Reconstruction and Rev. John Scott

In 1871, the Waterbury American published a pair of letters written by Rev. John Scott, a Waterbury man who was working for the American Missionary Association in North Carolina. Scott was a teacher as well as a Congregational minister: he built a small church and school in Dudley, N.C. as part of a larger mission to educate people who had been freed from slavery and to encourage them to join the Congregational Church. The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups were terrorizing freedmen and anyone who helped them. Three days after construction of Rev. Scott’s church and school was completed, the building was destroyed by arson. The fire was started in the school’s library, guaranteeing that none of the books would survive.

Last night our beautiful church was burned to ashes. ... They woke me at two in the morning only to see the building fall. ... By its blazing timbers we knelt down that night, and prayed that God would help us; prayed for the 150 pupils that would come in the morning and find neither house nor books: for the 200 people who, next sabbath, would look for a place to worship and find none. Books, papers, all were lost.
(Excerpts from John Scott’s letter to Rev. Charles C. Painter, published in “Ku-klux Outrages in North Carolina,” Waterbury Daily American, March 9, 1871)

Members of the Ku Klux Klan,
illustrated in Harper's Weekly, December 19, 1868

The destruction of Scott’s church and school happened in February, 1871, one of countless acts of terrorism being perpetrated throughout the South by white supremacists. There were so many incidents that some people in the North, including the editor and publisher of the Waterbury American, started to think it was all fabricated by politicians seeking to pass legislation giving more power to the federal government. They read accounts of atrocities taking place in the South and found them difficult to believe. Some dismissed the news as one-sided, assuming that reports of racist violence were exaggerated or somehow misleading.