The slave trade

by Theodore D. Jervey

So determined were the ruling political leaders of that day, to enforce their will upon a crushed and impoverished people, that in South Carolina in 1870, to enforce the provisions of legislation for social equality, these alien law makers did not hesitate to abrogate the elementary rule of the criminal law, which provides that the accused shall be deemed innocent until proven guilty, and so shaped the legislation, of the Civil Rights Act, that any one accused of violating its strict and far reaching provisions, on failure to prove his innocence of the charge, became liable to a fine of one thousand dollars and also imprisonment in the State penitentiary for five years at hard labor, which was increased to six years upon failure to pay the fine. Any one aiding or abetting in the infraction of the law was liable to a term of three years in the State penitentiary, with the loss of the right to vote or hold office.[208]

Now, it was while men’s minds in South Carolina were intensely agitated by the immense sweep of this act, that the whites of one of the religious denominations of this State found presented for their consideration, what was deemed by many of the various denominations as the entering wedge for the removal of distinctions between the races in the establishment of religious equality.

With regard to equality between men, it has been declared that there are at least four clearly distinguished connotations attached to the word, and a great variety of shades in each. These four connotations of equality are:

“1. Social equality, the tests of which are that we can invite each other to meet our friends in our homes without any thought of condescension or patronage and that our sons and daughters may freely intermarry....

2. Political equality, which is confined to the common possession of a vote....

3. Religious equality, which consists in common access to religious privileges on the fulfilment of the conditions prescribed by the church or the religious bodies.

4. Equality before the law, where the law courts are open to all alike for the protection of person and property.”[209]

The South Carolina law of 1865 gave to all the Negroes the right to sue and be sued, and to receive protection under the law in their persons and property, and therefore apparently the law courts were opened to all alike; but whether the Negroes thereby obtained a right to trial by a jury of their peers is a question.

As to those members of the colored race possessing seven-eighths or more of Caucasian blood, as far as law could make them, they were white.

Reconstruction attempted to extend to all of the colored race what had been extended to this portion; and now a portion were applying for religious equality.