# Alfred Moore Waddell **Alfred Moore Waddell** (September 16, 1834 – March 17, 1912) was a former Confederate officer and four-term congressman who became the public face of the [[Wilmington Coup of 1898]]: the orator of the white supremacy campaign, the reader of the [[White Declaration of Independence]], the leader of the mob that burned the city's Black newspaper, and the man installed as mayor the same afternoon. He is the KB's clearest case of an establishment politician leading an armed overthrow of an elected government. ## Career before 1898 | Years | Role | |---|---| | 1853 | Graduated from the University of North Carolina | | 1855 | Began practicing law in Wilmington | | 1860–1861 | Owned the Wilmington *Daily Herald*, a Whig paper he used against secession | | 1861–1864 | Confederate adjutant, then lieutenant colonel, Third North Carolina Cavalry (41st North Carolina); resigned August 1864 | | 1871–1879 | U.S. Representative, North Carolina's 3rd district (Conservative-Democrat); chaired Post Offices and Post Roads; sat on the Ku Klux Klan committee | | 1878 | Defeated for reelection; returned to law and writing | ## The 1898 speeches Waddell was the star speaker of the Democratic white supremacy campaign run by [[Furnifold Simmons]], with the [[Red Shirts]] as its armed wing. Two speeches are usually quoted, and they are often merged into one: - **October 24, 1898, Thalian Hall.** The text printed in the *Wilmington Messenger* the next day reads: "We are resolved to change them, if we have to choke the current of the Cape Fear with carcasses." Later retellings give it as "We will never surrender to a ragged raffle of Negroes, even if we have to choke the Cape Fear River with carcasses." - **November 7, 1898, the eve of the election.** "Go to the polls tomorrow, and if you find the negro out voting, tell him to leave the polls and if he refuses, kill him, shoot him down in his tracks." ## The coup On November 9 Waddell read the White Declaration of Independence at the New Hanover County courthouse, demanding that [[Alexander Manly]] close the *Daily Record* and leave town. On the morning of November 10 about 500 armed white men gathered at the Wilmington Light Infantry armory; when others declined, Waddell took command and led them to the *Daily Record* office, which was burned as the crowd grew to roughly 2,000. Killings of Black residents followed across the city. That afternoon the elected Fusion mayor, Silas P. Wright, the police chief and the aldermen were forced to resign at gunpoint, and Waddell was named mayor around 4 p.m. He held the office until 1905 (some sources say 1906). His own account, "The Story of the Wilmington, North Carolina, Race Riots," ran in *Collier's Weekly* on November 26, 1898; the "race riot" label held for most of a century. ## Later life and reassessment Waddell published a memoir, *Some Memories of My Life* (1908), and a history of New Hanover County (1909). He died in Wilmington in 1912 and is buried in Oakdale Cemetery. The state's 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission report, released in May 2006, put the documented death toll at as many as sixty Black residents and reclassified the event as a planned overthrow of the government, the reading that now governs how historians and the KB describe Waddell's role. ## See Also - [[Wilmington Coup of 1898]] · [[White Declaration of Independence]] · [[1898 Midterm Elections]] · [[Red Shirts]] - [[Furnifold Simmons]] · [[Josephus Daniels]] · [[Alexander Manly]] - [[Reconstruction and Its Overthrow]] · [[Jim Crow Era]] · [[Voter Suppression]] · [[Democratic Party]]