James H. Tillman Explained

James H. Tillman
Office1:	64th Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina
Term Start1:	January 15, 1901
Term End1:	January 20, 1903
Predecessor1:	Robert B. Scarborough
Successor1:	John Sloan
Governor1:	Miles Benjamin McSweeney

James Hammond Tillman (June 27, 1869 – April 1, 1911) was an American lawyer and politician from South Carolina. Born in Edgefield County, he received his education in the Curryton Academy; the Virginia Military Institute; the Emerson Institute of Washington, D.C., and the Georgetown University Law School.^[1] Between 1901 and 1903 he was Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina. He was the son of U.S. Representative George D. Tillman and nephew of Senator Benjamin Tillman.

In 1903 he fatally shot journalist Narciso Gener Gonzales, co-founder of Columbia newspaper The State, and was acquitted of murder in a trial that gained national coverage.^[2] It is believed that had he not murdered Gonzales, Tillman would have led the political movement which Coleman Livingston Blease inherited from him.^[3]

Further reading

• Book: Jones, Lewis P.. 1973. Stormy Petrel: N. G. Gonzales and His State. Columbia, S.C.. USC Press.
• Book: Underwood. James Lowell. Deadly Censorship: Murder, Honor, and Freedom of the Press. 2013. University of South Carolina Press. Columbia, South Carolina. 9781611173000.

Notes and References

1. Book: Thomas William Herringshaw. Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century. 1904. American Publishers' Association. 934.
2. Book: Edgar, Walter B.. The South Carolina Encyclopedia. 2006. University of South Carolina Press. 978-1-57003-598-2. 962–963.
3. Simkins, Francis Butler (1944). Pitchfork Ben Tillman, South Carolinian (first paperback ed.). Louisiana State University Press. OCLC 1877696