Although less known today than William Weatherford, Savannah Jack was considered “one of the bloodiest villains that ever infested any country” during his own time. Yet so much mystery surrounds Jack’s background and legacy that he has become the stuff of legend.
Following the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, Alabama’s Native Americans ceded millions of acres of land in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. Although the treaty was designed to bring peace to the war-torn Alabama territory, it did not make everyone happy. One Native American who appears to have been particularly disgruntled because of the change of events was Savannah Jack. Having lost his property along Line Creek near Montgomery in the land concession, Savannah Jack made threats that he would continue to fight the white settlers, and he kept his word.
Although less known today than William Weatherford, Savannah Jack was considered “one of the bloodiest villains that ever infested any country” during his own time. Yet so much mystery surrounds Jack’s background and legacy that he has become the stuff of legend. In the years after the Civil War, the court systems of northwest Alabama and southern middle Tennessee struggled to maintain law and order as murderous guerillas and bushwhackers terrorized the countryside. The most notorious gang in the area was the Clifton Shebang, known to Lauderdale County residents as “the Buggers.” Thomas “Mountain Tom” Clark (1821-1872), a deserter from both the Union and Confederate armies, was one of the leaders of this gang. The first record of Tom Clark and the Clifton Shebang comes from an 1865 report by Captain Lot Abraham of Co. D, Fourth Iowa Cavalry, USA. Reporting to his superior about robberies by Union troops stationed near Florence, Alabama, Captain Abraham stated: “Several citizens told me they believed most of the robbing had been done by men who were with Lieutenant Thrasher.” Among them, he listed Tom Clark. It was raining late in the evening of March 3, 1956, when brothers Billy Howard and Robert Earl Dye and their older cousin, Dan Brasher, left a relative's house in the rural backwoods of northern Jefferson County. They drove off in Billy’s 1947 green Ford for a party in Robinwood, just outside Morris, then disappeared into the Alabama night. Theories regarding the disappearance abound-from the men being murdered at the party to an execution-style shooting in a Blount County cave. A few strands of human hair fished out of an abandoned coal shaft led to speculation the men had been dumped there. The one constant in every theory was that moonshine played a pivotal role. |
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