Includes bibliographical references (pages 137-154) and index.

Wade Hampton's Black Red Shirts -- Chart: Hampton's Black Red Shirts -- South Carolina in 1876: Testimonies as to the Denial of the Elective Franchise in South Carolina at the Election of 1876. Preston Taylor -- Richland County. Jonas Weeks -- Richland County. Merriman Washington -- Richland County. Edward Henderson -- Abbeville County. Asbury Green -- Abbeville County. Aaron Mitchell -- Abbeville County. Tom Lomax -- Abbeville County -- South Carolina Slave Narratives. Frank Adamson. Charley Barber. Ed Barber. Andy Brice. John C. Brown and Adeline Brown. Thomas Campbell. Louisa Davis. Pen Eubanks. George Fleming. Madison Griffin. Richard Mack.

This Post-Revisionist Study examines the motives and the concerns of the ex-slaves in South Carolina who supported a movement that eventually led to white supremacy. Although most freedmen throughout the states of the former Confederacy were Republicans loyal to the party of the Federal government that had emancipated them, there were factions of African-American voters who aligned themselves with local white Democratic leaders. One such group of black conservatives joined the "Red Shirts," white paramilitary clubs that attempted to restore antebellum values in electing former Confederate general Wade Hampton governor of South Carolina in 1876.

Drago's analysis recovers and explains this lost aspect of Southern black history. Drawing on primary sources that include testimonies of seven black Red Shirts before a Congressional investigation of the election and eleven slave narratives, he de-romanticizes the black experience by examining the relationship between black initiative and southern paternalism.