Coleman Livingston Blease - Political Career

Political Career

Blease returned to Newberry to practice law and enter politics. He began his political career in the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1890 as a protégé of Benjamin Ryan Tillman. But whereas Tillman drew his support from South Carolina's well-to-do white farmers, Blease recognized that the tenant farmers and textile mill workers lacked a political voice.

In 1895 the state legislature ratified a new constitution that essentially disfranchised African-American citizens, thus suppressing much of the Republican Party in the state. The state had a one-party system, run by the Democrats. Blease's rise to power, as he moved from the South Carolina House of Representatives to the South Carolina Senate in 1900, was built on the support of both the sharecroppers and mill workers, an increasingly important segment of the electorate in South Carolina in this period. His appeal to the millworkers and sharecroppers was based on his personality and his view that made the "inarticulate masses feel that Coley was making them an important political force in the state." This new era saw a sharp division within the state Democratic Party, with the factions known for many years as being "Tillmanites" and "Bleaseites." Shortly before he was elected governor, Blease was elected as the Mayor of Newberry in 1910. He held this position until November 1910, when he became the governor of the state.