Arriving in Philadelphia, these immigrants were noted for arrogance and violence. They seemed unlikely to settle peaceably into the community founded by Quakers, and were encouraged to move on into the mountains. They settled throughout Appalachia, along the spine of the Southeast, spilling into the lowlands. One destination, Edgefield, was famous for violence from its very beginnings.
The District offered good land, with lots of game, loamy soil, and plenty of water. Cherokee lived there before white people arrived, and when the settlers declared it theirs, the Cherokee differed. A long, bloody conflict began, of a kind familiar to the settlers. By the time the Cherokee were driven off, the District was devastated. Livestock had been stolen and houses burned. Families were gone; there was no community. It was called “Bloody Edgefield.” The veterans of the Cherokee wars were outlaws who had robbed and pillaged, raiding plantations, abducting women, and torturing landowners. The rule of law did not exist. In response to this, the Regulators were formed, perhaps the first American vigilantes. Volunteer landowners took the law into their own hands, riding through the countryside and dispensing rough justice: shooting, whipping, beating, and hanging anyone they declared guilty.
The Revolution burnished Edgefield’s savage reputation. In 1781, thirty Revolutionaries were brutally executed at Cloud Creek. Among them were a father and son, both named James Butler, members of a Scotch-Irish family who’d arrived in the early 1760s.
“What! Old Edgefield again! Another murder … it must be pandemonium itself, a very district of devils,” wrote an eighteenth-century visitor. In 1850, the homicide rate in Edgefield was twice that of the state average. After the Civil War, Congress called it the most violent region in the state.
The trigger for violence was honor. In the Borders, honor was the only inviolate possession. The idea was brought to the New World: honor was fragile, jealously guarded, and easily threatened. Anyone could insult you, and challenge your place in the world. Any real or imagined slight could result in apocalyptic violence: hand-to-hand combat, duels, ambush, murder. Men shot each other during card games, on bar stools, in parlors, on the street, through the window, over anything. A sideways glance, a misreported comment, a drunken gesture.
The upper classes had their own violent tradition, the code duello. Dueling had strict rules about procedure and weapons, but both traditions held honor to be essential, and both traditions used lethal violence to defend it. Both traditions fit into the great tradition of violence that permeated the South because of slavery.
Edgefield had a double helix, twinned tendencies toward violence: one from seven hundred years of savage border fighting, and one from two hundred years of that peculiar institution, slavery.
* * *
SO EVEN THOUGH Hamburg was a Negro town, it wasn’t safe for Negroes. The white men from Edgefield were just over the hill. They drove through all the time, making trouble.
* * *
BUTLER AND GETZEN leaned forward. The horse, hearing rising voices, tossed his head. The people watching moved into the shadow of the empty warehouses. Children were grabbed by mothers. The young girls stiffened. The town went silent.
“By God, nigger,” Getzen said, “you let us through.” He picked up his revolver, which was lying on the seat.
Adams turned to his men. “Open order,” he called. The men stepped to each side and the ranks opened, making a wide swath between the columns. Getzen drove the nervous horse through them. Butler held his revolver pointing upward as they went through the ranks.
“The first nigger touches our horse is dead,” he said.
The uniformed men stood still, staring straight ahead as the chestnut horse jogged between them.
16.
PLAN OF CAMPAIGN
1st
Determine if necessary to kill every White Radical in this county—2 Every mulatto Radical leader
3rd
Every negro leader—make no individual threats but let this be known as a fixed settled thing—
4th
We must send speakers to all of their political meetings, who must denounce the rascality of these leaders face to face. The moral effects of this denunciation will be of great effect—
5th
Thorough military organization in order to intimidate the negro
6th
Every white man must be at the polls by five o clock in the morning of the day of election, and must go prepared to remain there until the votes are counted
7th
Make no threats—”Suave in modo fortite in re”
8th
There is no use in arguments for the negro
—CIVIL WAR EX-GENERAL MARTIN WITHERSPOON GARY, EDGEFIELD, S.C., SUMMARIZING A LETTER FROM S. W. FERGUSON, GREENVILLE, MISSISSIPPI, JANUARY 7, 1876. FERGUSON LAID OUT A STRATEGY FOR THE ISSUE OF BLACK VOTING.
* * *
M. W. GARY HAD BEEN at Appomattox, but he hadn’t surrendered. Instead he drove his spurs into his horse’s sides and galloped off the field to protest what was happening. That made him a hero to some.
Ten years later, Gary was still angry. He was a lawyer then, with a farm outside Edgefield. He was tall and bald, with a long nose and a permanent scowl, which gave him his nickname, the Bald Eagle. He didn’t like the way Reconstruction was going. He didn’t like the tax raises, he didn’t like paying Negroes to work. He didn’t like Negroes voting. He didn’t like the white people—Radicals—who thought all this was legitimate.
He wasn’t alone. He’d gotten up a group of more than a hundred local landowners, all angry. They didn’t like Reconstruction and they didn’t like the governor, Daniel Chamberlain, an outsider from Massachusetts who supported the laws on Negro voting. Most of the Southern Democrats were white, and most of the Republicans were black. The black population was larger than the white, which gave them political power. Gary’s friends didn’t like this. They didn’t like Negroes holding office, and they especially didn’t like Negroes carrying guns. That seemed against the natural order of things.
They complained about literacy. During slavery it had been illegal for slaves to learn to read and write, and now, ten years afterward, the black population was still not as well educated as the white one. Which meant there were illiterate people holding office. Gary and his group complained about this. They put a notice in the paper announcing that they were going to restore white supremacy. They were drawing up a list of Negroes to whom they wouldn’t rent farmland. White people owned almost all the land, so if they refused to rent any to a local black neighbor, he was out of luck. The white men listed the names of the Negroes who didn’t understand their proper position. Who were insolent, and wanted to be paid for their work, and wanted to vote. Gary had a plan to deal with all this, modeled on one from Mississippi.
Jim Cook was the Hamburg marshal then. He was colored, but he stood up to white men. He held both colored and white accountable to the law. Just outside town was a little spring, clear water that ran down into a hollowed-out rock. A sign forbade people from drinking straight from it, as a matter of hygiene. They were requested to drink from the dipper instead. A white man from Edgefield came by one afternoon and set his whole face right down in the water and sucked it straight up. Afterward he threw the sign down and trampled on it. Jim Cook fined him. That was something, a Negro telling a white man how to drink water. That was an insult to white men.
The boys from Edgefield liked to gallop through the dirt streets of Hamburg, raising dust and shooting off their pistols. Hollering and swearing, threatening people. It was just for fun, just a little excitement, but Jim Cook fined them for disturbing the peace. The boys resented this. The day before the parade, Tommy Butler had driven his wagon at a fast clip through town, stirring up dust into the faces of people sitting on the porches. It was a question of courtesy. Some of the people on the porches had complained, and he hadn’t liked that.
The day after the parade, Tommy Butler’s father, Robert J. Butler, the one with that pack of g
ood scent-hounds, came in and filed a formal complaint against Dock Adams. It wasn’t the first time. Two years earlier he’d filed a complaint against the marshal, William Nelson. This was over a dispute over the use of Market Street, for which his son Tommy claimed to have special rights. His father paid a monthly fee to the town for special use, sending his heavy wagons to Augusta. Tommy felt this gave him a kind of ownership over the roadway. That’s why he had told Dock Adams he was driving in his own ruts. Two years ago R. J. Butler had claimed that William Nelson and a colored cotton buyer called Samuel Spencer had threatened to kill Tommy. Nelson and Spencer were ordered to put up two hundred dollars as bond money and promise to keep the peace for a year. That bond money was a serious burden.
Prince Rivers was the trial justice, which was what they called the magistrate. He was a tall, handsome man, with jet-black skin and an imposing presence. He’d been a slave, but had taught himself to read and write. His slave job had been coachman, and during the war he’d stolen his master’s coach horse, took it out of the traces, and escaped. He rode a hundred miles, through Confederate lines, from Edgefield to Port Royal, to reach the Union troops. He volunteered to serve in the Union army, became a sergeant, and performed outstandingly. He was commended for his service. After the war he was elected to the state legislature.
Butler and Getzen accused Dock Adams and his company of blocking a public road. After they made their claims Rivers summoned Adams, Butler, and Getzen to appear the next day. Getzen said that the black soldiers carried loaded rifles, and had been insolent and threatening. Adams denied this. Rivers ordered a hearing three days later, at four o’clock on the eighth of July, a Saturday.
At noon that day there was a meeting of the Sweetwater Sabre Club. It had about fifty members, all white men. They met in the Sweetwater Baptist Church, and they called themselves a rifle club. They had uniforms and weapons, mostly Springfield rifles.
They were a rifle club, but also a citizens’ militia. There were a lot of these in the South. Before emancipation there had been good reasons for white men to go out in groups with guns. There were good reasons for night patrols, good reasons to hunt down slaves who had no business being out then. Sometimes they hunted them just for fun, to hear them whoop and holler. Beg for mercy.
Before the war white men had good reasons for emergency communication systems, for armed readiness, vigilance. White people needed all this: they were living on top of a volcano. They could feel it underneath them, the shift, the roiling. They knew it was there. They had always used violence preemptively, to prevent the possibility of violence coming from someone else. Guns and violence had always been part of their lives, but before the war those things were reserved for white people. Now the balance was changed. The federal government had set up Negro national guards. Negroes were carrying guns, and that was dangerous. The white men didn’t like it.
Young Ben Tillman and his brother George were members of the Sabre Club. They were from Edgefield; everyone in the club was. The Tillmans were a plantation family with a violent heritage. Their father, who’d died when they were young, had killed a man. George, the older brother, had shot a man during a card game. He hid out for a while in Mexico, then came home and served two years in jail. He carried on his law practice from behind bars, and later he was elected to the state senate. Another Tillman had been killed in a duel and a third during a domestic dispute. Ben was the youngest brother. He’d inherited some family land and had bought more. He now owned over twelve hundred acres. He’d lost an eye to cancer, and he wore a black patch over the bad one. It gave him a sinister, raffish look, which he enjoyed.
The Sabre Club admired the Bald Eagle’s plan and they wanted to teach the Negroes a lesson. They wanted to redeem the state from Negro and carpetbag rule. They called their plan “Redemption”; they were all churchgoers. They believed that this was a noble cause, that they were saving white society from defilement. They believed that white supremacy was part of the natural order.
The head of the Sabre Club was another Butler from Edgefield, Colonel A. P. Butler. That Saturday in July the members met in the Sweetwater Church at Summer Hill, about three miles above Hamburg. They were all told to attend the Butler trial, officially to provide protection for the two Edgefield boys, in case there was trouble. Actually their mission was to start a fight, if the Negroes offered any kind of opportunity. If no opportunity was offered, the Sabre Club boys were told to make one. They were not to wear uniforms, and not to carry guns, only pistols. Many of them took rifles anyway. They didn’t want this to look like an organized military campaign, though it was. They were told to spread the word throughout the countryside.
By then everyone had heard what had happened on the Fourth, about the insolent Negroes who’d refused to yield to white men. That story had gone all around the District.
* * *
ON THE DAY of the trial, Harry Mays, colored, walked home from work. He was a porter at a store in Augusta, and on Saturdays the store closed early. When he reached the South Carolina side he saw groups of white men in the streets, talking loudly. They were everywhere, on every block. A bunch of them stood around the liquor store on Center Street. They were all carrying guns, pistols mostly, but a few had rifles. The door to the liquor store was open, and the men went in and out. As Mays made his way through the streets, more white men with guns kept coming in from the Edgefield road.
When Mays reached his own street he saw A. P. Butler on the corner. A.P. had a farm in Edgefield, and Mays worked for him sometimes. After they’d said hello Mays asked Butler what was going on.
Butler told him that they were going to take away the Negroes’ guns. He said it straight-out.
Mays said that those guns belonged to the U.S. government, and maybe the U.S. government would have something to say about that.
Butler said the U.S. government had nothing to do with it. He told Mays there was no Constitution now. He said, “It has been one hundred years since the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution is played out now, and every man can do just as he pleases. There is nothing to be done about it.”
He told Mays about their plan, how the white men were going to take away their guns and keep the niggers from voting. He told Mays that all the white men were set on it, and there was nothing to be done about it.
Mays went on home. He didn’t like the look of things, and planned to stay inside.
At about three o’clock Butler’s buggy came up the main street to the courthouse, carrying R. J. Butler and his lawyer, General Matthew Calbraith Butler. The general was also from Edgefield, though if he was related to R.J. it was too complicated to figure out.
It was a hot afternoon, and the door to the magistrate’s office stood open. Constable William Nelson sat with his feet up on the doorframe, catching any breeze that came through. Nelson was nearly forty, a stocky man with a round face and hooded eyes. His manner was calm, and he had a settled way of speaking. The buggy pulled up outside with Butler in it. Tommy Butler and Henry Getzen were riding alongside on horseback. Getzen had a rifle, a sixteen-shooter, slung across the shoulders of his horse.
The general saw Nelson sitting in the doorway and called out to him.
“Where’s Rivers?” It sounded like an order.
General M. C. Butler had narrow blue eyes, a thin mouth, and a long, narrow beaked nose. His reddish-blond hair was meager on top, but thick around his mouth and along the sides of his face. His skin was smooth and tight over the bones of his skull. He was fierce and handsome.
“Rivers is over at his house, I reckon,” Nelson said. “He’ll be here directly.”
“Well, go get him, boy,” said Butler, impatient. “Tell him to come here to me.”
It was a little after three. The hearing wasn’t to start until four.
“No, sir,” said Nelson carefully. “I’m not Mr. Rivers’s office boy. I’m a constable, and I’m here tending to my business.”
The general stared at Nelson. “
Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“Yes, sir,” Nelson said. “I believe I’m talking to General Butler.”
“Well, God damn you, bring me some paper out here. I’ll write something to send him.”
“In here’s the office, and in here’s the paper, sir,” said Nelson, “and here’s the chairs for all the attorneys to sit down in.”
It was intolerable that this man wouldn’t show him more respect. “God damn you, bring it to me, sir,” said Butler.
But Nelson wouldn’t be sworn at. “No, sir, I won’t,” he said. “Come in, sir, and sit at the table.”
The general got down from the buggy, the springs creaking as his weight left it. He walked up the steps. He limped a bit: one of his legs was wooden; he’d lost his own in the war. Henry Getzen got off his horse and followed. He was holding a pistol, which he pointed casually in Nelson’s direction. Tommy Butler was still on his horse, out in the street. He held a pistol, too, pointing it in a general way at Nelson. Not ready to fire, but aimed in a way that drew attention.
The general came inside. He was tall and narrow-shouldered, with small hands and feet. His face was bright red. “Give me a chair.”
Nelson gestured. “There’s a chair, sir.” A table and two chairs stood against the back of the room.
“God damn you,” said Butler. “Give me the chair you’re sitting in.”
There was a pause.
“All right,” said Nelson, standing up. “If this one suits you better.” He stepped away. “Take it.” He didn’t touch the chair.
The general didn’t move.
“You goddamned leather-headed son of a bitch,” he said in a low voice, “sitting there fanning yourself in a chair, goddamn you.”
Nelson said, “I’m fanning myself sitting in my own office, tending to my own business, sir.” Nelson had had to put up a two-hundred-dollar bond for the man sitting on his horse in the street, holding the pistol aimed loosely at him.
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