“Be it ordained by the people of South Carolina, in convention assembled, that the Comptroller General, County Auditors, County Treasurers and all persons charged with the collections of State or municipal taxes, be and are hereby required, to keep separate and distinct accounts of all tax returns and taxes paid by white and colored taxpayers and that the same be always open for public inspection.”
The Convention voted this down, although the subject is known to be one upon which much loose generalization is continually indulged in as the basis of political appeals to voters.
But Wigg struck a more telling note than this. The concluding clause of Article 1, Sec. II being reported:
“After the adoption of this constitution any person who shall fight a duel or send or accept a challenge, for that purpose, or be an aider or abettor in fighting a duel, shall be deprived of holding any office of honor or trust in the State, and shall be otherwise punished as the law shall prescribe.”
To this Wigg suggested the simple addition, “or any one engaged in lynching.”[243] The amendment was voted down, but in what position did the vote so disposing of it place the law-making whites? How does it read today?
Wigg’s speech on the suffrage clause, from the standpoint of his race, was also a strong presentation of the subject, pitched upon a high plane, eloquent and dignified. No extracts from it will do it justice. To be appreciated at its full value, it must be read as a whole. In it was none of that amusing buffoonery, which in another colored delegate’s remarks so captivated the press representatives; but it did contain not a little biting sarcasm. It is a speech well worth the perusal of the careful student of history, who is desirous of informing himself of the various styles of men, our institutions and our practices have evolved. But with all that has been stated, yet the most interesting incident connected with this colored man’s service in the Convention, was his clash with the strongest and most influential member of that body, in an impromptu debate, arising almost accidentally, in which, by no stretch of imagination, can the colored man be said to have been worsted. That he owed his triumph to the weakness of the position of his adversary was his fortune, and he used it to effect.
As has been before suggested, by passing such a law to restrain the egress of the Negroes, as the new regime had done in 1890, the inconsistency of declarations concerning the dangerous characteristics of the race had been made manifest, and in the full tide of his progress as leader of the Convention, Senator Tillman found himself on a shoal from which it took some floundering to get again into natatory water.
As reported in the press the incident appears as follows:
“Senator Tillman said he would preface his remarks by reading from his first or inaugural message, when he advocated township government.... ‘At that time we were hampered by this Sinbad’s old man, the Negro. He is here and he is going to be here and we must look out for the nigger in the wood pile.’”
Mr. Wigg (a young colored man) asked Senator Tillman: