Wicked River_ The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild - Lee Sandlin [45]
Johnson’s first response was typical of him: he went to Winn and offered to settle the issue with a handshake. But Winn refused to discuss it. After that their dealings grew increasingly tense. Johnson offered to pay to have a survey done of their properties in the Swamp to establish the exact boundary line. Winn became enraged and said that if any surveyors—or, for that matter, Johnson himself—came onto his land, he’d shoot to kill. Johnson refused to take the threat seriously and had the survey done. The results proved him in the right. He showed them to Winn, but Winn would not budge. Johnson then sued him. He knew that with the results of the survey in hand, he was certain to win—but just before the case was heard, he made another offer to settle, on terms far less advantageous to him than what he was likely to get in court. Winn accepted, and the case was dropped.
Johnson returned to his ordinary routine; his diary entries for the next couple of weeks show nothing but the usual daily drift:
The river rising tolerably fast. Mr James Curry’s son was drowned yesterday evening at the landing. He fell off a log. Business rather dull
I was up at auction today and bought a barrel or ½ pipe of gin at 30 cts per gallon
Business only so so.
I rode out today with the children and got a lot of blackberries Business extremely dull
Business very dull indeed but nothing like as dull as was yesterday.
On June 16, 1851, two days after this last entry, Johnson visited his property in the Swamp. He took along one of his sons and an apprentice. On the way back, they passed a farm belonging to one of Winn’s sons; Johnson decided to stop off to light a cigar. The conversation was perfectly amicable. Johnson’s son and his apprentice later remembered seeing Winn there, but as far as they could recall, he and Johnson didn’t speak.
Johnson’s party rode back toward Natchez. As they neared the outskirts of the Swamp, they were surprised to see that Winn was following them. They slowed down to wait for him; instead he left the road and began paralleling them through the heavy underbrush. They still weren’t alarmed. They went on down the road for a few hundred more yards. Then Winn began shooting. Johnson’s apprentice was hit in the shoulder; Johnson himself was wounded in the stomach. Winn rode off.
Johnson was brought back into Natchez. He was still conscious, and as he weakened, he described the attack to his family and to the sheriff. He died later that night.
Winn was immediately arrested. He would give no explanation for his actions. People who knew him, though, did report that he had been complaining constantly about Johnson; even with the settlement of the lawsuit, he supposedly said that he didn’t think the troubles between them would ever come to an end. But at his trial he said nothing about any of this. Instead he stymied the prosecution with a surprise legal maneuver. According to Mississippi law, people with Negro blood weren’t allowed to be called as witnesses except against defendants who also had Negro blood. Winn claimed that, even though he was a man of color, he had no Negro blood: he was part white and part Seminole Indian. If this claim was upheld, the case could not proceed. The only witnesses to what had happened were Johnson’s son and his apprentice; without them, there would be nobody to testify. The jury deliberated the claim for a day and a half. In the end they were deadlocked. The judge declared a mistrial.
Johnson’s murder had been met with an upwelling of genuine shock and anger among the white people of the town. Johnson was “an excellent and most inoffensive man,” wrote a reporter in the Natchez Courier, “holding a respected position on account of his character, intelligence, and deportment.” It might be thought, then, that such a manifest injustice as the mistrial would lead to action by the local court of Judge Lynch. But the whites were prepared to go only so far in avenging a man of color; in this case they let the legal system take its course. Winn was duly retried.