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Southern Abolition Societies

jpeter · 2010-12-24

Rev. Anthony Bewley, from The Handbook of Texas Online: By 1858, after serving for ten years in Northern Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri, Bewley had moved his family to Johnson County, Texas, and established a mission sixteen miles south of Fort Worth. Although he was considered to be weak on the slavery issue by some northern Methodists, his antislavery views were threatening to southerners. Thus, when vigilance committees alleged in the summer of 1860 that there was a widespread abolitionist plot to burn Texas towns and murder their citizens, suspicion immediately fell upon Bewley and other outspoken critics of slavery (see TEXAS TROUBLES). Special attention was focused on Bewley because of an incendiary letter, dated July 3, 1860, addressed to a Rev. William Bewley and supposedly written by a fellow abolitionist, William H. Bailey. Many argued that the letter, which urged Bewley to continue with his work in helping to free Texas from slavery, was a forgery. The letter was widely published, however, and taken by others as evidence of Bewley's involvement with the John Brownites in Texas. Recognizing the danger, Bewley left for Kansas in mid-July with part of his family. En route he stopped for eleven days in Indian Territory to wait for the remainder of his family and later visited with friends in Benton County, Arkansas. On September 3, 1860, a Texas posse caught up with him near Cassville, Missouri. His captors returned him to Fort Worth on September 13. Late that night vigilantes seized Bewley and delivered him into the hands of a waiting lynch mob. His body was allowed to hang until the next day, when he was buried in a shallow grave. Three weeks later his bones were unearthed, stripped of their remaining flesh, and placed on top of Ephraim Daggett's storehouse, where children made a habit of playing with them. After Bewley's death the Northern Methodists ended their activities in Texas. According to some historians, they remained there until the end of the Civil War. Man. that was brutal. The late 1850's could not have been a good time to profess anti-slavery sentiment in North-central Texas.

Thread starter jpeter
Start date Dec 24, 2010

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