1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Benjamin Tillman

Benjamin Tillman Quotes

Benjamin Ryan Tillman was a politician of the Democratic Party who served as Governor of South Carolina from 1890 to 1894, and a United States Senator from 1895 until his death in 1918. A white supremacist who opposed civil rights for blacks, Tillman led a paramilitary group of Red Shirts during South Carolina's violent 1876 election. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, he frequently ridiculed blacks, and boasted of having helped to kill them during that campaign.

In the 1880s, Tillman, a wealthy landowner, became dissatisfied with the Democratic leadership and led a movement of white farmers calling for reform. He was initially unsuccessful, though he was instrumental in the founding of Clemson University as an agricultural school. In 1890, Tillman took control of the state Democratic Party, and was elected governor. During his four years in office, 18 African Americans were lynched in South Carolina—the 1890s saw the most lynchings of any decade in South Carolina. Tillman tried to prevent lynchings, but spoke in support of the lynch mobs, stating his own willingness to lead one. In 1894, at the end of his second two-year term, he was elected to the U.S. Senate by vote of the state legislature.

Tillman was known as "Pitchfork Ben" because of his aggressive language, as when he threatened to use one to prod that "bag of beef", President Grover Cleveland. Considered a possible candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 1896, Tillman lost any chance after giving a disastrous speech at the convention. He became known for his virulent oratory but also as an effective legislator. The first federal campaign finance law, banning corporate contributions, is commonly called the Tillman Act. Tillman was repeatedly re-elected, serving in the Senate for the rest of his life. One of his legacies was South Carolina's 1895 constitution, which disenfranchised most of the black majority and ensured white rule for more than half a century.

✵ 11. August 1847 – 3. July 1918
Benjamin Tillman photo
Benjamin Tillman: 7   quotes 3   likes

Famous Benjamin Tillman Quotes

“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.”

Benjamin Tillman

Speech to the United States Senate http://www.charlesmphipps.net/the-real-lynching-party/.

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

Benjamin Tillman

As quoted in Pitchfork Ben Tillman, South Carolinian (1967), by Francis Butler Simkins. Louisiana State University Press. OCLC 1877696, p. 144.

“How did we recover our liberty? By fraud and violence.”

Benjamin Tillman

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.
As quoted in "The Question of Race in the South Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1895" (July 1952), by George B. Tindall. The Journal of Negro History, 37 (3): 277–303. JSTOR 2715494., p. 94.

“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.”

Benjamin Tillman

As quoted in Pitchfork Ben Tillman, South Carolinian (1967), by Francis Butler Simkins. Louisiana State University Press. OCLC 1877696, p. 144.

“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.”

Benjamin Tillman

As quoted in "The Question of Race in the South Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1895" (July 1952), by George B. Tindall. The Journal of Negro History, 37 (3): 277–303. JSTOR 2715494., p. 94.

“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.”

Benjamin Tillman

Regarding the Democratic Party's goals (1909), as quoted in Voices of Civil War America: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life https://books.google.com/books?id=1mwy-XB6bs8C&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=%22We+reorganized+the+Democratic+Party+with+one+plank+and+only+one+plank%22&source=bl&ots=z38s4iS5Oi&sig=-bHC9bf27SsAB3u_mTeTVENP1vs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAmoVChMI28L2gZqPxwIVgTI-Ch1lWgai#v=onepage&q=%22We%20reorganized%20the%20Democratic%20Party%20with%20one%20plank%20and%20only%20one%20plank%22&f=false, by Lawrence Kreiser and Ray B. Browne, p. 27.
1900s, 1909

“We made up our minds that the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the constitution were themselves null and void.”

Benjamin Tillman

Speech to the U.S. Senate https://web.archive.org/web/20160228073733/http://emancipation.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/emancipation/publication/attachments/A_Republican_Text-Book_for_Colored_Voters.pdf (23 March 1900)
1900s, 1900

Similar authors

François-René de Chateaubriand photo
François-René de Chateaubriand 28
French writer, politician, diplomat and historian
Theodor Mommsen photo
Theodor Mommsen 65
German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, po…
Pierre Joseph Proudhon photo
Pierre Joseph Proudhon 40
French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and so…
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Theodore Roosevelt 445
American politician, 26th president of the United States
Benjamin Disraeli photo
Benjamin Disraeli 306
British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Pri…
Josh Billings photo
Josh Billings 91
American humorist
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 202
American poet
Andrew Carnegie photo
Andrew Carnegie 34
American businessman and philanthropist
Walt Whitman photo
Walt Whitman 181
American poet, essayist and journalist
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet