Liberian Exodus

The South would have to remain under federal control until it was deemed safe to leave matters to the southern state governments. This probationary period of federal control was termed “Reconstruction.”

The Red Shirts were simply a more organized version of the “rifle clubs” or “sabre clubs” that had proliferated in South Carolina after the breakup of the Ku Klux Klan by federal forces in 1871.

It must be remembered, however, that the full voting strength of white South Carolina was still insufficient to win a fair election. According to an 1875 special state census, South Carolina had 74,193 white men over age twenty-one and 110,735 black men over age twenty-one.

By the late 1850s he was an active abolitionist and worked with famous activists such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Delaney.