1898 Wilmington Race Riot Home Page
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Georgia Community Activist
Rebecca Felton Calls For
Lynching of Rapists:
The editorial of Wilmington newspaperman Alexander Manly which claimed that the rape of white farm women by blacks was "consensual," sparked the drive for responsible government in November 1898 and ridding the city of those provoking racial hostility. The speech of Rebecca Felton in 1897 which Manly was responding to is related below.
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| Rebecca Felton of Georgia |
"On August 11, 1897 Rebecca Latimer Felton, wife of a Populist leader in Georgia, spoke at the Georgia Agricultural Society about the problems that farm wives faced. She said that farm wives faced many dangers, but none greater than the threat of black rapists.
She argued that charitable donations for overseas missionaries were misspent; the funds were better spent educating poor young white girls who had been left unprotected by the poor white men of the South. White men, she said, had failed to protect farm wives from “the black rapist.” Vigilante justice, she declared, was a way for men to restore that protection. According to Felton:
“When there is not enough religion in the pulpit to organize a crusade against sin; nor justice in the court house to promptly punish crime; nor manhood enough in the nation to put a sheltering arm about innocence and virtue----if
it needs lynching to protect woman’s dearest possession form the ravening human beasts----then I say lynch, a thousand times a week if necessary.”
North Carolina Republicans who had encouraged African American men’s success were also to blame for the “black rapist.” Republicans, Felton insisted,
“must find a means to stop the crime that invites lynching by the ignorant and malicious of your supporters, or you cannot escape the responsibility for their actions. “ Republicans “encouraged the ignorant Negroes in thinking that the success of the party…insures him against the just penalty of his wrongdoing.” Republicans, who had portrayed white Democrats as the black’s most bitter enemy, had led African American men to perform all sorts of outrages against whites. “In his ignorance, she argued, the African American man “…has interpreted this to give him license to degrade and debauch.” Felton warned, “You are his teacher. You must correct your teachings or you cannot escape the wrath of an outraged people.”
(see the Alexander Manly-Rebecca Felton page for more)
Research Worth Reading
Understanding The Conflict and Its Origins:
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Charles B. Aycock North Carolina Governor 1901-1905 |
See "The Trial of Thomas Lane" on the Aftermath page.
Lane, a black resident of Wilmington, was tried for firing
into the Wilmington Light Infantry troops who
restored order during the November, 1898 conflict.
"The black youngster, Knight, testified that he was in the park
when the trouble occurred; that he heard a pistol shot, saw Thomas Lane
run around the house and throw his pistol under the building. At the same
time Lane told Knight that he had "gotten one of the damned rascals."
Meaning that he had killed one of the Light Infantry boys."
Wilmington Chamber of Commerce Resolution
November 1898
"The revolution in the city government that displaced a weak and
incompetent administration and legally instituted a new and
representative government was accomplished without violence,
and was the legitimate result of the combined moral influence of
the intelligent and wealth of the community."
Josephus Daniels at the post-conflict Negro State Fair in Raleigh:
"I felt that the Negroes might not relish my addressing them (at the Negro State Fair in Raleigh). “On the contrary,” (Parson Leak) said, “this old rascal (Daniel Russell) who is up in the Governor’s mansion, who has gotten everything he has from Negroes, has been ungrateful. They have no respect for him. They know that at heart you are their friend and they need somebody who was a leader of the white supremacy campaign to give them assurance of friendship
and protection. You are the very man they want.”
(Editor In Politics, Josephus Daniels, pp. 311-312.)
Welcome!
Our recent additions help further develop the context and historical perspective that enable one to better understand the November 1898 conflict in Wilmington, and how it was part of a very broad picture of race relations in the United States.
It is the intention of this website to clearly show the various reasons for the change in government and violence in Wilmington in November, 1898. Far from being an isolated racial incident, it was the result of years of political and racial tensions fomented by opportunists in order to acquire and maintain political supremacy in Wilmington, and New Hanover County.
The manner in which our research material is presented avoids unecessary commentary, and we intend to let the quoted participants speak for themselves. In this way the reader may best interpret the research and reach their own conclusions regarding the event, and the political turmoil leading to it. Unfortunately, there are those who will use historical events as a weapon for political purposes, and the best defense againt this is to one, view the past through the eyes of its participants and their writings left to us; and two, look at both sides of the issue that caused the turmoil to understand why each side acted as they did. Any attempt by private groups, or government, at politicizing history should be avoided, as in the words of the famous Austrian economist and historian, Ludwig von Mises:
"It is obvious that the historian must not be biased by any prejudices and party tenets. Those writers who consider historical events as an arsenal of weapons for the conduct of their party feuds are not historians but propagandists and apologists. They are not eager to acquire knowledge but to justify the program of their parties . . .They usurp the name of history for their writings as a blind in order to deceive the incredulous."
Also, as Editor of this site, I want to thank the very generous supporters who help make this site possible, and who provided the direction and research essential to presenting a useful source of historical information for visitors, researchers, and historians. With over 20,000 visitors to the website since 2005, we have become a well-known resource to many people in search of unbiased research regarding the 1898 conflict. Without that generous support of those interested in accurate and objective history, this website and research would not be possible. We especially appreciate the paid scholarships underwritten by local businesses. This has enabled us to employ two research interns through August and help them broaden their historical studies.
Our most important asset is the 1898 Institute being fully independent of any political organizations, and we receive no funding whatsoever from governmental agencies. The Institute is therefore free from any political or ideological bias that normally affects academic and government reports on the 1898 Wilmington conflict.
Thank you for visiting, and your continued generous financial support,
Henry,
Henry L. Melton, Editor
Institute Staff:
James C. Clinton , Assistant Editor
Patricia Markham , Senior Research Assistant
John Miller, Archival Research
Mary Boyd Cassinger, Librarian
Mike Taylor, Summer Intern
Alicia Brock, Summer Intern
(This site is continuously updated with pertinent research and newly acquired documents that relate to the 1898 Wilmington conflict. Our thanks to the many friends and researchers in the Wilmington area, at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and Chapel Hill, Wake Forest, Duke, and various area historical institutions whose efforts are greatly appreciated, and help make this important website possible.
Recent Additions To The Site:
The Postwar Black Political Reality in the North:
"By 1883, one (moderate Republican) admitted ruefully that "the elevation of the Negro was...one of the means adopted to punish the South for their treason"; it had little relation to the crusade for human rights which the
(15th Amendment) ratification exuberance celebrated.
Negroes looked to Charles Sumner, an anti-slavery man of impeccable credentials. Whatever the purity of his principles, he symbolized a very different force which worked against the Northern Negro. Sumner was a politician; his abolitionism and egalitariansim were expressed in political terms. After the war, left homeless by the diffidence of abolitionists and the dissolution of their organizations, the Negro was entrapped by politics, by the Sumners for whom politics was primary. The Republican party was the snare and the Negro the deluded. Without help from outside of the political arena, and there was none, the Negro could only struggle hopelessly and helplessly withing the p0litical framework. There was no escape.
Recent scholarship has demonstrated that the Radical and later the bloody-shirt wing of the Republican party had little use for the Negro except as political ballast. Within the Republican fold, colored followers sought earnestly for a role to play and rewards to earn. New Jersey and Connecticut, resident colored spokesmen proclaimed, could be controlled politically by Negro voters, since they held the balance of power; but the arithmetic of the pundit and that of the polls never seemed to agree.
Without the ability to score at the ballot box, Negroes suffered losses in the patronage game. No colored men held any appointive office in Philadelphia, a white newspaper asserted after an 1879 investigation, "unless, perchance, there may be a stray clerk or messenger in the post office or the customs house." "We do not believe," a Negro editor lamented in 1880, that "a colored man can be found from Maine to California holding a government position that pays over $1500 a year, and probably not a dozen that hold even $1000."
George T. Dowling of Rhode Island, a successful caterer and ardent politician, took on Frederick Douglas with a blast at Republicans for discriminations "that feed a lack of respect for colored men," and a hint that Democrats in the future might welcome Negro support. Most of the public backbiting (among black and white Republicans) grew out of conditions imposed by whites: discrimination which limited opportunities in employment, education and public accomodation; and the Republican party which limited political preferment....(many) able (black) men had fled New York for the South or posts abroad. Trained young colored men, a Philadelphia reporter observed, "are compelled to become waiters, barbers and the like, because other and more congenial employments are closed to them." (In the North), skilled Negroes were barred from government jobs as well as private employment (and must) "either be menials or starve or drift South."
Color differences within the race were heightened in this period by the influx of Southern freedmen, most of whom were very dark. Known by their color, their speech and their customs, the newcomers were viewed with suspicion by older (black) residents. One Negro leader charged that it was the Southern immigrants who gambled, committed petty thefts, and carried razors. A white Philadelphian characterized the newcomers as "ignorant, dissolute and brutal ex-slaves" and commented that the influx "had not bettered the social status of the free blacks of Philadelphia any more than elsewhere."
(Repercussions of Reconstruction, The Northern Negro, 1870-1883, Leslie H. Fishel, Jr., Civil War History, Kent State University, 1968, pp. 326-336)
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Bryan |
William Jennings Bryan in 1890 addresses black
"bloc voting" for the Republican party:
"It seems to me strange that this party, which claims to love the colored man so well, fails to show its affection in any material degree. In the northern States there are 621,000 colored men. In many instances they hold the balance of power, but nobody ever heard of a colored man going to Congress from the north."
"The Republican party has taken the Negro for thirty years to an office door and then tied him on the outside. The Negro has bestowed presidents on the Republican party---and the Republican party has given to the Negro janitorships in return."
(Bryan, Louis W. Koenig, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1971, page 76 & page 334)
1898 Black Collector of Customs John C. Dancy Speaks:
(Dancy) "Informed several audiences in New York that the Manly editorial
was "the determining factor" in bringing about the riot. Cyrus D. Bell, editor
of the Afro-American Sentinel in Omaha, Nebraska, also blamed Manly for
the violence. Bell pointed out that Manly was a mulatto, and he contended
that the violence in Wilmington "comes from that element that are so
nearly white that they are miserable anywhere except in the white race.
They are the meanest animals unhung.
They have no race, and as a rule less principle."
(McDuffie, page 752)
Legislature Restores Local Elections After 1898 Revolution:
"On March 4, 1899, the North Carolina Legislature ratified the (Wilmington) charter amendment. This act removed the power of appointing 5 (of ten) aldermen from the governor, and provided for the (popular) election of two aldermen from each ward. "
The new charter also attempted to force the city's blacks back to their jobs. The 1899 charter sought to remedy the labor shortage by empowering the mayor to order all tramps and vagrants to find employment within 24 hours or to leave the city. Those not complying would be put to work on city property for 30 days. The idle blacks faced the decision of returning to their jobs or being forced out of the community."
(McDuffie, pp: 773-774)
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Senator Zebulon B. Vance |
The Federal Election “Force Bill”
The "Force Bill" of 1890 that Senator Zebulon Vance responded to in the U.S. Senate was a thinly-veiled attempt by the Republican party to rigorously defraud honest voters in the South, and reinstitute corrupt "Reconstruction" election methods upon Southern States in the 1890's. Given the national-level problems of the Republican party after being ousted by Democrat Grover Cleveland, this bill was a predictable attempt to win by fraud what could not be attained through honest elections.
The following is an excerpt from a speech by Senator Zebulon B. Vance of North Carolina in the Senate of the United States, December 15, 1890:
(Vance):
“The title of this bill reads: “An act to prevent force and fraud in elections of the House of Representatives of the United States…and to insure the lawful and peaceable conduct of such elections.”
The object then, of the bill is to restore the purity of elections!
I presume that no one will doubt that this is desirable, nay, that it is indispensable. But the manner in which the Senator and his associates propose to bring about this purity is what strikes us with wonder.
When this (Republican) party presents itself as the defender of public virtue, and by reason of its high pretensions claims that only through its agency can this beatitude be reached, a prudent man would naturally inquire into its history for proof of its exalted qualifications.
Let us take this method for a moment and see who is, and what is the Republican party, as represented by the supporters of this bill. We shall find that it is the same party, which inaugurated Reconstruction. By Reconstruction, it will be remembered one-fifth of the votes in eleven States was suppressed by law. The punishment of disfranchisement was freely inflicted as a punishment for crime without trial and conviction.
Thousands upon top of thousands of other votes were suppressed by fraud, the returns being counted and canvassed in secret by men not sworn or in any way responsible to anybody, acting in States far distant from the places where the votes were cast. In addition to this there were received and counted the ballots of those who were not entitled to suffrage under any law known to American history or tradition.
In this way eleven Southern States were subjected to the control of this fountain of purity. The Republican party took full charge of them and their destinies. Behind and in support of their leaders stood the Army of the United States and all the moral power of the government then under the control of this great party whose chief desire is the purity and freedom of elections.
The carnival of corruption and fraud, the trampling down of decency, the rioting in the overthrow of the traditions of a proud people, the chaos of hell on earth which took place beggars the descriptive powers of plain history…I believe a committee of Congress, who took some testimony on this subject, estimated in 1871 the amount of plunder which was extracted from the Southern people in about 5 short years---some $300 millions of dollars in the shape of increased debt alone, to say nothing of the indirect damage inflicted by the many ways of corruption and misrule which can not be estimated in money.
The trick by which Republicans fastened itself for a term of years upon the downtrodden States was one which could only have been originated with a party devoted to the highest morality and the purest elections.
In the formation of new governments primarily, the Negro who had no right to vote was permitted to do so by military force. The historical inquirer will likewise learn that during the time the South was being thus plundered by the carpetbaggers through the ignorance of the Negroes in the Southern department of the party of purity and free elections, the home office was doing a business, which reflected no mean luster on the active and energetic Southern branches. The system of levying contributions upon all Federal officeholders for corrupt political purposes was inaugurated and set going with efficiency and success.
Grants of the public domain equal to the area of many great nations were jobbed away to companies of loyal speculators. The Credit Mobilier was born and with incredible rapidity became the scandal of Christendom. Whiskey rings fastened their thievish grip upon the revenues. The Black Friday conspiracy shook the credit of the continent and made businessmen lose faith in human integrity.
As soon as there began to appear any necessity for it, that is to say, so soon as there appeared a feeble and languid rallying of political virtue in the dazed public mind, this pure and virtuous party began to provide against the reaction with a system of gerrymander. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Ohio and various other States were so arranged in their Congressional and legislative districts as to completely drown the will of the majority and suppress their votes.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the dominant majority in both Houses of this Congress is the legitimate result of this suppression of the popular will by the methods of gerrymandering, aided and supplemented by a skillful application of the “fat” fried out of the tariff beneficiaries and used for the purposes of floating voters in blocks of five, by the very party leader who here says that the (Force) bill is intended to defend the Constitution of the United States against those who…are in the habit of substituting “processes of fraud, intimidation and bribery” (for honest elections).
At the present moment there are in the Union but twelve Republican States, representing some 9,000,000 of people, whilst there are thirty Democratic States containing 53,000,000 of people; yet the 9,000,000 control both Houses of Congress and every department of government…
The bill is not intended to preserve purity in elections. It is not intended to defend the Constitution of the United States against those who would substitute “processes of fraud, intimidation and bribery” for honest elections. It is intended to resurrect, if possible, the Republican party and restore its hold on power. To do this, it is intended by this bill to subject the people of the South once more to the domination of their recent slaves. The objects at which the provisions of this bill are aimed are the Democratic South, the great Democratic cities of the North, and all naturalized citizens.
The policy of subjecting the intelligence and property of the South to the control of ignorance and poverty is not a new one. It has been tried. To the candid man who really desires the welfare of his country, the experiment resulted in a failure so disastrous that he would never desire to see it repeated.
The carpetbag rulers were infinitely worse than the Negroes. The evil propensities of the one were directed by intelligence, and the ignorance of the other became simply the instrument by which the purposes of the white leaders were carried out. The material and moral ruin wrought under this infernal conjunction of ignorance and intelligent vice was far greater than that inflicted by war. The very foundations of public virtue were undermined, and the seeds of hatred were thickly sown between the races.
In this great struggle to escape Negro rule and restore our State governments to the control of those who made them, and whose ancestors had established their principles in their blood, we had both the aid and the sympathy of Northern Democrats everywhere. We had neither from you.
You did not even stand by with indifference. You upheld the party the party of misrule and ignorance in every way you could. You kept the Army of the United States in the South to overcome the struggling whites as long as you dared. You sorrowed when the plundering of our people was stopped, and you received to your arms as martyrs the carpetbag fugitives expelled by the indignation of an outraged people.
In 1865, the property of North Carolina assessed for taxation was $121,000,000; in 1860 it had been $292,000,000, showing a loss of $171,000,000. In 1865, the debt of the State was $10,899,000; in 1871 the debt of the State was $34,887,000. Taxation in 1860 for State and county purposes was $799,000; in 1870 taxation for State and county purposes was $2,083,000 per annum.
But such were the recuperative powers of our people when freed from the corrupt yoke of strangers and permitted to manage their own affairs, that our taxable property is now assessed at about $230,000,000. Best of all, under the influence of the kindly associations of these years of labor and recuperation, race asperities have become softened and white and black have grown closer to each other in the recognition of the fact that the interest of one is inseparably connected with the other. The direct effect, if not the object of this bill will be to disturb this prosperity and peace. There is made no secret of the fact that it is intended to secure the domination of the black voters of the South wherever they can be persuaded or morally coerced by this army of Federal officers into voting the Republican ticket. It (the bill) is a scheme for managing elections in the interest of a party as purely as was ever framed by designing politicians.
The Website and its Philosophy:
The 1898 Wilmington Institute for Education and Research is responsible for this site, and it will continually update the pages with newly transcribed or discovered historical documents that relate to the period. The visitor will notice that we have the entire three chapters of Harry Hayden’s pamphlet, “The Wilmington Rebellion of 1898” on the site, originally published in 1936 and most difficult to find in printed form.
Also, the “Union League in North Carolina” page will enlighten and inform the reader about the organization responsible for creating the Ku Klux Klan; and the “White Supremacy” page communicates to us through the words of North Carolina Governor Aycock what that term meant in 1898, and why those two words energized a generation of white Wilmingtonians to act as they did.
The conflict must be viewed from all sides and perspectives, whether we agree with the opinion or fact matters not, so that we and later generations can understand what happened in 1898---and why it happened. Most importantly, we must understand the context it occurred in and through the eyes of its participants, that generation of Wilmingtonians, both white and black, who experienced that context. It is logical to say that we in this present day cannot know that experience, though we may come to understand it by avoiding an emotional and judgmental approach to the conflict.
The intent of this website is to provide historical facts, analysis and documentation that support a well-reasoned and apolitical approach to understanding the conflict, and why it took place. Our bibliography page will give the visitor a point of beginning to gain this understanding, as well as the pages herein.
Please contact the Editor by email if you have any information or documents that you would like to share with the Institute and the public.
The 1898 Wilmington Institute for Education and Research is independent and solely responsible for this site and its contents.
Henry L. Melton, Editor
1898 Wilmington Institute For Education & Research
Copyright 2005
Note:
The content of this website does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Editor and the Institute, and the information published herein is presented for the purpose of education and research only.
We welcome questions and submissions from authors and researchers with
further information regarding the 1898 event in Wilmington, North Carolina.
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