James H. Tillman

James H. Tillman
File:James H. Tillman, South Carolina.jpg
64th Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina
In office January 15, 1901 – January 20, 1903
Governor	Miles Benjamin McSweeney
Preceded by	Robert B. Scarborough
Succeeded by	John Sloan
Personal details
Born	(1869-06-27)June 27, 1869 Edgefield County, South Carolina
Died

James Hammond Tillman (June 27, 1869 – April 1, 1911) was an American lawyer and politician from South Carolina. Between 1901 and 1903, he was Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina. He was the son of U.S. Representative George D. Tillman and nephew of Senator Benjamin Tillman.

Biography

Born in Edgefield County, he received his education in the Curryton Academy; the Virginia Military Institute; the Emerson Institute of Washington, D. C. and the Georgetown University Law School.

During the Progressive Era, following the American Civil War, a new brand of South Carolina populism was rising from the influence of Tillman's uncle, known by the nickname of “Pitchfork Ben”. This faction was even more populist, more aggressively racist, and more violent in rhetoric (and at times in action).

The younger Tillman had a reputation as being arrogant, exaggerated in rhetoric, loose on ethics, a heavy drinker, and a gambler. Nonetheless, he appealed to many poor white South Carolinians and his service in the Spanish-American War helped his career enough so that he won the 1900 election for lieutenant governor.

However, journalist Narciso Gener Gonzales, co-founder of Columbia newspaper The State, became a staunch opponent of Tillmanism and the trends that came along with it, including the use of violence to uphold white supremacy. Gonzales was also a political actor, having directed patronage through South Carolina from the Grover Cleveland administration. Although Gonzales held his own prejudices against Negroes, as was common in the South at the time, he opposed lynching as a means of enforcing social control. The State published articles blasting the young Tillman and accusing him of being “a proven liar, defaulter, gambler, and drunkard”, as well as fabricating the state Senate record and having a dishonorable war record.

In 1902, the ambitious Tillman wanted to win the South Carolina gubernatorial race, but the damaging articles from Gonzales’ newspaper continued. Also damaging was his calling for President Theodore Roosevelt not to be hosted by the governor because Roosevelt banned his uncle, Ben Tillman, from the White House for his fistfight with fellow South Carolina Senator John McLaurin. The reporting against him was accurate, and Tillman came in fourth in the Democratic primary, getting a paltry 17.2% of the vote. After his primary loss, he accused Gonzales of lying about him, claiming that his defeat was caused by “the brutal, false and malicious newspaper attacks headed by N. G. Gonzales”.

On January 15, 1903, Tillman fatally shot Gonzales in the abdomen in broad daylight, and Gonzales died four days later. Tillman was acquitted of murder in a trial that gained national coverage. He claimed at his trial that Gonzales had moved in a menacing way with his hands in his pockets, so he thought he was armed. The greatest victory his legal team scored was moving the venue of the trial from Columbia to Lexington County. Lexington County was full of his supporters, and the jury consisted of men who thought that what Tillman had done was acceptable to satisfy honor given the inflammatory nature of certain articles written against him. Although dueling had mostly faded away by this time, there was still a lingering honor culture that could result in men killing each other for actual or perceived slights and insults.

The trial was condemned as a “farce” in the statewide press, and although Tillman was acquitted, his story did not have a happy ending. He ran for Congress in the 2nd district in 1904 to replace the late George W. Croft, but was defeated by Croft’s son, Theodore. The following year, an obelisk in Columbia was constructed in honor of Gonzales that stands to this day with the inscription, “A martyr to free speech in South Carolina”.

Tillman’s lifestyle resulted in poor health, and he died on April 1, 1911 at the age of 41. It is believed that, had he not murdered Gonzales, Tillman would have led the political movement which Coleman Livingston Blease inherited from him.