"The Leading White Men of Edgefield"
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<p>“The leading white men of Edgefield decided to seize the first opportunity that the Negroes might offer them to provoke a riot and teach the Negroes a lesson by having the whites demonstrate their superiority by killing as many of them as was justifiable.” — Benjamin Tillman</p>
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<p>So who were these "leading white men," and to what lengths were they willing to go to "teach the Negroes a lesson?"</p>
<p>One of them was Martin Witherspoon Gary, a former Brigadier General in the Confederate States Army (CSA). Gary assumed a leading role in the Democratic Party's efforts to elect <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Hampton_III" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Wade Hampton III</a> as governor during the height of Reconstruction. Black eligible voters outnumbered whites in South Carolina. Gary engineered a plan to suppress Black voters via intimidation and violence.</p>
<p><img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*zmAu08S2u4lz-vQBs0Hmjg.jpeg" style="height:1050px; width:700px" /></p>
<p>By Unknown author — <a href="https://repository.duke.edu/dc/strong?utf8=%E2%9C%93&amp%3Bq=Martin+Witherspoon+Gary&amp%3Bsearch_field=all_fields" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">https://repository.duke.edu/dc/strong?utf8=%E2%9C%93&amp;q=Martin+Witherspoon+Gary&amp;search_field=all_fields</a>, Public Domain, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11375383" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11375383</a></p>
<p>Another leading white man was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Butler" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Matthew Calbraith Butler</a>, a former Major General in the CSA. Butler's grandfather, as did his father, served in the House of Representatives before the war. One uncle was a U.S. Senator, and another was once Governor of South Carolina. One of his cousins, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Brooks" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Preston Brooks</a>, assaulted Senator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sumner" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Charles Sumner</a> in 1856 on the floor of the U.S. Senate with a cane, so there's that. But by heritage alone, Matthew Butler was a leading white man.</p>
<p><a href="https://williamspivey.medium.com/the-leading-white-men-of-edgefield-2722426c3b6e"><strong>Learn More</strong></a></p>