Description

Lochran Hunter, a twenty-three-year-old who works in Mitchell County, gives this affidavit in Randolph County, Georgia on September 28, 1868. Hunter states that as early as Thursday, September 17, 1868, his employer, Robert Bacon, had warned him not to go into Camilla on the coming Saturday, September 19, 1868, because Bacon anticipated there would be violence there. In what came to be known as the Camilla Massacre or the Camilla Riot, Republicans and freedmen who gathered for a politcal rally and the townspeople who opposed them clashed in front of the Mitchell County courthouse that day. Though Hunter carried a pistol, he had been instructed by Republican leaders John Murphy and William P. Pierce to "shoot no guns," and he, like most of the freedmen who were, in any case unprepared to shoot back, followed those instructions when the townspeople began firing at the crowd. After the firing began Hunter escaped into the nearby woods, and though he was pursued for a short distance, he made it home safely by around midnight Saturday night.Digital image and transcription created by the Digital Library of Georgia in 2001 of a photocopy held by DeSoto Trail Regional Library of an original record held by the National Archives.

Record Contributed By

DeSoto Trail Regional Library System

Record Harvested From

Digital Library of Georgia