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Dixie Be Damned. Neal Shirley
Читать онлайн.Название Dixie Be Damned
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781849352086
Автор произведения Neal Shirley
Издательство Ingram
Timothy Lockley, in his book on race and class in the antebellum lowcountry, describes the myriad ways that poor whites and Black workers interacted and relied on one another. Particularly of interest are the informal economies they created through trade and crime. Even as many were ultimately recruited to police the territory, some poor whites would inevitably have been trading partners with rebel Ogeechee workers in the preparations for and during conflict.107 Any efforts by poor whites who did aid in the rebellion’s efforts were undocumented or concealed, while the spectacular accounts of those who fled the area were publicly used to incite and justify later military intervention.
New Year’s Eve wore on in Savannah with Sheriff Dooner summoning a posse comitatus after he was refused military aid for the second time that week. Latin for “force of the county,” posse comitatus was a common law that allowed for a county sheriff to summon the arms of any number of able-bodied men over the age of fifteen to help in the apprehension of criminals or convicts. This legalized form of vigilante justice was common in the rural South, especially when the conflicts between Union and Confederate allegiances in state governments created gaps in the smooth functioning of law and order. Savannah judge Philip M. Russell, Jr. issued 150 warrants against Ogeechee rebels, both men and women, seemingly with lists of workers’ names from planters and managers who were driven out of the area. The warrants charged the individuals with “insurrection against the State of Georgia, robbery by force, robbery by intimidation, assault with intent to murder and larceny.” The sheriff went out by train with his first posse, but returned immediately, frightened of being outnumbered, and proclaimed that “that no legal process should be served in their neighborhood, that they had possession of the country and a government of their own, and no white man or office of the State should molest them with impunity.”108
On January 1, 1869, the Savannah Morning News reported:
The Negroes are receiving reinforcements from Bryan and Liberty Counties, and trustworthy persons from that section report that they are plundering all the plantations and threatening destruction to all who dare to meddle with them. They are said to have thrown up some sort of a fortification at Peach Hill and have all the roads and approaches strongly guarded.
Alongside the continued destruction of plantation homes, Middleton’s house was rumored to have been torched after its contents looted. Up until that point, his plantation home had been used as a central strategic location for the rebellion.109
At this point, Major Middleton was becoming an organizing force in Savannah. He called a public meeting at the courthouse, where he seduced the crowds to his side with the impending threat of an armed and brutal mob surrounding Savannah. Middleton showed his true interests when he told the assembled crowd why they should hasten to intervene: “Capital which has fed these people, who are now deriving sustenance from plunder, would cease to be invested here.”110
On the evening of January 1, when the train stopped at Station No. 1, there were no rebels in sight. A sheet of paper was flapping in the wind, nailed to a post. A manifesto of sorts was written on the page by Solomon Farley:
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
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