The Walton War
Largely forgotten, unfortunately. (The Bus 5.29)
Welcome aboard The Bus!
The Stop
The Walton War was a minor but violent boundary dispute which occurred in 1804 between the newly-established US states of North Carolina and Georgia over the possession and control of the so-called Orphan Strip. A twelve-mile-wide swath of land nestled between the borders of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia in what is now Transylvania County, North Carolina, the territory was so-named because none of the surrounding states wanted the responsibility of governing it, causing it to exist for a time as a sort of no-man's land.1
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the poorly defined borders of North Carolina and Georgia - based on astronomical lines and unclear mountain ridges - were a frequent source of contention, and the Orphan Strip was no different. Originally controlled by South Carolina, after the American Revolution the land was ceded to the federal government who returned it to the Cherokee who by 1798 had given it back to the federal government who, frankly, didn’t want it. Without a designated ruler, the Orphan Strip quickly attracted settlers possessing ambiguous land grants issued by the surrounding states, a situation which led to tensions and blurred allegiances that would set the stage for future conflict.
In 1803 Georgia declared the Orphan Strip its land, naming it Walton County after George Walton - signer of the Declaration of Independence and senator and eventual governor of Georgia - and sparking further tension. Whether Georgia created the county to organise the settlers or to compete with North Carolina is unclear, but when Georgia tried to collect taxes from settlers with North Carolinian land grants, these settlers refused to pay and Georgia’s authority was quickly contested. When Walton County officials attempted to collect taxes and remove the North Carolinians living there, the situation escalated and resulted in numerous assaults and detentions. In December 1804, the problem reached its climax when a North Carolina constable - John Havner - was killed by a Walton County official.
Havner’s murder prompted North Carolina to send in a militia detachment of 72 soldiers that captured ten prominent Walton County officials. The prisoners were transported to Morganton, North Carolina to face trial, but within days all ten of the men had escaped. By this time, Walton County had fallen into disarray, with most of the Georgians scattering into South Carolina and into what was known as North Carolina Indian territory. Fearing a forceful response from North Carolina, Georgia decided to abandon its claim to the territory.
The dispute was formally settled in 1807 by a joint commission led by Joseph Caldwell - the president of the University of North Carolina - and Joseph Meigs - president of the University of Georgia. Their survey concluded that the entirety of the Orphan Strip rested inside the legitimate border of North Carolina, and thus determined Walton County an illegal annexation. Despite ignoring the commission’s findings and attempting to govern Walton County until 1811, Georgia finally surrendered its claim to the land and created a new Walton County around a three hours’ drive south in the middle of the state.2
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to a rather interesting short (2:56) video investigating how one might go about printing the English version of Wikipedia. While printing the online encyclopaedia at any given point is possible, keeping up with the constant edits (estimated at around 100 per minute) is an entirely different issue. Worth the time.
What if you tried to print Wikipedia?
The Recommendation
Today’s Recommendation concerns another piece of little-known North Carolina history - the white supremacist-led coup of a duly-elected mixed-race government in what at the time was the state’s finest city: David Zucchino’s Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy (2020).
From the inside flap: ‘By the 1890s, Wilmington was North Carolina’s largest city and a shining example of a mixed-race community. It was a bustling port city with a burgeoning African American middle class and a Fusionist government of Republicans and Populists that included black aldermen, police officers and magistrates. There were successful black-owned businesses and an African American newspaper, the Record. But across the state - and the South - white supremacist Democrats were working to reverse the advances made by former slaves and their progeny.
In North Carolina, Democrats were plotting to take back the state legislature, in November ‘by the ballot or bullet or both’, and then to trigger a ‘race riot’ to overthrow Wilmington’s multi-racial government. Led by prominent citizens including Josephus Daniels, publisher of the state’s largest newspaper, and former Confederate Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell, white supremacists rolled out a carefully orchestrated campaign that included raucous rallies, race-baiting editorials and newspaper cartoons, and sensational, fabricated news stories.
With intimidation and violence, the Democrats suppressed the black vote and stuffed ballot boxes (or threw them out), to win control of the state legislature on November 8th. Two days later, more than 2,000 heavily armed Red Shirts swarmed through Wilmington, torching the Record office, terrorising women and children, and shooting at least sixty black men dead in the streets. The rioters forced city officials to resign at gunpoint and replaced them with mob leaders. Prominent blacks - and sympathetic whites - were banished. Hundreds of terrified black families took refuge in surrounding swamps and forests.
This brutal insurrection is a rare instance of a violent overthrow of an elected government in the U. S. It halted gains made by blacks and restored racism as official government policy, cementing white rule for another half century. It was not a ‘race riot’, as the events of November 1898 came to be known, but rather a racially motivated rebellion launched by white supremacists.
In Wilmington’s Lie, Pulitzer Prize winner David Zucchino uses contemporary newspaper accounts, diaries, letters, and official communications to create a gripping and compelling narrative that weaves together individual stories of hate and fear and brutality. This is a dramatic and definitive account of a remarkable but forgotten chapter of American history.’
The Sounds
Today’s playlist - after the previous three Mondays’ deep dives into songs from 60 years ago - is a selection of five great tracks released this year: ‘Starbuster’ (Fontaines D. C., Romance), ‘Mary Boone’ (Vampire Weekend, Only God Was Above Us), ‘Hunger Games’ (Bob Vylan, Humble as the Sun), ‘Blindfold’ (Bombay Bicycle Club, Fantasies) and ‘POP POP POP’ (IDLES, TANKG). Enjoy!
The Thought
Today’s Thought is from the African American abolitionist, orator, newspaper publisher and author Frederick Douglass (1818-1895):3
‘The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.’
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!
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Until the next Stop …
I love these little historical footnotes that hide under our noses, and this topic is no different. Largely forgotten - and certainly a relatively minor issue in the formation of the USA - it’s nevertheless an important reminder that things certainly do not appear in a vacuum. Sources for today’s Stop include Carpenter, Clarence A. The Walton War and Tales of the Great Smoky Mountains. Lakemont, GA: Copple House Books, 1979; Reidinger, Martin. The Walton War and the Georgia-North Carolina Boundary Dispute. Monograph: 1981; and Walton War (Wikipedia).
For more about Douglass, see: Frederick Douglass (Britannica).
I have been driving by the Walton War historical marker for years and never made the time to learn the story behind it. The States have gone through a lot to remain "United." The next 100+ days here are going to be interesting. One hopes events like the Wilmington massacre are a thing of the distant past but I feel there are many people with thoughts of a new uprising simmering just below the surface of civility.