“You goddamned son of a bitch,” said M.C. “You want to have a hole put through before you can move.”
Robert Butler climbed down from the buggy and came in. He was holding a big navy pistol. It was aimed generally toward Nelson.
Nelson didn’t like all the pistols aimed at him, and he wanted to calm things down. He said, “Mr. Butler, now you know what kind of a man I am. You know me. I have always tried to behave when you came in my office.”
“I know you, Nelson,” said Butler, “but this goddamned drilling has got to stop. Now go and get Rivers.”
“No, sir,” said Nelson. “I have no right to go and get Rivers. I’m not going.”
“Well, goddamn you,” said Butler. His skin was thin and translucent, and the red had colored it all up. His taut cheeks and beaky nose, his neck were all brilliant scarlet. “You will be a dead man, and then you’ll wish you’d gone.”
Nelson shook his head slowly.
“I’m but one man,” he said. “If you’re going to kill me, then just kill me. That’s all you can do.”
“Well, goddamn you, we’re going to take our time about that. You goddamned son of a bitch.”
Nelson held Butler’s gaze but said nothing.
“Goddamn you,” said Butler, “sitting down there with your feet cocked up.”
* * *
DOCK ADAMS, master carpenter, and commander of the militia that refused to move, came home from work at around two thirty. As he walked home he saw the white men gathered along the sidewalks. They were all carrying guns. More kept coming in on the road from Edgefield, carrying guns and talking loudly.
At first Adams didn’t pay too much attention to them, but they kept flooding in. At home he went upstairs. From the second-floor window he watched the men in the streets. He could hear them talking. They were going to kill the niggers. He heard his own name. Dock Adams, he’s the head of them. They said they were going to kill him. They were going to kill every goddamned nigger in Hamburg.
He watched them milling about, going in and out of the liquor stores: Nunberger’s, Coger’s, Davis’s. He watched young Bill Morgan jump over someone’s fence into the backyard, and cut himself a switch from a cherry tree. He walked about cutting at people’s shoulders and saying what he was going to do to the niggers. Most of the men were either drunk or acting drunk. Dock thought they were drunk.
Dock left by the back way and went to Prince Rivers’s house. He told Rivers he wouldn’t show up at the courthouse: there were now several hundred white men crowding through the streets, carrying guns and saying they were going to kill him. He told Rivers he didn’t like the look of it. Rivers told Dock he was being too cautious. M. C. Butler just wanted to meet with him and the other militia officers. Adams said he’d agree to meet with Butler, but not at the courthouse.
Rivers headed over to the courthouse to talk to Butler.
The long, hot afternoon was beginning to slide toward evening. The liquor stores were all open, and more and more white men went in and out of them. Loud talk and jostling. Dogs got up from where they lay along the edges of the streets, moving off into alleys, out of the way.
The men kept flooding in. Some were on horseback, and milled about, walking their horses in circles, on long reins, leaning down to take a bottle out of someone’s hand, swigging from it.
When Rivers came back he told Adams that Butler was willing to meet him at S. B. Spencer’s house. But a big mob of white men with guns was already gathered there, and Adams refused. He told Prince that he’d be willing to meet Butler halfway between, if he’d keep back his men.
Butler refused. He said that all the guns must be given up to him. And that he wouldn’t guarantee any protection to Adams and his men. Adams said he refused to meet: he and his men would be at the mercy of Butler and his men. He said he couldn’t surrender the arms to a civilian, only to an official of the government that issued them. Rivers suggested that he take the weapons and send them directly to Governor Chamberlain.
Butler had had enough. No, he said, and got back into his buggy. He headed across the bridge to Augusta. He was gone for about half an hour. The white men were getting louder, shouting about killing all the niggers in town. Butler came back followed by a crowd of armed men. Sam Cook, the intendant, went up to him where the road turns onto Market Street. Sam Cook told Butler that things were looking squally, and he was worried they’d get worse. He asked Butler if he could get the women and children out of town before anything started. Butler told Cook he could have fifteen minutes. The intendant asked Butler if there was any way to settle things peacefully, and Butler said the Negroes would have to surrender their arms.
Adams refused. First of all, he told Cook, if they turned over their guns they’d all be killed by the white men. And these were government weapons. He couldn’t hand them over to a civilian. He’d surrender them only to a government officer who had a right to them. He wrote this down in a note to Butler.
Butler sent back word that Adams had fifteen minutes to hand them over. Butler was incensed to be taken for a civilian. He was a general; everyone knew that.
Adams sent word that he couldn’t surrender the arms.
The weapons and ammunition were kept in the Sibley Building, a solid brick two-story structure on the corner of Market and Center. It was next to Dock Adams’s house, with a connecting door. Sometimes the men drilled there. Adams got word out, ordering his men to muster there at once. Thirty-eight men gathered in the drill room on the second floor. Adams watched out the window as Butler lined his men up outside, on the far side of the street and behind the abutment of the railroad bridge. The streets were now completely filled with white men carrying guns, hundreds of them.
Adams had little ammunition; they’d never had much. He told his men to use it sparingly. It would be risky to shoot from the windows, where they’d be targets. They’d only be able to aim at an angle.
The men took up their guns and concealed themselves beside the windows. Outside they could hear the white men talking, and then Adams heard a signal gun go off. The white men began firing. Most of the bullets hit the brick walls, though some came shattering through the glass. Every so often one of the men jumped in front of a window and took a shot. Adams was looking out when he heard a crack, and then saw someone over by the train abutment suddenly jerk his head up, then fall. It was Mackie Merriwether, and now they’d killed a white man. The Edgefield boys started yelling at the top of their lungs, and shooting into the Sibley. The bullets thumped into the walls. Most of the Negroes were lying flat on the floor.
Outside, Butler shouted to Walker McFeeny to go across the river and bring two kegs of powder from Augusta: they were going to blow up the building. Dock stood by the window, watching from the side. What they actually did was to bring a cannon across the bridge. They set it up in front of the building and began to fire.
Behind the Sibley Building the ground sloped away. They were on the second floor, and needed a ladder to get out the back window. Adams went next door for his carpenters’ tools while the others ripped up the floorboards. He put together a ladder, which they lowered out the back window. Adams sent most of the men down it, but he and a few others stayed upstairs. Every once in a while they shot out the window to make the white men think everyone was still inside. By then it was nearly dark, and the moon was starting to rise. It was round and full and cast a dark radiance over the town.
The men hurried down the ladder to crouch in the darkness. Adams came down after them and moved them to the outskirts of town, into a corn field. He ordered them to wait there, and then he went back up the ladder. He went into his own house and up onto the roof, where he could watch and listen. He heard the white men talking and shouting.
His militia didn’t stay where they’d been ordered to stay. They started moving through the streets, trying to get away.
Harry Mays lived at the other end of the block from the Sibley Building. While this was happening he was at home, watchin
g from upstairs. He saw M. C. Butler giving orders. He thought between nine hundred and a thousand white men were there in the streets.
Months later he told Congress what happened.
They fired with small-arms until about eleven o’clock. Then I heard a cannon fire, and when I heard that I said, “Jesus! God! we are all done killed!” I … peeped out of the window. The moon was shining as bright as day, and I heard Harrison Butler say, “Here they come,” and they fired at the niggers and the niggers fired at them. I saw both fires … The niggers had done come out and was going across the street … Every time they would see a nigger they would shoot at him, and would holler, “Here he comes.” They got a fellow in Davis Lepfield’s yard … and they fotch him out. There was white men all around. Good God! I don’t know how many. There was about twenty-five men around him, and I think half of them shot him. He fell …
There was another man, Jim Cook, and I heard them say, “I’ve got the son of a bitch.” I heard him holler. I know his voice. He said, “O Lord!” They said, “You call on the Lord, you damned son of a bitch.” And it seemed to me that fifteen or twenty of them shot him then. By that time they got done shooting niggers in the street … Then the next man they got was me myself. I was living in the house next to Rivers … I heard them in Rivers’s house. From the smashing up of things and going-on I felt pretty bad myself. I thought the next turn would be mine. And sure enough … When I heard them strike the middle door with the butts of their guns I unlocked my door and walked out on the porch, and there was about ten or twelve at the foot of the steps. They hollered, “Come down, you damned big son of a bitch.” I said, “I hav’n’t done nothing.” They said, “None of you hain’t done nothing.” Then they took me around into this ring …
They had a whole parcel of men there, and you couldn’t see outside after you got inside. You couldn’t see among the white folks at all. Then they had us in the ring. After they got me there the next man they got was Attaway … They set him right down close by the side of me. He said, “Mays … do you think they will kill any of us?” I said, “Yes, I do think so…” He said, “Do you think they will kill me.” I said, “I do … All you have got to do now is to pray to God to save your soul. Just give up your wife and children and everything else, for they are going to kill you.” And then he hung his head and commenced crying …
There had been lies told on him, and they said he was going to kill white folks; the niggers had made up lies on him, and the white folks had been making such awful threats against him …
They were all going to get on one side of us and then were going to fire right into us [but then someone stopped it, and some of them went off and talked.] They carried us about twenty yards … and they stopped us in a ring and all circled about us and said, “Stop here;” and we all sat down in the dirt and sand. [There were] between twenty-five and thirty [of us] …
The first man they killed was Attaway … They called Attaway. Attaway says, “Gentlemen, I am not prepared for death.” Some of the white men said … “I don’t care; we are going to kill you;” and they took him off over the hill, and I heard the guns fire. When they come back they called for Dave Phillips. Dave got up just like a soldier. He looked like he didn’t care no more for it than he would about eating, and he walked right along. I heard the guns fire, and they came back, but Dave didn’t come. Then they came back and called Pompey Curry. He was sitting right by me. Me and him was cousins. I says, “Pompey, you run,” just so, and Pompey got up and darted out, and got away from them … They shot him right here, [pointing,] but the ball only scalped his leg, and he got away. The next one they killed was Hamp Stevens. He was sick. He says, “O, gentlemen, I haven’t done nothing.” They says, “Come out here.” He was a big mulatto fellow—a young man. They took him out, and I heard the guns fire, and they came back, but Hamp didn’t come. The next time they called Alfred Minyard. He was a small fellow, and was sick. He was grown, but he was only a little fellow. One of the white men said, “O, let that boy alone; he is sick;” but they said, “O, God damn him; we’ll fix him too.” I heard the guns fire, and they came back, but Alfred didn’t come. That was the last one they killed. He didn’t die then, not till the next day, at nine o’clock. I saw him after he was killed, and I saw where they had cut off a big piece of meat from off his rump.
—U.S. CONGRESS, DECEMBER 5, 1876, REPORT OF THE OFFICIAL U.S. INVESTIGATION, TESTIMONY AS TO THE DENIAL OF THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE IN SOUTH CAROLINA AT THE ELECTIONS OF 1875 AND 1876
17.
We find little, if any, excuse for the conflict itself, and absolutely none for the cowardly killing of the seven negro prisoners who were shot down like rabbits long after they had surrendered …
The killing of seven of the prisoners was barbarous in the extreme. We have no words strong enough to express our condemnation of such a crime.
The Hamburg militiamen … had given no special offence, and certainly had committed no such overt act as would justify the onslaught of the men from Edgefield. Their offence lay, we fear, in being negroes and in bearing arms …
In our judgment, the whole affair, from beginning to end, was shamefully wrong, and we owe it to the State to say so. We shall be told, no doubt, that it does not become a Democratic newspaper in South Carolina to give “aid and comfort” to the Radicals by denouncing, as criminal, any act of a body of white South Carolinians. Our answer to that is, that there is only one right and one wrong, for Democrat and Republican. What is wrong we must condemn. We will not consent to cover up a wrong, because it is committed by our political associates or personal friends.
—THE NEWS AND COURIER, JULY 10 AND 11, 1876
* * *
WHEN RIORDAN WAS TIRED, his left leg dragged slightly. In the mornings this was nearly unnoticeable, but later in the day it began to show. That afternoon he paused in the doorway of Dawson’s office to lift his hip, so he could swing his leg over the sill.
Dawson’s office was large and light, with two windows overlooking Broad Street. On one wall was a large map of Charleston, bookshelves beneath it. Between the windows hung a wall clock with a glass case for the pendulum below. Dawson was leaning over a manuscript on his desk, a pencil in his hand. He looked up as Riordan came in.
“What do you think?” Dawson asked.
“Our readers will be outraged.” Riordan sat down across from him.
“They should be. It’s outrageous behavior.”
“By your response,” said Riordan. “How far do we want to go in alienating them?”
“No one can stomach this,” Dawson said. “Shooting down prisoners like animals. I saw nothing like this in the war. Decent men will agree with me.”
“That won’t help if we lose all our subscribers,” said Riordan. “They’ll kick like mules at this.”
Their subscribers were fickle, canceling in a huff, firing off outraged letters, renewing without explanation. Circulation rose and fell in a continuing wave. But generally his readers agreed with Dawson, and if they left he trusted them to return. Where else would they get their news? The News and Courier was the best paper in the state, maybe in the South. The paper was booming.
“They’ll kick but they’ll come ’round,” he said. “This is a matter of honor. They’ll understand that.”
Riordan shook his head. “Their code of honor doesn’t apply here.”
“We can’t have two different moral codes,” Dawson said.
Riordan raised his eyebrows.
The cancellations flooded in; two days later Riordan was back.
“Forty-seven today.” Riordan came in and sat down.
“Is that all?” Dawson asked.
He was already focused on something else, the gubernatorial election. He wanted to reelect Chamberlain. “What are our chances, do you think?”
“He is an outsider,” Riordan said.
“From that foreign land, Massachusetts,” said Dawson. “But he’s so much better than the others. He’s cleanin
g up the state. Everyone can see that, can’t they?”
Riordan shrugged. “Self-interest plays a large part in politics.”
“But it’s in the interest of the whole state to elect him,” Dawson said. “Everyone.”
Riordan shook his head and said nothing.
“I’m going all out for him,” Dawson said.
The office boy came in. Bouton was eighteen, lanky and awkward, with watery blue eyes and an anxious manner. He did a million things: clipped articles, pasted them up, carried messages, ran up and down stairs, did as he was told. He wasn’t allowed to write anything yet, though he wanted to.
He’d brought up the mail, and handed a stack to Dawson.
“More love notes from our readers,” said Dawson. He picked up his letter opener, a narrow ivory knife. It was a gift from Sarah. He slit the first envelope. He read the letter and tossed it on his desk. He read two more, then looked up at Riordan.
“They do feel rather strongly.”
“I’m keeping count.” Riordan rose to leave. “I was a cotton broker before I became a journalist. I can always go back to it.”
“Riordan,” Dawson said. “If all we’re doing is courting subscribers, what are we doing?” He waited. “Principle was the whole point.”
“Yes,” said Riordan. “There’s a difference between holding firm to principle and rubbing the public’s nose in something offensive.”
The cancellations flooded in. Dawson didn’t care. Every morning he opened the mail with the ivory knife.
“Twenty-three,” said Riordan, coming in.
“And General Butler has denied having anything to do with the executions. He said he’d left when the mob was too unruly to obey commands. He said he left in disgust.”
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