his convention. The product of that commission was "The Black Code."
Its intentions and provisions were foreshadowed in the debates of the
convention. At the close of the debate I spoke for five minutes,
closing with the prediction that if the convention thought that its
work would be of any value to the state, they were mistaken. If the
convention thought it possible to provide a different code of laws for
the government of the loyal black citizens of the United States, from
that which governed the disloyal white citizens of South Carolina,
they did not understand what the war had accomplished. I said that I
knew more of the

OPINION OF THE WAR

than it was possible for any man in that convention or all of them to
know. While I spoke with modesty before men who had occupied high
political positions in the past, I spoke with confidence as to the
opinion of the people of the North who had waged a successful war
against secession and slavery. Speaking for them I predicted that
their laws would be made by major-generals and executed by
provost-marshals until the last man present would fall into his grave
before the North would admit the state into the Union under a
constitution which did not recognize that all men were equal before
the law. When I sat down there was a dead silence and solemn faces.

To show the opposition I excited, let me give another anecdote.

James L. Orr came to my room one evening and asked me not to be
offended if he requested that upon a certain question he proposed to
bring before the convention the next day I would not speak in its
favor. He said: "There are fools enough in this convention that do not
want anything that you do want, and every time you speak on a measure
you hinder its adoption." The proposition he had at hand was to

REDUCE THE TIME

requisite to obtain citizenship in the state from three years to one,
and after much difficulty he persuaded the convention to make the
change. He also wished to abolish the property qualification for state
senators. Tillman appealed to him in an eloquent speech to spare this
last relic of South Carolina conservatism. Orr, in reply, asked what
in God's name had South Carolina conservatism done for South Carolina.
He pointed to what its condition was once and what it now was, and
charged South Carolina conservatism with the result. His speech was a
powerful one, and brought the convention to his views, and no property
qualification was therea