J.W. Comer

Biography

Early life

J. W. Comer was born on the Comer family's plantation in Spring Hill, Barbour County, Alabama. His father, John Fletcher Comer, died when John Wallace was 13 years old. Wallace, as he was known in his family, was educated primarily in private schools and through the use of private tutors. in 1861, when he was 16, the Civil War broke out. J. W. would enlist two years later in 1863.

Civil War service

John Wallace enlisted on 1 April 1863 in Troy, Alabama to serve in the 57th Alabama Infantry Regiment. J. W. Comer achieved the rank of 1st Sergeant and was stationed in Mobile and Pollard until 1864. Comer joined the Alabama 27th Infantry Regiment as a Lieutenant in 1864 and followed them to Demopolis where they joined with the Army of the Tennessee. Comer served under Captain B. M. Talbot in Company H of the 57th Alabama Infantry Regiment for the majority of his service.

Comer was injured during the Battle of Atlanta and was rescued from the battlefield by his body servant, Burrell. Body servants were slaves who were often brought into battle by Confederate soldiers. Burrell, who was only 16 at the time, took Comer to a bateau and rowed him down the Chattahoochee River to Columbus, Georgia, a distance of almost 260 miles. Comer's mother met them there and took Comer and Burrell to Spring Hill where Comer recuperated. Comer himself noted that Burrell was a slave and not a soldier. Following the war, Burrell received a pension from the State of Alabama.

Following his recuperation, Comer rejoined his company in North Carolina. Comer was the last officer left in his company when it surrendered to Union forces. He had been promoted to Captain shortly before the surrender, but the commission was not processed before the war ended.

Election riot of 1874

Comer played a prominent role in the Election Riot of 1874. The White League, a paramilitary group opposed to equal rights for newly emancipated African Americans in the southern United States, attacked a polling place in Spring Hill. The son, Willie Kells, of the Republican Federal Judge presiding over the elections, Judge Elias M. Kells, was shot and killed in a melee that took place in the county courthouse. The White League was attempting to prevent any more Republican candidates from being elected into office by the majority black, Republican electorate of Barbour County.

Following their invasion of nearby Eufaula, the White League stormed the polling place in Spring Hill and destroyed the ballot box. The League effectively led a coup d'etat in Barbour County as they removed all Republican officials from public office and installed Democrats instead.

Legend holds that Comer, who was involved in the assault on the Spring Hill polling place, spared the life of Judge Kells, who, rather than his son, was the intended target of the mob, after the judge made the Masonic sign to Comer.

Business Interests

Comer had a stake in a multitude of agricultural and mineral interests. He owned and operated a plantation in Barbour County, known as Spring Hill. Additionally, he and his older brother, Hugh Moss Comer, established the Cowikee Mills at Eufala. Comer assisted his younger brother, Edward Trippe Comer, in the administration of his seven plantations in Milhaven, Georgia. Comer also had a stake in the firm of Comer and McCurdy which bred Hambletonian horses in Lowndesboro, Alabama. Comer also assisted in the administration of the Eureka Mines.

Comer operated the plantation at Spring Hill using leased convict labor, a practice common in southern industry at the time, throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Comer Plantation leased African-American convicts from the State of Alabama. After a visit to the Comer Plantation in Barbour County in 1883, Richard Dawson, the Alabama Prison Inspector, wrote: "Things in bad order. No fireplace in cell. No arrangements for washing. No Hospital. Everything filthy- privy terrible- convicts ragged many barefooted- very heavily ironed."At this time, residents of Barbour County were notorious for kidnapping and selling African Americans into bondage, to exploit their labor after the war to rebuild the wealth of Alabama's elite.

The peonage scheme in the American South grew out of enforcement of the "Black Codes" passed by many southern states immediately after the American Civil War, which sought to control the movement and labor of freedmen, who were sometimes migrating to reunite families and who wanted to do sharecropping rather than work for wages. States required freedmen to work or be defined as vagrants, and sought to regulate behavior by narrowly defining what was acceptable, including prohibition of gambling. Freedmen could also be arrested for such charges as insulting behavior or rudeness to white women. By the 1880s, local and state officials manipulated the system to entrap African Americans. Local officials would arrest African Americans, use white juries to convict them of trumped-up charges, and fine them for their actions plus court costs. Most cash-strapped African Americans could not pay such fines. The state leased them as prisoners to industry and planters for the amount of the fines (usually for $50– $100). Prisoners had to work off the amount they owed to the state through forced labor on farms, plantations, mills and mines.

Although illiterate, the prisoners were forced to sign labor contracts, often including stipulations that they

Political views

Although, unlike his brother, Governor Braxton Bragg Comer, J. W. Comer neither aspired to nor held public office, he did, both publicly and vehemently, denounce the Populist trend in Alabama politics.