Murder in Jefferson, Texas, Oct. 4, 1868

I was reading Fleming's book on Reconstruction in Arkansas and saw this incident involving Smith. Just a note, Fleming was an extreme racist and Southern partisan:
Far more serious than these, however, were several outbreaks which assumed a dangerous character because of reckless official participation in them. Of these the most notorious was the burning of Brenham, where a battalion of the I7th Infantry was stationed under the command of Major G. W. Smith. On the night of September 7, 1866, a crowd of drunken soldiers forced their way into and broke up a negro ball. Then, pursuing some negroes who fled for protection to a social gathering of some of the white people, they made their way thither and attempted to break up that. They were resisted, a fight
ensued, and two soldiers were shot, but not seriously hurt. They went back to their camp and the whole force turned out and went to town, their commander with them. He arrested two citizens and threatened the town if others did not surrender themselves. Then, by his orders, two stores were broken into under pretense of searching for the citizens wanted, and were rifled of their contents. Shortly afterwards soldiers were discovered setting one of these stores on fire. An entire block of buildings was destroyed with a loss of over $130,000. The citizens appealed to the governor, and at his request an investigation of the affair was made by the regimental commander, Colonel Mason, then on duty at Galveston. Mason's report disclosed practically nothing and was a palpable " white-wash ". x A special committee of the legislature, after an extensive investigation, made a report identifying certain soldiers as guilty and implicating Major Smith, who had allowed the accused soldiers to desert and had refused to assist the committee. 2 A grand jury indicted Smith on a charge of burglary and arson; but although Throckmorton appealed to the President on behalf of the civil courts, 8 it proved impossible to bring the officer to trial in defiance of his military superiors. 4 A judgment
examined by it, is given in the appendix to House Journal, Eleventh Legislature. 8 Throckmorton to Stanbery, October 12, 1866, copy in Executive Records, Register Book, no. 84, p. 120. 4 Sheridan accepted imquestioningly the statements made by Mason for damages was rendered against him in favor of a firm whose store had been burned; but in July, 1867, when martial law was again supreme, General Griffin issued a special order reversing this judgment and dismissing all proceedings against the officer, because " the acts [of Smith] were committed in discharge of his duty as an officer, and the action of the court was dictated by a spirit of malicious persecution, fostered by vindictive and disloyal sentiments." *


Ramsdell, Charles William (2007-12-14). Reconstruction in Texas (1910) (pp. 128-129). . Kindle Edition.
Ramsdell, Charles William (2007-12-14). Reconstruction in Texas (1910) (p. 128). . Kindle Edition.
Ramsdell, Charles William (2007-12-14). Reconstruction in Texas (1910) (pp. 127-128). . Kindle Edition.
 
I was reading Fleming's book on Reconstruction in Arkansas and saw this incident involving Smith. Just a note, Fleming was an extreme racist and Southern partisan:
...

Pat, are you sure this is the same G. W. Smith? I think there are discrepancies: I don't know what this 17th Infantry (U.S., U.S.C.T., or state, and if so which one?) is, but the only unit reference I've seen for the Jefferson victim is the 123d N. Y. After mustering out, Jefferson's Smith reportedly accompanied his uncle - by inference the uncle who raised the 123d - to Texas where the uncle went into business (I saw nothing else about him) and Smith into the Freedman's Bureau as its local representative. Of course that wouldn't preclude a stop on the way in Arkansas, but it doesn't explain any association with this 17th Regiment. Also, I don't know what Smith's final rank was, only that he's shown as a captain in his late-war photograph; this of course doesn't prevent him from being discharged with the next-highest rank conferred by brevet as was pretty common.
 
Interesting. I've read about this before that former Confederate Col. Crump, head of the Knights of the Rising Sun, was arrested along with a large body of men and charged with this killing.
Family history tells me that the yankee troops were not angels. They came to my gg grandfather's home, James Selen Stout, looking for him and 4 of his sons who were former Confederate soldiers. Selen lived in Pine Forest, Texas which is very close to Sulphur Springs, Tx. which is in northeast Texas within the Marshal, Texas spear of influence. They hid out by a cow pond while the Yankees went into the house and were searching for food they would confiscate and give to the Freedman's Bureau. My gg grandmother sat in a chair with her hoop skirt covering the trap door into the root cellar where they stored food was kept. The Yankees found neither food they could steal nor family members they could arrest. The locals made it hot enough for the Yankees that they had to build a stockcade in town and they stayed there at night venturing out only in the day for their thieving, jack boot trips.
Cullen Bakers and Biggerstaff prowled the area.
 
Pat, are you sure this is the same G. W. Smith? I think there are discrepancies: I don't know what this 17th Infantry (U.S., U.S.C.T., or state, and if so which one?) is, but the only unit reference I've seen for the Jefferson victim is the 123d N. Y. After mustering out, Jefferson's Smith reportedly accompanied his uncle - by inference the uncle who raised the 123d - to Texas where the uncle went into business (I saw nothing else about him) and Smith into the Freedman's Bureau as its local representative. Of course that wouldn't preclude a stop on the way in Arkansas, but it doesn't explain any association with this 17th Regiment. Also, I don't know what Smith's final rank was, only that he's shown as a captain in his late-war photograph; this of course doesn't prevent him from being discharged with the next-highest rank conferred by brevet as was pretty common.
Could be. Smith is a pretty common name outside of NY.
 
So, here is Ramsdell's version of the Jefferson killings. He says thatSmith was disparaged as a man who lived in "social equality" with the blacks, which is about the worst thing that could be said about a white man:

This belief was strength-enen by an affair which occurred at Jefferson early in October. Geo. W. Smith, a carpet-bagger from New York, had become the leader of the negroes in that community, where they outnumbered the whites two to one, and by his conduct had aroused the bitter enmity of the latter. The
Jefferson Times declared that he had lived among the negroes on terms of social equality, had encouraged them in all manner of evil, and by incendiary
speeches had constantly stirred up animosity and trouble between them and the whites. He was a member of the constitutional convention, and, on his return from its session, he became involved in a dispute with a white man. Smith brought up a gang of negroes to his support, wounded several white men, and then fled to the protection of the military, who turned him over to the civil authorities. He was jailed and strongly guarded by both citizens and soldiers, but a large body of armed men overawed the guard, entered the jail, and killed him, along with two or three negroes taken with him. Under the caption, " Murder of an Infamous Scoundrel ", the Jefferson Times gave an account of the lynching and sought to justify it.


Ramsdell was clearly ok with the lynching:

Though condemned in the eyes of the law, [the lynching) was an unavoidable necessity. The sanctity of home, the peace and safety of society, the prosperity of the country, and the security of life itself demanded the removal of so base a villain.

The Radical press, however, hailed Smith's death as that of a martyr to the Union and to free speech, and this was the version that was accepted at the North. Reynolds sent additional troops to Jefferson, proclaimed martial law there and arrested some thirty prominent citizens on the charge of murder. He held them in close confinement for about ten months for trial before a military
commission, and ultimately five were convicted.


Ramsdell, Charles William (2007-12-14). Reconstruction in Texas (1910) (p. 230-231). . Kindle Edition.
 
...Cullen Bakers and Biggerstaff prowled the area.

I've heard Baker's name but don't remember anything about him. Biggerstaff, on the other hand, was from the vicinity of what is now Mount Vernon in Franklin County between Mount Pleasant and Sulphur Springs. (Franklin Co. was created a little after all this with land taken from Hopkins and Titus counties.) Biggerstaff terrorized the freedmen of Hopkins Co., causing a troop of cavalry to also be stationed in Sulphur Springs that searched for him unsuccessfully. I think he generally confined his operations in this area rather than around Jefferson, but was said to have had as many as a couple of hundred followers at his zenith. Eventually things got too hot for him and whatever followers he may have had left and he escaped to the south of Fort Worth where he and another man died in an ambush laid by the townspeople of (I think) Granbury who seemed to have regarded him as nothing but an outlaw and troublemaker rather than as a Robin Hood.
 
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