Darien: Radical Republican Central

1. "[In] the settlement of the Scotch Highlanders at Darien ... I was

surprised to hear an extempore prayer before a written sermon. Are

not then the words we speak to God to be set in order at least as

carefully as those we speak to our fellow worms?"1

Reverend John Wesley, 1737

Darien, the seat of McIntosh County, was always in the periphery, in the shadow of

Savannah and ultimately falling yet further off the beaten path. Now one is obliged to fly into

the adjoining town of Brunswick, one step closer to the Florida border. Brunswick also claims

the Coast Guard station, lighthouse, and the only decent public beach for swimming and

sunbathing.

Lighthouse on Saint Simon Island. Photograph by Nicole Roger-Hogan

1 Quoted from his journal, cited by Buddy Sullivan, Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater: The Story of McIntosh County and Sapelo. Published by the McIntosh County Board of Commissioners, Sixth Edition, October, 2001, p. 21.

Beach on Saint Simon island, near Brunswick, GA: photo by Nicole Roger-Hogan

Even the Interstate has by-passed Darien. Fast food restaurants and strip joints huddle near the

off-ramp while downtown businesses languish. Locals attempt to attract vacationers from

Atlanta, who can moor their boats at local "yacht clubs" that attempt to provide the essential

amenities, including condominiums and at least one good seafood restaurant. There also are bed

and breakfasts, mainland and island lodging, and a desultory effort to capitalize on the history of

this town that was celebrated in Glory, as the port city burned to the ground by black Union

troops, recruited in Massachusetts.

Darien has attempted to write its own history. The McIntosh County Commissioners

have published the substantial but less than scholarly tome of local legend, Buddy Sullivan,

whose work is celebrated by local genealogists and history buffs, but city and county officials are

much less accommodating than this gesture suggests.

2

Plantation style house now operating as bed and breakfast, close to downtown, on the river. Photograph by Nicole Roger-Hogan

The local archives (with the exception of the County Court records, which are, of course,

open to the public) are guarded by appointed or elected officials who rely on feeble excuses if

not outright lies to protect the primary sources from the carpetbaggers/Yankees who might wish

to add to the reconstructed history. My experience may be atypical, but I found that the warm

welcome chilled immediately when I explained that Darien was 80% black and that virtually all

local government officials were black in 1870. Surely, they knew this. Surely they knew of

Tunis G. Campbell, Sr., New Jersey free-born black who came South with the Freedmen's

Bureau and, served, 1868-1872, as State Senator, Justice of the Peace, and preacher. He was, in

essence, the local boss, loved and feared by many, but there is virtually no trace of his existence

left in the official records of McIntosh County or Darien. Why were the local history buffs so

cold when I asked about records from the city and county government, 1868-1876? Were we not

all interested in celebrating the history of this rather extraordinary town? Only in the County

Court Clerk's office and in the public library were there available sources and helpful staff.

3

Elsewhere, the keepers of the vault were Dobermans (vicious guard dogs), protecting their

history from the Yankee invaders2

Contemporary Black Episcopal Church, across from Bed and Breakfast, near downtown on the river: Photograph by Nicole Roger-Hogan

Whether or not they were justified in this regard I shall leave to the reader's judgment, but

I will preface this local history with two disclaimers. First, this is a very narrow political

economy of Darien, 1868-1876, which does not do justice to the rich social and cultural life or to

the early and later history. Second, this is a revisionist history, but one that relies on sources that

celebrate the history of Georgia and McIntosh County and at least one source that celebrates the

efforts of Campbell. These include some work that does not meet the minimal standards of

academic scholarship (particularly in the use of quotation marks to indicate wholesale

2 Nicole Roger-Hogan is the original source for the Doberman analogy. She was not credited appropriately in Richard Hogan, “Where Sociologists Meet Historians: The Secret Life of the Open Stacks,” presented in the “How Scholars Work” series at Purdue University Libraries, October 30, 2008.

4

"borrowing"), but these decidedly biased accounts, including government records and local

newspapers (beginning in 1874), are supplemented when possible with sources from other towns

(notably, Savannah and Atlanta) and with whatever secondary sources I could locate.

Plaque for Episcopal "Colored" Church of 1876: Photograph by Nicole Roger-Hogan

Residence across the street from the Black Episcopal Church, near downtown, on the river; note U.S. and Confederate Battle flags: Photograph by Nicole Roger-Hogan

5

Theoretical and methodological qualms and quarrels are in the footnotes. The text offers

a tale of how the Scots established a god-fearing farming community in the highlands of the

Altamaha River, bolstered by an anxious British Crown and the Charlestown and Savannah

boosters, who required, above all, a buffer between them and the savages (both indigenous and

French or Spanish) in Florida. After the Scots had all but abandoned their highland farms, the

rice planters struggled with slaves and Freedmen, and eventually tried Chinese labor in efforts to

sustain agricultural trade with the transportation and timber interests who followed. Once again,

however, Darien was off the beaten trail, in this case, the rail connecting Savannah to Brunswick

rather than Darien. Most important, in this revisionist account, is the story of Reconstruction

Darien, the timber and (at best) secondary regional shipping and trade center that distinguished

itself as the heart of Radical Republican partisanship between 1868 and 1876, thanks in large

part to the indefatigable efforts of Tunis G. Campbell, Sr.

Before turning to Reconstruction, however, we should spend some time with the Scottish

Highlanders, memorialized today by a small cemetery in the heart of town. The cemetery

appears, in this photo from 2006, to be a work in progress, but the sign indicates some interest in

the historical significance of this site, which is indicated on standard tourist maps. At the same

time, the chain link fence and barbed wire, together with the brick and mortar fortification of an

earlier preservation effort, indicate a concerted effort to deter vandalism and to respect the dearly

departed.

6

Photo by Nicole Roger-Hogan, March 2006

Photo by Nicole Roger-Hogan, March 2006

7

Early Darien

The Scots in colonial Darien were gentlemen farmers who were decidedly anti-slavery

(and anti-black) but were not opposed to the use of debt peonage as a source of docile labor. The

Scottish settlement of 1836 was the second attempt to fortify the Southern frontier of the British

colonies. King George's fort, established in 1721, did withstand the first visit from the Spanish

troops but was burned in 1725, re-constructed in a hap-hazard manner, and finally abandoned in

1827.3 Then, when Governor James Edward Oglethorpe established the Georgia colony, platting

the city of Savannah in 1733, he re-populated Darien with Scots to protect his infant settlement

from the barbarians in the North as well as the South. Oglethorpe was convinced that the slave-

based rice plantation economy of the Carolinas was as morally bankrupt and as much to be

avoided as the Southern (Floridian) influence of Catholics and Indians. Oglethorpe thought the

Scotch might provide both a military outpost on the Altamaha River and the foundation for a

white yeoman (or, at least, agrarian) colony. In this regard, Oglethorpe declared, in 1736, that

there would be neither slavery nor strong spirits (rum or brandy—wine, beer, and ale were

allowed) in the Georgia colony.

The Scots who settled in Darien were, apparently, god-fearing family men and women

who established not just fortifications but a school and church. In 1736, Darien claimed two

thousand inhabitants, including the Scottish farmers who relied on indentured or otherwise

recompensed servants to grow corn, tend poultry and cattle and, of course, provide domestic

service.4 Darien linked the agrarian Scots to the rest of the world, exporting locally produced

food and timber for the troops in Frederica (twenty miles south of Darien) and for the growing

3 Sullivan, Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater, pp. 10-154 There is a discrepancy in the accounts of Sullivan, p. 22, and Phinizy Spalding, "Part One: Colonial Period," pp. 9-67, in Kenneth Coleman, General Editor, A History of Georgia. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1977, p. 18, who estimates, "Perhaps fewer than a dozen released debtors came to Georgia during the entire Trustee period." This (Spalding assures his readers) is probably fewer than one would find at other North American Royal Colonies at that time.

8

city of Savannah (on the South Carolina border, at the mouth of the Savannah River). The

McIntosh clan and the other pioneers were granted substantial lands, typically 50 acre town lots

and 500 acre farms, although Grey Elliot purchased Sapelo Island (9,520 acres) "from the Crown

on October 31, 1760".5

Darien all but died during the American Revolution, but local enterprise was revitalized

in the early national period, when Darien became the seat of McIntosh County, in 1818.6 By this

time Darien was a local port for the interior cotton plantations, along the Altamaha, Oconee, and

Ocmulgee Rivers (see map inset). Sullivan reports, "In February 1818 ... 1,100 bales of cotton

had arrived from the upcountry plantations."7 Steam powered saw mills, wholesale merchant and

shipping firms, and, in 1819, even a local bank marked the prominence of this growing

metropolis, but Darien still fell far short of competing with Savannah as an antebellum shipping

or trade center.

5 Sullivan, p. 416 Sullivan p. 667 Sullivan, p. 142

9

10

Source: http://www.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/maps/1852t4.jpg

As seen in Figure 2.1, Chatham County, the hinterland and metropolitan area for

Savannah, was already close to 13,000 people in 1800 and grew steadily after 1830, reaching

31,000 before the outbreak of the Civil War. McIntosh County grew most rapidly between 1800

and 1820, when it was one-third the size of Chatham County, but it never boomed again and

actually lost population in the 1850s.

11

Although Savannah did not rival New Orleans as a Southern port city, it was a Southern

city nonetheless. In this regard, as Chatham County became part of the Savannah metropolitan

area there was a dramatic increase in the white population, to the point where Chatham was a

white majority county at the outbreak of the Civil War. At the same time there was a less

spectacular but still noticeable increase in the population of free blacks, which peaked at 731

(3% of the total population) in 1850.8

8 Cities tended to undermine the master’s control. Richard C. Wade, Slavery in the Cities: The South, 1820-1860. NY: Oxford University Press, 1964, p. 244, argues, "Slavery's most compelling problem in the city was not finding work for the bondsmen, but controlling them when they were off the job." Frank Towers, The Urban South and the Coming of the Civil War. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004, p. 1, offers a different but compatible argument about how "cities constituted obstacles to white unity" and "provided a focal point for secessionists."

12

Darien did not dominate antebellum McIntosh County to the same extent, representing,

perhaps, ten percent of the county population at its peak in 1820. McIntosh remained a rural

county, with Darien, at best, a local shipping center. Consequently, McIntosh County did not

grow substantially in white or free black population in the decades leading up to the Civil War.

The free black population peaked at 109 (2% of total population) in 1830, when both white and

slave population declined. After that, however, as seen in Figure 2.3, the slave population

increased steadily, peaking at 4,629 in 1850 (77% of the total county population).

13

Darien during the War

As a local shipping point relying on water rather than rail transportation, Darien did not

have the strategic importance of Atlanta or Savannah, although it did merit the invasion of the

Massachusetts regiment, which burnt the city to the ground and effectively destroyed local trade

and industry. When the war began, Atlanta, Macon, Augusta, and Savannah were the railroad

hubs of Georgia. There was a spur-line running to Brunswick, Darien's neighbor on the South

side of the Altamaha River, on the route from Savannah to Thomasville (see Figure 2.4), but

Darien had no rail service and was of little strategic or economic significance in the battle to

subdue the South.

14

Figure 2.4 Railroads in Georgia, 1860

source: F. N. Boney, “The Emerging Empire State,” in Kenneth Coleman, general editor, A History of Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1977), p. 160.

The Civil War did have a tremendous impact on the future development of Darien,

however, because the port city became a major region of refuge for Freedmen. As Sherman

made his famous march to the sea, destroying crops, rails, and virtually every bit of capital or

infrastructure in a wide swath of destruction from Atlanta to Savannah, bands of Freedmen

followed the advancing Union troops, their liberators. As Sherman effectively freed slaves, he

thereby destroyed the most concentrated means of production sustaining the Georgia cotton

economy. As he approached the coast his advance produced a similar effect on the rice

15

plantations, which set the stage for what might be the most radical Reconstruction program

attempted anywhere in the South.9

Prior to Sherman's march, in 1864, the Union navy effectively controlled the Atlantic

coastal region, with the exception of Fort McAlister, just below Savannah. Darien was burned in

1863, but the valiant black Massachusetts regiment was not able to take Fort Wagner, south of

Charleston, where they suffered incredible casualties in a losing cause (as dramatized in the

movie, Glory).10

By the end of 1864, however, as Sherman captured Savannah, federal control of the

Georgia coast was complete. Then, in January of 1865, Sherman issued Order No. 15, ordering

the confiscation of the coastal and island rice plantations off the South Carolina and Georgia

coast (under the authority of the Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862) for settlement by

Freedmen, under the supervision of military authorities. Sherman appointed Rufus Saxton as the

governing authority, and Saxton was later appointed as regional director under the authority of

the newly organized Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (the Freedmen's

Bureau), also in 1865. He then appointed Tunis G. Campbell, Sr. to supervise the colonization

of the Georgia Islands,11 thus marking the opening chapter of Campbell's work for the Georgia

Freedmen and his enduring Darien legacy.

9 Port Royal, South Carolina, north of Savannah on the Atlantic coast, is the best known candidate for this honor, due to the scale of the initial effort and the protracted conflict associated with efforts to reverse the tide of radical egalitarianism, particularly in redistributing land. See W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (NY: Free Press, 1998 [1935]), pp. 67, 386-388.10 see F. N. Boney, “War and Defeat,” in Coleman, editor, History of Georgia, p. 198; see also Sullivan, on the destruction of Darien and the future of the regiment, pp. 294-30411 Duncan, Freedom’s Shore: Tunis G. Campbell and the Georgia Freedmen (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), pp. 7, 19-20

16

Figure 2.5Sherman's March to the Sea

source: Coleman, p. 199.

17

Tunis G. Campbell, Sr.

Tunis G. Campbell, Sr., was born in New Jersey in 1812, the son of a blacksmith and one

of ten children who lived the life of Northern free blacks, surrounded by whites, including one

who sponsored Campbell's education at the Episcopal academy, where he remained, until the age

of eighteen, the only black student. Campbell later converted to Methodism but maintained

collegial relations with the Congregationalists in the American Missionary Association (AMA)

and with the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, which petitioned the governor for his

release in 1876.12

The 1870 census enumerator identified Campbell as a minister (and a State senator).

Fellow clergy recognized him as a man of the cloth, but his reputation in Georgia was based

largely on his political activities. His Georgia political career began with his colonization efforts

for the Freedmen's Bureau and continued with his efforts for the Republican party, including his

service registering voters and serving, first, as delegate to the constitutional convention, and then

as Georgia State senator, General Assemblyman (an office to which he was elected but never

served), and local justice of the peace.

12 Tunis G. Campbell, Sufferings of the Rev. T. G. Campbell and his Family in Georgia (Washington: Enterprise Publishing Company, 1877), pp. 5-6; Duncan, Freedom’s Shore, pp. 12-13. Rt. Rev. Wesley J, Gaines, D. D. African Methodism in the South; or Twenty-Five Years of Freedom (Atlanta: Franklin Publishing House, 1890), pp. 66-67, electronic edition, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, reports the petition from the AME conference in 1876. Edmund L. Drago, Black Politicians and Reconstruction in Georgia: A Splendid Failure (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), pp. 18-19, offers insights into the competing sects and the extent to which the regional and racial distinctions were reproduced in religious organization. The dominance of the AME church, both in Augusta and in Savannah, best represented by Bishop Turner, as the church of the Freedmen might help us to appreciate the difference between the missionary efforts of the AMA—essentially, a Northern, white liberal "back to Africa" abolitionist church and the black Northern AME.

18

Tunis G. Campbell

source: reproduction of drawing from Campbell (1848), http://www.nathanielturner.com/marchingdiffdrummer4.htm, accessed 6/5/1020

During the brief Republican Reconstruction era, 1868-1871, and to a lesser extent

thereafter, Campbell was the leader of the Darien black majority. He was expelled from the state

legislature with the rest of the elected black representatives in 1869 but was reseated with them

in 1870. He lost his re-election bid for the senate, in 1872, through political machinations in

neighboring Liberty County and was then denied election to the General Assembly, in 1874,

when the Darien election results were thrown out in a similarly suspect appeal.13 Even so, in

1874 he was the unchallenged leader of the local population. He organized the black militia and

the volunteer fire department. By 1875, in desperation, the local Democrats had him arrested,

convicted and leased as convict labor, based on trumped up charges rooted in his service as

Darien J. P.14

13 According to the Savannah editor, Daily News &Tribune, 1 October 1872, p. 1, Campbell cooperated with the leader of black Republicans in Liberty but failed to carry that county; Duncan, Freedom’s Shore, p. 95, presents the fraudulent suppression of Liberty County votes as the decisive factor in this election. According to the Savannah editor, Daily News and Tribune, 15 October 1872, p. 1, however, Campbell lost in the more populous Tattnall district, which explains the results. Both accounts are sustained by facts; more on this later.14 This rather generous interpretation of Campbell’s role in these events is based largely on Duncan’s account. Campbell, The Sufferings of T. G. Campbell, pp. 25-26, reports that he preached in the convict labor camp, where he was imprisoned in 1876. He also reported that he had been offered $35,000 in 1868 and then again, while in jail in

19

The details and the significance of Campbell's efforts in Reconstruction Darien will be

developed further in the course of this narrative. At this point we need only recognize two

indisputable facts that are easily lost in arguments about who Campbell was and what he

represented. First, Campbell was initially a Northern "back to Africa" abolitionist and an

Episcopalian. Second, in the course of his struggle for racial justice, first as an abolitionist and

later as a defender of the Freedmen, he became a radical. In this regard, he was not so different

from Du Bois, who was a Progressive sociologist when he published The Philadelphia Negro.

One might compare Campbell's first publication, instructing servants (in 1848) with his diatribe

of 1877, at which point he rivaled the later Du Bois as a radical critic of republican capitalism in

the U.S. While conservatives tend to view Campbell as Hitler (or Stalin) and liberals want to

present him as an earlier version the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., in many ways it makes

more sense to think of Bishop Turner, of the AME church, as the Reconstruction Georgia

incarnation of Dr. King. In this regard, Campbell resembles Malcolm X, although he had

already found religion before he was imprisoned.15

The point is that Campbell was, by 1877 if not before, a radical, who defended the rights

of working men against their exploitation by capitalists. He was not primarily a defender of

Civil Rights so much as a defender of human rights and the rights of working men. What makes

his situation different from Malcolm's is not a commitment to nonviolence or a hesitation to use

Savannah, from the spring 1875 until mid-January 1876, as enticement to "keep quiet, and to preach as the white ministers directed, or leave the State." (p. 24).15 W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999 [1899]); Tunis G. Campbell, Hotel Keepers, Head Waiters, and Housekeepers’ Guide (Boston, 1848), reprinted as Never Let People be Kept Waiting: A Textbook on Hotel Management, edited by Doris Elizabeth King, King Reprints in Hospitality Series, Raleigh, North Carolina: The Graphic Press, 1973, Volume I. Campbell, Sufferings of the Rev. T. G. Campbell. Aldon Morris is finishing a book on Du Bois that should become the new standard for sociologists attempting to locate Du Bois in the canon. A less ambitious biography of Campbell should be forthcoming in a book edited by my friend and colleague, Joseph Dorsey, who has been less than forthcoming about the status of that manuscript. On Turner, see Stephen W. Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African-American Religion in the South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992). Further reading for those interested in religion is offered in the bibliographic essay.

20

"whatever means necessary" but the fact that when Campbell was arrested and leased as convict

labor, Turner and his followers pleaded for the governor to release him from his unjust

imprisonment. In many ways, the black clergy in Reconstruction Georgia were better able to

cooperate across class, region, and politics than was the case in the late twentieth century, where

the cleavage between civil rights and black power seemed insurmountable.16

Reconstruction Darien

When Campbell's attempt to establish Freedmen as yeoman farmers was abandoned by

the Freedmen's Bureau, in deference to the planters' demands for a contract labor system,

Campbell moved his Freedmen and his family to McIntosh County, where he leased with the

option to purchase the Belleville plantation, which had been reduced to ruin during the war. He

established the Freedmen as freeholders and organized a land claim club to sustain their claims.

He worked with the AMA and the AME in their efforts to establish schools and churches for

Freedmen, although he remained at least nominally independent from both sets of missionaries.

Georgia clergy, particularly in the AME, respected Campbell, "as a minister of a sister church."17

His religious service was important, particularly in building his local constituency and his

regional if not State alliances, but it is difficult to separate religious from political affiliations, at

16 The conservative perspective on Campbell is most clearly articulated by Sullivan, p. 333, reporting, "He was, in reality, a petty dictator." The liberal perspective is best captured by Duncan, p. xi, presenting Campbell as a "freedom fighter" and "an American who wanted to create a true color-blind democracy." W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, p. 499, relying on secondary sources, was less kind to Campbell. Perhaps the most balanced account is Drago, Black Politicians, p. 82-84, who characterizes Campbell as a political "boss" who was willing to bend the rules to the point of jury tampering. Drago asserts, p. 82, "He exercised his power arbitrarily and totally to the benefit of blacks." On Campbell's radicalism, consider his own words, Sufferings of the Rev. T. G. Campbell, p. 3, "I ask the laboring men and women of this nation, How long will it be before you will have no rights that the capitalists or property-holder is bound to respect? It is time you began to think about this."17 The petition from the AME identified Campbell “as a minister of a sister church.” See Gaines, African Methodism in the South, pp. 66-67. Campbell, Sufferings, p.8 reports that he had, in 1865, a "certificate as an Elder of the Zion Methodist Episcopal Church in America … as missionary for the States of Georgia and Florida." The Timber Gazette, 25 April 1874, p. 1, listed a “Methodist (colored) church ministered by Rev. S. Brown, who was not enumerated in the 1870 census in Darien or Ridgeville and does not appear elsewhere in the historical record. It is not clear if this was ever Campbell’s church or if he ever had his own church in Georgia or anywhere else.

21

least partly because Campbell and Turner were fellow legislators as well as preachers. In either

role, Campbell was instrumental in registering Darien and McIntosh County Freedmen to vote

and then in guiding their choice of elected officials. He was elected as a delegate to the

Constitutional Convention that was to meet the challenge of Reconstruction and establish a new

State in which slavery and rebellion were repudiated and political if not civil rights were granted

to all, without distinction based on race, color, creed, or previous condition of servitude.

Even the Moderate Republican leadership was reluctant to extend these rights to Georgia

blacks, and there was considerably more support from newly enfranchised blacks than from

nominally enfranchised whites, many of whom chose to boycott the election of Constitutional

delegates. Campbell was incredibly effective, however, in mobilizing local support for the new

constitution and for the Radical Republican Governor Bullock, in the landslide electoral victories

of 1868. McIntosh County was one of the coastal counties where Bullock received over 75% of

all votes cast, as indicated in Figure 2.6.

22

Figure 2.6Georgia Gubernatorial Election of 1868

source: computed from Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR 0001). "United States Historical Election Returns, 1824-1968." Ann Arbor, MI.

In fact, McIntosh County was one of the few contiguous counties in which President

Grant also garnered substantial support, as seen in Figure 2.7. In most of Georgia, even where

support for Bullock and for the Constitution was substantial, in 1868, there was limited support

for Grant.

23

Figure 2.7Georgia Presidential Election of 1868

source: source: computed from Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR 0001). "United States Historical Election Returns, 1824-1968." Ann Arbor, MI.

Nevertheless, in Darien, in 1868, Tunis G. Campbell was Justice of the Peace and State

senator. His son, Tunis G. Campbell, Jr., was McIntosh County's representative to the General

Assembly. More than in Savannah or Augusta, blacks controlled Darien politically if not

economically between 1868 and 1870. This is most apparent in the enumeration of the 1870

census, completed before Georgia was “redeemed” and local government reorganized on that

basis.

Darien in the 1870 Census

In 1870, the population of McIntosh County was 4,491, including 3,288 (73%) blacks

and mulattos. The town of Darien included 547 persons, just over 12% of the county total,

24

including 435 blacks and mulattos (and one Indian) but only 111 whites (20% of the Darien

population). Darien dominated the county, economically and politically, more than these figure

suggest, because the richest whites and poorest blacks in the Darien metropolitan area lived

outside the city proper, in the upland community of Ridgeville, which was never incorporated

but functioned as a relatively white suburb, located on a hill above the port city of Darien.18

Table 2.1Mean (and Standard Deviation) Real and Personal Wealth for Black/Mulatto and White

Residents of Darien and Ridgeville

Black/Mulatto White

Town Real Personal N Real Personal N

Darien $50 (272) $26 (112) 435 $827 (2711) $588 (1595) 111

Ridgeville $16 (74) $14 (59) 221 $1,124 (7714) $850 (5007) 192

Total $39 (228) $22 (98) 656 $1,015 (6351) $755 (4105 303

source: coded from 1870 manuscript census, on microfilm

When we consider Darien and Ridgeville together, as the metropolitan area of the port

city of Darien, they accounted for 21% of McIntosh County population and 49% of county

wealth in 1870. Even so, the reach of the metropolitan area was much greater than these

statistics suggest. Aside from the 14 pages of Darien and 11 pages of Ridgeville residents

enumerated in 1870 there were an additional 56 pages of McIntosh County enumeration

18 Ridgeville was 54% black in 1870, so it qualifies as a "white" suburb only in contrast to Darien, which was 80% black. As seen in Table 2.1, Ridgeville is also distinguished from Darien by the relative wealth of whites and the relative poverty of blacks. Thus Ridgeville was, in 1870, the suburban home of the wealthy white Darien businessmen and their black servants.

25

associated with the Darien post office. Only 26 pages of enumeration in the county lay outside

the reach of the Darien postmaster, and all of these were railroad construction camps, as opposed

to permanent settlements. It is apparent that the port city of Darien, together with its wealthy

suburb, dominated the county economically as well as politically, as the county seat and the

commercial and industrial center.

Theodore P. Pease, the Redeemer appointed chair of the county commissioners, ex-

officio Mayor and Justice of the Peace in post-Redemption Darien, who attempted to replace

Tunis G. Campbell, Sr. as the local political boss, was a resident of Ridgeville. In 1870,

however, Pease was just another wealthy merchant, a 57 year-old white male claiming $15,000

in real and $17,000 in personal wealth. Enumerated alongside the Pease family was a mulatto

household of one housekeeper and two domestic servants, claiming $500 in real wealth and no

personal wealth between them. Following the enumerator, the next household is the Joseph

Stewart family. Joseph was a black stevedore, claiming $200 in real wealth and $100 in personal

wealth. The next household was the William Robert Gignilliat family. William was a 34 year-

old white male, a lawyer claiming $300 in real and $8,000 in personal wealth. Gignilliat was

also Campbell's rival for the Georgia State Senate in 1868 and was the chair of the executive

committee of the local Democratic Party in 1874.

26

Table 2.2Mean and standard deviation Real and Personal Wealth by Class and Race,

Darien and Ridgeville, Georgia, 1870 (N=959)

black or mulatto white

Classmean real

wealth s.d.

mean personal wealth s.d. N

mean real

wealth s.d.

mean personal wealth s.d. N

LaborCraft $104 185 $85 158 45 $492 1380 $1,002 3807 27Service $53 222 $17 87 73 $170 486 $93 161 20Worker $86 146 $46 103 99 $0 0 $0 0 3Administrationmanager $75 106 $0 0 2 $0 0 $1,833 2754 3professional $275 263 $150 173 4 $146 282 $888 2159 13LandFarmer $38 69 $172 96 8 $15,500 20506 $10,100 14001 2Planter $400 693 $167 153 3Tradeshopkeeper $100 141 $0 0 2 $1643 2883 $1371 921 7merchant $6,664 19953 $2,716 4097 25ManufacturesMiller $5,000 - $0 - 1manufacturer $9,500 8185 $3050 4649 4Financefinancier $0 - $800 - 1

None $3 40 $3 37 422 $209 1076 $363 4315 195

Total $39 228 $22 98 656 $1,015 6351 $755 4105 303

source: coded from 1870 manuscript census, on microfilm

In 1870, however, these rich white men, surrounded by their servants, did not hold

political power, although they did, as seen in Table 2.1, control the bulk of local wealth. As seen

in Table 2.2 the rich white men included 25 merchants (including Mr. Pease), 13 professionals

(including Mr. Gignilliat), four timber/lumber manufacturers, and a couple of wealthy farmers.

Most of the laboring classes, particularly the workers—mostly laborers or otherwise untitled or

27

unskilled laborers, were black, but they were not entirely without wealth. There was, in fact, a

black middle class, most apparent in Darien.

Before we turn to Darien proper, however, we should look more closely at the

wealthy whites and their servants. Toward that end, Tables 2.3 and 2.4 display the most critical

characteristics of the ten (actually eleven, as there was a tie for tenth place) wealthiest persons in

Darien and Ridgeville. Table 2.3 ranks persons by real wealth, thereby distinguishing those

actively engaged in accumulating capital.

Table 2.3Wealthiest Persons in Darien and Ridgeville, 1870, by Real Wealth

Local family person last name

first name m.i. age sex race occupation Class

realwealth

per-sonalwealth

Ridge 651 1 Epping Carl 51 M W Consul & Timber

Merchant

merchant 100000 5000

Ridge 734 1 Morris Richard 50 M W Farmer farmer 30000 20000Darien 44 1 Young James G 44 M W Manf of

Lumbermanufacturer 20000 200

Ridge 687 1 Pease Theodore P 57 M W Merchant (Ret) merchant 15000 17000Darien 60 2 Cogdell Richard Jr. 23 M W Merchant (Ret) merchant 15000 10000Ridge 685 1 Langdon Charles S 34 M W Timber

Manufacmanufacturer 12000 10000

Ridge 691 3 Kerch Ann C 69 F W At Home 10000 60000Darien 1 4 Bigelow A S 41 M W Merchant

(Lumber)merchant 10000 500

Ridge 698 2 Travis Aria F 44 F W Keeping House

8000 500

Darien 33 1 Schreiber Fritz 32 M W Grocer & Baker (Ret)

shopkeeper 8000 2000

Ridge 681 1 Pilson Joseph P 38 M W Merchant timber

merchant 8000 500

28

Perhaps the most obvious fact is that the wealthiest residents were white. Also, since we

are ranking persons by real wealth (theoretically, capital, or income producing property) these

were virtually all white men who were actively engaged in some sort of capitalist enterprise.

Finally, most (seven) lived in Ridgeville, but there were some (four) wealthy businessmen in

Darien as well.

The wealthiest man was Carl Epping, Consul for Monaco, Sweden, and Netherlands, but

also a timber merchant, claiming $100,000 in real wealth and an additional $5,000 in pocket

money. Next wealthiest was Richard Morris, a farmer, followed by James Young, a lumber

manufacturer who resided in Darien. At number four on the wealthiest list we find Mr. Pease,

the wealthy Ridgeville merchant who later challenged Campbell for local political control. He is

followed, at number 5, by Richard Cogdell [sic?], a Darien merchant who lived with his father

(Richard, Sr., enumerated as person # 1 in this family) but claimed all the household wealth,

thereby qualifying as one of the wealthiest persons in town. Charles Langdon, like James

Young, was born in New York. In fact, among the wealthy white businessmen only Mr. Pease

and Mr. Gignilliat were born Georgia, most of the others were Yankees or, in the case of

Schreiber and Epping, foreign born immigrants. The two wealthy women were exceptional in

this regard, being both Georgia-born and not identified with any sort of capitalist enterprise.

Before turning to these wealthy ladies, however, it is worth noting, as a methodological

aside, that census enumerators listed persons in a particular order, within families. Families were

not necessarily kin, but they were living together as what we today would call a household.

Generally, persons were enumerated within each household ("family") beginning with the head

of household, followed by his spouse, children and servants. In this regard, we see that person

number one is generally the head of household—virtually always the rich white man in Table

29

2.3. The exceptions are Richard Cogdell, Jr. (who claimed his and his father's wealth), Mr.

Bigelow, apparently boarding in a household of merchants, of whom he was the wealthiest, and,

finally, the ladies.

Table 2.4Wealthiest Persons in Darien and Ridgeville, 1870, by Personal Wealth

locality family Person Lastname

Firstname m.i. Age sex race occupation class real

wealthpersonal wealth

Ridgeville 691 3 Kerch Ann C 69 F W At Home 10000 60000

Ridgeville 734 1 Morris Richard 50 M W Farmer farmer 30000 20000

Ridgeville 697 2 Brown John 45 M W Stevedore craft 0 20000

Ridgeville 687 1 Pease Theodore P 57 M W Merchant (Ret)

merchant 15000 17000

Darien 26 1 Strain Adam 30 M W Merchant (Ret)

merchant 500 11000

Darien 60 2 Cogdell Richard Jr. 23 M W Merchant (Ret)

merchant 15000 10000

Ridgeville 685 1 Langdon Charles S 34 M W Timber Manufac

manufacturer 12000 10000

Ridgeville 690 1 Gignilliat Wm Rbt 31 M W Attorney at Law

professional 300 8000

Ridgeville 691 4 Levant Mary J 48 F W At Home 0 6000

Darien 137 1 Walker James 25 M W Inspector of Lumber

manager 0 5000

Ridgeville 651 1 Epping Carl 51 M W Consul & Timber

Merchant

merchant 100000 5000

As seen in Table 2.4, Ms. Ann Kerch was the wealthiest woman in town and was, in fact,

the wealthiest person, when compared in personal as opposed to real wealth. Not surprisingly,

there is a relationship between the two types of wealth. Many (six) persons appear on both lists,

but many (five) do not. Ms. Kerch and Ms. Levant lived together, next door to Mr. Gignilliat.

Eliza Smith, a 40 year old mulatto female, employed as a housekeeper, claiming no wealth, was

enumerated as person #1, normally, the head of this household. Her son, Sandy, a black male,

age 11, was #2, followed by the wealthy white women, who were, in theory, boarders. One

30

might guess that they were friends or family of the Gignilliats, who are, most probably, the

employers of the Smith family.

Less perplexing were the craft and managerial or professional class men, including Mr.

Gignilliat, who claimed substantial personal but limited real wealth. Gignilliat claimed only

$300 in real property, presumably his home and office. John Brown, the Stevedore, from

England, didn't even own his home (according to the enumeration) but was boarding, with his

wife and children, with Eliza Jenkins, a fifty year-old black women, who claimed no wealth at

all. Clearly we could second-guess the enumerator here and elsewhere in reconstructing these

families. Perhaps it will suffice to add that Aria Travis (listed among the wealthiest on real

wealth) was the 44 year-old Georgia-born wife of a timber merchant's clerk. Perhaps her

husband married his boss's daughter?

We can leave these mysteries to the family historians and the historical demographers

who have analyzed and criticized the enumeration of the 1870 census.19 These wealthy white

people were, for the most part engaged in manufacturing and trade (and a little agriculture) in a

port city that depended primarily on the timber and lumber trade. This trade sustained the army

of laborers and a small cast of artisans (or "crafts"), merchants, shopkeepers, professionals and

managers, who constituted the "petty bourgeoisie" or middle class town boosters, who appeared

in countless similar roles in vastly different locations, serving the gold mining camps of

19 Steven Ruggles and Susan Brower, “Measurement of Household and Family Compositionin the United States, 1850-2000.” Population and Development Review 29, 1(March), 2003, pp. 73-101. For a defense of the 1870 census see J. David Hacker, Steven Ruggles, Andrea R. Foroughi, and Walter L. Sargent, “Public Use Microdata Samples of the 1860 & 1870 U.S. Census of Population,” Historical Methods, Volume 32, Number 3 (summer) 1999, pp. 125-133 [reprinted on http://www.ipums.org accessed 13 June 2012]. On the 1870 census undercount see Roger L. Ransom and Richard Sutch, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation (London: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 54.

31

Colorado, the cattle towns of Kansas, or the lumber towns of Wisconsin. They constituted, in

each case, the base of the urban population.20

Table 2.5Mean and Standard Deviation Real and Personal Wealth by Class and Race,

Darien, Georgia, 1870 (N=546)

black or mulatto white

Classmean real

wealth s.d.

mean personal wealth s.d. N

mean real

wealth s.d.

mean personal wealth s.d. N

LaborCraft $145 208 $90 164 31 $319 583 $51 167 12Service $99 310 $37 125 34 $241 611 $79 153 12worker $88 142 $58 117 67 $0 - $0 - 1Administrationmanager $75 106 $0 0 2 $0 0 $2,750 3182 2professional $275 263 $150 173 4 $300 412 $220 438 5LandFarmer $1,000 - $200 - 1Planter $0 - $200 - 1Tradeshopkeeper $100 141 0 0 2 $2,000 341 $1,620 850 5merchant $2,132 4117 $220 438 17ManufacturesMiller $5,000 - $1,500 - 1manufacturer $20,000 - $200 - 1

None $5 48 $4 44 294 $304 995 $51 167 54

Total $50 272 $26 112 435 $827 2711 $588 1595 111

source: coded from 1870 manuscript census, on microfilm

As one such urban place, Darien was home to the business of the merchants and

shopkeepers, managers and professionals, and even some of the manufacturers (one lumber

20 On boosters and boosterism see Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience (NY: Vintage, 1965), Robert Dykstra, The Cattle Towns (NY: Knopf, 1968), Carl Abbott, Boosters and Businessmen: Popular Economic Thought and Urban Growth in the Antebellum Middle West (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), Richard Hogan, Class and Community in Frontier Colorado (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990).

32

manufacturer and one saw and gristmill), even if many of the wealthiest persons chose to reside

on the ridge. Downtown Darien was, however, where most of the people worked (except, of

course, for the farmers and planters) and lived. It was the essential community and the seat of

political power, as county seat, federal port and post office.

As seen in Table 2.5, Darien proper was the home of the black middle class, including 31

crafts, 2 managers, 4 professionals, two shopkeepers, and the miller—a mulatto. These were the

movers and shakers who inspired the workers (including the service workers—over 100 persons

in all) to support local black churches, schools, and, of course, the Republican Party. Let us take

a closer look at this black middle class of 1870 Darien, beginning with the wealthiest residents.

Table 2.6 presents the wealthiest black and mulatto residents of Darien and Ridgeville, beginning

with Henry Todd, the mill owner, a 56 year-old mulatto from Florida.

Most (13/16) of the wealthiest black and mulatto residents lived in Darien, but unlike

their white counterparts, many of these persons were not engaged in any sort of capitalist

enterprise. There were three service workers: Carolina Johnson, a bartender, and Jonas Polite, a

porter, both from Georgia, living in Darien, and a domestic servant, Georgia Samson, also born

in Georgia, living next to the Pease family and probably working in their household. There were

also four unskilled/untitled workers, including George Washington, from North Carolina, and

Georgia-born Allen Gould, both living in Ridgeville. The two women, "keeping house" were

Martha Baker, a black women from Georgia, married to a white carpenter, Leonard Jackson,

from Vermont, and Mary Todd, the wife of Henry, the mulatto miller and the wealthiest person

on the list.

Table 2.6Wealthiest Blacks and Mulattos in Darien and Ridgeville, 1870

Based on Real Wealth

33

Local fmly

prsn Lastname

Firstname

m age

sex

occupation

class RealWlth

PersnlWlth

Darien

55 1 Todd Henry 56

M Saw and Grist Mill

miller 5000

1500

Darien

41 1 Johnson Carolina

39

M Bar Tender service

1500

500

Darien

18 1 Polite Jonas 41

M Porter in Grocery

service

1000

500

Darien

17 1 Jackson Lewis 44

M Carpenter & Ordinary

MC

craft 800 200

Ridge 671 1 Washington

George 30

M Job Laborer

worker 600 200

Darien

49 2 Baker Martha 55

F Keeping House

600 600

Ridge 688 2 Samson Georgia

30

F Domestic Servant

service

500 0

Darien

91 1 Jones Richard D 45

M Works at Saw Mill

worker 500 300

Darien

76 1 Thomas John 25

M Dock Hand on StE

worker 500 400

Darien

55 2 Todd Mary Ann 45

F Keeping House

500 0

Ridge 652 1 Gould Allen 26

M Works at Mill

worker 500 200

Darien

16 1 Campbell T G Sr

58

M Clergyman & State Senator

professional

500 300

Darien

10 1 Pang Jane 35

F Dress Maker

craft 500 300

Darien

16 2 Campbell T G Jr

29

M Representative Ga C

professional

500 300

Darien

9 1 Alexander John 54

M Blacksmith craft 500 150

Darien

14 1 Bennett James 24

M Brick Mason & Sheriff

craft 500 250

The rest were craft and professional persons who tended to be the movers and shakers in

local politics, including, of course, Campbell and his son. There were, in addition, Lewis

Jackson, carpenter and Ordinary of McIntosh County, Jane Pang, a dressmaker from Virginia,

John Alexander, a Georgia-born blacksmith, and James Bennett, brick mason and Sheriff, from

South Carolina. Most of the government officials of 1870 came from this list of the wealthiest

black and mulatto residents.

34

Table 2.7Government Officials in Darien and Ridgeville, 1870

locality dwelling unit family person lastname Firstname m.i. age sex race occupation class real

wealthpersonal wealth

Darien 19 16 1 Campbell T G Sr

58 M B Clergyman & State Senator

professional 500 300

Darien 19 16 2 Campbell T G Jr 29 M B Representative Ga C

professional 500 300

Ridge 731 651 1 Epping Carl 51 M W Consul & Timber

Merchant

merchant 100000 5000

Darien 4 4 1 Davis Daniel Webst

43 M W Post Master service 0 0

Darien 17 14 1 Bennett James 24 M M Brick Mason & Sheriff

craft 500 250

Darien 50 47 3 LeFils Arnaud 80 M W Clerk Court of Ordinary

service 0 200

Darien 20 17 1 Jackson Lewis 44 M B Capenter & Ordinary MC

craft 800 200

Darien 152 143 1 Underwood Smith 50 M B Alderman Works with Carpenter

worker 200 100

Darien 151 142 1 Guyton Alonzo 31 M M Alderman Carpenter

craft 200 100

Darien 23 20 1 Jackson Hamilton 25 M B Constable service 250 250

Darien 24 21 1 Howard Edward E 29 M B School Teacher cld S.C. & Asst

Marshall

professional 0 0

As seen in Table 2.7, there were only three white men with government jobs: Carl

Epping, the wealthy timber merchant was the Consul for Monaco, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

Daniel Davis was the federal postmaster. The only white local government official was Arnaud

Lefils, the naturalized Frenchmen who was clerking for Lewis Jackson, the black man who

served as Ordinary. State legislators were local black men, Tunis G. Campbell, Sr., and Jr. As

already noted, Campbell, Sr., was the local political leader, and he had the support of local

blacks, who effectively controlled the government of Darien and of McIntosh County in 1870,

35

even while the wealthy white businessmen controlled the timber and trade business. It is,

perhaps worth noting the two mulattos in municipal government, Sheriff James Bennett and

Alderman Alonzo Guyton, who figure prominently in opposition to Campbell in 1874.21

Unlike the white community, particularly in Ridgeville, in which two wealthy Georgians

and a handful of Yankees effectively monopolized local wealth and dominated the timber trade,

the black community, particularly in Darien included a few relatively wealthy individuals, but

they did not monopolize wealth to the same extent. At the same time, however, the middle class

black community of Darien and the wealthy white community of Ridgeville were part of the

same metropolitan political economy. Both were subject to the same government (since

Ridgeville was not incorporated), and they were both dependent on relations between a rural

agricultural or extractive hinterland and an urban commercial, industrial, and transportation

center.

The rich white men, especially the Yankees and the foreigners, dominated the timber and

lumber industry but also included wealthy farmers and even rice plantations within their

hinterland. The black middle class was more clearly rooted in the subsistence plus agriculture

that marked the traditionally white yeoman,22 but they also dappled in the lumber and timber

trade. In that regard, Mr. Todd, the mulatto miller of Darien, operated both saw and gristmills,

processing both timber and grains from the hinterland. Equally important, Darien provided not

just mercantile and milling services but social services, educating and churching the local 21 At one time I thought there might have been some tension between Campbell, Sr. and Jr. One could probably use Drago, Black Politicians, pp. 82-85, to fuel this speculation, since Drago refers to Edward Howard as Campbell’s adopted son and recounts a tale of Howard’s disobedience when Campbell asked him to commit jury tampering. In this regard, it is worth noting that Campbell, Jr., was among the persons arrested and tried on charges of riot in 1874. Howard was not on the list of defendants—see McIntosh County Superior Court Minutes, 1873-1877, December 1874, on microfilm at the Georgia State Archives, Morrow, Georgia; the original volume of handwritten records is in the McIntosh County Court Clerk’s new vault, Darien, Georgia. This suggests that Jr. could be counted on when Sr. was in trouble.

22 Alan Kulikoff, “The Transition to Capitalism in Rural America.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 46 (January 1989), pp. 120-144.

36

Freedmen and their families. In this regard, as important as the economic and political bases of

power were, the social networks that radiated from the black school and the black church were

equally important in preparing the Freedmen of Darien and surrounding McIntosh County as

citizens as well as workers.

Reconstruction Politics

Tunis G. Campbell, Sr., was the leader in the economic, political, and cultural

organization of McIntosh County blacks, but he did not work alone. Aside from his son and his

wife, he relied upon Edward Howard, teacher at the "colored" school and Assistant Marshall of

Darien, who later served as clerk of superior court. Also important was Toby Maxwell, one of

the four black Alderman (and one of two not enumerated in Darien or Ridgeville in 1870), who,

like Howard, followed Campbell from his Freedmen's Bureau colony on the coastal islands.

This was the inner circle of Campbell's political party.23 But Campbell's Darien was not ruled by

a caucus of his friends and supporters. In fact, it was quite the opposite, with public meetings

and rallies, particularly in election years. Campbell had leadership skills, as a minister and as the

director of his island colony, but he also had the organizational skills and access to economic,

political, and cultural networks in which he was not the unrivaled leader. He was able to exploit

both the density of local social relations—as Darien blacks met at church, at school, and at work,

aside from electoral rallies, and the “strength of weak ties,” linking Campbell to State and federal

authorities and organizations with which he was more or less loosely affiliated.24

In his efforts toward establishing the McIntosh Freedmen as freeholders on the Belleville

plantation, Campbell organized a local land claim club. As part of his service to the Republican

23 Drago, Black Politicians and Reconstruction, p. 8224 Mark Granovetter, "The Strength of Weak Ties." American Journal of Sociology, 78 (May, 1973), pp. 1360-1380.

37

Party, he was one of the registrars appointed by the governor, as was Theodore P. Pease.

Together they registered 675 black and 128 white voters in McIntosh County in 1867. At the

same time, Campbell supported education, attending the Georgia Education Conference in May

of 1867, and religion, attending the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church conference in

Augusta in June of 1867. In July, he was the local representative at the Republican State

Convention in Atlanta. Then he was elected as delegate to the Constitutional Convention, where

he worked with Reverend Henry McNeil Turner (later to become bishop of the AME church) of

Savannah, who, like Campbell, had come to Georgia to work for the Freedmen's Bureau.25

Turner, Campbell, and their fellow black legislators were expelled from the Georgia

House and Senate in 1869, but, through the aid of federal authorities and the continued threat of

martial law, they were seated in 1870 for what turned out to be a very brief moment of State

support for the efforts of Darien Republicans.

Important in this regard is the General Assembly bill of 1870, authorizing the

reorganization of Darien city government.

Section 1. Be it enacted, etc., That the several acts incorporating the "town of

Darien" and "city of Darien," and the acts amendatory thereof be, and they are

hereby, so amended as to conform to the present Constitution of Georgia, so far as

the right of the inhabitants to vote and exercise the functions of office in the said

municipality, so as to give all legal voters under the present Constitution all the

powers and privileges conferred by said Constitution.

Section 2. And be it further enacted, That whenever the word "colored," "white"

or "negro" is used, the same is hereby stricken out.

25 Duncan, pp. 43-47

38

Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That all laws and parts of laws militating against

this act are hereby repealed.

Approval Date: Approved October 27, 1870.26

Darien was, if only briefly, a black majority Republican town where blacks voted and

effectively monopolized local office, even as whites controlled local timber, transportation, and

trade.

Redeeming Darien

The Conservative (Democratic) Party of Darien was prepared for Redemption long

before Democrats in the rest of Georgia were prepared to battle the Republicans. Unlike the

white majority counties and the cotton belt, where whites were often inclined to ignore the

machinations of the Freedmen and the Republicans, Darien Democrats nominated a full slate of

officers for the April election. By unanimous proclamation the 9 April 1868 meeting endorsed

the straight Democratic ticket: Gordon for governor, Fitch for congress, and W. Robert Gignilliat

for State senator.27 Of course, given the efforts of Campbell and the black majority in Darien,

none of these Democrats were elected. Official returns have not survived, but it appears that that

there were municipal officials elected, along with Campbell and his son. C. C. Thorpe was

identified as McIntosh County Sheriff in July,28 replacing William C. Wylly who was identified

26 ACTS AND RESOLUTIONS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF GEORGIA, PASSED IN ATLANTA, GEORGIA, AT THE SESSION OF 1870. PART I.--PUBLIC LAWS. TITLE XI. INCORPORATIONS. I.—BANKS AND BANKING COMPANIES. II.—CITIES AND TOWNS. 1870 Vol. 1 -- Page: 186. Sequential Number: 125 Law Number: (No. 125). Accessed 12/6/2010 online: http://neptune3.galib.uga.edu/ssp/cgi-bin/ftaccess.cgi?location=fhtml/legis/bibl.html&sessionid=7f000001

27 Daily News and Herald 15 April 1868, p. 128 Daily News and Herald 1 July 1868, p. 1

39

as sheriff in the meeting held just before the election.29 Exactly who served in what capacity

prior to the publication of the Darien Timber Gazette (in 1874) is somewhat difficult to ascertain,

but it is clear that the white minority, as it expressed itself in the Savannah paper, considered

Campbell and his “troops” to be the effective authority in Darien.30

Although the official records have not survived it appears that Sheriff Thorpe was not

always respected as the local authority. According to one account, armed bands of black citizens

(in one case, “numbering eighty-four in all, all armed with muskets and bayonets”) routinely

patrolled Darien, arresting white men without regard to due process and inspiring the Sheriff to

place the white men in protective custody, even though they were not formally charged with any

crime.31 Reading the Savannah paper, one gets the impression that Campbell led an army of

black militiamen, an impression that seems to be shared by most of the secondary sources.32

The wealthy white minority was active, however, not only in politics but in economic

development. On 12 February local businessmen met to collect subscriptions for constructing a

telegraph line. Charles Langdon (presumably the wealthy Ridgeville Lumberman identified

above as one of the wealthiest local residents) was called to the chair and W. J. Donnelly

(presumably the Darien merchant, less wealthy but still comfortable with $350 in real and $1350

in personal wealth) was named as secretary33

By June of 1869 there was a municipal government, with Willis A. Burney, a white brick

maker from Darien, reporting $500 in personal wealth, serving as city marshal.34 Apparently,

according to the minutes of the Georgia General Assembly, “the Mayor and Council of the city

29 Daily News and Herald 15 April 1868, p. 130 Daily News and Herald 31 July 1868, p. 131 Daily News and Herald 4 January 1869, p. 332 see Drago, Duncan and Du Bois, Black Reconstruction33 Daily News and Herald 17 February 1869, p. 234 Daily News and Herald 5 June 1869, p. 3

40

of Darien did, in the year 1868, lay out and survey certain parts of the commons of said city.”35

According to the Savannah paper, however, Campbell was the effective government, even

sending his armed minions into neighboring Liberty County in defiance of the established

authorities.36

Although Campbell and his black colleagues were reseated in the legislature in January

of 1870,37 the Redeemers were prepared to take control in the November election. Campbell and

Governor Bullock joined in opposition to these elections, arguing that fraud and intimidation

would replace due process.38 They were successful only in delaying the election until December

22.39 Then, although Campbell continued to serve his four year term as senator and his son was

re-elected to the lower house, the Democrats effectively controlled both houses and proceeded to

dismantle the opposition.40

Efforts to unseat Campbell began immediately. In his capacity as Justice of the Peace he

was charged with false imprisonment of William Fischer, “a well known German merchant”

(presumably the man enumerated in 1870 as “grocer and baker” with $1500 in real and $2000 in

personal wealth), in January of 1871.41 In May, there were reports that Campbell was “dodging

the law” while black pirates were operating out of Darien.42 In August, the Savannah paper was

filled with spectacular claims, beginning with the claim that “negro troops” near Darien

committed outrages on whites after the Civil War, inspiring requests that Grant remove the

troops.43 Then the “Darien Outrage,” where Campbell arrested the captain of the British ship,

35 Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Georgia 1870, v1, p. 479, on microfilm at the Georgia State Archives36 Daily News and Herald 28 December 1869, p. 237 Daily News and Herald 7 January 1870, p238 Daily News and Herald 30 July 1870, p. 4; Daily News and Herald 1 August 1870, p. 239 Daily News and Herald 1 October 1870, p240 Daily News and Herald 11 January 1871, p141 Daily News and Herald 25 January 1871, p. 242 Daily News and Herald 1 May 1871, p1; 15 May 1871, p243 Daily News and Herald 1 August 1871, p. 1

41

Grace, who then attempted, unsuccessfully, to prosecute Campbell in federal court was headline

news for weeks.44 Allegations against Campbell continued in the Savannah paper along with a

steady stream of accusations of malfeasance and embezzlement against the governor, leading up

to the special election in December of 1871, which replaced Bullock with a Redeemer Democrat.

At that point, with Redemption complete, the war on Campbell moved into the

legislature. An investigative committee was appointed to consider Campbell’s actions in Darien,

as Justice of the Peace in particular. In August, they offered their report.

First. That the said Campbell had been guilty of using disrespectful language

toward this Senate while he held a seat in the same.

Second. That the said Campbell had been guilty of trying to excite an

insurrectionary spirit among the people in his district by advising them to resist a

public law of the State with a bayonet.

Third. That the said Campbell was a general disturber of the peace and order in

the section of the country where he lives.

Fourth. That the said Campbell had been guilty of malpractice in the office of

Justice of the Peace, which office he then held.45

The committee ultimately concluded, however, that they did not have authority over

actions committed by Senator Campbell when the legislature was not in session. Thus they

reported the matter back to the Senate for their consideration. It is not clear what the Senate

chose to do other than publishing this report.

44 Daily News and Herald 3 August 1871, p. 4; 11 August 1871, p. 3; 17 August 1871, p. 3; 18 August 1873, p. 345 Journal of the Senate, August 23, 1872, p. 523; State Archives microfilm

42

Campbell was not expelled from the Senate, but he was defeated in the next election, in

October of 1872. Campbell carried McIntosh County but lost in Liberty and Tattnail Counties.

Campbell had cooperated with Andrew Sloan, his Liberty County counterpart, to secure the

support of Liberty County black voters.46 But the Liberty County election board invalidated the

results of precincts that had voted overwhelmingly for Campbell. Clearly, with these additional

votes Campbell would have been elected, but his protest fell upon deaf ears in the Georgia

Senate.47

Meanwhile, his authority in Darien and in McIntosh County was progressively weakened

by a series of action by the Redeemer legislature. In December of 1871, just days before the

election, the boundary of McIntosh and Liberty Counties was altered in favor of enlarging

Liberty at the expense of McIntosh.48 Then the legislators reorganized McIntosh County,

appointing loyal Democratic white commissioners, including the wealthy residents we have

already met, Mr. Langdon and Mr. Pease. The legislators then declared that these appointed

officers should assume the authority of the municipal government, acting ex-officio and thereby

nullifying the expressed will of the local voters.49 Still not satisfied, the legislators then passed

an amendment, transferring the to the commissioners “criminal jurisdiction as is now vested in

the Justices of the Peace by the laws of the State.”50 At that point, January 20th, 1872,

Campbell’s reign as the local authority was officially ended.

Although Campbell was officially powerless, he continued to control Darien blacks, and

he was still in the cross-hairs of the Savannah editor. In January, a correspondent claimed that

Darien had been ruled by a white mayor with eight black councilors who victimized wealthy

46 Daily News and Tribune 1 October 1872, p147 Duncan, pp. 94-9648 General Assembly Acts and Resolution, 1871, v1, p. 24149 Ibid, p. 24550 Ibid, p. 307

43

whites, led by Campbell and his armed band of black supporters. The correspondent claimed

that the white men recently appointed as county commissioners were determined to enforce the

law, despite the armed resistance of the black majority.51 The Savannah editor continued to

cover Campbell’s alleged misdeeds, including charges that he had performed “mixed

marriages.”52 Continuing into 1873, the Savannah editor reported that Campbell’s appeal of the

State Senate election was rejected.

Source: Daily News and Tribune 29 January 1873, p. 2

Tunis G. Campbell, Jr. was re-elected to the General Assembly, but he did not figure

prominently in the Redeemer legislature. Meanwhile, the Campbell regime was effectively

undermined by the ex-officio municipal government effected by the appointed county

commissioners, who attempted through legal and other means to redeem McIntosh County.

According to the Savannah editor, there was something akin to a race war raging in Darien in

1873.

51 Daily News and Tribune 11 January 1872, p. 352 Daily News and Tribune 29 June 1872, p. 2; 19 July 1872, p2

44

Source: Daily News and Tribune 11 April1873, p. 1

In the January session of 1874 the Georgia Senate confirmed the election of Maddox and

rejected Campbell’s appeal.53 Campbell was being prosecuted for his various alleged misdeeds

as Justice of the Peace, but he was still at liberty to run for state office in the election of 1874.

This time he chose to run for the lower house, to replace his son, in order to avoid the difficulties

he had encountered in the Senate election. In the General Assembly he would represent the

voters of McIntosh County, where he was certain to hold sway. Ultimately, however, his

electoral victory was undermined by the Democratic Party, who appointed an election judge for

Darien who was not a property holder and who was thereby ineligible. Thus Campbell was

denied his seat in the General Assembly in the election of 1874.54

Much had changed in Darien since 1870, but there were a few members of the 1870

government who remained in power under the authority of the Redeemer government of 1872.

53 Senate Journal January 22, 1874, p. 6754 General Assembly Journal, February 9, 1875, p. 291

45

Lewis Jackson was still the McIntosh County Ordinary. James R. Bennett was still the Sheriff,

and Alonzo Guyton, who was an alderman in 1870, was Bennett’s Deputy Sheriff.55 Bennett and

Guyton joined forces with Campbell’s rival, Lectured Crawford in attempting to divide and

conquer black Republican support for Campbell and his radical program. In October of 1874

Bennett ran on an opposing Republican slate and, together with Crawford and Guyton, attempted

to undermine Campbell’s electoral support. As reported in the local paper, the Republicans were

divided between the “Bryanites” (moderates who support Bryan for Governor) and the radicals,

who supported Wimberly for Governor. Campbell was a radical and in his run for the General

Assembly seat then held by his son he was opposed by moderate (“Bryanite”) Bennett, who had

the support of Lectured Crawford and Deputy Sheriff Alonzo Guyton, who was particularly

critical of Campbell in the local paper.56 Even so, Campbell was the overwhelming victor in the

three-cornered race. According to the local paper, A. S. Barnwell (a McIntosh County rice

planter and a Democrat) “received 266 legal votes; T. G. Campbell, Sr., Republican and

supporter of Jesse Wimberly, 326 legal votes; Jas. R. Bennett, Independent Republican and

supporter of John E. Bryant, 74 legal votes;” The editor also notes that there were quite a few

illegal votes and that Barnwell “has given notice of an intention to contest.”57

As noted above, the General Assembly, in February of 1875, invalidated the Darien vote

and declared Barnwell the winner. In their report, they noted that Campbell had not appeared to

claim his seat. They neglected to mention that Campbell was in jail, fighting the first of two

charges of false imprisonment. In the first case, Issac Rafe had accused Campbell of false

imprisonment in December of 1873. In January of 1875 Campbell was indicted, prosecuted,

convicted and sentenced to hard labor before his attorneys were able to secure bail pending their 55Darien Timber Gazette 25 April 1874, p1. The city directory, listing officers, mail delivery schedule, religious services and Masons meetings, was published on page one, column one of each edition.56 Darien Timber Gazette 3 October 1874, pp. 2-3.57 Darien Timber Gazette 10 October 1874, p3

46

appeal of the original verdict. By the end of 1875, Campbell was again convicted of false

imprisonment, this time based on a Grand Jury indictment from April of 1872 for the

imprisonment of a John Fisher in February of 1871. A new indictment was issued in April of

1875, and in January of 1876 Campbell was ordered imprisoned for 256 days but was, instead,

leased as convict labor.58 Upon his release he did not return to Darien, fearing for the safety of

his family. Even in his absence, however, the Redeemers would not allow for local elections.

They continued to act as ex-officio local authorities, operating under the authority of the State

government, without the support of the local voters, who continued to oppose the Redeemers.59

Twice-told Tales of Darien

John Walton reminds us that there is not one history but many stories that we might

fruitfully consider as competing narratives.60 In the case of Darien, we have what we might

consider the currently popular public history of Buddy Sullivan, which borrows generously from

more scholarly accounts, including Duncan, often without observing professional rules for

citation and quotation. Duncan versus Sullivan accounts might be considered academic versus

public history, but there are, as Walton informs us, multiple accounts in both public and

academic realms which rise and fall as public and academic interests clash on whose truth we

should honor. Walton and I suffer from the disciplinary constraints of positivist social science.

58 Duncan, pp. 89- 107, offers a thorough repudiation of all of these charges and a stinging indictment of the Redeemer court responsible for these malicious prosecutions.59 The McIntosh County Commissioners continued to operate as ex-officio municipal authorities and as the only official government in Darien until long after Reconstruction was officially dismantled. The General Assembly reaffirmed this commitment to appointed authorities who might keep the local voters in line with legislation in 1873-1877—see General Assembly Acts and Resolutions, 1877, volume 1, p. 159. Duncan , pp. 115-116, reports that Campbell returned for his last hurrah in Darien in 1882, when, after six years in exile, he was still able to mobilize the Darien electorate to defeat his longtime rival Lectured Crawford in the McIntosh County election for Georgia General Assembly representative.60 John Walton, Storied Land: Community and Memory in Monterey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)

47

We can’t simply proclaim that all tales are equally defensible even as we hope to suggest that we

need to broaden our gaze to encompass the heretofore missing voices.61

Perhaps we should begin with a new voice, the voice of the publisher of the Darien

Timber Gazette, Richard W. Grubb, who introduced the first edition of volume 1 on 25 April

1874. “Darien once had a ... shall we say cotton? (for cotton was the staple then) Gazette; now it

is the Timber Gazette … Timber is King here now ... buyer and seller .. their interests are

friendly.”62 Grubb reconstructs Darien’s history as the history of a port city, a trade and

transportation center, where buyer and seller meet in “friendly” exchange relations. In some

ways, this sounds like Native American Monterey, in Walton’s account, where the local traders

hosted the hunting and fishing tribes who met at the port city, much like the fur traders and

Native Americans met at Fort Ouiatenon, in West Lafayette, Indiana, in the early to mid-

eighteenth century.

In the Darien publisher’s tale, however, British forts and Scottish settlers were part of a

prehistory that left landmarks—the fort and the Scottish graveyard, that predate the inevitable

development of commercial enterprise, which begins in earnest with the plantation economy of

the antebellum cotton economy.63 Similarly, in this narrative, the Civil War and Reconstruction

were an extended (1861-1871) period of chaos and disaster perpetrated by the carpetbaggers and

the ignorant and lazy Freedman. Campbell, in this account, is an excellent example of a

carpetbagger of a different color, whose ruthless imperial designs led the Freedmen down the

path to perdition. Thankfully, Messieurs Pease and Gignilliat (appointed County Commissioners

61 For an excellent if dated review of the tales told by Southern historians see Carl N. Degler, “Rethinkiing Post-Civil War History.” Virginia Quarterly Review, 57, 2 (Spring, 1981), pp. 250-267. Since Eric Foner published Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1867 (NY: Harper & Row, 1988), the floodgates of critical scholarship have opened. It is time for a new historiography, but I’ll not presume to write one here.62 Timber Gazette 25 April 1874, p. 263 Duncan stresses the anti-slavery sentiments of the Scotts. One might argue that Darien was a hotbed of abolitionist sentiments in the 17th century and a bastion of black economic and political power long before the efforts of General Sherman and the Freedmen's Bureau.

48

and ex-officio masters of the universe) were able to re-establish effective control of the port city

economy and government, effectively driving the carpetbaggers, including Campbell, from the

field.

This account is not simply the popular or conventional account. It was and is that, but it

was for many years compatible with the academic as well as the official textbook treatment

wherein Reconstruction, particularly in its radical incarnation, was doomed to failure and was

sustained only briefly in states with overwhelming black majorities and especially ignorant

Freedmen, racist white minorities, and greedy carpetbaggers, notably in South Carolina and

Louisiana, where it took an act of congress (and the failure of the electoral college system) to

establish a reasonable alternative, negotiated at the federal level and essentially imposed on the

two states that could not seem to govern themselves.

This was the Dunning academic narrative and the textbook as well as the popular position

on Reconstruction, but there has been an alternative narrative all along. The primary sources are

not as readily available, but the official papers of Governor Bullock and the story offered by

Campbell and by the few scraps of extant Republican, particularly black Republican newspapers

tell a different tale. This was the tale that Du Bois and Foner resurrected. It is currently the

leading interpretation among liberal (especially Yankee) historians, but it might become just

another school, readily forgotten sometime in the distant future. Since the popular and textbook

treatments are still laboring under the illusion that ignorant blacks and racist whites foreclosed

the possibility of meaningful Reconstruction, it seems quite likely that the conservative, racist

tale will be sustained, if only by locals who mourn the lost cause and celebrate the inevitable

failure of Reconstruction.64

64 Here we should consider rethinking or at least updating Degler, “Rethinking Post-Civil War History,” and the historiography of Reconstruction

49

The problem with the postmodern position that these are equally plausible narratives

which should be joined by still other equally plausible narratives, judged subjectively by each

reader, is that we have no basis other than ideology to choose between the competing narratives.

Thus history is purely political, as is social science and social history. The postmodern

alternative to positivist elitism is an equally conservative relativism that lacks any basis for

displacing the canonical works or choosing between revisionist accounts. We can simply choose

the facts as we please in a fit of postmodern whimsy. Campbell was a scoundrel or a saint—it

just depends on your critical or noncritical race theory.65 This is clearly an untenable position for

an academic.

So where does this leave us? Du Bois and Foner offer a useful corrective that their

followers, including myself, may follow as a fruitful approach. There was, as Du Bois argues, a

slave revolt. There was, as he and Foner both claim, potential for a revolutionary change in the

Southern political economy. In fact, the Civil War was, as Moore and others have argued the

real American Revolution, as the fetters on capitalist accumulation and republican (democratic)

governance were finally removed. It is also true, as Foner argues, that Reconstruction was an

unfinished revolution. As Morris indicates, it took nearly one hundred years from the

Emancipation Proclamation until a viable Civil Rights bill was passed, enforced, and sustained

by the courts.66

65 Drago’s assertion that Campbell was placing himself above the law should be tempered with a consideration of facts. The fact that Southern whites had long used the law to sustain slavery and the fact that the United States fought the British in 1812 to assert the right of American citizens to be secure in their persons against the claims of impressment gangs are pertinent in this regard. Campbell’s arrest of English ship captains should be considered in the context. The ship captain claimed hegemonic authority similar to the slave master. Thus Campbell’s repeated efforts to protect black crew members might have been symbolic as well as practical.66 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction; Foner, Reconstruction; Barrington Moore, Jr. The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967) ; Aldon Morris, The Social Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (NY: Free Press, 1984).

50

Could it have ended differently? Here we should be cautious. It is not clear that

republican government and “democratic” bi-partisanship could have produced a different

outcome. It is not clear that Georgia could establish republican government without an

indigenous bourgeoisie or, more important, a viable petty-bourgeois class of artisans and yeomen

farmers capable of fighting merchants and planters and gaining concessions if not total victory.

Clearly Darien, which housed an indigenous white largely Northern and foreign bourgeoisie and

a substantial black petty bourgeoisie in 1870, was the exception that proved the rule. The

question is which rule are we proving? Does the failure of Reconstruction in Darien indicate that

even under the best of circumstances Reconstruction was destined to fail?

My interpretation is that Darien is the exception that proves the alternative rule—that you

can’t have a bourgeois revolution without a bourgeoisie and can’t have participatory democracy

without a substantial and well organized petty-bourgeois class of artisans, shopkeepers, and

yeomen. As we will see, there was a potentially revolutionary class of agricultural workers

whose mobilization under the contract labor system was apparent, but whose efforts were

ultimately pre-empted by the convict labor system, which sustained the repressive force of the

contract system in undermining black farmworker organization and simultaneously undermined

the prospects of bi-racial class organization, as convict and contract laborers, although two faces

of the same coin, were socially, economically, and politically alienated from each other. This is

most apparent in the geographic dispersion of Freedmen between 1870 and 1880, as they moved

South and east toward freedom or North and west toward chains.67

We shall return to this discussion in conclusion. For now, we can leave the agricultural

workers, the farmers, and the black shopkeeper and professional classes of Darien and vicinity in

67 See Richard Hogan, “Resisting Redemption: The Republican Vote in 1876 Georgia.” Social Science History 35, 2 (2011), pp. 133-166.

51

the midst of a race war, as the Redeemers attempt to divide and conquer, repress and coopt

segments of the black leadership from Savannah to Brunwick, along the Atlantic coast, where the

black population was numerous and armed during Reconstruction and remained a potent

electoral threat if little more between 1876 and 1908. Before we return to the race war we

should spend some time in what has traditionally been considered the black belt, in this case,

Lexington, Georgia, the seat of Oglethorpe County, where the black majority were less well

positioned to effectively resist Reconstruction.

52