Chapter 16: The Alabama Militia

Sam Warren was privately disgusted by the force that turned out at his place at a chilly 10:00 in the morning in early January ‘71. They had been scheduled to be there at dawn and to number 100. They numbered 62 until he added himself to the number.

The only good news was that more than half of those who showed up were veterans.

He issued a rifle and 21 rounds of ammunition apiece. The cartridges were in three fast-loading tubes. He addressed the unit once it was assembled. He demonstrated how to crank the lever to get a new cartridge in the chamber.

“The first temptation with a repeating rifle,” he told them, “is to shoot carelessly because you think you will have another chance to aim with your next shot. Do not take that temptation. Aim first, then pull the trigger. Don’t try anything fancy. “ He pointed to himself just below the breastbone. “Aim here, right in the middle of the main part of the body.”

When he had decided that he could only arm a hundred men with the new rifles, Sam had written Jem Grant, the sheriff of Tuscaloosa County. He lived on a grant cut out of a plantation. The plantation’s old slave jail stood close to his land, and Grant was friendly with the grant-holder who had the old jail on his land. At the proper time, he would arrest some of the men he knew had threatened Black voters with violence, and he would lock them in the old slave jail.

Sam didn’t like to lead what might be an insufficient force into combat. He was even more reluctant to call the men out and then not lead them anywhere. Grant, too, was giving Sam his cooperation. If it led to nothing, he might not give any cooperation again. Sam’s original orders were for everybody to bring his own tin cup. He had Deb, Jeff Junior, Tommy Baker, Cassius, and Juliet pass among the troops with water for their cups.

His last words on his own land were, “All right, March!”

It looked more like a stroll than a march, but they did not make bad time. He had carts following with corn meal, and he had chosen the place for dinner on the map. They did not get there before two, but few fell out before then, either. They cooked their own pone and marched nearly to his pre-chosen camp site before he let them rest. By controlling the food supply, Sam suppressed the tendency to fall out.

Knowing how bad green troops can be on route marches, Sam’s agreement with Grant had allowed much more time for the trip than he expected to demand. Since the troop was so small that they didn’t lose much time when the spread out, they operated closer to his schedule than he had expected. He had them practice actually marching for the last full day. They only marched in one direction, but he stopped them when so many had lost the pace that there was no rhythm.

They camped at a place two hours walk from the jail that Grant would use and would let everybody know he was using. Sam didn’t want the force any closer until the afternoon. After breakfast he sent three of the veterans who managed to be in militia uniform to Grant to let Grant know where he was and to reinforce the posse Grant would use to make his arrests.

The rest of the unit practiced the manual of arms. Grant had convinced the grant-holder to let the unit stay there without telling them much about what they would be doing. The family was an audience for the manual-of-arms drill.

The unit ate an early supper of merely pone. After the woman of the house called her family in to supper. Warren called the unit to gather around him as far from the cabin as they could be without straying too close to the border of the grant.

“Now, here is what we are going to do,” he said. “The sheriff is going to be keeping some prisoners in an old slave jail. He is going to arrest them for some Magnolia raids. We expect the Magnolias to try to get them out. We are going to be hidden until the Magnolias commit a crime of violence. If all goes as I plan, they will be between us and the jail with their backs to us. When I give the order, you will fire on them. As long as you have a target, you will select a target, aim at him, and fire at him. You will stop when you can’t see any of them. You will stop when you have fired off the seven shots which are in your first tube. When you have fired those seven shots, you will immediately reload with another tube. You will not fire again until one of your officers tells you to. Now, who is in Captain Sherman’s company?”

He told off 12 privates from Captain Sherman’s company to be under Sherman’s special orders on their right to shoot anyone riding away on their right. He got another dozen under Captain Freeman to do the same on their left. He gave the “regiment” ten minutes to shit, piss, or smoke a last cigar.

Then he moved them out, ordering silence.

He got to the field away from the jail and placed the troops spread out among the cotton bushes. He enjoined silence, but you can’t get much silence from 63 men. He even heard some snores. Late in the night, he heard horses and the jingling of harness. The riders had even worse sound discipline than his force had. What looked like 50 horsemen stretched out in front of them. A few dismounted, and he could distinctly hear an axe bite into wood; he thought it was the jail door

“Aim and fire!” he called in his best parade-ground voice. There was a ragged volley. If a quarter of the shots had hit their targets, Sam should have seen 15 riders fall. There was nothing like that, but there were falling riders. There was also a great deal of confusion. That included several plunging horses. If a horse had been hit, that was remarkably bad marksmanship at that range; it might be helpful, though. You could hear the second volley, and then the shooting got too irregular.

Some of the riders had revolvers that they were now firing at the militia, and two different shotguns went off in their direction. He had been careful to spread out the troops, but that didn’t much reduce their exposure to that sort of fire.

He could see men riding off in both directions, and Freeman and Sherman deployed their special teams.

The firing drew to a close as various men got to the end of their first tubes at various rates.

“Do you Magnolias surrender to the Militia of the State of Alabama?” he called out in his parade ground voice when the firing seemed to have stopped. “We can only accept the surrender of all of you. If anyone fires on us, we shall resume firing until none of you is left.”

“Don’t be so bloodthirsty,” someone called. “We surrender.”

He sent Captain Sherman out with short lengths of rope which Sam had brought with him. Sherman tied up the unwounded. Two of Sherman’s troops collected all the weapons. When the militiamen had made their first trip back to the lines, Sam breathed more easily. There were still a lot of weapons to go, but they wouldn’t have allowed any fraction to have been confiscated if they intended to make another stand.

Somewhat later, Sheriff Grant came out and sent the deputy who had stayed with him for a doctor. “Tell him that I have white prisoners who have been wounded.”

The circuit court had come to the county, and the grand jury was going to be empaneled the next morning. That was why they knew that the Magnolias would have to show up this night. The sheriff had alerted the prosecutor that he had some plans afoot, although not what plans. The prosecutor had already drawn up search warrants in blank, and he’d fill them in with the names of the men on the arrest -- and killed -- list tonight.

Sam had brought carts from his neighborhood; therefor, the cart drivers could read. He sent a note back to them. They packed up the tents and bed rolls from the camping ground they had used the previous night. Militia spent the rest of the night on Grant’s allotment. The next morning, several soldiers were told off to be escort for Grant. The others were split among company officers to visit veterans in various parts of the county. They would try to enlist men into the militia.

With the stories that they told about their engagement with the Magnolias, recruitment went well. Each officer, who at least had known the manual of arms at some time, formed a company of the Tuscaloosa county militia. They had a standard speech on which Sam drilled them before they went off.

“I’m _____. I am going to be the captain of this company for the rest of this month. After that, you are going to elect officer, and I’m going home. I won’t be a candidate for officer. By state law, only veterans are candidates for officer. You will all buy the cloth to make your own uniforms. We’ll leave two swatches with you to show what the colors of the cloth will be. Remember that the pants are darker than the shirt.”

At the end of the month, each company held elections, and the officers elected met Sam at Sheriff Grant’s place. He held elections for colonel, lieutenant colonel, and major. At the end, the Tuscaloosa militia was larger and better organized than the Lowndes militia.

Meanwhile, Grant and Joseph Mounds, the prosecutor for that circuit, had used those search warrants. They got multiple copies of the oath of The Knights of the White Camelia. One of the articles of the oath was that the members would support any other member accused of a crime doing order business.

The search yielded membership lists, and Mounds used that to challenge anyone on the list who was considered for jury duty on these cases. The judge, a Yankee horrified by the violence the Magnolias had used, upheld the challenges.

Half of the riders with whom the militia had tangled who were alive and not seriously wounded, were headed for the penitentiary. The other half had hung juries.

On the march back, Sam and his officers concentrated on marching in step. Since the troops retained their rifles, Sam scheduled a half hour of manual of arms training for after supper at every stop. The men cursed when that was during rainstorms, but soldiers have to function in the rain.

When they had their last review in his yard, he made his farewell speech:

“You are going to carry your weapons home. These rifles are the property of the Alabama Militia and the State of Alabama. Take proper care of them. If you ever resign from the militia, then you must return the weapons. You must account for any ammunition that you were issued and do not return.

“We said at the beginning,” Sam continued, “that the sheriff dealt with those who broke the law; the militia dealt with those who defied the law. The men who were trying to break their co-conspirators out of jail were defying the law, and you dealt with them. When your neighbors ask you what you have been doing, tell them, ‘I was the state of Alabama this January.’”

The men separated into companies, and two companies marched off. The local company split apart, and the squads marched away, soon themselves to split.

After dark, Sam bathed in the branch. That night, he made love to his wife. Late the next morning, he left for Montgomery.

Marjorie received the book she had ordered in the mail. Moby Dick was a solid volume, even though it was close printed. She decided to deal with Ab after class rather than after church service.

She called on him as the class was breaking up. He moved away from the door and then moved to the front of the classroom where she was standing when most of the others were gone.

“Yes, Teacher.”

“Ab, we spoke about the difference between children’s books and books for adults. People like to read about things which happen in places or times other than where they live. Many books are placed in the same time or place. It’s unfamiliar in the sense that you haven’t experienced it, but it is familiar in the sense that you have read about it before.”

“Yes, Teacher.”

“A person who hasn’t read another story placed there, would have even more problems with a book placed in King Arthur’s time than he would have with just trying to read a long book. Now do you know what whale oil is?”

“I buy it for my lantern.”

“Do you know what whales are?”

“I have seen pictures. They are very big fish.”

She decided not to explain that they were mammals. She didn’t want to explain what mammals were. Suddenly, she was less sure that the world of this novel was as unfamiliar to the intended reader as it was to Ab.

“Well,” she said, “they get whale oil by rendering the fat of whales. They boil the fat in water. In order to do that, they hunt and kill the whales. Most Yankees don’t know any more about that activity than you do. This novel is placed on a whale ship -- a ship that works hunting whales. It is an awfully long book, but I think it doesn’t assume that you know what is happening before it tells you. Do you think you might want to read this book?”

“Oh, yes, Teacher.”

“Well, here it is. Read it at your own pace.”

“Oh, thank you, Teacher.”

“You are welcome, Ab.” The statement made her feel guilty, although they were trying to teach them both to say, ‘you’re welcome,’ and to know that their teachers owed them the same courtesy that they owed their teachers -- and each other.

Giving someone that book was not quite throwing your glove into a den of lions. It was, however, setting Ab a very great challenge. He already read better than anyone else in the class, and it was hard to remember that he had started late.

She had really not made him any promises, and she had to remember that the coin flip had come up tails. On the other hand, that would be the most vicious sort of flirting. Ab expected to earn something by reading that book, and by all that was holy, he deserved to earn something by reading that book.

The problem was that what Ab wanted was her. She wasn’t a prize. She was a unique human being, a well-educated woman with a mind and a spirit of her own. She deserved something more than being some man’s reward.

On the other hand, did she not deserve to be with a man who thought of her as a magnificent reward?

Jeff Ralston was slowly gathering around him a group of journeyman and -- mostly -- apprentice carpenters on whom he could rely. The more experienced carpenters mostly had grants; they were only available for a few months a year. He couldn’t blame them; they wouldn’t have dreamed of owning land a few years ago, and now they owned 40 acres of very fertile land

He somewhat preferred to train apprentices to his style of operation and his standards. The Alabama climate was forgiving, but Jeff didn’t believe in building things which needed forgiveness. He was getting more business if only slowly getting more customers. He had planned to put in dormer windows for the Warrens this summer, but the general had asked him to build an elaborate barn with both a hayloft and living quarters above it. He didn’t know whether that was as a replacement for the other expenditure or as an additional expenditure. Young Tertius Warren could sleep where he was one more year.

The millwrights were building a new weaving mill for Green-Butler, and he was scheduled to construct the actual buildings. Green expected a new supervisor and several forewomen for that ill, and he wanted Ralston to build a rooming house for them,

Despite the fertility of the soil, Green valued land lightly enough to make single-story buildings a better proposition.

The mill buildings, of course, weren’t really designed. The machinery was built, and then the buildings were merely a wooden shell around them. As far as the other buildings went, the customers were willing to hear his suggestions.

When Sam got to the legislature, his combat was the subject of all discussion. Cal Johnson and Gabe Lincoln merged the committees of the two chambers which had the militia among their concerns into a Joint Committee on the Militia. It met in the house chamber mornings, and most members of the legislature were in the audience.

The first order of business of the joint committee was a message from the state attorney general. In response to an inquiry from Governor Randolph, he had ruled that Sam’s appointment as adjutant general was permanent. The new governor could dismiss him or replace him, but Sam remained in office despite the governors’ term expiring.

Sam reported on the large assortment of violence and intimidation which had been reported in many places and associated in particular with the recent election. “We had a huge need, but we had limited resources. I decided to cut my coat to fit my cloth if you will excuse the expression. Sheriff Grant’s desires for Appaloosa County coincided with what resources we could bring to bear there. One fortunate side occurrence is that Sheriff Grant had another jail in which he could keep prisoners. That helped us evade a fire fight in the middle of town. A lot of guilty people were missed, but no innocent people were hit.”

Some Democrats objected that the suspects were not offered the opportunity to surrender before being subjected to withering fire from behind them. “Did you think that this was sporting behavior? Did the militia intend to always behave in this way?”

“The militia is not a sporting institution. It is a military force to oppose those who defy the law. I might point out that there were more than forty identifiable men to attack a jail which they believed held a sheriff and a single deputy. Appealing to sportsmanship on their behalf because they were surprised because they did not have the overwhelming advantage that they expected is rather silly. I certainly do not expect that the militia will often have such an advantage, but avoiding that advantage is the task of my opponents. It is no part of my task.”

Sending the rifles home with the troops was overstepping his authority.

“The pretty document which made me adjutant general said that I decided everything within the rules passed by legislative acts and orders of the governor. So, the decision would be mine if I had had a choice. You might think it would be better to establish an armory and store the weapons and ammunition there when it is not being used for state purposes. In fact, there is no state armory as yet. I had no alternative.”

“Is this another expense that you propose? It seems that the militia costs far more than your first proposal mentioned.”

“I was delaying the expression of my opinion of that concept until someone else proposed it and I was speaking as a senator rather than as adjutant general. It seems to me to be contrary to the entire idea of the militia. An armory without a permanent guard would be a constant temptation for those predisposed to doing ill. In the first place, merely by seizing those weapons, they should render the forces that the state has to oppose them in large part impotent. In the second place, they would add to their powers a tremendous stock of weapons.

“A permanent guard would transform the entire meaning of ‘militia.’ A militia is in its very nature a temporary force.”

“By arming those niggers, you have intensified the nightmares of every white person of this state. A rising of armed hordes of unruly niggers to massacre white men and to rape white women.” Previous rulings had established that calling a fellow legislator a “nigger” violated the rules of decorum; calling a citizen a “nigger” did not.

Sam pulled back his sleeve and ostentatiously examined his skin. That had become a hackneyed ploy whenever someone mentioned an agreement among the whites of Alabama or the legislature. “As to what some whites might fear. the state is not bound to avoid actions which arouse illusions. I marched with Sherman. Thousands of ex-slaves fled to seek protection in those columns. They left farms and plantations where they had been worked in violation of national law and often lashed unmercifully and arbitrarily. What they did not do was commit violence against their particular oppressors.

“I came into this state,” Sam continued, “in the company of thousands of armed young Negro men. They marched; they suffered, as soldiers do; they fought. What they did not do was fire upon civilians. Now, you tell me that arms must be kept from these young men because the only thing preventing them from killing and raping is their lack of means.

“On the other hand, there have been threats, lashings, and, yes, even shootings performed by white men on those whose sole offense has been encouraging citizens of their state to exercise their constitutional rights. Are some of our citizens to be protected against delusions while others are to be unprotected against real violence?”

Sam, however sarcastic he might be in speeches, welcomed the Democratic opposition to his actions. That made the militia and his vision of how the militia would operate a partisan issue.

The committee adjourned until the next day at noon. After Dinner, the Senate convened. Lieutenant Governor Burton recognized Cal Johnson, the majority leader.

“When the last session of the legislature closed,” said Johnson, “everything that the committees had passed but the Senate as a whole had not acted upon lapsed. I have been bringing most of those motions forward so that we could decide what the opinion of the new Senate was on them. In courtesy to Senator Warren, I omitted his bill to arm the militia, and -- considering the hearings this morning -- I am happy that I did. I now move the purchase of 500 Winchester rifles and 10,000 rounds of ammunition for them.”

“Second.”

“Mr. President, I rise with a question.”

“The chair recognizes the gentleman from Montgomery County to ask a Question.”

“I fought near two years of the War with a single-shot rifle. These repeating rifles are about the most expensive weapons that money can buy. Why does the state have to buy these?”

“I’ll defer to the gentleman from Lowndes to answer that question.”

“I’ll start with a little history,” Sam said. “When Montgomery fell, the garrison stacked arms and surrendered. The winning side demobilized a little more slowly, which included turning back to the government the weapons that they had been issued. Most of the other Confederate soldiers simply went home, carrying their rifles with them. As a consequence, the state, the entire south, is afloat in military-grade small arms.

“The Winchester rifle is an improvement on the Sharps carbine that the calvary carried towards the end of the War. It is a better weapon than the Confederate rifles, but it is available for purchase by any civilian intending to flout the law. I envision a militia better equipped and better disciplined than the forces they meet in combat. The legislature certainly cannot ask men to risk their lives inn its service while increasing their risk by arming them too poorly.”