Politics

The segregation of black voters into the “Black” Seventh, as it came to be known, had the desired effect. The Democrats did not even field a candidate in that district in 1882, and a white Republican, Edmund Mackey, won the election. In 1886, however, Democrats began to contest the seat. The former slave and Republican George Washington Murray won in 1896 but lost in the following election. He was the last African American to represent South Carolina in Congress for nearly a century.

In addition to political coverage, the Lighthouse and Informer covered literary and sports news, while its network of correspondents across the state covered the breadth and depth of Black life in South Carolina.

Adams represented Richland District in the S.C. House of Representatives from 1836 to 1849 and in the S.C. Senate from 1850 to 1853. On December 11, 1854, the General Assembly elected Adams governor.

Adger became one of the wealthiest and most influential merchants of antebellum Charleston, and he used his position to good effect in the affairs of the city.

A staunch Democrat, from 1864 to 1866 Aiken represented Abbeville District in the S.C. House of Representatives. During Reconstruction, the link he had earlier made between southernism and agrarianism grew stronger.

As a Unionist, Governor Aiken opposed the radical views of Robert Barnwell Rhett and members of the so-called “Bluffton Movement,” which called for secession if Texas was not annexed to the United States as a slave state.

In 1828 Aiken and others received a charter from the General Assembly authorizing the creation of the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company (SCC&RR). Aiken, the railroad’s largest investor, was soon chosen as president of the company.

In 1828 he launched his formal political career and won election to the S.C. House of Representatives, where he represented Prince George Winyah Parish from 1828 to 1831. He was subsequently involved in several disputed elections involving the Prince George Winyah S.C. Senate seat, in large part because of his staunch support of nullification.

Much like another prominent nineteenth-century political figure, James Chesnut, Alston is primarily remembered as the husband of his legendary wife.

Ansel was the first person of German ancestry to occupy the governor’s chair in South Carolina.

In August 1694 Archdale was chosen by his fellow proprietors as governor of the Carolinas, and he arrived in Charleston the following year.

One of several southern journalists whose “liberal” views on desegregation and civil rights attracted national attention and local scorn, Ashmore won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials opposing Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus’s attempt to stop the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957.

Atwater gained his reputation as a shrewd yet negative campaigner willing to use almost any tactic to get his candidate elected.

For its first 150 years, the Barnwell economy had an agricultural base, but in 1950 the U.S. Government announced plans for the Savannah River Site, a massive nuclear weapons facility that would be located in Aiken and Barnwell Counties. This had a profound effect on Barnwell’s geography and economy.

In 1711 Barnwell was chosen to lead a South Carolina expedition against an uprising of the Tuscarora Indians in eastern North Carolina.

In 1826 he was elected to the state General Assembly, where he represented Prince William’s Parish for a single term in the House of Representatives.

Baruch entered public life in 1916. His interest in preparing America for entry into World War I led President Woodrow Wilson to appoint Baruch to the Business Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense. After WWI, he became an elder statesman of the party. Although he had advised Republican presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, Democrats still knew the value of his support. Franklin Roosevelt relied on him for advice on policy during the Depression—despite Baruch’s occasional criticism of the New Deal—and turned to him to help guide both economic mobilization and demobilization for World War II.

One of his first actions as mayor was the appointment of a study group to investigate the improvement of air service for the area. As a result, the Richland-Lexington Airport District began operating the Columbia Metropolitan Airport in 1962.

In the fall of 1991, Beasley switched to the Republican Party because he felt that “the Democratic Party was moving so far to the left” and “that Republican philosophy and Republican policies were more in line with what is good for America over the long term.”

In the antebellum era, Beaufort became a summer retreat for rich Sea Island cotton planters and even richer mainland rice planters, who maintained a wealthy and cultivated society in the town.