Democrats through history

[DixieBelle]

Inspired by Rebel's "Black and Right" video, I decided to take the advice given and google some of the things mentioned. I chose the Wilmington Rebellion of 1898 for starters. It is my intention to continue shedding light on who the Democrats and Liberals really are. Nov. 4 changed the game for me and you guys may get tired of my rants. 

One of the main actors was Sen. Ben Tillman (D). Let's take a look this prominent member of the Democratic Party shall we?

Benjamin Ryan Tillman (August 11, 1847–July 3, 1918) was an American politician who served as governor of South Carolina, from 1890 to 1894, and as a United States Senator, from 1895 until his death. Tillman was a member of the Democratic Party.

Tillman, of German descent, was born near Trenton, South Carolina. He left school in 1864 to join the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, but was disabled by an illness that later caused the removal of his left eye and thus never fought for the Confederacy. During Reconstruction, he became a paramilitary fighter in the struggle to overthrow the interracial Republican coalition in the state and disempower the black majority. He was present at the Hamburg Massacre in July 1876, during which black Republican activists were murdered by Tillman's fellow "Red Shirts."

Tillman maintained his white supremacist beliefs in the Senate that he had implemented as governor; he was one of the most outspoken and unapologetic advocates of white supremacy ever to serve in Congress. Another quote of Tillman's is "We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be the equal of the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him."

Tillman died in Washington, D.C. and is buried in Ebenezer Cemetery, Trenton, South Carolina. A statue of him in his honor is outside the South Carolina State House.

An early trustee of Clemson University, Tillman Hall is named in his honor.

Sen. Ben Tillman of South Carolina, the South’s most gifted racist demagogue, saw no reason to wait. Tillman came to North Carolina in the fall of 1898 at the invitation of Simmons and bragged that he and his fellow Red Shirts, a terrorist militia, had seized power in South Carolina by force and by fraud. Tillman urged the white supremacy forces in North Carolina to adopt his “shotgun policy” and shamed them for failure to use violence already, especially against Manly. “Why didn’t you kill that damn ****** editor who wrote that?” Tillman taunted the crowd. “Send him to South Carolina and let him publish any such offensive stuff, and he will be killed.”

Tillman headlined the largest rally of the white supremacy campaign, held in Fayetteville on Oct. 20. By early morning, in one account, “vehicles filling all the streets and thoroughfares gave evidence that the white people of upper Cape Fear had left the plow, the machine shops, the kitchen, nay, the very neighborhood schoolroom.” Hundreds of white men showed up in red shirts, paying homage to Tillman’s terrorist achievements. A delegation from Wilmington led the parade, followed by 300 Red Shirts in military formation, trailed by a float with 22 beautiful young white women dressed in white. The constant boom of cannons added a violent percussion to a brass band from Wilmington

He was largely responsible for calling the State constitutional convention in 1895 that disfranchised most of South Carolina's black men and required Jim Crow laws. As Tillman proudly proclaimed in 1900, "We have done our level best [to prevent blacks from voting]...we have scratched our heads to find out how we could eliminate the last one of them. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it." (Logan, p. 91)

He was elected to the United States Senate in 1894, and was re-elected in 1900, 1906, and 1912. He served from 1895 to his death in 1918. A hotheaded and intemperate debater, Tillman became known as "Pitchfork Ben" after a speech he made on the Senate floor in 1896. In this speech, Tillman made several references to pitchforks and threatened to go to the White House and "poke old Grover [Cleveland] with a pitchfork" to prod him into action.

During his Senate career, he was censured by the Senate in 1902 after assaulting John L. McLaurin, another Senator

U.S. Senator Ben Tillman of South Carolina spoke to a large crowd in Fayetteville on October 21, 1898. Tillman was a popular figure in southeastern North Carolina, where he was seen as an honest, plainspoken politician with a special regard for the cause of the small farmer. In announcements leading up to the speech, Tillman was hailed as the "saviour of South Carolina" for his role in restoring Democratic control of that state and disenfranchising South Carolina's African Americans.

http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/1898/sources/tillman.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Tillman

http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20061117/NEWS/61115014/-1/news28

[franksolich]

I learned something about the "internal politics" of the U.S. Senate when reading about Ben "Pitchfork" Tillman, one of those small intricacies the primitives would never understand.

Sometime during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), Roosevelt wanted a certain law (something to do with the trusts, I think, but I don't remember) considered and passed by the Senate.

The Republicans in the Senate didn't want to have anything to do with it, and while one was willing to actually bring it to the Senate, no Republican wanted to touch it.

The Democrats in the Senate didn't want to have anything to do with it either.

However, there was the bill, and something had to be done with it.

Ben "Pitchfork" Tillman was the leader of the minority (i.e., Democrats) on the Senate committee that had to consider the bill.

The problem was solved by the Republican majority voting to have the hapless Senator from South Carolina be the sponsor of the bill, and to defend it--even though he was against the bill himself.

He did so, but it never got passed anyway.

[Chris_]

This is an excellent idea DixieBelle. I hope you continue.