South Carolina furnished the most striking example of this revolt. In
that State the families which had governed before the War continued the
direction of affairs. By a rather unusual compromise, the large western
population of the State had been balanced against the greater wealth of
the east. Consequently there was overrepresentation of the east after
the negro had been deprived of the ballot. It was charged--and with some
show of truth--that a small group of men clustering around Charleston
exercised an entirely disproportionate share of influence in party
management. The farmers, with a growing class consciousness, began to
resent this injustice and found a leader ready and anxious to direct
them.

In March, 1890, the delegates of the Farmers' Association decided to
secure the nomination for governor for Benjamin R. Tillman, who had
devoted much of his time for four years to arousing the farmers. The
contest for the nomination was begun in May and, after a bitter
struggle, Tillman won easily in the convention in September. The
"straight outs," dazed and humiliated, ran an independent candidate.
Tillman and his followers accepted the challenge and the conflict took
form as a struggle between mass and class. The farmers' leader, though
not himself illiterate, obscure, or poor, raged up and down the State
frankly and brutally preaching class war. He held up Charleston as a
sink of iniquity, and he promised legislation to cleanse it. Perhaps a
majority of the whites really believed his charges and put faith in his
doctrines. If not, the fetish of party regularity drew the votes
necessary to make up the deficiency. Tillman had been regularly
nominated in a Democratic convention, and South Carolinians had been
trained to vote the party ticket. He was elected by a large majority.

At the end of Tillman's first term two years later, he was again a
candidate, and the convention which nominated him approved the Ocala
platform. Since the party machinery was in control of the Tillmanites,
the opposition adopted the name "Cleveland Democracy" and sought to undo
the revolution. The result was never doubtful. Tillman was reelected by
an overwhelming majority, and on the expiration of his term was sent to
the United States Senate, which he shocked by his passionate utterances
as he had so often shocked his own State. The attitude of the educated
and cultivated part of the population of South Carolina toward Tillman
affords a