“What will you reply?”
“It’s probably true. I hope it is. I hope a distinguished general wasn’t in charge of that contemptible operation. And they’d been drinking all afternoon.”
“Armed and drunk,” said Riordan. “A recipe for success.”
“These gun clubs are a force for chaos,” said Dawson.
The Bald Eagle wrote an angry letter to a rival paper, calling Dawson cowardly for refusing to fight a duel. Dawson, who enjoyed dustups, wrote back at once. He strode into Riordan’s office and put his answer on the desk. Riordan read it while Dawson waited, his hands in his pockets.
Riordan looked up. “‘Slanderer and braggart!’ That’s a bit strong.”
Dawson shook his head. “He called me cowardly.”
“He’ll never give way, you know,” Riordan said. “He wouldn’t surrender at Appomattox. He thinks the war can still be won. Do we want him our enemy for life?”
“Does he want me his enemy for life?”
“These people are looking for enemies,” Riordan said. “It gives them focus.”
“They’ll do better choosing someone else.”
Riordan handed back the page. “We’ll stand firm. I hope the Bald Eagle settles his feathers.”
“That’s up to him,” Dawson said.
That afternoon he received a hand-delivered message: the Bald Eagle challenged him to a duel.
Dawson took it in to Riordan. “From General Gary,” he said. “Delivered by General Butler, colleague and second.”
Riordan was going over an account book. He jotted down a number in the margin, then put his hand out for the note.
“Two generals,” Riordan said. “Impressive.” He scanned the letter. “It’s a good thing you won’t duel. You’d have been dead years ago.”
“A barbaric institution,” he said. “I want to have it banned.”
Downstairs they heard a commotion, voices rising, shouts, then laughter: it was the reporters. They were like dogs, thought Dawson, barking in a frenzy, wagging their tails, running in circles.
“Do you ever think of getting a dog?” Dawson asked.
Riordan shook his head. “Not now.”
“I suppose not,” said Dawson. Riordan’s wife had left him (scandalously, for another man), and Riordan had custody of his two children. He had put them in a local boarding school, and now he lived with his bachelor brother. You couldn’t have a dog without a wife, a household. Dawson thought of tiny Ethel, her wild blue eyes and outstretched arms, staggering clumsily toward his legs. She wasn’t old enough.
“I had a dog when I was a boy,” said Riordan. “A little setter with brown spots. We called him Ajax.”
“I’d like a terrier,” Dawson said. “Or a Newfoundland.”
Riordan laughed. “Quite a difference.”
“Maybe both,” Dawson said. “I enjoy extremes.”
Downstairs they were laughing again, and then the front door opened and shut, the bell on it sounding. Someone had left, and the noise died. “How many cancellations do we have now?”
“A hundred and twenty,” said Riordan. “Cotton brokering calls. I can always go back.”
“But you won’t,” Dawson said. “Have some pity. That would be the end of me.”
Riordan smiled and shook his head.
“It was good, you know,” he said. “Your piece.”
* * *
YOUNG BARNWELL RHETT insulted Dawson in his paper, the Journal. Dawson didn’t mind. He remembered telling old Barnwell Rhett, at the Mercury, to swallow the Fourteenth Amendment. Rhett’s furious red face, his eyes like tiny chips of blue stone. But Dawson had been right.
Dawson showed the letter to Riordan.
“Another challenge?” asked Riordan.
“Only an insult,” said Dawson. “Or maybe three. ‘Liar, ingrate, and coward.’ Is that one or three? I’m curious about ingrate, but since we’re not on speaking terms I can’t ask. But no challenge. By the code it’s up to me to challenge him. Which I won’t.”
“But you’ll reply.”
Dawson nodded.
* * *
THEY WAITED IN Dawson’s office, Riordan, Jem Morgan, and Carlyle McKinley. McKinley was tall, lanky, serious, with a long Irish face. He’d been with the paper nearly from the start. Dawson trusted him.
It was just before noon. Dawson stood by the window, looking toward Rhett’s office at the Journal. It was a block away, on East Bay.
“Can you see him?” Jem asked. He came over to stand beside Dawson. He was shorter by several inches, still Little Morgan. His mustache was extravagant, and curled up at the ends. Jem was between jobs, as he often was, but always ready for excitement.
Dawson shook his head. “The sidewalks are full. We have an audience.”
“What time is it?” Riordan asked.
Jem took out his watch. “Eight minutes of.”
“What did your note say?” McKinley asked.
Dawson turned from the window. He tugged down his waistcoat and shot his cuffs.
“‘Captain Dawson requests the honor of meeting you on Broad Street, twelve noon, August eleventh.’”
“Have you a pistol?” McKinley asked.
Dawson shook his head. “I don’t carry one.”
“Have you?” McKinley asked Jem.
Jem raised his eyebrows and said nothing.
“We’re not setting out to fight,” said Dawson.
“You’re not,” said Riordan. “But he might be. This is South Carolina.”
“By the code he can’t shoot first,” said Dawson. “He has to wait for me to respond.”
“You’ve responded in print,” said Riordan.
“I didn’t challenge him. By the code he can’t shoot first. Either I shoot or no one does,” said Dawson.
“The code has been broken before,” Riordan said.
“I rely on his honor,” Dawson said. “Isn’t that the point?”
“What about the honor of his seconds?” Riordan said.
“Who are his seconds?” asked McKinley.
“McHugh and Williams,” Dawson said. “Write it all down, McKinley. In case anything happens.”
McKinley took out his notebook. There was noise out on the street. Everyone knew about this.
Dawson took out his watch and flipped it open. “Time.”
They went down the wide creaking staircase. Dawson went first, buttoning his jacket. Jem clattered behind like a tugboat, small but important. As he went down he pressed his elbow against his side pocket, where the pistol was. The others followed.
Dawson and Jem stepped outside and turned toward East Bay. At first there was excited talking, but then the crowd quieted. No one spoke. A man leaned out of an upstairs window. Two policemen stood along the curb. Everyone watched Dawson. Jem walked jauntily beside him. Dawson moved with long, deliberate strides.
At the far end of the block, three men approached on the other side of the street. Rhett and his seconds held themselves erect, looking straight ahead.
The street was silent. A buggy passed, the driver and passenger watching. Rhett and his men held their arms slightly away from their bodies, hands floating in the air. Jem held his arms away from his sides, but Dawson’s arms swung freely. He gazed straight ahead. One of Rhett’s men turned his head, staring at Dawson. It was one long block from the office to East Bay. A seagull flew overhead, crying.
In the middle of the block the men passed without pausing. Their seconds watched with sidelong gazes but didn’t turn their heads. The footsteps were loud. The crowd watched in silence. Someone whistled, and another gull wheeled above. Dawson and Jem walked on, and when they reached East Bay they turned, away from the crowds. McKinley was a few steps behind.
After another block they stopped, now alone.
“I think it’s over,” Dawson said.
“I was hoping for a little more excitement,” Jem said. “I got up early for this.”
McKinley took out his notebook and
began writing.
“There’s nothing to write,” Jem said. “Nothing happened.”
For Dawson the light had turned oddly spangled. He put his hands in his pockets and bent over from the waist. When he straightened the world crowded around. The tall brick house beside him was immense, its white trim brilliant. The ironwork fence was hung with garlands of wisteria. How precisely pointed the leaves were, how green! The windowpanes gleamed darkly. The sun was directly overhead; he was walking on his shadow. It was miraculous. He thought of Sarah’s blue gaze: she, too, was miraculous. It was miraculous that she was his wife. He was alive in the world.
On each side, each man thought he’d won.
* * *
SARAH SAT UPSTAIRS in her bedroom. She’d drawn the filmy inner curtains, but the sunlight filtered through. She sat with her back to the window, a parasol leaning on the sill to keep the slightest ray from her skin. She was trying to read; she couldn’t concentrate. She was always afraid for him. Whenever he was late the thought of his death entered her mind. Now she sat with a magazine, starting the same paragraph over and over. The handle of the parasol kept sliding off the back of the chair. Each time it slipped, it startled her.
When she heard the front door she was afraid it would be someone with a message. She wondered what she would say to Ethel. But when she went down she saw it was Dawson.
“All done,” he said. He put his arms around her.
“I was frightened,” she said.
“But you needn’t have been.”
* * *
IN AUGUST the Democratic Convention met, and Dawson learned that his readers would not take his advice. They would not support Daniel Chamberlain. The convention elected Wade Hampton as their candidate for governor. Hampton was the grandson of a Revolutionary hero, and a Civil War hero himself. His family had been one of the largest slave owners in the South, and he still owned vast properties.
Riordan came in to his office. Dawson stood at the window, looking down into the street. His hands were in his pockets, rattling the things there: a cigar cutter, change purse, a small knife.
“I’ve heard,” Riordan said.
Dawson nodded without turning.
“It’s a blow,” Riordan said.
Dawson turned around. “We’re the voice of the people. We support the process and the office. If they’ve chosen Hampton, we’ll support him.”
Riordan nodded.
“I don’t agree with them, but if that’s the way the current is moving we must stay in it,” Dawson said. “We can’t be left on the bank.”
Riordan took out his watch. “Only thirty-six days, nineteen hours, and twenty-two minutes.”
“That it took for me to see I was wrong?” Dawson said. “But I might have been right. I might have swung them round. If it hadn’t been for Hamburg.”
The trial of the Hamburg defendants took place in September. Eighty-seven white men—all the members of the Sweetwater Sabre Club, plus others from the District—were charged with murder and conspiracy to murder. They were ordered to appear at the courthouse in Aiken. Later Ben Tillman would write that that they merely agreed to appear, not that they obeyed an order. As he remembered that day, the Sabre Club was in charge, not the court. The defendants wore the Bloody Shirt.
The Bloody Shirt was like the Confederate flag, it roused something deep and primal. It was a reminder that blood had been shed, that the South had been victimized by the North. The Bloody Shirt reminded people that the South suffered. It was at once violent and sentimental.
The myth of the Bloody Shirt began in 1856, when Senator Charles Sumner gave an antislavery speech, criticizing Senator Andrew Butler, who was from Edgefield. A few days later, Butler’s cousin Preston Brooks, also from Edgefield, accosted Sumner in the Senate chamber. Brooks and his friend Laurence Keitt approached Sumner as he sat at his desk. Sumner had become famous because of his speech, and he was signing copies of it for the public. Brooks told Sumner he’d insulted his cousin. He raised his gold-headed cane in the air and brought down the heavy end on Sumner’s head. Sumner struggled to rise, but Brooks pounded savagely on his skull. He beat Sumner so hard he finally broke the cane. Sumner managed to stand but Brooks kept on beating him as he staggered away, and Sumner finally collapsed, bloody and unconscious, on the floor. Laurence Keitt brandished a pistol, warning off interference. Someone finally urged Brooks to stop before he killed Sumner. Sumner nearly died from his injuries, and suffered for the rest of his life from chronic pain and trauma.
Some responses to the incident were gleeful, urging Brooks to do it again and finish the job. There were reports that Sumner traveled about with the blood-stained shirt, asking for pity. It was said he’d gone to Boston and to England, flaunting the shirt. This behavior was considered evidence that Sumner was not a gentleman, that the North did not understand the South’s gallant code. Some Southerners despised Sumner for showing the Bloody Shirt as if he’d been a victim, as if he claimed to deserve attention, apology, sympathy, compensation.
But there was no bloody shirt. The whole story was a fabrication. Sumner never showed any shirt to anyone. Yet the story spread like wildfire, and the phrase passed into the language of the South. The Bloody Shirt was a rallying cry, a reference to the sniveling victim and a threat of violence. Sumner’s critics took to wearing the Bloody Shirt themselves. It became part of the Mississippi Plan to terrorize Negroes, and it spread throughout the South.
In late August, Red Shirts rode in a torchlight parade through Charleston. Everyone knew what the shirts meant; everyone understood that the blood was not the blood of the wearer.
Before the Sabre Club trial, Ben Tillman had shirts made for all eighty-seven men accused of murder. He bought Venetian red pigment himself, though some of the boys used pokeberry juice, to stain their shirts. Tillman had a gigantic effigy made, a flagstaff with a head. The figure wore an enormous bloody shirt. The head was made of two Negro masks, topped with a kinky black wig. At the bottom was a motto, from Milton’s Paradise Lost: “Awake, arise, or be forever fallen.” This was Satan’s appeal to the fallen angels, in which he tells them that though “defeat hath lost us Heaven,” still, “all is not lost.” Tillman had allied himself with Satan.
The white men rode into Aiken, the gigantic crucified Negro swaying above their bloody shirts. White people stood on the sidewalks and cheered. Negroes stayed indoors.
The men filed in to the courthouse, pistols in their belts. The judge set bail: they all got the same amount. They all provided affidavits for one another, proving that none of them was anywhere near Hamburg on the night in question. They all got off.
Dawson wrote high praise of Wade Hampton, the Democrats’ dream candidate.
“All I ask,” Dawson said to Riordan, “is that you don’t quit and go back to cotton brokering.”
Riordan smiled but didn’t answer.
On election day the Sabre Club turned out armed and in force. They threatened and harassed the Negro voters. They closed down some Negro polling places altogether. Their efforts were completely successful: Edgefield reported more votes for Wade Hampton than there were residents in the town.
But both the gubernatorial and presidential results were disputed. South Carolina, and several other Southern states, submitted two different sets of voting results, and both Chamberlain and Hampton declared victory. Uncertainty reigned. To maintain the peace federal troops entered Columbia, but so did armed Red Shirts. They claimed to be protecting Democrats, but they were so numerous and unruly that their presence itself was a threat. Chamberlain and his government were virtually under siege.
Dawson and others went to Washington to negotiate a solution. The result was the Compromise of 1877: South Carolina gave its electoral votes to Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican presidential candidate, and its state votes to Wade Hampton, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. In return South Carolina received federal assistance for Dawson’s favorite projects: railroads, commercial development, inf
rastructure. Most importantly, the delegation had demanded that federal troops depart from Southern soil. That promise was kept. Federal troops withdrew, leaving Negro voters without protection.
Dawson was confident that they didn’t need protection. Once federal troops left South Carolina the Red Shirts would settle down. Negroes were now in high office. He reminded his readers that Negroes were succeeding.
* * *
Wm. N. Stevens, a full-blooded negro, is said to be one of the most eloquent speakers in the Virginia Senate. He is a graduate of two colleges, and was born a slave.
—THE NEWS AND COURIER, FEBRUARY 23, 1878
18.
THE GOGGINS MURDER.
The Widow and Brothers of the Deceased Charged with the Crime—Not a Tear Shed by any of the Family—A Bloodstained Neighborhood.
A special reporter of the Ninety-Six Herald throws some light on the recent mysterious murder in Edgefield County. He says:
The jury of inquest into the murder of Pickens Goggins, near Good Hope Church, in Edgefield County, on the 6th instant, closed its labors on Monday last after a protracted investigation … The verdict of the jury charges John Goggins, Henry Goggins, and Mrs. Emma Goggins, widow of the deceased, with having committed the murder. Pickens Goggins, the murdered man, and Miss Emma May entered into the state of connubial felicity only a few weeks ago … Mrs. Emma Goggins, widow of the deceased, is a blooming brunette of about fifteen summers, beneath the long lashes of whose dark eyes could be detected the smouldering fires of intense passion. Over her straight dark hair, without a curl or ripple, was jauntily perched a pearl-colored felt hat, with lavender trimmings and an ostrich feather. A purple worsted dress, with maroon trimmings, and a gaudy neck ribbon fastened on her bosom with a showy tinsel pin, completed her outfit …
She appeared before the court when called, and gave her testimony in an easy and nonchalant manner. She stated that when the murder occurred she was in the kitchen with a negro girl getting supper; heard the shot fired in the room in which she had left Mr. Goggins; called “Pick,” (the deceased,) but he did not answer; then called for Mr. Clyburn, who lives perhaps one hundred and fifty yards distant, and told him when he came that she thought “Pick” was shot; did not go into the room where he lay until Mr. Clyburn came. Mr. Clyburn came at the call, and found Goggins dead, with a pistol shot in the head.
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