Government and Law

Dennis came to statewide attention in 1954 when—as a member of the State Democratic Party Executive Committee—he offered the motion to make Senator Edgar Brown the party’s candidate for the U.S. Senate after the unexpected death of the incumbent Burnet Maybank.

Dent’s involvement in ATMI, as a member of the Commission on an All-Volunteer Army, and as a supporter of President Richard Nixon during his second presidential election gained him the recognition of the Nixon administration.

He was a major influence in Thurmond’s switch to the Republican Party in 1964 and in shaping what became the Republican “Southern strategy,” a racial appeal to the segregationist inclinations of southern whites.

DeSaussure and many of his fellow lowcountrymen feared that upcountry growth would overwhelm their interests, especially the protections given to both plantation and slave holdings. Regarding the increasingly egalitarian rhetoric of upcountry leaders and their yeomen constituents with “dread,” he warned of the “ultimate effects of a degrading, calumnating democracy.”

Although in office less than a year, DeSaussure considered the Senate to be “grand theater, the arena where proud Sovereignties are fighting for their rights.”

Deveaux and his Loyalist partisans are believed to have been responsible for burning the Prince William Parish church at Sheldon in April 1779. Deveaux was commissioned as a major in the South Carolina Loyalist militia known as the “Royal Foresters” and served the British army occupying South Carolina for the next three years.

He opposed federal minimum wage and child-labor laws, and his objections to the World War I bonus bill cost him support among veterans.

Basing his idea on European models, Tillman portrayed the dispensary as a compromise between the private sale of liquor and prohibition that would promote temperance and clean up politics.

The dissenters, grateful for the policy of religious toleration that had given them a place of refuge, supported the proprietors. The proprietors tried repeatedly to break the power of the Goose Creek Men, but their attempts only provoked political disorder.

Delegate Daniel Henderson argued that the state’s relentless stand against divorce offered incentives to those who destroyed homes and winked at the “crime of adultery.” Opponents prevailed, however, strengthening their position with a clause in the 1895 constitution that prohibited divorce.

The Dixiecrat Party broke the solid South’s historic allegiance to the national Democratic Party and in doing so inaugurated an unpredictable era in which white southerners grappled with a variety of vehicles designed to thwart racial progress.

In 1757 colonial officials authorized construction of a tabby fort at the town of Dorchester, which subsequently made the region an active theater of combat during the Revolutionary War.

As a congressman, Dorn established a record as a strong supporter of military and defense spending. He was also a champion of veterans and supported numerous legislative acts for their assistance.

He devoted most of his energy while governor toward the establishment of South Carolina College in Columbia to advance public learning and to help unify the state. Following his term as governor, he again served as warden of Charleston and was one of its representatives in the Senate until 1808, when he again won election as governor.

He won a seat in the Provincial Congress in January 1775 and soon after sat on all important revolutionary committees. Drayton used his extensive powers to lead raids against the city’s royal post office and armories, thereby obtaining both crucial information regarding the intentions of the British Ministry and arms for the patriot forces.

In 1896 Earle defeated the unpopular John Gary Evans for the Democratic nomination to the U.S. Senate in the state’s first direct primary.

The murder of Willie Earle is believed to be the last racial lynching in South Carolina.

Edelman became active in civil rights as a student at Spelman College. Following the historic sit-in of four black students at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, Edelman and seventy-seven other students were arrested on March 15, 1960, for conducting a sit-in at Atlanta restaurants that served only whites.

Edens, an early supporter of Barry Goldwater for president, reached a high point at the 1964 Republican National Convention when he rose to announce the state delegation’s vote: “I am humbly grateful that we can do this for America. South Carolina casts sixteen votes for Senator Barry Goldwater.”

Agriculture dominated Edgefield’s economy throughout its history. Early settlers grew grains and raised impressive numbers of cattle and hogs. Staple crops, particularly tobacco, grew in significance by the 1790s.