Research Briefing No. 6: Who Killed William Meadows, 1868?

In a New York Times Book Review, the cover story was Sean Wilentz’ review of Nicholas Lemann’s book, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War. A mostly favorable review criticizes one nagging point, a tenacious problem that dogs historians still, “Lemann’s interpretation is uneven. . . the black participants in the story remain mostly obscure, and often come across more as victims than as political actors.” So, what else is new? This situation, however, can be remedied. Untapped, unexpected sources exist, offering the opportunity to find information that will lift the black participants of history out of obscurity. One example is William Meadows.

For most of his life, William Meadows was a slave. But after the Civil War, in 1868, he was free, and he served as one of the forty nine elected black delegates to Louisiana’s Constitutional Convention. Meadows died some months after the convention, shot and killed at his home in Claiborne Parish, in front of his family. The details of this event, including the eyewitness testimony of his wife, were captured in a contemporary state government publication, a report published by the General Assembly of Louisiana. A committee investigating the conduct of the elections recorded information about Meadows’ murder, thereby insuring that the details became part of the public record. This effort at the local level to record and preserve the information affords us the possibility of discovering the truth.

This is the eyewitness testimony of Meadows’ wife, as recorded by William Stokes, Assistant Sub-Assistant Bureau Commissioner, Claiborne Parish:
“I was out in the yard milking the cow when my husband passed going to the stable; my little son was with him; as soon as I was done I went into the kitchen with the milk; the kitchen is about twenty yards from the house; my little boy and his father were returning from the stable; my little boy turned off to come to me, and before he had reached the kitchen he heard some one call “Meadows”; his father looked toward the kitchen . . . at that moment he was shot; my boy saw him fall; he [was not] more than ten steps from his father when the first shots were fired; my boy is eight years old; I jumped out of the kitchen door and looked around at the men, and called for the gun; after I reached my husband they fired again, making three shots in all; I saw the guns in the men’s hands; when I reached my husband he was dead; the men stood there and I asked them who they were, they made no answer.”

The story of William Meadows points out the local resources that scholars have, at best, under-utilized, and, at worst, neglected, overlooked, or ignored. Most of the secondary sources on the Reconstruction era, even those works specifically on Louisiana or on the Constitutional conventions of the time period, do not mention William Meadows. If they do, it is but to say he was a Constitutional Convention delegate who was a former slave, or that he was a farmer. Some sources mention his murder, but give few details. Yet, there is information about Meadows’ murder in the report of the Joint Committee, and upon investigation, a rich and complex picture emerges.

Meadows’ wife’s testimony continues. “It was just about dark; they were dressed in black clothes; I saw them plain enough to know they were white men; I think they wore black hats; their clothes all looked dark; my first impression was that one of them was Newton Glover. . . I think the other was John Taylor; I am not sure of him. This man Glover threatened to kill my husband some time before: the Glover family seemed to be very much against my husband, and were always trying to meddle with him in some way. Mr. Carter, f.m.c., told my husband ten days before he was killed, that Newton Glover said that he held my husband’s life in his pocket, and if he did not leave in two weeks he would be killed. . . My husband was five years away from me,” she continued, “and served three years in the Federal army. The people refused to let him stay in the country when he first returned from the war, and many said he was not safe.”
The state government of Louisiana has provided an account that proves to be a rich vein to mine. Indeed, biased or not, censored or not, exaggerated or not, the usefulness of documents produced by local governments will vary with the attitude and motives of the local people involved. These sources give us something to consider, something to analyze, something to deconstruct. These sources offer the opportunity to lift the stories of people like William Meadows out of obscurity.

This is another in a series of Research Briefs, describing current research projects remedying society’s historical amnesia. For more information, contact janvoogd@yahoo.com