The Black Patch War constituted one of the most serious domestic threats to civil government in twentieth-century America. The violence peaked in 1907-9 and diminished over the next few years. At the turn of the 20th century, the American Tobacco Company, owned by James B. Duke, formed the Duke Trust. The term black patch referred to the region of the two states noted for the growth of dark-fired tobacco. Dr. Amoss’s defense was direct and unadorned. Erected 2005 by Glenn E. Martin, Kentucky Historical Society and Kentucky Department of Highways. Kentucky Governor A. E. Wilson (1907-11) dispatched troops to trouble spots, and several victims successfully brought civil suits against individual night riders. Some three weeks after the 1905 Guthrie tobacco jubilee, another PPA meeting was held, this one by invitation only. The Black Patch War constituted one of the most serious domestic threats to civil government in twentieth-century America. By now a few lights had come on, but they were quickly extinguished with warning shots. But the control and direction of the PPA always remained with the old elite, the planters and the local gentry. During the first part of the 1900s, problems over the price of tobacco turned to violence in the northern part of Tennessee. A vigilante band of men wearing masks known as the Night Riders took their orders from _____ of Caldwell County. “Night Riders” fought against non-cooperative farmers and businessmen who opposed the dark tobacco pool. Dr. Amoss, in legend and in rumor, opened the meeting by asking all the members who were willing to fight and die for the cause to stand. In 1907 and 1908, a vigilante group known as The Night Riders terrorized the "Black Patch" 30-county region of western Kentucky and Tennessee, where Dark Fired Tobacco was produced.The Planters Protective Association of Kentucky and Tennessee had organized to gain more power as growers against the James B. Duke tobacco conglomerate (American Tobacco Company, … In the course of a 48 hour wave of organized terrorist attacks, a group of two hundred Night Riders rode through the countryside laying waste to everything that they viewed as a threat to their union. Previously professor of history at Eastern Illinois University, he is the author of Night Riders: Defending Community in the Black Patch (1993); Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817-80 (1998); Racial Violence on Trial: A Handbook with Cases, Laws, and Documents (2001) Dunning was a planter whose dozen tenants worked 2500 acres of wheat, corn and dark-fire tobacco. Back at the turn of the 20th century, tobacco farmers in the Black Patch area of Kentucky and those in middle Tennessee struggled against large agriculture companies. The small town of Birmingham between the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, formed by freed slaves after the war, was torched and those who refused to flee were murdered in cold blood. There can be little doubt that most night riders were also PPA members and that many of the organization's members and leaders rode with the silent brigade in spirit, if not in body. Tobacco Warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky 1906. Duke’s ATC trust was broken up in November under the Sherman Anti-Trust act. Things were getting meaner. Topics and series. After Princeton, Meacham feared an attack on Hopkinsville, the most important city in the Black Patch: a huge tobacco market, and a transportation hub served by two railroads. If you want to learn the full, true story of the Night Riders, I suggest you buy "On Bended Knee" by Bill Cunningham. Not just the planters, but their tenants and ‘croppers whose tobacco “on shares” was their only source of cash. Functionality and information are in compliance with guidelines established by the American Association for State and Local History for online state and regional encyclopedias. Indian warfare, several regulator and vigilante movements, guerrilla warfare during the Civil War and Reconstruction, and lynching had characterized the Black Patch history long before the onset of the tobacco war. Amoss took the lead with Dunning at his side. A particularly valuable strain of fire-cured leaf, mainly used for “plug” or chewing tobacco, was established in a broad area of western Kentucky and north-central Tennessee, about the size of Delaware. The “Stainhouse Resolutions” were adopted, vowing loyalty to the PPA and severe penalties to those who cooperated with Duke’s hated ATC trust. During the Civil War, western Kentucky was under Union occupation, but its sympathies never altered. Mrs. Hollowell was wounded when one shot penetrated her cheek 'bone. Merchants, doctors, lawyers, and craftsmen also rallied, sensing (correctly) that the prosperity of the entire region rested on tobacco prices. Price Hollowell Black Patch War Hero Friday, September 23, 2016 School Performances* The saga of the Night Riders is not an easy one to tell. Its connection with the PPA is still officially “alleged.” They called themselves the Silent Brigade, or more informally the “possum hunters,” since their activities were to be mostly nocturnal. to attempt to regain their leverage against the ATC. The few people found on the streets were gently, and some not so gently, taken into custody. A parade of witnesses testified that he had been delivering a child or binding a wound at any time he was accused of directing Night Rider activities. T he Black Patch Tobacco Wars is the name given to a violent episode in American history that took place among 30 counties in southwestern Kentucky and northwestern Tennessee at the turn of the 20th century. The prosperity after the Civil War made the dark fire-cured leaf of the Black Patch even more valuable. Buyers for Duke were first warned, then threatened, then dragged from their hotels and whipped or beaten. Even “hillbillies” had families and friends. Amoss responded by planting false rumors, which had the militia mobilized, then looking foolish when nothing happened. Bill Henderson, a Dycusburg, Kentucky, tobacco buyer and businessman, took to openly taunting the PPA. They watered their horses and donned masks and white sashes, waiting for a sign from a modest-looking man in a brown cloth coat and a slouch hat who was consulting a pocket watch. As the raids became more local, and often more brutal, the opposition grew bolder. Then while the flames roared, they destroyed the local newspaper, and at the mournful sound of a hunter’s horn, they formed up in the center of town, holstered their weapons, and rode off into the night. They disarmed the local police, occupied the telegraph and telephone offices, and dynamited two warehouses filled with tobacco belonging to James Duke’s American Tobacco Company. After medical school in Ohio, Amoss returned to the Black Patch to serve his local community. Online Edition © 2002 ~ 2018, The University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, Tennessee. Night Riders formed The local residents had read about night riders in the Black Patch War in Middle Tennessee and Kentucky. In the months following Guthrie, PPA organizers were dispatched throughout the Black Patch. They were getting tobacco at ridiculously low prices and the farmers were unable to make a living. Non-compliant farmers found their plant beds scraped, their barns and sometimes even their homes torched. These interstate suits fell under federal jurisdiction, and acquitals were no longer assured. Both Washington and Jefferson were tobacco planters. There were few Night Rider raids during the Christmas holidays, and the Black Patch was silent, waiting with bated breath. still more violent group in 1906 called the Night Riders. Buggies, mules and horses filled the Guthrie fairgrounds. The following information is provided for citations. The PPA spoke for the Black Patch. A worried call to the local telephone switchboard was answered by a gruff male voice: “The Night Riders are here.” Minutes later, a blast rocked the town and a tobacco warehouse went up in flames. Not only the Courier Journal but the Atlanta Constitution and The New York Times were on hand. It was Duke who changed the game. Growers who refused to pool and the monopoly of buyers led by the American Tobacco Company and the Italian Regie presented threats to the PPA plan. Duke was delighted to pay eight cents a pound to growers willing to sidestep the PPA. Meanwhile Amoss gathered his troops in silence. In the Fall of 1904 (when the tobacco crop was in the barn) Ewing and a few other big planters put out the call for a gathering in Guthrie, Kentucky, right on the Kentucky-Tennessee line. Then the small black community in nearby Eddyville, many of whom worked for Henderson, were terrorized KKK style and ordered to leave town by two hundred Night Riders. The Silent Brigade was a guerrilla army that terrorized western Kentucky in a conflict that came to be known as the Black Patch War. The town was quiet. Barbecue and burgoo, moonshine and fiery speeches were eagerly consumed as thousands lined up to join the new Planters Protective Association (PPA). Ewing himself, and the PPA’s public leadership, carefully stayed away. The only people who went to jail were those who fought back against the Night Riders. A young hero of the Tobacco War and the son of an avid opponent of the Association and the Night Riders, Price Hollowell experienced the violence of the Tobacco War first-hand. Though bloody, Amoss’s wound was only skin deep. The night riders were organized into a secret fraternal society known as the “Silent Brigade” or the “Inner Circle” and structured along military lines. - James O. Nall, The Tobacco Night Riders of Kentucky and Tennessee. But they were well known, and discussed in whispers throughout the Black Patch. Families were torn asunder, brother against brother, just as during the hated war. October 30, 2020 by Chuck Stanion in Pipe Line. They were even in danger of losing their laborers. The same process of capitalist monopoly consolidation was squeezing farmers across the country as prices for wheat, corn, hogs, and cattle all fell under the pressure of the railroads and the hated trusts. In January, the Kentucky town of Russelville, home to two ATC warehouses, heard the muffled tramp, the creaking of harness, the “hunters horn” and the dynamite blasts. As volunteers flocked to join his secret army, Amoss pondered a change in tactics. White farmers fled also. The Louisville Courier Journal called for Law and Order, denouncing the night Riders as the “shame” of Kentucky. The Princeton raid was not national news but it gave the Night Riders a new image in the Black Patch as a disciplined and powerful force. The disappointed and the triumphant left the courtroom together. Then confusion and horror …. This agrarian revolt took on a somewhat different character in the South, and particularly in the Black Patch, where the fight was organized and led from the top-down, by the ex-Confederate local gentry. On the night of December 7, hundreds of horsemen gathered at a country church near Hopkinsville. the buyers had formed a trust and were controlling the market. the buyers had formed a trust and were controlling the market. The police and the militia were swiftly disarmed. Tobacco processing and manufacturing was centered in North Carolina, where James Buchanan Duke made a fortune selling “Duke’s Mixture,” then leveraged that capital into one of the great Robber Baron “trusts,” the American Tobacco Company. Raising a blood-stained hand, he called for calm, and passed off command to his trusted lieutenant, Dunning, who ordered the withdrawal. Collectively, these acts of violence became known as the Black Patch War. It climaxed in a parade several miles long, with planters, their supporters, Southern Belles bearing bouquets of dark leaf instead of flowers, grizzled Confederate vets, and the rear brought up by a thousand black sharecroppers, who saw their interests, at least temporarily, aligned with those of the planters. Night Riders also attacked agents and destroyed property of the ATC, setting fire to tobacco Soon after the formation of the Silent Brigade, “hillbilly” farmers found their plant beds scraped or sown with salt. War in the Black Patch 1906 – 1911. The eerie sound of a hunter’s horn called the troops to reassemble; it was Amoss blowing across the muzzle of his Army Colt. Suez Highlights the Fragility of Globalization, Letters From Minsk: Echoes of Munich Over Wroclaw, Poland, Live Animal Markets Should Be Closed to Prevent the Next Pandemic, Why Biden’s Choice to Bomb Outer Space Is So Damn Exciting, Global Billionaire Wealth Surges $4 Trillion Over Pandemic, While the Cost of Vaccinating the World is Estimated at $141.2 Billion, Tens of Millions in Florida Properties Linked to Ecuadorian Presidential Candidate Guillermo Lasso. It seemed like a good example to the Lake County residents. A word of warning often sufficed. Respected by both black and. The Night Riders, as they were named by local press, resorted to physical intimidation, crop burning, and other tactics to encourage the compliance of all farmers in the stand against Big Tobacco. Black Patch and Night Rider Oral History Project Project Summary By the beginning of the 20th century, tobacco buyers in Kentucky and Tennessee had formed the American Tobacco Company, a trust that controlled the tobacco market and forced farmers to sell their crops at extremely low prices. Now, however, schoolchildren in Christian and other counties in the Patch learn about the nightriders who fought the hated trust. The Night Riders was the name given by the press to the militant faction of tobacco farmers during a popular resistance to the monopolistic practices of the American Tobacco Company of James B. Duke. There were even assassination attempts against “General” Amoss, who disappeared entirely for months in 1908, but continued to direct his forces from underground, protected by his many friends and neighbors. The peaceful visits soon turned violent, however, and gave rise to the night riders. During the period between 1900 and 1906 trouble began to brew among the tobacco men of the state, especially in the Black Patch area around Hopkinsville. (Marker Number 145.) The state militia had expanded its reach beyond the major cities of the Black Patch and began a successful program of patrols that captured and disarmed several Night Rider bands, while court actions, when moved outside of the Night Riders’ dwindling base of support, returned hearty verdicts against captured members, who were having a hard time paying off steep monetary judgments. The PPA now controlled some seventy percent of the tobacco in the Black Patch, and the mood was celebratory. The secret meeting places were exposed, the nocturnal oaths laid out in the light. The local militia, was placed on alert, fearing an attack was imminent. “We fear no judge nor jury,” was Amoss’s boast, and it proved true. Dr Amos and Dunning, his dear friend and second in command, were at the defendants’ table, while the courtroom was filled with hundreds, mostly supporters but with Night Rider victims among them, hungry for justice at last. Tobacco is a versatile plant with many varieties that can grow even in northern and tropical climes. The PPA of course claimed no connection with the Night Riders but expressed sympathy with their goals. He learned Southern history, military tactics—and a schoolboy’s trick of blowing across the muzzle of a pistol to make a sound like a hunter’s horn that could be heard a quarter mile away. The trial was national news. From 1905 to 1909, armed bands of so-called night riders plagued the region, burning tobacco barns and warehouses and shooting into the homes of noncompliant farmers and African Americans in an attempt to scare them away, a tactic known as whitecapping. Back at the turn of the 20th century, tobacco farmers in the Black Patch area of Kentucky and those in middle Tennessee struggled against large agriculture companies. Ten thousand showed up in the tiny town of less than a thousand. Those who didn’t were asked to leave. By the early twentieth century all the Black Patch tobacco buyers, formerly independent, speculators, were under Duke’s control, and the prices dropped from eight and ten cents to four, three and even two cents a pound, Accidental Apocalypse and Nuclear War on Drugs, U.S. Black Patch War. Dr. Frank Amoss, a physician from Caldwell County, Kentucky, reportedly led the order. Black farmers were welcomed into the PPA, unusual for those apartheid times, and indeed a higher percentage of blacks than whites were members. NIGHT RIDERS During the period between 1900 and 1906 trouble began to brew among the tobacco men of the state, especially in the Black Patch area around Hopkinsville. Night Rider lodges often found themselves raising funds to pay off the judgments against their captains. The single dozing guard at the Latham warehouse barely escaped with his life when both warehouses went up with a blast heard for miles. When the Night Riders attacked the Hollowell farm in Caldwell County on the night of May 2, 1907, one of them boasted, "We Night Riders fear no judge or jury!" 1908 saw the end of the Black Patch War. The mayor, Charles Meacham, was also the editor of the Hopkinsville Kentuckian, which had editorialized against the Night Riders. During the Civil War, the area was heavily pro-Confederate, though Kentucky never successfully seceded. After independence climate and tradition established it as the main cash crop in the Upper South—Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and later, west of the Blue Ridge, in Kentucky and Tennessee. Although that situation was still ongoing, the actions of local farmers so far had shocked the local officials into studying their needs. The ladies in the telephone switchboard were politely taken into custody. Violence was only one method employed by the growers to raise the price of tobacco. The son of a Confederate officer, he was not a planter but he knew tobacco and its importance to the area; he knew the planters and he knew the local way of life. Flames lighted the skies, and a flying squad made quick work of the Kentuckian office, smashing the presses, scattering type, and chasing the mayor/editor into hiding in the coal bin of a Baptist church. Shipped in hogsheads from Virginia to England, it was the primary source of wealth for the Southern colonies. Some arrests were made but convictions in the Black Patch courts were never obtained. 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