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4
november, 2014
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Edward Dickson Pearsall, William theophilus Dortch, et al.
Stephen Carroll Pearsall recently contributed to Footnotes, the journal I edit for the
Duplin County Historical Society, a “jeremiad”
against those who would tear down the “Old
Duplin Court House.” It was written by his
great-grandfather, “E. D. P.” [Edward Dickson
Pearsall], for the Wilmington Morning Star
(8 April 1911).
“E. D. P.” begs the “Commissioners” to
“Touch not a single brick, for within its walls
North Carolina’s most gifted sons, viz.: Geo.
E. Badger, Jas. C. Dob[b]in, Geo. Davis, Wm.
T. Dortch, Zebulon B. Vance, Matt Ransom . . .
have moved men and women by their forensic
eloquence.” The reference to William Theophilus Dortch grabbed me. I had learned about him
as Editor of Robert A. Wiesner’s The Men of
Endor: Their Works and Their Times, 1861-1876
and included him in a play (In Celebration of
the 2007 Centennial of Lee County: A Collection
of Historical Articles and Creative Works. Ed.
Lynn Veach Sadler).
Jefferson Davis sent (1858) a Senate resolution to the Secretary of War “to enquire into the
expediency of establishing a National Foundry
on Deep River.” It led to the Endor Iron Furnace
(now in northern Lee County and owned by
the NC Department of Cultural Resources).
Wilmington’s McRaes turned to that project
when their trans-ocean commission business
was disrupted by the Civil War Union Blockade.
All of the second owners were actively connected with the Confederate Ordnance Bureau.
PL EASE R ECYCL E
T H I S N E W S PA P E R
historical
Perspectives
by Dr. Lynn Veach Sadler
It attracted Joseph R. Anderson, Commander
of the coastal defense forces of the Carolinas
and former President of Richmond’s Tredegar Ironworks, which lacked pig iron needed
by the Ordnance Bureau. Secretary of War
Judah P. Benjamin let the contract—the first
to encourage entrepreneurs to answer direct
needs of the Confederacy. The coal and iron
lands along Deep River, remote from military
activity, were thought the South’s safest.
The architecturally excellent Endor applied
very advanced technology and may have
been the first blast furnace in Virginia and
the Carolinas to use coke as well as charcoal,
but it became the costliest private industrial
undertaking in North Carolina to that time.
Most of the skein of owners knew little of
ironmaking; it was too far from its quickly
exhausted iron ore; transportation (roads,
railroads, rivers) was nightmarish; and it
had inadequate coal and especially limestone
(replaced with imported oyster shells). Yet it
reputedly produced the finest railroad wheels
made in the South during the Civil War. Before
firing Atlanta, the Confederates perhaps sent
its rolling mill machinery, shown in Gone With
the Wind’s evacuation scene, to the Endor. If
so, it was the only mill in the South to roll
rails during the latter part of the War. Its usual
laborers were slaves; three escaped two days
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before the Emancipation Proclamation.
The Endor anticipated today’s “insider
trading” and “influence peddling.” Many
of the Lockville Group achieved renown in
other fields, but their activities as its owners
were deliberately obscured. It was pivotal in
their conglomerate of ordnance manufacture,
rail and water transportation, banking, iron
smelting, rail-rolling, copper mining, land
speculation, and insurance. They integrated
their enterprises, including the Chatham and
Raleigh & Gaston Railroads, through their personal and business connections. High-placed
figures, e.g., a UNC President, had their reputations smudged. A gigantic scam, effected to
complete the Chatham Railroad from Raleigh,
through Lockville, to the coalfields, produced
the investigative Bragg and Shipp Commissions and brought down the Governor, among
others, but the go-between, former Union
General Milton S. Littlefield, escaped. He
had commanded the Twenty-First US Colored
Troops and, at Hilton Head, recruited units
of former slaves. He came here after involvement in a Pennsylvania “lumber steal.” A
member of “The Ring,” he worked with ten
railroad Presidents and pressured Legislators
to build/extend their lines, doling out $240,000
principally to insure funding for the Western
North Carolina Railroad. He carried payoffs
and secured loans without pay-back dates for
Legislators to locate the first State Penitentiary
in the Endor area. His “Third House,” a bar in
the Capitol’s west portico between the Senate
and House Chambers, dispensed free whiskey and cigars. Littlefield appeared before the
Bragg Commission as it was expiring and left
N.C. Inspection Station
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North Carolina before the Shipp Commission
sat. Several attempts to extradite him from
New Jersey failed, as did the Governor’s kidnapping scheme.
The State next employed the persuasive
powers of the elderly, respected State Senator
(former Confederate Senator), Dortch. Littlefield greeted him warmly, had him read “tellall” accounts, and promised to return with him
to stand trial if North Carolina guaranteed that
all involved would be punished. After reading the papers, Dortch decided that Littlefield
would be “troubled no more.” Too many prominent figures were involved.
Other surprises/links awaited. First, I
learned that Faison artist Mary Lyde Hicks
Williams, whose plantation works are featured
in Footnotes (Issues 115-120), did the Dortch
portrait in the North Carolina Museum of
History.
Second, “E. D. P.” described Duplin’s Courthouse as disfigured during Rad-pop days. I
sought help from former Curator of the North
Carolina Collection and renowned archivist
Dr. H. G. Jones, a friend of Dr. Dallas Herring
(father of the NC Community College System
and founder of Footnotes). Democrats used the
term for “Radicals” (Republicans) and “Populists” who welcomed the Negro vote and later
joined forces as “Fusionists.” “The bitterness
of the 1890s lingered for years. It is a sad period
of North Carolina history.”
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