he was experimenting with. I tried to get him back to the birth of the industry in the town, but he was scarcely interested in those struggles except as they had flowered in the achievement he was eager to show. He told me of a company that had started with fifteen thousand dollars capital, receiving installments on shares of fifty cents a week and commencing operations in an old wood-working shop. As we came down to the railroad the sun burst from the clouds and the haze lifted. Steam arose from the shiny, sweating backs of mules as they churned about a platform at which cotton bales were being unloaded. My guide yanked the windshield down again and pointed across to a great factory with a contracted, antiquated central portion overgrown with ivy. The car jerked to a stop with a chattering of brakes. "You see that middle building?" he asked. And then with hearty admiration: "Well, that's the damn little mill that began it all!"

He was no more likely to guard the tradition of the antebellum South than he had experienced the birth pains of the economic reconstruction which signalized the 'eighties and 'nineties. Neither social oppositions to industry nor social compulsions toward it had meaning for him. The long error of the South and its later resolve to make progress have bred up this new and practical type of manufacturer who does not count causes but plays for results, who knows his business and, with his American fellows everywhere, studies his chances, hardens his muscle, and exults in his fight.

The Election of 1876 in South Carolina

FRANCIS B. SIMKINS

Columbia University

When Daniel H. Chamberlain assumed the office of Governor of South Carolina, December 1, 1874, that commonwealth was nationally known as the "Prostrate State," having been subject to the ravages of war and the less destructive but more galling ravages of "Robber Governor" Moses and his unprincipled coadjutors. Moses considered the pardoning power a free instrument of bribery; through him offices of trust were sold with unblushing abandon; money entrusted to the governor was wasted to gratify personal lusts; the state government was in a condition of disorder bordering on anarchy. The former white masters, having apparently spent their strength in civil war and in vain attempts to redeem their state through coalition with reforming Republican minorities, for the time being resigned themselves to the tax collectors. The incompetent soldier-president of the United States, himself pleasantly surrounded by a sea of corruption, continued to support with troops and words the corrupt state of affairs in South Carolina, and the politicians of his party were more zealous to keep the state surely Republican than to advance the cause of reform. The wholesome public opinion of the North was still blinded by war hatreds and the characteristic American adherence to democratic dogma then concerning itself with the distribution of votes to black peasants who wanted to put the "votes in bags." The black man, five per cent. literate at the close of the Civil War, was always ready to fly to those who gave promise of protection against the class that had held them in slavery. The white minority,-in intelligence, tradition, and economic assets still master,-preferred "African tactics" in the state capitol to a full-hearted coöperation with a race for which it had contempt. The latter expedient demanded a compromise of race pride.

Only a brief estimate of the corruption and mal-administration, characteristic of Republican rule in South Carolina is here necessary, legal proof of which is evident from an examination

of the sworn confessions of the guilty, the digest of Reynolds, and the animated narrative of Pike.1 Every general historian of the United States uses this experience of South Carolina as part of his evidence for the text of the unwisdom of democracy based on ignorance. One item of public printing for the years 1790-1860 cost $609,000; for the years of Radical rule (18681876) the same item cost $1,326,589. During the latter period the state debt advanced from $7,000,000 to $29,000,000. The cost of a session of the legislature advanced to the average of $256,424.65, plus the torture of sessions that lasted on the average of one hundred and five days.2

But any consideration of the inexcusable corruption of Radical rule in South Carolina must also take account of the good accomplished. It was during this period that the material reconstruction of the state was effected. A democratic constitution and a code of laws in keeping with the liberal opinion of the world were enacted. For the first time in the history of the state every child could legally demand a public education. The press of economic necessity forced the negro, after the brief "vacation" of freedom, to return to a state of economic vassalage somewhat akin to the state of slavery. The result was the silent economic reconstruction of the state on a "share" and "wage hand" basis of tenancy. The slave régime was wasteful and inefficient because the slave, being allowed no property, had the lash as his only incentive to labor. The new system of the black man's economic vassalage to the white man, which developed under Radical political rule, is more efficient and consequently has made the state more wealthy because the laborer has the opportunity to acquire property as his incentive to labor. Certainly this change would not have taken place had the makers of the Black Code of 1865 not been replaced in the legislature by those who, by removing all restraints of slavery, allowed economic forces full swing.

The governor, Chamberlain, was a native of Massachusetts, a graduate of Yale, and had been an unsuccessful cotton planter and prominent in state politics. Combined with his gift of oratory and high education was a supreme faith in the efficacy of

1 Reynolds, Reconstruction in South Carolina, pp. 492-493; Pike, Prostrate State; Report of Joint Investigation Committee on Frauds. (S. C.) 1877.

2 Report Committtee on Frauds, 1877, p. 233.

3 Phillips, American Negro Slavery, chap. XVIII.

negro enfranchisement and the willingness of a politician to compromise with realities in South Carolina. With such qualities political rise was easy. When he came to office with words of reform on his lips, black and white Republican corruptionists laughed and white Democrats mourned, for all were familiar with the habit of politicians of even the Moses stamp making promises. Chamberlain, it was known, rested under the shadow of some of the shady transactions of the Moses régime; he had as his legislative colleagues the same corrupt crew of the previous administration. Had the South Carolina Democrats in 1876 had any faith in his word, so hopeless were the prospects of victory, it is not probable that they would have offered even a half-hearted opposition to his candidacy.

Yet in spite of all handicaps Chamberlain was true to his words: all his efforts were now bent toward the accomplishment of reform. He recommended to his "black and tan" legislature the solemn duty of reducing public expenditures to their lowest limit; of administering the public funds honestly in the public interest; of electing competent public officials; and of filling the local offices of all counties and townships with honest and faithful men.5 Every subsequent utterance was but a commentary on the foregoing concrete statement of concrete and necessary reform; every subsequent act, so far as he was not handicapped by practical political expediency and his own vicious colleagues in government, was but a vindication of the plighted word. He urged, with only single success, the inauguration of a plan of proportional representation through which the Democratic minority might have a better showing in the government; he vainly asked the legislature to pass laws remedying the inefficiency and corruption of local justice; in his message of January 12, 1875, he urged the registration of electors as a remedy for electoral dishonesty; in a two-year period he issued only seventy-three pardons in contrast with the 457 pardons of his predecessor in office in a like period. He vetoed seventeen acts of corruption and foolheartedness aimed at the material prosperity of the state. By one veto he saved the taxpayers of the state $300,000. As the result of his agitation

Reynolds, pp. 492-494.

5 Charleston News and Courier, July 6, 1876. This newspaper is hereafter referred to as N. and C When year is omitted supply 1876.

N. and C., July 10.

for a reassessment of property at its real value, taxes were reduced one-fifth in spite of no material reduction in the rate of levy. The contingent funds of the executive offices were reduced from $47,000 (1873) to $9,000 (1876).8 Like reductions were made in all other lines of public service.9

The reforms that Chamberlain attempted to accomplish were largely checkmated by the legislature, dominated as it was by its brilliant speaker, the black corruptionist, R. B. Elliott. This legislature was as corrupt as its predecessors and only less evil because a will more determined and moral was able intermittently to bring it to the realization of its responsibility. The venal majority would good-naturedly pass some corrupt scheme, preceded by an outburst of African oratory, only to be momentarily sobered by a dramatic appearance of the governor before a committee, a lashing message, or an effective veto.

The high water mark of unblushing abandon of public interest was reached by the legislature, during the absence of the governor, in the election of ex-Governor Moses and W. J. Whipper, two self-confessed corruptionists and "notorious reprobates, bankrupts and defaulters," to the judicial seats once held by O'Neal, Wardlaw and Withers, on "Black Thursday," December 16, 1875. "Civilization was at stake in some of the debased democracies of the South" was the opinion of a Northern paper. The governor in a firm outburst of moral passion, having as his pretext a flimsy technicality of the law, refused to commission these men as judges. The legislature, characteristically repentant, expunged Whipper's abusive speech against Chamberlain from the record and tried by legislation to undo its mistake.10

In openly denouncing the rascality of those who had put him in office, Chamberlain came dangerously near bringing about his own political doom, finding himself the despised ruler of a state divided into two hostile racial factions. The condemnation of the governor by the more venal element of his party found expression at a mass meeting in Charleston where State

Acts S. C., 1873, p. 409; N. and C., March 4.

Acts S. C., 1876, pp. 75-76

N. and C., July 14.

10 N. and C., March 3; Moses and Whipper never acted as judges.