Flagpole. (Athens, Ga.) 1987-current, July 19, 2000, Image 10
A CIVIL WAR LYNCHING IN ATHENS
Tt'I my article “The Last Lynching in
111 Athens," published in Flagpole on
Sept. 10, 1997 [see www.flagpole.com], I
recounted the grim saga of the 1921
lynching of John Lee Eberhart, the only
officially recorded lynching in Clarke
County since the government began gath
ering official statistics on lynchings in
1882. In my article, I noted that, while it
was the last lynching in Clarke County,
the Eberhart lynching may not have been
the only one in the history of this county,
because there might have been lynchings
here before 1882.
Recently, while reading E. Merton
Coulter’s classic history of ante-bellum
Athens, College Life in the Old South (UGA
Press, 1983 reprint), I came across a refer
ence on page 247 to an Athens lynching
occurring early in the Civil War. Having
checked into the matter, I can now
announce that, indeed, there definitely
was at least one lynching in Athens prior
to 1882. This lynching, possibly, but not
probably, the first lynching in Athens,
took place in 1862.
The only available information about
the 1862 lynching incident is in several
articles in the July 23, 1862 issue of a
former local newspaper, Vie Southern
Watchman (subtitled: “An Independent
Family Journal: Devoted to News, Politics,
Agriculture, [and] Current Literature").
One of these articles, euphemistically
entitled “Execution of a Negro,” reveals
that on Tuesday, July 15, 1862, a black
man (who was not named or identified in
the article, but clearly was a slave) was
arrested on an unspecified but evidently
capital criminal charge and brought to
Athens. On the next day, a court
hearing was held before a justice of
the peace in the Athens To^n Hall,
and the arrested slave was ordered
committed to jail to await a trial in
the Clarke Superior Court. Following
the hearing, however, a number of
persons in the Town Hall “overpow
ered the Sheriff and his Deputy, and
taking the negro (sic) about a mile
from town, hung him."
According to Frances Taliaferro
Thomas’ excellent book, A Portrait of
Historic Athens and Clarke County
(1992), the Town Hall where the
slave was seized had been com-
pleted in 1847, and was “the
center of town life." It had
two floors: the first floor
/
doubled as a town market
and jail, and the second -
floor contained a large *5®
hall for concerts, min- ^
strel shows, public ^
meetings and political ^
debates. Prior to 1876, g
the Town Hall, Ms. ‘ob
Thomas says, “served £
as courthouse and jail.” ^
The Town Hall faced V
Lumpkin Street. (The pre-
sent City Hall, constructed
in 1904, is located on College PUt
Avenue between Washington and
Hancock Streets.)
The 1862 lynching was a public spec
tacle. In another article in the same issue
of The Southern Watchman, it was
reported “that a portion of the crowd
which followed the negro (sic) to the gal-
. ? lows (sic) indulged in singing, yelling,
^ and hallooing!" However, the article
continued, “[i]n justice to those who
© conducted the [lynching], it is proper to
Er. state that this improper conduct was
Sj not sanctioned or participated in by
q them, that it was the work of outsiders."
^ The article added: “It may be proper
to remark that the crowd was not com-
~ posed entirely of Athenians nor even
g Clarke county men. There were people
2* from other counties and other States,
^ we learn.” Whenever a iynching
occurred in the 19th Century South,
it was a standard practice for local
authorities to blame the particular
Ox lynching on strangers from out-
*o side the county.
^ In a third article in the
same issue of The Southern
^ Watchman, it was
announced that the news
paper had just “received
a communication in
^ defense of mob law."
Presumably the com-
•—' munication was
? intended to justify the
recent lynching. Noting,
<1 however, that it had
“observed a growing ten-
0^ dency towards moboc-
racy," the newspaper declined
“under any circumstances to pub
lish [the communication]... even as an
advertisement." Those who advocate the
cause of mobs, the newspaper said,
“would inaugurate a worse government
than that of the infernal regions! And we
cannot think of mak'ng our paper the
\
(3tS)
advocate of such destructive doctrines.”
The 1862 lynching was not the only vio
lent manifestation of mobocracy in the
Athens of the time. In his superb biog
raphy of Athens' greatest lawyer and
statesman, Thomas R. R. Cobb: The
Making of a Southern Nationalist (1983),
William B. McCash mentions an incident
in Athens in November 1860 in which
Cobb “in*ervene[d]... to help save a man
who was being tried by a mob at the
Town Hall for allegedly expressing free-
soil sentiments. The accused was
released with the understanding that the
next offense should be punished by
hanging."
McCash also mentions the formation
by the Athens town council in November,
1860, of a “vigilance committee, com
posed of twenty prominent citizens,
empowered to investigate and try per
sons accused of encouraging slave insur
rection and punish those found guilty."
The town council established the vigi
lance committee, McCash tells us,
because it “dreaded the possibility of
slave revolts."
Viewed in light of other events of the
era, therefore, the 1862 lynching exposes
ante-bellum and Civil War Athens as a city
where mobs, lynchings and threatened
lynchings—directed at slaves or oppo
nents of slavery—helped keep the white,
racist, pro-slavery establishment firmly in
control.
Donald E. Wilkes, Jr.
Donald Wilkes is a professor at the UGA
School of Law
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