Wars

attacking North
Carolina’s plantation
society in the age of
Reconstruction
the
Lowry

Wars

attacking North Carolina’s
plantation society in the
age of Reconstruction
1| Tue Lowry Wars

FORWARD from the AUTHOR

1 became excited about this story when a friend of mine heard
about a book project myself and several others were tentatively
undertaking, and suggested including a section about the "Low-
1y gang.” I had never heard of them, but after he showed me a
large, old-fashioned button with Heny Berry Lowry's face, appar-
ently passed down from his family, I was intrigued.

Every text I read brought me deeper and deeper into the subject,
which to my pleasant surprise involved not just the efforts of a
few lone vigilantes but entire communities of exploited and op-
pressed North Carolinians at the end of the Civil War. Brought
up on the usual anarchist tales of assassins, bank robbers, and
the like from the European continent, I was thrilled to learn
about the struggle of the Lumbees and their comrades, which
were at least as brilliant, daring, and politically poignant as the
deeds of any Bonnot or Durruti,

In particular I was excited to present the ways in which this
history undermines what I was taught growing up about Re-
construction, about the tragedy of Republicans’ failed efforts
at racial justice, the absence of multiracial resistance, and the
State’s position toward former slaves and Indians. This view of
the Republican Party, as a benevolent but impotent force, was
what T learned in school; at home I learned a different narra-
tive, one idolizing Democratic (and by extension KKK) efforts
at White “self preservation” in the face of “carpetbaggers” and
the excesses of Northern Reconstruction. To this day I can hear
my Alabama-born family reflect bitterly on Sherman's march, as
if the poverty and hunger it brought was somehow unique to a
newly humiliated White race.

One might argue that both these perspectives hold grains of
truth, in that they reflect at least some participants' lived expe-
rience. But both are nevitably imbued with the White suprem-
acy and profitseeking of Northern industrialism and Southern
Plantation soclety, and neither offer much of substance to help
us understand the actual role and function of early capitalism,
party politics, and racialized exploitation in the emerging New
South. Ultimately, the Northern and Southern economic modes
were a false opposition—the South needed Northern-style capital-
ism, and vice versa. It was, after all, Northern industrialists that
employed forced, unpaid Black labor in their Southern mines
and railroads long after the Civil War was over, thanks o the
uniquely Southern invention of conviet leasing. The Lowry con-
fliet ultimately brings this relationship to the fore, in a way that
is less tragic and more herolc than many of the Reconstruction
Tue Lowy Wags | 2

‘narratives we are used to reading.

In this sense the Lumbee and Black struggles in Robeson
County at the end of the Civil War were characteristic of many
Southern histories of revolt and insurrection, wherein the pro-
tagonists face not one enemy but several, against both existent
State forces as well as a secondary ruling class in the process of
replacing them. The southern rebellious slave, maroon guerilla
fighter, prison rioter, striker, or indentured servant inevitably
‘must choose a treacherous path between or in total rejection of
these competing ruling class forces.

Tshould make a few notes about the writing of this text. The pro-
Jeot would not have been possible without the help of specifi
ally two books: The Only Land I Know, by two Lumbee authors
Adolph Dial and David Eliades, and To Die Game, by W. McKee
Evans. Thelr excellent rescarch and perspective was uniquely
‘elpful. This history is also possible, to the extent of the specific
details that it includes, by the long oral tradition of the Lumbee
people, which has managed to preserve much of the anecdotal
and legendary quality of the insurgents’ actions.

This writing was underiaken as part of a larger collaborative
project with several other authors, as we attempt to piece fo-
gother a much longer text that presents an in-depth history of a
variety of rebellions and insurrectionary moments from across
Southern history. That project is still under way, of course, but
we hope that this ‘zine can function as a kind of first draft for
the Lowry section, and catalyze some discussion and response
from readers that will help guide the larger writing project over
the next six months.

Long Live the Lowry Clan,
Long Live Revolt from the Swamps, the Streets,
and Everywhere in Between,

NC Piece Corps-espondent Sweet Tea
3| Tue Lowsy Wars

Henry Berry Lourie where are you?
Slecping in an unknown grate.
Does thegrass grouw above your breast,
Or do dark waters flow
With secretsounds through your bones
That uill confuse manind
Untilthe end of time.
From ever lasing o everlasting
You are the hero of a people.
Keepyour secres as you leep=~
That s part ofyour greates,
~Adolph L. Dia,
“The Hero ofa People”

INTRODUCTION

On December 21st, 1864, a wealthy slaveholder and minor offi-
clal of the Confederacy named James P. Barnes was ambushed
on his way to the Post Office in Robeson County, North Carolina.
After being initially cut down by a shotgun blast, Barnes was shot
at point blank range in the head. While the assassins fled into a
swamp, two nearby White residents arrived on the scene just in
time to hear the dying slaveowner accuse two Lumbee Indians,
‘William and Henry Berry Lowny, of the murder.

s a slaveowner and official in the Confederacy, Barnes was
hardly an innocent man. Specific to this murder, he had recently
accused several Lowries of stealing his hogs, in an example of
‘what many Lumbees still describe as “tled-mule” incidents. (Dial,
45) It was common practice for White men to tie up thelr own
livestock on an Indian's land, and return at a later time to accuse
the family of stealing his animals. Knowing the family had little
chance for justice in White courts, the White man would agree
to not press charges if the Lumbees would cede over a portion of
their land, or agree to work the white family’s land for free. Such
incidents comprised only one of the many strategles by which
plantation society succeeded in gradually reducing the size and
quality of Lumbee lands, reducing native autonomy, and press-
ing Lumbee men into forced labor, elther on White plantations
or at the Confederate forts on the coast.' Barnes had recently
used this exact strategy to foroe several Lowry sons into working
at feverinfested labor camps to help build the Confederate Fort

© Such methods bring to mind the same affect plea bargaining has today
wpon millions of Americans trapped in our judicial archipelsgo.
Tue Lowry Wags | 4

Fisher in Wilmington, thus unintentionally arranging his own
death at the hands of Henry Berry Lowry, a man whom he had
seriously underestimated, and whose legend would continue to
grow over the next decade.’

Such a revenge Iilling was not necessarily rare in the mid-1800s,
when family feuds were common and vigilantism and the law of
ten went hand in hand. But due to a number of factors, Including
the fact that thousands of other Black and Indian laborers were
being forced into new conditions of servitude on the supposed
eve of “emancipation,” the imminent arrival of a vietorious Un:
ion Army, the escape of large numbers of Yankee soldiers from
Confederate prison camps, and the relative cultural and econom-
ic autonomy of North Carolina’s Lumbees, what could have been
isolated as a solitary act of vengeance came to be seen and expe-
rienced by Robeson County’s people of color as a righteous act
of political rebellion against forced labor and White supremacy.

Thus began the Lowry Wars, a period of roughly eight years of
almost uninterrupted, multizacial attacks on Plantation soclety
in southeastern Norih Carolina. Dozens of sheriffs and white su-
premacist militia were murdered, plantations and white-owned
stores expropriated, and five different successful prison breaks
carried out, in what to this day represents period of marked
pride and dignity for North Carolina’s Lumbees. It was a time of
drastic economic and racial transition, opening avenues to new
Kinds of solidarity and political alliances possible between poor
White families, newly “freed” Black laborers, and Natives, but
also to new forms of economic and social bondage. Above all the
Lowry War illustrates the kinds of racial hypocrisy, betrayal, and
recuperation which would come to be expected from Northern
industrialists and their Radical Republican allies, and what their
industrial vision would soon have in store for the race relations
and economic servitude of poor people in the rural South.

ON the LUMBEES

To understand the constellation of cultural practices and eco-
nomie conditions that surround the Lowry War requires a brief
background on the Lumbees of southeastern North Carolina.
Historians and anthropologists disagree as to the exact origins
of the tribe, how the Lumbees came o be in the area around the
Lumber river, and who exactly their ancestors are. The lands
now oceupied by the Lumbee Indians were once controlled by
‘members of Eastern Sioux bands like the Catawba, Cheraw, and

2 1t should be pointed out that two hogs cars with Barnes’ mark were
indeed found on Lowry property, so it is possible the thefi actuslly took
place, to which we can only commend the Cowries even more.
5| Tue Lowry Wars

Waccamarw, and it is assumed that some members of these bands
‘mixed with the Lumbees. (Dial, 16-17) Others have staked a claim
on a Cherokee influence, which is supported primarily by the
oral tradition of the Lumbees themselves, as well as by anecdotal
evidence like the fact that one major Cherokee Chief was named
George Lowrle. I is also documented that the more assimilated
clements of Cherokee culture interacted with the Lumbees in
the 18th century sporadically, prior to Cherokee’s “removal” by
White people.

Language studies are of little help In determining Lumbee ol
gins, due to the fact that the earliest recorded observations of
Lumbees all agree on their speaking English before European
contact, speciically, a style of Old English unique to England in
the 16th century. There is no “native” language of the Lumbees,
though due to their own cultural and economic autonomy, they
continued to speak an old style of English long into the 19th and
even 20th cenfuries.

The predominant historical explanation for this bizarre phenom:
enon, which has emerged alongside an array of other evidence, is
that the Lumbees of North Carolina are the primary descendants
of Lord Raleigh's famous “Lost Colony.” These 117 men, women,
and children, led by Governor John White, were sent from Eng-
land to settle Roanoke Island in 1587. Governor White quickly
left the colony to return to England for supplies in August 1587,
and was unable to return for three years due to a naval war with
Spain. Upon his return, he found no one, only some abandoned
supplies that were too large to carry, and a strange marking on a
gatepost that simply read, "CROATOAN."

For many yeas it was merely assumed by historians, all evidence
to the contrary, that the colonists had perished. The dea that col
onists voluntarily “went native,” to live in peaceful relations with
their “inferiors,” was absurd, despite the reality of positive rela-
tions with the nearby Hatteras Tribe (the birthplace of one mem-
ber being, in fact, named “Croatoan”). Despite initial White de-
nial of this voluntary exodus, a legend and mythology of the Lost
Colony grew anyway, and still to this day functions as a kind of
“origin myth” of radical escape from civilization, dreamed about
and built upon by the contemporary anarchist imagination.*

Strange, then, that for many historians and Lumbee authors, the
mystery of the Lost Colony is now no real mystery at all. Afier
understanding patterns of native migration at the time, the most

3 For a longer history of the Croatoan debate, and how this concept of
escape and redemption plays out in the rac
Cratan,

1 mind, check out Gone o
Tue Lowey Wags | 6

simple explanation for the use of Old English among Lumbees
who had supposedly never before interacted with a European,
the strange absence of many shared cultural practices with near-
by natives, the presence of many English agrarian and kinship
customs, and the existence of phenotype characteristics like
blonde hair and blue eyes, is that the Lumbees largely come from
refugees of the original “Lost Colony.” Oral traditions reinforce
this interpretation. An excerpt from a speech given at the funeral
of two Lumbee boys murdered by a member of the Confederate
‘Home Guard serves as an example:

We were a free peaple long before the White men came to
ourland. Our tribe lived in Roanoke in Virginia. When the
English came to our land, we treated them kindly. We took
the English to live with us. There is the White man's blood
in these veins as well as that of the Indian. (Dial, 48)

‘One final piece of evidence: of the 85 different surnames found in
the original Lost Colony, 41 of these were found among the early
Lumbees.

Combined with a likely blood and cultural influence of other
native tribes, this means that the Lumbees emerged as iis own
unique grouping fairly recently, as a kind of refugee tribe, built
together from Anglo-Saxon escapisis and those Indians who had
left thelr native regions either due to choice or tribal rivalries
of some kind. While fully selfidentifying as Indian, they were
culturally a bridge between Anglo-Saxon and Native cultures of
the surrounding areas, traditionally practicing both smallscale
subsistence agriculture and hunting, as well as mutuaaid based
kinship networks.

Given the Anglo-Saxon cultural influence on the Lumbees, it's
not surprising that for a time the tribe was able to live in relative
peace with English settlers. Lumbees often sided with settlers
in conflicts with other Natives, and mainly kept to themselves.
They also traditionally occupied the difficult lands in between
acres and acres of swamp, leaving little immediate incentive for
a large-scale White-orchestrated land theft, as long as greener
‘pastures lay clsewhere.

This is not to say that the Lumbees had not defended themselves
before. In 1754, for example, when the State of North Carolina
sent troops to Virginia to help in its war against Indians, a sur-
veyor was sent to the area of Robeson County o inquire about
‘men for military service. The Governor's Agent noted at the time,

Drowning Creek [Lumbee River] on the head of Little Pee
Dee, fity families, a mixt crew, a lawless people, possess-
7 | Tue Lowsy Wars

ing the land without patent or paying any quit rents; shot a
surveyor for coming to view vacant lands...(Dial, 31)

The Lumbees must have been well aware of the precarious na-
ture of their existence for a long time, surrounded as they were
by a hostile State form and an emerging economy that enslaved
Indians, Africans, and even poor Whites at will. But it wasn't re-
ally until the age of “Jacksonian Democracy,” a time of increas-
ingly hostile racial caste systems, and the (related) uncertain
future of the Plantation economy, that the Lumbees were forced
en masse Into the social conflicts of the day. Surrounded on all
sides by Anglo-Saxon political and economic forms, there was
suddenly no retreat.

Several legal developments reflect this change, though the
everyday practices of White power structures were really the
catalyzing force. In 1835, North Carolina. revised its Constitu-
tion to officially disentranchise all free non-Whites. In 1840, in
a foreshadowing of the American use of gun control to disarm
potentially insurgent populations, particularly people of color,
ihe General Assembly passed a law prohibiting free non-Whites
from owning or carrying weapons without getting a license from
the Court. (Dial, 43-45) This legislation emerged in response to
a growing swell of antislavery sentiment and slave rebellions
nationally. Locally, these legal changes ocourred alongside oul-
tural and economic practices by Whites in Robeson County that
gradually but forcefully functioned to steal land from the Lumbee
community, and thus turn them into a landless people, forced to
work on White plantations or industrial projects like railroads,
either due to hunger, the point of a bayonet, or both. Attempted
insurrections like those of Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, and John
Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry In 1859 offered hope to many and
succeeding in destabilizing to a large degree this early capitalist
system, heightening racial anxieties on behalf of White elites in
the process. The need for unpaid, forced labor to kickstart the
Confederate war machine intensified this process even further.
By the end of the Civil War, despite a “victory” for emancipation,
the Lumbee community was facing the destruction of its trad.
tional cultural practices, the decline of its legal status to that of
Black exslaves, and a future of landlessness and forced wage la-
bor on industrial projects owned in part by Northern "liberators.”

‘THE WAR BEGINS

The Lowry War began with a vengeful assassination visited upon
a Confederate Sherif responsible for foreing Indians (as well as
still-enslaved Black men) into labor camps. Less than a month
later, another Confederate figure was murdered by ambush. The
Tue Lowry Wags | 8

man was James Brantly Harris, a known rapist, liquor dealer,
and an officer In the Confederate Home Guard, a local policing
body that hunted down deserters, escaped slaves, and union pris:
oners.* One Lumbee author described him s a *230-pound, swag-
gering, cursing, redfaced bully...remembered in the folk stories
of the Lumbees as a man ‘mean as the devil, the meanest man in
Robeson County.” (Dial, 48)

Harris was charged with “keeping the peace” in Souffletown,
the center of social activity for the Lumbees in Robeson County.
To this day it is unclear whether Scuffletown refers to a precise
location or functioned as a name for any place where Lumbees
gathered to share news or have good time. Some believe it to
be in the general area of Pembroke, others o be at Moss Neck,
and still others argue that it was a “floating or moving commu-
nity.” When interviewed, the Lumbee Reverand D. F. Lowry said
that Seuffletown “was similar to the end of a rainbow...You never
could find the place.” All that is known is that it referred to a
gathering place of some kind, an either permanent or rotating
and temporary zone, autonomous from surrounding White soc-
ety, where news could be passed along, goods traded or shared,
and festivities and declsionmaking could take place. (Svans, 26)

In any case, upon attempting to police Scuffletown, Harris ulti
‘mately paid a price for his bullying. His murder was catalyzed
by his own, brutal bludgeoning to death of two boys of the large
and respected Lowry clan, who had stood up to him when he had
‘made carlier unwanted advances upon an Indian female relative.
Both Whites and Indians sympathetic to the Lowries attended
the boys’ funeral, and despite a warrant being issued for Har-
1is’ arvest, he never made it to trial: while pleasureriding In his
buggy on Sunday, January 15th, 1865, Harris was ambushed and
Killed by a barrage of gunfire. One account says that his body
was taken from the buggy and thrown into a well; another says
that Harris was so hated by the Indian people that he was "buried
in an unmarked grave, lying north and south, ‘crossways of the
world,” rather than east and west as the Lumbees traditionally
bury their dead.” (Dial, 48)

At this point, surely realizing that the assassination of both a
civil and a military officer would not go unnoticed by the State,

4 Several writers have pointed out that institutions like these Home
Guards transitioned seamlessly after the Civil War into the modern police
forces we've all come to know and hate. One can draw a vavering but un-
broken line from the fugitive slave bounty hunters of chateel slavery, to the
Gonfederate Home Guards of the civil war, 10 the KKK and local sheriffs
of Reconstruction and Jim Crowe periods, and then finally to the police
departments of the modern era,
9 | Tue Lowry Wags,

an Informal but emerging band of multiracial rebels responsible
for the assassinations sought to act proactively. In response to
the ban on Indians and Blacks owning weapons, the next course
ofaction they chose was a bold raid for arms and ammunition on
the Robeson County courthouse in Lumberton, which also func-
tioned as an armory for the local militia. (Wilmington North Caz-
olinian, February 15th, 1863). The expropriation was successful,
and the Lowry Band, as they came to be called, began a series of
ambitious raids on prosperous planters in the area, distributing
the plunder in the evermysterious Seuffletown. They avoided the
property of Buckskins’, Blacks, and Indians, which helped them
maintain a broad base of support and is probably a large reason
for the band's multiracial character. The final notable raid in
this period, which took place February 27th, 1865, was an attack
on the Argyle Plantation, which turned into an intense gun bat-
tle. After gaining entry to the house, one of the band’s members,
a Yankee regular named Owen Wright, was injured, but the Con-
federate officers and wealthy widow who owned the plantation
S00n gave up. While no one was killed, this incident prompted a
retaliation by the Home Guard soon after.

Some notes should be given on the composition of this emerging
band of insurgents. Most of the people who Joined were Lumbee
Indians, many of them related by marriage or blood o the ex-
tensive Lowry clan. This includes members like Henry Berry's
brothers Stephen and Thomas Lowry, his first cousins Calvin
and Henderson Oxendine, his brothers-in-law Andrew and Boss
Strong, and many others. Some were simply friends who had an
axe to grind with the White political and economic establish-
ment, like John Dial, an Indian blacksmith apprentice whose fa-
ther was harassed at bayonet point by the Home Guard. At least
two Black former slaves Joined as well, a skilled mason named
George Applewhite and another man named “Shoemaker John.”
Another member was the White youth Zachariah McLaughlin, a
Buckskin Scot who had developed an affinity for the Lumbees
after attending many of their festive, all-night corn-shuckings.
Betraying his Calvinist background or any yearning for White
respectability, MeLaughlin joined the band in 1870 after being
denounced by a White girl

All of the gang tended to carry large amounts of weapons on
hand, typically two or three revolvers, a shotgun, a rifle, and a
bowie knife apiece. Deseriptions from journalists of the day

5 Buckskins were poorer Scotch-lrish immigrants living in Robeson
County. They occupied a place somewhere between Indians and full
Whites in the racial hierarchy of the time, though there were slso fully
integrated, wealthy Scotch planters active in plantation society and Con-
federate circles.
Tue Lowry Wags | 10

Henry Berry Lowry

tended to describe the gang’s leader Henry Berry Lowry in par-
ticularly spectacular terms. A pamphlet printed in 1872, which
admittedly sought to sensationalize the outlaws' band, reported
that, “His forehead is good and his face and expression refined—
remarkably so, considering his mixed race, want of education,
and long career of lawlessness...The very relatives of White men
Killed by Henry Berry Lowry admitted o me that, ‘He is one of
the handsomest mulattoes you ever saw.” Multiple reporters
praised Lowry's skill with banjo and fiddle, and many observed
that for a leader of men Lowry was remarkably quiet: “His voice
is sweet and pleasant, and in his manner there is nothing selt-
important or swaggering. He is not talkative, listens quietly, and
searches out whoever is speaking to him..” (Townsend, 12)

There were many, many other people involved directly or ind-
rectly in the Lowry War, including in the beginning Yankee sol-
diers who had escaped from Confederate prison camps. The band
was overwhelmingly young; in the beginning the majority were
teenagers, with both Henry Berry's right hand man Boss Strong,
as well as John Dial, being only fourteen. They were unique
for a guerilla operation In that their numbers and participants
changed regularly, ranging from a small handful to dozens to
perhaps even hundreds. Initially, members lived their Lives out
in the open in the community for many months at a time, only
returning to hide in the swamps when the militia came around
11| Tue Lowry Wars

Calvin Oxendine

or federal troops later ocoupied the area. The deep kinship net-
works of the Lumbee and emerging communities of sympathetic
free Blacks made this possible, and the constant interaction with
non-outlaw society allowed them to avoid their own political iso-
Lation, as well as vigilante posses and police Informants. It was
not unusual for Henry Berry Lowry himself to show up at church
one day, singing hymns alongside a Confederate officer, only to
miraculously disappear to the swamps before a militia could be
mustered by the terrified soldier.

Henderson Oxendine

It's important to understand that, throughout the conflict of the
Lowry War, the activities of this insurgent band would have been
completely impossible without the active collusion of large seg-
ments of the Lumbee community, as well as the (af least) pas-
sive sympathy of much of the Black and Buckskin communities.
Numerous escapes from Jail and vigilante violence were direct-
1y made possible by Lumbee family members and kinship net-
works, through not just the sharing of information but the active
distribution of tools to jailed comrades, and even, at times, entire
groups of Lumbee Indians volunteering for militia duty in order
Tue Lowry Wags | 12

to directly obstruct White efforts. By the time of the assassina-
tions of Harris and Barnes in the winter of 1864-65, free Lumbees
and Black slaves were already engaged in a kind passive resist-
ance against the Plantation and Confederate regime, aiding os-
caped fugitives and hiding in swamps en masse to avoid labor
conseription.

THE HOME GUARD LASHES OUT

With the assassination of two officials and a series of expropria-
tions against several prosperous plantations, the Worst fears of
Robeson County's White establishment were beginning to come
true. While much of the slave community was still hedging its
bets on the imminent arrival of the Union Army, the Lumbees
had selzed the initiative.

The White supremacist response materialized in March 1865,
when, frustrated by the outcome of the war and by the recent
attacks against planters and police, eighty men of the Home
‘Guard captured a half dozen Lowry family members and put on a
rushed “trial” for theft. Two of the men, Allen and William Low-
1y, were hastily exeouted by a firing squad. Then on April 1st,
‘upon visiting the home of Sinclair Lowry to search for weapons,
a firing squad separated Mary Lowry, an elderly matriarch of the
Lumbees, and tied her to a stake and blindfolded her, just as they
had done only a few weeks prior to her son and husband, Allen
‘and William. A soldier's voice interrogated her as to the location
of stolen arms, but she refused to answer, and another soldier
oried out, “Fire!” The shots were aimed above her head, intend:
ing to terrify her into talking. She still refused to talk, and the
‘men eventually untied her and returned her to the cabin. The
woman’s courageous silence forced the Guard to leave without
obtaining any information as to the location of her guerilla sons,
or where their arms were hidden. (Evans, 51)

‘The summer and fall of 1865 continued on relatively quietly, with
no particularly notable robberies or attacks taking place. It al-
‘most seemed as if the end of the Civil War would come to pass
with a return to normality. But then on December 7th, the situa-
tion exploded again. The teenage Henry Berry Lowry was to be
‘married to Rhoda Strong, and the wedding was a massive event,
celebrating the feats of the young Lowry as well as the incredible
courage of his mother. Despite the Civil War years of poverty and
‘hunger, the wedding feast remains legendary to this day, taking
up .75 foot long table on the yard of the old Allen Lowry Home-
stead.

Unfortunately, the festivities were broken up by a troop of the
13 | Tue Lowry Wars

Home Guard, led by Licutenant AJ. Menair. The officers leveled
their guns at Henry Berry Lowry and attempted to place him un-
der arrest for the murder of Barnes. Lowry refused, jumping be-
hind one of the only two White men present, and yelling, “Men,
are you golng to see one man tie me here fonight?” After this
appeal to the crowd, about half of the two hundred people pre-
sent proceeded to march upon the Home Guard as they dragged
Lowry away. Unarmed, they were beaten back by the butt ends of
muskets, and ultimately forced to abandon their efforts. (Evans,
7071)

Because General Sherman had burned the county jail in Lum-
berton, Lowry was instead taken to the Columbus County jail in
‘Whiteville, and charged with the killing of James Barnes. Accord-
ing to court records, Lowry treated the proceedings with “proud
contempt,” refusing to answer questions or counter-examine wit-
nesses. (Evans, 72)

It did not matter. As a local White reported, Lowry “filed his way
through the iron bars of his cell and broke down the wall of the
jail while the jailer and family ocoupled rooms beneath,” and was
thus able to “escape to the woods with handcutfs on, and make
his way back to his wife In Scuffleton. This was the first escape
ever effected by a criminal confined in jail at Whiteville. How
he came in possession of a file, no one in the confidence of the
whites can tell” (Norment, 13). A Lumbee folk tradition states,
however, that the file was brought to Lowry concealed in a cake
by his new bride, Rhoda Strong. Along with fueling a cartoon cli-
hé of outlawry that persists to this day, this was to be the first of
five dramatic jail breaks to ocour throughout the Lowry confliot.

In the year and a half after this spectacular escape, the Lowry
band spent more and more time in the swamps of Robeson Coun-
ty, hiding from an increasingly frustrated and angry White su-
premacist establishment. Plantation expropriations continued
intermittently as well. New members joined the gang periodi-
cally, adding numbers to replace the rogue Union soldiers who
had rejoined with General Sherman when he passed through in
carly 1865, or gone back to their own homes at the end of the war.

None of the bandits or their many Lumbee community accom-
plices were caught in this time period, despite the Sheriff Reu-
ben King issuing 35 separate writs for Henry Berry alone. The
Lowry band was seltdisciplined in iis targets and affinities: in
almost nine years of attacking Planter society, it did not once
target the property of Blacks, Indians, or Buckskin poor.

6 The gang once robbed the presumably wealthy John MeNair, only to
find a mere fficen dollars on his person, after which they returned the
Tue Lowry Wass | 14

In the years between 1866 and 1868, President Johnson willingly
turned a blind eye to both the return of exConfederate figures
to power and to the racist KKK terror that accompanied this de-
velopment. It comes as no surprise, then, that it was not to the
courts or police that poor Robesonians turned to for justice, but
1o the Lowry gang. When one local Black woman was interviewed
by a Northern newspaper reporter, she showed him her mouth.
When she was a slave, her master had knocked out all but fwo of
her teeth with an oak stick. She was quoted, “Oh dis was hard
country, and Henry Berry Lowry's jess a paying ‘em back. He's
only payin’ ‘em back! It's better days for the Black people now.
(Bvans, 77)

REPUBLICAN RULE and the LOWRIES

The Conservative Johnsonian state regimes were overturned in
1868, resulting in a power vacuum whereby, for a short time in
some parts of the South, no specific State power existed with
certainty. Some of the most exciting experiments in communiza-
tion and seltdetermination the US has ever seen ocourred in this
short time period, whereby the idea of freedom would be radi
cally reinterpreted by millions of poor people of color.

The brief rise of southern Republicanism, on the backs of masses
of newly enfranchised Black voters, has often been Interpreted
by Left historians as a brief period of hope and possibility for
those who suffered from White Supremacy in the Old South.
While it's true that these regimes were initially greeted with en-
thusiasm by many, it's clear that the actual function of Republi
canism, in both its moderate and Radical forms, was to subdue
and constrain any possible expansion of the meaning or scope of
“emancipation.” From the minor social programs of the Freed:
‘men's Bureau to the use of landless workers in new industrial
enterprises, from the “law and order” rhetoric aimed meekly at
the Ku Klux Klan to the outright repression of popular uprisings
like the Lowry War or Georgla’s Ogeechee Insurrection, the Re-
publican Party built the foundation of its “new exploitation and
oppression firmly upon the old.

In Robeson County the Republican Party found ltself in a pecu:
liar bind. The Party was nationally commitied to a law and order
platform, in an ultimately vain attempt at isolating and discred:
iting the waves of KKK vigilante terror that were sweeping the
South and keeping Black voters from the polls. Such terror had
increased drastically when Republicans took over; as the Con-

money and left quiety. (Evans, 137)
15 | Tue Lowry Wars

Swamp.

servatives lost control of the legal means to inflict violence, they
shifted casily into extralegal means. A law and order position
‘meant that Republicans had positioned themselves to be equally
‘opposed to any kinds of popular rebellion or direct action, or for
that matter Black or Brown self-defense. Locally, however, the
Party's base constituency was overwhelmingly supportive of the
‘popular vengeance and collective theft represented by the Lowry
gang, and so the Party was conflicted.

oSt
ang in the

Henry Berry Lowry and His G

A second issue confronted the local Republican Party as well
Certain members of the old Home Guard were now active in the
party organization, and any resurrection of concerns about the
Lowry violence would bring this embarrassing fact to the fore-
front.

In the end, the national and Industrial concerns of the Party inev-
itably took priority. In October of 1868, a sheritf of New Hanover
County asked Republican Governor Holden whether he intend-
ed to honor an caslier bounty put on Henry Berry Lowry's head.
‘Soon atter, thirty men raided a company store in McLaurin’s Hill,
South Carolina, followed by three large plantations in Robeson
County. On November 30th, at the behest of a Conservative peti-
tion, Governor Holden issued a proclamation of outlawry against
Henty Berry Lowry and many of his companions. Less than a
year after taking power, the party of the Union had turned its
back on the communities it had claimed to “liberate.”
Tur Lowry Wags | 16

Several days later, aware of the precarious position into which
the local party apparatus had placed itself, an agent for the newly
formed Freedmen’s Bureau and the newly elected sherlff paid a
cordial visit to the cabin of Henry Berry Lowry and Rhoda Strong.
After a large meal and entertainment from Henry Berry Lowry's
deft fiadle-playing, they begged him to turn himself in, promis-
ing fair treatment and an impartial trial In the new Republican
courts. Strangely, he agreed, and allowed himself to be taken to
a jail newly rebuilt by the Republican government in Lumberton.

Rumors of a possible lynch mob, however, reached Lowry's ears
in jail, and after noticing that security was strangely lacking, he
planned his escape. On December 12th, 1868, when the jailor
brought Lowry his evening meal, he was confronted with a pistol
and bowie knife. Lowry complained about his treatment, report-
edly saying, “T'm tired of this,” and walked out of the building.
(DG, 108)

Six weeks later, the gang reappeared. The wealthy landowner
and former sheriff Reuben King, a man detested for his 18-year
legacy of brutalizing Indians, catching escaped slaves, and evict-
ing debtors, was shot in his own patlor by George Applewhite.
The gang proceeded to ransack the plantation and escape to the
swamp.

The Lowries, and by extension their vast community network of
Lumbee and Black supporters, had unofficially declared war on
Republican Robeson County. There was no going back.

TR
ASSASSINATION and ESCAPE

A to b expecto, thore was shortage of Repubican officrs
with iy experiones n the pon it War South, and 0 the
ki e A P A e
e e e o o oo ety st vt Gt
Owen Normaat,a ran whe m mad & name fof himeelt bunting
e o e ponas v e
tony, o s g e it s o e g
Vitors, his i e e of propery, 1w, and arden

Norment was more skilled than his predecessors in the Home
Guard, and by September of 1869 managed to capture eight
‘members of the Lowry gang. Two of these men, Shoemaker John
and John Dial, initially gave corroborating testimony about the
gang’s involvement in the murders, but later repudiated their
statements, saying they were made under torture. Foraging raids
17 | Tue Lowry Wars

and expropriations against large landowners continued, how-
ever, seeming to imply that as soon as some men were caught,
others from the community could easily take their place.’ Many
of these raids occurred even in areas where the militia was most

actively in pursui.

Then, on March 19th, 1870, just two weeks before the trials of the
cight men were set to begin, the new regime experienced a ma-
Jor setback. Captain Norment was sifting at home with his wile
when he heard a noise at the door. Norment walked out into the
night and was quickly cut down by a shot in the dark. A doctor
was called, but on his way there the mule pulling his buggy was
shot, and the doctor consequently arrived 100 late to save the
Confederate-turned Republican Indian hunter.*

On April 1st, two of the captured men, George Applewhite and
Stephen Lowry, were tried for the murder of ex-Sherlff Reuben
King. Despite the repudiation of John Dial's carlier statements,
and the assassination of Captain Norment, the men were con-
victed and sentenced to hanging. While these men sat in Jail in
Wilmington, three of the four other captured comrades man-
aged a daring escape from thelr confinement in Lumberton.
According 1o a local paper, a “low white woman,” likely Rhoda
Strong, managed to pass onto them an auger during visitation,
with which they cut a hole in the wall and escaped.

Not to be outdone by their comrades, the remaining captured
‘members of the gang set themselves to escaping from their own
Jail in Wilmington. On June 13th, at 2am, the night guard made
his regular rounds o the cells, only to find the one holding the
Lowry gang members completely empty. The mystery was even:
‘tually unraveled: while guards and prisoners alike were distract
©d by a beautiful female accomplice earlier in the day, a second
accomplice outside the building helped Stephen Lowry haul up
a hatchet, chisel, and file through a jail window. The Innovative
prisoners then used the tools to fashion a makeshift key from a
tin spoon and open their cell door, and escaped through a hole
they had cut through the wall on a different floor. George Apple-
white, Stephen Lowry, and Henderson Oxendine all managed to

7 The racist and somewhat sensational Wilmington Jounal suggested the
gang had as many as 300 active members, though in all likelihood the
paper greadly exaggerated. (Week Jounal, Sept. 24, 1869)

8 Outside of a brawl with a servant during an ill-chosen and drunken raid
on a distllery, this murdered mule was the only known *collateral dam-
age” of the Lowry’s war against plantation society. The authors would like
10 express our deepest sympathy for this courageous creature, and hope
that his or her sacrifice, in hastening the death of Captain Norment, in
turn saved the livs of many other inmocent creatures.

Tue Lowry Wags | 18

escape, while Calvin Oxendine declined to leave, insisting that
he was Innocent and had a solid alibL. (Evans, 120-123)

Failing miserably in their strategy of militiabased Lowry hunt-
ing, the regime chose a new strategy: an undercover police in-
formant. For many months a Boston detective named John
Saunders lived in the area, cynically pretending to be a compas-
sionate reformer aimed at teaching Indian children how to read
and write, while really under the direction of the State to find and
capture the Lowy gang. The man had some success initially, in-
gratiating himself among the outlaws and viewing some of their
swamp hideouts, but he was eventually caught talking to Con-
servatives about his work. After a heated debate, in which some
of the men strongly opposed killing him, the outlaws decided
that the only available course given his knowledge was execu-
tion. Following his death, the gang mailed Saunders’ last letter
and a photograph to his wite.

While the Republican authorities had enjoyed a cerfain initial
success in stopping the Lowries the summer of 1870 proved how
little they had actually achieved: nearly all of the bands' mem-
bers who had been captured had escaped, the raids on planta-
tions and the redistribution of planters’ wealth had continued,
and the most capable members of law enforcement in the county
had all been assassinated. The Republican party had lost all cred-
ibility, both from the explicltly racist Conservatives and from the
poor communities that comprised the party's own lacal base.

POSSES on the PROWL

In the aforementioned context, the fall of 1870 elections were
a disaster for the Republican Party. The party was seen as im-
potent by White elites and Conservatives, and was (accurately)
viewed as a betraying the hopes of the poor people of its own
base. Combined with a major railroads scandal, which engulfed
certain members of Robeson County’s own Freedmen’s Bureau,
and the active intimidation of voters by KKK terror, the results
were predictable.

In an effort to avold impeachment by a newly elected Conserva-
tive legislature, the Republican Governor Holden actually re-
quested federal forces to be pulled from Klanerrorized areas
and relocated to Robeson County to help hunt the insurgent In-
dians and former slaves of the Lowry gang. Though they were far

9 Av & matter of fact, he was correct. When Oxendine lster stood trial, an
employer vouched for him, he was acquitied of ll charges, and went on to
live a normal life in the community.
19 | Tue Lowry Wars

‘more hesitant to attack the Lowries than was the local Conserva-
tive militia, the numbers of these federal forces made larger mili-
tary operations possible.

The Lumbee's extensive knowledge of the swampland made sur-
rounding and capturing the Lowry gang difficult, however, and
the strategy failed a number of times. On more than one oceasion
the gang slipped through their net with ease, sometimes even
‘with members of the gang donning militia uniforms and joining
in the hunt for themselves. At other times entire troops of Lum-
bee men would volunteer for a militia unit, apparently with the
Sole intention of leading the search along a false trail. (Evans,
142, 189)

Nevertheless, the increase in militia numbers had some effect.
On October 5th, 1870, a militia unit, frustrated with the hunt,
went to the houses of several Lowry relatives, apparently con-
tent to just murder them instead. The men they captured were
Andrew Strong and Malcolm Sanderson, and, while Strong man-
aged to escape by cutting his bonds and fleeing into the swamp,
Sanderson was not o lucky. Revenge came quickly, though. On
January 14th, 1871, the KKK leader John Taylor, who had exe-
cuted Sanderson 3 months prior, was ambushed and shot in the
head less than a hundred yards from the spot where Sanderson
‘was murdered.

The White militia retaliated again in February. Targeted for be-
ing a Black radical, a Lowry supporter, or both, Benjamin Bethea
‘was beaten and then shot by a mob of angry Whites. His family
alerted the Lowries to come and help stop the beating, but they
anived too late. Shortly thereafter, two more White antiLowry
people were shot down In revenge.

The Conservative legislature at this time began to offer massive
rewards, up to $12,000 dead or alive, for members of the Lowry
gang. Remarkably, the gang themselves then offered a similar
reward (albeit smaller) to anyone who could deliver o them spe-
eific heads of state. Writes one historian,

If the legislators and county commissioners were demon-
strating a marked liberality In offering rewards, the mem-
bers of the Lowry band showed themselves to be of compa
rable mind. They offered one thousand dollars for the head
of Angus MeLean, a county commissioner, in 1870 and two.
hundred dollars each for a list of individuals they had de-
clared “outlaws” in 1872, their more modest rewards re-
sulting from the limitations of their resources rather than
from a more miserly spirit. (Bvans, 155)
Tue Lowry Wags | 20

‘The rewards offered by the State certainly had an effect, as more
and more posses of eager racists from around the region joined
the hunt. On April 15th, 1871, one such group of men ambushed
George Applewhite while he was walking up the path to his cab-
in. He recognized the trap and ran, but not before being brought
down by a bullet in the mouth, and then a second in the back.
Fearing the rest of the gang was nearby, however, the posse left
his body and returned the next day with the militia. The body had
disappeared, and Mrs. Applewhite refused to answer questions.
In frustration, the militia arrested her brother Forney Oxendine
instead on trumped up charges of theft

It took the milltia nine days to find the body of George Apple-
white, and it happened quite by aceident. A small group led by
the Conservative Sheriff McMillan was in the vicinity of Henry
Berry's cabin when they heard banjo music. They crept up slow-
1y, surprised to find Lowry family members hanging out on the
poreh, as well as Applewhite, who was resting in the sun. After
being shot twice, he had miraculously crawled into the swamp,
“spit the bullet out” of his mouth, and found his way to the cab-
in of Henzy Berry Lowry and Rhoda Strong. Some of the militia
opened fire on the men, who fled into the house and began re-
turning fire, while other soldiers lef to get help. The skirmish
lasted several hours, but at some point the militia realized the
outlaws had ceased firing. Upon slowly approaching the cabin,
they found it to be empty. The soldiers discovered "a trap...con-
cealed in the floor, the hinges hidden or mortised bencath. This
trap afforded admission to a sort of mine o covered way, which
ran under the surface about sixty yards to the swamp.” (Evans,
170)

Not one to leave a family member behind bars, on May 10th a
large band of armed men convened in Lumberton to stage a spec-
tacular attack on the jail. With most of the force left surrounding
the building to prevent a counter-attack by federal forces, Henry
Berry Lowry, Steve Lowny, Boss Strong, and the now recovered
George Applewhite forced the doors open with tools on hand,
held up the guards, and released Tom Lowry (who had been
captured earlier) and Forney Oxendine from their cells. They re-
turned to Scuffletown in triumph. Writing to the Governor after
this incident, local Reverend James Sinclair, pleaded"At this mo-
ment the outlaws rule the county.” (Evans, 182-183)

‘WAR on SCUFFLETOWN

Around this time, the mood began to shift in Conservative circles
towards the idea of targeting the entirety of the Lumbee com-
munity of Robeson County, rather than just the Lowry gang. It
21| Tur Lowry Was

was becoming increasingly clear that the Lowries had a massive
support network and that there was a reason they always knew
where the militia would be long before they got there. Wrote one
officer in charge of the federal units, “The Lowrys have almost as
‘many friends as enemies,” who give them “information of any ex-
pedition against them and resist the ivil law themselves. Taxes
cannot be collected...nor warranis served on any of the inhabit-
ants of this settlement.” This kind of solidarity was not limited to
the Lumbee community; members of the Black community also
sought to help the insurgents. One journalist wrote in 1872 how
the Lowries were forewarned of federal troop movements by rail,
observing that,

“A movement among the negro train hands will be ob-
served as the locomotive approaches the stations of Seuf-
flotown...When the troops pursued the scoundrels they
could hear a peculiar bark like that of a cur precede them,
and die away in the distance...It was passed from shanty
t0 shanty to put Lowery on qui vive.” (Townsend, 55)

These acts of popular solidarity goaded the more aggressive
elements of the white supremacist establishment into shifting
to a strategy of general terror against the Lumbees. There was
tension internal to the ruling class over this approach, with Re-
publican moderates still attempting to isolate the band rather
than punish the community as a whole. Nevertheless, July of
1871 saw this strategy attempted on the largest scale yet. Colonel
Frank Wishart organized an anti Lowry campaign with 117 men
at arms. Rather than attempt to find the Lowry gang, the militia
Split into detachments to harass the community and capture the
outlaws' unarmed wives at thelr homes.

Though the gang engaged the militia in several shootouts during
these operations, the most notable tale from the operation oc-
curred by accident. On July 10th, in the midst of their campaign
and with the wives already in custody, a troop of eighteen men
aceidentally stumbled upon Henry Berry Lowry rowing by him-
self down the Lumber River. The militia immediately recognized
the leader and opened fire. He was too fast, however, and, after
diving into the water and tipping up his boat 1o use as cover,
began returning fire. Rather than retreat, Lowry actually swam
towards the men, picking one off at at a time from the cover of his
upturned boat. Eventually the militia captain ordered his men to
rotreat, giving Lowry one more story by which to become legend.

A few days later, several members of the gang sent a letter to the
Sheritt of Robeson County, stating,

“We make a request, that our wives who were arrested a
Tue Lowey Wags | 22

few days ago, and placed in Jail, be released to come home
to their families by Monday Morning, and if not, the Blood
iest times will be here that ever was before—the life of eve-
1y many will be in Jeopardy.”

Three days later, civil authorities in the county held a meeting,
at which they decided to release the men's wives. The following
day, the westbound train arrived at the Lumbee village of Red
Bank carrying the wives of the outlaws. They had left as prison:
ers, but they returned as heroes. (Dial, 7475)

HENRY BERRY LOWRY DISAPPEARS

Though the federal traops proved consistently unwilling or una-
ble to apprehend the insurgents, thelr presence in the area made
large-scale expropriations of plantations increasingly difficult.
Outside of a generalized insurrection against the Conservative:
turned-Republican-turned Conservative regime, the gang could
not simply survive in the same territory forever.

In late 1871, various peace treaty efforis were attempted, sepa-
rate from any influence of the Lowry gang. Various Republican
and Conservative moderates tried to propose petitions that might
pardon the outlaws and allow for a return to normalcy, but the re-
turn of a sirictly Conservative state legislature made these efforts
hopeless. The State was positioned well enough to isolate and
contain any large-scale rebellion, but it remained committed to a
repressive course of action with the Lowrys that it was incapable
of actually carrying out." Asked by one of the political moderates
why Lowry did not just leave North Carolina, he replied, “Robe-
son County is the only land I know. I can hardly read, and do not
Know where to go if 1 leave these woods and swamps, where I was
raised. It can get safe conduct and pardon I will go anywhere.
But these people will not lot me live and 1 do not mean to enter
any jail again.” (Dial, 76)

On the night February 16th, 1872, after giving up on a series of
fruitless talks among politicians as to the possibility of pardon,
the insurgents drove horse and buggy to the store of a promi-

10 Abrief aneedote from the Wilmington Star to highlight the ut-
ter incompetency of the government troops a this time: In September of
1871, “an officer received a message from Lowry, sating that he had visited.
their camp the night before and inspected their arms to see if they were in
proper condition. As proof of this assertion he stated tht he had left his
“card,’ which would be found attached o one of their guns. Upon exam.-
ining their wespons the name Henry Berry Lowrey was found inscribed
upon the breach of one of them.” (Wilimington Star, August 18, 1871)

23 | Tue Lowry Wars

‘nent merchant in Lumberton and proceeded to steal a thousand
dollars worth of merchandise, as well as an iron safe from the
Sheriff’s office containing about $22,000. This was by far the
most costly expropriation the band had ever carried out. Afier
the raid, Henry Berry Lowry and many of his conspirators disap-
peared. (Bans, 220-221)

T HNRY R LSRR

In the following two years, pursuit of the remaining known mem-
bers of the gang by bounty hunters had some effect: Tom Lowry,
Andrew Strong, and the young Zachariah McLaughlin were all
‘ambushed and murdered by opportunistic bounty hunters driv-
on by the most massive rewards the state had ever offered for an
outlaw, and they generally left the area in a hurry after collect:
ing their pay. But the mystery of what happened to Henry Berry
Lowzy, or the money stolen that night, has never been solved.

Over a hundred and forty years later, historians and members
of the Lumbee community still disagree over the leader's disap-
pearance. A variety of folktales, legends, and hypotheses exist,
some supported by more evidence than others, but all inconclu-
sive: that Lowry escaped the county undercover as an injured
Soldier with the help of a sympathetic General; that he faked his
own death and funeral with a straw-stuffed "corpse,” later escap-
ing from the county in a stolen military uniform; that he escaped
by train in his own coffin; that he survived his endeavors and
emerged under a different name as a leader of native resistance
in the Pacific Northwest a few years later; that he died on his
brother Tom’s land by accidental discharge of his rifle, secretly
buried by his comrades to continue the legend and rebellion of
his symbolic status. Local newspapers tended to prefer the ac-
cidental death story, but thelr papers also had a political interest
in undermining the legend of the man, in much the same way
that both Fasclst and Communist mouthpieces manipulated the
‘mysterious death of Spanish anarchist leader Buenaventura Dur-
ruti during the defense of Madrid. What's more, neither the body
nor the grave site of Henry Berry Lowry have ever been found.

What remains clear is that, whether Lowry died young or old
in his own homeland, or went on to continue his struggle else-
where, the insurgent gang that bore his name lives on in Infamy
to this day. Lowry historian W. McKee Evans writes in his book
To Die Game,

The Lowrys clearly made an impact on the home territory
of the Lumbee River Indians. They appeared on the scene
Tue Lowry Waes | 24

at a partioularly difficult period in the history of the Indi-
ans. At this time the armed resistance of the plains Indi-
ans was being smashed, their numbers decimated, while
the Indians of the eastern seaboard had known lttle but
defeat and increasing humiliation for a hundred years.
With the triumph of a frankly racist party during Recon
struction, it appeared that nothing could stop the winners
from putting the Lumbee River Indians into the same half-
free place in which they generally succeeded in putting
the Blacks. But this effort failed...to a great extent because
of the bold deeds of the Lowrys, which filled the Lumbee
River Indians with a new pride of race, and a new confi-
dence that despite generations of defeat, revitalized their
will to survive as a people. (Bvans, 259)

A brief story may illustrate just how strongly the legend of the
Lowry gang survived to inspire the Lumbee people. In Januazy
1958, while attempting to resurrect a presence in Robeson Coun-
ty, the KKK burmed a cross near the home of an Indian family
who had moved into an all-white nelghborhood. A similar attack
was carried out the same night in nearby Saint Pauls in the drive-
way of a White woman allegedly having an affaix with an Indian
man. The Klan then announced an open-air rally to be held in the
area on January 18th,

‘Unfortunately for the KKK, another clan attended the rally, too.
Chavises, Hunts, Locklears, Lowrys, Oxendines, Sampsons, and
‘many other descendants of the Lowry insurgents arrived in force,
resulting in what one reporter called “the shortest Ku Klux Klan
rally in history.” (Lumberton Robesonian, January 20th, 1958) A
Newsweek journalist wrote,

The Indians let the Klansmen set up thelr microphone
and a single electriclight bulb; they let about 100 Klans-
men assemble around the truck. Then they began to move
forward, roaring: "We want Cole!” (ed. Note: Cole was the
grand wizard of the clan) Cole stayed precisely where he
was—behind the truck. The Lumbees began firing their
guns in the air; a sharpshooter shot out the light bulb.
There was pandemonium in the darkness; the guns spat
flame into the air; the amplitying system was torn apart
auto windows were shattered by bullets. The Klansmen,
themselves well armed, decided to run for it; there was
the roar of automobile engines. Then the sheriff’s depu-
ties fired the teargas bombs. When the gas cleared, the
Lumbee raid at Maxton was over. The Indians had won.
(Newsweck, LI, January 27, 1958, p. 27)

Four Klansmen were injured in the exchange, and as the Klan
25 | Tue Lowry Wars

left the Lumbees burned thelr regalia in celebration. The inci-
dent became known as the Battle of Hayes Pond, and is still cel-
ebrated as a Lumbee holiday. The men and women who fought
there were raised on stories of similar battles that ocourred al-
most a hundred years earlier, stories that inspired an identity
and culture of rebellion and dignity. Needless to say, the Klan
did not return to Robeson County.

R RS RO TRUOTION

Like many others Native tribes, the Lumbee community had been
struggling to maintain its own economic and cultural autonomy
for centuries. The chief avenue for this had historically been a
degree of “looking White” thanks to in part to the tribe’s English
ancestry, as well as living in territories unsuitable for large-scale
plantation development. But flare-ups of violent rebellion had
happened before, and when the Jacksonian and Confederate re-
gimes began to further erode the Lumbees’ autonomy, they had
that history to furn to.

Like many other places in the South, the power vacuums cre-
ated at the end of the Civil War in Robeson County allowed for
renewed efforts at direct resistance and new experiments in ex-
propriation and mutual aid. The tensions internal to the ruling
class, as well the complete incompetency of Yankee efforts to
understand and manage Southern social relations, made for an
environment ripe for the community-wide passive resistance and
violent guerilla tactics of the Lumbees.

Republicans were better at understanding how to incite indus-
trial growth than how to appease racial strife. While incapable
of pleasing both the White supremacist planter class as well as
people of color, and while clearly preferring the former to the lat-
ter, the Republican Party did serve a least one crucial function
for the State in the context of Southern race relations, of particu-
lar importance in rebellious Robeson County. The party played
the vital role of political anchor to otherwise ebellious and vio-
lent tendencies in the Black community. The anchor was one of
hope, keeping a majority of the Black community grounded in
the idea that change and freedom could and would eventually
be provided to them. While the Lowry conflict, which included
some Black partisans as well as Lumbees, directly demonsirated
the betrayal of the Republicans, most of the Black community re-
‘mained content to wait and see what the Yankee liberators would
do, preferring a passive support and sympathy for the rebels to
active rebellion alongside them. While the Lowries and their
Lumbee supporters were more than capable of terrorizing the
Tur Lowry Wass | 26

White supremacist establishment of Robeson County, one can
only dream of what would have happened had the much larger
populations of former slaves set aside thelr lukewarm loyalty to
the Republican Party and also joined in.

It cannot be emphasized enough, then, that resistance like that
of the Lumbees was not an extension of Radical Republicanism
into deeper waters, but rather something entirely different. Thou-
sands of black and brown (and some poor white) people across
the South continued to organize and rebel after Union vietory,
and this could be portrayed as a way to push the definition of
emancipation further than the racist Lincoln ever intended. But
the realigning of Southern political interests, with Republicans
hiring Confederate Indian and fugitive slave hunters, rebuilding
old jails, and securing easily exploitable, cheap labor to industri-
alize the South, demonstrates beyond a doub that for the coun-
2y’s political elite, the Civil War was over. For them, it was time
to put aside old rivalries and get back down to business.

Whatever the benevolent intentions of individual Radical Repub-
leans may have been, Yankee-engineered Reconstruction was
chiefly a step in forcefully re-integrating newly available popula-
tions of desperate and destitute former slaves into industrial and
agrarian production. The biopower of whipped slaves, landless
Indians, and indentured servant Whites eventually became the
biopower of starving workers, all (some more, some less) free to
sell their labor to large landowners or planters-turned-industri-
alists, in many cases the same ones they had worked for previ-
ously. That the oppressed were now citizens, free to participate
in civil society, to press grievances before the government, to in-
voke the almighty Law, was not a small step forward but a giant
leap sideways, into a world where rebellion could be endlessly
recyeled through the legitimate channels of political spectacle.
Bondage had not been abolished, it had been democratized.

The acts of those like the Lumbees In North Carolina represent
then a continuation of a different kind of war, not the Civil War
that ended on May 9th, 1865 at Appomatiox Court House, but
the soclal war that periodically reignited across the farmlands,
swamps, and forests of the American South, that saw its hopes
temporarily dashed on October 16th, 1859 at Harper's Ferry.
Thelr struggle cannot be properly understood as an attempt to
spread the effects of democratization further for those who ben-
elited from Union victory. From the moment of Henry Berry
Lowxy's first jail breaks, after voluntarily giving himself up to Re-
publicans and then changing his mind, vowing o never "enter
any jail again,” this struggle embodied a rejection rather than
an acceptance of such democratic processes, preferring the di
rect expropriation of wealthy planters and the self-determination
27 | T Lowry Wars

of an autonomous Lumbee community to a capitalistdriven and
State-directed Reconstruction.

Nonetheless, many of these post-Civil War struggles have come
to be understood by historians as an attempt to push further this
process of so-called democratization, to secure more and more
privileges within the framework of State and Capital. In some
cases this historical interpretation is understandable and even
acourate, because the movements being studied indeed under-
stand and see themselves this way, or at least their most promi-
nent members and ideologues do.

These narratives tend to fall back on various frameworks that em-
phasize progress in some way, pointing with a certain inevitabil
ity to some distant future, be it a Marxian dialectic that has every
‘meaningful struggle pointing down the road to State Soclalism*,
or the more subtle but equally false ideal of a liberalism that aims
towards an end of history, a society of rational but atomized in-
dividuals, governed by a liberal and non-racist democratic State,
a kind of equal opportunity exploiter. Despite thelr differences,
these frameworks of understanding social movements hold in
common a sort of progressivism, whereby the protagonists and
their actions are seen to affirm dialectical patterns of soclal de-
velopment that fit with the desired historical narrative.

How clse can we understand a historian interpreting the revolt
of slaves and maroons as blending “easily into the message of
the Revolutionary War," selectively quoting Frederick Douglass
to argue that "the Constitution is a glorious liberty document,”
and thus portraying the militant efforts of former slaves as well
in line with the democratizing effects of capitalistengineered
Reconstruction?** The same historian of slave uprisings argues
that these were a continuation of the Bourgeols revolutions of
the age, rather than a violent challenge to them. (Genovese, 132-
133) Whatever version of progress the Left historian chooses to
see, whether it be radical or reformist, there seems to be 10 es:
cape from the narrative of the State.

Thus the Lowrles are often seen as struggling for Lumbee
rights when rights discourse was a philosophical framework far

11 We're dispensing with the nicety that authoritarian Marists ever actu-
allyintended to see the State wither avay into libert

12 Such claims appear particularly ridiculous in light of the fact that the
vast majority of organized slaves and maroons who took partin the Revo-
lutionary War fought on the Britih side. So much for sholitionism ss the
product of democracy and the Constiution.

Tue Lowry Wags | 28

‘more in line with the Republican Party of the time, a party whose
sherits, officers, and wealthy elite the Lowries were in the habit
of assassinating.

‘Expanding our focus, there are just too many radical counter-
examples in Southern history to believe the lazy notion that
“things get better,” or that an even passing from one stage of
development to the next will result in racial or economie justice
or progress. The racial solidarity of striking miners in Eastern
Tennessee in the 1890, as they freed black prisoners and burnt
‘prison stockades, outdoes in both courage and sincerity any kind
of racial solidarity and diversity we've seen in the past forty years
in the South. Race relations do not just “get better” gradually due
to the harmonizing effects of a liberal demacratic state or acces-
sible consumer markets. Rubbing shoulders at the mall while
looking at an overpriced gadget, before returning to one's own
‘urban ghetto, decaying apartment complex, or gated community,
does not qualify as racial harmony.

As objectionable as it may be to some, from our reading of much
of Southern history, a more accurate matrix for determining the
likelinood of meaningful racial solidarity has been the violence of
the sacial movements in question. Since the hardening of White
supremacist cultural norms In the 18th century, it has always
required a level of violent rupture for White, Black, and Native
rebels o actually find themselves side by side in true affinity."*
This is true of the aforementioned stockade wars in Tennessee,
of the long history of maroon rebellion along the Atlantic and
Gult Coasts, of early slave rebellions alongside Irish indentured
servants, of those conflicts like the Lowry Wars, of early labor
battles, and o later prison riots, just to name a few. Obviously
this is not to say that the reverse Is true, that violence of any kind
automatically creates the conditions to break down raclal hierar-
chies. Yet for actors of various racial privileges and disadvantag-
e8 1o find themselves in true affinity requires a rebellion whose
content s somehow fundamental to the nature of our soclety,
and such rebellion will always be violent. The progressive view
tends to abhor this reality in favor of a perspective that freedom

13 Some might abject to this assertion, posing the Civil Rights Move-
ment of the 1950's as & counter-example. For & host of reasons that we
may explore later, the White involvement in this movement can hardly be
described as taking place on an equal footing. Meaningful racial affinity
cannot include asituation where the most privileged actors withdsaw their
support as soon as the situation gets out of their control, a seality that
unfortunately describes the vast majority of White liberal involvement at
the time. A better example of affinity might be the actions of guerillas like
Sam Melville, Thomas Manning, o David Gilbert, or of the multi-racial
and politically diverse George Jackson Brigade.
29 | Tur Lowsy Was

is something which comes over time, rather than an experience
we immediately create for ourselves as we rebel together against
those who would oppress and exploit us.

To return to the subject at hand, when historians reflexively fall
back on this progressive way of understanding history, they often
have to ignore much of what s right in front of them. How else
could entire armies of Left academics and politicians sincerely
portray the Republican Party in the South as a wellintentioned
but tragic attempt at racial equality, or the mass thelt of plan:
tation property as aimed at securing “rights” for Indians rather
than what it clearly (albeit temporarily) resulted in-immediately
communist relationships of black and brown people? For a his-
torlan to use the political discourse of one Who is at peace with
State and Capital to explain away the motives of those who were
at war with these systems, represents fo us an extreme kind of
intellectual dishonesty and theoretical laziness.

Anarchists can also be guilty of this. All too often our own strug-
gles make the same mistake, using the discourse and frame-
works provided to us by our enemies with little examination.
Civil and workers’ “rights,” "amnesty” for immigrants, economic
and social “justice,” an end to police “brutality” - the words we
use about the problems we face say something about our posk
tion towards the soclety that gives us these problems In the first
place. Rights discourse, this concept of “justice,” the idea that
police could be anything but brutal - framing solutions in this
way only make conceptual sense if we plan to stay inside this
world we currently inhabit. They both reflect and reinforce a con-
strained imagination towards what is possible. Anarchist history
should be about discovering or recovering those moments when
something entirely different emerged on the scene, to help us
expand our imagination and ability to deseribe such moments
in thelr own terms rather than in those of our enemies. Such his-
tory should work to grow our sense of joy and wonder at the pos-
sibilities implied in rebellion, and our appreciation and sense of
heritage for those who came before us,

Rejecting the White supremacy of the Conservatives and the
false peace of the Republicans, the Lowry conflict is one such
legacy. Traveling in southeastern North Carolina today, one can
still oceasionally find a large button with Henry Berry Lowry's
‘handsome face for sale at small rural gas stations. Like many
others, we imagine him with his comrades emerging from the
‘swamps to raid the plantations and jails of 19th century Robeson
County, or to assassinate a Klansmen or sheriff, and we smile.
Tur Lowry Wass | 30
31| Tue Lowry Wars

SOURCES

Norment, Mary C. The Lourie History, As Acted n Part by Henry
Berry Lowrie, the Great North Carolina Bandit. With Biographical
Skeiches of His Asociates. Being a Complete Histry of the Modern Robber
‘Band in the County of Robeson and State of North Carolina. Wilming-
ton: Daily Journal Printer, 1875.

Evans, W. McKee. To Die Game. Louisiana State University
Press, Baton Rouge, 1971.

Dial, Adolph L. and David K. Eliades. The Only Land I Know.
Indian Historian Press, San Fransisco, 1975

Townsend, George Alfred. The Swamp Outlaus: or, The North
Carolina Bandits; Being a Complete History of the Modern Rob Roys and
Robin Hoods. The Red Wolf Series. New York: Robert M.
DeWitt, 1872.

Genovese, Eugene. From Rebellon to Revolution. Louisiana
State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1979.

Weekly Journal, Wilmington, September 24, 1869
Wilimington Star, August 18, 1871
Lumberton Rabesonian, January 20th, 1958

Newsueek, L1, January 27, 1958, p. 27
({4

On December 21st, 1864, a wealthy slave-
holder and minor official of the Confed-
eracy named James P. Barnes was ambushed
on his way to the Post Office in Robeson
County, North Carolina. After being ini-
tially cat down by a shotgun blast, Barnes
was shot at. point blank range in the
head... Thus began a period of roughly cight
years of almost uninterrupted, multiracial
attacks on plantation society in southeastern
North Carolina. Dozens of sheriffs and
White supremacist militia were murdered,
plantations and White-owned stores expro-
priated, and five different successful prison
breaks carried out, in what to this day rep-
resents a period of marked pride and dig-
nity for North Carolina's Lumbees.

NCPleceCir

www.nepiececorps.wordpress. tom