Tag: North Carolina

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Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

David Zucchino, Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020), 426 pages including notes, bibliography, and index along with 12 additional pages of prints.

On November 10, 1898, Wilmington, North Carolina erupted into violence. It began with an armed mob of white men burning the building which housed the Daily Record, an African American newspaper. Supposedly, this was because of an editorial that had been published months earlier that challenged the idea that lynching was necessary to keep black men away from white women.  After the fire, the mob terrified the African American community while white community leaders set out to exile leaders within the African American community along with members of the City Council and the Police Chief. Backing up these groups were reserve soldiers and sailors who had just recently returned home after having been deployed during the Spanish American War. By the end of the day, Zucchino estimates that there were 60 dead and that most of the black community had fled into the swamps. Some would leave right away; others would leave over the next few months and their absence would change the community forever.

After the terror created within the African American community, the leaders of this coup, turned to the elected and appointed leaders within the city government, who were mostly Republicans who had been elected with the help of the black vote. The election two days earlier had been a landslide for the Democrats (who at this time in history were the conservatives and had made the election about white supremacy). But with the mayor and aldermen not up for re-election, the leaders of the coup used the violence of the day as a reason to march on city hall and to demand the resignation of the city’s leaders. Then they placed their own people in power. The story reads like a who’s who of Wilmington’s leading families who were involved in the coup, along with clergy and members of the Jewish community.

David Zucchino, a reporter by trade, is not the first to tell this story. But Zucchino, with engaging prose, offers new insight into the events leading up to 1898 as well as what happened afterwards.  While much of what had been said about 1898 throughout history had been a lie, but the book could have also been called “Wilmington’s Secret.” This is not the kind of story a community speaks about publicly and, until the 100th anniversary of the event approached, most people knew little about what happened in 1898. I lived in the Wilmington area from age 9 to 24 and only knew rumors about 1898. I even played baseball at Hugh McRae Park (which recently has been renamed), unaware that the park was given to the country to only be used by whites. Even in the late 60s, I don’t remember seeing any blacks in the park. McRae was one of the leaders of the white supremacy movement in Wilmington. It wasn’t until the late 1990s, when I was home visiting my parents and picked up Philip Gerard’s novel, Cape Fear Rising, that I began to fully understand what happened. Since then, I have read four other books about this episode in history.

Zucchino begins his story with the fall of Wilmington to Union forces in the final months of the Civil War. In short chapters that focus on an event or a point in time, which reads like a newspaper column, Zucchino paints a broad picture of what was happening in Wilmington prior to 1898.  Wilmington was a place of opportunity for African Americans and many moved to Wilmington seeking a better life. At this time, most African Americans in North Carolina still had the right to vote and many did, which led to the 1898 election in which the black population was discouraged to exercise their rights. In the aftermath of 1898, the state would establish laws that would essentially disenfranchise black voters. Zucchinno shows that the event of November 10 was carefully planned. It was the ultimate example of playing the “race card.” The white leaders within the city excited fear of a black uprising among the white population, but they kept the white citizens from acting until after the elections. They even stopped earlier attempts to get Manly and his newspaper (which had published the supposedly offensive editorial months before the November events). By waiting till after the elections, they were able to intimidate the black population from voting while keeping the federal government from becoming involved. Even on November 10th, they were careful not to avoid endangering federal government property and employees (such as the head of the Customs for the Port of Wilmington, who was African American) because of a fear of the federal government becoming involved.

Zucchino doesn’t end his story in 1898. He looks at the impact on what happened in Wilmington on the rest of the country and tells what happened to the leadership on both sides in the decades following the coup. As he points out, even in 1998, at the 100th anniversary of the event, there was tension as to how the story would be told.

While there are many books about the 1898 coup, Zucchino’s book is professionally written and brings the events to light in a clear manner. This is a worthwhile addition to the growing library on both this horrific event and the rise of the Jim Crow South, as well of an example how fear, hatred, and misinformation can be used to incite evil.

My review of We Have Taken a City, another book about this event, click here.

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St. Andrew’s Talk

Yep, that’s me, decked out in formal threads with a McKenzie tartan kilt

 

Jeff Garrison 


A talk given at the St. Andrew Society for the City of Savannah’s Annual Banquet


November 30, 2019

The title for my talk this evening is “A Glorious Defeat.” By the time I’m done, I hope you understand what I’m talking about.

Alistair noted in my introduction that I’m from North Carolina. Like most Tarheels, I’m proud of my heritage. This pride is especially true of those of us of Highlander lineage. We take after St. Andrew, whose name in Greek implies manliness, valor, and bravery. We struggle with humility.

Of course, there is no Garrison clan. The Garrisons may have even been carpetbaggers for all I know. (actually, they were in NC around High Point before the Civil War). My great-grandfather Garrison moved into the land of the Highlanders of North Carolina early in the 20th Century. Twenty years later, his son set his eyes on a McKenzie girl. They married and had a son, who would later marry and have a son, and that’s where I come into the story. But if you look back through my family, you’ll find a lot of Scots blood: Blues, Blacks, McDonalds, McCaskills, McLeods, and such. But the McKenzies are on both sides. My paternal grandmother was a McKenzie, as was my maternal great-grandmother. I wear this tartan honestly and pray the inbreeding isn’t too damning.

So, why are there so many Highlanders in North Carolina? One former governor of the Old North State proclaimed there are more Highlanders in North Carolina than any other country, including Scotland. I’m not sure that’s the case, but for some reason, Highlanders began pouring into the colony in the early 1730s, long before the Battle of Culloden.  And actually, they didn’t settle throughout North Carolina. They mainly settled along the Cape Fear River and its tributaries. The Lowlanders mostly stayed close to the coast, while the lands to the west and north were settled by Scot-Irish (which sounds like a badly blended whisky).

Why did so many Highlanders head to the Sandhills? After all, it’s nothing like Scotland. There are no mountains or sweeping shorelines and the weather tends to be fairly mild. Two things: First of all, as beautiful as Scotland is, especially the Highlands, it’s not the best country to farm. These early Scot settlers were drawn to the rich land without rocks. It’s a lot easier to plow sand. This land that was abundant and cheap (after all, they were Scots).

At the podium. Photo by Jason Talsness

The second reason they came and concentrated themselves there is that the merchants in Wilmington marketed the region. If you look at a map of North Carolina, you’d notice that the rivers in the Western Piedmont and eastern mountains all flowed into South Carolina. The Cape Fear is the only river in North Carolina suitable for ocean going traffic. These merchants wanted farms and settlements so they could trade both up river and across the Atlantic.

Highlanders poured into North Carolina, mostly through the port of Wilmington, where they piled their belongings in long boats for the tough paddle upriver. They made their way to Cross Creek. (What kind of name is that? How does one creek cross another? Or is this a creek mad at the world?) But that name didn’t stick, except for in a shopping mall. And that mall probably won’t be there much longer. After the Revolution, the citizens of Cross Creek changed the name of the town to Fayetteville in honor of the Layfette, the French General who aided Washington. But that would be in the future, beyond the story I’m telling.

As these piney woods filled with Scots, they set out clearing land so they could plant corn, turnips and beans. They raised hogs and sheep, and kept a cow or two. They built mills for grinding grain and sawing lumber. They cut heart-pine timber and saved the tall straight logs to be used as masts on ships. They collected pitch from the pines and distilled turpentine. They did some other distilling, too, with something other than pine sap. I’m sure there was a field or two of barley. That which wasn’t drunk, along with the naval stores, were floated down the Cape Fear to Wilmington. There, it was shipped out across the sea. Life was pretty good. But along came a war, a war that brought division to the region just as it had to their homeland in 1745.

Early in 1776, the governor of the colony sounded the call to raise an army of Highlanders. The goal was 3,000 men, enough to help the regular British army nip the revolution in the bud.  They called upon General Donald MacDonald (Donald McDonald, you gotta admit, we Scots aren’t the most creative when it comes to names). MacDonald, a loyalist and experienced British officer, went through the Carolina Pine Barrens recruiting. He was only able to muster an army of 1,600. These recruits weren’t overly excited about war, and desertions started as soon as marching commenced. They gathered at Cross Creek, thinking they were going to join a large British force, only to learn that the Brits were still at sea. So they began to make their way toward Wilmington.

It was a miserable hike. Cold and wet. A small band of Patriots from Wilmington had an annoying habit of blocking their path at key points along the way, forcing them to take long muddy detours. As these Highlanders were not trained, and only about half of them had weapons, MacDonald hoped to avoid battle until he joined with the British regulars and his men were armed.

On the night of February 25th, they were 20 miles from Wilmington. Their path again was blocked by Patriots. Thinking they had superior numbers, they decided to strike. The Patriots were camping with their backs against the creek, at Widow Moore’s Creek Bridge. General MacDonald, being ill, relinquished command to the less experienced Colonel McLeod. Assembling the men in the early morning hours of February 26. Stuffing socks in the bag pipes, for it’s hard to be stealth with pipes blaring, they quietly marched off to surprise the enemy. Arriving at the encampment in front of the bridge, they found it abandoned. But the campfires were still warm. Then they noticed the planking over the bridge had been removed.

Col. Mcleod handpicked a contingent of men to cross the creek and to see where the enemy might be hiding. Dawn was just beginning to break, and a fog concealed the lowlands around the water. They carefully crossed the slippery timbers which had been greased with fat, probably from the Patriot’s evening barbecue.

Coming off the bridge, they silently made their way through the fog and up the road out of the swamp. Maybe a twig snap, for suddenly, someone ahead shouted, “Who goes there?” “A Friend of the King,” was the response, followed by something mumbled in Gaelic. At that point, knowing the enemy was just ahead, they drew sabers and charged up the road yelling “King George and Broadswords.” They were brave, living up to Andrew’s name. But the Patriots had dug in. It was a trap.

The patriots held their fire, hiding behind breastworks as the Scots came out of the fog. They charged as if they were William Wallace reincarnated. When only 15 or 20 yards from the line, the Patriots opened fire. In addition to their muskets, they were armed with two small canons loaded with grapeshot. With the road being flanked on both sides by swamp, the Scots were trapped. McLeod fell first, followed by fifty-some of his handpicked men. The rest of the Highlanders fled. The battle lasted only minutes. Over the next couple of days, 800 or so of the Highlanders were captured. Some were pardoned and went back to their farms, but many fled or were banished to Nova Scotia, Florida or the West Indies.

The defeat meant the British could not control the interior of the South and were severely hampered in their efforts at defeating the colonists. That summer, in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence. Many of those who had refused to join General MacDonald, such as my Umpteenth Great Grandfather Hugh McKenzie, joined in the fight for Independence.

Defeat can be bitter, especially for the proud manly sons of St. Andrew. But in time, God’s providential hand can be seen. As in Culloden, which strengthened the United Kingdom as the nation rose to reign supreme in the 19th Century, the defeat at Moore’s Creek was one step toward the creation of our great nation. At the time, these Highlanders had no idea, but theirs was a glorious defeat.  Thank you.

In January 2018, I gave the keynote at the Society’s “Burns’ Night” banquet. Click here to read my talk, which I was more humorous than this one. 

Sources:

McKenzie, James Duncan, Family History: A Comprehensive Record of the McKenzie Family from the Immigration of Hugh McKenzie to America from Scotland about the year 1750 and Continuing through the Present. (Unpublished Manuscript, 1940).

Meyer, Duane. The Highland Scots of North Carolina, 1732-1776. (Chapel Hill, NC:        University of North Carolina Press, 1957, 1961).

Powell, William S. North Carolina Gazetteer: A Dictionary of Tar Heel Places (Chapel            Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1968).

Ray, Celeste. Highland Heritage: Scottish Americans in the American South. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

Wikepedia, “The Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge,”             https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moore%27s_Creek_Bridge (accessed November 20, 2019).

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1957

Every day, Garrison Keillor sends out a new edition of “The Writer’s Almanac.” He always begins each day’s post with a poem. Today’s poem was by Charles Simic and titled “Nineteen Thirty-eight.” Thinking about his poem written about the year of his birth, I recalled a piece I wrote a few years ago on the year I was born. I wrote this in prose, but wondered if it might be crafted into a poem?  Probably not this week… This piece originally appeared in my former blog. 

1957
Jeff Garrison

Ike II

I arrived at the Moore County Hospital, just outside of Pinehurst, on a Wednesday morning in mid-January 1957. The highways we drove home on through the Sandhills were all paved by then, but many of the county roads including the one we lived on were still dirt.   It was a simpler time.  Longleaf pines surrounded the highways and golf courses and small farms raising bright-leaf tobacco dotted the landscape. The Lower Little River was populated by my relatives. We were mostly descendants from Highlanders from Scotland and for us, tobacco was king (and still considered safe).  It sold for 59 cents a pound. Nearly a half million acres were raised in North Carolina, producing over 1700 pounds an acre. You can do the math.

In the same month I arrived, a meeting of African-American pastors led to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  We’d hear more about them in the next decade as integration was moving into the forefront. Before the year was out, there’d be the incident in Little Rock and the Senate under the leadership of Lyndon Johnson passed the first civil rights legislation since the Reconstruction. We’d also be hearing more about civil rights and Johnston in the years ahead.

Two days after my arrival, three B-52s made the first non-stop around-the-world flights and General Curtis LeMay bragged that we could drop a hydrogen bomb anywhere in the world.  The one place we did drop one that year, accidentally, was New Mexico.  Thankfully, it didn’t detonate which is why no one knew about it. The military were exploding bombs in Nevada but said everything was safe and no one knew differently except for the sheepherders whose flocks began to lose their wool and die off. There were other nuclear accidents in ’57 in the US and UK, but we didn’t know about them. We just trusted that our governments would never do anything to harm us.

Although there were no major wars going on, the world was tense. In October, the first American soldier was killed in Vietnam, a country we’d learn more about. But in ’57, the focus was mostly on the Suez Crisis and the threat of a Soviet nuclear attack. The DEW line was completed in the Arctic.  When proposed, it was to provide a six hours warning before the first Soviet bomb could be dropped on an American city. By the time the work was completed, the margin was cut to three hours as Soviet jets had doubled their speed.  A few months later it became extraneous as the Soviets launched their first intercontinental ballistic missile. Later, they launch Sputnik and we’d spend the next twelve years in a space race. Amidst all this, some yo-yo created the first plastic pink flamingo. The end was near as prophesied by Nevil Shute, On the Beach, a post-nuclear war novel published in 1957.  I’d read it in high school.

To save us from calamity, we placed our faith in Ike, the President, who many thought I resembled as I too had a bald head.Thankfully Ike wasn’t Herod and didn’t waste any time worrying about a newborn impostor as he perfected his golf swing and began his second term as the leader of the free world.

Jack Kerouac published On the Road in 1957, and people were heading out on the road as a new line of fancy cars with high fins and excessive chrome were revealed. The ’57 Chevy became an icon of the era as Ike announced the building of interstates to connect the cities of our nation. Cars ruled!  New York City abandoned its trolley cars in 1957, and shortly afterwards the Brooklyn Dodgers (originally the Trolley Dodgers) announced they were moving to Los Angeles. In other sporting news, the University of North Carolina beat Kansas in the NCAA basketball finals. These teams have remained near the top throughout my life. The Milwaukee Braves led by a young Hank Aaron beat the New York Yankees in the World Series. We’d hear more from Aaron and the Yankees, but Milwaukee faded when the Braves high-tailed it to Atlanta. The Detroit Lions, a team whose demise parallels its city, won their last NFL championship.

Ayn Rand published Atlas Shrugged in 1957. Nearly six decades later, “Who is John Galt?” bumper stickers are occasionally spotted on American highways. In the theaters, The Ten Commandments was the top box office success. For a country that seems so religious yet so consumeristic, the commandment about not coveting appears overlooked and Rand “look out for me” philosophy glorified the sin.  Other commandments were also being broken as “Peyton Place,” which debuted in theaters, reminded us.

Radios in 1957 were playing the music of Elvis, Buddy Holly, Debbie Reynolds, the Everly Brothers, and Sam Cooke.  In Philadelphia, teenagers danced for the first time on American Bandstand as more and more homes acquired televisions.  In England, two chaps named Lennon and McCarthy met and would go on change music as we know it.  Humphrey Bogart died just two days before my arrival, but it was still a good year for Hollywood.  Not only was Moses selling, but so were dogs as children everywhere cried watching Old Yeller.  Another movie released was the Bridge over the River Kwai which motivated whistlers everywhere.  That old British army tune would later be used in a commercial for a household cleanser and inspired one of the beloved parodies of my childhood:

Comet – it makes your teeth turn green.
Comet – it tastes like gasoline.
Comet – it makes you vomit.
So buy some Comet, and vomit, today!

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