Each government debated and passed laws, raised militias, collected taxes, and conducted other business as if the other did not exist.
After four months of contested government, Daniel Henry Chamberlain, who claimed the governorship as a Republican, conceded to Democrat Wade Hampton III on April 11, 1877.
Before the Civil War and until the Great Migration in the early twentieth century, African Americans outnumbered whites in South Carolina.
[4] In the mid-1870s, the Democratic Party in South Carolina attempted to return the state to its antebellum status by electing former Confederates to political office and preventing African Americans from voting through the Black Codes, literacy tests, poll taxes, and intimidation.
This included the involvement of groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Red Shirts, particularly in 1875 and 1876, resulting in a reign of terror against African Americans and Republicans.
[6] In 1876, the Democratic Party nominated Wade Hampton III, a former Confederate lieutenant general, to run for governor.
South Carolina's incumbent Republican governor, Daniel Henry Chamberlain, a Massachusetts-born lawyer, was running for re-election against Hampton.
As the incumbent governor, Chamberlain secretly ordered troops to occupy the South Carolina Statehouse on November 27 to prevent the Democrats from taking control.
The next morning, the Democrats established their government in the Choral Union Hall instead of entering the Statehouse to avoid a confrontation.
For four days, members of both the Republican and Democratic parties occupied the chamber and conducted business, including debating bills, passing laws, and recognizing speakers.
[11] On December 4, Chamberlain threatened to use military force to remove the Democratic legislators, causing them to leave the chamber to avoid possible violence.
On December 6, the Republican General Assembly, claiming a majority because the votes of Edgefield and Laurens counties had been excluded, elected Chamberlain to a second term.
He began his new term the following day, declaring in his inaugural address, "I regard the present hour in South Carolina as a crisis at which no patriotic citizen should shrink from any post to which public duty may call him.
[citation needed] On March 31, 1877, Chamberlain and Hampton traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with the newly elected Republican president, Rutherford Hayes.
The imposition of the Black Codes and other voter restrictions on African Americans led to a rapid loss of electoral support for the Republicans.