Revised, this will go into RACIAL ENCOUNTERS, a family history starting in the 1600s
13 April 2021
Copyright 13 April 2021 by Hershel Parker
Reconstruction Foes: Albion Tourgee vs. Montford McGehee
The Radical Republican and the Defender of the KKK
On 17 August 1878 the Democratic Wilmington, North Carolina Morning Star belatedly quoted a short item from the Milton (Caswell County) Chronicle: "We learn that Judge Tourgee will speak at Roxboro' next Saturday, and that he will be met and replied to by that able and gallant champion of the people's rights and liberties, Montford McGehee, Esq." The Republican Greensboro North State two days before had explained that this was "simply a chimera of Bro. Evans' brain: "He is too old a man to keep up such habits, and ought to reform. He knows well enough that Judge Tourgee would enjoy nothing better than to amuse himself with Mr. McGehee, but has never appointed a meeting in Person [County] nor heard a word of such an announcement until the veracious statement of the Chronicle." In short, this was a bogus fantasy of a discussion to take place between men who represented opposite positions, Tourgee and McGehee.[i]
= The two opponents are blood cousins of mine, Montford McGehee, a then-prominent North Carolina planter and Democratic politician (pretty close kin), and Albion Tourgee, judge by virtue of Radical Republican laws and only later the famous political novelist (so distant a cousin that it took me a while to bother checking). They engaged in no such public debate as the Chronicle foretold, but North Carolina newspapers reported as they often referred to each other in public. They knew each other very well, for when Judge Tourgee held court in Roxboro, the county seat of Person County, McGehee was on hand (Raleigh News, 18 April 1874). McGehee was regularly one of the local lawyers present when Tourgee presided at the “Spring Term of Person Superior Court” (as he did in 1873, when the revered William A. Graham was one of the Orange County contingent). The judge had to have known McGehee’s great estate Woodburn, on the Hyco River, when he used the setting on the Hyco for Bricks Without Straw (out late 1880), though I doubt his character Potem owed much if anything to McGehee.
Tourgee (1838-1905), born in Ohio, a lawyer, a Union soldier, wounded, sought recovery in the warmer climate of North Carolina where he became a judge under Radical Republican controlled Reconstruction from 1868 to 1874. Even while he was living in North Carolina, he dared to expose white murders of blacks and of other whites whom they deemed sympathetic to negro rights. His national fame came with the publication of A Fool's Errand, By One of the Fools late in 1879, when Northern concern for Southern blacks was waning fast, but nevertheless a novel that many thought would become the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the Reconstruction period. Now he is remembered perhaps less for his novels than for having the best arguments but losing Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
Montford McGehee (1822-1895) was a planter from Person County, North Carolina.[ii] His father, Thomas Mumford McGehee (1784-1867) lived in Burleigh (now on the National Register of Historic Places) until late in life when he built Woodburn for his retirement home. Montford inherited it. After graduating from the new state university, he went to Harvard Law School (being careful, I checked Harvard records). In 1860 he owned 35 slaves, two older men (70 and 60) and fifteen who were 11 or younger, the others of good working and breeding age. After the war he was devoted to the Democratic Party. He and his younger half brother-in-law Richard Badger (like McGehee’s wife, child of the U. S. Senator George Badger) clashed decorously but passionately over protecting KKK murderers from prosecution. He had literary tastes but published nothing of note besides a eulogy of Governor William A. Graham in 1876. (Graham is a close cousin of mine by marriage but not blood kin.)
In his speech on Graham, McGehee made it very clear that the “doctrine of secession met with little favor in North Carolina.” Recently, Robert C. Carpenter in his Gaston County, North Carolina, in the Civil War has made the point that only the wealthiest slave-owners, high office holders, dragged the state into the war. It was Lincoln’s call for 75,000 troops followed by “suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act” which “wholly changed” public opinion in North Carolina. Even so, North Carolina permitted dissent throughout much of the war. Strong Union feeling remained. Some of my cousins in western counties chaired Union meetings in 1863, reported openly in William Holden’s Unionist newspaper, the Raleigh Standard. Confederate vandals attacked the press but Holden was not silenced. As during some of the middle Revolutionary years, war had been slow to come violently into the state. In the Civil War army men from all over the state were wounded and died. Some men left Wilkes County to join the Union Army and were slaughtered at Limestone Cove in 1864, among them a Pruitt and a Sparks cousin of mine. Yet war was slow to come onto North Carolina land. Some in north-central North Carolina got their first direct look at war when, on April 10, 1865, Sherman advanced toward Raleigh, his men well-armed, foraging and plundering as usual, and just then hearing of Lee’s surrender. USE MYERS BOOK HERE On April 13, the Federals occupied Raleigh, and four days later, the North Carolina Confederates surrendered. Lincoln’s assassination was followed by the new President Johnson’s rejection of the terms Sherman had set in Raleigh, so the armies on 26 April settled again, on terms like those Grant had accorded Lee at Appomattox. Some 90,000 Confederate troops surrendered, and on 30 April Sherman marched out toward Washington, D. C. in their usual two-wing formation. Unlike their earlier marches, however, foraging was officially forbidden and the men were to carry only five rounds in their cartridge boxes instead of the usual forty. They were not to take random pot shots at the inhabitants.
In the next three years Radical Republicans took control of public offices in North Carolina. The Encyclopedia of North Carolina explains that Presidents Lincoln and then Johnson "successively urged a quick and lenient restoration of the South to the Union" and appointed Unionist governors to prepare the states for readmission. At first, Congress forbad many former Confederates to vote or hold political office. The Radical Republicans refused to seat the Southerners who showed up at Congress claiming to have been elected. This showed ignorance as well as vindictive malice. President Johnson appointed the Unionist editor Holden provisional governor but in two later elections Jonathan Worth defeated him. Once Congress began controlling Reconstruction in 1867, Holden headed the Republican Party—consisting of black freemen (allowed to vote), Unionist white men (scalawags), and northern newcomers like Tourgee (carpetbaggers). Holden was elected governor under the new constitution in 1868, and after the Klan "virtually took over Alamance and Caswell Counties" in 1870, he sent in militia to crush the "insurrection."
The state legislature, controlled by the KKK, impeached Holden and removed him from office. The Raleigh Era summarized on 11 February 1873: "In 1870-'71 the Democratic party solemnly declared there was no such thing as the 'White Brotherhood,' or 'Constitutional Union Guards' or 'Invisible Empire,' in North Carolina, and that Governor Holden was pursuing a myth—an ignus fatuus—and they impeached him for what they charged as his great folly. But after the National Government has unearthed these fiendish organizations, the same party acknowledge by their votes in the General Assembly that the membership of these orders were so numerous in North Carolina that it is necessary to pass a general amnesty for them, as the State would be depopulated if they were punished for their crimes!" There were just too many KKK members to make it feasible punish any of them. With the death of Reconstruction, the Democrats regained the governorship for the start of 1877. Economic suffering, says the Encyclopedia, continued widespread.
The Encyclopedia does not convey the stark grief and terror of these chaotic, impoverished years. White families were rarely intact, for if father and sons had miraculously survived, uncles and cousins had been killed or had returned home maimed. Toward the end of the war many western households had been terrorized by the Gestapo-like Confederate Home Guards prowling for deserters. Now, if you were white you might not be eligible to vote and if you were black you might be eligible but too fearful to exercise the privilege. White veterans trying to provide for what was left of their families resented the government-sponsored Yankees imposed on them in the form of local and state officials. Blacks without masters were often resented by their former owners now that they were competitors for a diminished number of jobs. Before the war, whites exploited black labor but did not necessarily hate any of their slaves. White hatred of blacks, it seems to me, was a phenomenon of Reconstruction, when the Radical Republicans acted with idealism toward blacks and directed downright malice indiscriminately toward whites in North Carolina, where, it bears repeating, the majority of whites had not been in favor of secession. After 1866 and 1867 you never knew what resentment was going to break out in violence. Compounding confusion, ordinary citizens were often left unsure of the race of the perpetrators (evil-doers might wear masks or paint their faces), for newspapers were all partisan, and all lied to their readers or lied for their readers.
Here I survey some of the events which put Tourgee and McGehee at odds. On 12 July 1867 the Wilmington Journal reprinted this from the Newbern, Jones County, Journal of Commerce: "Horrible Murder in Jones County." “On Friday evening last, a party of three black men went to the house of Reeves Foscue in Jones county, and first shut the whole family up in one of the outhouses on the premises. They then proceeded to rifle the house of its contents, after a short while the family thinking that they were gone, made efforts to relieve themselves, when the scoundrels returned, and one of the most diabolical murders then commenced that we have ever recorded. Their first victims were Mr. Foscue and wife, who were taken out and murdered before the eyes of the children. They next seized Mrs. Whitty (a daughter of Mr. Foscue) and her child, an infant of four or five months old, and after snatching the child from her arms and killing it, they murdered the mother. Miss Foscue caught up another child and started to run when she was fired upon by the miscreants, and herself and the child both wounded; she still continued her way, however, and succeeded in reaching a neighbor[']s house, two and a half miles distant from the scene of the murder. Upon examining the child it was found to be dead." The editor had late news: "the Deputy Sheriff of the county has summoned a 'posse comitatus.' Which will leave the city this morning in search of the scoundrels."
An earlier report in the Newbern Republican as copied in the Wilmington Dispatch of 3 July was still more gruesome: "After murdering the ladies it seems the murders tied Mr. Foscue to a post near his smoke-house, where they stripped him of clothing, cruelly and horribly beat him, finally killing him by striking him on the head with a maul." Left dead with his hands tied behind the post, Mr. Foscue, over sixty, had been "a quiet, upright citizen, who, with his family was much loved and respected by all who knew them." As a point of interest, he had never owned a slave. The Republican reported that a "detachment of United States soldiers was at once sent to the scene of the murder." North Carolina was still occupied territory, although not perfectly protected by the new rulers. On 16 July the Newbern Republican reported that its account had been reprinted in the New York Police Gazette. In fact, the story was reprinted all over the South and as far away as Vermont.
Then on 15 December 1867, also in Jones County, Col. John H. Nethercutt, a Confederate veteran, was shot and killed while his wife was shot but did not die immediately. The Newbern Republican claimed that Col. Nethercutt "was murdered by white men painted black." On 24 December 1867 the Wilmington Journal reported that Sheriff Colgrove (that is, Orson Rodolphus Colgrove) had arrested Patrick Artist, "a colored man" who confessed the had come upon four black men who "were going up to give Nethercutt H—l." Three of the four were already under arrest. Relatives thought that Nethercutt had been murdered because he had testified that a former Confederate soldier had urged his fellows to desert, presumably during the last year of the war, when many deserted to save themselves and to help care for their distressed families, thereby risking the repressive efforts of the Confederate enforcement agency, the increasingly violent Home Guard.
At Christmas 1867 an aged man named Willis Briley or Brily was murdered in Pitt County "by a gang of negroes led by a white man." On 3 January 1868 the Petersburg, Virginia Progress-Index concluded its news from the Wilson County North Carolinian by describing the "marauding parties" as numerous: "Let the people everywhere increase their vigilance." On 2 January 1868 the Tarboro, North Carolina Tarborough Southerner also lamented: "Crime of every description seems rampant in the land. From every quarter comes accounts of murders, rapes and larcenies innumerable." Willis Briley had been "a quiet and inoffensive citizen," yet five negroes had committed "this hellish deed" of murdering him. He had tried to escape but "was shot dead at the buggy shelter, in the very presence of his wife and children." The murderers had been arrested, the Southerner reported, and jailed at Greenville. On 20 February 1868 the Tarborough Southerner reported that two of the negro murderers had "paid the penalty of the law and expiated their crime upon the gallows, in the presence of a large crowd of spectators, a majority of whom were negroes." The editor hoped the "majesty of the Law' might "have the effect of putting an end to the many atrocities, lately enacted in that locality, the natural sequence of these unquiet times and the direful teachings of radical misrule and lawlessness."
In Jones County the "majesty of the Law" was further mocked when "the murderers of Col. Nethercutt and the Foscue family" made their escape simply "by knocking off the hinges of the doors" and walking "out through the front of the jail." That was the Wilmington Journal of 21 July 1868, which saw such jailbreaks of blacks as to be expected "from counties in Radical hands." Murder of white Southerners was nothing to the new Radical rulers, "these negro-loving carpet-baggers."
The Radical Sheriff Orson Rodolphus Colgrove (1826-1869) of Jones County was murdered on 29 May 1869, as the Raleigh Standard reported on 9 June. He was "shot and killed by a party of white men who were concealed near the road side. A colored man, named Amos Jones, who was with Mr. Colgrove, was shot through his arm and side, and has since died. The sheriff's horse received a charge of buckshot in his head." The colored man, Amos Jones, lived long enough to identify one of the murderers. The paper reported: "One white man has been arrested, charged with the crime, and also one colored man, who is supposed to know something concerning the butchery." Laws needed to be enforced or else "the country will go to anarchy," and private vengeance would be common." The writer did not mention group vengeance practiced by the KKK. He merely insisted that the present laws simply needed to be enforced: "Let that law be executed and made a terror to evil doers, if it takes the whole available force of the State, and the gang of thieves and murderers who have to long infested that county and kept its peaceable citizens in a panic, will sheathe their bloody knives and hide their devilish heads, or go down to the felons' graves which their crimes merit. We hope not to be required hereafter to record a malicious murder each week or month in that county." The New Berne Times on 4 September 1869 held an "Examination of the Ku Klux Klan, or Constitutional Union Guards" in which David D. Colgrove, a half brother, testified that the sheriff "was the member of no secret organization. He was not a member of the Union League."
This time, Governor William Holden responded with force, sending the militia into Jones County. The Daily [GET THISwhat?] protested. Nethercutt, the Foscue family, and other murders had incited "no retaliation, no mob, no threats." The Wilmington Journal on 25 May 1870 explained that those earlier victims were "Conservatives"—Democrats. Colgrove, far from being spotless, had been murdered because of "his crimes in office and his cruel oppressions of the people." Holden had ordered out his "lawless militia and their criminal officers who had gone into the county to murder, burn and plunder." Now it was told that Colgrove in New York State in 1855 had been convicted of knowingly buying stolen jewelry and, at first fleeing to Ohio, had been brought back to serve his time. The Journal continued: "What became of him from that time until he turned up in Abraham's (Gov. Holden's) bosom, in North Carolina, we have no means of ascertaining." (The Journal plainly did not know that in 1859 Colgrove's wife in her divorce complaint had described him as an active adulterer.)
On 16 August 1869, again in Jones County, "Mr. Shepard, an honest and industrious hard-working man" who had come "from the North several years earlier,” had been brutally murdered. A Republican, he had been a Justice of the Peace, one of the County Commissioners, "and also a Colonel in the militia." Shepard "with four colored men was at work in a saw mill" that had been Colgrove's. The "report of three guns was heard, and those who hastened to the scene of the murder found Mr. Shepard, badly shot in the small of his back, and through his head. . . . One of the colored men Providence Bryant, was also shot, and badly wounded." The Ku Klux had approached the mill from the opposite side of the Trent river, and three of them were seen by a woman who lived near. Two appeared to be disguised, one was not disguised in any way and was a white man." The writer in the Standard demanded: "Why is it that these murdered men are always Republicans? Why is it that when the edict goes forth, and the man dies he is never a Democrat? Later news came from the New Bern Times: Shepard's militia had captured "two white men, old residents of the county with faces blackened, Frank Noble and John B. Bard. On the way to jail "the prisoners sprang from their guards, and though they were fired at they made their escape." This report had to be valid, for it was "corroborated by white men, citizens of Jones county."
On 17 November 1869, half a year after Colgrove's assassination, the Raleigh Standard quoted the Old North State on palliating crime, particularly in justifying "the Ku Klux by parading the many similar crimes committed, as is alleged by the members of the Loyal League. [TheLoyal League--say earlier Radical Rep] These outrages, among which may be mentioned the murder of Col. Nethercutt, the Foscue family and others in Jones and Lenoir, and the barn burnings, others still worse, in Orange cannot be defended." The Standard had "often deprecated the pal[l]iation of crime to serve party purposes," and now echoed the conclusion of the Old North State: "Surely the day for moderation and conciliation—for peace and harmony—has come if only those in authority, and out of it, would cultivate it."
What happened a little later drove the Republican Tourgee and the Democratic McGehee even farther apart, as their words later made plain. North Carolina State Senator T. M. Stoffner in 1869 pushed through the act that gave Governor Holden power to suspend the write of habeas corpus and to use the state militia against the KKK. The result was more violence from the KKK, which largely consisted of Confederate veterans who had returned to a section of the state which Sherman had desolated DID HE on his way north. Alamance county after the war was devastated—many families mourning men killed or maimed in the war, many people impoverished, many white men not allowed to vote, former slaves allowed to vote. Stoffner was warned to leave North Carolina but lingered for a time. Really, would his gentlemanly friends kill him?
Wyatt Outlaw, at least half white, born to a slave-owner locally identified as the wealthy Chesney Faucett and a female slave about 1820, was sold to George Outlaw and took his last name. Late in the War he was able to join the Union Army and served as far away as Texas. With Radical help, surely, Outlaw found a job in Alamance County as a railroad carpenter for some time. afterwards thanks to his skills he was able to find work as a carpenter. Clearly personable, with some education and great smarts, he helped organize the Union League of former slaves, apparently not so much as a political organization as a social group that could build a black church and school. He was purposeful but did not make himself conspicuous, yet he caught the attention in Alamance County of hundreds of white men who formed a vigilante group at the time called the "White Brotherhood," later known as the Ku Klux Klan. On 26 February 1870 dozens of disguised horsemen carrying torches marched to Outlaw's house, beat the door down, shoved women and children aside, and dragged Outlaw to an elm tree by the courthouse where they hanged him. No one was ever tried for the murder.
William Puryear "disappeared mysteriously from among the colored people of Alamance soon after Outlaw's murder. Half-witted, he had said publicly that he had "tracked two of the murderers of Outlaw to their homes." "Sure enough," said the Standard on 1 June 1870, the body of Puryear had been found: "Bound hand and foot, with a large stone attached to the neck, the corpse was recently discovered in Wilson's mill pond, about three quarters of a mile from where Puryear lived." One crime, said the Standard, "led on to the other. The handing of Outlaw was followed by the drowning of Puryear. The deed explains itself. Dead men can tell no tales about the Kuklux." [CHECK quotation] In late May or early June of 1870 the KKK tortured Andrew Loretz Ramsour (1817-1906), as the Standard reported on 28 August 1870: “Within the last four months, in the County of Catawba, some thirty or forty men, in disguise and armed, and calling themselves KuKlux, went to the house of A. L. Ramsour, took him from his bed, and, in the presence of his wife and daughter, tied him up and inflicted a severe whipping upon his bare back--disregarding the tears and entreaties of his weeping family.” On 15 June, the lieutenant Governor, Tod R. Caldwell, in Morganton, to which Ramsour had fled, testified that he had been “most unmercifully whipped,” lacerated with stripes from shoulders to hips: “He could not have received less than from 75 to 100 lashes.”
In 1870 Stoffner fled with his family to Indiana, where he lived until 1910. This is from the Raleigh Standard on 31 August 1870: “Did no one think of the bitter tears and trembling terror of the wife and little ones of Wyatt Outlaw, upon that awful night when sixty disguised ‘gentlemen’ caught hold of the rope? Did none think of the poor wife of Senator Shoffner, and her crouching children, during the dismal hours of that dreadful night when Dr. Moore, a messenger of mercy, turned back the sixty disguised ‘gentlemen’ who were hunting for her husband’s blood?[iii] Did no one think of the ‘pall of death’ which for months, in that very locality, had nightly settled upon the humble dwellings of the poor and defenceless victims of political hate and Kuklux outrage?
When the Standard published the foregoing, an atrocity even worse had taken place--in the court-house. The earlier murders had taken place mainly in eastern counties, especially Jones. The next events occurred in Alamance, and Orange County, which contained the capital, Raleigh. This is a letter from Albion Tourgee which was drastically altered before it appeared in in Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, formerly the abolitionist paper, then the Republican paper, on 3 August 1870, under this headline: "some of the outrages—letter from judge tourgee to senator abbott," dated Greensboro 24 May: "It is my mournful duty to inform you that our friend John W. Stephens, State Senator from Caswell, is dead. He was foully murdered by the Ku-Klux in the Grand Jury room of the Court House on Saturday or Saturday night last." Tourgee assumed there had been a sudden attack: "He was stabbed five or six times, and then hanged on a hook in the Grand Jury room, where he was found on Sunday morning." What the Tribune printed was an indictment of general slaughter in North Carolina by the Ku-Klux Klan.
On 5 August, having seen the Tribune, Tourgee wrote the Tribune protesting that someone had magnified his charges. Instead of 14 arsons he had written 4 arsons, instead of 4,000 or 5,000 houses opened he had written 400 or 500. The Tribune was skeptical, but let him have his say. In printing this letter on 18 August the Greensboro Patriot was downright contemptuous even of the claim that John W. Stephens had been murdered. "If Judge Tourgee had that strict regard for the truth which the high official position he occupies would demand of him, would he make such hazardous statements and send them forth as the truth, without having given the subject a reasonable investigation. . . . Thirteen murders he says[CHECK] have been committed by the Ku Klux in his district." Tourgee had corrected this to read "in the state," not just the district. Even in there had been thirteen murders, how did Tourgee know they were committed by the Ku Klux? Tourgee should cease his "unwarranted, slanderous attacks" and step down from the "judicial bench." His falsehoods were enough to brand him with "eternal infamy."
Most North Carolinians knew that the basics of what Tourgee wrote were true even if someone had multiplied the examples. The full account of the murder of Stephens was later written down by one of the murders, John G. Lea, who desired on his death (in 1935!) that it be made public. It was not a confession but a final bit of self-justification or downright gloating. The start of the document was an attack on Tourgee: "Immediately after the surrender of General Lee, in April, 1865, a bummer named Albion W. Tourgee, of New York, from Sherman's army came to Caswell County and organized a Union League, and they were drilling every night and beating the drums, and he made many speeches telling the negroes that he was sent by the government and that he would see that they got forty acres of land. He succeeded in getting J. W. Stevens [the spelling Lea uses] and Jim Jones appointed justices of the peace of Caswell County and they annoyed the farmers very much by holding court every day, persuading the darkies to warrant the farmer [this is not clear]. . . . The first trial that Jim Jones had, a negro stole Captain Mitchell's hog. He was caught cleaning the hog by Mitchell's son and by a darky whose name was Paul McGee. He was carried before Jones and Jones turned him loose and said he had been appointed by Governor Holden to protect the negro and he intended to do it. Soon thereafter I formed the Ku Klux Klan and was elected county organizer. I organized a den in every township in the county and the Ku Klux whipped Jones and drove him out of the county."
Then Lea proceeded with motivations for murder that are now seem unlikely to be true: "J. W. Stevens burned the hotel in Yanceyville and a row of brick stores. He also burned Gen. William Lee's entire crop of tobacco, and Mr. Sam Hinton's crop." According to Lea, a "darky" had confessed to burning a barn on tobacco on orders of Stephens and another "darky" confessed to burning a hotel on his orders. That determined the murder: "Stevens was tried by the Ku Klux Klan and sentenced to death. He had a fair trial before a jury of twelve men. At a democratic convention he approached ex-sheriff Wiley and tried to get him to run on the republican ticket for sheriff. Wiley said he would let him know that day. He came to me and informed me of that fact and suggested that he would fool him into that room in which he was killed. He did so and ten or twelve men went into the room and he was found dead next morning. A democratic convention was in session in the court room on the second floor of the courthouse in Yanceyville, to nominate county officers and members of the Legislature. Mr. Wiley, who was in the convention, brought Stevens down to a rear room on the ground floor, then used for the storage of wood for the courthouse. I had ordered all the Ku Klux Klan in the county to meet at Yanceyville that day, with their uniforms under their saddles, and they were present. Mr. Wiley came to me and suggested that it would be a better plan, as Stevens had approached him to run on the republican ticket for sheriff and he had told him that he would let him know that day, to fool him down stairs, and so just before the convention closed, Wiley beckoned to Stevens and carried him down stairs, and Captain Mitchell, James Denny and Joe Fowler went into the room and Wiley came out. Mitchell proceeded to disarm him (he had three pistols on his body). He soon came out and left Jim Denny with a pistol at his head and went to Wiley and told him that he couldn't kill him himself. Wiley came to me and said, "You must do something; I am exposed unless you do." Immediately I rushed into the room with eight or ten men, found him sitting flat on the floor. He arose and approached me and we went and sat down where the wood had been taken away, in an opening in the wood on the wood-pile, and he asked me not to let them kill him. Captain Mitchell rushed at him with a rope, drew it around his neck, put his feet against his chest and by that time about a half dozen men rushed up: Tom Oliver, Pink Morgan, Dr. Richmond and Joe Fowler. Stevens was then stabbed in the breast and also in the neck by Tom Oliver, and the knife was thrown at his feet and the rope left around his neck. We all came out, closed the door and locked it on the outside and took the key and threw it into County Line Creek. I may add that it was currently believed that Stevens murdered his mother while living with him. Stevens kept his house, within sight of the courthouse and now standing, in a state of war all the time with doors and windows barred with iron bars and a regular armory with a large supply of ammunition." The last allegations are pathetic—Stephens had murdered his mother and (after being marked for death) had unreasonably armed himself and his house! But he had trusted the friend who wanted a little private chat with him.
Many North Carolinians could have named some of the gang of respectable men who had killed Stephens. On 14 December 1872 J. G. Hester made a sworn statement before Judge Tourgee identifying the murderers of Stephens: Frank Wiley, Dosh Gunn, Bob Roan, Joe Fowler, Monroe Oliver, Jerry Lea, and Anderson Putillo, Thomas Johnson, 'Pink' or Albert, Johnston, Oliver—a set of names similar to those Lea wrote down decades later. Tourgee knew some of their names long years before he put the slaughter of Stephens into fiction. He also flinched when he passed them and others like them on the streets. He wrote to Abbott in the letter about the murder of Stephens: "And now, Abbott, I have but one thing to say to you. I have very little doubt that I shall be one of the next victims. My steps have been dogged for months, and only a good opportunity has been wanting to secure to me the fate which Stephens has just met. . . . The time for action has come, and the man who has now only speeches to make over some Constitutional scarecrow, deserves to be damned." The next March Bowman, a member from Mitchell county, "moved the Radical negro portion of his auditory to tears by reciting the sickening details of Stephens' murder, as portrayed in the document Hester, "a Radical detective, professed to have obtained." Montford McGehee "somewhat checked" the member's pathos and the tears of the negro members by reading "a letter from the alleged confessor, a gentleman of irreproachable character, stating that the confession was manufactured; that he knew nothing of Hester and had never made any statement to him, and had no confession to make to him or to any one else"
The Era on 11 February 1873 gave offhand a list of victims longer than what I have given up to now: "The stabbing of Stephens, the hanging of Outlaw, the drowning of Puryear, the shooting of Herring, the mobbing of the Star office, the whipping of Ramsour, the outrage on Justice, the decreeing of Shoffner's death." All these, said the Era ironically, "merit amnesty and pardon, because they were committed on Republicans by Ku Klux Democrats, in the interest of the Democratic party." This 1873 list was much shorter than that in Holden's Proclamation of 6 June 1870: early in 1869 disguised KKK members entered the house of Daniel Blue, a colored man, and killed and burned his pregnant wife and five children." On 26 February 1870 the KKK hanged Wyatt Outlaw. On May 21 1870 the KKK murdered John W. Stephens "in open daylight in the Courthouse." On 18 May 1870 a colored man, Robin Jacobs, was murdered by a band of the KKK. Between 2 April and 15 May "not less than twenty-one persons, white and colored" "were cruelly whipped and scourged by "a band or bands" of the KKK. Around 14 May a colored man was taken from his bed in Lincoln County and tied to a tree while fifteen of a band of disguised KKK members took turns raping his wife. About the same time in Lincoln County a band of KKK met a colored woman at dusk and raped her "and afterwards stuck their knives in various parts of her body." About the same time disguised KKK members in Lincoln County shot a colored man "and then told him they had shot him through mistake for another colored man, but laid him on a pile of fence rails and told him to cry for help." In Alamance County Puryear was drowned for talking of having followed two of Outlaw's murderers to their home. Senator T. M. Shoffner had sacrificeD his property by fleeing the state for fear the KKK would kill him. On 26 May 1870 disguised members of KKK killed "Neill McLeod and Daniel McCleod," white men in Cumberland County, and wounded three others of the family. Still others had been "put in fear for their lives, whipped, scourged, maltreated, mutilated and murdered" by disguised men of the KKK. Retaliation, Holden said, "has been commenced by the burning of barns, stables, and mills" by those injured by the KKK, and this retaliation is to be punished. All that was the first half of 1870.
President Grant pushed Congress to give him some power against the KKK. The Enforcement Act of May 1870 prohibited "banding together" and "going in disguise" to violate other citizens' Constitutional rights. Then on 20 April 1871 Grant signed the KKK Act which (unconstitutionally) gave him power to use armed forces and to suspend habeas corpus. The insurrection he focused on was in western South Carolina, not in North Carolina, but the Raleigh area KKK was perturbed and began a push for amnesty. That push took time.
On 23 January 1873 Senator W. A. Allen of Duplin County introduced an amnesty bill in the state senate. The Raleigh Era on 25 January 1873 declared: "The Democracy" (that is, Democrats) "Openly Espouses Ku Kluxism." The Era showed a good memory: "A bill was introduced in the Senate branch of the North Carolina Legislature on Thursday by Mr. Allen, of Duplin, the provisions of which extend amnesty to all persons in this State who have committed crimes of any grade whatsoever, whether members of the Ku Klux, League, Redstring or any other secret organization. This movement has not taken one altogether by surprise. It is well known that the leading members of the Democratic party feel under some obligation to screen from punishment, if possible, the numerous members of the infamous Ku Klux Klan, who have committed such hellish crimes at the instance of, and for the political advancement of these same leaders. No other organizations or secret societies in North Carolina than the Invisible Empire, White Brotherhood, Constitutional Guard, all part and parcel of the Ku Klux, have committed crimes as an organization, nor is there the least evidence to support the supposition that there has existed in this State any other organization whose purpose was to accomplish personal or political ends by the commission of crime."
The impetus in North Carolina was partly the desire of murdering KKK members to come out of hiding or even to return home. The Raleigh Era explained again on 20 February 1873 why Senator Allen had introduced the bill: "It has come to light that our Democratic fellow-citizens are under an urgent necessity to pass the amnesty bill in hot haste. It turns out that James Bradshaw, one of the murderers of Outlaw, and who stands indicted in Alamance for that crime, has sometime since returned to that county and is now lurking in the neighborhood of his home near Oaks, in Orange county. Bradshaw has a wife whom he had just married before he was indicted, and she has taken his indictment, and troubles subsequent, much to heart. This, with other causes, has induced Bradshaw to conclude to come forward, make a full confession of his crimes and throw himself upon the mercy of the powers that be; and Bradshaw has notified his former comrades that unless something is shortly done for his relief, he is determined to take the above course. This has caused great excitement among the Klans and has put the chiefs and leaders to work. The so-called amnesty bill is the result of consultation among the leaders in Orange and Alamance."
Bradshaw was about to throw "a mortar-shell" into the Klan camp. (In “And All the World Was in a Sea” in A Fool’s Errand Burleson knows he has “thrown a bomb” which may injure himself.) The Era ticked off some of Bradshaw's deeds: "the murder of Outlaw," "the drowning of Puryear," "the hanging of the Morrow negroes," "the shooting of Squire Alston," and other offences including the raid on the Hillsboro Jail. He was an intimate of Frederick N. Strudwick and joined him in one attempt "to murder Senator Shoffner." Although much of this was well known in North Carolina, Bradshaw's open confession "would cause a stampede altogether unpleasant to the party of respectability and intelligence," and it was "highly probable that he would a 'tale unfold' not altogether creditable to some of the 'big ones.'" Here was "a good and tangible reason why the Democrats of this Legislature shall vote for this Bill. Amnesty will pardon them and their friends."
Montford McGehee in an early address on the amnesty bill took on Judge Albion Tourgee, as clarified in the Raleigh News of 28 February 1873: "In the hasty and necessarily imperfect sketch of the remarks of Mr. McGehee on Amnesty reported on yesterday, the following passage occurs: 'He mentioned some of the vindictive expressions that had fallen from the lips of Judge Tourgee, and drew a paral[l]el between that officer and the blood Judge Jeffreys.' It should have read thus: 'He quoted the language used by the Judge of the Seventh Judicial District, "that he intended to give Orange county hell," and said that no paral[l]el to such language by any judicial officer could be found, unless in some of the expressions which, from time to time, fell from the drunken and bloody Jeffreys.' He insisted that the vindictive passions displayed by the Judge, before whom most of these cases would be tried, constituted a powerful argument for Amnesty." (Macaulay's History of England in the Harper's reprint available early in 1849 reminded the American reading public in unforgettable detail of the monstrosity of Judge Jeffreys. The entire section on Jeffreys was reprinted, for instance, in the Sumterville, South Carolina Banner on 25 April 1849. McGehee was making an allusion familiar to his audience.)
27 February 1873 Daily Era commented on what was said the day before, mixing summary with direct quotation throughout: "Mr. McGehee said that what he should say on this subject, was the expression of his calm, deliberate judgment, uninfluenced by sectional or personal feelings. Not a drop of my blood flows in the veins of any person who may be hurt or helped by this bill. I was surprised at the remarks with which the member from Orange (Mr. Watson,) prefaced his speech on yesterday, that this was a party measure. I do not so understand it. I have been invited to no caucus on this matter, and my opinion was not sought before the bill passed the Senate, and has not been sought since it came to this House. This bill is founded upon humane principles. The speaker referred to the passions engendered by the war—to the outrages committed after the close of the war in Eastern Carolina—in Orange and Caswell counties, as the reason why the Ku Klux Klan was organized and the reason why members of the Klan committed murders and other outrages. Are these men to be dealt with in the same manner as if they had not thus been tempted, but had committed cold blooded murder? The Wilmington Journal on 7 March was clear about the next section: "Mr. McGehee then passed on to the merits of the bill. He alluded to the passions engendered by the war and the unsettled and demoralized condition into which the country was plunged at its termination. He alluded to the numerous violations of the chastity of virtuous females, the cold blooded murder of Col. Nethercutt, and others, and to the burning of barns, dwellings in various localities, Was it strange that men should have associated themselves together to protect the honor of their women, and guard their property against the incendiaries' torch, and especially after it became well known in to what a stained condition the judicial ermine had fallen. He mentioned some of the vindictive expressions that had fallen from the lips of Judge Tourgee, and drew a parallel between that officer and the bloody Judge Jeffries."
McGehee went on by citing numerous European acts of amnesty, saying "that the crime sought to be amnestied by this bill was as the unit to the millions, compared to the crimes covered up by the celebrated act of amnesty of William III, of England. He appealed to both sides of the House to pass this bill and bring peace and quiet to hundreds of firesides, and forever bury the wounds and wrongs of the past. He appealed to the Democratic party to come up to the full measure of this lofty mission of grace and pardon to many not intentionally or literally criminal, and many who were hurried into infractions of the law while smarting under cruel wrongs and denials of justice." The Era continued: What has Judge Tourgee said with reference to the parties who are to be benefited by this bill: 'That he intends to give Orange county hell.' Shall we give these misguided men over to be tried by this Judge? These men have committed no crime against the law, but were urged to extremes by aggravated outrages. I honor the motives which aroused these men, and whatever they may say, I know they are honored by the Republicans of this House. The speaker cited the Act of Grace of William the III of England, and appealed to the House to pass this bill as a measure in the interest of peace."
McGehee’s young half brother-in-law Badger began his comments by repeating that when he was satisfied it would be for the public good he “would be an upholder of a bill for General Amnesty.” He held that the “general amnesty extended by the United States to the people of the South after the close of the war” was the closer “parallel to that of William III.” There was no precedent for amnesty “to a band of midnight marauders who committed murders” and other crimes mentioned in the Amnesty bill. He insisted: “The assassinations of the Klan created terror in a large community of the State. Those of a certain party were not harmed, but those of the other party were murdered in the night;--so great was the terror, that men must have suffered the pangs of death in apprehension of a visit of these midnight assassins. He referred to the murder of the Morrow boys in Orange county, and asked if these were the men whom the gentleman from Person said had simply vindicated their communities. The Speaker referred to the murder of Senator Stephens, and said that he did not think that assassination exhibited that goodness of heart which the gentleman from Person had characterized that assassination. These men should not be pardoned before hey have been convicted and sentenced to be hanged. If they are it will be an encouragement of crime. The outrages of the Klan bordered on treason; and had not the Congress declared these outrages to constitute insurrection, and but for the strong military arm of the government, we would have been under the rule of the Invisible Empire to-day.” His conclusion was eloquent: “While the murderers of Wyatt Outlaw, Wm. Puryear, Senator Stephens and the boy who was hanged and his body suffered to hang upon the tree until the buzzard had torn the flesh from his body, this bill should not pass. The cry that the Ku Klux originated by virtue of outrages on women, is the cry raised by newspapers, and served to keep up this state of affairs longer than it otherwise would have been. But this cry was false, and the people so understand it. The colored men have made as good jurors as white men; they have done their duty; and I assert that the outrages on women have not been shielded from justice; and that the reason urged by Mr. McGehee that this bill should pass, is not a valid.” For all his “vim,” Badger’s proviso was quickly rejected.
The Raleigh Era on 1 March 1873 printed a “Card from Judge Tourgee,” card being the term for a personal retort. It was dated Greenesboro, 28 February 1873. Tourgee spoke directly to the editors of the paper: “I see by your issue of yesterday that Mr. McGehee reiterated a statement made by Mr. Norwood, attributing to me the remark that I ‘intended to give Orange county hell.’ I have become so inured to falsehood and misrepresentation, that I rarely take the trouble to notice it, but as this tale has just enough truth in it to give it a flavor of verity, I make an exception in its favor.” He laid out the “facts”: “Speaking with some gentlemen of that county, one of them remarked that the ‘Ku Klux had made Orange county a perfect hell,’ or something of that purport, using the word ‘hell.’ I remarked that ‘if my information was correct, they would get ‘hell’ if the truth was ever known and the law executed,’ adding that I had ‘no doubt that more than one hundred men in the county, representing largely the best families, had actually participated in murder.’ Doubtless, the guilty conscience of some listener may have distorted this statement into the threat which Mr. Norwood throws out, boomerang style, into the darkness, and Mr. McGehee, with less cunning but more manliness, hurls at my head.”
Ironically Tourgee declared that “it was infamous in the extreme, for me to intimate that these men would or ought to be punished! It was treason against ‘our Sovereign Lord the Invisible Empire!’ Against any one who would breath[e] aught but ‘amnesty’ and ‘honor.’ Mr. McGehee stated in the same breath that he ‘honored their motives’--towards the Klan the enginery of the law should be at once directed. There is no crime so hienous [sic], no offence so unpardonable as the denunciation of murder, when the hands that drip with blood give the signal of distress of the Ku Klux Klan’ none which do not come within the scope and verge of ‘amnesty’ except efforts to punish the crimes of these pets of wealth, intelligence and virtue.” Tourgee recalled that he had been “anathematized for intimating that there was any such thing as Ku Klus in Orange, Alamance and other counties. It was an insult to the people of those counties.” Later he was “imprecated for producing a reign of terror in Alamance, by ferretting out the murders of Outlaw.” Then he had been “denounced as a disturber of the public peace” because he had “persistently kept upon the track of the honorable murderers of Stephens with the infamous intention of ascertaining their identity.”
Years later, in A Fool's Errand Tourgee was still ironical about the Act of Amnesty: "In short, they” (McGehee and his cohorts) “pardoned not only the perpetrators of these outrages, but, in a reckless determination to forgive, they even pardoned the victims! In this act of wholesale forgiveness they included not only the members of the 'Ku-Klux Klan,' the 'Invisible Empire,' the 'Constitutional Union Guards,' and other organizations which had constituted orders or degrees of the Klan, but also members of the 'Union Leagues,' ' Red Strings,' and other secret societies, for all acts done in pursuance of the counsels of such societies." In the conclusion of "And All the World was In a Sea," Tourgee continued his bitterness: "So the Ku-Klux was buried; and such is the influence of peace and good-will, when united with amnesty and pardon, that in a twelvemonth it was forgotten, and he who chanced to refer to so old and exploded a joke was greeted with the laughter-provoking cry of the 'bloody shirt,'" which was what anyone brought up whenever a Southerner wanted to remind people of the suffering of the South during the war: very few people in the North had felt for themselves what war was like.
On 11 March 1881 the Wilmington Star in “The Work of the Slanderer,” an attack on Tourgee based on praise in two Northern papers. The Boston Journal had accused the South of falsifying history “out of mere good nature” and forgetting true events “simply because their memory brings pain.” The Star quoted in outrage: “It is not worth while to falsify history’” by suppressing facts which would go to show the cause of such an organization. The Journal and its friends never heard but one side, and Tourgee is their teacher and witness. A professional falsifier is not the proper person from whom to draw material for history. Tourgee has slandered the South most deliberately and shamefully. Despised by all decent North Carolinians he takes revenge by blackening their character.” The Star would set the record straight: “In all North Carolina, so far as we can remember, but one man was killed whose death was supposed to have been caused by the Ku Klux,” and really Republicans had murdered him so that “prominent Democrats might be accused of the awful outrage.” The Star continued with a high-minded justification of the KK: “In North Carolina all intelligent people know precisely what provoked the organization. It is nonsense to suppose that intelligent white men would combine in a secret organization like the KuKlux unless there was cause. However reprehensible and dangerous such a secret organization may have been it is very certain it was not formed until great dangers threatened the safety of certain communities. When Northern Republican papers wax eloquent over the hideous dream and terrible outrage of the KuKlux they should try to find the other account-to see the other side of the shield.” The other side of the shield became history.
[TRANSITION here] On the few occasions when McGehee collided with other men, he made enemies. In 1873 there was another vote in the North Carolina Legislature as far reaching, perhaps, as the Amnesty Law. Early in 1873, representatives of Alamance, Cabarrus, and Person Counties pushed the General Assembly to enact a law that farmers had to fence their properties, so that livestock were fenced in. On 31 July 1873 the Raleigh Weekly Era printed a caution on "The Contest in Orange County" in that year's election, "the question of adopting the provisions of a late law, introduced into the Legislature by Mumford McGehee, Esq, the legal blunderbuss of Person county, and engineered through the 'Sinate' by [Norwood?] in relation to fences and the 'protection of crops,' but would be better understood if it read, 'a law to tear down the poor man's fence, and to protect the rich man's crop.'" The writer explained bitterly: "The provisions of this law are to prohibit all fences in a county, except one which shall run around the entire county, to be paid for by taxes out of he people's pockets, and to make every man keep his cattle, seep, horses, ad hogs penned up, on penalty of a misdemeanor, which shall render him liable to find and imprisonment, and permit a plea of damages against him, which shall forfeit his cattle when they are caught outside of a cowpen or a hog sty, in McGehee's field, or Cunningham's creek bottoms or Norwood's woods, ranging over a common territory as has been the custom since Orange county was settled." Livestock had ranged freely from the early settlements with fences put up only around fields and gardens. Small landholders often relied on free range to get their livestock access to water and grazing. This was North Carolina's version of the Enclosure acts in Scotland and England which had brought such suffering on the crofters and other poor.
McGehee begin 1874 by submitting to the North Carolina House of Representatives “a resolution denouncing the Civil Rights Bill” then pending in the United States Congress. McGehee also made sure that W. N. H. Smith would no be “president of a mere railroad,” Smith (later the Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court) denounced him in a card placed in the Raleigh Era (12 February 1874): “The smooth-faced, Plymouth-rock-looking fellow, McGehee, of Person, would require a large sized picture to do him justice. He thinks every man dishonest who has energy enough to make a living, and rise above him without friends, schooling, or money, and, like the other little-heads, he would blast my character without giving me a trial.” McGehee’s physical stature may have been slight, for Smith sympathized: “Poor little Mack! You can never elevate yourself by pulling others down. But you hate brains and energy and progress, Mac. You hate especially every man who has sprung from the mass of the people by his own exertions and become your superior. Your donkey-looking dignity does not cover your smallness.”
The Era on 27 February 1873 under "Messrs. McGehee and Badger" contrasted my cousin with his half-brother-in-law. "Mr. McGehee is one of the most polished scholars in the State and in his yesterday speech his language shone like the glitter of new steel, while his accents and bearing and gesticulation are of the old English type, knightly and courtly. But, what a pity; Mr. McGehee lacks the vim to make him a leader, and hasn't enough of the backwoodsman independence at the bottom of his scholarly polish and well trained and traveled intellect, to have the multitude follow him, rather than drag him along after them." Badger had the vim.
The Raleigh Era on 15 June 1876 reduced its coverage of the long speech Montford McGehee gave on the late governor, William A. Graham. The most notable feature of the address was the glowing defense of Governor Graham from the aspersions and slander of Zebulon B. Vance. In 1875 he had misrepresented Graham’s actions. According to McGehee, seeing that the war could not be won, he had appealed to then-Governor Vance to negotiate an end to the war, rather than merely relaying the suggestion of “unknown parties.” But Vance “wanted more blood, and Graham’s bleatings “to stop the sanguinary flood were in vain.” McGehee’s arraignment of the slanderer for his attack upon the dead statesman, was terrible, convicting the blood-thirsty Vance of falsehood.” Having put out his version of what had passed between himself and Graham, Vance in June 1876 criticized Albion Tourgee for challenging Vance’s memory. Vance had had “the cheek” to criticize Tourgee “with the sting of Mr. Montford McGehee’s bitter excoriation yet fresh upon his back.”
Evans in the Milton Chronicle could not let go of the bogus idea of pitting McGehee against Tourgee. This was copied on 17 August 1878 by the Wilmington Morning Star: “We learn that Judge Tourgee will speak at Roxboro’ next Saturday, and that he will be met and replied to by that able and gallant champion of the people’s rights and liberties, Montford McGehee, Esq.” This more scabrous was reprinted in the Star for 30 August 1878 from Evans’s Chronicle: “We admit Judge Tourgee’s ability as a speaker. We admit his shrewdness in political discussions, and his power to make the wrong appear right and vice versa. But if ever McGehee ‘hangs’ him he’ll make him see more dead niggers in a mill pond than he can shake a ‘bloody shirt’ at in a whole day.”
Evans’s fantasy debate between Tourgee and McGehee came as the real debates dwindled away. Tourgee, already a fiction writer, had been writing a romantic novel set in Reconstruction North Carolina, and containing obvious factual accounts of KKK murder as well as slightly “disguised” accounts (partially “hooded”) that anyone in the north-central counties would recognize. Early printed copies got to the state in late November 1879. The Farmer & Mechanic account was reprinted in the Carthage Moore Index for 17 November 1879 headlines “Tourgee’s Book”: Tourgee has published another book called “The Fool’s Errand,” by ‘one of them,’ which is designed to tell the tribulations of the typical carpet-beggar in North Carolina.” (Carpet-bagger, of course, was the term.) “It recites the “Chicken Stephens mystery, Outlaw murder etc; and the Observer, who has seen the advance sheets fears it will equal Uncle Tom’s Cabin in slandering the South.” (“Chicken” referred to a semi-apocryphal story about Stephens’s shooting a chicken, and its use was one way the Democrats had of minimizing his story.)
One more example. The Raleigh Hale’s Weekly for 25 November 1879 identified the book as “beyond doubt Tourgee’s work.” He dated Stephens’s murder as 1876 instead of 1873 and blamed Tourgee for not exposing it all in 1876 so as “to arrest and convict the murderers!” The whole story “is of course meant for the North, and is so told as to produce the most profound feeling of horror and indignation against the South and Southern people. Even if his story were true--as of course it is not--it might be matched any day in atrocity among Tourgee’s own people here at the North and West.” The book, in short, “is a bad one, as bad as its bad author could make it.” In the north and midwest, the book was praised, although it did not have the effect one might have expected: Voters were tired of Radical Republicans and the struggle to impose Northern self-righteousness upon the South by teaching blacks to read and keeping them in offices. Wasn’t the war over?
Montford McGehee, the man who had owned 35 slaves in 1860, had come on hard times. In the summer of 1876 Gustave H. Thorne, a Prussian emigrant, long an employee of the great Baltimore piano company, Knabe, was taken with North Carolina. On12 September 1877 he wrote to the Baltimore Sun (published on the 25th) about his visit in 1876: “I bought of Mr. M. McGehee a very desirable farm on the banks of Hyco, in Person conty, of this State, with growing crops, and removed to it with my family last June [1877]. . . . Labor can be had on reasonable terms, and the colored population is the most orderly I have met with, working in harmony with the whites, and have, apparently, little use for carpet-baggers.” The wheat was negligible, the corn flourishing, the tobacco crop very promising. Besides: “Fruits of all kinds grow here to perfection, and the plum--a native here--grows in variety, and some very good in the greatest profusion in the woods and on roadsides; and the same may be said of grapes.” The family recalled that McGehee sacrificed his library--including his father’s books--several tied in string for 10 cents a bundle.
Cousin Montford needed a paying job, but it took a while for people to realize that he had sold the great Woodburn estate (at a give-away price, between $5 and $12 an acre) in 1877, to be vacated in 1878. The Raleigh Weekly Observer on 12 November 1878 described Person County farms: "On the route to Roxboro there are some very fine farms. The most notable are those of Montford McGehee" and four others. "Mr Mcgehee's is on the waters of the Hyco River. Upon this river he has a large milling property. The valley lands of Hyco are the best in the northern part of the country." R. A. Leigh, writing in the Raleigh Weekly Observer on 12 November 1878 and not knowing that Woodburn had been sold, declared that McGehee was “in the vigor and prime of life, a classic scholar, and I might almost say a walking encyclopedia, for he is probably one of the best informed men on all subjects in the state. . . He owns and lives upon a valuable farm in the northern part of the county [Person], on Hyco river, where he is engaged in agricultural pursuits as well as the practice of law.” Leigh concluded that his many friends would be pleased to see McGehee elected “as Speaker of the next House of Representatives. Once it was clear had moved from Woodburn, his Democratic friends, including the writer in the 26 July 1880 Goldsboro Messenger, promoted him as the best choice from "quite a number of applicants" for the commissioner of agriculture: "It has also been suggested that he would be an admirable professor law at the University. But nowhere could he serve his State more effectually than in charge of the department of agriculture, a position, if efficiently filled, second only to the gubernatorial chair." McGehee took the work seriously. His eloquence could be focused on the cultivation of jute as a supplementary staple to cotton (WilmingtonWeekly Star, 11 March 1881). He blandly addressed the Colored Fair (the Raleigh News and Observer, 2 November 1881): “In common with the white people of our State he felt the liveliest interest in the welfare, prosperity and success of the colored race. He warmly complimented the negro race upon its progress since emancipation. Fifteen years ago it had no land, no houses, while to-day we see in city or in country pleasant homes and active industries. But, above all, the churches which have been built stand as the strongest testimony to improvement.” (He did not mention schools.) He was thorough: in 1883, for instance, he and his staff "showed what North Carolina can do" by their exhibits from Boston to New Orleans. He did his job, but he weakened.
When Montford McGehee died at the end of March in 1895, at 73, the Raleigh North Carolinian printed a worshipful eulogy for him as “one of the leading citizens of North Carolina.” After graduating from the University of North Carolina he had attended Harvard Law School (records show) before returning to Person County where he soon served in the state legislature and later, in 1880, as Commissioner of Agriculture. Not a writer, although known for his widely printed lecture on William A. Graham, McGehee “was thoroughly versed in the English classics and in the political history of his own country and of the leading governments of Europe.” A Presbyterian, he was unusually tolerant of those who “differed from him in religious opinion.” In the legislature his “thoughts were always clothed in elegant language and his manner was solemn and impressive.” He was, all through Reconstruction and afterwards, a Democrat, and a gentleman who pushed almost indelicately hard for amnesty toward the KKK.
Tourgee's A Fool's Errand had not proved to be the new Uncle Tom's Cabin. Stowe had published her book when many idealistic and influential people were ready to celebrate it and push for the end of slavery. In late 1879 and 1880, slavery had been abolished and, tired of the excesses and lasting debates of Reconstruction, very few influential idealists wanted to keep fighting for blacks to have social and political equality. Besides, it seemed that Tourgee and others had killed the KKK by exposing it, while McGehee and others had not enflamed it again by giving amnesty to the hooded legions of North Carolina.
Tourgee's national fame came at the end of 1879 in the first reviews of A Fool's Errand—a sensation through 1880, still being reviewed when it was overtaken toward the end of that year by Bricks without Straw. In a speech in Warren, Ohio, on 30 September 1880 ex-President Grant gave a speech in which he predicted that the newly-solid South, Democratic at last, would not remain so: "Once started, the solid South will go as Ku-Kluxism did before, as is so admirably told by Judge Tourgee in his 'Fool's Errand.' When the break comes, those who start it will be surprised to find how many of their friends have only been waiting for some one to take the lead. This desirable solution can only be obtained by the defeat, and continued defeat, of the Democratic party as now constituted." In 1896 Tourgee argued the Plessy v. Ferguson case and lost when the Supreme Court went for legal racial separation, Dred Scott all over again, almost. President McKinley appointed Tourgee as Consul to France, a post where Roosevelt retained him until his death in 1905.
I see McGehee as like the former Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, a courtly man who punishes evil most eagerly when it is committed by the lesser orders of being, not by people of his own stature. And his own stature was very high, he knew. I see Tourgee as a pragmatic if over-optimistic idealist. He stayed true to his principles long after most Radical Republicans had become tired of trying to befriend negroes in the South or elsewhere. His failure with Plessy vs Ferguson is magnified in 2021 as the Republican Party is pushing to reconfirm the 1896 verdict, or push it farther toward separate but unequal. Writing this essay as part of RACIAL ENCOUNTERS has been distressing, and as I finish it Minnesota has given the surest justification yet for killing young black men: “the Oooops Defense.”
(Evans, as the oldest newspaper man in the state, editor of the Milton Chronicle, in Caswell County, was almost always called "Father Evans," not "Bro," much shorter than "Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans." A cousin of O. Henry, his contribution to journalistic folk humor was inventing a mighty Fool Killer.)
[i]
[ii] Passed down by the McGehees was the fantastic legend that their immigrant ancestor to Virginia in the mid 1600s was really a MacGregor, escaping to the New World after King James I of England had determined to obliterate all living MacGregors and the surname itself. “Ho ho,” thought I for years, as I reflected on our American desire to have interesting European connections, “ho ho!” I was scornful when I saw that the Maryland Magruders had published a book purporting to prove they were MacGregors. Then came DNA, and I find with equal surprise and pleasure that I am 6th cousin a few times removed from a great MacGregor—Rob Roy himself! Now, the American McGehees were an excellent family, and fertile, for by the Civil War they were spread from Virginia to Texas (where they figured in the Great Escape), and beyond. One of the Mississippi McGehee men, Micajah, was a survivor of Fremont’s disastrous fourth expedition. My second cousin several times removed, Edward McGehee, with his family was burned out of “Bowling Green,” their home in Woodville, Mississippi, in October 1864, by black and white Union soldiers. A descendant, Cousin Stark Young, put the family into So Red the Rose.
[iii] Dr. John H. Moore perjured himself out of fear of the KKK. Finally he testified that he had “met the Kuklux going to kill Senator Shoffner at Gilbreath’s bridge,” which he then corrected to Bradshaw’s bridge, showing that the murderers had come from Orange. (The Raleigh Standard, 1 September 1870).
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