The South Carolina Dispensary system was a state-run monopoly on liquor sales in South Carolina which operated from 1893 to 1907 statewide and until 1916 in some counties. The system was the brainchild of Governor Benjamin Tillman, a farmer from Edgefield known as “Pitchfork Ben,” who served as governor from 1890–1894 and as a U.S. Senator from 1895 until his death in 1918. This experiment had never before been tried at the state level, and proved to be the last time a state would require all liquor sold within its borders to be bottled and dispensed through state-run facilities.