The test-oath was invitation to the carpet-bagger. The statements of Generals Schofield and Stoneman show how difficult it was to find in the South men capable of filling office who could swear they had “never given aid or comfort” to a Confederate. Few or no decent people could do it. In the summer of 1865, President Johnson instructed provisional governors to fill Federal offices of mail, revenue and customs service with men from other States, if proper resident citizens—that is, men who could take the test-oath—could not be found. Office-seekers from afar swarmed as bees to a hive.
The carpet-bagger was the all-important figure in Dixie after the war; he was lord of our domain; he bred discord between races, kept up war between sections, created riots and published the tale of them, laying all blame on whites. Neither he nor his running mate the scalawag or turn-coat Southerner, was received socially. Sentence fell harder upon the latter when old friends insulted him and the speaker on the hustings could say of him no word too bitter. His family suffered with him. The wife of the native Radical Governor of one Southern State said when her punishment was over: “The saddest years of my life were spent in the Executive Mansion. In a city where I had been beloved, none of my old friends, none of the best people, called on me.” In times of great poverty, temptations were great; men, after once starting in politics, were drawn further than they had dreamed possible. Again, men with State welfare at heart, urged compromises as the only way to secure benefits to the State; on being irritated, urged unwisely; on being ostracized, out-Heroded Herod. Our foreign office-holders were not all bad men or corrupt. We will not call these carpet-baggers. The carpet-bagger has been defined: “A Yankee, in a linen duster and with a carpet-bag, appearing suddenly on a political platform in the South, and calling upon the negroes to vote him into office.” I give portraits of two types.
In the wake of Sherman’s Army which passed through Brunswick, Virginia, toward Washington, came and stopped two white men, Lewis and McGiffen. They were desperadoes and outlaws, carried Winchester rifles and were fine shots; said they hailed from Maine; to intimates, the leader, Lewis, boasted that he had killed his step-father and escaped the hangman by playing crazy. They leased the farm of a “poor white,” Mrs. Parrish. Lewis opened a negro school and a bank, issuing script for sums from twenty-five cents to five dollars; he organized a Loyal League, collecting the fees and dues therefrom. He armed and drilled negroes and marched them around to the alarm of the people. Court House records show lawful efforts of whites at self-protection. August 8, 1868, Lewis was tried before William Lett, J. P., for inciting negroes to insurrection, when, under pretense of preaching the Gospel to them, he convened them at Parrish’s. He was sentenced to the penitentiary for seven years. The State was under military rule, and the decision of the civil court was set aside and Lewis left at large. John Drummond was a witness against Lewis.
Lewis soon had the negroes well organised; he established a system of signal stations from the North Carolina line to Nottoway and Dinwiddie. By the firing of signal guns, they would receive notice to congregate. Suddenly, all hands on a man’s plantation would stop work and say: “Got orders, suh, tuh go tuh de Cote House.” And all at once roads would be lined with negroes from every direction bound for the Court House. In a few hours the little town would fill with darkeys, a thousand or more on the streets. They would collect thus from time to time, and hold secret or public political meetings, Lewis, McGiffen and other speakers working them up to a state of great excitement.
At one meeting, a riot occurred in which several men were killed or wounded. Mr. Freeman Jones, later Sheriff of the County, gave me a version of it. He said: “Meade Bernard (afterwards Judge Bernard) and Sidney Jones were set upon. Negroes knocked the last-named gentleman senseless, continuing chastisement until he was rescued by the Freedmen’s Bureau officer. When Bernard was attacked, his old coloured nurse, Aunt Sally Bland, rushed into the melée, crying: ‘Save my chile! save my chile!’ Sticks were raining blows on his head when she interfered, pleading with them to desist until they stopped. These white men had shown all their lives, only kindness to negroes. When set upon they were doing nothing to give offense, they were simply listening to the speeches. One negro, observing their presence, cried out: ‘Kill the d—d white scoundrels!’ Others took up the cry.
“The whites, a little handful, retreated towards the village, followed by at least a thousand negroes, yelling intention to sack and fire the town. The road passed through a very narrow lane into Main Street. Here they were blocked and confronted by Mr. L. G. Wall, carrier of the United States Mail, who, as a Government official, halted them, telling them he had right of way and that they were obstructing Government service; he ordered them to move back and make room; they would not; he drew his pistol and fired five or six times. I believe every shot took effect. Several negroes were desperately wounded. The mob retired and Wall went on. In the suburbs the negroes held an angry meeting, but they had got enough of mob violence.” Which was fortunate. The normal white male population of the village did not exceed forty or fifty. White men went to the polls soon after not knowing what to expect, and found everything quiet. Negroes had come, voted early and gone. They had learned a salutary lesson.
Lewis claimed to be an officer duly commissioned, and went about making arrests, selecting some prominent men. One of his victims was William Lett, an old and wealthy citizen, and the justice before whom Lewis had been brought to trial. A complaint by Mr. Lett’s cook was the ostensible ground of Lewis’ call upon Mr. Lett; the real purpose was robbery. The outlaws had seduced into their service John Parrish, an unlettered boy who liked to hunt with them, and who, boy-like, was pleased with their daredevil ways. He composed the third in the “team” that went around arresting people. He recently gave me the next chapter in the Lewis story.
“I was jes a little boy an’ I done what I was ordered to. I was goin’ out sqir’l huntin’, an’ I see Dr. Lewis, an’ he had a paper in his han’, an’ he say: ‘Johnny, I want you to go with me this evenin’.’ I says: ‘I wants to go squir’l huntin’.’ He says: ‘I summons you to go wid me to serve a warrant on Mr. Lett.’ An’ I lef’ my dawgs at my sister’s an’ I taken my little dollar-an’-a-half gun along. He says: ‘Johnny, people tell me this ole man is mighty hot-headed. If he comes out of his house an’ I tell you to shoot, shoot.’ Dr. Lewis called Mr. Lett out to de gate, an’ read de warrant to him. An’ Mr. Lett said he wouldn’ be arrested by him, an’ Dr. Lewis grabbed at his coat collar, an’ Mr. Lett broke loose, an’ hollered for somebody to han’ him his gun outer de house. An’ he went into de house an’ got a gun an’ shot Lewis, an’ Lewis stepped behin’ de gate-pos’, an’ he called to me: ‘D— him! where is he?’ An’ I said: ‘Jes behin’ de winder.’ An’ I stepped behin’ de corner, an’ Dr. Lewis called me, an’ I stepped out, an’ I thought I see a gun or pistol pointin’ my way f’om de winder, an’ I thought I heard Lewis say ‘Shoot!’ an’ I shot. It warn’t nothin’ but a little bitter dollar-an’-a-half bird gun. But dem shot went through de weather-bo’din’. I heard Mr. Lett’s gun when it fell an’ I heard him when he fell. Lewis was standin’ behin’ de gate-pos’. The cook-woman hollered: ‘Here he is! here he is, going out at de back door!’ And thar was a little chicken-house. An’ Lett shot Lewis with bird-shot.”
Mr. Freeman Jones summed it up simply thus: “When the gang came to capture Mr. Lett, the old man attempted a defense, ordering them off his place, and barricading himself behind the nearest thing at hand, which happened to be a chicken-coop. Lewis shot and nearly killed him; the old man lingered some time between life and death.” Mr. Lett, it seems, was shot by both. “They toted Lewis away,” concludes Parrish, “to de house of a feller named Carroll, an’ he stayed thar. They sent for de military soldiers an’ they came, an’ I stated de case well as I could, an’ they discharged me.” Lewis was tried in the civil court, sentenced to a term in the penitentiary, was carried by the sheriff to that institution and pardoned next day by Governor Wells, military appointee of General Schofield; he got back to the county almost as soon as the sheriff.
The people became more and more incensed at repeated outrages. Dr. Powell, whose assassination was attempted, tells me that the immediate cause of the final tragedies was that Lewis ordered Carroll to leave home. John B. Drummond, volunteering, was appointed special constable to arrest Lewis. He met Lewis and his gang in a turn of the road and halted them, telling Lewis he had a warrant for him. Lewis fired, killing him instantly. The temper of the public was now such that Lewis and McGiffen fled the State, enticing Parrish along. They sought asylum in North Carolina and sent Parrish back for some property. A reward was offered for them. In a little one-horse wagon which Parrish brought with Lewis’ pony, they travelled by night to Charleston, South Carolina. Here Lewis opened a school and Parrish hired himself out. They staid there two years. McGiffen married again. He had taken his little child from his Brunswick wife; now he concluded to carry it back to her.