Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Edgefield had more dashing, brilliant, romantic figures, statesmen, orators, soldiers, adventurers, daredevils than any county of South Carolina, if not any rural county of America.

“You see? Right there in the Charleston newspaper! And General Martin W. Gary, ‘the Bald Eagle of the Confederacy,’ came from Edgefield, too: his good friend was my late brother, Major Tillman Watson of Clouds Creek, who sponsored General Gary’s wartime company of volunteers as well as his own. General Gary, of course, rallied the Red Shirts from his balcony right up the street at Oakley Park-‘The Red Shirt Shrine,’ men called it. General Gary and General Calbraith Butler and Miss Douschka Pickens, ‘South Carolina’s Joan of Arc.’ August 12, 1876! Redemption Day! They put on red shirts and marched with fifteen hundred volunteers down here to Court House Square!”

Dutifully I followed her commanding finger, which was pointed at the door onto the square. “Yes, indeed. The Heroes of ’76. Centennial of the American Revolution. Put General Hampton in as governor and cleaned the rascals out. So much for socalled Yankee Reconstruction!” She slapped a leaflet down upon my documents. “There,” she said. “This nice paper we got up for visitors tells all that history.”

In that dark period when South Carolina was prostrate, the honor of womanhood was imperiled, brutal insults forced upon citizens by foulmouthed freedmen were more than flesh and blood could endure and civilization itself hung in the balance.

“See that?” Aunt Sophia tapped the page. “Honor of womanhood.” Dutifully I read around that tapping finger.

All over the state, men organized Saber Clubs and Rifle Clubs in utmost secrecy. Even as Paul Revere had ridden for freedom’s sake a century before, South Carolina’s Red Shirts rode in grim determination, daring all for liberty… Danger lurked in ambush, shots rang out from the forests, and a riderless horse might go on its way alone, but the Red Shirts rode on.

“The Red Shirts rode on!” my kinswoman cried with emotion, standing erect and straight as any soldier. Her eyes shone bright and the feather in her cocked hat fairly bristled. No longer a giant peony, she resembled a very fierce old chicken.

Mildly the librarian remarked that Edgefield’s Red Shirts had surely been upstanding citizens, but elsewhere red-shirted vigilantes had terrorized black folks and burned the houses of the Radical Republicans who tried to defend them. On the long summer evening of July 8 of that year, in the town of Hamburg on the Georgia border, the birth of the Redemption era on Independence Day had been celebrated four days later by an assault on the black militia by a mob of red-shirted riders led by General Calbraith Butler: five black soldiers were killed and some twenty captured. That same evening, in the presence of their terrified families, according to one witness, these prisoners were hauled into the street and told to run, whereupon they were “shot down in the clear light of a brilliant moon.”

“ ‘Clear light of a brilliant moon!’ Isn’t that beautiful?” Aunt Sophia, starry-eyed, laid ringed fingers on her breastbone, the better to contain a fond, proud heart.

“So you see, Mrs. Boatright, certain Red Shirts had quite a violent reputation,” Miss Mims said, to caution me. Though genteel Miss Mims came from an old Edgefield family of more distinguished antecedents than her own, my great-aunt now inquired if perchance the librarian (whom she’d surely known all her life) had been raised “someplace up north? Otherwise, miss, you would have known that Calbraith Butler was the man who shouted out that the next patriot to shoot a nigger would be shot.”

“Some say, madam, that the halt was called because they’d killed every last black man, and shooting into the bodies was just wasting ammunition-”

“Personally, I’m proud of our violent reputation,” Aunt Sophia declared, turning her broad raspberry back on this naysayer. “The United States of America, as those Yankees dare to call it, could use a little more of our old Edgefield spirit. This darned country has gone softer than milk toast. Why, all around the world we are accepting any insult, and from any color!”

Perversely I said, “Madam, you appear to be just the person to advise me where to find a man who shared your views; he is the hero Captain Michael Watson’s great-great-grandson.” She cried, “Of course! Which one?” And I said, “Mr. E. D. Watson.” I raised my brows as if puzzled by her consternation. “Otherwise known, so I am told, as ‘Ring-Eye Lige.’ ”

Noticing my stink for the first time, Aunt Sophia recoiled and coughed and put her hand up to her throat. “Sir, this is our archives library, not an almshouse or some low saloon.” And firing a last furious glare that fixed all blame for the presence of this lowlife on the unfortunate Miss Mims, she swept out the door in a great waft of funereal perfume.

Still shaken by her own show of courage, Miss Mims ventured that the Watson file contained no recent record of Elijah D.; indeed, his name was absent from the county census after 1870. “Mr. Watson’s place in the community, you see…” Reassured by my smile of encouragement, she fetched a bound transcript entitled “Trial of the Booth and Toney Homicides,” an episode involving Ring-Eye Lige in which four men had died.

On August 12th, 1878, on the two-year anniversary of Redemption Day, with the entire county gathered to hear rousing speeches by Governor Hampton and other dignitaries, a shootout occurred inside and outside Clisby’s Store right down the street. Three men were killed, with several others seriously wounded. According to one account at least, Elijah D. Watson had been in the crowd at Clisby’s and had probably fired, after which he apparently took to his heels.

Burrell Abney called for the defense, sworn and examined by General Butler.

Q: Were you at Edgefield Court House on the 12th of August, 1878?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: Did you see any of the difficulty that occurred there on that day?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: Will you please state to the court and jury what you saw that day.

A: I saw Elijah Watson running toward where I was from Clisby’s store with a pistol in his hand.

Q: Had the firing stopped when you saw him running off?

A: It was just before the firing stopped, for I think there were three or four shots fired afterwards.

Had my father been fleeing the fray before it ended? Very likely. Was he a coward, then? Despite all his boasting, I had never been certain of my father’s courage. In any case, he and Will Coulter were among the four men indicted for murder. My father’s attorneys were Gary & Gary and also John L. Addison, my mother’s brother. In his summation, General Gary called these homicides “the most desperately fought combat that ever transpired in this dark and bloody region.” The Bald Eagle of the Confederacy would discount the testimony that placed Elijah Watson at the scene, whereas Ring-Eye’s old nemesis, Calbraith Butler, had passionately argued the reverse. All defendants were acquitted and sent home.

Where home might have been in my father’s case was a good question. The transcript established that within a few years after his family had abandoned him, the fallen Lige had wandered into dissolution, sharing a disreputable roof with the Widow Autrey. Being unacquainted with this lady, Miss Mims had no idea what had become of Mr. Watson. When she’d tried to inquire about him from one of the archive’s founders-and she nodded toward the door through which Aunt Sophia had made her getaway-she was told that in the eyes of his whole clan, Elijah D. was dead. “They just don’t talk about him. They had his name stricken from the census.” Miss Mims shook her head in pity. “He’s what the old folks used to call a ‘shadow cousin.’ ”