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"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 Spring 2002 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 Spring 2002 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 Spring 2002 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 Spring 2002 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