The attitude, behavior and utterance of these six Negroes in this convention, in the State where twenty years previously the members of their race had held their most pronounced legislative orgy and to which they now came, to what they must have realized were the political obsequies of the race, had in it, sentimentally considered, something of the pathetic. It should be borne in mind that those who did come now could only come from those two counties where the Negroes were at their lowest, if contact with whites was elevating; for, in Beaufort and Georgetown, the whites composed a very small minority. It was not a time, however, for sentimental considerations, and to fuse the general mass of the convention into a condition appreciative of the scheme it was aimed to present at that stage in the proceedings, Senator Tillman reviewed at great length and with terrific force the previous frightful excesses of carpet-bag government and Negro rule in the State. Upon the adoption of a resolution for the incorporation of his speech in the journal of the Convention, with a fairness, a milder man might not have exhibited, he requested that the replies of such of the Negro delegates as desired to speak, should also be therein printed. That Negro delegate designated by him as “the ablest man of color I have ever met,” W. J. Whipper, (Dan. Chamberlain’s _piece de resistance_ in the seventies), certainly the most notorious of all who rose to prominence in Reconstruction days, failed to avail himself of the privilege. While far less able, with a manly determination distinctly to his credit, Robert Smalls did, and defended his character with courage. He was accused of corruption. He pointed to the fact that he had been pardoned, and he claimed with great earnestness that the pardon had been granted him without solicitation on his part, and in spite of his urgent demand for trial. While his remarks do not indicate any exceptional intelligence, nor his reasons for desertion the clearest conception of what constitutes public morality, there is a ring of manly courage in his speech which wins sympathy. After setting forth the above claim, he concluded as follows: