Hamburg Massacre: Red Shirts Murder Black Militia to Suppress Voting

Over 100 armed white men—members of paramilitary “rifle clubs” called the Red Shirts—attack approximately 30 Black National Guard servicemen at the Hamburg, South Carolina armory on July 8, 1876, killing seven men (six of them Black) in what becomes the first of a series of planned civil disturbances designed to suppress Black voting rights and disrupt Republican meetings before the November election. The violence begins July 4 when two white planters encounter a Black militia company drilling on Hamburg’s Market Street. Although the farmers pass through after an initial argument, they file a formal complaint two days later—attracting armed white rifle clubs to the court hearing.

The massacre follows a systematic pattern of premeditated racial terrorism. The white supremacist militia, led by future U.S. Senator Benjamin Tillman, rounds up approximately two dozen Black citizens after attacking the armory. At about 2 a.m., the whites form what becomes known as the “Dead Ring” near the South Carolina Railroad bridge and debate the fate of the Black men. They select four men—Allan Attaway, David Phillips, Hampton Stephens, and Albert Myniart—and murder them one at a time, going around the ring. The Red Shirts, named for their distinctive uniforms, are simply reorganized “rifle clubs” that proliferated after federal forces broke up the Ku Klux Klan in 1871. Composed of hundreds of rifle clubs totaling 15,000 or more men, the Red Shirts vastly outnumber the detachment of U.S. troops in South Carolina.

Although 94 Red Shirts are indicted, none are convicted. Two participants—Benjamin Tillman and Matthew Butler—go on to serve as U.S. Senators, with Tillman boasting of the “stirring events” of 1876 during his 1890 gubernatorial campaign. The Hamburg Massacre catapults the “straight-out” strategy supporting ex-Confederate General Wade Hampton for governor. Although blacks are the majority of victims, Hampton uses the massacre to remind white voters of the “racial danger” of Republican government. The Red Shirts’ strategy of “force without violence” proves devastatingly effective: Hampton wins what historians now consider South Carolina’s most corrupt election, effectively ending Reconstruction. Southern Democrats succeed in “redeeming” state government and pass laws establishing single-party white rule, legal segregation, and Black disenfranchisement through the 1895 constitution. The Hamburg Massacre demonstrates how organized paramilitary violence can overthrow democratic governance when perpetrators face no accountability.