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, noble 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 rôle 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 crevasse of misgovernment and public debauchery.” There was then no Democratic party within the State; Democrats had been combining with better-class 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; classing 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 Saturday 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 Brass 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: “God bless my people, white and black!”