The slave trade

by Theodore D. Jervey

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.

Section 2. That the term ‘emigrant agent’, as contemplated in the Act, shall be construed to mean any person engaged in hiring laborers or soliciting emigrants in the State to be employed beyond the limits of the same.

Section 3. That any person shall be entitled to a license, which shall be good for one year, upon payment unto the State Treasurer, for the use of the State, of one thousand dollars in each county in which he operates or solicits emigrants, for each year so engaged.

Section 4. That any person doing the business of an emigrant agent without first having obtained such license shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be punished by a fine not less than five hundred dollars and not more than five thousand or may be imprisoned in the county jail not less than four months or confined in the State prison at hard labor not exceeding two years for each and every offense, within the discretion of the Court.”[237]

It is doubtful if the injury which had been inflicted upon the South by the vicious Federal legislation of 1868, had, in any way, been greater than by its checking the natural diffusion of the Negroes throughout the Union in consequence of their emancipation and the military overthrow of those opposing such.

The effect of the legislation of 1868 had been to direct and stimulate a movement to the South of Northern Negroes and white adventurers which banked up the Negro population there, taught all to consider themselves ladies and gentlemen, a fact which is still apparent in the apparel in which many attempt to perform heavy manual work; and, until they were disbanded in 1890, was most ludicrous, in their military aspirations, as the Kodak by Johnson shows.

The overthrow of Reconstruction in 1876, did to some degree produce diffusion and by the Census of 1890 it became noticeable even in South Carolina, where the Negro population was densest, that while the numerical increase of the Negroes was still greater there than the whites, the rate of increase of the former had fallen below the latter. Yet in South Carolina the Negro population still exceeded the white by 226,296, a greater excess than appeared even in Mississippi, a State of greater area and with a more numerous white population, where the excess of the Negro population was but 197,698.

Negro National Guardsman—South Carolina, 1890
Product of Congressional Reconstruction

Under such circumstances it was patent that legislation in either State which tended to restrain the egress of the Negroes, even if temporarily of industrial benefit to the land owners and agriculturists, was against the true interest of the State and the people, and, accordingly, in South Carolina, in the columns of “The Cotton Plant”, the organ of the South Carolina agricultural class of that date, the author of this work began an attack upon the law in a series of articles.

Without asserting that it was in response to this agitation, it nevertheless is a fact that closely following upon it, in 1893, the law was amended by the addition of a clause in the nature of a compromise, namely:

“That nothing in this act shall be construed to prevent emigrant agents operating in this State between the 1st day of July and the 31st day of December of any year.”[238]

This amendment, permitting the opportunity for assisted removal of the Negroes during that half of the year when such was least liable to interfere with their contracts for labor, admitted of a gradual removal of numbers of them and was a concession to public opinion and political morality by those who, with their votes and influence, controlled the political situation.

By 1890, it was scarcely to be doubted, that a great change in sentiment was taking place in the world or rather in those three great countries which, from their position, were most able to effect the opinion of the world. In Great Britain, the United States of America and Germany the extravagantly liberal and humanitarian ideas, with regard to the race question, which had marked the twenty-five years preceding 1890, were giving way to something which might be described by the word race-imperialism. In Germany it made its appearance in many forms, but more noticeably in the colonial ventures, which off the coast of East Africa were smeared with a recrudescence of the slave trade.[239] How it grew in that country and to what astounding lengths of caste culture it proceeded, would be beyond the scope of this study, but it might be mentioned that, by Paul Rohrback, without any credit to the author, Calhoun’s black “substratum” theory was openly avowed as the basis of colonial expansion.

Great Britain, with the Jameson raid and its sequellae, gave an illustration of race intolerance that shocked the world, but avoided the use of the black in conquering the white.

In the United States it took shape in the various constitutional conventions in Southern States, aiming to disfranchise the bulk of the Negro vote.

It was England, however, that altered the designation of “The Brother in Black” to “The White Man’s Burden.”

In every way in 1890 the Negro seemed to have failed. His profligacy was exaggerated, but in his profligacy he had betrayed Judge Tourgee. A study of the Census of 1890 by the author of this work indicated that in a total population of 62,620,000 in the United States, 45,770,000 were native whites; 9,240,000 were foreign born whites; 6,339,000 were Negroes; 1,131,000 were mulattoes; 110,000 were Mongolians and 58,000 civilized Indians.

Comparing the two sections: There were a little more than twice as many native born whites in the North and West as in the South. There were about twelve times as many foreign born whites and about seven times as many civilized Indians with fifty times as many Mongolians, but there were only one-twelfth as many Negroes and one-fifth as many mulattoes.[240]

	North & West	South
Native Whites	31,150,000	14,620,000
Foreign Born White	8,510,000	730,000
Negroes	489,000	5,850,000
Hybrids	195,000	936,000
Chinese & Japanese	108,000	2,000
Civilized Indians	51,000	7,000

In the eight Southern States, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas there were 6,162,000 whites to 4,480,000 colored persons, and in the first six named of these 3,599,000 whites to 3,492,000 colored persons. By States the comparison was as follows:

	Whites	Colored
South Carolina	462,000	688,000
Georgia	978,000	858,000
Florida	224,000	166,000
Alabama	833,000	678,000
Mississippi	544,000	742,000
Louisiana	558,000	559,000

In the same year in which Tillman had risen to power in South Carolina, Mississippi had disfranchised the great bulk of her Negro majority and, with his control of political affairs, Tillman set to work to accomplish the same thing in South Carolina. By 1895 he had succeeded in obtaining a constitutional convention and in that year it met.

For almost two centuries the Negroes had been trained in slavery. Then for a decade they had enjoyed what was much more akin to unbridled license than liberty. For about twenty years succeeding that they had been, by every device which could be conceived of, stripped of the exercise of the franchise and to a very great degree excluded from jury duty. The proposition was now to exclude the vast bulk of them legally from the franchise. It is interesting to consider and observe in what way they received the suggestion; for they were now absolutely without white aid, and dependent entirely upon such arguments as they themselves could advance. There was no attempt to hide the purpose. It was openly avowed that the main purpose of the constitutional convention of South Carolina for 1895 was to frame a law, by which the tremendous preponderance of the Negro electorate should be reduced to an inconsiderable minority. This had been accomplished in Mississippi, and the inconsistency of the Emigrant Tax Law, restraining in the State those whom the law makers had to protect the State from, escaped attention for the time.

Blunt and rough as he was in his political utterances, the prime mover for this convention, Senator B. R. Tillman, with a breadth of thought greatly to his credit, sought unceasingly to make it representative of all factions, classes and conditions of the white population of the State and, when it finally assembled, it was found to be so. In addition it contained a sprinkling of Negroes, through the presence of six Negro delegates from two coast counties, where they were in such overwhelming numbers as to preclude their exclusion by any methods afforded by existing laws.

The attitude, behavior and utterance of these six Negroes in this convention, in the State where twenty years previously the members of their race had held their most pronounced legislative orgy and to which they now came, to what they must have realized were the political obsequies of the race, had in it, sentimentally considered, something of the pathetic. It should be borne in mind that those who did come now could only come from those two counties where the Negroes were at their lowest, if contact with whites was elevating; for, in Beaufort and Georgetown, the whites composed a very small minority.

It was not a time, however, for sentimental considerations, and to fuse the general mass of the convention into a condition appreciative of the scheme it was aimed to present at that stage in the proceedings, Senator Tillman reviewed at great length and with terrific force the previous frightful excesses of carpet-bag government and Negro rule in the State. Upon the adoption of a resolution for the incorporation of his speech in the journal of the Convention, with a fairness, a milder man might not have exhibited, he requested that the replies of such of the Negro delegates as desired to speak, should also be therein printed.

That Negro delegate designated by him as “the ablest man of color I have ever met,” W. J. Whipper, (Dan. Chamberlain’s piece de resistance in the seventies), certainly the most notorious of all who rose to prominence in Reconstruction days, failed to avail himself of the privilege. While far less able, with a manly determination distinctly to his credit, Robert Smalls did, and defended his character with courage. He was accused of corruption. He pointed to the fact that he had been pardoned, and he claimed with great earnestness that the pardon had been granted him without solicitation on his part, and in spite of his urgent demand for trial. While his remarks do not indicate any exceptional intelligence, nor his reasons for desertion the clearest conception of what constitutes public morality, there is a ring of manly courage in his speech which wins sympathy.

After setting forth the above claim, he concluded as follows:

“Mr. President, I am through with this matter. It should not have been brought here. All the thieves are gone, they are scattered over the nation; but I have remained here. My race has honored me with a seat on this floor and I shall serve them to the best of my ability. My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life. I am proud of them and by their acts towards me, I know they are not ashamed of me, for they have at all times honored me with their votes. I stand here the equal of any man. I started out in the war with the Confederates; they threatened to punish me, and I left them. I went to the Union Army. I fought in seventeen battles to make glorious and perpetuate the flag that some of you trampled under your feet. Innocent of every charge attempted to be made here against me, no act or word of yours can in any way blur the record that I have made at home and abroad. Mr. President, I am through and shall not hereafter notice any personal remark. You have the facts in the case, by them I ask to be judged.”[241]

But it must not be imagined from this, that the speaker was in any sense hacked. On the contrary he continued to participate in the work of the convention to the best of his ability.

As an amendment to Section 34, of the draft of the Constitution, which provided—“The marriage of any white person with a Negro or mulatto person who shall have one-eighth or more Negro blood, shall be unlawful and void.”—Smalls proposed the addition,—“and any white person who lives and cohabits with a Negro, mulatto or person who shall have one-eighth or more Negro blood shall be disqualified from holding any office of emolument or trust in this State, and the offspring of any such living or cohabiting, shall bear the name of father and shall be entitled to inherit and acquire property the same as if they were legitimate.” But the Convention voted it down and not improperly, for though clever politics, the concluding clause was vicious legislation. The amiable boldness of the mulatto Smalls won for him, however, general tolerance and some regard; but he was not intellectually in the class with that octaroon, Thomas E. Miller, who, in the minds of most persons, made on this occasion the greatest display of talent.

Miller made many speeches and furnished much acceptable copy for the press. He, therefore, not unnaturally, loomed large in the eyes of the knights of the quill, and his ablest speech was later utilized, by the most cultured representative of the race in this country, Professor W. E. Burghardt DuBois, as one buttress of a defense of Reconstruction, in a paper read by him at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in 1909, which was published later in the Review. Still the speeches of both Smalls and Miller were defensive.

Of another and less known colored delegate to this convention, this could not be said as denoting his attitude. While bearing himself with dignity and strictly observing the proprieties of debate, the mulatto of whom mention is next made, eloquently illustrated the adage, that “the business of an opposition is to oppose.” The man and his efforts historically considered deserve some recognition.

James E. Wigg, was born at Linden Park, Bluffton, Beaufort District, South Carolina, March 25, 1850, the son of a colored woman by a white man. As a small boy he attracted the attention of Gen. David Hunter, upon whom he waited at Hilton Head, who, after the war, took him with him to Washington, D. C., and placed him at Whalen Institute. He was said to have been well versed in theology, and “an earnest follower of Swedenborg.”[242] His work in the Convention was marked by a distinct exhibition of intelligence. He submitted a draft for a constitution which was creditable, and he proposed an ordinance, to the Committee on Finance and Taxation, of distinct merit. It constituted politics of a high order. It was a bold challenge to the white majority, on a line hard to defend the unfavorable report of the Committee in response to.

Wigg’s ordinance was as follows:

“Be it ordained by the people of South Carolina, in convention assembled, that the Comptroller General, County Auditors, County Treasurers and all persons charged with the collections of State or municipal taxes, be and are hereby required, to keep separate and distinct accounts of all tax returns and taxes paid by white and colored taxpayers and that the same be always open for public inspection.”

The Convention voted this down, although the subject is known to be one upon which much loose generalization is continually indulged in as the basis of political appeals to voters.

But Wigg struck a more telling note than this. The concluding clause of Article 1, Sec. II being reported:

“After the adoption of this constitution any person who shall fight a duel or send or accept a challenge, for that purpose, or be an aider or abettor in fighting a duel, shall be deprived of holding any office of honor or trust in the State, and shall be otherwise punished as the law shall prescribe.”

To this Wigg suggested the simple addition, “or any one engaged in lynching.”[243] The amendment was voted down, but in what position did the vote so disposing of it place the law-making whites? How does it read today?

Wigg’s speech on the suffrage clause, from the standpoint of his race, was also a strong presentation of the subject, pitched upon a high plane, eloquent and dignified. No extracts from it will do it justice. To be appreciated at its full value, it must be read as a whole. In it was none of that amusing buffoonery, which in another colored delegate’s remarks so captivated the press representatives; but it did contain not a little biting sarcasm. It is a speech well worth the perusal of the careful student of history, who is desirous of informing himself of the various styles of men, our institutions and our practices have evolved. But with all that has been stated, yet the most interesting incident connected with this colored man’s service in the Convention, was his clash with the strongest and most influential member of that body, in an impromptu debate, arising almost accidentally, in which, by no stretch of imagination, can the colored man be said to have been worsted. That he owed his triumph to the weakness of the position of his adversary was his fortune, and he used it to effect.

As has been before suggested, by passing such a law to restrain the egress of the Negroes, as the new regime had done in 1890, the inconsistency of declarations concerning the dangerous characteristics of the race had been made manifest, and in the full tide of his progress as leader of the Convention, Senator Tillman found himself on a shoal from which it took some floundering to get again into natatory water.

As reported in the press the incident appears as follows:

“Senator Tillman said he would preface his remarks by reading from his first or inaugural message, when he advocated township government.... ‘At that time we were hampered by this Sinbad’s old man, the Negro. He is here and he is going to be here and we must look out for the nigger in the wood pile.’”

Mr. Wigg (a young colored man) asked Senator Tillman:

“Do I understand that you object to the presence of the Negro in South Carolina?”

“Senator Tillman: Not a bit, but I would place no restraint upon his emigration.

“Mr. Wigg: Did you not sign a bill calculated to prevent his leaving?

“Senator Tillman: I never signed such a measure.[244]

“Mr. Wigg: I mean the act imposing a tax on emigration agents.”

To this distinct specification of the act passed while he was Governor Tillman at first hastily claimed that it had been passed during his predecessor’s term of office; but later, on reflection, made a point of informing the Convention that he found he had signed it and desired, “to apologize to the State for having done so.”

The author of the Act, a cotton planter from Marlboro, W. D. Evans, then arose and also apologized for it, and a verbal pledge was given, that the Act should be repealed. At that time the Act was in its amended form, only operative for one-half of the year. But so far from being repealed, the only action concerning it, was the making of it operative for the whole year as originally drawn, license reduced.

As dissatisfying as such a statement may be to those to whom the injustice of it, and the disregard of a promise given under such solemn conditions, is repugnant, it must be borne in mind, that similar legislation of the State of Georgia had been, in the mean time, reviewed by the Supreme Court of the United States, and sustained upon the grounds inter alia, that—

“If it can be said to affect the freedom of egress from the State or the freedom of the contract, it does only incidentally and remotely.”[245]

The Supreme Court of the United States, therefore, shares with the Lower South the responsibility for this harsh and unwise restriction of the right of labor to its fullest wage, as well as the denial to a peculiarly ignorant and helpless mass of the population, of an assisted egress from localities where they are said to be such a menace from their extraordinary numbers, that a setting aside of all law and depriving of individuals of life without law by mobs is sometimes by some people justified.

But, while arguing for labor its right to go where it wishes to win its highest wage, we need not shut our eyes to the rank selfishness of the industrial agencies, which sweep out of a community the bulk of the able-bodied males and leave only the dependent women and children as a burden on it. That, however, could and should be met by legislation preventative of the breaking up of families simply to meet the demands of industrial slavery. But the right of the laborer to all that his work can earn should be protected, nevertheless.

As fruitful as the incidents of this extraordinary Convention were, in illustration of phases of the Negro question, the most remarkable of all, however, remains yet to be narrated. It has been previously stated, that in 1865, when the States of the then defunct Confederacy endeavored to rehabilitate themselves, as members of the Union, after Emancipation, but before Reconstruction, both South Carolina and Mississippi adopted codes, in which were the provisions that “every person who may have of Caucasian blood seven-eighths or more shall be deemed a white person,” thus separating such from “persons of color”, a denomination including all Negroes and mixed blood having less than seven-eighths of Caucasian blood, who were declared at the same time, “not entitled to social or political equality with white persons.”

This would appear to have been only another way of stating that those who did have seven-eighths or more of Caucasian blood were entitled to social and political equality with the whites. But Reconstruction, as has been shown, swept this legislation out of existence, in the attempt then made to place all upon one plane of social equality, and to punish as severely as a law could be framed to, such as might be accused of any discrimination of a social nature. This preposterous piece of legislation was in its turn done away with when Reconstruction passed away, and in its place there was enacted the law which penalized marriage between whites and Negroes. In the South Carolina convention of 1895, an attempt was made to so frame the law, as to make it conform to the view held in South Carolina and Mississippi in 1865; but to this there was opposition in the shape of an amendment reading as follows:

“Sec. 34. The marriage of a white person with a Negro or mulatto person who shall have any Negro blood, shall be unlawful, and the parties to such marriage, upon conviction shall be punished as the General Assembly may direct.”[246]

Over this amendment to the report of the committee much discussion arose and among other expressions of opinion, was one from Mr. Sligh of Newberry, that it would be better to allow any one with only one sixteenth of Negro blood to raise white, rather than force such, to raise colored children. Sentiment was, however, against his view, and the proposed amendment was accepted as above outlined.

But in two weeks, after many renewals of discussion as to the wrong and injury which might result from accusations apt to be based upon a proportion so indefinite, according to press report:

“On motion of Mr. W. D. Evans, Sec. 34, was recurred to, and trouble began. Mr. Evans proposed to amend the section by providing that the miscegenation law shall not apply to persons of mixed blood, whose status is that of white people. Mr. George Tillman stated, that he was very feeble, but that he felt compelled to say something on this subject. For one, he had felt ashamed when the delegate from Beaufort had clapped his hands, and declared that the coons had a dog up a tree. He was further mortified to see that the gentleman from Newberry (Mr. Sligh) and the gentleman from Edgefield (Mr. B. Tillman) goaded and taunted into putting in the constitution, that no person with any trace of Negro blood should intermarry with a white person and that for such marriage the Legislature should provide punishment even beyond that of bastardizing children and adulterizing marriage. Mr. Tillman said the Mississippi law forbidding marriage between white people with those with more than one-eighth Negro blood is the old South Carolina law. If the law is made, as it now stands, respectable families in Aiken, Barnwell, Colleton and Orangeburg will be denied right to intermarry among the people with whom they are now associated and identified. At least one hundred families would be affected, to his knowledge. They had sent good soldiers to the Confederate Army, and are now landowners and taxpayers. He asserted, as a scientific fact that there was not a full blooded Caucasian on the floor of the Convention. Every member had in him a certain mixture of Mongolian, Arab, Indian or other colored blood. The pure blooded white man had needed and received an infusion of darker blood, to give him readiness and purpose. It would be a cruel injustice and the source of endless litigation, of scandal, horror, feud and bloodshed to undertake to annul or forbid marriage for a remote, perhaps obsolete trace of Negro blood. By the rule of evidence traditional notoriety was admissible in proving pedigree. The doors would be opened to scandal, malice and greed; to statements on the witness stand, that the father or the grandfather, or grandmother had said that A or B had Negro blood in their veins. Any man who is half a man would be ready to blow up half the world with dynamite, to prevent or avenge attacks upon the honor of his mother or the legitimacy or purity of the blood of his father. He moved the restoration of the section to its original form.”[247]

Mr. George D. Tillman’s effort was successful, and the section, as finally adopted stands:

“Art. III, Sec. 33. The marriage of a white person with a Negro or mulatto or person who shall have one eighth or more of Negro blood shall be unlawful and void.”