COPYRIGHT 26 JUNE 2022
BY HERSHEL PARKER
Whites, Negroes, & Indians--The
Trajectory of an Innocent Texan, Jesse Wadlingon Sparks
Jesse Sparks
(1837-1896) was born in Nacogdoches, near the Sabine River, the Louisiana
border, a grandson of the long-lived Revolutionary Matthew Sparks whose delayed
pension application is quoted in my chapter on the war against the Cherokees.
As a Texan, Jesse was proud that uncles and an older brother had served at San
Jacinto. Indians killed his father and at least one uncle, and as “a wild boy”
he fought Indians two years under General Walker in the Terry Rangers. Then a
hero of San Jacinto, General Thomas Jefferson Rusk, recognized the intelligence
lurking behind rough ignorance and sent him and three others (including one of
his sons?) off first to Nashville, where he did not fit, and then to the
college at Murfreesboro, where he stayed for four years and emerged able to
write and speak persuasively. In 1861 Sparks as lieutenant power-pepped the Terry’s
Rangers into unanimously volunteering in the Confederacy for the entire
duration of the war. Late in 1861 he experienced a revelation at the shocking
death of Frank Terry near Woodsonville, Kentucky: men could die from a reckless
charge against an enemy.
An account in
the Nashville American (6 January
1889) tried a summary: Sparks “made a Major in January, 1862, and [was] ordered
to report to Gen. Van Dorn, which he did, and served with him until the end of
the war. He was in all the principal battles of the war in Tennessee and
Mississippi, and was twice wounded.” At one
point Sparks was assigned to Paul Hebért, a general in the Department of
Texas. (A Louisianan in the 1950s, I knew to say the name “a bear”.) In 1863
Hebért sent him on an important mission that should have gone smoothly. Under a
flag of truce he was to accompany Lewis Dent, a Southern planter, to Grant’s
headquarters in Natchez, Dent being notable a brother of Grant’s wife. Yankee
soldiers, Confederate soldiers, homeless white women and children, homeless
newly freed negroes, all were wandering in the water and mud. It was chaotic,
but Jesse got Dent to Goodrich’s Landing, only to held there by a persnickety
colonel who did not understand that a brother-in-law of Grant should have been
let through. The upshot is that Jesse Sparks’ name reached the desk of Grant’s
assistant Loren Kent who later on casually linked it with the name of my cousin
M. W. Sims, also on Hebért’s staff, in one of the many fabricated charges made
by Yankees against Confederates. Rebels (said various Federal soldiers) were
committing almost unimaginable atrocities to both black and white soldiers--and
(this was wildest, from Kent) even ministers. I talk about this in the next
chapter. Sims had indeed committed something almost like one act Kent charged
him with, but one in which he was following orders of the State of Louisiana.
Sims and Sparks (my cousins, not cousins to each other) never knew just what
they were charged with, and as far as I can see Sparks probably never knew he
was accused of anything, much less than something that in 2007 would make him
and Sims suspects in an atrocity in Linda Barnickel’s Milliken’s Bend. Sparks got Dent to Grant and somehow made his way
through the chaos back to Louisiana and Hebért. In the course of the war Jesse
was wounded at least twice, and later on a residue of metal in his body
tormented him.
The History of Tennessee said Sparks was
“captured, imprisoned and released various times by the Federals whom he
encountered” on his way home to Tennessee in December 1865 and early 1866. Conquered,
he was then bullied. Back in Murfreesboro he married Josephine Blevins (born
around 1841) in April 1866. They had six children there, spaced the natural
way, weaning of one baby followed by new pregnancy, starting with Jesse Jr. in
1867. Disenfranchised as a rebel during Reconstruction, at first Sparks was a
farmer (the Chicago Tribune
skeptically printed his eloquent cure for the army worm) and then, at last able
to vote, for twelve years he was Clerk and Master of the Chancery Court, a lawyer
and politician. He became a Tennessee state senator, by then known as a
“character,” and gradually something of a respected if sometimes surprising
fixture in the whole state, an “institution,” known for his foibles but loved
for them and admired for unusual behavior, such his praise of Indians and his
efforts to advance negroes.
At the same
time, for decades he found companionship with fellow veterans who had bonded in
the war and who then had suffered together in a particularly vindictive
Reconstruction. Late in life he surprised even his supporters, moving from
celebration of the Confederacy to becoming vice president of a society honoring
both Yankee veterans and surviving Confederate veterans. Before his death
becoming a hero to the blacks in Murfreesboro, who staged their own public
funeral for him. I do not want to diminish Cousin Jesse Wadlington Sparks in
this chapter by calling him by his first name instead of Major Sparks but I
feel very sympathetic to him and closer than our DNA would justify. Jesse was a
likeable fellow, and a surprising one.
So Jesse
Sparks may well have prevented the raid on the KKK meeting room by warning
someone in the KKK or someone who could carry the warning. Blacks had been
given the franchise in 1867, under Gov. Brownlow. White veterans like Jesse
were treated, three years, four years after the war, as non-persons in
Tennessee, not allowed to vote or hold office. Jesse was a companionable man.
From early youth, if not sooner, Jesse had been surrounded by males, from
Terry’s Rangers through the Confederacy. He was a man who had buddies--early
(if not first) the Ochiltree and Rust boys. He was a joiner--he got his troop
to shout out their determination to join the Confederacy together for the duration of the war. Later he worked
with other men and if he disagreed with them he remained comfortable around
them. In 1866 and 1868 in Tennessee men like Sparks were trapped, denied a
voice in their own affairs. These younger veterans were trying to start
families. By 1869 Jesse had a wife and two sons. He wanted to take a place in his society.
The governor
of Tennessee 1865-January 1869 was a fierce Radical, William G. Brownlow, a
religious fanatic and a political zealot who was determined to keep all
“rebels” suppressed. He was not an abolitionist but he pushed through voting
for negro males in 1867 as a way of galling white veterans. He was elected and
re-elected, like all dictators, by suppressing voting which might have been
against him. Like some of the high military officials, victorious in the war,
he regarded the South as a defeated enemy. There was to be no early end of
their punishment: ten years for an ordinary veteran of not being allowed to
vote, fifteen years for some officers. You find this hard to visualize? Just a
few years ago I had to argue passionately with members of a major New York City
publishing house who vindictively wanted to characterize the opponents in the
Civil War as “Americans” vs.
“Confederates.” By 1775 all my white ancestors (even if the families arrived in
the mid-Atlantic) were in the South, and all of them were Americans, even ones like my great grandfather John Andrew Jackson
Costner, who for years was a nondescript Confederate soldier. In 1868 and early
in 1869 Governor Brownlow was determined to keep white veterans from voting.
This was very hard for veterans who had seen their friends and family members
die and had been in combat, repeatedly, and many of whom who now lived with
wounds, as Sparks did with a unremoved Yankee metals.
This Radical
“Parson” Brownlow was quoted in the 30 July 1868 Little Rock Arkansas Gazette: “I have been appealed
to by prominent men of both political parties to urge upon you [the
legislature] the propriety of removing the political disabilities of rebels.
The conduct of that class of people has been and is such that I do not feel
justified in making this recommendation. They have a military organization in
this state whose avowed object is to trample the laws under foot and force the
party in power, to enfranchise themselves and their sympathizers. I cannot
stultify myself by yielding to this request, accompanied by threats of
violence. If member of the general assembly are alarmed for their personal
safety and feel disposed to sue for peace upon terms proposed by an armed mob,
they will of course take a different view of the subject. Any recommendation of
this kind, if made at all, should be made at a regular and not at a called
session of our body; and whether such recommendation and corresponding action
shall deemed wise, at your adjourned meeting in November next can then be more
safely determined, by strictly observing the conduct of these unreconstructed
ku-klux rebels and their sympathizing supporters between this time and that.”
For his rhetorical purpose Brownlow was pretending that the state militia was
controlled by the KKK. All Confederate veterans, Parson Brownlow was convinced,
must be treated as if they were active members of the KKK, and “strict
observation” could weed them out if they showed up at a polling place where
Radical Republicans were stationed. On 12 January 1869 the Memphis Evening Post, a Brownlow paper, railed
at the “audacity” of proposing “to give the control of the State into the hands
of these rebel assassins.” No hurry: “When they have ceased their war upon
loyal men and upon the State authority, it will be time enough to talk of their
enfranchisement.”
Over in
neighboring Missouri, Henry Brockmeyer delivered a masterpiece of sarcasm
(picked up by the Memphis Public Ledger
on 21 July 1868). Sarcastically he explained the steps people like Jesse Sparks
ought to be taking to be given the vote: “all that it is necessary for them to
do is to pledge fealty to the Radical party by believing, or pretending to
believe, themselves unworthy of the elective franchise by indorsing their own
disfranchisement, and then to go one step further in infamy, if that be
possible, and declare that while they themselves are unworthy their former
chattels are worthy.” Confederate veterans who read this in Tennessee may not
have appreciated the irony but they understood the fury at surviving the war (as
so many had not) and then being oppressed.
Against new
opposition, in January 1869 Brownlow worked hard to keep white veterans from
voting. The Memphis Avalanche on 28
January 1869 headlined: “MARTIAL LAW IN
TENNESSEE.” Brownlow was “determined to declare martial law” in some counties so the militia (which he was sure he still controlled)
could challenge and reject “rebel” would-be voters. White veterans and other
men in Rutherford county met in the Murfreesboro courthouse and decided
to circumvent Brownlow by going directly to General Joseph A. Cooper, who was
in charge of the state military forces. The Memphis Daily Appeal (30 January 1869) announced that on 28 January the
“delegation from Rutherford county appointed to wait upon Gen. Cooper,
commander of the Tennessee State militia, arrived in the city [Nashville]
yesterday.” Jesse W. Sparks was the third of eight named.
No pushover
for the governor or for the veterans, General Cooper challenged some of the
delegation: “Can the Criminal Court Judge change the Franchise, and Kuklux
Laws, at the holding of your courts without personal danger? Sparks and the
others assured him, “Judge Smith enforces the Ku-klux laws.” Cooper found ways
of dissociating rebels like Sparks from some KKK “outrages.” The paper
paraphrased: “He [Cooper] did not believe
that the outrages complained of had been committed by Confederate soldiers . .
. and he furthermore believed that but few of the Simon pure Confederate
soldiers were to be found in the organization of the Ku-Klux Klan.” He let
them know that the delegation could avoid any interference by the state if they
returned to their homes, where he expected them to do their duty and denounce
any mob action in the press. He had “advice to the delegation, saying that if
the people wanted to get the franchise, they must not curse and abuse us. He,
for one, could be folled a good ways, but was a hard man to drive.” [Folled is
a misprint for tolled, a once common word Faulkner had to explain even to
Virginians. You could keep your head down and lead Cooper along with sweet
words, the way you would walk with a hand containing some bovine delicacy held
behind you to ensure that you did not need to look back to see that a calf was
still following you.] The upshot is that Cooper was not in any hurry to call
out the militia to attack the “rebels.” In February 1869, Brownlow resigned.
Martial law was avoided. And Jesse Sparks entered public life as Democrat,
popular for the rest of his life, but not a man who blamed blacks for the sins
of the white Radical Republicans: the Radicals had enfranchised blacks mainly
as a way of grinding white Southerners further down, but Sparks escaped those
poisonous feelings.
In his middle
years Jesse Sparks was a public figure, a state celebrity. In November 1885 he
sent President Cleveland a live possum caught on the battle-field of
Murfreesboro, giving instructions on slaughter and cooking, then proudly framed
the thank you note from the President. On 2 April 1886 the Nashville Tennessean printed news from
Murfreesboro, a “Colored Concert” in support of a very worthy cause. The writer
had attended “the jolliest and most amusing amateur performance ever given in
the city,” all conceived “by our noble philanthropist, Maj. J. W. Sparks.” The
“participants were all colored, with the exception of Maj. Sparks, who made his
appearance before the curtain rose and stated in a most happy and
characteristic manner the object of the entertainment, which, in brief, was to
lend aid to the old and decrepit colored men and women of the city.” The Opera
House was packed. Whites were permitted: “The parquet and one side of the dress
circle were reserved for the whites and there were numbers of them who could
not find seats.” The concert raised money “far above the expectations of the
management.”
On 31 March
1887 a reporter from the Nashville American
gave a “pencil sketch” of Sparks as one of the state senators whose names were
as familiar as household words: “He is a native of Texas, and possesses all the
best points of the Texan happily blended with the personal accomplishments and
warm-heartedness of a Middle Tennessean.” On 5 June 1887 the Nashville Banner summarized Jesse’s long speech
against Prohibition (“Prohibition “will not prohibit” and “would result in no
practical good.”) Neal
Dow, the author of the 1857 “Maine Law,” reproached Jesse in a long letter (3
July 1887) in the Macon, Georgia, Telegraph
celebrating his now sober state: “Before the Maine law our people were
shiftless, thriftless, poor; now they are active, industrious, enterprising,
thrifty, rich. The liquor traffic earns nothing; its influence is to waste the
wages of labor and to ruin all who come under its influence.” Jesse won.
The American on 26 May 1888 saw Jesse as
magnet for public notice: “They tell this on Senator Jesse W. Sparks, who is an
officer on Gov. Taylor’s Staff: “Attired in his handsome uniform, epaulets
glittering, dignified and martial Uncle Jesse was walking near the camp
yesterday. A squad of soldiers approached, and, as they neared him, halted and
saluted. Uncle Jesse looked hard at them, and then exclaimed: ‘Tote your guns
boys.’ They did so and hurried away from the awful officer.” The same paper on
18 November 1888 proclaimed, “Uncle Jesse Heard From” and published a satirical
reply to “a candidate applying for aid.” “What the thunder do you want with
me?” Jesse stormed. He was a raconteur, as at a veteran’s reunion in Houston in
1888, where he “related a joke about his being appointed a committee to value
saddles of the Eighth Texas regiment, which created a great deal of laughter.”
The joke is lost but the idea of examining saddles remains funny. Once a ragged
rough Nacogdoches kid, “Uncle Jesse” had developed a voice, recognizable all
over Tennessee. Late in 1888 he assumed he would become the next Speaker of the
Senate. He told the vets in Houston that he was
a member of the senate of Tennessee “and will be elected speaker in two weeks
from to-day if nothing unforeseen happens.” That would have been “all right,” but
as the Memphis Commercial Appeal on 9
January 1889 revealed, his opponent was made Speaker “even at the sacrifice of
so true and unselfish a friend as Senator Sparks, and the sacrifice was made.”
The reporter added: “I have not heard Maj. Sparks bemoaning his fate, but he
now has the golden opportunity of his life to sit down and coolly reflect.”
Jesse did not
pause to reflect, and he did not want to be kept standing./. The Tennessean on 17 November 1889 told a
story that was copied all around, how Jesse behaved when entered a crowded
railroad car where a man was spread across two seats, his luggage on a third,
his feet both on the famous railroad plush. Jesse was polite: “Is this seat
engaged?” Pushed too far by rudeness, Jesse “jerked the seat over, probably
severely abrading the stranger’s shin-plasters.” “‘By G-d, sir,’ yelled the
stranger as he violently threw the seat back to its former position and poked a
revolver into the Senator’s glowing countenance, ‘I’m from New York.’
“‘And I,’
retorted the Senator as he knocked up the New Yorker’s pistol, “am from Texas,
more recently from Tennessee.” As he spoke he shot his right fist into the
stranger’s left optic, and knocking him against the window-pane shattered the
glass. The stranger’s head went through the opening thus made and the irate
Tennessean was about to throw the Yorker out the car when friends persuaded him
to desist.” Uncle Jesse was a hero, partly because he was, normally, a gentle
man, whose soul had imbibed “genial warmth and constant mildness” from his
years at Nacogdoches so that he was always in “good humor” around his friends,
according to the sketch of his life in the Nashville American (6 January 1889).
Sparks never
went out of his way to preserve his dignity. He was not in fighting shape. He
was “fat and heavy as a material body, but affable by nature, as most of
corpulent men are,” said the Nashville Tennessean
on 19 December 1886. The Louisville Courier
(2 February 1896) recalled “not the least notable” of his career “full of
daring deeds”--his celebrated foot race against Bob Taylor at the old Whig
barbeque two or three years ago.” The distance set was 25 yards, 25 long
strides. “Both contestants had to be carried off the field, and were laid up
for repairs for several weeks.” This, declared the Courier, “is history.” (Taylor, three term Governor, starting
1887-1891) had stronger arms than legs, perhaps, being “a master of the violin”
who had “often entertained his boys in camp.” He was a Union youth during the
war and a cheerful political rival of his older brother Alf, Whig and Democrat,
so cheerful they played fiddles together at political meetings. (“United
Veterans” Galveston Daily News 23 May
1895.)
Jesse was
loyal. After twenty years in jail, Captain A. W. Tompkins was pardoned by
Governor Buchanan of Tennessee. From a prominent Southern family, he had been
in B. F. Terry’s regiment in the 8th Texas Rangers and had captained Company H
through the war. Jesse Sparks had fought “side by side” with him and was the
chief promoter of the pardon.
More than an
attention-seeker, more than a celebrity, Sparks had become a thoughtful man.
Although Jesse’s father and uncle were killed by (probably) Comanches in Texas
and his North Carolina ancestors battled Cherokees, he developed a respectful
fascination with American Indians. On 8 December 1885, the Nashville American reported on the meeting of the
Tennessee Historical in the home of Major Sparks, a gathering enriched by rarities
such as newly copied photographs of Indians. Two or so months earlier, probably
in October, Sparks and the former governor of Tennessee, John C. Brown (a
cousin of mine through the Hill and Truman families) “had a long talk with
Sitting Bull” in the Southern Hotel in St. Louis, at a time the famous Indian
was sitting with his interpreter for a series of interviews. When the
Tennesseans left the hotel, Brown said to Sparks, “‘There is one of the great
men of this country. You can see it in his face. He is the only man that ever
whipped the United States, and that is more than you and I” (Confederates both)
“were able to do.”
The Atlanta Constitution (22 November 1886) revealed
that Sparks’s deep interest in Indians had caught the attention of a frivolous reporter
who mocked his collection. “Major J. W. Sparks, of Murfreesboro, has at his
residence quite a number of Indian relics, or rather, Indian weapons of war,
such as war clubs, bow and arrows, quivers, tomahawks and all the bloody
implements of death that the wily red man of the forest was wont to use and
still use in their merciless ravages. In his collection is a war club used by
Crazy Horse in the massacre ten years ago of the brave General Custer and his
gallant band, when there was not one of the United States soldiers left to tell
the melancholy tale. Another club has dangling from it a human scalp--the scalp
of a woman with long, black, silken hair. This is, no doubt, the only genuine
human scalp in Tennessee. Major Sparks says he would give anything to know the
sad history of the woman who met her cruel fate at the hands of the ruthless
savage. But it will doubtless never be known. She was slain, no doubt, while
her protectors were away, without one word of mercy, by a hand as pitiless as
that of Moloch. Major Sparks will present these weapons and fixtures, among
others of a like historical nature, to the Tennessee Historical society when it
meets again in Murfreesboro.” What shameful mockery and what a contrast with
the profound respect Sparks showed.
Sparks had
commissioned Professor T. N. Schleier to photograph several “Sioux Indians of
note and influence in their tribe.” Sparks now had carefully produced copies of
photographs of Sitting Bull, Crow Dog, Spotted Tail, White Thunder, Red Cloud,
and others. He presented to the Historical Society a group of eleven including
Yellow Bear, He Dog, Little Hound, American Horse, Little Big Man,
Young-man-afraid-of-his-Horse, Sword, Three Bears, and three interpreters.”
Sparks considered Young Spotted Tail “a splendid-looking young Indian with a
son of about six. Sparks said, “I took such a fancy to the little boy’s dress
(having a little boy about his size, myself,) that Mrs. Spotted Tail made me a
gift of it and sent it to my son, and he is now the proudest little fellow in
Tennessee. I think every boy in Murfreesboro of his size has tried on that suit
of clothes. There is not a woman in Tennessee that can do such work. So the
ladies here say, although it was done by a wild Indian.”
The Galveston Daily News on 20 December 1888
reported comically, “INVASION OF VETERANS. Houston captured by a remnant of the
famous Terry Rangers.” A captain arose and demanded that Major Jesse Sparks
“should be required to stand up and give an account of himself and explain the
trouble he had got the regiment into thirty years ago, when he marched them
into the service of the confederacy.” Elsewhere (in his 1919 Reminiscences) James K. P. Blackmun
recalled just how Jesse had got the men aroused: “They were lined up on three sides
of a hollow square” when Lieutenant Sparks asked: ‘Do you men wish to be sworn
into service for twelve months or for three years or for during the war ?’ With
a unanimity never surpassed, a shout unheard of before, that whole body of men
shouted, ‘For the war,’ ‘For the war !’ not one expecting or caring to return
until the war was over, long or short, and the invaders had been driven from
our borders.”
Thirty-seven
years later, Jesse gave the Houston invaders a fine speech that revealed much
about the Rangers and his early life. Some of it I have mentioned already: “You
may think I am not a Texan, but you are mistaken. I was born in Texas at
Nacogdoches. My brother and four uncles were in the battle of San Jacinto.
Before the war I was a wild boy. There were four of us . . . . We ran away and
joined General Walker and fought the Indians two years.” This was the John G.
Walker, later known as the “Greyhound Commander, and the General Rusk next
mentioned was a hero of San Jacinto and United States Senator. “General Rusk
said to us when we got back: ‘You can scarcely write your names,’ and sent us
off to school in Nashville, Tenn. We were there just four weeks and were
expelled. [Laughter.] General Rusk, for a son of his was of the party, wrote to
us and said: ‘It was just as I expected.’ He sent us to a good school at
Murfreesboro, Tenn., and we stayed there four years and did something for
ourselves.” Rusk must have sent them
away shortly before his suicide in Nacogdoches at the end of July 1857. Two of
his sons, one born in 1829, the other in 1841, survived the war; one son was at
college with Jesse.
So Jesse
Sparks was a Terry Ranger, who knew both B. F. (Frank) Terry and David Terry.
When Judge David Terry was murdered in San Francisco in 1889, having
established himself there, an enterprising reporter accosted Jesse, who
cautioned: “You must remember that was in 1861, ’62, ’63 and ’64, when I was
nothing but a boy, and I was not associated with those gentlemen like I would
have been had I been older. Still, I knew them both well,” especially B. F.
Terry, who lost his life, Jesse said, by rashness. Talking to the reporter
evoked powerful memories of a decisive event in his life, in mid December 1861.
B. F. was a reckless man: “‘Col. Terry
espied . . . a squad and said, ‘Boys, here is a squad of them, let us charge
them!’” When the men gathered at his body, Sparks remembered, “Then it was that
we were impressed for the first time with the fact that war meant killing
folks.” This sounds sententious, and it is--not awkwardly wordy but sonorously
emphatic, for the construction “Then it was that” is from the King James
Version of the Bible. Jesse was not finished with the reporter. B. F.’s son
David, he said, fell on the body, weeping bitterly. “Right there occurred one
of the tragedies of war that made a fearful impression on me.” Someone stupidly
pointed out a prisoner, the “fine-looking young German” who had killed Terry:
“The remark had scarcely been uttered before young Dave Terry whipped out his pistol
and shot the prisoner dead. While war meant war, and we were engaged in killing
people for a livelihood, this one act made a serious impression upon me”--the
act of a grief-stricken son shooting dead the prisoner who had killed his
father.
Now, all this
makes us believe that seeing Davy avenge his father was “one act” which marked
Jesse Sparks’s memory. Curiously, a widow, Maris Evans Claiborne, quoted a
letter from her first husband, Mark L. Evans: “Col. Terry made a desperate
charge upon about a dozen, and fell dead, having received a ball in the chin
and coming out in the back of his head. His horse was shot from under him about
the same instant. I have the honor to know that I shot the Dutchman's brains
out that killed him. I emptied my six-shooters into the crowd, and saw several
fall dead.” German, said Jesse; Evans said Dutchman, by which he may have meant
someone who spoke Deutsch, as in “Pennsylvania Dutch” or one of those who came
directly to New Braunsfel in the 1840s. Whatever Jesse remembered, had its
lasting effect on him.
“After a Long
Illness He Is Out Again,” said the Nashville American on 20 August 1890. A reporter had met Sparks the day
before: “From the effects of wounds received during the war and rheumatic
troubles the senator has been confined to his bed for several months. While his
sufferings were great and the confinement almost unbearable for one of his
temperament , he looks almost as natural as ever. Yesterday, he said, was the
first time he had been out of the house for several months, and he walks now by
the aid of crutches.”
In 1890 from
his sickbed Sparks had been paying attention to unsurprising news from
Congress, that the Government had not “in any one instance, complied with its
part of the treaty or contract, but has been quietly swindling” Indians. Sparks
knew there was one consistently honorable man in Indian affairs, Nelson A.
Miles, the hero of my earlier chapter on Wounded Knee. He quoted “Gen. Miles,
the senior Major General of the army,” as saying that the Sioux had been
“wronged from the beginning” and that Sitting Bull had been right in demanding
that the Government keep its treaties. On 20 December 1890, a few days after
the death of Sitting Bull, the Nashville American
quoted Sparks on that “remarkable man”: His picture shows one of the strongest
and saddest marked faces ever seen, and it almost bewilders one to look upon
the face of a wild Indian, like Sitting Bull, and see such wonderful and
plainly marked lines of strong character.” Some had seen the chief “as a lousy
cowthief and an altogether superfluous laggard upon this terrestrial ball,” but
Major Sparks told the reporter that he regarded Sitting Bull, St. Paul, and
Andrew Jackson “as the grand triumvirate of history occupying a serene altitude
on the cupola of the temple of fame.”
On 20 December
1890 the American quoted Sparks at
great length: “Sitting Bull and Red Cloud have been the great chiefs of the
Ogallala Sioux for many years. These Indians owned an immense territory in our
Western country, so admitted by the United States. When gold was discovered in
the Black Hills, these hills belonged to Sitting Bull’s people. The citizens of
the United States rushed there by the thousands and the Indians undertook to
protect their property, just what any people would have done. It brought on a
big Indian war, Sitting Bull was their leader, and he being a man of ability
and a good General, the Indians followed his advice and leadership, which
resulted in disaster to the United States forces, a terrible one, too. Poor
Custer and his gallant men were sacrificed because the white men of the United
States wanted to take the rich gold fields from Sitting Bull and his people
without pay or compensation. Can anyone blame Sitting Bull for defending the
rights of his people to these rich gold fields--gold fields that belonged to
these very Indians--for the United States Government acknowledged their title
to this territory by making a treaty with these very Indians wherein the
Government bought these gold fields from them at a price agreed upon, and among
other things it was agreed that the United States Government should feed and
clothe these Indians and educate their children for a term of years, I don’t
now remember how many. And it has come out within the last two months, in
debates in Congress, that the Government has not, in any one instance, complied
with its part of the treaty or contract, but has been quietly swindling these
Indians from the date of the treaty down to this date. All this is testified to
by the officers and agents of the United States Government. Gen. Miles, the
senior Major General of the army, says the Government has not kept its part of
the contract, but that these Indians have been wronged from the beginning up to
this date by the Government, and because Sitting Bull, acting for and in behalf
of his people, demanded from time to time a strict compliance with the contract
or treaty, upon the part of the United States Government, (the Indians having
complied strictly with their part of the treaty by surrendering enough
territory to make four such States as Tennessee), then you say Sitting Bull for
many years has been a thorn in the white man’s side.”
Sparks was
appalled at the tone the writer Carmack had taken in the paper: “Again: you
abuse Sitting Bull because he insists on his rights and say there is nothing
heroic in his death, that he was shot
down like a dog. Yes, that is true, Mr. Editor.
He was shot down like a dog. He was a prisoner, unable to do any
mischief, if so he desired. The proof shows he surrendered without offering any
resistance, and after being a prisoner he was shot down like a dog--this
wonderful man, the only man that ever
whipped the United States, killed while a prisoner, and because he was
insisting on the rights of his people, he is abused and vilified. I say it is
too bad and insist on saying this much in defense of this wonderful man.
“I insist, if
the Government had carried out its part of the contract, that there would not
have been any trouble. Their ghost dances are nothing more than our old-fashion
camp-meetings. It is their religious ceremony, and if let alone they will soon
abandon them, but if disturbed while carrying on their religious ceremony they
will fight. The agents of the Government know all this, and still insist on
breaking up their meetings. Our
Methodist brethren here at home would fight if one of their camp-meetings were
interfered with.
“So I say let
the Indians alone in their religious ceremonies. Comply with our contract
strictly, and I will guarantee no further trouble. The United States Government
is to blame for all this trouble, so, friend Carmack, take back all you said
about poor Sitting Bull.” He quoted “Gen. Miles, the senior Major General of
the army,” as saying that the Sioux had been “wronged from the beginning” and
that Sitting Bull had been right in demanding that the Government keep its
treaties.”
Not old in
years, but weak, Jesse still had influential allies. Grover Cleveland, ever
grateful for the Thanksgiving delicacy of possums, on 23 June 1893 appointed
Sparks as consul for Piedras Negras in northern Mexico. “Sparks Gets Pie,”
headlined that date in the American.
The short note credited Congressman Richardson for “feeling very good,” since
he had secured the appointment “through his persistent efforts.”
More thoughtful than ever now that he had a federal
post, Jesse, who had been so cruelly treated as a conquered rebel by the
Radical Brownlow, realized that he no longer wanted to live as a partisan
concerned only about the beloved Confederate veterans still surviving. It was
time for Yankees and Rebels to unite. The Galveston
Daily News on 23 May 1895 printed “Reunion Notes,” dating the piece as
Houston, 22 May: “One of the most interesting organizations now here is in camp
of ‘United American Veterans,’ all the way from Eagle Pass, Tex., on the
extreme border of the United States, only separated from Mexico by the Rio
Grande river.
The camp is
under command of Major Jesse W. Sparks, United States consul. This gentleman
was a gallant officer in Texas at the beginning of the war, and mustered the
famous Terry’s Texas rangers into the confederate service. He after served in
the armies east of the Mississippi river. When the war was over, like a
sensible man, he accepted the change of affairs in the south, and now feels
proud to represent his country as consul to a foreign nation. The camp
comprises men who wore the blue and the gray, and it is a pleasing sight to see
men who faced each other on the field of strife over thirty years ago now
messing together and touching elbows when marching under the folds of the star
spangled banner. The camp is one of the largest here. This organization will
certainly expand all over the south, and it will be only a few years when
similar camps will be formed. The southern veteran, homeless and disabled, has
no government pension to aid his declining years, but the ‘United American
Veterans’ will, as their charter provides, aid all members, no matter the color
of the jacket he wore over thirty years ago. . . . When the bands played
‘Dixie’ to-day the fact was noticed that a large number of members of the Grand
Army of the Republic cheered heartily, and when ‘The Star Spangled Banner’
closed hundreds of confederate veterans returned the compliment.”
The timing was such that Jesse had more than that chance at
grand reconciliation. The Louisville Courier
on 2 February 1896 looked back on a tragic episode: “A certain ‘professional
negro’ named Ellis, representing a company of Northern capitalists operating in
Mexico, by glittering representations of the glorious things awaiting the
colored race in Mexico, induced a large number of negroes to abandon their
homes in the South and go to that country, to work for the Northern company
above alluded to. Under the climactic conditions and barbarous treatment to
which they were subjected, these deluded negroes were soon reduced to a state
worse than death. As fast as they could break away from their restraints they
fled northward, in the hope of reaching the United States. They appealed to the
American Consul for relief and protection, and got both.”
There was news “reported on ‘Small-Pox at Eagle Pass,
Tex.’: Dr. Evans reports 115 cases of small- pox at quarantine station
yesterday morning. Three deaths occurred Tuesday among the batch of 65 that
arrived Monday night. Jesse W. Sparks, United States consul, who has taken such
an active interest in the welfare of the negro colonists, left yesterday for
Murfreesboro, Tenn., and while en route will endeavor to obtain contributions
of clothing and bedding, so badly needed by the negroes.” This was reprinted in
many places, some after Sparks had died, as explained below.
The Galveston Daily
News (27 July 1895) headlined “STRANDED
COLONISTS; Consul Sparks Asks the Government to Feed the Returning Negroes.” On
26 July Sparks “wired to Assistant Secretary of State Uhl at Washington
requesting that the Government furnish from San Antonio several thousand
rations with which the hundreds of starving negroes . . .”
Sparks died on 3 August, as explained below, but
editors heard erratically, rapidly or slowly. On 9 August 1895 the Boise Statesman used the headline “NAKED AS
FROGS, Terrible Plight of the Stranded Negro Emigrants in Mexico.” Jesse W.
Sparks, the “United States consul to Mexico” (or to Piedras Negras) wrote to
Austin reporting “a deplorable condition among the negro emigrants in Mexico,”
who needed money and food: “I have distressed people. . . . They need clothing
badly. The majority of them are as naked as frogs. Let your people get up
clothing for these poor women, men and children and send it at once.”
On 19
September the Morning Star in
Washington wrote on “Stranded Negroes / Unable to Return to Their Homes in
Alabama.” This was dire: “The 400 stranded negroes at Eagle Pass will have to
remain in that section unless they find means outside of the United States
Government with which to return to their homes in Alabama.” Smallpox had been
stopped, after many deaths, “but the negroes appear to have become panic-stricken,
for they have declined offers of good homes at fair wages on large ranches near
Eagle Pass.” The obituary piece in the Confederate Veteran I think was written
by Jesse W. Sparks, Jr. He celebrates the Consul’s “fearless action in behalf of
a large number of negroes who had been persuaded to go from the United States
into Mexico. They had become diseased with smallpox, were almost literally
naked and were starving then they undertook to return home. The authorities on
the other side refused permission for them to cross the Rio Grande, but Consul
Sparks, the Southern white man, assumed all responsibility. He got on the
engine by the engineer and required him to open the throttle and run the train
across despite all other authority. Then he took responsibility of supplying
food until his acts were approved at Washington.”
Not everybody
appreciated Sparks’s charitable nature. The Birmingham News on 6 February 1896 looked at this annoying event of 1895: An
unusual demand was made during the year on account of the large number of
negroes returning from Mexico who were unceremoniously and often times without
notice, dumped on this community, forcing us to provide for them in their
helplessness and want.”
The Baltimore Sun (3 August 1896) had the news of the
“sudden death of consul Sparks” of heart failure, in the International Hotel.
The paper knew what to emphasize: “Major Sparks was a prominent candidate for
Governor of Tennessee when appointed consul by President Cleveland. He was
vice-president of the United Veterans, an association Union and Confederate
soldiers. He was widely known throughout the South, and had come into national
prominence through his energetic action in behalf of stranded negro colonists
from Mexico. His remains will be shipped tomorrow to Murfreesboro, Tenn., where
his family resides.” The “United Veterans” deserved that mention, out of all
that could have been said. The Confederate
Veteran got other parts right: “His death at his post of duty was a great
shock to his family and friends, although he had been in ill health for some
years and was a dreadful sufferer at times from a bullet which never could be
extricated.” Then that obituary added this striking sentence about what that
wild boy from Nacogdoches had become: “Major Sparks shared liberally his income
with the poor and needy of both races.” He would have shared with Indians if he
could have. The 1896 Veteran (p. 286)
added: “Another prominent characteristic of Major Sparks was his great interest
in Indians, and he had a large collection of very fine Indian relics. Sitting
Bull was to him a most interesting character.”
The Nashville American on 2 August 1896 announced news
from Eagle Pass, Texas: “MAJ. JESSE W. SPARKS Well Known Tennessean Dies
Suddenly in Mexico. Was United States Consul at Piedras Negras, and Died of
Heart Failure at His Hotel There-Remains to Be Shipped to Murfreesboro To-Day
for Burial.” He had died on 1 August. The writer seized on two recent events,
Sparks’s becoming “Vice President of the United States United Veterans, an
association of Union and Confederate soldiers”--a happy reconciliation in a
group formed in 1892. Movingly, a group from the Eagle Pass Camp of United
Veterans (Federals and Confederates) escorted his body home to Tennessee. The reporter
accurately said that Sparks “had come into national prominence through his
energetic action in behalf of the stranded negro colonists from Mexico,” but
his activities for uniting the blue and the grave were of more importance
historically.
Astonishingly
(can you name a parallel?) black churches in Murfreesboro held services for
him. The Veteran said this: “One of
the most beautiful of a multitude of floral designs at his funeral was
contributed by the colored people. They subsequently held a public meeting and
passed resolutions, one of which reads: ‘That we deeply deplore the death of
Major Jesse W. Sparks, by which we and our race have lost one of our best and
truest white friends, and mankind a benefactor.’” The Nashville Tennessean on 4 August printed this
notice: “Colored Citizens Will Act”: “A large meeting of the colored citizens
of Murfreesboro will be held in the court-house on Wednesday, the 5th
inst., at 2 o’clock, in honor of the late Hon. J. W. Sparks. Rev. J. Allen
Viney, of New Orleans, and William Dickson Greer will be the principle
speakers. a cordial invitation is extend to the white citizens to attend.”
Sitting Bull to him was a most interesting character. As I wrote this chapter
Cousin Jesse became to me a most interesting character.
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