The third book published this year that focuses on a unique part of the history of Kingstree and Williamsburg County is a biography of Stephen Atkins Swails. Written by Mount Pleasant historian, author, and attorney Gordon C. Rhea, the book takes a close look at a man who was both loved and hated in his day.
Stephen A. Swails, Black Freedom Fighter in the Civil War and Reconstruction was released November 3. It follows the life of Stephen Swails from his birth in Columbia, Pennsylvania, in 1832 until his death in Kingstree in 1900. Although he was born to free Black parents, Swails saw from an early age that Black citizens, although free, were not free from harassment, as many of his neighbors' homes were burned and Black residents intimidated by whites who feared that Blacks would take their jobs. The Swails family eventually moved to Elmira, New York, and as a young man during the Civil War, Stephen Swails enlisted in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the regiment on which the movie Glory is based.
Rhea traces the movements of the 54th Massachusetts from the bloody battle at Battery Wagner near Charleston to the Battle of Olustee in Baker County, Florida, in which Swails was wounded, to their march with General Edward Potter across parts of South Carolina. Stephen Swails' performance was such that his white commanders and Massachusetts governor John Andrew requested that the War Department commission him as an officer. However, War Department officials were reluctant, fearing this would put Swails in a position to command white soldiers. Only after his commanding officers assured those officials that Swails looked like a white man did he become the first African-American commissioned line officer in the United States Army.
Following the war, Stephen Swails returned to South Carolina where he was employed by the Freedmen's Bureau and assigned to Williamsburg County. His job was to mediate grievances and issues between Blacks and whites. Rhea, in an interview with the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, noted that this position gave him a great political advantage in that he was well-known by all segments of the community and was "able to win allies in both sectors of the population. "
While working with the Bureau, Swails studied law and was admitted to the South Carolina Bar in 1872. He set up a law practice in Kingstree with Melvin J. Hirsch, who had fought at Battery Wagner on the side of the Confederates.
Swails also sought public office and was elected to the South Carolina Senate where he served as president pro tem. He also served as Williamsburg County Auditor and as Intendant, or Mayor, of Kingstree from 1873 until 1877. In addition, he was editor and publisher of The Williamsburg Republican. He was an electoral college elector for several Presidential elections and served as a trustee for the University of South Carolina.
Gordon Rhea notes that until recently little has been written about Reconstruction. "This was a real educational experience for me," he said in the interview with the Civil War Institute. "I'm glad I went through it because I learned so much and met some fascinating characters."
During Reconstruction throughout South Carolina there was much violence, including a number of political assassinations. And while there were racial tensions and upheavals in Williamsburg County, there was little overt violence. Stephen Swails has been credited by several who lived through the time with helping to keep relative calm in Williamsburg County.
However, as times began to change, Stephen Swails began to feel the heat of his opponents' wrath. They eventually were able to drive him from the county by threatening his life. He found work in Washington, DC, with the Post Office Department and the Department of the Treasury. But it also appears that he regularly visited his wife and children in Kingstree without incident, and after he became ill, he moved back to Kingstree where he died May 17, 1900, attended by Dr. D.C. Scott.
Stephen Swails had more or less become a footnote of local history until 1978 when brothers Jimmy and Edward Moore happened to see a trunk on the side of Brooks Street, outside the Carolina Warehouse. (The Swails home once sat where the warehouse was then located.) They didn't stop at the time but came back later that day to find it gone. Still later, Jimmy Moore drove by the town dump and saw the same trunk. This time he stopped and picked it up. Inside were the personal papers of Stephen Swails. The brothers didn't know who Stephen Swails was, but they took their find to Sammie McIntosh at the Williamsburgh Historical Society. McIntosh gave them $75 as a finder's fee. But, it wasn't until the 1990s that Kingstree attorney Billy Jenkinson became interested in the papers and, as a result, in 1998, an historical marker was placed on the property to commemorate Stephen Swails. In 2006, Russell Horres, a board member of the African-American Historical Alliance, was able to identify Stephen Swails' unmarked grave in the Humane and Friendly Society Cemetery in Charleston. Subsequently, the Alliance placed a marker on the grave. Billy Jenkinson, through a set of unusual circumstances, met Gordon Rhea and told him the story of Stephen Swails. Rhea became interested and soon found out that Hugh McDougall, the official Village Historian of Cooperstown, NY, and a former attorney and diplomat, had also gathered information on Stephen Swails. Jenkinson and McDougall's research gave Rhea a solid base from which to begin his own research.
Rhea points out that the white citizens of Williamsburg County had varying views of Stephen Swails. Dr. Samuel Davis McGill in his book Narrative of Reminiscences in Williamsburg County credited Swails with keeping serious violence at bay in Williamsburg County during Reconstruction. However, W.W. Boddie and Henry Davis saw him more as a villain, calling him a carpetbagger. I can add two other voices to these, one on either side. In 1932, Nell Gilland interviewed David Erwin Gordon, son of A.M. Gordon and Mary Lee Gamble, for the Bicentennial issue of The County Record. His view of Stephen Swails was much like that of Dr. McGill with the feeling that without Stephen Swails' influence, Williamsburg County's experience during Reconstruction would have been much more violent. However, in his unpublished memoirs, State Senator Edwin Christopher Epps noted that "The elder Swails was an agitator among negroes and must have caused quite a bit of trouble for how the Klu Klux and the Red Shirts handled him and finally made him leave town are stories which are among my first memories, and were told by both negroes and white people."
Senator Epps, however, had much kinder words for Stephen Swails' eldest son, Florian. He remembers Florian as working in James Sullivan's blacksmith shop; however, in his 1935 obituary, Florian is remembered as having worked as mail clerk on the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad for 32 years. His obituary notes that he owned one of the oldest homes in Kingstree, as he inherited his father's house on the corner of Main and South Brooks. Florian Grant Swails was also elected to the Kingstree Town Council in 1895. The article in The State newspaper notes that he and the three white men elected were all "young businessmen, expected to give general satisfaction."
Stephen and Susan Swails' daughter, Daisy, born in 1880, was also well-thought of by the citizens of Kingstree. She appears to have been the sole teacher in the "colored school" in Kingstree in the late 1890s. There are several mentions in The County Record of programs she and her students put on at the Court House that were attended by both white and Black residents. The 1940 census shows a 60-year-old Daisy M. Swails still teaching in Kingstree, boarding at the home of Joe Austin. Also boarding with the Austins was a 35-year-old Charles Edward Murray, who would make his own name in education in Williamsburg County.
Florian Swails' son, another Stephen A. Swails, was a veteran of the Korean War and taught for 15 years in the New York City school system, carrying on the legacies of his family in both the military and education.
"If you don't know about the past, you're bound to repeat the mistakes of the past," Gordon Rhea commented in his interview with the Civil War Institute. "It helps put into context a lot of what is going on today."
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