Bay Minette, Alabama, was still a small railroad town when the night of April 6, 1895, turned violent. James R. Stewart, a 30-year-old male deputy sheriff, went out as part of an effort to stop a feared robbery suspect who was moving along the Louisville & Nashville line and slipping away into the dark pine country whenever the law closed in.
Accounts describe the suspect as the outlaw known as “Railroad Bill,” later widely identified as Morris Slater, an African American fugitive
whose reputation for sudden gunplay and clean escapes had already spread beyond Baldwin County. That night, the chase tightened after reports of shooting on a road outside town, and a posse was organized to hunt him down. Near midnight, the pursuers believed they had him cornered, and gunfire erupted in close quarters—described in later retellings as a fight in and around a barn—where Stewart was struck and killed during the attempted arrest. In the confusion and smoke, Railroad Bill broke away and vanished again into the surrounding countryside.
There was no immediate arrest for Stewart’s killing. Instead, the case became part of a larger manhunt: newspapers carried the story, posses kept forming, and rewards climbed as Railroad Bill continued to slip past checkpoints and patrols. The pursuit did not cool with time; it intensified, fueled by each new robbery report and each fresh rumor of where he might be hiding.
The violence did not end with Stewart. Later that year, on July 3, 1895, Railroad Bill was blamed for killing Sheriff Ed McMillan during another attempted capture near Bluff Springs, Florida, after McMillan led a posse across the state line in pursuit. That second killing amplified the urgency, drawing in more law officers and railroad detectives and deepening the sense that the fugitive was waging open war on anyone who tried to take him alive.
Even so, there was no trial for Stewart’s death, because the suspect was never brought to court. The chase finally ended almost a year later, in March 1896, when lawmen ambushed Railroad Bill at a general store in Atmore, Alabama, and shot him down on the spot. His death closed the hunt, but it also meant the questions that would have been answered in a courtroom—exactly how the shooting unfolded, and who fired which shots in the chaos—were left to be argued in headlines, memories, and legend rather than settled by a verdict.
