The Hamburg Massacre

Hamburg was a market town populated by a majority of freed blacks in Aiken County, across the Savannah River from Augusta, Georgia.

The Hamburg Massacre (or Red Shirt Massacre was just prior to the last election season of the Reconstruction Era.

It was the first of a series of civil disturbances planned and carried out by white Democrats (Keep in mind that there was a mass exodus of Southern conservatives from the Democratic part in the 1960s/70 and similar reversal among Republicans).

The Edgefield District as majority Republican and progressive. The goal of the rioters was the suppression of black voting, disruption Republican meetings, and suppression of black Americans civil rights, through violence and threats of violence.

Over 100 white men attacked about 30 black servicemen of the National Guard at the armory, killing two.

Over 100 black people were killed during several days.

94 whites were indicted by the coroner's jury, but no one was ever prosecuted for the Hamburg murders

During the remainder of the century, laws were enacted
calling for single-party white rule, legal segregation, "Jim Crow," and disenfranchisement of blacks from voting and office-holding with a new state constitution adopted in 1895.

READ MORE:

"Official Report of the Battle of Hamburg", Attorney General of South Carolina, 1876.: http://henryshultz.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/official-report-of-the-hamburg-massacre/

Review of "Tightening the Noose." https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/05/21/reviews/000521.21dewlt.html