GREAT JUDICIAL FARCE.
The reign of lawlessness resulting in the torture and wanton murder of
the blacks following the Hamburg riot went unrestrained in spite of
the presence of white Union soldiers stationed in those sections where
the greatest outrages occurred after the Negro troops had been partly
mustered out.
The reason for this was not want of ample power close at hand for
the enforcement of law and order and respect for the rights of every
citizen, white and black alike; but inefficiency or culpable neglect on
the part of the military authorities to assert any authority at all.
Through the leadership of Gary and Butler and some others, including
Hon. B. R. Tillman, Luther Ransom and George W. Croft, a prominent
citizen of Aiken, the whites were allowed to run rough-shod over the
Northern white soldiers just as they had succeeded previously in
intimidating and “cowing” the Negro militia.
With the crazed white people swearing vengeance against every
northern man or woman known to be in sympathy with the movement for
the improvement of the Negro race, and the Negro and white soldiers
having demonstrated such poor ability or better stated, none at all,
in securing any decent respect for them and their work, the condition
of Martha Schofield’s school at this period is better imagined than
described. Located in the thick of the great white heat of the conflict
the principal and students were subjected to insults and indignities
that could be committed with impunity in times of great peril only. A
few nights before the trial at Aiken for the taking of testimony in the
case of the Hamburg rioters a number of armed men entered the yard and
some of them occupied the porch of Miss Schofield’s home. Taking a whip
in her hand she went out on the porch with a light in the other hand
and inquired as politely and calmly as she possibly could, what the
gentlemen would have, and if she could do anything for them. No one
made any reply but all immediately arose and departed in an orderly and
quiet manner.
The tact, the power and magnetism with which this woman met and
disarmed her enemies were the same forces wielded by her in drawing
to herself the great following at the North so necessary in the
accomplishment of her great educational mission in the South.
Afterwards it served in attracting to her the help of those who only a
few years before sought to do her injury only. With her powers of mind
and heart, enriched and mellowed by a Christian spirit that plainly
indicated that she held malice for none, but charity for all, she
won the love, respect and admiration of everybody who came under her
influence.
The absolute fearlessness and splendid self control maintained by her
during the rioting in Aiken preliminary to that great Judicial farce,
the trial of the members of the mob at Hamburg, is said by those who
witnessed it with her as having been courageous, if not heroic. Her
conduct on this occasion modulated by such propriety as required the
exercise of the greatest common sense, shows her to have been well
fitted for leadership in a time of great unrest and supreme anxiety.
Hundreds of excited Negroes on this eventful occasion flocked to her
like biddies to the mother hen in time of danger. Her school was a
veritable shelter in the time of storm when large bodies of white men
on horses dressed in white uniforms decorated in red, with crosses
and skeleton heads approached and rode through the town. The leader
riding in front carried a huge banner made of a shirt large enough for
Goliath. It was spotted all over with large red spots indicative of
pistol wounds. On either side was placed a Negro dough-face ornamented
at the top by chignons. This banner turned high in the air, round and
round, in the swift ride through Aiken from every side that the Negroes
looked, all that they could see was a bleeding, grinning, dying Negro.
The only thought among them was, how much longer each of them had
to live, and so they rushed in multitudes to Miss Schofield whose
interpretation of one of the inscriptions on the banner somewhat
allayed their fears and restored quiet among them.
One of the inscriptions said: “Awake, Arise or Be Forever Fallen.” The
other contained this: “None but the Guilty Need Fear.”
Among the excited Negroes were old men, ex-slaves, and young, strong,
manly fellows; but these, along with the weeping and moaning women and
crying, bellowing children, rushed to the grounds and buildings of the
Schofield school, all quaking with fear, one old fellow, exclaiming,
“Lawd, God-er mi’ty, I sho cant stan dis!”
And all the while this extravagant defiance of the police power of
the city and military authority of the United States was happening,
great bodies of the government’s own soldiers were standing idly by
and looking on! The impotency of the whites in uniform had brought the
same disgrace to the flag with which the Negro militia besmirched it at
Hamburg.
The white Union troops cheered the marauding mob, and even formed in
line and marched to the court house with them, where the rioters, or
many of them, were to be arraigned on the charge of murder.
The company was afterwards severely reprimanded for this conduct, and
while they never again set up cheers for the “Red Shirts” or fell
in ranks with them, it was common knowledge that a cordial relation
existed between them and the whites.
Under this condition of affairs it should not have been expected that
anything more than a ridiculous farce could have been made of the
court hearing given the party of lynchers. Besides, the Radicals in
power at the State Capitol were charged, not without much evidence to
support the charges made, with corruption of every sort, including
bold, out-right stealing and conspiracy to commit murder, and were,
therefore, in no condition to throw stones. The few Negroes intelligent
enough to present the case against the mob at the bar of justice were
intimidated alike by the whites of the South and the Radical whites of
the North, as well as by the action of the military authorities, who
allowed the brutalities to proceed with impunity just as they had gone
on before their arrival in the country.
Although the evidence at this mock trial was sufficient to convict
almost any man indicted of murder in the first degree, the kind hearted
Judge instead of remanding the prisoners to jail, admitted them to
bail in the sum of $2,000. This, it is believed, was done through the
discovery by Judge Maher of the utter hopelessness of any attempt to
prosecute the cases to a successful conclusion. Not only were the
Negroes intimidated, but the court itself fell under the vice of this
baneful influence, lying like a spectre, between justice and the
freedom of the culprits. This feature of the case is made unique by the
granting of any bail at all, and doubly so by the smallness of the sum
fixed. It becomes a travesty upon justice, if there was ever one, when
the character and financial responsibility of some of the men signing
the bonds are considered. Chreighton Matheny, a man who did not own
ten dollars in property in all the world was accepted as surety to
the extent of $20,000.00! It is the only case on record in the whole
judicial history of the universe where prisoners were allowed to go on
the bond of each other. One of the leaders in the riot who delights
in recounting the part he played in the murders at Hamburg and who
was given his liberty on a spurious bond at this trial, says that the
performance was a perfunctory and laughable travesty on law, but that
the action was necessary, for if the attempt to put any of them in jail
had been made every official in the court house and town obnoxious to
them would have been killed and they would all have gone to Texas or
some other hiding place.
If the judicial outrage at Aiken did not show a corrupt collusion
between the whites of the South and the white Union soldiers sent from
the North, certainly the relations of the Red Shirts and Yankee soldier
made this evident a few weeks later when the Ellenton riot broke out.
The pent up prejudice and passion lying dormant in the heart of the
Negro and whites for ages broke loose in all its fury and swept the
whole western section of South Carolina with a fan of fire, scattering
desolation and ruin wherever it touched. The possibility of the
outrages committed in the bloody drama of this riot is inconceivable
except upon the hypothesis that a thorough understanding existed
between the whites of the South and the soldiers of the North. In
spite of the fact that the government was supported or thought it was
supported, by the best soldiers the world had ever seen, by the men
who met Lee at Gettysburg and Johnston and Hood at Atlanta, Resaca and
Chickamauga, and also in spite of the fact that the Negro population
in the section affected out numbered the white population by about
ten to one, the murder of Negroes, accompanied by a reign of terror
unapproached by any in history with the possible exception of the one
attending the French Revolution, went on almost daily, the military
authorities being unable or possibly disinclined to afford any measure
of relief.
The failure of the government to meet its promises to the Negroes,
especially those made by many unscrupulous imposters who immigrated
to South Carolina and conspired with a number of native born white
sons, among the latter ex-Governor Moses, to obtain control of
the State government fell not so heavily upon the spirits of the
leading, thinking colored people as the failure of the government
to preserve law and order and insure them that security of life and
liberty which are indispensible to peace and happiness and essential
to the accumulation of wealth. It is not at all improbable that
the government’s proclamation to the Negroes insuring them against
molestation at the hands of their white neighbors was one of the
contributory causes of the Hamburg riot and all the other disturbances
that so seriously injured the Negro and the whole South. But the
government and the soldiers in blue who made him the equal of his
master and the white people among whom he lived could not or would not
make him master of the situation in which his freedom had placed him.
That distinctive quality of the Negro, predominating his character more
prominently than any other trait, of aspiring to authority, while a
perfectly laudable ambition, served him no good purpose at the period
of which this is written, but inflicted on him serious injury because
of both the untenableness of his position and the inability of his
government to make it tenable.
The majority of the educated white people of the South, as well as
the ignorant, all speak out and say in 1916 what they asserted in
1876--that God made them of better clay than He made colored people
and that they will shoot Negroes and steal their votes from the ballot
boxes just as long as murder and robbery may be necessary to maintain
their hold on the government, but there is not nearly so much chance of
them being able to do this now as in the years gone by, simply because
of the preparation of the Negro for the ballot which preparation is
rapidly making him not only fit to vote but qualified to fill the
position in which he once utterly failed for want of efficiency.
Through education he is making his position, both as a citizen and a
voter quite tenable, and by industry is spreading an influence that
will multiply the wealth of the South, in the distribution of which he
will share in proportion to his intelligence, industry and superiority
of numbers.
No one saw more clearly than Miss Schofield that the amelioration of
the condition of the race could be accomplished through education only
and the disturbing effect of the riot on her work gave her deep concern
and great anxiety. She had been in the South at the time of the mock
trial of the Hamburg rioters long enough to know with exactness the
prejudice and bitterness of the whites toward the cause dearest to her
heart and observed at close range each and every move made, determined
to courageously carry forward her work if in doing so it required the
sacrifice of her frail little body, which she always spoke of as
nothing but the temporary residence of a transitory soul upon which she
was dependent here and hereafter, now and forevermore, for all earthly
and eternal happiness.
No one, either white or black, came under her influence at this gloomy
period without being deeply impressed with the divine inspiration
that apparently guided her. All went away feeling verily that any
harm to that woman or her school could be inflicted only at too great
an expense, either in the loss of all self-respect or in remorse of
conscience, if not actual conflict in earnest, with the authorities at
Washington. She drove her tormentors away with kindness and kept them
at a safe distance with the philosophy of MacBeth, which made all who
cared to do her an injury feel that in murdering her work they would
also murder their own sleep and peace both here on earth and throughout
all eternity.
Could she have gained an audience with the men literally butchering the
colored population alive, and have spoken to them of the enormity of
their sins, it is possible that time at least, would have been given
the poor distracted Negroes to bury their dead. But time for argument
and reason was a thing of the past. Bodies lay for a week and even
longer, uncoffined and unknelled. A Negro named Bryant who was killed
by Captain Bush’s mob, near Ellenton, lay by the roadside from Saturday
evening until late Monday afternoon, when a few brave colored men
aroused sufficient courage to undertake to bury it. These had it in
a pine box of cheap manufacture, just as the unhappy man had fallen,
without a funeral robe or garment, in everyday old working clothes,
perhaps all the clothes the poor fellow had in the world, and were on
the way to a newly made hole in the ground near by, to lay it away from
the mutilating hand of the marauders as well as to protect it from
the pinions of the vultures on wings above, when a band of Red Shirts
appeared on the scene and forced them to flee for their lives, leaving
the body, stiff and stark, in all its gruesomeness to lie in state for
the benefit of all Negroes who might pass by.
While this squad of the “Red Shirts” were busily engaged in
intercepting the interment of the bodies of men which they had slain or
had assisted in slaying, another body just a short distance away was
equally as busy in the manufacture of new corpses, while some of the
unfortunates were on their knees in prayer.
Among the most prominent of the Negroes falling a victim to the
mutilators’ knives and the assassins’ bludgeons, with the dead and
the dying lying all around and stenching the pure air of Heaven
with the sickly odor of death, was Simon Coker, an unusually bright
mulatto, leader of the Republican Party in Barnwell County and the
representative of that County in the State Senate. He was shown the
body of Bryant, dead for several days, and told that equal honors
would be given his distinguished carcass when it had been made ready
for exhibition. He was promised this distinction for urging Negroes to
vote, to aspire to official position, and to stand for their rights,
even in the face of death itself.
Captain Nat Butler, a brother of General M. C. Butler, under whose
direction the execution of Coker took place, ordered the fatal shots
while the victim was in the middle of his last supplication on earth to
Him who alone can give or has any right to take away.
Before being horribly murdered Coker was reminded that he had but
very few minutes to live and was asked by Captain Butler if there was
anything which he could do for him. With great calmness, he is said by
a member of one of his executioners to have replied: “Yes, sir, here
is my cotton house key; I wish you would please send it to my wife and
tell her to have our cotton ginned and pay our landlord our rent just
as soon as she can.”
Butler is reported as saying in reply; “Very well, Coker, I will attend
to this. Now is there anything else?”
“Yes, sir,” said the Negro, “I would like to pray.”
“All right, get at it quick,” Butler answered by way of giving his
consent.
Before the doomed man could finish his prayer, the order, “Make ready,
men, aim, fire,” was given and Simon Coker, still in a kneeling
position, with pleas of forgiveness half finished on his lips, passed
from earth into eternity.
When the body was found a ghastly wound in the forehead as if it
had been made at close range was noticed. Evidence subsequently
disclosed that it had been made by one Dunlap Phinney, who delighted
in acknowledging the deed and humorously remarked in recounting the
terrible crime that he did it because he wanted no more dead “niggers”
to come to life again and turn witness as Pompey Curry had done when he
“played possum” with the same men in the Hamburg riot.
And this outrage, like others previously perpetrated, and still others
committed later on, occurred under the very eyes of the soldiers in
blue stationed in the South in the interest of maintaining the rights
of those citizens who had been made free by the force of their arms, in
deadly combat with the same men now being allowed to deny the Negroes
all that freedom implied and all that made the war worthy of being
fought!
Perhaps the hand of God had less to do with the non-interference of
the government in the rioting than the influence set at work by the
misrule of those in power of the State government. Every intelligent
soldier knew of the chaotic condition of the country as a result of
the open handed robbery and connivance with crime on the part of the
State officials and decided possibly that the reign of lawlessness
prevailing was no worse than the infamous conduct of the government
under the constituted authorities. At any rate, the “Red Shirts” were
allowed a wide latitude in defiance of all authority, and Mart Gary’s
and Butler’s doctrine of spreading terror among the Negroes as the
only means of rescuing the State from the misrule prevailing triumphed
famously.
Preceding the arrival of the national military authorities, travel
and the peaceable pursuit of business was made as hazardous by the
inefficiency and corruption of the constituted authorities as it had
been made by the creation of the reign of terror by the “Red Shirts.”
Radical officials, instead of the Negro, should be held accountable
for many of the real grievances complained of by the white people. In
the hope of winning his vote the Negro was promised by most of these
time-servers and self-seekers almost everything under the sun which
he could desire, including not only the proverbial forty acres and a
mule but absolute protection in attempts at inter-marriage with the
whites. He was urged not only to assert his rights but to defend them
even if it became necessary to shoot to death whole communities of
white people in doing so. With this instruction and the additional
assurance that the government at Washington would protect them in
every thing they might do, is it any wonder that the conduct of these
simple, trusting, unsuspicious children of ignorance, ready to believe
any thing told them and as ready to act on false assumptions as on the
other sort, should have become very obnoxious to their former masters,
and especially to that class known as the “Poor Buckra?”
Therefore, the work Miss Schofield undertook to do and accomplished
in spite of all opposition, that of educating the ignorant Negro and
empowering him with the sword of reason, in order that he might not be
led unwisely by those who sought to use him and did use him for selfish
purposes, was the great need of the times.
A former member of one of the many “Red Shirt” bands who participated
in the outrages of the Ellenton and Hamburg riots and is at this time
(1916) an inmate of the home for Confederate soldiers at Columbia, S.
C., stated to the author that it was the firmness, the reasonableness
and plausibility of the arguments of Martha Schofield that influenced
him and his compatriots in crime from molesting the Schofield school.
He states that he and his friends once made designs looking to the
destruction of the school as a part of the plan in terrorizing the
Negroes and “scallawags,” but were prevented from doing so only by
the patriotism expressed by this little woman in a casual, brief
conversation, at a time when she least expected their design against
her. “We all felt, also,” added the old rebel, “that since we could
not possibly kill all the Negroes some of them would be forced to live
amongst us always, and since the more useful arts, such as farming,
house-keeping, sewing and cooking which we satisfied ourselves were
specialized in by Miss Schofield, were better done right than wrong her
work might be helpful to us, and so we agree to let her alone.”
The great mission of her work was to teach the Negro the necessity of
preparing himself for the duties devolving upon him after freedom and
to place in his hands the knowledge with which he would be better able
to discharge these duties. This took him first through an elementary
course in physiology and hygiene, as the first duty of man as Miss
Schofield understood it, was to make of himself a good animal. The
author, by reason of her position in the medical profession and on
account of her attendance at the Schofield school is in a position
to know that the principles of hygiene and sanitation as taught and
practiced by Martha Schofield thirty years ago among the Negroes were
far in advance of that time, so far in advance that at this day and
time we see the same identical principles in use among us, improved
upon but slightly, if any.
The fact that Miss Schofield had the intelligence and genius to begin
her work where it should have been begun, in the home, appealed to the
good common sense of her white neighbors who for economic reasons,
if not for nobler motives, desired improved living conditions to
obtain among the Negroes. In the moral and intellectual aspect of
the lives of the latter the white man took little or no interest,
except to disparage the work done in this direction; but morality and
intelligence are bred on physical prosperity. Instruction in the art
of farming and in the laws of sanitation and health served to free
many who came under the influence of the school early in life from
the shackles and bonds of a form of slavery woven in the factory of
ignorance. Immorality, superstition, disease and death are some of the
products of this factory. Great joy is taken in the fact that not one
of the graduates of Miss Schofield’s school has ever been convicted or
sentenced to penal servitude. This demonstrates the wisdom of education
as a means of stamping out crime.
Robbery and murder by the Negroes in the new situation which freedom
had placed him was very uncommon, but he did practice a form of conduct
more humiliating to the whites than that of stealing their trashy
purses or taking their lives, which with the loss of their slaves and
their old aristocratic prestige, they considered worse than blasted.
He “mustered” into the service of the army, aspired to official
recognition and even cast votes and that at a time when his old master
was disfranchised! Why, he even arose to the position of Sheriff and
Attorney-General, Legislator and city Marshall. And in the execution of
the duties of his high office he often had occasion to arrest some of
his old masters or their best friends, and this aroused far more anger
among the whites than any of his lesser crimes, such as assassination,
robbery and the like. The white man resolved about like this: “The
Negro who steals my life and purse stealeth trash but he who steals my
high-blown greatness, takes that which shall not elevate him but make
him lie low, indeed, beneath six foot of earth and clay.”
For want of a cool, calm and deliberate judgment which education is
supposed to give to man, regulating his action to suit occasions and
emergencies, the Negro in office, erred egregiously in his dealings
with the whites, as white men and the men of all races before being
made efficient by the refining influences of enlightenment, will
err and do err. As a legislator he enacted some very foolish and
unnecessary legislation, impracticable if not discriminatory.
Among the ordinances of the town of Hamburg, which was ruled entirely
by Negroes, was one designed for the purpose of entrapping the white
men into the meshes of the law, although it was ostensibly passed in
the interest of the public health. It forbade any one to drink at a
public spring within the limits of the town except from some vessel
such as a gourd, cup or dipper, and was rigidly enforced by the town
marshall who was always a Negro. As many of the whites who passed by it
had no dipper or cup and were not disposed to use the one at the spring
for the public use as the Negroes enjoyed the same privilege as they
in its use, this ordinance caused the death of one of the marshalls of
the town and may have produced many riots if the Negro authorities had
resented extensively the defiance of this law which the whites took
particular pains to glaringly flaunt in their faces.
On one occasion a white man was arrested and taken before “General”
Prince Rivers and fined five dollars for drinking from the spring
without a cup. Sometime after this incident a Mr. Cockrell in
attempting to drink from it in a similar way was arrested by the
Negro marshall who it is charged, used insolent and abusive language.
Cockrell resented it by stabbing the officer to death with a knife. He
escaped capture and trial for murder only by getting out of the town in
a coffin-box which a friendly merchant arranged for his convenience.
No one knew till years afterwards who it was that killed the vigilant
of the town’s peace, but everybody felt that this act also killed the
enforcement of the “Spout” spring ordinance even as dead as the town’s
dead marshall.
Miss Schofield’s teaching included helpful instructions in the matter
of the responsibility of those entrusted with the exercise of power and
had for its object the work of storing the minds of the Negroes with
correct and practical principles of government, such as would promote
peace and contribute to the happiness and progress of both races
alike. With equal force she applied herself strenuously to the task
of impressing every Negro official that she could possibly reach with
the fact that the dignity of their office required an unostentatious
exercise of authority rather than a lavish display of power, which,
unfortunately for the Negro, seemed to characterize his first attempt
to rule. She taught that good government rested upon the exercise of
intelligent judgment and was made strong or weak in proportion to the
intelligence of those delegated to perform its functions, supposing,
of course, that intelligence also qualifies an individual (as it most
certainly does if it is heart deep), in moral fitness for the duties
and honors of office.
No one can know her life and work as the author knows about them
without acknowledging that want of her divine messages is, at bottom
the sole cause of much of our present woe, as want of them were the
cause in 1860 and 1870 and 1880 of our suffering and misery then.
In the light of this fact, with all of us, white and black alike,
becoming more and more inclined to accept it as a fact, it is scarcely
possible that any attempt sufficiently strong to retard the educational
advancement of the Negro to any great extent, will ever be made again.
Martha Schofield’s pupils and graduates are now scattered all over this
broad land, the majority of them engaged in farming, and are making a
success; but a vast number are architects, house-builders, while not
a few are successfully employed in the manufacture of useful articles
of all kinds. Among the best teachers of the colored race are numbered
some of her students, while the law and medical professions each have a
few to their credit.
But the influence of her teaching in the preparation of colored men and
women for the practice of humanitarian and religious principles, the
forces behind all endeavor that can be depended upon to make the world
a better place in which to live, is the greater legacy of her life to
the South, the white as well as the colored people.
If the white men of 1876 had had the regard for the doctrine of the
brotherhood of man with which Miss Schofield’s instruction abounded,
the brutalities and barbarities of those horrible times would have been
impossible. Intellectual and moral advancement of both the colored
and white race is necessary, absolutely, to a higher conception and
a greater appreciation of this doctrine which carries with it the
conviction that all the world is one country and no religion is worthy
which does not compel us to do good wherever and whenever good may be
done.
Miss Schofield never seemed to question whether a solicitor of alms was
worthy or not but devoted her time and energy to the immediate relief
of the need. That the applicant was in need and whether it was within
her reach to assist him or her, black or white, was all that appeared
to concern her.
It was out of the spirit of such sainted souls that the reaction in the
North against the continuance of the profligate conditions in the South
arose, and out of the wisdom of men and women of the North and South of
her calibre and justness, that remedies for the healing of the wounds
were found. But not without leaving scars, however, as a huge reminder
that like conditions in the future will produce like disaster.
The estimated killed among the colored in the Hamburg and Ellenton
riots is between 150 and 200. The number of whites killed is less than
twenty.
But for the change in the attitude of the United States troops towards
the whites, whom they informed that rioting must terminate, after the
Ellenton riot had then been in progress for more than a week, the
number of killed and wounded might have run into thousands instead of
only hundreds.
So the stationing of soldiers in South Carolina was at last justified
even though they stained, if not disgraced, for all time the uniform
they wore. Their failure to prevent rioting, accompanied as it was
by a large number of infinite outrages, may be forgiven but never
forgotten by memory.
Although two thousand or more white men participated in these riots
only about eight hundred were ever arrested. A charge of murder or
conspiracy to commit murder was made against each one, but only a few
were tried and none punished.
The reason of the failure of the government to press the charges and
convict the guilty was not for want of evidence nor from any fear of
another conflict of like character but on account of the election of
General Wade Hampton to the governorship, in whose courage and justice
the United States Government had perfect confidence. Besides, the most
intelligent Negroes as well as the whole radical regime of the South
plead for moderation in dealing with these cases. The radicals utilized
the Federal indictments against the “Red Shirts” as a scare-crow to
intimidate them in the prosecution of themselves in the State courts
which followed the inauguration of Hampton. The Democrats in Congress
who were bitterly contesting, at the time the election of Hayes, a
Republican, to the presidency over Tilden, also lent their powerful
influence to the motion to nol pros the cases against the whites by
agreeing not to press the cases at home against the former rulers of
the South. It was also stipulated that the Democrats must accept the
choice of Hayes for president if the Republicans succeeded in having
the troops from South Carolina and Louisiana removed.
These were the conditions upon which a treaty of peace was entered
into by the Republicans and Democrats at the time of the election of
President Hayes, but since that time laws have been passed in many of
the States making it a felony for citizens to utter such agreements,
and, of course, would apply for more severely in the case of officials
whose sworn duty it is to prosecute those guilty of crime.