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| Northwest corner of Chesterfield County in 1825. The Blakeney plantation is roughly the location of modern Pageland. Note also location of the Wadsworth plantation Mills, Robert. Chesterfield District, South Carolina. [1825] Map via Library of Congress |
Chesterfield County after the War
At the end of the Civil War, Chesterfield County was left devastated. During Sherman's march, many families saw Union soldiers seize their food stores, often a full year's harvest meant to sustain them through the year. One out of every four white men eligible for military service had been killed, and many more were seriously injured. In Old Store township, Alfred Agerton had seen three of his five sons killed and one of his brothers sent to a Union prison. State-wide, civil government had broken down, and the emancipation of slaves had created rapid and unprecedented social and economic change.
During the first years after the war, many in Chesterfield County faced hunger if not outright starvation. In a May 1867 letter, Governor Orr reported that the county needed at least 10,000 bushels of corn to feed the poor. The situation was described in detail by "prominent citizens" from the county in a July 1866 public letter to the federal government requesting aid:
There is now great suffering among the poorer classes of the white people of the District for want of the necessaries of life, and the distress is increasing and extending every day, while there are none there able to give relief or save these destitute ones from actual starvation.
This District suffered more severely by the march of Sherman's army than perhaps any other in the state, from the destruction of provisions and the means of providing for the future, and there is now neither grain sufficient to keep the population nor money to purchase it with. The state of affairs is becoming truly alarming. Every day, poor women are begging, in the streets of Cheraw for meal or corn to save themselves or children from starvation, and the petitioners would gladly afford it, if they had it
A close reading of the letter points to another source of tension. The authors ask for aid for the poorer classes of the white people but make no mention of the freedmen and their families who made up about one-third of the county. In many respects, they were left in the most straits. Emancipation had freed them from bondage, but would this mean anything other than a freedom to starve?
The federal government played a crucial role both in helping former slaves adapt to freedom and in having people of all races avoid starvation through the activities of the Freedmen's Bureau. Among its other activities, the bureau distributed rations to people of all races. Receiving rations was not easy for residents of Chesterfield. They had to travel twenty or thirty (at least a day's journey) to the bureau's regional headquarters in town of Darlington.
Conditions in the county were dire enough that many regularly made the trip. A newspaper writer, publishing under the pseudonym "Traveler," reported on the scene in July 1867. On the days that the bureau distributed rations, he wrote that every road to Darlington was crowded with people traveling from Chesterfield County and other regions. They made for a sad sight, traveling in "non-descript, antediluvian vehicles, drawn by animals, that appear but remotely descended from the genus equus, poor and bony, spavined and scrawny, most piteous looking objects." After arriving, people would camp in the town square, waiting their turn for rations. Many were noisy and generally disruptive, and situation would get worse after rations were distributed as some would immediately trade for whiskey.
To "Traveler," conditions in Darlington demonstrated problems with Republican policy. Republican politicians presented themselves as saviors of poor white farmers in the south. Bureau rations were to be only a first step towards uplifting them. The end of slavery and the break-up of plantations would bring even greater benefits by creating for them more opportunities to find wage labor and to purchase land. "Traveler" pointed to the scene in Darlington as evidence that this plan was failing. One Darlington farmer had expressed frustration because poor whites were spending two or three days every week traveling to town for bureau rations when they could feed themselves if instead they spent that time farming. The farmer had offered to employ some of the men on own farm, but the men illogically responded by saying that they could not leave their own crops, the very crops which they were abandoning to get bureau rations.
"Traveler" generally described the poor whites living the Sandhills as unfit for productive labor. During the past year, many had contracted to work for wages or to rent farmland, but they abandoned their duties when the blackberry season came, and they were able to live off the land.
"Traveler" described the freedmen as even more debased than poor whites. Bureau rations were offered on a per-person basis, and freedmen would bring elderly and infirm relatives, some "more dead than alive," so that they could get a larger share. Every week in town, "[o]ld and diseased negroes may be seen ... crawling up and coming many miles, who three years ago, 'in slavy time,' could not have walked in a hundred yards."
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| Freedmen's bureau distributing rations. The artist only depicts freedmen receiving rations, but the bureau also issued rations to white people Taylor, James E., Artist. Glimpses at the Freedmen's Bureau via the Library of Congress |
Throughout the region, land-owning farmers were frustrated at the difficulty in getting freedmen to work their land. In December 1868, the Cheraw Democrat reported that freedmen were seeking work on the railroads or establishing their own farms rather than working as house servants or farm laborers for whites. It disapprovingly described this as a "very doubtful policy."
Freedmen themselves were frustrated at their treatment by employers. Henry J. Maxwell, a free person of color who had served in the Union army and would later serve in the state senate, wrote about the condition of freedmen in the village of Oro in a July 26, 1867 letter to the head of the Freedmen's Bureau. While staying there, Maxwell became concerned because whites were taking "undue advantage" of freedmen. Cases where freedmen were mistreated were "too numerous and general" to describe in detail.
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| Henry J. Maxwell From Radical members of the first legislature after the war, South Carolina |
Maxwell's letter points to the difficulty of enforcing newly enacted laws. While the bureau was supposed to help freedmen resolve disputes over labor contacts and other legal matters, a lack of manpower limited what it could do. No bureau agent was assigned to Oro, and in his letter, Maxwell requested that one be sent. The request was declined as an agent was already stationed at Cheraw, but this was hardly a satisfactory solution. Freedmen in Oro seeking the agent's help needed to travel over thirty miles (at least a day's journey).
Even if they could secure help from a bureau agent, the agent was often limited in what he could. The federal government had only a limited ability to intervene in the county. Despite complaints of "bayonet rule" from white conservatives, few military forces were stationed in the area. Immediately after the war, roughly two-hundred Union soldiers were stationed in the county, half in Cheraw and half at Chesterfield Court House. This was a tiny contingent compared to Sherman's massive army, but it was more than enough to militarily overwhelm any resistance conservatives tried to offer. However, these troops were removed following a major nation-wide demobilization. For the remainder of Reconstruction, the nearest Union troops were more than a day's ride away, in towns like Darlington and Chester or in the city of Columbia. Freedmen and white Unionist could expect the government to offer only limited protection.
The Political Situation: Presidential Reconstruction
During the first years of Reconstruction, there was little need for conservatives to resist the government as political power remained in the hands of the men who had led the state during the antebellum. In June 1865, President Johnson appointed a provisional governor and directed the state to convene a convention for the purpose of revising the state constitution so as to repudiate secession and ban slavery. Once this was done, Johnson intended to restore the state to its normal relations with the rest of the country.
Chesterfield County sent to the constitutional convention two of the men who had promoted secession at the 1860 convention: John A. Inglis and Henry McIver. A new state constitution was adopted, and a new state legislature was elected. Only white men who had lived in the state for the last two years were allowed to vote, and they elected an all-white legislature in which the antebellum elite were strongly represented. Chesterfield county was represented by the planter/lawyer elite that had long dominated local politics. In the legislature, the county was represented by senator Alexander McQueen and congressmen S. W. Evans and M. J. Hough. Evans and McQueen were planters, while Hough farmed and also maintained a law practice. Both McQueen and Evans had served in the legislature during the antebellum and had served in the Confederate army during the war.
Not only was the new state government run by the men who had run it during the antebellum, but those men sough to preserve traditional race relations. While the government banned slavery, it denied freedmen important political rights, including the right to vote and serve on juries, and used vagrancy laws to force them into the workforce.
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| John A. McInglis From Dickson College |
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| Henry McIver From Wikipedia |
National politics resulted in an abrupt change in state government in 1867. Following conflict between President Johnson and Congress, Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts which placed each former Confederate state under military rule and required it to make further revisions to the state constitution before civil government would be restored. Central to the requirements was that freedmen be granted the right to vote.
The Political Situation: Congressional Reconstruction
Following the Reconstruction Acts, the South Carolina government was transformed at a dizzying speed. That fall, a state-wide election – the first one in which Freedmen were able to vote – was held to determine whether to hold a convention and, if so, who should act as delegates. The election came out in favor of a convention, and the newly elected delegates met in January to draft a new constitution. Over the summer, the new constitution was ratified, and a new state government was elected. The outcome was a shocking change. A legislature dominated by planters and ex-Confederates was replaced by one in which a majority of members were former slaves.
In Chesterfield County, the electoral outcomes followed those state-wide. The election for holding a convention had 1,927 registered voters in the county, of which 1,094 were white and 833 black. The vote went in favor of the convention with 877 votes for, 245 against, and 805 abstaining. The vote on ratification was similar: 722 voted for ratification, 644 against, and 550 abstained. Abstaining was essentially the same as voting against as passage required a majority of registered voters voting in favor.
The electoral outcome was the result of conservatives' political strategy. Arguing that military rule was preferable to a civil government where freedmen could vote, they encouraged whites to stay at home or cast a "no" vote. Chesterfield whites appear to have been convinced. The Cheraw Advertiser reported that the vote split along racial lines, and this is consistent with the reported votes. For both the vote on holding a convention and the vote on ratification, the combined number of abstentions and votes against is close to the total number of registered white voters.
The conservatives' strategy backfired disastrously. The convention delegates were determined by the ballots in favor, so the delegates were chosen by Chesterfield's black minority. Instead of the former secessionists who represented the county at the 1865 convention, Chesterfield – a county of poor white farmers – was represented by two Republican politicians: a black man from Charleston and a white preacher from New Hampshire.
The black man was H. L. Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury was from a prominent family of free persons of color living in Charleston. He had moved to the town of Cheraw only a year earlier to work as a Freedman's Bureau teacher. He received as much acceptance as could be expected. In general, affluent free persons of color in Charleston were positively regarded by conservatives as they had avoided challenging race relations and maintained good relations with the planter-elite during the antebellum. Shrewsbury was also able to avoid becoming entangled in the political corruption that was endemic during the early years of Reconstruction in South Carolina. Raised in urban environment and educated in common schools, he cut an unusual figure in backwoods Chesterfield, but the Charleston Mercury reported that "his neighbours speak well of him." By 1870, his standing was so high that the Chesterfield Democrat endorsed him as the Union Reform candidate for US Congress. (Ultimately, the nomination went to a Captain Dunn, a white former Union army officer.)
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| H. L. Shrewsbury is pictured in the center From Radical members of the first legislature after the war, South Carolina |
The New Hampshire preacher, R. J. Donaldson, was another matter. Donaldson (also spelled "Donelson," "Donalson," and even "McDonald") was born in Ireland, although he considered himself to be an Englishman. He had left Europe for America six years earlier. It's unclear what he did during the first few years, but by 1865, he was serving as a Methodist pastor in the town of Raymond, New Hampshire.
Donaldson moved to South Carolina around late 1867. The Methodist church stationed him in the village of Oro in Chesterfield. However, Donaldson appears to have had other ambitions as well. He ran two stores: one in Cheraw and one by a gold mine near Oro. These stores likely represented part of a coordinated effort by New York-based investors to develop northwestern Chesterfield. We'll explore this topic in a later blogpost on land sales and Henry J. Fox.
In contrast to Shrewsbury, Donaldson was hated by conservatives. The Charleston Mercury newspaper described him as motivated by "vile ambition." Among Chesterfield residents, it reported that he had a reputation as someone whose character was "not an enviable one." At least among conservatives, his reputation would only decline over time. Three years later, he was called "Chesterfield's most inveterate enemy" by citizens in a public letter to the state government.
Unfortunately for conservatives, Donaldson gained even more political power shortly after the ratification of the new constitution. He was elected state senator for Chesterfield. Shrewsbury received one of the two seats in the House. The other was held by a Republican, D. J. J. Johnson. Johnson was a black man living in Cheraw. He was not very active as a legislator, and little is known about him.
It is not entirely clear how Republicans were able to win all the legislative seats. The vote on ratification was determined by state-wide votes, so with the state's large black population, the outcome was bound to be in favor. This was not the case with the votes on elected offices. In fact, several counties with large white majorities elected conservative Democrats to both the senate and the house. Chesterfield would have been represented in the legislature by conservatives if they had managed to convince 78 of the 550 voters who abstained to show up and cast a vote for them. Yet it appears that conservatives did not even run candidates. In seeking to explain why electoral outcomes in Chesterfield were different from those in other majority-white counties, there are many explanations that one could point to, such as the county's lack of wealth or its underdevelopment or the greater destruction it experienced during the war, but all such explanations are speculative.
Already by June, conservative Democrats in Chesterfield had rallied. Local elections for county offices were held, and white Democrats won a number of offices in Chesterfield County including sheriff, coroner, and county commissioner. Developments in December further suggested upcoming political difficulties for Republicans. The election for US senator for the First District, which included Chesterfield, was held that month. In Chesterfield, the Democratic candidate Harris Covington, a former Confederate soldier, received a comfortable majority of 240 votes over his Republican challenger B. F. Whittemore. (Covington received 960 votes against Whittemore's 720). Whittemore had a strong showing in other counties and won the election, but it was becoming increasingly clear that Republican political control of Chesterfield County was tenuous.
Efforts to consolidate Republican political power were led by Senator Donaldson. Donaldson had multiple tools at his disposal. In addition to the legislative powers that his senate seat provided, he also had significant control over the local electoral system as he was given a gubernatorial appointment as election manager. Donaldson used these tools to promote his business interests. He successfully proposed a bill to incorporate a railroad company charged with connecting the Low County to Old Store township. In turn, he used his business interests to strengthen his political base. A land development company he was involved with sold plots of land to people from the north and from England. He hoped these newcomers would become Republican loyalists who would shift voter demographics in his favor. He also tried to protect freedmen from economic retaliation. When freedmen were evicted by their landlords for supporting the Republican party, the land development company offered them land leases, and a mining company Donaldson worked with offered jobs to freedmen. With all this, he built up a network of political supporters. His brother-in-law Alfred T. Peete moved to Cheraw and received employment as a deputy tax collector.
The Election of 1870
In seeking solidify political power, Donaldson had set a challenging task for himself. Donaldson's term of office was only for two years. Under the new constitution, only senators elected after 1868 would serve a full four-year term. During his two years in office, Donaldson needed to overcome the support that opposing Democratic politicians could draw from the county's two-thirds white majority.
A positive development during this time was that agriculture in the region was beginning to recover. In June 1869, the Cheraw Democrat reported that it had been a good growing season, and it looked like farmers would harvest a solid crop of corn and cotton. The Charleston Daily News was similarly positive about the prospects for farming. In addition to favorable weather, it reported that the labor problems were subsiding and "both whites and blacks are doing all they can to improve their conditions."
The political situation was very different. Tensions between Republicans and conservatives began to escalate to violence. In August 1869, township elections (for offices like selectman, constable, etc) were held. In the town of Mount Croghan, a fight broke out on election day between an (unnamed) freedman and a former Confederate soldier and farmer laborer, Archibald Nicholson. Archibald was struck on the head with a gun wielded by a second freedman, Jacob Brewer, who came to aid the first. Archibald's brother John joined the fight and was struck by a rock. The fight ended when some young men drove the freedmen away. Later that day, Archibald died from of the blow to his head. (John survived his injury.) In confirmation of conservatives concerns about how law had broken down, no legal actions were taken against Jacob Brewer even through a court of inquest found that he had feloniously murdered Nicholson.
R. J. Donaldson himself was present at the fight at Mount Croghan because he was serving as an election manager. Never passing up an opportunity to criticize Donaldson, the Charleston Daily News reported that, when the fight broke out, Donaldson ran off with some of the ballot boxes, although he returned with them after the fight was over.
The county was also subject to arson attacks that year. In Old Store township, two white farmers, Henry W. Funderburk and Naret Dees, were victims of such attacks. In December, Funderburk lost his barn, and Dees lost his home and an outhouse. The arson attack on Dees's property took the lives of a white boy and a black girl (both unnamed in newspapers). The incendiaries were never caught, but attacks of this nature were often thought to be perpetrated by freedmen for political or economic reasons (for example, to enact revenge against a landlord). After reporting on the attacks, the Charleston Daily News remarked that many residents of Chesterfield County were leaving the county for the west.
General state elections were to be held in October 1870, and as election day drew nearer, political pressure on Donaldson increased. State-wide, conservatives sought to make electoral gains by allying themselves with moderate Republicans seeking political reform. They united as the Union Reform party. The proposed electoral ticket was a fusion of the two political parties. The candidate for governor was the moderate Republican Richard N. Capenter, a circuit judge who had recently moved to Charleston from Kentucky. Reformists ran a conservative, M. C. Butler, for the lieutenant governor's office. Butler was an ex-Confederate officer and planter living in Edgefield. He later led efforts overthrow the Reconstruction government.
In Chesterfield County, local candidates were nominated at a meeting held at Chesterfield Court House in mid-August. The meeting drew several hundred whites and a "considerable number of colored people." The meeting was not announced as a meeting of the Union Reform party, but a list of the speakers shows that it was organized by the county's traditional conservative political leaders. The audience heard speeches by former state senator Alexander McQueen, prominent Cheraw lawyer W. L. T. Prince, and Henry McIver, one of the signers of the state's Ordinance of Secession. The upcoming election was described not as a political contest but rather as an existential fight for the county's future: "Old Chesterfield calls upon every one of her sons, native and adopted, white and colored, to do their duty; to ... never relax their efforts until ... our good old district [is] redeemed from carpet-bag rule."
Despite the brief appeal to Chesterfield's "colored sons," no effort was made to reach out to freedmen or moderate Republicans. Meeting participants nominated a ticket consisting of the local elites who had dominated politics during the antebellum. At the meeting, the proposed candidates were Alfred Moore Lowrey for state senate and Minor Jackson Hough and Gideon Walker Duvall for state congress. The nomination was changed after the meeting, and G. W. Duvall ended up running for senate while M. J. Hough and Burwell Christmas Evans ran for state congress. This ticket represented no real effort to reach out to moderate Republicans. G. W. Duvall was a wealthy farmer in Cheraw, M. J. Hough a lawyer in Chesterfield Court House, and B. C. Evans a merchant in Mount Croghan. All were white, and Evans and Hough were ex-Confederate officers.
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| B. C. Evans From Debbie Gibbons via FindAGrave |
Sources
26) "Chesterfield Election Fraud." The Anderson intelligencer. [Anderson, SC], November 24, 1870, p. 1.
27) The Camden journal. [volume], November 24, 1870, Image 1
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