[I'm reposting essays from my old bloodandoranges.wordpress website so all my Florida history writing will be one place. This piece was originally posted on Feb. 11, 2021]
Sifting through the Florida Freedmen’s Bureau records uncovers troubling anecdotes that reveal the abrasive and often oppressive daily treatment that Blacks endured at the hands of formerly slaveholding whites. In Florida, during the summer of 1866, little had changed to disturb the antebellum racial hierarchy. A series of incidents in Madison County, Florida, one year after Emancipation, that involved two families, one white, one Black, who shared the same surname, shows a minor complaint among people who had known each other intimately for years rapidly escalating into violence. The conclusion of the narrative, however, reveals that in any such dispute whites maintained complete control over institutions of power unimpeded. Blacks may have found freedom but they still had no remedy for the abuse inflicted upon them.
In the fall of 1865, under President Andrew Johnson’s “presidential reconstruction” plan, white, male Floridians ratified a new state constitution and elected a state legislature to meet in late 1865 and again in 1866. These legislators, who included many former Confederates, grudgingly acknowledged Emancipation but responded with a series of oppressive laws, known as “Black Codes,” that reimposed the pre-war restrictions on Black political and civil rights.
The drafters of Florida's Black Codes recognized that they needed urgently to establish a legal authority, on the local level, to ensure the unchallenged persistence of white supremacy. The instrument they devised was the creation of the county criminal court system. The Florida Black Code codifiers explained that they created the county criminal courts to replicate the plantation tribunals through which white owners had disciplined and punished Blacks during slavery. In the wake of Emancipation, Florida’s county criminal courts provided an immediate, efficient and legal venue to enforce racial hierarchy.
The county criminal courts held jurisdiction over any offense not punishable by the death penalty and cases were tried before of a jury of twelve white men. For any penalty where a fine was due, a defendant who could not pay such fine could be “put to such labor as the County Commissioners …may direct,” or have his labor auctioned off, with compensation for such labor applied to paying the fine and the cost of prosecution. [Ch. 1,465] The Florida legislature also passed at the same time a law that provided that whenever punishment for an offense called for a fine or imprisonment, the court could, “as an alternative,” sentence the defendant to “the punishment of standing in the pillory for one hour, or whipping, not exceeding thirty-nine stripes on the bare back, or both, at the discretion of the jury.” [Ch. 1,466].
While the laws governing the county criminal courts were ostensibly race-neutral, it was well understood in by all that the corporeal punishments were reserved for Blacks. As the Florida Black Codes codifiers explained when they presented their proposals to the legislature, “To degrade a white man by [corporeal] punishment, is to make a bad member of society and a dangerous political agent. To fine and imprison a colored man in his present pecuniary condition, is to punish the State instead of the individual.” Similarly, it is very doubtful that the alternative available to the court of selling of the defendant to forced labor - effectively the form of slavery still allowed by the XIII Amendment ("punishment for crime") - was ever intended to apply to white defendants.
The discriminatory operations of the Black Codes' county criminal courts are illustrated by the events reported in the Freedmen's Bureau papers concerning the Hamptons of Madison County , Florida. Madison County sits in north-central Florida, east of Tallahassee, and borders Georgia. Madison County was part of the “black belt” of prosperous cotton-growing counties with a large, even majority, enslaved Black population. The Hamptons were a family of Madison County farmers who collectively held more than fifty slaves on the eve of the Civil War. The patriarch, Andrew Young Hampton, had represented Madison County in the Florida state legislature during the war. His sons, Joseph John and Dr. Benjamin Wade, and their families lived on neighboring properties near the Madison County courthouse.
Eliza Hampton was employed as a cook in Andrew Hampton’s household. We don’t have much information about Eliza except that she was formerly enslaved, presumably by the family whose surname she shared. We know that she had a son named Jim Hampton. The 1860 US Census Slave Schedules show that Andrew Hampton held in slavery, among others, a 60 year old woman listed adjacent to a 35 year male and also a 35 year old woman listed adjacent to a 16 year old male. We can only guess whether Eliza Hampton was 66 or 41 years old, and whether Jim was 41 or 22, at the time of the 1866 incident that is described in the court proceedings copied in the Freedman’s Bureau papers.
Eliza Hampton told the Madison County county criminal court that “Mas Andy” had always treated her kindly and gave her plenty to eat. On May 30, 1866, however, Eliza suffered treatment at the hands of Andrew Hampton that far from kind. That day, it appears that Eliza, toiling in the kitchen, was very upset about something and loudly expressed her distress. Andrew, then nearly sixty years old, came to the kitchen to confront Eliza where he found her “in a very violent passion.” Andrew, in his words, ordered Eliza to stop “cursing before my grandchildren.” A witness corroborated that Eliza spoke loudly but did not confirm Andrew’s claim that Eliza cursed or that she bothered anyone other than Andrew. There is no record that anyone asked Eliza the reason she was so upset that day.
The accounts vary as to what precisely happened next. Eliza testified that Andrew told her to shut up or he would beat her. Andrew then took a stick and hit Eliza over the head. Andrew set the scene with more detail. When Andrew told Eliza to keep quiet, Eliza, Andrew claimed, approached and dared him “to strike her.” Andrew admitted that he then took a thin stick of elder in the kitchen and “hit her one light lick on the head.” He added the observation, that he apparently considered exculpatory, that Eliza had “always been high strung and devlish disposed – and evidently done what she did to provoke me to strike her.”
Eliza was so distressed by the beating that she fled in search of her son Jim Hampton who was out ploughing in fields about one mile from the Hampton house. Eliza found Jim and reported Andrew’s assault to Jim because, as Eliza later testified, she had “no other protection.” When testifying about this moment, Jim reported that “Mammy came to me and said are you going suffer Mas Andy to me for nothing in this way?” Jim told his mother that he would find another place for her to stay “without Mas Andy beating her.”
Jim mounted his mule to go see a neighbor about arranging for a safe place for Eliza. He soon encountered Joseph John Hampton, Andrew’s 37 year old son, mounted on a horse and carrying a rifle on his way to go hunt. Asked by Joseph where he was going, Jim explained that Andrew had beaten his mother and he “was going to get mammy a home.” Jim testified that Joseph then instructed him to return to work and Joseph said he would go see his father about the matter. Jim insisted on going ahead to visit the neighbor to make arrangements for his mother. According to Jim, Joseph replied that if “if you give me any more of jaw I will knock you off that mule.” Joseph later testified that he had used the word “impudence” instead of “jaw” in his reply but confirmed this threat to Jim.
Jim’s encounter with Joseph quickly escalated into violence. Joseph testified that Jim reached out to grab Jim’s rifle by the muzzle and in the process fell off his mule while also pulling down Joseph off his horse as he fell. According to Jim, Joseph “hit me and I caught the gun and fell off and pulled him off also. “ Joseph denied striking Jim, insisting only that he “raised my gun and looked at it.”
A desperate struggle for control over the rifle ensued. Joseph recalled that Jim sought to point the rifle toward him and “in the scuffle discharged both barrels of the gun.” As Joseph reached for his pocket knife, Jim “wrenched” the rifle from Joseph, knocking Joseph’s arm in the process so that the knife fell to the ground. According to Joseph, Jim seized the knife, opening it with his teeth, and attempted to stab Joseph. At that point, Eliza interceded, instructing Jim to give the gun and knife back to “Mas Joe” and the fight immediately deescalated.
The melee over, Joseph went to find the justice of the peace and swore that Jim Hampton assaulted him with the intent to kill. Jim Hampton was arrested and brought to trial on June 4, 1866 before Judge Joseph Tillman of the county criminal court. The court assigned Hampton an attorney, he pleaded not guilty, a jury was empaneled and the case of the State of Florida v. Hampton proceeded immediately to trial before Judge Tillman.
The State called Joseph Hampton and one other witness. Joseph testified that that he was on his way to go hunting and fishing when he encountered Jim Hampton. Joseph recounted the struggle, which he alleged was unprovoked beyond his threat to knock Jim off his mule if he didn’t cease his impudent language. Joseph stated that during the struggle he believed Jim intended to kill him first by attempting to aim the gun barrels toward him and then by cutting him with the knife.
Jim Hampton testified in his defense and also called his mother to the stand. Under the state’s recently enacted constitution, Blacks were allowed to testify in court only concerning the “rights and remedies” of other Blacks. Eliza stated that she saw Joseph knock her son off his mule, with both men falling while Jim held the rifle’s breech and Joseph grasped the muzzle. Eliza recounted that “speechless, I ran up and said Mas Joe you must not kill my child” and that Joseph replied he would kill Jim if he didn’t release the rifle. Eliza interceded, taking hold of the gun muzzle. When Jim got control of Joseph’s knife, Eliza pleaded with Jim “you must not cut Mas Joe with that knife.” Joseph asked Eliza to instruct Jim to return the gun and knife to Joseph, which Eliza did and Jim complied. Jim then called out “come mammy let us go and run in the direction of the swamp” and Eliza followed him.
The jury swiftly convicted Jim Hampton. He next day, June 5, Jim Hampton’s motion for a new trial and was rejected by Judge Tillman. Hampton’s counsel also withdrew a motion to appeal and Jim Hampton was sentenced to “stripes,” which meant that Jim would be subjected to thirty-nine lashes that afternoon.
Judge Tillman also presided over another State v. Hampton case. Like Joseph Hampton, Eliza Hampton had also gone to the Justice to Peace to swear out a complaint. The same day as Jim Hampton’s appeal, Andrew Young Hampton was brought to trial for his assault on Eliza Hampton. Andrew testified on his own behalf and called one witness who did not see the assault. Andrew admitted that he struck Eliza but minimized the offense by insisting it was a small stick and sought justification in his reacting to Eliza’s “obscene language.” The jury convicted Andrew and Judge Tillman fined him one dollar.
Lieutenant Julius E. Quentin, a German-immigrant and Union army veteran, who was assigned by the Freedmen's Bureau as its agent in Madison County, was outraged by the disposition of the court cases and the punishment of Jim Hampton. Quentin raised some obvious questions. Why, Quentin asked, was Jim Hampton tried, convicted and punished, but Joseph J. Hampton allowed to walk away with no consequences for the brawl? Also, Quentin wanted to know why the whipping of Jim Hampton was carried out so quickly and, improperly, behind closed doors under guard. These events in Madison County drew attention at the highest levels of the state when Lt. Quentin wrote to Major General John Foster, the Florida’s Freedmen’s Bureau Assistant Commissioner, that he understood that Joseph Hampton was the aggressor and that Jim Hampton was unjustly accused and convicted with the sentence being inflicted with undue haste. Quentin contrasted the punishment meted out to Jim Hampton with the $1 fine assessed against Andrew Y. Hampton for beating Eliza Hampton over the head. Foster asked Governor David Walker for an explanation. Walker, a conservative elected in a whites-only election, asked Judge Tillman to respond.
Tillman defended the proceedings in his court. Replying to Gov. Walker, Tillman insisted that he had complied with the law: he insisted that “the colored man was disbarred from the exercise of no right which is accorded to any person on the trial for such offense, the white man was allowed no illegal privileges.” Tillman pointed to his assigning an attorney to represent Jim Hampton when Hampton was “unable to procure counsel.” Tillman proudly declared that “in no case has a negro been tried by the court without assigning counsel, if from ignorance or want of means he has not already procured counsel.” Regarding the prompt infliction of the whipping, Tillman insisted that Hampton had withdrawn his appeal so that the sentence should be swiftly inflicted to allow him to be discharged from custody.
Madison County Sheriff J.W. Jones, who was tasked by Tillman with carrying out the whipping, replied to the questions forwarded to him by Tillman. Jones reported that he did not want to execute the sentence in the court house square in order “to avoid the noise and jeers of the crowd of boys who had assembled there and always ridicule any prisoner who may be punished.” Accompanied a few witnesses, Jones took Hampton to the clerks’ office at the court house. D.L. Burbank, who witnessed the whipping and counted out the thirty-nine lashes, confirmed Jones’s account at the door was not shut and no guard kept out observers.
Lt. Quentin’s complaint to General Foster indicates that Judge Tillman and Sheriff Jones were preforming exactly the efficient and oppressive roles envisioned by the Florida legislature in drafting the Black Codes and creating the county criminal courts. Andrew Hampton’s receiving a punishment of a one dollar fine while Jim Hampton received thirty-nine lashes after a speedy trial shows that the county criminal courts were smoothly functioning as designed.
The account in the Freedmen’s Bureau records of events of May 30, 1866, involving the Hamptons of Madison County, Florida, ends with Judge Tillman’s response to Governor Walker. Joseph Hampton died of pneumonia in late 1869 and his father, Andrew, passed away from the same illness a few months later. I cannot find any records about Eliza or Jim Hampton for whom the bitter experiences of that week were surely repeated. The county criminal courts, like the Black Codes, were swept aside during Congressional Reconstruction when the racially integrated Florida legislature of 1868 enacted a new state’s constitution. This respite proved brief, however, as integrated government and widespread Black voting were suppressed by white “Redemption” in the mid-1870s and white supremacy and segregation enforced for decades by the imposition of the Jim Crow regime.
Sourcse: Freedmen’s Bureau Records of the Assistant Commissioner 1865-1872, Florida, Roll 7 (unregistered letters received Aug 1865-1870), images 174-217. Recovered at Family Search: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9TZ-39JZ-Q?wc=73QQ-X27%3A1513389702%2C1513390001&cc=2427901
Acts and Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly of Florida at its Fourteenth Session (1866). https://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/AA/00/07/87/12/00041/99893-1865-010.pdf
A Journal of the Proceeding of the House of Representatives of the General Assembly of the State of Florida at this Fourteenth Session (1865), pp. 58-59. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112073605682&view=1up&seq=65
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