CHAPTER VIII.
HAMBURG AND ELLENTON RIOTS.
Several riots and some of as foul murders as ever disgraced the lives of men attended the uprisings around Aiken.
Among the most important of these were the Hamburg, the Ellenton and Ned Tennant riots, all occurring within a few miles of Miss Schofield’s school.
The Hamburg riot occurred in July, 1876, and proved to be one of the most tragic events, as it was one of the most disastrous occurrences for the Negro race and the Republican Party of the South that occurred during the entire period of Reconstruction. Seven Negroes and one white man were killed out-right, while one white man and two Negroes were seriously wounded.
This sounded the alarm of danger in the South for the experiment being made with the Negro for self-government and urged immediate action by Congress for the protection of its policy there, if not its newly made citizens who at the first challenge had shown conclusively the incapacity to protect themselves.
The riot was precipitated by two young white men, Henry Getzen and Thomas Butler, who were driving through Hamburg on the return from Georgia to their homes in South Carolina, just across the State line in the vicinity of Augusta. At the time a company of one hundred Negro men in command of Captain Dock Adams was drilling on the principal street of the town of Hamburg, and a large proportion of the Negro population, as usual, was out admiring the spectacular performance. It is claimed by the white men that the company was drilling “company front” and so filled the street from side-walk to side-walk, which permitted them no room to pass; and that Captain Adams instead of ordering his troops to fall into “Column fours” or “column platoons,” he ordered them to “charge,” at which command, Butler, a son of Mr. Robert Butler, shouted from his seat in the buggy, with revolver drawn, that he would shoot to death the first man that stuck a bayonet in the horse. With a hundred bayonets gleaming in the sun and several hundred of the colored race looking on, the Negroes knew the butchery of the whites was an easy matter, but being desirous of avoiding a conflict which they knew only too well was instigated at that time for the purpose of arousing the already over enraged whites to an action that would later on mean either the annihilation of themselves or their old masters and mistresses, whom some of them still loved and admired with the same affection and admiration that caused most of them throughout the battle for their freedom to remain at the fire-side and defend the homes of those out in a war fought to continue them in a state of bondage, the Captain ordered a halt and opened the ranks so that the buggy could pass. Completing the exercises, the soldiers were marched to their armory and dismissed. Adams then went, as was his right to do, to a Justice of the Peace, “General” Prince Rivers, a Negro, an ex-Union Soldier, commander of the Negro militia, the State Senator from Aiken County in the General Assembly and also the Trial Justice for his district, and swore out warrants for Getzen and Butler, charging them with interfering with his company at drill.
Hearing of this, Butler hurried home and informed his father of what had happened, who went in haste to the same Trial Justice and secured a warrant for Adams for obstructing the highway. News of the “cowing” of the Negro militia and the subsequent issuance of warrants for the captain of the company and the white men and the setting of the trials of each for a hearing was spread all over the surrounding country in a very short time, and excitement was intense on both sides as to what the outcome would be.
Without quoting the exact words of one of the members of the rioters who was the leader in the three great riots, the settled purpose of the whites was the seizure of the first opportunity that might be made by the Negroes to provoke a riot and demonstrate to the latter through blood-shed the utter hopelessness of the attempt of the Negro to rule and so rid South Carolina of the domination of Negro and carpet-bag government. For the approaching trial elaborate preparations had been made by the whites, including the employment of General M. C. Butler for the defense of Thomas Butler and Henry Getzen and the prosecution of Adams, and the calling together of all members of the Sweet Water Sabre Club, an organization of the leading white men of Edgefield and Aiken Counties for the destruction of the Negro regime locally and for use in overthrowing the State government and for the purpose of trampling under foot the laws passed by Congress, intended to give the Negro equal power with the white in the government of the State. Members of this club were not only instructed to attend the trial for the protection of the two young white men, but were ordered to be present to see to it that if no opportunity offered itself to provoke a riot, then they were to create one, anyhow. They were to go un-uniformed and armed with pistols only, but were to have their rifles near at hand and be ready at a moment’s notice to engage the blacks in deadly combat under their own vine and fig tree.
Emboldened by the apparent cowardliness of the Negroes to attack Getzen and Butler a few days before, members of the club expressed much fear that the Negroes would be bold enough to show resentment to any indignity which they might offer, and so would bring to naught the various plans and schemes previously formulated to engage them in battle. News of their presence in Hamburg and of their object had preceded their arrival, and the justice ordered the hearing postponed to a later day, when the orderly trial of the case could be assured by the protection of additional militia-men. The whites were quick to see the advantage which the Negroes would obtain by delay and promptly decided to begin the attack at once.
At about five o’clock in the afternoon, just as Adams and his company had assembled in their armory, General M. C. Butler sent the captain word that his militia with guns had shown that they were a menace to the peace and good order of the community and demanded of him the surrender of his guns, informing him at the same time that the whites were resolved to put an end to the political rule of the Negro and the carpet-bagger or die in the attempt that very day. With his prompt and peremptory refusal to surrender, Adams also sent defiance to the white men. This boldness somewhat dismayed the latter as they had with them five rifles only. The remainder of their armament consisted of pistols and shot-guns, making the effectiveness of the attacking party very inferior in the matter of weapons as in numbers. But this inefficiency was more than offset by the difference in training of the opposing parties, by the inheritance of many of the whites of thousands and thousands of years of skill in the use of the weapons of war, while the only training ever given the Negro had been one of fear. This had been his by inheritance just as the white race had inherited its contempt of fear. It is as natural for some of the Negroes to show cowardliness as it is for some of the whites to show bravery, and this difference in the qualities of the two races must remain relative in proportion to the intellectual and moral development of each race.
Besides, think who they were fighting—why, their old masters and their sons, whom some of the Negro soldiers no doubt, had risked their lives in previous emergencies to protect and defend from danger.
Could it be expected, under the circumstances, that their aim would prove unerring? Wasn’t it rather to be expected at the beginning that the shots which the poor, illiterate Negroes fired would fall wide of the mark, just as they did?
All admit now, even the intelligent Negro and the radical abolitionist, that the arming of the Negroes before first teaching them the use of weapons was a mistake, but this would apply with equal force to the ignorant, illiterate white race. ’Tis the condition of the mind that makes the body fit or unfit. The adder is not better than the eel, because of his painted skin, nor the blue-jay any better than the wren because of his fine plumage, as the Bard of Avon well expressed it when addressing good Kate and reminding her that she was none the worse because of her poor furniture and mean array, provided her mind and heart were perfect.
The Negro has arms and hands as strong as iron bands and with these he can punish into insensibility the men of almost any race; there are white men endowed with equally great physical powers who can, like the Negro, subdue others not so powerful in animal strength. Each of these types of men labor in the fields of arduous toil, neither having the time and, in most cases, lacking the intelligence to bathe and live a sanitary life, much less educate their poor brains. For this reason neither are the equal, either in war or in the every day intellectual occupations of life, of the men trained and dexterously skilled in the use of their muscles and brains. The psychological influence of the men of education over the ignorant and illiterate must not be overlooked neither in any attempt to account for the tremendous supremacy which the few exercise over the many.
At any rate, the superiority of the seventy members of the Sweet Water Sabre Club over the one hundred members of the Negro militia was amply demonstrated at Hamburg on July 8, 1876. It is possible that the Negroes, who could have destroyed the entire mob in a few minutes with their superior equipment, were aware of the reinforcements lying in wait at the beck and call of General Butler, and so retained their position in the armory as a means of protection against an attack by an overwhelmingly superior force. Certain it is, that from a vantage point of view the inside of the armory was no suitable place from which to shoot. The soldiers were compelled to shoot from below the windowsills, which elevated their guns, and so their bullets, except the one which killed Makie Meriwether, were spent in vain. At the sound of the first firing reinforcements for the whites began to pour into Hamburg by the hundreds, and no time was lost in obtaining a piece of artillery in Augusta and bringing it into action. Two shots from this destructive machine silenced the guns of the militia and the members of the company began to retire as secretly as possible, it being well understood by all that the whites would give nor ask any quarter in the orderly rules of warfare, as in the matter of capitulation and terms of surrender. The knowledge by every Negro at the beginning of this historic event that the battle meant death to everyone captured possibly unnerved every soldier and precipitated the demoralization following the advent of the solitary field piece of artillery. Out of the forty Negroes captured only a few belonged to the militia, the members of which the mob was determined to destroy that night, but as most of these had escaped, then it was decided to kill anybody in reparation for the death of young Meriwether. So a search of the homes of all Negroes and some of the whites was made, including that of a Jew named Louis Schiller, who was friendly with the Negroes and had through their votes, under the new order of things, obtained and held the office of County Auditor of Edgefield County before the creation of Aiken County. It was decreed that Schiller should be put to death, but he escaped with his life only by climbing through a trap door leading out on the roof and hiding himself behind a parapet on top of the house. All the while he was in hearing distance of the curses and execrations heaped upon his name and the avowed intention of the mob to hang him sooner or later.
Two, among the forty prisoners held under guard while the searching party worked, who knew that their capture meant their death, attempted to escape by jumping over a fence with their guards looking on and running as fast as their legs could carry them in hope of reaching a place of safety; but white men seemed to be everywhere, and although one of them, Jim Cook, the town marshall, did escape his guards he was shot to death by bullets from a shot-gun which tore in his head as he dashed through the crowds. The other had been killed by the guards having him in charge.
Cook was supremely hated by the entire white population of the County, more so, than other individuals of his race on account of his activity in the office of marshal, which the whites charged he used without provocation to humiliate and degrade them. Over his death there was the greatest rejoicing throughout the county among the whites.
Being unable to locate any more Negroes, General Butler and Colonel A. P. Butler concluded that all work was practically finished and quietly departed for their homes. They did not leave any orders and the members of the mob began to disperse in perceptibly large numbers. But the thirst for blood born of that insatiable desire to torture, to torment as in the fiery pit, and to murder implanted in the heart of individuals, half-animal and the sport of impulse, whim and conceit, until relieved by the tameness and intelligence which time and education alone can give, had not yet been satisfied, although for one life taken by the militia they had taken two.
These deluded children of the white men suffering with the same malady, ignorance, with which the children of the blacks were more seriously suffering, but recognizing the advantage which their superiority of numbers now gave them, reasoned that it was a dear piece of work to exchange one of their number for only two Negroes. It was argued that a story like that would not appease the popular clamor that now would rise like a heavy mist from the sea and gain the momentum of a cyclone. So it was solemnly agreed that, while the annihilation of the entire Negro population of the town of Hamburg would not atone for the death of Meriwether, the members of the mob would content themselves for that night, at least, with the assassination of only the meanest characters among the remaining number of prisoners held. The duty of designating these “meanest” characters, and those most deserving of death, fell to the lot of Henry Getzen, one of the young men who was the original cause of the riot and whose residence in the vicinity of Hamburg brought him into the closest contact with the Negro population and so prepared him fully for the duty of passing judgment upon the destiny of the prisoners.
His hands, red with the blood from the wounds that had killed Makie Meriwether and his heart beating in unison with his rankling mind at thought of the imaginary injustices already done, or to be done, by the Negro, the state of his feelings made him anything else but fit to pass upon the lives of the men now at stake, even had he been an honest man and inspired by high and lofty ideals as it must be conceded many of the whites in the Hamburg riot were.
The purpose by the whites was to use this riot to strike terror in the heart of the Negroes and intimidate them, then and there and for all time, in their aspirations for political as well as social advancement.
At that time, as at this time, in the case of a large element of the white population, it is undeniable that it is against their express desire that encouragement for improvement of the Negro be given him. Witness, the laws passed by the several Legislatures as late as 1916 in discrimination of him, one of which forbids the employment of truckmen in the cotton mills along with other employees whose skin is white. Several bills have been introduced for passage in the General Assembly of South Carolina to make the instruction of Negroes by whites a violation of the law, but up to this date, 1916, all measures for the purpose have failed of enactment.
When such laws finally become effective it may be proposed by the Negroes to restrict the practice of medicine by blacks and whites to the respective races to which each belongs. Likewise measures may be devised and enacted into law, which will make it unlawful for white salespeople to wait upon Negroes in the stores, or for Negroes to wait upon whites as sales clerks.
The constitutionality of the proposed law relating to the restriction of Negro teachers only in Negro schools is thought by some lawyers to be as applicable to physicians and clerks as to teachers.
The same racial prejudice which showed its specter-head in demoniac form in the case of the burning at the stake of two Negroes near the town of Statesboro, Georgia, in the year 1905, and the previous death by fire at the stake near Newman, Georgia, in 1895 of another was the moving spirit that actuated the mob and guided the hearts and hands of Henry Getzen and his band at Hamburg, twenty and thirty years before. As fast as Getzen could select from among the prisoners those he considered most worthy of death, they were taken out in the streets, before the eyes of their wives and children and shot to death, in the light of a brilliant moon reflecting the love of heaven, but no wavering image of that love was anywhere to be found in Hamburg that night. God and the angels had deserted it without any apparent concern for the safety of the helpless blacks.
When the firing ceased the mob’s victims, numbering seven with the two who previously had been killed, were piled side by side in the most conspicuous part of the town, and presented a grewsome sight, lying stark, stiff and cold, when the Negroes who had fled from the town returned to their homes on Sunday morning following.
Those of the prisoners who were spared, about twenty-eight in all, were given permission to leave and told to go with all speed at their command which they were none too slow about doing. Volley after volley was fired after them, over their heads with no intention to hit or injure them.
Had it been known before they were allowed to go that one of the supposed dead was only assuming death the number freed would have been reduced to twenty-seven instead of twenty-eight, for it was the decision of the mob that nothing less than eight lives should be taken in retaliation for the life of young Meriwether. Pompey Curry, who was selected among those to be shot fell dead at the first report of the guns and remained motionless and apparently breathless throughout the examination of the bodies and their disposal by the mob until the whites had all gone home, when he crawled through the high weeds which were near by and made his escape in the woods with only a slight wound in his leg. Among all the witnesses for the government in the prosecution of members of the mob which followed the conflict, none was of the importance of “Pompey Curry” as he knew by name a large number of the men and could point them out on sight. He discharged his duty as a witness in the celebrated trial, but a short time afterward he suddenly disappeared and no one knows or appears to know whatever became of him.
The success of the mob in thus attacking and annihilating a company of the government’s own soldiers and ruthlessly putting to death peaceable citizens in defiance of the law, without judge or jury, gave the greatest encouragement to the hopes of the whites. It was really of more far-reaching consequences in influencing their lives and fortunes than any incident ever occurring before or since in the history of South Carolina.
The direct opposite effect which it had upon the Negro and upon the people of the North, where it occasioned the bitterest comment, resulted in Congress appointing an investigation committee and the substitution of white Union soldiers to fill the places made vacant by the resignation of the Negroes from the ranks. Their resignation resulted from the fear they had of the whites and sincere desire to work in the interest of peace. They were also encouraged to resign by such men as Chamberlain, whose record as Governor, although placed in power by the votes of Negroes, is one of the most honorable of any Governor who ever filled the office of Chief Executive.
This tragic episode took from the Negro his last hope of being able to control the elections which followed in the fall. It gave to the whites all the freedom they desired to follow the doctrine of General Mart Gary to vote early and often. By doing so, they changed a Republican majority in Edgefield County of 2,300 to a Democratic majority of almost 4,000!
As an example of the perfect contempt with which Gary and his mobs treated the authority of not only the officials of the County but of the State may be cited his refusal to obey General Ruger’s orders to have the court house at Edgefield vacated by the whites. At this time he openly defied the military power of both the State and National government when he with his Red Shirt regiment, which he organized, captured the Chamberlain meeting on August 12, 1876. In a fiery speech to the Negroes at that time he announced in no unmistakable terms that no power above or below earth was sufficient to prevent the success of the Democratic Party at the polls that year nor in any succeeding year. He told the white men that an ounce of “Fearnot” was worth a ton of “Persuasion” and exhorted them to put the ballots in the boxes and he would see that every one was counted.
