But many Statesville residents were unconvinced. The Statesville Landmark continued to dispute the notion that the train was wrecked, arguing that “when the news got far from home and was doctored in central offices . . . it began to take on a different complexion.” The paper termed the suggestion that people from Statesville had robbed passengers “outrageous libel.” To help their case, the railroad attempted to track down the wreck’s responsible party, aided by the Richmond & Danville, which offered a highly publicized $10,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of anyone connected with the wreck. A detective hired by the railroad wrote a letter to survivors asking if they had any disagreements with friends who could have plotted revenge, or if they lost any valuables in the wreck. These attempts to find a culprit led to a few arrests of suspicious-looking individuals, but the investigation ultimately fell short. About a year after the wreck, the Landmark’s editor wrote, “the contention of The Landmark has been that the train was not wrecked, and we are satisfied, in view of the railroad company’s ridiculous failure to make it appear that it was, that the public believes by this time that The Landmark was right.” On the seventy-fifth anniversary of the wreck, Statesville’s newspaper noted that the cause of the wreck was still “controversial.”15
The diary of David Schenck, the Richmond & Danville’s head lawyer on the case, also suggests that the wrecker story was a fabrication. After the Richmond & Danville system was reorganized as the Southern Railway in 1894, Schenck was forced out of his position—a move he attributed to his reluctance to carry out his duties after the Bostian’s Bridge Wreck. As lawsuits for damage claims wound their way through North Carolina’s courts, the company tried another common strategy to contest the claims: move them from the local courts so they would not have to deal with a jury whose community had been traumatized by the wreck. For the Richmond & Danville, this meant a shift from the Iredell County courts to the Circuit Court in Charlotte. Schenck wrote in his diary that he would not swear to the petitions for the removal of the cases “because they contained falsehoods.” Unfortunately, he didn’t elaborate on the character or source of such fabrications. Still, the entry shows that even an experienced railroad lawyer harbored doubts about the company’s tactics.16
Despite the fact that the cause of the disaster was unsettled, the wrecking and robbery theory gained the widest purchase. S. P. Read, a Memphis man whose daughter died in the wreck, wrote Bennehan Cameron asking for details about his daughter’s death “down to the minutest details.” From what Read had heard, his daughter had survived the initial collision and was freed from the wreckage by Cameron, who later returned to the scene to find her dead. Read suggested in his letter to Cameron, “during your chance when you left to ring the alarm at Statesville, some villain may have murdered her to take from her person the insignificant valuables she possibly had.” Read’s assumption that robbers killed his daughter may sound sensational, but the fact that Read could even consider such a crime speaks to how compelling the railroad’s narrative of wrecking and robbery was for those in search of cause and meaning.17
Backed by the weight of a powerful corporation with allies in the highest levels of state government, it is no surprise that southerners largely accepted the railroad’s narrative of wrecking and robbery. White southerners were on edge in 1891. Increased mobility introduced by the interconnected rail network meant more frequent encounters with strangers, such as the white man in the black slouch hat seen lurking around Statesville, and unfamiliar black faces, like the four rescuers. This dynamic helped fuel an outburst of lynching in the 1890s, which historian Amy Wood has argued “erupted and thrived along the fault line where modernity and tradition collided.” Just as white men mobilized to confront the threat of supposed black rapists, white rail passengers began to fear conspiracies behind wrecked trains, and worry that gangs lay in wait at trestles like Bostian’s Bridge.18
Editorial pages initially focused on the broader systemic flaws behind the wreck. However, a number of papers clearly changed positions in light of the intimation that wreckers caused the accident. In the first issue published after the wreck, Leonidas Polk’s Progressive Farmer, a Populist publication that was typically hostile towards rail corporations like the Richmond & Danville, noted that whatever the cause, “it does not do away with the idea that every high bridge ought to be inspected before crossed by a train, and that trains ought to be run over bridges at a very slow rate of speed.” The paper went on to say that the practice of trains trying to make up time by running fast should be “stopped at once.” But after the coroner’s jury report, the paper switched tack and defended the railroad, arguing, “it is absurd to say that they carelessly allow anything to occur that entails such a great loss.” The paper suggested that the “well-dressed stranger” was the culprit—a “Jack the Ripper kind of fellow who thinks his mission here is to wreck trains.” A mere day after the paper printed an editorial suggesting safety improvements, the Richmond Dispatch noted that train wrecking had become too common, a “menace to all who ride upon railroads” and that to “flay them alive would be all incommensurate with the condemnation due their dastardly deed.” The rhetorical fire of editorial pages, once trained squarely at the Richmond & Danville or at the broader railroad system, was clearly redirected towards the unidentified wreckers.19