civil wars and civil beings

765 Pages·2006·4.48 MB·English

CIVIL WARS AND CIVIL BEINGS: VIOLENCE, RELIGION, RACE, POLITICS,
EDUCATION, CULTURE, AND AGRARIANISM
IN PERRY COUNTY, ALABAMA, 1860-1875

Except where reference is made to the work of others, the work described in
this dissertation is my own or was done in collaboration with my advisory
committee. This dissertation does not include proprietary or classified
information.

_________________________
Bertis Deon English

Certificate of Approval:

________________________ __________________________
Larry Gerber J. Wayne Flynt, Chair
Professor Professor Emeritus
History History

________________________ ___________________________
Patience Essah Joe F. Pittman
Associate Professor Interim Dean
History Graduate School
CIVIL WARS AND CIVIL BEINGS: VIOLENCE, RELIGION, RACE,
POLITICS, EDUCATION, CULTURE, AND AGRARIANISM
IN PERRY COUNTY, ALABAMA, 1860-1875

Bertis Deon English

A Dissertation

Submitted to

the Graduate Faculty of

Auburn University

in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the

Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Auburn, Alabama
15 December 2006
CIVIL WARS AND CIVIL BEINGS: VIOLENCE, RELIGION, RACE,
POLITICS, EDUCATION, CULTURE, AND AGRARIANISM
IN PERRY COUNTY, ALABAMA, 1860-1875

Bertis Deon English

Permission is granted to Auburn University to make copies of this dissertation at its
direction, upon request of individuals or institutions and at their expense. The author
reserves all publication rights.

_____________________________
Signature of Author

_____________________________
Date of Graduation
iii
CIVIL WARS AND CIVIL BEINGS: VIOLENCE, RELIGION, RACE,
POLITICS, EDUCATION, CULTURE, AND AGRARIANISM
IN PERRY COUNTY, ALABAMA, 1860-1875

Bertis Deon English

Doctor of Philosophy, 15 December 2006
(M.A., History, Jacksonville State University, 1997)
(B.A., History/Pre-law, Talladega College, 1997)
(B.A., English, Jacksonville State University, 1994)

765 Typed Pages

Directed by J. Wayne Flynt

The years 1860 to 1875 were of immense importance to Alabama history.
Following a controversial secession debate, its residents faced a life-changing war. In the
aftermath of war, Alabamians wrestled with the changes that accompanied the Union
victory. Like the rest of the South, cultural, economic, educational, ethnic, racial, and
religious issues beset Alabama during Reconstruction and the early Redemption years.
Wartime and immediate post-wartime changes were difficult for most of the state(cid:146)s
citizens, but the Postbellum period was particularly challenging for black Alabamians,
especially those who lived in the racially divided and often violent Black Belt. But one
of the region(cid:146)s localities was different. In Perry County, black agency, or self-help,
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thrived on the heels of the Civil War. Interestingly, a principal factor to black Perry
Countians(cid:146) self-help was the tremendous antebellum concentration of white educational
and religious institutions in the county seat, Marion, a phenomenon that softened local
whites and became a model for black liberation and biracial cooperation. In a region
where political- and race-based violence was widespread between 1860 and 1875,
hostility was noticeably slighter in Perry. Consequently, it became one of the most
progressive counties in Alabama during the Civil War, Reconstruction, and early
Redemption periods.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Very few people have completed doctoral study alone, and I am not a member of
the infinitesimally small group of individuals who have made this journey without the
help of others. Sincere thanks are extended to each one of the instructors, lecturers,
teachers, and professors who have aided me over the years. I especially thank Drs. J.
Wayne Flynt, Richard Bailey, Patience Essah, Larry Gerber, Johnny Green, Hines Hall,
Harvey Jackson, III, Suzanne Marshall, and Peter Robinson for serving on my thesis and
dissertation committees. Your patience and guidance are appreciated more than words(cid:151)
at least, my words(cid:151)can ever express. Even greater thanks are given to my mother,
Barbara Lawson English, and her husband, James A. ((cid:147)Pappy(cid:148)) Dunn, for the love and
the counsel that they have continually provided me before, during, and after my Auburn
stay. The Porters(cid:151)sister Claudette, brother-in-law Phetis, and nephew J. Chase(cid:151)have
been constant sources of inspiration, as have relatives Burt Lawson, Jr., A. B. Lawson,
Alfretta and Midge Green, Tyrone Byers, E. Quinn and RenØe Headen, and Rita
Cunningham. Tens of individuals have reminded me that friendship is one of life(cid:146)s most
important dispensations, so I will not attempt an enumeration here. Suffice it to say that I
appreciate every one of you. Finally, I wish to acknowledge six persons whose lives
were evidently taken so that mine could be spared: Ollie ((cid:147)Tollie(cid:148)), Morris, and William
((cid:147)Fred(cid:148)) Lawson; Henry and Anrae ((cid:147)Bo(cid:148)) English; and Edward Rowland. To you and
to my son, Marquis DeontØ Heath, this study is dedicated.
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STYLE MANUAL

Style Manual Used
The Chicago Manual of Style. 14th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Computer Software Used
Microsoft Word and Excel
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE X

INTRODUCTION
AN ATMOSPHERE OF AGRARIAN UNREST 1

CHAPTER ONE
A TOUGH DECISION: CHOOSING (cid:147)BETWEEN THE
CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA AND ABRAHAM
LINCOLN(cid:148)(cid:151)PERRY COUNTY DURING THE CIVIL WAR
YEARS, 1861-1865 26

CHAPTER TWO
(cid:147)BLACK RECONSTRUCTION(cid:148) IN ALABAMA: FORMING
A NEW EDUCATIONAL AND POLITICAL CULTURE,
1865-1874 105

CHAPTER THREE
(cid:147)SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES(cid:148): POLITICS
AND RACE-BASED VIOLENCE IN EARLY
RECONSTRUCTION-ERA PERRY COUNTY 168

CHAPTER FOUR
(cid:147)PROSPERITY AND HAPPINESS UNDER PROVIDENCE(cid:148):
RACE, RELIGION, AND EDUCATION IN POSTBELLUM
PERRY COUNTY 220

CHAPTER FIVE
(cid:147)REMEMBER OLD PERRY, BOYS!(cid:148): WHITE NOSTALGIA,
BIRACIAL INITIATIVES, AND KLAN VIOLENCE IN PERRY
COUNTY, 1869-1870 340

CHAPTER SIX
RECONCILIATION, RESTORATION, AND REVOLUTION:
PERRY COUNTY AND ALABAMA(cid:146)S FIRST REDEMPTION 368

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CHAPTER SEVEN
(cid:147)WAITING FOR SOMETHING TO TURN UP(cid:148): PERRY
COUNTY DURING THE (cid:147)DEMOCRATIC INTERLUDE,(cid:148)
1872-1874, PART I 419

CHAPTER EIGHT
(cid:147)CONFLICT AND CONQUEST(cid:148): PERRY COUNTY
DURING THE (cid:147)DEMOCRATIC INTERLUDE,(cid:148) 1872-1874,
PART II 479

CHAPTER NINE
TRITE BUT TRUE: PERRY COUNTY AND ALABAMA(cid:146)S
SECOND REDEMPTION 589

EPILOGUE
CONNECTING THE DOTS(cid:151)HOPE, TRAVAIL,
RESURRECTION, AND RECONCILIATION: THE
IMPORTANCE OF PERRY COUNTY, ALABAMA,
PAST AND PRESENT 642

BIBLIOGRAPHY 661

APPENDICES 708

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PROLOGUE

In The Oxford Book of the American South, historian Edward Ayers and political
consultant Bradley C. Mittendorf recall how (cid:147)much Southern writing is about memory,
about imagining and reimagining the past.(cid:148) This dissertation is not an attempt to imagine
or re-imagine the past of Perry County, Alabama, a rural, predominantly black locality
nestled in the heart of the Black, or Cotton, Belt (see Appendix A).1 Rather, it is an
attempt to flesh out what Weymouth T. Jordan, Peter Kolchin, William Rogers, Jr.,
Jonathan Weiner, and other historians have written about the county(cid:146)s cultural, economic,
educational, political, religious, and social pasts between 1860 and 1875. But, unlike

1 Edward L. Ayers and Bradley C. Mittendorf, eds., The Oxford Book of the American South (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997), x. Throughout the text, biracial, bi-ethnic, African American, black,
Negro, European American, Caucasian, white, and the like are used interchangeably because (cid:147)race(cid:148) as a
scientific phenomenon is nonsensical to the author, an outgrowth of sociology, socialness, ignorance,
convenience, or perhaps history but not of nature and science, as Barbara J. Fields, Manning Marable, Joel
Augustus Rogers, and several other persons have shown. See Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First
Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 1. See
also David Brion Davis, (cid:147)Constructing Race: A Reflection,(cid:148) William and Mary Quarterly 54 (January
1997): 7-18; Charles A. Gallagher, Rethinking the Color Line: Readings in Race and Ethnicity, 2d. ed.
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004; Martha J. Hodes, White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the
Nineteenth-Century South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); Manning Marable, Race, Reform,
and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1990, 2d. ed. (Jackson, Miss.:
University Press of Mississippi, 1991); William C. Kvaraceus, (cid:147)Poverty, Education and Race Relations,(cid:148) in
Poverty, Education and Race Relations: Studies and Proposals (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1967), 8-9; J.
A. Rogers, Sex and Race: A History of White, Negro, and Indian Miscegenation in the Two Americas, vol.
2: The New World (1942; reprint, St. Petersburg, Fl.: Helga M. Rogers, 1984), iii, iv.
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