Moses of South Carolina: A Jewish Scalawag during Radical Reconstruction

• 5. Governor Moses
• Chapter
• Johns Hopkins University Press
• pp. 148-177
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CHAPTER FIVE
Governor Moses

IN 1872, THOUGH THE FUTURE might be problematic for South Carolina’s Republicans, the present was bright. The federal government’s proceedings against the Ku Klux Klan and other paramilitary forces associated with the Democrats made it virtually impossible for the Democratic party to mount a credible campaign in 1872. With the Klan temporarily quiet, the Democrats could not hope to intimidate black voters or to prevent the Republican party’s black militias from maintaining physical control of the ballot boxes—and thus the capacity to determine the outcome of the voting—in most South Carolina counties. Hence, the Democrats did not bother to nominate a gubernatorial candidate and refrained from competing even for local offices in some counties.

At the same time, factional struggles within the Republican party gave rise to a party split and the presence of two Republican tickets on the statewide ballot. The Republican gubernatorial nomination had been seriously sought by three individuals, Frank Moses and two of the state’s most prominent carpetbaggers, Attorney General Daniel Chamberlain and Reuben Tomlinson, the state auditor. Tomlinson was a Quaker from Pennsylvania. He had come to South Carolina in 1862 to educate freed slaves on the Sea Islands that had been seized by the Union army at the beginning of the war. After the Confederate surrender, Tomlinson was appointed head of the Freedmen’s Bureau’s educational efforts in the state and was later elected to the state legislature.

Tomlinson and his supporters were allied with the national Liberal Republican faction that broke from the Republican convention and nominated Horace Greeley for president. Hoping to win Democratic support, Greeley and the Liberal Republicans attacked the corruption associated with the first Grant administration and called for an end to the military occupation of the South. With such a platform, of course, Tomlinson had no hope of winning South Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial nomination. Federal troops were critical to the party’s continued existence in the state. Accordingly, Tomlinson and his small group of allies, led by former governor Orr, bolted the convention and organized their own conclave. This breakaway convention endorsed Tomlinson’s candidacy. The defectors hoped to attract the support of Democrats and at least some Republicans. This was mere wishful thinking. South Carolina’s Republican voters were mainly black and now voted under the direction of the militias. The state’s Democrats, for their part, had decided to boycott the election. Tomlinson received barely a third of the popular vote.

As to Chamberlain, the attorney general could count on the support of many of the party’s carpetbaggers such as Comptroller General John Naegle, and some of the scalawags. Though few in number, by virtue of education and contacts in the North these individuals continued to play an important role in the Republican party’s leadership stratum. Like Chamberlain himself, many of the party’s white officials and activists viewed Republican dependence on federal troops and black voters as a situation that would be untenable in the long run. And like Chamberlain himself, many white Republicans had little love for blacks and craved acceptance in polite (white) society. Unlike Tomlinson’s bolters, though, Chamberlain’s followers understood that in the short run they could not hope for more than a small number of white votes and would need substantial support among blacks if they were to have any hope of success. Chamberlain also understood that he could not afford to offend the national Republican administration that controlled federal patronage and the Union army.

Accordingly, Chamberlain and his followers spoke in a political code that would be understood by the state’s white citizens but would not be overtly offensive to blacks. Chamberlain spoke out for political reform, economy in government, and an end to corruption. In fact, Chamberlain and his reformers were no less corrupt than those they attacked. Their goal was not to rid South Carolina of corrupt influences. Corruption was a code word for the policies, programs, and practices associated with black participation in the state’s political affairs. In opposing corruption, the reform wing of the Republican party was signaling to white voters that it was prepared to delimit black political involvement and open the way for expansion of white political power, albeit under Republican auspices.

Finally, there was Moses. With a solid base of support among blacks—who comprised 115 of the convention’s 148 delegates— there was never any doubt that Moses would secure the Republican nomination. Moses had spent several months actively campaigning. He attended the military balls organized by black militia companies and gave numerous parties for his black supporters. The white press made much of the fact that in February 1872 Moses was billed for six cases of champagne, six cases of whiskey, one case of brandy, and a cask of ale. Later he purchased six boxes of cigars, another case of champagne, twelve cases of carbonated water, and five thousand cheap cigars.¹

Moses was strongly supported by the Union League, whose state president, Francis Cardozo, was nominated for secretary of state on the Moses ticket. Another Union League veteran and black Republican stalwart, Richard Gleaves, was nominated for lieutenant governor. Moses’s name was placed in nomination by H. J. Maxwell, a black delegate from Orangeburg. Maxwell praised Moses as “a native Carolinian of high family, character, education and culture, who, upon reconstruction, had come forward to lead the poor colored men to self-government while [others] held aloof. His record, since, had been honest, consistent and brilliant,” Maxwell averred.² Moses’s nomination was seconded by his old political ally R. H. Cain. Cain told the convention that although Moses was a member of a prominent South Carolina family, he had become a champion of the poor and oppressed and was, thus, the candidate of the “bone and sinew” of the state.³ As Moses accepted the nomination, he declared that so long as God gave him strength he would make his duty to the state the guiding star of his political and personal life.⁴ According to white Democrats, who saw sexual implications in this relationship between a Jew and blacks, Moses secured the nomination by providing prostitutes for the black delegates to the Republican state convention. Moses had “cultivated the black women and the high brown of his state. When the Republican convention met . . . the ladies supporting Moses circulated among the boys to gratify passions for the asking.”⁵

After Moses was nominated, about a third of the delegates carried out their threat to leave the convention and proceeded to nominate Tomlinson on a Reform Republican ticket. To some extent, the split in the Republican camp simply reflected clashes of personal ambition. At its heart, however, the split emerged from a fundamental division in the Republican camp—a division involving race. Race divided the Republicans in two ways. It split blacks and whites, and at the same time, divided white Republicans with divergent attitudes toward blacks. Much of the state Republican leadership was white, while virtually all of the party’s voting strength was black. In the war’s immediate aftermath, this division could not be avoided. There simply were not enough African Americans with the education and experience needed to operate a political party and state government. In the beginning, the help of carpetbaggers and scalawags was essential.

By 1872, however, blacks had learned a good deal about the practice of politics. Hundreds had served in state and county posts, and hundreds more had served as officials in the Union League and the state militia. It was not long before black politicians began to resent their junior partnership in the Republican party and demanded a greater share of the state’s top leadership positions. Black politicians said that the Republican party had been too much “a black man’s party with a white man’s offices.”⁶ Struggles between black and white factions over nominations, appointments, and the allocation of state funds broke out in South Carolina as they did in a number of southern states during this period. Blacks were no longer content to be the Republican party’s “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” while white Republicans complained they were now being subjected to a new “color line.”

As early as 1869, a coalition of black legislators including Rainey, Whipper, Elliott, Nash, and DeLarge had forced Governor Scott to appoint an African American to head the state land office. By 1872, blacks were demanding and receiving a larger share of both the top statewide elective offices and state legislative seats. In the first Republican campaign after the 1868 constitution, the party nominated only one black candidate for a statewide elective office—Francis Cardozo for secretary of state. Four years later, on the Moses ticket, the Republican party nominated blacks for four of the seven statewide positions. African Americans were nominated for and subsequently elected to the office of lieutenant governor, secretary of state, state treasurer, and adjutant and inspector general. Four of the state’s five members of the U.S. House of Representatives were black. Republicans were also slating blacks for an ever larger share of the state’s legislative seats. In 1868, though they cast nearly 100 percent of the Republican party’s votes, blacks accounted for only 88 of 135, or 65 percent, of the South Carolina House and Senate seats held by the Republicans. By 1872 blacks held 106 of 130, or 81 percent of the Republican seats. These changes in the distribution of political power were accompanied not only by conflicts between black and white Republicans but also by divisions within the white Republican leadership. White carpetbaggers and scalawags could see that their role in the Republican party would soon be sharply curtailed. There were virtually no white Republican voters in the state, and as the black leadership stratum grew and gained political confidence, their need for white allies would inevitably diminish. For some white Republicans, this was an inevitable process, to be neither feared nor resisted.

Moses, for example, was firmly allied with the leading black politicians of the day, including Cardozo, Cain, and Elliott, and he counted on their support in campaigns and in the state legislature. The 1872 Moses ticket reflected these alliances. Moses led the state’s first black-majority ticket. For other Republicans, however, the solution to the problem of growing black power was a realignment of political forces that might bring at least some white voters into the Republican party. Such Republicans generally called for reform and an end to “corruption” in government. By this they meant the adoption of policies that would placate whites and reduce the role of blacks in the political process. One practitioner of this tactic was Attorney General Daniel Chamberlain who courted white support by calling for reduced state taxation and spending as well as an end to corruption.

It was this division among white Republicans on issues of race that, more than anything else, led to the split at the 1872 Republican state convention. Tomlinson’s dissenters had no chance of winning the general election in 1872, and in the absence of a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, the Moses ticket won handily. Most white voters stayed home, professing to see no difference between the two candidates. The Edgefield Advertiser advised the “good people” of South Carolina to “simply look upon the entire contest as a struggle between thieves and plunderers, and have no preference between the combatants. . . . Let us pray!”⁷ South Carolina’s Democrats were biding their time while divisions among the state’s Republicans continued to fester.

Once nominated, Moses campaigned vigorously to make certain that his black supporters went to the polls in adequate numbers. Moses relied heavily on the state militias, many of whose officers he had appointed in his capacity as adjutant general. Moses had allowed these officers considerable latitude in their handling of the state funds allocated to their units. This gave Moses a loyal following in what had become the most important element of the Republican electoral machine. For good measure, in his capacity as Speaker, Moses had exercised considerable influence over the appointment of each county’s election commissioners. The majority of them were Moses supporters and likely to make certain that votes were counted in a manner favorable to their candidate.

Despite effectively controlling the state’s electoral machinery, Moses campaigned vigorously among black voters statewide. As was typical of campaigns during that era—North and South—Moses and his agents handed out gifts to the voters who came to see him. Poor blacks received shirts and small bags of hominy meal. Some were given small-denomination state pay certificates. These were state notes that could be cashed by the bearer and were often used as political favors. Everywhere, boisterous crowds of blacks yelled, “Hoo-ray for General F. J. Moses Jr.”⁸

Even after his election, Moses continued to cultivate close ties to his impoverished black constituents. His former hometown newspaper, the Sumter News, castigated Governor Moses for

devoting himself day and night, and with tireless alacrity, to corporal works of mercy, feeding the hungry, with a little flour here, a modicum of meal and grist there, and a small amount of sugar and coffee yonder; clothing the naked with breeches, jackets, waistcoats and cravats; shoeing the bare-footed; covering the hatless and bonnetless; and sending tea, chicken broth, painkiller, Dalby’s Carminative, and other good and medicinal things to the sick and afflicted among his colored brethren and sisters. His charity was overflowing, and his good deeds are loudly applauded, by every colored tongue in the community. [The News was furious that] funds extorted from the honest, industrious taxpayers of the county should be thus wasted upon the . . . good-for-nothing vagabonds of Sumter County . . . because they happen to be friends and supporters of “our native young governor.”⁹

Governor Moses

Moses was sworn in by his father, the chief justice, in December 1872. His inaugural address consisted of the usual promises and platitudes. He averred that he would faithfully discharge his duties to all the people of the state. He sought to prove “by the enactment of just laws and their impartial administration” that in South Carolina “the highest private liberty” was “consonant with the greatest public good.”¹⁰ For the most part, the state’s white press professed to be satisfied with the new governor’s remarks and hopeful that he would pursue a wise course of action in office. The Marion Star said Moses should be given a fair chance to be a good governor. “The plan of giving a man a bad name and then gibbeting him has not worked well in South Carolina.”¹¹ Similarly, the Darlington Southerner hoped that Moses might “disappoint the evil prognostics of his enemies.”¹² Moses’s hometown newspaper, however, claimed to know Moses too well to be taken in by his rhetoric. “We hope for the best from the new regime,” opined the Sumter News, “but we have, however, such implicit and abiding confidence, in this gentleman and his associates, that we do not hesitate to assert that they will renew the work of plunder, if they dare attempt it.”¹³ This was the opening shot in what soon became an unrelenting attack on the Moses administration by the state’s white press.

Moses’s first task on assuming office was to address the state’s financial crisis. The tax base was being eroded by the ongoing decline in land values coupled with increased tax resistance on the part of white land owners. In 1871 nearly one-third of the state’s taxes, more than $1 million, were uncollected. A measure of mismanagement, coupled with four years of attacks by the Democrats—and some Republicans—had ruined South Carolina’s credit. The state could not meet its current obligations in such critical areas as education and security. Immediately after taking office, Moses told the legislature that there was not enough money in the state treasury to meet the state’s obligations.

For four years, the Scott administration had borrowed heavily to finance the state’s ambitious plans for education, land redistribution, and economic development, as well as to establish a large black military force. There was, to be sure, a certain amount of fraud associated with South Carolina’s financial affairs. State funds were deposited in a bank established by a group of state officials; appropriations were diverted from their intended use; more bonds were issued than authorized; and so on. These minor frauds, however, could not account for the state’s financial difficulties. The real problem was that for four years the state’s credit had been subjected to a relentless attack. South Carolina could borrow only at extremely high rates of interest and was compelled to sell its bonds at a steep discount, usually less than 50 cents on the dollar. Beginning in 1868, the white press had warned that the state would never be able to pay its “bayonet bond” debts issued by a “bogus legislature.” This media campaign was bolstered by various taxpayers unions and taxpayers conventions that trumpeted the same message and soon convinced the northern media and northern investors that South Carolina was an extremely poor credit risk.

At the beginning of the Moses administration, there was much discussion about the idea of debt repudiation. In the late nineteenth century, it was not uncommon for states to renege on all or part of their debt. After the Civil War, at least twelve states, including Minnesota and Michigan, were forced to repudiate debts, and others came close to so doing.¹⁴ South Carolina had already stopped paying interest on its bonds and bondholders were afraid the state might default on all its debt. Moses proposed that the state issue about $8 million in new bonds, which would be offered to bond-holders in place of their existing bonds. By reducing its debt to $8 million, the state could afford to resume paying interest and bond-holders, for their part, would receive some value for their currently worthless paper.

Most of the state’s bondholders indicated that they would not accept Moses’s offer and demanded that the state resume interest payments on the existing bonds. In April 1873 Morton, Bliss, and Company, New York bankers who had purchased several million dollars worth of South Carolina bonds at a deep discount, demanded that the state’s comptroller levy a new tax to pay the interest due on the bonds. The comptroller refused and the bank hired none other than former attorney general Daniel Chamberlain, now an attorney in private practice in Charleston, to take its case to court. The bank asked the court to issue a writ of mandamus ordering the state comptroller to levy the tax. A variety of taxpayer organizations intervened in the case asserting that the bonds in question had been fraudulently issued. The state, for its part, argued that the power to levy taxes had not been delegated to the comptroller but belonged, instead, to the state legislature. The court held that under South Carolina law, the comptroller had the power to levy a tax and issued an order of mandamus requiring him to raise taxes sufficiently to pay the next two installments on a portion of the state’s bonds.¹⁵

Whether this new tax could be collected any more successfully than the existing taxes was an open question. Rather than risk answering this question in the negative, Moses sought to begin the process of restoring the state’s credit. In October 1873 Moses called a special session of the state legislature to consider the debt problem. Moses informed the legislature that the state’s financial situation was much worse than his predecessor had said. The state owed its creditors some $15 million in long-term debt; $5.3 million in short-term “floating” debt; and an interest arrears of $2.3 million for a total of more than $22.6 million.¹⁶ This was a staggering sum, the equivalent of approximately 500 million in today’s dollars, and far more than a small and impoverished state could hope to repay.

Moses proposed a three-part solution to the debt crisis. First, he reminded the legislature of the ratification of a constitutional amendment during his last term as Speaker. This amendment provided that no further debt or obligation, “either by the loan of the credit of the state, by guarantee, endorsement or otherwise,” could be created by the legislature unless submitted to the state’s voters and approved by a two-thirds majority.¹⁷ Moses interpreted this to mean that the demands by some creditors that the state’s entire floating debt be funded at par value was out of the question. Because of the state’s poor credit rating, this debt had generally been sold below its nominal value and Moses asserted that to now fund it at par value would violate the state’s constitution by increasing the public debt of the state without the now-required popular referendum. Creditors would have to settle for less or nothing at all. Second, Moses asked the legislature to respond to the writ of mandamus requiring the comptroller to impose a new tax levy to support interest payments on the state’s bonds by depriving the state’s comptroller of the power to levy taxes. The legislature enacted the necessary legislation and the writ of mandamus was defeated.

Most important, Moses proposed a consolidation of the state’s outstanding debt. This entailed issuing new bonds in amounts equal to 50 percent of the face value of some $11.5 million of the state’s long-term debt. These new bonds would pay interest of 6 percent and would mature in twenty years.¹⁸ Moses reasoned that the state’s creditors would be willing to accept this nominal loss. The state’s bonds were selling at about fifteen cents on the dollar and no interest was being paid at all. “Now it is evident,” said Moses, “that it is to the interest of every bondholder that the debt be reduced in volume to a reasonable limit so that the payment of interest may be resumed.” Bondholders would benefit immediately because “while this new bond would represent upon its face a sum [less than] the face value of the old bond, the market value of the new bond would undoubtedly be . . . greater than the present value of the old.”¹⁹

At its special session, the legislature took no further action. At its regular session, though, later the same month, the legislature enacted Moses’s proposal in the form of a “consolidation act.” This act authorized the exchange of outstanding state bonds for new bonds, which would bear on their face the words “consolidation bonds,” equal to 50 percent of the face value of the bonds surrendered.²⁰ The legislature also invalidated some $6 million in bonds deemed to have been fraudulently issued. These two actions promised to reduce South Carolina’s bonded indebtedness by $10 million or more to a level that the state might be able to sustain.²¹ As Moses anticipated, the state’s creditors preferred a fraction of something to 100 percent of nothing and accepted the scaling down of the debt. To make certain that the state’s creditors would not balk, Moses had the legislature add a proviso to its funding bill declaring that the state would never levy a tax to support interest payments on any bonds covered by the act that were not exchanged for consolidation bonds.²²

Moses’s actions relieved, but did not fully resolve, the state’s fiscal problems. Over the next several years, the state encountered a number of stumbling blocks, including the failure of South Carolina Bank and Trust, in which hundreds of thousands of dollars in state funds had been deposited, recurrent charges of bond frauds, and several instances in which the state was briefly unable to collect sufficient taxes to meet its current interest payments.²³ Nevertheless, the actions of the Moses administration began the process through which South Carolina gradually recovered from the debt crisis of the early 1870s. By the end of Moses’s term as governor, South Carolina securities were considered a “good buy” in the financial marketplace.²⁴ And by the time the Democrats returned to power in 1876, the state’s debt had been reduced to a manageable $7.1 million.²⁵ The Robber Governor had begun the process of restoring South Carolina’s financial viability.

Integrating Public Institutions

Though South Carolina’s immediate fiscal crisis had been alleviated and the state’s long-term financial outlook had improved, in the short term the Moses administration lacked the financial resources to even consider new programs or initiatives. Moses hoped that restoring the state’s credit would allow the government to fund its schools and maintain the large militia forces on which it depended. One area, however, in which the Moses administration was able to take significant action was the integration of the university and other state educational institutions.

Under an act of 1869, the state university was prohibited from making “any distinction in the admission of students, or the management of the university on account of race, color or creed.”²⁶ However, between 1869 and 1873 no black students applied to the university and no black faculty sought appointments. The university was, in principle, open to blacks. In practice, it was understood that the university was open only to whites. Blacks who sought an education beyond the elementary level could attend one of the institutes established by various missionary societies or Claflin University in Orangeburg, which was supported by a wealthy Boston family and offered theological and teachers’ training. Some prominent white politicians suggested that the state university should remain an all-white institution and the Citadel Academy in Charleston might become an all-black college.²⁷

Although no blacks attended the state university, two members of the board of regents were black, and whites thought it was only a matter of time before blacks sought to take advantage of their formal right to enroll. White enrollments gradually declined in anticipation of this looming calamity. The father of two white students said, “I suppose that the S.C. University will go up the spout, under the new regime of the Carpet bagger and Scalawags and negroes.”²⁸

White fears of integrated educational facilities were realized in 1873. A new board of regents had been elected in 1872 consisting of four blacks and three whites, with Moses serving as the chairman. At the same time, the state legislature provided that the newly created State Normal School (teachers college), which would presumably enroll a great many black students, would be located in a building on the state university campus. University faculty members would be required to lecture to the Normal students and these students would also have the right to use the university library. Several professors resigned rather than teach blacks and the board replaced them with faculty members more sympathetic to black education.²⁹ Subsequently, the board dismissed several other professors who were known to oppose the admission of blacks to the university and brought in new faculty members, including Richard T. Greener, who was Harvard’s first black graduate.

In October 1873 the first black student arrived for classes at the state university. He was none other than Henry E. Hayne, a prominent Republican politician then serving as secretary of state. Hayne hoped to earn a medical degree at the university. The moment Hayne set foot on the campus, the three members of the university’s medical faculty resigned. In accepting their resignations the board issued a statement, signed by Moses and the other members, indicating that the board wished to place on the record its conviction “that the resignations of these gentlemen were caused by the admission as a student of the medical department of the University of . . . a gentleman against whom said professors can suggest no objection except, in their opinion, his race.”³⁰

South Carolina’s Democratic press denounced Hayne’s admission to the university. The Charleston News and Courier acknowledged that blacks had the abstract right to attend the university but, until now, had possessed a “wise” sense of propriety that had prevented them from taking advantage of this right. Now, the university would be destroyed without doing the Negroes “a particle of good.”³¹ The Chester Reporter claimed that Hayne “did not want to study medicine. He only entered for the purpose of submitting the professors to the test.” The professors, said the Reporter, had acted with “commendable dignity” in resigning.³²

Following Hayne’s matriculation, a number of other prominent black politicians, including Francis Cardozo, enrolled in the university. Like Hayne, these individuals hoped to demonstrate to the state’s blacks that the university was now open to them. Virtually all the school’s white students promptly left. Few blacks, however, could afford the costs associated with university attendance, and despite an effort by the state government to recruit South Carolinians then studying out of state, only a handful of students attended the school’s classes. Moses asked the state legislature for help, and early in 1874, the legislature, in one of its few new undertakings, provided for 124 scholarships of two hundred dollars each, distributed among the state’s counties, to help defray the living expenses of state university students. The Columbia Daily Phoenix denounced the scholarships as “a scheme to buy students . . . [that] was no doubt suggested by the practical difficulty that, notwithstanding the gates of the college are flung wide open . . . none have gone in.”³³

Many of the first scholarship students could not pass the university’s entrance exams and were sent for remedial work to the university’s preparatory department. Gradually, however, classrooms filled with students, including a number of poor up-country whites who had received scholarships. Overall, about 10 percent of the scholarships went to whites.³⁴ Moses informed the state legislature that the university was flourishing. He called it the “healthy child of the present administration” and expressed the hope that “the narrow spirit of bigotry and prejudice had been banished from its portals.”³⁵ Moses’s views were disputed by the News and Courier, which declared, “Governor Moses gives us ruin and calls it prosperity.”³⁶ Many white South Carolinians left the state to attend college elsewhere. Improbably enough, more than forty found their way to Union College in Schenectady, New York, which was happy to receive a tuition windfall.³⁷ Other white Carolinians remained in the school. Indeed, twelve of the twenty-three men who graduated from the university’s law school between 1873 and 1876 were white, and several went on to practice law in the state.³⁸

Black students benefited greatly from the instruction they received at the state university and from the scholarships that allowed them to attend college.³⁹ At least three of the faculty members brought in by the new administration were quite distinguished. William Main held a master’s degree in engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and was a well-known mining engineer. Fisk Brewer had taught ancient languages at Yale. Richard Greener later became a law professor at Howard University and a U.S. diplomat in Russia. Their students, who went on to become prominent members of the black community, included twelve ministers, eleven lawyers, ten college professors, five physicians, four diplomats, and many other professionals.⁴⁰ Whites did not consider these accomplishments to have any merit nor would they give the Moses administration credit for making higher education available to blacks for the first time in South Carolina’s history. To whites, the scholarships were simply another form of corruption that could be blamed on the Robber Governor. Soon after Democrats took control of the state in 1876, they closed the university and rid themselves of the scholarships— and the scholars.

As governor, Moses chaired the board governing South Carolina’s institute for the education of the deaf and blind located in Cedar Spring. In 1873 the board ordered the institute to accept black students and to teach them in the same classes and house them in the same facilities as white students. Rather than carry out this order, the officers and teachers of the institute resigned en masse and the facility was closed. Far from castigating the teachers and officials for abandoning their charges, the Democratic press claimed these events were evidence of the callousness and indifference of the Moses administration to the plight of the deaf and blind children of the state. In 1876 the Hampton administration reopened the institute with separate classrooms and dormitories for black and white children.

The Making of the Robber Governor

Bishop Gilbert Haven of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Massachusetts visited South Carolina in 1874 and returned impressed by the accomplishments of the Moses administration. He described new schools, the integrated state university, and a variety of state services available to poor black people.⁴¹ Most histories of South Carolina during Reconstruction, however, are influenced by the portrait of Moses and his allies carefully painted by his Democratic foes. William A. Dunning was the turn-of-the-century historian whose critique of Reconstruction inspired the eponymous “Dunning school” of historians who accepted as fact the version of events promulgated by conservative southern whites. Dunning reserved particular venom for Frank Moses. Under Moses, he claimed, South Carolina was “thoroughly Africanized.” The state had become a “shameless caricature of government” under the administration of this man of “notoriously bad character.”⁴² Another turn-of-the-century historian called Moses a “degenerate” who was “lost to every moral sense.” How else could his conversion to Radicalism be explained?⁴³ Even contemporary historians tend to gloss over accomplishments that might be credited to the Moses administration and devote virtually all their attention to the various forms of corruption linked to Moses and his political allies. To this day, in South Carolina, Moses retains the label given him by his enemies— the Robber Governor.

Moses and other Republican leaders did engage in various forms of corrupt activity. But they were not simply lining their own pockets. They were compelled to distribute jobs, money, and favors to mobilize popular support and maintain a party machine capable of competing against foes who were more experienced in the political realm, better organized, supported by a potent set of media allies, and ultimately, more proficient in the political uses of violence than the Republicans. What the Democratic press called corruption was one of the few tools available to the Republicans.

Democratic politicians and the Democratic press routinely attacked all the Republicans. They ridiculed the black politicians as buffoons who aped the manners of their white masters. They castigated the various carpetbaggers and scalawags as petty thieves Their most vicious and venomous attacks, however, were usually directed at Frank Moses. Day after day, week after week, South Carolina newspapers attacked the governor. They accused him of a string of vile crimes and declared that his middle initial, “J.,” stood for Judas. An entire paper, the Colleton Gazette, was founded by the Democrats for the express purpose of vilifying Frank Moses.⁴⁴ What made Moses a special target? He lived what Charles Sumner preached. Moses associated freely and openly with blacks. He had black friends. He invited blacks to his home. Whatever else they did, the other white Republicans did not violate the most fundamental tenet of South Carolina’s moral code. South Carolina whites were determined to prove, as Julian Buxton put it, “that a man who had betrayed his race to associate with the Negroes on terms of absolute equality, even social equality, was necessarily a moral degenerate.”⁴⁵

To fully illustrate Moses’s moral degeneracy, the white press engaged in what today would be called “opposition research.” The press carefully investigated his financial dealings, examined the intimate details of his personal life, and interviewed his associates, colleagues, neighbors, and friends looking for information that could be used against him. A “vast right-wing conspiracy” was organized against Frank Moses. Somehow, Moses’s personal financial records found their way into the pages of the Augusta Constitutionalist.⁴⁶ When Moses declared bankruptcy, the full details of every filing and disclosure were acquired by the Charleston News and Courier.⁴⁷ When Moses had a falling out with his friends, the Rollin sisters, the latter were persuaded to reveal every detail of their relationship with Moses to the eager readers of the Colleton Gazette.⁴⁸

In contemporary American politics, newspaper revelations of wrongdoing on the part of public officials are typically followed by demands for legislative hearings. The hearings, in turn, fuel demands for court proceedings and, perhaps, the incarceration of the unfortunate target of the process. Generally speaking, these revelations, hearings, and so forth do not arise accidentally. They are usually a carefully coordinated political tactic. I have elsewhere called this tactic RIP—revelation, investigation, and prosecution—and often enough it is a political epitaph for its subjects.⁴⁹ Contemporary Democrats and Republicans have used RIP attacks against one another quite regularly, often with considerable success. Rumors and revelations in the press led to the Watergate hearings, the Iran-Contra hearings, the Whitewater hearings, and so on. These hearings, in turn, have provided ammunition for the prosecution of government officials, led to a presidential resignation, and prompted the impeachment of a president. Most of those subjected to RIP attacks have almost certainly been guilty of some form of wrong-doing. But every politician, if not every adult, has at one time or another done something that, if fully investigated and revealed by the media, would be embarrassing, if not illegal.

Frank Moses was an easy target for these sorts of attacks. The Democratic press had little difficulty finding much to reveal, but the state legislature, firmly in Republican hands, would not cooperate by conducting hearings and investigations. Republican control of the legislature was, however, not an insurmountable problem.⁵⁰ The functional equivalents of legislative investigations were carried out by various taxpayers’ conventions organized by Moses’s Democratic opponents following up on the accusations and revelations trumpeted by the media. Late in 1873, after Moses had used a special legislative session to deprive the comptroller of the power to levy taxes, the Democratic media blasted the governor for his alleged financial improprieties and claimed that he planned to raise taxes himself. The Orangeburg Times demanded that citizens “make an effort to arrest this outrageous spoliation before you are hopelessly and ignominiously enslaved. . . . Protest at Washington against further taxation under such a filthy, disgusting loathsome state government and ask to be made a territorial dependency, or a conquered province, anything rather than the football of Moses and his crew.” The Times and other Democratic papers called for a convention that would investigate Moses’s crimes and identify remedies.⁵¹

Within a few weeks, a convention of citizens was called, consisting of those who were opposed to the “frauds and corruptions which prevail” and were in favor of “honest government with exact and equal justice to all.”⁵² The convention listened to testimony from various of Moses’s foes and found that the tax law was “cumbrous, obscure, and intricate.” Tax assessments, said the convention, were made improperly and frequently in secret. The administration had utterly ruined the credit of the state and corruption prevailed in nearly all the departments of the government. This same convention promoted the idea of encouraging white emigration from Europe to South Carolina to overcome white numerical inferiority in the state. The Democratic press was pleased that this convention of eminent and disinterested citizens had confirmed press accounts of events and demanded that something be done. As had been suggested by the press, the convention made provisions for the formation of “tax unions” in every county that would continue harassing the Moses administration. The Democratic press trumpeted the slogan “old men in the tax unions and young men in the rifle clubs.” The Republican press, for its part, averred that the taxpayers’ convention was the work of the former ruling class, which hoped to regain the power it had lost through secession. This response seemed closer to the truth.

Democrats could reveal and investigate, but they usually could not prosecute to complete the RIP process. Before 1876 most of the state’s law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies were in Republican hands. In 1873, however, a factional struggle within the Republican party led to Moses’s indictment on the serious charges of abetting fraud and grand larceny, charges that threatened to end his political career and, potentially, send him to prison.⁵³ Moses’s legal troubles were related to his attempt to gain control of a newspaper.⁵⁴ The Columbia Union-Herald was the state’s most important daily Republican newspaper.⁵⁵ Its publisher, Thaddeus Andrews, had decided to sell the paper, and Republican politicians were concerned about who the paper’s purchaser might be. Moses apparently heard a rumor that his opponents within the Republican party might acquire the Union-Herald. He said that he “heard from reliable sources that an attempt was being made to obtain control of the paper by those whose views did not coincide with [his] as to the financial policy to be pursued, and the adoption of which views would, therefore, in [his] opinion, have been injurious and hurtful.”⁵⁶ Moses determined that he would seek to acquire “political control” of the Union Herald and to use it as an instrument to counter attacks against his administration and publicize his own views.

Moses arranged a complex deal in which state funds would be used to acquire a half interest in the paper for the Republicans, which would, in effect, place the Union-Herald under his control. Before the transaction could be completed, however, Andrews lost control of the paper to his creditors, and Moses invalidated the state payment order that had been issued to Andrews. In the meantime, one of Andrews’s political cronies, John L. Humbert, the state-appointed treasurer of Orangeburg County, paid Andrews two thousand dollars based on the original payment order, which both men now knew to have been revoked. Humbert was arrested and charged with “defalcation,” or attempting to embezzle state funds. Unfortunately for Moses, the state solicitor whose jurisdiction encompassed Orangeburg was E. L. Butz, a white Republican who detested Moses and was allied with Daniel Chamberlain, who hoped to replace Moses as governor. The solicitor secured an indictment against Moses, charging him with having advised Humbert to pay the now invalid debt to Andrews. The county judge had little choice but to issue a warrant for Moses’s arrest.

Moses denied the charge and refused to surrender to the Orangeburg County sheriff who had been sent to serve the warrant. Instead, Moses ordered four companies of the state militia to surround his official residence and office to prevent any action by the Orangeburg sheriff. Accompanied by black militiamen in red uniforms, Moses rode around the capital in an open carriage to express his contempt for his foes.⁵⁷ He also had one of his allies issue a warrant for the arrest of the hapless Orangeburg County sheriff.

While onlookers gaped at the show, Moses negotiated with Chamberlain. Moses threatened to appoint only Democratic election commissioners to supervise next October’s elections if his indictment was not dropped. This would certainly give the election to the Democrats and end Chamberlain’s hope of becoming the state’s governor. If, on the other hand, Chamberlain was able to get the charges against him dropped, Moses agreed to step aside and not seek the 1874 Republican gubernatorial nomination.⁵⁸ Chamberlain agreed to these terms and, accompanied by Congressman Robert Elliott, a longtime Moses ally, Chamberlain hurried to the Orangeburg court. To the judge, Chamberlain argued that based on the traditional English theory that a king can do no wrong, the chief executive of the state could not be arrested and prosecuted while in office. He would first have to be impeached by the state legislature. Since the legislature was not in session, it would have to be called into session by Governor Moses, who seemed unlikely to call a special session for the purpose of his own impeachment. Whether for jurisprudential or political reasons, the Republican judge upheld Chamberlain’s argument and quashed the case against the governor. Once the charges were dropped, Moses denied having made any deal and said he planned to run for reelection in 1874.

Moses’s reputation for fraud extended far beyond South Carolina. Constant attacks on Moses in the southern press were soon echoed by the northern Democratic press and by Republican papers opposed to the Grant administration. The most important of these was Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. It was the Tribune’s correspondent James S. Pike who dubbed Moses the Robber Governor and whose accounts of the corrupt administration of the “Israelite” with a “thrifty eye to the main chance” helped make Moses an infamous figure everywhere in the nation.⁵⁹ Pike disliked blacks, and his newspaper, though Republican, opposed the Grant administration.⁶⁰ For Pike, exposing corruption in South Carolina served a double purpose. He was able to expose the villainy of Sambo and, simultaneously, demonstrate that the Grant administration, itself corrupt, supported an even more corrupt satellite regime in the South. For the northern press more generally, though, Frank Moses was an especially tempting target. This was a period in America when Jews were beginning to be ostracized and excluded from polite society. The idea of the rude, money-grubbing Jew who lacked the refinement and moral standards of Christian Americans was becoming a common theme in the popular press.⁶¹

That Moses and his father were both married to Christians and linked to blacks was, to the press, a sign of their political and sexual perversity. In a widely reprinted story, the New York Herald exposed the vices of the entire Moses clan. “The governor of the state sits in the synagogues of Africans, messes with them and dines and coquettes,” observed the scandalized reporter. How did a Jew ever become the governor of the state? The Herald knew the answer— predatory sexuality. “The Hebrews [in South Carolina] hardly got beyond the countenance of such females as they wooed and won until the era of scalawaggery [began]. Then . . . they arrived at their revenge, commonly with the rejected negroes. . . . Two of them are now on the bench and one is governor. . . . They are intermarried with Christians. Shylock and Bassanio meet in them and they have the plausibility of Portia.”⁶²

Against this backdrop, accounts of the financial and moral corruption of the Israelite Franklin Moses, Jewnier, fit the increasingly mean spirit of the times. Here was a Jew who stole, who socialized with blacks, inviting blacks into his home and even dancing with dusky maidens, as the papers liked to say. The story of Moses brought together so many popular themes, Jews, blacks, political corruption, even hints of illicit interracial sex. The political cartoonists, especially America’s most influential editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast, made much of these themes. Nast was a Republican and friendly with President Grant. At the same time, he was an out-spoken nativist who associated nonwhite, non-Protestant groups with debauchery and thievery. Nast’s clever cartoons on the cover of Harper’s Weekly emphasized Moses’s Jewishness and linked him to political corruption and the crimes of blacks, always presented as apelike creatures. The words of Pike and drawings of Nast, more than the crimes of Moses himself—crimes that were decidedly petty in the context of the period—made the Robber Governor a national political figure.

Moses’s Downfall

As the 1874 elections approached, Moses seemed determined to run for reelection. His main opponent within the Republican party would clearly be former attorney general Daniel Chamberlain. In the wake of Moses’s failed attempt to acquire control of the Union-Herald, a consortium led by Chamberlain had succeeded. Now the state’s most important Republican paper joined the Democratic press in condemning Moses. “He has thwarted the efforts of the Treasurer to bring to a strict accountability the treasurers. . . . He encouraged the extravagant and corrupt members of the legislature. He pardoned those convicted of fraud. He promised immunity to the dishonest but undetected.”⁶³

Despite these denunciations by the Republican press, Moses remained a powerful figure in South Carolina and could reasonably expect to be renominated by his party. He controlled the state militia and commanded a loyal following among the state’s black voters. Events outside the state, however, would soon drive Moses from office. Given the publicity surrounding the Robber Governor and the media attention that had been focused on South Carolina’s black government, the national Republican party had come to view its South Carolina wing as a political liability. On the national level, the Republicans were generally regarded as a corrupt bunch. The term “Grantism” had come to stand for a form of politics whose chief currencies were cash and favors.⁶⁴ Republicans had enough troubles without being saddled with what the press depicted as a bunch of thieving Sambos and their Israelite robber governor leader.

South Carolina’s Republicans were informed by their allies in Washington that the state had become a political liability for the entire party and needed to quickly improve its reputation. Congressman Robert Elliott told Carolinians that he had learned in his travels outside the state that “to mention South Carolina is to merit the sneers of the Commonwealths of the North.”⁶⁵ Elliott warned that northern Republican leaders threatened to abandon their South Carolina colleagues if something was not done to improve the state’s reputation. This was by no means an idle threat. South Carolina’s Republicans, who depended on the federal government’s patronage and military support, could not afford to alienate their friends in Washington.

President Grant himself confided in a group of Democrats that South Carolina under Moses was “badly governed and overtaxed.”⁶⁶ And Republican Thomas Mackey reported that the president had told him that he wanted the state’s Republicans to reform themselves. “And while the president speaks calmly of all the great battles in which he participated,” said Mackey, “yet when I talked to him of South Carolina, his apparently pulseless lips quiver, his veins and his eyes enlarge, and he says, ‘You must stop the robbery!’ ” In particular, Grant was reported to have denounced Moses. The president was reported to have asked, “Why don’t you convict Moses?”⁶⁷ Grant was rumored to be considering supporting a Democrat in the 1874 gubernatorial race if Moses won the state’s Republican nomination. These reports from Washington were eagerly trumpeted by Chamberlain’s Union-Herald. “The Republicans of this state must see to it that in the coming election every county shall elect none but honest and competent men, without stain or reproach on their private or public reputations,” the paper warned, “or we shall be driven out of the house of our friends as a leprosy and a curse.”⁶⁸

Under pressure from the Grant administration, the state’s black Republican leadership, including Congressman Robert Elliott, abandoned Moses and agreed to support the candidate favored by Washington, Daniel Chamberlain. Chamberlain was, in truth, no less corrupt than Moses or any other Republican. In some respects he was personally more corrupt, generally stealing to line his own pockets rather than to build a party machine. Chamberlain had been a leader of the major bond frauds, including the Greenville and Columbia Railroad fraud that had plagued the state. But he had a patrician demeanor, was popular in Washington, and had spent his time in South Carolina courting the white elite rather than kissing black babies. The national Republican leadership was very worried about appearances, and Chamberlain would diminish the appearance of impropriety.

Though the state Republican leadership would not support him, Moses might have considered bolting from the party and campaigning on his own. He still controlled the state militia, the key cog in the Republican electoral machinery. The militia’s commander, Beverly Nash, remained loyal to Moses and might have been able to mobilize black voters for the governor. Such a strategy, however, would have been quite risky. By 1874 South Carolina’s white paramilitary forces had been rearmed and reorganized. Indeed, throughout Moses’s two years in office, white rifle clubs were formed throughout the state.⁶⁹ These generally replaced the Ku Klux Klan network and pretended to be social clubs, holding parades, picnics, festivals, and balls.

The oldest of these rifle clubs, the Carolina Rifle Club of Charleston, had been organized in 1869 for the purpose of “the promotion of social intercourse and the enjoyment of its members by means of target shooting and such other amusements as they may determine.”⁷⁰ The club was organized in military ranks, but without military titles. The club’s captain was called the president, the lieutenants were vice presidents, sergeants were called wardens, and corporals were named directors.⁷¹

Behind the pretense, the clubs engaged in military training, held regular drills, and stockpiled rifles and ammunition. Their purpose was to intimidate blacks, drive away the black state militia, and destroy the Republican party. In August 1874 white rifle companies instigated several confrontations with black militiamen. In the town of Ridge Spring, a white rifle club ordered a group of black militiamen to stop drilling. When the blacks refused, they were attacked by a force of three hundred armed whites. In Edgefield, which was patrolled by Ned Tenant, a prominent black militia officer, hundreds of heavily armed whites attacked the militia company of seventy or eighty blacks and forced it to disarm. Only the prompt arrival of federal troops prevented a massacre. Moses’s request to the president for more federal troops to protect the black citizens of Edgefield was ignored by an administration anxious to limit its involvement in the affairs of South Carolina.

The growing power of white paramilitary forces meant that black militiamen would not be able to control the voting process unless they themselves were protected by federal troops. The Grant administration would certainly not allow its troops to intervene to help the Robber Governor win reelection. Frank Moses had no choice but to step aside and watch Daniel Chamberlain secure the 1874 Republican gubernatorial nomination.

Moses’s downfall was celebrated by the state’s white press. The Sumter News, now renamed the True Southron, said, “Tatterdemalion I, of South Carolina is dead. He is dead as a herring, dead as a nit, aye, is dead beyond all hope of resuscitation, reanimation, or resurrection, and will never trouble friend or foe, any more.”⁷² Why was Chamberlain preferable to Moses? While Chamberlain was a thief and plunderer, said the Southron, unlike Moses, he was not a “miscegenator.”⁷³

Though Moses’s political career had apparently come to an end, there would be one last stand. At the first session of the state legislator after the 1874 elections, Moses was nominated for judge of the third judicial circuit, which included Sumter. Chamberlain was able to block Moses and a black nominee, Frank Whipper, on the grounds that they lacked ability, character, and learning. “Legal learning, a judicial spirit, and a high and unblemished personal character should mark every man who shall be elected [to the South Carolina bench]. If all these qualities are not attainable,” said Chamberlain, “let the one quality of personal integrity never be lost sight of.”⁷⁴

This setback for Moses’s nomination was only temporary. When the legislature convened for its second session, his name was placed in nomination again by W. E. Johnston, a black senator from Sumter. This time, Chamberlain was absent from the capital and not able to block the election. Chamberlain’s absence was no accident. Chamberlain had been scheduled to deliver an address in Greenville. House Speaker Robert Elliott had assured the governor that no action would be taken on judicial nominations during his absence. Elliott, however, had no intention of keeping his promise. In response to pressure from the national Republican administration, Elliott had supported Chamberlain for governor against his longtime ally, Moses. As part of the deal, Elliott became Speaker of the South Carolina House, a position he preferred to continuing service in the U.S. Congress.

Before long Elliott came to loathe the new governor. In a few short months, Chamberlain had made it clear that his goal was to tie himself securely to the state’s white establishment and give short shrift to his black supporters. Chamberlain was widely quoted as having said that he was opposed to too many black Republicans in office because he wanted to keep the Republican party from going over to “negroism.”⁷⁵ Elliott was sure Chamberlain intended to betray black rights and he became obsessed with the matter of Chamberlain’s duplicity.⁷⁶ Elliott was determined to undo his mistake in any way he could, including resurrecting the Robber Governor. As soon as Chamberlain was out of the city, Elliott brought the question of judicial appointments to the floor of the House. Elliott spoke on behalf of the eight Republican nominees, including Moses and Whipper. He declared that Whipper, in particular, had been opposed by some only because of his skin color. The vote was taken and Moses and Whipper, along with the other six Republican nominees, were elected.

News of Moses’s election was greeted with elation by his black supporters. According to the True Southron, “There was whooping and yelling and hats thrown up to the ceiling, etc., and the ex-governor, who was sitting outside to hear the result, was borne in by his supporters and he was almost pulled to pieces in their vain endeavors to get a shake of his hand.”⁷⁷ For the most part, black South Carolinians continued to support Moses. To the black citizens of the state, he was not the Robber Governor but was, rather, the only white politician who seemed genuinely blind to racial differences. When Moses was later indicted by the Hampton regime, some blacks went to jail rather than testify against him.⁷⁸

Whites had a different view of Moses. For years December 16, the date of his election, was remembered as Black Thursday in South Carolina. Governor Chamberlain feared that the political resurrection of Frank Moses in the Republican party would undermine his own efforts to court conservative support. Chamberlain quickly returned to Columbia where he told the News and Courier, “I look upon [the election of Moses and Whipper] as a horrible disaster— a disaster equally great to the state, to the Republican party and, greatest of all, to those communities which shall be doomed to feel the full effects of Moses and Whipper on the bench. . . . Of Moses, no honest man can have different opinions. . . . The reputation of Moses is covered deep with charges, which are believed by all who are familiar with the facts, of corruption, bribery, and the utter prostitution of all his official powers, to the worst possible purposes. This calamity is infinitely greater in my judgement, than any which has yet fallen on this state, or, I might add, upon any part of the South. Moses as governor is endurable compared with Moses as judge.”⁷⁹

In Sumter, where Moses would serve as judge, huge crowds of blacks and whites assembled in the city streets. Several thousand whites gathered to protest Moses’s appointment and to vow armed resistance to any effort he might make to take office. The leader of the throng said, “We meet to tell Franklin J. Moses, Jr., that he shall never preside as a judge in Sumter court house unless he is seated there by federal bayonets.”⁸⁰ A prominent Jewish Sumterite, Charles Moise, declared, “I say the time has come for resistance! Should F. J. Moses, Jr., by any legal trickery, attempt to ascend the steps of the courthouse to take his seat as judge, I, Charles H. Moise, forty-six years of age, with a wife and ten children to support, am ready [to] unite with a band of determined men, and with muskets on our shoulders, defend that temple of justice from desecration.”⁸¹ Voicing the sentiments of the local Jewish community and its fear of being associated with the Moses clan, Moise sought to portray the problem as one of excessive parental indulgence. The elder Moses, “instead of compelling his son to earn an honest living by honest labor, encourages and assists him to aspire to positions for which he is utterly unfit.”⁸² Several thousand blacks gathered in support of Moses and to declare that they would protect him if need be. Both crowds included armed men and bloodshed seemed likely. A riot was narrowly averted.⁸³

On December 25, 1875, Governor Chamberlain issued a statement asserting that he would refuse to present commissions to Whipper and Moses. The governor asserted their elections had been unconstitutional because their predecessors had been entitled to full four-year terms even though they had been elected only to fill the last two years of unexpired terms. Hence, said Chamberlain, the seats to which Moses and Whipper had been appointed were not vacant. Whipper mounted an unsuccessful court challenge to the governor’s actions. Moses never attempted to take his seat. Chamberlain’s action made the governor extremely popular among South Carolina’s white citizens. Many Democrats declared that the party should endorse Daniel Chamberlain for reelection in 1876.⁸⁴ Chamberlain believed that his plan to build a firm base of support among the state’s conservative whites was succeeding, and he hoped that he would run for reelection without a Democratic opponent.

As for Frank Moses, he was finished in South Carolina politics. Like the Wicked Witch of the West, Moses was not only merely dead; politically, at least, he was really most sincerely dead.