We have carefully and earnestly investigated the circumstances of the killing of Robert Melton and his wife and the severely wounding of his daughter by a party of armed men on the night of the sixteenth [unreadable] but are sorry to say that our efforts so far have been failures. but hope o'er long the peace officers of the County may be more successful in ferreting out all pertaining to this outrageous and terrible crime. We think it however due to the people of the county to say that our investigations in the matter have only strengthened our convictions that this murder was not caused by political prejudice but rather the effect of a personal malice and revengeful feeling.
This statement was part of a grand jury report, and it marked the end of legal efforts to bring Robert Melton's killers to justice. The report is remarkable. Many in the community completely disagreed with the grant jury's assertion that the killings were an act of "personal malice and revengeful feeling." Melton's neighbors, Henry J. Fox and S. E. Lane, said that crime was the culmination of campaign of Ku Klux Klan harassment. Fox felt so concerned about his safety that he took to sleeping in the woods. Ultimately, he voted with his feet and left the county.
What is going on here? A natural reaction is to dismiss the grand jury report as yet another example of "southern justice." The history of the civil rights movement is filled with examples of all-white juries who refused to convict white men for violent crimes against black men. Yet this phenomenon was a twentieth century phenomenon. The criminal justice system looked very different during the 1870s. In this post, we will take a look at the Chesterfield grand jury and speculate on why they were so ineffective in bringing justice to the Melton family.
the law as it now stands virtually opens the way to ignorance and wholly restricts the power to prevent incompetent persons from becoming jurors. . . . It can only be characterized as a depraved prejudice seeking to uproot the foundations of society, and wishing to break down every barrier of common sense in the administration of justice. Verily, we have fallen upon evil times!
-The Anderson Intelligencer newspaper, April 8, 1869
The South Carolina criminal justice was completely rebuilt in the first years after the Civil War. As the above quote shows, white conservatives were horrified at the changes that took place.
As a precondition to restoring civilian government, Congress required the state to revise its constitution and, among other changes, grant Black men the right to sit on juries. The specifics of jury selection were determined by laws passed by South Carolina's pro-Black Republican party.
Under the 1868 constitution, jury selection functioned differently than how it does today. Jury duty was not regarded as an obligation for all voters. Rather, it was a responsibility for the county's leading citizens. Jury members were chosen at random from a list drawn up by township selectmen (the smallest governing body). The selectmen were instructed to choose people who were "of good moral character" and had "sound judgement," and at most one-tenth of voters could be chosen.
Selectmen were locally elected, so communities exhibited significant control over the jury selection process. Recognizing that former enslavers and ex-Confederate soldiers could not be expected to protect the rights of freedpeople, the state legislature amended the laws governing the jury selection process in March 1869 so that the racial composition of a jury had to match the relative populations of the county. In Chesterfield County, this meant that a jury needed to be approximately one-third Black and two-thirds white.
The requirement that juries include Black members drew the greatest condemnation from conservatives. Articles in conservative newspaper questioned whether there were enough men of good moral character among the Black population to fill the jury pool. Several of the writers suggested legal strategies for getting around the new law (arguing that it violated civil rights guaranteed by the state constitution, for example).
The Republicans who designed the new jury selection process seemed to have mixed feelings about its success. Several Republican lawyers and judges were asked about the legal system as part of Congress's 1871 investigation into Ku Klux Klan activity. The answers given should be viewed critically: Republicans hoped that the investigation would demonstrate the need for federal intervention, conservatives for the opposite. James Orr, a former conservative governor who was then serving as a circuit judge, told Congress that he found no fault with the "experiment" of racially mixed juries. His expressed opinion might reflect conditions in his circuit, but a more likely explanation is that it was a disingenuous effort at dissuading Congress from intervening in state affairs.
Most of the legal officials who testified said that the court system was unable to curb political violence. They attributed the problem to mixed juries, although not because of any inadequacies of Black jurors. Rather, political tensions were so high that jurors of a given political party would not vote for conviction for political violence against the opposing party. Like Orr, these legal officials were not disinterested parties, but their testimony is supported by the bare fact that not a single person was convicted for Ku Klux Klan violence despite its endemic nature.
"hearty Republicans, & as individuals & families, kind & friendly to all around us – but Sir, we are in terror from Ku-Klux threats & outrages– there is neither law or justice in our midst."
-letter from Robert Melton's neighbor, Louise Lane, to President Grant
Who made up the grand jury that deliberated on the murders of Robert and Harriet Melton? Consistent with state law, the grand jury was two-thirds white. The white jurors were drawn from the class that had long led the county: affluent smaller farmers. Most of the white jurors were not wealthy enough to have been members of the planter class, but most owned their own land and at least four were from slave-owning families. The exception was James H. Powe who came from one of the wealthiest families in the county. His father was a former state senator who had enslaved over one-hundred people before the Civil War. Powe himself was a graduate of both South Carolina College and the Charleston Medical College, a rare distinction.
Most of the white jurors were veterans of the Confederate army. The Confederate government used conscription, so military service did not necessary indicate support for the Confederacy, but at least some served with enthusiasm. Powe volunteered as soon as the war broke out, and he even helped finance the war by purchasing uniforms for his unit. Powe was very proud of his military service and was active in Confederate veterans organizations.
Powe also appears to have had a deep hatred for the Reconstruction government. Certainly, he had reasons to be upset. Not only had the defeat of the Confederacy ruins his family financially, but it had also ruined Powe physically. He had been seriously injured during war, and while serving on the jury, the injury still left him still partially paralyzed. Other white jurors likely also bore deep financial, physical, and psychic wounds from the war.
Information about the Black jurors is harder to come by. I haven't been able to find any information about two of the jurors (Edward Pegues and Miller Robinson). Two others, Horace Chapman and Ambrose Robertson, appear in the record as farmers, but this isn't notable as it was the profession of the overwhelming majority of residents. None of these people appear in the historical record until after the war, so they were very likely born enslaved.
The best documented juror is Wade Floyd. Floyd appeared to have been active in the local Republican party as he was an election manager in 1870 (the position was a gubernatorial appointment, likely at the recommendation of Chesterfield's state legislators). Floyd worked as a schoolteacher, initially for the Freedmen's Bureau. This is very significant since it means that he was educated. In particular, he was literate. In contrast, all the other Black jurors as well as some of the white jurors were illiterate, so Floyd was the only Black juror who could read the report that the Grand Jury produced.
How should we view the Grand Jury report in light of the jury makeup? With men like Powe on the Grand Jury, it was hardly surprising that the Grand Jury failed to bring Robert Melton's killers to justice. Powe almost certainly felt the killings were justified and, viewing the state government as illegitimate, felt no compulsions about lying to protect the killers. He may have even known the killers and had personal knowledge of their plans.
It is surprising that the Grand Jury report offered such a strong statement about the killing. I would have expected jurors like James H. Powe to have been balanced by the presence of jurors like Wade Floyd with the consequence that any official statement by the Grand Jury would have avoided making a clear statement either way.
One possibility is that white jurors were able to dominate the Grand Jury proceedings. Certainly, men like Powe would have felt more comfortable in a courtroom, and with his college education, Powe would have been far better equipped to understand the legal system and express himself in writing than the Republican jurors. He and his conservative allies might have been able to wield economic power over the Republican jurors. Several of the jurors, such as Horace Chapman and Ambrose Robertson, farmed on rented or sharecropped land, making them vulnerable to threats of kicking them off the land.
Another possibility is that everyone on the jury had it out for Robert Melton and his allies. By 1871, anger over political corruption had split the county Republican party into two factions. Robert Melton had been allied with state senator R. J. Donaldson who was strongly opposed by the faction committed to fighting corruption. Jurors like Wade Floyd might have been allied with the Donaldson's opposition, and they could have decided that allying themselves with conservatives and tacitly condoning the murder of Melton was preferable to allowing the corruption of Donaldson's administration to continue unabated.
Ultimately, we only have the thinest evidence to evaluate the Grand Jury's activities. The Grand Jury's statement that Robert Melton's killing was not politically motivated is absurd and certainly worth a close inspection, but I don't see how to reach any definitive conclusion about why they issued their report. Perhaps the only clear conclusion is that Louise Lane was certainly correct that for her and other Republicans in Chesterfield County they could expect "neither law or justice in our midst."
May 1871 Grand Jury
Black Jurors
1. Wade Floyd (b. 1840)
2. Horace Chapman (b. 1826). illiterate.
3. Edward Pegues (b. 1850)
4. Ambrose Robertson (b. 1842). illiterate.
5. Miller Robinson (?)
White Jurors
1. William Jeptha Gaddy (b. 1828). Jury foreman.
2. Colin Campbell (b. 1830)
3. Jeremiah M. Funderburk (b. 1844)
4. Calvin Massey (b. 1813)
5. James H. Powe (b. 1835)
6. Stephen Purvis (b. 1840)
7. Alexander Anderson Pollack (b. 1832)
8. Nevins Stewart Smith (b. 1827)
9. Thomas Threatt (b. 1809)
10. J. H. Villaneuse (b. 1836)
Sources
1. "Items – Editorial and Otherwise." The Anderson intelligencer. [volume], April 30, 1874, Image 2
2. "The New Jury Law." The Anderson intelligencer. [volume], April 08, 1869, Image 2.
3. "The New Jury Law." The Charleston daily news. [volume], April 10, 1869, Image 2.
4. "The New Jury Law – Its Legal Interpretation." The Anderson intelligencer. [volume], April 15, 1869, Image 2.
