The excitement of the election of 1876, when native whites strained every nerve to win the negro vote, was fully felt on the Santee. The morning news reached El Dorado of Hampton’s election, the Captain, according to custom, walked down to his wharf to give orders for the day. He found his wharf foreman sitting on an upturned canoe, his head hung down, the picture of dejection. “William,” the Captain said, “I have good news.” “Whut is it, suh?” “General Hampton is elected.” Silence. Presently the negro half lifted his face, and looking into the eyes of the white man with the saddest, most hopeless expression in his own, asked slowly: “Well—Cap’n—whut you goin’ tuh do wid we, now?” The master’s heart ached for him! Remanded back to slavery—that was what negroes were taught to look for—to slavery not such as they had known, but in which all the follies and crimes to which they had been incited since freedom should be charged up to them. They did not, could not, realise how their old owners pitied, condoned, forgave.
Next election the struggle was renewed. After a hopeful barbecue, the Captain’s hands were threshing his rice crop. He called the foreman behind the stacks, and asked: “Well, Monday, what are you people going to do at the polls tomorrow?” “Dee gwi vote de ’Publican ticket, suh. Ef dee tells you anything else, dee’s lyin’. I gwi vote de ’Publican ticket, suh. I got it tuh do. I b’lieve all what you white gent’muns been tellin’ us at de barbecues. I knows myse’f dat dis way we niggers is a-doin’ an’ a-votin’ ain’ de bes’ way fuh de country—anybody kin see dat. But den I got tuh vote de ’Publican ticket, suh. We all has. Las’ ’lection I voted de Democrack ticket an’ dee killed my cow. Abum, he vote de Democrack ticket; dee killed his colt.” Monday counted off the negroes who had voted the “Democrack” ticket, and every one had been punished. One had been bombarded in his cabin; another’s rice crop had been taken—even the ground swept up and every grain carried off, leaving him utterly destitute. “I tell you, suh,” said Monday, “I got tuh do it on my ’count, an’ on yo’ ’count. You make me fo’man an’ ef I didn’ vote de ’Publican ticket, I couldn’ make dese niggers wuk. I couldn’ do nothin’ ’tall wid ’em.”
MRS. WADE HAMPTON
(Daughter of Governor McDuffie, of South Carolina.)
From a painting photographed by Reckling & Sons, Columbia, S. C.
The night before an election the Democratic Club was in session at McClellanville when Mr. McClellan came in and said there would be trouble next day. He had heard on the river that negroes were buying up ammunition and were coming armed to the polls. He had gone to stores and given orders that sale should be stopped. Whites now tried to buy but found stock sold out. They collected available arms and ammunition in village and neighbourhood, and concealed these under a hay-wagon, which appeared next day near the polls, one of many of similar appearance. Squads were detailed for duty near polls and wagon.
Blacks came armed, and, demurring, stacked muskets at the cross-roads which marked the hundred-yard limit prescribed by election ruling; all day they were in terrible humour. “I heard my own servants,” Captain Pinckney tells, “between whom and myself the kindliest feelings had existed, say in threatening tones: ‘We’s here tuh stan’ up fuh our rights. We ain’ gwi leave dese polls. None our colour got tuh leave dese polls ’fo’ dee close.’”
Whites preserved a front of unconcern they were far from feeling. Seventy-five whites and 500 blacks voted at this precinct. Guns once in the hands of the blacks, and turned against this little handful of whites, God help all concerned! Whites had begun to hope the day would end smoothly, when a trifling incident seemed to precipitate conflict. Two drunken white men rode hallooing along the road. The negroes, taking this as a pretext for a fight, rushed for their muskets. An old trial justice, Mr. Leland, sprang on a box and called loudly: “Come here! Come here!” They looked back. “I am the Peace Officer!” he yelled. “Come, listen to me!” Threatening, curious, sullen, they came back some paces with an air of defiance, of determination suspended for the moment. “I don’t like the looks of things,” said the old trial justice, “and I am going to call on the most influential men in the community to act as my constabulary force and help me maintain order. Pinckney!” The gunboat desperado stepped forward. “Calhoun! De Saussure! Huger! Horry! Porcher! Gaillard!” So the wily old justice went on, calling names famous in the annals of South Carolina, and black men answered. “Line up there! Take the Oath of Office! Hold up your hands and swear that, so help you God, you will help me maintain the laws and preserve the peace and dignity of the State of South Carolina!” He happened to have in his pocket a dozen old badges of office, and swift as he swore the men in, he pinned badges on them. He made them a flighty, heroic little speech and the face of events was changed.
He had picked off ring-leaders in mischief for justices of the peace. Whites found it difficult to pocket smiles while beholding them strutting around, proud as peacocks, and reducing to meekness inoffensive negroes who would never have made any disturbance in the first place but for the prodding of these same new “limbs of the law.” It was trying in a different way to see a peaceable, worthy negro knocked about incontinently by bullies “showing off.” Yet the matter in hand was to get the day over without bloodshed. And this end was achieved.