Wilmington's Lie

by Zucchino, David

  Visiting Northern reporters shared meals and drank whiskey with the city’s leading white supremacists, absorbing their indignation and rage. The correspondents were often met at their hotels by a “welcoming committee” of white men who handed out cigars and offered to facilitate their reporting. Some reporters accepted invitations to stay in white homes. The whites made sure the correspondents did not interview black leaders—not that the white journalists, even the Northerners, were inclined to seek out black viewpoints.

  Washington Post correspondent Henry Litchfield West was cheered with cries of “Hip, hip, hooray!” while covering a Red Shirt rally in Wilmington the first week of November. West reported white men’s musings as fact. He published a rambling account, “Race War in North Carolina,” in Forum magazine, a current-events monthly in New York. The typical black man of North Carolina, West concluded, was “thriftless, improvident, does not accumulate money, and is not accounted a desirable citizen.” Black men also were prone to violence, he wrote.

  [I]t was expected that the Negroes, when they learned that the right of suffrage was to be denied to them, would resist. From their churches and their lodges had come reports of incendiary speeches, of impassioned appeals to the blacks to use the bullet that had no respect for color, and the kerosene and the torch that would play havoc with the white man’s cotton in bale and warehouse.

  It was this fear of the Negro uprising in defence of his electorate—of a forcible and revengeful retaliation—that offered an ostensible ground for the general display of arms; but if the truth be told, the reason thus offered was little more than a fortunate excuse. The whites had been determined to regain their supremacy … There would have been rapid-fire guns and Winchester rifles if every church had held a silent pulpit, and every lodge-room where the Negroes met had been empty.

  The night before the election, black ministers attempted to refute claims that they were inciting mob violence. They called on all black residents of Wilmington to observe a day of fasting and prayer, intended to assure whites that their black neighbors sought a peaceful election. Even as white gunmen patrolled their neighborhoods, the preachers went home that evening and retired to their beds, still trusting that prayers alone might achieve a lasting peace.

  In Washington, DC, black leaders had received reports of an imminent white riot in Wilmington. Even from 360 miles away, they correctly interpreted white supremacist intentions. They had only to read Wilmington’s white newspapers, whose breathless accounts were reprinted in Northern newspapers. The fate of black voters in North Carolina, and elsewhere in the South, was a national issue because of widespread attacks and intimidation. In Washington, a committee of black leaders wrote to President McKinley warning of a catastrophe unless the federal government intervened with a show of force.

  North Carolina’s black congressman, George H. White, visited the White House to personally inform McKinley of white supremacist plans to violently overthrow Wilmington’s Fusionist government. White described for the president “the unholy war that Democrats are making on the color line.” He explained that white supremacists had concocted spurious claims of Negro rule to incite whites to violence.

  “The cry of negro domination is a bugaboo. There has never been Negro domination in any county in the State,” White told reporters as he left the meeting with McKinley.

  During the first week of November, the Second Baptist Church in Washington, DC, held a symposium titled “The Race War at the South: Its Effects upon the Nation.” A committee of black ministers was appointed to appeal to McKinley to intervene in “the farce that is about to be enacted in the state of North Carolina.”

  There was no response from the White House. The Wilmington Messenger quoted an official at the War Department in Washington as saying that no federal marshals would be sent to North Carolina. President McKinley, the official said, believed any federal intervention would be a “fatal mistake.”

  In Wilmington, White Government Union clubs from the city’s white wards gathered at the courthouse on Monday, November 7. A correspondent for the Washington Evening Star called it “the most remarkable political meeting which has been held in the United States in this campaign.” Several hundred men jammed the main meeting room. After a rousing speech by Colonel Waddell, the clubs requested that all businesses employing Democrats close for Election Day to allow workers to vote.

  Separately, twenty-five club members were assigned to spend Election Day as “observers” at each polling place in the city. For white wards, they were told to round up every white man they could find and escort him to the polls with instructions to vote Democratic. They were told to “never look a man square in the face, even if they knew that John Smith was voting as Willie James and the latter was dead and buried in Oakdale cemetery for lo many years.”

  For the city’s two gerrymandered black wards, they were instructed to challenge any black man attempting to vote. Finally, club members were assigned to go to each ward in the evening, when ballot boxes were to be opened and votes counted by election officials of both parties. They were drilled on the most efficient ways to remove Republican ballots and replace them with phony Democratic ballots.

  After Waddell left the White Government Union meeting that Monday evening, he walked to Thalian Hall, where he had been asked to reprise his October 24 “Cape Fear carcasses” speech. This time, the gathering was even larger, with armed Red Shirts joined by White Government Union men and throngs of white sentries from the nearby wards. The cheers for the Colonel were deafening.

  “Men, the crisis is upon us,” Waddell began. “You must do your duty. This city, county and state shall be rid of negro domination, once and forever. You have the courage. You are brave. You are the sons of noble ancestry. You are Anglo-Saxons.”

  He was interrupted by shouts and applause.

  “You are armed and prepared, and you will do your duty,” he continued. “Be ready at a moment’s notice. Go to the polls tomorrow and if you find the negro out voting, tell him to leave the polls. And if he refuses, kill him! Shoot him down in his tracks!”

  As Waddell walked off the stage to a standing ovation, a steamship from New York slipped into the port of Wilmington a few blocks away. On board was the Hotchkiss rapid-fire gun.

  The weapon was delivered late that night to the Naval Reserves billet, where members of the unit were asleep on the floor, their rifles stacked nearby, loaded and ready. Among them were White Government Union members who had cheered Waddell’s speech. Some still wore white WGU buttons on their lapels.

  At the Wilmington Light Infantry armory on Market Street, a few blocks away, the Colt rapid-fire gun had been mounted on a wagon, ready for service the next morning. Inside, in the dark, so many militiamen were spread across the floor, using overcoats as pillows, that their officers could not walk across the armory without stepping on their sleeping forms.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  A Pitiful Condition

  E LECTION DAY dawned bright and clear in Wilmington on Tuesday, November 8. It was a typical early autumn day in the Cape Fear country, with the warm residue of summer carried by a mild breeze off the river and the sun low and brilliant in the sky. Voters were out early, walking in small groups toward the polls for the 7:00 a.m. opening. Both blacks and whites were tentative and anxious, but for different reasons. Many whites believed newspaper accounts of black plots to attack and burn white homes and businesses. Black men, who had endured intimidation and beatings all summer, braced for more as they made their way to the polls.

  White newspapers advised black men not to vote. Under the headline GONE TO THE NIGGERS , the Messenger published the lyrics to “Rise Ye Sons of Carolina,” the anthem of the White Supremacy Campaign.

  Proud Caucasians one and all …

  Hear your wives and daughters call …

  Rise, defend their spotless virtue

  With your strong and manly arms …

  Rise and drive this Black despoiler from your
state.

  Red Shirts paraded on horseback, occasionally firing Winchesters into the air. They were careful not to show their rifles and shotguns at polling places, where weapons were prohibited. Some white sentries gathered unarmed at the polls. Others tucked pistols in their belts and tied white handkerchiefs to their biceps as they patrolled predominantly black neighborhoods.

  White gunmen accosted blacks at gunpoint in some wards, forcing them to turn back as they tried to reach polling stations. “Pistols were held in the faces of Negro poll holders who had to leave to save their lives … and they knew not what moment they would be killed,” the Reverend J. Allen Kirk, a black minister, wrote later.

  A correspondent for the Washington Evening Star, after a walking tour of black wards, wrote in a front-page dispatch: “There were not a half dozen Negroes to be seen in the vicinity of the polls. It was said that in former years they would gather in hundreds about the voting places. There is no doubt that the negroes have been thoroughly overawed by the preparations which have been made by the whites to carry the election.”

  Several black men later complained to federal officials that they had been accosted and turned away before they could vote or were told by white election officials that they were not properly registered. Many others chose to avoid confrontation and stayed home. Benjamin Keith, a white Populist grocer, described his black neighbors as “frightened into a pitiful condition, asking their white friends not to let them be hurt.”

  But other black men gambled, hoping to avoid white gunmen by voting early and then quickly retreating—as the lawyer William Henderson had advised. All morning, black figures hustled down side roads and ducked through alleys to reach voting sites. Many managed to vote, especially in predominately black wards, where white sentries were less eager to patrol. By the Washington Evening Star reporter’s count, 1,419 black men had registered in the gerrymandered black First Ward, with 820 casting votes. In the other black ward, the Fifth, 538 black men voted out of 763 who had registered.

  The man from the Evening Star, along with other Northern correspondents—from the New York Times, the Washington Post, Collier’s Weekly, and others—braced for the anticipated black riot. They reported that the Wilmington Light Infantry and the Naval Reserves were on alert, with some men billeted in private homes. But as the morning passed, the reporters were surprised that at least some black men had managed to vote. They were surprised, too, that the black men they encountered were neither hostile nor violent, as the city’s newspapers had predicted.

  The sight of black men voting enraged Mike Dowling, the Irishman who commanded a brigade of Red Shirts from Dry Pond. Though bars and taverns were closed, Dowling and his men had helped themselves to liquor provided at the office of John D. Bellamy, the Democratic candidate for the United States House. Fifty Red Shirts had gathered on horseback under Dowling’s command that morning.

  Dowling had wanted to lynch Alex Manly the day his editorial appeared in August, but he had been dissuaded by Furnifold Simmons’s order to postpone violence until after the Democrats had carried the election. But now Dowling believed he had waited long enough. At midday on Election Day, he ordered his Red Shirts to mount up and ride to the Record office to lynch the editor.

  As the Red Shirts rode down Market Street they encountered Hugh MacRae, the cotton mill owner and a leader of the Secret Nine. He was sitting on his porch, watching white voters walk past. Dowling dismounted and walked over to tell MacRae of his plans. MacRae surprised him by objecting. He reminded Dowling that the plan was to forestall any violence until after the election.

  Dowling protested, so MacRae invited him and a few other Red Shirts to Sasser’s Drug Store a block away. The store was owned by L. B. Sasser, another member of the Secret Nine. Sasser backed MacRae, telling Dowling that his plan was premature. Dowling persisted. Finally, MacRae showed Dowling and his men a document he had prepared—a “White Declaration of Independence.” MacRae said the declaration was to be read the next day, November 9, at a mass meeting of whites to be held at the county courthouse. Whites would formally demand that Manly shut down his newspaper and leave the city, and that the Fusionist mayor and police chief surrender their posts to Democrats.

  After looking over the document, Dowling still was not satisfied. To placate him, MacRae let Dowling listen as he telephoned the city’s newspapers and told them to print a notice of the white declaration meeting in the next morning’s editions. Finally convinced that Manly would be dealt with, Dowling suspended the Red Shirt lynching party.

  If the Red Shirts had made their way to the Record office that afternoon, they would not have found Alex Manly. He had disappeared.

  His mother and other family members, alarmed by death threats against Manly, begged him to flee the city. Earlier that week, a white friend had warned Manly that he was about to be lynched. The friend gave Manly $25 in gold coins and the password needed to cross checkpoints set up by Vigilance Committee sentinels. “May God be with you, my boy. You are too fine to be swung up a tree,” the man said.

  The man was never identified by Manly, but he may have been the Reverend Robert Strange, the rector of St. James Episcopal Church. The church stood at Fourth and Market Streets, just five blocks from the Record office. Strange was a small, slender man—five foot six and 135 pounds—who was respected by blacks and whites for his rectitude and sense of moral justice. One newspaper called him “a man of charming dignity.” Strange was also the chaplain for the Wilmington Light Infantry, a position that would have provided access to the password.

  Thomas Clawson, the reporter and city editor for the Wilmington Messenger, was also looking for Manly on Election Day. He wanted his Hoe press back. According to Clawson , the Manly brothers had made only a small down payment on the press and still owed him the bulk of the $600 cost. Clawson claimed the press as his property, while also publishing a small item in the Messenger on November 10: “The Daily Record has suspended publication. The outfit of the company will be turned over to creditors, and the affairs of the paper will be closed up at once.”

  Alex Manly had already fled Wilmington, possibly the night before Election Day, with the password and $25 in hand. He had loaded a horse and buggy, planning to bluff his way through checkpoints with the help of the password. Despite his notoriety due to the August 18 editorial, few whites in Wilmington knew what Manly looked like. And because he easily passed as white, he believed he would not be questioned closely. He dressed in a dark suit and hat, looking like a prosperous white merchant.

  Manly’s buggy managed to reach the outskirts of the city, where he encountered a Vigilance Committee checkpoint set up at a small bridge. Beyond the bridge, a dirt road led out of Wilmington and into the longleaf pine forests. One of the white gunmen asked Manly where he was headed. Manly mentioned a small town north of Wilmington and said he was on his way to buy horses at a farm auction. He recited the password.

  The white men told him they were planning “a necktie party” in Wilmington for Alex Manly, the black editor.

  Manly had a ready reply. He told the men that he, too, was “going after that scoundrel Manly.”

  One of the men told him: “If you see that nigger Manly up there, shoot him.”

  Noticing that Manly was unarmed, he handed him a rifle.

  Alex Manly nodded and snapped the reins. The wagon lurched forward across the bridge, headed north.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Retribution in History

  B Y MIDDAY ON NOVEMBER 8, so many citizens—black and white—had gone to the polls early to avoid trouble that most of the voting was over. Ballots were to be counted by hand after the polls closed at 5:00 p.m. That gave Democrats most of the day to carry out their plan to stuff ballot boxes at selected precincts. They were not concerned about the special police officers recruited by Mayor Wright for Election Day security. The mayor had persuaded only fifteen officers to serve, not the hundred he had hoped for.

  One targeted black precin
ct was the Fifth Precinct of the First Ward, where 313 blacks and 30 whites had registered. The polling station had been set up inside a stable at the corner of Tenth and Princess Streets, in a cramped room about sixteen feet by twenty feet. That evening, ballots were being counted by six men—two black Republicans, two white Populists, and two white Democrats. The gerrymandered precinct had voted overwhelmingly for the Republican ticket in 1896. But the White Government Unions had devised a plan to flip the precinct, despite the odds.

  Shortly before 9:00 p.m., nearly 150 white men, some with white handkerchiefs tied around their arms, surrounded the stable. They arrived in darkness, having turned off electric streetlights in the neighborhood. After some low murmuring and whispering, about three dozen of the men suddenly stormed into the little room and confronted the vote counters.

  The first man to step inside was former Wilmington mayor William Harriss, a politician with a grudge. Harriss had been replaced as mayor by Wright after the disputed municipal election the previous March. Harriss barged into the stable, shoving a policeman into a barrel of water. Other men rushed into the room behind Harriss. They upended a table, knocked over an oil lamp, and plunged the room into darkness. Lamp oil spilled onto the floor and ignited. Someone stomped out the small fire.

  Some of the white men pulled out pistols. Abram Fulton, a black registrar, stumbled in the dark toward the back of the room, hoping to find a way out. He hid in the back for several minutes until someone lit a candle. Then he ran out the front door. Albert Lamb, a black drayman serving as a precinct election judge, also hid in the darkness. When the candle was lit, he, too, escaped through the front door.