Gary and Butler deemed compromises with black leaders to be misguided; they believed that white men must be restored to their antebellum position of preeminent political power in the state.

Butler brought additional men in from Georgia, and the augmented armed mob, including Tillman, went to confront the militiamen, who were barricaded in their drill room, above a local store.

[28] While Hampton presented a fatherly image, urging support from South Carolinians, black and white, Tillman led fifty men to Ellenton, intending to join more than one thousand rifle club members who slaughtered thirty militiamen, with the survivors saved only by the arrival of federal authorities.

It was now after midnight, and the moon high in the heavens looked down peacefully on the deserted town and dead negroes, whose lives had been offered up as a sacrifice to the fanatical teachings and fiendish hate of those who sought to substitute the rule of the African for that of the Caucasian in South Carolina.

[35] Starting with the election of Hampton as governor in 1876, South Carolina was ruled primarily by the wealthy "Bourbon" or "Conservative" planter class that had controlled the state before the Civil War.

[36] The agenda of the Conservatives had little to offer the farmer, and in the hard economic times of the early 1880s, there was discontent in South Carolina that led to some electoral success for the short-lived Greenback Party.

[48] Kantrowitz pointed out that the term "farmer" is flexible in meaning, allowing Tillman to overlook distinctions of class and unite most white men in predominantly rural South Carolina under a single banner.

Tillman stated that this provision, which made the lifetime trustees a majority of the board, was intended to forestall any attempt by a future Republican government to admit African Americans.

Accordingly, the party's Bourbon-controlled state executive committee tried to use the brief August convention (called to set the rules for the September one) to change the nomination method to a primary, in which the anti-Tillman forces would unite behind a single candidate.

In his inaugural address, Tillman celebrated his victory, "the citizens of this great commonwealth have for the first time in its history demanded and obtained for themselves the right to choose her Governor; and I, as the exponent and leader of the revolution which brought about the change, am here to take the solemn oath of office ... the triumph of democracy and white supremacy over mongrelism and anarchy, of civilization over barbarism, has been most complete.

"[75] Tillman made it clear he was not content that African Americans were allowed even a limited role in the political life of South Carolina: The whites have absolute control of the State government, and we intend at any and all hazards to retain it.

The only enactment that struck at the African American in Tillman's first term imposed a prohibitive tax on labor agents, who were recruiting local farm hands to move out of state.

[86] Tillman had to walk a narrow line in the debates over lynching, since most of his supporters believed in the collective right of white men in a community to dispense mob justice, especially in cases of alleged rape.

He attempted to finesse the matter by seeking to appeal to both sides, demanding that the law be followed, but that he would, as he stated in 1892, "willingly lead a mob in lynching a Negro who had committed an assault on a white woman".

Tillman discouraged northerners from sending aid to African Americans, fearing it would result in "lazy, idle crowds [wanting to] draw rations, as in the days of the Freedmen's Bureau ...

Tillman appointed dispensary constables, who tried to seize such shipments, to be frustrated by the fact that the South Carolina Railroad was in federal receivership, and state authorities could not confiscate goods entrusted to it.

[93] Only weeks after the Darlington affair, the South Carolina Supreme Court declared the act creating the dispensary system in violation of the state constitution on the grounds that the government had no right to run a profit-making business.

Cleveland was elected, but the new president was offended by Tillman's earlier attacks, and denied the governor any role in patronage in South Carolina, entrusting it to Senator Matthew Butler and other remaining Conservatives.

Each registrant had to prove to the satisfaction of the county board of elections that he could read or write a section of the state constitution (in a literacy or comprehension test), or that he paid taxes on property valued at $300 or more.

Conviction of any of a long list of crimes that whites believed prevalent among African Americans was made the cause of permanent disenfranchisement, including bigamy, adultery, burglary, and arson.

[120] Other Cleveland policies, such as his forcible suppression of the Pullman Strike, led to the Democrats losing control of both houses of Congress in the 1894 midterm elections, and to a revolt against him by silver supporters within his party.

Tillman is not known to have otherwise discussed his feelings at the failure of his presidential bid, and the political grief was likely overwhelmed by personal sadness a week after the convention when his beloved daughter Addie died, struck by lightning on a North Carolina mountain.

[147] Given that in Africa, they were an "ignorant and debased and debauched race" with a record of "barbarism, savagery, cannibalism and everything that is low and degrading", it was the "quintessence of folly" to believe that the black man should be placed on an equal footing with his white counterpart.

"[149] He told his colleagues, "I have three daughters, but, so help me God, I had rather find either one of them killed by a tiger or a bear [and die a virgin] than to have her crawl to me and tell me the horrid story that she had been robbed of the jewel of her womanhood by a black fiend.

"[151] [152] As South Carolina's economy changed in the early 20th century, with textile mills being built, Tillman complained that some African Americans were evading the supervision they would have on the farm, fearing the threat to white women.

However, he opposed taking the Spanish colonies such as Puerto Rico and the Philippines, both because he considered it wrong to annex people to the United States without their consent, and out of opposition to adding territories with large numbers of non-whites.

Tillman mocked the Republicans, most of whom supported annexation rather than self-determination, stating that it was that party that since 1860 had claimed "that all men, including the Negro, are free and equal," and was annoyed when they refused to admit their positions were inconsistent.

Once Democrats took control of the Senate for the first time in Tillman's tenure, in 1913, he became chairman of the committee and allied with others from the southeast (such as Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels, a North Carolinian) to see that the bulk of naval appropriations would be spent there.

[160] Although he urged vigilance against spies, once he was satisfied that the accusations against German-born Friedrich Johannes Hugo von Engelken, president of the Federal Land Bank at Columbia, were unfounded, he spoke in support of the man.

Blease, also an outspoken white supremacist, had entered politics as a Tillmanite legislator in 1890, and breaking from him, adopted similar techniques to Tillman's to appeal to poor farm workers and mill hands.