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A History of Columbia County Florida (1996) Edward F. Keuchel 124/340

A History of Columbia County, Florida
When loaded in Jacksonville the arms were carefully locked in
a freight car and federal troops traveled with the train. Civilian
railroad employees operated the train, and there is some evidence
that the entire crew was composed of Klan members. At Lake City
the Klan group boarded the train, and before it reached Madison,
the weapons and ammunition were thrown off and later destroyed.
Soldiers on the train were not even aware of the theft until they
reached Tallahassee. The Klan operated so efficiently that they
even had a key to open the door of the freight car, and it was
carefully relocked after the guns were removed. The New York
Times called the incident a “high-handed Mississippi piratical
outrage,” but to the Conservatives it was a victory.21
Unfortunately other lawless events relating to the politics of
this era were of a more violent nature. Historian Joe M. Richardson
has shown that Florida in the 1870’s was still a frontier area. There
would have been considerable lawlessness and violence even with­
out the political and racial problems of Reconstruction. It was
quite common for men to carry guns and knives. Federal military
commanders lamented that pistols and bowie knives were be­
coming the law of the land.22
As affairs developed, two areas in Florida witnessed most of
the violence of the Reconstruction era. They were north central
Florida including Columbia, Alachua, Hamilton, Lafayette, Madi­
son, and Suwannee Counties, and west Florida including Jackson
and Calhoun Counties. Judge William Bryson of the Third Judicial
Circuit, which included Columbia County, noted that Ku Klux
activities worked to make the Democratic Party supreme and
defeat the Republicans.23

21 House Report 22, pp. 185-86; New York Times, November 7, 1868; Ralph
Leon Peek, “Lawlessness and the Restoration of Order in Florida, 1868-1871,”
unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida, 1964, pp. 111-12.
“Richardson, The Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, pp. 161-64.
“Ralph L. Peek, “Lawlessness in Florida, 1868-1871,” Florida Historical
Quarterly, XXXX (October, 1961), pp. 164-65.
122

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