Black Patch Tobacco Wars
The Black Patch Tobacco Wars were a period of civil unrest and violence in the western counties of the U.S. states of Kentucky and Tennessee at the turn of the 20th century, circa 1904–1909.
[citation needed] The initial idea of the PPA was to "pool"[1] and withhold their tobacco until the ATC agreed to pay higher prices.
[citation needed] James Buchanan "Buck" Duke of North Carolina was an ambitious businessman and planter who quickly learned that profit was maximized buying and selling tobacco, not producing it.
This brought many farmers to the brink of financial ruin or led to the complete loss of their farms, as they found it cost more to plant their crop than they earned on it.
[citation needed] In 1904, Felix Ewing, a wealthy tobacco planter and owner of Glenraven Plantation near the Kentucky stateline in Adams, Tennessee, proposed a way for the Black Patch growers to regain control of their sale prices.
Glenraven Plantation, developed like a company town, had its own church, stores and post office, and its residents were tenant farmers and sharecroppers.
[3][page needed] During the summer of 1904, Ewing discussed his idea throughout the region and on September 24, 1904, hosted a meeting in Guthrie, Kentucky, attended by some 5,000 locals.
He presented a plan for every farmer in the area to join a protective association whose purpose was withholding their tobacco from the Trust until buyers paid their asking price.
[2] The group moved to form the new organization, the "Dark Tobacco District Planters' Protective Association of Kentucky and Tennessee,” referred to as the PPA.
The number of members soared as farmers anticipated an immediate resolution to their problem, and included judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officials.
When the Trust fought back by offering exceptionally higher prices for tobacco sold by non-members, the number of holdouts increased.
[citation needed] The PPA inadvertently created new tensions in the region, dividing men who had previously worked closely together if they had opposite ideas about joining the association.
Dr. David Amoss, a farmer and country doctor from Cobb, Kentucky who lived in Caldwell County rose to a position of notoriety within the Association.
[6][page needed] Amoss ordered his men to burn or otherwise destroy the property of growers, and whip them and other persons who refused to cooperate with them in their fight against the Trust.
[citation needed] According to local accounts, on December 1, 1906, small groups of Night Riders drifted during the day into Princeton, Kentucky, the seat of Caldwell County.
Then with three long whistle blasts the men came together, then slowly and methodically rode out of town singing "The fires shine bright on my old Kentucky home" bringing the night of terror to an end.
He set the defense plan in action, and the different units were alerted and took their positions, but the warning was a hoax, a test of the city's preparedness.
[citation needed] As had been the case in Princeton, Night Riders regularly drifted in and out of town to keep an eye on what was going on, in order to properly plan the raid and be prepared to pull it off at the right time.
[citation needed] They left their horses outside town, and about 250 masked men marched down 9th Street to Main, where they separated and carried out their orders with military precision.
Several men guarded the routes into the city and other downtown streets, while others took control of the police and fire departments, L&N rail depot, and the telephone and telegraph offices, essentially cutting off communications.
J.C. Felts, a brakeman working for the railroad, was shot in the back with 35 pellets of buckshot (but survived the injury) as he tried to save railcars from the fire.
[citation needed] While the raid was taking place, Major Bassett, commander of the militia, slipped out a rear window in his house and raised a posse of eleven men to pursue the Night Riders as they left town.
[8] In the early hours of January 3, 1908, while the soldiers were guarding Hopkinsville and other towns, the Night Riders hit Russellville, Kentucky, the seat of Logan County.
[citation needed] On August 1, 1908, about one hundred masked men believed to be Night Riders entered the jail in Russellville and demanded four black prisoners: Joseph Riley, and Virgil, Robert, and Thomas Jones.
His friends and Masonic lodge brothers, Riley and the three Jones, were arrested for allegedly having expressed approval of Browder's actions, as well as discontent with their employers.
[17] In April 1908, a Kentucky State Guard detachment commanded by Lieutenant Newton Jasper Wilburn led a series of raids against the Night Riders' leaders.
[citation needed] By the summer of 1910, the Night Rider trouble had come to an end except for a few scattered minor episodes.
Whispered wooing of lovers by moonlight, All of these he has heard in his day, The patient ox, the tired horses in summer How they long for his shade by the road.
However he's keeping the secret, but of course he would know just at sight The face of the man who disgraced him, by posting a threat in the night The people who live near Old Knotty, and quietly working their farms, but they've nothing to lose by marauders, No plant beds, tobacco or barns.
They've read long ago, in an old book, That in Union alone man may stand; That a house with its members divided, Is like the one build on the sand.
