History of Abbeville, (Abbeville County) South Carolina United States of America

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Biographies:

Abner Smith Lipscomb, jurist, was born in Abbeville, S.C., Feb. 10, 1789; son of Joel and Elizabeth (Childs) Lipscomb. His father was a Revolutionary officer, and both parents were natives of Culpeper county, Va. He studied law with John C. Calhoun and George Bowie at Abbeville, S.C., and settled in the practice of law in 1811 at St. Stephens (Ala.), at that time in Mississippi Territory. He served as captain of volunteers in the expedition against the Indians in the war of 1812. He was a member of the Alabama territorial legislature, 1817-19; judge of the supreme court of the state of Alabama, 1820-24, and chief justice, 1824-35. He was a representative from the Mobile district in the Alabama legislature, 1838, and in 1839 he removed to Texas. He was secretary of the republic under President Lamar, 1839-41, and a member of the convention of 1845 that accepted the terms of annexation proposed by the United States and framed the constitution of the state. He was an associate justice of the supreme court of the state, 1846-57. Lipscomb county, Texas, was named in his honor. He received the honorary degree LL.D. from theUniversity of Alabama in 1834. His opinions are published in Minor's, Stewart's, and Stewart and Porter's reports, and in "Texas Law Reports" Vols. I. to XVII. and his decisions are quoted by the supreme courts of Iowa, Massachusetts and other states and by the United States supreme court. He died near Austin, Texas, Dec. 3, 1857.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

John Caldwell Calhoun, statesman, was born in Abbeville district, S. C., March 18, 1782; son of Patrick and Martha (Caldwell) Calhoun. Patrick came to America with his father, James Calhoun, when six years old. They left Ireland in 1731, located in Pennsylvania, removed to the banks of the Kanawa in Virginia and after Braddock's defeat, being driven by the Indians, he with his sons settled in South Carolina in 1756 and established Calhoun settlement in what became Abbeville district. The Calhouns and Caldwells were both of the Presbyterian faith. His father was a surveyor by profession. He was prepared for college at the academy of his brother-in-law, Dr. Waddell, a Presbyterian clergyman, and in 1802 entered Yale college, where he was graduated with distinction in 1804. He studied in a law office in Charleston, S. C., and was graduated at the law school, Litchfield, Conn. He was admitted to the bar in 1807, and practised his profession at Abbeville, S. C., where he soon rose to the first grade of professional eminence. In 1808 he was elected to the state legislature, and an address which he made to the people of the district of Abbeville, denouncing the British outrages upon the United States frigate Chesapeake, resulted in his election as a representative to the 12th Congress, where he took his seat, Nov. 4, 1811, and was named by Speaker Clay for second place upon the committee on foreign relations. The genius of Calhoun admirably fitted him to act as a leader in the crisis through which the country was then passing. The threatening clouds of war had long shadowed the councils of the nation; the Congress had been divided for three or four years in regard to the policy to be pursued in dealing with Great Britain, and it was owing to his attitude on this question that, at the first meeting of the committee on foreign relations, Mr. Calhoun was chosen chairman, a position which, next to that of speaker, was the most important in the house of representatives. On Nov. 29, 1811, the committee submitted its report, embodying six resolutions in favor of declaring war with Great Britain, Mr. Calhoun having written the report, one clause of which read: "The period has arrived when, in the opinion of your committee, it is the sacred duty of Congress to call forth the patriotism of the country," and on Dec. 12, 1811, Mr. Calhoun made his first speech in Congress, defending the resolutions, refuting the arguments of John Randolph, the dissentient member of the committee, and declaring "a sense of national inferiority the greatest of political evils." He recommended the embargo of sixty days laid upon all shipping by President Madison, and earnestly advocated the repeal of the non-importation act, the increase of the navy, the tariff of 1816, the bank bill and the building of a system of canals and post roads, and of other internal improvements, which would have, in his opinion, the effect of nationalizing the Union. In 1817 he was appointed secretary of war by President Monroe, and he served through both terms, his conduct of the war department evincing his administrative capacity. In 1824 Mr. Calhoun's name was mentioned as a possible candidate for the presidency, but the prominence of General Jackson, the opposition candidate, whose war exploits were fresh in the minds of a gratified nation, induced the friends of Mr. Calhoun to place his name upon the list as a vice-presidential candidate, and upon his election as vice-president he removed his family to Pendleton district in South Carolina, where his wife had inherited an estate known as Fort Hill, and here he resided until his death. During the administration of John Quincy Adams, Mr. Calhoun, though prevented by his office from being an active, was an indirect supporter of the opposition, and upon the nomination of General Jackson as President in 1828 he was placed on the same ticket as vice-president. He became the head of the Free Trade party, which was at this time acquiring prominence, the cotton states universally being in favor of that policy, and the manufacturing states as persistently opposed to it. In the summer of 1828 he embodied what afterwards became known as the doctrine of nullification, or state rights, in an elaborate paper, which, being put into the hands of a committee of the South Carolina legislature, was ordered to be printed, and became known as "The South Carolina exposition." He claimed that each state of the Union had the power to decide for itself in respect to the constitutionality of any federal law, and to resist its enforcement within the state if the people regarded it as unconstitutional. He apprehended more danger to the Union from consolidation of power than from assertion of state rights. These proposed measures were brought to the notice of the United States senate by Mr. Hayne of South Carolina, and opposed by Mr. Webster in what became an historic debate. In the meantime, disclosures made to President Jackson about the part taken by Mr. Calhoun in the matter of the Seminole war while in President Monroe's cabinet, led to Mr. Calhoun's resignation from the vice-presidency to take the seat in the senate vacated by Mr. Hayne, on his becoming governor of South Carolina. The nullification measures were adopted by South Carolina in 1832, and only the passage of the Clay compromise, to which Mr. Calhoun was induced to lend his countenance, and the strong position assumed by President Jackson and Lewis Cass, secretary of war, prevented the threatened collision between South Carolina and the general government. He opposed vigorously the withdrawal of the deposits from the United States bank, declaring that "The whole power of the government has been perverted into a great political machine, with a view of corrupting and controlling the country." He accused the President of attempting to wrest the power from Congress and to hold in his own hand both the sword and the purse. In 1835 he was re-elected to the senate for the full term. Since 1831 a full band of abolitionists in the north had declared uncompromising war against the domestic institution of the south, and no one understood more fully than he that the handful of earnest fanatics and madmen were laying the axe to the very roots of the well-being and prosperity of the south. Senator Calhoun's motion, Jan. 7, 1836, against the reception of two petitions, asking for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, opened a general debate in the senate. His action was vigorously condemned, and was characterized by the north as a wanton attack upon the right of petition. He saw with a clearness that was prophetic that unless his views of the constitutional status of slavery were accepted, the south would be compelled to sever the ties which bound them to the north, or abolish slavery. He regarded slavery as a natural condition, and prophesied that to change the relations of master and slave would destroy the prosperity of the southern states and place two races in a state of conflict that would end only in the extirpation or expulsion of one or the other. Mr. Calhoun did not take part in the presidential election of 1836. He advocated the depositing of the surplus revenues in the treasuries of the different states, to be used by them for internal improvements. For the south he proposed a system of roads which should connect it with the west, and bring it, as he hoped, to an equal measure of commercial prosperity with the north. In the financial panic of the same year he was in favor of a total separation of the government from the banking interests, and favored the treasury plan. His attitude on the slavery question was actuated by a spirit of unswerving loyalty to the south and to the Union, of which he foresaw the disruption should the north persist in a determination to limit slavery to the states in which it already existed, and deny to the south equal privileges in the territories. He denounced the efforts of the abolitionists as "a war of religious and political fanaticism, mingled, on the part of the leaders, with ambition and the love of notoriety," and in defence of slavery which he so consistently defended, said, "The relation now existing between the two (races) is, instead of an evil, a good?a positive good." On March 4, 1840, he introduced in the senate a set of resolutions condemning the action of the English government in refusing to recognize as property and deliver to their owners certain negroes from vessels driven by stress of weather into English ports. In a speech delivered Aug. 5, 1842, Senator Calhoun discussed the tariff question and advanced with force the theory of duty for revenue as opposed to a duty for protection of manufacturers, and claimed that the popular party of the future would be for free trade, low duties, no national debt, a banking system separated from the control of the general government, economy in administering the affairs of state, retrenchment in all departments and a strict adherence to the constitution. At the end of 1842 he resigned his seat in the senate, the resignation to take effect from the close of the 27th Congress, March 3, 1843. The legislature of South Carolina immediately named him as candidate for President of the United States. On March 6, 1844, President Tyler appointed Mr. Calhoun as secretary of state, to succeed Secretary Upshur, who had met his death by the bursting of a gun on the steamer Princeton. On Oct. 16, 1843, Upshur had proposed to the republic of Texas a treaty of annexation, and before the people of Texas, composed of emigrants from all parts of the Union, but largely of slave-holders from the south, who had brought with them their slaves, would consent to accept the treaty, they insisted on being assured of military and naval protection, not only against Mexico, but as well against England, who had threatened to prevent the consummation of the treaty unless the people would agree to frame a state constitution abolishing slavery. Mr. Calhoun reluctantly agreed to the conditions imposed, but, before signing the treaty, exposed the scheme of England in a series of papers which so changed the opinion of the senate, that when the treaty came before that body it was rejected. The presidential campaign of 1844 was pivotal on the question, and after Polk was elected it was accepted by the people that Texas was to be treated as any other territory; that is, the question of the admission of slavery was to be dependent on the popular will of the sovereign people of the state under the Missouri compromise act. His judicious diplomatic correspondence with Great Britain, in regard to the possession of Oregon, resulted in the vindication of the rights of the United States and the adjustment of the matter by the treaty of 1846. On March 4, 1845, he retired from the cabinet upon the inauguration of the new administration, and on December 1 again took his seat in the senate, where he did all he could to prevent a war with Mexico, fearing that the acquisition of more territory by the United States would only keep up the agitation of the question of slavery as new states were admitted. Mr. Calhoun, on Feb. 19, 1847, presented to the senate resolutions concerning the slave question in the territories, in which he asserted, "Congress has no right to do any act whatever that shall directly, or, by its effects, deprive any state of its full and equal right in any territory." This expression was drawn from him by a petition from inhabitants of New Mexico against the introduction of slavery into the territory. On March 4, 1850, his last extended speech was read by Mr. Mason, of Virginia, though he afterwards spoke in debate in that body, closing with these words: "Having faithfully done my duty to the best of my ability both to the Union and to my section, throughout the agitation; I shall have the consolation, let what will come, that I am free from all responsibility." Two friends led him out of the senate chamber and he was not to pass its threshold again. Three colleges conferred on him the degree of LL. D.: Hamilton in 1821, Yale in 1822, and Columbia in 1825. In 1849 he wrote his Address to the People of the South, A Disquisition on Government, and A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States. His complete works were published by R. K. Cralle (6 vols. 1853-54). He died in Washington, D.C., March 31, 1850.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

Langdon Cheves, statesman, was born in Abbeville district, S. C., Sept. 17, 1776, son of Alexander and Mary (Langdon) Cheves. His father was a native of Scotland and his mother a Virginian. He engaged in mercantile business in 1786-95; was admitted to the bar in 1797, and in a few years had acquired a competence through the practice of his profession. He was elected to Congress in 1808 as a representative from South Carolina, serving through the 11th, 12th, and 13th congresses. He was a vigorous supporter of the war with Great Britain and served as chairman of the naval committee in 1812, and of the ways and means committee in 1813. He was elected speaker to succeed Henry Clay, Jan. 19, 1814, by the Federalists and anti-restriction Democrats. His position as speaker enabled him to defeat the Dallas scheme for re-chartering the United States bank. He declined re-election in 1815, resumed the practice of law, and was made judge of the superior court of South Carolina the next year. He was elected president of the board of directors of the United States bank in 1819, and resigned in 1823, after having placed the bank in a firm financial condition, to accept the position of chief commissioner of claims under the treaty of Ghent, to which President Monroe had appointed him. He returned to South Carolina in 1829, where he occupied himself in the cultivation of his extensive plantation for twenty-eight years. He published a notable letter in the Charleston Mercury, Sept. 11, 1844, on the political issue of the times. He condemned the nullification scheme of 1832, but supported the secession movement, and as a delegate to the convention of the Southern Rights association at Nashville, Tenn., Nov. 14, 1850, in a powerful speech, declared himself friendly to the scheme of a separate southern Confederacy. He was married to Mary Dallas of Charleston, in 1806. He died in Columbia, S. C., June 25, 1857.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

John McLaren McBryde, educator and scientist, was born in Abbeville, S.C., Jan. 1, 1841; son of John and Susan (McLaren) McBryde; grandson of John and Margaret (Donnan) McBryde and of Adam and Agnes (McKillop) McLaren, and a descendant of the distinguished Presbyterian divines John and Robert McBryde of Belfast, Ireland. His parents came to America from Scotland between 1820 and 1830, and settled in South Carolina. He was educated at the South Carolina college, and the University of Virginia. He obtained a commission in the Confederate army, serving, 1861-63, when his health obliged him to retire. He was married, Nov. 18, 1863, to Cora, daughter of Dr. James and Anna Maria (Harrison) Bolton of Richmond, Va. He was employed by the Confederate States treasury department, 1863-65, and at the close of the war he removed to Buckingham, Va., and engaged in farming. He removed to Albemarle county in 1867, where he pursued scientific studies. He was president of the Belmont Farmers' club, and was active in the organization of other farmers' societies. He was professor of agriculture and botany at the University of Tennessee, 1879-82; was elected professor of agriculture and botany at the South Carolina college in 1882, and upon the resignation of President William P. Miles in 1882, he served as president, 1882-83. He was regularly elected to the office in May, 1883, and served in that capacity until 1888. He was elected president of the University of Tennessee in 1887, but declined the honor. In 1888 he became president of the University of South Carolina and director of the experiment stations of South Carolina. In 1891 he accepted the presidency of the Virginia Polytechnic institute and the directorship of its experiment station. He declined the position of U.S. assistant secretary of agriculture in 1893. He was a member of the Miller beard of trustees of the University of Virginia; corresponding member of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific society of North Carolina; fellow of the American Geographical society and of the American Statistical association and a member of several other scientific societies. He received the degree of LL.D. from Southwestern Presbyterian university in 1884 and that of Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee in 1887.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor