Testimony of J. Wesley Caradine, excerpted from Mississippi in 1875. Report of the Select Committee to Inquire into the Mississippi Election of 1875 (1876).
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J. W. CARADINE – CLAY COUNTY.
ABERDEEN, MISS., June 26, 1876.
PERSONAL STATEMENT.
J. W. CARADINE (colored) sworn and examined.
By the CHAIRMAN:
Question. Where do you live? – Answer. I live in Clay County.
Q. In what place, near what post office? – A. Near West Point; that is my post-office. A little village named Siloam is nearest me, but no business is done there scarcely.
Q. How long have you lived there? – A. This is the second year.
Q. Where did you live before that? – A. In the neighborhood of Palo Alto, in the same county.
Q. What do you do? – A. Farm.
Q. Do you own land? – A. I have traded for some; I have not entirely paid for it yet.
Q. You have a right to own it? – A. Yes, sir.
Q. Have you taken any part in politics over there? – A. Well, a little, sir.
Q. Have you held any office? – A. I have, sir.
Q. What office have you held? – A. The first appointment I had was trustee in Chickasaw County, before Colfax was formed. After that, I was appointed as one of the school-directors. Since that I have been a member of the legislature.
Q. Do you read and write? – A. Yes, sir; a little.
Q. Have you learned that since the war? – A. Since the war. I did not know the alphabet before the war.
Q. What is your age? – A. I am going on 31; I was 30 the 16th of last February.
Q. Did you make any speeches in the last canvass? – A. A few. Well, I made a good many speeches before I was nominated, and afterward. I was a candidate at that time.
Q. A candidate for the legislature? – A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you make speeches up to the time of the election on the 2d of November, or did you stop before that? – A. I made some few speeches just before the election. I had a vacation a while after the nomination was made. I was silent until a few days just before the election, and I made a few remarks just to wake them up before the election.
Q. What led you to speak? – A. Well, everybody got perfectly quiet after the nominations were made; everybody resorted home to work, and there was no political excitement in the county; every one got very quiet until just before the election, and some of them thought that it would be proper to sort of liven it up again, and I had occasion to meet them again and talk with them.
EXCITING ELECTIONEERING INCIDENTS.
Q. Did you make any speeches on the democratic side? – A. I could not say exactly that they were on the democratic side. I had occasion to make some with them in joint discussion just a few days before the election.
Q. What led you to do that? – A. The first of my getting in conflict with them, I think, was on Tuesday before the election. The election was on Tuesday, I believe; and a week before the election I made a republican speech at Palo Alto. There is quite a neighborhood there, and they invited me up there to speak for the last time before the election, and I went up there and spoke to them on that night; and on the following day I had occasion to be in West Point, and they attacked me as to my speech that I had made a very fiery, contemptible speech, and wanted I would take it back.
Q. Who was it that attacked you and spoke in the way you said? – A. A gentleman at West Point; one of the attorneys there.
Q. Give us his name. – A. S. M. Bradshaw is the name of the gentleman that spoke to me.
Q. What did he say to you? – A. He attacked me. I went in very early in the morning, and I went around to the court-house; and I got into the court-house, and he halted me and said, “You are the very gentleman I want to see;” and he walked up and asked me what I said in my speech last night. I told him that I really could not tell him right then all I did say; that it was a very lengthy talk, and that I could not tell him all I did say, or really what I did say. He says, “If you said what I understood you said, you done it at the risk of your life.” I said, “I don’t know as I have said anything in violation of the laws of the country, or in violation of the Constitution under which I live. I always try to stay within the bounds of what I believe to be right, as near as possible. I did not go any further than that, as I think. I may be in error, but I don’t think I was in my own opinion.” He said: “What we understand you said, if you said it you have got to take it back, and I want you to meet us in the morning at 9 o’clock.” We did not have any more words there.
I knocked around the court-house all the next day. I met them the next morning – that was on Thursday. They had a sort of white people’s celebration, as you might call it, and all the whites were in town that day. There was scarcely any colored men in town. There was a powerful turnout there, and a considerable excitement; and I went in and staid around there until some time about 1 o’clock, and several of them had hollered at me during the day while they were marching around, and I joked with them. Most everybody in that county knew me, as I was born and raised right there close; and many white men in the ranks hollered at me, and said I had to take back before sundown what I had said on Tuesday night. I felt fearful, and I kept myself perfectly quiet.
About 1 o’clock Beverly Mathews, of Columbus, was making a speech to them on the street. He was on the gallery of the court-house, up from the ground, and I was not at the court-house. Some one came in and said that Mathews was speaking, and I concluded I would go down and listen to him. I went down, and the crowd was scattered around so much that I could not hear him on the outside, but I worked myself along in the crowd until I got near enough to hear what he was saying. I reckon I had been there some four or five minutes, as well as I can remember, and was standing there listening to him, when a gentleman cotched me in the bosom and shook me, and snatched me around. He says, “I suppose you say I am a God-damned liar?” I said, “No, I don’t, ‘case I never use an oath now;” that I had a different profession from that; that I did not cuss. He said again, “I suppose you call me a damned liar?” – just that way. I said to him, “No, I don’t cuss.” He then said to me the third time, “I suppose you say I am a God-damned liar? I want you to repeat it.” I said, “No, sir; I don’t cuss at all, and I don’t know what I would call you a liar about. I never had any conversation with you.” He said, “Do I understand you to deny what you said at Palo Alto?” I said, “Nobody asked me to deny it, any more than some people attacked me yesterday and said I should take it back to-day.” Says he, “Did you say so and so at Palo Alto Tuesday?” and I said to him that I didn’t.
Q. What did he say that you said? – A. He said that I told the colored people to fetch their guns to the election; that there was going to be blood spilled on account of this great thing. I said to him, “I am sorry that you think that such an ignorant man as myself would get up in the presence of intelligent men, as many of them gentlemen were, and make such a foolish speech. They certainly did not understand what I said, and there must be some misapprehension;” and from that two or three young men said, “Do you suppose we have not got intelligence enough to understand your political speeches?” I said, “No; I don’t suppose nothing of the kind; but there is some misapprehension somewhere. I never carried a pistol, and I never asked anybody to carry their arms, and I think you could not have understood me. I spoke the words plain enough, it looked to me, for any one to understand what I said. I said that a great battle was to be fought on Tuesday next between two very powerful elements, and that each man should be prepared with his ballot to fight the battle at the polls. I spoke it plain enough, it looked like, for any one to understand it, and you have come up and reported that I had said this, that, and the other.”
At that time a colored gentleman – I could not call his name to save my life now; I know his folks, and I know him when I see him passing on the street, and I think he lives in West Point – was standing right by me, and they were gathering around me pretty thick, cussing, ripping, and talking. This colored man took me up and carried me through the crowd, making way through the crowd. Immediately these white folks snatched him back, and snatched me back where I was, and they said, “You ain’t going to take this man anywhere until he takes back these things; we are satisfied that he has said them, and he has got to take them back.” I said, “I try as a boy here to give every man the respect that is due them as citizens, and I have always demanded it, and have got the respect of the white and black all through my life, and I suppose I have got as many friends in the country among the white people as any other colored man in it. I have never been insulted before since the war by any of the white people in my neighborhood, where I live, until this time; and I give every man the respect that is due him, and I asks it of you. It is your day, and I am here as a sacrifice if you want me. But I did not say these things, and what I did say I don’t take back. I declared my rights as a republican from principle and not motives of office.”
A gentleman named J. W. Prewett, a white man, came to me and just picked me right up, and said, “I have got you in my power now, and will see that you don’t get away from me.” He just picked me right up as though I had been a boy, and set me up on the pavement, and ran me into a saloon owned by Ed. Ware, and shoved me on in there, and says, “By God! get away from here; if anybody wants to do” – thus and so, or something of that kind, he remarked that he would not let them do it to me; and he got me into Ware’s front door, and there was a partition in there between the front saloon and a back room; and he dodged behind that and shoved me through there, and I kept on through and got into his back room there; and a colored man named Monroe Staggs taken me and carried me to the court-house, and from there I went into the office of the superintendent of public instruction there. I went in there and stayed there an hour, and never saw any more of them; but Prewett said that afterward thirty or forty came after me, and if he had not held the door so as to conceal me they would have shot me before I got out at the back door.
I did not have anything more to do with them after that, I believe, at all. This Jerry Hudson, the one that cotched me that day by the breast – I saw him a day or two afterward, and he spoke to me and said he was as good a friend to me now as he ever had been; that he was drunk on the day of the trouble. I told him I had nothing against him as a man, but that I felt a little wrong toward him for the way he treated me at the time. He said he felt that he had treated me wrong, and was sorry for it. I believe that was about as far as that case ever went, though they told me that I would have to go around and make some speeches for them; that I had risen up a great element or some kind of feeling in the colored men; that they never could get out of them for the next ten years to come, with the speeches I had made, and that I had to go around and make some speeches in behalf of them in some way, or else I might have some trouble. They told me if I would do that, I could demand some respect among them and have no further trouble with them.
WITNESS IS FORCED TO MAKE SPEECHES BY THE DEMOCRATS, BUT “THEY DID NOT REALLY APPRECIATE THEM.”
Q. What did they say would be the consequence if you did not go with them and make speeches? – A. They did not say if I did not do it what would be done, as I remember; but they came to my house and fotched a buggy for me and told me I had to go with them to make speeches for them. And they said, “You know what has been said and what has been done; you have got to go, so just hurry in here and go along if you don’t want any further trouble.” I then got in and went along with them, and they did not really appreciate my speeches at length; but I went along with them and made three speeches; and they had some fault to find with my speeches at last, but I have never had any trouble with them since.
“A BLACK-LIST.”
Q. Do you know anything about a black-list? – A. Well, there was a democratic club there, or a conservative club was, I believe, the name of the organization; and they met and passed resolutions that all that voted the republican ticket or took any part in the meetings of the republicans there should be put onto what they called the black-list; but as for the meaning of that black-list, I don’t know what they mean by it. I saw the resolution in a newspaper, and the black-list, as they call it, and saw several names attached to it; and they would meet occasionally, and every time they would meet I suppose they would fotch a man up. The black-list was that these men who appeared on it was not to get any employment from any man that owned land in the county, and if any man gave him employment he was to forfeit all his rights in the assemblage.
Q. What paper did you see that resolution in? – A. In the West Point Citizen, I think it was.
FELIX ARCHER HAS SOME TROUBLE WITH HIS EMPLOYER.
Q. Do you know Felix Archer? – A. Yes, sir.
Q. Where is he? – A. He lives about three miles due west of me – four miles, I reckon.
Q. Did he have any trouble in that canvass? – A. He never made any speeches, as I know.
Q. Was he run off? – A. He was not, of my own knowledge. I heard the old gentleman say himself that he was living with a man, I think, by the name of Ivey, and he had told him to leave his place; that he was not going to have anything to do with any damned radicals, or something of that kind; and I think finally he did leave, and he stayed away from his plantation. He lived there till his crop was gathered, and had to take his things away; but I think he allowed him to come back and finish gathering it; and he had to move his family and produce away before Christmas. I know there was a conversation that taken place between me and him, now, and I remember his saying that he had some trouble with his employer.
ABOUT THE PICKETS.
Q. Do you know whether any of the roads in your county were picketed during the canvass or on election day? – A. None, of my own knowledge; I heard it rumored.
Q. You did not see the pickets? – A. I did not see any. I saw them with some cannon, hauling them around in the back of the town; what they were going to do with them I did not know.
Q. You saw cannon? – A. Yes, sir; they shot off one near my house. They turned right up close to my house, on the hill, and shot it off and went on with it.
ARMED MEN IN UNIFORM AT THE ELECTION.
Q. Were there any armed men at this meeting at West Point on Thursday before the election? – A. I did not see any with guns, as I remember. They had these great big – what they call Ku-Klux pistols – great, big new pistols, a new kind of pistol there; and they had them buckled around on the outside. The privates did not have them, but the officers that was dressed in uniforms had them, pretty much.
Q. How many officers were dressed in uniform? – A. I could not tell you.
Q. What was the uniform? – A. Red shirts and yellow ones, and red caps with a feather or something sticking in them.
Q. Did these men have pistols? – A. Yes, sir.
Q. How many of these men were there uniformed in that way? – A. I could not tell you; I should think there were some twenty or thirty, maybe more. They was the officers there of their club, I suppose. They had general officers to preside over their shebang. They was riding around there generally – a great crowd of them. There may have been, I reckon – a large bunch – one hundred or more, of them.
Q. Do you know anything about threats by farmers not to employ men, other than what you have stated? – A. No, sir; none.
Q. Do you know whether any men were discharged after the election on the ground that they had voted the republican ticket? – A. No, sir; I do not believe I know any of my own personal knowledge. There wa’n’t any right in my own neighborhood; there is nobody scarcely in my neighborhood, only one or two farmers living there; all colored people pretty much around there; we are a colored neighborhood almost entirely.
ARMS AMONG THE COLORED PEOPLE.
Q. Do you know whether the colored people generally have arms or not – pistols or guns? – A. A good many of them have shot-guns, such as they are; shot-guns, or Army muskets, or something. They got hold of them after the war when they could get them cheap, and a good many of them got them; but I don’t think there was a great many pistols among them; I never seed many.
THURSDAY BEFORE THE ELECTION.
By Mr. BAYARD:
Q. Who was Mr. Prewett? – A. He is an old citizen living there, about four miles, I think, east of West Point.
Q. He was the white man who took you away from the crowd at the time you were standing listening to the speech? – A. Yes sir.
Q. There was a pretty big crowd of men? – A. Yes, sir; I reckon twelve or fifteen hundred.
Q. On Thursday before the election? – A. Yes, sir.
Q. Is Prewett a democrat? – A. He affiliates with the republicans.
Q. He came and just picked you up out of the crowd? – A. Yes, sir; just simply picked me up out of the crowd, and shoved me along into Mr. Ware’s saloon.
Q. Was there considerable decorating of buildings with flags that day? – A. Yes, sir; they had two or three hundred of them.
Q. What sort of flags did you see? – A. I saw red, and yellow, and green, kind of made in United States flag stripes; great broad stripes running clear through.
Q. Did you see any United States flags flying among the others? – A. I saw some made sort of in that style, with stars all around.
Q. Do you know a United States flag when you see it from any other flag? – A. I don’t know as I would; I think I would, though.
Q. Did you see one flying that day from the court-house? – A. Yes, sir; there was one from the court-house, but I could not subscribe the appearance of it. They had them front of the citizens’ doors all around.
THE BLACK-LIST.
Q. What is the date of that black-list you spoke of? – A. I could not tell you that.
Q. What year? – A. In 1875.
Q. Do you know about what time? – A. It was along, I think, in the latter part of the year; in November, I think.
Q. After the election? – A. I think it was after the election when I saw this resolution. I am most satisfied it was. I noticed it in the papers – in several different papers.