Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction Book

What struck me most as I read this in-depth biography of Ben Tillman, South Carolina governor, senator and one of the Jim Crow era's most significant legislators, was how detailed and well-researched it was. Given that it was written more than 70 years ago, Francis Butler Simkins must have relied on quite a bit of shoe-leather detective work to go through thousands of pages of Tillman's personal papers, the Congressional Record, newspaper articles covering several decades, etc. Simkins may have had an advantage in that he was from Edgefield, S.C., the same town as Tillman. Certainly, Simkins, who was born in 1897, when Tillman was at the beginning of his lengthy career in the U.S. Senate, knew many people who knew Tillman and were able to offer personal anecdotes.

Simkins' work does a good job of showing Tillman's many contradictions: He was a populist who wrested power from the Bourbons and pushed for a greater voice for poor white males, yet he made sure any rights blacks might have acquired as a result of Reconstruction were erased. Tillman was largely self-educated and pushed for the creation of what would become Clemson University and Winthrop University, but his attitude toward blacks reinforced a divisiveness that would continue to poison the state long after his death in 1918. At the time of his demise, Tillman was considered the second most influential legislator in state history after John C. Calhoun, having, among other things, led the Constitutional Convention of 1895 that resulted in the state constitution still in use in the South Carolina today, and being crucial in the establishment of the Charleston Naval Base, which operated from 1901 through 1996. Yet today he is largely known for his bigoted views and nasty racial remarks. Simkins' book presents a good, wide ranging look at Tillman, both the good and the bad.