MURDER TWO
The South, meanwhile, was in shock and consternation over a murder of its own—an elderly white woman in South Carolina murdered by her slaves. Betsey Witherspoon was her name, and by her family’s accounts, she had long pampered and “indulged” her slaves.
In mid-1861, however, the Witherspoons discovered that while absent on a trip, her slaves had “borrowed” her china, linens, and silverware for a “ball” held some fifteen miles from her Society Hill plantation. Her son, John Witherspoon, visiting his mother one evening after her return, told her slave William that he would be back the next day, “and give every one of you a thrashing.”
That night, his mother died in her bed—of natural causes, it first appeared. According to diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut, writing about her own second cousin Betsey, investigation—and the key confession of a slave—instead revealed a chilling scenario orchestrated by William.
In the middle of the night, long after the Widow Witherspoon had gone to sleep, William and Betsey’s maid, Rhody, stole into Betsey’s bedroom and smothered her with a bedspread. They thought it would appear she had simply died in her sleep, like her kinswoman Elizabeth not long before. The slaves then started to dress their victim in a clean nightgown—when she started up, conscious again!
Mary Boykin Chesnut does not say exactly how her cousin truly died, but she does say the unfortunate woman “begged them hard for life,” and “she asked them what she had ever done that they should want to kill her. She promised before God never never to tell on them. Nobody should ever know. But Rhody stopped her mouth with the counterpane. William held her head and hands down. And the other two [slaves] sat on her legs.”
Her children suspected foul play when they saw bruises on their mother’s face and neck. They then found blood on a candlestick on her bedside table. They found bloody fingermarks on the underside of her bedspread. Further searching turned up bloody rags. Then they found that a trunk holding their mother’s cache of gold pieces had been stolen. Finally, a detective called to the plantation home questioned a young, frightened-looking slave named Romeo, and he “told every particular from beginning to end.”
There was talk of a lynching, but the murder victim’s son John “will not allow anything wrong or violent to be done,” wrote second cousin Mary Chesnut. The suspects would be “tried as the law directs.” Oddly, she also noted, it was the maid Rhody who first pointed out the blood on the bedspread. “They suppose she saw it, knew they would see it, and did it to avert suspicion from herself.”
But Rhody seemed to want to call attention to herself. After the blood was found, the victim’s daughter-in-law Mary Witherspoon wouldn’t accept the obvious. “I wish they would not say such horrid things,” she cried. “Poor soul, she died in peace with all the world. It is bad enough to find her dead. Nobody even touched a hair of her head. To think, any mortal could murder her. Never! I will not believe it.”
To which Rhody looked “strangely” into Mary’s eye and said, “Well done! Miss Mary. You stick to dat, my Missus. You stick to dat.”
Postscript: The perpetrators were later convicted and hanged, Mary Chesnut reported in her diaries. And violence begat still more violence, as sometime after the trial a Captain W. H. Wingate, who had “stood by” the murderous slaves during their trial, shot and killed the victim’s grandson, Captain George Williams, in cold blood, for reasons unclear. By Chesnut’s account, the abolition-touting Wingate came up behind Williams as he sat in a chair at a railroad station waiting to leave with his troops and shot the young officer, “before the very faces of his soldiers.” No surprise that “it was very hard to rescue Wingate from the hands of George’s men, who wanted to shoot him instantly.” In contrast to the earlier scenario, the jury convicting this murderer recommended mercy, and he was merely banished from South Carolina as his punishment.
MURDER THREE
“Oh, you coward!” How many times in the course of human affairs have such words led to violence, physical injury, and even death? So it was in Norfolk, Virginia, a city destined to be occupied by Federal troops from May 1862 until war’s end. This was a difficult period for the port city’s old-line, pro-Confederate white citizenry. Surely they winced at the parade of local blacks upon the effective date of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863). And no doubt they cringed at the sight of black women trampling the Confederate flag and at reports of Jefferson Davis being buried in effigy in a local cemetery.
Such events were close to mind the day a white Union lieutenant marched a company of black soldiers past the esteemed and widely loved physician David Minton Wright.
Here was a man dedicated to saving human life, a man “who had been heroic in his treatment of patients during the deadly yellow-fever epidemic of 1855,” recalled Virginius Dabney in his Virginia: The New Dominion, A History from 1607 to the Present. And yet, at the sight of the Union officer and company of blacks something within the doctor snapped. Fists clenched, obviously agitated, he uttered those fateful words: “Oh, you coward!”
The accosted officer, Lieutenant A. L. Sanborn, immediately stopped. “You are under arrest,” he said. “Whereupon Wright drew a pistol and fired twice at the Union officer, wounding him fatally. It was a rash and inexcusable act.”
It was also one that would haunt Norfolk for months, even years. First, Dr. Wright underwent trial before a military commission. Next, he was convicted and sentenced to death. Then came the sensational moment when Wright’s daughter Penelope visited him in his jail cell and exchanged clothing with her father and he briefly escaped.
But not for long. Discovered, he was returned to his cell and confined. Finally, in October 1863, a public hanging took place in the middle of the racetrack in the city’s fairgrounds. “Thousands watched,” reports Dabney, “as was the custom in those days, but ‘few old citizens could be recognized,’ since the ‘better classes’ were said to have stayed at home.” Nor was that really the end of the affair, since “his death cast a pall over Norfolk for years.”
Knights of the Realm
FEW IF ANY SCHOOLS OF THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOUTH WERE HELD IN SUCH high esteem as the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, founded by Thomas Jefferson within many a Southerner’s own lifetime. Four decades later it had become a magnet for the elite of the Old South, the plantation South.
Let a university historian describe the students to be found on Thomas Jefferson’s gorgeous campus at the outbreak of the war. Except for a small minority, wrote Professor Philip Alexander Bruce, the few hundred students at the university “were representative of the very best element of the Southern communities.”
How so? According to Bruce’s multivolume centennial history of the school (1818–1918), “They belonged to the widely known families which had always controlled the social and political destinies of that broad division of the country [the South].” Such prestigious background—good breeding, in effect—meant more, in his opinion, than mere social status. “Imbued to the fingertips with the free, virile, and chivalrous spirit which had been nurtured by the plantation system, they were at once democratic and aristocratic.”
While that combination may seem unlikely to some, Bruce was probably correct when he noted that the young university scions came from a rural environment and were quite accustomed to manly pursuits such as riding horses, hunting, fishing, tramping in the countryside, and getting along in all kinds of weather.
They made good soldiers, not only because of these useful skills and a general self-reliance in the field, but also because of their “high sense of personal honor and unshakable devotion to country.” It needs hardly be said that they held a special feeling for home and family tradition; they lived on or in properties passed down from colonial days. “The history of these houses—their heirlooms, their surroundings, their occupations, their atmosphere—had left a permanent impression on the spirit of the young men who went straight from these thresholds to be educated in the University of
Virginia.”
Therein, too, lay the explanation for their ultimate allegiance not to Union, but to home state. “Their loyalty to their respective states,” wrote historian Bruce, “was a passion as ardent as that which the Swiss felt for their mountains, or the Highlanders for their glens.”
When 515 university students joined the Confederate Army in 1861, only a handful of students remained at the school, which soon became a giant de facto Confederate hospital. Of the school’s nine thousand alumni as of 1865, more than a fourth “took an active part in the hostilities…about 500 of the university alumni perished in the service.” Many more were wounded. Students in the later period of the Civil War, in fact, were recovered wounded—young men too maimed or disabled to fight again, but able to get around as students.
The conversion to a military hospital filled the school’s dormitory rooms and even Jefferson’s famous Rotunda, originally the school’s library. In a dormitory room, at one point, a wounded Federal prisoner languished with two recuperating “Rebs.”
“Hello,” said a surprised visitor one day, “how did this Yank get in here?” Never mind, said the “Yank’s” companions. “Leave him alone. We are brothers now through suffering.”
While many of the university’s casualties were twenty and over in age, quite a few were not: Sixteen were under twenty, eight under eighteen, nine under seventeen, and three under sixteen. Bruce’s account reflects a romantic glow when mentioning the university’s heroes, saying that all its sons “were equally unselfish, equally devoted, and equally brave,” and all again, “with equal cheerfulness, offered up their lives upon the altars of their native commonwealths.”
Despite his unabashed jingoism, Bruce did tell the stories of remarkable and inspiring young men. It is significant, though, how often the allusions to knights of old crop up—and not always in his words alone.
Take young Dabney Carr Harrison, who at nine “had read Hume’s History of England”; who at fifteen had entered the sophomore class at Princeton; who had “a countenance classical”; who by nature “was at once frank, cordial, and fearless”; who in manners was “singularly gentle and refined”; who attended law school at the university for two years before becoming a minister; and who, at twenty-seven, as war broke out, was the University’s chaplain.
He remained a man of God as the war’s toll mounted, especially among the First Families of the South. “The war had now begun, and in a short time, the news arrived that two of his cousins, men of brilliant promise and graduates of the University, Holmes and Tucker Conrad of Winchester, had been killed. Then followed the announcement that a third cousin, Carter H. Harrison, had fallen, then that his own brother also had perished.”
This news was too much for University Chaplain Harrison. “‘I must take his place,’ was his quiet response to this last sorrowful message.”
As a soldier—a captain in fact—the young minister performed with courage but said, “I can fight for my country, but I cannot hate my enemy.” It was reported that he never ordered his men forward—he led them from in front.
And the outcome? “He fell at last, shot through the lung, after three bullets had passed through his hat, and one across his temple, leaving a bloody streak in its course.”
Dying, he said he was “content and happy, trusting in the merits of my Saviour, Jesus Christ.” A “short, feverish sleep” silenced him for a while, but he then started up with a final cry. “Company K! You have no captain now, but never give up, never surrender.”
A fellow minister, the Reverend J. M. Atkinson, held the same romantic viewpoint as that imbuing Bruce’s history. Said Atkinson: “Among the deified heroes of ancient song, in the golden record of Grecian fame, in the stirring chronicles of the medieval knighthood, in the ranks of war, in the halls of learning, in the temple of religion, a nobler name is not registered than his, nor a nobler spirit mourned.”
But Dabney Harrison was not alone. There was, for instance, Randolph Fairfax, “the grandson of the ninth Baron Fairfax, of Cameron…sprung from a family which had been conspicuous in England and America through eight centuries.” A student who joined Virginia’s Rockbridge Artillery, this martyr served so well and so conscientiously until his death in battle that Robert E. Lee wrote to the young man’s mourning father, “I have watched his conduct from the commencement of the war, and have pointed with pride to the patriotism, self-denial, and manliness of character he has exhibited.”
Another to be installed in the university’s pantheon of heroes was a professor, Lewis M. Coleman, who taught ancient languages. An artillery major, he was fatally wounded at Fredericksburg.
Still another university hero was Cotesworth Pinckney Seabrook of South Carolina, who used to walk “many miles” into the mountains near the university to conduct religious services “for the mountaineers.” Said a close friend from both college days and the soldierly ranks: “He seemed raised up from among the medieval dead and set in the midst of us, to give proof that the spirit of knightly courtesy, constancy, and valor had not departed from our times.” This amazing young man, who hurried home to volunteer as soon as South Carolina seceded, managed to survive major battles of the war—Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg among them—and the first clash at Cold Harbor. After that engagement, he wrote, almost unbelievably, “We had the satisfaction of charging through grape, canister, and bullets for half a mile.”
He wrote to his mother to have no fear for him, since he had no fear for himself. The next day, at Chancellorsville, he was killed—another romanticized martyr from the ranks of those privileged by birth, background, and education to defend tradition, chivalry as they saw it, and a way of life they thought their right and responsibility.
Six-Year-Old’s Flight
WHEN MARTHA HARPER WAS “ABOUT” S I X YEARS OLD, THERE LOOMED A GOOD night for her escape from the master’s farm to rejoin her mother and father in Richmond. The white overseer’s daughter was getting married, and all round the Ryland place in Saluda, Virginia, the white folks were getting ready for a big time. Who among them would be thinking about what the slaves were up to?
It was around 8:00 p.m. when a friendly slave named Bill crept up to a window in Martha’s quarters and beckoned; the proverbial coast was clear. As instructed in advance, she ran out the door, and Bill handed her over a fence to her uncle Jack, who was waiting with another man.
The two men ran through the woods taking turns carrying the little girl on their shoulders. About midnight, however, four hours after their start, they heard the yelp of bloodhounds. Somebody was in pursuit after all!
The frightening sound was drawing steadily closer. The little girl knew the significance. “My poor heart started jumping as the sound neared and neared,” she related many years later.
She was sure they’d all be caught any moment, but her uncle Jack reassured her. “Dem’s Ryland’s hounds,” he said. He had outdistanced them before, and he would outdistance them this time.
The two men bent to it and ran faster and faster. They reached the Pamunkey River, where Uncle Jack took the child high on his shoulders and waded the deep stream. He just “ploughed” through the water to the other side. There the small party of fugitives paused under a brush for breath. They watched as the pack of hounds and their slave-hunting masters reached the shoreline left behind and the dogs muddled about in confusion over the lost scent. As the blacks held their breath, the white posse turned downstream. In minutes, the pursuers were gone.
The two men and the girl went on. Soon they found a place in the thick, hardly trammeled woods to hide out for the coming day. They did the rest of their traveling that way—rest and hide by day, travel by night—until the morning when they reached a farm in Hanover County, outside Richmond, where Martha’s father had left his wagon for them. The two men placed Martha under a pile of vegetables in the wagon and told her to be still while they proceeded toward nearby Richmond—and the two sets of military lines ahead of them.
; “When they got to the Yankee lines, Uncle showed Father’s pass, and they let us pass through the lines. Outside of Richmond, he had to show it to the Confederates, and they let him pass into the city because he was bringing provisions.”
Soon the wagon turned down old Brook Road, and soon it turned into St. James Street. Martha’s waiting mother at last saw the horse-drawn rig coming. “She screamed so loud that they must have heard her all over Richmond.”
Davises Everywhere
SO MANY PEOPLE WERE INVOLVED IN SO MANY WAYS. ALL ACROSS AMERICA, FROM all across America, the Civil War sucked up many different people, pulled them into the maelstrom, and spit them out again, changed forever. Heroes, fools, rogues, knaves, and innocents were all affected, whether they wanted to be or not.
Take one common surname—the Davises.
There was Jefferson Davis, of course. President of the Confederacy and a mainstay of the history books. But how about the ten Davis men who won the Medal of Honor for their gallantry during the Civil War? They are hardly known today, except possibly among their descendants or by hometown historians, but all ten men—Union men, naturally—were visible enough to be decorated for their exploits.
Confederates named Davis (or otherwise) naturally did not qualify for Union decorations, and so few among us today will recall Private John Davis of the Confederacy’s “Quitman Rifles,” Kershaw’s Brigade, at Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863. A compatriot, Dr. Augustus Dickert, called this particular Davis “one of the bravest men in our regiment.” Said Dickert: “He was reckless beyond all reason. He loved danger for danger’s sake. Stepping behind a tree to load—he was on the skirmish line—he would pass out from this cover in plain view, take deliberate aim, and fire. Again and again he was entreated and urged by his comrades to shield himself, but in vain.”
Best Little Stories from the Civil War: More than 100 true stories Page 15
