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"T" is for Tillman, Benjamin Ryan [1847-1918]

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"T" is for Tillman, Benjamin Ryan [1847-1918]. U.S. Senator. Governor. During the 1880s Tillman presented himself as the advocate of “the farmers” against lawyers, politicians, merchants and “aristocrats” whom he blamed for farmers’ economic difficulties. As the champion of a proposed agricultural college and of the farmer's alliance—he won the Democratic nomination for governor in 1890. Tillman established the Dispensary, a state liquor monopoly, and backed a referendum for a constitutional convention. He dominated the 1895 Constitutional Convention that completed the disenfranchisement of black Carolinians and opened the door for Jim Crow. After entering the U.S. Senate in 1895, he achieved notoriety for his rhetorical attacks on racial equality, corporate power, and imperial expansion. During his last decade in office, Benjamin Ryan Tillman—formerly an ardent foe of federal power—helped steer millions of federal military dollars to South Carolina.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.