At the time of the publication of these editorials, the State of South Carolina was represented in the Senate of the United States by Wade Hampton and M. C. Butler. Both were members of families which had been identified with the history of the State of South Carolina from the Revolutionary War. Both belonged to the slave-holding planter class. Both had served with distinction in the Confederate War, rising respectively to the grades of lieutenant general and major general; the former having established a record while in command of the cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia, second to none, in handling that branch of the service. In addition Hampton had, in his own State, been the leader of the whites in the great political struggle of 1876, in which the Negro government had been overthrown, in which contest, he had been ably seconded by Butler. But the Hampton of 1867 had passed through many experiences since General D. H. Hill had commended his appeal, at that date, to the Southern Negro to consider the South as his home, and Green’s campaign of 1874 had probably convinced him that the bulk of the Negroes preferred the showy flashes of the characterless Elliott and Whipper to the sober honesty of Delany and Thomas. In the year that Gen. D. H. Hill, of South Carolina, died, B. R. Tillman pushed to completion Hill’s educational view with the founding of Clemson; while to Senator Hampton was propounded the query which the editorials had suggested, concerning the diffusion of the Negroes: “Would any injury result to the South from an extensive exodus?” The reply from that one in the South best qualified to answer such a question might well stand also as the best reply to the inquiry propounded by George William Curtis to the author of this work, before alluded to. Hampton’s reply exhibited the broad statesmanship of Paul Hamilton, Joseph Alston and Robert Barnwell in 1803, before South Carolina had been deluged with slaves, and the brave sincerity of Robert Y. Hayne, in 1818, 1827 and 1839. Hampton said: “An inconvenience, but no injury. We would gladly see the colored people move elsewhere, and we would be willing to suffer any reduction of representation that might result from their departure. It would deprive us of much of our labor and make it a little harder for the present generation, but it would be the salvation of the future.”[229] Senator Butler then took up the matter, and in the early part of 1890 sought to have enacted by congress a bill providing: