Klu Kluxers in Northeastern Spartanburg: The Republican Party in Limestone

Chart showing the locations of people in the 1870 census

The Reconstruction-era Klu Klux Klan attacks generally targeted Republican politicians and their supporters. Who represented the Republican party in northeastern Spartanburg County? Not many people! With its large white majority and well-organized political leaders, all elected officials and a majority of voters were conservative. Throughout Reconstruction, the county was a stronghold for state conservatives. Northeastern Spartanburg was twice marginalized. The region was only weakly represented within the county Republican party. Of the four Republican candidates for legislative seats, none came from the northern part of the county.

In the townships of Limestone and Cherokee, the presence of the Republican government was largely limited to officials serving in positions that were appointed by the (Republican) governor. These consisted of the election managers and the trial justices. Election mangers were responsible for the mechanics of voting on Election Day. They set-up the ballot box, monitored voting, and then brought the ballot box (with the ballots) to Spartanburg village for counting. This was an important and often difficult position as Reconstruction was a time when there was widespread election misconduct (voter intimidation, ballot stuffing, etc) by both political parties. 

Trial justices were low-level judicial officials. They handled minor criminal and civil offenses. They also handled the initial stages of major criminal cases. A jury trial for a major offense like murder would be handled by circuit judge, but a trial justice would handle the early stages of the legal process, doing things like issuing arrest warrants and taking bond. 

Trial justices typically were not legal professionals, but they were educated men of some standing in the community. The office of trial justice was only created in February 1870, and it drew heavy criticism from conservatives. The common complaint that the men appointed as trial justices were incompetent men of low character. I'm not sure what to make of this. A position similar to a trial justice, justice of the peace, existed in the antebellum but with the crucial difference that a trial justice was appointed by the governor while a justice of the peace was elected by the local community. For Spartanburg, this meant that the trial justice was a prominent local Republican in a predominantly conservative community. Conservatives generally deplored all Republican officials, but it was also the case that Republicans qualified to serve in legal positions were hard to find as virtually all antebellum legal professionals had supported secession and the Confederacy.

I have not been able to find any information about the election managers and trial justices for Cherokee township, but I think I have a complete list of people for Limestone township. The trial justices were P. Quinn Camp and William Champion. Both were white southerners. Camp was an old man in his mid-sixties who had spent his entire life in Limestone County. He was never a member of the planter class, but he did run a successful small farm. By the time the Civil War broke out, he was farming one-hundred acres of land with help from nine people he enslaved. He appears to have been a respected member of the community served as federal postmaster for several year.

Camp experienced incredible misfortune during the war. His sons John J. and William E. both served in the Confederate army, and William was killed in battle at the tail end of the war. Camp's personal finances also collapsed. When the war broke out, he was in debt, and he lost his farm during the war. 

Despite his family's support of the Confederacy, Camp was allied with the Republican Party during Reconstruction. It is unclear how Camp became involved in politics. In testimony before the Congressional investigative subcommittee, Camp said that he had always been a Republican, but he had never been active in politics. He had accepted the appointment as trial justice, he said, because his neighbors had asked him to take on the position because his predecessor had "abused" it. 

Camp's claim to have been uninvolved in politics seems inconsistent with his actions. He not only served as trial justice, but he was also an active member of the local Republican party, regularly attending party meetings. His Republicanism caused conflict between him and his white neighborhood. He was accused of being a "hidden radical" and treated with contempt.

Camp's son John J. was one of the election managers for the 1870 election. By this time, John was in his late twenties and was working on his father's farm. John turn to the Republican Party is striking in light of his service to the Confederacy. He not only served in the Confederate army for almost the entire war, but he was serious injured in battle.

William Champion was one of the other election managers. He had also served as a trial justice, but he was no longer serving in the position by 1870. (He may have been the man that P. Quinn Camp replaced.) Champion was a white man in his fifties. He was originally from North Carolina, across the state border, but he  had lived in South Carolina for over a decade. He made a living from milling and farming. Like Camp. he had supported the Union during the war and was active in the local Loyal League. 

Champion received a great deal of criticism from conservatives, even more than Camp. One man told a Congressional investigative subcommittee that he was "a very stupid, ignorant creature, and a drunken fellow." A particular complaint was that he was agitating the freedpeople, especially on the issue of landownership. This was a touchy political issue as many freedpeople want to become landowners, and many white landowners feared that their property would be seized by the federal government. Conservatives accused Champion of telling freedpeople who rented farmland that they were entitled to stay after their rental lease expired because they would soon be given a legal title to it. He was also rumored to have told white people that they should extend full social equality to freedpeople because, if they didn't, they would be forced to at "bayonet point" by the federal government.

The other election manager was Clem Bowden. Like Champion and Camp, Clem was an old man; he was sixty years old. Unlike them, he was a Black man who had been enslaved during the antebellum. He had grown up in the area. Clem did not say who had enslaved him before the war, but by 1870, he was leasing a farm near the plantation of Major Lee Linder. 

At the time that Ku Klux Klan violence broke out, the state government was trying to form a state militia that could help curb political violence. On paper, Spartanburg County was the home to two regiments (approximately two-thousand militia members), and the regiments were equipped with almost one-thousand rifle muskets. Conservatives were outraged by all this, but it is unclear if the muskets were even distributed, and certainly the Spartanburg state militia was not anything resembling a functioning military force.

The Republican voters were organized into a local Union (or Loyalist) League. Conservatives accused the Union Leagues of being the Republican counterpart of the Ku Klux Klan, but nobody in Spartanburg made a credible accusation that the Leagues engaged in any political violence. The Union League was, however, a clandestine organization, so it is unclear exactly what they did. The extent records indicate that they socialized freedmen into the voting process and politics more generally. Union leaders certainly promoted political positions that conservatives felt were beyond the pale, but this was hardly justified breaking the organization up.

And breaking up the Union League, and all significant Republican activity, is what was achieved by the Ku Klux Klan. In a later post, we'll take a look at what exactly took place. 

Klu Kluxers in Northeastern Spartanburg: the situation before the war

On January 31, 1872 at 3:20 pm, a train carrying a highly unusual cargo arrived in Charleston, South Carolina. Escorted by thirteen army soldiers were forty-nine Ku Kluxers who were being sent to prison. Approximately half of the them were to be imprisoned in the Charleston jail, while the rest were being sent by ship to the federal prison in Albany, New York.

The fact that these men were facing imprisonment for Ku Klux activities was the outcome of extraordinary efforts by the federal government. Traditionally, responding to criminal violence is the responsibility of state governments, but the government of South Carolina (as well as many other governments in the south) had shown itself incapable of effectively curbing the Ku Klux Klan. Congress, with the support of President Grant, responded by passed new legislation to enable the federal government to act. Only nine months earlier, the president had signed into law the Reconstruction Acts which enabled the Justice Department to prosecute people who denied citizens the right to vote. The idea was that this would allow the Justice Department to prosecute Ku Kluxers without encroaching on the authority of state governments. The prosecution of South Carolina Ku Kluxers was an early test case of the new law, and the imprisonment of the forty-nine Ku Kluxers was a major success.

After they disembarked from the train, the Ku Kluxers were marched under army escort through the city. They attracted a great deal of attention. For years, Americans had heard horrifying and fantastic stories of the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. In South Carolina, Ku Kluxers had terrorized the Upcountry for much of the previous year. In popular imagination, Ku Kluxers were demonic figures who, disguised in elaborate costumes, attacked freed slaves in the dead of night and then disappeared before law enforcement could react. The ex-Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest, claimed the Ku Klux Klan formed a paramilitary force half a million strong that served in defense of white Southerners. For most residents of Charleston, this was their first chance to see a Ku Kluxer.

What did Charleston residents see? A very different sight than the mental image they had formed. A reporter for the Charleston News described the Ku Kluxers as follows:

a more forlorn woe-begone looking crew could hardly be got together. Many were imperfectly clad, some had gaping shoes, and their persons and clothing seemed to have declared eternal war with such domestic appliances as soap and water.

In an upcoming series of blogposts, I will take a look at these Ku Kluxers. I will focus on the men who were from Spartanburg County. While the South Carolina Ku Klux Klan has been the subject of a great deal of study, the focus has largely been on Union County. There is good reason for this. Union County was the site of some of the most ambitious Ku Klux Klan actions: two jail raids that resulted in the murder of twelve Black men who served in the state militia. The Ku Klux Klan did not pull off any comparable operations in Spartanburg, but they were a powerful force that left Black families in many parts of the county paralyzed with fear. 

Northeastern Spartanburg

Let's begin by taking a look at the part of Spartanburg where the Ku Kluxer were active. The 1872 convicts were from two townships: Limestone Springs and Cherokee. This region is now part of Cherokee County. It lies in the Upstate, along the border with North Carolina. The population center is the town of Gaffney, then the small village of Limestone Springs.

Map showing the location of the town of Gaffney
Google Maps

Northern Spartanburg has been populated since the 1700s. The Battle of Cowpens, an important Revolutionary War battle, was fought there. Despite its long history, the area was largely underdeveloped at the outbreak of the Civil War. The village of Limestone Springs was the only population center. The village originally was a resort town which planters from the Lowcounty would visit during the summer to escape the punishing coastal heat and enjoy nearby mineral springs. By the time the Civil War broke out, the village's most prominent feature was the Limestone Springs Female High School. This was a private woman's college run by the Englishman Thomas Curtis. The student body of approximately one-hundred students was a large presence. Beyond their numbers, the students brought a level of culture and sophistication to what was otherwise primitive country backwoods. Most of the students had come from other parts of the South Carolina, although a few were from other southern states, and one student (Elena N. Booth) had come all the way from Cuba. The village also supported a small number of people in the professional and commercial classes, a doctor, a few merchants, a shoemaker, and so forth.

Life was very different away from the village. One freedman described the area as a "pretty wild country." Approximately four-thousand people lived in the area, with somewhat more than had living in Limestone township and the rest living in Cherokee township. The area supported iron manufacturing, but the industry's local impact was limited. The ironworks were largely run by enslaved labor and owned by men living in Spartanburg village. Most people in the area were famers.

Like all of South Carolina, Cherokee and Limestone Springs were slave societies, but the slave population was relatively small, perhaps a quarter of the population. The typical enslaver was not a wealthy planter with a large workforce but rather a small farmer who enslaved a single family. No more than twenty residents had gained planter status by enslaving a large workforce. The largest enslaver was D. B. Ross, a farmer in Limestone Springs who enslaved approximately sixty people. He was exceptional. Most of the planters only enslaved twenty-some people, putting them on the bottom rung of planter society.

D. B. Ross ran a successful cotton farm, but most farmers grew little or no cotton. The planter with the second largest enslaved workforce (forty-two people), Lee Linder, grew no cotton and instead grew food provisions and raised sheep for wool. Others grew tobacco as a cash crop. Compared to planters in other parts of the state, the planers of northeastern Spartanburg were men of modest means, but they and other landowners wielded a great deal of influence. Many small famers were landless and rented land from planters, making them economically dependent on them. 

Life for small farmers was difficult. In other parts of the Upcountry, a farmer of modest means could hope improve his lot by growing cotton, but in northeastern Spartanburg cotton grew poorly and most people were subsistence farmers, growing corn and raising hogs. They could expect a lifetime of struggling to feed their family. 

Map showing the locations of the counties of Cherokee and Limestone in 1887
Spartanburg Public Library

When the war broke out, northeastern Spartanburg was cushioned from the impact by the area's impoverishment. Wartime conditions cut off access to international markets, so cotton growers struggled both to sell cotton and to purchase food provisions.In contrast, subsistence farmers in northeastern Spartanburg could lead lives during wartime that were largely the same as their lives during peace,  especially if their families members were able to avoid military service, 

Nevertheless, the community was presented with a tremendous challenge at the end of the Civil War. A quarter of the population was freed from bondage, and it was unclear how everyone would adjust to their new status. Much of the white male population had served in the Confederate army, and a number had been killed or permanently disabled. On top of this, the state government was being reformed after a few years of military government.

In the following series of blogposts, I will try to unpack what happened in the townships of Cherokee and Limestone in the years after the Civil War.  One thing is clear. Whatever happened, it was a disaster. In 1871, six years after the end of the Civil War, the region was plunged into barbarous violence. Virtually every Black family was subject to horrific violence, most often whippings but also sexual violence and mock executions. Many white families were implicated in the violence, and large numbers of people – including some of the most prominent and influential men – fled the area to escape law enforcement. Rather than recovering from the chaos of war, northeastern Spartanburg sunk further into poverty and disorder.

Map of the townships of Limestone and Cherokee, c. 1875
From South Carolinians Library

Source

1.  "The Convicted Ku Klux." The Anderson intelligencer., February 1, 1872, p. 1.

2. "Editorial Correspondence." Yorkville enquirer. [volume], July 26, 1860, Image 2

3. "Limestone Male Academy." The Carolina Spartan. [volume], December 20, 1866, Image 4

Emancipation in Spartanburg: Lot Farrow meets the Union army

How did freedom come to enslaved people living in the village of Spartanburg? Unlike other parts of the Confederacy, freedom only came at the very end of the war. Spartanburg County was never the site of significant fighting, and Union troops only arrived in summer 1865. 

An unusually intimate look at the experience of enslaved people that summer is offered by testimony collected by the South Claims Commission. The Claims Commission was formed to provide financial compensation to individuals who had provided supplies to the Union army. Submitted claims were carefully vetted. Claimants had to not only describe the supplies that had been taken, but they also had to demonstrate that they had remained loyal to the Union.

Within Spartanburg County, two claims were submitted, one by the widow Jemima F. Harvey. As part of her claim, Lot Farrow, a man formerly enslaved by her husband, testified about his experience at the end of the Civil War. Lot provided testimony to the Claims Commission in October 1872 (roughly seven years after he had been emancipated). He was interviewed by a claims officer, Theodore W. Parmele. Parmele was a white Union veteran from New York City, so he was someone who was sympathetic to enslaved people but also had little experience interacting with them.

Lot's testimony was offered to help the federal government assess the value of the supplies taken by Union troops and determine whether his enslaver, Milo A. Harvey, had remained loyal to the Union. In the course of offering this information, Lot gave a detailed description of events in Spartanburg upon the arrival of Union troops.

Spartanburg Village before the War

"I was born a slave in the state of South Carolina" is how Lot Farrow introduced himself to Theodore W. Parmele. Lot was in his mid-forties. For a number of years, he had been enslaved by Jemima F. Harvey's husband Milo. Lot worked for Milo as a driver and a teamster. Milo had great need for these skills as he ran a livery stable and delivered mail for the federal government. 

Both Lot and Milo lived in Spartanburg, then a small village of one thousand-some people, approximately a third of whom were enslaved. The village was home to the county courthouse and a regular market, so it served as a regional center for the county which was a rural area largely populated by small farmers. Milo had moved to Spartanburg from Pennsylvania long before the war broke out. By 1860, he had achieved considerable financial success. He employed at least four stage coach drivers and owned a private home on the north side of Spartanburg's Main Street. While Milo clearly participated in slavery, it is unclear how many people he enslaved. The 1860 census records him as having enslaved two enslaved women, but this must be incomplete as he also enslaved Lot during this period. Milo reported to the census that his personal estate was valued at $10,000, likely the value of his stable together with the people he enslaved. All in all, Milo maintained a very comfortable lifestyle for his family, although he was not a member of the South Carolina elite as he did not run a plantation.

Lot's experience with slavery was different from most slaves in South Carolina. While many slaves were bound to a plantation or a small farm, Lot regularly traveled throughout northwestern South Carolina, helping his enslaver deliver the mail. Living in a village, he had an unusually broad social network as he was in regular contact with both white people and the Black people enslaved by his neighbors.

Lot likely had a family in the antebellum, although there is no direct evidence on this matter. The 1880 census records Lot as living with his wife, Adaline, and their three children. All of the children were born before Emancipation, so Adaline and Lot likely started living together before the war, although any relationship would have been informal as the law did not recognize "slave marriages."

Lot and other people who knew Milo said that he was a Confederate albeit not an enthusiastic one. Milo opposed secession, but when the Civil War broke out, he "went with his state." However, he was pessimistic of the south's prospects and felt the war was bad for both sides.  Lot, unfortunately, did not offer his opinions regarding the Confederacy, and he likely kept those closely guarded.

The only member of Milo's household who served in the Confederate army was Milo's brother, John. He enlisted at the very beginning of the war, on the day after Confederate forces opened fire on Fort Sumter. His service was undistinguished. He fell ill and was discharged from the army that September. For most of the war, life continued on as before. Milo, with help from Lot, continued to run his stable and deliver the mail, although his employer had become the Confederate government.

Until the very end of the war, Spartanburg village was far away from battlefields. The village's population swelled  as people from places like Charleston moved there seeking refuge. Most residents experienced the war indirectly through the arrival of refugees, the absence of the many young men who were serving the army, the rampant inflation (especially inflated food prices), and the collapse of the cotton market. No Union troops came near the village, but residents traveling through rural areas needed to be concerned about running into Confederate deserters, escaped Union soldiers, or common criminals who were taking advantage of the breakdown in civil order.

Lot Farrow meets the Union Army

On April 30, 1865, several weeks after Robert E. Lee surrendered his army, Union troops came to Spartanburg. The Confederacy had collapsed as a military force, but many members of the Confederate government – including President Jefferson Davis – remained at large. President Davis was believed to be traveling through South Carolina, and two cavalry brigades were sent to the state from North Carolina in pursuit of Davis and other fugitive members of the Confederate government.

One brigade of Union cavalry, led by Brevet Brigadier-General William J. Palmer, arrived in Spartanburg on the evening of the 30th. No effort was made to resist them, and they were greeted by one citizen who simply asked that they respect private property. The Union troops were evidently impressed by both the village and the conduct of its residents. One solider wrote in his journal that Spartanburg was a "pretty town" that had "many fine residences" and was a "center of wealth." He remarked that residents appeared to have accepted the defeat of the Confederacy and were eager to move on in their lives. The troops remained in good order, and there were no reports of looting or pillaging. One company (Company G, commanded by Joseph R. Lonabaugh) was stationed in the village, while the rest continued their search for fugitive Confederate officials.

It is unclear exactly when Lot first met with Union troops. Lot could not remember the month or year that he encountered Union soldiers, but he recalled that it was on a Sunday around 2 pm. Another man who was present, Hugh Holt, recalled that the event occurred in early May. The first Sunday in May was on May 7, more than a week after the troops first arrived in the town. More likely is that Hugh was mistaken, and the troops came to the stable on the 30th (which was a Sunday).

Whenever the event occurred, it began with a group of an estimated twenty mounted Union soldiers arriving at the stable around 2 p.m. while Lot was working there. Present with Lot was a white man, Richard Arnold, who boarded his horses at the stable. 

The Union soldiers were led by two officers, and when they arrived at the stable, they asked for "Lot." After Lot made his presence known, they asked him where the horses were, and he told them that they were in their stalls in the stable. Lot recognized the officers as men he had met a month earlier. They had come to Spartanburg disguised as Confederate troops from Tennessee and asked him about the stable and other matters. Evidently, they had been scouting out future sources of supply for the Union army. 

The officers were friendly with Lot and acknowledged that they had met him a month earlier in disguise. The officers had brought their troops there to requisition supplies. The cavalry unit's horses were "badly used up," and they needed fresh horses as replacements. 

The Union men proceeded to take their horses from stable. Lot sent word to his enslaver, Milo, and asked what should be done. Milo responded by saying that, "he could not help it." While the men were taking the horses, Hugh Holt, a white man who was employed by Milo, showed up, but he did nothing but watch the proceedings.

In addition to the horses and a pair of mules, Milo had stored a large amount of fodder for horses as well as food provisions in the stable. After the horses were taken away, the soldiers began taking the provisions. Lot and Richard Arnold went to a Union headquarters that had been established near the Courthouse to lodge protests. Lot was simply told that the soldiers needed the provisions more than he did. Lot was unable to hear what Richard Arnold said, but the soldiers not only left his horses alone, they even posted a guard to keep others from taking them. Mr. Arnold had been loyal to the Union (a rarity in South Carolina), so presumably, he had convinced the Union officers that he should be allowed to keep his horses as a reward for his loyalty. 

Taking the provisions took all day. There was much to carry off. Stored in the stable were 1,500 pounds of bacon and one-hundred bushels of corn, among other goods. Lot helped the soldiers load several horse wagons with corn, and the soldiers enlisted the help of "colored people" (likely people enslaved by neighbors) and had them carry provisions for them. The soldiers rewarded them by giving them some of the bacon they had requisitioned. 

The soldiers only finished taking provisions at 10 o'clock p.m. Lot remained at the stable all night. Union soldiers remained in the village. Their presence caused anxiety among residents. Many saw had their horses taken, and some had their watches stolen, but the troops remained in good order, and there was none of the pillaging or looting that was reported in other parts of the south. After more two days in Spartanburg, the Union soldiers continued south in pursuit of Confederate leaders.

Freedom comes to Lot Farrow?

In principle, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed Lot from bondage and directed the army to preserve his rights as a freeman. In practice, life for Lot continued as it did before. None of the soliders encouraged him to leave his enslaver. When the army left Spartanburg, a number of newly freed slaves joined them, but Lot was not among them.

Freedom likely came to Lot during the summer. On June 5, a Union officer issued a proclamation that all slaves were now free. However, enslavers were free to ignore as the proclamation went unenforced. The proclamation was reissued in mid-August, and Union soldiers were stationed in the village on a long-term basis. At this point, everyone began to recognize that the practice of slavery had come to an end. 

The transition to freedom appears to have gone relatively smoothly for Lot. He continued work for Milo but now as a paid employee. Compared to many, Lot and Milo had an easier time adjusting to the new labor situation as Milo had long employed free laborers at his stable, and Lot simply joined their ranks.

Lot achieved enough financial success that he was able to purchase his own property in 1869,  only four years after Emancipation. He lived with his family in a two acre plot on "Rutherford St." He and his wife were also able to preserve their family despite the incredible pressures put on them by enslavement and the disruption of Emancipation. Unexpectedly eloquent testimony to the warm relations in the Farrow family is found an 1882 deed in which Lot granted parts of his property to his wife and children. He said the land was given in exchange for "the sum of one dollar" and "the natural love and affection which I bear to my said wife and daughter[s]."