fall ’19/winter ’20 pg. 2 pg. 3 As the sun set on a wooded pasture in southern Boone County, “Hang Him bringing the seriously injuring her. The John Ellis and Walter C. promise of reprieve child, witnessing her mother Maupin to determine who in pain and unsure about might have committed from the oppressive her aunt’s fate, ran toward the attempted rape. Many August heat, the nearest home for help. concerned citizens arrived at Decently Meanwhile, Hubbard, being Edward Young’s land, since 15-year-old Young claimed as property by “very stout and pluck to Nancy Hubbard the backbone successfully several black men. Following zachary traveled home resisted his assaults” with a physical examination of and in dowdle with her sister the assistance of her parasol.1 Young’s enslaved people, Amanda soon returned to the group determined that Mary Jacobs and the scene with a nearby the likely perpetrator was Amanda, Jacobs’ resident, Joseph Armstrong. a man named Hiram. The young daughter. The assailant managed investigators returned to the Order”: Order, to escape just before justices with Hiram to conduct The three had attended the Armstrong’s arrival. their impromptu trial. funeral service of Harrison Hubbard, quite shaken from Upon hearing the evidence Politics, and Jacobs and hoped to make the traumatic experience, and testimony of several it home before the waning “preserved her person from witnesses, Ellis and Maupin light disappeared. Arriving at tarnish, receiving no injury determined that there was a fence, Hubbard dismounted except on the face, throat insufficient evidence to the 1853 2 her horse to remove the bars. and eyes” from the attack. hold Hiram and let the man Jacobs and the young girl return to Young’s property. passed through the barrier While any attack of With the justices preventing Lynching this sort on a young white and waited while Hubbard further action, the collection guided her horse through woman would cause of citizens dispersed, at the gate and replaced the considerable disruption in least momentarily. of Hiram, bars. From a nearby thicket, an agrarian community, the a man, completely nude fact that Hubbard identified except for some leaves stuck her nude assailant as an a Slave in his hair, allegedly seized enslaved man intensified the teenager and dragged the anxiety. As night settled her into the woods. The on the region on August commotion startled Jacobs’ 12, 1853, a large number of horse, which threw her off, black men were taken before an informal hearing held by Justices of the Peace fall ’19/winter ’20 pg. 4 pg. 5 Based on a “proper affidavit made by a brother of the young lady,” Justice Thomas Porter of Columbia issued a warrant for Hiram’s arrest. As Diane Miller Sommerville manner. By creating the seeming Thomas Porter of Columbia points out in her book, Rape and paradox of an orderly mob, the issued a warrant for Hiram’s Race in the Nineteenth-Century citizens of Boone County arrest. The sheriff, warrant in South, despite the outrage such enacted a compromise solution hand, proceeded to Edward a case would have inspired in that appealed to the sensibilities Young’s property south of a slaveholding community in of Democrats and Whigs—the Columbia to retrieve the suspect the days before the Civil War, former favoring popular justice that same night. Arriving at Southerners tended to allow legal and majoritarian rule with the Young’s farm late in the evening, processes to unfold. Antebellum latter appealing to law, order, and the sheriff was unable to locate lynchings of enslaved people due process—to reinforce the Hiram. Young assured the sheriff were not entirely unheard of, but racial order.6 that he would retrieve the man they were far rarer than those and deliver him to Columbia. that occurred during the late- Concerned about the well-being nineteenth and early twentieth of his investment, Young appealed centuries.3 Since the owners of to the sheriff to ensure Hiram enslaved people had a financial would have a fair trial. Young stake in the prosecution of their delivered on his promise, bringing “property,” an element of class- Hiram to the Columbia jail before based conflict sometimes arose the sun rose Wednesday morning.7 when an enslaved person stood accused of a crime. Slave owners, With the prisoner secure in in an attempt to retain the value the county jail, court officials set of their human investment, would his trial to take place just four hire attorneys to defend the days later on Saturday, August 20. accused, while non-slaveholding In the meantime, Young visited whites opted at times to the office of a Columbia lawyer 4 named James S. Rollins and circumvent formal proceedings. John Ellis lived at a farm As the sectional crisis heated southeast of Columbia, secured his services for the defense Missouri, and was Justice of the of the enslaved man. Rollins was up over the course of the 1850s, Peace from 1844 to 1878. He anxieties in slave societies, was a fairly prominent citizen a 40-year-old attorney who had, in Boone County, including like many others in the region, particularly those situated on as one of the first curators of the border of slave territory, the University of Missouri. been born and educated in the (Image: Historical Atlas of upper south state of Kentucky. manifested in a marked increase Boone County, Missouri, in the number of incidents of 1875, State Historical Society Unlike the majority of lawyers in mob violence on enslaved people.5 of Missouri) the middle of the nineteenth This incident, taking place before century, Rollins had attended the eruption of violence in the Still outraged by the incident school for formal legal training Kansas Territory, at least and taking to heart the words of at Transylvania College in initially conforms more with Justice of the Peace Ellis, who Lexington, Kentucky, in addition Sommerville’s depiction of legal after freeing Hiram that night to reading law with the prominent proceedings for enslaved people stated that he “hoped the matter Missouri lawyer Abiel Leonard. in the antebellum South. Within would not stop here,” a group Rollins had practiced law in a few days, however, public traveled thirteen miles north to Columbia since 1836 when he was deference to the legal process the county’s seat, Columbia, to not serving in political office as a deteriorated into a call for mob push for a continuation of the Whig in the state capital. Rollins justice. Hiram’s story stands legal proceedings. On Tuesday, also laid claim to more than two apart from other documented August 16, the concerned citizens dozen enslaved men, women, The crime of which Hiram was accused was in the southern part of the and children who produced a county, near the Missouri River. (Image: Historical Atlas of Boone County, Missouri, case studies in the community’s got what they wanted. Based on 1875, State Historical Society of Missouri) attempt to ensure the mob a “proper affidavit made by a variety of agricultural goods on conduct itself in an orderly brother of the young lady,” Justice his property on the southern edge of town.8 fall ’19/winter ’20 pg. 6 pg. 7 Defense attorney James S. Rollins (1812-1888) was, like the lawyer across from him in Hiram’s trial, a Kentucky product and strong Unionist. By three o’clock that afternoon, Guitar had only worked his way through around half of his declared witnesses—meaning Hiram’s defense had not yet begun—when a mob “entered the courtroom...” Rollins was living in this house sketched by George Caleb Bingham the same year as the trial, and a year from serving another term in the Missouri legislature. He served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives during the Civil War. (Images: State Historical Society of Missouri) On the appointed day, law way through around half of his a group of men pulled the loose enforcement officials brought declared witnesses—meaning end of the rope until Hiram’s Hiram to the courtroom, where a Hiram’s defense had not yet feet left the ground. Within third Justice of the Peace, David begun—when a mob “entered just a matter of moments, the Gordon, would hear the case. the courtroom, in a tumultuous, rope snapped, providing a brief Over the course of the week since menacing manner” and reprieve for the enslaved man. As the incident had occurred, “overcoming the importunities members of the mob worked to excitement in the town and and efforts of the court, sheriff, retie the murderous knot, a party surrounding area had grown to counsel, [etcetera] put a rope of individuals, including Hiram’s a fever pitch. Spectators quickly around the prisoner’s neck and attorney, Rollins, and the filled the courtroom to capacity, forced him into the street.” 10 editors of both of Columbia’s with many more remaining Whig newspapers, William outside the building in Once the mob successfully Switzler and E. Curtis Davis, anticipation of the trial. As one in removed Hiram from the shelter arrived and appealed to the crowd attendance observed, “a portion of the law, they stripped him of his to let the legal processes run their of [the crowd] were much excited clothing and forced him through course. After considerable oratory by the daring atrocity of the the center of town toward a grove effort by Rollins and others crime charged and [had] a firm of trees beyond the bridge that who opposed the lynching, order conviction of the negro’s guilt.” 9 crossed the Flat Branch Creek on prevailed and Hiram was the western edge of Columbia.