BENJAMIN R. TILLMAN (1847-1918)
The vitriolic rhetoric of politics is nothing new in Charleston, which has a long history of name-calling and even worse when election time comes around – and for good reason.
By the time they fired on Fort Sumter in 1861, Charlestonians had spent almost two centuries cultivating an aristocratic tradition that held themselves in the highest regard, bringing them to secede from a federal government they felt was unduly burdening them with mandates, taxes and regulations.
Even after the impoverishment that followed losing the Civil War, this sense of hereditary superiority continued leading Charlestonians to consider themselves above the laws that governed lesser souls. Small wonder then that her citizens scoffed at the idea they should submit to the demands of a boorish, low-born, backcountry governor.
Benjamin Ryan Tillman Jr. came bawling into the world on Aug. 11, 1847, the last of 11 children born to Benjamin and Sophia Tillman in Edgefield. The Tillmans were among the largest landowners in the Edgefield District, a violent region even when measured against the standards of rural antebellum South Carolina.
The Tillmans seemed to have a knack for finding trouble. Ben Sr., who died when Ben Jr. was 2, murdered at least one man and had a rioting conviction on his record. Ben’s oldest brother George, an attorney, was found guilty of killing a man who accused him of cheating at cards. Not one easily deterred, George continued practicing law from his jail cell during his two-year sentence for manslaughter and was elected to the state Senate while incarcerated. He went on to represent South Carolina in Congress as well.
Meanwhile George’s son, James H. Tillman, Ben’s nephew, was the state’s lieutenant governor when, on Jan. 19, 1903, he fatally shot Narciso Gener Gonzales, editor of The (Columbia) State newspaper, during a confrontation on the S.C. State House steps.
The Tillmans were a rough family.
Ben was no exception. In June 1864, the 16-year-old enlisted in the Confederate Army. Before he could join his unit, however, a brain tumor resulted in the loss of his left eye, leaving him with a frightening demeanor that matched his personality.
As Reconstruction governance ended in the late 1870s, Ben became involved in politics, proclaiming that Charleston’s long-dominant aristocratic conservatives were holding back the rest of the state.
At the risk of short-shrifting his huge impact upon the cultural soul and racial history of our state, suffice it to say that by the 1880s, Tillman had branded himself the champion of South Carolina’s backcountry farmers (at least those who were white men), fighting against evil Lowcountry aristocrats.
He denounced Charlestonians who had long held power in the state as “broken-down politicians and old superannuated Bourbon aristocrats who are thoroughly incompetent, who worship the past, and are incapable of progress of any sort, but who boldly assume to govern us by Divine Right.” He even called The Citadel a “dude factory.”
Tillman earned the nickname “Pitchfork Ben,” not only because of his agrarian roots and political platform, but also because in 1896, when he was being considered by some as a presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, he delivered a brutal speech criticizing his rival, President Grover Cleveland, a man of generous girth, and threatening to prod the posterior of that “bag of beef” with said farming implement. Editorial cartoonists across the nation began depicting South Carolina’s Tillman with pitchfork in hand, taking jabs at his political opponents.
Speaking on the steps of Charleston City Hall, Tillman railed: “You Charleston people are a peculiar people … you are the most arrogant set of cowards that ever drew the free air of heaven … You are the most self-idolatrous people in the world. I want to tell you that the sun doesn’t rise and set in Charleston.”
And that was a campaign speech! Which he won.
In a December 2019 article for Atlantic Magazine, essayist Adam Serwer said: “The greatest danger to American democracy isn’t an excess of vitriol – it’s the false promise of civility.” At least with Ben Tillman, Charlestonians knew exactly where they stood.
