27 December 2003
VICKERS/‘The Old South’ can still be found
By OVID VICKERS
Commentary
The question is sometimes asked does the Old
South still exist? Well, yes, it certainly does. If a person stands at a
distance and looks objectively at Philadelphia, Miss., he will see that the town
embodies (even in the 21st century) many of those facets attributed to what is
called “The Old South.”
Since towns like Philadelphia exist on several different levels, the observer
must cast about to discover the mystique which has established itself and
continues to define the identity of Southern towns and communities.
Many of these customs, manners, and traditions which stamp a place as being Old
South came about before and during “The War” and have endured to this very
day.
To be truly Southern, a town must have suffered the ravages inflicted by a
Northern army which occupied the town or simply engaged in burning and pillaging
as they marched through. The occupying army often stayed briefly because of the
nearness of a pursuing Confederate cavalry.
Philadelphia certainly meets this criteria, for a Northern army did march into
town and engage in burning and pillaging. On the 24th day of April, 1863, Col.
Benjamin Grierson and three regiments of cavalry made up of 1700 men and several
artillery pieces entered the county at Stallo and marched south to Philadelphia.
The next day they marched south to Union, completing an almost direct
north-south line through the county’s most heavily populated area.
Grierson did not tarry in Neshoba County because he met resistance at every
turn. Local citizens took up arms and the dashing Captain Henry Forbes returned
quickly to Philadelphia from Macon where he and his troop of 35 men had been
deployed. Although greatly outnumbered, Forbes and his men ambushed Grierson’s
army on its march through the county.
Every Southern town has at least one local author who observes and records the
lives and activities of a town’s citizens and, for that matter, anyone who
might be passing through.
Philadelphia has produced more than one writer.
As early as 1940 Clayton
Rand was making some very interesting and astute observations about Philadelphia
and Neshoba County in his book Ink on My Hands.
Florence Mars penned a best seller when she recorded the civil rights struggle
in Witness in Philadelphia, and Smith Wood told us what it was like to grow up
in Neshoba County in the 1940s in his novel Beyond Childhood. Rachel Evans and
Betty Seward penned an entertaining and sometimes poignant story with their Nor
Far From the Zinnias.
William Faulkner told us in his short story “A Rose for Emily” that it is
characteristic of Southern towns to have an unsolved mystery that is talked
about from one generation to the next.
Philadelphia has such stories. Mystery continues to surround the death of the
brother of a prominent Philadelphia figure.
One day in 1901 a citizen shot and killed the gentlemen in question on the
streets of Philadelphia. The reason for the shooting has never been fully
understood, but, understandably, the event caused great excitement. When the man
who did the shooting was arrested, it was felt that he might not be safe in the
Philadelphia jail because of the popularity and influence of the family of the
man who was killed. For this reason, the accused was sent to Macon and then
brought back to Neshoba County for trial. Although he pleaded self defense, he
was found guilty and sent back to the Macon jail. (It is not clear why he was
not sent to the state penitentiary.)
At this point the story takes on a strange twist. The brother of the accused
went to Macon and convinced the authorities to let him take his brother’s
place in the jail so the incarcerated brother would come home and visit his wife
and children and attend to his crop. This practice went on for some months with
one brother staying two weeks and the other brother the next two.
After about a year or eighteen months, as best the story can be pieced together,
a new trial was held at which time witnesses came forward and testified that
they had observed the shooting and that the accused acted in self defense.
This story has two ironic aspects. The son of the prisoner grew up to be elected
to a very important position in Mississippi’s judicial system, and today the
copies of the Neshoba Democrat which carried accounts of the shooting and the
subsequent trial are missing from the archives.