"The Hamburg Massacre " (or Red Shirt Massacre or Hamburg riot)

Was a key event in the African American town of Hamburg,South Carolina in July 1876,leading up to the last season of the Reconstruction Era.It was the first of a series of civil disturbances-acts of violent,racially motivated attacks-planned and carried out by White Supremacists and Southern Democrats in the majority-black Republican Edgefied District,with the goals of suppress black voting,disrupting Republican meetings,and eradicating newly freed African American civil rights,through actual and threatened violence.

Beginning with a dispute nominally over free passage on a public road,this massacre was based on racial and political grounds.A court hearing attracted armed white paramilitary groups,colloquially called the "Red Shirts".Desiring to regain control of state governments and eradicate the civil rights of African-Americans,over 100 men attacked about 30 African-American servicemen of the National Guard at the armory,killing two as they tried to leave that night.Later that night,the Red Shirts tortured and murdered four freedmen of the militia while holding them as prisoners,and wounded several others.In total,the events in Hamburg resulted in the death of one white man and six African-American men ("freedmen");several more African-Americans were wounded by the white mob.Although 94 white men were indicted for murder by a coroner's jury,none prosecuted.

The events catalyzed parties to the volatile 1876 election campaign.There were other episodes of white violence in the months before the election,including an estimated 100 African-Americans killed during several days in Elleenton,South Carolina,also in Aiken County.The Southern Democrats succeeded in "redeeming" the state government and electing Wade Hampton III as governor.During the remainder of the century,they passed laws to establish single-party white supremacist rule,impose legal segregation and "Jim Crow," and disenfranchise African-Americans by a new Constitution in 1895.This exclusion of African-Americans from the political system was effectively maintained into the late 1960s.

Hamburg was a majority black market town in Aiken County,across the Savannah River from Augusta,River.Aiken was the only county in the state to have been organized during the Reconstruction era.Following the end of the War,the defunct market town was repopulated by Freedmen.(It had been superseded by Augusta,which gained a railroad.)Many African-Americans in the postwar period moved from rural areas to cities to escape white violence and gain in their own communities.

As Southerns sought to regain control of the state legislature,their leaders planned to disrupt Republican events,as outlined in Confederate veteran General Martin W.Gary's "Plan of the Campaign of 1876" (also known as the Edgefield Plan).On July 4,1876,Independence Day,two white planters drove in a carriage down Hamburg's wide Market Street,where they encountered a local militia company,which was drilling (or parading) under command of Captain D.L. "Doc" Adams.

The men in Hamburg Company were entirely African-Americans and mostly freedmen.A white supremacist group called the Red Shirts,led by Benjamin Tillman,who later went on and serve a 24,year career in the United States Senate and whose term was marked by enacting racist legislation,instigated confrontations with the African-Americans by a claim that said freedmen intentionally blocked passage of public roads and denied passage to any white man.Alternate  sources say that a carriage of white men intentinally drove up against the head of the column to cause a civil disturbance.In any case after an exchange of words,the Red shirts,also called "white planters" passed through the ranks of the black parade.

The Red Shirts then went to the local court,where,at a hearing on July 6,they accused the militia with obstruction of a public road before Trial Justice Prince Rivers.The case was continued until the afternoon of July 8.More than 100 whites from Edgefield and Aiken counties arrived at court,armed with "shotguns,revolvers,hoes,axes and pitchforks.At that time Matthew Calbraiith Butler,an attorney from Edgefield,appeared as the planter's counsel.(of the many men surnamed Butler who were involved in the incident,he was referred to as "General" Butler,based on his service in the Confederate Army.)Despite the lack of any official standing,M.C. Butler demanded for the Hamburg company to disband and turn their guns over to him personally.

As armed white men gathered in the vicinity,the militia company refused to disarm and took refuge in the armory in the Sibley building near the Charlotte,Columbia and Augusta Railroad bridge.The white militia surrounded the building.Perhaps 25 African-American militia and 15 others were in the building when firing began.In the exchange of gunfire,Mckie Meriwether,a local white farmer,was killed.

Outnumbered,running out of ammunition,and upon learning that the whites had brought a small cannon to the city from Augusta,the militia in the armory slipped into the night.James Cook Hamburg's Town Marshal,was shot and killed in the street.

The white supremacist militia rounded up around two dozens African-American citizens,some from the militia,and at about 2 a.m. took them to a spot near the South Carolina Railroad and bridge.There,the whites formed what was later called the "Dead Ring" and debated the fate of the African-American men.The whites picked out four men and,going around the ring,murdered them one at a time:Allan Attaway,David Phillips,Hampton Stephens,and Albert Myniart.Several other's were wounded either during their escape or in a general fusillade as the ring broke up.According to the State General's report,freedman Moses Parks was also killed here.The U.S. Senate investigation said he had been killed earlier near Cook.

A coroner's jury indicted ninety-four white men in the attack,including "M.C.Butler,Ben R.tillman,A.P.Butler,and others of the most prominent men in Aiken and Edgefield Counties,South Carolina,and Richmond County Georgia.They were never prosecuted.

The official report by the Attorney General of South Carolina ends with this statement:


...The facts the demand on the militia to give up their arms was made by persons without lawful authority to enforce such demand or to receive the arms had they been surrendered;that the attack on the militia to compel a compliance with this demand was without lawful excuse or justification; and that after there had been some twenty or twenty-five prisoners captured and completely in the power of their captors,five of them were deliberately shot to death and three more severely wounded.It further appears that not content with thus satisfying their vengeance,many of the crowd added to their guilt the crime of robbery of defenceless people,and were only prevented from arson by the efforts of their own leaders.


Outrage at the events led to the U.S. Senate calling for an investigation.It gathered testimony in hearings held at Columbia,South Carolina and published its finding in 1877

Republicans were stunned by the massacre at Hamburg.The event deflated the "Co-operationist" faction of the Democratic party,which had anticipated a fusion with the reforming Republican Governor Daniel Henry Chamberlain.Democratic support crystallized around the uncompromising "Straight-Outs," who had already launched the terrorist "Edgefield Plan," devised by General Martin W.Gary for South Carolina's Redemption.

The massacre attracted nationwide attention (such as in Harper's Weekly,August12,1876 and in The New York Times).A much larger massacre of freedmen by white paramilitary took place from September 15 to 21 in the town of Ellenton,also in Aiken county,with estimates of 100 freedmen killed and a few whites.

In October 1876,there was a political conflict in Cainhoy,near Charleston,resulting in the deaths one African-American man and three to six whites,the only such confrontation that year in South Carolina in which more whites died than African-Americans.

Following the violent and bitterly-contested 1876 election campaign,with suppression of African-American voting of the Red Shirts and charges of fraud,white Democrats gained undivided control of the South Carolina legislature and narrowly won the Governor's office.They passed laws during the next two decades to impose legal segregation,Jim Crow and,in 1895,adopted a new constitution,which effectively achieved African-American disenfranchisement in the state.

M.C.Butler's expectations and extent of involvement in the later events have not been proven.He was not in the "Dead Ring," but his association with the massacre damaged his later career in the U.S. Senate.

Benjamin Ryan Tillman led an Edgefield County "Rifle Club" which was part of the Red Shirts.He became recognized in the area for his role in the Hamburg Massacre and continued to boast of these "stirrings events" of 1876,referring,to this more than a decade later during his 1890 campaign for Governor of South Carolina as he put it on the U.S. Senate:


[A]s white men we are not sorry for it,and we do not propose to apologize for anything we have done in connection with it.We took the government away from them in 1876.We did take it.If no other Senator has come here previous to this time who would acknowledge it,more is the pity.We have had no fraud in our elections in South Carolina since 1884.There has been no organized Republican party in the state.

Benjamin was among 94 whites indicted by the coroner's jury,but no one was ever prosecuted for the Hamburg Massacre.

In 1940, the state legislature of South Carolina erected a statue honoring Benjamin on the captain groups.In 1946,Clemson University,one of South Carolina's public universities,re-named its main hall in Benjamin's honor.Only after events in 2015,when a white supremacist named Dylann Roof murdered nine African-American church members during their prayer service did Clemson vote to distance themselves from Benjamin's "campaign of terror." However,his name remains on the main hall.

After these events,many African-Americans left Hamburg and it began to decline once more.After a 1911,flood,Augusta began construction of a river levee,but Hamburg was left unprotected.Disastrous floods in 1927 and following seasons finally forced out the last residents in 1929.In the 21st century,no visible remains exist of the former town of Hamburg,and it is largely covered by a golf course.