The Road to Jim Crow Vote Suppression in Florida

[reposted from bloodandoranges.com;  Part I orig. Nov. 18, 2014, and Part II Nov. 19, 2015]

PART I:

 

In the 1888 presidential election, about 74% of eligible Florida voters (i.e., men 21 years and older) cast ballots.^[1] Just four years later, that percentage plummeted to 33%.^[2]

Why did Florida voter turnout shrink by more than half in four years – and remain that low, and even lower, for decades after?

Like other Southern states during the late nineteenth century, Florida experimented with legislation to suppress voting until its Democratic Party-controlled legislature finally concocted the perfect blend of laws that effectively eliminated black voters–and a heck of a lot of poor white voters too.

For Southern whites, Reconstruction was a nightmare of Republican state rule dominated by Northern carpetbaggers, Southern scalawags, and the occasional African American politician, all enabled by black voters enfranchised in late 1867.

After enduring eight intolerable years, conservative whites finally “redeemed” their states through a mix of terrorism, electoral intimidation, and the ballot box. They were determined never to lose control again.  How to establish this advantage as permanent and unassailable was the dilemma.

The obvious tactic was to reserve voting for Democratic Party (i.e., conservative whites) loyalists.  But achieving this goal was not so simple. Reconstruction insurgencies had demonstrated that intimidation and vote fraud were intermittently powerful but ultimately inefficient tools. Excessive violence risked congressional and executive branch interference to defend minority voting rights. Democratic leaders quickly turned to legislation as a tool to suppress black voting.  The challenge in drafting laws to restrict voting rights was surviving constitutional challenges. Passage of the XIV and XV Amendments to the US Constitution had overturned laws that explicitly barred black voting–such as the “black codes” passed by Southerners immediately after the Civil War and similar restrictions in many Northern states.

Deciding who could vote was especially sensitive in a contested state like Florida. State elections from 1870 through 1876 were extremely close, with the Republican margin of victory in statewide contests declining from 53% of the vote in 1874 to 51% in 1870 and 1872, with 1876 effectively tied.

The small but consistent white Republican vote in Florida – probably 10% to 20% of Republicans during Reconstruction– provided the margin of victory in these elections.  It is also certain that black voting rates in Florida were extremely high and may have approached 90% of eligible voters in certain counties.

Most accounts have attributed the Republican collapse in the mid-1870s to intra-Republican divisions, black disillusion about the state party’s white leadership, the toll of Regulator violence, and the small but increasing number of blacks voting the Democratic ticket.

These were all factors. But the most serious challenge was demographic: Florida’s white population majority grew from 51% in 1870 to 53% in 1880. Republicans’ failure to expand their white electorate beyond the small coalition of Southern unionists and carpetbaggers proved fatal.

In the 1874 election, Democrats regained partial control of the state assembly and two years later won back the statehouse and both chambers. The Republican drafted state constitution that placed sweeping powers of local appointment into the governor’s hands, now delivered the reins over county political machinery to the Democrats. This control was particularly important in the “black belt” counties (Jackson, Gadsden, Leon, Jefferson, Marion and Madison, as well as Alachua) which held a large percentage of the state’s black voters.

The road to complete suppression of the black vote was long and gradual.  Certainly Republicans were far from pure. Republican county officials likely took advantage of poor slavery era recordkeeping to allow underage blacks to vote while also averting their eyes to repeat voting.  Democrats were paying attention and later shamelessly insisted that they learned all about vote fraud from the Republicans.^[3] But Democrats soon showed that they could both neutralize and far surpass Republican gamesmanship.

On taking office in January 1877 Democratic Governor Drew called for legislation purportedly intended to combat voting irregularities (i.e., voting fraud by blacks and Republicans) by handing local Democrat officials power to revise voter rolls and the discretion to remove voters who, in the commissioners’ view, did not meet the new law’s requirements.

The proposed law instructed each county’s commissioners (conveniently appointed by the Democratic governor) to review all registrations rolls by November 1877 and to continue to scrutinize such rolls annually. Counties were divided into multiple precincts and voters were required to register and vote only in the precinct where they resided (Laws of Florida, Ch. 3021 (No. 45) 1877). Attorney James McClellan – compiler of Florida’s code of law as well as a former Confederate army colonel and leader of Jackson County’s Regulators–chaired the state assembly’s judiciary committee. He remarked that his committee had “spent much time upon this bill, and hope and believe that it will answer the many demands for a salutary law upon this agitating and important subject,” and prevent “abuse of suffrage.”

 

The re-registration bill may have been patently reasonable (and conforming with contemporary practices), but alarmed Republican leaders recognized that, with Democrats in firm control of county electoral machinery, Republican (i.e,. black) voting would be greatly reduced. Black Republican legislators strenuously objected:  Jefferson County senator Robert Meacham complained that the bill would “deprive a large number of people of voting” and was “unjust, unfair, unlawful;” Senator Frederick Hill of Gadsden County sarcastically proposed renaming the bill as “to provide for disenfranchising one-third of the legal voters.”

 

As historian Canter Brown Jr. has observed, the law “took away from rural blacks the protection afforded them by voting together at the county seat and mandated that they exercise their rights in potentially hostile areas away from the eyes of federal officials.” In short, the law gave Democratic county officials the latitude to manipulate voter rolls. (Brown, Florida’s Black Public Officials 1867-1924, p. 39). With Democrats firmly in control of state government, there was nothing Republicans could do. The bill passed easily and Gov. Drew signed Ch. 3021 into law on Feb. 27, 1877.

 

It is difficult to assess the impact of the re-registration law with certainty.  State-wide, the re-registration law did not eliminate one-third of voters as feared by Hill, but Republican voting was impacted in important ways. In four of eight counties which had black majorities in 1870, Republican votes as a percentage of eligible voters stayed close to the same or slightly increased from 1874 to 1878. In three other black majority counties, Gadsden, Jefferson and Jackson, however, the impact on Republican voting was catastrophic. Measured as a percentage of eligible voters in 1874 and 1878, Republican votes dropped 33% in Gadsden, 46% in Jackson and by an astounding 58% in Jefferson.

 

Assuming voting rates in 1878 remained similar to 1874 (as they did in black majority counties Duval, Leon, Marion and Alachua), voting decline (i.e., vote suppression) in these three counties translated to a loss of 2,440 Republican votes.  The previously contested 1^st Florida congressional district became a safe Democratic seat. Even with its 60% black majority, Jackson County was permanently lost to Republicans.  Gadsden’s two-thirds black majority was effectively neutralized.^[4]  Madison County, more than 60% black, found its 1878 vote disqualified by Democratic officials, eliminating the Republican advantage in the 2^nd Congressional district.

 

Black and Republican voting remained resilient in a handful of counties with strong black majorities in 1878 (e.g., Leon, Marion, Alachua and Duval), but the Republican vote fell statewide from 39% to 35% of all eligible voters (i.e., 11% drop) from 1874. Republican votes may have slightly increased in absolute numbers, but they grew at half the rate of increase enjoyed by the Democrats. ^[5]

 

As intended, the registration law granted county Democratic officials wide latitude to manipulate voter rolls and proved effective in several contested black belt counties, but it did not prove decisive in ensuring white electoral control of the state. Democratic strategy soon evolved from controlling state government to dominating the elected offices in every county, especially those with black majorities. Control of state offices appeared firm, but there remained the outstanding vexation of stubborn black voting majorities in Leon, Jefferson, Marion, Madison, Alachua counties.  Democratic Party leaders were not going to rely on uncertain population trends and leaky registration laws, or the tactic of simply rejecting a black majority county’s votes (i.e., Madison Co. in 1878).  It was time for the Democrats to return to the legislative conference.

 

[1] All voter participation stats herein are calculated using the total of adult males indicated in the US Federal Census at the Univ. of Virginia Census Browser.  Voter numbers are actually slightly higher because I did not reduce the eligible numbers by non-citizens or others not eligible to vote. In 1880, fewer than 4% of the state’s population was foreign born and, presumably, a number of adult male immigrants had become citizens. I used straight-line averaging to calculate eligible voters in inter-census years.

[2] In 2012 about 63% of eligible Floridians voted in the presidential election (http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2012G.html).

[3] Edward C. Williamson, Florida Politics in the Gilded Age, 1877-1893, p. 83.

[4] Because population numbers are not available for 1874 or 1878, I calculated straight line estimates of population and racial breakdowns using 1870 and 1880 census numbers. I’m not sophisticated enough to use regression analysis.  I did not use 1876 voting results because those numbers were highly disputed by both parties.

[5] For 1878, I included my projection of Madison County votes based on the voting rates in 1874.  Edward Williamson is very skeptical that large numbers of Jackson and Gadsden county blacks turned to the Democratic Party after 1874.  Williamson points to the 1882 declaration by state’s attorney Daniel L. McKinnon that Jackson County Democratic leaders had boldly and audaciously violated election law. Florida Politics in the Gilded Age, 83-84.

 

 PART II:

In Part I, we discussed the re-registration law that Florida Democrats passed in 1877 immediately after taking full control of the state and the law’s impact of suppressing black voting in a handful of counties. White conservatives continued to face two significant challenges in their bid for total electoral domination of the state. Although the state’s demographics trended increasingly white, the narrow racial divide made white political control dependent on maintaining white electoral solidarity. Leadership was fully aware that their hysterical warnings about black-Republican voters bringing back the “outrages” of Reconstruction was an unstable platform on which to center a party. Still, pre-war Whigs and Democrats, who continued to hold their competing political and economic outlooks, suppressed their differences to form an unnatural alliance in the cause of white electoral domination. The fissures, however, were sure to resurface eventually. Should this uneasy, white Democratic coalition splinter, party leaders feared that unified black/Republican voters might still retake the state.

A second issue for Democratic leadership continued to be the status of whites in black majority counties.  Ante-bellum leadership for both Whigs and Democrats tended to come from the wealthy planter class who resided in the agricultural counties with large pre-war slave populations.  Although Republicans receded as an electoral threat for state offices after 1876, blacks continued to contest and win county-wide elections in Leon, Jefferson, Marion, Madison and Alachua counties well into the 1880s. Galling to Democrats, the second congressional district (north-east Florida) also continued to fall to Republicans as Congress approved a series of challenges to election results brought by white, Republican candidate Horatio Bisbee.

Faced with these threats to their complete political domination, Democrats looked toward a legislative solution to prevent any possibility of black political power: the poll tax. The ultimate regressive tax- in which every eligible voter was assessed the same amount, each year – poll taxes, also known as capitation taxes, were common in America and had often been proposed to support education. Mandating payment of a poll tax as a prerequisite to voting, however, was new to Florida. In theory, the poll tax was race neutral. It was assumed, however, that black males, who typically worked in a cash-strapped agricultural economy resting on liens and barter, would be disproportionately impacted. This awareness could be discerned in the lightly veiled insinuations of newspaper editors who promoted the poll tax as a means to “protect” black majority counties “from the dangers of ignorant voters who take no interest in public affairs.” [Pensacola Commercial, July 11, 1885]. Mandating that the poll tax needed to be paid for multiple years prior to the electoral year prevented Republican operatives from distributing poll tax payment money to voters on the eve of the election. The additional requirement of presenting a receipt as proof of payment targeted blacks who, presumably illiterate, might be assumed not to safeguard such paperwork.

Unlike the chaotic 1876 election, Florida Democrats, led by William D. Bloxham, triumphed easily four years later. In the ensuing 1881 legislative session, white Democrats, now safely in control of both houses, quickly passed laws prohibiting interracial cohabitation (Ch. 3282, No. 64) and “intermarriage of white persons with persons of color” (“colored” defined as 1/8 negro blood) (Ch. 3283, No. 65). In the same session, a resolution to amend the state constitution to mandate payment of a $1 capitation tax in the year preceding an election as a prerequisite to voting passed both houses. The barrier to enacting the poll tax, however, remained Article XIV of the 1868 “Carpetbagger” constitution which provided voting rights as follows:

Section 1. Every male person of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, of whatever race, color, nationality, or previous condition, who shall, at the time of offering to vote, be a citizen of the United States, or who shall have declared his intention to become such in conformity to the laws of the United States, and who shall have resided and had his habitation, domicil, home, and place of permanent abode in Florida for one year, and in the county for six months, next preceding the election at which he shall offer to vote, shall in such county be deemed a qualified elector at all elections under this Constitution.

In addition, the 1868 constitution’s drafters inserted safeguards (Article XVII) making amendments difficult by requiring passage by successive legislatures before submittal to the voters for approval. A poll tax would have to wait until at least the 1886 election.

In the ensuing years, newspaper editors increasingly clamored for the poll tax. In 1880, Florida voters had rejected a referendum to hold a convention to revise the constitution but four years later the Democratic campaign plank called for a convention to discard the 1868 “carpetbagger” constitution and pass a poll tax. The coalition formed in 1884 by white “Independent” defectors and black Republicans appeared to vindicate Democratic leadership fears that the declining black population might exploit white divisions to take power. The Democrats rallied behind war-hero candidate General Edward A. Perry who defeated his renegade white challenger. Motivated whites also reversed the 1880 rejection by handily voting to approve a convention to revise the state constitution.

At the 1885 Constitutional convention, the poll tax became the subject of a complicated negotiation. Some whites recognized that the poll tax would inevitably impact poor white voters and fought against its passage. White laborers from Jacksonville submitted a petition to protest the poll tax. Other arguments ensued over details such as the amount of the tax and the number of years’ payments necessary. In a compromise that surprised all, the convention allowed for but refrained from imposing the poll tax in the revised constitution: the job of implementation was kicked down the road to the 1887 legislative session. A handful of black convention delegates agreed to the poll tax provision in the new constitution probably as a trade-off for stronger education guarantees and confidence that the legislature would continue to be too divided to pass a poll tax. (Brown, Florida’s Black Public Officials, p. 59).

Temporarily at least, the calculation of black delegates proved correct. The 1887 legislature again failed to unite on a single poll tax bill and the proposal fizzled. In the same session, however, the dominant Democrats passed another strict registration law which reduced black voting and also Florida’s first segregation law by mandating that railroads provide first-class railroad cars “for the separate and exclusive use of colored persons.”

The November 1888 election proved to be the last time for decades that Florida’s blacks voted in significant numbers. On May 27, 1889, Governor Francis Fleming signed a poll tax law requiring that all males 21 and over pay an annual capitation tax of $1 for the two years preceding the election as a prerequisite for voting (Ch. 3850 Sec. 1). The final clump of dirt tossed on the grave of black voting in Florida came in the same session when Jackson County’s William H. Milton Jr, grandson of Florida’s Confederate governor, introduced an “eight ballot box” measure (Ch. 3879, Sect. 25) which created a complicated voting scheme at polling stations with separate boxes for each office. Essentially a literacy test (that local white voting supervisors could easily help white voters maneuver), the new law targeted those black voters who might have accumulated the cash to pay the poll tax and present the receipts.

The impact of these two new laws on voting, particularly black voting, was catastrophic. Applying regression analysis, J. Morgan Kousser has calculated that black turnout declined from 87% in 1884 to 62% in 1888 to 11% in 1892 to 5% in 1896 [Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics, p. 102]. White voting also diminished (from 86% in 1888 to 59% in 1892) as state-wide turn out fell from 74% to 33% in one presidential election cycle.  The 8 ballot box measure was abandoned in 1895 for the secret ballot but the damage had been inflicted.   Conservative whites, who, beginning with Reconstruction era violence in Jackson County, had sought to eliminate voting rights granted blacks in 1867, finally achieved their long, sought goal. The poll tax would continue in Florida until 1937. 

Anderson J. Peeler and Drafting Florida's Black Codes

[reposted from bloodandoranges.com orig. March 7, 2016}

After the surrender of the Confederate armies, Southern leaders aspired to reunion with minimal change from the pre-war status quo.  Emancipation could not be ignored, but white Southerners were confident that they could absorb this challenge by legislating the status of the former slaves without federal government interference. When Southern state legislatures convened in the fall and winter of 1865, they formally acknowledged Emancipation and duly passed the XIII Amendment per Andrew Johnson’s requirements for admission. At the same time, however, these states, including Florida, passed draconian “black codes” crafted to control every aspect of freedmen’s lives, essentially placing them under the same burdensome restrictions that oppressed ante-bellum free blacks in the South. The following essay tells the story of Florida’s black codes through examining the life of their primary drafter, Anderson J. Peeler.

With the entry of Union troops in May 1865, a few weeks after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, the Confederate flag finally lowered over Tallahassee. Two months later William Marvin, Andrew Johnson’s appointment as Florida’s provisional governor, arrived and began planning Florida’s readmission to the Union. On August 23, Marvin announced an election to be held on October 10 to select delegates for a state constitutional convention. Voting would be limited to white men who had lived in the state for one year (and their county for six months) and who had taken Johnson’s amnesty oath. Both blacks and recently transplanted northern whites were barred from voting. By election day, 8,512 men had bothered to take the amnesty oath (including 1,470 who swore the oath at the polls).[1]  Fifty-six delegates were elected and the constitutional convention convened in Tallahassee on Oct. 25.

The delegates to the convention consisted of ante-bellum and Confederate officials who adopted an ordinance revoking secession. They declared slavery “destroyed in this State by the Government of the United States” but preserved it as criminal punishment (Article XVI).  Although the convention stated that “all inhabitants… are free, and shall enjoy the rights of person and property without distinction of color,” the delegates signaled that those rights were not civil or political. The constitution retained the three-fifths clause to calculate representation in the state legislature and restricted voting to white males twenty-one years or older. Delegates also affirmed the legislature’s right to bar blacks from immigrating into the state and to limit their right to offer evidence and testify in court. (Florida Constitutional Convention Journal, 1865, p, 56).

The constitutional convention adjourned on Nov. 7 but not before adopting a resolution calling on Governor Marvin to appoint a three-man commission to advise the forthcoming legislative session on necessary changes to state laws ensuing from the new constitution “with reference especially to the altered condition of the colored race” (Ordinance No. 4). In plain language, the commission was tasked with drafting “black codes” for Florida.  Marvin selected Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles H. Dupont, former state Attorney General Mariano D. Papy, and a young attorney and Confederate veteran who had served in a number of minor government functions, Anderson Jones Peeler.

A.  J. Peeler was much younger and not nearly as distinguished as his colleagues, but his selection for the “black codes” commission was not a surprise.  Only twenty-seven, Peeler had already compiled an impressive resume and proven himself a Tallahassee political and legal insider. His background was unusual.  He was born in Harris County, Georgia, in 1838, the son of James Peeler, a Methodist minister who accumulated a fortune through selling rights to a plow he patented and investing the proceeds in land.  The family moved to Key West in the late 1840s and then various places in Florida. Peeler proved a precocious and talented youth. Through an act of the Florida legislature, A.J. gained admission to the Florida bar before his seventeenth birthday (Journal of the Florida House of Representative, 7^thSess, Nov. 1854). At nineteen, he married Elizabeth Frances Walker Byrd, a widow with two children who was as many as nine years older (E. F. Peeler: findagrave.com).  In the late 1850s, Peeler regularly advertised his services as an attorney in Florida newspapers and formed partnerships with well-known attorneys, such as state supreme court justice Thomas Baltzell. Still in his early twenties, Peeler received appointments as clerk of the state Supreme Court and the state assembly.  Then the Civil War then intervened to interrupt this speedy trajectory.

 

Before the firing on Fort Sumter, Peeler traveled to Pensacola where he enlisted as a corporal on April 1, 1861 in the 1^st Florida Infantry regiment.  The forces around Pensacola settled into stalemate and within the month Peeler resigned and returned to Tallahassee. The following April, Peeler joined Company I of the newly recruited 5^th Florida Infantry. The 5^th FL remained in Leon Co. for a few months during which Peeler received a promotion to lieutenant and the gift of an inscribed sword from Col. Joseph J. Williams, also from Leon County, and one of the wealthiest men in the state.  (The sword can be seen here: http://www.floridaconfederate.com/default.asp?24 )  The regiment arrived in Virginia in time for the Battle of Second Manassas. Peeler and the 5th fought in the major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia that followed. Peeler may have had no previous military experience, but his conduct as a junior officer drew praise. One soldier remarked after Peeler’s performance at Gettysburg that “a braver man than Lieut. Peeler never breathed.”  During the Florida Brigade’s advance on the Union’ center on Gettysburg’s second day, Peeler was observed “dash[ing] up and down the line, hurrahing and encouraging the men on, and keeping the line dressed.” That same day, however, Peeler was seriously wounded in the head and captured. [Waters & Edmonds, A Small but Spartan Band, p. 70].

 

Peeler’s Union captors sent him to the Camp Letterman hospital near Gettysburg where he spent at least one month recuperating. Peeler sent his nurse, Euphemia Goldsborough, a warm and eloquent thank you letter which Goldsborough placed in her notebook and can be read here:  http://civilwarwomenblog.com/euphemia-goldsborough/

 

Peeler spent quite a literary internment at Johnson’s Island, Ohio prison writing plays staged by the Camp’s theatrical troupe and also authored a florid, maudlin novella “Arthur Murray – Our Little Hero, or the Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock” about an orphaned Fredericksburg boy who volunteers as a drummer for his fallen father’s Virginia regiment and then falls himself at Gettysburg.[2]

Peeler was released from prison in March 1865 and first traveled to Richmond. He immediately sought to join the faltering war effort, requesting John C. Breckinridge’s permission to recruit Black soldiers for the Confederate army.  It’s not clear if anything came of Peeler’s request, but he did return to Florida and his law practice. He also quickly resumed his place as a Tallahassee insider. He was appointed secretary of the state constitutional convention in October 1865, where Provisional Governor Marvin selected Peeler for the black codes Commission.

In late November 1865, Florida held an election for state officials and legislators.  This time, only about 6,000 white men came to the polls to elect judge David Walker as governor and choose state senators and assemblymen. Peeler was sent to represent Leon County in the Florida House of Representatives which convened in Tallahassee on December 18, 1865.  According to Jerrell Shofner, most of the eighty-eight legislators had been slave owners and at least twenty had been Confederate officers.  [Shofner, Nor is it Over Yet, p. 46].

 

The three-member black codes commission drafted a report to accompany its proposed package of ten bills. The report is revealing. Only DuPont and Peeler signed the report: Papy dissented, objecting not to the bills, but apparently to the report’s excessive editorializing. DuPont and Peeler set the tone of their report and the accompanying bills by praising slavery as a “benign, but much abused and gravely misunderstood institution” and by invoking the “authoritative decision in the great case of Dred Scott vs. Sandford” as precedent to contend that, even after emancipation, blacks were not citizens of the United States as that term was conceived in the U. S. Constitution.  The Commission focused on the ante-bellum status of free blacks in the South:  emancipation may have freed the slaves, but it had not altered the “social, legal or political status” of ante-bellum free blacks.  With these tenets in mind, the Commissioners modeled the black codes after the restrictive bounds placed on ante-bellum free blacks.[3]

 

The Commission asserted that the legislature retained the right to distinguish and discriminate based on color when drafting laws.  While some of this discrimination was explicit, most of the racially different application of laws would be implemented at the discretion of local officials.  Punishment provisions for various offenses may have appeared race neutral, but the Commission’s report was clear that corporal punishments (i.e., whipping up to 39 lashes or standing one hour in the pillory), provided as alternatives for offenses otherwise punishable by fines or imprisonment, were to be imposed only on blacks defendants.  Peeler and DuPont offered startling and horrifying justification:  “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.”[4]

The black codes proposed by Peeler, DuPont and Papy are as follows:

i.  An act to establish and organize a County Criminal Court. (Ch. 1,465)

Sec. 1:  creates county criminal courts with jurisdiction over non-capital offenses;

Comment: if a fine was imposed and not paid, the county commissioners could order that the offender to be set to labor with any compensation going toward paying the fine and cost of prosecution or, alternatively, the authorities could hire the offender out to any party “who will take him or her for the shortest time, and pay the fine, forfeiture and penalty imposed, and cost of prosecution.”  The Commission was explicit that these county criminal courts were intended to replace the old plantation tribunals and to deal with an anticipated “great increase of minor offenses” committed by emancipated blacks. Although racially neutral, it is difficult to imagine that the selling off of labor punishment (essentially temporary slavery) would ever be applied to whites.

ii.  An act prescribing additional penalties for the commission of offences against the State and for other purposes (Ch. 1466)

Sec 1: whenever criminal punishment is limited to a fine or imprisonment, the jury has the option of imposing the pillory for an hour, or whipping (not to exceed 39 lashes) or both.

Sec 3: exciting or attempting to excite insurrection or sedition “amongst any portion or class of the population” is a felony punishable by death.

Sec 12: unlawful for person of color to own/keep/use bowie-knife, dirk, sword, fire-arms or ammunition ..unless by license of county judge and recommendation of 2 respectable white citizens.

Sec 14: races forbidden from intruding on each other’s public assemblies, religious or other; colored persons intruding on white religious or public assembly, or railroad car other public vehicle set aside for whites, is guilty of a misdemeanor (subj to Sec. 1 punishments).

Sec 15: forbids forming a military organization not authorized by law.

Sec 19: forbids hunting within closure of another without consent; using livestock without consent; moving into house or building without leave; illegally taking possession of church/school; cutting down trees exceeding $1 in value; Burglary is punishable by death or $1,000 fine or imprisonment (or pillory/ whipping); assault on white female with intent to commit rape or accessory punishable by death.

Comment:  Sec. 1 gives county officials the discretion to sentence black offenders to corporal punishment while also recognizing the “repugnance to the infliction of corporeal punishment upon the white man, and hence the resort to fine and imprisonment for the punishment of offenses committed by him.”  Sec. 12, which was the subject of much debate, imposed a strong gun control law but limited its application to blacks in order to protect “our wives and children from threatened danger, and the prevention of scenes which may cost the extinction of an entire race.” Sec. 14 allowed segregating public events and railroad cars decades before Jim Crow laws. The death penalty clauses in Sec. 19 are startling.

iii. An act to punish vagrants and vagabonds: (Ch. 1467)

Sec; 1 “every able bodied person who has no visible means of living, and shall not be employed at some labor to support himself or herself, or shall be leading an idle, immoral or profligate course of life” may be arrested by a justice of the peace or judge and bound by surety for one year for good behavior and future industry;  if not giving such surety, the offender may be tried and, if convicted, sentenced to labor or imprisonment not exceeding 12 months or by pillory/whipping.  If the offender is sentenced to labor, the sheriff or a court officer will hire out the offender with proceeds paid to the county treasury;

Sec; 2: vagrants to be disarmed by Sheriff, Constable or Police officer;

Sec, 6: if vagrant is a minor, he will be apprenticed,

Comment: This proposed law, based on an ordinance submitted at the state constitutional convention, was, on the surface, applicable “without distinction of color.” The context of its introduction at the convention and the enforcement/punishment provisions suggest that this law was primarily intended to apply to blacks. In its potentially most extreme application, this law would allow a justice of the peace to arrest an individual he deemed “idle” and send the accused off to “labor” (i.e., slavery) for 12 months.  The county stood to gain financially from vagrancy arrests. This vagrancy statute also served as a form of labor control over blacks (see Ch. 1,470, Sec. 2 below).

 

iv. An act in addition to an act entitled ” an act to amend the act entitled an act concerning marriage licenses, approved January 23, 1832. (Ch. 1468)

Sec 1; misdemeanor for a white woman to “attempt to intermarry,” live within state of adultery or fornicate with a negro, mulatto or other person of color: punishment is fine up to $1,000, and/or jail up to 3 months.; such woman will be disqualified from testifying as a witness against any white person.

Sec. 2:  punishment for a negro who lives within adultery or fornicates with white woman is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine up to $1,000, or pillory/whipping

Sec. 3: “every person who shall have one eighth or more of negro blood shall be deemed and held to be a person of color.”

Sec.5:  allows for legalizing pre-existing marriages between whites and “persons of color” (amended the following year c. 1552);

Comment:  The Commission amended this law to punish black male/white female sex which, previously, must have been too incredible and horrific for Florida legislators to imagine. Unsurprisingly, corporal punishment applies only to blacks. “Person of color” is unhelpfully defined as an individual with one black great grandparent.

 

v. An act to establish and enforce the marriage relation between persons of color: (Ch. 1,469)

Sec. 1: all colored couples living together and who wish to continue so, must marry in ceremony within 9 months.;

Sec 2: legitimizes children of such prior cohabitation;

Comment:  The Committee intended to enforce marriages to “improve the moral condition of the recently emancipated slaves.” The Commission pontificated that the regulation of slave marriages by masters had “been the only inherent evil of the institution of slavery, as it existed in the Southern States.” The following year, the legislature added a new law declaring as married all freedmen couples who had lived together as husband and wife and dismissing indictments against them for fornication or adultery (Ch. 1,552). The amended law remained valid in 1871.

vi. An act in relation to the contracts of persons of color (Ch. 1,470)

Sec 1: contracts with persons of color must be in writing and fully explained before 2 credible witnesses, in duplicate with one copy;

Sec. 2: if colored laborer “shall refuse or neglect to perform…by willful disobedience of orders, wanton impudence or disrespect to his employer…failure or refusal to perform the work assigned to him, idleness or abandonment of the premises or the employment of the party with whom the contract was made, he or she shall be liable upon the complaint of his employer or his agent, made under oath before any Justice of the Peace of the county, to be arrested and tried before the criminal court, and upon conviction shall be subject to all the pains and penalties prescribed for the punishment vagrancy; Provided that it shall be optional with the employer to require that such laborer be remanded to his service instead of being subjected to the punishment”  

Sec. 3:  If laborer violating contractor lives on premises of employer, he will be ejected by the sheriff;

Sec 4:  recourse for laborer if employer refuses to pay: judgement may give first lien on crop but right of appeal;

Sec 5: enticing/inducing laborer to quit, shall be punished by fine of less than $1000 or pillory/whipping;

Sec. 6: this act applies to all “lumber, rafting or milling business, and to all other contracts with persons of color.”

Comment: Sec. 2 is astounding: if a white employer deemed his black worker impudent or disrespectful, or if the laborer simply quit, the laborer could be adjudged a vagrant and sold for one year’s labor or compelled to return to labor for the employer, presumably at no pay. To meet constitutional objections, the legislature went through the motions of amending this act the following year to provide that it be extended “to all persons without discrimination of color.” Sec. 6 was changed to remove the reference to “persons of color’ but to add agriculture as a fourth category of employment chiefly associated with black labor (Ch. 1,551).

 

vii.    An act in relation to apprentices (Ch. 1,471):

Gives courts rights to apprentice out children of adjudged vagrants (Sec. 3) or paupers (Sec. 4) applies to children under 16, until 21 (males) or 18 (females).

Sec: 5: misdemeanor for parent of apprenticed child or other person to “entice, take, carry away…” an apprenticed child.

Comment:  Like the vagrancy statute, the committee explained that this act would be applied “without distinction of color,” but the allowance for corporal punishment in Sec. 5 indicates that apprenticing (i.e., potentially not much more than unpaid child labor forced on children of the poor (i.e., vagrants/paupers)) was disproportionately intended to apply to blacks. Slightly amended the following year (Ch 1,557), this was one of the few black codes still on the books under the Republican “carpetbagger” administration.

 

viii.      An act authorizing executors, administrators, trustees and guardians to contract for the hire of laborers, and confirming contracts heretofore made (Ch. 1,473)

This Act legalized contracts made between executors/guardians of estates and freedmen laborers for the benefit of such estates (e.g., cultivation of land) and gave laborers a first lien on crops grown for wages.

 

ix:        An act concerning testimony (Ch. 1,472)

Sec. 3: testimony of colored persons not authorized “to be taken by depositions in writing or upon written interrogatories, otherwise than in such manner was will enable the court or jury to judge the credibility of the witness.”

Comment:  Article XVI, Sec. 2 of the 1865 Constitution allowed testimony by colored persons in court proceedings “affecting the rights and remedies of colored persons” but excluded their testimony in all other cases except as allowed by future legislation. The original bill submitted by the Commission was race neutral and allowed anyone to testify on their own behalf, but the witness’s interest in the case was to be considered by the judge or jury in evaluating the witness’s testimony. Section 3 was added to the bill as an amendment (Journal, 1866, p. 157). (Constitution (1865) Article XVI, Sec. 3).  This bill seemed to create great confusion and debate between the Florida House and Senate.

 

x.   An act to extend to all the inhabitants of the State the benefits of the ‘courts of justice and the processes thereof.   (Ch. 1,474)

Sec: 1: judicial tribunals of the State “shall be accessible to all the inhabitants of the State, without distinction of color…subject only to restrictions in the constitution of the State.”

Sec. 2: Repeals all laws applying to slaves, free negroes, and mulattoes, except the act to prevent their migration into the State, and the act prohibiting the sale of fire-arms and ammunition to them.” All criminal law previously applicable to white people now apply equally to all inhabitants.

Comment: Despite the Committee protestations that they provided for “perfect equality under the law,” equal access to courts did not mean equal justice when blacks were prohibited from serving on juries and their testimony was typically inadmissible against white men.

 

There were a few additional “Black Codes” not originally included in the Committee’s package of bills:

Act to organize the Militia of this State  (Ch. 1,464)

Sec.1: limited to white males between 18 & 45

Comment: consistent with the gun control provision, this militia law restricted blacks’ access to weapons.

An act concerning schools for freedmen. (Ch. 1,475)

Sec. 6: schools for freedmen children to be funded by a tax on colored males between 21 and 55 or one dollar assigned to the Common School Fund for freedmen

Sec. 9: tuition to be collected from each pupil for the common school fund

Comment: While some pointed to this provision of education for black child as progress, the law required that these segregated schools and the administrators of the black school system were to be entirely funded through a budget raised exclusively by an additional capitation tax and tuition assessed to blacks. Schools would not be established or maintained if such black-funded budgets were not “sufficient to meet the expenses thereof.”  After payment of their regular $3 capitation tax (Ch. 1,501), it is questionable whether many black agricultural laborers would have the cash to pay this additional tax. The plan to fund black schools through assessments on the black community was proposed to the legislature by Rev. L. M. Hobbs, Freedman’s Bureau Asst. Superintendent of Education for Florida (Journal, 1865-66, pp. 221-22).

An Act to require the Children of Destitute Persons to provide for the Support of such Persons (Ch. 1,476)

Requires children to support parents who are unable to support themselves and allows authorities to issue orders assessing children for their support and garnishing wages

Comment: Shofner sees that law as primarily targeting African Americans (Nor is it Over Yet, p. 56) which conforms with the Committee’s concern for “making suitable provision for the support of such of the colored population as are superannuated or rendered unable to work by disease” but not at general public expense. Consistent with Ch. 1,475 (schools), white Floridians were adamant that social welfare for blacks was to be entirely funded by the black population.

 

Act for the Relief of Landlords  (Ch. 1,498)

Sec. 2 & 3:  allows a lessor to get a lien on all crops grown by a renter for failure to pay rent within 10 days after due and for sheriff to sell such crops at public auction

An act to raise a revenue for the State of Florida (Ch. 1,501)

Sec. 1: imposes an annual capitation tax on every male between 21 and 55 of $3. For nonpayment, tax collector may hire out the non-payer “before the door of the court house, to any person who will pay the said tax and the costs incident to the proceedings growing out of said arrest.” If the delinquent payer is employed, his employer may pay the tax and costs as a credit against wages due the delinquent.

Comment: It was obvious to all that black farm workers and small farmers, who often received a crop share rather than cash wages, would find it a challenge to pay this tax. Again, the sale at auction (or return to employer who paid the tax) would almost certainly be disproportionately, if not exclusively, imposed on blacks.

Historian Theodore B. Wilson commented that the black codes commission’s report was “ridiculous for its pompous bigotry.“ While I cannot confirm that DuPont delegated drafting the report to Peeler, its style and tone do resemble Peeler’s writing found in the Florida House Journals and his speeches reprinted in newspapers. Elsewhere, Peeler does seem to take a sort of proprietary interest in the text of some of the codes, when defending the testimony law against various amendments and, later, confessing the problems with implementation of the county criminal courts law. Shofner has written that Peeler performed most of the Commission’s work, but does not document that claim.

Prof. Wilson, who wrote a survey of the black codes in the 1960s, shared Shofner’s dismay at the Commission’s work.  Both scholars pointed out that Florida’s legislature convened after both Mississippi and South Carolina black codes had already received strong criticism for their harsh treatment of freedmen. Unlike the black codes passed by the remaining Southern states, Florida’s black codes were just as unforgiving as Mississippi’s, perhaps even more egregious.  Shofner found that the black code reflected “belligerence and defiance” by Florida lawmakers.  (Shofner, p. 50).  Wilson concluded that Florida’s legislature was the “most bigoted and shortsighted of all southern legislatures of 1865 and 1866.” At least Mississippi had the excuse of having gone first (Wilson, Black Codes, p. 143).  Both Shofner and Wilson singled out the Commission for blame.

The Freedmen’s Bureau protested the disproportionate and corporal punishments under the Florida black codes. But these complaints were inconsistent in their effectiveness: Joe M. Richardson reports many cases in 1866 of accused blacks being assessed large fines and, unable to pay, then whipped or sold at public auction (Richardson, African Americans in the Reconstruction of Florida, p. 376).  A few provisions were considered so egregious that even Florida officials immediately recognized they had to be modified (e.g., Ch. 1,470 regarding contracts entered into by persons of color, and the gun control law).  Most of the black codes were overturned in 1868 by Florida’s “Carpetbagger” revised state constitution which prohibited “civil or political distinction in this State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”  (Constitution, 1868, Article XVI, Sec. 28).  The 1868 Constitution also provided that jurors were to be selected from registered voters, who then included blacks.  The racially biased gun control law was also rejected in paragraph 22 of the Constitution which declared that “The people shall have the right to bear arms in defense of themselves and of the lawful authority of the state.”

 

In addition to his work on the black codes, Peeler was busy at the legislative session during which the Commission’s work was presented and approved. He was appointed to the committees on the judiciary, militia, and schools and colleges.  He also led an effort to send to Washington a delegation to petition President Johnson for the release from imprisonment of Florida Confederate officials David Yulee, Stephen R. Mallory, John H. Gee and A.K. Allison.  When the XIII Amendment to the US Constitution banning slavery came up for a ratification vote before the Florida legislature, Peeler was one of only two out of 38 assemblymen who voted in the negative.  Asserting the privilege to explain his dissent, Peeler wrote that he could not sanction Congress’s tyrannical abuse of power of making passage of the XIII by Southern states a condition precedent for their return to the Union. Peeler asked rhetorically whether such concessions would end “with negro suffrage?”[5]

 

Peeler returned to the state legislature the following year to represent Leon County again and held onto his powerful position as chair of the judiciary committee.  In this role, he resisted a bill to abolish pillory and whipping as a punishment, “believing it in some cases to be the most effectual preventive of crime.” (Journal, 1866 15^th Sess., 81).  Peeler also supported repeal of the County Criminal Court act because the past year’s experience had proven these new courts to be cost inefficient and because the system “works great prejudice to the interests of the planters and other business men” by calling them to jury duty and for “frequently withdraw[ing] large numbers of their hands from their labor” as well as the “utter ignorance and inefficiency of many of the Judges.” (Journal, 1866, pp. 81-2; Ch. 1,537). Peeler took a close interest in the case of George St. Leger Grenfell who was imprisoned by the United States at Fort Jefferson. He delivered an extensive report on the situation and privately volunteered legal support for Grenfell. (Journal 1866, pp. 122-26). In a final act of defiance, Peeler wrote a long resolution in opposition to ratification of the XIV Amendment and his colleagues supported him with a unanimous vote opposing ratification.

 

Peeler’s career as an elected official ended with Congress’s passage of the Reconstruction Acts and the granting of voting rights to Florida’s adult, African-American males in 1867.  Residing in Leon County, the Florida county with the highest percentage of African Americans, Peeler initially stood little chance at winning re-election while blacks voted in large numbers during the Reconstruction years. Still, Peeler remained politically active. Unlike many whites who preached non-cooperation with Reconstruction officials and boycotted elections, Peeler recognized by mid-1867 that black voting was inevitable and that whites needed to organize and even co-opt black votes. He urged whites, who formed a majority of the state’s population, to fully participate in the political process and organize to elect representatives to oppose Reconstruction. Whites, he argued, should strive to convince black voters that native Southern white Democrats represented blacks’ best interests too. He felt confident that thousands of blacks would indeed be persuaded  to act “with their real friends” by voting for white Democrats (Semi-Weekly Floridian, Aug. 30, 1867).[6] Needless to say, this plea failed utterly as new black voters in 1867 and 1868 almost unanimously supported the Republican Party and the drafting of a new state constitution to trump the 1865 version.  

 

The following summer, Peeler traveled to New York City as a delegate to the Democratic Party national convention held at Tammany Hall.  In 1873, Peeler moved with his family to Austin, Texas where his father had large land holdings. There he established a successful law practice and at times worked with the state government.  His career in Texas is summarized in a tribute found in the Texas Supreme Court Reporter (1888);

 Peeler died in 1886 at the age of forty-eight, leaving behind Elizabeth and five children.

---

[1] It is difficult to get a sense of how many eligible voters failed to take the amnesty oath.  There had been about 18,000 adult, white males in 1860. 

[2] “Arthur Murray” was later collected in an anthology of Confederate prisoner writing: https://books.google.co.il/books?id=WAcTAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22arthur%20murray%22%20drummer%20boy&pg=PA275#v=onepage&q&f=false

[3] The Dupont-Peeler Commission report is found in the Journal of the Proceedings of the House of Representatives, of the General Assembly of the State of Florida, Fourteenth Session, Dec. 1865- Jan. 1866,  pp. 58-69.

[4] One Florida senator, Holmes Steele, objected to this reasoning. Steele argued that because blacks were now free, the imposition of the lash – formerly reserved for slaves - would only serve to degrade them. Instead, whites should seek “to reform and elevate” their former slaves by imposing only punishments appropriate to free men.  (Florida Senate Journal, 1865-66, pp. 146-7). 

[5] See also Peeler’s eulogy of his law partner Thomas Baltzell, former FL Chief Justice (Journal, pp. 282-3)/

[6] In this speech, Peeler announced his credentials as a “friend” of black people: “Now you all know that I have been the friend of the colored man. I have defended three of them for their lives before Military Commissions and the Courts since the war closed, and they were all cleared. I did just as much for them as the richest white man in the State, and here in this Court House I have helped a great many colored people out of scrapes and difficulties, and never got but little pay for it either – for I knew they were poor and knew nothing about law matters and ought to be helped.” 

[7}: Cases Argued ad Decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Texas, 1888, pp. vii-viii.

Peeler died in 1886, leaving behind Elizabeth and five children.

Notes:

[1] It is difficult to get a sense of how many eligible voters failed to take the amnesty oath.  There had been about 18,000 adult, white males in 1860.

[2] “Arthur Murray” was later collected in an anthology of Confederate prisoner writing.[https://books.google.co.il/books?id=WAcTAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22arthur%20murray%22%20drummer%20boy&pg=PA275#v=onepage&q&f=false ]

[3] The Dupont-Peeler Commission report is found in the Journal of the Proceedings of the House of Representatives, of the General Assembly of the State of Florida, Fourteenth Session, Dec. 1865- Jan. 1866,  pp. 58-69.

[4] One Florida senator, Holmes Steele, objected to this reasoning. Steele argued that because blacks were now free, the imposition of the lash – formerly reserved for slaves - would only serve to degrade them. Instead, whites should seek “to reform and elevate” their former slaves by imposing only punishments appropriate to free men.  (Florida Senate Journal, 1865-66, pp. 146-7).

[5] See also Peeler’s eulogy of his law partner Thomas Baltzell, former FL Chief Justice (Journal, pp. 282-3).

[6] In this speech, Peeler announced his credentials as a “friend” of black people: “Now you all know that I have been the friend of the colored man. I have defended three of them for their lives before Military Commissions and the Courts since the war closed, and they were all cleared. I did just as much for them as the richest white man in the State, and here in this Court House I have helped a great many colored people out of scrapes and difficulties, and never got but little pay for it either – for I knew they were poor and knew nothing about law matters and ought to be helped."

[7]Cases Argued and Decided in the Supreme Court of Texas (1888), pp. vii-viii.

Once Upon A Time During Reconstruction in Florida

[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

www.ancestry.com;

www.findagrave.com