Bloody Williamson

by Paul M. Angle

  Another shattered the decorum of the court when he defined his attitude toward capital punishment:

  “No, sir: I don’t believe in no capital punishment, and I’ll tell you right here that any man who does ought to be hung!”

  Many in the courtroom laughed at the answer a farmer gave to the lawyer who tried to find out whether he was prejudiced against Negroes:

  “Wall, sir, I don’t believe in hangin’ nobody for nothin’, and I reckon I never could hang a white man for killin’ a nigger, but if one nigger kills another, and it was right down awful murder, I reckon as how I could send him to the penitentiary.”

  Thirteen days passed before twelve men, selected from nearly five hundred talesmen, sat in the jury box. All were farmers, and most of them owned the land they worked. Only one had ever been a miner.

  During the first days of the trial the state offered numerous witnesses to identify the defendants as members of the armed mob that had ambushed the Illinois Central train at Lauder station on the morning of June 30. None compared in effectiveness with Alfred Karr, the husband of the woman for whose murder the miners were on trial. As the tall, light-colored Negro with the reddish mustache and goatee took the stand, the spectators stiffened with expectancy, and a strained hush replaced the usual undercurrent of whispering and shuffling feet. In a calm voice Karr told how the bullets cut through the hair of the little child he held on his knee. Suddenly he stood, pointed to the dark face of George Durden, one of the defendants, and cried with passion:

  “There is the man that killed my wife! I am sure of it. He shot her through the heart, and as she fell on the floor beside me and I called her by name, a stream of blood as big as this here cane [shaking the stick he held] burst from her bosom and soaked the floor where she fell.”

  From the defendants charged directly with murder the state turned to Thomas Jeremiah, one of the two white men on trial. The prosecution admitted that Jeremiah had not even been near the scene of the riot, but contended that he was its principal inciter, and procured the arms and ammunition the attackers had used.

  To prove its case the state presented two private detectives whom Brush had hired several weeks before the outbreak. Both testified that Jeremiah, with John Paretti (indicted but never apprehended), had stored guns and ammunition in the boardinghouse in Carterville where all four men had lived, and that the weapons and cartridges had been removed on the early morning of June 30. The boardinghouse proprietor corroborated their testimony.

  The state concluded its case dramatically. From the beginning Brush had taken an active part in the trial. He had filled several notebooks with abstracts of testimony, and had conferred repeatedly, in whispers, with the attorneys for the prosecution. Each night in his hotel rooms he had held a council of war, reviewing what had just happened and planning the next day’s strategy. Now he was called as the state’s last witness. Quietly and without perceptible emotion he told his story.

  As the train stopped at Lauder, Brush related, he was sitting at an open window in a coach ahead of the one in which the Negroes were riding. Angry voices drew his attention. Looking out he saw Paretti, whom he knew, and heard him say to the conductor:

  “I want to get to those Negroes.”

  The conductor asked Brush whether Paretti, and several others on the platform, were his men. Brush replied that they were not, and told the conductor to pull out. Looking Paretti in the eye, he warned him not to shoot. The conductor signaled the engineer, and the train jerked into motion.

  “If you don’t stop that train I’ll shoot you!” Paretti yelled.

  Instead of complying, the conductor jumped for the rear platform, and the train gained speed.

  “Immediately,” Brush said, “the Italian and the Negro behind him fired their guns.… Someone, whom I could not see, fired into the car, up toward the front end. Immediately after the two men fired at the conductor they fired at me. By this time there was a great deal of firing all around.”

  The quiet voice continued.

  “I opened the valise which was on the seat in front of me, and, taking my revolver out, reached out of the window to return the fire. I was almost ready to shoot, and was looking for the men when I heard someone fall or jump on the ground near the depot platform, about the length of a car from the depot. I looked that way and saw a Negro firing wildly toward the train.… I fired at him that instant, and thought I hit him as he fell. I then turned and fired at the Italian and the Negro.”

  Brush concluded his testimony by describing the finding of the dead Negress and the removal of her body from the train at the mine.

  The strategy of the defense was simple: to establish alibis for those defendants charged with participation in the riot, and to show that Thomas Jeremiah was not a conspirator.

  To this end, witness after witness took the stand to testify that one or more of the defendants was somewhere else than at Lauder station when the train was fired on. Others, including the wife of the Carterville boardinghouse proprietor, swore that the ammunition Jeremiah was said to have stored up before the riot was inconsequential in amount. Still others testified to Jeremiah’s good reputation and character, and impugned Brush’s detectives.

  With the testimony all in, Vienna prepared for an oratorical field day. Interest in the case had, if anything, been heightened by the testimony, and new spectators poured in to hear the closing arguments of the attorneys. These, it was evident, would take several days, for none of the fourteen lawyers had any intention of surrendering his right to make a speech.

  On the afternoon of January 3, 1900, State’s Attorney George B. Gillespie opened for the prosecution, taking three hours to expound the law and analyze the testimony of the witnesses for the defense. On the following day L. O. Whitnet, Gillespie’s partner in private practice, consumed the entire morning on behalf of the defense. For the remainder of that day, and the two days that followed, the lawyers picked apart the stories of the witnesses and attacked or defended the miners’ union and Sam T. Brush. One even read the Biblical accounts of the fall of man and Cain’s slaying of Abel, and from them drew precedents for the application of the death penalty. The spectators, crowding the courtroom from 8.30 in the morning until 9.00 each night, sat enthralled.

  The climax came on Saturday, January 6, when “Governor” Johnson made the final argument for the defense and “Judge” Youngblood closed for the prosecution. “This,” wrote Jewell H. Aubere, reporting the trial for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, “was the day for the battle royal.… Today the old court house in Vienna was turned into an arena, and there before breathless hundreds these venerable men struggled for the mastery.”

  Johnson began quietly and disarmingly by reminiscing about his boyhood in southern Illinois. He spoke of the jury as an instrument of justice, stressing the seriousness of each juror’s responsibility, and emphasizing the fact that guilt must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Turning to a defense of the miners’ union as an organization, he unleashed the eloquence that hundreds had come to hear. With a lump of coal in his hands he described the hardships and dangers faced by the men who dug the black mineral from the depths of the earth, and implored the jurymen to deal simple justice to his clients.

  Following Johnson’s example, Youngblood traced the trials of his own boyhood, and challenged any man to show that his attitude toward the laboring classes had ever been anything but friendly and sympathetic. But a crime had been committed, a foul crime, and justice demanded that the penalty of the law be applied. With a severity approaching passion he assailed Jeremiah and Durden as leaders of a conspiracy that had led to murder, and sarcasm gave a cutting edge to his voice as he reviewed the arguments of the lawyers who had asked that these men go unpunished. Then he dropped oratory, and closed with a cool and logical discussion of the evidence.

  After Youngblood finished, Judge Vickers read his instructions to the jury, and put the case in its hands.

  As dawn broke on Sunday morning, the bailiff in charg
e of the jurors left the courthouse to summon the judge and the lawyers. The defendants were brought in from the jail. To the audience, which included half a dozen sleepy spectators, the judge read the verdict:

  “We, the jurors sworn to inquire into this cause, find the defendants not guilty of the crime charged.”

  There was no demonstration.

  That afternoon the lawyers, the defendants (except four who had been held for violating an injunction issued by the United States Court), and their friends and families started for their homes. At every station crowds prevented the train from proceeding until hundreds had shaken the hand of “Governor” Johnson, whom all credited with the acquittal. Nowhere did the celebration approach that at Carterville, where at least a thousand people, accompanied by a band, had assembled. There, from the platform of his car, Johnson made a short speech. On the 30th day of June, he said, Sam T. Brush looked from a car window at Carterville and saw his enemies. “On the 7th day of January,” he continued, “we look out of a car window and see our friends. Brush and the attorneys for the prosecution tried to make the people of Vienna believe that the people of Carterville are all cut-throats and anarchists. But we convinced them that you are law-abiding and good citizens of this state.”

  After the Lauder case, the trial of the Carterville rioters was an anticlimax, in spite of the fact that the second riot far exceeded the first in seriousness. Everyone knew what the outcome would be. If a Johnson County jury would not convict Negroes for killing Negroes, could there be any real possibility that white men would be punished for the same offense?

  The trial, which began at Vienna on January 23, 1900, followed the pattern of the earlier case. Once again strangers filled the county seat and crowded the courtroom from morning until night. The same lawyers were on hand, with the defense banking heavily on Johnson. Once again weeks were consumed in examining almost six hundred talesmen before a jury was selected. As before, the jury consisted mainly of farmers, all fairly young.

  On February 13, Youngblood opened for the prosecution. In a speech of an hour and a half he expounded the law and outlined the state’s case against the twelve prisoners, all charged with the murder of the Negro, Sim Cummins. In reply, W. W. Duncan indicated that the defense would be an alibi for some of the defendants, justifiable homicide for others.

  The state took seven days to present its witnesses. Altogether, fifty-two testified. Some had seen old man Shadowens, his two sons, and Elmer James, all carrying guns, on their way to the Carterville railroad station just before the riot. Some had seen Willis Carney, or Robert Hatfield, or Mat Walker, fire at the Negroes as they ran down the tracks in terror. Others testified that the colored men had been anything but provocative in their behavior, and that the riot was precipitated by the white miners who had ordered them out of town. In all, nine of the defendants were positively identified as having taken part in the shooting. In order not to weaken its case, the state dismissed the indictments against the other three defendants, and yielded to the defense.

  The defense introduced a number of witnesses, some of them colored, who swore that the Negroes had come to Carterville on September 17 looking for trouble, and that their actions at the Italian saloon early that morning, and at the railroad station later in the day, had precipitated it. Three of the prisoners—Matthew Walker, Willis Carney, and Lem Shadowens—admitted frankly that they had taken part in the riot, but all swore that Sim Cummins had begun the shooting and that they had fired only in self-defense.a Other defendants were located at points distant from the station at the time of the riot. A succession of witnesses, principally Carterville businessmen, testified to the good character of the nine men standing trial.

  On March 1, after six weeks had been spent in selecting a jury and taking testimony, the lawyers began their closing arguments. For three days the old courtroom rang with sententious oratory. The testimony of witnesses was emphasized or torn apart, prejudice was charged and disavowed, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution were cited, and the shades of Jefferson and Lincoln appealed to.

  As in the Lauder case, Johnson closed for the defense. No one, he asserted, was more keenly aware of the rights of Negroes than he. As a young man he had fought for the abolition of slavery, and as a resident of a one-time slave state he had been bitterly condemned for championing the cause of freedom. But the right of a Negro to equality before the law did not nullify the right of self-defense. On that the defendants stood—that and the fact that the state had not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt, as the law required.

  The final summary of the state’s case fell to George B. Gillespie who, though the youngest of the attorneys for the prosecution, had shown outstanding ability in this and the preceding trial. Governor Johnson’s address, Gillespie admitted, was “as beautiful as a dream and smelled as sweet as new-mown hay,” but facts, not flowery words, should influence juries. The defense claimed self-defense, but against what? If an overt act had been committed, it had been committed by the defendants. The Negroes, it was said, had formed an unlawful assembly, but they had as much right in Carterville as anyone, and if any assembly was unlawful on September 17, 1899, it was that of the armed whites. The men on trial brought about the death of Sim Cummins: they had the means, the opportunity, the motive, and malice in their hearts. “I make no passionate appeals,” Gillespie concluded. “Decide this case according to the law and facts, and remember God’s decree has gone forth ‘that whosoever shall shed man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’ ”

  Gillespie finished his argument late in the afternoon of March 3. That evening Judge Vickers gave the case to the jury. At four o’clock on the following morning the jurors reached a verdict of not guilty; three hours later the verdict was announced in open court. State’s Attorney Fowler of Williamson County, recognizing the futility of further prosecutions, asked the court to dismiss the indictments, still pending, for the killing of the other four Negroes. The defendants walked out of the courtroom in full freedom.

  As he discharged the prisoners Judge Vickers made a little speech. Let them forget the animosities that had been engendered during the trial, he asked, and cherish neither hatred nor desire for revenge because of it. Above all, he hoped that a spirit of mutual forbearance would prevail, and that peace, law, order, and tranquillity would be restored in Carterville.

  The judge’s hope was realized. Nonunion Negroes continued to work the St. Louis and Big Muddy mine without molestation. But for Brush it was a losing venture. Between 1900 and 1905 his production ranged from 213,000 tons to 245,000 tons, as opposed to 320,000 tons in 1897 and 300,000 tons in 1898. At the same time other mines in the state, and even in Williamson County, set new records. Moreover, his expenses ran high. At frequent intervals he had to replenish his labor force, which meant transportation not only for the miners but for their families as well, and at all times he had to keep his properties under heavy guard.

  In 1906 he gave up—not by surrendering to the union, but by selling out to the Madison Coal Company. Thereafter the St. Louis and Big Muddy was known as Madison No. 8. And thereafter it was worked by the United Mine Workers of America.b

  Fifty years afterward, one who had known Brush well, both directly and through close family associations, rendered a verdict sounder, perhaps, than those which were read in the courtroom at Vienna. “Sam Brush was no Lester,” he said. “I am sure he fought the union because of principle, not because of money. He was the typical early American stubborn individualist who would not count the cost. He thought he was right.”

  * This is a general description, and may be too bleak for the St. Louis and Big Muddy mine. Miss Elizabeth P. Brush, Samuel T. Brush’s daughter, comments on this passage:

  “Occasionally my father took us to the mine to the Fourth of July picnic.… I remember a grove of trees where the long tables were set, and I remember the rows of ugly little houses, but I do not believe there was ‘a total absence of vegetation’; the hideou
s mountain of slack which I recall so well seeing from the train at Du Quoin must have had a rather inconspicuous counterpart at the Brush mine, for I do not recall it at all.…

  “As for sanitary arrangements, running water was a rare luxury in rural southern Illinois in the 1890’s and for many years thereafter. Outdoor privies were all but universal even in the towns. In our house, built on the edge of town (Carbondale) in 1891, and considered ‘modern’ then, all the water used for the bathroom, had to be pumped by hand into a tank in the attic, and so the bathroom was used only in case of illness!”

  † A woman who formerly lived in Williamson County comments: “Some Herrin families do keep hired Negro help in their homes overnight. I had a ‘Clarissa’ who lived with me for four years. The old feeling of ‘being out of the city limits by dark’ was still with her, however. She didn’t like to answer my door after the evening meal and usually stayed right in her room. She never appeared on the streets after dark.”

  ‡ Miss Brush comments: “I recall that he thought the Pana operators craven to discard the Negroes after they had used them, and he liked the idea of befriending them (as he thought) as well as of breaking the strike against him.… What his admirers thought courage and optimism, a detached observer might well call rashness or I suppose, foolhardiness.”

  That Brush had a deep interest in the welfare of the Negro—most unusual for a southern Illinoisan of fifty years ago—is beyond question. His daughter characterizes him as “a pillar of the Presbyterian Church of Carbondale, a friend of the Negroes of the town, and a stern enemy of the saloon.” And Dean Robert B. Browne of the University of Illinois, who as a young man knew the Brush family well, tells me, in language gratifyingly unacademic: “Sam Brush always had the damnedest stream of colored folks coming to the back door and getting handouts. He took care of ’em.”

  § Miss Brush writes: “Unless my father and my brother James lied repeatedly in their conversations with each other, the men who testified thus were most unsavory characters. The account is based on defense testimony, is it not? You quote my father’s statement [see this page], but it seems to me you have not allowed it to influence your narrative of the killings. However blameworthy Sam T. Brush may have been for bringing the Negroes into Williamson County, his testimony as to what happened is surely deserving of enough weight to cast a shadow of doubt on what Shadowens and James said to save their skins. And is it likely that the Negroes, who certainly went to Carterville with apprehension, made such threats? It would have been suicidal. As for their drinking, my father thought that story a lie.”