Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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THE STRUGGLE OF '76. I Address Delivered at Red Shirt Reunton at Anderson, August 25th, by Senator B. R. Tillman. Continued. The Leaders in 1N7<?. There will always be a difference of opinion among I South Carolinians as to which of the three men, Butler, j Hampton or Gary, is entitled to the most credit for there-1 demption of the state in 1876. I, who am entirely familiar with all of the primcipal events which led up to that strug gle and was a modest actor in some of its most stirring scenes, desire to put on record my estimate of the work of these three men. They were all cavalry leaders in the, Army of Northern Virginia, Hampton, a lieutenant general, j Butler, a major general, and Gary, a brigadier general, j The two last had been captains in the famous Hampton i Legion and all three went to the front together. They ! Viovo oil rrnccpM thp river and are sleeoine: with Tacksonandj "? ' " "" i w Lee. Hampton, shortly after the war went to Mississippi: to look after his large planting interests in the Yazoo! Delta. He returned to South Carolina in 1876 at the earn- j est solicitation of the other two men. j Butler and Gary resumed the practice of law at Edge-:, fioM vvhil#? hnth nf them had lan?e fanning: interests. I , met Gen. Hampton only two or three times casually. I was on the most friendly terms with Gen. Butler until Ii entered the race against him for the senate in 1894. He insulted me grossly and wantonly in that campaign and we never spoke again, though after my earnest effort to have ( McKinley appoint him a general in the volunteer army in the Qnich_Am#?riran war he made advances which I did 11 ?f ? I not feel willing to accept. With Gen. Gary I was intimate and was one of his ] trusted lieutenants in the red shirt campaign in Edgefield in , 1876. h I express it as my deliberate judgment after a careful ' consideration of all of the facts as I know them that But-< ler's work at Hamburg was more far-reaching in its consequences and valuable in its results than any act of either of the other two men. The qualities possessed by all three of them, differing in many respects, were all essential to ; the final success of the white man's cause in that supreme ! crisis. Hampton's calm determination, his poise, his i moderation, his good judgment in dealing with the per-; ] plexing conditions produced by the dual government which { existed between the assembling of the legislature in Novem-, I ber and the withdrawal of the troops in March, were ab solutely necessary to the success we achieved, rte Diun-| dered egregiously in urging the policy of persuasion and of convincing the negroes by argument to vote with us. He always maintained that sixteen thousand negroes voted for him in 1876, but every active worker in the cause knewj that in this he was woefully mistaken. Gary preached the only effective doctrine for the times, that "one ounce of fear was worth a pound of per-: suasion," and was prepared and did ride rough shod over the negroes and their carpet bag leaders, while his daring i refi sal on the day of the election to obey Gen. Ruger's order to have the whites vacate the court house at Edge-; field really gave us the victory. His exhortation to the white! men was to "put the ballots in the boxes, I will see that theyj are counted." He organized the red shirt regiment which j on the 12th of August captured the Chamberlain meeting' in Edgefield and gave the negroes to understand that the j white men were resolved to take possessioil of our own again and drive out the thieves and scoundrels whom they had been following. Butler in 1874 had led the forces at the Second Ned Tennant riot which struck such terror into the hearts of the two companies of militamen that by night movements; and devious paths through the swamps and pine thickets they had marched to Edgefield and delivered up their rifles to Laurens Cain. Butler, Gary and George Tillman had to my personal knowledge agreed on the policy of terrorizing the negroes at the first opportunity by letting them provoke trouble and then having the whites demonstrate their superiority by killing as many of them as was justifiable. Butler's opportunity came at Hamburg and when he, as I have narrated, took upon himself the responsibility of ordering Dock \dams' militia company to surrender its arms and then organized and ordered the attack on the j armory, his daring spirit led him to do that which put his i own neck in jeopardy while it thrilled and burned in the ; souls of the white men of South Carolina as nothing else | could have done. t The spirit of 1776, which made Moultrie, against the'] advice of Gen. Lee, man his palmetto log fort and destroy | Sir Peter Parker's fleet, pulsated in the bosom of every i ( brave Carolinian, when they learned that a body of seven- ( ty-five poorly armed whites had dared to attack a legally , organized militia company, capture its armory, and then | put to death some of its members. If there had been no] Hamburg riot, it is extremely doubtful whether there would , have been any straightout campaign in 1876. It is equally i ] doubtful whether there would have been a 12th of August. < If Gary had been at Hamburg instead of leaving the scene \ as soon as the armory was captured, as did Gen. Butler, j he would probably have directed events to the very close ? and sateguarded trom a legal point ot view the lives 01 | those who had done the bloody work. As it was every- . thing ran by haphazard after the negroes evacuaed the ( armory. Butler, when he was lighting for his seat in the . senate, denied participation in the Hamburg riot except in j the preliminary stages as a lawyer. He said there were , three separate Butlers and he had nothing to do with the killing of any of the negroes. This was entirely accurate, but he had fired the fuse and set the ball in motion, and i one of its consequences was the redemption of the state 1 from negro rule. i Gary's doctrine of voting "early and often" changed c the republican majority of 2,300 in Edgefield to a demo- j :ratic majority of 3,900 thus giving Hampton a claim to at he office of governor. to Hampton has his monument and the people of South tii Carolina love to honor his memory, but Butler and Gary e> are entitled to equal, if not more credit for the victory of 01 1876. In my visit to the north as a lecturer I have come on some b; strange and interesting things. Some years ago I lectured h< at Iowa City, Iowa, the former territorial capital of that ni state. After I had finished speaking and returned to the w hotel an old Union soldier, whose name I forget called on o! me. He was very much impressed by what I said and n< asked if I would not allow him to show mc the town next n morning. Finding I would have an hour or two after H breakfast before inv train left, I agreed. He carried me cl to the old territorial capitol which he said had been de- si signed by Jefferson Davis when secretary of war and was a IrcDroduction of the Parthenon at Athens. We entered ci ~ r the building and he directed my steps to the rooms occu- o pied by the state historical society of Iowa. Iowa has tl made very little history, so there was nothing much wcrlhy n of notice. But in a glass case carefully preserved and ci abeled with certificates as to when, where and by whom s( it had been "capturea he showed me the large silk flag b with the blue ground a*"' white Palmetto tree and crescent c< 1 ~1 ? ~ *- ^ ^ !-?/-? f r/ ..nf nf 11 wnicn was useu on smie iu um^n, m<. our state house in Columbia. Gen. 0. 0. Howard's cer- A tificate gave the name of the soldier, company and regi- k ment who had done the gallant deed of "capturing" it or ti stealing it from the secretary of state's office. , It is in a n splendid state of preservation, the silk being of the finest tl and the border being of heavy gold fringe. It must be at w least twelve by twenty feet in size. South Carolina has p made so much history and written so little that Iowa may e< want to keep this memento of her part in the suppression ir of the rebellion and the burning of Columbia. If they A can afford to keep it, we certainly can afford to let them al have it. But if conditions were reversed I should certainly feel ashamed as a citizen of Iowa to hold the stolen em- a< blem of a sister state as a trophy of the civil war. w A more recent event is equally interesting. About 01 three weeks ago I addressed the chautauqua at Batavia, w Ohio. ls Mr. Miles Bicking, who said he-was a democrat, ap- v' proached me and said: "I have something here which ha? 2] been in my possession about thirty years and I thought I fc would bring it out today and show it to you and ask you ol ibout the story of tissue ballots we have heard about in ir South Carolina. Your lecture has given me all the infor- st nation I want and I ask you to accept this as a curiosity." [ give the exact reproduction of this curious relic of b} a< ^one days. It is the democratic ticket for Richland coun- tl :y in Hampton's second election for governor in 1878. tl P: RICHLAND COUNTY. tl For Governor: Wade Hampton. 01 Lieutenant Governor: w W. D. Simpson. ' ^ Secretary of State: k R. M. Sims. ' il Superintendent of Education. U! H. S. Thompson. tr Comptroller General: Johnson Hagood. Adjutant and Inspector General: v E. W. Moise. w State Treasurer: V S. L. Leaphart. k Attorney General: ir Leroy F. You mans. ? ^ Congress?Third District: D. Wyatt Aiken. ^ State Senator: n John H. Kinsler. 11 Representatives: ? John E. Bacon, tc John A. Elkins, ^ John C. Haskell, c' John C. Seegars, E. McC. Clarkson, Tl? n School Commissioner: w L. C. Sylvester. ^ County Commissoners: 2 W. C. Starling, N. J. Dubard, 11 T. A. Scott. o: It will be recalled that the tissue ballots were used je n the heavy negro counties for the purpose of having the fc white men to vote several tickets at once by folding them ill together in a way to have them drop apart in the 30.\es. The law provided on closing the polls that-jf ^ :here were more ballots found in the box than there were , b names cn the poll lists the ballots should be returned to ( :he box and one of the managers should draw out the ex:ess to be destroyed. It is needless to say that the demDcratic white manager did the drawing and the negroes i r jsed to be very much surprised that he always drew a :hick republican ticket to be burned. The men in the upper part of the state who had no negro majorities to contcnd against and some of the kneebreeches statemen who are.editing our papers now will ioubtless find fault and criticise any allusion to these 11 :hings in this day~and time, but those of us who passed ihrough the ordeal and who risked our lives at Hamburg ind Ellenton can afford to leave to the judgment of the people of the state whether there was justification for our u icts or not. That we have good government now is due entirely to the fact that the red shirt men of j976 did all 31 ind dared all that was necessary to rescue South Carolina from the rule of the alien, the traitor, and the semi-barba- Iri :ous negroes. (1' 01 The ISIowlv Shirt Drill. | in One more episode of that momentous year and I wilMo je done. It relates particularly to the orign of the red . Ik shirt as the democratic uniform in 187C. I shall leave it^It others to sift the evidence and determine if it can be done, . w ncf thp rrprlit Hps. I wnnt 1fi< 'tell wh.'it I' knOW cl >out the bloody shirt and its effective use in that momcn- 1" us crisis. In my story of the Hamburg riot I have men-j Dned the drum-head court martial which condemned and t ;ecuted milttiamen who were prisoners after the fighting t firing had ceased. |\ The last man selected to be shot was a notorious thief ? y the name of Pomp Curry whom I had known from boy-j Dod. ,He bad fnrnished the names of all whom he reco-^ ized to District Attorney Stone and this evidence caused t arrants to be issued against practically all the members z [ the Sweetwater Sabre club and a few others who were s ot members. Many active participants in the riot were i ever found out or indicted. Others who were not in j 1 [amburg at all were among the accused. We were 1 riarged with murder and conspiracy to murder, and the t leriff of Aiken county was ordered to make the arrests. 1 ,ikca wise and prudent man lie did not attempt to exe- i ate the warrants, but communicated with Col. Butler, 1 ur captain, and by common understanding all of the men ! ius charged assembled at Lower Cherokee Pond, a place < ear Col. Butler's home, and started for Aiken. The pro- ^ 1 :ssion was led by the sheritt in a buggy, toiioweci by tne^ 3-called prisoners, armed, to the teeth, and accompanied 1 y baggage wagons with supplies for horses and men, i Doks and a full camping outfit except tents. Rev. Wil- ! am Shaw, who owned a plantation two miles west of iken, the dwelling house on which was unoccupied, had^ indly offered it for our use. We reached this place some : me before sundown and took up our quarters for the^ ight. Court was to convene two days later and we werej' ius early on the groued in order to give the lawyers who! ho had our case in hand opportunity to draw up the pa- 1 ers and prepare for obtaining bail if we were to be allow- 1 J to return home. Gen. Butler, who was under indict.--.4 rrr,f f PI < *?"> Wr>nr1prcr?n nf thpl IL 11 L) iiUlii VJLUi^V, IJLUiJ . JL>>. W. *av?<mv*wv*i w? ???w ikenbarand Maj. William T. Gary were acting as our ttorneys. Among those whose interest had induced them to :company us was my brother, Hon. George D. Tillman, ho had been nominated as a candidate for congress in ur congressional district. He had been in correspondence ith General, afterwards Senator J. Z. George, of Misssippi, the man whose constructive statesmanship in deising means to safeguard southern civilization by the imination of the negro vote will cause his name to shine >r all time as a great constitutional lawyer and benefactor f the south. It was under him that Mississippi led off i disfranchising the negro and practically every southern ate has followed suit. Mississippi had thrown off tht lrpet bag yoke two years before that and Gen. George dvised my brother to have the South Carolinians impress noorrnpc KntVi atf tn nnr strpnrrfh and tfte nurnose of wv-fc)'v" ft-" I- ? I le whites by using a spectacular uniform and urged the arade of long processions of armed white men through le country. The Hamburg riot had caused such a furore through- ' at the north and the republican press of that section was aving the bloody shirt with such frantic energy that Mr. illman suggested to Col. Butler that we though assemled as prisoners should wave the bloody shirt in reality as token of defiance. The idea was seized upon by all of 1 5 and Luther Ransom and myself were appointed a comlittee to visit Aiken, confer with the democratic authori es, and see if we could induce them to help us in jcuring shirts to be donned as uniforms. Col. George 1 V. Croft, then county chairman, entered into the scheme ith great zeal, and gave us an order for the necessary ? tt i j . i it:. r> ...u~ ellow Homespun, naving ODiaineu una, ivausuin, wuu new nearly all of the ladies of Aiken, accompanied me i my buggy and we distributed the bolts of cloth among le ladies with the request that they make us forty homeDun shirts just as soon as possible. As I remember it, le cloth was distributed one afternoon and the next lorning we drove into town from our camp and gathered p the garments, obtaining a good supply of turpentine, il, and Venetian red at the same time. I had telegraphed ) a friend in Augusta, Tom Henry, to send me without 1 lil two negro paper masks or doughfaces and a kinky tiignon. I had ordered a carpenter to make a large flag :aff in the shape of a cross and I got one of the ladies to i .i -r lake an enormous snirt, Digger man uoiiam 01 udiu ould have worn. This shirt was turned into a flag with le arms outstretched over the cross pieces. The negro ices were tacked to the top back to back so as to make a 1 rinning negro head from either side and the chignon was ailed on top of these. Satan's appeal to the fallen angels: "Awake, arise i r be forever fallen," had been emblazoned in large black :tters on one side and my brother suggested the motto >r the other side: "None but the guilty need fear." The shirt was made bloody with the marks of bullet ounds in red, and when the work of making the unique anner was completed, Ransom and others making sug2stions, it was surely a most ghastly object. The yellow homespun shirts had been put on and | /ery wearer stained his shirt with artificial blood accord- i ig to his own fancy. Some used poke-berries to make , ic color more fiery than the Venetian red and turpentine, i i .1 i'.i. , nu vary me urn:. Everything in readiness, about four o'clock the day ' efore court was to convene the Hamburg rioters to the , umber of forty, uniformed as no men have ever been j efore or since, rode into the town of Aiken in column of 1 vos. The flag which was in itself not very heavy retired a very strong and muscular man to handle it when e began to gallop, and Milledge Horn was selected as ag bearer. He had lost five brothers in the Confederate | rmy, a sure guarantee of his courage and daring, was sixj" et high, weighed over 200 pounds and was correspond- ^ igly muscular. As soon as we reached Aiken we rode jictlv by every house where the ladies had been at work i our shirts so as to let them see us. Then stringing out'( i column of file making a line nearly a quarter of a mile ng, and the order was given to gallop, and for half an 1 jur at breakneck speed we paraded through every street, being dry we soon kicked up a great cloud of dust, hile all the men in-the town as well as the women and lildren lined the space in front' of their houses and waved landkerchiefs and cheered us. Not a negro did we see. Having shown how little terrified we were to thus >eard the lion in his den, we proceeded in column of twos o Coker Spring where we consumed an hour or more in vashing the dirt off our faces and out of our eyes and :ars, and watering our horses. At that time there was stationed at Aiken a company jf United States regulars. These were camped on the )luff overhanging Coker Spring. The strange and unique ippearance of this new uniform and the men in it caused ill of the soldiers to line up on the bluff and watch us ,vith great curiosity and interest When all our men had inished washing, and we were again in our places (every :hing having been done in military style, one man holding :hree horses, with linked bridles, while the other three . cashed at the horse trough) Col. Butler gave the command: "Fours left, left dress." This threw us into line facing the bluff where the Yankees were gathered some sixty yards away and about forty feet above us. Then the order was given: "Three cheers for the boys in blue," and if there was ever a "rebel yell" it must have leaped from the throats of those determined and desperate men. As soon as the cheers were given the command followed: "Fours left, left by twos, march," and we started off back up the hill briskly, toward the town. Almost as if by magic the Yankee soldiers who were all in uniform received the order from someone: "Fall in, right dress." As they were already in line it took them Dnly two or three seconds to get in military formation and without counting off the order was given: ''Three cheers for the men in white." The answering call of the northern white man to the southern white man- was as hearty and vigorous as our defiance had been. I will say in passing, that, while some of these same men marched sixteen miles to . -use's Bridge to stop the Ellenton riot some weeks later, and were held along with a large number of other trocps in the disturbed region?one whole regiment being sent to Edgefield court house in October?none of the soldiers ever displayed any other than the most friendly and kindly feeling and they had no stomach whatever for the dirty work they had been sent into the state to do. They obey orders, which is the duty of a soldier, but they never showed any feeling other than good will and sympathy for our people. But while v the Sweetwater Sabre club and its successor in Meriwether township, the democratic fighting club, came in: contact with the troops on several occasions afterwards they were never permitted to cheer us again. The rioters in their bloody shirts returned to their quarters. In this parade the shirts were worn as blouses over the pants, pistol belts outside. Some of the men wore them home, and one young mg.n, John Crawford, I think, caused his sisters to become dreadfully frightened because they thought he Vvas wounded. I carried the flag to my home and I have always regretted that it was destroyed oy nre wnen my residence was uumcu sumc three years later. It was a unique scene in the court room when Judge / Maher ordered bail to be granted, fixing the sum as I recall it, at $1,000 each. The argument of the case had delayed action far into the night Lamps had to be brought in and as the restless "prisoners" would pass in and out of the court room and take their seats the thud of the barrels of their revolvers could be heard as they came in contact with the benches. When court was adjourned the men began to make inquiry of the clerk of the court as to when they could file their bonds. He in a' rather petulant and irritable manner, which was natural because he must hive been very much fatigued, replied: "Sometime in the morning." Just then I overheard Sheriff Jordan whisper to him: "You had better let these men get out of town to? . 11 ^ >> night else they may ourn it ana nangyou oeiort: uiuuuug. In a thrice of the manner of the clerk changed and he began to hand out blank bail bonds to be signed by all the applicants and their sureties. We all went on each ' other's bonds and it became a joke, causing great amusement that Walker Matheny, who did not own ten dollars worth of property, had signed bonds to the extent of $20,000. In truth the whole performance was a perfunctory and in mafty respects a laughable travesity on law, for if they had attempted to put us in jail I am sure few or none of us would have acquiesced and we would have probably killed every obnoxious radical in the court room and town and gone to Texas or some other hiding place. In an hour we had departed and gathering up our camp followers were on our way home. We had in truth waved the bloody shirt in the face of - * ? *' A. T A. ! _ the Yankee bull and dared him to do nis worse, it is needless to say that this daring act on the part of the whites served to intensify the dread of the negroes, while among the whites the bond of race drew us closer together. It was "all for one and one for all" and the state's motto: "Animis opibusque parati"?ready with our lives and fortunes?pulsated as the sentiment in every bosom. I am very much gratified to know that you have withheld yourselves from looking for something to eat at this late hour long enough to listen to this recital of facts of what we in the lower part of the state had to do to save the lives of our wives and children and to preserve our very civilization itself. It is a compliment both to you and to me that I appreciate to the utmost, and I close this recital by extending to you my thanks with the assurance that as long as South Carolinians are true to themselves and'to each other the State will never again have to pass through such an ordeal. THE DIRT OF AGES. A charitably disposed official of the municipal government at Washington tells of an interesting exchange of views between two urchins at a dinner given to the newsboys of the capital by popular subscription. As the lads were waiting for their dessert, they placed heir p-rimv hands side by side on the table cloth. o J "Mine is dirtier than yours !" svas the claim made by :>nc boy. "Maybe it is, " said the second newsboy ; "but you do n't vanter fcrgit you're two years older'n me." The best portion of a good man's life? His little', na-meiess, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love.?Wordsworth. ^? ? J