#60 The Campbellton Cavalry (100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida)

William J. Daniel was a member of the Cambellton Cavalry
He is buried at Campbellton Baptist Church.

With the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Marianna approaching, the next few articles in our list of 100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida, will focus on the men and boys that defended the county on September 26-27, 1864. The countdown continues with #60 the Campbellton Cavalry (sometimes called the Campbellton Home Guard).

Please click here to see the entire list as it is unveiled.

Soldiers and officers from both North and South enlisted and fought for a variety of reasons in 1861-1865, but the men and boys of the Campbellton Cavalry fought for one reason and one reason only - to defend their homes and families.

Spring Hill United Methodist Church
Established in 1897 at Spring Hill near Campbellton.

Most of the regular Confederate forces were withdrawn from Florida during the months following the Battle of Olustee in early 1864. The result was that homes and communities across vast regions of the state were left utterly defenseless.

At Spring Hill, just southwest of Campbellton, a group of around 30 local men and boys gathered in May 1864 to form a volunteer unit that they dubbed the Campbellton Cavalry. They came from as far south as present-day Cottondale and as far east as modern Malone, although most lived in the area from Campbellton to Holmes Creek.

F.B. Callaway served with the Campbellton Cavalry
He is buried at Campbellton Baptist Church

The citizen soldiers were comparable to the "Minutemen" of an earlier time. They continued their daily occupations, but were prepared to respond and fight in the event their homes were threated by Union troops or one of the deserter gangs that roamed the area. Like most such units of the time they elected their own captain.

That distinction went to a plantation owner named A.R. Godwin. A well-known resident of Jackson County, he was respected and trusted by his friends and neighbors, had served as a justice of the peace and was a member of the county grand jury on at least one occasion.

A reenactor armed with a shotgun prepares to fire.
From the documentary The Battle of Marianna, Florida to be released 9/27.

The company was in essence an irregular cavalry formed by civilians and disabled Confederate veterans. Its men had neither uniforms nor government arms.

Most of them carried the percussion lock shotguns that were so common in Jackson County homes of that age. While designed for hunting, these smoothbore guns were easy to load and could be fired accurately from horseback.

For the first few months of its existence, the Campbellton Cavalry did not do much actual duty. Some of the men wrote later in their pension applications that they guarded creek crossings and occasionally responded to reports of deserter activity. There is no indication that they came under fire prior to the Marianna Raid.

Interpretive kiosk at Campbellton Baptist Church
includes information on the Campbellton Cavalry.

The company was independent until August 1864 when troops in Northwest Florida were reorganized following the St. Andrew Bay Raid. Godwin's unit and Captain W.B. Jones' Vernon Scouts of Washington County were attached to Captain Wilson W. Poe's Company C, 1st Florida Infantry Reserves (Mounted). Together they formed a battalion for home defense with Poe as overall commander. Godwin and Jones retained company command of their individual units.

All three companies would fight against the Union troops that attacked Jackson and Washington Counties on September 26-28, 1864. The role of the Campbellton men in defending Jackson County during Marianna Raid will be discussed in future articles of this series.

No original roster of the Campbellton Cavalry has been found and only a partial list of its members can be reassembled from original accounts and later pension records:

Men of the Campbellton Cavalry

Alexander R. Godwin, Captain
William A. Abercrombie
George Ball
Samuel Bosworth
William Clayton
Cullen Curl
William Daniel
Mark Elmore
F.B. Haywood
Spencer Lamb (also given as Lamb Spencer)
William Mathews
A.J. McNeal
Charles Tipton
Ezekial Register
J.W. Rouse
Jasper Newton Williams
J.W. Williamson

If you had an ancestor that served in the Campbellton Cavalry and do not see them listed here, please let me know by leaving a comment.  I hope to identify as many of the men as possible before the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Marianna on September 27, 2014.

The Attack on Sarah Jane Bryant (July 8, 1866)

The road along which the Bryant girls were walking.
It was dirt at the time. The attack scene is just north of Cottondale.

The event considered by many Jackson County residents to have been the first unprovoked sign of tension between the races during the Reconstruction era was an alleged attack on Sarah Bryant by two freedmen, Henderson and Lewis White. (Note: The family name is spelled Bryan on some documents, Bryant on others).
Although she was described by one recent writer simply as a "white woman," Sarah Jane Bryant in reality was still a young girl. The teenage daughter of a poor laborer named James Bryant, she was one of at least nine children raised by a man credited on the 1860 census with a personal worth of only 75 cents.

These were not wealthy people. They were not politically involved. They had not owned slaves. They worked hard and struggled to survive. There is no indication in the county's records that they were anything other than law abiding people. And in the hard times immediately after the War Between the States, they undoubtedly were suffering far more than they had during the years before the war.

Sarah and her nine year old sister had gone to visit her brother, who lived nearby. It was a Sunday afternoon and the two girls stayed until an hour before dark and then started walking the two miles back their home along the old Campbellton Road. When they were within one-quarter mile of their own house, they saw two black teenagers approaching them. They had never seen them before.

Old tree near the scene of the attack.

In her testimony given in open court on October 31, 1866, Sarah described what happened next. The testimony was written out by hand as the girl spoke:

...It took place a quarter of a mile from home in an old field. They was very close when she first saw them. Prisoner [i.e. Henderson White] first stood and begged, then caught hold of her. They were black and ragged. He exposed part of his person, came in contact. She tried to keep from it. Prisoner didn't do any thing till the other threw her down.

Sarah identified both Henderson and Lewis White in court and pointed out Lewis as the one that had thrown her down. Both, she said, then raped her. Her mother, Margaret, testified that she heard Sarah "crying and moaning before she entered the yard." She also told the jurors that her daughter had been "in delicate health for two years past and sickly."

Word of the attack spread through the community and an immediate search was launched for the assailants. The victim's brother, John H. Bryant, found the suspects at a nearby farm. He tried to question them, but Henderson White refused to say anything. John then went to the Justice of the Peace with his father, who signed an affidavit swearing that his "daughter, 14 years, was caught on the 8th day of this month and ravished and that he has good evidence that Henderson White and Luis White... did commit the offence there."

With a warrant in hand, the two men went back to try to arrest Henderson and Lewis, but the former refused to go with them. According to John's testimony, Henderson told him that, "They had no body to prove he had done the act." They then summoned Captain Alexander R. Godwin, who lived nearby. He had commanded the Campbellton Cavalry, a home guard unit, during the war and was generally regarded as the leading man in the community. Godwin examined Henderson himself and testified against him before the Jackson County Grand Jury a few days later.

Before the grand jury could act and he could be taken into custody, Henderson White was accused of raping another teenage girl.

George S. Hawkins
Defense Attorney for Henderson and Lewis White

The trial of the two teenaged freedmen was held in Marianna on October 31, 1866. They were defended by one of the most prominent attorneys in Florida, former U.S. Congressman George S. Hawkins. Testimony was heard from three prosecution and three defense witnesses and the case then went to the jury.

Henderson White was found guilty of rape and sentenced to hang, but Hawkins had been able to create reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors with regard to Lewis White and he was acquitted.

The testimony from the case was included in thousands of lost documents from the Reconstruction era recently discovered in Jackson County. It reveals that despite the heinous crime committed against their daughter, the Bryants tried to follow the law and allow the judicial system to function. The suspects were provided with an attorney. In fact, they were provided with the services of one of Florida's most notable attorneys and the testimony reveals that he waged a strong defense on their behalf.

Although they were tried by an all white jury, it is significant that the testimony of the three black witnesses was carefully considered and Lewis White, who like Henderson had been charged with raping a white victim, was acquitted. He was still living in Jackson County years after the trial.

Sentenced to hang, Henderson White was granted a temporary reprieve by Florida's federally-appointed governor. That reprieve expired in March of 1867 and he was executed by hanging in Marianna.

The Bryant family left Jackson County after the trial and moved to to Clarke County, Alabama, where by 1870 James Bryant was farming and still trying to provide for his large family.

The trial itself is especially significant because it was the first time freedmen faced a post-war jury in Jackson County. The trial took place while local residents still had control of the judicial system and the outcome clearly demonstrates that they tried very hard to be fair and that the testimony of black witnesses was heard with the same consideration as that of white witnesses.

Control of the local courts soon would be ripped from the hands of the people of Jackson County and the Federal government would seize control of affairs in Florida and the county with an iron grip. The newly discovered records, however, raise serious questions as to what might have happened and, more importantly, what might have been avoided had Florida's citizens been allowed to continue their peaceful efforts to adapt their society to the new order of things in the years after the Civil War.

I will continue to post on the Reconstruction era in Jackson County soon, so be sure to check back often.