Senator Ben Tillman was a Confederate veteran who became the governor and senator of South Carolina. Four decades after the Civil War he provided an explanation of why white South Carolinians fought during Reconstruction to keep Blacks unenfranchised and why they still fought against Black government officials.
I have been examining Tillman’s speech to the Red Shirt Reunion of 1903 elsewhere on the Hamburg Massacre. But now I want to dive directly into why the Red Shirts were opposed to granting the right to vote to African Americans. Here are some excerpts from Tillman’s own Struggles of 1876 : How South Carolina was delivered from carpet-bag and negro rule : speech at the Red-Shirt re-union at Anderson pp. 8-13:
If you imagine that the negro question is settled, as some of the young editors of papers in this state tell us, then you had better ask your friends to go get out a writ of lunacy at once. Nothing but besotted ignorance on the part of these would-be leaders can excuse their belittling the dangers of the race problem. With the exception of the counties in the Piedmont extending east- ward to Chesterfield and including Horry, Anderson and Union, all the other counties have negro majorities. The general proportion is two to one, but Beaufort has 10 to 1, and in the counties of Charleston, Georgetown and Berkeley it is from three to seven to one. The idea of a com- pulsory education law to hurry up the crisis, which will come when the negroes who can vote outnumber the whites, can but be considered criminal.
These editors say, “Tillman is wild,” and that he has been doing a great deal of injury to the state and the south, and that he does not represent the best thought and feeling of South Carolina. God have mercy! If I do not represent the best sentiment!! What He Says Up North.
All that I have ever said to northern audiences in the senate or elsewhere is that the Creator made the Caucasian of better clay than he made any colored people. I have told them “we shot them, (the negroes), we stuffed ballot boxes,” and did all that was necessary to maintain our hold on the government; and that with a negro majority in at least two southern states there was not power enough between Cape Cod and California to make us again submit to negro rule. I spoke thus on the floor of the senate. Did I misrepresent southern feeling or sentiment when I uttered those words? I misrepresented the feeling of the News and Courier and State, no doubt, for both of those papers have a negro-loving record.
I have told the northern people that they do not know anything about the negro, that they would not submit to negro rule if they lived among us, and that they only proclaimed their belief that the negro is the equal of the white man for political purposes. I have said, “you do not believe they are your equals, you only think they are our equals. If you would not allow them to govern you, you will never have the pleasure of seeing them govern us any more.” Is this true or not?
It is one of the things in my life of which I am proudest that when I went to Washington as your representative and found that the democrats were not saying any- thing about the republicans and their pretended love for the negro, and those republicans were running over us rough shod in dishing out federal appointments to negroes in the south, that, single-handed and alone, I began to discuss the question without fear or favor. Then after I had stayed there several years I made a speech on the race problem which occupied two days. I discussed it in all of its phases from the standpoint of ethnology, history, geography, sociology, and presented its industrial and political phases. I rubbed it in, and not a republican sen- ator ever dared or thought it worth while to attempt a word in reply. This was followed by two subsequent speeches. One of these was in reply to Spooner of Wis- consin who had taken me to task on account of my advo- cacy of lynch law. If my answer did not satisfy him, he at least did not attempt to reply. Any person who has not seen a copy of this speech can get it by sending me his name and address on a postal.
The Crum Affair. [“President Theodore Roosevelt named William Demosthenes Crum, a Black physician, as the Collector of Customs for the port of Charleston in 1902″ Wiki]
When Dr. Crum’s name was sent to the senate for the position of collector of the port at Charleston seven years ago, I held him up for three years and would not allow him to be confirmed until finally I agreed with Senator Spooner to get a report from the judiciary committee on the matter of a “constructive recess. When it came it was the unanimous opinion of the judiciary committee, republicans and democrats alike, that there was no such thing contemplated by our Constitution, and that Roosevelt had usurped authority in appointing Crum as he did between 12 o’clock and 12 o’clock of the same day. That was a victory. At least I think so.
Last December Crum’s term expired. Roosevelt sent his name in again. The republican senate had come to hate Roosevelt as much or more than I did. I went around and notified many of the democrats that I proposed to fight Crum’s nomination and it was hung up in the committee until in February, when President Taft telegraphed Senators Frye and Aldrich that he wanted Crum out of the way. I received notice from Mr. Frye that the nomination would be pressed. The rule in the senate is that when there is business before the senate somebody must talk or we must vote. I could only get one democrat, Mr. McLaurin, of Mississippi, to agree to help me fillibuster. They said I would almost surely fail and I was unwise to fight under such desperate conditions. The matter of his confirmation came up and under the rules it went over until the next day. Next morning we went into executive session upon convening. It was universally felt among my friends in the senate, both republicans and democrats, that it was dangerous for me to undertake to make a speech, dreading lest the strain in the then condition of my health might produce either a stroke of apoplexy or paralysis. But I thought I could not die in a better cause. And I would infinitely prefer to fall dead upon the floor of the senate discharging my duty than to linger and suffer as I have known people to do. So the debate was opened by my reading the protests of all the commercial bodies of Charleston, and then presenting the constitutional relation between senators and the president in making appointments. I was interrupted by my friends among the republican senators, who sought to enter the debate to give me relief. Senator McLaurin and one or two other democrats came into the discussion…
Crum’s name and the struggle over the last negro appointee of Roosevelt was over. Mr. Taft has promised us that we will have no such appointments during his administration. One of my strongest points and one which I emphasized with the greatest vigor was the inquiry as to why South Carolina should be subjected to the mortification of having the last dose of negro office-holding ! Crum’s defeat was accomplished by a persistent determination to debate the whole race problem…
[p 13] We have met here today to celebrate the victory of 1876; the triumph of the whites over the blacks; of civiliz- ation and progress over barbarism and the forces which were undermining the very foundations of our commonwealth.
As is natural, the Piedmont section of the state having a white majority, suffered least during that terrible period and has profited most by the restoration of good government. When I first came to Anderson in 1886 it was a straggling village with muddy streets which gave no sign of the progressive and beautiful city which now greets my eyes. This is the condition throughout the entire upper section of the state. Wherever you find whites in large numbers, industry and thrift are in evidence on every hand. As we move towards the coast the lack of these grows more and more apparent, due entirely to the difference in the population. The more negroes the less progress.
Anderson never had negro domination in its true sense. You old men know little or nothing about the hor- rors to which the middle and lower counties were subjected. You always had a white majority and have it still; and you ought to thank God that this is so, and strain every nerve to increase the number of good white people who shall make South Carolina their home and develop her resources.
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