South Carolina gubernatorial election, 1890

The 1890 South Carolina gubernatorial election was held on November 4, 1890 to select the governor of the state of South Carolina. Ben Tillman was nominated by the Democrats and easily won the general election against A.C. Haskell to become the 84th governor of South Carolina.

In January 1890, the Shell Manifesto was released by the Farmers' Association and it denounced the current Conservative Democratic state government while calling for a convention to be held in March. It was signed by the President of the Farmers' Association, George Washington Shell, but it was written by Ben Tillman who sought to manipulate the Association into supporting his candidacy for governor. The manifesto called for the nomination of candidates for statewide office, with the intent of giving Tillman an early advantage over his Conservative Democrat rivals.

The Farmers' Association convened in Columbia on March 27 and immediately a call was made by W. Jasper Talbert to vote on proceeding with nominations for the statewide ticket. However, the tally from the delegates was 116 votes against nominations and 115 for nominations. Nevertheless, Talbert turned a one-vote defeat into a six-vote victory by switching votes of delegates without their consent and allowing votes of an unseated delegation from Beaufort County. The official vote to proceed with nominations stood at 120 to 114 and Talbert then simply announced the nomination of Tillman for governor without even obtaining a vote from the delegation.

The Conservatives and the state press condemned the Farmers' Association for trying to disrupt the unity of the state Democratic party. In addition, they stressed that if the Farmers' Associations candidates failed to achieve nomination at the Democratic convention, then their cause would lose all relevancy. Furthermore, the News and Courier conducted a straw poll of over a thousand residents in the state and released the results showing that John Calhoun Sheppard was the most favored candidate for governor, followed by Johnson Hagood and in third was Ben Tillman.

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