Preservation of the Union: Then and Now

By Robert Tolbert

Preservation of the Union--Then and Now is a book written by Robert Tolbert, a ninth-generation American and former sixth grade teacher and coach. The book discusses how his first ancestor came from Buckinghamshire, England, in 1696 and acquired a 1,034-acre parcel of land up the Chesapeake Bay on the Mattaponi River in Virginia, called Endfield. It would be on that parcel of land two generations later Kunte Kinte, in the book Roots, would spend a great deal of his life.

Along the way, Robert Tolbert would create a 52-unit condominium project some 300 years later and he named it Endfield in honor of his roots and colonial history.

Tolbert's great-uncle (5) Benjamin Waller, was an attorney in Williamsburg and he mentored George Whythe, who, in turn, mentored Thomas Jefferson. Wythe worked with Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and was the first Virginian signatory on the Declaration of Independence.

As America developed and grew, it seemed there would always be growing pains, such as a need for a labor force to work the land and give it value. That led to the United States becoming the only country to rely solely on black slaves after Black Codes were created around 1700 until 1865 in the South.

It was a terrible mistake having any kinds of slaves, but black slavery created a curse on America that seems impossible to resolve. It is one of the main goals of this book to put slavery, all slavery, into a historical context and hopefully bring people together and get people to talk about something other than what race we all are - enough - life is too short and racial issues are simply very destructive to us all.

In 1895, when South Carolina rewrote their Constitution, the Democrats bypassed the powers of the 15th Amendment and wanted to disenfranchise blacks from voting. Tolbert's relatives, who were staunch Republicans, wanted to challenge Democrats from preventing blacks from voting in a court case that would also create and maintain a two-party system. This led to the Phoenix Riot of 1898 and the killing and wounding of many people. Four of those severely wounded were from the Tolbert family, including Tolbert's grandfather, James Watson Tolbert.

James Watson Tolbert had all of his property burned. When the seventeen men who committed the terrorism were charged in court, they were exonerated in nineteen minutes. Vigilante rule and the Democrat-formed Jim Crow laws created after the Compromise of 1877 would prevail for another 80 years, until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 to undo the damage caused by the Democrat Jim Crow laws.

On the day after the Phoenix Riot, November 9, 1898, members of an 800-man mob went through the countryside terrorizing blacks and Tolbert's to prevent blacks from voting. Two of the many places they went were the home of four-year-old Benjamin Mays, who never forgot seeing his father begging for his life and the home of James W. Tolbert, where 125 hooded terrorists told him to leave his home or be killed. Mays grew up to become Americas first great civil rights leader and the President of Morehouse College. He inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. to become a minister instead of a lawyer. Two weeks after the riot, James Watson Tolbert was shot off a roof he was repairing by a group of KKK members and left for dead.

Part Two of this book deals with people and issues we all need to explore in order to hopefully preserve not only the Union, but all of mankind and save man from himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9798887631929

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Background

Then

Chapter 1: Colonial Beginnings

Chapter 2: Tolberts Come to America

Chapter 3: The Second Generation

Chapter 4: Slavery (Man's Exploitation of Man)

Chapter 5: Reconstruction and Its Demise

Chapter 6: The Phoenix Riot of 1898

Chapter 7: The Aftermath of the Phoenix Riot

Chapter 8: Benjamin Mays—the Mentor of a King, Martin Luther King Jr.

Chapter 9: Benjamin Mays—the Trip

Chapter 10: Briefs from Loy Sartin, Curator, Benjamin Mays Historic Site

Now

Chapter 11: Getting Back on Track

Chapter 12: Men of Inspiration Who Made a Difference—Giants of Civilization

Chapter 13: Historical Statues in America

Chapter 14: President Donald Trump

Chapter 15: Climate Change—Fact or Fiction

Chapter 16: America's Political System

Chapter 17: A Note of Interest

Chapter 18: Race and Racism in America

Chapter 19: The Wrong Time to Do the Wrong Thing

Chapter 20: Concluding Comments

Chapter 21: Postscript—George Campos

Notes

cover.jpg

Preservation of the Union

Then and Now

Robert Tolbert

Copyright © 2023 Robert Tolbert

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88763-191-2 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88763-193-6 (Hardcover)

ISBN 979-8-88763-192-9 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

To Mom

Background

Given the May 25, 2020, death of George Floyd, an African American man who died during an arrest at the hands of a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, our country has experienced violent demonstrations and rioting in cities such as Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Portland, Minneapolis, and Washington, DC. Cities have burned and destruction in the name of peaceful demonstrations has taken a huge toll. The Black Lives Matter movement has been a main theme of our country and has created further racial divisiveness in our country. However, our country needs to know that white Americans also have fought for the rights of black and brown people for hundreds of years. Many have paid the price for doing that. Seldom do politicians and the media do that, and many promote divisiveness over unity for their own purposes.

There have been times in our history when great strides were taken to promote the cause of the civil rights movement and then times like now, where the common cause of all mankind has run amok. It almost seems that the civil rights movement has been stalled by people constantly talking about race and racism for what seems to be their own benefit, and it has spread into our school systems to indoctrinate our greatest hope for the future—our children.

I intend to share the story of my family, which has lived here for nine generations and has experienced slavery, Christianity, racial injustices and punishment for their involvement with their efforts to promote black voting rights. In their effort to create a two-party system in South Carolina, they played a huge part in supporting African Americans to use their Fifteenth Amendment rights to vote. The actions of the Democrat Party and the Ku Klux Klan led to many black deaths and the mob destruction of my relative's property and homes. Among other events, you will learn about my grandfather James Watson Tolbert, who was attacked just after the Phoenix Riot of 1898 that took place in Phoenix, South Carolina, where Tolberts were encouraging blacks to sign affidavits at the election place in Phoenix that if they were allowed to vote that they would vote.

My grandfather was threatened at his home the day after the riot by the KKK and left for dead about a week after the Phoenix Riot, but he survived after a long time in recovery. During that riot, there was a little African American four-year boy named Benjamin Mays, a sharecropper's son who witnessed his father being terrorized by Democrats who were making sure that blacks would stay away from the voting polls on the very same day that my grandfather had been terrorized (November 9, 1898). Mays would never forget this incident, and it inspired him to get a good education to get out of working in the fields as a sharecropper's son. Mays grew up to become president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he inspired Martin Luther King Jr. to become a minister and civil rights leader.

One of the descendants of blacks who were part of The Liberian Exodus of 1878 (chapter 17) who sailed from Charleston, South Carolina, to Liberia on the Azor to escape persecution recently stated that many of the white Tolberts paid a heavy price for their Lincolnesque/Republican affiliation with Blacks in South Carolina. Racism has a long and diverse history. So, you see, we cannot choose or change where we come from, only where we are going and how we live our lives in the time we have on this earth. The need for unity, healing, and a full picture of the actions of all regarding race and its history in America needs to be explained in a way to unify us all. May God help us on this task!

Part I

Then

Chapter 1

Colonial Beginnings

We live in the United States of America, the greatest nation in the history of the world. The very name implies that we are, indeed, united. There are, however, very few times when our country was all on the same page and there was total agreement on significant issues.

So starting with the Revolutionary War and our independence from Great Britain, we were in disagreement—the two factions, of course, being the colonists, who wanted to be free of British rule, and the Loyalists, who remained loyal to England.

In writing this book, I originally had no intention of going back further than when the Tolberts came to America in 1773, which would cover six generations. After thinking about it, I would be remiss if I didn't go back to my first relative, which would be nine generations, because I feel it is significant. My first ancestor to come to America was a man by the name of Colonel John Waller (1673–1754), who is my grandfather (six greats). He was born in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, England, the son of Dr. John Waller (1645–1723) and Dorothy King Waller (1648–1738). At the age of twenty-three, Dr. Waller financed his son John to come to America, where he bought a 1,039-acre parcel of land on the Mattaponi River in King County, Virginia, which was a plantation he named Endfield.¹

On this plantation two generations later, Alex Haley in his book Roots would talk about and describe his ancestor Kunta Kinte. After my great-grandfather (six greats) owned Endfield, it became the property of my uncle Benjamin Waller in the next generation. Benjamin passed it on to his son John, and it was my first cousin John Waller (six times removed) that actually owned Kunta Kinte in the book Roots. I believe that would put that phase of the book Roots just before the end of the colonial period or just after the Revolution.

My Paternal Roots in America

Colonel John Waller – Came in 1696

(1673–1754)

Newport Pagnell Buckinghamshire, England

Dorothy King (1675–1759)

(Children) Mary, John, Thomas, William, Benjamin 1716–1786, Edmund

Edmund Waller – Brother of Benjamin of Williamsburg. Ben's son John owned Kunta Kinte in Roots.

(1718–1771)

Mary Pendleton (1720–1808)

Reverend John Waller – Founded seventeen Baptist churches in Virginia and South Carolina and was imprisoned for preaching without British consent.

(1741–1807)

Elizabeth Curtis

(1742–1803)

Tolberts Came to America in 1773

George Whitefield Tolbert gave a black lady a cow and was shot in duel by a Democrat who took the cow; the other man died. My great-grandfather died two years later of a congestive chill acquired from being wounded in the duel that occurred in 1868. Brothers were John Robert Tolbert, Elias Lake Tolbert, and Thomas Nathaniel Tolbert. Their sister was Nancy Ann Tolbert.

They were all deeply religious and kind to the black people who helped work their land I believe as a result of their Quaker upbringing.

James Watson Tolbert (shot by the KKK shortly after Phoenix Riot in 1898)

(1865–1944) (Ninety Six, South Carolina)

Olive Toccoa Looper (1885–1918) (Pickens, South Carolina) died from the swine flu pandemic in 1918. My father was one year old at the time of her death.

William Henry Napier Tolbert (Greenwood, South Carolina) – In the oil business, died a broken man of severe alcoholism and heart attack in Maywood, Illinois)

(1917–1972)

Jane Amanda Hargrave (Her spirit and legacy will forever be with me)

(1921–1996)

(Children: William, Nancy, Robert, Elizabeth)

Robert Arthur Tolbert

(1945–)

Nancy Ann Caesar

(1946–)

Children: Chad and Lisa

Colonel John Waller would become a justice of the peace and the first sheriff of King William County in 1701 and the first clerk of Spotsylvania County in 1722. His son Edmund, my five great-grandfather, succeeded him in 1742. John was also a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses for King William County from 1720 to 1722.²

Colonel John Waller and his wife, Dorothy King (1675–1759) had six children: Mary (1699–1781), John (1701–1776), Thomas (1705–1765), William (1714–1760), Benjamin (1716–1786) and my (five) great-grandfather Edmund (1718–1771).³

Mary Waller married Zachary Lewis (1702–1765) a famous attorney of the time, and their oldest daughter, Ann Lewis (1726–1748), married George Wythe (1726–1806) in 1747. Ann died eight months later with no cause ever being given.⁴

The story of my uncle Benjamin Waller is truly amazing. The family plantation of Endfield was near a ferry landing where people would cross the Mattaponi River from Williamsburg going north and east toward the Rappahannock and Potomac River sections.

John Carter, the secretary of state and one of the richest men in the British colonies, would go from his home in Lancaster County called Corotoman Plantation to his office in Williamsburg using the ferry. On occasion he would stay overnight at the Endfield Plantation during his journey. One evening John Carter was having a conversation with my then ten-year-old uncle Ben Waller. Carter asked my grandfather, John Waller, if he could take Ben to Williamsburg to live with him, and my grandfather Colonel John Waller reluctantly said yes! The conversation was a bit awkward, but the rest is history. Benjamin was soon in Carter's chariot and heading to Williamsburg around 1726.

Benjamin took advantage of his opportunity at Williamsburg by getting an education at the College of William & Mary. He became a clerk of the council and of the general court, a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses 1747–1761, an eminent person in the field of law and member of the general court of the Commonwealth in 1779 till he died in 1786. He also served on the Supreme Court of Virginia 1779–1785.⁵

In addition to his legal positions, Benjamin taught law at William & Mary and was the person who taught law to George Wythe, who wrote parts of the Declaration of Independence and also was the first Virginian signatory to sign the Declaration of Independence. My uncle Ben was actually the uncle of George Wythe by marriage since Wythe had married Ann Waller Lewis, who was Benjamin's niece, who was the oldest daughter of Mary Waller Lewis. Ann Waller Lewis was also my first cousin six times removed. That would also mean that George Wythe was my first cousin-in-law. To teach law, Benjamin used the law books of Sir John Randolph (1673–1737), the personal attorney for King George II⁶ and became the first teacher of law at William & Mary College in Williamsburg.

My cousin Ann Waller Lewis and George Wythe were married in1747; however, Ann died about eight months later in 1748. Wythe went on to be a very well-known and important person in Virginian history. As a member of the Virginia House of Burgess and Continental Congress, Wythe attended many political gatherings. The First Virginia Convention was in Williamsburg; however, the Second Virginia Convention was moved to Richmond to prevent Loyalist intervention issues.

George Wythe attended the second convention in Richmond, which was held at St. John Episcopal Parish, and it was there that on March 23, 1775, that Patrick Henry gave his Give me liberty or give me death speech, which would rouse the convention to push for their independence from the British. Thirty-one years later, George Wythe died and was buried in the church cemetery of the St. John Parish in Richmond, Virginia.

In 1986, my family and I visited Williamsburg, and it was both interesting and a walk in history. We walked on Waller Street, which was named after my uncle Benjamin, we visited his home in Williamsburg with his name on it, and we visited Bruton Parish and sat in the family pew which my uncle owned and where the Wallers always sat for church services. It was a very rewarding and fun day seeing where he lived around the time of Colonial America and the Revolution.

Benjamin Waller is on a list of judges of the Supreme Court of Virginia (1779–1785). Being the clerk of courts, he also read the Declaration of Independence on the Williamsburg Courthouse steps on July 25, 1776. In Wikipedia it also mentions how my family was linked to Alex Haley's book Roots: The Saga of an American Family.⁷

George Wythe was taught law by my uncle Benjamin Waller. Wythe learned his trade having been a law student of Wallers at William & Mary College, and he also worked in Benjamin's law office. Various sources say that Wythe learned his legal expertise from my uncle.⁸ When Wythe earned his law degree, he set up his practice in Spotsylvania, near Endfield. I have a personal opinion that maybe, just maybe, Uncle Benjamin encouraged him to go there and practice law, and perhaps it might lead to Wythe meeting my cousin Ann Waller Lewis.

George Wythe would go on to be one of the most prominent citizens in the history of Williamsburg, and his beautiful home is still maintained in Williamsburg today. Even though he learned from my uncle Benjamin Waller, an attorney, Wythe is credited for being the first American law professor of jurisprudence. George Wythe, in turn, was the law teacher for Thomas Jefferson at William & Mary College. When George Wythe died, he gave his library to Thomas Jefferson. Ben Waller and Thomas Jefferson were law partners near the end of Waller's law career.

One of Uncle Ben's grandsons, William Waller, married one of President Tyler's daughters, and they lived in Benjamin Waller's house in Williamsburg. Ben Waller had a house and street named after him in Williamsburg.⁹

The next link around the time of the revolution was my grandfather (four greats), Reverend John Waller (1741–1802), who was married to Elizabeth Curtis (1742–1803). They had nine children, and their home was in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, most of their lives.

During the course of his life, he founded seventeen Baptist Churches and was imprisoned by the British for preaching the gospel without a license from the state. He refused to follow the Virginia statute, which didn't allow preaching in the colonies by anyone except preachers of the established church—the Church of England.

Reverend John Waller spent 187 days in Virginia jails at different times and preached his own beliefs. As a young preacher, he was referred to as Swearing Jack and today is referred to as a historic figure in the fight for religious freedom in America.

In 1793, at the age of fifty-two, he and his family members moved to Abbeville, South Carolina, because of the inexpensive land and to be near his favorite daughter, Anne, and her husband, Reverend Abraham Marshall, who was also a Baptist minister.

About forty years ago with encouragement from my aunt Dolly, I went to look for the gravesite of Reverend John Waller. Taking my cousin Liza along, we saw a South Carolina historical sign for him. We parked the car on the road and walked across a cow pasture and way back off the road there was a briar patch fit for Brer Rabbit, and there we found his gravestone in a family plot along the road from Scotch Cross to Cambridge.

Reverend Waller's daughter, Mary Magdalene Waller (1774–1828) three greats, married James Watson, and they had a son, James Franklin Watson (1804–1851) two greats, who married Margaret Watson in 1826 and their daughter, Dolly Jane Watson Tolbert (1842–1897), married my great-grandfather George Whitefield Tolbert (1839–1870). Finally, it's Tolberts from there on!

The next conflict in our history of course was slavery. Going back to Portugal's trade ships in 1619, the slave trade created a plethora of issues very complicated and so bitterly wrong that one person could own another for the purpose of economic benefit. Being very vulnerable, the slaves were exploited in many sad and despicable ways and considered chattel. In our country's history, I can't think of anything more divisive than slavery other than perhaps the issue of abortion.

After the issue of slavery, of course, is the Civil War. The first Tolbert to come to America came through the Port of Charleston in 1773 and settled in Upstate South Carolina. Land was inexpensive, and before long Robert Tolbert acquired around a thousand acres. He married Nancy Red, and they had one son, Robert Red Tolbert, my great-great-grandfather. Robert Red Tolbert owned slaves, but his wife was a Quaker, and they treated the slaves kindly. Above all, he didn't believe in secession and he wanted to preserve the union.

As a true Unionist, he did not believe in the cause of the Civil War, and his top priority was preservation of the union. Robert Red had four sons, of which at least two were college graduates and officers in the First Cavalry of South Carolina. He told them when they went to war that they would lose because they were on the wrong side of the issue of secession, but also told them it was their duty to serve. It is interesting that some fifty years later, Teddy Roosevelt would send his four sons to fight in World Wars I and II.

When they came home from the war in 1865, they all voted for Ulysses S. Grant and joined the Republican Party. This caused such a conflict at the polling place where they voted that it was shut down for thirty years because of the controversy. (The war created a tremendous amount of inner turmoil and inner conflict.)

Much has been written and said about my great-great-grandfather Robert Red Tolbert, who died in 1866. I want to tell about his wife Elizabeth Henderson Tolbert. Articles tell about the large number of slaves the Tolberts owned, yet when people talk about the Tolberts' properties, they refer to them as a community.

I realize that Elizabeth grew up in a Quaker family, and I have studied about Quakers and their beliefs. Quakers believe in and try to be a unified force for good. They honor and respect each other and also people of all races. This belief system leads to human equality and the brotherhood of man.

My great-great-grandmother's influence would affect the way their workers were treated, and the workers were respected and often trained to specialize in such things as sawmills, tanneries, cooking, and other specific jobs. She influenced her sons to treat all people with respect—black or white. Her son, John Robert, also married a Quaker lady by the name of Betty Pope Payne.

Her husband died in 1866, and her son, George Whitefield, died in 1870, and she went on to influence her grandchildren. She even sent my grandfather, James Watson Tolbert, born in 1865, to a Quaker school in North Carolina for a few years. She was a lady of great influence.

Robert Red Tolbert died in 1866, but his sons believed that in order to stop the Democrats from taking measures after the war to maintain white supremacy, measures had to be taken to change the political regime. Drastic measures to maintain white supremacy were a part of the Democrat plan because the South had been so badly humiliated when they lost the Civil War, and Ben Tillman, the future governor of South Carolina, was always quick to point out that the Democrats did it by corruption and intimidation.

The Tolberts were held in great disdain and hated by their neighbors, especially the poor whites because the Tolberts respected the blacks and favored them to work on their land over job-seeking poor whites who lacked the work ethic for their own success.

After the Civil War, Reconstruction was initiated and then what I consider the worst short-term solution for a long-term issue—the Compromise of 1877. This compromise will lead to the end of reconstruction and the advent of Jim Crow laws and segregation and leave blacks to be second-class citizens for many years to come because of the blacks being disenfranchised by Democrats from being able to vote. To keep blacks from voting, controls came from vigilante groups, including the Ku Klux Klan. My family simply had no support from the local, state, or federal government after the Grant administration ended in 1877.

As leaders of the Republican Party in South Carolina, the Tolberts challenged the state constitution written in 1895 mostly by the state's self-admitted white supremacist governor, Ben Tillman, who served as governor from 1890 to 1894. As a result of the new state constitution, written in 1895, eliminating most twenty-one-year-old black men, or older, from voting in the election of 1898, the state constitution was challenged by my relatives, and it led to the Phoenix Riot of 1898. Because Tillman's Constitution revision of 1895 was challenged by my relatives, Tillman hated the Tolberts.

As a result of the election day riot of 1898, an estimated twenty blacks were shot and killed. My uncle, John Robert Tolbert, and two cousins were also shot the day of the riot. My grandfather, James Watson Tolbert, was shot and left for dead within two weeks of the riot in the town of McCormick, South Carolina.

The day after the Phoenix Riot of 1898, on November 9, a crowd of between five hundred and seven hundred people showed up at Rehoboth Church to terrorize both the blacks and Tolberts and seek revenge for their role in the riot. James Hoyt, who wrote a booklet on the Phoenix Riot after witnessing it, said the mob was the most frightening thing he had ever witnessed in his life. It was on that day that these men terrorized my grandfather, James Watson Tolbert, and said if he didn't leave his home, he would be killed. My grandfather wrote a letter to the governor of South Carolina asking for protection from the terrorist vigilante mobs. A copy of the letter was also sent to the local, state, and federal government, to no avail. A copy of the letter was actually printed in The New York Times almost immediately on November 17, 1898. He was shot and left for dead and his property burned to the ground a few weeks later. He never returned to McCormick, South Carolina.

These dismal occurrences perhaps prompted me to write this book. When I was about twenty-five years old and living in Wisconsin, my mother sent for two books involving the history of my father's family in South Carolina. The first book was entitled Greenwood County Sketches. The second book was a booklet written by a man who actually covered the Phoenix Riot of 1898, then reported on it about thirty-five years later in Washington, DC. His name was James A. Hoyt, and his father was a leader in the South Carolina Democratic Party.

In his pamphlet, Hoyt describes a man on page 10 who was "a