Beville, the sheriff, was an appointee of General Swayne. He was unable to give bond, but Swayne waived that formality and ordered him to continue in office without bond. In 1868 Richard Harris, a negro, who could neither read nor write, became his worthy successor.
As solicitor the discriminating voters chose Ben Bardwell, a negro, who was wholly deficient in the knowledge of reading and writing, a deficiency which made him "an easy mark" for one of the most learned bars in the state.
George Houston, a freedman, was sent to the lower house of the legislature. As his colleague Ben Inge, another "person of color," absolutely illiterate, was selected.
An army captain, one Yordy, received the state senatorial honors, which he wore while serving Uncle Sam in the custom house at Mobile. He was a long-distance representative, having no domicile in Sumter, nor ever making his appearance there.
John B. Cecil, reputed federal army sutler and coming with the influx from fecund Ohio, was elected treasurer. He gradually and logically degenerated into a partnership with a negro in a grog-shop enterprise.
Badger, another bird of passage, became tax assessor. The revenue and road commission was a motley aggregation which comprised one carpetbagger and three negroes.
Edward Herndon, a native Union man, by grace of appointment and election, simultaneously devoted his talents to the offices of circuit clerk, register in chancery, notary public, justice of the peace, keeper of the poorhouse and guardian _ad litem_,--and perhaps felt aggrieved that he didn't have "all that was coming to him."
It would seem that, with this multiplicity of trusts, Mr. Herndon monopolized the privilege of plurality in office holding; but not so, for Mr. Daniel Price, a typical scalawag, with the reputation of a jailbird and desperado, made flight from Wetumpka to Sumter, and was endowed with a bunch of federal and county jobs,--register of voters, superintendent of education, postmaster and census taker. Insatiable, like Oliver Twist he wanted more, and as a side line to his multifarious activities, employed his scholarly attainments in the conduct of a negro school, meanwhile boarding and associating with negroes.