Beacon of Democracy: South Carolina in 1868- Part One

On Jan. 14, 1868, a large group of well-dressed men gathered in the heart of Charleston, South Carolina, in front of a 3-story brick mansion, right next to the City Hall, and across from one of the city’s most important landmarks, colonial-era St. Michael’s Church.

This particular gathering, less than 3 years after the end of the Civil War, attracted more notice than most, because most of the men were Black. After all, South Carolina had been the first state to secede, in order to maintain plantation slavery, and it was near where this meeting was happening that Confederate artillery had opened fire on Ft. Sumter out in the harbor in 1861, starting the Civil War. What also caused a buzz was that this racially mixed group was meeting in the Charleston Club- an exclusive place where wealthy white slaveowners had networked and partied before the war.

The gathering marked the opening of a constitutional convention. Over the next couple months, this group would draft one of the most politically radical documents in American history- one that transformed the state (temporarily, anyway!) from being one of the least democratic among the United States, to becoming one of the most democratic. In these posts, I will take a close look at this meeting from a variety of angles: how this convention came about, who was there, what they decided, and what impact the document had and has had- not just for South Carolina, but for the history of democracy- not just American, but worldwide.

To make my storytelling manageable, I will be breaking down this story into two parts- this one, on the background up to 1868, and then a second on the remarkable convention itself, in depth!

In 1868, South Carolina (a state the size of Ireland) was in the midst of the greatest social crisis in its history. Its economy, based on the export of (mostly slave-produced) cotton and rice, was close to nonexistent. Many of its towns were damaged or destroyed, and what few railroads there were had been largely torn up by Union Gen. Sherman’s men. The state’s chief labor force, its Black population of over 400,000, a majority (57%), was now (as of Dec. 1865) legally free, with the ratification of the 13th Amendment, but faced a host of new problems. As for its white minority, about 60,000 of its young men had joined the Confederate military, and over 20,000 of those were now dead. The victorious Union Army was still present and in control (there were by now 5 military districts across the South, each led by a general). The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, the man who had led the North to victory, had been assassinated (a first!) in Apr. 1865. His successor was Andrew Johnson (himself a Southerner, born in North Carolina). All of the Confederate state officials had by now been removed, and the last Confederate governor, Magrath, had been released from a military prison.

Columbia, SC, after its burning on Feb. 17, 1865- taken by George N. Barnard- Nat. Archives

There have been many occasions in history when an entire system of brutal repression has suddenly collapsed. Sometimes it happens very dramatically: King Louis XVI is beheaded; Czar Nicholas of Russia abdicates; Hitler commits suicide; the Shah of Iran flees; and an official in East Germany opens the Berlin Wall. Other times, the entire system simply creaks to an end, without much outright violence- such as the collapse of the Soviet Union. What all of these events have in common is that the “old order” is abruptly gone, and that no one yet knows just how the future of society will unfold. In the late 1860s, South Carolina, and the other ten ex-Confederate Southern states in general, were in just such a moment of dissolution and liberation.

At the time of the Revolution, South Carolina’s richest white planters were the richest in British America- thanks to their wholehearted investment in the slave trade, especially to provide labor for their unique cash crop (rice!). The first settlers, from Barbados, had brought Black slaves with them in the late 1600’s. Untold numbers of African Americans sickened and died from the process of converting swamps to rice agriculture by hand in extreme heat, and from the malarial mosquitoes encountered by their wading in the deep mud of the Lowcountry tidal rice fields. In the 1790s, the invention of the cotton gin created a new handful of big fortunes from the growing of cotton (in the drier inland “Up-country”). South Carolina’s planters even refused to accept the Constitution if it didn’t include language protecting slavery. But, even before the Civil War, the state’s economy was headed into steep decline, as rice demand dropped, soils were worn out, and many slaves were forcibly exported to (more profitable) Mississippi and Louisiana. Still- most of the white population in 1861 enthusiastically embraced what they thought would be the solution: secession from the Union. For just about all of them, the resulting Civil War was an unmitigated disaster.

The postwar picture was much different for the African American majority. The state was home to not just one, but two, wartime economic experiments by the Northern government for freed slaves. The first was the so-called “Port Royal Experiment,” which started when the Union Navy captured the Sea Islands plantations early in the war, in 1861; the white owners fled, while local Black people flocked to the Union occupation zone. There they were provided with food, education (thanks to many Black and white teachers from the North), and the unheard-of opportunity to cultivate their own land (for awhile anyway!). Secondly, when Sherman’s army reached Savannah late in the war, in 1865, the Union general, after meeting with Black leaders, issued a field order giving a long stretch of the South Carolina and Georgia coast to freed people (the so-called “40 acres and a mule”). With the complete collapse of the Confederacy in Apr. 1865, the future for South Carolina’s Black people, even with the physical destruction and economic chaos of the time, looked unimaginably bright!

Pres. Andrew Johnson (1865-69)- from Am. Battlefield Trust- studio portrait in 1865

Then new President Johnson dimmed those prospects a great deal. His “Presidential Reconstruction” plan took shape by the summer, as most of the huge Union military was rapidly disbanded. It had three basic components: 1- ex-Confederates of high rank would be humiliated by having to apply individually for pardons to get restored citizenship (Johnson, who grew up in extreme poverty, wanted revenge on the rich planters); 2- he appointed provisional governors, chosen from the same planter class, who were authorized to write new constitutions and hold elections, and then to apply for their state to be readmitted, speedily, to the Union; and, 3- most tragically and fatefully- all lands formerly owned by whites, regardless of loyalty, and now lived on and “owned” by freed slaves would be immediately returned!! Johnson, who had never approved of Lincoln’s Freedmen’s Bureau (the first social welfare agency in American history), ordered its head, Gen. Howard, to personally break the last news to the former slaves in Oct. 1865! Johnson summed up his postwar approach to the South thus: “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, this shall be a government for white men.” As an extra cruel twist of the knife, he advised the returning states to approve Black (male) suffrage, but with a property qualification (knowing full well that he was depriving the ex-slaves of the necessary property to be able to vote!).

Benjamin Franklin Perry, 1860, by unknown creator (Wikimedia.org)

In the case of South Carolina, as elsewhere, the white leadership could hardly believe their good fortune. The provisional governor, Benjamin Perry, had not supported secession, but held all too-common racist views (“the African has been in all ages a savage or a slave”). He quickly called together a “constitutional convention” in mid-Sept. 1865- with the delegates almost all ex-Confederates (one member had even introduced the motion for the state to secede in 1861!!). The state’s most popular ex-Confederate, former Gen. Wade Hampton (who had owned 900 slaves before the war, but who didn’t come, and who had turned down a run for governor), advised, while recognizing the emotional pain involved, that the group should accept the formal end of slavery and deal “frankly, justly, kindly” with the freed slaves.

But the delegates only accepted part of this advice. They did vote (a majority anyway) to ratify the 13th Amendment (ending slavery) and to “repeal” the act of secession (though without admitting any wrongdoing!). But they had no interest in breaking with the state’s long tradition of severely restricting democracy (as one delegate put it, “Everybody… dreads popular elections. Dozens of delegates have said to me that it isn’t well to allow the people to elect their own rulers.”). They chose, without an election, a full set of state officials, including a new governor (James Orr).

But that wasn’t all. Two of them set about drafting what would be known as the “Black Code,” an elaborate set of regulations to restrict the lives of freed slaves in countless ways (other Southern states would have their own versions). Just a few examples: no Black gun ownership; no marriage without white permission; no working as “artisans, mechanics, and storekeepers” unless the freedman paid for an expensive license, renewed every year; requiring the “servants” to work from dawn to dusk with a “polite” demeanor; and even requiring Black tenants to get permission from the white landowners to have visitors!!

Needless to say, the freedpeople affected had a great deal to say about this, and right away! A “colored convention” assembled at Zion Church in Charleston in Nov. 1865, even before the Black Code was approved (including many of those who would play leading roles in the 1868 convention). They drafted two protests: one to the new state government, and one to the U.S. Congress.

That Congress was about to change the direction of Reconstruction- drastically! Both houses were controlled by the same Radical Republicans who had wholeheartedly supported the destruction of the Confederacy and of slavery. They, and most of the Northern public, were shocked when, in December, the Southerners newly elected by the states readmitted by Johnson showed up on Capitol Hill. Many were former Confederate generals, and even former Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, the man who had famously described slavery as the “cornerstone” of his society, was there too!

The Radicals simply refused to let these men into the Senate and House, setting up years of confrontation with Pres. Johnson (to climax with his impeachment!). They forced, over his constant vetoes, extensions of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and passage of the first civil rights act in American history. When he still wouldn’t back down, they passed in 1867 a Reconstruction Act that returned the whole former Confederacy to military rule, with no readmission allowed until each state accepted the 14th Amendment (which defined citizenship for the first time, as provided to ALL Americans at birth, and that ALL citizens must get “equal protection under the laws”!). For the next decade, it would be the Republican Congress which would be making most of the important national political decisions.

This military period of “Congressional Reconstruction” (1867-68) is the time when newly empowered Black leaders, with some white allies, came together to write an entirely fresh and revolutionary South Carolina constitution in early 1868!

This ends Part One- next time I will share what I’ve managed to learn about the convention delegates, their decisions, and the constitution's legacy! It's some of the most interesting political history that I’ve ever read about as a history teacher…

Resources: will be included at end of 2nd part of this post...