Reconstruction

by Brooks D. Simpson

  Counsel for defense took a commission to cross-examine witness, but did not meet with more success than partly confusing witness. Had witness been in free command of language it may be that the counsel would have been confused. It was evident that Levi knew exactly what he was saying, although he had a halting way of expressing himself. Questions as to distance, time, locations, numbers and such would prove difficult for almost any one to answer under the circumstances; when a man’s life is in great danger his mind is not likely to closely observe things generally, so as to fix circumstances in his brain to make him a fluent witness.

  CROSS-EXAMINATION

  —Two of the Hickman brothers look very much alike; think Tom is the oldest; heard a man say that it was best to kill the niggers at once; saw William Cruikshank before sundown; there was a small shower at dusk; saw both brothers (Cruikshank) there at one time, and think I can’t be mistaken; saw Prudhomme Lemoine after I was taken prisoner; saw him about five o’clock; didn’t see him after that; he had a gun; saw him guarding prisoners; he had a double-barreled gun on his shoulder; saw Denis Lemoine there; of these prisoners here I saw only Bill Cruikshank and his brother; did not see Mr. Lewis there at all; Nash spoke to Denis Hickman when he talked of not killing the niggers; Nash said that to Hickman; the man who took me out at midnight was a stranger to me; the man who was taken out with me to be killed was Mac Brown; he and I were side by side; the man who shot at us stood about fifteen feet from us; he said he was going to shoot us through our heads; when he fired we both fell, I on my face; laid there until daylight; when I crawled off did not feel of Mac Brown’s body; can’t say what time it was when I crawled off; the bullet that wounded me cut my neck, glancing off, stunning me; I did not stir all night, but remained on my face. Mac Brown yelled after he fell, and the man shot him five times after that; when I got home no one was there, but my wife got in an hour afterward; I had nothing to do with making the gas pipe gun; Gilly and Luke Hadnot had repeating rifles.

  New Orleans Republican, February 28, 1874

  TRIAL IN THE UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT.

  Eighth day’s proceedings in the trial of W. J. Cruikshank and others, charged with conspiracy and murder last April in Grant parish:

  Benjamin Brim sworn—Last April was living about seven miles below Colfax; I was in Colfax, about the time Jesse Mc­Kinney was killed, to see about it, and to be among the people; was afraid to remain at home; our people in Colfax talked of the scary times; was in Colfax Easter Sunday, and saw the fight. [This witness described the situation of things Sunday morning just the same as other witnesses have.] Heard Shack White call to Bill Irwin and say that we surrendered; none of our people were shooting then, on account of the fire; firing outside had ceased for the time; some one told us to stack our arms; we went to the door, having laid down our guns; when our people went out the white men commenced shooting at us; I saw our men falling, and I fell, though not wounded; a man saw I was not hurt, and told me to get up and go to a tree where prisoners were placed; remained there fifteen or twenty minutes; a man asked me if there were no more men in the courthouse; he told me to go in and get them out; they were under the floor; all left except one, and we went back prisoners; one man under the floor said he would as soon be burned as shot down; the prisoners were marched into a field and ordered to sit down; there were many dead men near the courthouse; we remained under guard until dusk; one of the guards said to Captain Nash, “Here are your prisoners, what are we to do with them?” Nash told him to take us down to the boardinghouse; the wounded were also taken there; there were eight or nine wounded men; we sat in the yard until after dark; there were twenty-eight prisoners; kept us in the yard during the rain; the wounded were permitted to lie on a gallery; Nash came and said he would send us home if we would go home to our cotton and sugar; another man said, “Nash, have you no better sense than to send them old niggers home? You won’t live to see two weeks;” Nash went to the river with a large crowd of men; after that a stout man asked me where that yellow fellow was who had been with me; it was William Williams; “I want you and G. Nelson; I want two, and if you run I will shoot hell out of you;” Williams and Nelson said they did not intend to run; he told them to march on before him; Nelson said he would ride behind him, but the man told him no; the stout man said to others to get their own men and let them walk side by side; so all the prisoners were taken away; the stout man, when all was ready, asked if all the beeves were yoked up, and then said march off; my partner was Baptiste Mills; the foremost men did not go more than fifty or sixty yards, when I heard shooting; when I heard the firing I stopped; the man who had me said he was to carry me to the sugar house, and that he was not going to shoot me; I stopped again, and my captor cocked his pistol; I turned around to look at him and the bullet struck my nose close to my eyes just as I turned; I fell and laid there some time; Baptiste Mills fell as I fell; I was shot afterward as I was on the ground; the bullet entered my back and passed out of my side; Mills was not wounded; we finally got up and left; a man who had charge of the wounded said he could not mind them all; some one told him to shoot them; a good part of the wounded men escaped; when the whites were hunting them I was on the ground, my nose full of blood, and as I blew it out they heard me and shot me again, saying, “That will do him,” and then they left; after everybody was gone I got up and tried to walk, but could not stand; I bled freely, but finally I began to crawl, twenty feet at a time; I was all night going two hundred yards; got to a road as day was breaking and tried to walk, but failed; crawled into a ditch among weeds and remained there all day; at night I went about five hundred yards, to a house; the rain helped me; Mike Brannon lived in the house; remained there a long time; when I first went out of the courthouse saw Bill Irwin, Dennis Lemoine, Prudhomme Lemoine, D. Hickman, Willy and George Marsh, Hopkins, Oscar Lacour and Gus Lacour. [Witness pointed out the first three confidently.] When I and my partner were called out there were many white men in sight; when I got out of the ditch where I had been hiding, I saw some men driving mules and horses off toward the sugar house; the men were armed and mounted; they did not see me; Alex Tillman was not among the prisoners; saw John Carter as he lay dead; he was one of us in the line; a yellow woman, Matilda, nursed me; do not know the man who shot me the second time; there were several white men shooting; I felt sure they intended to shoot me when they took me out, although the man told me not; know none of the men who were shooting in the morning, only those I named; saw no wounded white men; heard Nash say: “Cease firing men, you are shooting our own men;” heard one of them yell; did not see the man who yelled; he said, “Men save me, I am shot;” saw no wounded white men; am sure Tillman was not among the prisoners; saw no flag of truce; was in a little room in the courthouse; when we surrendered we dropped our arms.

  CROSS-EXAMINATION

  —At Colfax I had my gun and ammunition, which were taken from me when a prisoner; I did not fire a shot; did not give any ammunition away; do not know who the man was outside who was yelling; the people in the courthouse did not fire a shot inside after the surrender, I think; did not see Mr. Lewis at Colfax that day; the stout man who shot me was about thirty-five or forty years old, good beard and full face; never saw him before; do not know that Shaw was held a prisoner by the colored people.

  New Orleans Republican, March 4, 1874

  “PERFECT EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW”:

  WASHINGTON, D.C., JANUARY 1874

  Robert Brown Elliott:

  Speech in Congress on the Civil Rights Bill

  WHILE I am sincerely grateful for this high mark of courtesy that has been accorded to me by this House, it is a matter of regret to me that it is necessary at this day that I should rise in the presence of an American Congress to advocate a bill which simply asserts equal rights and equal public privileges for all classes of American citizens. I regret, sir, that the dark hue of my skin may lend a color to the imputation that I am controlled by motives personal to myself in my advocacy of this
great measure of national justice. Sir, the motive that impels me is restricted by no such narrow boundary, but is as broad as your Constitution. I advocate it, sir, because it is right. The bill, however, not only appeals to your justice, but it demands a response from your gratitude.

  In the events that led to the achievement of American Independence the negro was not an inactive or unconcerned spectator. He bore his part bravely upon many battle-fields, although uncheered by that certain hope of political elevation which victory would secure to the white man. The tall granite shaft, which a grateful State has reared above its sons who fell in defending Fort Griswold against the attack of Benedict Arnold, bears the name of Jordan, Freeman, and other brave men of the African race who there cemented with their blood the corner-stone of the Republic. In the State which I have the honor in part to represent the rifle of the black man rang out against the troops of the British crown in the darkest days of the American Revolution. Said General Greene, who has been justly termed the Washington of the North, in a letter written by him to Alexander Hamilton, on the 10th day of January, 1781, from the vicinity of Camden, South Carolina:

  There is no such thing as national character or national sentiment. The inhabitants are numerous, but they would be rather formidable abroad than at home. There is a great spirit of enterprise among the black people, and those that come out as volunteers are not a little formidable to the enemy.

  At the battle of New Orleans, under the immortal Jackson, a colored regiment held the extreme right of the American line unflinchingly, and drove back the British column that pressed upon them, at the point of the bayonet. So marked was their valor on that occasion that it evoked from their great commander the warmest encomiums, as will be seen from his dispatch announcing the brilliant victory.

  As the gentleman from Kentucky, [Mr. BECK,] who seems to be the leading exponent on this floor of the party that is arrayed against the principle of this bill, has been pleased, in season and out of season, to cast odium upon the negro and to vaunt the chivalry of his State, I may be pardoned for calling attention to another portion of the same dispatch. Referring to the various regiments under his command, and their conduct on that field which terminated the second war of American Independence, General Jackson says:

  At the very moment when the entire discomfiture of the enemy was looked for with a confidence amounting to certainty, the Kentucky re-enforcements, in whom so much reliance had been placed, ingloriously fled.

  In quoting this indisputable piece of history, I do so only by way of admonition and not to question the well-attested gallantry of the true Kentuckian, and to suggest to the gentleman that it would be well that he should not flaunt his heraldry so proudly while he bears this bar-sinister on the military escutcheon of his State—a State which answered the call of the Republic in 1861, when treason thundered at the very gates of the capital, by coldly declaring her neutrality in the impending struggle. The negro, true to that patriotism and love of country that have ever characterized and marked his history on this continent, came to the aid of the Government in its efforts to maintain the Constitution. To that Government he now appeals; that Constitution he now invokes for protection against outrage and unjust prejudices founded upon caste.

  But, sir, we are told by the distinguished gentleman from Georgia [Mr. STEPHENS] that Congress has no power under the Constitution to pass such a law, and that the passage of such an act is in direct contravention of the rights of the States. I cannot assent to any such proposition. The constitution of a free government ought always to be construed in favor of human rights. Indeed, the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments, in positive words, invest Congress with the power to protect the citizen in his civil and political rights. Now, sir, what are civil rights? Rights natural, modified by civil society. Mr. Lieber says:

  By civil liberty is meant, not only the absence of individual restraint, but liberty within the social system and political ­organism—a combination of principles and laws which acknowledge, protect, and favor the dignity of man. * * * Civil liberty is the result of man’s two-fold character as an individual and social being, so soon as both are equally respected.—Lieber on Civil Liberty, page 25.

  Alexander Hamilton, the right-hand man of Washington in the perilous days of the then infant Republic, the great interpreter and expounder of the Constitution, says:

  Natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race; civil liberty is founded on it; civil liberty is only natural liberty modified and secured by civil society.—Hamilton’s History of the American Republic, vol. 1, page 70.

  In the French constitution of June, 1793, we find this grand and noble declaration:

  Government is instituted to insure to man the free use of his natural and inalienable rights. These rights are equality, liberty, security, property. All men are equal by nature and before the law. * * * Law is the same for all, be it protective or penal. Freedom is the power by which man can do what does not interfere with the rights of another; its basis is nature, its standard is justice, its protection is law, its moral boundary is the maxim: “Do not unto others what you do not wish they should do unto you.”

  Are we then, sir, with the amendments to our Constitution staring us in the face; with these grand truths of history before our eyes; with innumerable wrongs daily inflicted upon five million citizens demanding redress, to commit this question to the diversity of State legislation? In the words of Hamilton—

  Is it the interest of the Government to sacrifice individual rights to the preservation of the rights of an artificial being, called States? There can be no truer principle than this, that every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the protection of Government. Can this be a free Government if partial distinctions are tolerated or maintained?

  The rights contended for in this bill are among “the sacred rights of mankind, which are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records; they are written as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”

  But the Slaughter-house cases!—the Slaughter-house cases!

  The honorable gentleman from Kentucky, always swift to sustain the failing and dishonored cause of proscription, rushes forward and flaunts in our faces the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Slaughter-house cases, and in that act he has been willingly aided by the gentleman from Georgia. Hitherto, in the contests which have marked the progress of the cause of equal civil rights, our opponents have appealed sometimes to custom, sometimes to prejudice, more often to pride of race, but they have never sought to shield themselves behind the Supreme Court. But now, for the first time, we are told that we are barred by a decision of that court, from which there is no appeal. If this be true we must stay our hands. The cause of equal civil rights must pause at the command of a power whose edicts must be obeyed till the fundamental law of our country is changed.

  Has the honorable gentleman from Kentucky considered well the claim he now advances? If it were not disrespectful I would ask, has he ever read the decision which he now tells us is an insuperable barrier to the adoption of this great measure of justice?

  In the consideration of this subject, has not the judgment of the gentleman from Georgia been warped by the ghost of the dead doctrines of State-rights? Has he been altogether free from prejudices engendered by long training in that school of politics that wellnigh destroyed this Government?

  Mr. Speaker, I venture to say here in the presence of the gentleman from Kentucky, and the gentleman from Georgia, and in the presence of the whole country, that there is not a line or word, not a thought or dictum even, in the decision of the Supreme Court in the great Slaughter-house cases which casts a shadow of doubt on the right of Congress to pass the pending bill, or to adopt such other legislation as it may judge proper and necessary to secure perfect equality before the law to every citizen of t
he Republic. Sir, I protest against the dishonor now cast upon our Supreme Court by both the gentleman from Kentucky and the gentleman from Georgia. In other days, when the whole country was bowing beneath the yoke of slavery, when press, pulpit, platform, Congress, and courts felt the fatal power of the slave oligarchy, I remember a decision of that court which no American now reads without shame and humiliation. But those days are past. The Supreme Court of to-day is a tribunal as true to freedom as any department of this Government, and I am honored with the opportunity of repelling a deep disgrace which the gentleman from Kentucky, backed and sustained as he is by the gentleman from Georgia, seeks to put upon it.