USA > Mississippi > Pike County > Pike county. Mississippi, 1789-1876: pioneer families and Confederate soldiers, reconstruction and redemption > Part 22
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30
If the reader could see the inner chambers of the demon-like con- claves that secretly met in the night times everywhere when it was supposed all white people were asleep, they would be astounded. And with each of these secret negro carpetbag meetings held in some out of the way house, if you could look under you would see the figure of the Night Hawk of the Ku Klux Klan on duty, with his revolver in his hand, listening to the schemes concocted within. Nine out of ten of all the troubles that sprung up between the whites and the negroes were instigated at some of these secret meetings by the carpetbag politicians, inciting the negroes to acts that would bring trouble with the whites in order to have an excuse to apply for and bring troops into the county or precincts where elections were to be held.
The negroes were in a state of transition. When it was seen that they could be made to answer, as instruments to carry out the pur- poses of carpetbag freebooters, the plan was concocted and the negroes were made to bear the consequences to follow. The negroes were
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not to blame for these things, because they were led and controlled by white men who cared nothing for their welfare.
In Pike County the conditions were greatly ameliorated by the strong influence wielded over them by one man. Without this man there is no telling what may have been the fate of the negro in the county. His own people were as much concerned as the mass of citizens in the county in the careful control of the negro population under the new conditions. Many of his connections had been slave owners, and he belonged to a class of high respectability. He was too young to become a soldier in the war, but in his boyhood and young manhood he learned the lessons which should guide him for the right and he stood high in the estimation and friendship of Con- federate soldiers who had safely passed through the war, as well as with all others who knew him.
On a little stream in the southeast portion of the county, where nature has given the sweetest hopes and the greatest joys to those who were ushered into life, a child was born whose ancestry was of a high class of Scotch people. In the morning of his life he imbibed from a Christian mother all the attributes of a pure and upright character. When the war closed he had not entered his majority, and when it became necessary to fit himself for higher duties he had to do so by his own exertions, as his father was unable to help him.
The name of Frederick W. Collins will go down to posterity as the one who saved his native county from the terrors of a race war. He had more influence over them than all the other Republicans in the county combined, and if he had not been firm with them and held them within his own grasp the doom of the negroes, wrought up by the influences of others, would have been sealed for the time in Pike County, and the day that W. H. Roane had him appointed Clerk of the Circuit Court, that day marked the salvation of the negroes in the county. If he had not thus been put forward it is likely no one else would have come to supply his place in the ranks of the Republican party, the bulk of which had no other influence over the negro than to incite him to wrong and to further their polit- ical schemes.
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Fred Collins told them in their conventions that they knew not what they did, that they were "treading on coals of fire, which, if kindled to a blaze, would be the death knell of themselves and would sweep the negroes of Pike County from the face of the earth." He knew the temper of his Confederate soldier friends.
On one occasion when the feelings of the people were wrought up to an explosive point, one of the most dangerous and determined negroes was burning to begin a race war and was working his plans for that purpose, instigated by designing members of the radical party. Collins, being informed of it, immediately put a stop to it and informed his associates that such a thing should not be permitted to have encouragement, Another effort was made when the negroes attempted to dispossess the whites of their lands through the instru- mentality of a set of scoundrels who came into the county under the pretense of locating the forty acres each of them was promised by the leaders of the Black and Tan government. This was an aggrava- ting measure to stir up strife in order to compromise the white people and drive them to acts of desperation.
In this instance, as in others, the advice of Mr. Collins prevailed and trouble was happily averted.
Collins was a consistent conservative Republican, having at heart the best interests of the commonwealth, and as such he was in touch with the best people of the county; at the same time, by the force of his logic and influence, the negroes recognized him as their best friend and safest advisor, and he thus stood as a breakwater against race conflicts. The fact should also be recorded that no love existed be- tween Fred Collins and the carpetbaggers.
FRED W. COLLINS.
Fred Collins was born on Magees Creek, or rather on Collins Creek, near its junction with the former stream in the southeastern portion of Pike County, on the 14th of September, 1846. His father was Chauncey Collins, of Scotch ancestry, a native of Salisbury, Connecticut, and came to Mississippi in 1842. His mother was Amelia Woodruff, who was a daughter of Elias Woodruff, a native of New Jersey, and Ailsey Collins, of Columbia, Marion County, Miss.
Fred W. Collins received his education in the common schools in the neigh- borhood of Tylertown. He grew up with the boys of his generation on Magees
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Creek, a section of Pike County which has sent out into the world some bril- liant self-made men. He was too young to enter into the Civil War.
At the age of twenty-three, on the 12th of January, 1870, he was married to Mary Elizabeth Smith, then eighteen years of age, a daughter of William Smith and Angeline Magee. William Smith was of German descent and a son
HON. FREDERICK W. COLLINS Summit, Miss. Collector of Port, Gulfport, Miss. From a late photograph.
of one of Pike County's original pioneers. Angeline Magee was a daughter of Sier Magee, who settled on Magees Creek, above the junction of Dry Creek with that stream, in 1811. It was from Sier and his brother Jeremiah that Magees Creek took its name. The Magees came from South Carolina; the Smiths came from Germany; the Collins and Woodruffs came from New England.
It was a very important epoch in the history of Pike County that brought Fred Collins to the front as a public man. It was the fiat of a necessity, and it
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was to save Pike County from carpetbagism. The Confederate soldiers were his warm personal friends. Governor Ames tried the experiment of appointing an alien Sheriff, who mysteriously disappeared. W. H. Roune, of Magnolia, member of the State Legislature, in support of Alcorn's policy of appointing native citizens (under the reconstruction acts) to office, had him appointed Circuit Clerk, to which position he was twice elected, while nearly all the other offices were filled by the election of Democrats. In 1870 he was elected Mayor of Magnolia and served as Deputy Sheriff under J. Q. Travis. He changed his residence to Summit and was elected by the Democrats of that town as its
VIEW ON F. W. COLLINS' FARM, LOOKING TOWARD THE JUDGE HOOVER PLACE, ON BOGUE CHITTO RIVER NEAR SUMMIT
Mayor. He held the office of postmaster of Summit for several years under appointment of President Hayes. In 1890 President Harrison appointed him United States Marshal for the Southern District. In 1892 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention at Minneapolis, and a delegate at large to the St. Louis Convention. He was appointed Marshal by President Mckinley in 1897. The Governor of Mississippi appointed him alternate commissioner to the World's Fair at Chicago.
Fred Collins was a Republican of wise and tactful conservatism, and an essential factor as such in Pike County, and occupies a conspicuous place in its history. There are few, if any, Republicans in the South who have been so warmly supported by Democrats and held office as long as he through their support. He knew how to be a Republican and at the same time merit the support of Democrats. Few men have such a record.
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In June, 1900, he was sent as a delegate at large to the Republican National Convention at Philadelphia, that nominated Mckinley and Roosevelt for Pres- ident and Vice-President.
In 1904 he again served as a delegate from Mississippi at large in the Repub- lican National Convention at Chicago, and supported Roosevelt and Fairbanks for President and Vice-President. He was also elected Chairman of the Repub- lican State Committee, and assisted in managing the national campaign.
When Mr. Roosevelt succeeded to the presidency upon the death of Presi- dent McKinley, he appointed Mr. Collins Register of the Land Office at Jackson, Miss. At the end of his four years' term, Mr. Roosevelt appointed him to the office of Collector of Customs for the District of Pearl River, in Mississippi, with headquarters at Gulfport.
Some of Mr. Collins' strongest political opponents have been his truest and sincerest personal friends. He has risen from circumstances in his career that. called for peculiar merit and good ability.
The Clinton and Woodville riots, and the flame that burst out in. Louisiana at Colfax, Coushatta, and other places leaped over the: borders. The White League Ku Klux, as they were then termed, of Louisiana and Mississippi, were aglow with warmth and burning for action, and when it was seen that they would not submit to the efforts being made to Africanize their country, troops were stationed in every available locality to overawe them. In the county of Amite a deputy United States Revenue Collector had his headquarters and made it a special part of his duties to dodge about from place to place in order to create the impression that his life was in peril. He succeeded in having a detachment of cavalry sent to McComb City for the purpose of using them to intimidate the White Leaguers. These soldiers scoured the county for the purpose of arresting men who were under the ban of Ku Klux suspicion in forming associa- toins to resist the government's policy.
A negro who had been a slave of the Sartin neighborhood, in the eastern portion of the county, assaulted his former master's young daughter while on her way to school and then cut her throat and left her for dead.
This brutal assault on an innocent and helpless child he had known from infancy, belonging to one of the first families of Pike County and descending from one of the first pioneers who came from the old historic State of Georgia and settled here, was an outrage which even
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to think of was revolting, much less the actual fact of the crime. In all the long years of slavery in Pike County no such a crime had been committed on a white girl by a negro, and when the news spread over the county among the people a body of determined men were ready to begin the work of extermination. It was a conclusion based upon this fact that led them to begin at once to rid them- selves of a curse that was about to become their heritage. Know- ing what would be the consequences to follow, the officers of the county promptly apprehended the negro and incarcerated him in a safe place until his trial could be had, which resulted in a verdict of assault and battery with intent to kill, and he was sentenced to the penitentiary for twenty years. The unfortunate girl recovered, but with the loss of speech for several years. From the very begin- ning of the outrages which cursed the South after the close of the Civil War, there was none perhaps which failed to meet its reward, but the public mind in Pike County has never been free from the stain it felt was left by not executing this negro at once.
Here the writer desires the indulgence of the reader for the pur- pose of referring to circumstances occurring in the sister State of Louisiana, which was felt by the people of Mississippi as concerning themselves.
A negro in Union Parish of that State was burned at the stake with the assistance of men of his own race, for a similar crime. He had been the outrager and murderer of a most estimable white lady . and was caught, and after proof and confesson he was tied to a stake at the spot of his crime where his victim was found, and made to suffer death by cremation in the presence of over two hundred men. This lady, Mrs. Kidd, was the wife of one of the best young men in Union Parish and the mother of two beautiful children. Dragged from her horse while on the road to visit a sick neighbor in the after- noon, she was not seen again until found several days later chained to a tree, where she had been kept, and her brains knocked out.
There was another which occurred about the same time and which may be classed as the crowning of all outrages yet known in the annals of crime in this country.
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In the Parish of Grant there lived a most estimable widow lady, Mrs. Lecour, who was the mother of a beautiful daughter seventeen years of age. They were relatives of one of the foremost families in the State of Louisiana and descendants of a high class of early Spanish and French settlers. Here in the midst of the presence of a body of United States troops under a Federal officer who bore the name of Colo- nel Decline, this young widow lady, with her daughter, were dragged from their home in the dead hour of night by nine desperate and brutal negroes and carried away into the adjacent swamp and there made to suffer the horrors of assault the whole night through, from which both died in a short while after being found by their friends.
When application was made to the officer in command of the troops at Colfax for assistance to arrest and punish the perpetrators of this revolting crime, he "declined," saying that he had come there for a "higher purpose." (?)
What action does the mind suggest to the reader when such out- rages, so revolting in their nature, perpetrated in the very presence of United States troops, who were supposed to be there to protect the weak and defenseless and to keep the peace of the community?
When Colonel Decline, the commanding officer of these troops stationed at Colfax, refused the application for assistance to capture these criminals he was told that they would be caught and executed under his nose, if the State of Louisiana had to rise in solid mass and drive a devil like him from its borders to accomplish that end.
The news spread throughout the adjacent country with almost lightning rapidity. All through Rapids, Grant, Sabine and Natchi- toches the news passed from house to house.
The organization that had been ushered into being and brought with it the flame that arose among the Scottish hills in the past came to the rescue to place the stamp of its order. Where was Decline's power then? Ask the little negro mulattoes rocked in the cradles of carpetbag concubinage in Grant Parish.
In the face of him and his troops and the "higher purpose" of his mission, these demons of his household were captured and made to suffer the penalty of their crime "under his nose."
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And while these terrible crimes were being perpetrated on our white women by negroes upheld by Yankee troops, all the sympathy of Northern radical newspapers was given to the negro criminals and our white people assailed as barbarians for vindicating the wrongs, and the merciless power of the military invoked to punish them. Columbus Nash, the gallant young sheriff of Grant Parish, with his heroic posse cometatis of young men of Grant and Rapides, was hunted as an outlaw for trying to preserve order and protect the helpless.
When we go over the past and reflect we may wonder that there ever lived a people on earth who could be so controlled as not to rush into measures which might result into a sweeping destruction by again coming in conflict with the United States forces. This was one of the great characteristics of the Ku Klux Klan that stood forth to protect the weak and the helpless and to punish crime.
They were men who had been trained in war, recruited by youths of their own blood, and they were men who could control their own acts so as to avoid a conflict with the United States forces, yet they feared them not.
In all the cases where the negroes were concerned in these crimes they were or had been under the influence, openly and through secret channels, of carpetbaggers from the Northern States, who instilled in their minds that they were the special wards of the Government- the "children of Israel," led out of bondage by their Moses sent from God, cruelly assassinated in Washington, and by their Joshua who crushed the Philistines at Appomattox; that they were the masters now and could act with freedom as they regarded it.
The great riots of Grant Parish, where several hundred negroes were slain, and Coushatta, in Red River Parish, which resulted in the execution of the carpetbag leaders of that section, were the off- springs of Northern adventurers.
Referring back to the events connected with the negro govern- ment of Mississippi the writer must be excused for indulging at length on these occurrences. They were the measures adopted by the carpetbaggers who came South to possess themselves of the wealth they thought existed among the white people, and they were
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men who believed the government would confiscate all the property of those engaged in the war on the Southern side and divide it out among those who had been instrumental in the overthrow of the Southern Confederacy; a concerted movement of rapine and plunder. This class of men put in their claims as deserving the rewards of the conqueror, and they were not scrupulous about how they obtained what they wanted. It mattered not to them if all the white people of the South were swept from the face of the earth, and they were men to do their dirty work through the ignorant negro.
The Southern armies had been overcome, and, returning to their homes, the Confederate soldiers cherished the hope of being able to retrieve their lost possessions, but within their hearts there was a spark of manhood left and it never became dimmed by anything that was offered by their enemies. The year following their capitulation was a time of deep distress among those dependent on them for the absolute necessities of life. They bore the indignities of the mili- tary rulers with a patience worthy of a race of freemen, but they never yielded a thought which they believed to be for their future welfare, and when the trying ordeal again came the reward of a faithful adherence to those principles which gave to them renewed hope and energy were realized.
A people that can be driven to the verge of desperation and then recover their lost liberties by the power of mind over matter are a people to stand the tests of any disaster. In the years that follow these events there will come to the surface conditions which will disclose all the virtues of a noble race. In the future there must rise a spirit which will animate them to the point of war or peace at all hazards, and in the conflict which shall be waged against the South's heroic warriors will come the requiem of a dead dynasty buried in its own polluted garments, which shall live in tradition and in history and story as the shame of the American Continent .. For a more unholy piece of stupidity and oppression never cursed a people than the rule of the carpetbaggers and ignorant negroes, supported, de- fended and sustained by the military power of the Government of
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the United Northern States against the white people of Mississippi and Louisiana during this period.
It is well that the people of the South should persist in preserv- ing the truths of history and keep before the civilized world the cruel enormities practiced upon them which their adversaries have endeav- ored to falsify and conceal from the rising generations, not only at the North, but in the South, and to force into the school books for the education of our children absolute falsehoods relating to events connected with the Civil War and the reconstruction era.
Under the fluttering folds of the vaunted star-spangled banner, held aloft as the emblem of freedom and hope and happiness for the oppressed of all nations, the very people whose genius made it famous in what it represented, upholding it in times of peril, were made to suffer the most damnable coercion, subjugation and despotism, and to cover up their crimes against the South, blot out the records or mutilate history with glaring falsehood, while their poets feebly sing and their orators swell in recounting the "immortal deeds" of their invading armies whose vandalism was never equaled; fighting for FREEDOM, as the Hessians of England fought for it against us in the revolution of 1776, and in depopulating Nova Scotia of the un- fortunate Acadians, scattering them along the bleak and wild gulf coast, as they fought for it in the subjugation of Ireland, and as the Spaniards fought for freedom in Cuba and elsewhere. Hundreds of books have been written and published by Northern men on events of the Civil War who have wilfully falsified the number of men en- listed and used in the subjugation of the South. The writer listened with amusement to an educated young man from the State of Mich- igan regaling a crowd of boarders on one occasion in the city of Wagoner, Indian Territory, on the history of the battle of Gettys- burg, stating that there were forty thousand men killed on both sides in the battle, besides enumerating other wonderful things. Upon being asked where he learned that history he answered, "from an English Cyclopedia." His story was that Lee had 125,000 men engaged in the battle and Meade only 75,000, or thereabouts. · He admitted he had never seen the "Rebellion Record," published
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by the Government. He asserted that the South had two million of men and the North had one million of men during the war. When I told him I happened to be present and "performed a part in that little skirmish" and corrected him with the official figures, more than he were struck with amazement. That if he would take off fifty thousand from Lee's forces and add them to Meade's he would come nearer to the truth of history; that the forty thousand included killed, wounded and prisoners captured on both sides.
It is well for the South to keep in mind the difference in the num- ber of forces engaged, and for the benefit of those in whose hands this book may come in future years, I insert the following:
The South enlisted, all told, 600,000 men, which included those on post duty, hospital service and the men engaged in government service not actually on the field. From an article Written by Gen. Stephen D. Lee the following figures are gleaned:
"The North enlisted 2,864,272 men (not including three and six months' volunteers), giving them 2,264,272 men more than the South had altogether. To this must be added 600 vessels of war manned by 35,000 sailors used in the blockade of Southern ports, harbors and river warfare in support of their army. Against these marvelous odds the Southern armies fought for four years, suc- cessfully beating them back until by the casualties of war they were completely overpowered by the inexhaustible recruiting service of the Northern armies from Europe. There were only 100,000 effective Confederate fighting men for duty in the field when the war ended. . The death roll of the Confederate armies numbered 325,000 men. They had contested every foot of ground against their enemies all over our beloved land on nearly two thousand battlefields.
"The death roll of the Yankee armies numbered 359,528 men, 275,000 of them buried beneath Southern soil.
"When the war closed the enemy had one million (1,000,000) men for duty in the field, or ten men to one Confederate, and a fabulous pension roll.
"The number of killed or mortally wounded of the Yankee Army in battle amounted to five per cent and the Confederates ten per cent of the numbers engaged, which is larger than any of the bloodiest wars of Europe, which has not been more than three per cent.
"In this great struggle the North owed its success to its continuous stream of recruits from Europe in quest of the $1,000 bounty and its ability to blockade our ports. If this contest had been narrowed down strictly to the two sections it is very questionable whether the South would ever been overcome; and it is left to the reader to judge if the Yankee armies have any room to boast of this prowess, or honors to claim in their invasion, and as to whether the judg- ment of the world is against them in favor of the South."
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