Those Five Orange Pips - Conclusion
|
We know that in 1865 Colonel Elias Openshaw returned to his plantation. Few folks outside the South realise what he returned to. Those men who were able to return to their homes found a land far different from what they left. General Sherman was told to make an example of the South to deter future thoughts of secession by any state. Sherman and his band of rabid goons did exactly that. In what far surpasses the threshold of war crimes, they roamed across the South raping, pillaging, plundering and destroying. If it grew, it was uprooted. If it was erected, it was burned and razed. If it was a female, it was raped. If trains ran on it, it was torn up. All infrastructure was destroyed. This is what Elias Openshaw came home to. The Openshaw plantation was fortunate that its owner returned. The South bore the brunt of the deaths in The War. In far too many cases, the husband and father did not return. Imagine their survivors, including slaves, recently freed by the 13th Amendment, huddling together in the remains of the buildings on the farms and plantations. Disease and starvation were rampant. There was no "Marshall Plan." There was no 911. There were no police. There were, however, groups of roving marauders that might best be called Sherman's Gleaners. What Sherman left, they took. It was because of this that Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate General, formed what came to be called the Ku Klux Klan. They had one purpose, to rid their countryside of these bandits. Unfortunately, some men took their groups towards other ends. As a result, in 1869, Forrest ordered the disbanding of the Klan. As we know, not all obeyed. In 1869 or 1870, after the
Klan was ordered disbanded, Colonel Openshaw returned to England. His nephew
tells Holmes, “He had made a very considerable fortune in the States, and his
reason for leaving them was his I must question how Openshaw could have made a fortune. His wealth was certainly based in land and buildings. While he may have enjoyed a high standard of living before the war, any actions after the war to turn his plantation into a liquid fortune would have been futile. Those buying would have been the so-called Carpetbaggers, opportunistic Yankees who came South to take advantage of the ruined economy. As to his reported aversion to Negroes, consider the fact that the 15th Amendment, enfranchising the recently freed slaves, meant that a man such as Elias Openshaw could bring his 300 new employees to the polling booth and have a much greater result on the election than a store owner, for they most certainly would have voted they way their employer told them. What do we know of
Openshaw's involvement with the Klan? 4th. Hudson came. Same old platform. 7th. Set the pips on McCauley, Paramore, and John Swain, of St. Augustine. 9th. McCauley cleared. 10th. John Swain cleared. 12th. Visited Paramore. All well. What did Openshaw mean by these notations? What was the "platform?" Perhaps this was Forrest's demand that the group disband, and that those who did not were to pay a dearly for their actions. Perhaps McCauley, John Swain and Paramore were not ready to follow Forrest's instructions and they paid the price. If we surmise that the remaining renegade members hunted down Openshaw in order to get the papers that implicated them in the persecutions of the freed slaves, why did they not meet personally with him as opposed to having Capt. John C. |
|
|
|
Calhoun kill him? Why would they (or Calhoun) assume that the brother and nephew would have any knowledge of the papers? The ultimate problem is to find the reason that an entire family was assassinated. Alas, we shall never know, for Holmes theorised before he had all the evidence.
4Reconstruction Act of 1867, 15th Amendment 5The Five Orange Pips, DD 219 |
|
|
