The definitive biography of a controversial South Carolina leader; Upon its initial publication in 1944, Pitchfork Ben Tillman was a signal event in the writing of modern South Carolina history. In a biography the Journal of Southern History called
definitive.
Francis Butler Simkins brings his research skills and professional dispassion to bear upon a study of one of the state’s most controversial political leaders. Benjamin Ryan Tillman (1847-1918) accomplished a political revolution in South Carolina when he defeated Governor Wade Hampton and the old guard Bourbons who had run the state since the end of Reconstruction. During his political ascendancy as governor and then United States Senator, Tillman introduced the state’s dispensary system and shaped the state’s 1895 constitution into a bulwark of white supremacy. Almost single-handedly Tillman established the iniquities of Jim Crow that countless other southern demagogues would imitate. These
accomplishments
would plague the South and the nation until this day. Orville Vernon Burton’s new introduction looks at both Tillman and author Francis Simkins as prime examples of southerners with tremendous talent but unsettling accomplishments.