Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/354

Miller, and Messrs. W. T. Blanton and J. M. Hudson were appointed to select permanent officers, and nominated the following gentlemen: General Johnson Hagood, President; Messrs. Counts, Sojourner, Blanton, Killingsworth and Ogilvie, vice-presidents; J. M. Ryan, secretary.

General Hagood, who was at the front end of the hall, some distance from the chair he was to occupy, upon the invitation of the temporary chairman, advanced to take his seat as presiding officer amidst deafening applause. On taking the chair, General Hagood said: "I understand the purpose of this meeting to be to consider the misgovernment in South Carolina, which running through ten long years, has culminated in the shameful and shameless proceedings of our present Legislature. It is not for me, here, to recall this disgraceful history in all its details. You have borne with it till patience has ceased to be a virtue, and from one end of this American Union to another, regardless of section or party the press—that mighty engine and exponent of popular sentiment—is now ringing with the denunciation of the last wrong inflicted upon you, and with commendation of the true and faithful man who, with a heroism surpassing that of the battlefield, which is wielding such weapons as the executive army can furnish in your temporary defence. This thing has gone far enough: This crowded hall—these earnest faces over which a light flickers that carries me back to a time since when my head and heart have alike grown gray, tell me so. Every instinct of self-preservation tells me that the time has come when all in South Carolina who are fit to live outside of her penitentiary, or expect to within her borders an inheritance for their children, must enlist in this struggle. It will be a contest in which no half-hearted recruit is wanted. It is a fight for life and property, in which you will have to do all that a citizen may do—and, if need be, all that may become a man." (Applause.)

Mr. Alfred Aldrich rose and said: A short time ago, in this house, I said among other things to the taxpayers, that I had "implicit confidence in the people of Barnwell County, but none in Governor Chamberlain." In the light of recent events, I desire to make the Amende honorable to Governor Chamberlain, and here, with equal unreserve as when I made the declaration alluded to, I wish to submit the charge in my opinion embodied in the following resolutions:

Resolved that Governor Chamberlain, from his first … to his