Page 136 - a-history-of-columbia-county-florida-(1996)-edward-f-keuchel

A History of Columbia County Florida (1996) Edward F. Keuchel 125/340

The Era of Reconstruction
Between the fall of 1868 and 1871 sixteen Republicans, mostly
blacks, were murdered in Columbia County. The first was in the
fall of 1868 during a party at the home of black Republican leader
Prince Weaver. Weaver had been warned previously not to hold
political meetings in his house. While the party was underway a
group of disguised men appeared in the yard and fired into the
house. Weaver’s thirteen-year-old son Samson was killed, and three
others were wounded. The next victim was Thomas Jacobs, an
active Republican, who was called to his door in the middle of the
night and shot dead. Timothy Francis had been threatened by the
local Ku Klux because he had been active in politics. He left the
county and found work in the railroad pumphouse at Sanderson
where he was murdered early in 1869. At about the same time Ike
Ipswich, an active worker for the Republican Party in Columbia
County, was shot to death one evening as he returned home after
work. James Green, a prominent Negro Republican leader, was
taken from his house at night in the fall of 1869 and carried some
five miles away where he was tortured and forced to reveal
information relating to the Union League and the Republican
Party in the county. After talking he was shot, and his body
dumped in a pond. Another incident involved Lishu Johnson who
was taken from a hiding place in a white man’s house one evening
in the fall of 1869. No trace was found except his clothes in the
nearby woods.24
Besides these murders there were numerous beatings of both
black and white Republicans. Even suspected Republican support
could lead to a beating. Robert Forson, age twenty-three, a white
farmer who had lived in Columbia County for fifteen years related
in testimony that he was seized at his father’s house on the night of
July 2, 1870, and taken to a spot about a mile away where he was
tied naked to a tree and whipped. He was told that he was punished
because he had associated with Negroes. His abductors were not
Ibid., pp. 165-66; Shofner, Nor Is It Over Yet, p. 228; House Report 22, pp.
177-79, 222-23, 263.
123

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