History
Chapter Two — The Reconstruction Through Coming of the Railroads
The years known as the Reconstruction were, in many ways, more grievous to the people of the county than had been the war years. Alabama was in a chaotic state, politically, socially and economically. The United States Congress had forgotten President Lincoln’s words, spoken so eloquently in his Second Inaugural Address, which he closed with a moving plea for merciful treatment for the South and for all victims of the war.
Rather, The Reconstruction Acts, enacted by The Congress, in March, 1867, replaced the governments of Alabama and nine other states with military commanders. President Andrew Johnson had set the formula when he stated, “Treason is a crime and crime must be punished. Treason must be made infamous and traitors must be impoverished”. White southerners, including many in Pickens County, responded by becoming a part of the Ku-Klux Klan .Much unrest and lawlessness resulted directly from the breakdown in civil government and law enforcement authority.
Both life and property were endangered by lawless and desperate men. It was a most difficult time for both whites and blacks to adjust to the drastic changes in their relationships.
What degree of causal relationship was there to the plight of Pickens Countians, indeed to all Alabamians, in these difficult years, with the landing of Alabama’s first slave ship, The Africaine, in Mobile, in 1721?
That slave ship unloaded 120 black people onto Alabama soil out of a total of 224 who had begun the voyage in the Guinea Coast of Africa. From then on, it was an ever-increasing torrent of landings.
In the excellent volume, Alabama — The History of a Deep South State, the writers comment on the debate which resulted in secession and the war that ensued, as follows:
“Alabamians interpreted coercion by the federal government on the issue of slavery a violation of individual rights. It was the right of self-determination they advocated, a Southern nation created through secession, which they believed was a state’s constitutional right.. But they were well aware that the right to own slaves lurked behind the shibboleth of Southern rights”.
But the issue was settled, at least on its face, by the outcome of the war. Slavery was outlawed and the union survived.
In Pickens County, a freedman, Henry Wells, was accused of burning the second courthouse on November 16, 1876. He was arrested in January, 1878, and held in the garret of the then-new courthouse. Legend holds that as Wells peered out of the North window at a mob gathering below, lightning struck nearby, indelibly etching his image in the pane. Legendary or factual, the image of a face can still be seen in the window. On December 30, 1927, a hailstorm knocked out every window in the building, but this pane survived.
One of the most colorful characters of the reconstruction era was a Pickens Countian, John L. Hunnicutt, (1850-1932) whose memoirs have been preserved and published in 1959, in an excellent work by Dr.William Stanley Hoole, then librarian at The University of Alabama, with Dr. Allen J. Going collaborating in an incisive Introduction.
Dr. Hoole’s descriptive narrative of what it was like to live in Pickens County during the reconstruction period cannot be ignored, whether one agrees with his conclusions or not.
He wrote: “(John L. Hunnicutt) was a robust, daring man of the Old South, who grew to maturity in those three tragic decades before, during and after (the war). Born on September 24, 1850, he was a lad of ten or fifteen, an impressionable age, during that awful conflict. And he was a young man in his early twenties when The South, already beaten to its knees by an invading army, was lashed and thrashed to the brink of death by Yankee occupation troops, mostly Negroes, and by crooked, conniving carpetbaggers from the North — and what’s worse — by sneaking, stealing scalawags, native white Southerners, who traitorously sold their birthrights to the usurping Republican regime for a mess of political pottage. For ten long years Alabama and the other Southern states rocked and reeled under the terrifying pressures of the enemy domination — Negro militiamen jostled former Confederates off sidewalks. Negro freedmen, encouraged by the Freedmens’ Bureau, padded and stole the ballot boxes. Negro ‘politicians’ — yesterday’s slaves — sat in the State Legislature, unable to read or write, and Negro demagogues preached revenge against the whites from street corners under the protection of Negro soldiers.
“Meantime, the state plunged headlong into political disaster: the public debt rose from eight million dollars in 1868 to twenty-six million in 1874; the state was bankrupt, its credit gone, its bonds worthless; on every level of government, city, county and state, corruption and extravagance ruled; and, more intolerable than all, unprincipled Republican leaders constantly fanned the flames of racial hate, seeing in it their most powerful weapon.”….
Dr.Hoole continues: “No wonder post-war white Alabamians forgot they had ever been Whigs or Unionists or Secessionists and banded themselves together as Democrats, swearing to fight to the last man to break the back of Black Republicanism in their state, or die trying. For ten, long, bitter years after Appomatox they had suffered degredation, ignominy, shame. Now at last, they would assert their supremacy; with their lives, their property, their courage, their moral power, by fair fight or foul, by obvious means or oblique, they would win Alabama back to the white man. And, 1n 1874, they did. United, the Democrats spoke out against the radical misrule of the Republican Party which had ‘persistently and by false and fraudulent representations…inflamed the passions and prejudices of the Negroes, as a race, against the white people, and have thereby made it necessary for white people to unite and act together in self-defense and for the preservation of white civilization’. They rallied their strength. They worked and campaigned unceasingly. Forgetting all previous differences, they voted the Democratic ticket as one man..
“The Republicans retaliated by fierce displays of militia movements and threats of civil and legal procedures…..Blacks were coached to intimidate, threaten and antagonize whites, provoking them to anger which, by pre-arrangement, prompted their arrests by Negro troops. As a result, bitterness reigned throughout Alabama.. Everyone on both sides knew the battle lines were drawn for a last-ditch fight. The Democrats realized that their future success in the state, their very homes, depended upon the results of the 1874 election. The Republicans realized that upon their victory depended their permanence in Alabama, for most of them had no business there, anyhow, except to profiteer from political office-holding.
“The election of 1874 was one to be long remembered. Blood flowed freely in the state, as men made their own laws on the spur of the moment, laws to fit that moment.
“As John L. Hunnicutt, one Alabamian [and Pickens Countian ]who fought through the thick of the conflict, wrote in his memoirs:’Everything was in confusion. The white people had not adjusted themselves to the new administration of affairs . Times were pretty trying for white men.
‘Promised a mule and forty acres, ignorant Negroes believed they would soon dominate the South — even to the extent of being given white wives. Unaccustomed to voting, they were marched up to the polls by companies with drums beating — then the Republican scalawags and carpetbaggers filled out their votes for them.’
“Fighting fire with fire, the Democrats retaliated in kind. On one occasion, according to Hunnicutt, a ballot box at Trinity, near Columbus, was stuffed with fake Democratic votes. On other occasions, unmerciful violence was pursued. The Ku Klux Klan broke up political rallies throughout West Alabama, as Hunnicutt described; and more than one Yankee was ‘invited to leave’ the South — or else.
“The Democrats won the election of 1874 by more than 10,000 votes. George S. Houston, a conservative, was elected Governor of Alabama….The Bourbons were in power, sworn to restore home rule and decent government. The back of the Republican Party in Alabama was broken. Carpetbaggers quit the state like rats. Alabama quickly destroyed the old 1867 Radical Republican State Constitution and adopted a new one (1875) which promised economy of government, improved public education, payment of the state’s burdensome debt, and an end to all evils spawned by Yankee Reconstruction”.
Some might choose to revise history and block out all memories of these perilous times in Pickens County; but the truth is that these things actually happened and remarkably the people of the county, black and white, nevertheless survived. That the black people of the county suffered for decades due to the absence of the right to vote cannot be denied. This lack of civil rights cast them in a most degrading role in society, which saw no real reversal until the voting rights acts of the 1960′s. A major “civil” war had been fought and its consequences would not be alleviated quickly.
In 1859, a corporate charter was granted to a corporation known as, “The Memphis, Holly Springs, Okalona and Selma Railroad”. This proposed line was commonly known as “The Nathan Bedford Forrest Railroad”, as the Confederate hero became the champion of the ill-fated route following the war.
General Forrest was not affiliated with the company in its antebellum organization, but he joined in when the company was reorganized in 1868. In 1869, by act of the Alabama Legislature, the name was changed to Selma, Marion and Memphis Railroad”, with authority to build a line from Selma to the Mississippi state line in the direction of Columbus. Forrest took the lead in promoting the promising new line.
The Carrollton newspaper, The West Alabamian, carried a report on September 16, 1868, that General Forrest and a Colonel Sykes would be in Carrollton on September 20 to address the people regarding the proposed railroad. It was to be financed by bond issues backed by the full faith and credit of the counties through which it was proposed to run.
A Pickens County referendum authorized the county to issue bonds in the amount of $100,000.00. It passed by a vote of 1,212 to 607. The bonds were issued by the poverty-stricken county. Only a few miles of the railroad were ever built and that was in Dallas and Perry counties.. No rails were ever laid in Pickens County and the bonds placed a severe strain on county finances for years.
While Pickens County was represented in the Legislature by Albert Decatur Willett, around 1884, legislation was enacted which relieved the county of much of the burden of the bonded indebtedness. The act was known as “The Strangulated Counties Act” and, in addition to Pickens, it applied to the counties of Lee, Chambers, Tallapoosa and Randolph.
Credible biographers of General Forrest affirm that he had no part in any fraudulent acts involving the proposed line, although there appears to have been some fraud or very poor business judgment involved. They say that the financial panic of 1872 caused the endeavor to fail and point out that Forrest actually suffered bankruptcy and the loss of his large cotton plantation as a result of the proposed railroad’s failure.
To Forrest’s credit it must be pointed out that some sixty years later the Frisco Railroad built its line down the Tombigbee Valley, basically following Forrest’s route in Pickens County.
Despite all the hullabaloo of reconstruction hard-times — freedmen unrealistically envisioning what their new freedom meant and whites struggling to hold onto their places of social and economic superiority — life had to go on. People had to eat. Children were born and had to be cared for. The soil had to be cultivated to produce some livelihood for both the owners and the laborers. The everyday necessities of life had to be met no matter what one’s station in life might be. People had to get along in a system with at least a modicum of normalcy and accommodation. The Roman adage that necessity has no law became a living principle in the struggle for bread.
And so, level-headed landowners and financially destitute black laborers began to work out a system within which all could at least survive. Not all the black freedmen had the initiative and drive to migrate to the northern cities. What’s more, Pickens County was still “home” to them and many of them wanted to remain here, making the most they could of a bad situation. Undoubtedly there was much evidence of Christian charity coming from both sides; but for the “Freedmen” their lot in life was a long way from genuine freedom.
In most instances, the farm system of share-cropping was the result. The usual arrangement was that the landowner furnished the land, a team of mules, feed for the mules, and in many instances a minimal amount of food for the laborer and his family.
Most of the food was raised on the farm or came from a commissary owned by the landowner. The laborer received one-half of the fodder or hay he produced on the fields assigned to him, one-third of the corn, one-half of the net cotton product produced after ginning and one-eighth of the cotton seed. The details of arrangements varied from farm to farm and even among the share-croppers on a given farm.
Most reports on these share-crop arrangements indicate that the laborer never managed to get ahead; but, at least, he and his family were surviving by the toil and sweat of their brows. In all fairness to the landowners, it must be pointed out that they furnished an expertise of management and financing that was invaluable to the laborer.
Many small Pickens County farmers were the sole source of labor on their farms. They had no laborers, except their spouses and children. But they survived.
And so, on into the late Eighteen Hundreds life was difficult. Dr. R.R. Wyatt, author of a little book entitled The Autobiography of a Little Man, graphically describes how tough things were. He wrote: “I was born in Pickens County, Alabama, in a cabin three miles South of Carrollton, May 8, 1857. Most people were born in similar cabins in those days. Occasionally, a well-to-do man had his house made of sawed lumber, made with a ripsaw, the log being stood on end during the process of sawing”.
Dr. Wyatt tells of a rather unusual black man, named, Chill: “If he ever did a days work I never heard of it. As a beggar, he was tolerated by all of the best citizens. He would go to one place today and another tomorrow asking for bread, knowing that he would get something besides bread. When he needed a shirt, he begged the merchants for the cloth and always there was some good white woman who would make it for him. To a man who never refused Chill he was loyalty itself. Chill had such a friend in John R. Long, the elder, and one of the merchants of Pickensville. Mr. Long never refused Chill food or cloth for his clothing. Chill didn’t wear shoes, never had a pair and never needed them. His feet had become so accustomed to all kinds of weather the skin had become impervious to cold. The skin on the bottom of his feet had so thickened and dried that he could walk briskly, as he always did, throw up the sole of his foot and strike a match on it, light his pipe without breaking his gait”.
Such was the charitable relationship between the races, even in the midst of political and social turmoil.
Travel in those years was most difficult in and around the county. The roads were little more than paths. Some endowed people enjoyed the luxury of horse and buggy. Some had to settle for just a horse. Others a mule. Most black families traveled in a mule drawn wagon…Many, like Chill, simply walked.
The steamboat era was in its last days in the second half of the Nineteenth Century. There were railroads being built all over the country, but none had appeared in Pickens County until 1897. Anticipation of obtaining a railroad was at a fever pitch in the county, when on November 8, 1893, The West Alabamian carried a short news article, as follows:
“Clear the track! The contract for building the railroad from Columbus, Mississippi to Tuscaloosa has been awarded to J. W. Woolfold and Company. The work will begin at Columbus in three or four weeks and is to be completed to Tuscaloosa by September 1, 1894. Whoopee! Old Pickens will get there at last!”
The above appears to be a premature rumor about the Mobile and Ohio Line’s plans, which was, indeed, built from Columbus and Artesia, right through Pickens County, on to Tuscaloosa and Montgomery in 1897, three years later.
In the August 10, 1898 edition of The West Alabamian, an article was headed:”Telephone, telegraph, mail and express at Reform”
Then, the following week, an interesting news report appeared, reading:”Reform – The new railroad was at last put on regular passenger coaches and running on regular schedule time from Columbus to Montgomery. Week before last there passed over the line in route to Florida eight …carloads of soldiers passing the depot within one-half hour of each other. It was indeed a sight to behold to all who had never seen soldiers transported to the front”.
So the railroad with all its accommodating benefits had at last reached Pickens County, but the route chosen by the Mobile and Ohio Railroad had aroused much concern in the county site town of Carrollton. A strenuous effort by its citizens to persuade the railroad to come through the county site, rather than through the villages along the Northern route chosen. But all to no avail. Railroad officials explained that their contract for carrying the U.S. Mail required them to choose the shortest route possible. Thus the railroad had come through Stafford, Yorkville, Beards (McShan), Reform and Gordo..
Not to be outdone, the leading citizens of Carrollton decided they would just build their own railroad. And that is what they did. Led by Probate Judge O.L. McKinstry, Martin Luther Stansel and Circuit Clerk W. G. “Uncle Billy” Robertson, they organized their own corporation, known as “The Carrollton Shortline” and began planning to build a railroad connecting the county site to The Mobile and Ohio at Reform, ten miles distant.
In their planning, they enlisted the assistance of a young entrepreneur of Tuscaloosa, John Taylor Cochrane,(June 24, 1873 – January 12, 1938). Eventually Cochrane would take over the Carrollton Shortline and become its owner. He was the son of Judge W.G. Cochrane of Tuscaloosa and he was newly married to Alyce Searcy Cochrane, (October 12, 1875 – January 10, 1922), the daughter of Tuscaloosa banker, George Searcy. A. G. Dancy was the engineer employed to lay out the new line.
By 1902, Cochrane had brought The Carrollton Shortline into the county site and he was already laying plans to extend it further South toward the villages of Franconia and Bridgeville.
Bridgeville, situated on Lubbub Creek, about one mile South of the present City of Aliceville, dated its history back to 1821, when Judge Solomon Marshall began the operation of a ferry across Lubbub on the Columbus to Greensboro Road. In 1870, Bridgeville’s population was 1,265. It had two churches, later a toll bridge, twelve stores, a blacksmith’s shop, a grist mill and several “thirst quenchers”.
Franconia, on the public road between Bridgeville and Carrollton, was settled around Mayerhoof’s Store. The Oak Grove Presbyterian Church was established there in 1837.
Each of the two villages plead their cases for the railroad, but Cochrane settled the matter when, in October, 1902, he purchased thirty acres of land from Mary Ann S. and Thomas D. Robertson for eighty dollars and “in consideration of building a railroad”. On this land, situated equal distance between the two villages, he laid out a new town, with the assistance of the surveyor William Toxey, and named it “Aliceville” in honor of his wife.
The Cochrane’s lived in Aliceville for a few years and he became the president of the town’s first bank, Aliceville Bank & Trust Company. He promoted the town vigorously, encouraging residents of the neighboring villages to “move into town” and start businesses and build homes. The town was incorporated as a municipality in 1907.
In 1906, the Carrollton Shortline’s charter was amended to change the name of the railroad to Alabama, Tennessee and Northern. In 1928 , the A.T. & N. completed its line into the port city of Mobile, where Mr. Cochrane became a successful and prominent businessman.
The coming of Mobile & Ohio Railroad and The Carrollton Shortline, later A. T. & N., to Pickens County was a boon to the economy of the area and to its culture. It gave new life to the somewhat isolated area and opened up the possibility of travel to its inhabitants. And the inhabitants responded with great enthusiasm.
The railroads brought new life to several crossroad villages in the county. Before the coming of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad to Gordo, it was known as, “The Crossroads Settlement”, located on stagecoach lines at the intersection of the Tuscaloosa-Columbus road and the Vienna-Fayette road, a mile North of the present town. The town was incorporated in 1900/1901, and its name is believed to have been derived from the name of the site where the Battle of Cerro-Gordo was fought in the Mexican War. The word, “Gordo” means “fat” or “abundant” — a good name for a wide-awake community.
Among the first land grants recorded in Pickens County were in the Gordo area to men whose names have continued to be familiar in the area, such men as John Hargrove, Benjamin Clements and Kenneth Findley. In 1910, Gordo was the largest town in the county with a population of 707.
The name of the Town of Reform has aroused much interest over the years. Legend holds that Lorenzo Dow, the famous Methodist circuit rider was preparing to leave the area following a rather unsuccessful protracted meeting. Some rowdy citizens taunted him, with the question, “What should we name our town?’…Dow, reportedly, shouted back, “Reform!”. The village found there in the late eighteen hundreds was relay station for a stagecoach line running from Montgomery to Columbus and there was a small post office on a star route between Carrollton and Fayette. John Graham had his residence and a store building there, which housed the post office. In May, 1892, Dr. C.B. Wimberly, a native of Vernon, erected a drug store in the village, giving it two stores.
Such was the situation in Gordo and Reform when the coming of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad in 1898 changed everything. Living became better. Communication with other places was accelerated and a new and hopeful outlook for the future came to both places.