University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2019 The Transformation of a Confederate State: War and Politics on the South Carolina Home Front, 1861-1862 Eric Lager University of Tennessee, elager@vols.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.edu/utk_graddiss Recommended Citation Lager, Eric, "The Transformation of a Confederate State: War and Politics on the South Carolina Home Front, 1861-1862., University of Tennessee, 2019.edu/utk_graddiss/5622 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact trace@utk. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Eric Lager entitled "The Transformation of a Confederate State: War and Politics on the South Carolina Home Front, 1861-1862." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in History.
Stephen Ash, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Daniel Feller, Luke Harlow, John Scheb Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official student records.) The Transformation of a Confederate State: War and Politics on the South Carolina Home Front, 1861-1862 A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Eric Andrew Lager August 2019 Copyright © 2019 by Eric A. Lager All rights reserved. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My interest in South Carolina politics during the Civil War began while working on my M.
thesis at Clemson University but it was greatly expanded and nurtured at the University of Tennessee by my dissertation advisor Stephen Ash. In a research seminar during my first semester of graduate work at Tennessee he expressed his encouragement and support for this project. Throughout the process Dr. Ash generously gave his time to revising drafts, offered valuable suggestions, and spent a small fortune purchasing red pens to mark up my manuscript, thereby saving me from countless errors.
His scholarly expertise was matched by a genuine concern for my mental and physical health amid the trials of dissertating. Steve had to put up with a lot of emotional baggage from me, and I thank him for enduring it. Dan Feller’s seminar on Jacksonian America was instrumental in fostering my interest in antebellum politics, as was the summer I spent working as his research assistant for the Andrew Jackson Papers. Luke Harlow and John Scheb offered valuable insights and suggested areas worthy of further investigation during my dissertation defense.
My dissertation committee deserves special thanks for their service. I am grateful to my former professors at Clemson University, especially Paul Anderson and Rod Andrew for continuing to support me long after I graduated. The time they spent taking my phone calls, listening to my complaints, and patiently offering their advice was a crucial factor in completing this project. My colleagues at Tennessee, Robert Glaze, Allen York, and Max Matherne, also listened to the many problems that I encountered along the way and kindly offered solutions.
Bernie Koprince, the administrative assistant for the Department of History at Tennessee, was dedicated to ensuring that the many forms required for the graduate school were filled out correctly. Other friends inside of academia were also important to the completion of this project by expressing their support and offering advice, particularly Evan Nooe, Trae Welborn, and Jason Moss. Aaron Astor at Maryville College and Terresa Herbst at Colorado Mountain College deserve my thanks as well. I am also grateful to Clarissa Confer, my undergraduate advisor at the University of Florida who introduced me to Civil War scholarship.
It is doubtful that this project could have been completed without the support of the faculty in the Department of History at The Citadel. For the last three years I have had the honor and pleasure of working as a visiting assistant professor at this fine institution. Kyle Sinisi, David Preston, Katherine Grenier, Joelle Neulander, Dan Giblin, Amanda Mushal, Melanie Maddox, Kerry Taylor, Nancy Aguirre, Kurt Boughan, Damon Fordham, Larry Grant, Joy Datta, Victoria Musheff, and the staff at the Daniel Library assisted and encouraged me every step of the way. My former Citadel colleague Ivy McIntyre has become a good friend and I owe her a great deal of debt for encouraging me during the writing process.
Former Citadel librarian Deborah Turkewitz was all too eager to assist me in various ways, especially with fixing the microfilm machine. Thanks are also in order to Karen Stokes at the South Carolina Historical Society. iii I have many friends outside of academia that deserve recognition for the support they have given me. These are friends who have little interest in my dissertation topic but were always available to listen about the problems that I encountered during this long journey.
A few of these friends, but certainly not all of them, include Sam Schrock, Greg and Sarah Chingo, Buddy Caldwell, Walker Fluke, Allison Hainline, May Jackson, Cj Rusin, Chris and Jessica Whitney, Ken Kukowski, Lindsay Schlesinger, Ronnie Burnett, Daniel Reedy, Julie and Jim Strablizky, Laura Dziadosz, Sammy Samuelson, Brad Riddick, Timothy Bolden, Megan Fritts, Caryle Cole, Jason and Sarah Winter, Nick Boulos, Kevin Steck, Kevin Dolan, Kyle Gough, Corey Hill, Justin Karr, Megan Lassiter, Heather Young. I would also like to thank the staff at Beaver Creek Resort, Colonial Williamsburg, Fort Pulaski National Monument, Custer State Park, and Pastor Hollie Miller at Sevier Heights. John Wade of Charleston kindly allowed me to sit on his front porch for hours reading research material, cooked up many Sunday night dinners, and encouraged me to finish. I would also like to thank Dr.
Ashley Bullock for sustaining my mental health when things got difficult. My greatest debt is to my family. It is inconceivable how this project could have been completed without their support. My family is very large and all who contributed to my success cannot be mentioned here.
Uncle Bob took my phone calls on a daily basis, listened to my progress (or lack thereof), and always offered me hope and encouragement. My many aunts, uncles, and cousins constantly supported me in important ways. I am greatly indebted to my sisters Beth and Annie, and their husbands Jason and Ernesto, who encouraged me along the way. My deceased father, grandmother, and pa continue to inspire me.
My grandad, alive at 95, was eager to support me during this long endeavor and generously offered me the funds to finish the dissertation. My mom has been the strongest supporter of anyone. When I doubted my ability to complete the Ph. program she refused to stop believing in me.
Her unending love and the immense sacrifices she made in order for me succeed is the primary reason that I completed this project. Words cannot possibly describe how much I owe my mom. I dedicate this dissertation to her. iv ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the Confederate home front experience in South Carolina by examining the state government in 1861-1862 and the controversies that arose after the state seceded from the Union.
It challenges the common assumption that citizens in the state were politically united in that period. Many historians have recognized the central role of South Carolina in the secession movement but few have paid attention to political developments there during the ensuing war. This project seeks to rectify that oversight by looking at the crucial role of the state government in conducting the early war effort and at the political and ideological conflicts that its actions provoked. In response to the Union invasion of coastal South Carolina in November 1861, state political leaders instituted radical measures.
The convention of the people of South Carolina was called back into session and proceeded to create an executive council with extraordinary powers that displaced the regular government and even superseded the state Constitution, thus overturning South Carolina’s antebellum political tradition of very limited executive power. The council subsequently stirred up a storm of controversy that shook the state during 1862. Many politicians and ordinary citizens denounced this revolutionary experiment in government and demanded that the convention be dissolved and the council abolished. This conflict, along with the demands of war, fostered a new, more intimate relationship between the state and citizen.
The state government was forced to respond to the anti-council movement, to the planters and slaves who resisted calls for labor to work on coastal fortifications, and to the white plain folk, including many women, who demanded that the state intervene to help them survive wartime hardships. The operations of the state government were thus an essential element of the Confederate home front experience and played a more conspicuous role in the war effort than historians have heretofore acknowledged. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter One: "The Glorious Little State of South Carolina": Places, People, and Politics in the Palmetto State from White Settlement to Civil War…………………………………………………………….17 Chapter Two: "The Fate Which Is upon Us": Security and Society in the Early War Period………………….52 Chapter Three: “We Are Obliged to Submit to His Hateful Presence”: Invasion, Dislocation, and Legislation, November 1861-January 1862…………………………………………….88 Chapter Four: “The World Is Disturbed around Us”: The Executive Council and the War Effort, 1862…….126 Chapter Five: “An Outburst of Furor”: Discord, Controversy, and Ideological Opposition to the Council and Convention………………………………….164 Chapter Six: “There Should Be Little Speaking and Much Acting”: Abolishing the Council and Restoring Regular Government, November-December 1862………………….259 vi Introduction On 25 November 1862, Governor Francis W. Pickens informed the members of the South Carolina legislature that they must act quickly, for a vexing issue was dividing the polity.
The question was whether the legislature should keep the executive council in existence or abolish it. Pickens hoped that it would be abolished at once. He warned the legislators that the public’s “dissatisfaction and restiveness under this new and unauthorized system” of government had reached a feverish pitch. This resentment arose not from any disloyalty to the Confederate cause “but from a feeling of sensitiveness under what [the citizens] deemed an unnecessary and arbitrary establishment of an unusual and irregular Government.”1 The political disquiet described by the governor is remarkable.
Two years earlier, on 20 December 1860, the delegates of the convention of the people of South Carolina had voted unanimously, 169-0, to secede from the Union. The Palmetto State was the only state that manifested such complete political unity in the Southern conventions that were called to consider secession. A considerable number of historians have analyzed antebellum politics in South Carolina to explain why it became the most unified and secessionist state in the South. Some have pointed to the state’s relative economic decline.
Others have argued that South Carolina developed a degree of insularity not known anywhere else in the United States, thereby creating a closed society impermeable to external influences. Several studies have emphasized the importance of race and the large proportion of slaveholders in the white population. Many others have cited South Carolina’s failure to develop a two-party political system. Despite some disagreements on these points, scholars agree in general that South Carolina developed along a 1 Journal of the Senate of South Carolina: Being the Session of 1862 (Columbia, SC: Charles P.
Pelham, 1862), 33, hereafter cited as Senate Journal (1862). 1 different trajectory from other Southern states and evolved a unique political ideology and culture, creating what James Banner has dubbed “The Problem of South Carolina.”2 Given South Carolina’s pivotal role in the creation of a Southern confederacy, it is not surprising that historians have focused on the state’s political development prior to the Civil 2 Journal of the Convention of the People of South Carolina, Held in 1860, 1861 and 1862, together with the Ordinances, Reports, Resolutions, etc.