“Do I understand that you object to the presence of the Negro in South Carolina?”
“Senator Tillman: Not a bit, but I would place no restraint upon his emigration.
“Mr. Wigg: Did you not sign a bill calculated to prevent his leaving?
“Senator Tillman: I never signed such a measure.[244]
“Mr. Wigg: I mean the act imposing a tax on emigration agents.”
To this distinct specification of the act passed while he was Governor Tillman at first hastily claimed that it had been passed during his predecessor’s term of office; but later, on reflection, made a point of informing the Convention that he found he had signed it and desired, “to apologize to the State for having done so.”
The author of the Act, a cotton planter from Marlboro, W. D. Evans, then arose and also apologized for it, and a verbal pledge was given, that the Act should be repealed. At that time the Act was in its amended form, only operative for one-half of the year. But so far from being repealed, the only action concerning it, was the making of it operative for the whole year as originally drawn, license reduced.
As dissatisfying as such a statement may be to those to whom the injustice of it, and the disregard of a promise given under such solemn conditions, is repugnant, it must be borne in mind, that similar legislation of the State of Georgia had been, in the mean time, reviewed by the Supreme Court of the United States, and sustained upon the grounds inter alia, that—
“If it can be said to affect the freedom of egress from the State or the freedom of the contract, it does only incidentally and remotely.”[245]
The Supreme Court of the United States, therefore, shares with the Lower South the responsibility for this harsh and unwise restriction of the right of labor to its fullest wage, as well as the denial to a peculiarly ignorant and helpless mass of the population, of an assisted egress from localities where they are said to be such a menace from their extraordinary numbers, that a setting aside of all law and depriving of individuals of life without law by mobs is sometimes by some people justified.