“There shall be assessed on all taxable polls in the State between the ages of 21 and 60 years (excepting Confederate soldiers above the age of 50 years) an annual tax of $1 on each poll, the proceeds of which tax shall be expended for school purposes in the several school districts in which it is collected.”
Claflin College was advocated for colored students, taught by Negroes; the best, wherever they could be found, should be secured.
The committee on order, style and revision had the work ready, and all that was needed was the signature of the members to make the Constitution final. The members went up in county delegations and signed the new organic law.
President Evans and Vice President Jones signed the new Constitution as the officers present, and then came Abbeville and the other counties on down. When Beaufort was reached, Delegate Smalls asked to be excused from signing the Constitution, as he would not sign a Constitution with such an article on suffrage. He was unanimously excused. He was the only member of the Beaufort delegation present.
Some one during the progress of the signing sent up a resolution that members not signing the Constitution should not be paid. Gen. Smalls said he would walk home rather than sign the instrument. President Evans did not press the resolution, and members generally thought lightly of the matter, and it was not even put to the Convention.
Editorial from the (N. Y.) Press, Oct. 5, 1895.
We can recall no more brilliant moral victory of a parliamentary minority than that gained on Thursday in the South Carolina Constitutional Convention by the representatives of the race about to be disfranchised for lack of intelligence wherewith to vote. In so characterizing the attack of these black delegates we have in mind the extraordinary ends accomplished with minorities by Mr. Randall, Mr. Blaine and Mr. Reed, the chief parliamentarians of our generation.
In this case the white majority laid themselves open to the flank movement, which Robert Smalls had evidently meditated throughout the session, by introducing a quite supererogatory article for the amendment of mixed marriages. The black leader instantly moved an amendment providing that illicit as well as legal unions between the races should be prohibited. He proposed to disqualify all men—and this of course would mean only white men—who were parties to such unions. He proposed that the offspring of such unions should take their fathers’ names.
Senator Tillman, who seems, though the author of this new secession of South Carolina, to be the only man in the Convention who appreciates in the slightest degree the effect of its actions upon outside public opinion, proceeded at once to save his record by espousing the Negro cause. He cut himself loose promptly from the majority in the course into which he knew its provincial ignorance would direct it. He went so far as roundly to berate his own chairman for his attempt to choke off the plea of the black men for the integrity of black women.