Samuel E. Gaillard
South Carolina politician
Samuel Eden Gaillard (c. 1839–1879) was an African-American businessman and politician during the Reconstruction era in South Carolina. He represented Charleston County in the state senate from 1871 until 1877, when he resigned after Democrats regained control of South Carolina and engaged in a purge of Republicans.
Political career
Gaillard entered public service through employment by the Freedmen's Bureau, a federal agency established in 1865 to aid formerly-enslaved people living in the American South.
In 1867, Gaillard was appointed to the Board of Registers for the third district in modern-day Berkeley County, which was part of Charleston County at the time. In this role, he was in charge of organizing elections in the area.
He was a Citizen's Party (Union Reform Party of South Carolina) nominee for Alderman in 1871.
During the 1872 South Carolina gubernatorial election, Gaillard "bolted" from the Republican Party's nominee and supported the Independent Republican ticket, which was formed to oppose the election of Governor Franklin Moses Jr. and push efforts to reform the state government. This became known as the "1872 Bolting Movement".
The public source identifies “Samuel E. Gaillard” as south Carolina politician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Samuel, Gaillard and South.
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This entry incorporates text from “Samuel E. Gaillard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.