Part one of two parts

A 90-minute public history lecture -— on “the Asheville Riot of 1868” and its impact on the city’s history thereafter — was presented by Dr. Steven Nash on April 11 at Pack Memorial Library in downtown Asheville. 

An overhead screen at the lecture emphasized the full name of the lecture as follows:

“The Asheville Riot of 1868: How political violence undermined Reconstruction in the North Carolina mountains”

About 80 people attendence Nash’s talk, which delved — deeply — into Asheville’s history during the Reconstruction Era. 

Nash is a professor of history at East Tennessee State University. He is the author of “Recontruction’s Ragged Edge.” Also, he is the president of the Mountain History & Culture Group, a nonprofit support board for the Vance Birthplace State Historic Site, located near Weaverville. 

“The 1868 election riot in Asheville was a critical turning point in Western North Carolina’s Reconstruction,” an event promotion stated. “It revealed the strength of the biracial Republican coalition formed after the Civil War, and desperate determination of its opponents to defeat it.”

Nash began his talk by noting, “I just came here from teaching, so my tendency (as a professor) is to walk around and lecture, rather than stand at a podium... I focus on 19th century United States, especially. 

“The Asheville Riot of 1868 is a critical part of Reconstruction in this area. 

“It was a period that was about reconstructing the Union. Some would say it (Reconstruction) started during the Civil War, when Confederates states started being occupied in 1863....” 

Or, “maybe it (Reconstruction) began in 1865, with the formal surrender of the Confederate military” at Appomattox Court House in Virgina. (At that time, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant.)

“It tends to do two things,” Nash said of the Reconstruction of the Union — “One, put it back together. Or two — define freedom for 2 million former slave people. How is that going to fit? Those are two complicated issues...

“The United States South is a very diverse region. There’s the plantation South, the mountain South” and other geographically distinct areas.

As for the Asheville Riot of 1868, Nash said, “The first one to talk about is Randolph Shotwell — and Reconstruction. He founded the Asheville Citizen (on Feb. 3, 1870)... He’s one of the very few people to go to jail for being a ‘Ku Klux’ from Western North Carolina.” 

(According to a Dec. 26, 2020 column in the Citizen Times by John Boyle, the newspaper that Shotwell founded was named the weekly North Carolina Citizen, which was the forerunner of the soon-to-be daily Asheville Citizen. 

(Boyle added in his 2020 column: “He (Shotwell) did not operate the newspaper long (records show that it failed in less than a year), but he left a lasting impression upon the community, region and state by launching an institution that has grown with the city and region and exerted a constructive influence for eight decades.”)  

Meanwhile, Nash said the following five factors define Reconstruction

• The Freedmen’s Bureau (more formally known as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands)

• Military occupation and radical Reconstrction

• The coming of the carpetbagger

• The Union League

• The Ku Klux Klan (Shotwell’s reactionary KKK)

Continuing, Nash said, “Shotwell gives us a glimpse of his view. He starts his criticism of Reconstruction by talking about the Freedmen’s Bureau, asserting that, ‘with its petty despots, hold court day and night, and creating every effort to create problems between whites and blacks.’”

From Nash’s viewpoint, Shotwell believed that “the key problem is you have the government sending in people to resolve problems between blacks and whites. The real problem to him was: ‘Who’s going to be in charge?’”

As for “what actually happened in 1868” in Asheville, Nash presented a colorized image — from Harper’s Weekly — of blacks registering to vote. (The sketch appears above).

“In Nov. 3, 1868, it was a federal election in Public Square (now Pack Square),” the historian said. “It was a mixed crowd. Tensions were present. Tensions mounted when a black man sought to register to vote and the white registrar, said he was not eleigibl to vote,” citing a number of reasons, including that the man had previously committed a felony... Tensions rose and one man was killed — James Smith.”

(A report in the Nov. 3, 2015 edition of the Citizen TImes stated the following about the incident: “While accounts differ as to how what occurred came about, the results of both accounts are the same. Ultimately, a number of people, overwhelmingly African-American, were wounded and James Smith, likely the African-American man who had been initially denied the vote, was killed by “a pistol shot in the right side of the face.” In a jury trial that followed, it was found that “the first stone or missile came from the hands of said James Smith, deceased,” and although the white man who most likely shot him was identified, no one appears to have been convicted of the murder as James Smith was deemed to have been engaged in a riot.”)

Following the death of Smith, Nash said, “Newspapers, particularly coming from the conservative side —  mostly former Democrats, the party of Zebulon Vance and others... depicted the riot as bad behavior by blacks... One African-American was killed and eight wounded. 

“They said that the affray was rooted in James Smith’s effort to vote… Then they said African-American behavior was bullying. Then they said there was a fight. What prompted the fight is unclear. Nicholas W. Woodfin testifed later that an African-American man attempted to vote the Republican ticket. And the larger African-American crowd became incensed and attacked him, as a result white gentlemen tried to help him and he was killed and he put the number wounded at 18.”

At the time and beyond, Nash noted, “Local historians described as what happened in Asheville as the result of ‘turbulent negroes’ and ‘carpetbaggers’ — not the result of an incindiary force from the outside.”

Pausing, Nash shook his head a bit and asserted, “It’s so much more complicated than that, not surprisingly...

“Let’s take Randolph Shotwell at his word. Why did he feel so angry and bitter toward this institution (Reconstruction)?

Also, Nash asked, rhetorically, “How did we get to the Asheville Riot of Nov. 3, 1868? 

Answering his own question, the historian stated, “After the Civil War ended, the United States Army was massive. There was a U.S. occupation of Asheville at the end of the Civil War — and it lasted for a while.

“The South is a big place. It was a tough task for the United States Army, which had to invade and occupy a hostile place (the South). The military helped that” by calming the citizenry through its presence, enabling it to maintain law and order.

In Asheville during Reconstruction, Nash said, “The first (federal) agent here was Patrick Murphy… and then a former Union officer, Oscar Eastman. Eastman was part of the Freedman’s Bureau of Western North Carolina, “which had five offices in WNC after the Civil War”

(On March 3, 1865, Congress passed “An Act to establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees” to provide food, shelter, clothing, medical services, and land to displaced Southerners, including newly freed African Americans,” according to the website www.senate.gov.)

As for the Union military occupying WNC after the Civil War, Nash said, “Morganton was kind of ‘the big one’ and ‘the hub.’ That’s where the military was based.”

However, there also were military attachments in Asheville, Franklin, Wilkesboro and Jefferson, he said.

“North Carolina was part of the 2nd Military District (along with South Carolina),” the historian said.

In returning to the topic of the Freedman’s Bureau of Western North Carolina, Nash noted, “There’s a lot of geography to be covered by these agencies. No railroads... Poor roads....” 

Nash added, “The bureau agents in Asheville had more going for them. Oscar Eastman arrived in 1867-1869 as bureau agent in Asheville. Almost immediately, he became a thorn in the side of (the local Asheville) white establishment.

“An incident happened, and he called for an intervention. So the bureau had a tremendous amount of power to reach into these various community relationships. Here’s somebody who’s vested with the power of the federal government. They also got involved in court cases. I think it’s famous… a telling court case involving an African-American man, Carny Spears, was arrested ostensibly for stealing a horse. He was convicted. The judge in the case was Augustus Merrimon. while Eastman was Merrimon’s brother-in-law.

“The way it all goes down, he (Spears) is forced to pay a fine. A neighbor pays off his fine — and Spears works” for that neigbor to repay him for paying his fine, Nash noted.

“Eastman finds out about it and says (to Judge Merrimon), ‘Look, you didn’t allow Spears to testify on his own behalf.’” 

Pausing again, Nash said, “That sort of thing (criticizing a prominent white judge on behalf of a black man) sent a shockwave through Asheville right after the war. Because right after the war, there were people here who thought they (black suspects) might (simply) be hanged. 

“Suddenly,” Nash stressed, “Southern whites felt they had a role in Reconstruction,” for better or for worse.

“This is an example of Freedman’s Bureau intervention — and the resistance that it prompted from the former conservative white Confederate elite...” In Buncombe County, 81.5 percent were registered male white voters and 18.5 percent of male African-American were registered voters.

“It also gave assistance to local white Unionists — supporting them in terms of politics. A result was the rise of a biracial slate of candidates statewide in 1868.