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Benjamin Tillman
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| Biography: Benjamin Ryan Tillman |
Benjamin Ryan Tillman (1847-1918), an American statesman for the South and a demagogue, was known as "Pitchfork Ben." His political campaigns on behalf of poor whites gave direction to a new generation of Southern activists who reorganized post-Reconstruction politics and society.
Benjamin Ryan Tillman was born in Edgefield Country, S.C., on Aug. 11, 1847, of an old Southern family. He was raised on a plantation which boasted numerous slaves. A bright student, Tillman was prevented from serving with the Confederate forces during the Civil War because of the loss of his left eye. After the war he began farming, experiencing the frustrations of Southerners under Reconstruction policies and Federal troops.
Despite his many acres Tillman identified himself more with poor white farmers than with the aristocrats of his state who sought to return to what they recalled as a gracious and chivalrous era. The fear poor white farmers felt and their hatred of freed blacks found expression in bloody riots in 1876 in which Tillman participated. Only in 1885 did his demands for farmers' education and aid and the organization of the Farmers' Association give him a political base.
During the next years Tillman engaged in bitter controversies, making scapegoats of blacks and aristocrats and organizing a political machine of rural supporters. Becoming a power in the state Democratic party, in 1890 the "One-eyed Plowboy" urged voters to "spit out of your mouths" candidates allegedly arraigned against the farmers' interests, and he rode into power. As governor of the state in 1890-1894, and afterward, he dictated all legislation. Some of his policies comported with those of the Populists of the period. Thus he appointed a commission to fix railroad rates; in 1896 he managed to institute the primary system of nominating Democratic candidates (as distinguished from the old convention system) to enable a broader spectrum of the white voters to name candidates; and he won tax equalization and education measures. However, his determination to make blacks second-class citizens had less in common with populism. Tillman's most original program was his pioneer Dispensary, which gave the state sole right to sell alcoholic liquors.
In 1896, having named his successor as governor, Tillman won a seat in the U.S. Senate; his assertion that he would "stick my pitchfork into [President Grover Cleveland's] old ribs" appropriately introduced him to the national audience. In Washington his unbridled scorn for blacks divided both liberals and conservatives. Tillman's hatred of President Theodore Roosevelt became a major motif in his career. Nevertheless, his exposé of the inordinate profits gained by steel manufacturers for government ships, his battle for naval expansion, and, most important, his work to revitilize the Interstate Commerce Commission through the Hepburn Act (1906) gave him status among those working for progressive measures.
Although Tillman remained a senator and a figure in South Carolina politics, he loomed largest in his last decade as the prototype of New South politicians like James K. Vardaman in Mississippi and the later Jeff Davis of Arkansas. Both roused their poor white constituents for progressive social measures but also for the suppression of black civil rights. Tillman died on July 3, 1918, in Washington.
Further Reading
The authority on Tillman is Francis B. Simkins: see his The Tillman Movement in South Carolina (1926) and Pitchfork Ben Tillman, South Carolinian (1944).
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Benjamin Ryan Tillman |
Tillman, Benjamin Ryan, 1847-1918, U.S. Senator from South Carolina (1895-1918), b. Edgefield co., S.C. A farmer, he became the leader of the backcountry whites in South Carolina and fostered their discontent with the ruling tidewater aristocracy. Supported by the Farmers' Alliance, he was elected governor in 1890 and served two terms (1890-94). His victory meant the downfall of Wade Hampton (1818-1902). Tillman greatly advanced agricultural education (Clemson and Winthrop colleges were opened) and railroad regulation. He was responsible for the adoption of the dispensary law, whereby the state controlled the sale of liquor. He dominated the state constitutional convention of 1895, which adopted rules virtually disfranchising South Carolina blacks. Tillman defended the use of force to prevent blacks from voting. Many of his measures reflected the influence of Populism. In 1894, Tillman was elected Democratic U.S. Senator. In the Senate he was the champion of the Southern farmer and allied himself with the Populists against the currency program of President Cleveland. He vigorously attacked Cleveland in the Democratic convention of 1896 and gave support to William Jennings Bryan and free silver. He earned the nickname Pitchfork Ben when he threatened to stick his pitchfork into Cleveland. Although Tillman was at odds with President Theodore Roosevelt, he helped secure passage of the Hepburn rate bill for railroads. In general he supported Woodrow Wilson's administration, particularly Josephus Daniels's naval expansion program.
Bibliography
See biography by F. B. Simkins (1944, repr. 1964); F. B. Simkins, The Tillman Movement in South Carolina (1926, repr. 1964).
| Wikipedia: Benjamin Tillman |
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Benjamin R. Tillman
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| In office 1890 – 1894 |
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| Preceded by | John Peter Richardson III |
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| Succeeded by | John Gary Evans |
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United States Senator
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| In office 1895 – 1918 |
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| Preceded by | Matthew Butler |
| Succeeded by | Christie Benet |
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| Born | August 11, 1847 Trenton, South Carolina |
| Died | July 3, 1918 (aged 70) Washington, D.C. |
| Nationality | American |
| Political party | Democratic |
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 in office. Combative, vitriolic, and openly racist, Tillman's views were a matter of national controversy.
Tillman was a member of the Democratic Party. Tillman also was a founder of Clemson University and served as one of its earliest trustees.
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Biography
Tillman, of English 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 community. He was present at the Hamburg Massacre in July 1876, during which an African-American federal militia was overthrown, its arms seized, and after surrender 6 members killed in cold blood by a group of armed white citizens led by Tillman's fellow "Red Shirts."
Governor of South Carolina
Presenting himself as the friend of ordinary white farmers, "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman took over the South Carolina Farmers Alliance, and used the organization to advance his political ambitions. He was elected Governor of South Carolina in 1890, and served from December 1890 to December 1894. He helped establish Clemson College and Winthrop College while in office, and the Tillman Hall on each campus is named in his honor. When the Alliance founded the Populist Party on the Ocala Demands, Tillman arranged for the South Carolina Democratic Party to adopt the platform, though he refused to endorse the "sub-treasury," the Populists' most ambitious economic proposal, or to countenance any appeal to black voters. The strategy prevented the development of an independent Populist Party and the biracial politics of North Carolina, thus assuring white control through the dominant, white Democratic Party.
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)
U.S. Senate
Tillman was elected to the United States Senate in 1894, succeeding Senator Matthew Butler, who had also been directly involved in the Hamburg Massacre. Tillman would be re-elected three more times, and would hold office from 1895 to his death in 1918. A hotheaded and intemperate debater, Tillman became known as "Pitchfork Ben" after a 1896 Senate speech in which he made several references to pitchforks, and threatened to "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 and his counterpart from South Carolina.[1] As a result, the Senate added to its rules the provision that "No senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator."[2] He was also barred from the White House.[3]
He became the chairman of the Committee on Revolutionary Claims (57th through 59th Congresses); served on the Committee on Five Civilized Tribes of Indians (61st and 62nd Congresses); and the Committee on Naval Affairs (63rd through 65th Congresses). During World War I, impatient with the Navy's requests for larger battleships every year, he ordered the United States Navy to design "maximum battleships," the largest battleships that they could use.
Tillman took the lead in railroad regulation, though his foe Republican President Theodore Roosevelt out-maneuvered him in passage of the Hepburn Act of 1906. Tillman was the primary sponsor of the Tillman Act, the first federal campaign finance reform law, which was passed in 1907 and banned corporate contributions in federal political campaigns.
Tillman was the younger brother of George Dionysius Tillman (1826 - 1902), a U.S. Representative from South Carolina, serving from 1879 to 1893 (with one interruption).
Senator Tillman died in office in Washington, D.C. and is buried in Ebenezer Cemetery, Trenton, South Carolina. A statue of him is outside the South Carolina State House.[1] Tillman Hall at Clemson University is also named in his honor as an early trustee of the university.
Racism
Tillman opposed American annexation of the Philippines because he feared an influx of non-white immigrants would result, undermining white racial purity. 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.
Tillman also once said that "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."[1]
Reacting to news that Booker T. Washington had dined at the White House with President Theodore Roosevelt and his family, Tillman predicted, "The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again."[2]
References
- Burton, Orville Vernon (1985). In My Father's House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-1619-1. New social history; online edition
- Kantrowitz, Stephen (2000). Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-2530-1.
- Stephen Kantrowitz. "Ben Tillman and Hendrix McLane, Agrarian Rebels: White Manhood, 'The Farmers,' and the Limits of Southern Populism." Journal of Southern History. 66#3 (2000) pp 497+. in JSTOR; online edition
- Logan, Rayford W. (1997) [1965]. The Betrayal of the Negro, from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80758-0. This is an expanded edition of Logan's 1954 book The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877-1901.
- Simkins, Francis Butler (1926). The Tillman Movement in South Carolina. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. online edition
- Simkins, Francis Butler (2002) [1944]. Pitchfork Ben Tillman, South Carolinian. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 1-57003-477-X.
- Simon, Bryant (1998). A Fabric of Defeat: The Politics of South Carolina Millhands, 1910-1948. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-2401-1. online edition
- ^ a b Herbert, Bob (2008-01-22). "The Blight That Is Still With Us". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/opinion/22herbert.html?hp. Retrieved 2008-01-22.
- ^ Kennedy, Randall. Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. Pantheon. ISBN 0-375-42172-6. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/nigger.htm.
External links
- "Their own Hotheadedness": Tillman speech in Senate advocating disenfranchisement of blacks and lynching of those who protested
- "The White Man's Burden" as Prophecy. Tillman speech in Senate denouncing U.S. imperialism in the Philippines on humanitarian and patriotic grounds
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| Preceded by John Peter Richardson III |
Governor of South Carolina 1890 – 1894 |
Succeeded by John Gary Evans |
| United States Senate | ||
| Preceded by Matthew Butler |
United States Senator from South Carolina 1895 – 1918 |
Succeeded by Christie Benet |
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Mentioned in
- Wade Hampton (Confederate general)
- Congressional Record
- Social Darwinism (American history)
- the South (region, United States)
