Chapter X

As has been heretofore stated, George William Curtis, the most eminent representative of former abolition sentiment, at that date (1888), still alive in the United States, had propounded a query to the author concerning political advantages obtained through the possession of the suppressed vote swelling the electoral strength of the States, possibly compelled to suppress its exercise.

Hampton, the most illustrious representative and “one of the most distinguished leaders”[232] of the overthrown slavocracy, had, in his reply to a press interview, indicated how little desirous he thought the South was of retaining any advantage based on its possession, and his lieutenant, Butler, elaborating the argument, had pressed for a diffusion of the Negroes throughout the United States.

The fates gave Mr. Curtis the last word.

In _Harper’s Weekly_ in the early part of 1891 appeared an editorial entitled “A Sign of the Times.” It was in part as follows:

“The associations, which under the general name of Farmers Alliance, are organized throughout the country, are a sign of the times not to be overlooked. They are the political form which is given to a feeling which is observable on all sides, extending quite beyond the circle of those who actually take part in such associations.... The mainspring of the movement is hostility to what is called the aristocracy of wealth. This hostility is due to the conviction that consolidated capital commands special privileges, which are denied to the greatest industrial interest of the country, that of agriculture.... The most striking illustration of this movement was that in South Carolina. A Farmers Convention composed of white Democrats, who were opposed to what they called the aristocratic Democratic Ring, made the present Governor ‘Ben’ Tillman, the Democratic candidate. His main appeal was to the poor whites or ‘buckra’, as they are called, and despite the fact that he was opposed by Judge Haskell, a representative of the old governing class, who had the good will of most of the colored leaders, Mr. Tillman was overwhelmingly elected.... Tillman’s election, which was a signal defeat of the old Democratic regime in South Carolina was followed by the defeat of the chief representative of that regime, Senator Hampton, for re-election to the Senate.... One striking incident in the campaign was the speech of a colored Republican, who opposed Judge Haskell and who said that Tillman had made both the whites and the Negroes readers and thinkers.”[233]

The colored man to whom Mr. Curtis referred was the Rev. Richard Carroll, of Orangeburg, later of Columbia.

In the early fall of the year 1890 he had, in a letter to the editor of _The News and Courier_, opposing Negro excursions, given, in addition to the very sensible views he put forth concerning such, an indication that he was alive to the greatest need of his race and how best it might be met. Five years before Booker Washington came upon the stage and twenty-two before he saw the light, Carroll seems to have seen it and pointed to it as follows:

“Our Northern friends are turning their attention to the needs of emigrants in the West. We should save money to buy homes while land is cheap.”[234]

That Carroll was, at that date, a vigorous, original, independent thinker and speaker, will be indicated by a fuller description of the incident which Mr. Curtis alludes to above.

Upon the division which occurred in South Carolina between the followers of Judge Haskell and Mr. Tillman, the Republican party in that State, mainly composed of Negroes, had begun to stir and a convention had been called of the leading colored men of the State to consider the advisability of endorsing Judge Haskell and supporting his candidacy, and, the delegates having assembled, a motion was made to leave the matter to the Republican executive committee. The resolution obtained support from many members in strong speeches. It was opposed by one speaker. The following is the newspaper report of the speaker’s remarks:

“The Rev. R. Carroll, of Orangeburg, could not approve leaving the matter to the Republican executive committee, because he knew the committee would endorse the Haskell ticket (How do you know?). Because one of the leaders told me so. I am here to oppose the colored people taking any action whatever. We have got what we have prayed for so long, a split in the Democratic party. Join one side now and we will grasp a shadow. Let the thing work. He believed Tillman ought to be elected (Voices—‘Oh No’). Well let me talk. Before Tillman was nominated, we were all Tillmanites. (Voices—‘No, No’). We all rejoiced. We wanted his success. Now he has been nominated. Tillman has done us more good than any living man since the war. He made colored as well as white people thinkers and readers. Heretofore all Democrats went into office on 76 and the Negro Question. Tillman came along and let the Negro alone (Voices—‘Hamburg, Ellenton’). He put people to thinking of other things than the Negro. He ought to be Governor, and if I was a white Democrat I’d cast 10,000 votes to reward him. I am not afraid of Tillman. I’m afraid of the men who got into his waggon and were pulled into office by him. The white people are divided, but the moment that the Negro comes in, they will get together (applause). Both parties will turn on the Negro and he will have to run to the mountains.... If you endorse Haskell I’ll enter politics with 100,000 others (‘Won’t vote for Tillman’). He’ll be governor just the same.”[235]

Although Carroll was in a minority, he fought the question to a vote, replying to the charges with vigorous thrusts and with regard to the claim that those whom Tillman represented were the lynchers of Negroes asking: “Were they not led by aristocrats as well as common men?”

In fact Carroll appreciated, in advance, what Mr. Curtis deeply interested as he was and keen observer also, never quite grasped, viz., that the dominant faction, in South Carolina, did not intend to permit the Negroes to participate. And this was in fact the greatest fact of the Tillman movement and one which made it utterly unlike all apparently similar efforts in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and other Southern States. The head of the camel never having been permitted to enter in South Carolina, the difficulty experienced in the other States in removing the camel, when he had completely filled the tent, was never felt in South Carolina.

In storming his way to place and power, Tillman unquestionably appealed to a class, the farming class, whom he declared constituted seventy-five per cent of the white population, and whom he also averred had been discriminated against. But Tillman really had less prejudice against the old families of South Carolina than many who opposed his candidacy. His people before him had been identified with the soil of South Carolina for generations. His father had held Federal office under Andrew Jackson, and one of his ablest lieutenants, W. D. Evans, was, in 1890, still living on the land originally granted his ancestor in the days of the province of South Carolina.

Once established in power, Tillman was for all classes.

But Mr. Curtis, clean and lovable man as he was, never could entirely free himself from the feeling that, as an abolitionist, he had felt toward the class which had led the South through the struggle in behalf of slavery. He had great hopes that the elevation of Tillman and the overthrow of the Hampton regime meant a chance for the Negro to come back to some exercise, even if a restricted one, of the suffrage. He expected that there would be a marked difference in the feelings and sentiments of those whom Tillman led and those who had preceded them; and in a letter of Jan. 21, he thus exhibited it:

“I do not know if you have seen a paper by the Rev. A. D. Mayo, who for ten years has been busily engaged in promoting education in the Southern States. He holds that the class which Tillman represents and not the old planting aristocracy is the real hope of the Southern country, and he makes a very strong statement.”[236]

But no class has any monopoly of selfishness and while it was most unfortunate for South Carolina, yet it was in accordance with human nature, that one of the first considerations of the class which had seized the reins of power in South Carolina in 1890, was to benefit its own class, by an attempt to perpetuate those very conditions which for eighty years had done more to injure South Carolina than any one thing in her history, and which her wisest sons had unavailingly opposed, viz., the retention of a mass of ignorant, agricultural laborers, reduced as close to the condition of serfs of the soil as it was possible in each period to accomplish; for this is what the law, enacted in most of the cotton States at that date, did in fact bring about, by taxing out of existence those agencies which might have relieved the State of considerable numbers of Negroes.

The South Carolina Act, passed December 4, 1891, can stand as typical of this legislation, which was based upon the determination of the white agriculturists of the Lower South, constituting as they did about seventy per cent of the white population, to hobble, well within their reach, cheap Negro labor. Coupled as the passage of such legislation was with the fierce declarations against black brutes, with which the perpetrators of such sought to excuse the numerous lynchings of this period, it was apparent that, while the vengeance was swift in overtaking the blacks who violated white women, the pound of cure was preferred to the ounce of prevention; and so, exposing their women to that risk which seemed inevitable with the tremendous Negro population which abounded in the South, the men who made the laws still clung to cheap Negro labor. It is true that as a whole, in the section covered even by South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, the white population had gained upon the Negro population and was at this date but slightly inferior in numbers, amounting to 2,917,000 whites, to 2,966,000 Negroes, in this black belt; but just what proportion of whites were absolutely independent of the Negro agricultural laborer it would be difficult to estimate. That there were then and are now a very great number, who would profit to a very great degree by an assisted emigration of Negroes, and that these whites were of the class whose women folk necessarily were most exposed to the risk which a juxtaposition of such an immense mass of Negroes presented, growing race prejudice prevented the perception of, and the members of this class lent their influence to this injurious legislation formulated as follows:

“No person shall carry on the business of emigrant agent in the State without first having obtained a license therefor from the State Treasurer.