Slavery by Another Name (82 page)

prided himself on his “rule” over his wife and children and the believers to whom

he ministered. So visceral was his passion for stern, orderly church and family

hierarchy that Starr lived much of his adult life agonizing over his shameful

pliancy as a young minister to the leaders of a congregation that wished to allow

its young people to dance. Starr con ded to another pastor late in life that as a

result he “never afterwards had the same power and in uence over a

congregation.” On his deathbed, Starr implored his fellow preachers to remember

that “the old fashioned doctrine of holiness, as taught by our fathers, is true; it is

the doctrine of the Bible …preach it to the people.”

54. Reynolds E. Wallace Jr., “Recollections of the Past: Wesley Chapel,” copy of

unpublished typescript, in possession of author, 1996.

55. Deed of J. W. and Hannah Starr to J. S. Hansberger, Nov. 24, 1868, BCC. Rev.

Starr and Hannah in November 1868 agreed to sell more than two hundred acres

east of Ridge Road to Hansberger, owner of an adjacent tannery, reserving to

themselves access to a spring on the property. Harry P. Cottingham bought a total

of 161 acres in May 1865 from the longtime family neighbor Pulaski Wallace; the

land was adjoined by two ninety-foot-wide lots sold near the same time to J. W.

Starr for $2,502. Deed of Harry P. Cottingham to P. Wallace, May 18, 1865, BCC.

56. Marguerite Starr Crain and Janell Turner Wenzel, They Followed the Sun: The

Story of James Penn Starr and Georgian Theus: Their Ancestors and Their Progenies

(Dallas:

Suburban

Tribune,

1971),

cited

at

members.aol.com/InmanGA/family.starr.html.

57. Vandiver, “Josiah Gorgas,” p. 12, citing Gorgas diary entry, Aug. 3, 1865.

58. Marriage license of Henry Cottinham and Mary Bishop, Jan. 8, 1868, by J. W.

Starr, Bibb County Marriages, SCHS.

CHAPTER I : AN INDUSTRIAL SLAVERY

1. 1860 Census.

2. Rhoda Coleman Ellison, Bibb County, Alabama: The First Hundred Years, 1818–

1918 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984), pp. 82–83.

3. Ibid.

4. Donald E. Collins, ed., “A Georgian's View of Alabama in 1836,” Alabama

Review, January 1972, p. 221.

5. Harper's Weekly, July 13, 1861, p. 442.

6. Ellison, p. 69.

7. Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Back Country (New York: Mason

Brothers, 1860), p. 64.

8. Cited in Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations on Cotton and

Slavery in the American Slave States (New York: Mason Brothers, 1862), p. 439.

9. James C. Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the

Roots of Regional Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 22.

10. Ibid., p. 13.

11. Ibid., p. 23.

12. Ibid., pp. 13, 20–23.

13. Ibid., p. 26.

14. Ellison, p. 97.

15. Ethel Armes, The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama (Birmingham: Chamber of

Commerce, 1910), p. 73.

16. Ellison, p. 100.

17. Armes, p. 72.

18. Ibid., p. 71.

19. Frank E. Vandiver, “The Shelby Iron Company in the Civil War: A Study of a

Confederate Industry,” Alabama Review (January 1948), p. 14.

20. Armes, pp. 67–68.

21. James R. Bennett, Old Tannehill: A History of the Pioneer Ironworks in Roupes

Valley (1829–1865) (Birmingham, Ala.: Je erson County Historical Commission,

1986), p. 18.

22. Ibid., p. 22.

23. Ibid., p. 18.

24. The South Carolina Railroad reported in its corporate records at the end of

1861 the ownership of nearly ninety slaves, at a total investment of $77,566.

Similar records from the North Carolina Railroad during 1862 show the company

leasing 273 slaves from owners scattered across the state. By 1864, the number had

grown to nearly four hundred. The Richmond & Petersburg Railroad owned 118

slaves in that year, employing a dozen as remen and train hands, two dozen in

their mechanics shops, and a score of slaves repairing tracks. The Virginia Central

relied on more than three hundred slaves during the Civil War, primarily for the

building and repair of rail lines but also assigning dozens of blacks as brakemen

and firemen on railroad cars. Also see Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution:

Slavery in the Ante-bellum South (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956).

25. Armes, pp. 76, 66, 68.

26. Ibid., p. 74.

27. Ibid., p. 78.

28. Bennett, p. 27.

29. Ibid., p. 28.

30. Armes, p. 169.

31. Anderson to Ware, Feb. 12, 1859, Shelby Iron Co. Papers, University of

Alabama Library, cited in Vandiver, “The Shelby Iron Company,” p. 15.

32. John W. Lapsley, a “militant industrialist” and early Alabama railroad builder,

was associated with the Shelby Coal Co. and the Shelby Lime Co., both essential to

the Shelby Iron Works. On March 18, 1862, to provide capital for the Confederate

expansion, Lapsley, another major slave owner named John M. McClanahan, and

Henry H. Ware, John R. Kenan, Andrew T. Jones, and James W. Lapsley each

bought a one-seventh interest in the Shelby Works. Cited in ibid., pp. 14–16.

33. 1860 Census, Shelby County Slave Schedules.

34. Referring to A. N. DeWitt & Co., Columbus, Miss., making two hundred barrels

a week; Griswold & Gunnison, pistol makers in Griswoldville, Ga. See Vandiver,

“The Shelby Iron Company.”

35. Bennett, Old Tannehill, p. 24.

36. Vandiver, “The Shelby Iron Company,” p. 20.

37. J. Michael Bunn, “Slavery in the Shelby Iron Works During the Civil War,”

Shelby County Historical Society Quarterly (March 2003), pp. 24–29.

38. Ibid.

39. Bennett, Old Tannehill, p. 17.

40. Armes, pp. 162–64.

41. Justin Fuller, “History of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company,

1852–1907” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1966), p. 280.

42. W. David Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District: An

Industrial Epic (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994), p. 34; also see

Alex Lichtenstein's review, Alabama Review 51 (April 1998), pp. 106–13.

43. John T. Milner, “Report to the Governor of Alabama on the Alabama Central

Railroad” (Montgomery: Advertiser Book and Job Steam Press Print, 1859), pp. 44–

45, ADAH.

44. Arney R. Childs, ed., The Private Journal of Henry William Ravenel, 1859–1887

(Columbia, S.C., 1947), p. 256, cited in William Cohen, “Negro Involuntary

Servitude in the South, 1865–1940,” Journal of Southern History (February 1976),

p. 34.

45. Matthew J. Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American

South, 1866–1928 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), p. 100.

46. Ibid., p. 169.

47. Ibid., pp. 82, 117.

48. Ibid., pp. 133, 154–55, 161, 169, 202.

49. Mary Ellen Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865–1900

(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000), pp. 14–15, 66–67.

50. Annual Report of the Inspectors of the Alabama Penitentiary for the Year

Ending Sept. 30, 1877 (Montgomery: Barrett & Brown, 1878), ADAH.

51. Convict Legislation and Rules, 1882–1883, Department of Corrections, ADAH.

52. History of the Penitentiary, Special Message of Gov. Cobb, 1882, ADAH.

53. First Biennial Report of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, September 1,

1894, to August 31, 1896 (Montgomery: Roemer Printing, 1896), ADAH.

CHAPTER I I: SLAVERY’S INCREASE

1. 1870 Census, Bibb County.

2. Headstone of Elisha Cottingham, 1793–Nov. 10, 1870; headstone of Nancy

Parker Cottingham, Feb. 3, 1796–July 22, 1873.

3. 1870 Census, Bibb County, Six Mile Township.

4. 1870 Census, Bibb County, Randolph Township, Brierfield Post Office.

5. Shelby Sentinel, Aug. 16, 1877.

6. Docket of A. M. Elliott, Justice of the Peace, 1878–1880, SCHS.

7. Convicts at Hard Labor for the County in the State of Alabama on the First Day

of March 1883, microfiche, ADAH.

8. “Jefferson County Circuit Court Convict Docket, 1902–1903,” BPLA.

9. Tallapoosa County Deed Book: “This agreement made and entered into between

men Sevi Pearson of the rst part, and John W. Pace of the second part, whereas

Sevi Pearson of the rst part has been convicted before Luke Davenport, a notary

public of and ex o cio J.P. on the 28th day of April 1885 for an assault and

battery on Cora Iverson, and a ne of sixty dollars imposed and the further sum of

ten and 50/100s cash, and whereas the said Sevi Pearson has confessed judgment

for the above arrest and John W. Pace has become his security on payment for said

conviction and upon becoming his security for said amount and paying the same

for the said Sevi Pearson, bond himself to work faithfully for John W. Pace for

eight dollars per month for nine months and further agrees that he will take such

treatment as other convicts this April 28 1885, signed in open court, Luke

Davenport, NP, Sevi Pearson, John Pace.”

10. Thomas L. Cochran to R. H. Dawson, Nov. 23, 1887, Administrative

Correspondence, 1881–1897, Dawson Letter Books. Correspondence of the

Inspectors of the Penitentiary, Department of Corrections, ADAH.

11. Shelby County Record of Prisoners, April 11, 1878, to October 11, 1878, SCHS.

12. History of the Penitentiary, Special Message of Gov. Cobb, 1882, pp. 357–58,

ADAH.

13. For an excellent examination of the dialogue between Archey and Dawson, see

Mary Ellen Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865–1900

(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000).

14. Ezekiel Archey to R. H. Dawson, Pratt Mines, Jan. 18, 1884, Dawson Letter

Books, ADAH.

15. Curtin, p. 69.

16. Testimony of Jno. D. Goode, Testimony Taken by the Joint Special Committee

of the Session of 1880–81 to Enquire into the Condition and Treatment of Convicts

of the State (Montgomery, Ala., 1881), ADAH.

17. Curtin, p. 69.

18. Ethel Armes, The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama (Birmingham: Chamber of

Commerce, 1910), p. 110.

19. Marjorie Longenecker White, The Birmingham District: An Industrial History

and Guide (Birmingham: Birmingham Publishing, 1981).

20. New York Times, Dec. 17, 1882; cited in Curtin, p. 70.

21. Curtin, p. 75.

22. Biennial Report of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, 1880–1882

(Montgomery, Ala.: Barrett & Brown, 1882), ADAH.

23. Cobb, Penitentiary, pp. 357–58.

24. Dawson to B. F. Porter, June 21, 1883; to B. H. Warren, June 30, 1883, Dawson

Letter Books, ADAH.

25. Armes, p. 196.

26. Curtin, p. 83.

27. Dawson to Simon O’Neal, Judge of the Probate, Russell County, May 23, 1883,

Dawson Letter Books, ADAH.

28. Dawson to Judge Allston, Aug. 27, 1883, Dawson Letter Books, ADAH.

29. Annual Report of Inspectors, 1878.

30. Lewis McCurdy, of Lowndesboro, Ala., telephone interview with the author,

Aug. 29, 2003

31. Dawson diary entries, Diary of Reginald Heber Dawson, 1883–1906, July 5, 13,

1883, folder 1, ADAH.

32. Dawson to Simon O’Neal, Sept. 10, 1883, A. S. Williams Collection, Eufaula

Athenaeum; Dawson to L. A. J. Cumlie, Sept. 25, 1883, Dawson Letter Books, ADAH.

33. Curtin, pp. 84–88.

34. Convicts at Hard Labor, 1883.

35. Dawson Diary, July 10, 1885, ADAH.

36. Curtin, p. 88.

37. Minutes of the Board of Inspectors, 1883–1913, Department of Corrections,

ADAH.

38. Dawson Diary, July 11, 1883, ADAH.

39. Ibid., Nov. 14, 21, 1883.

40. Ibid., May 22, 1887.

41. Convict Legislation and Rules, 1882–1883, ADAH.

42. Testimony of Pratt payroll agent Justin Collins, Nov. 16, 1883, U.S. Congress,

Senate, Committee on Education and Labor, 49th Cong., 2nd Session, Testimony

Before the Committee to Investigate the Relations Between Capital and Labor 4:441,

cited in Curtin, p. 86.

43. A. T. Henley to R. H. Dawson, Dec. 7, 1883, Dawson Letter Books, ADAH.

44. Ezekiel Archey to R. H. Dawson, Jan. 18, 1884, Dawson Letter Books, ADAH.

45. Milner to Dawson, June 10, 1885, Dawson Letter Books, ADAH.

46. Minutes of the Shelby County Commission, December 1880, SCHS.

47. Shelby County Record of Prisoners, April 18, 1879, to Oct. 1, 1888, SCHS.

48. Shelby County Commission Minutes, July 9, 1883, SCHS.

49. Shelby County Commission Minutes, Feb. 2, 1883, SCHS. Elliott received

approval for $43.50 for fees related to state cases he had adjudged; warrants

totaling $94.65 for work in circuit court cases were also approved.

50. Shelby County Minutes, Feb. 11, 1884, SCHS.

51. J. A. MacKnight, “Columbiana: The Gem of the Hills” (Columbiana, Ala.: Shelby

County Sentinel, circa 1907), pp. 5–6.

52. Shelby County Record of Prisoners, Aug. 17, 1884, to May 16, 1886, SCHS.