The Record of Murders and Outrages by William A. Blair

Author:William A. Blair [Blair, William A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877), African American & Black, Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies
ISBN: 9781469663463
Google: 25IkEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2021-09-13T02:43:17+00:00

White Georgia’s blatant assault on Republican dominance began in the spring of 1868 as a group of men numbered at between twenty and thirty forced their way into a boardinghouse in Columbus. They had come for George W. Ashburn, a white organizer of the Republican Party, delegate to the constitutional convention, and champion of African American interests. He had rented a room from a Black woman. Arriving shortly after midnight at the end of March, the assailants wore masks, some of them blackened. Ashburn had a pistol, but the intruders killed him with a volley of ten to fifteen shots as he stood in the bedroom. One man knelt to fire a final charge into the body. A woman who lived in the home recognized a man whose disguise had fallen off as a “respectable and orderly young gentlemen.” But because of death threats, the woman recanted her testimony at the coroner’s inquest. The verdict, consequently, came down as death caused by parties unknown.24

Recognized as one of the first murders by the Klan in Georgia—although there had been lynching of Black people that had not attracted this level of interest—the slaying prompted an immediate reaction by the federal government. General Grant pushed for an energetic investigation by the army and the use of a military commission to try the case. Without political relations restored with the United States, Georgia remained under the control of Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, the hero of Gettysburg. The army settled on nine men to accuse for the murder, including a physician, a commission merchant, two policemen, a deputy marshal, and active members of the Democratic Party. Meade told Grant that he saw a connection between the disorder in his district of Alabama and Georgia and the secret organizations operating in Tennessee, meaning the Klan. He begged for more troops, which were sent.25

The controversy commanded public interest. It involved not only leading men of the community as the accused but also high-profile lawyers, including the former vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens. A U.S. soldier served as a witness, confessing his own involvement as one of the killers. He had been recruited by locals to join the Democratic Party. Despite his and other testimony consistently showing the perpetrators guilty of cold-blooded murder, the trial did not end well. It lasted from June 29 to July 24, when Meade ordered the proceedings closed after elections installed a Republican governor and the legislature ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. This supposedly met the qualifications for rejoining the Union and ended military rule. The accused were turned over to civil authorities to continue the prosecution, which of course did not happen. The freed men returned to Columbus as heroes. In the end, no one paid for Ashburn’s murder.26 A member of the constitutional convention had died mysteriously from pistol balls that no one seems to have fired.

The usual mixed reactions appeared in Northern newspapers. The contrarians diminished the guilt of the assailants, blaming the trial on the federal

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