Benjamin Tillman on South Carolina

“The whites have absolute control of the State government, and we intend at any and all hazards to retain it.”

“We don't need another race to help us at this time. In some of the states, the Negro holds the vote of control.”

“We deny, without regard to color, that 'all men are created equal'; it is not true now, and was not true when Jefferson wrote it.”

“Republicanism means Negro equality, while the Democratic Party means that the white man is supreme. That is why we Southerners are all Democrats.”

“We reorganized the Democratic Party with one plank and only one plank, namely, that this is a white man's country and the white men must govern it.”

“The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they learn their place again.”

“History has no record of Negro rule. The situation is grave, and calls for wisdom and all manner of statesmanship. If we had our say, the Negro could never vote. I believe that God made the white man out of better clay than that which the Negro was made from.”

“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.”

“How did we recover our liberty? By fraud and violence. We tried to overcome the thirty thousand majority by honest methods, which was a mathematical impossibility. After we had borne these indignities for eight years life became worthless under such conditions.”