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Cj EX "I I B R I S tJifea-g^
BRUCE COTTEN
COLLECTION
GF
NORTH CAROLINIANA
'"'"I '. i?''if' ''",';:"ff II '''•!' irv>iiiiirw'i|WH'|i"ii!|wi''iiiiiiiii'b
OKBlRBEftsl
Note: This book not to be copied by instant copier. Photo- graphs have been copied and the North Carolina Collect- ion has negatives for re- production purposes.
^j
III pn'scnfiiiirtlils Series of iiitonsoly interostiiis? SEA ROMANCES to the Readinj? Coi iiiiinilv, file riihlislioi- luis the satisfaction of liiiouiii? that they are
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a
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THE
SWAMP OUTLAWS:
OR,
THE NORTH CAROLINA BANDITS.
Being a Complete History of
THE MODERN ROB ROYS AND ROBIN HOODS.
«♦■ 4» «»■
NEW-YORK : ROBERT M. DE WITT. PUBLISHER.
NO. S3 ROSE STREET, {Between Duane and Frankfort Ureets)
INTRODUCTION.
-^* -♦•^ •»'<^—
The liomelj'' old ndage tli:it there is noUiin^- " new tinder the sun " is coiiPtantly vcrifu'fl bj- actual facts occm iiif;- evciy day. The accouiils handed down by tradition of" tiie bold arclMM" Kobin Hood" kee[)hig whole counties on the alert, and disputing the li^-lii to kill fat bucks in tlie i\>yal torest with the boldest barons, have scenied al- most too daring forbelief, yetliere we have— in this cnligiitened period of the world's history — a whole State of the most powerful and most enliglilened nation of" tlie earth successfully defied by a band ol less than a dozen Outlaws. Individual hunters essay to track and capture Ihoni, and their bones bleach in t!ie forest paths for their temerit}', troops — regtUar and irregular — alteuipt tlieir subjugation, and are ingloriously repelled b}'^ these dauntles, law-defying Bandits, '
Not only are thej' secure in their swauipj-^ retreats. They boldly make raids into the neighboring cotuitry, and release prisoners from the constituted authoi-itios. They fearlessly enter towns and deliberately carry off the municipal archives and county treasiu'es — removing by main force immense Herring safes, whose strength bafllcd violence and whose ingeniouslj'^-coustrucled locks no skill could opoji.
The most fertile brain never conjuied up such deeds of courage, ciuolty and skill- ful military strat;\gem as bavc marked tiie career of these undaunted men, in whose' veins the blood of tiie Indian antl Negro is sti-angely connningled. indeed, it seems jis if the white Frankenstein by his crimes lias raised a fearful monster that will not tlown at the bidding ot his affrighted master.
Strange, unlikely and almost incredible as tbc deeJs may appear ■which crimson the sluggish swamp streams of the Old North State, and which are graphically narrated in the following pages,tbey may be relied on as perfeclly antlieutic. They are collected from the cohunns of the ^ <w York Herald. It seems almost superllu- ous, at this late daj', to say anything in praise of the wonderful resources and world- reacliing enterprises of this great journal. At a time when the proprietor of the Herald is supporting a corps of brave men in the dense tropical forests ot Africa, seeking to reach and save Livingstone (a task, by tbe way, that bis own government has slirank from); when his coriespondeuts are interviewing Bismarck and compar- ing notes with Gladstone — be finds time and means to send an intelligent corres- pondent I'igbt into tlie heart of tbe country where the red bowie-knife and death- dealing rifles of tbe Swamp Outlaws are carrying dismay and terror into the heart.* of men, women and children. Indeed, there ai)pears to bo nothing too small foi its microscopic or too large foi- its telescopic vision. A Baxter street light or a Sedan conflict alike find in the ubiqitous columns of the New York Herald " a local habi- tation and a name."
(vii.)
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
Among- the L.owerys, the Outlaw Ter
rors of North Carolina— Tiisonrora. !Seii(\y,al and Caticasian Blood JliiijJ- liii;;' ill Tlicir Veins — Histni\- of tli(!ir Caiiipaig'n — A Bloody Nine Years' Kc;l:oixI— Sixleeu Murders, — Three Ilinidred Robberies, and Not a Man Lo-t to riie Band— Ho|)oles,s Condi- tion ot All'iiis- The Old Nortii State Disniaj'e 1 and Battled — Grajilde Pen Pietnre of Henry Berry Lowery. tiie Ontlaw Ciiief— Portrails ot '• B()>^"" Stroni;-, Steve Lower}', Anilrew Stronij and Tom Lowery.
Shoe IIkel, N. C, Feb. 27, 1872. The bandit of North Carolina, Henry Berry Lowery, standing in perfect dis- dain of the autlioritics of the State, as well as of the federal troops, it was d(?einod necessary to send a Herald correspondent to study the situation.
TO THE SEAT OF WAR.
1 left Washington City Thursday night and reported myself next day at noon in the oHice of Governor Walker of Vir- ginia.
The handsomest man in the South was
seated at tlu; table, signing bills, in the
old Confederate Supreme Court room.
His beautiful, grayish black mustache,
healthy gray hair, clear skin and smiling
exfu-ession, every inch a loi-d lieutenant
in the oMest of our shires, grew soberer
as he said : —
.^ ^, " Lowery ? Why a captain of the Vir-
., ginia militia applied to me yesterday to
^ pbtain permission for himself and forty
^ men to hunt that fellow in the swamps
> of North Carolina. Lowery must be a
^ good deal of a character."
As I looked over the files of the Rich- mond newspapers, and their intimate exchanges of the tobacco, rice and tar region, I found the question of the day to be— Lowery. He was at once the Nat Turner, the Osceola, and the Rob Roy MacGregor of the South. With iriingled ardor and anxiety, desire and trepidation, I pushed on by the Weldon road to Wilniingt« ii, the largest town of the State, where Lowery had once been confined in prison. There was there but a single question — Lowery. The Wilmington papers called the Robeson county people cowards for not cleaning him out. The Robeson county paper hurled back the insinuation, but hurled nothing else at Lowery. The State government got its share of the blame, and the State Adjutant General replied in a card that the militia and volunteers had no pluck on the occasion when he had tried them. Five men had mas- tered a Communwealth.
THE SCARE ON TIJE ROAD.
An instance of the deep sense of ap- prehension created by these Itandits in all southeastern Carolina is affirded by a dream which Colonel W. H. Barnard, editor of the Wilmington Star, related to me. The Colonel's paper is eighty miles from the scene of outlawry :
" I dreamed the other night/' said he, "that I was riding up the Rutherford Railroad, and came to Moss Neck sta- tion, where the outlaws frequently ap-
[ix.]
10
THE SWAMP OUTLAVv'S.
pear. I thought a yellow fellow, Indian- look incr, came to the car door and said, * Everybody can pass but Barnard! I want him !' This was Henry Berry Lowery. Then I dreamed they to(»k me into some kind of torture place, and poked guns at me and tantalized me."
The newspapers were, however, making political c;ipital out of the Low- ery gang, instead of calling upon an honorable and united State sentiment to suppress the scandal. The democratic papers cried, " Black Ku Klux !" and the republican papers retorted by asking where was the valor of the wnite Ku Kliix, who could flog a thousand peace- ful men, but dared not meet five outlaws ill arms.
"The democrats," said one Robeson county man, in my room, "as soon as they upset the republicans in Robeson county startf'd to annihilateScufflotown and its vote by terror. They have been beaten in it. That chap Lowery has made them a laughing stock. He ought to be killed, but they skulk out of his reach."
CRIME WITHOUT A COMPASS.
Mayor Martin, of Wilmington, Presi- dent of the Rutherford Railway, which passes through Scuffle-town and the land of the outlaws, relates an incident, piti- ful at least to Northern ears, of the ignorance of these robbers, and the hope- less fight they are making within the limits of all that is available to them. Adjutant General Gorham, who directed the late ignominious campaign against the Lowery band — where, by current re- ports, the main victories gained were over the mulatto women, the soldiery driving the husbands forth to insult and debauch their wives — said that Henry Berry Lowery, when asked to withdraw from the State, replied : —
" Rol)( son comity is tlie only iaiiH I know. 1 can iiardiy read, and do m-i know where to go if i leave these woods and swamps, where 1 was raised. If 1 can get safe conduct and pardon I will go anywhere. I will join the United States Army and fight the Indians. But these people will not let me leave alive, and I do not mean to enter any jail again. I will never give up my gun."
Mayor Martin's solution for the diffi- culty is for the United States to declare martial law over the whole Congression- al district in which Robeson county stawds, and make a systematic search with regular troops for these outlaws. He says that when they first took to their excursions they were camparitively sober, but of late have taken to drinking, and about four weeks ago they all, ex- cept their leader, got drunk at Ed. Smith's store, Moss Neck, and lay there all night! "Whiskey," said Mayor Martin, " will reduce them in time; but they are very careful whose liquor they drink in these days. Henry Berrr Lowery left his flask hanging an a fence a few weeks ago, and when he returnetl to get it he made everybody at the sta- tion drink with him."
TO LUMBERTON.
Early in the morning, Monday, Feb- ruary 26, I took the train for Lumber- ton, and from the forward car to the tail the freight was Lowery. In the second class carriage, escorted by two sheriffs, MacMillan and Brown, of Robeson county, was Pop Oxendine — the previ- ous said to be his literal name — brother of Henderson Oxendine, the only one of the outlaws who was ever brought to trial and han"ed. He was chained to a regular army soldier, who had recently murdered a negro at Scuffletown, and he was a remarkable looking mulatto, with a yellowish olive .skin, good features, and
THE SWAxMP OUTLAWS.
11
hfindsnme, fippcnling, uiiroliablc, unin- IThe conductors and enginoers say that
a
tpi-pretible pair of black oycs. So j^ood looking a mulatto man, with such a coiujilcxion, 1 had not seen. Like the rest, he had the Tuscarora Indian blood in liini, with the duplicity of the mixed races \vhere the while blood predomi- nates, lie was ironed fast to the seat and looked at me with a look inquisitive, pitiful, evasive and inijcnunus by turns. If I should describe the man by the words nearest my idea I should cull him n negro-Indian gypsy.
The passengers were apprehensive nnd inquisitive together, wanting to know all about Lowery and dreadijig to encounter him. The fullest, and often very intelligent, explanations were mad(> to me, and every facility was tciidered to assist me to form accurate C(jnclusions as to the characters in the band.
Cobuiel S. L. Fiemont, General Superintendent of the Rutherford Rail- way, will permit no passenger carrying arms for the purpose of shooting Liiwery to ride on his trains, as he fears that such permission will endanger the Rafety of the railway. Lowery could loss a train olT almost any day, but he seems to hold a supeistitious respect for the United States mails.
A few months ago a man by the name of Marsden announced that he meant to travel up and down the road as a detect've and kill Lowery on sight. To put him to the test Lowery and all the band appeared with cocl cd shot- puns at Moss Neck station, and stood at a respertable, yet fui tive, "present arms," while the braggart, fur Buch he was, crawled under the car seat. I>nvery offered $100 reward to anybody who would tell him whether Harden or Marsden was on the train, as he meant
then; is perfect safety on the trains, although none know when t-he outlaw leader may tiike otRnce against the com- pany or its ofiieers.
LUMBEFwTON IN COURT WEEK.
The Ruthetford Railway traverses the counties of the southern tier of North Carolina, passing lew towns of the magnitude, I'nt built generally through till' pilch pile woods, whoso white bob a, sti ipped u f jw fiH't from the ground and notched to provoke the flow of the sap and to catch it, resemble the intermin- able tonjbstones of a woodland burial ground. Swamps intersect the woods, and the resinous-lookin<i waters of manv creeks and canals alternate with deserted rice fields, the skeletons of old turpentine distilleries, the stubble of ragged cotton plantations, some oc- casional weatiier-blackcned shanties, and now and then a sawmill or a pile of newly hewn timber.
Flat, humid, almost uninhabited, is the traveller's (irst impression of the country. But there is a speck of light and lift; at Abbottsville, the home of ex- Uuited States Senator Abbott, who has built up the '" Capo Fear Building Com- pany," to supply ready made houses to the people of his adopted State, and whose private residence, of yellow frame, is next to the large mill and branch railway of the enterprise.
Alter five hours ride we came to the weather-blackened, unpainted town of Lumberton, on the flowing Lumber River, a branch of the Pedee.
Lmnberton is the seat of Robesf)n county, the stamping ground of Lowery's band. With one exception — and that disputable as the act of tho
to follow the fellow up the road but he i band — no murder has been committej would not cross the platform himself, j by tho Lowerys beyond the lines of
12
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
t,hi3 county. It contains, by the census of 1870, 3,042 men above the age of twenty-one.
By the census of 1850, the last pre- Ceeding census avaikblo at tliis point of view, it contained 039 whites iinabU; to read, and had at that time 1,171 free negroes, or more than oven Iho popu- lous county in whicii Wilmington stands, and qnintupli; the U-oo ne/^roes po]>i)i.ition of the adj.icent comities.
Si-ulTlctown a few miles distant from Lumbcrton was one of the lai-gest free noiXn) settlements in the United States before the war against slavery, and it was Ijesides, an ahuost imnu'inurial tree negro settlement.
This being Court week, ihe town of Lumheiton was full of SL-nffl'.'tou ncrs, and I saw and talked wiih Sinclair L'lWi'ry, elder brother of tho outlaws, and .-dso with "Dick" Oxcndino, who married the only sister of Henry Berry Lowcry, and who kijeps a barroom in the Court, H<H]se village.
Besides, I visited t!ic scene of the lat< st exploits of tin; Loworys, the cap- ture of the most valuable s:ife in tlie town, as well as the countv official snfe, which they contemptuously rejected o)i 1 he road.
1 ;i!so visited the jail v, here Hender- son Oxendine's gallows stood, and the couit room, where a noisy crier made proel iinatlon from the oj)en wintlow, and llie garrulous Judge Clarke was delivi'i'lng a charg(i upon the enormities of t!iesc banditti, ci-\ i;ig meantime into his pocket hauilkei'chief.
E. sides, I talked wiih a great number of ti • leadinix citizens, w ho to a man, wei- • of Scotch descent, and at noon nox' 'lay, I'esamiiig the train, I xisited Sci !"! town and fslept willi cnurleous ent i i iners at L^hije^jHiCi'l, in the heart of I ii •• pine forest.
The incidents of these excursions will appear hereafter.
Let me now address mvself to
«
describing the outlaws. DESCRIPTION OF TII5] OUTLAWS.
IIENUY BERRY LOWERY.
Henry Berry Lowery, the leader of the most formidable band of outlaws, considering the smallness of its numbers, that has been known in this country, is of mixed Tuscari ra, mulatto imd white blood, twenty-six years of age, five feet nine in';hes hi<jrh and weiiihiuir about 150 po\inds.
He has straight black haii-, like an Indiiii : a dark goatee, and a beard grace- ful in shape, but too thin to look very black. His face slopes from the cheek bones to the tip of his goatee, so as to give liim the Southern American con- tour of physiognomy ; but it is lighted with eyes ot' a different color — eyes of a grayish hazel — at times appearing light blue, with a drop of brown in them, but in agitation dilating, darkening, and, although never quite losing the appear- ance ot a smile, 3 et inaction it is a smile of devilish nature.
His for. head is good anil his fico and expression refined — remarkably so, con- sidei-ing his mixci] race, want of educa- tion and long career of lawlessness.
A scar of crescent shape and black
lor li<'s in tl
le sum below Ins le
ft
ey(
said to have been made Uy a:i iron pot falling Ujiou him when a chiid.
H;s Voice is sweet an 1 piea^-ant, and in his ni ii.n-r there ii ni>ihing self- imporiaiit or swairrrerin"-. lie is not tilkative. listens qniclly, an<l searches out who ■vif is speaking to liim like a man iHii, lati; in all boolis save tlu! two great hoolis of nature, and huuian nature above all.
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
13
MRS. HENRY LOWERY
The color of the skin is of a whitish yellow sort, with an admixture of cop- por — sucii .1 skin as, for the nature of its components, is in color indescribable, there being no negro blood in it except th:it of a f'lr remote generation of mu- latto, and the Indian still apparent.
It is enough to say of this skin that it seems to suffer little change by heat or cold, exposure or sicknes-;, good honse- ing or wild weather.
The very relatives of white men killed by Henry Berry Lowpry admitted to me that " Tie is one of the handsomest mulattoes you ever saw."
LOTERY rnYSICALLT.
To match this face the outlaw'^ body is of mixed strength and beautv.
It is well knit, wiry, straight in the shoulders and limbs, without a physie.il fliiw in it, and as one said to me who had known him well since childhood, ** Ho is like a trap ball, elastic all over."
He has feet which would be notice- able anywh.re, pointed and with arch- ing instep, so that he can wear a very shapely boot, and his extremities, liko his features indicate nothing of tho negro. A good chest, long bones, supple- ness, proportion, make his walk and form pleasing to see.
14
THE SWAMP OUILAWS.
parage
lie is negligent about his dress, but his clothes become him and never dis- hiin.
People have told me that he wore fine clothes; but, when questioned to the point of re-examination, admitted that he had nothing on but a woolen blouse and trousers and a black wide-brimmed, stiff woolen hat
HIS ARMS.
To see this trim youth ns he appears whenever seen on the highroads or the piney forest bypath, or as often at the raiUvav stations of Moss Necl<, Eureka, Bale's Store, or Red Banks, is to sec •youn'» Mars bearing about an arsenal.
His equipment n)ight appear prepos- terous if we do not consider, the pecu- liar circumstances of iiis warfare — out- lawed by the state of North Carolina, without a reliable base of supplies, and compelled to carry arms and charges in them enough to encounter a large body of men or stand a long campaign.
A belt around his waist accom- modates five six-barrelled revolvers — long shooters.
Fiom this belt a shoulder strap passes up and supports behind, slinging fashion, a Spencer rifle, wliich carries eight car- tridges, and it is now generally alleged that he has replaced this with a Henry rifle, carrying double the former num- ber of cartridges, while, successively, man after man of the band, by some mysterious agency, becomes possessed of a Spencer rifle. In addition to these forty or forty-eight charges Lowery carries a long-bla'ied knife and a large flask of whiskey— the latter because he fears to bo poisoned by promiscuous neighborhood drinking.
He can run like a deer, swim, stand
sleep by little snatches which, in a few days, would tire out white or negro.
Although a tippler, he was never known to be drunk — a fact not to be justly asserted to his confederates.
Brought suddenly at bay he is observed to wear that light, fiendish, en. joying smile, which shows a nature at Its depths savage, predatory and fond of blood. The war he has waged for the
a region of
past nine years, within twelve or fifteen miles square, against county, State, Confederate and United States iiulhorities, alternately or unitedly is justification for the terror apparent in the faces of all the white people within those limits.
Lowery's band gives more concern to the Carolinas than did Carleton's Legion ninety years ago.
LOWERY AS A BRIGAND LEADER.
"What is the meaning of this?" said I to " Parson" Sinclair — the fijihtin:; parson of Lumberton — "How can this
fellow, with a handful of boys and illi- lerate men, put to flight a society only recently used to warfare and full of ac- complished soldiers ? Explain it."
"Lowery," answered Sinclair, "is really one o( those remarkable execu- tive spirits that arises now and then in a raw community, without advantages other than nature gave liim. He has passions, but no weaknesses, and his eye is on every point at once. He has impressed that whole negro society with Ills power and influence. They fear ;lnd admire him. He asserts his super- iority over all these whites just as well. No man who stands face to face with him can resist his quiet will, and assur- ance and his searching eye. Without fear, without hope, defying society, he weeks of exposure in the swamps and I is the only man we have any knowledge crest, walk day and night, and take j of down here who can play his part
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
15
Upon my word. I believe if he had I lived a^cs ago he would have been a Williatu tlie Conqueror. He reniinda me of nobody but R )b Roy."
HIS BLOUD AND INCLIN.VTIONS.
The thi-ec natures of white, Indian and nt'gro arc, however, seen at iiitiM-- vals to come f«»rward in tliis outlaw's natui- .
The nr'TO trace is in his love of rude music.
He is a banjo player, and when the periodical hunt fov him is done he re- pairs to some one of ihc huts in SctifHo- town and plays to the dancing of lh(i mulatto yirls and his companions by the hour, his belt of arms ur.slung and thrown at liis foot, the peaceable part of the au.VuMioe taiciui; part with mixed wonder dc'ig'il and a[>i r. hension. Sev- eral times tiiis baiijt> has nearly betrayed him to his pursuers.
Sherilf MacMiilan described himself nnd posse once lying oat all night in the swamp and limb;^r around Lowery's cabin to wait fur him to come forth at daylight.
" And," said he, " that banjo was just ♦■verlasliiigl V thrumming, and we could hear the laughter and Juba-beating nearly the whole night long."
THE MULATIO SARDANaPALUS.
The licentiousness of Lowery is stifli- cient t > 1)0 uoliceable, but while it never engages him to the exclusion of vigi- lance and activity, it also shows what may be traced in some degree to his Indian nature — the using of women as an auxiliary to war and plunder.
He has debauched a number of his prisoners with the mulatto girls of Scuffle town, and the charms of these yel- low-tinted syrens broke up the morale of the late campaign in force against
the outlaws, while, as some allege, the discovery of the Detective Landers plan to capture Lowery was made by a girl in Lowery's interest with whom Landers spent his time.
Lowery has said, and laughed over it, that he devised at a critical point in a truce between the contending parties that a bevy of the prettiest and frailest beauties in Scuffletown shonM ct)me up and be introduced to one of the officers hi'di m command.
After that the Marc Antony in ques. tion laid down his sword, and gave practical evidence that the hostility of races is not so great as the slavery statesmen alleged.
The indifference of the Indian to the loan of his squaws finds some parallel in Lowery's tactics.
He himself is the Don Juan of Scuffletown ; but he sleeps on his arms* and will go into the swamps for weeks without repining. Women have been employed to give him up; but they either repent or he discovers their pur- pose by intuitive sagacity.
THE OUTLAWS WIFE.
The white society around him gave Henry Berry Lowery a lesson in self- schooling and sacrifice so far as women were concerned.
After the murders of Barnes nnd ILuris — offences which, some think, ou^ht to have been included in the proclamation of oblivion for offences committed by both sides betoie the close of the war — Lowery stood up by the side of Rhodv Slronir, the most Ijcautiful mulatto of Scuflljtown, to bo married.
Aware of the encasement and the oo- casion, the Sheriffs possic, w ith cruel de- liberation, surrounded the house till the ceremony was over, and then rushsd in
jr.
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
nnil t )ok tlio outlawed husband from the side of liis wife.
[J :• was it'iaovcd to Liimberton jail, and tlu'ii scut still fLii-ther away to Culiuiibus comity jail; but lie broke throuiih ih;! hai-.s, csca[n'd to the woods with the irons on his wrists, and made his way to his bride. Th.'V have three (riiildren, tlie fruit of their stolen and rudely iuterrupted interviews.
A GLIMPSE AT MADAM ^. LOWERY.
As I rode down on the train from Shoe Heel to Liiinborton, on the 28lh of F> liruary, the eondiietoi-, Coroiiel Morrison, eaiiio to me and saicl : — " if you want to -co Henry Berry Lowery's wife you can find hei- in the forward second-ela-5S car."
She had tilcen the train at Red Banks for liloss Neck — points between which the whole baud of outlaws frequently ride on the freiiiht trains — and at the latter nolable station I saw her descend with her baby and walk off down the t'(»ad ia the woods and stop there among the tall [Vitch pines, as if waiting for somebody. The baby — the last heir of outlawry — began to cry as she left the train, and she said, mother-lashi -n : " No, no, no, I wouldn't cry, when 1 had bi. en so good all day !"
This womnn is the sister of two of the five remaining outlaws and wife of the tiiird.
The wiiites call her satirically, " the queen of Scufflctown ;" but she ap- peared to be a meek, pretty-eyed rather shrinking giil, of a very light color^ poorly dressed.
She wore many brass rings, with cheap rep stones in them, on her small hands, and a dark green plaid dress of nauslin delaine, which just revealed her new black morocco " store " sh,>es. A yellowish muslin or calico hood, with a
long cape, covered her head, and there was nothing beside that I I'emember ex- cept a shawl of bright coloi-s, much \\ orn.
It was sad enoiigh and j)rosaic ein)u<^h to see this small w.nian with hci- babv in her arms, cairying it along, whde the hnsl)and and father, covered with tie blood of fifteen murders, roamed the woods and swamps like a Seminole.
Rliody Lowery is said not to be a constant wif>, but to follow the current example of SLuflletown. Other persons, the negroes notably, deny this.
A more persevering newspaper cor* respondent might settle the issue.
LOWERY AS A TERROR IZER.
Mr. Hayes, a republican, of Shoo Herl, whose knowledge of iho Scuffle- town seitlement is very g od and whose practical Northern mind is not likely to be deceived, told me that Lowery, among Irs numerous warnings served upon people, stopped one white man on the load and said, •' Yv;u are taking ad vantage of my circumstances and ab. seuce to be familiar with my family. Now, you better pack up and get out of this county.''
The man lost no time in doing as re- quested ; for Henry Berry Lowery generally -.varns before ho kills. In ihe niJitter of honesty in the observance of a promise or a treaty the people most robbed and outraged by this bandit ac- knowledge his Indian scrupulousness. " Mr. MacNair," he said to one of his white neighbors, -.v-hom he iiad robbed twenty times, "i want you to cear up and go to Lu'.nberton, where they have put my wife in jad for no crime but be- cause she is my v\if((; that ain't her fault, and they can't make it so. Yon people won't let me woik to get mv living, and I have got to take it from
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
17
you ; liiit, God knows, she'd like to see rnc niiiicc iny own bread. You go to Liiinljcrton and tell the Sheriff and Cv<iiiity Coinrnissionors that if they diint lei her out of tliut j .il I'll retaliate on the white women of Hurnt Swamp Township. Some of them shall come to the swamp with me if she is kept in the jail, because they cau't get me."
LOWERT AS A TRUCE MAKER.
Lowery then named a point on the road wlu!!-G he would meet JtlaeNair, and he nut him instead three miles nearer to Liimberton. Tlie feeling ot terror in 1 lie. county may be understood when, without more delay, Rhody Lowery was set free.
While in the region several persons urged me to go out and talk to Lowery SlierifT ^racT^rillan and Mr. llrown, the son-In-law of the murdered Shei id Kiiifr -i— strange as it may appear for county ofTiccrs, and T mention it to show the suptirstitiou inspired by this brigand — offered to ol)t:iia an interview for me with the whole gang by sending out some member of the Lowerv familv to negotiate. ^Fy faith was not equal to theirs, and I declined.
"Do you suppose that fellow would give mo n, talk V I said to Calvin Black a merchant of Shoo Heel.
'• Yes, if ho could bo made to under- stand lluit your intentions were pacific. The large reward now out fop him, amoiinting, for himself and party, to about forty-five thousand dollars, taken dead or alive, makes him apprehensive of assiX-s^iinlioti. I*utif ho were to promise not to injure you, you could go any- where to see him with perfect i(n- punity." This was general testimony.
Rev. Mr. MacDiermid, editor of the Robesonian, the county organ, who does his duty by niiintimidated denunciation of this outlaw, said : — " Henry Berry
Lowery has sent mc word that I had better be cautious now I w rite about him, but I believe that I could go to see him to-day, for he appreciates his con- sequence in the role he has assunu d."' 1 noticed, however, that nob idy did go to sec him, and I followed that hi^h and general example.
PRICE OF LOWERYS HEAD.
Since Jefferson Davis' fligijt and the reward put upon his head there has been no American criminal — pi-obably none previously in all the history of the coun- try for (iffences at common law — who has been dignified witli the amount of money offered for Lowery's overtaking.
If it should appear in the Nortli this slietrh is too strong, I point to this re- ward and to the fict that this outlaw has already made a pergonal and bloody campaiirn against societv lonirer than the whole revolutionary war.
Osceola, or» Powel (who was an im- mediate mixture of Indian and negro blood, ; n 1 who fought over a larger region), gave out in a much shorter space of resistance.
HIS CHIVALRY.
Two things arc to bo chronicled in this man's favor, and 1 make them on the universal testimony of everybody in this regioi!.
ITc has never committed arson or rape or offered to insult females. "While entering private houses nearly every day his worst act is to drive the family into some one apartment and bar them there while the house is cooly and leisurely ransacked.
A few weeks ago an aged lady, ^Irs. MacNeil and her daughter, were shot with duck shot by somebody taking the name of Lowery's band, doubtless the party accused ; but the wounding of the woman was not foreseen by the brigands,
13
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
and tliov fired at old MacNcil, whose i fiiinilv of sons and son-in-law had become parlkuLiiIy off usivc to them.
MacN'il told nic the circumstances as lollows: — IIo h:id heen repeatedly robbed, his son-in-law Taylor killed, his sons ordered to leave the country, and now aliiiost entirely nlone, he was com- pelled to do a good deal of his own watching iuul to w:iit upon himself.
Staiidiiiir by his smokehouse one mooiili dil ni:'ht lu; saw two men enter the yard ;ind one of them walked straight up to the srnolu horse door and began to pry it open. Partly concealed in the shadow of the fnce, MacNcil cried — "Who is Ihatl" No ans'ver.
Ho rope itel tlie interrogation and the reply was —
*' What in the hell is that your busi- ness 1'
The Scotch blood of the old man mour.ti d to his f ic(% notwithstanding his lonjr ;mi.1 n(»: whollv undeserved mis- fortunes, and he went into his dwelling fur his gi;ii. ITis wife and his daughter besought hini not to venture out, and, on his icfi.isal, followed him to the door. He called again : —
** Who's that at mv smokehouse?' The answer was : — "Lov.ery's band, God damn you." And in a nilnutc a charge of buckshot pouri d in at the door, putting, as Mac- Neil sai<l, sixteen buckshot in a place no bigger than his hat from the spot where he was expected to have been, and strik- infT his Mile in the thiMi, riddling her dress, and hitting his daughter in the shoulder and breast, so that the shot catnc out of her back. Both women will iccover, allhough sorely wounded. The cause of this long persecution of MacNcil I will give in another letter.
RU^rORS AND INCIDENTS. Colonel Wisehart, an old Confederate
officer and a dauntless man, living near Moss Ni'ck, has shot at Lowery several times, but always missed him, and jnc«; surroimded with a posse the outlaw's cabin, but he got off so mysteriously that they allege to this day that he had an undergnnind passage.
Lowery is said to whip his w ife some- times and to have threatened also to shoot her, on the occasions of her re- proving his long absences. St)me time ajro she came, accordin"if to rnnior, to a store at Luinberton and remarked : —
'• Berry put his gun in my fiec to-day and said ho meant to kill me, and I told him to fire it off — not to stop for me."
The negroes charge that these stories are without foundation, and Deputy Sheriff Brown admitted to me : —
" Lowery will never leave this country alive."
"Why?"
" Because he loves his wife and will not leave her whereabouts."
1 give some further rumors for what they arc worth : —
Henry B. Lowery is not a good shot except at close quarters — so says B(»ss Strong. The Boss remarked at Moss Neck one day : —
" Henry is nothing much with that Spencer rifle, nor his shotgun, neither; but Steve Lowery can shoot liie tail off a coon."
Some of the ScufHetoAvn negroes say differently, and give marvellous in- stmees of the accuracy of eye and nerve of both Henry Berrv and the in.-joritv of the gang. He cei tainly gei eially kills when he does shoot. H' re is an instance of his coolness. A Mr. McRae who lives on the limits uf lloheson county removed from the imniediato country of the bandits, got <>!! with other passengers at Moss Neck a favf weeks ago, and said aloud funiliary —
" Where docs this rascal, Lowery,
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
19
keep himself? I'd like to see the villaiiu''
A wliiiiah nejrro, standing near by, unarmed, s:iid, coolly —
" Well, sir, if you'll step this way I'll show liini to you."
Tiiis was 'J'om Lowery. The a.^toiiish- ed pasenger was put in a moment in ihc presence of a sombre- looking mu- latto fellow wiih straight hair, whoso body was giit all round with pistols, and who cirricd two jjuns besides.
" This is Henry Bjrrv Lower v," said the other outlaw.
*' Yt;s," said H(Miry, " and wo always ask our fiieiiJs to take a drink with us."
The. passenger saw the significant, bland look on both the half-breed fices, and ho said, with all available assur- ance : —
" I'll take the drink if you'll let ine pay for it."
" Oil, yes, we always expect our friends to treat us."
PICTURE OF '• SWARTHY INDIAN
STEVE."
The brigand of the Lowery gan<jr, m appearance, is Steve, whose carri.ige is that of a New York rough, and whose thick, black, straight hair, thin, black moustache, goatte and very loweiing countenance, set with blackish liaz d eyes, give him the character his deeds bear out of a robber and murderer of the Murrel stamp.
He is the most perfect Indian of the party, superadded to the vagabond. He is five feet nine inches hi<fh, thick set. round shouldered, heavy and of power- ful strength, with long arms, a heavy moufcii, and that brusque, aggressive, impudent manner, which befits the high- wayman stopping his man.
Sieve Lowery required no great provocation to take to the swamps and prowl around the country by day and night.
He is mentioned third on the list in the Governor's proclamation, fi^'uring there at $500, or half the price of Henry Berry Lowry's head; is the oM',-st of the gang, said to be thirty-one. and his im- perious temper, ijis.iliable love of rob- Ijery and insubordination to h s younger brother, the leader, o:iee involved him in a quarrel, where he was shot iu tb« leg.
Steve has the woi'st cnunton.ince of .any man in the gang. IIis swarthy, dirk brown ccjmplexioUj thin visa_:e and quick speech make him fe.ired by any unlucky enemy who may fall inti> the hands of the outlaws.
W'hen Landei's, the detective, was condemned to death and Tom L )wery slunk away, unwiHing to see blood, Steve Lowery raised his gun aiicl filled the unfortunate prisoner witii ;i eharge of buckshot. Steve has been Concerned in nearly every robbery an.J shooting, perhaps cv^ivy one, committed l)y this party.
SKETCH OF BOSS STROXQ.
The youngest of the gan:: and the most t;usted and inseparable companion of Henry Berry L >wery is his boy brother-in-law, Boss Sti-onj. a^ed no more than twenty. The Strongs are said to have been derived from a white man of that name, who came from Western Carolina to Sciifiletown and took up with one of the Lowery women. In this generation they are legitimate. Boss Strong is nearly white ; his dark, short cut hair has a reddish tingu and is slightly curling; a thick down appears on his lip and teinplrs, but otherwise ho is beardless; he has that dull, blueish eye frequently seen among the SeufBe- tonians, and is taciturn. %
In repose his countenance is mild and pleasing; but the demon is always near at hand when Henry Berry Lowerjr
20
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
desires iL to appear, and then the heavy bhicU oye-brows of the boy, which nearly meet over the bridge of his nose, give him a (logged, determined lo<)l<, which many a man has seen to his cost. Boss Strong is plastic material in the hands <if iiis brothei'-in-law, and !ie>'t t<> that h'ader is c(inimor.!y regarded as the woi-st of the party.
He is so 'iistinguishcd in all the offers of lewards. Being the least capable and (>xpei-ieiice 1 of thi' party, he is thei'e- forc must d.;ngei-(nis in other hands, and it is a revoliiig instance of the extremes of i/oixl and ill to see the fidelity of Boss Strong- to ITenry Berry Lowery up to the eonsiDiunaiion of repeated murders willi t!)c coolest militai-y obedience.
His hands are dyed deep in the blood of old and \ ouii .;■. Boss Sli'ong is about Civi' feet ten, tliiek set, with a full face, and lie handles his arms willi slciil and has the eoiii-a<»e of a bull pup.
^^'lle;l Jcjhu Taylor's brains were blown oiil Itv Henrv Berrv, Boss I'ushed npon the hank and aimed at young MacNeil and woinided him witii the wad (if a eh:ii-ge, of buckshot intended to s!ay him.
■ The ]U'oj)]e of Tiobeson county and the mililarv aullioiities have long au;o given up all prospect of seducing either of ;!u'.-;e mui'dci-ers to betray each other.
Boss Sti-oi:g has never been considered asuithin that possil)iity. He, like the leadiuir outlaw, has tjenerallv killed his man at close quarters — seldom at more than from four to ten yards.
ANDREW STRONG DELINEATED.
Andrew Strong, elder brother of Boss, is very nearly the same age with Herwy Ber;y Lowery. He is more than six feet high, tall and slim, and nearly perfectly white ; his thin beard is of a
reddish tinge, and he has dark, stiaight
hair.
This fellow is the Oily Gammon of the party, without that higher order of cun- ning which with Henry Berry Lowery amounts to prescience and strategy ; but his eye can wear a look of meek, repi'oachful injury, and his tongue is sof^ and treacherous.
He was at one time in Court, and when the indictment of his crimes was read he looked out of his great, soft eyes as if ready to weep at snchuijjust impu- tations. Andrew Strong niairied the (hiughter of Henry Sampson, auotlicr o^ the Indian nuilattoes, and has two chil- d:'en.
II(! is a cowardlv cutthroat, and will st(\al a poeketbook on the high I'oad.
In the way of killing people he is sinnlarlv Tierfidions, and the liwuex will drop (Voni his touguii almost into the wound he iudiets. Loving to see fear and jiaiu, a profissor of" d( eiit, plau>iljl(', uiieei-tain, tineasy, deadly, this meanest of the band \ et has const quenec in it.
TOM ].0'\VERY, THE JAFL D'RD.
Tom Lowei-y has a long, straight Caucasian nose, a good forehead of more ihan avei-ajie heie-ht, sIo|)ing but heavv jaws, vei'y scruliby, black beard about the chin, coininij out .slunt, stiff and sparse, and straight, black liair.
He would be called cadaverous if h« were white, but in his eye there are the hazel lights (darting and restless, and readily burning up to a large glow) of the Indian gypsy. Perhaps the solution of the white race, which blended origin ally with the Tuscaroras — a subject on which ihe learned Judge Leech, of Lum- berton, has spent much inquiry — might be solved by the gypsy suggestion. The Judge mentioned Portuguese (a tru- ly jtiratical race since the days of Tols nois), Spanish and several other races to
THE SWAMF OUTLAWS.
'21
u
',.<
... I •*!:
i^
v':L.y
22
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
account for the blood wliich others aitriUutcd in the Luwer^ s to negro in- fusion. Might it h;ivc been " Roin- nuiny ?" 'J'iic ]*)nglibh gypsy has been in North Ann licu a hundred years,
Tom Lowery is a thieving sneak, enpable of murder, but sickened by blood, and the o'uest member of the Lowrry gang.
lie is thiity-live years of age, has a broad-siiouldered, active, strong body, and is five feet nine inches high.
The eye of this man is a study — blue- ish gray, furtive, and dancing around, hut when the observei's eye drops away he sends a heathenish shaft of light atraight out from the thieving nature of the fellow, which seems to seize all the situatidii.
Ho is equally alert in slipping jail and evading capture, and some time ago he got off from the military, peppered all over the back with shot and with his shirt full of blood.
THE RETIRED PSEUDO OR DISABLED BANDITS.
The above five men constitute, at present, I he bandits and outlaws ot North Carolina. Together they make an active and formidable, and also a wicked crowd ; and, officered by a man of remarkable ability and powers, they present an anomalous picture in the heart of modern society.
I append sketches of the other and former members of the band, and now in the foreground : —
GEORGE APPLEWHITE
George Applewhite is a regular ne- gro, of a surly, determined look, with thick features, woolly hair, large pro- tuberances above the eyebrows, big jaws and cheek bones and a black eve.
Mrs. Stowc might have drawn " Drcd * from him.
IL; is supposed cither to be dead, hid. den jiwav, wounded, or to have aban. doned the country, as lie has not been seen or heard of for several months.
When last heard from ho was faint from loss of blood, and had received wounds in the breas: from some soldiery.
He married into the Oxendin^^ fimily, and was present at the inurde*- of Sheriff King and elsewhere, and is therefore in- cluded in the list of outlaws and a re- ward put upon his head.
JOIJN DIAL, THE STATE'S EVIDENCE.
John Dial, who lies in the jail of Co- lumbus county, at Whitesville, as Calvin Lowery does in the jail of New Hano- ver countv, at Wilir.in<iton, is a lijiht mu- latto, with a vagrant, fierce look, aggra- vated by a wart or fleshy protuberance of some sort on the side of his nose, di- rectly beside the left eye, which wart is as large as a marble.
Dial was as bad as any of the jran". but not bold, and ho prefers the repose of the jail to wading the swamps with Henry Lowei-y.
He pays that George Applewhite shot Sheriff King, while the rest of the band charge that Dial himself precipitately drew his pistol and killed that hale old Carolinian.
SHOEMAKER JOPIN.
"Shoemaker John," who at one time had dealings with Henry Berry Low- ery's party, but has been sent to the P. nitentiary, is an oval-fjced negro, good for stealing, but with little stomach for blood-letting. The Lowerys repu- diate liim altogether.
THE ONE MAN HANGED
-.- . . ^ , Henderson Oxendine, han<,'ed at Lum
lie IS a picture of a slave at bay. K«..f ., o..^ »■ ' i- ■
r "'*.'' -.1 Oerton some time ago, was a thick-se»
THE SWAMF OUTLAWS.
2»
b'lt trim light mulatt-i, with straight hair and a stoical face. He died with- out more than a sigh.
I visited Calvin Oxendine in the Wil- mington jail, whence nearly the whole band escaped, he refusing or being afraid to go.
CALVIN OXENDINE.
The Wilmington jail is an oblong brick structure, to the front of whicU is affixed the jailor's residence of a plaster imitation of sandstone crowned with bat- tlements.
The jail is small in size, as big as a country meeting-house, and the rear part and body of it descends below the street level into a sunken lot, which is enclosed by a brick wall capped with nails and broken glass.
From the upper tier of jail windows to the ground, is about thirty feet, and the walls is twelve feet high. A fierce dog goes at large in the jail yard.
Our worthic-ii occupied one of the rear corner cells in tne upper tier of this jaii for six months, and they took out the bricks at the side of the edifice, making a small hole, still in outlines distinctly visible though ro-enclosed, and let them- selves down with their blankets.
The dog made no alarm, if, as is doubtful, he was at liberty that night, and the neighboring vacant lots gave easy means of escape to our bandit des- peradoes.
Thejiil is, like most county jails in the South, a piece of dilapidation with- out, and of bad construction within, and other holes in the rear attest how other prisoners made their riddance.
One of these holes, at the present writing, has not been bricked up. al- though some time has elapsed since the inmates cut it.
TUE BANDIT IN JAIL.
I visited this jail with the courteous City Marshal of Wilmington, W. P. Canaday, first entering a livery stable adjacent, through the open chinks of which tools were, probably, handed to the prisoners within, the level being nearly the same and the walls only twenty feet apart.
The jail, in the interior, was of an in- human architecture, the cells beino- en- closed by a corridor, which debarred tin-m from light and gave only ventil- lation by shafts above.
The grated doors admitted very little light through their narrow chinks, and murderer or mere peace-breaker shared a common fate in them, lying almost in darkness.
A prison without security for the evil ought to afiord some compensation for the merely erring, suspected or unfor- tunate.
This jail, while clean enough, is a relic of the Middle Ages.
If you take from a man liberty give him at least light! One of the iron doors was laboriously unlocked by the negro jailor, and shaking himself from the long vision of darkness, Calvin Ox- endine, an indicted murderer of SheriflT King, walked out into the corridor.
Here was a situation for John Calvin the Richelieu of the Huguenots ! That name, crossing from France to Scotland and passing into the family nomencla- ture of Gael and Lowlander, had made the passage of the ocean with the immi- grants into Carolina, and these mixed mulattoes and Indians had inherited it from their Scotch neighbors and natural fathers, until now 1 saw before me the reformer and the bandit, the Geuevese and the Scuffletonian in Calviu Oxen- dine.
lie came out from his cell in a greasy
^4
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
shirt and a pair of woolen trousers belt- ed at the waist, and with his .searching, round, indescribable eye, looked me through and through.
It was a black eye, which got its edu- eation from a country place where they make an inventory of strangers in the glimpse afforded by a flash of lightning and rob them before the next flash.
The speculation in that pair of eyes that he did glare withal mocked knowl- edge. It was the gypsy's encyclopedia of a chicken coop, and I was the chicken in view.
From my side of the case it was the worst pair of agates I ever saw — furtive, plaintive, touching, repelling. God save us from these mixed races, that we can- not understand, which civilize them- selves on no one line of projection, and give no key t > their tortuous character, and are to themselves a heathen mys- tery !
"I came down the road yesterday, Oxendine, from your part of the world." The big eyes repeated the perform, ance.
" From Robeson county ?" " Yes."
" Well, did you see that party that went up on Monday — what about
them r'
This with a sort of lethargic earnest- ness, like a sleepy nature slowly rolling out of bed.
" You mean Pop Oxendine ?"
"Yes; my brother."
" His trial won't come off for several days. But tell me, Oxendine, how came Henry Berry Lowery to get all you boys in his hands? Has he so much greater power than you, although younger?"
The fellow rolled his orbs at mt; again, perfectly submissive, but all searching— ignorance and cunning and prowling and wonder reaching out to drink me in and tathom me — and yet, withal, a sort of roadside equality.
His rrtther over-fed face ; his cracked, slipshod shoes; his drooping breeches,
were mean enough; but there was the gypsy inquiry nearly nonchalant, in his locrk. Sensual his face certainly was but a deep fallow of powt-r lay in it, generations of the bummer worthy of education from the beginning.
What crimes against human nature have been committed by Southern pre- judice against everything with a drop of the negro in it !
This rascal's eye looked like genius more than anything I had seen below Richmond.
" Indeed," he said, after finishing up the study, coolly. " I can't tell you ; I don't know anything about it."
Respectful and polite he was all the time, but in his situation, the answer was diplomatic, and the next remark showed that it was not made without • logical reference to himself.
'• Sheriff, when is my trial coming off. Am I to lie in this dark place two more years ?"
" I would insist upon my trial," said the Sheriff.
" I will. " 1 can't stand it." Then, after a minute, giving me, another roll of his quiet eyes, he said. '* Can you give me a piece of tobacco sir?'
" No ; but 1 can give you the money to get it."
He took it, looked at it, and, pro- nouncing my name plainly, with thanks although the name had been mentioned only once, walked voluntarily back to his cell.
These mulattoes of the families of Lowery, Oxendine and Strong have been locked away in the fastnesses of a hard Scotch population and their develop- ment cramped.
What might have been the discoverer has become the buccaneer ; the poet had become the outlaw.
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
25
BLOOD TRAIL.
Hovr liOwery Avenged the Murders of a Father and a Brother— Cain's Bniud the Test of Admission to tlie Gang— A AVur of Races— The Out- laws iu the Swamps- The Judge on the Beucli— The Ku Idux on Their Ni«-litly Raids— Lowery Breaics PrTson Twice— Slieritt" King, Nor- nient. Carlisle. Steve Davis and Joe Thompson's Slave Murdered by the Band— Killing the Outlaw's Rela- tives When They Cannot Catch the Gang— The Ku Klnx Under Taylor Slay°"MaUe" Sanderson, Henry Rev- els and Ben Botha, the Praying Preacher— A Promise That Was Kept— "I will kill John Tavlor— There's No Law for Us ]\[ulattoes.'' Aunt Phoebe's Story— Tlie Hanging of Henderson Oxendine — Outlaw Zach Mc Laughlin Shot by an Im- pressed Outlaw— The Black Neme- 6is.
LcMBARTON, N. C, Feb. 27, 1872.
In two previous letters I have describ- ed the persons of the Lowreys and some of their associates, and given the origin of the local feud which has run into an extended career of outlawry and crimes. This letter will recapitulate the leading crimes on both sides, as derived trom the best information.
THE TWO ARRESTS AND JAIL- BREAKINGS OF LOWERY.
Although Henry Berry Lowery swore an oath of revenge for the murder of his father and brother in 1R65 he was not yet entirely given up to outlawry, and the republican politicians and advisers of the people of Scuffletown felt some sympathy for him and sought to save him. These looked upon the murders of Harris and Barnes as partly justified.
in the former case by the monstrous character of the man, in the latter by motives of self defence and the collisions of the races in the war.
The old slaveholding element of the county, however, unaware of the scourge or humanity they were creating and the talent as an outlaw leader he was Ho de- velop, resolved to have and to hang him at all hazards.
They found that he was to be married to Rhody Strong, the most beautiful girl in Scuffletown, and, surrounding the house on the night of the ceremony , they took him from the side of his bride — one A. J. MoNair accomplishing his capture. The jail at Lumberton was then in ashes, and the county without a safe receptacle for
THE YOUNG MURDERER AND BRIDE- GROOM,
then only twenty years of age. He was therefore conveyed in irons to the jail at Whitesville, Columbus county, twenty- nine miles from Lumberton. Here the desperate young husband filed his way out of the grated iron window bars, es- caped to the woods, and made his waj back to his wife. This was in 186(^.
In the interrupted enjoyment of fami- ly happiness Henry Berry Lowery ex- pressed a desire to quit the swamps and return to his carpenter's trade and peace- ful society. His republican friends la- bored again in his behalf, and they re- solved to plead the proclamation of ob- livion for ofTences committed during the war, issued by the federal department commanders throughout the South. Dr.
26
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
Thomas, Ffeed men's Bureau Agent at Soulfletown, arranged with the Sheriff, B. A. Howell, that if Lowery truely gave himself up, he should be well fed, not be put in irons, and protected from the mob. United States troops at that time were quartered throughout North Carolina and the rebel element was dis- Coui'aged.
The Sheriff and Dr. Thomas called for Lowery at his own cabin, near Asbury church, and brought him into Lumberton in a buggy. A new jail haiJ meantime (18G8) been erected in the outskirts of the town, constructed en- tirely of hewed timber. Lowery was for a time tractable, quiet and confiding in his advisers. The
SULLEN HOSTILITY OF THE TOWNS- PEOPLE—
natural enough, no doubt, taward the murderer of two citizens — soon began to develop, and complaints were made that Lowery had three meals a day, and not, two, like the other prisoners. He was fed fi'om the outside by a shoemaker who also acted as jailer, and this good treatment, added to reports of his proud and nnintimidated bearing, led to a public cry that he ought to be ironed and put on hard fare. It is charged also — and the story was told to me by three different persons living widely apart — that some of the towns-people, hearing of the line of defence to be assumed for fco prisoner, had resolved to drag him tromjail and drown him in the river at the foot of the jail-yard hill.
At any rate Lowery grew suspicious and uneasy, and perhaps chafed at con. finement. One evening, as the jniler appeared with his food, he presented r. knife and a cocked repeater, and said : —
" Look here, I'm tired of this. Open that door and stand aside. If you leave the place for fifteen minutes you will be
shot as you cQine out!"
He then walked out of the jail, turned down the river bank, avoiding the town stopped at a house and helped himself to (^omo crackers, and, crossing the bridge, was never again seen in Lumber- ton.
THE BAD CHARVCTER COMING OUT.
From that day to this he has led the precarious life of a hunted man and rob- ber, killing sometimes for plunder, sometimes for revenge, sometimes {"or defence. He has refused to trust any person except those who by bloodshed put themscdves out of the pale of society like himself, and he has collected a pack of murderers whom he absolutely com- mands, and who have finally diminished to five, the rest being sent off as un- worthy, useless or uncongenial
" My band is big enough," he said last week. " They are all true men and 1 could not be as safe with more. We mean to live as lon<f as we can, to kill anybody who hunts us, from the Sheriff down, and at last, if we must die, to die game."
To another person he said. " We are not allowed; to get our living peace- ably and we must take it from others. We don't kill anybody but the Ku Klux."
A steady moral aeciine and grow^mg atrocity has been remarked of Henry Berry Lowery, but he has committed no outrages on women and no arsons. His confidence and sense of lonely and des- perate independence have become more marked. A cool, murderous humor has gained upon him, and he is a trifle fond of his distinction. Frequent exhibitions of magnanimity distinguish his bloody course and he has learned to arrogate to himself a protectorate over the inter- ests of the mulatoes, which they return by a sort of hero-worship. There is not, probably, a negr6 in Scuffletown w'hci would betray him, and his prowess is a
THE SWA]\rP OUTLAWS.
27
housfthold word in every black family I OXLY A TOOTH AT EACTT SIDE, ill sea-board Carolina. Ilis consistent I
una
UNFLINCHING METHOD OP WARFARE
has gained him awe amon^ the wjiitos, amounting nearly to respect, and by n certain integrity in n'ord and perform- ance he has come to deal with all the community as an absolute and yet not wilful dictator. Like the rattlesnake of the swamps, he sends warning before he kills, and only in robbery is remorseless and sudden.
" My massta — his name's MacQueen (or MacQuadc) — knocked 'em all out wid an link stick. God knows I worked for him wid all my might ; but, you see, ho wasakeepin'black women and his wife gwine to leave him, he wanted me to say she had black men, and IM a died first ! ITe whipped me and beat me, and at last ho struck mo wid a stick over de monf, and, Massta, I jess put np my hand up to catch de blood and all de teef dropp ed in de palm of my hand. Oh, dis
The family is divided in verdict uj>on wis a hard country, and Henry Bej-ry
his conduct. P.itricl<, Sinclair aii.l Purdy, who are^fe'hodists, sp(>ak pretty much in these terms ((pioted from Pat- rick Lowery, who is a preacher) : —
" My brother Harry had provocation — the same all of us had— wdien thev killed my old father. But he has got to be a ba-1 man, and I pray the Lord to remove liiin from this world, if he only repent first."
AN ANTE-BELLUM EPISODE.
A good deal of the above is probably deceitful. The current opinion of Scuffletown is as follows, in the lanifunrje of an aged colored woman at Shoe Heel.
" Massa," she said, '• Hi-nry Berry Lowery aint gwying to kill nobody but them that wants to kill him. He's just a paying these white people back for killing his old father, brothers and cous- ins. His old mother f knew right well, aud she says, " ^ly boys aint doing right, but I can't help it; I can only jiss pi-ay for 'em. They wan't a brought up to do all this misery and lead this yer kind of life." " Massta," resumed Aunt Phoebe, •' this used to be a dretnl hard country for poorniggers. Do you see my teeth np yer, Massta?"
The old woman drew her lip back with her finger and showed the empty gum, with
Lowcry's joss a payin' 'em ba(;k. He's only a payin' 'om back ! Ii's better days for dc brack people now. IVfassta, he's jess de king o' dis countrv."
This is a perfectly literal version of a Christian old woman's talk. Bandit and robber as he is, and bloodstained with many murders, this Lowery's crimes scarcely take relief from the blotched background of an intolerant social con- dition, where the image of God was out- raged by slavery throug-h two hundred years of bleeding, suffering and submit- ting. The black Nemesis is up, playing the Ku Klux for himself, and for many a coming generation the housewives of North Carolina will fri<ihten the chil- dren with tales of Lowei-y's band. Still, the fellow is a cold-blooded, malignant, murderous being, without defenders even among republicans.
MURDER OF SHERIFF REUBEN KINO.
The first great crime succeeding the killing of Brant Harris was committed in the motive of house robbery upon a highly esteemed old citizen of advanced years, the Sheriff of Robeson county. Reuben King. This happened on the night of January 23, 18G9.
Henry Berry Lowery has since said that he had no inteutiuu of accuin^iish-
as
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
inu- the death of this gentleman, but that, being poor, and aware that King had a quantity of money in his possession, the" boys" wanted to rob him, and had no notion of putting him out of the world.
After being shot Kinij lingered till the 13t.h of March, and his antemortem statements, added to the confession of Henderson Oxendine, one of the rob- bers, give us a complete history of the tragedy. Lovvery alleges that he whipped George Applewhite, the negro who fired the fotal shot ; but this may be meie cunning, and, besides, the ban- dits have charged the crime upon John Dial, the State's witness.
The ruffians, hearing t':at King w.is possessed of considerable money, came down from Seufflctcwn and hid in a thicket near his house, which w:is two miles south of Lumberton. There they built a fire to warm themselves, and, be- ing only partly armed, they out blud- geons from tiie swamp and trimmed them.
Dial remarked, " The old Sheriff may resist us !"
" if he does," exclaimed Boss Strong, '* we'll kill him !"
Tlxey blackened their faces to disguise their identity and race more securely, and then, to the number of eight or nine moved, with the stealth of Indians, up to the dwelling of the hale old gentle man.
Sheriff King w;is reading the report of a recent Baptist Convention beside his fireplace. In another part of the room — the parlor — Edward Ward, one of his neighbors, who had come to pass the night, was reading a book. Sud- denly the door was pushed open and
A ROW OF BLACKENED, HIDEOUS FACES
appeared over the threshold, while a
gun barrel was pointed at King, and an imperative voice said : —
" Surrender !"
The man Ward sat as if paralyzed. The Sheriff. I'oused at the summons from his book, scarcely understood the situa- tion. By a fatal, instinctive movement he leaped up and seized the menacing firearm, and bent it down toward the flour. Henry Berry Lowery, the hold- er of it, struggled at the butt and bent it up again, and in the wrestle the piec« was discharged into the parlor floor, burning and scarring the boards tliere. By this time the cl-oseness of the en- counter and the SherifTs stiff and pow- erful hold upon the gun had brought his body around so that his back was toward the open door. At this instant a pistol, at close quarters, was fired into the old man's head from behind, and he fell to the flour in agony. The robbers im- mediately, and without show of resis- tance, fired at Edward Ward and felled him with a wound which lasted for months.
The females of the family, rushed in and stood horrified spectators of the miserv of the two men. The blackened and excited faces of the robbers struck them with additional terror.
"Water!" gasped the bleeding Sheriff; " I am burning up ! For God's sake give nn' 80me water !"
"God damn you!" cried one of the villains, " what did you fight for?
"YOU SHAN'T HAVE WATER."
It was a scene of indescribable bl odi- ness — the screaming women, menaeed by the resolute robbers; the groaning victims, the disguised faces of the fiends and their lust for plunder paramount. No wonder that Henry Berry Lowery, ashamed of the remembrance, threatens to shoot any man who says he took part in the performance.
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
29
THE HOME- GUARD DEMORALIZED
After a little time one of the women was allowed to go and get water, while the rest were locked up under guard. Then the robbers ransacked the house; opened trunk after trunk and took some of them out in the yard to investigate their contents. They finally made their escape laden with plunder, and it was not until John Dial pointed out the place wiiere they had cut clubs in the swamp and built the fire that the whole matter was exposed. Dial has now been in jail at Whitesville two years. Two of '.he persons concerned in this murder have been condemned and escaped, two are in jail and one was hanged.
THE ONLY BANDIT HANGED. Henderson Oxendine was finally arrested at the house of his brother-in- law, George Applewhite, the negro, while waiting for Mrs. Applewhite to be confined. The authorities, aware of the condition of the culprit's sister, stayed around the house all night and got in at daylight, supposing Applewhite to be there. They at once arrested Hender- son Oxendine and Pop Oxendine. The pfrsons named as present at the murder of Sheriff Kinjr, in 18G9, were John Dial, Stephen Lowery, George Apple- wliite, Henderson Oxendinp, and Calviu Oxendine. These at least were in the
30
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
custody of the officers at one tirnp, while Henry Berry Lo\v(;ry, Boss Strong and others also present, were at large,
Steve Lowery and George Applewhite were condemned to be hanged, when, prematurely, the majority of the pris- oners, among them the condemned, dug their way out of the prison.
When Henderson Oxendine was hanged there were about thirty-five per- sons present in the small jail yard, bu^ the tree tops overlooking the enclosure were filled with whites and negroes.
The gallows was of the rudest con- traction, built against the high picket
fence of the jail, with a trap, which was
held up by a rope passing over the short
beam secured, behind the Upright joist
by a wooden clamp, so that it could be
severed by the blow of a hatchet.
Oxendine's mother came to the jail the
morning of the execution and condoled
with her boy.
He was a thin-jawed, columnar-necked wild, whitish mulatto, with ears set back like a keen dog's, a good forehead, pierc- ing, almost staring round eyes, with dark, barbaric lights in them, a nose eminent for its alert nostril, and a long- ish, near bottomed chin, set with thin, dirtyish beard, and a mouth of African suggestion.
Pride and stoicism were in his expres- sion, and negro-like, he sung a couple of hymns on the gallows out of the Baptist collection.
His executioner was a Northern rough named Harden, or Marsden, a waif from somewhere, who resembled a sailor's boarding house runner, and was of lower estate than the Lowerys.
This is one of the beings who has rung himself in on the people of Robeson county, ostensibly as a detec- tive. He pinioned Oxendine and then severed the supporting rope with the hatchet.
No attempt at rescue wag made. THE MURDER OF OWEN C. NORMENT.
The first murder committed in cold blood for revenge was upon the person of Owen C. Norment, who lived four miles from the hut of Plenry Berry Lowery and eight miles from Red Banks station. His house was also three miles from Alfordsville, on the road to Lumberton, and not far from the dwelling of a white desperado called Zach McLaughlin. Aaron Swamp, a feeder of Back Swamp, was near Nor- ment's house. Triis murder was com- mitted by Zach McLaughlin, by order of Henry Berry Lowery, who, with hi.s command, was posted near. It was the first white man killed by the gang since 18G4, a lapse of more than five years.
Norment was an overbearing ex- slaveholder, who had shot a man dead at Charlotte, N, C, for calling him a liar, and had been tried for it and ac- quitted.
He had very black hair, whiskers and eyes, and weighed about one hundred and sixty-five pounds.
His ofllence was I'aising the people against the L)werys, charging robberies to them and threatening them.
Hearing loud noises, as of the stir- ring up of domestic animals, the rat- tling (if wagon chains, &c., outside of his house.
Norment walked out in the dusk of a Saturday evening and asked who was present. Hearing somebody moving in the dusk, he called for his wife to give him his gun.
Almost immediatelv a gun was fired only ten feet from Norment and he was shattered in the lower members and elsewhere with shot and ball.
He fell instantly, and being removed to the house, a servant was despatched for a physician.
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
31
Dr. Dick obeyed the summons, and being driven in a mule buggy by one Bridgers, they were greeted, one mile from Norment's honse, with a discharge of firearms, which killed the mule and forced the driver and the doctor to take to the woods.
The same night Archie Graham, a neighlior, was shot and dangerously wounded, and also Ben MacMillan, an- other obnoxious personage.
Tho house of a Mr. Jackson, on the Elizabeth road, was sIm) fired into and his dog killed.
The robbers held carnival that night and resumed the reign of terror.
Norment's leg was amputated, but the doctor was nervous, as the wounds were fata!, for he died on Monday morning, thirty-six hours after being shot, leaving a wife and three children.
THE MURDER OF JOE THOMPSONS
SLAVE.
The Lowervs had once been slave- holders, and Henry Berry always refers to the full blacks as " niggers."
A good while prior to the time of the killing of O. C. Norment the Lowery gang shot dead a negro belonging to one Joe Thompson, who lived at Ashpole Swamp, sixteen miles from Lumberton, and was a neighbor of Henry Berry Lowery.
Tlie band had robbed Thompson's house of bedclothing, <kc., and, thinking of some story relative to their doings which the negro had told, they shot him dead at his own shanty.
Then they ordered Thompson's driver to gear up the family carriage and drive them home, which he did, and they left the vehicle not far from Henry Berry Lowery's house.
This must have been about at the close of the war, for tho driver narrates that three United States deserters or
escaped prisoners were then with the mulatto robbers.
THE FATE OF ZACII M'LAUGHLIN. .
Tliis Zach McLaughlin, who is alleged to have inflicted the mortal wound upon Mr, Norment, met with a fate justly deserved.
He was a native of Scotland, and one of a low, sensual, heathenish type of white men who consorted with mulattoes and spent his low energies in seducing mulatto girls and women.
Having laid out in the swamps with the Strongs, Lowerys and Applewhite, lie picked up an almost equally renegade white by the name of Biggs, when, one evrninc, the twain met at a mulatto shanty upon an identical object — nam.ely a mulatto syren.
As they quitted the place to go home McLaughlin, who was drinking deeply of villanous liquor, said to Biggs, with an oath : —
" I'll kill you right here unless yo\i join with me and rob the rmokehouses and shanties of some of tluse fi-eedmen. We want you with our crowd, and you've got to come or die."
Biggs says in his statement that ho went, out of the feiir t)f death, and helped in the robberies of that night, but privately made up his mind to escape from McLaughlin or to kill hini
McLaughlin finally grew very drunk, and insisted upon building a fire at a place in the sw:inip and resting there.
These twu men were now quite sep- arated trom other compani<tnship, and when the fire was lighted, McLaughlin, who possessed a monopoly of the arms, compelled Biggs to sleep between him- self and the burning brands, while he, meantime, bent akimbo over the burn- ing blaze and dozed.
Biggs began to test the sleeping out-
33
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
oast by roUiiifj and moving, and finally by jostling McLiughlin.
Reniemberini; his description of his pistols, and in particular one pistol, which was described as
NEVER MISSING FIRE. Biggs manage i to pull it from the sheath in McLaughlin's belt. With this he shot the white outlaw through and through and then slipeed away into the swamp to see if he moved.
The drunken beast being perfectly dead, Bij^gs made his way to Lumber- ton and related the story. Seaith was made, and cfi the spot of ground indi- cated, beside the extinguished fire, the bloody carcass of McLaughlin was dis- eovered.
Just previous, to. this affiiir — Novem- ber 9, 18T1 — ^McLaughlin and Tom Lowery had escaped from Lumberton jail by availing tiiemselves of a loose iron bar and wrenching the grates off the jail windows.
Biggs received 8400 for his two shots into McLaughlin's body.
He has figured in a subordinate degree since that time as a volunteer to capture the outlaw chief.
McLaughlin was altogether a meaner specimen of mankind than the Strongs and Lowerys.
THE MURDER OF STEVE DAVIS.
On the 3d of October, 1870, the Lowery band of outlaws appeared at the house of Angus Leach, near Floral College (female), and pnjceeded to seize a large quantity of native brandy, dis- tilled there for the fruit-jrrowins neigh- bors — some say brandy designed to to evade the revenue Laws.
Lowery's band was alert and fond of strong drink, and they seized all the available vessels at hand — kegs, pitch- ers, pots and measures — to transport the liquor.
Unwilling to despoil without inflict- ing pain, they struck old Angus Leach over the hip with ;i gun stock, disabling him, and a negro man, .showing some solicitude for the fluid property, they tied up, whipped him with a wagon trace and slit his ears with a penknife.
Thi liquor which they did not remove they destroyed bef)re the United States revenue officer could find it.
Next night the persons who had placed their fruit, &c., for distillation at this place, started in pursuit of the fugitives.
They found the whole p.irty, very drunk, at George Applewhiti-'s, between Red Banks and PI timer's station.
Applewhite was an alert, thick-lipped deep-browed, woolly headed African, with a steadflist, brutal expression.
Firing into the house the outlaws rushed out, well armed and spoiling fo"- a fight. The neighbors wounded nearly every man of the party.
Boss Strong was shot in the forehead Henderson Oxendine in the arm and George Applewhite in the thigh.
Steve O. Davis, of Moore county, a fine young man and brave as youth dare be, rushed ahead of the party and forced the fighting in the swampy edge of the field where the outlaws were.
Henry Berry Lowery took deliberate sight upon him and shot hiwi through the back of the head. He fell dead.
THE MURDER OF CARLISLE.
I possesss no data upon the murder of a Mr. Carlisle, who appears to have been killed in the early part of the open and announced warfare, except the record that some of the bobtail followers
of Lowery's band were accused of the crime.
One " Shoemaker John," not proven guilty of the murder of Mr. Carlisle, received a sentence of ten years in tha State Penitentiary March 1, 1871, foF
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
33
burglary. He appeared to be glad of the opportunity to go safely to jail and to escape, on the one hand, the mob, and on the other the Lowery gang.
"DAL BAKER."
In the fall of 18G0 Daniel or " Dal" Baker was shot in the leg while near Scuflletown, and his leg hud to be amputated.
Several other shootings occurred about this time, and the war being now •well understood, the citizens, volunteers, militi;i and two companies of United States troops started in to make a set campaign against the outlaws.
Here some atrocities were committed properly belonging to this narrative.
Amonii the ci imes of the Lowerv band must be placed in legitimate con- text some of trie more precipitate crimes committed ngainst the mulatoes of Scuflletown by their white neighbors.
Eight negroes have been killed by the whites episodically in the hunts for the Lowerys.
THE MURDER OF BEN BETITA.
Bon Botha was a full-blooded negro and a violent radical republican among his color, and he was used bv the re- publican politicians to disseminate their doctrines and keep the color in Scuflle- town united in vote and sentiment.
He was what is called a praying politician, apt to be frenzied and loud in prayer and to exhort wildly, and he has cunning enough to ring politics and the wrongs of the colored people into his prayers, so that he might have been said to pray the whole ticket.
Last winter the democrats having full possession of the county, and the Ku Klux cfi'iK barefaced and undisjiuisedlv through Samson, Richmond and the adjoining counties, it was resolved to Taake an example of this praying negro.
The Coroner of the county, KoUer* Chaafin, got a party ostensibly to limit, for Lowery, he being tho pretext for ;ill Ku Klux operations in Robeson, and it is alleged that some members of the party came out of Battery A. United States artillery, then posted in an<l about Scuffletown.
THE ROBESON COUNl'Y KU KLUX
seldom wore disguises, the Lowery jire- text covering all their operations.
With eighteen voung men thev start- ed towai-ds Ben Betha's and the propo- sition w:is then sprung to take liiiu out and kill him that night.
Alarmed at this, Chaafin, the !Mac- Queens, and somo of the more prudi'Ut turned back, afraid of Judge Russell's bench warrants. Malcolm MaoNeil now took command, and, at the head of tun men, marched up to Ben Botha's door between twelve and one o'clock, and rapping there, said to the negro as he appear! d : —
" Cotne out here? We want you." T.;e darky seemed aware by their reso. lute faces that his hour, long threatened, had come, and he turned I'bout and said to his w ife — " Ole woman, 1 specs they's gwine to l<in me. Mobbe I'll never come back no mo'."
*• Go and jjet vourhat!" was the nex; order, and then the negro was lifted out of the shanty, and for one quarter of a mill' there was no sign of his well known foot tracks.
The fact was that he had been lifted on a horse and ridden off a quarter of a mile, so as to hide his traces. The tracks reappeared after a certain distance and the negro was never more heard of after that night, but was found dead, shot through and through.
Judge Russell called npon the Gnind Jury to indict every man of this party ; but the Grand Jury, with that prove -
34
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
bial Southern justice manifested towards the negro,
IGNORED THE BILL,
and then the Judge, witli almost extra Judicial severity, put his written protest on the records of the Court, and denounced the action of the Grand Jury as outrageous.
He then issued his bench warrant, and outlawed every man concerned in the killing of Betha, and they all ran out of the county.
Malcolm AlacNiel went to Baltimore* where he is a clerk in a store, and his brother has fled lo I\Iississippi. This happened only a few months ago.
The negio waiter in the hotel at Lum- berton said to me in the presence of several white men of the town : —
"They say they go up to Scultietown tohuntLovvery ; but I never knew them to go there without killing some inno- cent person."
THE MURDER OF HENRY REVELS.
The mui'der of Henry Revels, a mu- latto boy, is nnother case in point. One night Dr. Smith, north of Scuffletown, came into that settlement and said he had been shot at on the road by somebody.
Dr. Smith was a brother of Colonel Smith, the democratic Treasurer of the county, and also a merchant at Shoe Heel.
Putting their heads together the Shoe Heelers concluded that the fellow was Henry Revels, a likely mulatto, who had become a leading republican and was somewhat saucy around that region.
He had been brought up by Hugh Johnson and made a body servant, so that he had a better appearance and more intelligence than the ordinary run of Scuffletowners.
Fifteen or sixteen men on horseback
Heel and rode six miles off, to Johnson's place, and took young Revels by force out of the house, telling him not to open his mouth.
They carried him to the vicinity of Floral College, wliere resided the Rev. Mr. Coble, chaplain on the occasion of the killing of old Allen F.owery.
There Revels was shot dead and his carcass thrown behind a woodpile. The negroes found the carc.iss and called up the reverend divine to i.lentify it.
Coble, by this time not anxious to fall into the hands of Judge Russell, had the Coroner cited, but before a jury could be summoned some person concerned in the murder took the body and hid it in a mudhole, where the negroes again discovered it and the inquest was held.
Warrants were issued for these Ku Klux, and put in the hands of Juhn Mac Niell, of Smith township, the constable there, but he failed to do his duty and all the parties ran away.
THE OXENDINES SHOT AND WHIPPED.
This MacNeil, although a constable and head of the militia in his township, was personally concerned in the outrage on the Oxendines.
Hearing that Tom Lowery, one of the outlaws, was dead, and wishing to prove it and discover the body, perhaps for the purpose of getting the reward, it was resolved to pay the Oxendines a visit.
They went to the h'Mise of Jesse Oxendine, son of John, who was work- ing quietly at turpentine-making, and MacNiell said : —
" Where is Tom Lowery buried ?"
John Oxendine replied that he did not know, and was not aware that he was dead.
The constable's posse then put a strap around the neck of Oxendine. and, pass-
and in buggies started out from Shoe ing it over the limb of a tree, hun<rhim
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
35
up but the man's weight broke the limb.
They hung him to a second limb, but the sapling- bent toward the ground.
Thoii they put the strap around his nock so that the ends hung over, and two men pullrd it each way until the nejrro irrew black in the face.
Nearly at the same time they shot another of the Oxendines, at his own gate-post through both hands.
Bench warren ts were issued, but they could not have them served by the Sheriff or the United States officers, and the fifteen or twenty men cuncerued in the outrage went out of the county for a while until the thing blew over.
In this brutal way the hunt for Henry Berry L )wery goes on, and the people who cannot catch him revenge them selves upon his neighbors.
THE MURDER UF ' MAKE ' SANDERSON.
The mu filer of Make Sanderson — Make meaning Malclom — would have been fully investigated had it not been for the fact that Tom Rus^sell, a brother of the republican Judge .Russell, was one of the party who murdered him and the Judge let the subject drop ou that account.
Make Sanderson was a mulatto of such li<:ht skin that before the war he enjoyed the general privilege of whites. He married a sister of Henderson Oxendine, who was afterwards hanged at Lumberton. Sanderson's wife being also the daughter of John Oxendine, who was a half brother of old Allen Lowery, father of the Lowery gang.
There appears to have been nothing charged against Make Sanderson except his relationship by marriage to the Lowery family.
Tt is generally asserted that he was a harmlesss man, " bossed" by his wife. On one of tho periodical futile raids for Henry Lowery the militia, or the volun-
teers, among whom was Murdoch Mac- lain Ji>[u\ TdyU)r, the Pursells, 'i'oni Russell and others, arnsled Make Sanderson and Andrew Strong, and, tying their wrists together so tightly that the blood came, marched them to the house of Mr. liiinan, a republican and lather of the boy afterwards
KILLED DY THE LOWERVS.
At Inman's they gi)t a plough line, and, tvins; the two more securelv, then marched the pair to John Taylor's who lived about two miles from !Moss Neek.
As Jt)hn Tavlor had gone over to the house of his father-in-law, William C. MacNiell, the march was continued to that point, and here, in the dusk, the party stopped in MacNiell's lane, send- ing messancs to and fro until dark.
The object of this was to keep the crime within the circle and not put the MacNiells in danger of Henry Berry Lowery's vengeance.*
While the negroes were led together Andrew Stroiis, certain that lie was going to be shot, gave his penknife to Ben Strickland, another negro, and told him to give it to his wife, because it was all that he had in the world, and he should never see her again.
This latter point came out as circum- stantial evidence,because afterwufdsJohn Taylor attempted to deny that he ever had Andrew Strong in custody when he was brought before the Court for the murder of Make Sanderson.
At dirk both negroes were brought up to William C. MacNiellJ<s yard, and all the party of capturers took food on the piazza, and while there John Taylor, a black-eyed, black-haired, bearded, reso- lute man and the most determined hunter that ever started against the Lowerys, walked out of the bouse upon the piazza.
Both the negroes fell on their kuees
36
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
and held up their hands, bound as they were, and cried : —
"O, Mr. Tayloi-, save my life! Save my life !"
A KU KLUX NERO.
Taylor drew baci< with liis foot half raised, as if about to kick tliem, and he said, bitterly : —
" If all the mulatto blood in the coun- try was in you two, and with one kick I could kick it out, 1 would send you ail to hell together with my foot."
The nejiroes were then taken across MacNeill's dam, where John Taylor, within a few weeks, was to fall dead with the roof of his head shot off, and marched to the woods north of ISIoss Neck station, about one mile, until the party reached a sort of wild dell in the lonely country.
John Taylor did not accompany the party, but the two MacNeills did, and also Murdoch MacLain, Tom Russell, some of the Pursells and John Pater- son, of Richmond county.
Andrew Strong, who afterwards re- lated these incidents to his lawyer, says that himself and Make Sanderson were now made to stand up together, asked if iney had anything to say, because they had now got to die, and with this their hats were pulled down over their eyes witn an ostentation of pity. Mur- doch MacLain, who appeared to be the captain, then cried out : —
" The shooting party will be Nos. 1, 2, and 3. Step out !" "
Andrew Strong asserts that No. 2 was " Sandy'' MacNeil, brother-in-law of John Taylor.
Make Sanderson, who appeared per- fectly resigned, asked if they would give him time to pray.
After a little conterence the answer was : — " Yes, you may pray."
Strong says that Make Sanderson
then fell on his knees and made the most wonderful prayer that he ever heard in his life, the woods ringing with his loud, frenzied utterances as he spoke? of his wife and children, and finally,- negro fashion, he became so earnest that one of the fellows, who had a towel wrapped around his head — so had the majoiity — stepped- up and hit Sander- son with the butt of a pistol, saying.
"Shut up, you damned nigger! You shan't make any such noise as this if you are going to be shot !"
AFTER THE PRAYER,
there was some little delay among the assassins.
Some ot them were evidently sff^winw frightened between the prospects of vengeance from Sanderson's connections and Judge Russell's Court.
This interval Andrew Stronjr im- proved to loosen, little by little, the rope which tied his wrists to Sanderson's and suddenly getting his hand out he rushed into the woods and ran like a deer.
Thev riddled the woods with buck- shot and ball, but never saw him again until he appeared against John Taylor and others in the Court at Lumberton.
The remaining negro, who exhibited no desire to run, being a weak fellow without much stamina, was taken back to the mill dam by MacNiell's house,for the party had lost spirits and feared that the other negro would inform upon them.
Here, it is said, they consulted with John Taylor, who said that indecision w(juld do no good, and that now the negro had better be' killed, since his companion would spread the tidings.
For two days Make Sanderson was not seen. John Tavlor and all the band denied having encountered him at all.
A negro found him below the mill tail, in the swamp place behind the mill,
THE SWAMF OUTLAWS.
87
\\ MYW'f'X
A SPY CAUGHT BY T!HE LOWERY B AIM BITS-
shot in the abdomen with a great
quantity of buckshot, and then again
shot in the back of the neck, in such
close quaitcrs that his hair was burned
as by the flanh of a pistol.
The man looked as if he had first
been shot and then endeavored to grope
his way up out of the water, for the
p.'ilms of his hands and fingers were torn.
The body was deposited in IMacNiell's mill and then hastily buried, but the Magistrate of Lurnberton, Parson Sin- clair, had it disinterred and the inquest held.
The verdict was, "Shot by parties unknown to the jury."
Magistrate Sinclair issued warrants for the leaders in this affair, and sent thorn to prison without bail ; but Judge Russell, notwithstanding the high nature of his offence, released John Taylor on a bond of $500, supposedly because Tom Russell was in the transaction.
When Henry Berry Lowery heard that John Taylor was out on $500 bail, and that this was considered security (Miough for the murder of his relative, he said —
" WELL, I WILL KILL JOHN TAYLOR "
there is now no law for us mulattoes."
Three weeks afterwards, as John Tay.
lor crossed tflio mill dam, coming down
38
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
from ihe house of his f ither-iii-hiw to the station, the gang of outlaws rose from the swamp within thirty yards of the place where Sanderson had been killed' and Henry Berry Lowery shot the skull and brains ont of Taylor and then rob- bed him of his pockctbook
Tkus perished a man brave, zealous, active and a good citizen to all but
negr es, whom, with the old-fashioned contempt for slaveholders, he regarded, in the language of Judge Taney, as " without rights that white men were bound to respect."
Here my letter exceeds bounds, and I will try to finish up the bloody reca- pitulation in one more article.
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
39
TIIR MrLVTTO CAPITAL,
Origin of the Free Negro Settlement. Fir-t AppearaiK'e ut the Lowery Ilalr-Kreods Tlie Old Tiisoarora Blood. Life and FiM'liii<? in Sciitnc- towii. Caiiso of the Vciulelta. Low- ery's Cousins Slain by Brant Harris. Tlie Mnrdcr of Barnes and Harris. Old .Mien Lowery and Bill Lowery Shot by tlie Hume Guard. The Vow of Keveu.i;^e. Abortive Eftbrts to Iklake I'eace. The Lowerys Exempt- ed From the Act of Oblivion.
LuMBERTON, N. C, Feb. 2G, 187-2.
Here is the place wHere the Lowery gansr has been in jail, whence futile pro- cesses are issued for them, and where any of the members ever caught will be hanired or burned.
Id is a ti)wn almost wholly built of un- painted planks or logs, which have be- come nearly black with weather stains. The streets arc sandy and without pave- ments of cither brick or wood.
About nine hundred people reside in the place, and nearly every white man in it and in the surrounding country is Scotch."
The country was settled by Scotch Highlanders before the Revolution, and afterwards by a promiscuous emigration from the west coast of Scotland.
About thirty miles distant, at Fay- ctteville, lived Donald and Flora Mac- Donald, the latter the savior of Prince Charles, the Pretender, the former the defeated champion of the royal standard at the beginning 0/ our war of independ ence. _ These Scotch slaveholders were hard
taslt masters, and they look with pinch- ed and awry faces upon the negro voting beside them.
The county government is democratic, and so perfectly impotent to catch or kill five outlaws that at present it is mailing no exertions whatever.
fiideed, the opinion prevails that the SherifTs office has concluded a truce up^n what are called honorable terms with Henry Berry Lowery.
If it can be said that these bandits are republicans it must also be charged that the county government is demo- cratic, and the honors are easy between pillage and impotence.
COURT SCENES AT LUMBERTON.
The Court House is built of brick, with a frame pediment above the eaves in the gable end, and the court room in the second story is covered Milii saw- dust to keep the peace while Judge Clarke, one of the District Judges, goes through the comedy of justice.
" Make proclamation !" cries he, or his clerk, to the Sheriff, who stands at an open window opposite the bench, and who roars down in a stentorian way to the people assembled in the public aiTa : "Neil Mc Neil ! Campbell McGrcngor! McLcod Duncan ! come into court, as you are this day commanded, or your security will be forfeited to the State!"
This kind of noise,*^with variations of " Oh, yes ! Oh, yes !" goes on pretty much all day, while witnesses, jurors and attached people are being summon- ed.
40
TPIE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
The court room is very crude, large and bare, and the Judge looks amazing- ly hi<;h up behind the long gallery where they expose him.
He is a queer, affiible old Judge, who has fought in the Mexican war, in the Confederate arntiy, and commanded one of Holden's regiments (Kirk leading the other) against the Ku Klux.
He is at present what is called a " scalawag," and says, among m.my other things of no consequence, that if he ever sees Lowery he will kill him. The opportunities appear good for this sort of intention.
Down before the Court House, where the people of the county are congre- gated, there is an old pole well in the public square, where white and negro fill their gourds at the dripping backet. Around the corner stands the old 3ray — curious vehicle for such a village — on which the Lowery band hauled off a safe from the rear of a Lurnberton store, deliberately backing the dray up throuirh an alley between two houses and leisurely setting the valuable casket thereon, stopping at the Court House, with a contempt of superstition, to haul off the county safe.
To do all this required the opening of
a man's stable, stealing his horse and
the robbing of a blacksmith's shop of
tools to break open the safes, as well as
the impressment of an additional pair of
wagon wheels to convey the larger safe
to the woods. The horse could not pull
the whole load, and the county safe was
dropped off within town limits. The
valiant volunteers and posse of the
Sheriff marched out of town two or
three miles and found the private safe
rl93,d of about twenty-seven thousand
dollars.
This was money which had been
placed in the hands of the safe-owner
\ for private keeping. Strange as It may
seem, this robbery caused a feeling of relief in many minds.
With so great a quantity of money it was hoped that Lowery 's band might have quitted the country, and such rid- dance would have been cheaply pur- chased at the figure named.
LIFE AT THE BELEAGUERED TOWN.
The tavern at Lumberton is without a sign-post, and is a weather-stained frame house, with small bedrooms, no carpets, no bar and a fair country table. 1 found no milk to drink with coffee anywhere in the region, but plenty of esiis and chickens.
The jail — not on the same site where Henry Berry Lowery was once confined, and whence several of the outlaws ef- fected their escape — is truly a singular edifice.
It is built in a grove of oaks and pines in the environs of the town, and con, structed wholly of hewn timber, enclosed bv a high paling picket fence, outside of which picket is a log guard house for small offenders.
I stepped inside the jail yard, nobody objecting, to make a sketch of the gal- lows where Henderson Oxendine recent- ly met his fate stoically, no rescue at- tempted, only the singing of a couple of volnntary hymns himself, negro fashion. The cord supporting the drop was not severed by the Sheriff, but a desperado from Ohio voluntarily assumed the office.
While I sat within the sloping jail yard I heard a banjo " tumming" in the jail, and ttie negroes confined there were comparing with Pop Oxendine and the newly arrived offenders for Wilmington the relative quality of meals vouchsafed at the two prisons.
The Lumber River, which flows into the Little Pedee, of South Carolina, and reaches the aea near Georgetown, is at
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
41
this time of the year little wider than a j cit)- street, and of running water, but barely forilablc and capable of carrying lo'fs :ind rafts of lumber down the six score miles of its cour.se.
Ileariiig horrible imprecations made on the other side of the river, accom- panied by cries of " Give me my knife ! Yes, I'll cut his heart out ! I say gi'e me my knife ! My blood's been insult- ed. A man ot hoiio' can't live after he's been kicked out o' that court room !" <fec., <fcc.,
I was relieved to find that it was merely a negro lad, rejoicing in his rights as a freem-in, who wanted to escape, Lowery-fashion, from his mother and brother, and vent his whiskey courage upon somebody.
There are many negroes, as 1 found, whose freedom takes the form of boast- ing and cursing.
I failed to perceive in the attorneys and merchants of Lumberton any particular cnideness or inferiority.
Judge L.'ech and several others were representative men of good sense, but of strong, unmanageable political and social prejudices, and they have suc- ceeded in segregating and solidifying the negro vote, so that the two faces may about be said to make the two political parties.
Here, in the large and motley crowd assembled to attend Court, were to be seen the rival elements of this pro- vicial population.
The whiles generally wore butternut, copperas-colored or gray home-spun stuff and large-rimmed, flat, stiff felt hats.
Many of them were very ignorant and could not read, and looked upon the Court as the very judgment seat of Caesar.
"Yon just stand up and when your name is called you say 'guilty' and pay
your money," I heard a lawyer say to a boor. The boor looked as if it required vast heroism to say even as much
THE SCUFFLETOWNERS AT COURT.
Here, also, were the Scuffletown mu- lattoes — that curious race — imposed up- on for many generations by master and slave, their husbands cuckolded their women debased and intimidated, their freedom! not worthy of the name.
Had Robeson county exerted decent endeavors to protect these immemorial free people, when slavery was the law and the' horrible radical had not yet subverted " the constitution " which few of tlie folks who weep for it ever read, or, reading, respected — this ( xisLing outlawry would have been precluded.
Scuffletown, over whose name and etymology there seems to be debate, possibly got its name from the long scuffle of the whites and the slaves to reduce it to peonage and make freedom under the condition of color, contempti- ble among the mulattoes.
Nobody in the whole region could account for this free negro settlement — • one of two large aggregations of yellow men which has existed in North Carolina since the organization of society.
There were many theories, but no reasons at hand fur them.
1 conceive that these negroes might have been the slaves of tories driven from the State at the close of the Revo- lution, or of the emancipated slaves of the Quakers, and that they increased and multiplied by accessions from run- aways, by the birth rate of force ex- erted on them and by the necessity of union or the sympathy of all neighbor- ing free negroes with a homogeneous settlement.
The comely mulatto women, the strange mulatto men, both sexes decent- ly clad, were plentiful in town — some
42
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS
arriving on mule back, some in short, bometnade carts, many on foot.
There was a good deal of drink ins^- among the men and of covert courtship and ogling among the girls. Virtue was evidently not uniformly high in Scuffletown.
SCUFFLETOWN TOPOGRAPHICALLY.
The Rutherford and Wilmington Railroad runs westward from Lumber- ton River.
Eight miles northwestward it strikes the station of Moss Neck. Seven miles from Moss Neck it strikes the station of Red Banks.
These two stations bound Scuffletown, which spreads besides three or four miles on both sides of the track, and is surrounded on three sides with swamps, which send branches of swamp up through it, and in wet weather each of these swamps are receivers of supplies " bays," bottoms, or pools, which per- meate the mulatto fortress.
In fact, it is a part of the "great swamp district of North and South Carolina, below the terrace of hills, and yet is nothing particularly frightful, even to a stranger, and quite unlike our notion of the swamps of Florida and Louisiana.
These swamps enclose the rivers and their arteries laterally for a few yards, and often, or generally, as the stream winds, there is swamps on one side and low clay sandbluffs opposite. It is a mean country for troops to trespass upon, but not an impregnable country. I believe that I am safe in saying that no Northern society would plead this region as excuse for not following up and annihilating such a crowd as Low- ery's band.
THE LAND OF LOWERY.
Taking the railroad as the axis of
reference, and looking away from Lum- berton northwestward, we see Rafl Swamp leave the river first, and after six or seven miles incursion northward, send on, parallel with the railroad on the right. Burnt Swamp, Panther Swamp, and Richland Swamp, exten- sions of each other. On this side of the track Lowery's band have never com- mitted a murder, unless thev killed the McLeods.
Two or three miles above Raft Swamp — the river bending to the riiiht of the track — the Lumber River, itself swamp girt, sends off at opposite sides Bear Swamp (for Jack's Branch), which en. closes Moss Neck and Bule's stations, and Back Swamp, which lies about paralled with the Lumber for twenty miles, and projects to the southward Ashpole Swamp and Aaron Swamp.
Here, then, are four series of swamps, counting the swampy Lumber River, The swamps are only a mile ov two apart and their feeders diminish the distance. On Back Swamp the Lowery band keeps its ambush and secret camps. The Lumber River is his line of de- fence from the railway. The swamps around Moss Neck are the scenes of its boldest assassinations. The house of Henry Berry Lowery, the leader, is bi'yond Back Swamp, five miles from Moss Neck station, and covered in the rear by Ashpole and Aaron Swamps, and all Scuffletown is his political ally and " boozing ken,"
The operations directed against him start from Lumberton on the east and Shoe Heel on the west, twenty-one miles apart, and each twelve miles from his fastness. Further in his rear, on the South Carolina side, the Little P^dee as well, send up parallels of swamp. Florence, a great prison pen for federal troops in the war is fifty miles behind him.
THE SVVA^rr OUTLAWS.
48
A3 old Aunt Phoebe said to me at Shoe Heel.
" Boss, Henry Berry Lovvery is de king o' tlie country "
SCUFFLETOWN AS A DEFENSIVE TRACT.
The free negroes settled upon the SoulTletown tract because the poverty of the soil and the half inundated condition of the reiiion brought it within their means and debarred it from the capacity of white men.
In wot weather, after rains, when the Lumber River and its tributaries rise, this region is almost flooded, and then the only means of iuter-commu- iiication are small paths, known only to the inhabitants, which connect the island- like patches and afford a labyrinthian, mazes for escape to any who keep the clues.
The Lumber River has bridges at but one or two ])oints, and, being swift and deep, must be crossed by scows or rafts.
Jn summer a luxuriant undergrowth covers all the swamps and low places, and even the prairie pine land, so that one cainiot see his own length, while in winter the streams are full of water and the Swamps more extensive.
The gall berry tree, sweet gums, post oak, hickory, cypress and all the pine varieties, grow in the swamps and on their margins, and the bamboo vine, stretching out eccentrically and profli- gately, makes a nearly impenetrable abatis.
The serpents are numerous and often dangerous, including every variety of the moccasin, the rattlesnake and the largest specimens of water and black snakes known in temperate regions.
Lizards live in the decaying logs, and snapping turtles appear in the pools, creeks and bays.
The woods are plentifully supplied with wild cats, which kill pigs and lambs; and the silence of the niglit in the rep- tilian region is broken by the great ill- omened owl, which utters no mere " tu- whil," but appals the silence with his long fo: eboding note, like the ver\« demon of the woods mourning for prey.
A TOUR OF SCUFFLETOWN.
The stranger who expects to see in Seulfletown any approach to a munici- pal settlement will be disappointed.
It is the name of a tract of several miles, covered at wide intervals with hills and log cabins of the rudest and simplest construction, sometime a half dozen of these huts being proxinjate.
Two or three places to sell a low character of spirits exist where the dwellings are densest. The people have few or no horses, but often keep a kind of stunted ox to haul their short, ricketty carts, and a man with such a bovine hubin and a pair of old wheels is esteem- ed rich; yet, living upon such land and for so many years, the mulatoes of Scuflletown would have esteemed them- selves well to do had they enjoyed any security from their white neighbors. Tiiey had little more equity before a jury than negroes, and it was no great ofl^ence to violate their asylums and court their wives and daughters.
The whole Lowery war afterward began with Brant Harris' keeping in a sort of servile concubinage some girls courted by the Lowery s.
To visit a Scuflletosvn shanty, repre- sentative of the whole, is to pass by a cow lane or foot track up through a thicket and suddenly come upon a half- cleared fifld of old pine and post oak, enclosed by a worm fence without a gate.
A little old lever-well of the crudest
44
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
mechanism — seldom of the dignity and proportions of a pole well— stands in this lot, the male proprietor of which is sitang on the worm fence, and he replies to youp neighborly salutation without changing his position. ^
Advancing, to the cabm it is found built of hewn logs, morticed at the ends the chinks stopped with mud, the chimney built against one gable on the outside, of logs and clay, with sticks and clay fibove, where it narrows to the smoko hole.
There is beside the large chimney place, a half barrel, sawed off, to make lye from the wood ashes, and the other half of the barrel is seen to serve the uses of a washtub.
A mongrel dog is always a feature of 1 10 establishment. The two or three acres of the lot are generally ploughed and planted in potatoes or maize, both of which come up sickly.
The yellow woman commonly has a baby at the breast, and from half a dozen to a dozen playing outside on the edges of the swamp.
The bed is m.ade on the floor ; there are two or three stools ; only one apart- ment comprising the whole establish- ment.
LOWERT'S CABIN.
Just such a place as the above is the house of Henry Berry Lovvery, the out- law chief, except that, being a carpenter he has nailed weather strips over the iufcersiices between the logs and made himself a sort of bedstead and some chairs.
His cabin has two doors, opposite each other, in the sides, and it has been so many times shot through and through with rifle balls that his wife can now stand fire as well as her husband.
The Scuffletowners go out to work as
ditchers for the neighboring farmers, who pay them the magnanimous wages of $G a month.
As many of them arrf intemperate a neijjhborin": trader with a barrel of molasses and a barrel of rum speedily gets the $6 from the whole party.
The above picture while true of the majority of the ScufRetowners. is not justly descriptive of all.
The Oxendines are all w.ell to ao, or were before this bloody fend began, and the Lowerys were industrious carpen- ters, whose handiwork is seen at Lum- berton, Shoe Heel and all round that region
Great crimes in Scuffletown were rare before the war.
Petty stealing and pilfering of chick- ens and an occasional pig were not un- known.
The whites hated the settlement because it was a bad example to the negroes. But most of the people were Baptists or Methodists, and nearly all owned their homesteads.
RISE OF SCUFFLETOWN.
By the census of 1860 Robeson county contained 8,459 whites, only three free blacks, all males, and the extraordinary number of 1, 459 free mulattoes. There were only 113 foreigners.
But one county — Halifox — contained so many free mulattoes, and that was the county whence the grandfather of the present outlaws of Robeson emigrated.
In 1860 there were 2,165 mulattoes and 287 free blacks in Halifax. Wake county had next below Robeson 1,196 mulattoes, and after Hertford county, with 1,020. There were no counties in all the State with more than a few hun- dred ; the average was not above fifty to each county.
At the same time Robeson county had 126 slave mulattoes and 5,329 slave
THE SWAMF OUTLAWS.
4o
ADVANCE OF THE TROOPS INTO THE SWAMPS.
blacks. Altogether the county contain- ed 15,489 souls, the free population making alincst two-thirds.
It stood considerably above the aver- age counties of the State in slaves aiid population, and out of the full-blooded Indians (1.158 in number) ascribed to North Carolina, none were set down either to Robeson or Halifax county.
The antiquity of these free negro set- tlements might be inferred from the fact that by the census of 1850 only two slaves were manumitted that year. In 1860 there were manumitted 258, or one out of every 1,283.
In the latter year there were 5,202
fugitives from North Carolina to 17,501 from South Carolina.
Where did the South Carolina fugi- tives hide 'J
Perhaps no inconsiderable portion of ihein sought the swamp counties on the southern tier of Norih Car(jlina, and begged the cliai-ity of this lai-ge fi ce ne- cro settlement.
THE INDIAN RACE OF THE LOWERYS.
The question ensues, whence came the Indian blood of the Lowervs ? who are by general assertion and belief partly of Indian origin.
Why should they and their blood >relative3 show Indian traces while Scuffle-
46
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
town at large is mainly plain, unioinau- tic mulatto 1
ThoJ-e wei-f two sets of aboriginese in Nortn Carolina — the Cherokees of the west, mountainous Cirolina, who re- moved at a comparatively i-ocent period to the Indian Territory and of whom several remnants remain in the extreme western corner or pocket of the State, numbering 1,0G2 in Jackson county alone.
Jud^e Leech, of Lumberton, says th.it he saw a Cherokee once who resembled Patrick Lnwery so closely that he called out, " Is that Patrick ?"
Besides the Cherokees there was the Atlantic coast confederacy, led by the Tuscaroras and abetted at the great mas- sacre of 1711 by the Hatteras Indians, the Pamilicos and the Cothechneys.
These Indians, after adetermin-ed resis- tance to the whites, which resulted in scaring the Bai-on de Gi-aflT, the Swiss founder of Newbern, out of the New World, accepted a reservation of lands in Halifax and Bertie counties, near ihe Roanoke R.ver.
Tiiey eiiiii^iaied to New York and joined the Five Nati(.ns a few years af- terward, being thought worthy in prow- ess to be admitted to that proud con- federacy, but they held the fee simple of their lands in North Carolina until after the year 1840.
Some persons of the tribe must have remained behind to look after thftse lands, and among these, as will be seen hereafter, was the grandfather of the
Lowerys.
The pride of character of the Tusc;:- roras was such that the Cheroke. s, Creeks, and other tribes joined the whites to subjugate them, and Parkmai: says that the Tuscaroras were of the same generic stock with the Iroquois • and conducted th-^ southern campaigns of those Five Nations.
Ilildreth says that they w?re reputed to be remnants of two Virginia tribes, the Manakins and iSIanaho* s, iiereditaiy enemies of Captain John Smith's Pow- hatan.
They burned the Surveyor General, who had trespassed on their lands, at the stake, and were in turn partly sub- jected to slavery by the militia <;f South Cai'olina. Eiiiht hundred of them vvere sold by their Indian enemies to the whites oi' ihe Carolinas at on3 time, and in 17 iS most of those at liberty retired through the unsettled portions of Virginia and Pennsylvania to Lake Oneida, New York.
This criminal code, enforced against Allan Lowery, the father of Henry- Berry Lovvery, the outlaw, has had the result of making Robeson county the seat of a fierce wai'fare for revenge.
Persons curious about the severity of this code may see a digest of it in Hild- reth, Colonial, series, vol. II., pp. 271 — 275.
The Tuscaroras, in their prime, had 1,200 warriors in North Carolina.
In l807 they bought a tract from the Holland Land Company with the pro- ceeds of their North Carolina lands, and it was about at this period that th'-* ancestor of the Lowerys removed from Halifax county t > Robeson county.
THE LOWERYS SETTLE IN ROBESON.
The following statement of the origin of the family is derived from the note- books of Colonel F. M, Wishart, which were entrusted to me to look at by Captain F. H. M. Kenney, of Shoe Heel :—
James Lowery, the grandfather of H. B. Lowery, came from Halifax, N. C, and settled at what is called Harper's Ferry (in the centre of Scuffletown, two miles from Ruhr's store), bnilt a bri(J^e across Drowning Ci'eek, and
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
47
kept it as a toll bridge; also kept a j spirits recoiled from -.vorking on the
public house for the accomodation of travellers.
He was wealthy and fairlv "esoected by all, and owned slaves.
lie married a Moman by tne name of
, and had three sons, George
Travis Lowery, Allen Lowerv and Tho- mas Lowery.
Allen Lowery, the father of the band leader, married a woman by the name of Mary Combes and settled on the south side of Back Swamp, in a desert- looking wilderness, and was the father of Patrick, Purdio, Andiew, Sinclair, William, Thomas, Stephen, Calvin, . Henry Berry and Mary.
Old Allen Lowery was a good, peacea- ble citizen, and well liked.
He was a great hunter in his vounfi days. With his neighbors — Barnes, Mc- Nuir, Moore and others — he was willinir to share his last cent. All his boys were mechanics with him, and the fini- ily got on smoothly and industriously until the summer of 1864, when three '' Yankee " prisoners escaped amon" many from the pen at Florence, S. C.
They made their way to the house of Allen Lowery aud were comparatively safe, as nearly all the white people were in the Confederate arrny and the State laws would not allow the niulattoes to enlist in the ranks.
The Scufflt'tosvners'Were mustered in only as cooks, <kc., or conscripted to woik on the brestworks about Wilm- ington. /
There is a story current that the Low- erys in tne Revolutionary War were torv bush whackers, but it is also allc"-- ed that one of the family received a United States pension up to the day he died. Some of the boys were willing to enter the Confederate army ; as their father had kept slaves, but their proud
fortifications among the netrroes.
As the war progressed and ihe Low. erys got to understand it ihey Sympa- thized with the North, and entertained at their cabins its escaped soldiery iroin Florence.
A DEMOCRAT'S ADMISSION.
Mr. Bruce Butler, an larn' st democrat and a prominent lawyer in Wilmington, said, in reply to an interrogatory : —
" [ don't think politics has anything to do with this outbreak. It began in the war, when our impressing officers made a requisition upon the free negro settle- ment and pulled away these outlaws or their relatives to work on our fortifica- tions. They complained of the fooil the treatment, the woi-k, and so forth, and, I believe, the chief outlaw himself ran away. Then there was hunting made for him and he got to lying out in the woods and swamps; next to stealing, next robbery. Murder and outlawry followed in time — bad begun grew worse — that's mv understandiufr of it. "
OLD ALLEN LOWERY
One evening at Lumberton I sat in the office of Judge Leech, half a dozen gentleman present, and they described old Allen Lowery. The disposition generally manifested by the white peo- ple of Robeson county is to put little stress upon the murder of this old man, but to ascribe the crimes of Henry Berry Lowery's band to lighter cause and to separate the motive of revenge altogether from his offences.
"The L 'werys," said one of the per- sons present, "were always savage and predatory. By conducting a sort of swamp or guerilla war during the Revfv lution thev accumulated considerable property, and at the close of that war
48
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
were landholders, slaveholders and people of the soil. Then they grew dis- sipated duiing the time of peace, and their land was levied upon to pay debts- Being Indians, with an idea that their ancestors held all this land in fee simple, they could not understand how it could be taken from them, and for years they looked upon society as hav- ing robbed them of their patrimony."
"Yes," said one present, "Allen Lowery brought me a case against a man who wished to sell a piece of pro- perty he had forniely owned, and he couldn't be made to understand that the man had a good title for it. When they were holding the examination, just before they shot him in 18G5 the old man pleaded in exleniiation of the plun- der found in his house that he had never been given fair play but had been cheat- ed out of his land. He said that his grandfather had been cut across the hand in the Revolution, fijjhting for the State, and that the State had cheated all his family. He had the Indian sentiment deep in him, of having suffered wrong and imparted it to all his sons. Here is Sink (Sinclair) Lowery with the .same kind of notions to this day. He said a little while ago, ' We used to own all the country round here, but it was taken from us somehow.' "
" He was a good carpenter," said another, " and brought all his boys up in industriously. He built this office in which we sit. He had a peculiar kind of eyes ; they would prowl around your face until you got off your guard and Mien he would give you a piercing look through and through. He had a heap of mixed white and Indian pride, but 1 believe he was whipped at the whipping post once for pilfering, but that was so far back in his youth that nobody re- membered it except by tradition. His sou, Sinclair, married a white woinac.
jThe Lowerys and Oxendlnes were gen- erally accounted the highest families in Scutrletown."
" Well," chimed in another voice, " he was considerable of a heathen and never went much to church except very late in life, when he became a Methodist class- leader. Old Allen married a girl early in life and had one child, but being in- different or disappoinied about her, he wandered off two years to South Caro- lina, and when he returned, without di- vorce or notice of any sort, he married a different woman.
"Taking example from him the first wife also married a new man. By the second wife old Allen Lowery had all these children. Nobody ever had any complaint to make of him or his boys until the murder of Barnes, eight years
ago.
THE FIRST MURDER. Henry Berry Lowery grew up with his fjither, a carpenter and a liunter.
He was noticed to be a boy of good appearance, quiet address, pleasing and modest enough, but also to cherish deep resentments and to readily take affront. His eyes had iiidden in them, a-nd prompt to come forth on provocation, the hazel Indian lights, and when he was ordered to the sand pits, below Wilmington, to do laborer's duty, at the age of seven- teen, he ran away, and returned to ScufHetown, where he was repeatedly hunted, and by none more than by John A. Barnes, his flither's next neighbor, and by J. A. Brant Harris, a white man of bad character, who domineered over Scnffletown.
He remained for many months be tween the swamps and the shanties_ and was joined by Steve Lowery and other relatives and acquaintances.
Unable to work for a living under these conditions, the party had to forage upon the whites.
THE swa:\ip outlaws.
49
Thus, inssensibly, formed vagabond and desperate habits, in whicli, there is reason to believe, they found apt tutors in some escaped Union prisoners wi'o had made their way from Florence, S. C, by the light of the North Star, straight into Sciifiletown, and who, to avoid capture, hiJ in Baelc and Lumber Swamps with the young Lowerys, Strongs and Oxendiiies.
Bloody example, the self-reliance of an outcast and distaste for peaceful pursuits soon overcame Henry Berry Lowery, and he grew to hate the slave- holders and to identify himself ideally with the wrongs of all the mulatto settlement.
BRANT HARRIS.
This fellow was a bluff, swaggering, cursing, redfiiced bully, entrusted by the rebel county authorities with keep- ing the peace in ScufflL'town anl hunt- ing up deserters and conscripts, and he meantime gained a penny by "farming a turpentine orchard," selling rum, &c.
He looked like a slave dealer, and was the terror of the poor wretches of Scuffl' town, whom he used to flog, un- roof and insult at will.
Being a libidinous wretch he took possession of some of the lightest dams- els in the settlement, and one of these was courted honorably by a cousin of young Henry Berry Lowery.
Seeing the white man so much at the hut of his girl one of the young Lowerys threatened among his people to kill Brant Harris if he did not let her alone.
Tliis being reported to Harris he was seized either with apprehension or rage, knowin.:-, perhaps, the Indian Qualities of the Lowery lads.
He therefore put himself in ambush to kill the lad who threatened him, but by mistake shot the wrong Lowery, the brother of the boy he hunted.
This mistake made Brant Harris aware that his present peril was greater than before, for he had now nfised the savajie ire of all the Lowervs and their Indian kin.
He therefore seized both the broth- ers of liis victim as persons who owed military service on the fortifications ot Wilmington, and was deputed to march them from Scuffletown to Lnmberton.
On the way this monster deliberately murdered both boys, and one of the three, at least, was found wi.th his skull beaten in by a bludgeon.
A fourth brother made his escape to the Lowerys and joined Henry Berry Lowery, who vowed to kill Brant Har- ris at sight.
The foregoing is thus ingeniously paraphrased by Colonel Wishart in his book said to be designed for publica- tion, part of which, in manuscript, I had the privilege of examining:
" A man by the name of Brant Har- ris, who had been a sutler and turpen- tine merchant at Red Banks, had a dis- pute with the Lowerys (charged to be about stolen chickens) and he finally killed three cousins of Henry Berry Lowery named Jarman, George and Bill." '
Now, there is no record that the Lowerys in question were not as re spectable as Brant Harris, and it was several years before Henry Berry Low- ery's victims amounted to three.
Brant Harris weighed 230 pounds.
His character may be inferred from the fiict that some of the females of his surviving family have given birth to mulatto children.
THE MURDER OF BARNES.
Before the fugatives in the woods and kinsmen of the Lowerys had dealt out retribution to Brant Harris the family of Allen Lowery had become
50
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS
embrfiilcd with thpir nearest neighbor, a bacliclor named John A. Barnes. This Barnes was a fine hunter and could track the fugitives with his prac- tised eye through the swamps, so that he was an obstacle to them as well as an enemy.
The following is Captain Wishart's version of this assassination, the first in point of time committed by Low- ery's band : —
After the escaped prisoners from Florence reached the Suffletown district they made the acquaintance and sought the hospitality of Allen Lowery's fam- ily.
Henry Berry, Stephen and William Lowery, wishing to give their new friends good table fare, went to the neighboring farm of Mr. Barnes, their oldest acquaintance, and stole two of his best hogs, two miles distant, caried them home and salted them nicely away for long consumption.
Barnes followed the cart track to Allen Lowery's house, saw the remains of the butchering and cleaning, and, getting out an officer and a search warrant, swore to his mark on the ears of the hogs, as found on the re- jected heads among the offar.
The three young Lowery's — Henry, Steve and Bill — were nowhere to be found.
Barnes requested old man Lowery and all his boys henceforth to keep on his land or he should help to forward them to the batteries to work involun- tarily.
' Here the struggle commenced and threats passed and repassed.
Oil the 12th dav of December, 1S64 ,
•> 7 7
while James P. Barnes was going to Clay Valley Post Office, a distance of one mile (the Post Office at the store of Cantaiu W. P. Mores), he was waylaid
half way by IL B. Lowery, Bill Lowery and (as supposed or charged) by the Yankees and shot.
He fell with twenty buckshot in his breast and side, and then Henry Berry Lowery deliberately walked up to him with a shotgun, and although Barnes cried, " Don*t shoot me aixain — I am a dying man," the young mulatto Indian, then not more than sixteen or seventeen years of age, replied :
" You are the man who swore to shoot me," and fired another load into liis face, shooting off part of the cheek.
The whole party then crept into the swamp and disappeared.
Some of the neitrhbors, hearing the shooting and hallooing, hunied up r.iid heard the dying statement of Barnes that Henry Berry Lowery was his murderer.
THE FIRST BURGLARY.
Soon afterward these young men went to the house of W^idow MacNair, for the purpose of robbing a confederate colonel.
The sick soldier there lent his pistol to the widow, who wounded one of the robbers, and they carried him off to Colonel Drake's, some distance away, and ordered Widow Nash, the only per- son in the house, to attend to him till well, on pain of death. The man re- covered in perfect secrecy.
THE SECOND VICTIM.
It now became Brant Harris' turn.
The young Tuscarora who had taken the first life without a shudder— and that the life of a man 'generally reputed to be a good neighbor and useful man — built himself a " blind," or curtain of brush and old logs ; and as Brant Har- ris rode by m his buggy, near Bute's store, in the early part of 1865, he was riddled with buckshot,
THE SWAMP OUTLA\YS.
51
His horse ran away, and carried him a considerable distance.
Few people sympathized with Har- ris, although all were now aware of the existence of a savage band of outlaws in the swamps, who resisted and baffled all means to bring them in.
Before any efficient means could be adopted to arrest young Lowery and his brothers and associates in the in- tricacies of Back Swamp the army of General Sherman, making the grand march, swept on by Cheraw and Rock- ingham to Fayetteville, and the fora- gers or " bummers," who strayed out on the flanks, pounced upon Robeson county.
ALLEN LOWERY'S OFFENCE.
At Scufiletowii they found in tlie Lowery's guides, informants and enter- tainers, who posted them as to the sta- tus of the leading rebels of the county, the wealthiest homesteads and such other matters as a rapacious soldiery would wi.sh to know.
Some of tlie Lowery boys went out with these troops and brought home part of the spoils.
At this period an execution had been levied on old Allen Lowery, and his son Bill, at law, proprietor of the house and ground where the old man and his wife resided. Bill had probably had association with that part of the family whicn had fled to the swamps, but there 13 poor testimony that old Allen h:id ever committed any robberies. His son William, the new master of the place, governed the old man, who was now sixty-fi\e years of age.
DEATH OF THE OUTLAW'S FATHER.
When Sherman's army had passed on to Fayetteville and Raleigh the ma- lignant rage of the people of Robeson
county turned upon this old citizen and the helpless part of his family.
They little knew what a young de- mon they were to arouse for seven en- suing years in the wild boy who resided in the swamps, and whose motto was to be " Blood for blood ! "
They resolved that the Lowery's were then committed adherents of the Yankees, that the blood of Barnes and Harris was unaccounted for, and that it was necessary to muke an example of somebody iu Scufflctown to teach them that the end of slavery was not yet the colored man's triumph.
Blind, inconsiderate, brutal ill-will and cruelty were at the bottom of this movement.
It started between Floral College and what is now called Shoe Heel.
A member of the gang was a Presby- terian preacher named Coble, or Cobill, an old apostle, exhorter and Phi/risee of slavery, and one of the leaders in it was Murdoch Mac Lain, who, six years afterward, tumbled out of his buggy, shot through and through by Henry Berry Lowery.
These, among twenty others, marched j upon old Allen Lowery's cabin, and dragged out the old man and his wife, and two of the sons, found on the prem- ises, Sinclair and Bill.
Searching the cabin they fouiid sev- eral articles said to have been filched
I
! from the white neiirhbors. This vrtis
justification enough.
They carried the old people off to a ; safe nook and there went through the
farce of examining them. 1 The devil's own prirst— Coble or C<v ' bill — got a prayer ready to make at the ' execution, and to make his holy rob
hypocritieally consistent, he pleaded for
the life of Sinclair Lowery. ' The negroes say these white Ku KluJt
52
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
made the condemned people of the fam ily dig their own graves.
They stood the old man, at sixty-five years of age, up beside his son, both of them enduring the ordeal with Indian stoicism, and, by the light of blazing torches, as one account relates, shot them to deatii with duck shot and ball.
Coble or Cobill got off his prayer and perhaps his gun. Before they shot the father and son they endeavored, with blanced fear of the vengeance of the North, to mai<e the poor old wife of AI- len Lowery confess to some justification for their act by pointing their pieces at her and firing volleys over her head un- til she was nearly paralyzed with fear.
From a thicket near at hand Henry Berry, the son of Allen Lowery, saw the volley fired which laid his brother and father bleeding on the ground.
There he swore eternal vengeance ao-ainst the perpetrators of the act.
Fourteen citizens have paid part of that penalty in the succeeding seven years.
He has been the greatest scourge the South ever knew from one of the inferior race, and has developed a cunning, blood- thirstiness, activity and courage unmatch-
ed in the history of his race. Some have compared him with Nat Turner.
HENRY BERRY LOWERY AND NAT
TURNER.
The insurrection of Nat Turner tO()k place in Southampton county, Virginia, August, 1831, just over the line from Halifax county. North Carolina, where the grandfather of the Lowerys lived.
In Southampton county, as in Halifax, abode Indians, a few of whom still re- main— the Nottowavs.
Nat Turner was the senior of Henry Berry Lowery, and was thirty-one years of age and a slave.
He was a praying ignoramous and believed himself inspired to kill off the whites, which he commenced, with four disciples, by killing fifty-five men, women and children,
Tiie insurrection lasted only two days and after hiding several weeks the leader was caught and hanged.
Henry Berry Lowery has never been caught and held. He is a bloodthirstv remoseless, able bandit leader.
In my next letter I shall take up the catalogue of his crimes.
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
53
THE BANDIT IN JAIL.
KOllTII CAROmV OSCEOLA,
Further Murders by the Liowery Out- laws. A Coiiipiirison. Alive or Dead. ni.e:li Rewards for tlie Cap- ture or Killing of the Bandit?. Tiiril- ling Stories of the Swamp War. Cold-hlooded Assassinations. Sudden Murders, Cool Robberies, Ruthless Retaliation and Footpad Generosity. The Feud with the M'Neills. The Fight. Lowery's Wonderful Escape and Deadly Stratagem. Fearful Death of Sanders, tlieSpy. Tortured lor Three Days, Bruised, Bled, Poi- soned, and Finally Shot. Romance Outdone by Facts. How the Suc- cess ot the Gang Demoralizes Young ScutHetown. The State Powerless.
Wilmington, N. C. March 2, 1872. Since my return and rest in this city
1 have seen the report of the Ku Klux Committee, which is, in general, con- firmatory of the information I have sent you from personal investigation, analy- sis and belief.
The astounding feature of the Lowery band is that they have so long baffled detection and paralyzed the public spirit and citizen resistance of Carolina. Liv- ing upon the border of the North State, they have passed, in their excesses, the boundary line, and some of the murders have been done almost within hearing of South Carolina.
Yet, when the State proposed a vig- orous campaign against them, and the
54
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
militia and volunteers were companies of regular United States troops were finally withdrawn because an equal num- ber of citizens would not operate with them-. Adjutant General Gorham stig- matized th(j militia in a newspaper let- ter, and suid that the regulars, men and iillioers, obeyed orders and showed cool professional pluck.
This campaign was made at the worst season of the year, the heat and miasma rising and the vvoods and swamps cov- ered with thick, concealing vegetation.
Twenty-eight volunteers enlisted for this ignominious campaign under Cap- ttiin Wishart, " the flower of the coun- try," most of them grown to active years since the close of the rebellion.
They were spruce young fellows, fond of a drink and a spree, and I am enab- led to present some picture of them from Captain Wishart's diary.
A GLIMPSE OF THE SWAMP WAR. Thus run f >ur of Wishart's excerpts: —
Saturday, August 5. — Militia ordered to Lumberton ; a pretty sight ! Ne- groes, mulattoes, whites — all drunk, without arms, ammunition or anything, only money enough to get whiskey.
Later, in August. — Two of my men drunk ; one lost his boots, one his pistol * * and the pilot was drunk * * The red bugs and yellow flies would kill an elephaiit * *.
Saturday, October 29, 187L — Henry Berry, Steve, Andrew and Boss were at Bear Swamp Academy to-day at pub- lic speaking on educational purposes. All had two double-barrelled shotguns apiece. They captured old J. P. Sin- clair, who outlawed them.
Later in the Hunt, — Andrew Strong was seen Saturday, October — , at — , Complained of being nearly worn out.
THE LOWERYS AND THE FLORIDA SEMINOLES.
; As there is a cry for United Statea interference in the Lowery war, it may be timely to advert to a war held in a
I similar country in the era of Jackson
' and Van Buren.
THE SEMINOLES
were originally Creeks from Georgia.
They numbered in Florida, 1594 men, and of all sexes and ages 3899, exclusive of 150 negro men, escaped slaves.
To subdue these Seminoles took a campaign of five years and cost $19, 500,000, besides the pay of the regular army and losses sustained by settlers from Indian ravages.
Above twenty thousand volunteers were called out.
Osceola, the Seminole brave most dis- tinguished, was thirty-two years of age when- the war broke out; Nat Turner was thirty-one; Henry Berry Lowery was eighteen.
O-ceola was half white, and his Enir- lish name was Powell, the same with the Florida assassin tif Secretary Seward, who was I'emarked to resemble an Indian when he was hanged as Wash- ing to, in 1865.
The Seminoles brought into the field 1,060 Indians and 250 arms-beai'in<r negroes.
Persons familiar with the Florida war trace resemblances between Henry Berry Lowery and the Seminole chief called Coacooche, or Wild Cat.
Both young men, they made war a predatory pastime, grew merry with ex- citement, were cruelly active, and they both ridiculed and laughed at the soldiery floundering in the mud and water to overtaken them.
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
55
ATTITUDE OF THE CAROLINA NEGROES TOWARD THE OUTLAWS.
In passive allies the Lowerys are nearly as well befriended as the Semi- noles, for all ScufHetown wishes them at least no ill.
When the troops pursued the scoun- drels they could hear a peculiar baric like that of a cur precede them, and die away in the distance, the mulatto's war- ning note passed from shanty to shanty to put Lowery on the qui vive.
If soldiery or armed men are on the railway train a movi ment among the negro train hands will be observed as the locomotive approaches the stations of Scuffletown.
What happens in Wilmington to- night will be in the knowledge of the outlaws within fifteen hours.
It is this prescient, omniscient, unac- eountable apprehension and intelligence of the Lowery which has stricken the community infested with a dumb terror.
The negroes generally in the State show adherence to these colored mur- derers.
The Legislature passed a bill, ratified by the Governor February 8, 1872, offering a reward of $10,000 for Henry Berry Lowery, and $5,000 for each of the following men : — Stephen Lowery, Boss Strong, Andrew Strong, George Applewhite and Thomas Lowery.
It was proclaimed as follows : — Now, therefore, I, Tod R. Caldwell, Governor of the State of North Caro- lina, by virtue of the authority in me vested by said act above recited, do issue this my proclamation offering the following rewards in addition to those heretofore offered to be paid in currencv to the party or parties who shall ap- prehend and deliver, dead or alive, any of the outlaws hereinafter named to the Sheriff of Robeson county.
This reward, in addition to a small reward offered previously by the State and another by the county, brings the price of the band up to about seventy- Hve thousand dollars. The attitude of
THE BLACK LEGISLATORS
was ominious. When the question came up of offering an enlarged reward for these outlaws several republicans, chiefly black members, voted against it. It finally passed by 7-4 to l8. Caw- thorn, colored, and Fletcher, colored, made speeches advocating it.
Mills proposed to increase the reward even more, which Mabson, colored op- posed.
Page, colored, offered an amendment to the effect that the reward was to be considered open for thirty days, and meantime the outlaws be permitted to leave the State. This was rejected. The yeas and nays were called. The following persons, among others, about half of whom were colored, voted against offering the rewards : — Bryan, Burns, Carson, Hargrove, Ileeton, Johnston, Marler, Page, Smith, Reaves and York.
This excerpt shows that Lowery 's popularity is not confined to the negroes of Robeson county, but is considerable throughout the State,
He interrupted an educational meet- ing some time ago with his whole armed band, and demanded the proceedings of the Legislature to be read.
The State Adjutant General, Gorham, stigmatized the Scuffletonians in his report as deceitful and in collusion with the Lowerys.
AFRICAN CHARMS FOR THE BAND.
The superstition of this ganef of out- laws has been suggested as a mode of aflriphting them.
When Henderson Oxendine was
5C
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
handed there were found in his coat pockets ;i piece of human bone, appar- ently taken from tlie human hand, and a quantity of mixed herbs.
Beinnr interroirated as to whether , their many bloody deeds had not given I the surviving bandits visions of ghosts i and fears of being haunted by their dead, the wife of one of them con- fessed that, alttiough never hesitating in determination, both Henry Berry and Tom Lowery and Andrew Strong were often blue and mentally uneasy. I
At this the county newspaper ofj Robeson — a very complete and spright- ly local paper, edited by a clergyman named McDiermid — printed a local i about the discovery of spiritual artil- lery, baneful drugs, witchcraft, «&c., in- tended to be read by the Loweiys, and to fill them with apprehension.
These outlaws take the nev/spapers daily, and some time ago, in hunting over the deserted shanty of Lowery, a copy of the Robesonian was found, with the endorsement torn from the wrapper, and then carrried to the publishing of- fice and the address was there identified.
The person implicated confessed that Henry Berry Lowery gave him the money and ordered him to subscribe vicariously
WHERE DO THEY GET ARMS ?
The Lowerys probably procure their improved arms — the breechloaders especially — through some of tlie more avaricious country merchants, and are made to pay heavy rates with the money they have got by robbery.
They have depleted the whole region round Scuffletown of guns and pistols.
In one case a white family slept on tlieir arms and walked with them con- tinually; but one Sunday, releasing vigilance, left their guns for a few j
moments on the piazza, when the Low- ery band, lying in watch, rushed up between them and their arras and drove the men to the woods.
INCIDENTS OF OUTLAWRY.
April 29, 1871. Henry B. Lowery and Buss Strons went to a house in Richmond county and took two mules and a wagon out of a citizen's barn, filled the wagon with corn and drove in style to Seufllotown, where the corn was equally distributed.
Having no use for horses and vehi- cles they returned the team the same day to the owner.
May 3, 1871, Henry B. and Steve Lowery and Boss and Andrew Strong went on a robbing excursion to the house of Mr. Parnell, near Sciiffletown.
The males of the family fled to the woods, the females were bolted away in a retired apartment, and the house despoiled.
The bandits waited all night tor the males to come home, and threatened to kill them if they inopportunely arrived.
One day in October, 1871, a Mr. McNeill was out in the woods hunting coons with a fine dog which belonged to him.
As the darkness came on he heard what seemed to be human footsteps around the tree he was watching.
Filled with the superstition of Low- ery's band he made haste to get home.
Next morning, sure enough, as he sat at Monbeck station, Henry Berrv Low ery appeared, armed like a pirate, double-barrelled shot gun, Spencer car- bine and five revolvers in his belt, but cool as a cucumber.
He had a dead coon over his shoul- der.
" Mr. McNeill," he said, " as your dog treed this coon, I thought it no
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
57
more than right to bring it to you. I wish vou would lend me that donj to cocn a little on my own account "
" No," said McNeill, " 1 can't .spare that dog, but 1 have got another one at home which I might lend you."
" Oh," cried Lowery, *' never mind. I cuess I can cot along without it." And he walked off as demurely as any honest neighbor. To show this outlaws fearlessness, it may be instanced that when he went to the house of one McKinsley, near Red Bank, he pulled off his whole belt of arms and then threw them down on the piazza while he ordered the family to prepare him a meal in a remote apartment and par- cook of it there.
The leading white families remaining in Souffletown are the McNeills, Ed. Smith, Alex. Mclntyre, Nick and Wil- liam Kelly, John McNair, and the Ty- tiers.
The ablest leader against Lowery has been J. Nicholas Maclain, who has been obliged, nevertheless, to leave the county and go to Georgia. He is a lighl-complexioned man, sallow, wiry, and beardless.
EDITORIAL COURAGE.
Mr. James, local editor of the Wilm- ington Journal, received a letter from a brother editor at Lumberton after the safe robbery in February, IS? 2, to this effect :—
All the able-bodied men in town have gone west in pursuit of the outlaw. It is needless to say that I start east by the first train.
One Oxendine, commonly called Dick, keeps a bar at Luinb('rtf>n, unable 1o have any repose at Scuffletown.
His father was the " best-to-do" negro In that settlement, and was for a time County Commissioner, with a salary of $3 a day.
The Lowerys have not always been a peaceful family, even prior to the war and it is related that John Quince Low- ery killed a relative about 1858, and was branded for it in the hand nl Lumber- ton.
Several of these outlaws have been acquitted before the Courts.
Applewhite was condemned, but broke jail, as did Steve Lowery.
Tom Lowery was in Lumberton jail when Henderson Oxendine was hanged in the jail yard.
Applewhite had been a slave at Golds, boro, and, although a blick man, he married a nearly white Oxendine giil.
Andrew Strong married Henry Berry Lowery 's sister, if I am correctly in formed. Tom Lowery married a girl of Scuffletown named Wilkins, and Steve Lowery married an Oxendine.
THE DEATH OF APPLEWHITE.
It appears to be well established that Applewhite is either dead or laid up from serious wounds received in a com bat with the militia, near Red Bank, in October, 1870.
He was fired upon and pursued, and the bloody tracks in the leaves and bushes showed where he had stopped to rest and supper.
His little daughter told the Sherifl and posse that he had been hit in the mouth, neck and breast and could not articulate, and that he repeatedly f tinted^
His mulatto wife dressed iiis wounds with spirits of turpentine, and the mis- erable man had then to return to the swamp.
Soon after this he was surrounded in Lowery's cabin, and had to escape as best he might by the aid of the band, io the darkness before the dawn.
" IN THE SWAMPS these outlaws live on little island-like
58
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
patches, burrowing under brush, and at one place it was found that they had constructed a commodious cabin.
They seldom move at night except to do robberies, and take advantage of the darkness to slip into the huts of their relatives and befrienders.
LOWERY'ri CABIN.
The homo of Lowery is now deserted, and its log walls and doors show the marks of bullets, shot and balls fired from the woods and swamps.
There are two doors on the sides, opposite each other, and a trap was at one time concealed in the floor, the hinges hidden or mortised beneath.
This trap afforded admission to a sort of mine or covered way, which ran under the surface about sixty yards to the swamp.
This passage way was filled up sev- eral months ago, and the house is no longer tenable by the bandits. Here Lowery was surrounded in May, 1871, by Sheriff MacMillan, George Wisehart and a posse of nine in all, but, after some exchange of shots, Lowery pulled out a small false closet or buttery by the chimney, acting as a concealed door, and he crept off with his entire party,
THE FIGHT AT WIREGRASS LANDING.
A few months later than this, in the autumn season, he performed an escape of almost incredible audacity.
There were twenty-three soldiers at a spot called Wiregrass Landing, and as they looked up the narrow channel of the Lumber River they saw Henry Berry Lowery paddling a small, flat- bottomed scow, his belt of arms un- buckled and thrown in the bottom of the boat.
Instantly the whole party opened fire, when Lowery, with the agility of a
terrapin, threw himself into the water on the remote side of the scow, tilted it up like a floating parapet, and reaching inside successfully for his weapons, aimed and fired as ci>olly as if he were at the head of his band on solid ground. In this position he actually wounded two of the men and put the whole posse to flight. Sheriff AlacMillan vouches for the literal truth of this statement.
A GENERAL JAIL DELIVERY.
Some of the jail breakings of this party have been remarkable.
May 10, 1871, Henry Berry and four other men suddenly appeared in Lum- berton jail, where Tom Lowery and Pop Oxendine were heavily ironed.
The rescuers bored with augers around the staples of three doors, and also bored around the irons fastened in the floor, when all the party went forth nonchalantly.
MURDER OF GILES INMAN.
Mr. Inman was needlessly killed while bringing up reinforcements to Sheriff, MacMillan.
Inman Avas a youth of eighteen or twenty, and a resolute spirit to cleanse the county of its marauders.
The Sheriff of the county had sur- rounded Henry Berry Lowery's house and had shown the white feather, with a large part of his posse ; and therefore, there was a steady cry for the reserves. As in the ballad of Horatio,
Those behind cried, " Forward !" And those in front cried, " Back."
Lowery, meantime, had secretly and like a snake slipped out of his cabin, and he panted for blood. Throwing himself down in the bushes near the path, only 500 yards from his house where the white hunters lay in force, he ordered his band to pick off the advanc- ing party seriatim.
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS. ^^
His own carbine brought down Giles MURDER OF HECTOR AMD A. T. MAC
NEILL AND WILLIAM BROWN.
Inmaa instantly.
At the same instant Roderick Thomp- son, another volunteer, was mortally wounded by Boss Strong, and Frank MacCoy was badly wounded.
Inman's family is said to have been republican in politics.
MURDER uF MURDOCH AND HUGH MACI<AIN.
The murder of the two brothers, Mur- doch and Hugh MacLain, was achieved while they rode together along the pub- lic road in an open buggy, and accom- plished after long and cool deliberation. They had several times approached the dwelling of these young men, and rattled chains and stirred up the domes- tic fowls and animals, but Murdoch was too prudent to come out.
He was a superb specimen of the self- reliant, impulsive, military Southerner, never capable of acknowledged merit in a negro accompanied with humility, and at the murder of Allen Lovvery by the neighborhood he was second in com- mand.
As he was riding along Henrv Berrv Lowery from a "■ blind" at the roadside and at close quarters snapped his gun.
Murdoch instantly reached for his arms, which he carried with him perpet- ually, but before he could bring it to his shoulder he was riddled with buckshot, and the horse started off at a gallop with both brothers mortally wounded.
This murder has been the latest com- mitted by the Lowery band, and its purpose was solely revenge.
In killing MacLain Henry Berry Low- ery shed the blood of one of the highest youthful spirits in that region, but one unfortunately, whose record against the colored race was long and hard and dark.
The murders of Hector MacNeill, A. MacMillan and William Brown happen, ed in the summer of 1870, within sight of a large camp of troops and directly upon the railroad track near Bure's sta- tion.
It had been deemed sagacious to make prisoner the wife of Henry Berry Low. ery and to deposit her and her children in Lumberton Jail as an accomplice of the outlaw chief.
Filled with rage at this act Lowery and his gang made their way rapidly across the swampy country and, throw- ing themselves down behind some decay- ed railway tier, waited like panthers for the soldiery u> appear.
They came leading the mulatto wo man and her children, jocular and un- suspecting.
Suddenly there was a series of re- ports of firearms, and the three persons named were down on the track moaning in the anguish of mortal wounds.
The woman and children were left standing on the track and the rest of the escort party ran away more or less injured with buckshot.
Berry Barnes was shot in the head and Alecl; Brown in the ankle. The troops fired the camp, riddled the woods with ball, but the creatures of the swamp were nowhere to be seen, and the woods resumed their melancholy and silence.
The three victims belonged to the best families of whites in that region, and their summary fate filled the whole country side with the pall of woe and terror.
Society seemed to have become dis- rupted, the law without avail, and ven- geance without call or reach of God or man
1 talked on this matter with two of
60
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
the intimate white neighbors of the Lowerys — viz., MacNeill, and McLeod. MacNeill is a little, thiclv-set, aged old man, with hard, twinkling eyes and homespun clothes.
" I think I ouj^lit to liave some svm- pathj," he said, "I have been robbed time and again, my wife and daughter shot at my J;hreshold^ my son-in-law, Taylor Willard, and his family, returned upon my hands for support, and my sons banished from their country on penalty of death."
■ "They have robbed me," said McLeod, "of above three thousand dollars, com- pel me to give tkem food and set it out on my table for them, and when my wife said the other day to Henry Berry Lowery that he had impoverished us, he answered cooly : —
" Well, I always know where to come •when I want anything."
" They took my watch," resumed McLeod, " and stopped me the other day, and seized my pocket-book. Low- ery looked over its contents and said, ' Sixteen dollars, is that your whole pile ? Well, I won't take that.' "
" 1 have no desire to see any ven- geance done to them," concluded McLeod, " if they only leave the coun- try and never return. I say let them go, for really this band looks like as if it never would be caught and never give us ftny ptace."
THE MURDER OP DANIEL AND MAC- NEILL M'LKOD.
In Moorfi county, a night's ride from Scuifletown, a party of disguised men killed Daniel and MacNeill McLeod ai>d stabbed two women and a boy.
The motive was apparently robbery, as the victims were supposed to have been in receipt of a large sum of money, and, as a horse and buggy had been stolen the previous night near Shoe
Heel, the act was supposed to have been committed by Lowery's band.
The perpetrators of the act were never discovered, but a negro nei''hV)or oi the McLeods was shot dead by the citizens on suspicion of having been a spy of the Lowerys. It is not that clear this band in chargeable with the crime.
The story of John Tayh^r's death was partly recited in a previous letter, but as a crime, and not merely as a codicil to the death of "Make" Sanderson, it deserves repetition.
THE MURDER OF JOHN TAYLOR.
January 14, 1871, Henry Berry Lowery murdered John Taylor, the most determined and uncompromising of his pursuers, at Moss Ni-ck, on the mill dam, within two hundred yards of soldiers on guard at the railway station.
The outlaws had previously robbed Taylor, threatened him, and sent him word that he should be killed on si^ht. Taylor had spent the previous night with his father-in-law, William C. Mc- Neill, who lived a short way from the depot.
Saturday morning, at eight o'clock, he started with Malcolm D. MacNeill toward the depot to meet the train. Henry Berry Lowery and two others suddenly rose up from the swamp be- side the dam, and Henry Berry fired a shot gun three feet fr> m Taylor's head, sending the whole charge through his head and temples, blowing off part of the skull, and fragments of the brain fell into the mill dam and floated down against the bank with the current.
Steve Lowery almost instantly fired at Malcolm MacNeill.
Henry Berry Lowery ran out of the swamp, seized the quivering body of Taylor by the legs and robbed it of $50 currency.
The troops at the depot rushed down
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
6*
\f<Cb^
THE OUTLAW SHOT IN HIS CABIN.
to the spot where the outlaws disap- peared into the swamp and fired, and the same evening the Luinberton militia took to the swamps, twenty-five in number, and stayed out all night.
Not finding anything the people began to adviicate bloodhounds as the only way of tracking up the desperadoes.
THE MURDER OF JOHN SANDERS.
No crime known to modern society presents such dark, mediaeval features as the killinij of Sanders, a detective polico officer from Boston and a native of Nova Scotia.
It was the concluding portion of a career of wild adventure, and to this day the people of Robeson county turn pale at the bloody reminiscence.
Sanders was one of several man who have sought to obtain the large reward offered for these outlaws, dead or alive, in a sum in gross equal to a handsome little fortune, and he was accredited by the Sheriff of New Han- over county to three or four white re- publicans of Scuflletown.
Sanders appears to have been desti- tute of honor ; but his scheme of cap- turing these men was a shrewd one.
62
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
Aware that they were anxious to leave the swainps and get safely out of the United States to Mexico, or, at least, to the frontier country, he pro- posed to show them the way, assume to be their protector and friend, and ulti- mately to give them up on the road by arranging, beforehand, to have them intersected at some point in South Carolina or Georgia.
At the time Henry Berry Lowery fathomed this design and slew Sanders for his treachery a wagon had been prepared and packed, and the outlaws had fully agreed to slip off, escorting their movables and families under cover of the woods and broken country.
To bind them to his confidence by extraordinary means Sanders prosti- tuted the rites of Masonry and
ORaANIZED MASONIC LODGES
in the Scuffletown region while teach- ing a small negro school in that vicinity.
He spent eighteen months of per- severing cunning to win the sceptical hearts of the bandits, but became him- self corrupted by their females, and reckless of speech and association. Being suspected and looked upon with an evil eye for living among the mu- lattos and teaching them, Sanders also joined the Ku Klux to appease the white population, and, it is rumored, was concerned in several night enter- prises, whippings and vigils.
Here we have the perfection of Goblin reality — a man sworn into Masonry and, also, the Invisible Em- pire, for the purpose of bringing a band of outlaws to justice. .
Sanders was a stoop - shouldered, thin-visaged, hook-nosed man, with a broad, sharp forehead ; he had keeness
if apprehension and undoubted bold- ness.
He died as he had lived, in mystery, and out of the sight or reach of pity- ing man, and there is reason to be- lieve that his fate was to be attributed to the want of caution of some of the county authorities who had learned his purposes.
SANDERS' CAPTURE BY THE LOWERYS.:
In the middle of December, l870, Sanders established a camp in a " bay" near Moss Neck, close by the house of William C. MacNeill.
Sanders was a loose talker, and had informed many persons of his object and MacNiell's sons visited him in his secret camp and gave him advice and information.
According to the statement of one of the MacNeill boys, made before he was warned out of the country, there was a x-endezvous of several of the neighbors called at Sanders' camp on Sunday, November 20, 1870. Some of the young men got to the camp at four o'- clock in the afternoon, but MacNeill did not arrive until seven o'clock.
As he walked down toward the "bay" the young men slipped up to him and, with ghastly faces, whispered that they were all surrounded and that to move would be certain death, covered, as they all were, by the shot guns and pistols of their besiegers.
The impetuous MacNeill reached his hand toward his pistol, when four men rose up in the bushes close beside him — namely, Henry Berry Lowery, Stephen Lowery, George Applewhite and Boss Strong.
Henry Berry Lowery advanced, with a cool, fiendish look, and took MacNeill's repeater from its case, and told him to make himself at home that night, for he
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
63
would be detained. MacNeill, disarmed, joined the other prisoners around th^. outlaw's camp fire.
After dusk Henry Berry Lowery led MacNeill off from the camp into the swamp and said : —
" God damn your soul, I want you to tell me where Sanders is. He is expect- ed here. If you don't tell uie where he is and why he don't come I will kill you dead. I intend to kill you anyhow when I get Sanders. You had better own right up !"
Not obtaininf; anvthin<f from Mac* Neill, the outlaw walked him back to the fire, and, after a little time, Steve Lowery took MacNeill out for a like purpose. Steve Lowery told MacNeill that if he did not make a clean breast of his knowledge of Sanders Henry Berry Lowory would make the whole gang rid- dle him.
Steve showea a.iIacNeill a pack of cards which he had purchased at the Scotch fair, a few miles from Shoe Heel, and remarked, " We boys go anywhere, and
THE WHOLE COUNTRY BELONGS TO US."
Young MacNeill testifies that all that night messengers were sent out to confer with invisible persons, whose voices were heard on the road side. These posted sentinels and the outlaw leaders in camp kept up communication all night long and toward daylight the bandits grew very impatient and threatened their prisoners many times.
At early dawn Steve Lowery being out on guard, the detained prisoners heard the cry " Halt ! " and heard sev- eral other voices belonging to persons not seen in the camp. Almost immedi- ately the voice of Sanders, the detective. Was heard, saying, " I surrender."
Henry Berry Lowery, George Apple- I
white, and Henderson Oxendine now r. n out and the conmiand was heard to take the prisoner on to the Back Swamp.
In a few moments Henry Berry Lowery and his brother Stephen returned, saying, " We have got the buck we wanted."
Henry Berry Li»wery then turned to Malcolm MacNeill and said, " God damn you, I have a great mind to kill you right here. I ought to have killed you before.
" You have been hunting me for years. You are young, stout, and healthy, however, and I don't want to take 'your blood. I hate U> interfere with you and your people ; but you have already done so much to have me hanged or shot that it would be right if I should kill you right here. 1 will let you go this time, however ; but you make yourself scarce in this country. Your folks may keep that siiebang at Moss Neck; but you won't know when your time has come. Get out of this country mighty quick. Your father may stay here if he wants to, but
TELL HIM TO WALK A CHALK LINE."
Young MacNeill then retired, covered with the rifle of his unappeasable foe, and he lost no time in obeying commandy and quitting the counti-y. Sanders, wiiose voice he recognized, was never seen again by mortal eyes except by the outlaws.
Nearly a month after the arrest of Sanders, and on the testimony of the people detained at his camp by the Lowerys, three persons were arrested as accomplices in the murder and charged with being guardians of the road and entrappers of the unfortunate Sanders.
These were Dick Oxendine, who now keeps a barroom at Lumberton, John Sampson and Robert Ransom.
64
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
The end of the unfortunate Sunders was related by Henderson Oxendine, one of the outlaws, prior to his execu- tion, and is fully confirmed by Henry Dcrry Lowery himself, who said : — •'The efficiency and morale of my comnumd compelled me to lull San- ders. We all pitied him, but if 1 hadn't killed him I would have had no ri^ht to liill John Taylor or any of the rest."
They marched Sanders to a secret camp on a small island in Back Swamp, near the residence of the late Zach T. Chandler, and proceeded forthwith, with devilish malignity, to torture him, by firing volleys over his head, bruising him with gunstocks and clubs, and finally by administering doses of arsenic to him and
OPENIXCJ HIS VEIIS'S WITH A KNIFE,
For three days, or until Thursday, these horrible wretches surrounded their white victim, their dull blue eyes calmly enjoying his agonies, and he reminded every hour that escape or mercy were hopeless.
Human or savage nature, happily, seldom presents a picture so atrocious as one decoyed and disappointed man guarded in the wild swamps of Caro- lina, but almost within sound of Chrsi- tian firesides, looking into inevitable and violent death after days of pain.
The victim's fortitude and philosophy earned the respect of his murderers, and before carrying his sentence into execution they permitted him to write a fiirewell letter to his injured wife and family, which they posted by mail with a sort of grim and military observance of justice.
The object of keeping Sanders alive for the better part of a week has not been explained — whether due to divided
councils, love of persecuting him while still alive, or the desire to wrest infor- mation from him.
He had reason to lament that he ever left his residence and associations in enlightened New England, to die thus miserably in the swamps of the Pedee region, among the human moccasins that infested it.
On Thursday night the outlaws told Sanders that his time had come, and they blindfolded his eyes and tied him to a tree.
He made a few words of a prayer and gave a signal, and at once Steve Lowery, the darkest Indian of the group,
EMPTIED BOTH BARRELS OF HIS SHOT GUN into the helpless wretch.
After the hanging of Oxendine, a party of twenty-five soldiers and citi- zens, led by Mayor Thomas and Lieuten- ants Home and Simpson, followed the directions given by Oxendine, and, without difficulty found the camp w here Sanders hud been confined. It was in the densest part of the swamps, and scattered around were the spade used for digging the grave and some cooking utensils.
They proceeded to search for the re- mains, and found them decently wrapped in a blanket, and deposited face up, with the hands folded in a dignified manner, and the daugerreotype of
THE MURDERED MAN'S WIFE
reverently placed upon his breast. These cool particularities and delibera- tion make the tragedy even more hein- ous by the awe which they inspire.
It is murder with the appearance of sovereignty and martial right.
The occurence will frighten the rising generation of Carolnia for the century to come.
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
65
THE ANARCHY OAUSED BY THE LOWERYS.
One looks in vain for any other cause of this fateful and scandalous slate of affairs in an old and sedate part of North Carolina than the anomalous fact of a large free negro settlement in a period of slavery, and the shiftless, predatory and insolent' dominion of a few families in it of corrupted and savage blood, wliich could be tamed with difficulty and never quite sub- jugated.
Freedom fell wiih almost tropical heat and spontaneity upon this settle- ment and warmed to active life the Lowery vipers, who proudly essayed to compete in military qualities with the late slaveholders and Confederate sol- diery.
Party politics has only availed to
intensify, prolong and dignify this
strife, while meantime murders reach
thi' score and the robberies are innume- rable.
Enougn can be said on the side of the Lowerys to give them a trifle of an apology, but the condition of things is now such that all classes of the popula- tion are interested in the death and overthrow of th^se scoundrels, who are worse than Ku Klux — they are Apaches.
They are turning the heads of the colored people and prompting negro imitators, and
THE VERY CHILDREN OF SCUFFLE- TOWN are growing up barbarians with the lust for plunder and rapine.
There is little to choose between the politicians of the rival parties.
The undoubted existence of Ku Kluxism — now perished utterly and without mourners or apologists — has made the republicans take the part of the Lowery gang as a necessary reac- tion and return of resistance.
But the Lowery feud began in 1803, before the Confeder.icy was suppressed, and proceeded entirely from causes in- separable from the war.
The leader of the gang, and, indeed, all associated with it, have shown a ferocity, a premeditation and an insol- ence frightful to understand and destruc- tive of all example and order,
Tne State and county authorities have dene their best and accomplished noth-
mg.
The desperation and confidence of the outlaws is greater than ever. They fear nothing and terrify all.
Can Congress or the President permit the colored people of the South to be longer debauched by this spectacle of a few men of color defying a State ?
OMINOUS INTELLIGENCE.
Wilmington, N, C, March 23, 1272.
The latest intelligence from the Herald correspondent in the hands of the Robeson county outlaws renders even more grave the question of his probable fate. It was his intention to accompany the outlaws to their several hiding places, they agreeing to carry him to their haunts in the swamp blind- folded, and it was his intention to leave them on Monday next if possible. To- day Rhody Lowery, the wife of Henry Berry Lowery, appeared at the depot at Moss Neck and made a statement to the special messenger of the Herald as to the recent movements of the correspond- ent.
MRS RIIODY BRINGS STRANGE NEWS.
Rhody states that upon the return of the Herald correspondent fr(jm Moss Neck yesterday, after his delivery of his package of correspondence for the Herald bureau hero, he was seated in her cabin when Andrew Strong and
6C
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
Steve Lowery suddenly entered and I peremptorily ordered him to I
" COME AND GO WITH US. "
Rhody states the Hearald corres- pondent, manifesting great trepidation, immediateiy obeyed their order, and was last seen by her moving in com- pany with the outlaws, whose manner toward him was sullen and menacing, in the direction of the swamp. Rhody has seen nothing of the Herald corres- pondent since his departure from her cabin, and s;ie professes entire igorance of the disposition made of him by the outlaws.
AN OMINOUS HINT.
In connection with this 1 make an ex- tract from a letter from your correspond- ent on yesterday. He says : — " In a conversation with Andrew Strong and Steve Lowery of yesterday I asked if I could see ' Boss,' who they say is not dead, though I know he is, and Steve, with a laugh, said to Andrew, ' Yes, he shall see Boss before he goes away,' which remark was accompanied by a villanous chuckle. I am on parole now. They made me put my hand on my heart and swear I would not try to run away, and then I gave them full per- mission to kill me if I did, and not ac- cuse them at the Day of Judgment. They treat me well, except that they compel me to drink their infernal whiskey. "
Rhody Lowery's statement concern- ing the Herald correspondent, taken in connection with the ominous utterances of Steve Lowery, has created a feeling of profound apprehension here regard- ing his fate.
THRILLING FACTS.
The Herald Correspondent Among the Lowery Bandits. A Week in the Hands of the Lowerys. Tlie Father of the Oxendines. The Motiier ol J the Lowerys. Her Bitter bcory by the Grave of tlie Murdered. Khody Lowerj'^, the Queen of Scullletown. Face to Face With tiie Terrors. Their Appearance and Equipment. A Night ia Khody Lowery's Cabin. Lite of the Hunted men.
Terrible Tales From Terrible Tongues. A Blindfold Journey to Their Hiding Places— The Island Armory. Released from Bondage. Excitement in Wilmino-ton.
Wilmington, N. C, March 25, 1872-
ARRIVAL OF THE CORRESPONDENT.
To the amazement, and yet to the great satisfaction, of^the public here the Heeald correspondent who has been for nearly ten days past in the swamps of the Carolina outlaws returned to Wilmington this afternoon by the Char- lotte road, which traverses the Scuffle- town district. Up to the time of his arrival in Wilmington little or no hope was indulged of his safety, in view of the threats against him which have re- cently been made by the outlaws. His safe arrival in Wilmington this after- noon
CREATED AN INTENSE EXCITEMENT,
and despite the fearfully stormy weather the Herald correspondent was the ob- ject of curiosity and the Herald was the theme of discussion and praise. The universal sentiment in Wilmington is that the Herald correspondent is the hero of a wonderful feat of daring, and there is universal rejoicing that he has finally escaped the great perils which have for more than a week past envir- oned him. Details given by your cor- respondent regarding his adventures among the outlaws confirm the accounts given in the Herald despatches of the
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
67
PERIL AND DIFFICULTIES
which he has undergone. He left for New York this afternoon, and will give to the Herald the fullest possible de- tails of his thrilling adventures. On Friday last your correspondent was taken by the outlaws farther into the swamp, and
CONDUCTED BY Til EM BLINDFOLDED
from Rhody Lowery's cabin to several of their most secret hiding places. At the moment of leaving lihody's cabin the Hkrald correspondent experienced the greatest sense of personal danger suffered by him during his career with the outlaws. Tom Lowery had especi- ally urged the killing of the •»
"DAMNED YANKEE,"
and as the other outlaws conducted him away from Rhody's cabin, with the re. mark to Rhody that he would never see daylight again, your correspondent had little hope but that Tom Lowery's savage threat would be executed. Con- ducted by outlaws through the swamp blindfolded, except when his captors chose to remove the bandage, he trav- ersed the swamp, in some places wad- ing almost
WAIST DEEP IN WATER.
and again reaching solid gronnd, thus gaining one of the hiding places of the outlaws, which he inferred to be situa- ted upon an island. The blindfold was removed, and he found hitnself an in- mate ot a low, pitched cabin, in which a moderately tall man could not pos- sibly stand erect. In this cabin were from
THIRTY TO FORTY SHOT GL'NS
but no smaller arms. The outlaws would not permit him to look out of the window and make any observations
of the surroundings. He was told that he was already the possessor of more of their secrets
THAN ANY OTHER HUMAN BEING
outside of their gang, and more than they intended anybody else should ever have access to again. While in the swamps your correspondent was repeat- edly informed by th<; outlaws of their suspicions that he would attempt to chloroform them, and that he was a government spy sent to repeat the role in which the Detective Sanders had been caught by them.
A DEMOCRATIC DEMON.
He was also told by Steve Lowery that a prominent democrat of Robeson county had given them information that he was a federal spy and that he would undoubtedly do them great harm before he left them.
" Still, " said Steve, " we believe that you are honest, and we will trust you ; but
DONT UNDERTAKE TO COME HERE AGAIN
because you know too many of our secrets. " Steve then added, " We have trusted three other men besides you and they all betrayed us, but still we will trust you and let you
GIVE THE HERALD ALL THE INFOR- MATION
you can about us. " After leaving the swamps the outlaws carried your corres- pondent on Sunday back to Rhody's cabin, and this morning accompanied him to Moss Neck,
WAVING A FRIENDLY ADIEU TO HIM
as the train left. As a mark of their confidence in the honesty of his inten- tions toward themselves, the outlaws gave the Herald correspondent
68
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
A DOUBLE-BARRELLED SHOT GUN,
formerly belonging to Henry Berry Lowery, the deceased outlaw chief, and Sieve Lowery presented him wi'h three silver pieces, to be given, one to his wife, another to his baby, and the third to be kept by himself as a souvenir of his trip among the Carolina outlaws. Your correspondent is warm in his ac- knowledgment of Rhody's seryjces to himself in aidijig him to retain the con- fidence of the outlaws, and
PRAISES HER COURAGE and intelligence. Rhody carried him to many points of interest, among others to the grave of the unfortunate Sanders, a spot which the outlaws seemed to dread visiting witharem ika- ble superstitious apprehension. Upon one occasion thts Herald correspondent was within half a mile of the grave of Sanders and begjied the outlaws to
DO
CONDUCT HIM 10 THE GRAVE, but they refused, as they also did to visit the graves of other victims of their vengeance.
The satisfiiction of the community of Wilmington at the safe arrival in their midst of the daring Herald correspond- ent is heightened by his confirmation of the previous tidings from him of the deaths of Henry Berry Lowery and of Boss Strong, the second in cleverness and courage of the gang of outlaws. During the abs' nee of your correspond- (Mit in the swamps the excitement in Wilmington was at fever heat and found some curious forms of expression.
FIRST LETTER FROM OUR CAP- TURED CORRESPONDENT.
) SCUFFLETOWN, RoBHSON CoUNTY, »
'. N. C, MARcn 1, 1872 f
That the thrilling pictures given in the Herald of the outlaws of the Robe-
son county swamps, in North Carolina, with the history of their deeds of daring murder and rapine, had awakened a deep sensation over the United States, was everywhere evident. It seemed incredible that a band of five men should persistently defy a community such as the Old North State. The criminal supineness of the State authori- ties, the inactivity of the federal govern, ment and the terrorized condition of the inhabitants of the district all expressed an anumalous condition of affairs which
CALLED FOR THE FULLEST INVES- TIGATION.
The account given by another corres- pondent had exhausted all the infor- mation surrounding the gang, had given graphic sketches of the now famous mulatto settlement, with its ominous name of Scuffletown, had detailed the outrages by the gang, and traced back their history to the days of the rebel fortifications at Wilmington, when Henry Berry Lowery first took to the swamps, to avoid impressment to work with the slaves of the Southern plant- ers. Escaped federal prisoners, too, from the Confederate prison at Florence, S. C, were seen flitting across the swamps and
HIDING FURTIVELY AMONG THE SH.\NT1ES .
of the free negro settlement of Scufile- town to take their places awhile with Hinry Berry Lowery and his fellows in the swamps. By and by came the sweep of Sherman's army to the sea, and it was related how the " bummers" found guides and supporters among the free mulattoes of Scuffletowu.
It came out, to.i, in a ghastly way, that the rebel whites of the district, wishing to wreak their vengeance on the colored people, came in the night to
THE SWAMF OUTLAWS.
69
t)ld Allen Lowery's cabin, and, dragging forth himself and his son William, mer- cilessly
SHOT THEM, FATHER AND BOY,
with the one volley, and then went their way, pntting two of iheir supposed ene- mies out of the way only to create a pack of avenging devils in the persons of the old man's sons and their outlawed friends.
The war closed, and, rightly or wrongly, the white people of Robeson county true to their murder of the fa- ther, exempted the Lowerys from the act of oblivion. How truly has it been said that " we can never forgive those we have injured ! "
The end of the strife between North and South brought no peace to Scuffle- town The " angels " were in the swamps robbing by day murdering by ni<'ht ; the rebels had become Kii Klux, and from fighting manfully in the sun- light were trooping in
THEIR MURDEROUS MASQUERADE,
under the pines and cypresses at night and dra^jrin" a negro here and there from his shanty, let him sing his wild, hurried prayers for a minute or two, and then stopping it all with buckshot, but carefully skirting the outlaws themselves, some day to fall, like John Taylor, under a " bead " drawn by Henry Berry or one of his broth<u- outlaws.
This was not civilization. The irre- sponsible lex talionis of the hater and hated, the state of things that created in the land of Muscovy between serf and feudal master the phrase that de- scribed the murder of the latter by the former as " the wild justice of revenge," existed in the land of the Lowerys with more degrading surroundings than ever before or in any otner country.
That social, restraining force called government had failed to put an end to it, and there seemed, previous to the Hkhalu's expose, to be a sort of laissez oiler agreed on in tacit apathy by all piirties.
But even yet the outlaws themselves had not spoken.
THE OUTLAWS STOHY FOR HIMSELF
was unuttered, except through his sen- tence of death by word of mouth, fob lowed pretty surely by execution through the barrel (jf a rifle.
In perhaps any other state of things no more would be needed previous to setting about his censure. As things stood it seemed that there must be something needing fuller detail — some thing of moment in their position which neither the shivering sympathizers of their own race nor the vauntinji but trembling white foes thereof would or could impart. This was to be got from the outlaw's lips along.
It did not require much deep reason- ing to arrive at this conclusion. It forced itself naturally forward, and the journal whieh had enterprise enough to gather the first part of the story could surely learn the second.
Without, then, any feeling of rashness or bravado th;it I am aware of, but simply in the exercise of a grave duty, to shrink from which would be abhor- rent to my nature,
I LEFT FOR THE WOODS AND SWAMPS
of Robeson.
My preparations were simple as my mission was direct, and relying on my ability to make the honorable nature of my purpose apparent even to the des- perate men it was my deliberate pur- pose to meet face to face.
Passinir over the incidents which f'n not properly belong to my narrative, 1
70
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
may say that on my arrival in Wil- mington 1 found the Lowerys and the Herald expose to be the only topics of interest in that quiet Carolina town, and the tone of the well-dressed, lounging chivalry about the hotels was not at all encouraging.
I told the object of my visit to several, and the universal verdict was
" A DANGEROUS GAME, STRANGER,
rather you than me." They recalled to me with all the discouraging emphasis which a slow ejaculation of alternate ■words and tobacco-spittle can command the fearful fate of Saunders, the detec- tive, and generally finished by saying : —
" AN' HE WAS SMARTEHRN YOU LOOK,
STRANGER."
This continual replication of warning did not tend to cheer me.
It recalled in a painful way 1 had never before imagined the poem of Excelsior with its dismal forebodings of a fatal ending to my venture, but I dashed these all away. The thought that Longfellow's aimless young mad- man who died in the snow, had nothing in common with a man endeavoring in his own humble way to serve the civili- zation which lay so sadly wrecked out in the swamp region beyond.
If the scare had reached Wilmington, I reasoned, I shall not then have much difficulty in getting the whites of Robe- son county to assist me in ridding them of the objects of their terror through, perhaps,
A MORE MERCIFUL "WAY
n than killing them off like dogs. But in
this I was destined to be mistaken
Excepting Captain Morrison ; the "king of conductors " on the Wilming- ton, Charlotte and Rutherford Railroad.
and Ed Hayes, of Shoe Heei, no one encouraged me to proceed.
From the ticket agent, from whom I bought a ticket for Moss Neck, at Wil- mington, with his horrified ejaculation —
"My God! stranger, you are not going to stop there !"
To the merchants of Shoe Heel, who assured me death would be the sure fate of any stranger who would venture into Scuffletown, I heard but the one opinion, that the Lowerys were devils and would welcome an opportunity to kill a white man.
Before leaving Wilmington I pre- pared
A LETTER, DIRECTED TO H. B. LOWERY.
stating that I desired to interview him for the Heiiald and offered to give myself into his hands if we would grant me the interview.
It was my intention to stop at Moss Neck and attempt to find a messenger who would deliver my letter, but oh the train Captain Morrison advised me to go on to Shoe Heel where I would find better accomodations than at Moss Neck, and from where I could certainly send a messenger to the outlaws.
I took his advice, but was unable to find any one in or about Slioe Heel who would deliver or who knew any one who would present my petition to the " King " of Robeson county.
The reported killing of Boss Strong, it was supposed, had
SO ENRAGED THE OUTLAWS
that the time was particularly inauspi- cious for my visit.
I met here James McQueen, or Don- ahoe, of Richmond county, N. C, who asserted he had killed the notorious Boss.
He is a tall, awkward, shambling.
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
71
dark coniplexioneJ man, of Scoitish I once unfDlded the object of my calling* decent, twenty-five years of age; he has iuid asked if I could be permitted to
very small eyes, which he has a trick of dropping the instant he is looked at.
The next morning, March 14, I left Shoe Heel and came to Eureka, or Buie's Store, half way between Moss Neck and Red Bank.
At. the store, close to the railroad, the colored clerk, of whom 1 enquired the road to Patrick Lowery's, left the store to point it tmt to me.
To him I stated the object of my vis- it, and asked him to inform any of the outlaws he mii^ht see what I was after.
THE FATHER UF TWO MURDERERS.
Soon after leaving the store I met an old negro who asked me if I was louk- inj; for anvbodv, when I told him I wanted to go to Pat Lowery's. lie told me I was in the right road, and added : —
'• Fs skeered of strangers most to deff, but you hain't got no gun. "
Tiiis was Jack O.xendine, the father of Henderson, who was hung in Lum- berton in 1870, and Calvin, who is now in the Wilmington jail, charged with being implicated in t e King murder.
At the conclusion of his introduction he said : —
" ' Fore God, dis is powerful bad country to live in ; ebery now and den de Ku Kluck come iu yer, and with their shootin' an' uhippin' an' hangin', an' de men out by deyselves totin' dere guns, I's scart to defT. *'
A short half mile from the station brought me to
THE HOME OF PAT LOWERY,
the oldest brother of Henry Berry, and a preacher. When 1 got there he was working in his carpenter shop, near his house — for he is not above honest lab(»r notwithstanding his profession. I at
stay with him a few days while I u«Mld make efforts to meet the outlaws. He was perfectly willing I should make his house my home while here, but thought my chance of seeing Henry was very slim.
It had been reported for the past four weeks that he was dead, and many be- lieved it, even some of his Jiiends, while the majority thought the story had bee*i originated by his wife and brothere to cover his escnpe from the county.
Patrick told me S:eve and Tom Low- erv
HAD PASSED HIS HOUSE A FEW DAYS BEFORE,
but it might be a lot g time before they would be in their immediate neighbor- hood again.
After a long conversation between him and James (Jxendine, a well-to-do mulatto fiirmer living near by, it was decided that my best plan would be to go over to the home of old Mrs. Low- ery, the mother of Patrick and Henry.
They both assured me it would be perfectly safe, for the outlaws never in- terfered with any but those who trou- bled them.
For a consideration Patrick consent- ed to give me his horse on which to • ride over, and his son Allen, a bright boy of sixteen, to guide me. After a dinner of
CORN BREAD, BACON AND COFFEE.
we started on our journey, and I must confess to a slight sinking of the heart as I lost sight of the railroad and plung- ed into the swamps, the lurking places of the Lowery outlaws.
IN THE OUTLAWS LAND.
I had ridden about a mile, when the- discomfort produced by my horse'*
72
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
miserable gait, and the barigiii<r of my valise against my legs, became too great, and I proposed to my guide that he should ride awhile.
But the change was not for the better, and it had scarcely been made when we came to one of the low places in the road that are so common here, called " branches," and which are feeders to the swamps
Alons one side of these branches are laid, or erected on stumps, logs for the convenience of pedestrians.
They are generally unhewn, all very narrow, many of them decayed, and very few that stand firm under any move- ment. At the first of these I came to, after dismounting,
I LOST MY BALANCE,
and got into the water knee deep. I remounted the horse, then, and, except- ing the gait and banging aforesaid and crushing of my legs against the trees, first on one side and then on the other, as I followed Allen in the narrow foot- path through which he led me, I suffered no great inconvenience.
About two and a half miles from Patsedo we came to the " Back Swamp," where for about three hundred and fifty yards the black water crosses the road flowing sluggishly through the brush, and cypress trees.
Along the foot logs here Allen ran, with the confidence inspired by long practice.
ANDREW STRONG'S CABIN.
About a mile from the Back Swamp we passed the cabin of Andrew Stiong, one of the outlaws, where his younger brother, Boss, was shot the Friday be- fore.
We passed close to the house, and a couple of women came to the door, and
[ stood there as long as the house was in sight.
As I have since learned, there was another pair of eyes Avatching us from a thicicet near the house. Andrew Strong himself, with
HIS GUN READY FOR A SHOT,
in his hand, studied me as 1 passed. Another long stretch of water, mud, and sand, and wc came to Henry Berry Lowery's house, now in the occupancy of his wife, Rhody. A quarter of a mile further and we reached our desti- nation, the home of
OLD MRS. ALLEN LOWERY.
Here we were greeted by the loud and decidedly savage barking of three large dogs. Two or tliree very light mulatto girls drove them away, and opened the gate for me ; as I passed in I was put in the presence of the old woman, who gave me a very hospitable reception, and assured me I was wel- come to st:iy as long as 1 pleased, if I could put up with their rough fare.
Mrs. Lovvery has the largest house in this section of country ; it is weather- boarded, has four good sized rooms, and a kitchen attached, aud a wide porch in front. It is on a plantation containing about seventy-five acres, and has numerous out-buildings connected with it. There has been no division of the estate or property since old Allen Lowery was killed, the children
GIVING ALL THE PROFITS TO TPIEIR MOTHER.
One son, Sinclair, living near, super- intends the farm, and assists her when necessary. This little plantation pro- duced last year eight bales of cotton and four hundred bushels of corn.
Soon after my arrival I met Sinclair, who is a dark mulatto, with a good
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
73
BOSS STRONG
countenance. He told me he did not know whether Henry Berry was alive or dead ; that no one had seen him for four or five weeks. ^Irs. Lowery said the same. Sinclair addfd : —
" I will be glad it he is dead, for he is a very bad man, and has done a heap of harm."
He further told me he had not been on friendly terms with Henry since the marriacre of the latter to Rhody Strong ; the marriage it had been announced would be solemnized at his mother's nouse, and Sinclair, fearing that an attack would be made on the house by the oflic^rs in pursuit of Henry, objected to the ceremony being performed theie. When Henry was arrested he accused Siaclair of having informed on him, and
ON- GUARD.
they had never been on good terms afterwards. Steve and Tom
TOOK PART WITH HENRY
in his qnarrol ; so that Sinclair could give me no information of the outlaws.
I would here remark that this band are known in thoii- neighborhood by the name "outlaws;" their friends call them and they style themselves out- laws.
W^hen I returned to the house after the conversation with Sinclair, who was working in a fioiJ. 1 was presented to Iihody, the wife of Henry Berry Low- ery.
THE "QUEEI^ OF SCUFFLETOWN." This young woman is remarkably
74
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
prettv ; her face oval, of a very light color; large, dark, mournful-looking eyes, with long lashes ; well shaped moul'i ; with, small, even teeth, well rounded Qhin ; nose slightly retrousee, with profusion of straight jet black hair, combine to make her a very pleasant object to gaze at. She has small hands and feet, and on the latter she wears No. 2, and still cramps her feet less than the majority of white women. She is of medium height, with a very well developed figure, and is lietween twenty- one and twenty-two years old. When I add that she has a low sweet voice, and a great many little graceful motions of her head and body, it will be seen that she is a raj'a avis in ScufRetown. To the above description I regret that 1 am compelled to add that this queen cannot write, that
SHE SMOKES A PIPE AND RUBS SNUFF.
When Rhody learned the object of my visit she said she would undertake to have my message conveyed to the outlaws, and she had no doubt they
would ffrant me an interview. Hen
fy
Berry, she said, was away, and she could not tell wlien he v/ould return. I walked home with her, r.nd examined carefully the home of the notorious out- law leaden.
THE OUTLAW'S NEST.
The cabin of this man is built pre- cisely as are all those of the poorer mulattoes — one story high, logs from three to eight inches apart, the intersti- ces not filled in as in log houses at the North, but covered by boards on either the inside or outside, never both. This house had the- boards on the outside. There are two doors, opposite each other, secured by modern bolts and buttons, and on the third side is the
capacious hearth or fireplace, with chim- ney built of logs, lined and floored with clay. On the side opposite the fireplace stands the bed, and above and beside it are stretched several poles, upon which hang the clothes of the family.
There are no windows, nor any open- ings for light but the doors and chimney. Indeed, of some twenty houses of mu- lattoes I visited, 1 found but two, those ofJNIrs. Allen Lowery and Pat'^ick Low- ery, in which there were windows.
The house of H. 13. Lowery is within a small enclosure, which is surrounded by a large one, and is on his father Allen's estate. The furniture of this house consists of
A BED, A TABLE, TFIREE CHAIRS,
and three stools. Over the fireplace are pasted a numb<n" of pictures cut from the illustrated papers, while a colored print, labelled "The Two Beau- ties," hangs over the table. Rhody had left her "help" — a light mulatto, who had been engaged by Andrew Strong to stay with her for six weeks for a pair of shoes and a calico dress — in charge of
HER CHILDREN—
Sally Ann, aged five ; Henry Delany, aged three, and Neelvann, aijed one year and two months. They are all of a very bright coloi-, strong, active, and healthy, the boy being particularly bright. He is said to bear a strong resemblance to his father.
1 spent an hour or more with Rhody, She told me, further, if I would come back the next morninfj she mi";ht have some information for me, and that in the meantime I might rest assured I would be in no danger from the out- laws or their friends.
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
75
BY THE Or-D MAN'S GRAVE— OLD MllS. LOWEllYS STORV-
The iTxt moniint; ( March 15) old Mrs. Lowery took nut to a small unen- closed grave in a field near her house, where, marked by four rails lying on the ground, was iho grave of her husband and son William. The old woman's voice was broken, and the tears rolled down her withered face even now as she told mo how they met their death.
There had been no trouble between them and any of their white neighbors, except that some of their sons had flod from the officers who wanted to take them to wt)rk in the rebel fortifications at Wilmington.
In 18G1 a party of whites, com- manded by James Barnes, came to the house and took the old man and Wil- liam away, at the same time,
THEY ASKED FOR SPADES,
and took some along with them ; some of them r.turned directly and ca;-ried ol 1 Mrs. Lowery and her two daugh- ters to the house of a white man, Rob- ert McKensie, where they wee locked up in a smoke bouse.
Mckensie then went away saying he was going up to see how the Loweiy men were faring.
When they returned home, in a thicket not far from the house, they found a new-made, shallow grave, in which were the bodies of Allen and William Lowery, lying one above the other, riddled with musket balls.
The next day they came back and took me out into the woods and said they were going to kill me if I didn't tell them where the Yankee prisoners were hid. I didn't know and I told them so, but they wouldn't believe me. They blindfolded me and tied me to a tree, and said they were going to shoot
me. I heard them firing, and then I fainted. When 1 fainted they untied me and sent the girls to bring me too.
This was old Mrs. Lowery's story, and all the mulattocs whom I met and questioned about it, told me about the same thing.
From the grave of the Lowery's I went straight to Rhody's house. As 1 entered the gate of the outer enclosure I noticed a man standing in the doorway who stepped back within the house. As I reached the inner gate he again came to the door and
I CONFESS TO SOilE NERVOUSNESS
as I saw his equipments. But it was no time to stop now, and in a moment 1 was in Henry Berry Lowery's house, in the presence of Steve Lowery and Andrew Strong, two of the famous swamp outlaws. With as composed aa air as the nature of the case would pe^ mit I stepped forward.
" I believe these are the men " (I am not sure but that I said gentlemen) "I wanted to see," and extended my hand to the one nearest me, who grasped it cordially as Rhody mentioned his name, Andrew Strong, and mine, and then repeated the ceremony with Steve. Both of them offered me chairs ; but I accepted that from which Andrew had just arisen, it being nearer the fire, and immediately
EXPLAINED MY PURPOSE
in seeking them. I told them the great paper of America had giv. n some at- tention to them, and had published their histories as furnished by the white people of Robeson county ; but that the people of the United States might have a clear and just conception of afliiira here I had been sent down to see them, h'ar their stories and the circumstances that had made them outlaws and se«
76
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
Qow they lived. I told thein. further' As the shooting of Boss was the chief
topic I had heard discussed after lea\ing Wilmington, I told them I had seen James ]\lcQueen or Donahoc, at Shoe Heel, and had taken down his version
that [
HAD NO WEAPON BUT A SMALL REVOLVER.
which they could have while I was with them, but which they would oblige me by returning when 1 left thom.
They replied that Rhody had told them the nature of my business, that they were glad of an opportunity of giv- ing their story to the country, for the " papers were telling so many d — d lies about them," that I would be perfectly safe with them, and that I might keep my pistol.
THE MEN I MET.
Steve Lowery is five feet ten inches high, thick set, with long arms and legs, and is very strong ; he has a very dark yellow complexion, hazel eyes, bright and restless, black straight hair and thin mustache and goatee. He was armed with a Spencer rifle, two double-barrell- ed shot suns, one of the latter and the rifle beinsz slung from his shoulders, and three six-barrelled revolvers in his belt, while two United States cartridge boxes hung from his shoulders.
Andrew Strong is nearly white, about six feet high, with rather mild eyes and reddish beard and hair, tlie latter cut short. He carried a heavy rifle and the same number of shot-guns, revolvers and cartridge boxes as Steve Lowery, be- sides a heavy canvas haversack. His impedimenta ("turn," he calls it) weighs not less than a hundred pounds. He
ADJUSTED ALL HIS EQUIPMENTS ON ME,
and I C0!ild barely stagger across the floor with them. After a few general remarks, Andrew told me they would tell me all I wanted to know if I would question them.
of the affair, and would : ow like to know if it was correct. 1 road to them McQueen's story as follows: —
DONAIIOE'S STORY OF KILLING EOSS STRONG.
" Last Thursday night (May 7), 1 reached the house of Andrew Strong, on the edge of Soufllctown, about ten miles from here, at twelve o'clock', I fixed a good blind about 150 vards from the house, and lying down, I watched the rest of the nitfht and all the next dav, eating some provisions I had bi-ought along. About half-past seven P. M. Friday, Andrew came out of the wools, and after stopping and looking around him in all directions he went into the house, and directly come out and gave a low call, when Boss came out of the woods to the house; they were each armed with two rifles and two or three revolvers. A little after eight o'clock, when I thought they woul 1 be at sup- per, I slipped up to the house and look- ed in through the cat hole in the door, as I supposed they were eating their supper by the light on the hearth. Be- side Andrew's wife, Flora and a Miss Cummings were there. I kept watching there until Boss laid down on the floor with his feet to the fire and his head to- wards me and commenced
PLAYING ON A MOUTH ORGAN.
Then I saw my cnance, and I pushed the muzzle of my rifle (a Henry) through the cat nole unt I it was not over tnree feet from his head, took a stead v aim by the light of the fire and shot. When I fired the women screamed and said: —
THE JSWAiMP OUTLAWS.
77
LIKENESS OF SANDERS THE SPY.
"HES SHOT," "NO HE ISN'T," "YES HE IS,"
and I looked in as quick as I could get my gun out of the way. Boss' arms and legs had fallen straii^ht from his body, and there was a little movement of the shoulders as if he was trying to get up. Andrew Strong was then stand-
ing
IN THE SHADOW IN THE CORNER
and he stayed there until I left. He said to his wife, '' Honey, you go out
and see what it is," and opened the door opposite the one 1 was at and pushed her out, but did not come around to the side I was ; but went in directly and said there was nobody about. He sent her out again, telling her to look in the corners and jams ; but before she had got well out, he said, " Come back, Il'ney, he was blowing on that thing and it busted and blnwed his head off," and directly after he said, " My God ! he's shot in the head ; it must have come from the cat hole," and sent his
w
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
wife out again, and I slipped off. Wlien 1 returned the cat hole was shut up and the house was all dark. Then I come bacl^ to Shoe Heel."
THE OUTLAWS HOLD A COUNCIL.
Before they left they went out of the house and held an animated conversa- tion of perhaps hulf an hour's duration in the garden, after which Steve address- ed nne : —
" We've trusted three men before and ebery one of dem betrayed us, an' we swo' we'd neber trust no stranger agin, but you look hmiest, an your story 'pears to be all right, an' we is gwine to trust you some. Now you's got a- bout Donahoe's shootiii B ss, we are gwine to keep you heah till you can
PUT IN DE PAPER HOW WE KILLED DONAHOE.
We won't hurt you, an' you kin travel about whar you bab a mind to in dis place, but you must swear an oath dat you won't ti-y to go away without us lettiu' you".
I was somewhat dismayed at this speech, but expressed myself satisfied with the arrangement. I saw I would have an opportunity of seeing wild life not often enjoyed by Northern men, ;and felt that 1 was in no great danger if J acted honestly towards my captors.
PART TO MEET A^AIN.
The outlaws then slung on their . "equipments, and after promising to meet me at the *' New Bridge,'' three miles distant, the next morning, strode into the heavy pine forest, and I went back into the cabin, where Rhodv taught me how to rub snuff.
ScuFFELTOWN, March 22 1872.
THE DEATH OF HENRY BERRY LOW- ERY.
As this letter cannot be read by the
people of this settlement before I have left it, the most important piece of in. formation I have to conimunicate shall be given first. Henry Beny Lowerv, the notable chief of tne notorious swamp outlaws is actually dead. This is denied bv all of his comrades, and his relatives profess to be ignorant of his fate. But from evidence the most reliable, when connected with a well-connected chain of circumstances, I am enabled to give you a correct account of
T.iE DEATH OF THIS ROBBER CHIEF.
Between February 13 and 16, in company with his Jidus Achates, Boss Strong, Henry Berry Lowery was ranging the country in the neighborhood of Moss Neck in search of some persons whom he had been informed were hunt- ing him, while Steve and Tom Lowery and Andrew Strong were stationed at a rendezvous on Lumber River, near the " new bridge." Abotit one and three- quarter miles from Moss Nock station, within short gunshot of the road leading from Inman's Bridge to McNeill's mill, they discovered in the bushes a newly made " blind " (a place of concealment or ambush made by intertwining the branching of the thickly grown bushes.)
it was not then occupied, and Henry Berry, believing it had been recently made by one of his pursuers, who would shortly return to it, ensconced himself in it, while Boss made a blind for him- self a short distance off covering tiie road. But a few minutes after they had placed themselves in their lespective positions the report of a gun was heard from Henry's hiding place, and when Boss, who waited to hear a vvord from his chief or an answering shot from an enemy, cautiously approached the spot, Henry Berry Lowery lay oii his back, with one barrel of his shotijun discharc- ed and his nose, forehead and the
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
79
WHOLE FRONT OK HIS HEAD BLOWN I horseback for the New Bridge. On the
I . , . ,, 1-^ . 1 , T-v 5)
OFF.
way 1 passed the " Devil's Den,'' ;i
desolate wild spot in the Back Swamp,
where is said to be one of the hiding
wiper showed he had been trying to pj^.^es of the bandits.
The broken ramrod and the missing
draw a load from his gun. Boss drew the body into a thicket, and notified his companions, who straightway buried him where, in all human probability, the eve of man will see liim never.
Thus perished this remarkable man, | and his death marks the dissolution of | this most formidable body of despera- j does.' The large sum of money he was said to be in posessioii of is also lost to the country, for no member of the band, not even Boss nor his wife, knew the whereabouts of his treasure cliest. The remainiu'^^ outlaws have made diligent search, but as yet have had their labor . for their pains. Henry Berry was said to have had a good deal of money, b*ides his share of the proceeds of the Lumberton Bank, from which some thirty thousand dollars were taken. It appears to have been his habit of appro- priating to his own use
THE LION'S SHARE OF ALL MONEY
taken, giving the subjects the other
booty.
But to resume the story of my life among tt.e outlaws. A little after dark on th^ evening of the day 1 met Andrew Strong and Steve L iwery I returned to Henry Berry's house, in pursuance of his wife's invitation, to spend the night
there.
After supper Rhody said
I SHOULD SLEEP IN THE BED.
while she would make a coi^ch tor her- self, help and family on the floor.
The next morning, after a breakfast on the same chicken we had tried the
Our destination was Moss Neck, where 1 wanted toniail some letters and send some private despatches to the telegraph office at Wilmingtcm, and they wanted to
SEND THEIR MESSAGE TO THE HERALD.
We heard the train east coming when we were about a mile from the station, and ran the whr)le distance from there. They would iM)t go up to tbe train, nor would they let me go until i promised them solemnly, with my hand on my heart, that I would not go off in it, and would hand their despatch, as well as my own, to the conductor.
From Moss Neck, with a young man who had been taken piisoner by the outlaws, when they captured the detec- tive Saunders, but who now appeared to be on very good terms witn them, we went down the railroad about a mile and then half a mile south into a " bay," where Saunder's '-camp" had been lo- cated.
From tills desolate spot we returned to Moss Neck, where
1 MET THOMAS LOWERY.
another of the outluws, and upon whose head is set a price of $5,000. Tom Lowery is five feet ten inches high, strongly built, with a lighter complex- ion than Steve, but darker than Henry Berry. He has rather regular features, a high forehead and the brightest eyes of the three outlaws T met. He has a short, black beard, and straight, black hair, and is more refined in his appear-
°" , '""l f with a guide furnished bv ancc than Steve or Andrew Strong,
thff^riends of the outlaws, I started on' He was armed precisely as they, with
80
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
a rifle and two shotguns and a bolt full of I e vol vers. He said he liad heard of my j)resence in tlie neighborhood and was glad to see me.
It being now about one o'clock we were all natuiall} hungry, so Steve bought a couple dozen of eggs fi'oin a woman near by, who boiled thein for him, and we went into the store at Moss Neck to eat them, which work we accomplished by cutting them in iialvts with our knivfs, sprinkling coarse salt on them and gulping down each hall from its shell. I ate four, the remain- der being devoured by the three out- laws. In addition to the eggs we had some
GINGER CAKE, CHEESE AND WRETCiJED WHISKEY.
After dinner I was taken to McNeill's mill, near Moss Neck, the place where that Make (Malcolm) Sanderson was killed, and where, within a few yards of the formei', one of his murderers, John Taylor, was subsequently punished. The place was pointed out to me, and the story of their respective deaths told by Andrew Strong.
WHERE MAKE SANDERSON AND JOHN TAYLOR WERE KILLED.
In September, 1S70, Andrew, who up to that time had been charged with no offence, and was then working at his home, was called up from his bed at about eleven in the night by a party of over twenty men, who said they wanted him to go along with them a little ways. When he had dressed and gone out to the party he found they had another man (Make Sanderson) with them. After they had gone about a mile one of the party, McNeill, turned to Andrew and said, " You'll never see morning again," and upon his prisoner asking why and what he had done was
! answered that he was a d — d nigger and a spy for the Lowerys and so was S;iiiderson, and they had determined to kill them all.
On the road to Moss Neck they were shot by John Taylor, to whom the pris- oners made a scrong and passionate ap- peal f)r mercy, t » which he replied, " If all the mulatto blood in the country was in you two and a movement of my foot would send you to hell I would make it." Soon after the prisoners were tied together and led to a secluded spot about a mile from Moss Neck, where they were to die. Sanderson asked for lime to pray, which, after some consul- tation, was given him. In the midst of his supplications for pardon hi- was in- terrupted by a blow from a pistol and told to hurry up and not to pray so loud, as
GOD WOULD HEAR HIM ANYHOW.
"When he had finished they were taken to a proper distance from their captors to be shot at, when Andrew, who had been working at his bonds ever since they were put on him, broke them sud- denly and rushed for the woods, fol- lowed by the shots of his enemies.
Make Sanderson's hody was found the next morning near McNeill's mill- pond riddled with bullets. It was said he was standing on a plank over the race, and at the first fire fell into the water still alive, and crawling out on the land below was shot on the ground where his mangled body vras found.
For this murder John Taylor was arrested, but held to bail in the sum of $500. When H. B. Lowery heard this he remarked :
" We mulattoes must carry out our own laws: I will kill John Taylor," and on the morning of January 14, 1871, with a company of soldiers with- in 200 yards of him, he and Boss Strong
THE SWAiMP OUTLAWS.
fil
rose from the road, a hundred yards from where Sanderson hud been killed the fall befi)re, and at a distance of less then ten yards shot the top of his head off.
AN' OUTLAW CONCERT.
After Andrew had toM nie this his- tory and had shown me where Sander- son and Ta\ lor were killed, and where Henry and Buss were ambushed, we re- turned to the store, where for n couple of hours in a back room Steve and Andr 'W " picked " the banjo, played on the violin and saiijj negro melodies to an appreciative and enthusiastic audi- ence. Steve sings very well, and the peculiar airs with which he was accom- panied on the banjo were novel and ex- ceedingly pleasarit.
A LODGING PAID FOR.
When we fiitally left Moss Neck it was for the purpose of finding a place for me to spend the night. About three miles up the railroad we came to the residence of Tom Chavis to well-to-do mulatto, where Steve engaired lodnrinnr for me, telling them to give me a good supper and allow me to retire to bed immediately after, for I was " clean done worried out, " and he would pay the "bill ; and, fixing a point to meet me the next day, the outlaws strode away to ward the swamps.
THE PRESS ON THE OUTLAWS AND HERALD ENTERPRISE.
Our rural friends the Southern edi- tors, are at it again. Past all thsir comprehension seems the fact that a New York journal could have a corres- pondent in Africa and one amonjr the Carolina out'aws of the same time. Here, for instance, is an enlightpned little rag from Mississippi, the Pilot.
Hear what it flutters. ^ord help r country with such pilots, although ihey do boast of being " official journal of the United States."
THROUGH THICK AND THIN.
(F m the Duily Mississippi Pilot, Miircli 22). One of the New York Herald cor- respondents was r< cently killed while searching for Dr. Livincfslcjne, in the interior of Africa, and now another has fallen into the hands of the Swamp An- gels, led by the bandit, Stephen Low- ery, in North Carolina. The Lowerys say they will not kill him; only inter- view him until they prove whether he is an impostor or not. Can't the Herald spread this on a little thicker? It seems to us remarkably " thin."
THE HATE OF COLOR.
When the bull-fighters of Seville wish to enrage the plunging toro they flash a piece of red cloth before his eyes, and straightway he becomes mad. When you wish to enrage a grand old unpro- gressive, hardshell democrat of the Soutiiern stripe show him som.ething black, and the rabies will follow direct- ly after. The following is the painful result of a Newark man finding out that the Lowerys were colored !
IF THEY WERE ONLY WHE
(Fn.in the Newark (N. J.,) Daily Journal, March 25 )
The Swamp Angels are not yet ex- tinguished, and it is even a matter of doubt to the present time whether the leader is dead or has run away or will yet turn up in some fresh raid upon society. Would it not be well for Grant to extend a " protectorate" over Robeson county? The Herald re- 1 porter has not vet been heard from, I and when a whiteman, in the legitimat*
82
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
pursuit of an honorable busines, cannot pass safely through our own country, we think it wouKl be bi-^tter to postpone a protectorate over Mexico until we have regulated matters somewhat bet- ter at home. Had Henry Berrv Low- ery, and his gmg been white men would they have been permitted to ex- ist? We pause for a reply.
Here now is a southern man, who at- tends to his business of news collecting. We lilve this. He reports that the Hkrald correspondent was in danger, and we are thankful to liim : —
BRAVE RHODY LOWERY.
(From the Wiliiiin;^t()n (N. C.) Journal, Marcli 24.)
The wife of Henry Berry Low ery, the outlaw chief, was at Moss Neck de- pot yesterday as the train passed that point, whither she came for the purpose of delivering a despatch from Hender- son, to be sent north from this city. She states that the correspondent was at Lowery's cabin, near Moss Neck, on Friilay evening, about six o'clock, when Tom Lowery, Stephen Lowery, and Andrew Strong entered it and roughly told him to get up and go with tiiem. He told them that he was ready ; but first asked permission to send off a de- spatch to his paper, which was accorded him, when he wrote the despatch and gave it to the Lowery female, who, as we have seen, fulfilled her promise to deliver it lo the conductor of the tr.iin. Henderson then accompanied the out- laws, bound for the recesses of Scuffle- town swamp.
It was reported here yesteruay, the report coming from Siioe Heel, that Henderson had been killed by the out- laws, but the report is generally dis- credited.
WHO IS TO BLAME?
Here is another solution of the ques«- tion. The Edgefield Advertiser said it was Grant ; llie Raleigh Era said it w;is the Ku Klux ; the Wilmington Star now says it is Governor Caldwell. Wonderful ! It admits that he sent down his Adjutant General, but forgets to mention that the cowardice of the population of Robeson county made his efforts ineffectual. They can only tell half truths down there.
(From the Wilmington Star, M;ircli 24.)
CALDWELL AND LOWERY
That Henry Berry Lowery and his little band of robbers and cutthroats should, for so long a time, set law and civilization at defiance — should pillage, outrage and murder with un paralleled impunity — affords food for reflection upon the sort of government we have, and more especially gives ample oppor tunity to know the men who })retend to administer that government in the in- terest of justice, of law, of humanity.
It is a melancholv thoujiht that is forced upon the intelligent North Caro- linian, that the government of his native State is inadequate to protect him from the ravages of the highway robber and the bullet of the midnight assassin.
Low, indeed, is the condition of that people Avho are in daily jeipardy of life and property. Terrible is the state of that society that must thus live in con- stant peril.
We charge it upon Governer Cald- well— and his conduct sustains the charge — that he has been lax, lukewarm and careless in this matter of putting down the Lowerys.
We charge it upon him, that while innocent blood of good men appeared to him from the swamps and plains of Robeson and invoked high heaven for
THE SWAMP OJTLAWS.
83
vengeance he lifced scarce a little fingii to arrest the dangerous course of the assassins, was diiml) to piteous entreaty, heeded not the cries of consternation tliat went up to Iliin from a suffering, outraged, imperilled people.
We charge these things home upon the Governor of North Carolina, and the people know that the facts sustain the charge.
He was appealed to for a long while in vain.
He was appealed to persistently, and after taking much time he sent his Ad- jutant General to the scene on the out- rages.
The result was a failure. When he should have renewed ajiain and again his i-'xertions to captui-e or kill the outlaws he refused altogether to act.
But to-day, in North Carolina, not a hundred miles from Wilmington, we have a band of men, not a half ilozen in number, who are open and notorious, desperadoes, killing whom they list without the ft'ar of punishment before: their eyes, going at the dead hour of the night into towns,capturing iron safes and robbing them of their contents — a mere handful of men, riding roughshod over county. State and federal authori- ties, with a iionchalance and bravad) that would do credit to the daring and subtle Bedouin of the desert. I
Here, in the Litter part of the nine- teenth century, in a land that boasts of the excellency of its laws and the security afforded by its government, what do we see?
Alas ! it would be well to be blind, if blindness brought contentment. But free citizens, with souls in their bodies, cannot shut their eyes to the attrocious violations of law, peace and order in Robeson county. i
^len, with the common feelings of humanity — individuals ujion whom one ray of the sun of civilization has shone — must experience pity, shame, and in- dignation at the spectacle of a petty gang (;f mulattoes committing act after act of the most fiendisii outra<:e of law deed after deed of the most abandoned savagery, perilling the iii.iustrial inter- ests of a whole section, filling the pub- lic mind with ap{>rehension and terror, and doing these diabolical crimes with almost the certainty of non-interference, if not protection, by a radical adminis- tration.
Upon the head of Tod R. Caldwell rests the responsibility, the terrible re- S[)onsibility of the deeds ol" these mur- derous villains. Let him, and iiim alone, bear the blame and reap the deep curses of a>: outraged, afflicted people ! It will not do for his partisans to say that he could not suppress these pitiful outlaws. He did not try to put them down. He would have shown his humanity and his efficiency as a Govern- or had this band been composed of white men and his party had ciiosen to dub them Kii Klux. Oh, yes! What calling out of militia a la Holden j What making of requisitions upon Grant ! What an upstir of loyalty ! What an outburst of patriotic zeal would there have been had Lowi rv been a Ku Klux ! Pity ! nitv ! So much party capital is lost! Long ago would the little band have gone to the criminal's bourne, and the very name of Lowery have been a stench in loyal Northern nostrils, and a new hate of the South been added to the catalogue now long as the list of ships in Homer.
Again we pile up the counts in our bill of indictment. We charge it upon Governor Caldwell that he can meddle in law-making, can make himself Legia-
84
THE SWAMP OUTLAWS.
lature and Supreme Court, can starve Penitentiary convicts and drive inmates of the Asylums from the place of medi- cal aid b:icli to their homes. W^e charge it upon Governor Caldwell that he is foiivard and meddlesome and obstinate and cruel where these virtuous and praiseworthy quualities of his head and heart can be bestowed upon con- servative enemies. We charge it upon Governor Caldwell that he so despises our party that he cannot in his official conduct do members of that party any justice.
Governor Caldwell that he does not make a hearty and an earnest effort to stop the reign of lawlessness, rapine and murder around Scuffletown and Moss Neck. We charge it upon Governor
Caldwell that he is callous and brutally indifferent to the higiier instincts of humanity, that he is active only in belief of party, zealous only when party exigency requires zeal ; that he would long since have stopped the Robeson outrages if the Outlaws had been con- servative whites instead of radical blacks. These charges are pi-efuni'd b}' the whole body of intelligeur, lau-abid'ng people of the State whom he disgraces and outrages. If he quails not before them, if their indignant voices move not his rough, fretful, splciu-tic and sav- •diie nature, then is he sunk and sod- den in the lowest pit of degradation, and there is no hope for him, then is he forever damned in the estimation of all good and peaceable citizens.
THE END.
nSToTE.— Manv of tlie foregoing articles are introaucecl merely to explain how such a state of tliiiio-s"'coukl pos^bly exist in a civilized country. Tlie fierce hate of politic cariactionists°entirely blindin;^ them to tiie disgrace and injury inflicted upon rheir common country by the toleration of .^Yrong deeds whether perpetrated by one i^ ass Cr another.l
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ABSTEACT OF OONTEJSTTS :
Preface,
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Rules of Order
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Chiirman— his requisites ; necessity of his impartiality ; dignity re- quisite:
The Meeting — order necessary.
Points of tJider.
Debate, its rules and usages.
Speakers — their rights and duties.
Arrranffing for a Meetin.:.
The " Call," lorms and advertising.
A New Club — call to form.
Alma Mater — call for a meeting', to organize.
Boys in Blue — call to organize a Social Society.
Committee of Arrangements, how arranged.
Caucus and caucusing, explanation of terms.
Conventions — how composed.
Town Meetings — how called.
Ward Meetings.
Committees.
Itesolutions and "Motions — now pre- sented ; form of.
Amendments — lorra of ; Examp e; (if.
Rules as to striking out and insert- ing words.
Divisions— explanation of the term ; examples of.
Yeas and Nays— rules, how fixed ; how taken ; calling the ; when a vote may be changed.
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Speaking — general observations on.
Points of Order and Appeals — mode of making; form of making.
Debate— when a speaker may speak twice ; when a Chairman may speak ; every member has a right to speak once ; courtesies of.
Questions- rules in relation to.
Privileged Questions — how they af-
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Committee of the Whole— objects of organization of.
Call of the House— rule? relating to ; duties of sergeant at arms ; closing the doors.
Adjournment— motion to adjourn ; when debatable.
By-Laws ot Citizens Central Com- mitte: PLemarks on ditto ; Sus- pending Order ot business; Put- ting Motions in Writing ; Movtd by two Members ; Stated by the Chair ; After the Previous Ques- tion; without Debate or Explana- tion ; Member on the floor ; Re- consideration ; Five Minutes rule ; Point of Order and Appeal ; Prev- ious Questiim ; Chairman not to speak ; Reports of Committees ; Preliminary Debate ; Retiring committees; Order and Harmony ; Suspen.sion of Rules,
Forms and Formulas — On making Quotations ; on the duties of Citi- zens in a Republic ; Remarks on Government; Memorial to Con- gress on Neutral Rights.
Farmer's Club — Formation of; Con- stitution ot.
Insurance Club — By-Laws of.
^ ocial Club — By-Laws of.
Form of Legislative Bill.
British Parliament — Law and prac- tice of.
Congress of United States — Forma- tion of; U. S. Senate ; U. S. House of Representatives ; Concrress in Session ; Acts of Congress; Powers of Congress; Passace of Laws; Powers ot the U. S. Senate ; Pow- ers of the U. S. House of Repre- sentatives.
Business Rules of TJ. S Senate— Of the Vice-President ; Order in the Chamber ; Debate Regulated ; Calling to Order ; Yeas and Nays ; Reconsideration ; Vice-President's
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Busiu' ss Rules of IT. S. House of Representatives — Of the Sper.Ker ; Speaker Pro Te.a.; Appointing Committees ; Preserving Order ; Motion to Adjourn ; Previous Question ; Attendance of Mem- bers; Callof theHousr ; Introduc- tion of Bills ; ("ommittce of the Whole ; CUiange of Order.
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Rules and Order of the New York Assembly— Speaker's Powers and Duties ; Order and Decorum ; Priority of Business ; Committee of the "Wliole ; Absence of Quo- rum ; Record of Action ; Yeas and Nays ; Alteration and Rules.
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Routine of a Business Meeting — The Quorum, the Presiding Offi- cer, the Secretai-y.
Masonic Rules of Order— Grand Lodge of State of New York.
Parliainentary Authorities.
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Constitution of the United Sta, 3s. with all the Amendments.
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PRICK 50 CENT.S.
The laughable piece that give.s title to the above, is bound to be the most popular of recent times. It is so thoroughly "Chinee" in all its characteristics that one would think its admirable coinp<jser had fed on bird's nests — and niiihtingales' at that — all his lile. The other pieces are all capital ones, master productions of their respective authors.
Nothing approaching this collection has ever beforo been presented to the public (except in this series). Just think of it ! Fifteen lirst class pieces of rare excellence for Fifty Cent.<. At the regular music publish- er's piices this numbur of piecfs would cost Five Dollars!
A richly colored characteristic lithographic picture adorns the cover.
!£?* Printed equal to the best music, on fine, thick paper.
3?S" Copies of Hit above Books sent to any address in Ae UnileU Stales or Canadas, fret of postage, on receipt of retail price.
SfiKl Cash Orders to Atldrcs-s on Fir<4t Ptt^e.
PIEIICE EGAN'S STORIES.
The author of the following great booK.. has attained a success as genuine, and ; pronounced in his peculiai' field, as either Marryat, Buhrer or Dickens. He has the won- ; drous faculty of imparting an intense and absorbing interest to his varied characters. His plots are real miracles of ingenious complication, their denouments being riddles impossi- : Me of solution by the most penetrating of novel readers; and yet all is conducted to a ; natural and probable explanation. Pierce Egan's popularity is continually on the in- crease, and most deservedly so — for he continually improves : so tha this last seems always ' to be his best book.
' >• lP37ioe 23 Ooxits
I^i'ico SO Ooixts
l^o. "(» T»^^T^X»^"UCW'Ei-,ov\\vc^Co.s\Vc.awd\\\c CoWare
lE^x-ico SO Oonts 'F'xxGG 30 Oozits I=>i-ico SO Oeaats I^'zrico SO OexLts
^o. A\. \.^Ol4'£.1L IOC^Il^X"^.
I^x-ice SO Oez:Lts I=x-ic© '73 Ceaats
•^o. \^. "WX TiO'V"^ \<;.^'^*£.-, ov \\ve l^vctxcV'iviV SeeveX.
Every one of the above books is nicely printed, on good paper, brown paper covers, and makes a handsome volume.
Sin<»le copies sent to any address, in the United States or Canadas, postage free, on receipt of the retail price (as tv^'ove). Address
ROBERT M. DE WITT, PuWislier, 33 Rose street.
-J
THE LIBRARY OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF
NORTH CAROLINA
THE COLLECTION OF NORTH CAROLINIANA
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