Slavery by Another Name (46 page)

before him were the only whites to reenslave a black man since the

Civil War. "In view of the fact that this is the rst crime of the kind

which ever has occurred in Georgia," Speer told the defendants,

"and because of the frank confession of the young men, sentence is

imposed, in order to convince the public that the purpose of the

court is to warn and deter others from like crime. During good

behavior, ne is suspended upon payment of $100 each." Given the

"problems of the times," Speer maintained harsh measures would be

counterproductive. "I deemed it for every reason best to deal very

leniently with the prisoners," Speer wrote to the at orney general.4

Reese was concerned that too many in the South viewed the new

slavery cases just as Judge Speer appeared to, as an anomaly. To

prove the broad scope of involuntary servitude in his jurisdiction,

Reese planned to aggressively broaden his investigation. Just two

Reese planned to aggressively broaden his investigation. Just two

days after Pace's guilty plea, the prosecutor sent federal marshals

back to Coosa County to arrest Laray Grogan, one of the Goodwater

watchguards who had been so busy in the town's trade in black

labor.

Grogan was accused of arresting an African American woman

named Emma Pearson on a bogus charge of vagrancy and then

sel ing her to Eliza Turner, the brother of Fletch Turner, who

managed the family's limestone quarry in Calcis. After arriving in

Montgomery, Grogan told a local reporter that he had done nothing

wrong and further that the peonage cases had made the blacks of

Coosa and Tal apoosa counties "unbearably impertinent." His bond

was immediately posted by two wealthy Goodwater businessmen,

and Grogan was released.

The same day, J. Wilburn Haralson was arrested in Columbus,

Georgia, where he worked in a cot on mil , and brought by a

Saturday morning train to Montgomery. Known as the Cosby

family's "a davit man," Haralson routinely wrote out and swore to

any ctitious charge George Cosby told him to lodge as a ruse for

seizing blacks. He was placed in the county jail to await trial on

five counts of peonage.5

Despite the continuing stream of new charges and the opening of

the Cosby trial a few days away, Reese worried that public support

for his campaign was wavering. Newspapers across the South were

growing more bel igerent in tone as Reese and a few other

prosecutors continued investigations. Alabama's most popular

political gure, Secretary of State J. Thomas He in, was also

growing louder in his denunciations of the cases.

Three days before the Cosby trial was set to begin, Reese

conducted a formal interview with the Montgomery Advertiser. He

said that while the charges against the Cosby men were technical y

termed peonage, the case was in fact about slavery—the overt

buying and sel ing of humans, and holding them in a condition of

coerced forced labor. "These indictments are for …kidnapping and

taking and carrying away any person with intent to place him in a

taking and carrying away any person with intent to place him in a

condition of slavery, and holding and returning him to a condition

of peonage," Reese said.

He also made it clear that the cases were aimed not just at

cleaning up an isolated nest of slavery hanging on in one area of

Alabama. The prosecution was an at ack on widespread practices of

involuntary servitude across the state. The Tal apoosa cases were

the high-pro le criminal thrust of the e ort, but just as important

was Judge Jones ruling that the Alabama contract labor law was

invalid. "The contract labor law which has just been declared

unconstitutional …was passed for the protection of landlords in the

cot on growing belt.

"It is a mat er of common knowledge that under this statute, the

laborer or renter has not been guilty of any criminal act in thus

leaving or abandoning the premises," Reese said. "He has simply

breached a contract which creates the relation of debtor and

creditor. Under this statute the creditor commands the debtor on

peril of hard labor not to work at his accustomed vocation for any

one else during the term of that contract." Reese blamed the nearly

unchecked and unaccountable power wielded by justices of the

peace in rural areas.6

The fol owing morning, the Cosbys appeared on the second oor of

the federal building accompanied by Dadevil e lawyer Thomas L.

Bulger, son of the Confederate hero at Get ysburg. But the rst train

from Tal apoosa County, packed with spectators and key witnesses,

had been delayed. Final y, at 1 P.M., the court convened with a

crowded gal ery of white spectators. White witnesses mil ed in the

corridor. For their safety, the African Americans who would testify,

explained Reese, would be produced only as they were cal ed to

the stand.

Reese announced to the gal ery that the government would rst

prosecute case No. 4218, in which the Cosbys, Pace, J. W. Haralson,

and James Kennedy were charged with conspiring to sel Pike

Swanson into labor on the Cosby farm. Swanson had testi ed

Swanson into labor on the Cosby farm. Swanson had testi ed

previously to the grand jury that he was held on the Cosby

plantation until just before the peonage investigation began. A

farmhand from Macon County, he said he went to the Cosby farm

the previous July and freely signed a contract to work for $2 a

month. But once Swanson began work, the Cosbys refused to pay

him. Instead, he was arrested, then arrested a second time, on bogus

a davits by Haralson accusing him of disorderly conduct and

ghting. Swanson was put through a sham trial by Kennedy, the

justice of the peace. Then Cosby pretended to pay Swanson's nes

in return for holding the worker at least fourteen more months.

Swanson testi ed he was never paid for any work on the Cosby

plantation and was held under guard seven days a week, and

locked in at night. Two weeks before the Cosbys were indicted, the

white men freed Swanson, who then ed to his home county. A

week before the trial, Burancas Cosby claimed never to have seen

Pike Swanson.

After Reese announced that Swanson's capture would be the rst

case, Judge Jones granted a one-day delay to give the defense

lawyers time to prepare. But early that afternoon, George Cosby

sent word that he and the other members of his family wished to

avoid the trial, as Pace had done. G. R. Sha er, of Dadevil e, one of

the men who made bond for the Cosbys, urged them to plead guilty

and had gathered scores of signatures in Tal-lapoosa County on a

petition asking for clemency.

At 5 P.M., Sha er cal ed the judge from his Adams Street home

back to court chambers, where they met with Cosby's lawyers.

Judge Jones refused to promise clemency. But in return for guilty

pleas from two of the men, Jones and Reese agreed to accept the

at orneys’ arguments that the statute of limitations had passed on

the crimes al eged against W. D. Cosby—the man who had been

ready to take morphine a few weeks earlier. His case was

dismissed.

With shafts of summer sun cut ing sharp diagonals through the

courtroom windows, George Cosby and his nephew Burancas stood

before the bench, heads bowed, eyes downcast. They quietly

before the bench, heads bowed, eyes downcast. They quietly

pleaded guilty to forty- ve counts of peonage and conspiracy to

hold blacks in slavery.

The two insisted they had no idea that their actions were against

the law. They vigorously protested al egations by the U.S. at orney

that they treated the forced laborers cruel y. They implored the

court to recognize the hardship on their families that would come

from imprisonment.

"The excuse that you did not know that you were violating the

laws of the United States can have no legal weight, since every man

is conclusively presumed to know the law," Judge Jones responded.

"It is not entitled to a particle of moral weight in these cases,

because you are bound to know that what you did was a violation

of the laws of God and of the State regardless of any law of the

United States. Helpless and defenseless people who are guilty of no

crime have been brought into court and by col usion with justices of

the peace, who prostituted the authority of God and of this State in

the administration of justice have been deprived of their liberty,

fined and forced to work and in some instances cruel y beaten.

"You have violated not only the laws of your country but that

great law of honor and justice, which bids the powerful and strong

not to oppress the down-trodden."7

Judge Jones sentenced each of the men to one year and a day in

the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.

Reese was jubilant. The swift guilty pleas seemed to prove both

the extent of involuntary servitude and the power of the federal

sword to stop it. The clear implication was that he was at the

beginning of a massive campaign to root out slavery once and for

al . The trial of Fletch Turner was next on the docket, and would be

fol owed by many more. Agents continued to probe Lowndes

County and other areas where evidence of even more widespread

slavery was rampant. Reese began advocating to the Department of

Justice that his assistant, Julius Sternfeld, be named a special

prosecutor solely to oversee the expanding investigation. "These

cases justify the contention of the government that peonage and

cases justify the contention of the government that peonage and

involuntary servitude has been practiced in Alabama in no smal

degree," he quickly wrote the at orney general. "These practices are

indulged in many other counties in the district and our e ort shal

be made in the direction of put ing an end to them."8

But more practical men than Reese could bet er see what the

future held. White leaders were ral ying across the South,

emboldened by men such as Secretary of State He in, who was

crisscrossing Alabama denouncing Reese's investigation and

castigating any white man who did not agree. At the same time,

black preachers and African Americans who had established some

sliver of nancial security grew fearful of the rising temperature

around them. They had learned through bloody experience the

dangers of chal enging the status quo of white domination, and also

that in the in exible rituals of southern racial interaction men such

as themselves were expected to prostrate themselves before whites

as proof that they too gave no credence to the inquiries demanded

by President Roosevelt and Judge Jones.

Shortly after the Cosby sentencing, Edward M. Adams, a Secret

Service agent stationed in Montgomery, wrote to Washington

headquarters in hopes of softening any disappointment that might

come if no jury convictions were won in any of the slavery cases.

He was particularly concerned that another agent assigned to the

cases not be tainted by any such failure. "He has secured evidence in

a number of cases that ought to bring convictions, yet, knowing

public sentiment as I do, I fear, unless compromise verdicts can be

secured, that no convictions wil result," Adams wrote. "The iniquity

of peonage wil always remain in this country in practice, to

eradicate it is an interminable work. The sentiment against the

in iction of punishment to o enders nds its strongest exponent in

Secretary of State He in, an orator of no mean ability, and he is

going about the state like a roaring lion. I merely write this, to say,

that whatever the result in the trial of the cases in this court, the

failure to convict and punish o enders, cannot be charged to our

service."

Adams included with his let er a newspaper clipping reporting

Adams included with his let er a newspaper clipping reporting

that petitions signed by hundreds of blacks in Tal apoosa and Coosa

counties had been presented to Judge Jones asking for clemency for

the Cosbys. "These cases have caused a bit er feeling between the

two races," the article said with profound understatement, "and that

the petitioners believe that the peonage system is broken up, and

further says that the Cosbys are good citizens of the community."9

• •

Indeed, whatever initial contrition white southerners expressed at