The Red Shirts or Redshirts of the Southern United States were white supremacist paramilitary terror groups that were active in the late 19th century in the last years of, and after the end of, the Reconstruction era of the United States. Red Shirt groups originated in Mississippi in 1875, when anti-Reconstruction private terror units adopted red shirts to make themselves more visible and threatening to Southern Republicans, both whites and freedmen. Similar groups in the Carolinas also adopted red shirts.
Among the most prominent Red Shirts were the supporters of Democratic Party candidate Wade Hampton during the campaigns for the South Carolina gubernatorial elections of 1876 and 1878.Charles Lane, The Day Freedom Died, (2008) p. 247 The Red Shirts were one of several paramilitary organizations, such as the White League in Louisiana, arising from the continuing efforts of white Democrats to regain political power in the South in the 1870s. These groups acted as "the military arm of the Democratic Party".George C. Rable, But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984, p. 132
While sometimes engaging in violent acts of terrorism, the Red Shirts, the White League, rifle clubs, and similar groups in the late nineteenth century worked openly and were better organized than the underground terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. They used organization, intimidation and force to achieve political purposes of restoring the Democrats to power, overturning Republicans, and repressing civil and voting rights of freedmen.Nicholas Lemann, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Paperback, 2007, p. 76. During the 1876 campaign in South Carolina and the 1898 and 1900 campaigns in North Carolina, the Red Shirts played prominent roles in intimidating non-Democratic Party voters.
Origins and symbolism According to E. Merton Coulter in The South During Reconstruction (1947), the red shirt was adopted in Mississippi in 1875 by "southern brigadiers" of the Democratic Party who were opposed to black Republicans. The Red Shirts disrupted Republican rallies, intimidated or assassinated black leaders, and discouraged and suppressed black voting at the polls.
Men wearing red shirts appeared in Charleston, South Carolina, on August 25, 1876, during a Democratic torchlight parade. This was to mock the waving the bloody shirt speech by Benjamin Franklin Butler of Massachusetts, in which he was falsely claimed to have held up a shirt stained with the blood of a carpetbagger whipped by the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction Era. "Waving the bloody shirt" became an idiom in the South, attributed to rhetoric by Republican politicians such as Oliver Hazard Perry Morton in the Senate, who used emotional accounts of injustices done to Northern soldiers and carpetbaggers to bolster support for the Republicans' Reconstruction policies in South Carolina. The red shirt symbolism quickly spread. Suspects accused in the Hamburg Massacre wore red shirts as they marched on September 5 to their arraignment in Aiken, South Carolina. Martin Gary, the organizer in South Carolina of the Democratic campaign in 1876, mandated that his supporters were to wear red shirts at all party rallies and functions.
Wearing a red shirt became a source of pride and resistance to Republican rule for white Democrats in South Carolina. Women sewed red flannel shirts and made other garments of red. It also became fashionable for women to wear red ribbons in their hair or about their waists. Young men adopted the red shirts to express militancy after being too young to have fought in the Civil War.Ball, William Watts (1932). The State That Forgot: South Carolina's Surrender to Democracy, Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company. pp. 158.
South Carolina Red Shirts
State Democrats organized parades and rallies in every county of South Carolina. Many of the participants were armed and mounted; all wore red. Mounted men gave an impression of greater power and numbers. When Wade Hampton and other Democrats spoke, the Red Shirts would respond enthusiastically, shouting the campaign slogan "Hurrah for Hampton". This created a massive spectacle that united and motivated his followers.
Red Shirts sought to intimidate both white and black voters into voting for the Democrats or not at all. Their goal was to restore Democratic rule and white supremacy. The Red Shirts and similar groups were especially active in those states with an African American majority. They broke up Republican meetings, disrupted their organizing, and intimidated black voters at the polls. Many freedmen stopped voting from fear, and others voted for Democrats under pressure. The Red Shirts did not hesitate to use violence, nor did the other private militia groups. In the Piedmont counties of Aiken, Edgefield, and Barnwell, freedmen who voted were driven from their homes and whipped, while some of their leaders were murdered. During the 1876 presidential election, Democrats in Edgefield and Laurens counties voted "early and often", while freedmen were barred from the polls.Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, New York: Harper & Row, 1988; Perennial Classics, 2002, pp. 574–575
Armed and mounted Red Shirts accompanied Hampton on his tour of the state. They attended Republican meetings and would demand equal time, but they usually only stood in silence. At times, Red Shirts would hold a barbecue nearby to lure Republicans and try to convince them to vote for the Democratic ticket.
Hampton positioned himself as a statesman, promising support for education, and offering protection from violence that Governor Daniel Henry Chamberlain did not seem able to provide. Few freedmen voted for Hampton, and most remained loyal to the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln. The 1876 campaign was the "most tumultuous in South Carolina's history".Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, New York: Perennial Classics, 2002, pp. 572–573 "An anti-Reconstruction historian later estimated that 150 Negroes were murdered in South Carolina during the campaign."Nicholas Lemann, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War, New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, Paperback, 2007, p. 174
After the election on November 7, a protracted dispute between Chamberlain and Hampton ensued as both claimed victory. Because of the massive election fraud, Edmund William McGregor Mackey, a Republican member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, called upon the "Hunkidori Club" from Charleston to eject Democratic members from Edgefield and Laurens counties from the House. Word spread through the state. By December 3, approximately 5,000 Red Shirts assembled at the State House to defend the Democrats. Hampton appealed for calm and the Red Shirts dispersed.
As a result of a national political compromise, President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered the removal of the Union Army from the state on April 3, 1877. The white Democrats completed their political takeover of South Carolina. In the gubernatorial election of 1878, the Red Shirts made a nominal appearance as Hampton was re-elected without opposition. In the 1880s, local Redshirts like James B. Morrison won political office, further cementing democratic rule.
Future South Carolina Democratic politicians, such as Benjamin Tillman and Ellison D. Smith, proudly claimed their association in their youth with the Red Shirts as a bona fide for white supremacy.
North Carolina Red Shirts
Red Shirts were active again around the 1898 and 1900 elections, allied with the Democrats' appeals to voters to support white supremacy, in an effort to avoid voters moving to the Populist fusion candidate, as some had done in the 1896 gubernatorial election.
The Red Shirts were part of a Democratic campaign to oppose the interracial coalition of Republicans and Populists, dubbed Fusionists, which had gained control of the state legislature in the 1894 election and elected a Republican governor in 1896. Such biracial coalitions had also occurred in other states across the South, in some cases overturning or threatening white Democratic control of state legislatures. The majority of the White population feared the empowerment of Blacks made possible by Republican-Populist electoral fusion. To break up the coalition, white Democrats used intimidation and outright violence to reduce black Republican voting and regained control of the state legislature in 1898.
Intimidation and violence against blacks increased prior to the 1898 election throughout the state, especially in black-majority counties. On November 4, 1898, the Raleigh News & Observer noted,
The first Red Shirt parade on horseback ever witnessed in Wilmington electrified the people today. It created enthusiasm among the whites and consternation among the Negroes. The whole town turned out to see it. It was an enthusiastic body of men. Otherwise it was quiet and orderly.
At the time, Wilmington was the largest city in the state and majority-black in population.
In Wilmington, a biracial coalition of Republicans won the offices of mayor and aldermen in 1898. The mayor and two-thirds of the aldermen were white, elected from a black-majority city. But local white Democrats wanted power and took it six days after the election in the Wilmington massacre of 1898, the largest recognized coup d'état in United States history. After overthrowing the government, the mob attacked black areas of the city and killed numerous blacks, burning down houses, schools and churches. So many blacks left Wilmington permanently that the demographics changed, resulting in a white-majority city.
White Democrats controlling the state legislature drafted an amendment to the state constitution that disfranchised most African Americans and many poor whites by establishing requirements for poll taxes and literacy tests, which raised barriers to voter registration.Richard H. Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon", Constitutional Commentary, Vol. 17, 2000, p. 27, accessed 10 March 2008 In 1900, the amendment was adopted by a statewide popular referendum in which turnout of black voters was suppressed.
From 1896 to 1904, black voter turnout in North Carolina was reduced to near zero by the combination of such voter registration provisions together with more complicated rules for voting. This followed a pattern of similar state actions across the South, starting with the state of Mississippi's new constitution in 1890. After a generation of white supremacy, many people forgot that North Carolina once had thriving middle-class blacks.Richard H. Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon", Constitutional Commentary, Vol. 17, 2000, pp. 12–13], accessed 10 Mar 2008
Rise of the group Due to the feelings of political devaluation among many white Democrats in North Carolina, the Democratic party and Red Shirts made it their goal to restore full and total power. The Red Shirts intimidated black voters by threat and outright attack, and practically eliminated the black vote in the state.Prather 1977 Red Shirts were first spotted in North Carolina during the October 21, 1898, rally in Fayetteville. At this rally Benjamin Tillman, a prominent South Carolina Red Shirts leader, gave a speech that was followed by a plethora of Red Shirt activities in the state of North Carolina. The North Carolina Red Shirts were a conglomerate of all social classes, including teachers, farmers, merchants and some elite members of the Democratic Party.Edmonds 1951 From that day on, Red Shirts chapters were particularly active in the southeastern part of North Carolina, including "New Hanover, Brunswick, Columbus, and Robeson counties", all of which geographically lie next to the South Carolina border and had large black populations.