In the blogpost "Reconstruction in Chesterfield County," I discussed how Republicans first came to political power with the 1867 election of delegates to a constitutional convention (which Congress had required as a precondition to restoring civil government). Ultimately, they came to power because most conservative voters followed the (ultimately unsuccessful) state-wide strategy of boycotting the election in hope of defeating the Congress's plans to force southern states to enfranchise freedmen. However, this outcome was not inevitable. A majority of voters in Chesterfield were white, and some counties with similar majorities were able to elect conservative delegates. Here we take a closer look at how the election played out.
State-wide, most conservative leaders urged their supporters to boycott the election convention delegates. By doing so, they hoped to defeat efforts to restore civil government with the expectation that Congress would respond by offering restoration under milder terms (for example, allowing the continued disenfranchisement of freedmen). Representative of attitudes was that of former governor Benjamin Perry who urged voters to boycott the election because "nothing worse than negro suffrage and a negro government can be forced upon us."
Chesterfield county was unusual in that, at least initially, local conservative leaders did not participate in the boycott. Instead, they not only proposed delegates, but they even tried to reach out to Black voters, although, as shall see, there were limits to what conservatives were willing to accept.
Chesterfield voters organized a public meeting to deliberate on the convention vote on October 8, about a month before the vote was held. The meeting was not organized on behalf either political party, and while one newspaper described the participants as "conservative voters," it was attended by ex-Union soldiers and freed slaves as well as former Confederate soldiers and enslaver. Despite the political conflict between these groups, the newspaper reported that "utmost harmony and good feelings" were maintained throughout the meeting.
A study of the meeting participants shows the depth of the accomplishment. The meeting began with opening remarks offered by L. Charles Inglis, a young stalwart of local conservatives. He was the son of John A. Inglis, a wealthy planter/lawyer who had not only served in the state legislature but had even played a lead role in drafting South Carolina's Ordinance of Secession. L. Charles himself was well-positioned to take over his father's role: he was a lawyer and a Confederate veteran, both valuable credentials for an aspiring conservative politician in South Carolina.
The president of the meeting was J. H. Gooch. He isn't as well-documented as Inglis, and he later worked with Republican politicians, but at the time, he appears to have been a conservative. Gooch had grown up on a farm in North Carolina, but after the war, he became active in South Carolina politics. The previous year he had been elected to serve the unexpired term of a state congressman (M. J. Hough) who had resigned after being elected district judge. U.S. Congress had restored military rule before he was seated, but his election was an indication that he was well-regarded by conservatives.
Meeting participants also included men who had led the state during the Antebellum. Former state congressman Hugh Craig was elected to serve as meeting secretary. Craig was a sixty-year old man from a distinguished family. His ancestors had built the first house in Chesterfield Court House, and his father had fought in the Revolutionary War. Hugh had spent most of his life as a Methodist minister, but he had also served three terms in the state congress. He appears to have supported the Confederacy: he had owned two slaves (an elderly man and woman) and his son James had served in the Confederate army. However, his political loyalties at the time of the meeting aren't entirely clear. By the next year, he had become supportive of the Republican Party, eventually receiving a gubernatorial appointment and two nominations to the county Republican ticket.
Black men also participated in the meeting. The vice president of the meeting was Lisbon Arthur, a Black man who later was active in the Republican Party and twice served as chairman of the county party. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any further information about him.
The meeting resulted in a resolution that recognized the new political rights of freedmen, albeit in a form that was limited enough to be palatable to local conservatives. The preamble to the resolution not only recognized that U.S. Congress had granted freedmen the right to vote, it even acknowledged the need for "harmony between the two races" and that it was incumbent on the "white people" to "prove [their] disposition" to freedmen. However, these sentiments were expressed in a paternalistic, and slightly menacing, manner that reaffirmed the power of the county's traditional elites: also included in the preamble was the observation that white voters outnumbered freedmen and thus they held the power to elect an entire ticket.
The most substantial concession to freedmen was that one of the two men elected as delegates to the constitutional convention was to be a Black man. On the issue of legislative representatives, the resolution was weaker. Candidates for state legislature were all to be white men. Support was expressed for the election of Black men to the U.S. senate seat and at least one of the seats in the U.S. House, but this measure was less an expression of support for freedmen and more an acknowledgement of political reality. While white voters formed a majority of voters in Chesterfield County, Black voters were a majority in the larger congressional district and could win elections without support from white voters. Despite these limitations, when the resolution is read alongside statements by other South Carolina conservatives declaring that "negro suffrage" would be an unbearable tyranny, it is a remarkably liberal document.
The responsibility of selecting nominees to represent Chesterfield at the constitutional convention was assigned to an eight-person committee appointed by the meeting president. That committee was also responsible for nominating a bi-racial sixteen-person committee that was charged with promoting the election of the chosen nominees within their communities.
The committees included a number of men who were the type of planter/lawyers who'd been prominent during the antebellum. Hugh Craig served on one committee as did former state congressman and district judge M. J. Hough, a practicing lawyer. Committee member G. W. Duvall was the son of a major family of Maryland planters, and he had maintained his own plantation in Chesterfield with help from twenty-nine enslaved workers. Many of the white committee members were former Confederate army officers. M. J. Hough had been a captain in the Confederate army, and other former officers included Neil F. Graham, Theodore F. Malloy, and John Evans.
Information about the Black committee members is harder to come by. Lisbon Arthur served on the committee, and other members included Plenty Jefferson and Andrew McFarland, both of whom worked as farm laborers. Certainly, the most prominent Black member was Henry J. Maxwell. His inclusion is strong evidence of conservatives willingness to cooperate with their political opponents. Maxwell was from a family of free persons of color who lived in the South Carolina Sea Islands. He had fought in the Union army during the war and then moved to Chesterfield to work for the Freedmen's Bureau.
The men that the committee put forward as the proposed delegates to the constitutional convention were W. Augustus Evans and a man known either as J. J. Johnson or David Johnson. (Both names are given in newspaper accounts.) W. Augustus Evans was the son of a successful Chesterfield planter (Albert Evans). He had served in the Confederate army, and during peacetime, he worked as a farmer and merchant. It is harder to be certain about "Johnson" because of the confusion over his first name. Newspaper records only describe him as a "colored man" from Cheraw. He may be D. J. J. Johnson, one of the men who was elected to state congress in the next year.
What's most notable about the committee members is who is not included. Completely absent was R. J. Donaldson. Donaldson would be elected as a convention delegate and then as a state senator. Two of the attendees, D. J. J. Johnson and H. L. Shrewsbury, would later be elected on Republican tickets that included Donaldson. It is unclear if this indicates that they were political allies of Donaldson; they inclusion could have part of a compromise between rival factions within the Republican Party. Shrewsbury was more moderate than Donaldson, and the two had become political opponents by 1870.
Donaldson was also connected to J. H. Gooch, although through questionable circumstances. A year or so after the November meeting (in 1869), Gooch, with help from Donaldson (then a state senator) sold land to the state land commission. The commission was widely regarded as corrupt, and politicians charged it with frequently purchasing worthless land at inflated prices from unscrupulous politically-connected individuals.
The land that Gooch sold was a five-hundred acre plot that had been the cotton plantation of Colonel W. J. Ellerbe. In the antebellum, Ellerbe had been a successful planter who ran his farm with help from fifty enslaved workers. Gooch had purchased the land Commissioner in Equity sale, perhaps land seized by the state government because of delinquent taxes (Emancipation left many planters like Ellerbe bankrupt). Gooch purchased the land for ten thousand dollars and then sold it to the land commission a year later for the same amount. Gooch lost money in the transaction. He only received seven thousand, seven hundred, and seventy-five dollars. Donaldson took two hundred and twenty-five dollars for himself and gave two thousand to "parties in Columbia for their approval" (a polite way to describe a bribe to legislators).
The conservatives' electoral plan that was laid out at the October meeting was ultimately unsuccessful. Both Johnson and W. Augustus Evans lost the election for delegates to the constitutional convention, and Chesterfield ended up being represented by R. J. Donaldson and H. L. Shrewsbury. The election returns (which we recalled in "Reconstruction in Chesterfield County") clearly indicate what happened. The vote split along racial lies with Black voters largely voting for a convention with Republican delegates and white voters largely either voting against the election or abstaining altogether. Less clear is how this came to be.
On election day, conservatives appears to have abandoned the plan proposed at the October meeting and instead supported the state-wide plan to oppose holding a constitutional convention. There are no records of deliberations of the Donaldson or others within the county Republican Party appear to have been preserved, but it certainly would not have been difficult for Donaldson to make a compelling argument to voters. The argument that freedmen shouldn't be represented in the legislature by the very men who had fought a civil war to keep them enslaved hardly needed to be made, and Donaldson's political plans could even be made compelling to white voters. With financial support from northern investors, he was planning to develop northwestern Chesterfield. Especially important was his plans to build a railroad connecting Chesterfield to Charlotte and Charleston as this a rail line would help landowning farmers ship their cash crops to markets.
In any case, the vote on holding a constitutional convention marked a major change in county politics. Donaldson election as convention delegate marked his political rise. He almost immediately became a figure of hatred by conservatives, and they quickly rallied around efforts to remove him and his supporters. Although their hatred of Donaldson was only partially related to race (he was accused of "sowing the seeds of dissension between ... the races," but this was only one of a number of their complaints), their fights with him killed any hope of racial reconciliation. Conservatives focused on overthrowing the Reconstruction government, and after they succeeded, they denied Blacks from meaningful political power for generations.
Sources
1. "Election of Representatives." The daily phoenix. [volume], November 18, 1866, p. 2.
2. "State Items." The Charleston daily news. [volume], January 28, 1867, Image 1
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