Unit 5: Post Reconstruction
South Carolina History
Wade Hampton & the Bourbons
Gov. Wade Hampton’s supporters were
known as the Redeemers (because they
“redeemed” the state from the Republicans,
and placed the antebellum elite back in
political power) or the Bourbons (from the
French royal family that was restored to the
throne after the French Revolution).
 They wanted to restore the government as
closely as possible to the its prewar state
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Wade Hampton & the Bourbons
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During this time, plantations were being replaced
by small farmers, share croppers, and tenant
farmers
Even though the elite were back in power, they did
nothing to help the struggling poor farmers
When cotton prices were decreasing and farmers
couldn’t pay their debts, the Bourbons passed a
crop lien law that allowed creditors to have first
claim on a farmer’s crop. This practice kept the
farmers in continual debt.
Wade Hampton & the Bourbons
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Wade Hampton was willing to support the rights of
African Americans to vote and hold office
Other Democrats were not supportive and moved
to take away the African American’s right to vote
The Bourbons prevented freedmen from voting by
using the Eight Box Law (which required a
freedmen to be able to read in order to put the
ballot in the right box) and the poll tax (which kept
poor people from voting)
These regulations not only affected African
Americans, but also poor whites
Wade Hampton & the Bourbons
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In order to offer a little assistance to poor, illiterate
white voters, “grandfather clause” legislation was
passed that allowed them to vote if their
grandfathers had been able to vote in 1860
The South Carolina legislature also redrew
Congressional districts so that only one district had
an African American majority, which limited the
number of African Americans elected to the United
States Congress
South Carolina Economy
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The Conservative Democrats were more interested
in restoring the state to pre-war times and did little
to encourage the growth of industrial development
The rest of the country was benefiting from the oil
and steel industries,
SC benefited from the production of cottonseed oil,
phosphates for fertilizers, the lumber industry, and
the textile industry
These industries gained importance as the state
was able to lure northern mills south by offering a
source of cheap and non-union labor
South Carolina Economy
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Other regions of the Unites States were increasing
crop production through mechanization (using
tractors and harvesters)
South Carolina used phosphate fertilizers to
increase cotton yields
After the war, farmers planted more and more
cotton in an effort to make a profit.
This, along with using phosphate fertilizer, created
a surplus (extra amount) of cotton in the state.
When the supply of the cotton exceeded (was more
than) the demand for it, the price of cotton fell.
South Carolina Economy
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Cotton was still the main crop of SC, but it did not bring
the state wealth the way it once had
European buyers had found new sources of supply
during the war years, which lowered the demand
Farmers were unable to make payments on the loans
that they had taken out to purchase land and
equipment and were stuck in debt by the Bourbon’s
crop lien law.
Farmers also faced bank foreclosures, losing their land
for non payment of taxes, as well as drought and pests
such as the army worm and the boll weevil that led to
periodic crop failures
Populists
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A social organization, known as the Grange, started
to ease the isolation of farm life
The Grange was later replaced by Farmers’
Alliances in the 1880s
The Farmers Alliance pushed for a change in the
money supply to help with continuing economic
problems
Reflecting the social views of the time, the Farmers
Alliance was segregated with African Americans
being in the Colored Farmer’s Alliance
Populists
In the 1890s, Farmers Alliances around the
country united to form the Populist Party
 It supported:
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the regulation of railroads and banking
 the free and unlimited coinage of silver
 a system of federal farm loans
 Democratic reforms such as the popular election
of Senators, the secret ballot, and a graduated
income tax.
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Populists
Farmers tried to unite with industrial workers
by encouraging an eight-hour day and
restrictions on immigration
 The Populist Party was successful in electing
senators, governors and state legislators in
the South and West
 One of these men was Benjamin Ryan
Tillman
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Ben Tillman
Ben Tillman was popular because he was a
great speaker and had good political skills
 He had Populists beliefs (protect the small
farmer against the elitist Bourbons), but
wasn’t a true Populist and wanted to gain
control of the Democratic party in SC
 Tillman had racist views and didn’t like the
Southern Populists’ attempt to get the African
Americans’ votes
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Ben Tillman
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He blamed the Conservatives (Bourbons) for the
small farmers economic problems and didn’t
support the elitist ideas of the University of South
Carolina
He wanted to have a college that would teach small
farmers better crop management and to develop
new crops to increase their economic prosperity
Thomas G Clemson, son-in-law of John C.
Calhoun, died and left land to help create such a
school, which later became Clemson Agricultural
and Mechanical School
Ben Tillman
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Clemson was a land grant college, which
means that the federal Morrill Act used
money gained from the sale of lands in the
west to support agricultural improvements in
each of the established states.
Ben Tillman
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Tillman opposed the Conservative Bourbons
because
they had done little or nothing to address the
needs of the states’ farmers
 they generally accepted the rights of some
African Americans to vote and hold office
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Ben Tillman
Tillman ran for governor on a platform of
white superiority and later led the movement
to further disenfranchise the AfricanAmerican voter
 His bigotry and racist speeches led to
increased violence and lynchings and African
Americans who dared to protest were
intimidated into silence
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Ben Tillman
Tillman won the Democratic nomination for
governor and was almost guaranteed a
victory
 A Conservative opponent ran as an
independent and openly sought the support
of the remaining black voters
 Whites united against any chance of AfricanAmericans regaining political power and
Tillman won the governorship in 1890 and
again in 1892
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Ben Tillman
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As governor he:
established a railroad commission to regulate
rates
 passed legislation that limited the hours for
textile workers to 66 hours and 6 days a week.
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Ben Tillman
Governor Tillman amended a state
prohibition act
 Instead, he substituted the State Dispensary
system
 The state would control the distribution of
alcohol
 This worked for awhile, but eventually
became corrupt.
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Ben Tillman
In 1894 Tillman was elected to the U.S.
senate from South Carolina
 He urged his followers to call for a new state
constitution to replace the Reconstruction
constitution of 1868 and to cement his
control of the Democratic Party
 He wanted to be sure that the black majority
did not provide political support to his
Conservative opposition
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Ben Tillman
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The new 1895 state constitution:
required that there be separate schools for black
and white children
 It effectively kept blacks from voting by making
voters pay a poll tax six months before the
election
 It established a literacy test for voting by
requiring that voters be able to read and interpret
the United States Constitution
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Jim Crow Laws
The state also passed Jim Crow Laws, which
set social segregation into law
 In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United
States ruled that such laws were
constitutional
 The Court ruled that separate-but-equal
facilities satisfied the 14th Amendment’s
requirement for equal protection under the
law in the case of Plessy v Ferguson
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Jim Crow Laws
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Although African-American South Carolinians
protested their exclusion from public life,
violence, intimidation and lynchings by white
terrorists effectively silenced them
Women’s Suffrage
The women’s suffrage (the right to vote)
movement continued in South Carolina
 Women’s organizations that formed in South
Carolina to support women’s right to vote
were disappointed when in 1920 the state of
South Carolina refused to ratify the 19th
amendment to the United States Constitution
that allowed women to vote
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Natural Disasters
In 1886, an earthquake devastated
Charleston
 Measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale, it was
the largest earthquake in the United States at
that time and was felt by two-thirds of all
Americans
 Because of building construction that relied
on masonry rather than wood frames, which
would move better with the earth, over 2,000
buildings were destroyed
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Natural Disasters
Racism prevented an accurate count of the
number of people who were killed, some
estimates place the number as high as 500
 The city didn’t get state and federal
assistance, but the people of Charleston
were able to form the most rapid, humane
and financially responsible recovery from the
destruction of a large scale disaster in
American history up to that time
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Natural Disasters
Outpourings of sympathy and assistance
came from all over the country that had
recently been divided by the Civil War
 Much of what is generally now known about
earthquakes was a result of the scientific
study of the Charleston quake
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Natural Disasters
Hurricane of 1893 was one of a series of
seven that stuck the South Carolina coast in
a 20 year period
 Rice fields were wiped and competition from
the Far East brought an end to the
production of ‘Carolina Gold
 Tobacco, peaches, and cotton continued to
be grown
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Textile Mills
The surplus of cotton in South Carolina drove
the prices down, but led growth of the textile
industry in the Upcountry
 Local investors soon provided most of the
capital for the building of textile mills, located
close to the cotton fields and along rivers that
would supply power
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Textile Mills
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South Carolina also had a ready supply of workers
Poor farmers who could no longer make a living
from the land were attracted to mill villages that
provided homes, schools, churches, and stores in
addition to jobs
The first mills were started in the Upstate, within 15
years there were mills in the Midlands and the Low
Country
By 1910, South Carolina was the second largest
textile producing state in the nation
Textile Mills
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Life for mill workers was not ideal
The conditions in the mill village depended upon
the generosity of the mill owners and the economic
conditions of the times
When depression struck, workers were laid off
Some mill children were able to go to school
Others worked in the mill where their small fingers
made them better able to retie broken threads but
they were more susceptible to workplace accidents
Textile Mills
Men, women and children worked long hours
for low pay and were often looked down
upon as “lint heads.”
 Workers in South Carolina were paid less
than half of what mill workers in other parts
of the United States
 They worked from 6 am until 6 pm until
Governor Tillman’s law reduced hours to 66
per week
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Textile Mills
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Workers often suffered from diseases of the lung
including tuberculosis from breathing in the cotton
fiber and from the crowded conditions of their
workplace
Accidents in the mill could end a worker’s career
Workers were unable to organize into unions to
improve their conditions since union organizers
were immediately fired and the organized labor
movement consistently crushed by the mill owners
Population Migration
Mill villages in South Carolina drew much of
the white population from rural areas to
urban areas within South Carolina
 Prior to the Civil War, Southerners were
moving west in search of new land as their
cotton crops depleted (removed nutrients
from) the soil
 After the Civil War, many people moved west
from other areas in the US and from
overseas
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Population Migration
Free land and the transcontinental railroad
used aggressive advertising and land sales
to bring settlers to the West through but also
provided farmers access to new markets
 African Americans were drawn to the urban
areas in the Northeast and the Midwest for
job opportunities in factories that were not
open to them in the mills of South Carolina
(such as such as weaving or dying fabric)
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Population Migration
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African Americans were also pushed out of
the state by:
the continued agricultural depression
 the ravages of the boll weevil
 the social discrimination of Jim Crow laws
 increasing violence
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Population Migration
Large numbers of immigrants stayed away
from South Carolina because of the
depressed economic conditions, lack of
available land, and the lack of industrial jobs
 The mills had plenty of transplanted farmers
from the rural areas of the state and had little
need for immigrants
 Immigration had a much greater impact on
the cities of the Northeast and Midwest
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Population Migration
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Many immigrants established businesses including
the founder and editor of The State newspaper,
who was an immigrant from Cuba
some immigrants moved to the plains and
established farms
many immigrants were too poor to move beyond
the port cities where they landed
Ethnic neighborhoods grew as immigrants looked
for the familiar in a strange new land
South Carolina city neighborhoods were divided
into black and white sections
Population Migration
African American communities reflected
those of the immigrant communities as
sources of support against the white political
machine
 Northern resentment against the immigrants
from Southern and Eastern Europe can be
seen as a Northern reflection of the antiAfrican American prejudices in South
Carolina
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Population Migration
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Some people who helped immigrants had hidden
agenda in politics
Immigrants voted for ward bosses and politicians
who found them jobs and helped them through
hard times
Many political bosses were corrupt and routinely
used bribery in awarding city contracts, but they did
serve an important role in helping new immigrants
to adapt to their new country.
Population Migration
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The prejudice against immigrants led to
literacy tests proposed in Congress in the
1890s, and immigration restrictions in the
form of a quota system passed in the 1920s
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Whites felt that their race was better than all the
others, so they had a right to rule over the other
races
They tried to establish their superiority and felt that
that competition between races was a form of
Social Darwinism (survival of the fittest) and gave
them an excuse for white supremacy.
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Spanish American War
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There were many causes of the US
involvement in the Spanish American War:
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Political and economic pressure from within the US
The US’s desire to support the rights of Cubans
against an oppressive Spanish regime
Yellow journalism (propaganda)
Exacerbated by the explosion of the U.S.S. Maine in
Havana’s harbor
Spanish American War
Victory in Cuba came quickly and established
the United States as a world power
 The United States expanded in the South
Pacific with the annexation of Hawaii and the
capture of Manila harbor in the Philippines
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Spanish American War
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The war had little direct impact on our state; the two
regiments of soldiers organized in South Carolina
never even saw battle.
It did
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create unity in the state and opened up greater
worldwide trade and markets for South Carolina goods
Reconciled the SC Democratic Party that had been split
into the Tillmanites and the Conservatives
Revived national patriotism, as Americans united against
a common enemy.
Spanish American War
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The creation of Camp Jackson had a dramatic
impact on the economic health of the state
The war showed that many South Carolinians
suffered from poor health and illiteracy
Almost one out of three South Carolina
volunteers were found to be medically unfit for
military service, a trend echoed across the
country in World War I.