CHAPTER IX.
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.