Carl J. Vipperman - William Lowndes and the Transition of Southern Politics, 1782-1822

The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vipperman, Carl J., 1928

William Lowndes and the transition of Southern politics, 17821822 / by Carl J. Vipperman.

p. cm. (The Fred W. Morrison series in Southern studies)

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-8078-6630-X (alk. paper)

1. Lowndes, William, 17821822. 2. LegislatorsUnited StatesBiography. 3. United States. Congress. HouseBiography. 4. United StatesPolitics and government18011815. 5. United StatesPolitics and government18171825. 6. South CarolinaPolitics and government17751865.

I. Title. II. Series.

E340.L75V57 1989

328.730924dc19 88-17246

[B] CIP

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

In pursuing this study I have accumulated scholarly debts in numbers far too great for more than a few to be acknowledged here. The late Bernard Mayo, my mentor and influential exponent of the biographical approach to history, introduced me to William Lowndes in a graduate seminar and lived to see his suggestion bear the unexpected fruit of a biography on Rawlins Lowndes, Williams father. For whatever degree of clarity, thoroughness, and scholarly balance either that biography or this one may possess, the credit must go to Mr. Mayo. Colleagues whose scholarly insight and expertise have illuminated the chapters they read include Earl Hess, Lee Kennett, William McFeely, Barry Schwartz, and William Stueck. For the special interest he took in my project and the many ways he chose to remind me of the golden mean of moderation, I must say of my generous colleague Peter Hoffer that devils advocate is by no means a thankless persuasion. I owe a special debt to Thomas L. Purvis, whose detailed and insightful analyses led to the restructuring of two pivotal chapters. My colleague and department head, Lester Stephens, in addition to reading portions of the manuscript, gave consistent support to this project through the arrangement of teaching schedules to allow periodic freedom from the classroom for sustained research and writing. I am particularly thankful for Louise Bailey, whose invaluable research on the South Carolina legislature has done so much to simplify the work of scholars in the field, and who generously made available before publication her findings on Lowndes and his legislative colleagues.

Historians who labor in the South Carolina vineyard with Robert M. Weir are among the most fortunate, especially when his rigorous and authoritative review of their work from its conceptual framework to its detailed execution permits prepublication correction of errors ranging from the more obvious to the least suspected. Orville Vernon Burton furnished an equally valuable perspective in his review and suggested similar revisions with that most persuasive combination of disarming tact and intellectual force. I am deeply indebted to both. Editor-in-Chief Iris Tillman Hill and Executive Editor Lewis Bateman of the University of North Carolina Press, ever since they read a portion of the manuscript in its early stages, have been valuable allies in bringing this work to fruition. It need hardly be said, however, that the author accepts full responsibility for any and all errors in the book that bears his name.

I wish to thank the University of Georgia Research Foundation for their generous grant, which funded research on the tariff issue.

To archivists, librarians, and uniformly gracious staffs of repositories I visited in researching the life of Lowndes, I offer my profound gratitude for supplying the records that have made this book possible. These repositories include the Boston Public Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Houghton Library of Harvard University, the New York Public Library, the New York Historical Society, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Duke University Library, the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina, the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, the South Carolina Historical Society in Charleston, the Charleston Library Society, the College of Charleston Library, the University of Georgia Library, the Alabama State Archives in Montgomery, and the Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino, California. My hope is that this book may approach the standard for my profession that the invaluable assistance, which these unnamed professionals gave me, has set for theirs. Graduate students whose assistance contributed to the accuracy of footnote and bibliographical support for this study include Alan Atkinson, LaFayette Hanson, and Richard Meixsel. Historians who write in longhand as I do will fully concur in my expression of thanks for typists Kathy Coley and Jennell Hutchins.

On a more personal level, I would be remiss in failing to express my appreciation to two Lowndes descendants, Charles Lowndes Mullally and Thomas Pinckney Lowndes, both of Charleston, South Carolina. Each contributed to this study by furnishing information on William Lowndes and the family history, and in the process, amply demonstrated that traditional lowcountry hospitality continues to rival that of their distinguished ancestors.

My wife, Reggie, deserves a special word of gratitude. Although to the reader she may remain unknown, she has contributed no less than Elizabeth Lowndes to her husbands endeavors, and far more than the mere dedication of this book could ever repay.

If it is true that the meek shall inherit the earth, it does not follow that the modest shall enjoy posthumous fame. William Lowndes of South Carolina ranked among the most influential congressmen of his time, including such figures in the pantheon of American politics as John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster. Although the public careers of his famous colleagues extended some thirty years beyond his, the fact that Lowndes descended into relative obscurity after his death and has remained there for more than a century and a half may be attributed perhaps as much to modesty as to misfortune, for he always preferred the anonymity of a selfless public servant.

In a characteristic gesture, Lowndes declined to sit for his congressional portrait when Samuel F. B. Morse was preparing his celebrated painting of the House of Representatives of the Sixteenth Congress, forcing the artist to sketch a caricature of the South Carolina congressman from the House gallery. A similar request to have his features immortalized in marble met a similar response, with the consequence that no correct likeness of Lowndes survives. Because his weak voice too often led the House reporter to summarize his speeches, his friends entreated him to engage in the common practice of writing out a speech after delivery for distribution in print, but he consistently declined, explaining that he did not want a reputation for making speeches. More seriously, he preserved virtually none of his correspondence, methodically committing it to the flames of his fireplace at the close of each legislative session. His wife, Elizabeth Pinckney Lowndes, saved the letters he wrote to her, which comprise the bulk of his extant papers, but even they display to the historian a disappointing aversion to the discussion of public issues. Fate seemed to indulge his quest for anonymity: he died in circumstances that left neither headstone nor common grave to mark his passing; one of the great Charleston fires destroyed most of his remaining papers; and the burning of Columbia in 1865 consumed the land and tax records of Colleton County where his plantation was situated. It should not be surprising, then, that the most prominent tribute to his memory, other than the name of an occasional county or crossroads village in the rural South, is a respectful record of his life compiled by his granddaughter largely from the letters her grandmother had saved.