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 >io. )49 E„st n:,y Street, Cl.nrle.lo,,, 8„. C:,. 
 
C^;^HE name of Pickens is historical in South Caro- 
 ^^ lina. For three generations it has held promi- 
 nent station in the roll of her public men. Andrew 
 Pickens, the elder, was a worthy compeer of the 
 great Whig chieftains of the revolution; and with 
 the "Game Cock" Sumter, and the "Swamp Fox" 
 Marion, composed that famous trio of the partisan 
 leaders of the unpaid gentlemen of Carolina, whose 
 fame will always live in " song and story," in the old 
 Palmetto State, whatever complexion her destiny 
 may assume. His conquest of the Cherokees, the 
 wound in the breast which he received in the thick- 
 est of the tio-ht at Eutaw, and his srallant services at 
 the hard-fought battle of the Cowpens, for Avhich 
 Congress voted him a sword, would be kept alive by 
 tradition, even were they not indelibly impressed on 
 the brightest pages of the Southern chapters of the 
 history of that great struggle. He was a general in 
 the war of the revolution, was subsequently elected 
 to Congress, declined a re-election, and was after- 
 
wards solicited to accept the office of Governor of 
 the State, which he also declined. 
 
 His son, Andrew Pickens, the younger, was also 
 distinguished, both in military and civil life. In the 
 war of 1812, our second war of independence, as it 
 has been not inaptly termed, he was Colonel of the 
 10th Regiment United States Regulars, stationed on 
 the Canada frontier, and was afterwards appointed to 
 the command of one of the two regiments raised by 
 the State for the defence of Charleston in 1814. Upon 
 the return of peace, he was, in 1816, elected one of 
 that long line of illustrious Governors of South 
 Carolina — the choice of the white men of the State — 
 which commenced in 1775 with John Rutledg-e. 
 
 His son, Francis W. Pickens, more widely known 
 than either sire or grandsire — more widely known, 
 indeed, on the day of his death than any living Caro- 
 linian, after high o'ffices held in times of feverish 
 excitement, and a long and eventful public career 
 passed amid the storms of State — has but lately 
 breathed his last, at the family seat of Edgewood, 
 amid the endearments of domestic life, and with 
 children's faces around his bed, but leaving no heir 
 male to transmit to after generations the name 
 which has been so long and so much honored in 
 South Carolina. 
 
3 
 
 The last Pickens, tlioiigli his . services as Aid to 
 Governor Hayne in the stormy days of nullification, 
 and his course as Governor of South Carolina in the 
 first two years of the great civil war in America, 
 gave no uncertain promise that, as w^ere the sire and 
 grandsire in military affairs, so would be the son, 
 won his laurels in that civil arena for which he had 
 evinced from boyhood a passionate proclivity. 
 
 " Politics," says the last of the British premiers — a 
 man who has ^^erhaps lived more in and for the 
 world of politics than any living statesman — "politics 
 is a branch of study certainly the most delightful in 
 the world, l)ut for a boy as certainly the most perni- 
 cious." Here we have followed the practice, rather 
 than the theory, of Mr. D'Israeli ; the highest goal of 
 honorable ambition is to acquire great renown by 
 great public services, and ambitious youth naturally 
 aspire to political distinction. 
 
 Mr. Pickens' early education was well adapted to 
 form an orator and statesman. He was an earnest 
 student of Aristotle, the most acute of human intel- 
 lects, whom he justly considered the most profound 
 of all who have treated of government ; and through- 
 out life was fond of tracing in modern authors, re- 
 peated, varied, and disguised, those fundamental 
 
ideas of the science which the greatest of philoso- 
 phers taught the greatest of conquerors. As in 
 statesmanship his master was the founder of the 
 science of politics, so in oratory his master was the 
 greatest orator who ever spoke — 
 
 " Whose resistless eloquence 
 Wielded at will that fierce democratic, 
 Shook the arsenal and fulmined over Greece." 
 
 So attached indeed was he to Demosthenes, that 
 he could repeat in youth the whole of the transcen- 
 dent oration on the Crown, and would often, in later 
 life, quote striking passages of it with unaffected 
 admiration. 
 
 Under the able tuition of his father, he studied and 
 memorized Burke's great speeches on the taxation 
 and conciliation of the colonies, Sheridan's famous 
 Begum speech on the celebrated trial of Warren 
 Hastings, and Lord Mansfield's ablest efforts in the 
 House of Lords ; and to these and the other bravuras 
 of British oratory he constantly recurred with the 
 greatest pleasure. 
 
 But his heart, like Legare's, was in the classics, and 
 it might be truly said of him, in the beautiful lan- 
 guage of a college friend, afterwards a congressional 
 

 <r^ 
 
colleague and rival aspirant for liigli office, who liad 
 tlie same tastes with himself, that he "drank deep 
 and drank often of the precious waters of those 
 virgin fountains which were unlocked in Nature's 
 first known cycle." 
 
 These studies, begun at home under the tuition and 
 example of his father, were fostered and cultivated 
 to the highest degree when he entered the South 
 Carolina College,— long before and long afterward, 
 the nursing mother of Southern statesmen and ora- 
 tors,— no unwilling or laggard pupil, but " conspicu- 
 ous among the youths of high promise who sat at 
 the feet" of the great teacher who then enunciated, 
 with consummate ability and singular force, doctrines 
 of political economy and the philosophy of govern- 
 ment which took deep root in South Carolina. 
 Thomas Cooper's political life was one continued 
 struo-de against all forms of political tyranny and 
 centralization; and lectures which, commg Irom the 
 masters of cloistered colleges, might have been con- 
 sidered theoretical abstractions, became concrete re- 
 alities, when life was breathed into them from the 
 personal experience of the master "who had spoken 
 history, acted history, lived history;" who had been 
 prosecuted for his political course by the British 
 
6 
 
 Crown and the administration of the ekler Adams; 
 who had canvassed the most excitalde voters on 
 earth in a contested race with Egallte Orleans for 'a 
 seat in the convention during the carnival of the 
 French revolution of 1789. And on no subject was 
 Dr. Cooper's intellect more vigoi-ously exercised than 
 on the fundamental principles involving the relation 
 which the States bore to the Federal Government of 
 the American Union, and which underlay the distinc- 
 tion between that party which advocated a strong 
 centralized national government, and that which ad''- 
 vocated tlie sovereignty of tlie States~t\^ sovereignty 
 of the States, now scarce mentioned save in derision, 
 except as we hear of it, after the ground swell of the' 
 great struggle of arms, in the exhaustive argument of 
 Alexander Stephens, or a brief, vigorous letter from 
 Barnwell Rhett, reminding us of the spirit and the 
 days when calida juventa he wrote the Colleton ad- 
 dress. Mr. Pickens' position on these great questions, 
 and in the great struggle, first of opinions and then of 
 arms to which they led, was taken then, early in life, 
 while a college boy; and thenceforward, to the day of 
 his death, he never swerved or wavered from that 
 position; and though its armed adherents went to the 
 wall, and its flag went down on the red field of bat- 
 tle, 
 
" With not a man to wave it, 
 And not a sword to save it," 
 
 though what he had regarded as sovereign States, 
 among them his beloved Carolina, were given as 
 provinces to pro-consuls, and the dire result of arms 
 proclaimed that he and his great compeers would be 
 portrayed in the colors of " The Gracchi of the Patri- 
 cians, and not the Gracchi of the people," he ever 
 maintained the same position, through evil as well as 
 good report, and denied to the last, as the great 
 heroic mind ever has done and ever will do, " that 
 might makes right." 
 
 To him the abandonment of the doctrines and 
 dogmas of the States Eights strict construction party 
 would have been worse than political apostacy — it 
 would have been sacrilege, for to him the sovereignty 
 of the States was not an abstraction or a theory — it 
 was a creed, a religion. So early and so deeply was 
 he imbued with the principles of the States Rights par- 
 ty, that while in college he wrote seven articles under 
 the signature of "Sydney" for the Charleston 
 Mercury, then under the editorial auspices of the 
 gifted Henry L. Pinckney. These articles took the 
 highest ground, asserted the separate -sovereignty of 
 the States, their right in theii* sovereign capacity to 
 
nullify an unconstitutional act of Congress, to relieve 
 tlieir citizens from its operation, and to open tlieir 
 ports in defiance of the restrictions of an unconstitu- 
 tional and oppressive tariff. They excited the great- 
 est interest, and their authorship was ascribed by the 
 National Intelligencer of that day to a committee 
 of -distinguished Carolinians, supposed to consist of 
 Hayne, McDuffie, and Hamilton. 
 
 He was admitted to the Bar iu 1828, and was elect- 
 ed to the Lower House of the South Carolina Legis- 
 lature in 1832, where his speeches elicited the waj-ni- 
 est encomiums (despite their differences on the 
 exciting topics discussed) from Hugh S. Legare, then 
 Minister in Brussels; his first speech being made at 
 the request of Wm. C. Preston, on the latter's resolu- 
 tions responsive to Jackson's famous proclamation on 
 the Nullification imbroglio. He soon became chair- 
 man of the Committee on Federal Relations, and of 
 the Committee on the Judiciary ; and in the former 
 capacity made the well known report on the oath to 
 be prescribed to ofiicers, a subject which gave rise to 
 so much excitement, politically and judicially. 
 
 Li 1834, when twenty-six years of age, he was 
 elected to Congress, as successor of Mr. McDufiie 
 without opposition, and at once took high rank from 
 
a speech lie delivered on our relations with France. 
 A lady of wit and fashion at the Capital, who had 
 been accustomed to hear his predecessor and the other 
 great orators from his State, Init who now^ heard Mr. 
 Pickens for the first time, at the conclusion of his 
 maiden speech in Congress, asked " if it were really 
 true, that orators grew spontaneous in South Carolina." 
 He and Governor Hammond, then also a member 
 of the House of Eepresentatives, by concert, objected 
 to the reception of abolition petitions, which the 
 House had been receiving and referring to the Com- 
 mittee on the District of Columbia, and in January, 
 1836, he delivered, on Governor Wise's resolution on 
 that subject, one of the first arguments ever made in 
 Congress against the constitutional power of the gov- 
 ernment to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, 
 and forcildy portrayed the power of the abolitionists 
 amid conflicting political parties, and the causes which 
 would inevitably increase that })ower, and demon- 
 strated that from holding the balance of power they 
 would finally control the destinies of the government. 
 "It is of no avail," said he "to close our eyes to pass- 
 ing events around us in this country and in Europe. 
 Everything proclaims that, sooner or later, we shall 
 have to meet the strong and the powerful, and contend 
 
10 
 
 over the tomljs of onr fathers for our consecrated 
 hearthstones and household gods, or abandon our 
 country to become a bhack colony, and seek for our- 
 selves a refuge in the wilderness of the West. It is 
 in vain to avoid the contest." How significant are 
 these predictions of 1836, when read by the light of 
 the Presidential canvass of 1860, and the lurid glare 
 of all that has followed in its wake ! 
 
 His speech on the Fortification bill, in May, 1836, 
 attracted much attention from the vigorous exposition 
 of the real nature of the changes going on in the 
 government, which he contended were virtual altera- 
 tions of the nature of the government itself. At this 
 day it has a high additional value from its predictions, 
 since realized, as to the changes which would be 
 produced in naval warfare by the application of steam 
 power. During the same year he was among the first 
 who advocated the independence of Texas, in opposi- 
 tion to the views expressed by Governor McDuffie, 
 and others of the dominant party in South Carolina 
 and elsewhere; and, in 1837, made one of the first 
 speeches in Congress in favor of the independent 
 treasury scheme. 
 
 A series of speeches delivered by him from this 
 time to 1811, on the relation of the government C^ 
 
11 
 
 banks and the l)anking system, and on the subject of 
 exchanges, excited wide-spread comment and admira- 
 tion in the great commercial and financial centres of 
 the Union, and may be read at this day with pleasure 
 and profit. The report made l)y him as chairman of 
 the Committee on Foreign Kelations, in 1840, on the 
 burning of the steamboat Caroline, and the demand 
 made by the British Minister for McLeod, exhibited 
 his views of our foreign relations, and created a sensa- 
 tion Ijoth here and in England. 
 
 He continued in Congress an active participant in 
 all leading deljates, till the 4tli March, 1848, when he 
 was elected to fill the unexpired term of Major Jeter 
 in the State Senate. 
 
 ye was a member of the State Convention of 1852, 
 and drew" its ordinance affirmino- the rio-ht of secession, 
 reported by a committee composed of Chancellor 
 Wardlaw, RoTjert W. Barnw^ell, and himself. 
 
 On the election of Mr. Buchanan to the Presidency, 
 
 he accepted the mission to St. Petersburg, having 
 
 previously declined the mission to France, tendered 
 
 him by President Tyler, and the mission to England, 
 
 tendered him by President Polk. During his residence 
 
 as American Minister in St. Petersburg, he jealously 
 
 guarded the honor and dignity of his country, and 
 L.of C. 
 
12 
 
 vigilantly watched its interests, so far as these came 
 or could come within the scope of his duties or powers, 
 and the legation was the seat of an elegant hospitality, 
 emhellished hy all that female grace and ingenuity 
 could devise to remind American visitors to the ice- 
 hound capital of all the Russias of the delights of 
 our own more temperate clime. 
 
 But his heart, amid all the ostentation and gaiety 
 of diplomatic life, was with his home and people in 
 the sunny South ; and the John Brown raid, the dis- 
 ruption of the Democratic party under the bold lead 
 of Yancey, in which party Mr. Pickens had long 
 thought was the last hope of a Constitutional Union, 
 and the incrasing excitement of domestic politics, 
 admonished all who believed with him that tl^ir 
 ])rimary allegiance was due to their State and not to 
 the Federal Government,' that the prologue which 
 had lasted for thirty years was hastening rapidly to its 
 close; that the black curtain which had shut down 
 like a pall between the seer-like eyes of Calhoun and 
 the future was about to be raised upon the first scene 
 of the grand drama whose denouement no mortal 
 could foretell ; that the conflict of opinions which had 
 descended from Jeiferson and Hamilton to Calhoun 
 and Webster, to Pickens and Fessenden, was now 
 
18 
 
 "being debated for the last time as a conflict of opinion 
 between Wigfall and Johnson ; and that beyond the 
 Atlantic was no place for •mrptn^ whose solemn duty 
 and high privilege it was to be where, if other conflict 
 succeeded the conflict of opinion, they could meet their 
 enemy at the gate-w-Hie resigned his position as Minis- 
 ter to Russia, came to Washington, settled his accounts 
 with the department, and reached Carolina amid the 
 excitement which prevailed in November, 1860. 
 
 The times were darkening, and events, more 
 unmistakal)le than the fitful beating of the public 
 pulse, proclaimed in tones too audible to be misunder- 
 stood, that those who had just been chosen by the 
 people of Carolina to select a fit occupant for the 
 Executive chair, were called upon to make that 
 selection under circumstances more momentous, and 
 at a time more big with fate than had ever fallen to 
 the lot of the representatives of the people. Names 
 of good men and true, of civil and military fame, of 
 national as well as State reputation, were presented, 
 but the loud voice of popular acclaim, on the 16th <^t^ 
 December, 1860, four days before the State formally 
 sundered the bonds which bound her to the American 
 Union, wafted the returned minister from Russia into 
 that high office which then required for the discharge 
 
14 
 
 of its lierculeaii duties and responsibilities faculties 
 not second to tliose which, in times almost as dark and 
 perilous, had vindicated the claims of John Rutledge 
 and Robert Y. Hayne to the same exalted position. 
 How the solemn trust confided to him was executed 
 — how wisely — how firmly — how dauntlessly — with 
 what ceaseless vio;ilance for the honor and interests 
 of the grand old Commonwealth — with what earnest 
 desire for peace — with what vigorous preparation for 
 war — with what nerve, when honor called for the 
 decisive shot at the " Star of the West" — ^vitli what 
 fidelity to the sister States who had allied their 
 fortunes, for better or worse, with South Carolina, 
 who, singledianded and alone, in defence of her 
 princij)les, had stepped into the fearful arena — is it. 
 not written in the record of the eventful two years 
 during which he held the helm of the State of South 
 Carolina? That record can never perish ! And what- 
 ever may be the fate of South Carolina, the name of 
 Francis Wilkinson Pickens will l^e forever and aye 
 entwined with the decisive initiatory steps which she 
 took in armed defence of those principles of free 
 government and theories of States rights, for which 
 he had contended with unswerving fidelity from youth 
 to aire ; for it was his fortune as her Executive chief 
 
15 
 
 to illustrate in action lier opinions and creed, at a time 
 and under circumstances which can never be forgotten. 
 The views which Governor Pickens pressed upon the 
 Confederate Government as to the management of its 
 foreign relations, differing so widely from those which 
 the Richmond Cabinet adopted, have not been and 
 perhaps never will be published. Suffice it to say- 
 that his views were based upon an attentive study of 
 our diplomatic history; upon the actual condition of 
 the foreiocn relations of the United States then 
 existing; upon his personal knowledge of the policy 
 of the different powers, partially fore-shadowed by 
 the corps of able ambassadors ever present at the 
 Russian Court, almost the headquarters of the diplo- 
 macy of civilization, and upon his profound and 
 enlightened conviction that neither formal recognition 
 nor moral aid could be relied on at an early period of 
 the gigantic struggle between the States from the 
 great powers, whose favorable action w^as so confi- 
 dently expected by the Confederate Executive and 
 the peoj)le of the South. In his opinion, no considera- 
 tions based on the diminished supply of that mighty 
 plant "which keeps steam expanding, machinery in 
 motion, and the lightning traversing the wires," or 
 any other material interest likely to be seriously 
 
16 
 
 affected by tlie war between the States, would he 
 found sufficiently potent, in the brief time so general- 
 ly supposed, to induce the English or French Cal)inet 
 to interfere for the repression of the assaults made by 
 the spirit of the age upon the Chinese wall maintained 
 by the South against the public opinion of the civil- 
 ized world, the Areopagus of modern times. He 
 thouo-ht that a wise direction of the Foreio-n relations 
 of the Confederate Government would rather seek to 
 interest in its favor those great nations whom a 
 similarity of institutions might admonish that their 
 interests and fate, in that regard, were, to a certain 
 extent, bound up with the South. But Dlis aliter 
 visum, and when long afterward views somewhat 
 similar to those of Governor Pickens were presented 
 to the Spanish Secretary of Foreign Affairs, it was 
 too late. Mr. Seward had anticipated the Richmond 
 Cabinet. During the administration of Governor 
 Pickens there arose an excited controversy growing 
 out of the continued existence of the convention, the 
 Executive Council and its acts, involving questions as 
 to the nature of sovereignty, the power of the Legis- 
 latures calling conventions of the people, and the 
 power of those conventions when called and in exist- 
 ence, which had been discussed in the Nullification 
 
17 
 
 Conv^ention and the Legislatures of that day, about 
 which the doctors of the States Rights party had then 
 differed, which had not been definitely settled, and 
 which now, in the midst of a raging war, awoke and 
 stirred themselves from their Daedal couch. Argu- 
 ments in favor of the legality of the Council and its 
 acts were ably and elaborately presented by its advo- 
 cates, and Governor Pickens ably, tirmly, and zealous- 
 ly defended his views of the Executiv^e prerogative, 
 and the constitutional partition of powers between 
 the different departments of the government. The 
 voice of the people, as evinced in the fall elections of 
 1862, and the acts of the Legisture then elected, was 
 averse to what they regarded as an ^^ imperiuni in 
 imperioy But the action of the convention, provid- 
 ing for the dissolution of itself and the council, soon 
 withdrew the question from the domain of practical 
 to that of speculative politics, and all excitement on 
 the subject ceased. As a practical cpiestion, it seems 
 not probable that it will speedily be resurrected again ; 
 as a speculative question " suh judlce lis ^s^," and is 
 likely so to remain. 
 
 Y Grovernor Pickens, at the expiration of his term of 
 office, retired to private life, after two years of excite- 
 ment which would have tried nerves of iron. From 
 3 
 
18 
 
 tliis retirement lie emerged but once again into public 
 view as a member of tlie Convention of 1865, called 
 l>y Provisional Governor Pei'ry, under President John- 
 son's reconstruction programme^} He took a prominent 
 part in the debates on some of the leading provisions 
 of the constitution then adopted, and consistent and 
 logical in his States Rights theories and principles to 
 the last, moved and carried an ordinance for the re- 
 peal of the Secession ordinance of 1860 — the repeal 
 affirming the past validity of that which is re2:)ealed. 
 
 After his retirement, he returned, with the hearti- 
 ness of a boy let free from school, to agricultural 
 pursuits, the favorite occupation of the Carolina gen- 
 tleman, for which he ever had a passion, but from 
 which the toils of public life had long debarred him, 
 and he enjoyed to the last (what many who have 
 held high public station have not been so fortunate as 
 to possess), the esteem, respect, and affection of his 
 neio-hliors, and unbounded popularity among the 
 people of his own district ; a popularity based upon 
 their regard as well for his pure character and moral 
 worth, as his intellectual endowments; for though 
 ever courteous and aifable, he contemned the fawning 
 arts which sometimes avail demagogues on the hus- 
 tings and in popular canvasses, and with high and 
 
19- 
 
 low " lie hore, without abuse, the grand old name of 
 gentleman.'''' 
 
 Edgewood, after the long absence of its master, was 
 again thro^v^l open, and l)ecame, as in former days, the 
 abode of elegance, refinement, and hospitality ; the 
 resort of wit, beauty, and talent; and, even after its 
 master's fortunes were shattered by the disastrous 
 crash with which the Confederate Government and 
 the property of the S( uth fell, it was still to ^te vis- 
 itors what it ever had })een — what Holland House w^as 
 to the Whig coterie — the most delightful of houses. 
 The serpentine avenues and the pleasant grounds, the 
 house over whose doors might have been inscribed, as 
 over Earl Cowper's, " tuum <^.s'/," the library, the paint- 
 ings, the Avorks of art, still remain. 
 
 The graceful and accomjdished mistress who pre- 
 sided over all this lovely scene, and whose smile was 
 \vont in liap})ier days to light up as with magic the 
 long galleries and dusky corridors, still remains — 
 chastened, and in her widow's weeds. But the cor- 
 dial grasp of the hand with Avhicli the master of the 
 house greeted his guest, his genial Avelcome which 
 combined courtly hos})itality ^vitli rural al)andon, his 
 "kindness far more admiral>le than m-ace," which mit 
 the huml)lest visitor at his ease — these are no lono;er 
 
•20 
 
 there ; for that master to whom tliese ])eh)nged, after 
 a long and lingering illness, cheered by all the con- 
 solations of the Christian religion, slee])s quietly in 
 the village churchyard. He has left " no son of his 
 succeeding" to perpetuate his name, but he has left 
 contributions to debates on great occasions, sj)eeches 
 on vital subjects, striking addresses, and important 
 messages, the collection and publication of which 
 would be his fittest memorial. It is due to history, 
 to the State, and to him. And independent of what 
 editors, biographers, and collectors may do for his 
 future fame, he has left much which is indissolubly 
 entwined with the most exciting passages in the his- 
 tory of South Carolina. And what can never be 
 forgotten, 
 
 " To her young sons, the model of a life 
 Mild in its calm, majestic in its strife; 
 To her rich history, blocks of purest ore — 
 To her grand blazon, one proud quartering more." 
 

 
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