these persons that this peonage system is more cruel and inhuman
than the slavery of antebel um days, since then the master
conserved the life and health of the slave for business reasons just as
he did that of his horse or mule, but now the master treated the
slave unmerciful y and with the sole object of get ing the greatest
possible amount of labor out of him. Moreover a peon costs but a
few dol ars while a slave used to cost several hundred."1
Pace, agitated at the at ention his case drew, appeared alone early
in the morning two days later at the o ces of U.S. At orney Reese.
He said he wished to plead guilty to al eleven counts of peonage
and obviate the need for trial. Pace's supporters spread word that
he had approached Reese against the advice of his own lawyers. In
reality, the gesture was a calculated gambit to shift the focus of the
prosecution to other defendants—while preserving Pace's chal enges
to the constitutionality of the indictment.
Reese refused to accept the plea unless Pace was represented by
his at orney. At noon, after rounding up one of Pace's lawyers—the
others had already departed for Dadevil e—court was cal ed into
others had already departed for Dadevil e—court was cal ed into
session, and the peonage counts read aloud. Pace pleaded guilty to
each one, though only after his at orney led "demurrers" to the
indictments—objections in modern legal parlance—arguing that the
federal peonage statute didn't apply to the acts al eged in the
indictments.
The federal government had no jurisdiction over the use of forced
labor in Tal apoosa County, the lawyers argued, regardless of
whether individuals had been held in slavery. Judge Jones,
acknowledging Pace's right to chal enge the applicability of the
peonage law to a higher federal court, overruled the objections and
ordered Pace to stand for sentencing.
Asked if he had anything to say, Pace—in stark contradiction to
his initial claims to the press—said he was guilty of the seizure of
eleven African Americans, including John Davis, Rita Scot , Jim
Caldwel , and another laborer named Owen Green. Yet Pace denied
that his capture and enslavement of workers violated any United
States laws.
Green had also raised his shirt to show the grand jury his injuries
during earlier testimony. "They whipped scars on me," Green said as
he revealed the marks on his skin. "They laid me up for a week and
a half one time. One of the scars on me is where Mr. Tom
Blassingale struck me on the head. He struck me with a stick …and
knocked me senseless…. Mr. Jim Kennedy choked me and jumped
on my head. After I was stamped, the blood came up from my
lungs…. I bled a good deal from my lungs."2
In the case of Green, Pace lured the farmhand by approaching
him in a saloon in Dadevil e, o ering to hire him for $4 per month,
help his father pay o the mortgage on a $16 horse, and al ow him
to come and go freely from the farm. But once a contract had been
signed, Green was placed in the lockup on Pace's farm for nearly
two years. "I was made to do farming, locked up at nights and
whipped," Green testi ed. "Mr. Jim Kennedy whipped me ve
times in one day. Mr. Bob Smith also whipped me. He whipped me
four times. Mr. Bil Brown whipped me." Later, Pace sold Green to
four times. Mr. Bil Brown whipped me." Later, Pace sold Green to
George Cosby.
In the courtroom, Reese stood and, playing out a careful y
choreographed arrangement with Judge Jones and Pace's lawyer,
made one act of deference to the defendant—who appeared in
court looking far older than his forty-nine years.3 Reese pointed out
Pace's "diseased" condition and asked that the defendant be al owed
to sit for the rest of the proceeding.
Judge Jones agreed and then sentenced Pace to ve years in the
federal penitentiary in Atlanta on each charge. Taking into account
Pace's in rmity, the judge ruled that the sentences would be served
concurrently The charges that Pace had conspired with others in the
seizure and enslavement of blacks were postponed until after the
court of appeals ruled on Pace's chal enge. Accepting assertions that
Pace was in dire health, Jones also al owed him to post a $5,000
bond and remain free pending the outcome of those legal
machinations. Wil iam Gray, the Dadevil e banker, reappeared at
the bar, along with co-defendant Fletch Turner, to sign the bond for
Pace. He was released from custody.
Pace appeared visibly relieved, though the sti sentence sent a
wave of anxiety through the other defendants—who realized Pace
was now likely to be cal ed to testify against them and that Judge
Jones would hand down similar penalties to others convicted.
The Advertiser, like most local whites, remained certain that Pace
would never actual y be imprisoned, regardless of whether the
guilty pleas were a rmed by the court of appeals. "He is in an
almost helpless physical condition. He su ers from a bone disease
which has a ected his feet, and he walks with great e ort. It is said
that he wil be able to produce a surgeon's certi cate showing he is
in a terrible physical condition."
Reese was elated with the guilty plea. But a growing chorus of
politicians, journalists, and southern commentators—the same
voices that original y applauded the investigation as proof that
southerners could be relied on to clean up slavery—hailed Pace's
southerners could be relied on to clean up slavery—hailed Pace's
admission that the continuing slavery was limited to a pocket of
miscreants in one county. They loudly proclaimed there was no
need to pursue any further charges or al egations.
Reese knew bet er. The publicity around Pace's arraignment and
plea triggered a wave of new al egations, some even more grim
than any yet heard by the grand jury. Moreover, At orney General
Knox's earlier order of investigations into peonage and involuntary
servitude across Alabama, Georgia, and northern Florida was
detecting dozens of other cases. U.S. District Court judge Emory
Speer in Macon, Georgia, was presiding over his own proceedings
stemming from a multilayered slave trading conspiracy in the
southern half of that state.
Three white men—Wil iam Shy, Arthur Clawson, and Robert
Turner— pleaded guilty there to capturing a black man they
claimed owed them money whipping him, and forcing him into
labor. Judge Speer—behaving more like Alabama had initial y
expected of Judge Jones— ned the men $1,000 each but then
immediately suspended the punishments.
Apparently unaware of the earlier peonage al egations in his
state, Speer made the extraordinary assumption that the three men
before him were the only whites to reenslave a black man since the
Civil War. "In view of the fact that this is the rst crime of the kind
which ever has occurred in Georgia," Speer told the defendants,
"and because of the frank confession of the young men, sentence is
imposed, in order to convince the public that the purpose of the
court is to warn and deter others from like crime. During good
behavior, ne is suspended upon payment of $100 each." Given the
"problems of the times," Speer maintained harsh measures would be
counterproductive. "I deemed it for every reason best to deal very
leniently with the prisoners," Speer wrote to the at orney general.4
Reese was concerned that too many in the South viewed the new
slavery cases just as Judge Speer appeared to, as an anomaly. To
prove the broad scope of involuntary servitude in his jurisdiction,
Reese planned to aggressively broaden his investigation. Just two
Reese planned to aggressively broaden his investigation. Just two
days after Pace's guilty plea, the prosecutor sent federal marshals
back to Coosa County to arrest Laray Grogan, one of the Goodwater
watchguards who had been so busy in the town's trade in black
labor.
Grogan was accused of arresting an African American woman
named Emma Pearson on a bogus charge of vagrancy and then
sel ing her to Eliza Turner, the brother of Fletch Turner, who
managed the family's limestone quarry in Calcis. After arriving in
Montgomery, Grogan told a local reporter that he had done nothing
wrong and further that the peonage cases had made the blacks of
Coosa and Tal apoosa counties "unbearably impertinent." His bond
was immediately posted by two wealthy Goodwater businessmen,
and Grogan was released.
The same day, J. Wilburn Haralson was arrested in Columbus,
Georgia, where he worked in a cot on mil , and brought by a
Saturday morning train to Montgomery. Known as the Cosby
family's "a davit man," Haralson routinely wrote out and swore to
any ctitious charge George Cosby told him to lodge as a ruse for
seizing blacks. He was placed in the county jail to await trial on
five counts of peonage.5
Despite the continuing stream of new charges and the opening of
the Cosby trial a few days away, Reese worried that public support
for his campaign was wavering. Newspapers across the South were
growing more bel igerent in tone as Reese and a few other
prosecutors continued investigations. Alabama's most popular
political gure, Secretary of State J. Thomas He in, was also
growing louder in his denunciations of the cases.
Three days before the Cosby trial was set to begin, Reese
conducted a formal interview with the Montgomery Advertiser. He
said that while the charges against the Cosby men were technical y
termed peonage, the case was in fact about slavery—the overt
buying and sel ing of humans, and holding them in a condition of
coerced forced labor. "These indictments are for …kidnapping and
taking and carrying away any person with intent to place him in a
taking and carrying away any person with intent to place him in a
condition of slavery, and holding and returning him to a condition
of peonage," Reese said.
He also made it clear that the cases were aimed not just at
cleaning up an isolated nest of slavery hanging on in one area of
Alabama. The prosecution was an at ack on widespread practices of
involuntary servitude across the state. The Tal apoosa cases were
the high-pro le criminal thrust of the e ort, but just as important
was Judge Jones ruling that the Alabama contract labor law was
invalid. "The contract labor law which has just been declared
unconstitutional …was passed for the protection of landlords in the
cot on growing belt.
"It is a mat er of common knowledge that under this statute, the
laborer or renter has not been guilty of any criminal act in thus
leaving or abandoning the premises," Reese said. "He has simply
breached a contract which creates the relation of debtor and
creditor. Under this statute the creditor commands the debtor on
peril of hard labor not to work at his accustomed vocation for any
one else during the term of that contract." Reese blamed the nearly
unchecked and unaccountable power wielded by justices of the
peace in rural areas.6
The fol owing morning, the Cosbys appeared on the second oor of
the federal building accompanied by Dadevil e lawyer Thomas L.
Bulger, son of the Confederate hero at Get ysburg. But the rst train
from Tal apoosa County, packed with spectators and key witnesses,
had been delayed. Final y, at 1 P.M., the court convened with a
crowded gal ery of white spectators. White witnesses mil ed in the
corridor. For their safety, the African Americans who would testify,
explained Reese, would be produced only as they were cal ed to
the stand.
Reese announced to the gal ery that the government would rst
prosecute case No. 4218, in which the Cosbys, Pace, J. W. Haralson,
and James Kennedy were charged with conspiring to sel Pike
Swanson into labor on the Cosby farm. Swanson had testi ed
Swanson into labor on the Cosby farm. Swanson had testi ed
previously to the grand jury that he was held on the Cosby
plantation until just before the peonage investigation began. A
farmhand from Macon County, he said he went to the Cosby farm
the previous July and freely signed a contract to work for $2 a
month. But once Swanson began work, the Cosbys refused to pay
him. Instead, he was arrested, then arrested a second time, on bogus
a davits by Haralson accusing him of disorderly conduct and
ghting. Swanson was put through a sham trial by Kennedy, the
justice of the peace. Then Cosby pretended to pay Swanson's nes
in return for holding the worker at least fourteen more months.
Swanson testi ed he was never paid for any work on the Cosby
plantation and was held under guard seven days a week, and
locked in at night. Two weeks before the Cosbys were indicted, the
white men freed Swanson, who then ed to his home county. A
week before the trial, Burancas Cosby claimed never to have seen
Pike Swanson.
After Reese announced that Swanson's capture would be the rst
case, Judge Jones granted a one-day delay to give the defense
lawyers time to prepare. But early that afternoon, George Cosby
sent word that he and the other members of his family wished to
avoid the trial, as Pace had done. G. R. Sha er, of Dadevil e, one of
the men who made bond for the Cosbys, urged them to plead guilty
and had gathered scores of signatures in Tal-lapoosa County on a
petition asking for clemency.
At 5 P.M., Sha er cal ed the judge from his Adams Street home
back to court chambers, where they met with Cosby's lawyers.
Judge Jones refused to promise clemency. But in return for guilty
pleas from two of the men, Jones and Reese agreed to accept the
at orneys’ arguments that the statute of limitations had passed on
the crimes al eged against W. D. Cosby—the man who had been
ready to take morphine a few weeks earlier. His case was
dismissed.
With shafts of summer sun cut ing sharp diagonals through the
courtroom windows, George Cosby and his nephew Burancas stood
&nbs
p; before the bench, heads bowed, eyes downcast. They quietly
before the bench, heads bowed, eyes downcast. They quietly
pleaded guilty to forty- ve counts of peonage and conspiracy to
hold blacks in slavery.
The two insisted they had no idea that their actions were against
the law. They vigorously protested al egations by the U.S. at orney
that they treated the forced laborers cruel y. They implored the
court to recognize the hardship on their families that would come
from imprisonment.
"The excuse that you did not know that you were violating the
laws of the United States can have no legal weight, since every man
is conclusively presumed to know the law," Judge Jones responded.
"It is not entitled to a particle of moral weight in these cases,
because you are bound to know that what you did was a violation
of the laws of God and of the State regardless of any law of the
United States. Helpless and defenseless people who are guilty of no
crime have been brought into court and by col usion with justices of
the peace, who prostituted the authority of God and of this State in
the administration of justice have been deprived of their liberty,
fined and forced to work and in some instances cruel y beaten.
"You have violated not only the laws of your country but that
great law of honor and justice, which bids the powerful and strong
not to oppress the down-trodden."7
Judge Jones sentenced each of the men to one year and a day in
the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.
Reese was jubilant. The swift guilty pleas seemed to prove both
the extent of involuntary servitude and the power of the federal
sword to stop it. The clear implication was that he was at the
beginning of a massive campaign to root out slavery once and for
al . The trial of Fletch Turner was next on the docket, and would be
fol owed by many more. Agents continued to probe Lowndes
County and other areas where evidence of even more widespread
slavery was rampant. Reese began advocating to the Department of
Justice that his assistant, Julius Sternfeld, be named a special
prosecutor solely to oversee the expanding investigation. "These
cases justify the contention of the government that peonage and
cases justify the contention of the government that peonage and
involuntary servitude has been practiced in Alabama in no smal
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