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Senate Years of Service: 1895-1918 Party: Democrat
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Library of Congress |
TILLMAN, Benjamin Ryan, (brother of George Dionysius Tillman),
a Senator from South Carolina; born near Trenton, Edgefield County, S.C., August
11, 1847; pursued an academic course; left school in 1864 to join the Confederate Army, but was
stricken with a severe illness; engaged in agricultural pursuits; Governor of South Carolina
1890-1894; established Clemson College and Winthrop College while Governor; member of the
State constitutional convention in 1895; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1894;
reelected in 1901, 1907 and 1913 and served from March 4, 1895, until his death; censured by the
Senate in 1902 after assaulting another Senator on the Senate floor; chairman, Committee on
Revolutionary Claims (Fifty-seventh through Fifty-ninth Congresses), Committee on Five Civilized
Tribes of Indians (Sixty-first and Sixty-second Congresses), Committee on Naval Affairs (Sixty-third
through Sixty-fifth Congresses); Tillman was known as Pitchfork Ben during his years in the Senate;
died in Washington, D.C., July 3, 1918; interment in Ebenezer Cemetery, Trenton, S.C.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Simkins, Francis. Pitchfork Ben Tillman:
South Carolinian. 1944. Reprint. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967;
Kantrowitz, Stephen. Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
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