his will and actions,—cannot fail, in any age or among any people, to deeply affect the character of individuals and society. The effects are not wholly injurious, if judged by ordinary human standards. Slavery promotes in the master class the spirit of command, pride of blood, of race, of character. Personal courage and daring, patriotism, generosity, hospitality-the great patrician qualities—seem to a large extent to accompany and grow out of slavery. Certainly these and cognate qualities have marked the people of South Carolina in all periods. The brutalizing influences of slavery need less notice because, ordinarily, they are the only ones observed by those who look on from the outside; but probably these influences were never more sadly exhibited than among the people of South Carolina.

Two great facts, or events, distinguish the history of South Carolina and illustrate the tendency of her people subsequent to the Revolution and the formation of the Union-the Nullification episode of 1835, and the Rebellion of 1861,—and each of these events throws light upon the portion of her annals of which this volume is to treat. Of each slavery was the inspiring cause. From 1783 to 1835, slavery had strengthened its hold in South Carolina and the South. From being deplored as a misfortune, or excused as a fact or a necessity, it had come to be defended in church and state as a relation sanctioned by the bible, advantageous on all grounds to the master race, and largely a blessing even to the slave race. It is not necessary to suppose that Calhoun and his followers were consciously aiming at all times to strengthen slavery; we may even assume they were working in the belief that true political wisdom, their civil and political freedom, required the construction which they sought to put on the Constitution. None the less is it true and apparent that slavery was the only fact or influence alienating them from the old union of spirit that carried them shoulder to shoulder with the North, through the Revolution. If economic reasons moved them, it was in the habits and conditions which slavery created, that such reasons arose and were fostered. Slavery construed the Constitution and measured the Union for them, as it determined all things, whether they were conscious or unconscious of its controlling agency. It is vehemently denied by Southern writers

and apologists that slavery was such a motive. Nullification and secession, it is averred, were simply political tenets or principles. But if this be true, those principles and tenets were first taught or suggested by the influence and interests of slavery. What gave heat and force to the great debate of Webster and Hayne in the Senate, was the different social conditions which the orators represented. But for this, that debate would have been academical and abstract. And the force which set the squadrons in the field in 1861, was the fear and rage inspired by the election of a President, and the triumph of a party, pledged to restrict slavery within the limits then bounding its possible progress.

The part of South Carolina in fomenting, precipitating, and waging the war intended to divide the Union is matter of common knowledge. The State suffered in large measure the losses and woes which war always imposes; and in the failure of the attempt which her leading spirits had so actively incited, attended. as it was by the annihilation of all property in slaves and the system of slavery, thus violently revolutionizing the organic structure of their social and industrial as well as their political state, they and their sympathizers had an extraordinary share of the humiliation of defeat.

In 1850 the population of the State had risen to 668,507, the whites numbering 274,563; free colored, 8,960; slaves, 384,984.

III.

After the close of the war, two distinct and opposing plans were applied for the reconstruction, or restoration to the Union, of the State. The first, known as the Presidential plan, was quickly superseded by the second, known as the Congressional plan; but it had worked vast mischief by fostering delusive hopes, the reaction of which was manifest in long enduring bitterness. Under the latter plan, embodied in the Act of Congress of March 2, 1867, a convention was assembled in Charleston, January 14, 1868, "to frame a Constitution and Civil Government." The previous registration of voters made in October, 1867, showed a total of 125,328, of whom 46,346 were whites, and 78,982 blacks.

The feelings of the whites were probably correctly expressed at this time by the Address of the Conservative (Democratic)

party issued at Columbia, November 6, 1867. It contains these words:

"We have shown that free labor, under the sudden emancipation policy of the government, is a disaster from which, under the most favorable circumstances, it will require years to recover. Add to this the policy which the Reconstruction Acts propose to enforce, and you place the South, politically and socially, under the heel of the negro; these influences combined would drag to hopeless ruin the most prosperous community in the world. What do these Reconstruction Acts propose? Not negro equality, merely, but negro supremacy. In the name, then, of humanity to both races, in the name of citizenship under the Constitution, in the name of our AngloSaxon blood and race, in the name of the civilization of the nineteenth century, in the name of magnanimity and the instincts of manhood, in the name of God and Nature, we protest against these Acts as destructive to the peace of society and the prosperity of the country, and the greatness and grandeur of our common future. The people of the South are powerless to avert the impending ruin. We have been overborne; and the responsibility to posterity and to the world has passed into other hands."

On the question of holding a constitutional convention the vote cast in November, 1867, was 71,087; 130 whites and 68,876 blacks voting for it, and 2,801 whites against it. Of the delegates chosen to the convention thirty-four were whites and sixty-three blacks.

The new Constitution was adopted at an election held on the 14th, 15th, and 16th of April, 1868, all State officers to initiate its operation being elected at the same time. At this election the registration was 133,597: the vote for the Constitution 70,758; against it, 27,288; total vote, 98,046; not voting, 35.551.

Against the approval by Congress of this Constitution the Democratic State Central Committee forwarded a protest which concluded thus:

"We have thus suggested to your honorable body some of the prominent objections to your adoption of this Constitution. We waive all argument on the subject of its validity. It is a Constitution de facto, and that is the ground on which we approach your honorable body in the spirit of earnest remonstrance. The Constitution was the work of Northern adventurers, Southern renegades, and ignorant negroes. Not one per cent. of the white population of the State approves it, and not two per cent. of the negroes who voted for its adoption understood what this act of voting implied. That Constitution enfranchises every male negro over the age of twenty-one, and disfranchises many of the purest and best white men of the State. The negro being in a large numerical majority as compared with the whites, the effect is that the new Constitution establishes in this State negro supremacy with all its train of countless evils. A superior race-a portion, Senators and Representatives, of the same proud

race to which it is your pride to belong—is put under the rule of an inferior race; the abject slaves of yesterday, the flushed freedmen of to-day. And think you there can be any just, lasting reconstruction on this basis? The Committee respectfully reply, in behalf of their white fellow-citizens, that this cannot be. We do not mean to threaten resistance by arms, but the people of our State will never quietly submit to negro rule. We may have to pass under the yoke you have authorized, but by moral agencies, by political organization, by every peaceful means left us, we will keep up this contest until we have regained the political control handed down to us by an honored ancestry. This is a duty we owe to the land that is ours, to the graves that it contains, and to the race of which you and we are alike members-the proud Caucasian race, whose sovereignty on earth God has ordained, and they themselves have illustrated on the most brilliant pages of the world's history."

In the first

The new State officers took office July 9, 1868. Legislature, which assembled on the same day, the Senate consisted of thirty-three members, of whom nine were negroes, and but seven were Democrats. The House of Representatives consisted of one hundred and twenty-four members, of whom fortyeight were white men, fourteen only of these being Democrats. The whole Legislature thus consisted of seventy-two white and eighty-five colored members.

At this date the entire funded debt of South Carolina amounted to $5,407,306.27. At the close of the four years (two terms) of Governor R. K. Scott's administration, December, 1872, the funded debt of the State amounted to $18,515,033.91, including past-due and unpaid interest for three years. During the period of this administration, no public works of any appreciable importance had been begun or completed. The entire increase of about thirteen million dollars may be said to represent only increased, extravagant, and profligate current expenditures.

In December, 1873, during the administration of Governor F. J. Moses, Jr., an Act was passed by the Legislature entitled “ An · Act to reduce the volume of the public debt and to provide for the payment of the same.' This Act recognized as valid, of principal and accrued interest of the public bonded debt, $11,480,033.91, and declared invalid and not a debt of the State, $5,965,ooc of bonds known as "conversion" bonds. It provided for refunding the valid debt, so called, in new bonds of the State at fifty per centum of the par value of the bonds and coupons.

The financial and other history of the State from this time.

until the inauguration of Governor Chamberlain in December, 1874, is revealed incidentally, but with all essential completeness, in the subsequent chapters.

IV.

The political campaign of 1874 in South Carolina was a distinct and determined effort on the part of a majority of the Republican party of the State to secure reforms in administration, and especially a reduction of public expenditures. Daniel H. Chamberlain,' who had held the office of Attorney General of the State during Governor Scott's administration, from 1868 to 1872, but had held no office for two years, was nominated for Governor by the Republican party. So loud was the demand for reform, that a respectable portion of the Republican party refused to support Mr. Chamberlain, on the alleged ground of want of confidence in his zeal and firmness as a reformer. This opposition took form in the nomination of John T. Green, of Sumter, a native South Carolinian, then a judge of the Circuit Court of the State. Judge Green was supported by the Democratic party, which made no separate nomination for Governor.

The platform originally adopted by the Republican party was accepted by the bolters as the exposition of their principles and aims, and the Democrats made no distinctive declaration of policy. Its provisions were as follows:

1. It re-affirms adhesion to the principles of the National Republican Convention at Philadelphia in 1872, as embodying the true ideas of American progress.

2. It maintains the authority of the general government to interfere for the protection of domestic tranquillity in the several States, and acknowledges with gratitude the interposition in this State.

3. It deprecates lawlessness in any form; deplores violence, intimidation, or obstruction of personal or political rights by any party; demands a universal respect and consideration for the elective franchise in the hands of the weakest, and declares that it shall hold men the enemies of equal rights who interfere with or deny a free and lawful exercise of the ballot to any citizen, of whatever party creed.

4. It pledges the party to continue scrupulously to enact and enforce the financial reforms promised two years ago, and in large measure fulfilled; in proof of which it points to the following laws, viz.: The law to levy a specific tax; the law to reduce the volume of the public debt; the law to regulate public printing; the law to regulate the disbursement of public funds; and the law to reduce assessments.

A sketch of Governor Chamberlain's previous life is given in the Appendix.