The Incorrigible John George: Part 2
How a convicted criminal became a lightening rod for change
The Incorrigible John George is the true story of John Mathias George, a notorious Alabama bootlegger, lawbreaker and storyteller. If you’re new to the story, you might want to start at the beginning of this four-part series.
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Release Date: January 14, 2025
Confederates rise to the challenge
Convicted moonshiner John George’s story appeared above the fold on Page 1 of the Friday, January 29, 1926 edition of the Birmingham Age-Herald, and within hours members of local and state patriotic groups had sprung into action.
Among those was Confederate veteran Thomas Millsaps. Eighty-year-old Thomas had fought under Nathan Bedford Forrest in Forrest’s Cavalry Corps, and was commander of Camp Hardy, United Confederate Veterans (UCV).
Established in June of 1889 by former soldiers and sailors of the Confederate States of America (CSA), the Southern veteran organization was founded on the principle that:
The United Confederate Veterans are men incapable of cherishing other feelings than those of the noblest toward the common country in all its broad dominion.
Their affection for each other as comrades in march, camp and battles where they enjoyed victories and suffered defeats; their admiration for their great leaders, living and dead, their pride in Southern valor; their devotion to the Heaven-favored land of the South;
Their purpose to preserve an impartial history and to perpetuate the glorious memories of the great war are not inconsistent with their proven fidelity to the terms of their surrender; their manifest appreciation of the heroism of the Union veteran; their patriotic allegiance to the Government of the United States; their enthusiastic cheers with which they greet our country’s flag; their willingness to unite with all sections to build up the whole commonwealth; their resentment of any foreign invasion of the common rights or real; and their readiness to give themselves, their sons and their fortunes in defense of this great Union of free and sovereign States.” 1
Strong upholders of what Virginia author Edward Pollard termed the “Lost Cause” – the belief that the “South had not actually been defeated; rather, it had been unfairly overcome by the massive manpower and resources of the deceitful Yankees,” 2 members of the UCV defended the dignity, heroics and reputation of Confederate veterans, both living and dead.
In his capacity as commander, Thomas declared that no Confederate veteran would rest until John was back home with his family.
“We fought in ’61 for what we thought right,” he said, “and we will continue to fight for what is right as long as any of us live, and it is not right for Mr. George to serve a sentence for violating a liquor law, when others who are real violators get off so light.”
Thomas quickly organized a conference of other veterans, and together they agreed to immediately send a telegram to Alabama governor, William Brandon detailing their outrage, and to follow up the telegram with a petition demanding John’s release and signed by every local veteran . 3
Paulus Daniel, Commander of the UCV’s Camp Wilcox– and coincidentally the warden of the Jefferson County Jail who’d tipped off the Birmingham paper as to John’s plight – was charged with writing the governor a letter seeking an immediate pardon. 4
In addition to fellow veterans, John also gained the support of local members of another Southern patriotic group, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). Founded in 1894 and incorporated in 1919, the organization was active in, among other things, honoring the memory of Confederate veterans and dead; protecting, preserving and marking the places made historic by Confederate valor, and collecting and preserving material for a truthful history of the War Between the States.” 5
Members were encouraged to develop leadership skills, to become professional fundraisers, writers, speakers and political lobbyists, and then use those skills to preserve and defend memories of the Confederacy and those who fought for it in any way possible. 6
And by 1926, the UDC had become one of the most culturally influential and politically effective women’s organizations of the day.
John’s case seemed custom-made for the ladies of the UDC, and they went at it with everything they had.
Like many members of the organization, Mamie Paul Hayes had a personal stake in honoring Confederate veterans like John: her father, Edward Paul, had been a lieutenant in Company F of the 60th Alabama Infantry Regiment during the war, and had died sometime around Mamie’s birth. He’d been just 29.
As President of Montgomery’s Sophie Bibb Chapter of the UDC, Mamie was one of the more outspoken leaders on the situation.
“I think it is terrible that an old man, a Confederate veteran who evidently had an honorable record during the war, should be sent into the mines,” she said. “An old man 84 years old is more like a child, and children are sent to reform schools, while our younger men are frequently put in Kilby Prison. We believe and hope that Governor Brandon will grant clemency in this case.” 7
Another UDC chapter president, Mary Sheets Donoho of Birmingham’s Camp Wilcox chapter, concurred, calling John’s sentence to hard labor at the coal mine a “shame”, and promising that, “The Daughters of the Confederacy will do everything they can to bring about his quick release.” 8
Mary’s late husband, Charles, had come from a long line of distinguished military men, and had enlisted in the Confederate Army at the age of 18. During his four years of service, he’d fought in 18 regular battles, including the April 15, 1865, Battle of Spanish Fort, where he’d been seriously wounded. No doubt, Mary thought of Charles when she learned of John’s situation.
However, and perhaps awkwardly, Mary was also a leader in the local Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), an organization predating the UDC by two decades. The WCTU and its members were vehemently opposed to alcohol, and fought relentlessly to abolish the liquor trade and put an end to the consumption of all alcohol.
Just fifteen months earlier, Mary had represented her chapter at the state convention during which WCTU president Mary T. Jeffries had congratulated members on their dedication, and said, “Our work is not done, and now that we are citizens, our powers are greater, and we should use them to obtain law enforcement.”
Then she’d specifically called for Mary and other WCTU members to push their local representatives for immediate passage of a law that would make it impossible for violators of Alabama’s prohibition law to be paroled after they have been arrested and convicted. 9
The WCTU president could well have been talking about convicted moonshiner John George. Lucky for him, however, the only thing Mary and other true believers in the Lost Cause narrative could see was an honorable old soldier of the Confederacy being dishonored, disrespected and abused.
Call Me A Bastard is the compelling true story of Aimee Henry and Mary Martha Parker: One woman just wanted to belong, and the other was determined to never let her. Start reading it today from the beginning.
The dark pall of Alabama’s slave-holding past
In 1875, Alabama formalized a system which allowed the state to lease inmates of state-run prisons to private corporations, primarily coal mines, farms and lumberyards, in exchange for monthly payments. Soon after, and seeing how financially lucrative the arrangement was, county officials began leasing their inmates to private businesses, as well.
A decade later, nearly three-quarters of Alabama’s state revenue came from the convict lease system. And by the time John was convicted of violating prohibition laws and leased to the Wegra Mine by Hale County in 1926, the convict lease system was annually contributing more than a million dollars to Alabama’s coffers. 10
It was also, many believed, intentionally racist, abusive, unsafe and inhumane, and a thinly-veiled effort to “reestablish antebellum race and labor relations”. 11
Some of the most powerful and vocal opponents to the convict lease system in Alabama over the years had been local journalists who regularly used their platforms to highlight what they saw as the inherent evils in the system and call for its immediate end.
In the same way members of the UCV and UDC saw opportunity in John’s enrollment in the convict lease system, so too did many journalists.
And they didn’t pull any punches.
On January 30 the Birmingham Post published one of the more scathing indictments of the convict lease system, drawing a direct line between Alabama’s slaveholding past and its convict leasing present:
The convict leasing system always hangs over Alabama like a dark pall. It is a constant strain on the escutcheon of a state that is otherwise civilized. The shame of prison slavery is always with us.
But occasionally things happen that particularly emphasize the course of this system.
There have been two such instances within a few days – first, the investigation into the death of James Knox, a youthful prisoner at the Flat Top mines, and then the leasing of John George, an 84-year-old Confederate veteran, to work in the county convict mines at Wegra.
John George is out at Wegra today, wearing the stripes of a convict, a slave of the Alabama By-Products Corporation.
His body has been sold to that corporation for almost two years...
In closing, the piece expressed renewed hope that the end of Alabama’s convict lease system — the only such system still in existence in the whole of the United States — could well be at hand:
John George, veteran of the Lost Cause, may help lead the way to victory over Alabama’s greatest curse, as he totters about his tasks in the Wegra convict slave mine. 12
Whether they were right or not, was yet to be determined.
Playing to the Audience
For his part, John played to what he knew to be a sympathetic audience, entertaining complicit journalists from his new digs at Wegra mine like the celebrity he was.
Over and over again, with the self-deprecating storytelling and innocent guile which had gotten him out of trouble in the past, the old Confederate made sure he ticked off all the boxes: his loyalty to the Southern cause, the plight of his young family back home and the horrors he faced as an 84-year-old victim of Alabama’s unjust and deplorable convict lease system.
He knew his audience would eat it up.
“I fought for three years in the Confederate army, until I was shot in the head,” John told a reporter, pulling off his government-issue convict hat to show the mark left behind by a Yankee bullet. 13
“I was young then,” he continued, regaling his audience with tales of his time spent in the uniform of the Confederacy during the War Between the States. “I did not need these specks, and I could carry my shoulders straight and march all day without tiring.”
When asked about family — his 22-year-old wife, Julia, and their two young sons, Woodrow Wilson, not yet three, and Jeff Wesley, just two months — John said he worried about them getting by, maybe even losing the farm.
“I’ve had a hard life,” he said. “I have worked on that farm since I was a little boy, and Son, that was a long time ago — before you were born.”
“I worked mighty hard to have a place to spend my last days,” John added, “and now I have to come here. I never thought I would come to this.
And when asked about the future, he hit all the right notes. “I can’t live to do the two years,” John said, referring to the six month sentence he’d received for violating Alabama’s prohibition laws, and additional time it would likely take him to work off his $500 fine and court fees. “I am 84 years old, and I am living on borrowed time. Two years from now I will be gone, and it may not be that long.” 14
It was, without a doubt, an impressive performance by the convicted criminal. But there was one little problem: Little of what John said was based on fact, and nearly all of it was verifiable.
Copyright 2025 Lori Olson White
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End Notes
1 “Minutes of the First Annual Meeting of the United Confederate Veterans Held in the City of Chattanooga, Tenn., July 3, 1890”, Atlanta, GA, Constitution Book and Job Office, 1891. P. 4.
2 “The Lost Cause of the Confederacy” Wikipedia
3 “Local Veterans to Ask Pardon. Plea Will Be Made to Governor at Once, says Leader”, The Birmingham Post, Birmingham, AL, January 30, 1926, P. 1.
4 “Vet’s Plight Brings Shower of Letters”, Birmingham Post-Herald, Birmingham, AL, January 31, 1926, P. 23.
5 “History of the UDC”, United Daughters of the Confederacy ®, https://hqudc.org.
6 Karen L. Cox, Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture, University Pres of Florida, 2002. P. 27.
7 “Members of U.D.C to Protest Sentence of Confederate Vet. Local Chapter Delegates to Appeal for Executive Clemency Monday in Behalf of Aged Birmingham Man; Given Six Months on Prohibition Charge,” The Montgomery Advertiser, Montgomery, AL, January 31, 1926, P. 17.
8 “Determined Move Made in Aged Veteran’s Plight: Confederate Organizations Busy in Effort to Save John George from Dismal Prison Camp”, Birmingham Post-Herald, Birmingham, AL, January 30, 1926, P.1.
9 “State W.C.T. U. Hear Addresses on Reform”, The Birmingham News, October 16, 1924, P. 14.
10 Convict Lease System, Encyclopedia of Alabama. (https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/convict-lease-system/)
11 Jefferson Cowie, “How the Slavery-Like Conditions of Convict Leasing Flourished After the Collapse of Reconstruction” Literary Hub, November 23, 2022. (https://lithub.com/how-the-slavery-like-conditions-of-convict-leasing-flourished-after-the-collapse-of-reconstruction/)
12 “John. George – Slave”, The Birmingham Post, Birmingham, AL, January 30, 1926, P. 4.
13 Lewey Robinson, “Aged Veteran, in Prion Stripes, Toils at Mines. John George, 84, Who Bears Scars of Yankee Bullets, Begins Six-Months Term at Wegra Camp for Alleged Sale of Moonshine Liquor”, The Birmingham Post, Birmingham, AL, January 30, 1926, P. 1.
14 “Vet’s Plight Brings Shower of Letters”, Birmingham Post-Herald, Birmingham, AL, January 31, 1926, P. 23.
This is incredible, Lori. You need to get this published into a wider circulation. Just amazing.
Wonderful detail and storytelling. I love the title of this series.