Fraud of the Century by Roy Jr. Morris

Author:Roy Jr. Morris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2007-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

IN SOUTH CAROLINA, as in Louisiana, the Democratic candidate for governor made a concerted effort to appeal to black voters. Like Francis Nicholls, Wade Hampton was a much wounded former Confederate general who did not have to rely on nakedly racist appeals for support. Instead, realizing that black voters outnumbered white voters in the state by a three-to-two margin, Hampton took pains to reach out to black Republicans, assuring them that he intended to be a governor for both the races. His first campaign speech, at Abbeville on September 16, made his position plain. “The only way to bring prosperity in this state is to bring the two races in friendly relations together,” Hampton said. “If there is a white man in this assembly who believes that when I am elected governor that I will stand between him and the law, or grant to him any privileges or immunities that shall not be granted to the colored man, he is mistaken, and I tell him so now.”

Hampton had been one of the first prominent southerners to publicly advocate black voting rights—he believed that all voters should be subject to the same literacy and property-owning requirements—and his speech at Abbeville was printed and distributed to black communities throughout the state. At the same time, black members were integrated into Democratic political clubs, and Hampton passed the word to his white supporters that he expected each of them personally to recruit at least one black man into the Democratic ranks, to induce him to “cross over Jordan,” as such party-switching was called. One of the first to do so was black community leader Martin R. Delany, a former Union soldier and Freedmen’s Bureau official who took to the stump for Hampton and Tilden. By early November there were eighteen separate black Democratic clubs in the state, and hundreds of black supporters donned the distinctive red shirt and marched alongside their white counterparts in elaborate campaign processions that snaked across the South Carolina countryside beneath banners proclaiming “Peace and Prosperity to All Classes” and “Honest and Good Government for All.”

Not all white Democrats welcomed the black converts with open arms. In the westernmost counties of the state, where Hamburg was located, M. C. Butler and his close associate Martin Gary, another former Confederate general, directed a campaign of physical and psychological intimidation modeled after the Mississippi election a year before. The plan, known variously as the Edgefield, Straight-out, or Shotgun policy, also called for individual whites to control one black vote apiece, “by intimidation, purchase, or keeping him away” from the polls. As outlined in Gary’s self-authored “No. 1 Plan of the Campaign,” Democrats were advised to “never threaten a man individually. If he deserves to be threatened, the necessities of the times require that he should die. A dead Radical is very harmless.” The extent and impact of the Straight-out Policy have been debated by historians ever since, and one scholar has argued persuasively that Gary exaggerated his role in the election as a way of downplaying black support for Hampton.

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