to escape white violence and gain safety in their own communities. As Democrats sought to regain control of the state legislature, their leaders planned to disrupt Republican events, as outlined in Confederate veteran General Martin W. Gary's "Plan of the Campaign of 1876" (also known as the Edgefield Plan). On July 4, 1876, Independence Day, two white planters drove in a carriage down Hamburg's wide Market Street, where they encountered a local militia company, which was drilling (or parading) under command of Captain D. L. "Doc" Adams. Events The men in the Hamburg Company militia were entirely black and mostly freedmen. A white supremacist group called the Red Shirts, led by Benjamin Tillman, who later went on serve a 24-year career in the United States Senate and whose term was marked by enacting racist legislation, instigated confrontations with the black citizens by claiming that said freedmen intentionally blocked passage of public roads and denied passage to any white man. Alternate sources say that a carriage of white men intentionally drove up against the head of the column to cause a civil disturbance. In any case, after an exchange of words, the Red Shirts, also called "white planters", passed through the ranks of the black parade. The Red Shirts then went to the local court, where, at a hearing on July 6, they accused the militia with obstruction of a public road before Trial Justice Prince Rivers. The case was continued until the afternoon of July 8. More than 100 whites from Edgefield and Aiken counties arrived at court, armed with "shotguns, revolvers, hoes, axes and pitchforks." At that time, Matthew Calbraith Butler, an attorney from Edgefield, appeared as the planters' counsel. (Of the many men surnamed Butler who were involved in the incident, he was referred to as 'General' Butler, based on his service in the Confederate Army.) Despite the lack of any official standing, M. C. Butler demanded for the Hamburg company to disband and turn their guns over to him personally. As armed white men gathered in the vicinity, the militia company refused to disarm and took refuge in the armory in the Sibley building near the Charlotte, Columbia and Augusta Railroad bridge. The white militia surrounded the building. Perhaps 25 black militia and 15 others were in the building when firing began. In the exchange of gunfire, McKie Meriwether, a local white farmer, was killed. Outnumbered, running