But, while arguing for labor its right to go where it wishes to win its highest wage, we need not shut our eyes to the rank selfishness of the industrial agencies, which sweep out of a community the bulk of the able-bodied males and leave only the dependent women and children as a burden on it. That, however, could and should be met by legislation preventative of the breaking up of families simply to meet the demands of industrial slavery. But the right of the laborer to all that his work can earn should be protected, nevertheless.
As fruitful as the incidents of this extraordinary Convention were, in illustration of phases of the Negro question, the most remarkable of all, however, remains yet to be narrated. It has been previously stated, that in 1865, when the States of the then defunct Confederacy endeavored to rehabilitate themselves, as members of the Union, after Emancipation, but before Reconstruction, both South Carolina and Mississippi adopted codes, in which were the provisions that “every person who may have of Caucasian blood seven-eighths or more shall be deemed a white person,” thus separating such from “persons of color”, a denomination including all Negroes and mixed blood having less than seven-eighths of Caucasian blood, who were declared at the same time, “not entitled to social or political equality with white persons.”
This would appear to have been only another way of stating that those who did have seven-eighths or more of Caucasian blood were entitled to social and political equality with the whites. But Reconstruction, as has been shown, swept this legislation out of existence, in the attempt then made to place all upon one plane of social equality, and to punish as severely as a law could be framed to, such as might be accused of any discrimination of a social nature. This preposterous piece of legislation was in its turn done away with when Reconstruction passed away, and in its place there was enacted the law which penalized marriage between whites and Negroes. In the South Carolina convention of 1895, an attempt was made to so frame the law, as to make it conform to the view held in South Carolina and Mississippi in 1865; but to this there was opposition in the shape of an amendment reading as follows:
“Sec. 34. The marriage of a white person with a Negro or mulatto person who shall have any Negro blood, shall be unlawful, and the parties to such marriage, upon conviction shall be punished as the General Assembly may direct.”[246]
Over this amendment to the report of the committee much discussion arose and among other expressions of opinion, was one from Mr. Sligh of Newberry, that it would be better to allow any one with only one sixteenth of Negro blood to raise white, rather than force such, to raise colored children. Sentiment was, however, against his view, and the proposed amendment was accepted as above outlined.
But in two weeks, after many renewals of discussion as to the wrong and injury which might result from accusations apt to be based upon a proportion so indefinite, according to press report:
“On motion of Mr. W. D. Evans, Sec. 34, was recurred to, and trouble began. Mr. Evans proposed to amend the section by providing that the miscegenation law shall not apply to persons of mixed blood, whose status is that of white people. Mr. George Tillman stated, that he was very feeble, but that he felt compelled to say something on this subject. For one, he had felt ashamed when the delegate from Beaufort had clapped his hands, and declared that the coons had a dog up a tree. He was further mortified to see that the gentleman from Newberry (Mr. Sligh) and the gentleman from Edgefield (Mr. B. Tillman) goaded and taunted into putting in the constitution, that no person with any trace of Negro blood should intermarry with a white person and that for such marriage the Legislature should provide punishment even beyond that of bastardizing children and adulterizing marriage. Mr. Tillman said the Mississippi law forbidding marriage between white people with those with more than one-eighth Negro blood is the old South Carolina law. If the law is made, as it now stands, respectable families in Aiken, Barnwell, Colleton and Orangeburg will be denied right to intermarry among the people with whom they are now associated and identified. At least one hundred families would be affected, to his knowledge. They had sent good soldiers to the Confederate Army, and are now landowners and taxpayers. He asserted, as a scientific fact that there was not a full blooded Caucasian on the floor of the Convention. Every member had in him a certain mixture of Mongolian, Arab, Indian or other colored blood. The pure blooded white man had needed and received an infusion of darker blood, to give him readiness and purpose. It would be a cruel injustice and the source of endless litigation, of scandal, horror, feud and bloodshed to undertake to annul or forbid marriage for a remote, perhaps obsolete trace of Negro blood. By the rule of evidence traditional notoriety was admissible in proving pedigree. The doors would be opened to scandal, malice and greed; to statements on the witness stand, that the father or the grandfather, or grandmother had said that A or B had Negro blood in their veins. Any man who is half a man would be ready to blow up half the world with dynamite, to prevent or avenge attacks upon the honor of his mother or the legitimacy or purity of the blood of his father. He moved the restoration of the section to its original form.”[247]
Mr. George D. Tillman’s effort was successful, and the section, as finally adopted stands:
“Art. III, Sec. 33. The marriage of a white person with a Negro or mulatto or person who shall have one eighth or more of Negro blood shall be unlawful and void.”