Williamsburg County, South Carolina - Chapter 32: Williamsburg, U. S. A., 1865, 1923

Williamsburg District on May 1, I860, was the most Southern of all the South. Every man was a cotton planter. Several were physicians, a half dozen were merchants, two or three were lawyers, but every one owned and operated a plantation by virtue of African slave labor. There were practically no "poor whites" in the district. All of this breed had gone away into the far West and become mili¬ tant abolitionists. Williamsburg then placed its trust in cotton and believed that it was king of the earth. The district did not even produce a sufficiency of corn and pork to supply its needs, although corn would grow with little cultivation and hogs would increase and fatten in the swamps without any care from man. Williamsburg preferred to produce cotton and from the proceeds of its sale to purchase whatever else it needed or desired. Wil¬ liamsburg then was drunk with material prosperity and did not consider the danger incident to the production of one article. Xor does it seem that Williamsburg remem¬ bered that less than three generations before that time the world had lived for countless generations without using cotton products.

The people of Williamsburg had passed through three generations without doing manual labor. Their hands were untutored and soft and their minds were overcome by the delusion that working with the hands was dis¬ honorable and consistent only with the condition of slav¬ ery. While negro slavery had brought a kind of pros¬ perity to the South, it had undermined the foundation of substantial life and the fall was inevitable.

It must have been that Williamsburg District on May 1, 1865, was one of the saddest spots in the world. Be¬ tween May 1, 1861 and May 1, 1865, Williamsburg Dis- trict furnished twelve hundred able bodied men to the Confederate Army. This was more in number than it had men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. Of these twelve hundred, more than three hundred were killed in battle or died of disease and more than three hundred of the remainder had been severelv wounded in action. A considerable number had been so seriously weakened by the hardships of the camp that they were semi-invalids for the rest of their davs. Of those Confederate soldiers who returned strong and healthy from the War, few actually knew anything about agriculture and stock raising, nor had the old men and the women who remained on the plantations of Williamsburg learned very much about these things during the War. Over¬ seers and slaves had been most largely responsible for the cotton raising in Williamsburg. Slaves had, as a general rule, remained loyal to their plantations during the War and the usual conditions had obtained. The hands of the white people of Williamsburg were still soft and their muscles untrained on May 1, 1865.

The Emancipation Proclamation, which had been pro¬ mulgated as a war measure by President Lincoln on Jan¬ uary 1, 1863, became effective in the Southern States as their territory came under the rule of martial law by the United States forces. Until May 1, 1865, Williamsburg's Confederate law did not succumb. A few days before that time some of the farsighted men of the district re¬ alized what fearful conditions might result from the com¬ plete collapse of the Confederate Government and re¬ quested the United States military commander at George¬ town to station some troops at Kingstree for the pro¬ tection of the people of the County. This was done.

When Captain Blake and his company of regular troops of the United States Army arrived at Kingstree, these soldiers immediately satisfied the best element in the district that the community should be controlled accord- ing to the rule of reason and in harmony with the highest ideals of the section. These troops most agreeably surprised the substantial citizens of Williamsburg as well as certain recently freed slaves who had expected these Yankee soldiers to consort with them and to effect their ne¬ farious designs. These soldiers advised and virtually re¬ quired negro slaves in the district to remain on their respec¬ tive plantations and complete the cultivation and harvest¬ ing of the crop that had already been planted. These troops maintained order and compelled the negroes to conform even to a severer code than their masters had required. An insolent or "uppish" negro found no com¬ fort or consolation in this Yankee camp, and frequently a former master was seen pleading for mercy for an of¬ fender. The venerable Samuel Ruffin Mouzon, whose family history and natural ability assure sound judgement, said in 1922, "This military law just after the War gaA7e South Carolina the best government it has ever had." This opinion seems to prevail so far as Williamsburg is concerned among the few remaining men who were mature in that far away period.

During the military occupation of Williamsburg, the same civil officials who had been chosen under the Con¬ federate Government continued to exercise the functions of their several offices under the direction of and with but little interference from the Federal soldiers in the district.

Political, social, and economic conditions in Williams¬ burg at the close of 1865 were sufficiently severe to test to the uttermost any people who ever lived on these mun¬ dane plains. Half of its virile young manhood had been sacrificed to the god of war and every home in the land was a house of mourning. Its heroic dead were already dust in Virginia and Tennessee and Georgia, but its liv¬ ing sacrifices moved about with their empty sleeves falling limp by their sides and crying continuously out of their silence. The natural rulers of the district saw above them always a stronger force than they could control. How¬ ever faithful and efficient this military government may have been and however closely its commanders may have followed the best light before them, those people, who had hewn out of primeval forests this pleasant land and who had paid for its political freedom and independence with their own blood, could not find peace and rest in other than their own law. Economic conditions were inde¬ scribable. For more than a year Williamsburg had no money as a medium of exchange and primitive barter obtained. The Federal troops stationed at Kingstree immediately after Appamattox brought the first money that would pass as currency in the district and through these Federal troops for about six months came nearly all of the money in circulation in this section.

The natives of Williamsburg had a sufficient amount to eat all during the year 1865, but there were many refu¬ gees who came here from the coast absolutely penniless. There was some suffering for food among these people while their condition was unknown to the normal resi¬ dents.

Samuel Ruffin Mouzon, who then lived and now lives on the Mouzon plantation eight miles west of Kingstree, was passing along the streets of Kingstree soon after the coming of the Union soldiers when he was accosted by Major Atkinson, a refugee lawyer from Georgetown, who had brought his family here to escape Potter-made con¬ ditions in Georgetown. Says Mr. Mouzon, "Major Atkin¬ son told me that his children were crying for bread and that he must have something for them to eat and that no money could be had and that he was helpless." Mr. Mou¬ zon went home and immediately sent Major Atkinson a bushel of meal, two hams, and a fat beef steer, writing him that he might pay for these things whenever it was convenient. A few days later when Mr. Mouzon was in Kingstree, Major Atkinson gave him some money, which he placed in his pocket and did not count until reaching home. He then found that Major Atkinson had paid him $49.00. Mr. Mouzon took $9.00 hack to Major Atkinson, since prior to that time they had agreed on $40.00 as a price for the steer. Major Atkinson declined to accept the $9.00 on the ground that old Simon had been given the head, liver, and lights of the beef for butchering, that he had kept one hind quarter for himself and sold the remainder of the beef for $53.00 to the Yankees. Mr. Mouzon says that he had more than one hundred head of cattle in Pudding Swamp at that time.

However distressing conditions were at this time, ob¬ servant ones saw beneath the lowest depth already reached a lower depth yawning to receive them. Alien military rule seemed to tax these high spirited Anglo-Saxons to the absolute limit, yet hating, unrestrained abolitionists had not done their worst. President Andrew Johnson undertook to execute Lincoln's reconstruction policy in the South, but he was no stronger than a hundred other men about him who had hate in their hearts and vengeance in their hands.

The reconstruction policy advocated by such Republi¬ can leaders as Governor Andrew of Massachusetts was thus summarized by him on January 2, 1866 : first, prose¬ cute peace as vigorously as we have prosecuted war; sec¬ ond, inflict no humiliation, require no humiliation of the South ; third, enlist the sympathy and service of the natu¬ ral leaders of the South in the work of reconstruction. For advocating this policy towards the South, Governor Andrew's name was stricken from the list of the Republi¬ can party leaders and the reconstruction Republican Con¬ gress, ignoring and over ruling the Executive, proceeded without let or hindrance to wreak its policy of vengeance on the Southern States.

This Congress made a condition precedent to the readmission of the Southern States into the Union that they should adopt constitutions and organize and then submit to the Congress the condition that the Congress might determine whether or not the petitioning state had con¬ formed and was worthy of readmission. This Republi¬ can Congress took the command of the army out of the hands of the President and decreed that Federal troops should remain in the subdued Southern States so long as it willed. This Congress passed laws granting suffrage to every male inhabitant in the South over twenty-one years of age and not attainted by felony, excepting certain classes of men who had participated in the War. This Congress directed that Federal troops should be stationed in the South to effect this suffrage policy. Under these laws, Williamsburg District had more than five recently emancipated negro slaves to every one white man who could vote. The State of South Carolina had more negroes than whites who could cast ballots and thus determine the constitution and the laws required for readmission into the Union.

democracy is for angels." Thousands of years of re¬ corded history and further ages of reliable tradition show that unlimited democracy is impossible in any consider¬ able state. The beautiful so called democracies which have flourished from time to time along the ages have all been so limited that in fact thev were aristocracies. This act of the Republican Congress in attempting to create an unlimited democracy had no precedent in history and will probably never be used as authority for foisting such an impossible scheme on any other people until the end of the world. This Congress undertook to place within the hands of negroes, who could neither read nor write, and whose experiences had been limited to slaving services on plantations, and whose ancestors had four generations before them been cannibals on the Congo, the rule and domination of the fairest land on earth. White men owned this fair land by virtue of birth right from worthy establishing ancestry.

LTnder the terms dictated for suffrage by this Repub¬ lican Congress, there gathered in Columbia a convention in 1868 which adopted a constitution for the control and the government of South Carolina. This Constitution came out of the brains of men who were aliens in the State and from those men who, though born and raised within its bounds, had been attainted by the State, and hated the land in which they first saw the light. This Constitution was a monstrosity in the eyes of the men who had made the State and who loved it. This Constitution was sub¬ mitted to the Congress created voters of South Carolina for three days, April 14, 15, 16, 1868. Unspeakable Re¬ publican politicians herded ignorant and illiterate negroes to the polls and voted them for the adoption of this Con¬ stitution. And this was the first dav in the liistorv of the

State that the Constitution had ever been submitted to the people for ratification. Elections were held under - this Constitution and General Robert Iv. Scott, a carpet bagger from Ohio, was chosen Governor of the State and a "black and tan" Legislature selected.

On July 29, 1868, General R. S. Canbv, Federal military commander in the State of South Carolina, issued Gen¬ eral Order No. 145 in which he stated, that "all authority conferred upon and heretofore exercised by the com¬ mander of the second military district under the afore¬ cited law of March 2, 1867 (the first of the Reconstruction acts) is hereby remitted to the civil authorities consti¬ tuted and organized in the States of North Carolina and South Carolina, under the Constitution adopted by the people thereof, and approved by the Congress of the United States."