William Dudley Chipley

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An obelisk dedicated to Chipley's memory in Plaza Ferdinand VII in Pensacola, Florida.

William Dudley Chipley (June 6, 1840 – December 1, 1897) was an American railroad executive and politician who was instrumental in the building of the Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad and was a tireless promoter of Pensacola, his adopted city, where he was elected to one term as mayor, and later to a term as Florida state senator.

Following the

Radical Republican judge George W. Ashburn by the Ku Klux Klan. Political maneuvers resulted in the dropping of all charges.[1]

In 1877, Chipley helped Texas Rangers and Florida law officers subdue and arrest outlaw John Wesley Hardin aboard a train in Pensacola. Hardin was subsequently returned to Texas, convicted on outstanding murder charges, and imprisoned.[2]

Early life

Chipley was born in

Asylum for the Insane
in Lexington.

Chipley moved with his parents back to Lexington when he was four years old, and was raised for all of his formative years in Kentucky. He graduated from the Kentucky Military Institute and Transylvania University.

Military service

The base of the obelisk, with his biography inscribed.

After graduation from Transylvania, he enlisted in the

Atlanta. As a prisoner of war, Chipley was transported to Johnson's Island on Lake Erie in Ohio, and was interned there until the war was over. In mid-1865, he settled in Columbus and married Ann Elizabeth Billups, the daughter of a prominent planter in Phenix City, Alabama, just across the Chattahoochee River
from Columbus.

Contemporary illustration of George W. Ashburn's murder

Ashburn murder trial

Chipley was later implicated and charged in the murder of George W. Ashburn by the Columbus Ku Klux Klan.

Radical Republican member of the Georgia government, was murdered on March 31, 1868, following warnings by the KKK to cease his outspoken support for Reconstruction.[5] In the resultant investigation into his murder, Chipley was identified by witness Amanda Patterson as one of several men who broke into the house Ashburn was staying in; Patterson also told investigators that Chipley had, prior to the murder, told her "We are going to kill old Ashburn the night of the day he speaks [at a political meeting]."[6][7]

With former

Alexander H. Stephens representing the defense, Chipley and his alleged co-conspirators were tried before a military court (a civil court not being used as a result of Georgia's temporary military governorship).[8] The prosecution, aided by federal investigator Hiram C. Whitley, assembled evidence of guilt to the point that sympathetic Southern newspapers switched from outright denial of Klan guilt to diminishing the status of the crime; as the Macon Weekly Telegraph hypothesized, perhaps the defendants had intended only to tar and feather Ashburn but when he resisted, the Klan members shot him in "quasi self-defense."[9][10] Northern newspapers reported the defense as resorting to tedious details in their attempt to clear the accused, with the Chicago Tribune recording the military judges as "growing somewhat weary of the great mass of trifling and irrelevant matter introduced by the defense."[11]

Political intrigue, however, would ultimately undermine the case against Chipley and the other defendants. Stephens' connections with Democratic members of the Georgia House of Representatives lead to Democrats voting to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, a Republican goal, which in turn caused the re-admittance of Georgia to the Union and the invalidation of the military court proceedings.[12][13][14] As a result, Chipley and the others charged in Ashburn's death were released.[15]

Railroad executive

Monument in the town of Chipley, Florida

Chipley entered the railroad industry shortly after the Ashburn trial. He worked for the

Florida Panhandle with the eastern part of the state for the first time. Chipley was made vice-president of the P&A.[16]

Chipley's success in getting a railroad built through the Panhandle led the residents of Orange, Florida, to rename their town Chipley in 1882. In the same year, the town of Chipley, Georgia, near Columbus, was named for him, after he got the tracks of the Columbus and Rome Railroad extended to that community; the town's name was changed to Pine Mountain in 1958.[17]

Politics and death

The inscription on Chipley's obelisk in Pensacola commemorates him as a "soldier", "statesman" and "public benefactor".

Chipley created the Democratic Executive Committee in Muscogee County, Georgia in the late 1860s, and was its first director. He later served as director of the Florida Democratic Executive Committee.

Chipley served one term as the mayor of Pensacola (1887–1888). He also served in the Florida State Senate from 1895 to 1897, and lost his bid for

United States Senator
in 1896 by one vote.

While on a trip to Washington, D.C., Chipley died on December 1, 1897. He was in the middle of a trip to lobby lawmakers to base more industrial endeavors in Florida. He was buried in Columbus, while the townspeople of Pensacola erected an obelisk in the Plaza Ferdinand VII in his honor.

See also

References

  1. OCLC 1091189008.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link
    )
  2. ISBN 978-1574415056
    . Retrieved 20 October 2019.
  3. OCLC 1091189008.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link
    )
  4. ^ "The Murder of George W. Ashburn of Georgia". The New York Times. April 6, 1868.
  5. OCLC 1091189008.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link
    )
  6. OCLC 1091189008.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link
    )
  7. ^ Meade, George (1868). Report on the Ashburn Murder. U.S. Army Department of the South. p. 51.
  8. OCLC 1091189008.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link
    )
  9. OCLC 1091189008.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link
    )
  10. ^ "Affairs in Atlanta". Macon Weekly Telegraph. July 10, 1868.
  11. ^ "The South". Chicago Tribune. July 11, 1868.
  12. ^ "Stand Firm!". Atlanta Constitution. July 21, 1868.
  13. ^ Telfair, Nancy (1929). A History of Columbus, Georgia 1828-1928. Historical Publishing Company. pp. 166–167.
  14. ^ "Suspension of the Military Commission". Atlanta Constitution. July 23, 1868.
  15. ^ "Return of the Prisoners". Columbus Daily Enquirer. July 26, 1868.
  16. ISBN 0738524212
    . Retrieved 20 October 2019.
  17. ^ "Harris County Historical Markers: The Iron Horse". georgiainfo.com. Retrieved 20 October 2019.

External links

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