Democrats
Democratic Perspective
During this same period, Mary Norment was compiling her own history of the Lowry gang, one that was not even close to showing their better sides. It is important to note that when examining the work by Mary Norment, one must consider how this author is connected to the outlaw. Her husband, Owen Norment, was a captain in the county police for Robeson.[1] In fact, it was Capt. Norment’s task to try and capture the outlaw, a job which provided more stress and angst than satisfaction. This pursuit of the outlaw also led to the Captain’s demise when after capturing Henry Lowry and his younger brother in law, Boss Strong.
During this period Capt. Norment’s plantation was ‘visited’ by members of the Lowry gang, who upon luring him outside of his house, shot him repeatedly, holed him up into his house, and forbade the use of a doctor to his residence (by means of firing upon the doctor himself), until the Captain’s fate was sealed. This attack was prompted by the Captain capturing Henry Berry and the rest of his gang retaliating for the arrest. [2] As such, Mary Norment, worked on a history of the Lowry history, in both the family’s history and with the events of Henry Lowry himself.[3] “Mary Norment hated Henry Berry and his followers with the boundless hatred of one who has been injured beyond all repair….that life rarely treats wicked people with appropriate cruelty, ….Could mere death, death from a swift bullet, mete out the full measure of retribution to men who could establish a secret hiding place in the shadow of a home, and who could hark there listening to a father reading nursery tales to his children, waiting for the proper moment to entice him to his death?”[4]
In the work, Norment displays the Lowry’s in a light that is far from flattering, and even depicts the murder of Allen and William as if they had brought the executions upon themselves. When disc using the cause of the deaths of Allen and William, Norment goes into great pains to stress that it was their involvement in crimes against their own neighbors that brought about their own demise;
“The Lowries lived in Scuffletown. Old Allen Lowrie, held in contempt the common Scuffletonians, purchased a tract of land from a white man, who was a small farmer, in a neighborhood which comprised families equal in point of education, refinement and wealth to any community in the county of Robeson or elsewhere throughout the State. The immediate vicinity in which commenced the horrible scenes of plunder, so soon to be followed by bloodshed, was not thickly settled, the plantations being large; consequently families in some instances lived a little remote from each other….”[5]
It was at this point in the text that the Home Guard is introduced and displayed as a force of good and stability for the people of the region. Their involvement, for the short time that it lasted, seemed to have brought peace and order to the county of Robeson, and that their involvement into the affairs of Robeson was by invitation of the townsfolk and certain members are depicted as exemplary citizens; including J.P. Barnes, who commanded the men who executed Allen and William Lowry, and James Brantley Harris, who was known for randomly murdering members of the Lowry family in a futile attempt to try and intimidate Henry Berry.
What is also remarkable is the use of the Lumbee Indian, as a group, was a compromise to the character of Lowry himself. “The event of Lowries' death which I have just mentioned, it is thought, kindled afresh in the bosom of Henry Berry the fires of revenge, which are always so difficult to extinguish in the breasts of Indians. Nothing would quench that fire but blood.”[6]
What’s more, in several articles of the New York Times, a purportedly moderate newspaper, there are numerous editorial and news bulletins posted that depicted Lowry, not as a hero, but as vile villain. In one such article published in July of 1871, titled “Robin Hood Comes Again”, the imagery of Robin Hood itself is used in a negative manner, whereas Republicans used the image of a man fighting a tyrannical force, Robin Hood is associated with gang violence and is anything but honorable.[7]
Another piece printed in 1872 called, “A New Expedition” tells the story of Lowry in association with former Unionists and those within the mixed colored races in North Carolina, and in the very same article, depicted the Ku Klux Klan as being a group that is trying to maintain and up hold social order in the region.[8] It is important to note that while The New York Timeswas a conservative Republican paper, the fact that the majority of the editorials and views of the Lowry gang were negative, and that the paper was more conducive of the same conservative ideas that the Democratic side had for both the United States as a whole and with the situation with the outlaws, the paper shows perfectly how the conservative media saw the
[1] Evan, Willian McKee., To Die Game, (Syracuse: Syracuse Universtiy Press), 112
[2] Evan, Willian McKee., To Die Game, (Syracuse: Syracuse Universtiy Press), 112-116
[3] Evan, Willian McKee., To Die Game, (Syracuse: Syracuse Universtiy Press), 116
[4] Evan, Willian McKee., To Die Game, (Syracuse: Syracuse Universtiy Press), 116-117
[5] Norment, Mary, The Lowrie History, As Acted in Part by Henry Berry Lowry, (Lumberton, NC; Lumbee Publishing Company, 1909), 30-31
[6] Norment, Mary, The Lowrie History, As Acted in Part by Henry Berry Lowry, (Lumberton, NC; Lumbee Publishing Company, 1909), 40-41
[7] Unknown, “Editorial Article 1 -- No Title,” New York Times, Jul 22, 1871, 4
[8] Unknown, “A New Expedition: Proposition to Capture the Lowery Gang of Outlaws Singular Enterprise,” New York Times, Mar 18, 1872, 5