The Louisiana Intelligencer - Trouble at Filhiol's Date: Dec. 1999 Submitted by: Lora Peppers ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** Date: Dec. 1999 Submitted by: Lora Peppers The Louisiana Intelligencer Wednesday, November 11, 1868 Page 3, Column 1 Trouble at Filhiol's The following is as correct a statement of the trouble at the Filhiol box, on the day of election, as we have been able to get. Everything went on quietly and nearly two hundred votes had been polled when the commissioners started to dinner; on their return, they found that about thirty strange white men on horseback, accompanied by one colored man, and fully armed, had arrived in front of the polls. On reopening the polls, a colored man voted a Republican ticket and the crowd of strangers being informed of it immediately called on the colored man in their company, whom they called Bob Stiff, to pitch into him. Stiff immediately knocked this colored man down with a stick, but after he had been struck once or twice, the man succeeded in making his escape. While this was going on a difficulty occurred between another colored man and the strangers, who were about to kill him, when Mr. P. Carrington interfered and saved his life at the risk of his own. Shortly after this the party of strangers mounted their horses and rode down the road; they had been absent but a short time, when some firing was heard in the direction they had taken. On their return they stated that a colored man named Culpepper, in Mr. Filhiol's field, had fired at them and that they had killed him in consequence. In proof of this, they exhibited a stick in which some shots were lodged. At night there was considerable apprehention of difficulty among both races, but nothing serious occurred, excepting the burning of a schoolhouse belonging to the colored people on the Bres plantation and of the corn crib, with twelve hundred bushels of corn on the Faust Plantation. A colored man whose name we have been unable to learn, was shot in the mouth. That night about fifteen colored men came to town for protection, which was extended to them by the Sheriff. On Wednesday warrants were issued against a number of the men, who were said by the colored men, to have been implicated in the difficulties of the night. On Wednesday night, Sheriff Wisner and Mr. Dobson acting as his deputy, with some cavalry, started down to arrest the accused whom they brought to town on Thursday. The prisoners immediately gave bonds for their appearance for trial on Friday. On that day the case was continued until Monday. On Friday three of the principal witnesses in the difficulties of Tuesday night, named Simon Peterson, Daniel Webster and Orphey Johnson, all colored men, started down the river to go to their homes, and stopped on the Copley Plantation for one of them to see his wife, when they were taken out of the cabin by a party of eleven white men. Four of the white men took them to the deadening (?) In the rear of the plantation and there told them to kneel down and say their prayers as they would be killed. Instead of doing this they broke and ran, when fire was opened on them by the whites, and Peterson and Webster were killed, but Johnson came to town on Friday evening about dark and his story created a great deal of indignation among all classes of our community. Mr. Duffel, who has charge of the Copley plantation, makes the following statement as to what occurred prior to taking the men out of the cabins: The white men came riding to his house furiously and stated that they had been fired on by some negroes from the corner of the fence and that the negroes had hid themselves in one of the cabins and unless they were brought out immediately, they would burn up the quarters. Mr. Duffel went to search for the negroes and found them hid in the loft of one of the cabins, a shot was fired at him, said by the colored men to have been by accident, when he told them they must come down or the cabin would be burned up with them in it. The negroes then came out and were taken away by the four white men, as stated by Johnson. The names of these four men are Pinckney Faust, Marion Faust, Beaver and John Faulk. Warrants were issued on Saturday for the arrest of the four accused and on Sunday morning Sheriff Wisner started out with a posse for their arrest, but did not succeed in finding any of them. The bodies of the two killed colored men were found on Sunday afternoon by some colored men, together with the dead bodies of their horses. The case of the parties, arrested by Sheriff Wisner, was continued on Monday until Thursday. # # #