Capitol Men by Philip Dray

Author:Philip Dray [Dray, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Chapter 11

BLACK THURSDAY

OF THE EX-CONFEDERATE STATES that the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 sought to reform, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida held on to their Reconstruction governments the longest. The others had, by the mid-187os, already been restored to "home rule" or were in the process of caving in to the forces of redemption. Strenuous efforts to undo Reconstruction were nothing new; the difference now was that the resistance had grown ever more savvy, patient, and sophisticated in its ability to humiliate the occupying foe. In South Carolina, the state's black political leaders, including Robert Brown Elliott, recognized that purposeful measures were needed if the state's Republicans were to ride out the wave of white reaction.

Elliott returned home in February 1874, fresh from his triumphant civil rights speech in Washington, during which he'd gotten the better of former Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens and blazed a name for himself as a Republican orator of note. But when he took the podium at a homecoming gathering in Columbia on February 16, he did not, as some expected, commence a recitation of his now-famous address to Congress. In Washington he had eloquently defended black Americans' claims to Reconstruction's advances; now, at home in South Carolina, he wanted to speak about their responsibility. Deserved or not, the state's politics had become a national subject of ridicule, its Republican leadership deemed incompetent and corrupt. Though the characterizations were obviously exaggerated and inflamed by racial enmity, leaving them unaddressed entailed great risk.

As Elliott knew, whites in South Carolina felt that the Republican state government was excessive and wasteful, and this belief was linked to outrage at how the state had shifted the local tax burden. A central tenet of the constitutional convention of 1868, where the Republicans had laid out their blueprint for reform, was the idea that raising land taxes would drive the state's planters to break off small parcels to sell to blacks and poor whites. But this meant higher taxes for one segment of the population, with the potential rewards reaped by those who paid little or no tax. The higher rate of taxation, coupled with their loss of their slave "property" and other economic reversals associated with the war, had hit many landowners hard. Newspapers were filled with listings of properties that had gone up for sale as a result of unpaid taxes. Since many whites also felt excluded from politics generally, they described this imbalanced situation as taxation without representation.

Elliott was willing to concede that the taxpayers' anger had some justification. "Fellow citizens, rights impose duties," he told his supporters. "The question is ... can the colored people of this state maintain and administer the government of this state upon the basis of self-government and unrestricted suffrage? The power we have will be our condemnation, unless we arouse ourselves to our responsibilities."

Realigning the state's tax burden might be one means of quelling the citizens' outrage, but in Elliott's view, reforming the culture of corruption and "easy takings" was at least as essential.

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