USA > Mississippi > Pike County > Pike county. Mississippi, 1789-1876: pioneer families and Confederate soldiers, reconstruction and redemption > Part 14
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Upon polling the Quitman Guards it was found that a number of them, including Capt. Brent, could not immediately take the field if called upon, and it was determined to reorganize the company and
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a call was made to make up the maximum of one hundred men al- lowed by the military regulations, and Captain Brent resigned, on account of his planting interests which he could not suddenly leave.
On the 15th of April, 1861, Abraham Lincoln issued his proclama- tion calling for seventy-five thousand men to suppress "combinations" opposed to laws "too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or the powers invested in marshals by law," "the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of South Car- olina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas," "by virtue of the power in me vested by the constitution and laws," etc. It will be remembered here that in his correspondence with Alexander Stephens he said the South had nothing to fear from him.
The President of the United States had no such authority under the Constitution. This act of Abraham Lincoln was clearly an assumption of authority, a violation of the Constitution, which he had sworn to support, in the very beginning of his executive career; a preconceived revolutionary measure for the coercion of the Southern States and the abolition of negro slavery.
The Constitution of the United States clearly and emphatically says: "The Congress shall have power to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union suppress insurrection and repel invasions."
"Congress shall have power to declare war," says the United States Constitution, not the President, and when this man who had sworn to support the Constitution invaded Maryland and occupied her terri- tory and shot down her people in the streets of Baltimore, and placed that city under martial law, arresting and imprisoning her civil officers, who had committed no unlawful act against the Government of the United States, it was a declaration of war upon a State of the Union which had not denied, nor attempted to deny, any lawful authority of the United States, nor attempted to obstruct the execution of its laws, certainly exceeded the bounds of his executive authority.
It was an act of revolution and invasion without a lawful excuse, and under the rant of firing on the flag at Fort Sumpter and the destruc- tion of the Union, men flocked to his standard to defend their "liber- 11
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ties," "liberties" assumed to invade a peaceful State of the Union and to make war on and destroy others acting solely in self-defense. Seventy-five thousand men to suppress "unlawful combinations!" Sovereign States acting in the peaceful exercises of State rights. The earnest and impartial student of the political history of the United States cannot fail to be convinced that the Southern States were eminently correct in their attitude and acts in 1861. That Abraham Lincoln, who has been worshipped and lauded as a patriot and martyr to liberty, was a tool of abolition conspirators, a violator of the organic laws of the land, a revolutionist, a destroyer of the fundamental prin- ciples upon which the government was founded, acting in direct con- travention to the action of the colonies in their exercise of the right to withdraw their allegiance to the British Government in 1776; the reverse of George Washington, with whom the feeble effort has been made to class him. In his own language I would say: "We cannot escape history."
These matters are here mentioned in order to prepare the mind of the reader for the future, and to show why the South was forced to resort to arms, and why Pike County, a mere speck on the map, became like other sections of the South, almost stripped of her gallant men and boys in the conflict which followed. The future pages contained in this work are embellished with their names-their deeds are recorded in story and song, in ably written histories of the land and in the published official reports of the armies.
When Virginia failed, through the convention of States called at Washington, to secure an amicable adjustment of pending difficulties, and seeing the hopelessness of her efforts and the determination mani- fested at Washington to invade and coerce the Southern States, she positively refused any aid for that purpose, but promptly withdrew from the Union and cast her destinies with the Confederate cause.
The secession of the Southern States was peacefully accomplished, and every effort consistent with honor was made by them to avoid war, but when they saw the treachery manifested over the Fort Sump- ter affair and the determination of Lincoln to coerce them they deter- mined to prepare for the issue as best they could.
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SOME NOTES ON SECESSION.
It would seem proper just here to give some notes on secession, as the Southern States have had to bear the blame for the inculcation of the doctrine and for the "destruction of the Union," from a Northern point of view. We are at a period now when the Southern States are exercising the right of secession, not threatening to do so. Here- tofore they had held fast to the Union, defended it and used every means in their power to sustain it in all its purity and in accordance with the rights declared by the Constitution.
As early as 1781 the New England States began the agitation of secession; only a few years after the Declaration of Independence, and from this time on down to 1845, a period of sixty years, promi- nent men supported and sustained by the people in New England advocated and agitated the question of secession and the formation of a Northern Confederacy.
Let us go back a little and see how history sustains this declara- tion :
Jefferson Davis has been scurrilously attacked by Northern Writers and historians as the father of secession and the arch traitor of America, from the time imperial Abraham Lincoln displayed his infamous con- tempt for American institutions, founded on the independence achieved by the colonists in the revolution of 1776. If Jefferson Davis is the father of secession and the arch traitor who began the war between the North and South what name can be given to those who brought on the war against Great Britain? Who were the fathers of that great struggle? In other words, who were the grandfathers of the sin of secession? What Southern State ever made the threat of secession prior to 1860? Then what Northern State did? For the benefit of the reader it may be well even in this little history of Pike County to inform him on this subject. The historian says:
"While the thirteen States were living under the old Articles of Confederation, 1781-1788, threats of a new England confederation were loud and deep, and prominent men declared that if the Mississippi River were not closed up for twenty-five years the New England
18
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States would secede from the perpetual 'Union' and establish a con- federation for themselves," and this was because commerce of the country went out through that great highway instead of through the Eastern States. Mark the date, 1781-1788.
Lieutenant-Governor Wolcott, of Connecticut, made this declara- tion: "I sincerely declare that I wish the Northern States would separate from the Southern the moment that event (which was the election of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency) shall take place."
The election of Jefferson a cause of secession ?
That was before Jefferson Davis was born. Some years later on, while negotiations were pending for the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France, out of which five great States were carved, the Massachusetts Legislature passed the following resolution :
"Resolved, That the annexation of Louisiana to the union transcends the constitutional power of the government of the United States. It forms a new confederacy to which the States united, by the former compact, are not bound to adhere."
The North threatened to secede if the Embargo Act, which was passed to protect citizens of the United States on the high seas and the honor of the flag, were not repealed.
When Congress was considering the admission of Louisiana to the Union, in January, 1811, Massachusetts spoke out vigorously in the person of her representative, Hon. Josiah Quinsey, thusly:
"I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion that if this bill passes the bonds of the Union are virtually dissolved, that it will free the States from their moral obligations; and, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare for a separa- tion." Another father of secession.
When was Jefferson Davis born? June 3, 1808, and he must have been learning his A, B, C's about this time at the point of a goose- quill.
In the proceedings of the Hartford Convention, in 1814, the fol- lowing has been preserved in history (some more Connecticut feeling) : "In cases of deliberate, dangerous and palpable infractions of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of the State, it is not only the
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right, it is the duty of such a State to interpose its authority for their protection in the manner best calculated to secure that end. States, which have no common umpire, must be their own judges and execute their own decision."
This was good secession doctrine for New England in 1814, but it was a crime in 1861 for the Southern States to act upon it!
When the Florida purchase was made by President Monroe in 1819, he was prevented from securing the Spanish claims west of the Mississippi River by "ominous threats of New England to secede."
We have not yet read of any Southern State doing this up to this time.
In 1845 Massachusetts again threatened to secede if Texas was admitted to the Union, when her Legislature passed the following resolution :
"The annexation of Texas will drive these States into a dissolu- tion of the Union." What States? The Northern States. And down to 1845, including the threat to secede in case of war with England in 1812, the North made nine different threats to secede, and Jefferson Davis, though he had been admitted to a seat in Congress in 1845, had not been permitted the privilege of giving expression to his senti- ments on secession, learned from the North, and we have not heard from South Carolina yet, except incidentally in asserting her sover- eign rights.
New Hampshire spoke, through its Governor, in this wise in 1792: "All who are dissatisfied with the measures of government look to a separation of the States as a remedy for oppressive grievance."
"A war with Great Britain! We, at least in New England, will not enter into. Sooner would ninety-nine out of one hundred of our inhabitants separate from the Union than plunge themselves into this abyss of misery." Thus spoke Timothy Dwight, President of Yale College, in 1792.
Who fought the War of 1812-15 and beat back British invasion of our country? The South did.
Massachusetts presented a petition from citizens of that State in 1842, through John Quincy Adams in Congress, praying that Congress
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immediately adopt measures, peaceably, to dissolve the Union of these States; and one of the reasons given was that if the Union per- sisted in the present state of things it would overwhelm the whole nation in destruction.
The Southern States were not oppressing New England nor inter- fering with their affairs.
"Up to 1830 the right of secession was universally admitted," said Charles Francis Adams.
We have not heard from Jefferson Davis yet, though we have searched the records clear on down to Daniel Webster, in 1851. But Daniel Webster was of Massachusetts, and was regarded as a very wise man, a great statesman, and one whose opinion was considered correct. . What does he say when the Dred Scott fugitive slave question was on? Here it is:
"I do not hesitate to say, and to repeat, that if the Northern States refuse wilfully and deliberately to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provides no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact."
And the Northern States refused to obey the mandates of the Supreme Court, and according to Webster the South had a right to secede and set up a Southern Confederacy.
N. P. Banks, when Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1857, said:
"Under these circumstances I am willing to let the Union slide. If slavery is to continue the Union cannot and ought not to stand."
When one expedient failed to keep up the agitation the North adopted another, and the question of slavery was wrung in as an excuse for Northern secession and a free Northern confederacy.
"Let the wayward sisters depart in peace," said Gen. Winfield Scott, Commander of the United States Army, 1861.
Where was Jefferson Davis then? In the United States Senate pleading for peace, fair play, and for the security of the rights of the States composing the Union.
Col. Timothy Pickering said, as far back as 1804: "The principles
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of our revolution point to a remedy: A separation. A Northern confederacy would unite congenial characters and preserve fairer prospect of public happiness."
That is what the South thought in 1860-61, and acted upon it. Secession was good for the North when it suited the Northern case, but when it came to be necessary for the South to exercise the right peaceably to save herself, which she claimed, it then became an act of treason, and since we have arrived at that point let us hear something more.
William Lloyd Garrison, a representative of the North, and ex- pressing Northern secession sentiment, spoke thus on the question :
"Justice and liberty, God and man, demand the dissolution of this slave-holding Union, and the formation of a Northern confed- eracy, in which slaveholders shall stand before the law as felons and be treated as pirates. No Union with slave-holders! Up with the flag of disunion, that we may have a free and glorious Union of our own. This Union is a lie; the American Constitution is a sham, an imposture, a covenant with death and an agreement with hell! Let the slave-holding Union go, and slavery will go with the Union down into the dust! If the Church is against disunion . then I pronounce it of the devil! I say let us cease striking hands with thieves and adulterers and give to the winds the rallying cry: 'No Union with slaveholders, socially or religiously, and up with the flag of disunion.' "
You may search the records in vain, you cannot find any such sentiments uttered by Jefferson Davis. Abraham Lincoln said:
"This country cannot remain half free and half slave."
He was nominated and elected by a party pledged to the abolition of slavery without compensation to the owners.
Charles Sumner said it was "a dog's job to obey it." Thaddeus Stephens said: "To hell with the Constitution," and Abraham Lin- coln followed his advice from beginning to end.
William Lloyd Garrison failed to tell us who the slave pirates were. He passed over the fact that 360 Yankee vessels were at that very time engaged in the felonious act of kidnapping uncivilized
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negroes in Africa, bringing them over to the glorious, free, humane and religious North and criminally smuggling them into the Southern States, in violation of their established laws prohibiting the importa- tion of African slaves from foreign ports. It was big money in the Yankees' pockets and a saintly avocation so long as it paid handsome profits; but slavery, which they established and kept up, like the Constitution which protected it, became "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell" as soon as the poor African was turned over to the Southern slaveholder and the Yankee pirate got the shining gold for him!
Who were the thieves, the adulterers, the pirates and felons that stimulated Mr. Garrison to raise the rallying cry of "No Union with slaveholders, socially, religiously, and up with the flag of disunion?" His own people of the New England States, and it is getting time for the people of the North to learn the truth, for in the language of their idol, "They cannot escape history."
In the face of these historical facts the South has been assailed by Northern writers, newspapers and historians as the hotbed of secession.
If the North was so anxious to secede and form a Northern con- federacy which would give them security and peace, why did not they begin at the time they thought it essential to their interests to do so; and if the North desired a free confederacy God knows the South would have been glad of it, and what motive could they have to deny to the South that which they clamored so long for themselves, and. what motive actuated them when the South felt aggrieved and formed a confederacy by peacefully withdrawing from the Union? Let history speak for itself.
The South tried to abolish foreign and ocean slave trade in a constitutional convention held in 1787, but the pious New England Puritans and African negro kidnappers defeated the effort; and while the abolition cohorts of the North and East were organizing their forces in 1859 and 1860, New York fitted out eighty-five ships, bring- ing over from Africa between thirty and sixty thousand negroes annually, to further stimulate the pious and moral fumigations of Abraham Lincoln and William Lloyd Garrison; and from the time
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of the constitutional limit against importation of slaves in 1808, up to 1860, it has been declared that 270,000 negroes were introduced into New England and smuggled into the Southern States by the pious abolition Yankees; and while they were doing this they were stealing from the Southern people the slaves they sold them, and they openly boasted of it, one Levi Coffin declaring that he alone had been the means of carrying away 2,500 slaves, valued at $2,500,000.
From 1770 Rhode Island maintained as many as 150 vessels, most of the time in the slave trade, to a few years before the outbreak of the Civil War. She probably quit the ocean business then to make other warlike preparations to help rob the Southern owners of all the others sold to them or to become saints when their kidnapping, smug- gling and stealing back ceased to be profitable. And many of the palatial residences of the New England States stand as monuments to the slave trade which their owners followed.
As Massachusetts was the first to legalize slavery within her borders, it is nothing but justice to her to give her credit for it, by laws passed in 1641.
If the 2,500 slaves that Levi Coffin stole back from Southern pur- chasers were worth $2,500,000 it was a good business for the pious puritans, who have been classed by historians "Not mere slave- mongers. To themselves they appeared as the elect to whom God had given the heathen as an inheritance. In seizing and enslaving Indians, and trading for negroes, they were but entering in possession of the heritage of the saints."
Each cargo brought over by the eighty-five vessels fitted out in New York in 1859-60, ranging from 30,000 to 60,000 annually, repre- sents so many millions of dollars, and if they were worth $1,000 each then the 4,000,000 slaves owned by the South in 1861 were worth four thousand millions of dollars taken from the Southern States, by force of arms, by the tender-hearted Abraham Lincoln who loved them so well.
Massachusetts was pious enough to pass a law abolishing the ocean slave trade about 1787, but Virginia preceded her by ten years. And Massachusetts kept up the institution until it ceased to be profitable,
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and sold them off to Southern people and got the money for them, and so did the other Northern slave States.
It is so hard to "escape history" that a few bits of advertising done later on in Boston and Philadelphia would be interesting. The Boston Continental Journal of 1799 advertised:
"FOR SALE .- A likely negro girl, sixteen years of age, for no fault but the want of employment."
"FOR SALE .- A likely negro wench, about nineteen years of age, with a child six months of age; to be sold together or apart."
The above matters are mentioned as a preface to what the New England States did in 1861-65 on the question of a "free Northern confederacy" versus a slave Southern confederacy.
It is intended that the reader should know that Massachusetts and the other New England States are responsible for the institution of slavery in this country, and that they plied the ocean trade in violation of the United States Constitution limitation of 1808 and in violation of the laws passed by Southern States prohibiting importa- tion of negroes from Africa, and brought them into Northern and Eastern ports and sold them into Southern States.
As the secession of the Southern States began in December, 1860, the ocean slave trade of the New England States had to stop, and the millions of money flowing into their coffers from the South also.
Now let us see how many troops each of these self-constituted "elect to whom God had given the heathen as an inheritance," fur- nished for the next four years to abolish slavery in the South without compensation to their owners. We will try to be fair and give the statistics published as historical authority:
Massachusetts (army and navy)
159,165
Connecticut (army)
57,882
Maine (army)
70, 107
New Hampshire (army)
32,750
Vermont (army) 36, 755
Pennsylvania (army, exclusive of militia)
362, 284
New York.
448, 850
Rhode Island
23,236
Total
1, 191, 029
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And those pious, benevolent, kind, Christian kidnappers and abolition soldiers have had the gall to assert that the slaveholders got all they were entitled to out of the negroes and should ot be remunerated for them. This would be poor logic applied to them- selves if they had thus been robbed. And the Northern States should be made to pay full value for every slave emancipated with- out compensation, and until they do it the crime of this stupendous robbery will hang over their heads and taunt them in the coming centuries. Physically the Union is restored; spiritually the Southern people cling to their ancient blood inheritance, and the crime of Southern invasion and coercion and their attendant disasters are unforgivable, and will haunt Yankee-doodle-dum until the crack of doom.
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HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
CHAPTER VI.
The exciting events leading to the secession of the Southern States, the formation of the Confederate government, President Davis' call for 1,500 troops to protect Pensacola, the fall of Fort Sumpter and Mr. Lincoln's call for 75,000 men to put down what he termed "combinations opposed to laws" "too powerful to be sup- pressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings," created a spirited military activity all over the south, and it was clearly seen that the cloud in the horizon "of the size of a man's hand" men- tioned in Miss Rachel Coney's speech on the 4th of July, the year previous, was rapidly accumulat- ing in volume. In response to the President's call there were imme- diately two companies, the Quit- man Guards and the Summit Rifles, prepared for coming events. In April the Quitman Guards were reorganized with 107 members and' CAPT. SAMUEL A. MATTHEWS Quitman Guards the Summit Rifles with a lesser number.
The following is the muster roll of the Quitman Guards mustered into the State service on the 21st of April, 1861:
I Samuel A. Matthews, Captain
2 James M. Nelson, Ist Lieut.
3 Thomas R. Stockdale, 2nd Lieut.
4 S. McNeil Bain, 3rd Lieut.
5 Wm. M'Cusker, Ist Sergt.
6 R. J. R. Bee, 2nd Sergt.
7 Colden Wilson, 3rd Sergt.
8 Frank P. Johnson, 4th Sergt.
9 Luke W. Conerly, 5th Sergt.
Io Louis N. Concy, Ist Corp.
II Dr. R. T. Hart, 2nd Corp.
12 Warren R. Ratliff, 3rd Corp.
13 Charles A. Ligon, 4th Corp.
14 E. G. Cropper, Ensign
15 Wm. Thad Tyler, Commissary
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PRIVATES.
16 Andrew, E. C.
20 Barksdale, John T. 24 Burkhalter, John T.
21 Brent, J. A.
25 Burkhalter, Charles
26 Breed, E.
19 Allen, George W.
23 Badon, H. B.
27 Barr, Thomas M.
CAPT. JOHN HOLMES Quitman Guards
28 Coney, William L. 29 Coney, John H. 30 Crawford, Jesse
31 Cook, Thomas D.
32 Conerly, Mark R. 33 Collins, Joseph W.
34 Carter, Harvey
35 Coney, Van C. 36 Fry, Charles H.
37 Friedrich, Phil. J.
38 Forest, Thomas Jeff.
39 Forest, Benjamin F.
40 Foil, J. D. 41 Finch, William
42 Finch, Milus 43 Garner, William 44 Gibson, Jesse F.
45 Guina, Asa H.
46 Gillespie, J. P.
47 Holmes, John
48 Holmes, Benjamin
17 Ast, John
18 Ard, A. E.
22 Brent, Geo. W.
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HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
49 Hamlin, O. C.
69 McIntosh, D. M.
89 Ratliff, Simeon
50 Harvey, W. Pearl
51 Hamilton, Thomas
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