Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Reconstruction, 1865–1867 477
honor bound to secure to the helpless people we have liberated a republican form
of government, and . . . we betray our trust when we hand these freedmen over
to their old masters.” 42
This was the uneasy state of affairs in Mississippi on the morning of 13 October,
when a white resident of Copiah County entered the Hazlehurst Freedmen’s
Bureau office “in a boisterous and defiant manner,” as Captain Peck later
testified. Drury J. Brown, a planter who had led a regiment of Confederate
infantry during the war, accused Peck of extorting money under the pretense of
collecting a tax from employers of freedmen. Brown then left but returned in
the afternoon and became quarrelsome and abusive. When he shoved Peck, the
captain called a private of the 58th USCI into his office and ordered Brown’s
arrest. The planter was drunk, “which I did not notice until he refused to respect
the arrest,” Peck said. It took three soldiers to drag Brown out of the
office. “We took hold of Mr. Brown and with considerable struggling . . . got
him out of the back door,” Sgt. William Gray testified. They dragged Brown by
his legs to the veranda of a nearby house that served the Freedmen’s Bureau
as a jail, “not having any more appropriate place,” Peck explained. Within an
hour, the captain released his prisoner on the understanding that Brown would
go home. 43
The next day, Peck took a train some seventy-five miles to department headquarters
at Vicksburg, where he hoped to collect copies of some recent orders that
had not reached Hazlehurst. Returning on 18 October, he found the infantry company
withdrawn to regimental headquarters at Brookhaven, leaving a sergeant and
six privates to keep watch over impounded cotton. On the same day, Drury Brown
took his complaint of being manhandled by black soldiers to a justice of the peace,
who issued an order to the sheriff for Peck’s arrest. About half an hour after the
captain reached Hazlehurst, a deputy tried to serve the warrant on him, but he refused
to acknowledge the right of the county to interfere with a federal official in
the execution of his duties. 44
That evening, Pvt. Lewis Dowell stood guard over the cotton that was piled
near the railroad tracks. He heard a group of men pass by; one of them said, “He
thinks he cannot be taken because he has got a few Yankee niggers with him.”
About nine, Dowell heard Peck call for the guard. Sgt. Dilman George brought
the six privates at the double and found the captain some distance from his office,
surrounded by fifteen or twenty men. Dowell counted four shotguns or revolvers
trained on Peck and six pointed toward the advancing soldiers. Three or four dozen
more men, most of them armed, stood “scattered down the road . . . in a sort of
scrmish line [sic],” Dowell remembered. As the first of the soldiers came within
ten paces of the group, the sheriff cocked both hammers of his shotgun and ordered
42 Maj Gen P. J. Osterhaus to W. L. Sharkey, 21 Aug 1865, and Maj Gen P. J. Osterhaus to
Capt J. W. Miller, 21 Aug 1865 (M–347–DM–1865), both in Entry 2433, pt. 1, RG 393, NA; Col
S. Thomas to Maj Gen O. O. Howard, 21 Sep 1865 (M–5), NA M752, roll 22; Harris, Presidential
Reconstruction, pp. 73–74.
43 Affidavits, Capt W. Peck, 1 Nov 1865, and Gray, n.d., in Peck file.
44 Capt W. Peck to Maj G. D. Reynolds, 31 Oct 1865, NA M1907, roll 34. Affidavits, Dowell, 31
Oct 1865, and Peck, 1 Nov 1865; T. Jones to Sheriff, 18 Oct 1865, Peck file.