The convention was held and following it an election for governor and members of the General Assembly under the new Constitution and the most distinguished members of the convention, without regard to differences of opinion as to policies, united in recommending as candidate for governor Hon. James L. Orr, who prior to the war had been Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and with the organization of the Confederate States, a Senator from South Carolina and who had organized a command and seen service in the War between the States.
Despite these facts and in the teeth of his published declination of a nomination, in his absence, General Hampton was nominated for governor by the mechanics of Charleston and only defeated by 733 votes in a total of 19,113 cast, a vote measured by the white males of voting age just after the war and its disabilities, which must have been at least forty per cent of what could have possibly been polled.
A legislature most representative of the State assembled and from the names appended to the: “Act preliminary to the legislation induced by the emancipation of slaves,” passed Nov. 19, 1865, W. D. Porter, President of the Senate, C. H. Simonton, Speaker of the House, and James L. Orr, Governor, appear officially responsible for the legislation; but the main work of framing it was done by D. L. Wardlaw and Armistead Burt. Although continuously and often very incorrectly assailed, viewed by a critic in no way partial to the South, these efforts of the vanquished, before the flood of Reconstruction was let loose by Congress upon the South, do not appear as frightful as they still are alleged to be.
Professor Burgess, speaks of them in general in the following terms:
“When the newly reorganized States came to assume jurisdiction over matters concerning the freedmen, they found themselves driven to some legislation to prevent the whole Negro race from becoming paupers and criminals. It was in the face of such a situation that the legislatures of these States passed laws concerning apprenticeship, vagrancy and civil rights which were looked upon at the North as attempts to reenslave the newly emancipated and served to bring the new State governments at the South into deep reproach. It must be remembered, however, that at the time of the passage of the Stevens resolution by the House of Representatives, only two of Mr. Johnson’s reconstructed States had passed any laws upon these subjects. These two were Mississippi and South Carolina, and a close examination of the text of these enactments will hardly justify the interpretation placed upon them by the Radical Republicans.”[191]
Professor Dunning in a later work states that:
“South Carolina forbade persons of color to engage in any trade or business other than husbandry and farm or domestic service, except under a license requiring a substantial annual fee; and in the code concerning master and servants embodied many rules that strongly suggested those formerly in force as to master and slave.”[192]
The license required for a shopkeeper was substantial, also that for a pedlar. It was one hundred dollars a year. In both of these vocations the mass of the Negroes could be easily fleeced by the shrewd and unscrupulous members of the race; but in all other vocations, except those free, it was only ten dollars.[193]
While accusing Wilson, Sumner and other extremists of distorting the spirit and purpose of both the laws and the lawmakers of the South, Professor Dunning says:
“Yet as a matter of fact, this legislation, far from embodying any spirit of defiance towards the North or any purpose to evade the conditions which the victors had imposed, was, in the main, a conscientious and straightforward attempt to bring some sort of order out of social and economic chaos which a full acceptance of the war and emancipation involved.”[194]