Dixie After the War Part 24

"We have received indignant letters from the South in regard to recent articles in this paper. A prominent South Carolinian writes: 'I can't stand the "Tribune" any longer!' One party from Texas says: 'Stop that d----d paper!' Now, all this for reasons which can be explained in a few words. When the 'Tribune' is exposing Republican rascalities, the Southerners read it with pleasure. But when it exposes Democratic rascalities, they write: 'Stop that d----d paper!'"

BATTLE FOR THE STATE HOUSE

CHAPTER x.x.x

BATTLE FOR THE STATE-HOUSE

South Carolina's first Governor under her second reconstruction was General R. K. Scott, of Ohio, ex-Freedmen's Bureau Chief. His successor was Franklin J. Moses, Jr., scalawag, licentiate and debauche, four years Speaker of the House, the "Robber Governor." Moses' successor was D. H.

Chamberlain, a cultivated New Englander, who began his public career as Governor Scott's Attorney General. A feature of the Scott-Moses administration was a black army 96,000 strong, enrollment and equipment alone costing over a half-million dollars, $10,000 of which, on Moses'

admission, went into his own pocket as commission on purchases. The State's few white companies were ordered to surrender arms and disband.

The State House was refurnished on this scale: $5 clocks were replaced by $600 ones; $4 looking-gla.s.ses by $600 mirrors; $2 window curtains by $600 to $1,500 ones; $4 benches by $200 sofas; $1 chairs by $60 chairs; $4 tables by $80 tables; $10 desks, $175 desks; forty-cent spittoons, $14 cuspidors, etc. Chandeliers cost $1,500 to $2,500 each. Each legislator was provided with Webster's Unabridged, a $25 calendar ink-stand, $10 gold pen; railroad pa.s.ses and free use of the Western Union Telegraph were perquisites. As "Committee Rooms," forty bed-rooms were furnished each session; legislators going home, carried the furniture. At restaurant and bar, open day and night in the State House, legislators refreshed themselves and friends at State expense with delicacies, wines, liquors, cigars, stuffing pockets with the last. Orders for outside entertainments, given through bar and restaurant, were paid by the State. An incident of Radical rule: "h.e.l.l Hole Swamp," purchased by the Benevolent Land Commission as site for homes for homeless negroes. Another: Moses lost $1,000 on a horse race; next day the House of Representatives voted him $1,000 as "gratuity." The order on the Treasurer, signed by Moses as Speaker, to pay this "gratuity" to Moses is on file in Columbia.

Bills made by officials and legislators and paid by the State, reveal a queer medley! Costly liquors, wines, cigars, baskets of champagne, hams, oysters, rice, flour, lard, coffee, tea, sugar, suspenders, linen-bosom shirts, cravats, collars, gloves (masculine and feminine, by the box), perfumes, bustles, corsets, palpitators, embroidered flannel, ginghams, silks, velvets, stockings, chignons, chemises, gowns, garters, fans, gold watches and chains, diamond finger-rings and ear-rings, Russia-leather work-boxes, hats, bonnets; in short, every article that can be worn by man, woman or infant; every article of furniture and house furnishing from a full parlour-set to a baby's swinging cradle; not omitting a $100 metallic coffin.

Penitentiary bills display in abundant quant.i.ties fine liquors, wines, delicacies and plain provisions; yet convicts nearly starved; bills for the coloured Orphan Asylum, under coloured General Senator Beverly Nash's direction, show silks, satins, corsets, kid gloves, all manners of delicacies and substantials for the table, yet it came out that orphans got at "breakfast, hominy, mackerel and bean coffee--no milk. At dinner, a little bacon or beef, cornbread and hominy, sometimes a little baker's bread; at supper, a slice of baker's bread and black mola.s.ses, each child dipping a slice into a saucer pa.s.sed around." The State-paid gardener worked Senator Nash's garden; coal and wood bought "for the Asylum" was delivered at Senator Nash's; ditto lumber and other supplies.

The matron sold dry goods and groceries. I have mentioned trifles. For big "steals" and "hauls," Railroads, Bond and Printing Ring swindles, consult the Fraud Reports.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RADICAL MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATURE OF SOUTH CAROLINA.

These are the photographs of sixty-three members of the "reconstructed"

Legislature of South Carolina. Fifty of them were Negroes or Mulattos; thirteen were white men. Of the twenty-two among them who could read and write only eight used the vernacular grammatically. Forty-one made their mark with the help of an amanuensis. Nineteen were taxpayers to an aggregate of $146.10. The other forty-four paid no taxes, and yet this body was empowered to levy on the white people of the state taxes amounting to $4,000,000.]

The State University was negroised, adult white and black men matriculating for the express purpose; its scholastic standard was reduced below that of an academy. Attempt to negroise the Deaf and Dumb Asylum closed it. At the Insane Asylum the tact and humanity of Dr. J. F. Ensor, Superintendent, made the situation possible to whites.[23]

South Carolinians beheld Franklin J. Moses, Jr., owner of the beautiful and historic Hampton-Preston home; at receptions and fetes the carriages of a ring-streaked, striped and speckled host rolled up gaily to ancient gateways. .h.i.therto bars exclusive to all that was not aristocratic and refined. One-time serving-maids sat around little tables under the venerable trees and luxuriant vines and sipped wine in state. A Columbian tells me she used to receive a condescending bow from her whilom maid driving by in a fine landau. Another maid, driving in state past her ex-mistress's door, turned her head in shame and confusion. One maid visited her ex-mistress regularly, leaving her carriage a square or two off; was her old, respectful, affectionate self, and said these hours were her happiest. "I'se jes myse'f den." A citizen, wishing to aid his butler, secured letters of influence for him and sent him among rulers of the land. George returned: "Marster, I have a.s.sociated with gentlemen all my life. I can't keep comp'ny with these folks. I'd rather stay with you, I don' care how poor we are."

One night when Rev. William Martin's family were asleep, there came a knocking at the door. Miss Isabella Martin answered. Maum Letty stood outside weeping: "Miss Isabella, Robert's (her son) been killed. He went to a party at General Nash's an' dee all got to fightin'. I come to ax you to let me bring 'im here." Permission was given. A stream of negroes flowed in and out of the bas.e.m.e.nt rooms where the dead was laid. And it was, "The General says this," "The General says that." Presently the General came. "Good morning, Beverly," said Miss Martin. "Good morning, Miss Isabella;" he had been a butler and had nice manners. "This is a sad business, Beverly." "Yes, Miss Isabella. It happened at my house, but I am not responsible. There was a party there; all got to fighting--you know how coloured people will do--and this happened." It is law for the coroner to see a corpse, where death has occurred from violence, before any removal or change is made. The coroner did not see Robert until noon.

General Nash had gotten the body out of his house quickly as possible.

Belles of Columbia were Misses Rollins, mulattoes or quadroons. Their drawing-room was called "Republican Headquarters." Thick carpets covered floors; handsome cabinets held costly bric-a-brac; a $1,000 piano stood in a corner; legislative doc.u.ments bound in morocco reposed with big alb.u.ms on expensive tables. Jewelers' and other shops poured treasures at Misses Rollins' feet. In their salon, mingling white and dusky statesmen wove the destinies of the old Commonwealth. Coloured courtezans swept into furniture emporiums, silk trains rustling in their wake, and gave orders for "committee rooms"; rode in fine carriages through the streets, stopped in front of this or that store; bareheaded white salesmen ran out to show goods or jewels. Judge M. (who went over to the Radicals for the loaves and fishes and ever afterward despised himself) was in Washington with a Black and Tan Committee, got drunk, and for a joke took a yellow demi-mondaine, a State official's wife, on his arm and carried her up to President and Mrs. Grant and introduced her at a Presidential reception.

Black Speaker Elliott said ("Cincinnati Commercial," Sept. 6, 1876): "If Chamberlain is nominated, I shall vote for Hampton." A member of the Chamberlain Legislature tells me this is how the Chamberlain-Elliot split began. Mrs. Chamberlain was a beautiful woman, a perfect type of high-born, high-bred, Anglo-Saxon loveliness, n.o.ble in bearing, lily-like in fairness. She brought a Northern Governor, his wife, and other guests to the State House. They were standing near my informant in the "white part" of the House, when Elliott, black, thick-lipped, sprang down from the Speaker's chair, came forward and asked a gentleman in attendance for introduction. This gentleman spoke to Alice Chamberlain. The lily-white lady lifted her eyes toward Elliott, shivered slightly, and said: "No!"

Elliott did not forgive that.

If the incident were not on good authority, I should doubt it. At Chamberlain's receptions, the black and tan tide poured in and out of his doors; he entertained black legislators, and presumably Elliott, at dinners and suppers. But all men knew Chamberlain's role was repugnant to him and his exquisite wife. What she suffered during the hours of his political successes, who can tell? Tradition says she was cut to the quick when a black minister was called in by her husband to perform the last rites of the church over her child. Any white clergyman of the city would have responded on call. There were many to say Chamberlain turned to political account even so sacred a thing. Others to say that if white ministers had shown him scant attention he was right not to call upon them. And yet I cannot blame the white clergy for having stood aloof, courting no favours, of the foreigner who fraternised with and was one of the leaders of the State's spoilers, whether he was a spoiler himself or no.

Governor Chamberlain was fitted for a better part than he had to play; he won sympathy and admiration of many good citizens. He was a gentleman; he desired to ally himself with gentlemen; and the connections into which ambition and the times forced him was one of the social tragedies of the period. He began his administration denouncing corruption within his own party and promising reforms. At first, he investigated and quieted race troubles, disbanding negro militia, and putting a stop to the drilling of negroes. He bestowed caustic criticisms on "negrophilists," which Elliott brought against him later. He was at war with his legislature; when that body elected W. J. Whipper, an ignorant negro gambler, and ex-Governor Moses to high judicial positions, he refused to commission them.

Of that election he wrote General Grant: "It sends a thrill of horror through the State. It compels men of all parties who respect decency, virtue, or civilisation, to utter their loudest protests." He prophesied immediate "reorganization of the Democratic Party as the only means left, in the judgment of its members, for opposing solid and reliable front to this terrible _creva.s.se_ of misgovernment and public debauchery." There was then no Democratic party within the State; Democrats had been combining with better-cla.s.s Republicans in compromise tickets. To an invitation from the New England Society of Charleston, to address them on "Forefathers' Day," he said: "If there was ever an hour when the spirit of the Puritans, the spirit of undying, unconquerable enmity and defiance to wrong ought to animate their sons, it is this hour, here, in South Carolina. The civilisation of the Puritan and the Cavalier, the Roundhead and the Huguenot, is in peril."

A new campaign was at hand. Chamberlain's name was heard as leader of a new compromise ticket. He had performed services that seemed inspired by genuine regard for the old State and pride in her history. He was instrumental in having the Washington Light Infantry, of Charleston, at Bunker Hill Centennial, and bringing the Old Guard, of New York, and the Boston Light Infantry to Fort Moultrie's Centennial, when he presented a flag to the Washington Light Infantry and made a speech that pleased Carolinians mightily. He and Hampton spoke from the same platform and sat at the same banquet. He was alive to South Carolina's interest at the Centennial in Philadelphia. The State began to honour him in invitations to make addresses at college commencements and on other public occasions.

A Democratic Convention in May came near nominating him. Another met in August. Between these he shook confidence in his sincerity. Yet men from the low country said: "Let's nominate him. He has tried to give honest government." Men from the up country: "He can not rule his party, his party may rule him." Men from the low country: "We cannot elect a straight ticket." Men from the up country: "We have voted compromise tickets the last time. We are not going to the polls unless we have a straight, clean white ticket." They sent for Hampton and nominated him. His campaign reads like a tale of the old Crusades. To his side came his men of war, General Butler, General Gary and Colonel Haskell. At his name the people lifted up their hearts in hope.

Governor Chamberlain had denounced the rascalities of Elliott, Whipper's election in the list. He was nominated by the Blacks and Tans, on a ticket with R. H. Cleaves, mulatto; F. L. Cardoza, mulatto; Attorney General R.

B. Elliott, black, etc. He walked into the convention arm in arm with Elliott. Soon he was calling for Federal troops to control elections, charging all racial disorders to whites; ruling harsh judgments against Red Shirts and Rifle Clubs; cla.s.sing the Washington Light Infantry among disorderly bodies, though he had been worthily proud of this company when it held the place of honour in the Bunker Hill parade and, cheered to the echo, marched through Boston, carrying the battle-flag of Colonel William Washington of the Revolution.

That was a picturesque campaign, when every county had its "Hampton Day,"

and the Red Shirts rode, and ladies and children raised arches of bloom and scattered flowers in front of the old cavalry captain's curvetting steed. Barbecues were spread for coloured brethren, and engaging speakers tried to amuse, instruct and interest them.

The Red Shirts, like the Ku Klux, sprang into existence almost as by accident. General Hampton was to speak at Anderson. The Sat.u.r.day before Colonel R. W. Simpson proposed to the Pendleton Club the adoption of a badge, suggesting a red shirt as cheap and conspicuous. Pickens men caught up the idea. Red store supplies ran out and another club donned white ones. The three clubs numbered a body of three hundred or more stalwart, fine-looking men of the hill-country, who had nearly all seen service on battlefields, and who rode like centaurs. Preceded by the Pendleton Bra.s.s Band, they made an imposing procession at the Fair Grounds on the day of the speaking, and were greeted with ringing cheers. The band-wagon was red; red flags floated from it and from the heads of four horses in red trappings; the musicians wore red garments; instruments were wrapped in red. The effect was electrical. In marching and countermarching military tactics were employed with the effect of magnifying numbers to the eyes of the negroes, who had had no idea that so many white men were alive.

The red shirt uniform idea spread; a great red-shirted army sprang into existence and was on hand at public meetings to see that speakers of the White Man's Party had equal hearing with the Black Republicans. The Red Shirts rode openly by day and by night, and where they wound their scarlet ways women and children felt new sense of security. Many under its protection were negroes. Hampton strove hard to win the negro vote. He had been one of the first after the war to urge qualified suffrage for them.

In public speeches he declared that, if elected, he would be "the governor of all the people of South Carolina, white and black." He got a large black vote. Years after, when he lay dying, friends bending to catch his last words, heard him murmur: "G.o.d bless my people, white and black!"

Mrs. Henry Martin tells me of some fearful days following the pleasant ones when her father, Professor Holmes, entertained the Old Guard in his garden among the roses and oleanders. "One night, my brother, after seeing a young lady home from a party, was returning along King Street with Mr.

Evaugh, when they encountered a crowd of negro rowdies and ran into a store and under a counter. The negroes threw cobble-stones--the street was in process of paving--on them. My brother was brought home in a wagon.

When our mother removed his shirt, the skin came wholly from his back with it; he lived several years, but never fully recovered from his injuries.

My father cautioned us to stoop and crawl in pa.s.sing the window on the stairway to his room. In other houses, people were stooping and crawling as they pa.s.sed windows; a shadow on a curtain was a target for a rock or a bullet. Black women were in arms, carrying axes or hatchets in their hands hanging down at their sides, their ap.r.o.ns or dresses half-concealing the weapons." "There are 80,000 black men in the State who can use Winchesters and 200,000 black women who can light a torch and use a knife," said "Daddy Cain," ex-Congressman and candidate for reelection, in his paper, "The Missionary Record," July, 1876, and in addressing a large negro gathering, when Rev. Mr. Adams said, "Amen!"

Northern papers were full of the Hamburg and Ellenton riots, some blaming whites, some blacks, some distributing blame impartially. Facts at Cainhoy blazed out the truth about that place, at least. The whites, unarmed except for pistols which everybody carried then, were holding peaceable meeting when fired into from ambush by negroes with muskets, who chased them, continuing to fire. A youth of eighteen fell, with thirty-three buckshot in him; another, dying, wrote his mother that he had been giving no trouble. A carpenter and a shoemaker from Ma.s.sachusetts, and an aged crippled gentleman were victims.

"Kill them! Kill them all! Dis town is ours!" Old Charlestonians recall hearing a hoa.r.s.e cry like this from negro throats (Sept. 6, 1876), recall seeing Mr. Milton Buckner killed while trying to protect negroes from negroes. They recall another night of unforgettable horror, when stillness was almost as awful as tumult; frightened blacks were in-doors, but how long would they remain so? Rifle Clubs were protecting a meeting of black Democrats. Not a footfall was heard on the streets; not a sound broke the stillness save the chiming of St. Michael's bells. Women and children and old men listened for the alarm that might ring out any moment that the negroes had risen _en ma.s.se_ for slaughter. They thanked G.o.d when presently a sound of careless footsteps, of talk and laughter, broke upon the night; the Rifle Club men were returning in peace to their firesides.

General Hunt, U. S. A., reported on the Charleston riot, November, 1876, when white men, going quietly to places of business, were molested by blacks, and young Ellicott Walker was killed. The morning after the election General Hunt "walked through the city and saw numbers of negroes a.s.sembled at corners of Meeting and Broad Streets," and was convinced there would be trouble, "though there was nothing in the manner of the whites gathered about the bulletin board to provoke it." Surgeon De Witt, U. S. A., told him "things looked bad on King and other streets where negroes insisted on pushing ladies off the sidewalks."

When Walker was killed, and the real trouble began, General Hunt hurried to the Station House; the Marshal asked him for a.s.sistance; reports came in that negroes were tearing up trees and fences, a.s.sailing whites, and demanding arms of the police. General Hunt found at the Station House "a number of gentlemen, young and old," who offered aid. Marshal Wallace said, "But these are seditious Rifle Clubs." Said General Hunt, "They are gentlemen whom I can trust and I am glad to have them." Pending arrival of his troops, he placed them at the Marshal's disposal. The general relates: "They fell in with his forces; as I was giving instructions, he interposed, saying the matter was in his hands. He then started off. I heard that police were firing upon and bayonetting quiet white people. My troops arrived and additional white armed citizens. One of the civil authorities said it was essential the latter be sent home. I declined sending these armed men on the streets, and directed them to take position behind my troops and remain there, which direction they obeyed implicitly."

With the Mayor and other Radical leaders General Hunt held conference; the negro police was aggravating the trouble, he proposed that his troops patrol streets; the mayor objected. "Why cannot the negroes be prevailed upon to go quietly home?" the General asked. "A negro has as much right to be on the streets armed as a white man." "But I am not here to discuss abstract rights. A b.l.o.o.d.y encounter is imminent. These negroes can be sent home without difficulty by you, their leaders." "You should be able to guarantee whites against the negroes, if you can guarantee negroes against the whites." "The cases are different. I have no control over the blacks through their reason or intelligence. They have been taught that a Democratic victory will remand them to slavery. Their excited fears, however unfounded, are beyond my control. You, their leaders, can quiet and send them home. The city's safety is at stake." The Mayor said he must direct General Hunt's troops; Hunt said he was in command. The Mayor wired Chamberlain to disband the Rifle Clubs "which were causing all the mischief." Hunt soon received orders to report at Washington.

"Hampton is elected!" the people rejoiced. "Chamberlain is elected!" the Radicals cried, and disputed returns. The Radical Returning Board threw out the Democratic vote in Laurens and Edgefield and made the House Radical. The State Supreme Court (Republican) ordered the Board to issue certificates to the Democratic members from these counties. The Board refused; the Court threw the Board in jail; the United States Court released the Board. The Supreme Court issued certificates to these members. November 28, 1876, Democrats organised in Carolina Hall, W. H.

Wallace, Speaker; Radicals in the State House, with E. W. Mackey, Speaker, and counting in eight Radical members from Laurens and Edgefield. The Democratic House sent a message to the Radical Senate in the State House that it was ready for business. Senate took no notice. On Chamberlain's call upon President Grant, General Ruger was in Columbia with a Federal regiment.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SOUTHERN CROSS

General Hampton, while Governor, built this, his residence, with his own hands and with the a.s.sistance of his faithful negroes. The men in the picture, from left to right, are: Hon. LeRoy F. Youmans, General Hampton, Judge McIver, Hon. Joseph D. Pope, General James McGowan.

Photograph by Reckling & Sons, Columbia, S. C.]

November 29, the Wallace House marched to the State House, members from Edgefield and Laurens in front. A closed door, guarded by United States troops, confronted them. J. C. Sheppard, Edgefield, began to read from the State House steps a protest, addressed to the crowd around the building and to the Nation. The Radicals, fearful of its effect, gave hurried consent to admission. Each representative was asked for his pistol and handed it over. At the Hall of Representatives, another closed and guarded door confronted them. They saw that they had been tricked and quietly returned to Carolina Hall.

The people were deeply incensed. General Hampton was in town, doing his mightiest to keep popular indignation in bounds. He held public correspondence with General Ruger, who did not relish the charge that he was excluding the State's representatives from the State House and promised that the Wallace House should not be barred from the outer door, over which he had control. But its members knew they took their lives in their hands when they started for the Hall. A committee or advance guard of seven pa.s.sed Ruger's guard at the outer door. Col. W. S. Simpson (now President of the Board of Directors of Clemson College), who was one of the seven, tells me:

"On the first floor was drawn up a regiment of United States troops with fixed bayonets; all outside doors were guarded by troops. Upstairs in the large lobby was a crowd of negro roughs. Committee-rooms were filled with Chamberlain's State constables. General Dennis, from New Orleans, a character of unsavoury note, with a small army of a.s.sistants, was Doorkeeper of the Hall. Within the Hall, the Mackey House, with one hundred or more sergeants-at-arms, was a.s.sembled, waiting Mackey's arrival to go into session." The seven dashed upstairs and for the door of the Hall. The doorkeepers, lolling in the lobby, rushed between them and the door and formed in line; committee presented certificates; doorkeepers refused to open the door.

"Come, men, let's get at it!" cried Col. Alex. Haskell, seizing the doorkeeper in front of him. Each man followed his example; a struggle began; the door parted in the middle; Col. Simpson, third to slip through, describes the Mackey House, "negroes chiefly, every man on his feet, staring at us with eyes big as saucers, mouths open, and nearly scared to death." Meanwhile, the door, lifted off its hinges, fell with a crash. The full Democratic House marched in, headed by Speaker Wallace, who took possession of the Speaker's chair. Members of his House took seats on the right of the aisle, negroes giving way and taking seats on the left.

Speaker Wallace raised the gavel and called the House to order. Speaker Mackey entered, marched up and ordered Speaker Wallace to vacate the chair. Speaker Wallace directed his sergeant-at-arms to escort Mr. Mackey to the floor where he belonged. Speaker Mackey directed his sergeant-at-arms to perform that office for General Wallace. Each sergeant-at-arms made feints. Speaker Mackey took another chair on the stand and called the House to order. There was bedlam, with two Speakers, two clerks, two legislative bodies, trying to conduct business simultaneously! The "lockout" lasted four days and nights. Democrats were practically prisoners, daring not go out, lest they might not get in.

Radicals stayed in with them, individual members coming and going as they listed, a few at a time.

The first day, Democrats had no dinner or supper; no fire on their side of the House, and the weather bitterly cold. Through nights, negroes sang, danced and kept up wild junketings. The third night Democrats received blankets through windows; meals came thus from friends outside; and fruit, of which they made pyramids on their desks. Two negroes came over from the Mackey side; converts were welcomed joyously, and apples, oranges and bananas divided. The opposition was enraged at defection; shouting, yelling and rowdyism broke out anew. Both sides were armed. The House on the left and the House on the right were constantly springing to their feet, glaring at each other, hands on pistols. Wallace sat in his place, calm and undismayed; Mackey in his, brave enough to compel admiration; more than once he ran over to the Speaker's stand, next to the Democratic side, and held down his head to receive bullets he was sure were coming.