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Reconstruction in South
Carolina.
There is no new South
Carolina. Her boundary lines and her physical features remain unchanged.
Her population within the dates named has not been affected by either
emigration or immigration. Within the past forty-three years marvelous
changes have occurred in the social, industrial, political and educational
condition of the state, and South Carolinians have directed, and are
directing, all these mighty movements. The same old stock works the same
old soil under greatly changed and rapidly changing conditions.
The year 1865 was a dark
year-the very darkest -in the annals of the Palmetto state. In February
Sherman's army marched northward from Savannah, burning the towns of
Barnwell, Orangeburg, Columbia, Winnsboro, Camden and Bennettsville ;
applying the torch to many public buildings (including churches) and
private residences; tearing up the railroads, burning the cross-ties and
twisting the rails; living on the country and utterly destroying such
supplies as the Northern troops did not consume-even the pig in the pen,
the chickens in the yard, and the milch cow in the lot-in order that
nothing might be left that could be used to support the soldiers of the
Southern armies. Woodrow Wilson says: "Sherman traversed South Carolina in
the opening months of 1865, ruthlessly destroying and burning as he went.
* * * His terrible march through Georgia and the Carolinas was almost
unprecedented in modern warfare for its pitiless and detailed rigor and
thoroughness of destruction and devastation. It illustrated the same
deliberate and business-like purpose of destroying utterly the power of
the South that had shown itself in the refusal of the Federal government
to exchange prisoners with the Confederacy." None save those who saw and
suffered realize the condition of the people living in the track of
Sherman's army in the spring of 1865.
In April the Southern
armies surrendered. South Carolina, with a voting population in 1860 of
40,000, had furnished over 65,000 soldiers, including boys in their teens
and gray-haired men in their sixties, to the armies of the Confederacy.
The survivors, "heroes in gray, with hearts of gold," came straggling
home, many of them afoot, and went to work cheerfully to make a living for
their families and to restore the waste places-to build anew the
commonwealth they loved so well-as loyal to their paroles as they had been
to the cause of Southern independence.
These Southern soldiers and
their sons and grandsons have been and are the leaders and the workers in
all those movements through which, to use the words of Professor N. S.
Shaler, of Harvard, "the economic condition has steadily and swiftly
bettered, until at the present time (1904) the district which thirty-five
years ago was the most impoverished ever occupied by an English people is
perhaps the most prosperous of its fields."
Grant's magnanimous
treatment of Lee and his faithful followers at Appomattox had moved the
Southern heart to its lowest depths. The men of the South had fought well,
had been overpowered, and were willing to shake hands and live in peace.
Lincoln's kindness of heart and his zeal for the Union led many to hope
that peaceful relations between the sections would soon be restored. "We
must let 'em up easy" was his own quaint way of expressing, but a few days
before his untimely death, his feelings towards the South and his views of
the restoration of the seceded states.
Wade Hampton, a wise and
skilful leader of his troops in war and of his people in peace, had hardly
laid away his Confederate uniform before we hear his voice in Columbia,
where the secession convention had met, pleading with his people to accept
the situation resulting from the surrender, favoring fair treatment,
including the education of the late slaves, and the gradual granting of
the suffrage to the negro.
But, unfortunately for
South Carolina, for the whole South and for our entire country, other
views than those of Lincoln and Hampton were to prevail, other plans were
to be pursued, and the "hell of reconstruction" had to be endured for
twelve long years. This period, save in the one respect of the loss of
human life, was infinitely more disastrous to the social, industrial and
political conditions of South Carolina than the four years lying between
the seizure of Fort Sumter and the surrender at Appomattox.
At the close of the war A.
G. Magrath was governor. There was but the semblance of civil authority.
The governor directed that all district and municipal officers should
exercise their functions for the maintenance of peace and order. lie was
so soon sent, as a prisoner, to Fort Pulaski, Savannah, that even the
appearance of any power, save that of the army of the United States, was
altogether wanting. There was no organized state government, no central
civil authority, no militia, to which the people might look for the
protection of life and property. The government of the United States,
acting by its military officers, was in actual possession of the
territory, and in actual control of the entire population of South
Carolina. There was no trial by jury. The question of guilt or innocence
was decided by the post commander, or the provost-marshal, or the provost
court, or the military commission, according to the grade of the offense.
There was harshness of administration, there was arbitrary use of power,
there were instances of injustice, but all this recognized, it may now be
conceded that the presence of the troops conduced to the maintenance of
peace.
The garrisons were at first
of white troops entirely. Soon came the negro soldiers, the use of which,
essentially cruel, was likewise reckless in the extreme. These negro
soldiers were commonly arrogant, frequently impertinent, sometimes
insulting. They were even lawless, brutish, and in not a few instances,
murderers.
To recall those days is
like thinking of a horrible dream. When the novelist of to-day tells of
the brutal conduct of those black troops, the young reader asks, in
amazement, "Can such things be true?" When the actor shows, on the stage,
the occurrences of that dark and troublous period, audiences are so moved
that municipal authorities deem it wise to prohibit the exhibition. Yet no
man then living disputes the truth of the novel or the drama.
President Andrew Johnson, a
native of North Carolina, who had, when a young man, worked as a tailor in
an up-country town of South Carolina, undertook the task of
"reconstructing" the state, and seemed disposed to carry out the policy of
President Lincoln. Public meetings were held in different sections. In
these, resolutions were unanimously adopted expressing the earnest desire
of the people for the reestablishment of civil government. Committees from
these meetings went to Washington, laid before the President the condition
of affairs, and asked him to appoint a "provisional governor." To this
office B. F. Perry was appointed. This was a wise selection. Perry was a
native of one of the mountain counties, had been all his life a "Union"
man and an opponent of both nullification and secession. When South
Carolina seceded, however, he went "with his state" and used his great
influence with his followers to persuade them to enter the Confederate
army. He accepted the appointment and immediately went to work upon the
basis agreed upon by the President and other prominent Northern men for
the reconstruction of the state. Increased confidence in the future was
immediately felt all over the state. Governor Perry issued an ably written
proclamation which was received with enthusiasm by all, and a hope of
rescue from what seemed absolute ruin was fondly cherished. Civil
government was restored; a convention of the people was called, and on
Oct. 18, 1865, a governor and members of the legislature were elected.
James L. Orr was elected
governor, receiving 9,928 votes. Wade Hampton received 9,185 votes, though
he had positively refused to run, and had urged his friends all over the
state not to vote for him. William D. Porter, of Charleston, was elected
lieutenant-governor, receiving 15,072 votes.
The legislature, often
locally spoken of as "the last white man's legislature,"-the last for
whose members white men only were allowed to vote, was a truly
representative body, and contained many of the ablest and most eminent men
of the state, men who had been leaders of their own people in peace and in
war; men who, a decade later, led their people out of reconstruction
darkness into the unprecedented prosperity of the last thirty years.
From the people's dream
there was a rude awakening. Some years had to pass before South Carolina
could be called a state. The legislature, at the session of 1865, passed
an act known as the "Black Code." It discriminated between whites and
blacks as citizens; provided separate courts for the trial of all civil
and criminal causes, and did not give the negroes the ballot nor the full
right of citizenship equally with the whites. Whether this action of the
legislature was used as a pretext, or whether Congress and the Northern
people would have acted as they did anyway, a great change soon came over
the political sky. The United States senators-elect, Benjamin F. Perry
(long term) and John L. Manning (short term), and the members of Congress,
John D. Kennedy, William Aiken, Samuel McGowan and James Farrow, elected
Nov. 22, 1865, were not allowed to take their seats. (It is interesting to
note, however, that in the proclamation from Wash-ington, dated Dec. 18,
1865, South Carolina was included in the necessary number of states which
had ratified the Thirteenth amendment and thus made it a part of the
Federal constitution).
A generation later Dr.
Dunning, of Columbia University, in his Reconstruction-Political and
Economic, in discussing the so-called "Black Code" uses these words:
"To a distrustful Northern
mind such legislation could very easily take the form of a systematic
attempt to relegate the freedman to a subjection only less complete than
that from which the war had set them free. The radicals sounded a shrill
note of alarm.* * * In Congress, Wilson, Sumner, and other extremists took
up the cry, and with superfluous ingenuity distorted the spirit and
purpose of both the law and the lawmakers of the South. The `black codes'
were represented to be the expression of a deliberate purpose by the
Southerners to nullify the results of the war and to reestablish slavery,
and this impression gained wide prevalence in the North.
"Yet, as a matter of fact,
this legislation, far from embodying any spirit of defiance toward the
North, or any purpose to evade the conditions which the victors had
imposed, was, in the main, a conscientious and straightforward attempt to
bring some sort of order out of the social and economic chaos which a full
acceptance of the results of the war and emancipation involved. In its
general principle it corresponded very closely to the actual facts of the
situation."
Military government was
reestablished. Generals Sickles and Canby were, in the order named, the
military governors. The latter, under authority of acts of Congress,
ordered an election for delegates to a constitutional convention, to meet
Jan. 14, 1868. This election was held Nov. 19-20, 1867, and resulted as
follows: for the convention, 130 whites and 68,876 blacks; against the
convention, 2,801. One hundred and twenty-four delegates were elected, and
each was furnished a copy of General Canby's order which was "evidence of
his having been elected a delegate to the aforesaid convention."
Forty-eight delegates were white, seventy-six colored. The whites, classed
as Republicans, were about equally divided as natives and newcomers-in the
vernacular of the times "scallawags" and "carpetbaggers." The previous
residences of twenty-three whites were given as South Carolina, nineteen
other states, two England, one each Ireland, Prussia, Denmark, and one
unknown. Fifty-nine negroes had previously resided in South Carolina; nine
in eight different states, one in Dutch Guiana, and the previous residence
of six was "unknown." The convention was in session two months, and framed
a constitution, modeled after that of one of the great Northern states,
that met the requirements of the "war amendments" of the Constitution of
the United States; and that, with few amendments, was the constitution of
the state for twenty-seven years -nineteen years after the whites resumed
control of the state government.
For about three years
(1865-68) the state was under a dual government-civil and military. The
military, while dominant, permitted the civil government to have a form of
life. Governor Orr was a man of ability. He, like Governor Perry, was a
native of the "up-country," a graduate of the University of Virginia,
lawyer and editor, thirteen years a member of the state legislature, ten
years a member of Congress, elected Speaker of the House in 1857. While a
firm believer in the right of secession, he opposed separate state action,
and his influence in the Southern Rights convention, held in Charleston in
1851, probably prevented that body from passing the secession ordinance
framed for its adoption. When South Carolina, nine years later, did
secede, he raised a regiment of riflemen for the Confederate service which
he commanded until 1862, when he was elected a member of the Confederate
Congress. His position as governor was anomalous, regularly elected by the
people, but permitted by the United States government to hold the place
only as provisional governor until the state could be reconstructed after
the "Congressional plan."
Under this plan the state
had three governors -Robert K. Scott, an Ohio carpetbagger, who served two
terms; Franklin J. Moses, Jr., "scallawag," licentiate and debauche, "the
robber governor," the prince of thieves, and Daniel H. Chamberlain, a
cultivated New Englander. James S. Pike, of Maine, a strong anti-slavery
man before the war and a consistent Republican, visited South Carolina in
1873, and his remarkable book, The Prostrate State, was perhaps the first
intimation to the northern mind of the doings of reconstruction leaders.
After him came Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, whose masterful pen pictures
showed what crimes were being committed in the name of free government.
Since these pioneers, historians and novelists have found South Carolina,
between 1868 and 1876, a rich field for exploration. Let us look at a few
of their "finds." In 1860 the state's taxable property, exclusive of the
slaves, was $316,000,000, and the annual taxes $392,000. In 1871 the
taxable property was $184,000,000, and the taxes $2,000,000. A public debt
of less than $7,000,000 in 1868 had become, by the end of 1871, nearly
$29,000,000 actual and contingent.
The state house was
refurnished on this scale : $5 clocks were replaced by others costing
$600; $4 looking-glasses by $600 mirrors; $2 window curtains by curtains
costing from $600 to $1,500; $4 benches by $200 sofas; $1 chairs by $60
chairs; $4 tables by $80 tables; $10 desks by $175 desks; forty-cent
spittoons by $14 cuspidors. Chandeliers were bought that cost $1,500 to
$2,500 each. Each legislator was provided with Webster's Unabridged
Dictionary, a $25 calendar inkstand, $10 gold pen. Railroad passes and
free use of the Western Union Telegraph were perquisites. As "committee
rooms" forty bedrooms were furnished each session, and the legislators
going home carried with them the furniture. At restaurant and bar, open
day and night in the state house, legislators refreshed themselves and
friends at state expense with delicacies, wines, liquors and cigars,
stuffing their pockets with the last. F. J. Moses, Jr., Speaker of the
House, lost $1,000 on a horse race, and on the next day the House voted
him $1,000 as a "gratuity."
"Bills made by officials
and legislators and paid by the state reveal a queer medley! Costly
liquors, wines, cigars, baskets of champagne, hams, oysters, rice, flour,
lard, coffee, tea, sugar, suspenders, linen-bosom shirts, cravats,
collars, gloves (masculine and feminine, by the box), perfumes, bustles,
corsets, palpitators, embroidered flannel, ginghams, silks, velvets,
stockings, chignons, chemises, gowns, garters, fans, gold watches and
chains, diamond fingerrings and ear-rings, Russia leather workboxes, hats,
bonnets; in short, every article of furniture and house furnishing from a
full parlor set to a baby's swinging cradle, not omitting a $100 metallic
coffin." - Avary.
There lies on the writer's
desk a photograph group of sixty-three members of the "reconstructed"
legislature of South Carolina-fifty negroes, or mulattoes, and thirteen
white men. Twenty-two could read and write, forty-one "made their mark" in
place of signing their names, forty-four paid no taxes, nineteen were
taxpayers to an aggregate of $146.10.
The reader wonders why
South Carolinians submitted. The reason is respect for and fear of the
government at Washington. Why President Grant and those associated with
him in authority gave moral and physical support so long-the two terms of
Grant's presidency-to such men and such measures is a marvel alike to
those who read of and those who remember the dark days of Reconstruction.
The election to the bench
of Whipper (negro) and Moses (renegade white) roused the entire state.
Governor Chamberlain, their political associate, refused to sign their
commissions. The Democrats nominated Wade Hampton for governor and a full
state ticket. Then came the memorable "Red shirt campaign" of 1876.
"Hampton or Military Rule" was the deep-seated determination of the entire
white population. Hampton won by a small majority. The Republicans refused
to submit. Then came the "dual government," with its awful suspenses, for
about five months. President Hayes, very soon after his inauguration,
withdrew the Federal troops from the state house. Chamberlain's so-called
government immediately collapsed, and Carolinians once more ruled
Carolina.
New Social Conditions.
"De bottom rail's on de
top, now, and we's gwine to keep it dar," was a favorite expression of
negro leaders during the time of their political supremacy. The first
statement is an accurate description. Never in the history of any people
had such a social earthquake occurred. The opening of the year found the
negroes in slavery not only contented, but happy, loyal to their masters,
taking no thought for the morrow. Within a few months they were free, and,
so far as man's laws and garrisons of conquerors could make them, citizens
of the country, superiors of their late masters, many of whom were
disfranchised. Negroes were then taught by designing leaders that they
were as good as white men, entitled to sit in the white man's parlor, to
take to wife the white man's daughter. Thus the wind was sown. To this day
our country has been reaping the whirlwind. The negro rapist, the black
brute, fear of whom hangs like a dark cloud all over the south land-who is
in latter days found and lynched-in states beyond the limits of the late
Confederacy, is a direct product of the teachings and practices of the
days of reconstruction. The crime against womanhood, and the awful
vengeance that swiftly follows in short, rape and lynching-make one of our
new social conditions.
Another is the growth of
towns and cities at expense of the farms and the country homes. The
reasons usually assigned for such removals are protection of wives and
daughters, better school facilities for the children, improved church
privileges and more social intercourse. The general results are of
doubtful benefit. Country schools and churches are weakened, and the soil
is not so well cultivated by the tenant, white or black, as it was when
the soil-owner lived on his farm.
The growth of the mill
village is another phase of this question. About one-fifth of the entire
white population of the state is now found in these mill villages. Nearly
all these villagers went from the farms of the state. These people live in
good houses which are well furnished, dress well, live well, not to say
extravagantly, work sixty hours a week, seem to enjoy life, and, as a
rule, save very little of their earnings. There is always some moving to
and fro, families going from one mill to another, or from the mill back to
the farm, or vice versa. It is the pay envelope regularly, the "cash
consideration" that carries the family, especially the family with large
numbers of girl children, from the cotton farm to the cotton factory. Too
often such moves take the head of the family off the list of workers and
enroll him as a gentleman of leisure. One curious feature of this mill
life is that the people soon form a sort of caste; they will not send
their children to any school but the school in the mill village, and even
when city churches of their own denomination are in easy reach, they
insist upon a separate building - a mill church for mill people.
Social conditions are, as
yet, but little affected by labor organizations. The railroad men,
machinists, carpenters, telegraph operators, and others have their
organizations, which are well managed and which produce little or no
friction. So far as the writer is informed, there are no "unions" of farm
or factory laborers. Farmers' unions are being organized throughout the
state and now claim an aggregate membership of 35,000.
South Carolina's position
is unique as to marriage and divorce laws. No marriage license and no
record of marriage is required, and the constitution declares: "Divorces
from the bonds of matrimony shall not be allowed in this state." It is a
common saying in South Carolina that it is easy to get married and
impossible to secure a divorce. The state constitution fixes the age of
consent at fourteen, and gives married women the same rights of property
and of business contract as men and unmarried women. The abolition of the
saloon, or "bar-room" as here commonly called, and state control of the
liquor business brought on a new social condition. The state dispensary,
which on account of its being mixed up with bitter partisan politics never
received a fair test, was, on account of what seems a well-founded
suspicion of mismanagement, recently abolished, and the liquor business is
now entirely under the control of each county, which may, by popular vote,
choose for itself between prohibition and the county-dispensary sale of
liquor. Nearly half the counties are "dry." Drunkenness and its attendant
crimes have largely decreased, and prohibition is steadily gaining ground.
Very few of the people now
living in the state were born beyond its limits. The social life of the
state has been very little affected by immigration. Efforts to induce
Europeans to make their homes in South Carolina have been made under the
auspices of a department of the state government, but with very little
success. The probable need of more labor in the mills and on the soil, and
the relief from the threatened dangers of a large negro majority by
bringing in more white people, seem to make little impression on the
deep-rooted and widespread opposition to European immigration.
The state has probably lost
less in recent years by emigration than at any time in its history. In
colonial days many Carolinians moved across the Savannah River and settled
in Georgia. The extent of this emigration is not generally recognized.
"From 1820 to 1860 South Carolina was a bee-hive from which swarms were
continually going forth to populate the newer cotton-growing states of the
Southwest." These Carolinians, like all Americans, generally moved
directly westward, and they and their descendants are found to-day in
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. In 1860 two-fifths of
the people born in South Carolina, and in 1870 one-third, were living in
other states, mainly in those just named.
New Industries.
In considering new
industries within the period under review, phosphate mining and the
manufacture of fertilizers are the first to claim our attention. The
commercial value of the phosphate was established in 1868, and the mining
began the year following. The annual yield steadily increased until 1883,
when it reached a total of 355,333 tons, valued at $2,190,000. Since then
this industry has declined, owing to the discovery of new mines in
Tennessee and Florida and their operation at a lower cost of production.
Twenty-six years ago there
were twenty-five fertilizer factories, chiefly small ones, in the state.
This business has grown immensely, and Charleston is the seat of this
industry in America.
The cotton-seed industry is
another that has developed within this generation. Men now living remember
when cotton-seed were considered worthless except for planting purposes;
when the farmers would as soon think of hauling home from the sawmill the
sawdust from his logs as carrying away from the gin the seed of his
cotton. Less than thirty years ago seed sold for ten and twelve cents a
bushel, and were used almost entirely for manure. There was not an oil
mill in the state. In 1882 there were three mills whose combined capacity
was 20,000 tons of seed a year. Now there are 106 mills, using about 40
per cent. of the half million tons of cottonseed annually grown in the
state, and whose products of crude oil, meal and cakes, hulls and linters
are worth $5,000,000. It is difficult even for a native to realize the
remarkable development of the cottonseed industry.
While these two may claim
leading places as new industries, others are found in various sections of
the state, some of them the only ones of their kind in the South, such as
loom and harness works, knitting mills, bleacheries, shuttle and bobbin
factory, sawmills, table damask factories, woolen blanket mill, tanneries,
lime plants, telephone factory, carriage and wagon shops, clay ware
plants, flour and grist mills, glass factory, canning and preserving
establishments, veneer factory, boat ore factory and pickle factory. The
small industries are just beginning to receive attention and developments
at a rapid rate may be expected with confidence.
The "power" used in any
community is a sure indication of its manufacturing interests and their
growth. Within the last decade of the Nineteenth century South Carolina's
use of steam power showed the remarkable increase of 178 per cent., and an
increase of 95 per cent. is the record of the first five years of the
current century. The figures for electric power used are, in the year
1890, eight horsepower, ten years later 6,061 horse-power, five years
afterwards 32,162 horse-power. Power companies are developing the shoals
on all the streams of the hill country and transmitting electricity to all
points that need it, and are in reach in some instances seventy miles
away. The increasing use of water power is shown by the following figures
at intervals of ten years, beginning in 1870: 10,000, 14,000, 16,000,
28,000, and (in five years) 31,000.
The cotton mill industry is
not new in South Carolina. Its history there reads like a romance. As
early as 1816 some New Englanders came to the foothills of the Blue Ridge
and laid the foundations of the great factory interests of that section.
To tell of their early efforts to make "cotton thread," and to speak of
the retarding influences that delayed the growth of the enterprises for
half a century and more, would carry us far afield and beyond the limits
of this paper.
South Carolina leads the
Southern states in cotton manufacturing, and is surpassed by but one state
in the Union-Massachusetts. The Cotton Mills of South Carolina, by August
Kohn, of Columbia, is a masterful work, and is most cordially commended to
all readers who may be interested in the subject. In 1870 there were
twelve cotton mills in South Carolina, with 35,000 spindles, consuming 5
per cent. of the crop of the state. Thirty-three years later the mills
numbered 136 with 2,500,000 spindles, and consumed 600,000 bales of
cotton-64 per cent. of the entire crop of the state.
The latest statistics
available (1907) give these items of the textile industry of the state:
number of establishments, 179; of corporations, 159; capital invested,
$104,000,000; number of spindles, 3,600,000; 90,000 looms; 750,000 bales
of cotton consumed annually; value of annual product, $75,000,000; 55,000
employees.
Mill village population,
120,000; 8,000 children under sixteen employed in the mills, and 36,000
others residing in the villages.
The success of these mills
has been marvelous. They are managed by home talent. The operatives are
natives and are all white people. Negroes have been tried as mill "hands"
and found dismal failures. They cannot be depended upon for regular,
constant work is the verdict of successful mill managers who have made the
experiment.
Agriculture has always
been, is now, and will continue to be the leading industry of our people.
The average size of farms is ninety acres, one-sixth what it was sixty
years ago. The state's acreage in all crops is 4,750,000. The farmers
expend $29 per acre for fertilizers, the average for the United States
being $9. The number of farms operated in the state is a little over
155,000, of which 60,000 are operated by owners, 57,000 by cash tenants,
and 38,000 by share tenants.
This system of working the
land for a share of the crop grown on the land was inaugurated very soon
after the surrender of the Southern armies,. Lincoln, in his emancipation
proclamation, had advised the negroes to work for their late owners for
reasonable compensation. The garrison commanders, in their endeavors to
readjust affairs, to prevent the negroes from leaving the plantations,
used their influence to have labor contracts made, and nearly all such
contracts were on the basis of a division of the crop, the laborer
receiving one-third of the crop for his services in its cultivation. There
was some opposition to such an arrangement on the part of the landowners,
and a few disdained to "go into partnership with a nigger" to have their
paternal acres cultivated. The custom, however, became general and is
largely followed to this day. Many of the most successful farmers declare
that this plan of farming-the crop being planted, worked, gathered and
marketed under the landlord's direction, and the laborer receiving a share
of the crop, not "money wages," as compensation for his labor-is the
method most beneficial and most satisfactory to both parties. The
political economist will note that in the cotton fields of this state,
this form of profit-sharing has been in successful operation for over
forty years, and is steadily growing in popular favor.
Recently the Economic
Association of Manchester, England, sent an agent through the South to
examine into the condition of cotton-growing and the development of other
crops. He was an unbiased observer, and this extract from his report may
be considered a fair verdict:
"I find that the best
farmers, the most systematic and by far the most thrifty and economical
administration of the farm are unquestionably to be found in South
Carolina. Here the cultivation of the soil is regarded as a life-time
pursuit, and in the majority of instances I have found the farmer, whether
landlord or tenant, a close student of the branches of science which
enable him to know the wants of the soil, and the proper means of
supplying these wants. The Clemson Agricultural College has been a real
blessing to the farmers of South Carolina. Under its tutorage young men
have discovered that the cultivation of the soil is the noblest and by far
the most prolific occupation they can enjoy."
The secretary of
agriculture of the United States, Mr. James Wilson, after traversing South
Carolina from the Atlantic to the Blue Ridge, remarked: "No section of the
world offers such inducements for diversified farming," and he predicted a
future for the section such as has not been witnessed before in this
country.
The state claims to lead
the world in the following respects: as a grower of cabbages. (there is a
farm of 1,000 acres near Charleston, whose owner-in 1891 a poor man
working for small wages-now spends $110,000 a year in the cultivation of
his cabbage crop); as a shipper of cabbage plants (one party, on one of
the islands near Charleston, ships a hundred carloads-100,000,000-of
cabbage plants a year) ; as a pecan grower (one man owning three groves,
one of 600 acres, and two smaller of 10,000 trees each, with an annual
production of ten tons) ; in the quality of its sea-island cotton, and in
the yield, per acre, of upland cotton, four bales; of corn, as
demonstrated in world contests; of rice and of oats.
South Carolina in recent
years has won the place of leader among the states of the Union in the
yield per acre of corn, oats, rice and cotton; in the production of tea,
possessing the only commercial teagardens in America, and claims
leadership in the cheapness of the cost of living and in climatic
conditions, which are equalled only by those of southern France.
The Palmetto state, of
whose part in the Revolution Bancroft wrote: "Left mainly to her own
resources, it was through the depths of wretchedness that her sons were to
bring her back to her place in the republic after suffering more, daring
more and achieving more than the men of any other state"; the state that
led in secession, and whose sons, after four years of service on the
battlefield, stood "without a regret for the past, without fear for the
future, facing the world and fate"-this little state contends that after
ten times four years of industrial development, taking up new industries
and trying new methods in those that were old, she leads the Southern
states in textile manufacturing; in production of corn, oats, rice and
cotton per acre; in value and yield of hay, per ton ; in water power,
developed and undeveloped; in cheapness of cost of living; in production
of gold and tin; in production of kaolin; in climatic conditions; in
variety of opportunities for the home-seeker; in rapidity of industrial
development; in the manufacture of fertilizers; in harbor facilities,
depth of water on bar and accessibility considered; in rapidity of
development of trucking industry; in extent of cheese manufacturing; in
size of bleachery; in the strength of her granite; in the manufacture of
paper pulp, and in the welfare work in her cotton manufacturing districts.
And, best of all, her
people are throwing their hearts into and mixing their brains with their
work as never before, and feel they are just beginning to develop their
wondrous resources.
New Political Conditions
(Constitutions).
Under this topic three
conventions claim consideration : first, that of 1865, called by B. F.
Perry, provisional governor, by direction of President Johnson, and
composed of delegates chosen by people "loyal to the United States," who
had taken the oath of amnesty, "to restore the state to its constitutional
relations to the Federal government"; second, that of 1868, called by
General Canby, U. S. A., which met in Charleston, January 14, that year,
"to frame a constitution and civil government"; and third, the convention
of 1895, called by the General Assembly of the state.
The average citizen or
reader of history cares little for details of constitution-making and
constitutions. Those who are concerned usually prefer to study original
documents and get their information at first hand. The constitution of
1865 seems not to have received the attentive study of its make-up and
proceedings that their importance demanded. In these we see the attitude
of the leaders of the state toward the new conditions consequent upon the
collapse of the Confederacy. The meaning may be made clear by a reference
to the Tilden-Hayes controversy of 1877: "Benjamin H. Hill consulted with
a number of ex-Confederates, all members of the House, with the result
that forty-two of them solemnly pledged themselves to each other upon
their sacred honor to oppose all attempts to frustrate the counting of the
votes for President, `as they did not propose to permit a second civil war
if their votes could prevent it.' "The stand of these "Rebel-Brigadiers"
and speaker Randall's firmness ensured a peaceable solution of the
perplexing problems of that period. Had such natural leaders been allowed
to lead their people in South Carolina and her sister states in the spring
of 1865, there would have been no "horrors and suffering" of
Reconstruction times, and the chapters that tell of those times, the
darkest on the records of American history, would never have been written.
The writer of this sketch
heartily recommends two books: Reconstruction in South Carolina, 1865-67,
by John S. Reynolds, librarian of the state supreme court, and Dixie After
the War, by Mrs. Myrta Lockett Avary, the brilliant Virginia author. The
one book gives the results of careful research by a trained lawyer in a
style acquired by long years of service in the highest state court; the
other presents in graphic pen pictures a panorama true to life of Southern
people and their surroundings.
The convention of 1865 met
September 13, in Columbia, in the Plain Street Baptist Church, the same
building in which the secession convention had held its first sessions,
and went to work to frame a constitution and to enact such ordinances as
were necessary to put the state government in operation till the meeting
of the legislature. The constitution contained provisions intended to meet
new conditions induced not only by the failure of secession and the
destruction of slavery, but by changes in the social and political
relations of the different communities making up the new body politic.
Slavery was prohibited forever and voting qualifications were fixed; the
election of governor and lieutenant-governor was transferred from the
legislature to the people, and the "Parish System," whereby six low
country districts (i. e., counties) had twenty-two out of forty-five state
senators and fiftyfive representatives out of a total of 124, was
abolished by a vote of eleven to one.
This white-man-made
constitution contained but one reference to the negro race, that directing
the General Assembly to provide for a system of inferior courts, known as
the District (i. e., county) courts, to have jurisdiction of all civil
cases in which one or both parties were negroes, and of all criminal cases
where the accused were persons of color.
The convention appointed a
commission of two of its ablest members to prepare and submit to the
legislature a "code for the regulation of labor and the protection and
government of the colored population of the state." Neither the
Thirteenth, Fourteenth nor Fifteenth amendment of the Constitution of the
United States, it will be remembered, had yet become a part of the
fundamental law of the land.
The plan of Thad Stevens
prevailed over that of Abraham Lincoln, and confusion became worse
confounded.
Reference has already been
made to the congress-directed, military-ordered and negro-chosen
convention of 1868. The policy, temper and ideas of this body may be
judged by some of its proceedings as follows: A Charleston newspaper was
violently denounced and its reporters were excluded from the hall, this on
motion of D. H. Chamberlain. A negro member (Nash, of Richland county)
offered a resolution to tax uncultivated lands higher than those under
cultivation. Congress was requested to lend $1,000,000 to buy lands to be
resold on long time to persons in South Carolina. An attempt was made to
reform the vocabulary of South Carolina by expunging therefrom the words
"negro," "nigger" and "Yankee," making the opprobrious use of any of those
terms a misdemeanor, punishable by fine and imprisonment. The district
commander, General Canby, commonly called "the satrap" by the Carolinians
of that time, in accordance with a resolution adopted by the convention,
issued an order of a further stay, for three months, of all executions and
all sales of property for any debt whatever.
By ordinance, contracts
made for the purchase of slaves were declared void, and the courts were
prohibited from issuing processes for their collection. General Canby was
requested to issue an order to enforce this ordinance, but he forbore to
act in the premises. On motion of D. H. Chamberlain, afterwards governor,
and sometimes called "the best," "the brainiest," and the "most honest" of
all the reconstruction governors, General Canby was requested to abolish
the district courts, dismiss their judges and declare vacant all offices
incident to such courts, but on this request General Canby took no action.
Congress was requested to donate to the state, for distribution among the
freedman, the land which had been sold for non-payment of the direct tax,
the value of such lands being estimated at $700,000. A commission was
appointed to frame and submit to the legislature a scheme of "financial
relief" for the people of the state. The cost of the session of the
convention, which adjourned March 18, after working fifty-three days, was
about $110,000.
The new constitution, as
the reader may readily suppose, contained many provisions radically
different from those of the constitution of 1865. The paramount allegiance
of the citizen was declared to be to the constitution and government of
the United States, and all oaths of officials acknowledged that
allegiance. Imprisonment for debt was abolished, and a homestead exemption
of $1,000 in lands and $500 in personality was allowed to the head of
every family. Representation was apportioned according to population only.
The names of judicial subdivisions were changed from "districts" to
counties. Presidential electors were required to be elected by the people.
It was required that "all the public schools, colleges and universities of
this state, supported in whole or in part by the public funds, shall be
free and open to all children of this state, without regard to race or
color." Courts were permitted to grant divorces. This constitution,
strange as it may appear, was allowed to remain the fundamental law of the
state for nearly twenty years after the "restoration of home rule"-after
the whites resumed control of the government. There were some amendments,
and some provisions were ignored, and others evaded.
The convention of 1895 was
a representative body. The calling of this convention was one of the
principal events following the success of that political and social
revolution known as the "Farmers' Movement of 1890," of which B. R.
Tillman was the leader. This convention was primarily for the purpose of
readjusting the franchise in such a manner as to eliminate the ignorant
vote through legal means, by requiring an educational and a property
qualification, which had the desired effect.
Perhaps the most remarkable
new political condition in South Carolina is the method of nominating all
officers, state and federal, from coroner to United States senator, by a
direct primary election known as the "Democratic primary," but designed to
be a white-man's primary. In these primaries the white voters express
their choice of measures and officials, and the general or regular
elections are little more than formal approval of what has been decided
upon weeks beforehand by a majority of the white men of the state, over
twenty-one years of age, whether "registered" (that is, legal) voters or
not.
Thus the state, once the
most aristocratic in the Union, leaving the least power in the hands of
the voter, has now become the most democratic, giving the most power to
its citizens (white) to be used at the ballot box. The last three
governors furnish a striking illustration of how this "primary election"
works. The present governor is the son of a German immigrant; the last
governor was a member of one of the old families prominent in affairs from
colonial days, and his immediate predecessor was an Irish boy in the
Orphan Home at Charleston, who learned the printers' trade, went from the
printing office to the governor's mansion, and at the expiration of his
term went back to the editor's desk and the printing press, saying, with
pardonable pride, that had he not been a printer he would never have been
governor.
Educational Advance.
Along no other line of
progress has South Carolina advanced more rapidly in the past thirty-three
years than along the line of her educational interests. Perhaps the most
marked change in the opinions and practices of her people is that
concerning the education of the children in free public schools -"schools
good enough for the richest and cheap enough for the poorest."
The story of the schools
and of the training of the youth in colonial days, both proprietary and
royal, in the time of her statehood before entering the Union (1776-1789),
while she was one of the sisterhood of states (1790-1860), and during her
brief existence as a state of the Confederacy (1861-1865) is one of
thrilling interest and rich in lessons of suggestions.
The limits of this paper
and the dates assigned both forbid our taking up that story. The
antebellum system of schools, if system it may be called, supported by the
state, bore but little fruit, despite frequent recommendations by
governors, reports of commissions and legislative appropriations of public
funds. Some reasons for this little fruit may have been that the white
population living on plantations and farms was widely scattered; that the
better class would not patronize the schools, which were regarded as
pauper institutions, close akin to the almshouse or district (county) poor
house; and that many private schools sprung up on every hand and the
people did not feel the need of the free schools.
In 1868 a new constitution
was adopted. Old forms of government, the courts and long cherished
institutions were changed. A new system of state instruction for rich and
poor alike supplanted the old system of private institutions for
tuition-paying pupils. Here was the real beginning of the public school
system, which to-day occupies a most prominent place in the mind of the
people and in legislation. Provisions were made for three sources of
revenue: first, an annual appropriation by the legislature; second,
poll-tax, and third, a voluntary local tax. The system was good enough in
theory, but in practice proved a failure, owing to the ignorance and
dishonesty of many of the officials charged with its management. The first
state superintendent of education was elected in 1868. He was J. K.
Jillson, a carpet-bagger, who served eight years and who repeatedly made
public and official complaints of the diversion of school funds to other
purposes, and in his last report for 1876 called attention to an aggregate
deficiency of almost $300,000. It is but simple justice to the memory of
this official, and to the truth of history, to say that no suggestion of
suspicion was ever breathed against his personal or official integrity,
and that a thorough investigation of the records of his office by his
successors showed no indication of any mismanagement.
The Republican legislature
of 1874-76 proposed an amendment to the constitution fixing an annual free
public school tax of two mills on the dollar's worth of property as
assessed for taxation. This amendment, earnestly advocated by Governor
Hampton in his public addresses during the memorable campaign of 1876, was
approved by the people by a vote of twenty-five to one in the election
that year. Yet when, a few weeks later, the proposed amendment came for
ratification before the legislature chosen at the same election, all
Governor Hampton's great personal and official influence was necessary to
prevent its rejection, so strong even then was the prejudice against free
schools-a prejudice brought over from ante-bellum times, and at that time
intensified by the fact that these schools were of Reconstruction origin
and came from a regime then and now "a stench in the nostrils of decent
people."
It may be worthy of note
here that when the constitutional convention of 1895 took up the school
question this fixed tax was increased 50 per cent., from two mills to
three, with little or no opposition.
A few figures will show the
growth of the public schools:
1869-70 1906-07
School population
168,819 511,896
Enrollment
28,409 314,399
Average attendance
23,441 222,189
Teachers
528 6,228
Number of days
80
96
Number of schools
630 4,995
Salaries paid teachers
857,321 $1,415,725
Total expenditures
$77,949 $1,853,572
In the eighties and
nineties educational thought and action turned towards "graded schools,"
as they were and still are called. The name is somewhat misleading. The
underlying idea was not the grading of the pupils, but more money for and
longer terms of the schools. Many cities, towns, and even villages in
thickly settled communities voted a local supplementary school tax upon
themselves, only property-holders voting, in most cases being compelled to
secure from the legislature, by special act, permission to hold such
elections. In many instances the opposition was active, and occasionally
the graded school proposition was defeated. But these schools steadily
grew in favor; new and modern school buildings were erected, and to-day
the town without its well-equipped school, or system of schools, is the
exception.
The student of civics is
interested in tracing the resemblance of these school meetings to the
township meetings of New England. For the improvement of the teachers,
"Teachers' Meetings" in the cities, and normal institutes (of late years
known as summer schools) in the county, district (several counties
combined), and state were organized. The Winthrop Normal and Industrial
College at Rock Hill provides instruction in the science of teaching for
young ladies, while young men secure such instruction at the State
University in Columbia.
Within the last two years
the state department of education has worked out a plan for high schools
which, endorsed by the state teachers' association, has been favorably
considered by the General Assembly. The State University has added to its
courses a department of secondary instruction, and its professor in charge
of this department is actively engaged in traveling over the state, urging
and assisting in the establishment of high schools.
Domestic science is being
introduced into the schools, even in some of the most conservative. A new
feature-farm demonstration work-under the auspices of the United States
Department of Agriculture, is now being added to well-known schools, one
at the old home of General Sumter, another at the old home of ex-Governor
Hammond.
The colleges of South
Carolina are commonly classified as denominational and state institutions.
The leading denominations, within a period of twenty years immediately
preceding the great struggle of the sixties, had organized colleges under
their respective control. All these - Erskine (Associate Reformed
Presbyterian, 1839) at Due West; Furman University (Baptist, 1850) at
Greenville; Wofford (Methodist, 1851) at Spartansburg, and Newberry
(Lutheran, 1858) at Newberry - have continued in successful operation
during the period of this study, broadening their curricula, erecting new
buildings, enlarging their faculties, increasing their attendance of
students, and annually enriching the spiritual, moral, intellectual,
professional, industrial, commercial and domestic life of the
commonwealth. No denominational college has died in South Carolina. In no
state of our Union have church colleges exerted a greater influence.
Nor have the churches been
unmindful of the claims of their daughters. The Due West Female College,
The Greenville Female College, Chicora College, Converse College, Lauder
College (formerly Williamston), Columbia College, Presbyterian College for
Women, The Limestone College and Leesville College (coeducational) are all
doing good work and growing in public favor. The older state institutions,
The South Carolina College (now University) at Columbia, founded in 1801,
and the South Carolina Military Academy (popularly known as the Citadel)
at Charleston, founded in 1842, are still in successful operation.
Clemson College, at the old
farm home of John C. Calhoun (agricultural, mechanical and textile), and
Winthrop at Rock Hill (normal and industrial), furnish opportunities for
that industrial training of the young men and young women which is
demanded by this industrial age. These twin institutions, monuments, more
enduring than brass, of the work of Benjamin Ryan Tillman, though enlarged
more than once, are unable to accommodate the hundreds of boys and girls,
mainly children of the industrial classes, who clamor for admission. Their
doors were thrown open for students fifteen years ago, Clemson in 1893,
Winthrop in 1884.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. - Andrews,
Elisha Benjamin: History of the last Quarter Century in the United States;
Avary, Mrs. Myrta Lockett: Dixie after the War; an Exposition of Social
Conditions existing in the South during the Twelve Years Succeeding the
Fall of Richmond; Dunning, William Archibald: Reconstruction, Political
and Economic, 1865-1877; Kohn, August: Cotton Mills of South Carolina: a
series of observations and facts; Pike, James S.: Prostrate State-South
Carolina under Negro Government; Reynolds, John Schreiner: Reconstruction
in South Carolina, 1865-1877; Rhodes, James Ford: History of United States
from the Compromise of 1850; Watson, E. J.: Handbook of South Carolina;
Wilson, Woodrow: Division and Reunion, 1827-1889.
WILLIAM SHANNON MORRISON,
Professor of History and Political Economy, Clemson College. |
