WPT Archives: 1990s

America's Battlegrounds

Americas Battlegrounds

November 14, 1994

>> Announcer: Funding for this program was made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by the annual financial support of viewers like you. [wind whistles] [weighty music]

>> Dave: These are hallowed grounds, lands that in our past were marked by bloodshed and battle. [gun pops] These are America’s battlegrounds, places that have been witness to conflict, [gun pops] conflict that has shaped our country’s history, shaped our nation’s character. [gun bangs] Tonight, on “America’s Battlegrounds”: the Whiskey Rebellion, the subject was taxes; the outcome was bloody; the court case of Dred Scott, his fight for freedom split the nation; the Battle of Poison Springs, the story of a Civil War massacre still in dispute today; the Battle of the Bear’s Paw, the last brave stand of Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce tribe; Cairo, Illinois, the story of a city torn in two in the battle for civil rights; the stories of America’s battlegrounds. You can look around almost any town in this country and find the reminders and relics of war, the conflicts that define American history. I’m Dave Iverson, and this particular town is Galena, Illinois. Over there, you’ll find a monument to one of Galena’s most famous residents, Ulysses S. Grant. Grant’s battleground, of course, was America’s greatest conflict, the Civil War. But every chapter in American history has been marked by battle from the time of the Civil War to the era of civil rights. Labor uprising, student protests, battles over land and race, these American battlegrounds have altered and sometimes rerouted our national experience. Tonight, we bring you some of those stories. We begin with a story from the hills of Western Pennsylvania. [glowering music] [crickets chirp] [birds tweet] Mingo Creek Cemetery near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, among the markers placed here over the centuries are two weathered headstones inscribed with the names John Hollcroft and James McFarland. One was an agitator; the other, a casualty in a nearly forgotten battle known as the Whiskey Rebellion. [kindly music] By the end of this conflict, George Washington would lead more troops against a group of American farmers than he’d led into any battle against the British. It was a struggle that helped shape our country, a struggle some say still isn’t over.

>> States’ rights versus a strong central government has never been resolved as an issue. And so that makes it important as the first manifestation of that conflict in political thought in this country.

>> We were a United States of America, and the Whiskey Rebellion was the initial tragic challenge that we were going to be a United States. [wagon rattles]

>> Dave: In 1791, Philadelphia in Eastern Pennsylvania was the capital of the new American government. Western Pennsylvania was still Frontier Country; the town of Pittsburgh, little more than a fortress outpost of 1,200 residents. As these early settlers toiled to survive, the country struggled [anvil clangs] to recover from its expensive War of Independence, a war that had left Americans with its first national deficit.

>> The national debt that we had as a result of the American Revolution was the equivalent of $11 trillion today. The national debt that all of us wring our hands over is $3 trillion.

>> Dave: 200 Years ago, Alexander Hamilton came up with his deficit solution. It included imp posing a tax on whiskey.

>> Had to do a major job, namely to establish the federal treasury. And they had to establish the right of the government to levy taxes on anything. And so that was Hamilton’s choice. [kindly music] And he sought to put that tax on a commodity that he knew was everywhere. It was nationwide. And so it was a very fair tax, in his mind, on the populace.

>> Dave: The tax was resisted all along the western frontier but especially in Southwestern Pennsylvania, where even the smallest farm had a still. Whiskey was the best way to turn grain into profit. It wasn’t only a libation. It was an all-purpose medicine and commodity for trade.

>> This was not a currency society here on the frontier. They did not have paper money, and the biggest barter item was whiskey. Even the preachers were paid in whiskey.

>> Dave: And whiskey would serve to reignite the still-unfolding debate over two new documents, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

>> There were those who did not want the Constitution, because they did not want to give up their state’s rights. They were the ones that fought for the Bill of Rights, which followed in three or four years after the Constitution. They simply did not want to have that constitution and a United States of America. They wanted states’ rights. [crowd roars]

>> Dave: Into this unpopular arena, the government sent excisemen to collect the tax along the frontier. They often left wearing tar and feathers. And any farmer who paid the tax might expect a visit from Tom the Tinker, whose remains probably rest under the name John Hollcroft in that cemetery at Mingo Creek.

>> He was probably the most rabid radical on the side of the Whiskey Rebels. And what he’d do, quite simply, was if you were making whiskey and paying the tax on it, he would first advise you by anonymous letter that if you didn’t stop, he would tinker with your still. And by tinkering with it, that meant he would shoot it full of holes or destroy it. [fire crackles] Not only did he destroy people’s stills. He burned barns. He did a lot of damage to people who paid the tax. [birds tweet]

>> Dave: It was at this location on July 15th, 1794, that the protest became a full-scale rebellion. On that date, a local revolutionary war hero, General John Neville, came to this cabin to help collect the whiskey tax from a local farmer. General Neville lived nearby, had his own still, and had previously opposed the tax. But his friend George Washington had persuaded him that the new government needed the tax to survive.

>> John Neville did not wanna pay the tax. He had his own still, and as a wealthy man, he didn’t wanna pay any money that he didn’t have to pay. But when he received a call from George Washington, the President of the United States now, the patriotism in this man welled up over his own individual preference.

>> Dave: Patriot or not, General Neville’s efforts infuriated the anti-tax farmers. Led by John Hollcroft, or Tom the Tinker, they descended on the general’s mansion at Bower Hill. During the confrontation, a 16-year-old boy was shot. [gun cracks]

>> And when they saw that somebody had been killed, when blood had been spilled, they did go wild, as any mob is prone to do. [crowd roars] [gun cracks]

>> Dave: The next day, 600 rebel farmers returned to the General’s mansion. [snare drum blasts] This time, the rebels were led by James McFarland, the other Whiskey Rebellion fighter who’s buried at Mingo Creek.

>> Somewhere during the mid fighting, a truce flag was flown from General Neville’s house, although the Federalist defenders deny this. McFarland stepped out to accept what he believed a commonsense surrender. There were 600 people fighting against 10 or 20. And he was shot. He was shot point blank from one of the windows in the mansion and died almost instantaneously. [kindly music]

>> Dave: When the rebel leader McFarland was killed, his followers looted the general’s estate and burned it to the ground. The Whiskey Rebels now flew their own flag. The tax was splitting the new nation into two opposing camps.

>> Washington himself wrote in his own writings that if this rebellion could not be put down, then they had fought the revolution for nothing and we might as well all go back to the king.

>> Dave: In August of 1794, a mob rallied at Braddock’s Field for a march on Pittsburgh, a place local folks called Sodom for its sinful ways. But this time, that old demon whiskey actually prevented any fighting.

>> About 5,000 of ’em marched through them. The citizens of Pittsburgh were smart enough to humor them and cajole them and offer them free whiskey and drinks, and that pretty much diffused the situation.

>> Dave: Still, the government in Philadelphia was alarmed. Alexander Hamilton urged President Washington to send troops to Southwestern Pennsylvania and crush the rebels once and for all.

>> Hamilton insisted that the military be sent, and only reluctantly did Washington agree.

>> Dave: Washington personally led the force of 13,000 men. And on October 20th, 1794, the overwhelming federal troops sliced through the region virtually unopposed. Little happened until the night of November 13th, an evening that would become known as the Dreadful Night. [horse whinnies]

>> Without warning, arrest squads went out and arrested several hundred people without warrants or anything that we would consider today as legal process and dragged them out of their beds, some of them, put them up in makeshift jails, unfinished log cabins. It was extremely cold winter. And a lot of these people suffered exposure. Some of them died. [snow crunches]

>> Dave: The army marched 20 farmers to trial in Philadelphia. Only two were actually convicted, and Washington pardoned them both. 200 years later, in the countryside that surrounds the graves of the Whiskey Rebels at Mingo Creek, the subject of the rebellion is still debated: were the rebels anarchists or patriots?

>> No, now, they were, basically, hardworking people who thought that the tax was wrong. They were tax protestors. Now, that’s probably the tax protest. It just got a little out of hand. That’s all.

>> We had to stop this problem, and Washington and his vice president and all of his officers had to make sure that we learned how to be a United States of America. [kindly music]

>> Dave: The whiskey tax never collected much money, and it was later repealed by Thomas Jefferson. But the significance of the rebellion lives on. It was America’s first crisis over states’ rights, a crisis that helped define an emerging nation. [crickets chirp] [glowering music]

>> This was very much a common, everyday, garden-variety courthouse. And probably, one of the more important trials that were held here was the Dred Scott case, which started here in the circuit courts of St. Louis County. [wind murmurs] In some respects, even though Dred and Harriet Scott didn’t know it at the time that they filed for their freedom in the old courthouse, they made of the old courthouse, virtually, the first battlefields of the Civil War. [thoughtful music]

>> 19th century St. Louis was a crossroads of the North and South, of the established East and expanding West. Missouri’s entry into the Union as a slave state was the result of the 1820 compromise over the expansion of slavery into new states and territories. Some 37 years later, the Supreme Court would take the Dred Scott case and try to settle that issue once and for all. All Dred and Harriet Scott had asked for was freedom for themselves and their two daughters.

>> It lasted for 11 years, involved five separate trials. What should have been a very simple case when Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet, walked up the steps of this building and came in to sue for their freedom in 1846, turned into a very complex thing that started to involve politics and the larger social issues of the day until the case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

>> Dave: Dred Scott was owned by Dr. John Emerson, an army surgeon stationed at the Jefferson Barracks Military Post in St. Louis. But in the 1830s, Emerson took Scott to live at a military post in Illinois, a free state, and then to the Wisconsin territory, now Minnesota, where Congress had banned slavery under the Missouri Compromise. Here Scott married Harriet Robinson, also a slave. Dr. Emerson brought his slaves back to St. Louis where Dred and Harriet Scott were told about the doctrine of “once free, always free,” and that the courts would properly release them from bondage because they had resided in free territory. With Dr. Emerson now dead, they took his widow to court. After some delays, the county court awarded the Scotts and their two daughters freedom in 1850.

>> Many other slaves had been freed previously. Dred Scott had a clear-cut case. It was an ironclad case. He definitely had lived in free territories. There was even a state supreme court decision based on another case with the exact same particulars. [thoughtful music]

>> Dave: In 1852, the state supreme court, responding to the national tensions, ignored its own precedent and overturned the decision. No longer would freedom in one state mean freedom in Missouri. Under this new doctrine, the Scotts, once free, were slaves again. Their lawyers moved to get the issue before the United States Supreme Court. As more time passed and the bitter feud over slavery intensified, what had been a routine and obscure court case took on far greater significance. The public, desperate for a solution, now eagerly looked to the court.

>> It comes at a time when the Union is on the brink. It comes at a time when legislatures were having trouble compromising. It comes at a time when compromise still seemed possible.

>> Dave: On March 6th, 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney issued the majority opinion. It upheld the Missouri decision and left Dred Scott in slavery. Taney wrote that blacks had no rights in federal court and that the writers of the Constitution never intended to include Negros as citizens. “On the contrary,” he wrote, “they were at the time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race.” And that was just the beginning.

>> It’s generally thought that Justice Taney was trying to calm matters in the country, that he felt that he, by rendering his decision in the Dred Scott case, was actually going to settle once and for all the question of slavery in the United States and render a fair decision for everyone.

>> Dave: Taney’s opinion struck at the very heart of the debate, the powers of the state and federal governments. He wrote that Congress was powerless to exclude slavery from the federal territories and the Missouri Compromise had been unconstitutional. It was only the second time since the founding of the country that the Supreme Court had struck down a federal law.

>> The Civil War itself was fought over that nature of that relationship: what is the relationship of the states to the federal government? And certainly, slavery was the substantive issue but at a theoretical level, that is just critical to understanding this period in our history.

>> It had a major impact on this nation. When you think about this chief justice who said blacks had no rights that whites were bound to observe or respect, that had a bearing on the way the nation began to look at blacks. [thoughtful music]

>> For Dred Scott and for all blacks, slave and free, it was a total loss of human rights; for slave owners, a total victory for the rights to their property and protection from federal power. But that victory was only on paper. For the abolitionists, it was ammunition for the cause. “This decision,” they said, “was treasonous and would lead to the legalization of slavery throughout all of the United States.” “Now,” they said, “You must decide. Which side are you on?”

>> Both sides started to feel very much on edge, and it polarized the country to the extent that people felt that there was no going back, that there had to be some sort of a dramatic resolution to this, and probably, it would not be through compromise. [march-like snare drum music]

>> Dave: The compromises of the founding fathers, the political maneuvers of the Congress, and now this legal battle in the nation’s highest court all had failed to end the conflict. [cricket chirps] The next battles would be far more costly. Dred Scott did win his freedom, not from the courts but from a local white man, a supporter whose father had owned Scott years before. After the Supreme Court decision, this man obtained ownership of the Scotts and, back in the St. Louis County Courthouse, where it all began, officially set them free. Dred Scott went to work [thoughtful music] in a St. Louis hotel but lived only a year and a half as a free and famous man, dying of tuberculosis in 1858. He gave his name to a case that changed American history, but he was buried in an unmarked grave. [birds tweet] Another hundred years would pass before his name was inscribed in stone. [glowering music] [birds twitter] Southwest Arkansas, an ocean of pine and hardwood forests rolling for miles in every direction, under this canopy of green, at the foot of an old oak tree, water flows from underground and runs across a shady valley. The locals call this place Poison Springs. The peacefulness of the setting belies the fact that during the Civil War, 130 years ago, something terrible happened here. And to this day, it remains a place that generates strong feelings and bitter disagreement about how the story should be told. The controversy involves this small roadside park and whether its historical markers accurately tell the story of what happened to the 400 black soldiers who fought here. [boots clop] When the park was dedicated, Dr. Gregory Irwin was there as a Civil War re-enactor. [sergeant speaks indistinctly] He’s also a professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas.

>> My initial response to the exhibit at Poison Spring was emotional. I was very angry. It was as if those black troops were being murdered again, this time in the history of that event. [wind whistles]

>> Dave: It happens during the last year of the Civil War. The fighting in Arkansas has degenerated into vicious guerrilla warfare. By now, the Union Army occupies all the major towns along the Arkansas River Valley. North of the river, the Federals maintain a tenuous control, but Southwestern Arkansas is still a Confederate stronghold. [sky rumbles] Into this hostile territory, in the rainy spring of 1864, the Union Army launches a campaign motivated more by greed than military strategy. [bird tweets] [cricket chirps] The goal is cotton, vast stores of it rumored to be held in Texas and Louisiana by the Confederates. But three weeks into the campaign, the Union commander General Frederick Steele finds himself bogged down with 10,000 hungry troops in a countryside decimated by war. [crickets chirp] He sends out a train of 200 wagons to bring back corn from neighboring farms. 400 of the soldiers guarding the wagon train are members of the First Kansas Colored Infantry, ex-slaves who have joined the Union Army.

>> The whole concept of using black men as soldiers was just something that was unthinkable.

>> Dave: Ronnie Nichols is an historian and director of the Old State House Museum in Little Rock.

>> A lot of these former slaves had been mistreated, had been divided up as far as families were concerned, and now they had an opportunity to carry rifles and carry rifles for the other side, which again was very scary and very dangerous for the white citizens. [hooves clop]

>> Sergeant: Forward.

>> Dave: On April 18th, 1864, the Union wagon train is returning from its foraging expedition loaded with corn and other items taken from residents of the area. By now the Confederate army is aware of the slow-moving Union caravan, stretching for more than a quarter-mile along a road that will pass by Poison Springs. Seeing the opportunity to surprise and cut off the Union wagon train, Confederate General John Marmaduke acts quickly. He gathers a collection of troops from Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas, along with two regiments of Choctaw Indians from Oklahoma who are fighting for the Confederates. The rebel force outnumbers the Union soldiers guarding the wagon train three to one, and they’re waiting at Poison Springs. [cannon blasts] [man shouts indistinctly]

>> Man: Whoo!

>> Man: Whoo!

>> Dave: The Confederates attack. The First Kansas Colored is brought to the front and bears the brunt of the Confederate assault. They’re soon overwhelmed and in retreat. The rebels take no black prisoners. [horse whinnies]

>> As certain Union troops / Union officers left the field, they looked back and saw black soldiers wounded and prisoners being murdered by Confederate troops. One black soldier who was lying wounded on the field feigning death later came back and said how the men of the 29th Texas rode around hooting, “Where’s the First Nigger”… That’s what they called the First Kansas: “Where’s the First Nigger now?” as they killed anybody who showed a sign of life. After they were dead, they were scalped, chopped up, stripped of their clothes. Some Confederate soldiers lined up dead black soldiers and took captured wagons and tried to see how many heads they could crush. The dead white officers in the regiment were turned on their faces as a sign of dishonor. And they were circled by the corpses of the dead blacks. Some blacks were buried up to their waists to serve as headstones for dead white officers. Others were buried head-down up to their waist to serve as footstones in a parody of a cemetery. It was very, very bloody. One Confederate soldier said that he couldn’t take a step on certain portions of that field without stepping on black bodies.

>> Dave: How that field of blood and carnage should be remembered is still the subject of debate today. [keyboard clacks]

>> Gregory: To be brutally Frank, the new exhibit at Poison Spring is a piece of garbage, an example of history distorted to please the sensibilities of white racists.

>> Dave: Dr. Irwin refers to one of the original six plaques at the Poison Springs exhibit. It explained that the high death toll among federal black troops was compounded by Confederate outrage at the collection of, quote, “unscrupulous other plunder found on the Union train.” Professor Irwin then led the effort to remove the original plaque.

>> It more or less said the blacks had had it coming, that their mistreatment, the atrocities, the murders of wounded men / unarmed prisoners, that those acts were justified because the Confederates found plunder, stolen personal items, in the forage train. Of course, why white Union prisoners, who made up a majority of the escort… Why they were not subject this kind of treatment, why only blacks were treated in this manner, that was not explained.

>> Bill: It was the 129th anniversary of the Battle of Poison Springs That’s when the markers were dedicated, the bronze plaques. Sometime later, I was in that area, and I stopped just to re-read the plaques again, and panel number five was gone.

>> Dave: Bill Thompson is another Civil War re-enactor and a lifelong resident of Southern Arkansas.

>> I was heartbroken because I was so proud to see the plaques there. I’d been in and out around Poison Springs for a long time, and it was just a campsite, ya know? Or you knew that the battle took place, but that was about it. Any information, you had to go research it. And here was these excellent bronze plaques that told the whole story. And now one of ’em is missing. When they told me who was behind it and all, then I was very angry because these people did not have the right. It’s like they’re rewriting history. They’re wanting you to see what they want you to see. They’re covering up the truth.

>> Dave: The truth, according to Thompson, is that the First Kansas Colored infantry committed equally atrocious acts against the Confederate allied Choctaw Indians who had sided with the South in an earlier battle. The same tribe was alongside the Confederates again at Poison Springs.

>> It was payback time for the Choctaw Indians. They were able to get their revenge there at Poison Springs. And it’s unfortunate that it happened, but these people that are the ones that got the plaque changed and that continue to talk about what an atrocity it was, they fail to mention what an atrocity that these same troops inflicted on the Indians.

>> That’s just something that, again, is ludicrous. This is something they would not do, nor would their commanders allow anything like this to happen.

>> Dave: And professor Irwin believes something else happened in that earlier battle that may have triggered the massacre at Poison Springs.

>> These troops had faced each other in the past. The First Kansas Colored had been engaged the Battle of Honey Springs in Oklahoma in July of 1863, where it defeated in an open fight the 29th Texas Calvary. The 29th Texas Calvary would be attacking the First Kansas from the south at Poison Spring. And those Texans, they had a score to settle because black men had made them look bad. And that was something that white Southerners found intolerable during the Civil War era. [birds tweet]

>> The victor always writes the history book. Does not mean the history book is correct. When somebody goes to Poison Springs now and looks at the plaque, they get part of the story. They don’t get all of the story. [sighs] In the south, we feel like our Southern heritage… We’re losing it. It’s being taken away from us a little at a time. It has been ever since the war was over with.

>> When it comes to the Civil War, a lot of people, especially from the South, where it was fought, where the scars are still felt, they confuse history with ancestor worship. There’s a tendency to try to cover up and glorify what was a very dirty bloody ugly war. By pretending certain unpleasant things did not occur in the past, it makes it easier for us to ignore unpleasant things that happen in the present, makes it easier for us to ignore problems that still plague our society, makes it more difficult for us to understand where these problems came from, and thus makes it impossible for us to put together workable solutions. [glowering music] [birds tweet]

>> Dave: By the banks of the snake, salmon, and clearwater rivers to the Wallowa Valley of Oregon, for thousands of years, these lands were home to the Nez Perce. They lived in separate bands, but their common voices, past as well as present, still tell the story of their tribe’s struggle to survive. [wistful music] The most famous Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, Chief Joseph. He remembers how life began to change with the arrival of the white man.

>> Joseph: It has always been the pride of the Nez Perces that we were the friends of the white man, but we soon found that the white men were growing very rich very fast and were greedy to possess everything the Indian had.

>> Dave: The white men and the Nez Perce signed a treaty in 1855, making most of the traditional homelands of the tribe a reservation. But when gold was discovered eight years later on those same homelands, the U.S. government wanted a new treaty.

>> That treaty was imposed to accommodate the influx, mainly, of the gold being discovered on the reservation and also to legalize the settlers who had come in onto the reservation. And this was called the Steele Treaty, and what it did, it cut down the reservation to about a 10th of the size it was.

>> Dave: It was signed by those bands, primarily Christian, who accepted the boundaries. Other, more traditional bands refused to sign.

>> The non-treaty and the non-Christian who wanted to practice their own religion stayed off the reservation.

>> Dave: General Otis Oliver Howard was dispatched in 1877 to move the non-treaty bands onto the now reduced reservation. Several council meetings were held until Howard grew impatient and threatened to use force.

>> So the order came in April 1877 that Joseph, they give him 30 days to vacate Wallowa Valley. That was just like [chuckles] taking orders at the gunpoint.

>> Dave: Howard’s threats worked. Most of the Nez Perce gathered here at Tolo Lake in 1877 to move on to the reservation. But anger towards white settlers who had gone unpunished for previous deeds sparked an uprising.

>> There was a lotta killings, isolated incidents of murder here and there, that the federal government would not take into prosecution or anything of that sort under the white man’s law. And the young warriors just wanted to get even, take revenge.

>> Dave: The Nez Perce warriors’ revenge left 17 settlers dead. The army took it as an act of war. Troops from Fort Lapwai battled the Nez Perce here at White Bird Canyon in a short fierce encounter that left 33 soldiers dead but not a single Nez Perce casualty.

>> The troops, the commanders, including General Howard, felt he was going against an inferior force. So obviously, the Nez Perce people were better fighters than they thought.

>> Dave: The army’s effort to move the Nez Perce off their land became a full-scale war. Forts around the West would send nearly 2,000 soldiers. And scores of citizen volunteers and 10 Indian tribes would side with the army. Over the next four months, there would be more than a dozen battles and skirmishes along a trail nearly 1,800 miles long, finally culminating in an encounter at the Bear’s Paw battleground in North Central Montana. Although Looking Glass assumed overall command, the Nez Perce were not led by one leader. Each band had different chiefs for different purposes. Joseph was a people chief, one of many, and decisions were made not by one but by consensus, together. Looking Glass convinced the Nez Perce to start this long journey by crossing the Bitterroot Mountains and seeking refuge in the buffalo country with their old allies, the Crows.

>> It was sad for them to leave, because they know they was leaving a lot of their ancestors’ burial grounds and all their homesteads. And it was a sad time.

>> Dave: At first, the army and the settlers in the Bitterroot Valley allowed safe passage, and the Nez Perce group of 800 traveled in peace. On their way to the buffalo country, they rested at a traditional camping place along the Big Hole River.

>> Looking Glass said, “Well, the white people down at Bitterroot Valley treated us good. They traded us all these things. The war is over. General Howard’s gone. It’s done with.” Little did they know that Colonel John Gibbon came out of Fort Shaw, came to Missoula, forced-marched all the way there, and arrived August 9th, 1877, about two o’clock the morning.

>> Dave: Looking Glass was wrong. The war was far from over. Gibbon’s soldiers attacked the camp as the Nez Perce were sleeping, killing 30 warriors. But the Nez Perce quickly regrouped and drove the soldiers back. In the attack, the army killed 50 women and children. Joseph was outraged. [gun cracks]

>> Joseph: Nez Perce never make war on women and children. We would feel ashamed to do so cowardly an act. [gun bangs] [bullet whistles]

>> Dave: The remaining Nez Perce continued eastward through what is now Yellowstone National Park. On reaching the buffalo country, the Nez Perce were refused sanctuary by the Crow, who feared war with the government.

>> So once they got over Crow country, it’s rather unfortunate because the Crow people were divided themselves. The Crow said, “No, we can’t help you.”

>> Dave: The Nez Perce then turned north, hoping to join up with Sitting Bull, who had been forced from his land and found refuge in Canada. They were just 40 miles from the Canadian border, two days away, when Looking Glass again underestimated the army’s relentlessness. As they stopped to hunt buffalo, Colonel Nelson A. Miles and 400 soldiers and scouts were racing to intercept them. The great battle is remembered by He-mene-mox-mox, Yellow Wolf.

>> Yellow Wolf: A wild stir hit the people, great hurrying everywhere. From the south came a noise, a rumble like stampeding buffaloes, hundreds of soldiers charging in two wide circling wings. They were surrounding our camp: “Fight!” When Colonel Nelson Miles made his attack, he tried an all-out calvary charge, same type of charge that overwhelmed many other tribes. The Nez Perce did something very unique in that sense is that they held their fire. And all of a sudden, they opened up the last minute. Then all of a sudden, they were shooting at stripes. NCOs and officers were the main target.

>> Dave: By targeting the buglers and officers, the Nez Perce destroyed communication among the soldiers, but Colonel Miles quickly changed tactics. He stopped the attacks and laid siege to the camp, preventing the Nez Perce from escaping once again. The bands had lost many chiefs and warriors. It was October, and the snow had already begun to fall. Yellow Wolf remembers the first night after the attack.

>> Yellow Wolf: Wild and stormy, the cold wind was thick with snow. Guns flashed through it all. I felt the end coming, all for which we had suffered lost.

>> Dave: The end would come soon for Looking Glass. Thinking he had spotted a messenger from Sitting Bull, he stood up in his rifle pit and was killed. Joseph, the people chief who had met with Miles earlier, was forced to seriously contemplate surrender.

>> Joseph: Miles said to me in plain words, “If you will come out and give up your arms, I will spare your lives and send you back to the reservation in Idaho.” I could not bear to see my wounded men and women suffer any longer. We had lost enough already. We could’ve escaped from Bear Paw Mountain if we had left our old people and children and wounded behind. We weren’t willing to do this. We had never heard of a wounded Indian recovering while in the hands of the white man.

>> I think it took a brave man to stand up and say, “I’m gonna surrender for my people.”

>> Dave: For his people. On October 5th, 1877, with several warriors at his side, Joseph rode into the army camp.

>> Joseph: I went to General Miles and gave up my gun. I said, “From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more.”

>> Dave: Joseph claimed that this was all he said to General Miles. His famous speech was probably delivered to other Nez Perce during a council meeting held early year in the day as a way to explain his decision to give up his rifle. The complete surrender speech was probably delivered by Nez Perce Scouts as a message to General Miles. [wistful music] After the end of the fighting, some bands slipped away north into Canada. General Miles’ promise of a return to the reservation was overruled by the general of the army, William Tecumseh Sherman. Joseph and the other survivors were sent to the Indian territory in Oklahoma. Yellow Wolf remembers the place they called Eeikish Pah, Hot Place.

>> Yellow Wolf: We had fought the army to a standstill. We did not expect being sent to the Eeikish Pah. Had we known of the army’s intentions, we never would’ve surrendered.

>> Dave: The unfamiliar climate became another brutal enemy. The Nez Perce desperately wanted to return to their land.

>> Nature placed us in this land of ours, land that has been taken from us. I am telling my story that all may know about the war we did not want. War is made to take something not your own.

>> Dave: After successful lobbying by Joseph, the Nez Perce were returned to the Northwest in 1885, but only those who accepted Christianity were allowed to go to the reservation at Lapwai, Idaho. Those that kept the traditional ways were exiled to the Confederated reservation at Colville, Washington. Although Joseph longed to return to his home in the Wallowa Valley, he would never be allowed to live there again. These lands remain a testament to Joseph’s last brave stand to save his people, to lay down his rifle for their safety. It remains his legacy to the tribe. [glowering music] Ain’t gonna let-a nobody Turn me round Yeah Turn me round Whoa, yeah Turn me round Ain’t gonna let nobody Ain’t gonna let nobody In 1969, a young Jesse Jackson came to Cairo, Illinois, for a rally. Keep on a-walking Walk enough to take all day He came to lend his support in a battle for civil rights, a battle that divided this town in two. Yeah Turn me round [siren wails] Whoa, yeah Turn me round [siren wails] For over 140 nights in 1969, Cairo was torn apart by gunfire. Two people were left dead; dozens, injured.

>> Firebombings, shootings, some of everything went on during that time. It had gotten so terrible you would think that you was in Vietnam. Turn me round Keep on a-walking Keep on a-talking Waking on to Freedom Day Ain’t gonna let-a no jail tale Turn me round Yeah

>> There was so much gunfire coming in and around my mother-in-law’s apartment, and we lived in the back, that my wife and I even got in the bathtub and slept in there a few nights.

>> Dave: Cairo became the stuff of national headlines. A “New York Times” reporter wrote, “Probably, no other American locality in recent years has lived through such persistent, systematic, and stubborn racial violence as this tiny city at the southern tip of Illinois.”

>> We’d get phone calls 2:00 a.m. from people in the hospital, for example, and they say, “They’re firing at us.” We could hear the bullets in the background.

>> Dave: United States Senator Paul Simon was then the lieutenant governor of Illinois.

>> Cairo was a battleground. There’s no question about it. People were being killed. Blood was being shed. People lived in fear. I’m gonna keep on a-walking Yeah Keep on a-talking Walking on to Freedom Day

>> Dave: Cairo is located at the confluence of the two largest rivers in the country, the Mississippi and the Ohio. Cairo, then a town of 10,000, was caught between currents, a Southern city in a Northern state, a fiercely segregated city in the land of Lincoln, a city with vast disparities between its citizens, and a city that, since 1913, had what is described as an at-large voting system that effectively shut out African Americans from city government. A young Cordell McGoy explains.

>> The houses we live in. Employment, there is no employment, no justice at all in our court system. Negros are shot at here in Carol as dogs. At that time, that 18-year-old man felt he had nothing. He was just outta high school. He saw his community going nowhere, lotta turmoil, lotta racism both sides, lotta frustration, lotta anger, no hope, and I was a very angry young man at that time.

>> Dave: That anger, that frustration felt by Cordell McGoy and other blacks in Cairo, was sparked to violence by the death of Private Robert L. Hunt. Hunt died under suspicious circumstances while held in the city jail. Hunt’s death was ruled a suicide, but many in the black community, including his cousin Floretta Simelton, didn’t believe it.

>> Robert Hunt was arrested and as being arrested, he was hung in jail by the police department [chuckles] in Cairo. Meanwhile, after he was hung, they say he hung himself with a T-shirt, but he also was beaten first.

>> Dave: The next day, Cairo exploded. A rash of firebombings caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. The National Guard was called out to enforce a curfew and restore order. Taking a cue from the national civil rights movement. Cairo’s black residents founded their own civil rights organization called the United Front, their symbol a gun on the Bible. The Front turned to the power of the purse and began a boycott of Cairo’s downtown businesses.

>> Why are we the target? I think it’s because the top boys calling the shots in this national or international conspiracy are trying to break down our government. I think that they pick us as a good target area.

>> Jesse: I’m black.

>> Audience: I’m black.

>> I’m beautiful.

>> Audience: I’m beautiful.

>> I’m God’s child.

>> Audience: I’m God’s child.

>> Soul power.

>> Audience: Soul power.

>> Soul power.

>> Audience: Soul power.

>> It’s an honor to be called an agitator. Soul power.

>> Audience: Soul power.

>> What function does an agitator serve on a washing machine? It shakes the dirt outta things. And we meant to come to shake the dirt outta things, to shake the racism out, shake the fear out, to shake the intimidation out, and to demand equal protection under the law.

>> Dave: Blacks saw the boycott as the only non-violent recourse to fight the city’s racism.

>> And it gon’ stay on, and it gon’ be on.

>> As the weeks dragged into months, blacks used the boycott to articulate a list of demands whites saw as unreasonable.

>> And it might be on forever.

>> Interviewer: What do you think that they might feel that they had to gain by this?

>> I don’t know. The demands they make are rather outlandish. They want to have criminal cases dismissed. They demand that chain stores put in black managers and things of that sort.

>> This is one of the confrontations between the blacks during a march and members of the Cairo Police Department. And it was one of the main conversations.

>> Preston Ewing was present with his camera during many of the confrontations.

>> Preston: This was the police commissioner with his double-barreled shotgun standing in front of the stores and downtown Cairo.

>> Dave: As the boycott went on, tensions increased, and out of frustration, both sides took up arms.

>> Well, there were nights where there was an exchange where there were focus targets, but there were many nights where the gunfire was psychological. It was just to be heard from one section of town. And then you would hear the other section of town respond almost as if you were in a battle and the enemy is saying, “Listen to what we have,” and the other side: “Well, we have something too.”

>> Dave: Those lines blurred when as many as 450 whites were designated volunteer deputies. Many were members of the White Hat, a private citizens’ patrol. The White Hats began in 1967 under the leadership of Alexander County State’s Attorney Peyton Berbling.

>> This thing of people living in fear has to be resolved, and you have to have law and order to do it.

>> And Peyton Berbling, he formed this group known as a White Hats to more or less threaten Negros and put ’em in a position where they have no say so if any Negro in the community speaks out or tries to start any kind of racial trouble, he will be killed, shot upon as a dog or something, and there will be no action taken against the person who kills him. And the people that will do that are the White Hats.

>> Dave: Cairo’s current mayor, Jim Wilson, attended high school with Cordell McGoy. He looks back on the White Hats and sees a very different history.

>> Like I say, I wasn’t old enough to be a member of the White Hats. You had to be 18 years of age, and I wasn’t 18 at the time, but I think every person in the white community, and I’m saying these are good rational people, participated in a White Hat movement. [crowd murmurs] [birds tweet]

>> The whole picture given to the public and the nation was of a community filled with hatred and a community filled with stupid people. And that was possible because the people who weren’t stupid and the people who weren’t filled with hatred weren’t standing up and speaking up.

>> Dave: In time, hatred gave way to exhaustion as nearly every city institution came under legal attack, The White Hats were disbanded under court order. A lawsuit changed Cairo to an aldermanic form of government. Eventually, three African Americans were elected to city council, including Cordell McGoy. The boycott finally died out, but half of Cairo’s businesses permanently closed.

>> Downtown Cairo businesspeople never saw the advantage in one community. They were willing to hurt themselves just to hurt somebody else.

>> Dave: 25 Years after the protests and boycotts, much of downtown Cairo remains deserted.

>> If the blacks wanna say that they won the battle by closing down stores and retail merchants going outta business, well, you can say that was a victory. But when all that was over and there was no plan to revitalize the community, you lost a war, because we in worse shape now we’ve ever been in. This is what’s left of downtown Cairo today. I guess it’s the results of the boycott, the troubled times in Cairo, and the dying out of downtown America.

>> Dave: It is that bleak economic environment that Cairo’s integrated city council is now working to change. Councilman Cordell McGoy is leading an effort to bring in a poultry-processing plant.

>> I had that sign erected so the people could rally behind seeking industry for Cairo that would benefit all of Cairo.

>> Dave: In Cairo, the battle for economic opportunity is a continuing struggle. For some, like Cordell McGoy, the American dream is still alive. For others, the dream remains distant.

>> Middle-income African Americans have really improved their lot in our country. There is, however, an underclass in our country. And because we’re increasingly segregated on the basis of economics, we’re not paying attention to that underclass. And that is potential dynamite.

>> Man: Better run. Think I wouldn’t notice.

>> Man: Don’t [indistinct].

>> Man [indistinct]. [glowering music]

>> Dave: From Cairo, Illinois, to the hills of Western Pennsylvania, America’s battlegrounds have often altered our national direction. They are conflicts that have been staged in farmers’ fields, city streets, and county courtrooms. Together, they’ve helped shape our history and our time. [uneasy music] [bright jingle]

>> Announcer: Funding for this program was made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by the annual financial support of viewers like you. [blissful music] Ah Ah

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