Slavery by Another Name (45 page)

people for their course.

Our people do resent the interference of Northern people in a matter

with which they have no real concern, and we intend to continue

resenting it. What is more, we intend to settle this race question in our

own way and if the result is to have the country "rent again into factions

hating each other" …we shall not feel that we of the South are the

o ending party. We do not hate the North, but we will settle the race

question.60

Even in the North, there was consternation about the trials

beginning in Alabama, and stirring up issues that northern whites

increasingly agreed should be left to southern whites to handle. The

Chicago Tribune opined that relations between the South and North

had deteriorated to their worst state in more than a decade and

pointed to the current message of former President Grover

Cleveland and other leading northerners: "The South— the white

and the black South—should be let alone to set le their problems in

their own way," Cleveland said.

Edgar Gardner Murphy, a moderate white Montgomery resident,

insisted in let ers to northern newspapers that the Tal apoosa

peonage cases did not indicate a massive level of continued black

enslavement. In a let er to the New York Evening Post, Murphy

wrote:

The sentiment of the whole state has been unanimously insistent upon a

thorough investigation of the charges and upon the rigorous punishment

of the guilty…. An ignorant and lowly people settled in isolated regions

where local courts and local constabularies are often ine cient and

sometimes corrupt are always in danger of becoming the prey of brutality

and greed. If it is hard for the best sentiment of New York to protect

e ectively the poor immigrants of her great port from the avarice of

thieves and "loan sharks," and it is di cult for your city to protect some

of its young girls from the degrading barter of the "cadet."

He argued that the peonage cases weren't the result of leaving the

South alone to deal with race issues. Instead, the new rise of slavery

was caused by "a persistent policy of intrusive censure and of

political threatenings." He said the North placed undue "pressure

upon Southern life, put ing the South ever on the defensive and

partly neutralizing the forces of self-criticism and of local

responsibility. Whatever evils may now exist at the South have not

resulted from the policy of let ing the South alone."61

But as each defendant stood perspiring before Judge Jones in the

increasingly crowded courtroom, wearing his best black church suit,

bolo tie, and clutching his hat, it became clear that whatever the

judge's southern pedigree nothing would be sacrosanct in this

proceeding.

VI I

A SUMMER OF TRIALS, 1903

"The master treated the slave unmerciful y."

Negotiations over Pace's plea to the charges against him continued

for days. His at orneys initial y believed that Judge Jones—like

any other white southern judge—would feel compel ed by

tradition and public pressure to acknowledge the untested status of

the peonage statute and o er a symbolic punishment to Pace in

exchange for a guilty plea. But Judge Jones showed no sign of

doing so. Reese, the prosecutor, was insistent that Pace be

meaningful y punished. Pace's lawyers were certain, regardless of

the public brouhaha in the preceding weeks, that no Alabama jury

would actual y convict a white man on such charges. They urged

him to wait for trial.

Meanwhile, the city was ablaze with anxiety. In the early evening

of the day fol owing Pace's arraignment, a former U.S. marshal

named Charles E. Taylor confronted Deputy U.S. Marshal Byron

Trammel on the sidewalk beneath the white-columned portico of

the elegant Exchange Hotel, where many of the at orneys and others

involved with the peonage cases were staying. Trammel was

assisting Reese in the investigation.

The two men had long disliked each other, according to mutual

acquaintances, and there was no record of the words exchanged

when they faced o outside the front doors of the hotel. But within

minutes, Taylor drew a pistol. Trammel responded in kind. Shots

were fired. Taylor was soon dead.

Stanley W. Finch, another Department of Justice investigator in

Montgomery , was certain the shoot-out was brought on by the

peonage cases. He wrote to his Washington bosses that federal

agents in Alabama—feeling increasingly more like the interloping

Freedmen's Bureau agents who scat ered across the South thirty

years earlier—were encountering unprecedented hostility wherever

years earlier—were encountering unprecedented hostility wherever

they went.

"The country throughout this district wherever [peonage] exists is

pret y thoroughly aroused," Finch wrote. "The fact that a Secret

Service agent is engaged on these cases is wel known and many

have the impression that a number of secret service agents are

scouring the country…. Any one traveling through the country

engaged in an investigation on behalf of the government is liable to

be mistaken for one of these detectives. In some localities the

sentiment has reached such a pitch that it is considered unsafe for

anyone known as or suspected as being a government detective to

travel."

Nonetheless, Finch reported that involuntary servitude was

indeed widespread across the state. He succinctly summed up the

economics of the new slavery. "It is by no means con ned to a few

isolated communities. I have also been again and again informed by

these persons that this peonage system is more cruel and inhuman

than the slavery of antebel um days, since then the master

conserved the life and health of the slave for business reasons just as

he did that of his horse or mule, but now the master treated the

slave unmerciful y and with the sole object of get ing the greatest

possible amount of labor out of him. Moreover a peon costs but a

few dol ars while a slave used to cost several hundred."1

Pace, agitated at the at ention his case drew, appeared alone early

in the morning two days later at the o ces of U.S. At orney Reese.

He said he wished to plead guilty to al eleven counts of peonage

and obviate the need for trial. Pace's supporters spread word that

he had approached Reese against the advice of his own lawyers. In

reality, the gesture was a calculated gambit to shift the focus of the

prosecution to other defendants—while preserving Pace's chal enges

to the constitutionality of the indictment.

Reese refused to accept the plea unless Pace was represented by

his at orney. At noon, after rounding up one of Pace's lawyers—the

others had already departed for Dadevil e—court was cal ed into

others had already departed for Dadevil e—court was cal ed into

session, and the peonage counts read aloud. Pace pleaded guilty to

each one, though only after his at orney led "demurrers" to the

indictments—objections in modern legal parlance—arguing that the

federal peonage statute didn't apply to the acts al eged in the

indictments.

The federal government had no jurisdiction over the use of forced

labor in Tal apoosa County, the lawyers argued, regardless of

whether individuals had been held in slavery. Judge Jones,

acknowledging Pace's right to chal enge the applicability of the

peonage law to a higher federal court, overruled the objections and

ordered Pace to stand for sentencing.

Asked if he had anything to say, Pace—in stark contradiction to

his initial claims to the press—said he was guilty of the seizure of

eleven African Americans, including John Davis, Rita Scot , Jim

Caldwel , and another laborer named Owen Green. Yet Pace denied

that his capture and enslavement of workers violated any United

States laws.

Green had also raised his shirt to show the grand jury his injuries

during earlier testimony. "They whipped scars on me," Green said as

he revealed the marks on his skin. "They laid me up for a week and

a half one time. One of the scars on me is where Mr. Tom

Blassingale struck me on the head. He struck me with a stick …and

knocked me senseless…. Mr. Jim Kennedy choked me and jumped

on my head. After I was stamped, the blood came up from my

lungs…. I bled a good deal from my lungs."2

In the case of Green, Pace lured the farmhand by approaching

him in a saloon in Dadevil e, o ering to hire him for $4 per month,

help his father pay o the mortgage on a $16 horse, and al ow him

to come and go freely from the farm. But once a contract had been

signed, Green was placed in the lockup on Pace's farm for nearly

two years. "I was made to do farming, locked up at nights and

whipped," Green testi ed. "Mr. Jim Kennedy whipped me ve

times in one day. Mr. Bob Smith also whipped me. He whipped me

four times. Mr. Bil Brown whipped me." Later, Pace sold Green to

four times. Mr. Bil Brown whipped me." Later, Pace sold Green to

George Cosby.

In the courtroom, Reese stood and, playing out a careful y

choreographed arrangement with Judge Jones and Pace's lawyer,

made one act of deference to the defendant—who appeared in

court looking far older than his forty-nine years.3 Reese pointed out

Pace's "diseased" condition and asked that the defendant be al owed

to sit for the rest of the proceeding.

Judge Jones agreed and then sentenced Pace to ve years in the

federal penitentiary in Atlanta on each charge. Taking into account

Pace's in rmity, the judge ruled that the sentences would be served

concurrently The charges that Pace had conspired with others in the

seizure and enslavement of blacks were postponed until after the

court of appeals ruled on Pace's chal enge. Accepting assertions that

Pace was in dire health, Jones also al owed him to post a $5,000

bond and remain free pending the outcome of those legal

machinations. Wil iam Gray, the Dadevil e banker, reappeared at

the bar, along with co-defendant Fletch Turner, to sign the bond for

Pace. He was released from custody.

Pace appeared visibly relieved, though the sti sentence sent a

wave of anxiety through the other defendants—who realized Pace

was now likely to be cal ed to testify against them and that Judge

Jones would hand down similar penalties to others convicted.

The Advertiser, like most local whites, remained certain that Pace

would never actual y be imprisoned, regardless of whether the

guilty pleas were a rmed by the court of appeals. "He is in an

almost helpless physical condition. He su ers from a bone disease

which has a ected his feet, and he walks with great e ort. It is said

that he wil be able to produce a surgeon's certi cate showing he is

in a terrible physical condition."

Reese was elated with the guilty plea. But a growing chorus of

politicians, journalists, and southern commentators—the same

voices that original y applauded the investigation as proof that

southerners could be relied on to clean up slavery—hailed Pace's

southerners could be relied on to clean up slavery—hailed Pace's

admission that the continuing slavery was limited to a pocket of

miscreants in one county. They loudly proclaimed there was no

need to pursue any further charges or al egations.

Reese knew bet er. The publicity around Pace's arraignment and

plea triggered a wave of new al egations, some even more grim

than any yet heard by the grand jury. Moreover, At orney General

Knox's earlier order of investigations into peonage and involuntary

servitude across Alabama, Georgia, and northern Florida was

detecting dozens of other cases. U.S. District Court judge Emory

Speer in Macon, Georgia, was presiding over his own proceedings

stemming from a multilayered slave trading conspiracy in the

southern half of that state.

Three white men—Wil iam Shy, Arthur Clawson, and Robert

Turner— pleaded guilty there to capturing a black man they

claimed owed them money whipping him, and forcing him into

labor. Judge Speer—behaving more like Alabama had initial y

expected of Judge Jones— ned the men $1,000 each but then

immediately suspended the punishments.

Apparently unaware of the earlier peonage al egations in his

state, Speer made the extraordinary assumption that the three men