[The following takes place during the Reconstruction Era in the Antebellum South following the American Civil War.]
The first sign of serious trouble for Ames had come the previous summer in Vicksburg, where whites were livid over the marriage of a Negro legislator to the daughter of a local planter and the presence of several blacks on the Republican ticket in upcoming local elections. On July 4, 1874, a mob of Vicksburg White-Leaguers shot up an Independence Day rally of black Republicans, killing several, and took over the city by force. Ames wrote to President Grant begging for federal troops to quell the riot. But Grant, fearful of political backlash, advised Ames to settle the matter locally and refused to interfere. Incredibly, on the very anniversary of his siege victory at Vicksburg, Grant effectively returned the city to his old enemies.
Six months later, emboldened white supremacists inflicted worse slaughter on Vicksburg. A mob forcibly turned the black Republican sheriff Peter Crosby out of office. The overthrown sheriff, on orders from Ames, mustered a band of five hundred freedmen to help him take back his post, but as they marched on the town a heavily armed white militia headed by a Confederate cavalry colonel, Horace Miller, met them at a bridge on the outskirts. The leader of the black militia, a Union veteran named Andrew Owen, advised his outnumbered and outgunned men, “Boys, go back peaceable and quiet.” As they turned their backs and began to disperse, a white fired into them. The shot touched off a massacre; for the next three days vigilantes hunted blacks down through the woods, where their bodies remained, their families too afraid to claim them.
Source:
Jenkins, Sally, and John Stauffer. “Reconstruction and Redemption.” The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded from the Confederacy. Anchor Books, 2010. 267-68. Print.
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