Chapter 31

Why is it that the Southerners, the whites who masters before the war, have not devided the negro vote, and uniting with those who were intelligent, gained control of the State so as to secure it an efficient government? It would seem to the ordinary political thinker that even three-sevenths whites could control the four-sevenths blacks. One thinks of the Saxon in India with the Hindoo, in Canada with the French, in Jamaica with the Negro, in Ireland, after a turbulent fashion, with the mailed hand, and yet his rule is now absolute. Why is it that in South Carolina it is otherwise? My gifted and honored colleague, Mr. Nordhoff, in his series of letters from the South, says it is because he has been corrupted by the carpet-bagger. With all deference to that distinguished authority, his answer is an imperfect solution. Surely the Negro who knows his old master, who has lived with him during his life, who in most cases looks with affection upon him and all who belong to him--surely in the new relation he will look to the master as a friend, and take his guidance in so solemn a duty as entering upon citizenship. This too because as we learn from all authorities, and from none more clearly than Mr. Nordhoff, that the master, "accepts the new relation" and has no purpose of renewing the war, and, so far as from wishing to return the negro to slavery, feels that the old system was an error, even from an economical point of view, and that in time its abolition will prove to be a blessing to the white, whatever it may be to the black. Why, then this being the case, has the carpet-bagger been able to strangle a commonwealth like South Carolina, and with the aid of the Negro, plunder his old master? The only answer that I can see is that the whites have not taken any pains to cultivate the blacks, who would naturally go with them, or the intelligent and honest Northern men who came here, meaning in good faith to make the South a home and to grow up with the Southern people. In nearly every case with scarcely an exception, the whites have drawn a line, just as Jefferson Davis drew when he embarked upon the Confederacy. They alone have a right here. Whoever opposes him is a "scalawag," a "carpet-bagger," or a "nigger." A "scalawag" if as a Southern born man he votes with the Republicans; a "carpet-bagger" if he comes from the North, no matter how he votes. This line is drawn with severity and with scarcely an exception. A worthy citizen of Charleston, who came from the North in the beginning of the war, from motives of philanthropy, to educate the blacks, who has lived in the state ever since, and holds a high reputation from all classes because of his integrity and ability, told me that he had never been asked to the home of a Southern man since he came into the State. "They do business with me, meet me in public places and show me all respect, but never open the latch key". A reverend and highly esteemed prelate of the Methodist Church in the North came here to attend a gathering of African churches. He was in an official position, for these churches were under the control of his denomination. He remained here several days presiding over the gathering. He was known to be an honored prelate, whose life was given solely to his religious duties. He told me that during his stay in South Carolina he had not received a single attention from his Southern fellow Methodists. The clergy had not noticed his presence nor asked him into their pulpit. He saw only fellow Christians who had come from the North or Negroes, I cannot imagine how the line can be more closely drawn, and now speak of what happened only a few days since.

_The Negro and His Northern Ally_

The negro, then has been thrown back upon his Northern ally. Every memory, every name, every anniversary of the war, is cherished as sacred. All the rest is an abomination. You may well ask: "Why should not this be so, for are not these memories dear to them by the blood slain brothers and children?" Truly so, and far be it from me to profane so holy a thought as that which would honor them. But I am answering the question propounded some time since as to how it is that the Southern whites have never succeeded in dividing the colored vote, so as to give the states a good government. They have driven the Negro away. In Georgia when they gained power they have practically disfranchised him. But for the interference of the Federal Congress they would have forbidden his appearance in their legislatures. I do not think that any frank Georgian will deny that this result was largely due to intimidation and force. In a State with 545,142 negroes in 1870, to 638,926 whites, they have virtually stamped out a Republican party. The negro is afraid to vote, is not in many places allowed on the jury, is punished severely for crimes, and Mr. Nordhoff has told you that at least 25,000 of them have left the State in the last five years; and yet in Georgia they pay taxes on a large property. The negro in South Carolina sees what has been done across the line, and he knows, or naturally fears, that should the white man rule here the same results will follow. As a consequence, therefore, the negro is in the hands of the adventurer. He fears that his master will make him a slave, or reduce him to a condition akin to slavery. The result is, therefore, that not one of them will vote the Democratic ticket. I have heard of Democratic negroes, but I have seen none. I have spoken on this subject with Southern men in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and there is only one story. "I have negroes here," said one eminent gentleman, "who were my slaves in the old time. They hang around my house. They will fight for me, work for me and bring me their money to keep. They take my advice in all things, and are trustworthy and devoted. They will not vote for me. My coachman there will vote against me and in favor of the meanest Republican in the county." The negro thus far sees nothing in politics but his own freedom. He votes for Grant all the time. His political education embraces a sentiment and a fact. The sentiment is Lincoln, the fact is Grant. I was talking to a woolly headed vagabond the other day, who had learned that I was a Northern man, and wanted to go home with me as an attendant. He was a worthless, ragged, shining darky, as black as night, and earned his living, he told me, by dancing the juba for gentlemen on the sidewalk when the police were not looking. During the war he was a slave lad. "Did you know you were free," I said, "before the war was over?" He told me that the news came very quickly; that they all kept "mighty shady," never pretending to know until "Massa Sherman came with the soldiers." But they knew it all the time, and there was never a night that his "old mammie didn't pray to Massa Lincoln." This is the thought that has burned deep into the negro mind. You cannot erase it. You cannot take it from him. He has heard the slaves' horn. He has worn the yoke and carried the scar into furrow and swamp. He has seen father and mother perhaps, taken to the block and sold into slavery. That memory ever lives as it would live with you and I, if such a career darkened our lives. So Moses may steal and Whipper may "administer justice," to him they mean freedom. Coming out of the night they find no hand to grasp but the hand of the adventurer. Is it any wonder then, that they follow him as blind men or those who see darkly?

_Better Signs_

I cannot resist the conclusion, and it grows upon me every day, in the South, that for much of the wrong, that has been done in these States the old Southerners are to blame. I say this in sorrow and with no harshness of feeling to them, and not without making allowance for a feeling which, after all, is one of human nature, a feeling of hatred of the men who defeated their hopes of empire and of contempt for the negro, who is today a senator, but who yesterday could have been sent to the whipping post. It is not easy for a planter who has not enough to eat to rejoice over the fact that the servant who once washed his beard is now his ruler of the State. But, whatever the motive of the feeling, the negro in South Carolina is at the feet of Moses and Whipper, because he was driven there. The old master has as yet made no sign of sympathy or friendship. I am profoundly convinced that if, instead of mourning over the lost cause, as in the past they were wont to bluster about the Yankees and slavery, these people had dealt wisely with the negro and generously with the Northern immigrant, these States, and South Carolina especially, would be free and powerful. I hail the Chamberlain movement in one of its aspects as the opening of a new era. The support which that officer receives from the leading journal in the State, and one of the leading journals in the South--_The News and Courier_--shows the awakening of a new spirit. This paper thoroughly Democratic, its editors gentlemen who were in the Confederacy through the whole war and firm in their devotion to the lost cause, sees that the only hope for South Carolina is supporting the honest, intelligent New England Governor, who says he is Republican from conviction and never ... a Democrat; that he has no sympathy for Democracy or desire to be in its councils ... that as Governor he means to give ... honest government. The news ... takes the Governor at his word and ... him on, while newspapers over the border in Georgia mock and deride. If Chamberlain succeeds he will divide the colored vote, and for the first time array parties upon some other dividing line than that laid down by Jefferson Davis when he founded his Confederacy.

_Hope for Carolina_

But whether he succeeds or not the movement which he began a year ago, and which is now almost national in its extent, must go on. There is no way for South Carolina to win a good government except on this basis. Here the negroes are and in a large majority. They cannot be driven away, they cannot be slain, they cannot be disfranchised. They must be asked to take part in government, to unite with honest men in punishing crime. Education makes this more and more easy, and amid all this sorrow and strife and tumult the work of education goes on. The negro pants for the primer and the speller as the hart for the water of the brook. I have taken pains, in some bookstore loungings, to inquire about this. I learned in nearly every case that the negroes were constant purchasers, and almost invariably of school-books--elementary and advanced. I am told that the negro is as anxious to read and write as he used to be to own a yellow cravat. I do not suppose this education goes far, but it is something. It is there I see day--there, and nowhere else. This old feeling must die out. These memories of the Southern Confederacy must be put away with the family laces and grandmother' samplers. Leaders like Toombs and Hill must be superseded. These negroes must be taught that freedom means responsibility, and that honesty is safety and peace. These lands and ports, these watercourses, these widely stretching and vast acres, must respond to capital and energy, the money and the skill of the North. Here is room in South Carolina alone for all of New England, and in no State could the spirit of New England work such marvels. But so long as the fogs of slavery and misgovernment and ostracism and social hatred hang over them like the malaria of their own rice lowlands, so long South Carolina will be a prostrate State, crying for sympathy and help. Let us trust that the time has come for the people to help themselves, and in doing so, raise their Commonwealth to a pinacle of grandeur and prosperity such as even its proud history has never known.

"REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLE" AND THE INDEPENDENT REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT

The burden of the song of the Chamberlain Ring and their organs is that the integrity of "the party" is of more consequence than honest government, and that any Republican who votes for Green and Delaney is a traitor to the Republican party and false to Republican principles. In all humility we beg leave to suggest that the persons who are candidates for office in the interest of a corrupt Ring, and the few newspapers which live and move and have their being by and in that Ring, are hardly the disinterested and unselfish counsellors that they claim to be. It is safer to go outside of the charmed circle, and ascertain what is advised by Republicans whose honesty is as great as their integrity, who were Republicans when Democracy was in the ascendant, and who are as true now to Republicanism as they were while slavery existed and most of the South Carolina white Republicans were red-hot Democrats in the South or obscure demagogues in the North. Their opinions are entitled to weight, and for that reason they are carefully excluded from the columns of the organs of the Chamberlain Ring. It is in our power, however, to lay these opinions before the public, and we mean to do it.

1. _The New York Times_ is known everywhere as a powerful Republican newspaper; it advocates Republican principles in season and out of season. This paper heartily approves of the Independent Republican movement, and says that, whatever may be the immediate result, "The final effect cannot be good." It says, further, that, in the organization of the Independent Republican movement, the colored people have made "a long step forward."

2. _The New York Evening Post_, a Republican newspaper which circulates among the upper-ten, declares that "the political signs from South Carolina are favorable"; and that it has very gratifying assurances that "the colored voters are beginning to perceive that they have been used too long by unscrupulous politicians" (of the Chamberlain-Bowen school) "who have employed partisan prejudices to promote their own private fortunes." And _The New York Tribune_, an unfaltering friend of the colored Republicans, talks in the same strain, and gives the Independent Republican movement its warm approval.

3. One of the strongest Republican newspapers in New England is _The Springfield Republican_ (Mass.) which sees in the new movement an evidence of good faith on the part of the Conservatives, and of sagacity and honesty on the part of the Independent Republicans.

The newspapers whose opinions we have quoted represent, in large part, the sentiments and opinions of the people who pushed the war against the South, and insisted on the abolition of slavery. They say, without a dissenting voice, that the Independent Republican movement is right and wise and just. On the other side, a marked man, stands C. C. Bowen, who, in printed handbills, speaks of Judge Green as "the Democratic candidate for Governor." Colored Republicans! whom will you believe, the men and newspapers who fought your battles when you were powerless to help yourselves, or the men and the newspapers whose love for you only began when you had office and public plunder to bestow upon them?

SUNDAY MORNING, July 12, 1874

_The Warning_

If there be anything wanting to the argument we have persistently urged upon the Republicans of this State, it is contained in the following extract from an editorial in _The New York Times_, General Grant's especial organ. In speaking of what General Grant has said about South Carolina, the _Times_ says: "He (General Grant) further added that unless a true reform was begun at once in South Carolina, the Republican party would this fall repudiate the so-called Republicans of the State. In fact, this is what the Republicans of the North have already done. The Triumph of Moses and his gang would be only the triumph of corruption, and that the people of this country will not stand.

If we do not heed this warning in time, there will not be enough left of our organization next year to make a respectable ward meeting. We cannot fight the Democrats here, General Grant and the whole country beside. We cannot afford to commit political suicide, and we are not going.

CHARLESTON, S. C., FRIDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 2, 1874

THE FAIR PLAY MEETING

_A Grand Gathering of Republicans and Conservatives--Harmony Prevails and Nothing Asked but Fair Play_

The meeting last night was one of the most extraordinary gatherings ever held in Charleston. Upwards of four thousand of our citizens irrespective of party, assembled together and raised their voices in the interests of fair play for one and all.

Men of culture and wealth, stood side by side, with the honest and industrious workingmen. Republican and Conservative, white men and colored men, Chamberlain men and Green men stood shoulder to shoulder bearing in mind the great object of the meeting and for the time being casting aside all thoughts of party spirit. It seemed to be well understood by each and every man in the vast assemblage that this was not the time nor place to urge the claim of any particular candidates, and the harmony that prevailed reflected the most unbounded credit on the citizens of Charleston.

Let it here be distinctly understood that the objection to the commissioners of election does not imply an objection to either of them individually but it is claimed that one of them should at least give place to a representative of the other side. If Thompson and Smith are candidates for election to any office, and the three commissioners of election are all Thompson men, it is natural that the supporters of Smith should be dissatisfied, but by appointing one Smith man all suspicions of unfair play will be removed.

Col. E. W. M. Mackey called the meeting to order from the steps of the City Hall at 8 o'clock and upon his motion it was organized with the following officers:

President--The Hon. H. D. Lesesne.

Vice-Presidents--Mayor C. I. Cunningham, Ex-Gov. Wm. Aiken, Coroner Aaron Logan, Mr. E. B. Seabrook, Mr. S. Y. Tupper, Alderman W. J. McKinlay, Senator S. E. Gaillard, Hon. Henry Gourdin, Mr. John F. Taylor, Rev. E. J. Adams, Mr. Andrew Simonds, Mr. H. H. DeLeon, Mr. C. O. Witte, Alderman S. B. Garrett, Mr. Hugh Ferguson, Mr. J. W. Reed, Alderman John A. Godfrey, Mr. B. Bollman, Mr. B. O'Neill, Capt. J. C. Clausen, Mr. Stephen Brown, Mr. W. A. Courtenay.

Secretaries--Mr. J. A. Mushington, Mr. C. O. Trumbo, Capt. Alex Williams.

Mr. Lesesne opened the meeting with a most appropriate address, in which he stated ... meeting, at his leisure, who shall present by letter or otherwise, the foregoing preamble and resolutions to the Governor of the State, and require of him, as necessary for the preservation of public peace, that he do remove the said commissioners of election, or a majority of them, and appoint, in their stead, commissioners of known integrity, intelligence and impartiality, who will see that in every matter pertaining to the election, equal and exact justice shall be done to all citizens, irrespective of class, color or political party; and further, that the said committee shall, in the event of the refusal of the Executive to grant this request, call a mass meeting of the people to take such action as will then be necessary.

Resolved, That a committee of five be appointed by the chairman of this meeting, at his leisure, who shall immediately ascertain what protection can be secured to the voters of Charleston County under the United States laws relating to elections, which committee shall immediately report the result of their investigations, through the public prints, with such recommendations for the guidance of the citizens as they may deem advisable.

After the reading of the above preamble and resolutions, Mr. Joseph W. Barnwell addressed the meeting, and was followed by the Hon. G. A. Trenholm, who spoke with much eloquence and at considerable length.

Mr. Trenholm, holding the Chronicle in his hand, read therefrom the following extract from the third plank of the Republican platform: "We shall hold all men as enemies to equality of rights who interfere with the ballot or deny the free and lawful exercise of its use to any citizen, whatever may be his party creed."

He called attention to the fact that these sentiments were in the Republican platform and were published in the Charleston Chronicle, the only Republican paper in this city; but, strange to say, this portion of his speech does not seem to have made a great impression on either the News and Courier reporter or the Sun man. For the News and Courier fails to report it, and the Sun does not shine upon it.

The Hon. A. J. Ransier then took the platform, but his address was interrupted by an unlooked for incident.

A number of policemen having in charge some of the men who were wounded in the fracas with the strikers, of which an account is given elsewhere in this issue, were seen marching down Meeting street followed by a considerable crowd. The bigger crowd seeing the others, and not knowing what was up, became demoralized, and a panic ensued followed by a general stampede.

SPEECH OF W. A. HAYNE, OF MARION,

_On Outrages In Edgefield County S. C._

The House, in Committee of the Whole, having under consideration the following message from His Excellency:

STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA, Executive Chamber, Columbia, March 1, 1876.

HON. ROBERT B. ELLIOTT, Speaker House of Representatives:

_Sir:_--I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of a copy of a resolution adopted by the House of Representatives and concurred in by the Senate, by which I am requested to report to this General Assembly at the earliest practicable moment all the facts and information in my possession in relation to outrages alleged to have been committed recently in Edgefield County.