CHAPTER VII.
CAUSE OF MANY RIOTS.
Between the years of 1865 and 1876 the severest tests were put to the work of being done by Miss Schofield, to see whether it could be made practical or not. By the courage with which she met and answered them she established once and for always the truth that the progress of light and reason can not be retarded long, no matter by whom and for what purpose such an attempt might be undertaken. The outrageous murders of Negroes by white men which went on almost daily following the unwise policy of the government at Washington in putting them in power in the South before many of them could scarcely read or write, precipitated the greatest excitement throughout the country. These outrages attracted the indignation of the North and martial law was declared all over South Carolina. This was done to enforce the rights of the peaceable, law-abiding whites, as well as the rights of that class of Negroes. Of course, much blame for the haughty attitude of the Negro and the declaration of martial law was laid at the door of Miss Schofield, whose teaching it was generally believed by the ignorant whites, was responsible for the deplorable state of affairs that existed. The Northern press at the time carried over her signature many accounts of the numerous brutalities happening in and around Aiken and she was repeatedly called to account by the leading white people, all assuming a threatening attitude that would have put to flight almost any other woman. But Miss Schofield would meet her antagonists face to face and dare them to harm even one hair of her head. She would remind them that they were all chivalrous white gentlemen and could not under their own pretences attack her and do her violence without surrendering every right and claim which they might have upon knight erranty.
In a New York newspaper of the year 1876 she details one of the murders typical of the Reconstruction period.
An old man, deaf, and dumb, who had never spoken a word or heard a sound in all his seventy years of life sought protection and refuge in the Schofield home. He had scarcely entered the house before an armed body of men arrived and demanded that the old dumb man reveal the hiding place of a certain negro whom the white people had decided it was necessary to put to death for their own peace and security. As he could neither hear nor talk, he answered the threatening attitude of the crowd with unintelligent murmurs and gestures and pointed excitedly at Miss Schofield. She explained the condition of the man and plead earnestly with the mob for his life, but to no purpose. They engaged him and stabbed him to death in her back yard as he undertook to escape.
The same number of this newspaper carries instances and gives dates of other atrocities of a most depraved character. All this served to stimulate the growing animosity between the whites, who regarded the outrages being committed by them as absolutely essential to the preservation of civilization, and the Northern immigrants or carpet-baggers, who through the Negro vote were in power and held all of the important offices of the County and State. Many of these disgraced with shame for the time being the offices held for enriching themselves and impoverishing the already impoverished and well-nigh destitute country.
Martha Schofield’s activities in broad-casting stories of these hideous outrages and appealing for the continuance of the reign of the military authorities in South Carolina as the only means of making life at all safe and possible under the circumstances, drew to her the contempt and hatred of the white people, who of all the people on earth were best suited by reason of their position and knowledge to assist her in her work.
The suspicion and distrust she worked under of being in sympathy with the unscrupulous and corrupt regime in complete control of local affairs was manifestly a serious handicap. No one more clearly than she realized the disastrous effect their corruption would have on her school, her work and the colored people. She knew also that it meant defeat, in the South at least, of the great party whose triumph in the cause of freedom had made it possible for the first time in American history to test the possibility of elevating a lowly and much abhorred race. These influences weighed heavily upon her heart, and but for the courage and sternness of her nature, which seemed never to be at its best except when acutely vexed and infinitely tried, would have resulted in her voluntarily withdrawing from the self-imposed task almost in its beginning.
The author shall never forget but she will always remember and value her most priceless treasure, the tender religious emotion which the happenings of these times provoked. They were felt keenly at the morning service of the Schofield Normal and Industrial Institute during her first year at this institution. How fondly does she recall now as if the voices of angels, whose voices of three decades ago as the whole school would sing those comforting old plantation hymns, “Steal Away, Steal Away to Jesus,” and “Love, Come a Twinkling Down.”
The joy, the emotion and inspiration which is felt at the moment of writing these lines, over the probability of a similar joy in heaven, in the heart of her who had the heroic courage and the splendid manhood to risk her life in the unselfish and holy cause of implanting in the Negro mind and soul that which is beautiful, noble and sentimental, is unbounded.
The reflection that large numbers of her fellow-citizens now rejoice with her, and the prediction that others who do not now do so will later on, gives her likewise an even greater measure of the debt of gratitude which all owe to the mother of the movement for the courage to continue the work for the uplift of the Negro even at the peril of her life.
The work of Miss Schofield was made doubly more perilous each day by the misrule of the imported rulers of State. For these she had, instead of sympathy, an unbridled contempt, and never failed to express that contempt, whenever possible. But the white people would not condescend to hear her talk, much less believe anything which she might say. Besides their prediction that deplorable conditions would follow the rule of any Yankee, no matter whether he was a Scott, a Moses, or a Chamberlain, must not be discounted by the substitution of honest men from the North. The more corrupt a Republican was the better he served to prove the contention of the Southerners that only Democrats could be safely trusted with power.
The dishonest, corrupt and unscrupulous officials in authority were equally as energetic in protecting their offices from capture by good men, by countenancing, if not actually encouraging, a spirit of lawlessness. Governor Jenkins, the Republican Governor of Alabama, was quoted as saying that he would like to have a few colored men killed every week or so, in order to provide the semblance of truth for his libels that the maintenance of the Radicals in power was the only salvation of the colored people. His work and talk, typical of that of others, served to frighten good men away and keep Jenkins and his kind in authority. And all this time Martha Schofield and her little band of Negroes, whom she was endeavoring to lead out of the depths of darkness, despair and crime into the light of reason, courage, and industry were daily praying for their enemies, for the deliverance of men of all races from the fetters of greed, avarice and revenge, which was responsible for the suffering and misery to be seen on every hand. They were praying not only, they were working also, with all their little might, that the things for which they prayed might come to pass. This school, of all others which the author ever attended, preached, if it preached anything at all, that God must never be expected to answer prayers unsupported by works.
At one of the great political rallies held in Aiken by the Democratic Party a few years before the succession of Hampton to the Governorship one of the orators of the day said that the treasury of South Carolina had been so gutted by the thieves in power that nothing was left to steal except the power to stop the further enlightenment of the fool ‘nigger.’ He added also, that he wanted a change in the government in order to make a South Carolina bond equally as good on the market as a “nigger’s note.”
The legislatures of the Southern States authorized the increase of the public debt from $87,000,000 to $300,000,000. They held the right to declare martial law in every county whenever deemed advisable, to arrest and try any person by court martial and had at their disposal the right to raise regiments of soldiers, one of Negroes and one of whites, to execute their several wills. Under these circumstances it does seem that security of life, liberty and even the pursuit of happiness and the accumulation of property should have gone on undisturbed by anything which the aristocrats and poor whites might have done, in opposition to the desideratum so devoutly wished for by the authorities in power.
But history records that the authorities with unlimited power signally failed in asserting any power at all; that the party in power with unlimited means at its command for accomplishing great undertakings of public enterprise accomplished only the complete demoralization of the whole South, financially and morally.
After sitting a whole year the legislature of Alabama at the end of its session passed a bill authorizing the endorsement of the State’s credit, for the purpose of encouraging the development of railway construction and transportation to the extent of $16,000 per mile. Only one road was completed. Five were built a few miles and abandoned. Through the issue of bonds for one purpose or another, as for instance, the building of railroads organized and owned principally by the men voting the bonds, the public treasury was fleeced to the limit. This, combined with the stupidity, cowardliness and corruption of the military authorities hastened on the hurried collapse of organized government and substituted in its place a reign of terror and lawlessness without a parallel in Southern history.
