Download The Rebels Are Bold, Defiant, and Unscrupulous in Their

"The Rebels Are Bold,
Defiant, and
Unscrupulous in Their
Dementions of All Men
Social Violence in
Daviess County,
Kentucky, 1861-1868
J. Michael Crane
Several scholars have examined the violence
that whites Kentuckians wreaked on African
Americans in the aftermath of the Civil War. The
historian George Wright noted, "The first ten years of
emancipation witnessed racial violence in many
forms . . . [M]any Kentucky whites were determined
to preserve the racial subservience that had characterized the antebellum period, and others simply
refused to acknowledge that slavery had ended and
resorted to force to keep blacks enslaved." Similarly,
Marion Lucas determined that: "Much of the violence that gripped Kentucky in the years immediately following the Civil War stemmed from the prevalent belief of whites in the inferiority of blacks. The
desire of the majority of white Kentuckians to keep
freedmen 'in their place' allowed a minority to engage
in 'dark and bloody deeds,' creating a 'system of terrorism' in the Commonwealth."2 These arguments
are essentially correct but merit further analysis,
including closer attention to the origin and types of
violence, racial and otherwise, that occurred in
Kentucky. White society in Daviess County, like that
in the rest of Kentucky, divided during the Civil War
between pro-Confederate factions and Conditional
Unionist factions both of whom had desired to keep
slavery and who both now wanted to keep both
African Americans and white Unionists submissive
after the war.3
In many ways, Kentucky's history diverged from
the rest of the South's at the outbreak of the Civil
War. Despite having the third largest number of
slaveholders in the South, Kentucky remained in the
Union. The state's support of Constitutional
Unionist John Bell, over native-son and Southern
Democratic candidate John Breckinridge, in the i860
election, showed Kentuckians wanted to maintain
the Union and keep slavery.4 The white population's
loyalty fell both North and South, as the state had
trade ties and blood ties to both sections. Sensing the
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Social Violence in Daviess County, Kentucky
In the summer of 1884, Daviess County,
Kentucky, authorities arrested and jailed Richard
May, an African American, for allegedly raping a local
white woman. When rumors circulated of May's
probable lynching, the sheriff, a former Confederate,
vowed to protect the prisoner. A white mob formed,
shot to death the sheriff who tried to hold them off,
then grabbed May and hanged him on a tree in front
of the courthouse. The local precedents for this event
stretch back to 1866, when a mob strung up another
black man accused of attempted rape, Tom Conyers,
likely on the same tree. The violence of the late18 60s in Daviess County grew out of hatred and animosities fostered during the Civil War. As the county's white community split over political and sectional loyalties during the war, they resorted to violence against both real and imagined foes, black as
well as white. The two sides agreed that white
Kentuckians must maintain the subservience of
African Americans. The choice, however, was
whether they could accomplish this with Kentucky
in the Union. Once the war ended, with slavery abolished, those who supported the Union found themselves in an ironic position: they could not support
Radical Reconstruction and thus had to find a home
within the Democratic Party, a party that contained
their wartime political foes. In this process of adjustment, African Americans became entangled in a web
of competing political factions, often suffering the
vengeance of white Kentuckians who viewed freedpeople as potential economic and social rivals.1
danger of Kentucky's border position and divided loyalties, the state's politicians guided Kentucky into a
position of neutrality once hostilities started.
Through the efforts of native son Abraham Lincoln
and a coalition of in-state Unionists, Kentucky
remained within the United States' fold. Kentucky's
loyalty to the federal government resulted in the state
avoiding the harshest aspects of Radical
Reconstruction. Consequently, the aggressive white
pro-Confederate violence against political rivals,
white resentment over emancipation, and the state's
prohibition of black suffrage until the United States
adopted the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 stunted
the Republican Party's growth. By that time, the
opportunity to build a strong biracial Republican
Party was lost. As a result, white-on-black violence
in Kentucky during Reconstruction was less centered
on politics than on social and economic strife. White
Kentuckians were not trying to topple a Republican
state regime, as in Mississippi, Louisiana, and South
Carolina. Rather, they contested whether former
Unionists or former Confederates would run the state
and control its future.'
The price that Kentuckians paid for their loyalty during the war was internal division as states'
rights advocates led their supporters into fighting for
the Confederate cause, often against fellow
Kentuckians. This discord between Kentuckians led
to incessant partisan warfare that carried over into
bitter rivalries and retributions during the postwar
years. This rivalry shaped the outcome of postwar
politics as former Confederates and their sympathizers gained the upper hand by the late 1860s and controlled the state until its voters elected the state's
first Republican governor in 1895.h
Daviess County in many ways exemplified the
observations just made about Kentucky. A tobaccogrowing county situated just up the Ohio River from
Evansville, Indiana, Daviess held a largely nativeborn population that was seventy-seven percent
white in i860. That year the county consisted of
nearly 12,000 whites and 3,600 blacks, with only seventy-six African Americans listed in the census as
being free. Owensboro, the county seat, contained
2,300 people of both races the year before the Civil
War, a growth of ninety percent from the previous
decade. Before 1856, Whigs handily won most elections. That party's disintegration in the 1850s however, opened the door for the Democrats, who pulled
IS
even in the 1856 presidential election, splitting with
the American Party. In the critical election of i860
John Bell won forty-seven percent of the county's
votes over Breckinridge's twenty-nine percent and
Democratic stalwart Stephen A. Douglas's twentythree percent. Combined, the Democrats polled fiftytwo percent of the vote, revealing a tight political
division within the community. The historian James
Copeland, using voting populations, party strength,
and Union volunteering, has determined that Daviess
County and others nearby "defy ready Unionist or
secessionist classification . . . It was in these counties
that the familiar notion of brother fighting against
brother was probably most valid." The fourth candidate in the election, Republican Abraham Lincoln
only managed to win seven votes in the county,
revealing an absence of anti-slavery sentiment in the
area. The Democrats' defeat would be the last by the
party in a presidential election for some sixty-eight
years.7
The violence that occurred in Daviess County
during the Civil War stemmed from the divided loyalties in the community, which incessant partisan
warfare and the breakdown of slavery demonstrated.*
In April, 1861, shortly after the firing on Fort Sumter,
Daviess County's white residents who wanted to
fight in the conflict quickly moved to their respective
camps. Men who wanted to remain at home and still
participate, or were too old for regular service formed
Home Guard units with either Union or Confederate
loyalties. No evidence indicates that pro-Confederate
Home Guards in Daviess County remained intact
beyond the initial stages of the war. Such men, however, were likely candidates to harbor guerrilla units
as they passed through the county. These Home
Guards had two functions. First, they policed the
slaves of masters who had gone off to war, much like
the antebellum slave patrol. Second, the Home
Guard units skirmished with guerrilla bands that
developed shortly after the war began. Like their
army and militia models, Home Guards organized
around local politicos, such as thirty-one-year-old
Unionist and State Representative, George H.
Yeaman.9
Guerrilla activity during this early period of the
war largely centered on political intimidation, such
as their occasional kidnapping of prominent
Unionists. For example, irregulars briefly abducted
Yeaman in September 1862. Termed "arrests," these
Ohio Valley History
DAVIESS COUNTY
Map of Daviess County,
from History of Daviess
County, KY, Interstate
Publishing Co., Chicago,
1883 (From CHS Printed
Works Collection)
kidnappings showed how vulnerable townsmen were
at the hands of the local guerrillas'. Later that year,
when federal troops first arrived in Owensboro, the
guerrillas rode into town as another demonstration of
power, killing Union soldiers and destroying federal
property. By 1863, however, guerrillas began resorting to banditry by taking what they needed from
farmers in the area. "We almost daily hear of outrages committed by them [guerrillas] upon unoffending people," reported the Owensboro Monitor. Such
lawlessness continued throughout the war. The
Monitor complained again in July of 1864, "Men have
banded together for no other object than plunder and
self aggrandisement, and as long as this state of things
exist we are by no means safe." Most surviving newspaper accounts indicate that these gangs of bandits
stole weapons, horses and provisions. Banditry had
its consequences; members of the community fought
back when they could. In September 1862, the newspaper's editor, Thomas Pettit, noted that a "retired
guerrilla" was "killed by four of the most respectable
citizens of Princeton. . . . It appears that he had for-
merly assisted in stealing horses from them." By supplying themselves with horses and provisions, guerrillas in the countryside proved the weakness of federal power outside of the garrisoned towns, constituting another form of political intimidation for Daviess
County citizens, most of whom were farmers.10
Meanwhile, slavery slowly crumbled in Daviess
County during the war. Slave owners tried to maintain the system for months after the war concluded.
Slave sales and hiring had continued until the war's
final months. As was common throughout the South,
the problem of runaway slaves increased as the war
continued. Late in the war, groups of as many as fifty
slaves fled from the county across the Ohio River. An
increase in slave-initiated crimes added to slaveholders' fears. Elliot, a Daviess County slave, killed his
master on the public road and a slave in Henderson
County killed his overseer then burned his owner's
stables and tobacco. Slaves clearly took advantage of
the chaos of war and grabbed opportunities for freedom and revenge when they arose. By the summer of
1864, Owensboro's white residents responded to this
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Social Violence in Daviess County, Kentucky
breakdown in the system by instituting a police
patrol along the city's riverbank, checking for passes
and closing the "dram shops" on Sundays. Within a
few days, the Union Army apparently halted this
local response to slaves exerting their agency, yet
then instituted a patrol of its own, made up largely of
black troops. A week after a notice by the police
patrol appeared in the Monitor, Pettit observed:
"Now negroes patrol by night and day the river bank,
. . . a white man, whether loyal or sympathizer, can't
walk the river bank . . . after a certain hour at night,
without 'a pass.'" Pettit added that the "ebony
guards" had twice caught him without a pass. The
federal government's recruitment of slaves into the
army sounded the death knell of the peculiar institution in the Bluegrass State as Daviess County slaves
joined by the hundreds, emptying farms of their most
able workers."
The story of the federal government's effort to
enlist Daviess County slaves illuminates the white
community's sentiments concerning the collapse of
their labor system. The U. S. Provost Marshal in
Owensboro, Jonathan R. Grissom, a Unionist and
local tailor of modest wealth, had a difficult time
enrolling black recruits. Grissom wrote in a summary report: "It was extremely difficult to obtain services of equitable [white] persons to act as Enrolling
Officers. And in many cases after commencing the
work they gave it up on account of personal abuse,
insults, and threats of personal violence made by citizens and owners." When the reality of slavery's
demise fell upon the owners, sentiment further shifted against Union policy and thus against Unionists.
Such a shift opened the community towards violent
responses in the face of the apparent powerlessness to
stop it. Grissom further noted that "in many cases
the owners positively refused to give a list of their
slaves for enrollment and in others falsely denied
owning any Negroes." Grissom solved his problems
by circumventing the owners and asking the slaves
directly. He concluded that his trials developed
because his office "never obtained the co-operation of
the citizens generally because the leading prominent
men were not earnestly for the government on
account of the probability that the status of their Tet
Idol' the Negro would be affected thereby." Grissom
added that the decision to recruit slaves into the army
turned slaveholders against the Union: "Owing to
this general disaffection among real or pretend Union
20
citizens the Rebel citizens taking advantage of this,
encouraged Armed Bodies of the enemy to come into
the District and the counties adjacent, who made war
on the few uncompromising friends of the
Government by robbing and in some instances murdering them."12
By the end of 1864, guerrilla raiding and banditry along with a severe shortage of labor created by the
enlistment of hundreds of slaves into the army combined to cripple Daviess County's economy. Farmers
lamented a "want of labor" that could keep the tobacco crop to a fourth of its normal yield, with wheat and
corn down a corresponding amount. In July, the
Monitor complained that food was no longer available
in the town and begged Hoosiers to send their surpluses across the river. The countryside surrounding
the garrisoned town of Owensboro became a noman's land, an area which neither Confederates nor
Federal forces controlled. Various bandit and guerrilla groups roamed through the county, skirmishing
with Home Guard and Union Army units. On top of
the economic devastation lay the psychological trauma for whites of seeing armed former slaves
patrolling the area, which served to encourage a flood
of additional runaways to strike out for freedom
(many joining the U. S. Army). By early 1865, partisans grew so bold that they burned down the county
courthouse for having housed African American
troops.11
Eventually the area's white soldiers left their
regiments in the field to return home as they decided
that their part of the war was over. Some of the
returning soldiers took up battles in the political
arena that they did not win in the war. Others sought
vengeance and retribution for the small feuds that
took place between neighbors and which ballots
could not solve. Finally, many white Daviess
Countians who fought on both sides of the Civil War
saw that the world they fought for was being transformed in ways they found unacceptable, most especially slavery disintegrating with the help of the federal government. The violence that came after the
war, on both white and black locals—political, racial,
and personal—stemmed from these veins of conflict
within their local society.14
The worst period of violence in Daviess County,
outside of the Civil War itself, occurred during the
three-year period after the war when the wartime factions of Unionists and pro-Confederates battled for
Ohio Valley History
control of the county. Both groups wanted to maintain black subservience, but conflict splintered the
community as white and black residents reshaped the
postwar landscape. Political struggles in this period
included violence and intimidation as returning
Confederates and their home front sympathizers
sought retribution against Unionists and Union soldiers. For returning Confederates and their supporters, though they had lost the war on the battlefield
they could defeat their foes in the end by controlling
the county's politics and thus the future of its race
relations. To accomplish this end, they bullied, beat,
and murdered those who stood in their way.
As a consequence, the federal government
responded to the growing level of violence toward
Kentucky's freedpeople by expanding the Bureau of
Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, commonly called the Freedmen's Bureau, to the state
despite the fact that Kentucky never seceded. White
Kentuckians viewed this development as an unjust
intrusion of federal power into local affairs and often
responded with greater levels of violence towards
freedpeople. For the freedpeople of Kentucky, however, the Bureau served as a desperately needed ally in
providing food, resources to start schools, legal representation, and adjudication of labor contracts.
Unfortunately, the Bureau could do nothing to
improve the freedpeople's political powerlessness
within Kentucky.15
The Democrats, who generally had maintained
their proslavery stance during the war, already had
the political support of the majority of the community by the war's end because of the Republican Party's
support of emancipation and the adoption of the
Thirteenth Amendment. The uncompensated loss of
such a vast amount of personal property in the form
of slaves shifted the loyalties of all but the staunchest
Unionists to the Democratic Party. In the 1864 presidential election, the Democratic candidate, Union
General George McClellan garnered 1,124 votes to
Lincoln's 37. A year later, the Democrats defeated
Owensboro's own George Yeaman, a Unionist and
former Whig, for reelection to Congress. Yeaman garnered only thirty-three percent of the vote in Daviess
County. In fact, Yeaman lost despite federal army
troops being posted at the polls and the arrests of suspected southern sympathizers. Pro-Confederates in
Owensboro's 2nc* Precinct responded to this federal
intrusion in local politics and clear favoritism for
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Unionists by indicting the poll judges and the official
who appointed them. Yeaman's continued support of
the Union at the cost of slavery, however, swung the
election to his Democratic opponent B. C. Ritter of
Christian County.16
Ex-Confederates, soldiers, guerrillas and politicians, maneuvered to gain control of the Democratic
Party, which was still in Unionists' hands at the end
of the war. In the August 1866 county elections, they
effectively completed such a coup with George W.
Triplett easily winning the county judgeship over one
of the county's most prominent Unionists, John S.
McFarland. Triplett not only served as a staff officer
in the Confederate Army, but he also represented the
Owensboro area in the Confederate Congress.
Violence in the weeks leading up to the election by
ex-Confederates seemed to play a role in ensuring victory at the polls. In Owensboro, A. W. Lawwill, the
Freedmen's Bureau agent, and others complained
about attacks on Union men going unpunished. For
example, Lawwill reported that a Confederate veteran
attacked and badly beat James Richmond, a Unionist
and former member of the Home Guard, on his way
to the Knottsville Precinct poll in eastern Daviess
County. Having gained control of the county's legal
system through the election of George Triplett as
judge, ex-Confederates now had free rein to intimidate potential rivals for power and to settle old
grudges. Lawwill noted this to his superior after the
August 1866 election: "I do solemnly believe that no
Union man can be protected by the Laws of Kentucky
or at least by a Daviess County Grand Jury."
Furthermore, this election marked a shift in position
within the ranks of the Democratic (now proConfederate) Party.17
Shortly after the 1866 election, four former
Unionists (including McFarland and Grissom, the former U. S. Provost Marshal), wrote to General Jefferson
C. Davis, Freedmen's Bureau Superintendent for
Kentucky, complaining about the treatment of Union
veterans. Political sour grapes probably motivated
the men to send the letters, especially considering
that the four men addressed their respective letters
within the same two days and that the letters carried
the same tone of bitterness. One of the letter writers,
Jesse Moore, requested that Davis send troops to the
county and added, "The Rebels are bold, defiant, and
unscrupulous in their dementions of all men, who
once wore Blue, or sustained the Union Cause, They
Social Violence in Daviess County, Kentucky
21
without provocations shot down men; and boast of it
. . . some eight or ten men have been murdered
around us in the last few months." Moore finished
his letter with a paraphrase of an observation made in
McFarland's letter: "If they [the military] fail to act,
Kentucky will indeed become a good state for a Union
man to emigrate from." McFarland pointed to
Triplett's election as an important event in the perpetuation of violence on Union men, labeling the
other men elected as "returned Guerillas." Justice of
the Peace F. S. Beers echoed the sentiments of the others, claiming that "shooting them [Union men] is of
common occurrence[,] threats are daily made."18
Finally, a revealing type of threat began to
appear around this time that continued to plague the
community. Lawwill received "numerous" complaints that someone was sending anonymous letters
to "white persons who served in the United States
Army . . . bidding them to leave the county." Such
anonymous letters that surfaced during the next two
years served in part as a form of racial terrorism, as
white "Regulators" tried to rid the county of black
farm renters and laborers. Started as a form of political intimidation toward white Unionists to encourage
them to exit the area, these letters later targeted black
farmers.19
Not all white-on-white violence was so overtly
political in nature; occasionally personal revenge was
the motive. The partisan warfare fought in the area
left deep scars on many people. Amos Metcalfe, a
staunch Unionist, member of the Home Guard, and
Enrollment Officer for the federal government during
the war, had a running feud with a band of former
guerrillas. During the war, Walter McDaniel, Dr.
George Davidson, and the Carlisle brothers, all guerrillas, kidnapped Lieutenant Hampton of the 3 5 ^
Kentucky Infantry (Union), took him across the Ohio
into Indiana, and murdered him. This action apparently was retribution for Metcalfe having killed John
Chandler, a member of their band earlier in 1865
while he was a member of the Home Guard. After
the pro-Confederate sweep of the August 1866 elections, McDaniel convinced a sympathetic deputy
sheriff, Thomas Greenwell, to arrest Metcalfe for the
killing of his guerrilla comrade during the war.
Instead, Greenwell, eager to demonstrate his proConfederate sympathies, shot Metcalfe three times,
leaving him for dead. Metcalfe survived the ordeal
and gave his deposition to Lawwill. When Lawwill
tried to press the case before the local authorities,
they refused to investigate and instead wanted to
press for the arrest of Metcalfe who was recuperating
across the river in Indiana. McDaniel and his group
continued to make threats on Metcalfe's life and in
1867, McDaniel even tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Metcalfe in broad daylight. Lawwill managed to
arrest the Carlisle brothers in neighboring Webster
County and had them tried in Indiana, where a local
jury found them guilty and sentenced them to the
penitentiary. McDaniel and Davidson, however,
eluded arrest with the help of county officials such as
Greenwell. Feuds like this one obviously contained a
political aspect in that the combatants fought on
opposite sides in the war, but they often devolved
into personal vendettas.20
22
Ohio Valley History
While the previous veins of postwar conflict—
politics and revenge—focused on white-on-white violence, another, racial conflict, generally involved
white violence against African
Americans.
Concerning the postwar situation in Kentucky, the
historian Victor Howard has observed, "With the limited protection of the masters having disappeared
after the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment and
the failure of the state to extend its protective arm,
naked prejudice was for the first time given complete
license." Most of this racial violence fell within two
broad categories of social and economic control.
Confederate veterans and their supporters wanted to
reestablish the social boundaries defined by race that
they perceived emancipation had dismantled. These
veterans went to war to protect a way of life that
included black subservience. Upon their return they
found former slaves who were now Union veterans
and who refused to show the deference that white residents had come to expect, if not require, of black residents.21 Freedmen's Bureau agent Lawwill wrote in
October 1866 about the origin of this violence:
There is a deep seated and bitter feeling existing among some, against the freedpeople they however are not the influential
and respected citizens but are men who are
returned Guerillas [sic] and have no respect
for themselves, or anyone else, these men
are countenanced by some of the better
portion of the community because they
were Rebels during the late war, this
makes them bold and makes them a terror
to the loyal portion of the community."
Racial violence as social control in Daviess
County took two forms; attacking or intimidating
blacks to reestablish deferential behavior and destroying those who failed to conform, notably "insolent"
black veterans and potential transgressors of sexual
boundaries between black men and white women.
The first category of attacking or intimidating to
reestablish deferential behavior occurred in day-today incidents of local white residents attempting to
put black residents "in their place." Lawwill noted in
his report of August 1866: "The freedmen complain
that they are knocked down by some persons who
have their faces blackened and coats turned wrong
side out[,] this allways[sic] happens after dark."
These tactics, by which white assailants forcefully
asserted their presence and donned makeup and
deceptive attire, was likely a form of psychological
terrorism. Black Daviess Countians were disturbed
enough by the practice to complain to the Freedmen's
Bureau. The makeup and attire could also suggest a
nascent form of a Ku Klux-type of terrorist organization, which did later organize in the county.2'
Although similar incidents of retributive violence occurred involving Confederate veterans and
African Americans, the racial dynamics involved
indicate that they were often a response to racial agitation. Several attacks on black veterans appear to
have transpired largely because the victims were
Union veterans and not necessarily because of any
personal vendettas. In each instance, the African
American was purported to have acted with "insolence" towards whites. Consequently, a white male
killed or grievously wounded the transgressing black
man. After one of these incidents in 1867, the
Monitor commented, "we regret that one should so
far forget himself as not to be mindful of his proper
status, or to imagine that Kentucky is Africanized,
and we hope for the future we will have no fault to
record against anyone of their race."24
instantly dead." Conveniently, as often happened in
such cases, no one seemed to know the shooter's
name. Fuqua's killer was never brought to justice and
Fuqua paid the ultimate price for violating white
expectations of black behavior.25
A few months later, another returned black veteran, Aaron, confronted his owner on a street in
Owensboro. Supposedly, Aaron had made repeated
threats that he intended to kill his former master, A. D.
Hill. According to the Monitor, Aaron and Hill scuffled before Hill "accidentally" shot at Aaron. Aaron
began to flee and Hill then shot him in the leg.
According to one observer, "A crowd of excited people,
amongst whom were some of the best and most worthy citizens . . . gathering around the negro clamored
for a 'rope!' 'a rope!' 'hang him!' 'hang him!"' A. M.
Mayo, the Freedmen's Bureau agent at the time, apparently seized Aaron out of the crowd and placed him in
jail. After things cooled down, authorities released
Aaron and sent him out of the county. The Monitor
noted that the community supported Hill's actions and
would have supported Hill "still more if he had shot
the negro dead in his tracks." In a telling closing paragraph, the editor, Thomas Pettit concluded:
There is no hard or cruel treatment to
the negro in this community, nor did such
a case ever occur here within our knowledge, but the negroes and their friends
understand fully, and may as well, if they
do not understand, that when a conflict
here takes place between a negro and a
white man, that in ninety-nine cases out a
hundred the negro will go under.26
Examples of racial control violence illustrate the
sources of such aggression towards African
Americans in the immediate postwar years. Andrew
Fuqua, a black veteran recruited locally, returned to
Owensboro in early 1866. While in a grocery store, he
reportedly became "very obstropulous [sic]" and
failed to treat the owner's wife with the expected
level of respect. According to the Monitor, a white
man in the store "ordered the negro to cease his
impudence, and on his refusing to do so, was shot
Pettit left no doubt in such an open warning that
when a conflict arose between people of different colors, white skin mattered most. Pettit probably stated
what was already obvious to most readers.
Outside of Owensboro, William Bell shot Tony
Cardiff, a black veteran, in the head in front of two
black witnesses. Bell quickly fled the county and
ultimately the state. Perhaps Bell and Cardiff had
argued before or Cardiff simply would not give Bell
the right of way. Regardless, Cardiff was a poor
choice for a target, as the politically powerful and
wealthy McFarland family apparently wanted justice
in the murder of their former slave. In December
1866, detectives arrested Bell in Oakwood,
Tennessee. Later in 1868, a U. S. District Court in
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Social Violence in Daviess County, Kentucky
Louisville found Bell guilty of murder.27 Elements of
this violence appear related to the anti-Unionist violence taking place at the same time against white
Daviess Countians, but the frequent mention of
"insolence" or "impudence" on the part of black victims suggests the motivation of racial control in the
minds of the white attackers.28
Black males who transgressed sexual boundaries
faced similarly swift punishment for failing to obey
white social norms. A black youth, Mat Hayden, supposedly offered to let Mr. Burnett's wife pay off a debt
Mr. Burnett owed Hayden with sex. Once Mr.
Burnett learned of the proposition, he found Hayden,
beat him, and apparently briefly tortured him by
hanging. The most probable reason Burnett did not
kill Hayden was that by late-1867, when this outrage
occurred, Burnett faced certain prosecution for murdering a Daviess County freedman. Lawwill's success
at getting the Carlisle brothers and William Bell prosecuted in United States District Court seemed to
send a chill through the white community that
slowed the frequency of lethal racial violence.
Lawwill commented in his report in June, 1867, "the
Rebels are not so eager to kill men who were Union
men or soldiers."29
A year before the torture of Hayden, a similar
sexual transgression occurred that ended much differently. In this instance, a twenty-year-old black man,
Tom Conyers, was accused of offering a poor, fourteen-year-old white girl a dime to have sexual relations with him. When she refused, Conyers ran a
head of her, stopped her, and solicited her again. A
young white man, Napoleon Colier, who had witnessed the whole event, then interceded on the girl's
behalf, warning Conyers to stop his importunities.
Authorities arrested Conyers the night of the incident, placing him in jail. The next day, at a preliminary trial, both the girl and Colier testified that
Conyers indeed made the propositions. The Court
did not allow Conyers to testify in his own behalf
because he was black and Kentucky law did not allow
black testimony against whites. The judge determined that the case merited a full trial for the offense
of detaining a white woman with the intention to
commit rape on her and to have intercourse with her
against her will. He set Conyers's bond at one thousand dollars. As the deputy sheriff escorted Conyers
out of the courthouse, Walter McDaniel, the former
Confederate also involved in the Metcalfe fracas,
placed a noose around Conyer's neck. McDaniel then
led Conyers like a slave going on the auction block.
McDaniel handed the rope over to the girl's father,
Joseph Goyne, who conducted Conyers to a locust
tree, threw the end over a limb, and hanged him in
the presence of "a hundred or more witnesses."
Mayo, still the Freedman's Bureau agent at the time
and who witnessed the entire trial and lynching,
claimed to have tried to stop the lynching but
McDaniel, Joseph Norris, "and several others pulled
their pistols on me and told me to leave or I would be
killed[.] I also understood that they said who ever cut
the Negro down should be hung on the limb." Mayo
reflected on the fear that McDaniel and his cadre
inspired among the community: "The boy hung
about twenty minutes. . . . I could not induce any of
them [freedpeople] to lay hold of him as they said
they heard that the first one that touched him should
be hung." The judge, a lawyer, and a bystander later
took the body away.10
The men who perpetrated this lynching wanted
to punish Conyers in a public manner that left no
doubt where they stood on even the attempt of sexual transgression by black men. McDaniel and Norris
were both Confederate veterans. Although certainly
in the Democratic fold, men like McDaniel, Norris,
and Goyne were a sub-faction who had little patience
for the niceties of the legal system. The Democratic
Party leaders had to struggle to keep men like them
under control. Echoing the boosterism common
among city leaders but also calling for control over
such actions, the Monitor responded to the lynching
with the following:
We desire to call the attention of our
people to the fact that the reputation of our
city will suffer terribly from the recurrence
of such scenes of mob violence in our
midst.- The negro was in the hands of civil
officers, had been tried and sent on for further trial, and it is no use to go through the
mockery of civil trials, if after verdict the
prisoner is to be dealt with by a mob.- We
might as well abolish courts altogether.
The Monitor voiced the concerns of the
Democratic Party leadership and, in essence, spoke
for Owensboro's white community as most residents
were by now loyal Democrats. The editor, Pettit,
made what became the paper's common response to
Ohio Valley History
such violent incidents: local white residents should
not take extralegal actions but rather should let the
courts handle transgressors of social proprieties.
Democrats had ensured the favorable adjudication of
such events by sweeping the county elections in
1866.31
Other voices within the community wanted the
lynchers punished. "One who Knows" wrote to
General John Ely, superintendent of the Freedmen's
Bureau in Louisville, asking that the General investigate the hanging. The anonymous sender added, "It
was a murder committed by two men - returned
guerillas [sic] and rebels."
Apparently, exConfederates already exerted enough pressure in the
community that their potential victims feared identifying themselves as opponents to their outrages.
"One who Knows" feared discovery and asked Ely to
burn the letter suggesting, "Send down quietly a
detective and you can find how infamous it was.
Civil courts have done nothing about it. - in fact are
powerless."
The Freedmen's Bureau did have
Lawwill investigate the lynching and he took five
depositions. Only Mayo dared to name McDaniel and
Norris as the leaders in the lynching. To reiterate, the
deponents accused Hayden and Conyers of attempting to rape white women by simply verbalizing their
desire for sex. In each case, white locals (those in the
Conyers lynching being confirmed ex-Confederates)
hanged the transgressor, sending an unmistakable
message (despite Democratic leaders' protests) that
white women were off limits to black men. In addition, McDaniel's and Greenwell's connection to both
the Conyers lynching and the Metcalfe feud indicates
that the same type of men were using violence
against both whites and black Daviess Countians.
Further, they fit Lawwill's profile of the source of violence in the county: former guerrillas who acted with
the tacit support of Confederate sympathizers.32
not enslaved they should not stay in the area as
potential social equals. Community leaders responded by denouncing such acts of economic terrorism,
largely because they needed black laborers to work
their tobacco fields. "This county, and the whole
State is greatly in need of this [African American] element of labor, and unless some means can be adopted
by which it can be made useful, the farming interest
of the county and State will be seriously . . . injured,"
wrote "Farmer" to the Monitor in September of 1865,
voicing the concerns of many tobacco growers after
the war.33
The earliest incident of this type of terrorism
transpired in December 1866, just as local white
landowners negotiated the next year's contracts for
renting farms to black tenants. In late fall, a number
of notices similar to the anonymous letters that
white Union veterans received in the summer
appeared around the county. These notices warned
"that renting a house or ground to Freedmen meant
they will be burned." Probably to show that the
notices were legitimate, in December a tobacco barn
that freedpeople used burned to the ground.
Significantly, this form of terrorism often only indirectly targeted freedpeople, who rarely owned land
themselves, as threats of property destruction targeted white landowners who hired black workers or
rented farms to freedpeople. When the terrorists had
the opportunity to strike black property, such as
barns with freedpeople's tobacco in it, they usually
took advantage of it.34
Based upon the reaction of white community
leaders, these types of men engaged in economically
motivated violence. Before 1866, white locals
designed economic violence to keep black laborers in
place through the institution of slavery. After 1866
and the ex-Confederate political takeover, economic
violence shifted to terrorizing black residents into
leaving the county. The probable instigators of this
post-1866 economic violence were the poorer whites
in the community who did not want to compete with
free black labor or who felt that if freedpeople were
After the freedpeople's tobacco barn burned,
word spread around the county that a "vigilance committee" calling themselves "Regulators" had coalesced. Evidence such as the notices demanding
black residents to leave the county illustrates their
desire to force black laborers out of the area. Similar
groups arose all over state at this time. Just before
New Year's, Regulators demonstrating their seriousness burned down the rented house of a black farmer,
Uriah, a mile outside of Owensboro. The Monitor
immediately replied to this "unwarrantable outrage"
with a warning: "we advise them [Regulators] if they
have any desire to die natural deaths to desist in
future from such operations."35
Such economic terrorism revealed a division
within the Democratic ranks because the party leaders, through the Monitor, consistently spoke out
against these acts. Lawwill also noted that notices
Spring 2002
Social Violence in Daviess County, Kentucky
were sent to ''almost every Union man and many
Rebels/' indicating that the Regulators were targeting
all white locals who rented to freedpeople. A
response to the burnings and notices appeared in
March. "JOHNNY ROACH"(probably Captain James
Rouse, who had rented the recently burned house for
1867) wrote a letter to the Monitor. In the letter, he
issued a "determined" warning:
1 st. If a negro house is burnt, or a
negro molested, or any place of ours, by any
lawless and malicious man, or band of
men, we are determined that such parties
shall be brought to justice. There is still
law in Daviess county, and there is still a
penitentiary in Frankfort, and detectives
shall be neither few nor fearful.
2d. The black people of this community are the weaker portion of our population. They are our laborers, and we their
employers. They look to us for employment and protection, and they shall not be
disappointed; and we here say to these lawless house-burners, (if any of them can
read;) that they have put themselves in a
position of extreme peril; 1st, As they
stand in the presence of the law of the land;
and, id, That in their malicious attempt to
drive off others, they themselves may be
compelled to fly.
JOHNNY ROACH
Captain of the Anti-House-Burners"1
restraint without its exercise by irresponsible persons, and which can subserve no good purpose."
Pettit concluded by observing what Democrats feared
was already happening elsewhere in the state because
of Regulators: federal military occupation.'8
For the outlying counties, the 1867 Regulator
terrorism campaign proved modestly effective in forcing black residents out of the area. Many freedpeople
fled to Owensboro and the relative protection of the
Freedman's Bureau office. As Lawwill reported,
"They complain that they have no assurance of their
lives or property. . . . Regulators . . . are continually
committing depredations on them, they come to this
district without any thing to live on and I fear many
of them will suffer this winter." Lawwill had a small
squad of infantry posted in Owensboro, but they
seemed only to calm the city itself as they were slow
in reaching distant parts of the county. The havoc
that the Regulators caused apparently settled down in
late spring, only to reappear the following year in a
new guise, when the Regulators transformed themselves into a Ku Klux Klan-like group. As winter
reached Daviess County, the notices warning against
renting to black tenants in the coming year appeared
again. This time, a group called the "White Horse
Company" signed the notices and, as Lawwill wrote,
"This has thrown the freedmen into a great state of
consternation." Lawwill asserted a month later that
he had managed to calm the excitement."'
The stern warning clearly contained a paternalistic
understanding of the employer-laborer relationship.
This paternalism for the black worker was the probable dividing line between the Democratic Party leaders and the Regulators, since party leaders most likely owned farmland and needed black labor.'7
Like the Conyers' lynching, party leaders felt
that violent activity such as terrorizing blacks
besmirched the community's reputation. Again, similar to the Monitor's previous response to the
Conyers' lynching, the paper called for the extralegal
violence to stop because the law (controlled by proConfederate Democrats such as Judge Triplett) would
punish black criminals. The editor, Pettit wrote,
"The law and its execution are in the hands of white
men, and if the blacks (or whites either,) are culpable
of any misdemeanor, the laws furnish sufficient
A new turn in Regulator violence occurred in
April 1868 as Klan-like groups shifted their tactics
toward controlling societal change in the countryside.
A Regulator group calling itself the "Klu Klux Klan"
burned down a black school a mile and a half outside
of Owensboro. Rather than focusing on economic
terrorism, these Regulators decided to widen their
scope to a social motivation, although still within the
larger framework of trying to control societal transformation. Like the previous acts of arson, a white
man rented the house to an African American, a
teacher in this case. The arsonists, however, now targeted a source of black improvement rather than a
symbol of economic gain. In contrast to the countryside school burnings, Lawwill never indicated that
terrorists damaged either of the two black schools
within Owensboro. Therefore, this school burning
was perhaps rural white residents' response to the
expansion of black education outside of the city,
where blacks worked predominantly as farm hands in
26
Ohio Valley History
the fields rather than in a schoolhouse. In nearby
Breckinridge County, part of Lawwill's district, a gunpowder explosion destroyed a black schoolhouse in
December 1867, suggesting an anti-black education
movement among Regulators in the area.40
In summary, violence for economic and social
control of freedpeople developed around competing
white factions who attempted to shape labor and race
relations in post-emancipation Daviess County.
Some white residents wanted black laborers to leave
Daviess County while others wanted them to stay,
which caught freedpeople squarely in the middle.
Economic violence did succeed somewhat. The black
population of Daviess County barely increased from
i860 to 1870 while the white population increased 43
percent. In prior decades, the black population had
increased by an average of 43.5 percent.
Despite having unfinished business, the
Freedmen's Bureau closed in Owensboro in June
1868. Likewise, the Bureau left only a token office in
Kentucky by that fall. Lawwill and the Bureau had
helped to start several black schools in the county,
which served as valuable symbols of pride for the
black community. More important, as white and
black Daviess Countians stumbled their way through
the labyrinth of developing a new labor system with
corresponding social ramifications, the Freedmen's
Bureau served as an advocate for African Americans
when they needed one most. Lawwill's efforts to
prosecute those who committed acts of racial violence often failed, but he had enough successes in getting a few key white miscreants convicted that may
thought twice about murdering black neighbors.41
Although the Regulators had some initial success in pushing freedpeople out of Daviess County,
they never completely achieved their goal. The black
population grew by 35 percent from 1870 to 1880. In
the end, the pro-Confederate Democratic leaders won
over all challengers, as George Triplett remained the
county judge until 1878. Other former Confederates
held county positions for just as long. After 1870,
when black residents tried to challenge the white
power structure once they had the vote, such as in
1875, they were usually routed at the polls. George
Helm and Harrison Saunders, both black, ran for city
council that year and finished last, receiving about
half the votes of the next closest candidate.
Finally, the violence perpetrated in Daviess
County during the initial years of Reconstruction was
a part of the larger struggle for political control of the
county between white political factions that
stretched back into the war years. These factions
agreed, as they had during the war, that African
Americans must remain in subservience but had not
determined who would control the outcome of emancipation. The white-on-white violence in the early
postwar period developed as an outgrowth and continuation of those political rivalries and other personal vendettas from the Civil War. Eventually groups of
former Confederate soldiers and guerrillas terrorized
and murdered both white and black residents. Such
men, who were most familiar with extralegal means
of achieving their ends, committed acts of violence
against white residents in order to shackle them in
political subordination. They targeted black residents because they wanted to maintain the social and
economic subservience of a people they had gone to
war to keep in shackles.
Spring 2002
Social Violence in Daviess County, Kentucky
J. Michael Crane is a Ph.D. candidate in the
Department of History at Vanderbilt University.
1 George C. Wright, Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865-1940:
Lynchings, Mob Rule, and "Legal Lynchings" (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 44, 155-56; A. W.
Lawwill to Levi Burnett, June 9, 1866, Records of the Bureau of
Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (hereafter cited
BRFAL), Record Group-io5, 1068, L-27 (1866), National
Archives (hereafter cited NARA); Lawwill to General Ely,
October 4, 1866, BRFAL, RG-IO5, 1068, L-163 (1866), NARA;
Owensboro Monitor, May 23, 1866.
2 Wright, Racial Violence in Kentucky, 19; Marion B. Lucas, A
History of Blacks in Kentucky: From Slavery to Segregation,
1760-1891 (Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1992), 187.
3 For Owensboro and Daviess County, see Lee A. Dew and
Aloma W. Dew, Owensboro: The City on the Yellow Banks
(Bowling Green, Ky.: Rivendell Publications, 1988); History of
Daviess County, Kentucky
(Interstate Publishing, 1883;
reprint, Utica, Ky.: McDowell Publications, 1980). Also, see
the many fine local history articles published in the Daviess
County Historical Quarterly, Daviess County Public Library.
4 Jasper B. Shannon and Ruth McQuown, Presidential Politics
in Kentucky, 1824-1948 (Lexington: University of Kentucky,
I
95°)/ 33-36. The vote totals show that Bell won a plurality of
Kentucky votes (45.2%) over Breckinridge (36.4%), Douglas
(17.5%), and Lincoln (.9%).
5 Lowell H. Harrison, The Civil War in Kentucky (Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, 1975), 1-13; Lowell H. Harrison
and James C. Klotter, A New History of Kentucky (Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, 1997), 181-94; Stuart S. Sprague,
"The Kentucky Pocket Plantation: Sources and Research
Strategies, Mason County As a Case Study," Filson Club
Historical Quarterly 71 (January 1997): 69-70; Ross A. Webb,
"Kentucky: 'Pariah Among the Elect'," in Radicalism, Racism,
and Party Realignment: The Border States during
Reconstruction, ed. Richard O. Curry (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1969), 105-18; Allen W. Trelease,
White Terror, The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern
Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1971), 89.
6 Harrison and Klotter, New History of Kentucky, 239-48.
Despite its age and Dunning-school sensibilities, E. Merton
Coulter's The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1926) still
contains the most complete and astute analysis of Kentucky's
politics in the postwar era.
7 United States Census Office, Ninth Census, vol. I, The
Statistics of the Population of the United States (Washington,
D. C: Government Printing Office, 1872), 31-33, 148; Lee A.
Dew, "The Whig Party in Daviess County," Daviess County
Historical Quarterly (hereafter cited DCHQ) vol. 1 (Winter
1983): 15-21; Shannon and McQuown, Presidential Politics in
Kentucky, 34-35; James E. Copeland, "Where Were the
Kentucky Unionists and Secessionists?" The Register of The
Kentucky Historical Society (hereafter cited Register) 71,
(1973): 347-48.
8 Military control of Kentucky hung in the balance the first
two years of the war. The armed struggle for the state culminated in Confederate and Union forces fighting a showdown
battle at Perryville in October 1862 that proved inconclusive.
General Bragg, however, after failing to find the popular support he had expected, pulled his Confederate forces out of
Kentucky, removing the last regular Confederate Army from
the Bluegrass State. Thereafter, the state was left to guerrilla
forces to fight for the South's cause against the federal troops
garrisoned at strategic points and cities around Kentucky.
Eventually, the non-garrisoned areas turned into a no-man's
land as the war wore on and guerrillas turned to banditry in the
wake of a disappearing organized Confederate presence.
Harrison, Civil War in Kentucky, 50-54; James Lee
McDonough, War in Kentucky: From Shiloh to Perryville
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994). Stephen Ash
describes the development of Union garrison and no-man's
land in Ash, When the Yankee Came: Conflict Chaos in the
Occupied South, 1861-1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1995), 76-108.
9 History of Daviess County, 158-61.
10 Owensboro Monitor, September, 3, 9, 17, 24, October 1,
1862; History of Daviess County, 160-62; Aloma Williams
Dew, "'Between the Hawk and the Buzzard': Owensboro
During the Civil War," Register 77 (1979): 1-14; Jeremiah Rose,
"Guerrilla Warfare in Owensboro," DCHQ 14 (October 1996):
84-92; James B. Martin, "Black Flag Over the Bluegrass:
Guerrilla Warfare in Kentucky, 1863-1865," Register 86 (1988):
352-75. For guerrilla activity in 1864, see J. W. Compton to J.H.
Baxter, August 31, 1864, Record Group 18, Letters Received,
Box 11, C-794, Freedom and Southern Society Project (hereafter
cited FSSP), R-61, NARA; Owensboro Monitor, August 31,
October 19, 26, November 16, 30, 1864; U. S. War Department,
The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official
Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 70 vols.
(Washington, 1880-1901), series I, vol. xxxix/i [S#77]. For a
theoretical treatment of banditry see Eric Hobsbawm, Bandits
(New York: New Press, 2000). The Union Army banished
Thomas Pettit to the Confederacy in 1864 for his anti-Lincoln
editorials. He returned after the war to resume his editorship.
Pettit went on to become a Populist leader in Kentucky during
the 1890s. See Aloma Williams Dew, "Pettit, Thomas
Stevenson," in John E. Kleber, ed., The Kentucky Encyclopedia
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 719.
11 Owensboro Monitor, September 3, 17, November 11,
December 3, 10, 1862, January 7, February 18, March 4, April
1, May 27, June 17, July 1, September 2, 16, November, 4,
December 2, 16, 1863; April 6, July 27, August 10, 17, 31, 1864;
Lucas, History of Blacks in Kentucky, 147. Kentucky
Governor Bramlette denounced any plans to recruit slaves in
his September 1863 inaugural address. By March 1864, recruiting was already underway against the Governor's wishes. He
traveled to Washington and confronted Lincoln over the issue.
Bramlette apparently received a promise from Lincoln that
slaves would not be recruited as long as whites filled the state's
quota for troops. By mid-summer, Kentucky had failed to meet
its quota and vigorous recruitment of slaves promptly ensued.
White Kentuckians, especially slaveholders, felt the federal
government had betrayed them. In exchange for Kentucky's
loyalty, the government was freeing their slaves by enlisting
them into the Army. The historian John David Smith has
observed that "the freeing of Kentucky slaves upon entrance
into the army neatly circumvented the exclusion of the
Commonwealth from the Emancipation Proclamation." John
David Smith, "The Recruitment of Negro Soldiers in
Kentucky, 1863-1865," Register 82 (1974): 372, 384, 389-90.
28
Ohio Valley History
12 Capt. J. R. Grissom, to Brig. Gen. James B. Fry, June 1, 1865,
PMG Central Office, Historical Reports, 2nd Dist., Kentucky,
Box 3, Record Group 50, 325A, FSSP, R-67.
13 Ibid., July 20, August 24, 1864; History of Daviess County,
175-77,- Glenn Hodges, "Bill Davison's Owensboro Raid,"
DCHQ 4 (April 1986): 37-43. For more on no-man's land in general see Ash, When the Yankees Came, 76-108. According to
Marion B. Lucas, Kentucky tobacco production had dropped
57% and wheat production 63% in final years of the war, see
Lucas, History of Blacks in Kentucky, 160.
14 Commonwealth v. Miles Howard, Aiding Slaves to Escape,
Case #103, Daviess County Court Criminal Files, 1862-1866,
Box 8, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives,
Frankfort, Ky. (hereafter cited KDLA); Commonwealth v. Lewis
Philpott, Enticing Slaves, Case #82, Daviess County Court
Criminal Case Files, 1862-1866, Box 8, KDLA.
15 Harrison and Klotter, New History of Kentucky, 236-39.
16 Owensboro Monitor, December 7, 1864, September 13,
1865; Lee A. Dew, "Tom Pettit's Owensboro, 1865," DCHQ 13
(July 1995): 53-60; Gregory S. Kuhn, "George H. Yeaman:
Owensboro's Civil War Congressman." DCHQ 6 (October
1988): 74-79; History of Daviess County, 149-51;
Commonwealth v. James Littell and Richard Smock, Case #'s
109)-112, Daviess County Court Criminal Case Files, 18621866, Box 8, KDLA; Commonwealth v. A. G. Botts, Case #104,
Daviess County Court Criminal Case Files, 1862-1866, Box 8,
KDLA. Lincoln received 30% of Kentucky's votes, as opposed
to only 3% of Daviess County's, in 1864. See Shannon &
McQuown, Presidential Politics in Kentucky, 39-40. For an
insightful examination of Kentucky politics of the period see
James Larry Hood, "For the Union: Kentucky's Unconditional
Unionist Congressmen and the Development of the
Republican Party in Kentucky, 1863-1865," Register 76 (1978):
197-215. By the August 1865 elections, the pro-Confederate
faction of the Democratic Party termed itself the
"Conservative Union, or Anti-Amendment Party," expressing
the key division over support of the Thirteenth Amendment,
see Commonwealth v. A. G. Botts Case #104, Daviess County
Court Criminal Case Files, 1862-1866, Box 8, KDLA.
17 Owensboro Monitor, 29 August 1866; History of Daviess
County, 154; Ezra J. Warner and W. Buck Yearns, Biographical
Register of the Confederate Congress (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1975), 239-40, 300; Report of the
Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky,
Confederate
Kentucky Volunteers, War, 1861-65 (Hartford, Ky.: Cook &
McDowell, 1979), 426; Lawwill to Ely, October 4, 1866, BRFAL,
RG-105, 1068, L-159, Box 5 (1866), FSSP, A-4280; J. R. Grissom
to Gen. Jefferson C. Davis, August 25, 1866, BRFAL, RG-105,
1068, L-115 (1866), FSSP, A-4280; Lawwill to Ely, August 25,
1866, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L-109, Box 5 (1866), NARA.
Triplett gained 1,444 votes to his two opponent's combined
total of 1,099 votes. Interestingly, Knottsville Precinct was the
only one that Triplett lost, by 15 votes, History of Daviess
County, 102, 601. George C. Rable discusses political violence
several in southern states, but neglects Kentucky. See Rable,
But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics
of Reconstruction (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984).
18 J. R. Grissom to Gen. Jefferson C. Davis, August 25, 1866,
BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L-115 (1866), FSSP, A-4280.
19 Lawwill to Ely, August 13, 1866, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L122 (1866), FSSP, A-4279; Lawwill to Ely, January 30, 1867,
BRFAL, RG-IO5, 1068, 1,-28(1867), FSSP, A-4388.
20 Lawwill to Ely, August 25, 1866, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L109 (1866), FSSP, A-4280, Lawwill to Ely, October 4, 1866,
BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L-159 (1866), FSSP, A-4280; Lawwill to
Ely, June 21, 1867, BRFAL, RG-105, 1250, LS, NARA; Lawwill
to Ely, June 30, 1867, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, H-551 (1867),
FSSP; Lawwill to Ely, October 23, 1866, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068,
L-177 (1866), FSSP, A-4280; Commonwealth v. Amos Metcalf
and William Honeycut, Murder, Daviess County Court
Criminal Case Files, 1862-1866, Box 8, KDLA.
21 Victor B. Howard, "The Black Testimony Controversy in
Kentucky, 1866-1872," fournal of Negro History 58 (April
1973): 144-45.
22 Lawwill to Ely, October 3, 1866, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L185 (1866), FSSP, A-4279.
23 Lawwill to Ely, August 31, 1866, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L122 (1866), FSSP, A-4279. Allen Trelease discusses a similar
origin of the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee. See Trelease, White
Terror, 3-13.
Spring 2002
24 Owensboro Monitor, May 22, 1867.
25 Owensboro Monitor, March 7, 1866; Lawwill to Ely,
October 5, 1866, 1068 (LR), box 5, L-163 (1866), BRFAL, RG105, FSSP
26 Owensboro Monitor, May 9, 1866.
27 Owensboro Monitor, October 17, December 19, 1866; Ely
to Lawwill, December 20, 1866, BRFAL, RG-IO5, 1255, NARA;
Lawwill to Ely, June 24, 1867, BRFAL, RG-105, 1250, NARA;
Kentucky Union Veterans, appendix, 48; Victor Howard, Black
Liberation in Kentucky, 140-41.
28 Owensboro Monitor, May 22, September 25, 1867; Lawwill
to Ely, September 30, 1867, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L-320
(1867), NARA.
29 Lawwill to Runkle, October 25, 1867, BRFAL, RG-105,
1250, LS, NARA; Lawwill to Runkle, October 31, 1867, BRFAL,
RG-105, 1068, L-342 (1867), NARA; Lawwill to Runkle,
November 30, 1867, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L-374 (1867),
NARA; Lawwill to Ely, June 30, 1867, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068,
FSSP, A-4364.
30 Lawwill to Burnett, June 9, 1866, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L21 (1866), NARA; Owensboro Monitor, May 23, 1866. On the
issue of black testimony during Reconstruction see Howard,
"The Black Testimony Controversy in Kentucky," 140-65.
31 Owensboro Monitor, May 23, 1866; Report of the Adjutant
General of the State of Kentucky, Confederate
Kentucky
Volunteers, War 1861-65, 2 vols. (Hartford, Ky.: Cook and
McDowell, 1979), 490, 24.
32 Lawwill to Burnett, June 9, 1866, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L21 (1866), NARA.
33 Owensboro Monitor, September 20, 1865.
34 Lawwill to Ely, December 13, 1866, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068,
L-12 (1867), FSSP, A-4388; History of Daviess County, 180-81.
35 Owensboro Monitor, January 2, 1867. For news of
Regulators outside of Daviess County see ibid., January 30,
February 13, 1867.
36 Owensboro Monitor, March 6, 1867.
37 Lawwill to Ely, February 27, 1867, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L51 (1867), FSSP, A-4389.
38 Ibid.
39 Lawwill to Ely, January 30, 1867, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L28 (1867), FSSP, A-4388; Lawwill to Runkle, February 3, 1868,
BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L-44 (1868), NARA. For a look at the
first years of the Ku Klux Klan in Kentucky see Trelease, White
Terror, 89-91.
40 Lawwill to Runkle, February 3, 1868, BRFAL, RG-105,
1068, L-44 (1868), NARA; Lawwill to A. B. Brown, April 24,
1868, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L-152 (1868), NARA; Lawwill to
Runkle, January 23, 1868, BRFAL, RG-105, 1068, L-30 (1868),
NARA.
41 Lawwill to Runkle, June 24, 1868, BRFAL, RG-105, 1250,
NARA; Mary Beth Durham, "Black Education in Owensboro,"
DCHQ 12 (April 1994): 26-36. For additional analysis of the
Bureau's impact in Kentucky see W. A. Low, "The Freedmen's
Bureau in the Border States," in Radical, Racism, and Party
Realignment, 250-56.
Social Violence in Daviess County, Kentucky
29