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Legacy of a Southern Lady: Anna Calhoun
Clemson, 1817-1875
Ann Ratliff Russell
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Legacy of a Southern Lady: Anna Calhoun Clemson, 1817-1875, by Ann Ratliff Russell (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press,
2007), xx, 162 pp. Paper. ISBN 978-0-9796066-0-1
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Legacy of a Southern Lady
Anna Calhoun Clemson, 1817-1875
Dedication
In the spirit of Anna Calhoun Clemson,
this book is dedicated to each girl who adores her father and
to every woman whose support of her husband makes a difference.
Legacy of a Southern Lady
Anna Calhoun Clemson, 1817-1875
by Ann Ratliff Russell
CLEMSON UNIVERSITY
DIGITAL PRESS
Works produced at Clemson University by the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing,
including The South Carolina Review and its themed series “Virginia Woolf International,”
“Ireland in the Arts and Humanities,” and “James Dickey Revisited” may be found at our
Web site: http://www.clemson.edu/caah/cedp. Contact the director at 864-656-5399 for
information.
Copyright 2007 by Clemson University
ISBN 978-0-9796066-0-1
CLEMSON UNIVERSITY
DIGITAL PRESS
Published by Clemson University Digital Press at the Center for Electronic and Digital
Publishing, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina.
Produced with the Adobe Creative Suite CS2 and Microsoft Word. This book is set in
Adobe Garamond Pro and was printed by University Printing Services, Office of Publications and Promotional Services, Clemson University.
Editorial Assistants: Amy Bickett, Megan Boyce, and Julie Gerdes
Special thanks to Susan Hiott, Librarian, Clemson University Special Collections and Will
Hiott, Director, Historic Properties, Fort Hill House Museum, for their help in collecting
material, and to Professor Alan Grubb, History Department, Clemson University for his
hand in proofreading.
Copy editing by Wayne Chapman, Director, CEDP, and Executive Editor, Clemson University Digital Press.
To order copies, contact the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing, Strode Tower,
Box 340522, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634-0522. An order form
is available at the digital press Web site: http://www.clemson.edu/caah/cedp/russell, which
is also the address where the online edition may be accessed.
iv
Table of Contents
Frontispiece .................................................................................i
Preface..................................................................................... vii
Genealogical Branches of the Clan Colquhoun ................... xviii
Cast of Characters ....................................................................... xiv
Chronology ................................................................................. xviii
One Her Father’s Daughter ....................................................1
Two A Mother’s Love ............................................................21
Nina, Calhoun, and Floride
Three The Glory of the House ..............................................51
Four Her Dearest Maria .......................................................71
Five Traveling Women ..........................................................83
Anna Calhoun Clemson
Margaret Fuller
Harriet Lowndes Aiken
Lucy Holcombe Pickens
Six My Very Much Beloved Dear Anna ...............................105
Seven Epilogue ...................................................................121
Notes .....................................................................................125
Bibliography .........................................................................154
v
List of Major Illustrations
Anna Calhoun Clemson, frontispiece and late in life ...................................... vi, 31
Coat of Arms of the Clan Colquhoun ..................................................................xiii
John C. Calhoun .......................................................................................2, 19,119
Thomas Green Clemson ........................................................................ 8, 106, 120
Floride Bonneau Colhoun Calhoun, with Anna Calhoun Clemson and
children Calhoun, Floride, Nina (in collage) ................................................. 22
Nina Clemson (bust) ............................................................................................ 25
Calhoun Clemson as a boy .................................................................................. 26
Floride Clemson as a girl ...................................................................................... 27
Floride Elizabeth Clemson, age 15 ....................................................................... 33
Calhoun Clemson in military attire ..................................................................... 36
Elias Baker ........................................................................................................... 40
Gideon Lee .......................................................................................................... 49
Floride Lee, age 2 1/2 .......................................................................................... 50
Fort Hill Mansion ................................................................................................ 52
Andrew Pickens ................................................................................................... 55
James Edward Calhoun ........................................................................................ 60
Floride Isabella Lee .............................................................................................. 70
Inscription from Calhoun Family Bible ................................................................ 70
Illustration from Maria Edgeworth’s novel Helen ................................................. 72
Law offices of Simkins, Pickens, and associates .................................................... 73
Cemetery monument for Maria E. Simkins ......................................................... 82
Anna Calhoun Clemson, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Lowndes Aiken, Lucy
Holcombe Pickens ........................................................................................ 84
Portraits, Calhoun Clemson and Floride Clemson as children ............................. 89
Portrait, Harriet Aiken ......................................................................................... 98
Library bookplate from Clemson Agricultural College ....................................... 122
Clergy Hall (later Fort Hill), 1815 ..................................................................... 162
First students at Clemson College, 1893 ............................................................ 122
Most of the illustrations in this book—including the “minor” ones presented as miniatures
in the “Cast of Characters” on pages xiv-xvii—originate from Clemson University collections, especially the Fort Hill Museum (University Historic Properties). Acknowledgment
is paid to the following sources for the exceptional images: to Creighton Lee Calhoun, Jr.,
for Anna Calhoun Clemson, frontispiece; to Lidie Lee Flammia and Lorton Lee Lewis for
Gideon Lee, Jr., at c. 50; to Pelham Lyles, Director, Fairfield County Museum, Winnsboro,
SC, for James Rion; to the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, for Francis Pickens and Lucy Holcome Pickens (on pages xvi and xvii); to the Historic
Charleston Foundation for Harriet Lowndes Aiken; to Meredith Sonderskov for Elizabeth
Barton and Louisa Clemson Washington; to the Blair County Historical Society, Baker
Mansion, Altoona, PA, for Elias Baker; to Andrew P. Calhoun, Jr. for the Clan Colquhoun
Society Crest; and to Adrienne (Plum) Moore for Lucy Holcombe Pickens.
vi
P
R
E
F
L
A
C
E
ike Abigail Adams (1744-1826), a popular subject in biography for over 150 years,
Anna Calhoun Clemson left in the nineteenth century an abundance of letters for
study. This rich legacy reveals much about the most meaningful relationships in her
life and in turn portrays for posterity the person she was. Just as Abigail was known by the
accomplishments of her husband and son, both of whom became presidents of the United
States, Anna, the daughter of statesman John C. Calhoun, and wife of diplomat Thomas
Green Clemson was distinctive in her own time due to her association with her father and
husband. Because her story is remarkable in its own right and one worthy of being told,
I have used her letters as the basis for this biography and have therefore relied primarily
on the unpublished, two-volume documentary edition of Julia Wright Sublette. Following the lead of Edith B. Gelles’s book, Portia: The World of Abigail Adams, I have chosen
a topical, or “collage,” approach to the reconstruction of Anna’s story, which will not be
told from birth to death but rather from the multiple perspectives of her roles as daughter,
mother, sister, friend, traveler, and wife. The observation of historian Jill Ker Conway
that—“a diligent biographer sees a life in the round, from many perspectives”—seems
to validate an appreciation of Anna in this manner.1 I also think that the reader will find
Anna to be a woman whose relationships make for an interesting revelation of her life and
its significance.
Using the concept of the “southern lady,” I have tried to unify the narrative based on
Anna’s roles with regard to attendant issues of gender, race, class, and regional identity. My
only deviation from Anna as the protagonist in this book is in giving a comparative account
of the experiences of Margaret Fuller, Harriet Lowndes Aiken, and Lucy Holcombe Pickens,
as a select sample of women who traveled to Europe in the 1800s. I grant that Margaret,
a northerner, differed from Anna and the other two exemplary representatives of elite, accomplished southern womanhood, but the New England intellectual was herself a woman
of privilege and was, perhaps, not as much of an anomaly as one might think, especially with
regard to Anna Calhoun Clemson. Both women were astute political observers, thanks to
the tutelage of their fathers, and both women attributed the strife in European society to the
undemocratic rule of royalty. However, neither woman had confidence in the future of the
French Republic that was established in the aftermath of revolution in Paris in 1848.
Although Anna was unique in terms of individual identity, she was similar to other elite
southern women of the nineteenth century, and a study of her life can provide a perspective of her peers as well as a focus on her own importance. The intriguing images of beauty,
breeding, and charm attributed to the South’s mythical lady conjure up a false impression of
perfection that belies the reality of existence for these admittedly privileged persons. Anna’s
story, as told through her relationships, reveals primarily what historian Margaret Ripley
Wolfe calls a “distinctive southern woman” whose life, though blessed with benefit, displayed
hardship and tragedy that she endured with fortitude, triumphed over, and survived.2
“Life is a journey,” Vice-President John C. Calhoun wrote to his fifteen-year-old
daughter, Anna Maria, when she was a student at the “Barhamville” school, near Columbia, South Carolina, in 1832. Anna traveled well the journey her father had defined for
her from the cherished days of childhood to what she termed the “happy times” of youth
vii
and the often somber realities of adult responsibility. In the literal sense of travel, she made
trips to the nation’s capital with her father and close friend Maria Simkins and ventured
on a northern excursion with other companions, at the age of nineteen—to Philadelphia,
New York City, West Point, and Niagara Falls. With her husband, she went to Havana,
to a “Miner’s Hut” in Georgia, to a dilapidated domicile on the Canebrake plantation in
the Edgefield District of South Carolina, and then abroad to Belgium; and, especially significant, she went on her own behind enemy lines to a Yankee prison on Johnson’s Island,
Ohio, to see her captured son, Calhoun Clemson. Returning to the South at the end of
1864, with the Confederacy collapsing, Anna and her daughter Floride endured a harrowing journey to a world forever changed by the catastrophe of civil war. Like her beloved,
embattled, South, Anna had lost much in the course of life’s spiritual “journey.” In her
personal album, she revealed privately her memories of family and friends:
What should we do without the memory of the loved & lost! When with others life drags on in its dull round but when alone the closed doors of my heart
open & the dwellers in those silent chambers come out & surround me once
more—Then my Nina plays around me or climbs my knees & puts her arms
around me with loving words— Then my father holds out to me his hand with
his sweet smile & glorious eyes & say[s] “my daughter” as I often saw him in
life—my sister sits & looks at me with loving eyes— poor Pat with his kind
manners & noble heart—is once more there & John & Willie live once more in
the recollections of childhood—Farther back in the vistas of years I see Maria &
enjoy once more her friendship & I am once more young & happy & the many
friends “I’ve seen around me fall leaves in wintry weather” once more make life a
long dream of happiness. So live I in the past but a footstep approaches & they
all flee before it—the heart closes & life is once more sad & gloomy.3
Written sometime after December 1858 and the death of her youngest child, threeyear-old Nina, Anna’s poignant expression of a mother’s loss also reveals memories she held
dear as a daughter, sister, and friend. Images of her father, sister, brothers, and dearest friend,
Maria, reflect the happiness shut inside her heart’s “silent chambers,” closed as “a footstep
approaches,” perhaps that of her husband. Thomas Clemson’s depressive disorder, described
by his wife as the “blues” when they married, had worsened since the couple’s return from his
diplomatic post in Brussels in 1851. Deep despondency over the death of his little girl had a
great impact on his behavior, making life for Anna “once more sad & gloomy.”4
So Anna’s journey with the man she married was in all respects the most difficult one
that she ever made. She gave him her love and loyalty and relinquished “the cherished
object” of her life, her father, making a choice she thought to be “the best” in marrying
Clemson. Initially, he was a man resolved in his actions and loving and supportive of her.
But Anna soon realized that he was tormented in both mind and body by a misunderstood mental illness. Unable to fulfill her own individual identity in her relationship with
her husband, she ultimately found happiness in being close to her children.5
With her son Calhoun at the troublesome age three and her daughter Floride not yet
two, her outlook dulled on Clemson’s acceptance of a diplomatic post as Chargé d’Affaires
in Brussels in 1844. However, because of his interest in living, once again, in Europe,
viii
where he had studied as a young man, she welcomed the appointment for his sake and
determined to make the best of it for the sake of her young family. Sailing back and forth
across the Atlantic (indeed, an incredible journey in itself ) separated her from loved ones
in America and from the Calhouns’ “dear old Fort Hill” plantation home for a little over
six years.6
Following her return from abroad and settling with her family on a farm outside of
Washington, D.C., Anna witnessed the deterioration of her husband’s depression, which
caused distress for her and their children. As a person who prized dearly the harmony of
family love, the situation was particularly painful but paled by comparison with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. With Clemson and their son Calhoun joining Confederate forces in the South and with Anna and Floride remaining in Maryland, the Clemsons
were not reunited in South Carolina until the summer of 1865, after a four-year separation. Following their journey south at the end of 1864, the Clemson women joined Anna’s
widowed mother, Floride Calhoun, at her “Mi Casa” home in Pendleton, South Carolina,
and anxiously awaited the arrival of their men folk in April 1865, when the war ended.7
Finding the region in ruins and her own Pendleton community impoverished, Anna,
who had once left her father’s political world for what she believed would be the “quiet
of domestic life” as Mrs. Thomas Green Clemson, now emerged, with other southern
women of her class, as a leader in the South’s first generation of female activists. Involved
in worthy causes and accepted in the public sphere by virtue of their gentility, these ladies
forged a future for themselves and their families in the defeated South. Beside her husband, Anna worked impressively among all those living around them.8
The tragic loss of both their daughter, Floride, and son, Calhoun, six years after the
war’s end, not only devastated the Clemsons but proved to be of profound significance for
the future. Thomas Clemson’s vision of an agricultural and mechanical college for South
Carolina became personally important to Anna, who must have felt, as he did, that this
would be a memorial worthy of her father and their son and an honor to each of them.
Aware that the land needed for the school would undoubtedly soon be hers when she
inherited the family’s Fort Hill plantation from the disputed estate of Floride Calhoun,
Anna left to her husband, in her last will and testament, all of the extant and future property that she possessed.9
Despondent at the death of his last two children, Clemson depended upon Anna
to support his dream of a scientific school for the study of agriculture because his very
indifferent disposition distracted him from such determination after the death of their
children. Although eager to see the school established, Anna was primarily thinking, in
1872, about a planned trip to see her little granddaughter, Floride Isabella, in Carmel,
New York. Personally escorted by their son-in-law, Gideon Lee, Jr., she and her husband
made a very tiring four-day trip by land in June, and, though his health and spirits seemed
somewhat improved at first, his old hopeless state reappeared so that she felt he would
never be better. Nevertheless, their stay in New York was one bright spot at a very bleak
time in their lives. Their trip back to South Carolina would be Anna’s final journey.10
Returning first to Mi Casa, in Pendleton, and then home to Fort Hill, since her inheritance from her mother’s estate had been settled in her favor early in 1872, Anna would
spend the last three years of her life there. She participated with her husband in the public
promotion of the college that would become a lasting legacy for both the Calhoun and
ix
Clemson names. Thomas Green Clemson’s later founding of “The Clemson Agricultural
College of S.C.” (as a tombstone reads in St. Paul’s Churchyard, Pendleton) on grounds
of the Fort Hill plantation was made possible because of his wife’s bequest to him. So
his establishing the school that they both desired enabled her to join the ranks of other
strong southern women whose positive influence reached beyond their own lives to make
a difference.11
Many years after Anna’s death, Richard W. Simpson, Clemson’s lawyer and the first
chairman of the Board of Trustees of Clemson Agricultural College, commented in a letter to Clemson College President Walter M. Riggs that “there ought to be a monument
of some sort erected to her memory.” Later with words of sincere sentiment he wrote the
following eloquent statement: “Mrs. Clemson was among women what her distinguished
father was among men. Her love for her home and country were superb, and to this noble,
generous and yet gentle woman, South Carolina is as much indebted for Clemson College as [it is] to the distinguished husband, Thomas G. Clemson.” The history of Clemson
University today is not complete without recognizing this southern lady, whose family’s
Fort Hill home is now preserved for generations to come as a “National Historic Landmark” in the heart of the school’s campus.12
When John L. Allen, former Director of Visitor Programs at Clemson University
hired me to work at the historic houses of Clemson University (Fort Hill and Hanover),
I did not dream where the job would eventually take me. My introduction to Anna Calhoun Clemson led to an interest that was nurtured by the Clemson University Woman’s
Club, which allowed me to do an on site presentation about the women of Fort Hill. My
friend on the History Department faculty, Alan Grubb, aroused my curiosity by calling
my attention to a letter from the papers of former Clemson President W. M. Riggs, praising Mrs. Clemson’s role in the founding of the college. At the First Southern Conference
on Women’s History in 1988, sponsored by the Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH), I had the opportunity to present a paper entitled “Anna Calhoun Clemson
and the Origins of Clemson University,” which was later published by The United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine. (At SAWH’s Fifth Southern Conference on Women’s
History in 2000, I was able to include, in a presentation on women travelers, information
about Mrs. Clemson’s Belgian years.) For further articles about Mrs. Clemson, my thanks
go to Stephen Hoffius, former Director of Publications for the South Carolina Historical
Society. He encouraged me to continue writing and enabled my work to appear in the
Carologue magazine.
My decision to enter graduate school at the University of South Carolina was supported by recommendations from members of the History faculty at Clemson University,
including Carol Bleser (now Professor Emeritus), the late Alan Schaffer, and Robert S.
Lambert, who was the department head who hired me as an instructor in 1967. The
classes that I had in Columbia and the two that I took at Clemson all contributed to
my dissertation in pursuit of the doctoral degree. Especially, I wish to extend my appreciation and admiration to the following persons: Carol Bleser, Alan Grubb, Constance
Schulz, Michael Smith, Marcia Synnott, Tom Terrill, Clyde Wilson, and the late John
x
Scott Wilson. Of particular significance to me in this process was the support of my dissertation advisor, Marcia Synnott, without whose help I would neither have continued
with the endeavor nor completed its end. Clyde Wilson’s enthusiastic encouragement
to move “ONWARD” inspired me to do just that, and his astute comments as I did so
enlightened my perspective.
The scholarship of Ernest McPherson Lander, Jr., in his works on the Calhouns and
the Clemsons; of Julia Wright Sublette, in her documentary dissertation on Anna Calhoun
Clemson’s letters; and of Clyde Wilson, in his editing of The Papers of John C. Calhoun,
made possible my own academic effort. Moreover, each of the following individuals contributed to its completion: Andrew P. Calhoun, Jr., genealogist of the Clan Colquhoun
Society; Creighton Lee Calhoun, Jr., great-great grandson of Anna and Thomas Clemson;
Patti Connor-Greene, Alumni Professor of Psychology, Clemson University; Jim Cross,
Susan Hiott, and Dennis Taylor, all in Special Collections, Clemson University; Henry
G. Fulmer, Manuscripts Librarian, The South Caroliniana Library, University of South
Carolina; The Reverend Bob Haden, Director of The Haden Institute, Charlotte, North
Carolina; Will Hiott, Director of Historic Properties, Clemson University; Mary Alice
Spoone King, former Graduate Coordinator, Department of History, University of South
Carolina; Polly Owen, a former first grade teacher extraordinaire and Historic Site Guide
at Fort Hill and Hanover House for fifteen years; the late William Leon Pippin, Jr., whose
library and friendship were invaluable to me; Katherine A. Saunders, Associate Director
of Preservation Initiatives for the Historic Charleston Foundation; Ben Skardon, distinguished U.S. Army veteran, Clemson Alumni Master Teacher, and devout Episcopalian.
The critique of an anonymous reader for the University of Missouri Press enabled me
to give a more thematic and analytical approach to the subject of my dissertation. Suggestions made by Robert Figueira, Co-Editor of The Proceedings of The South Carolina
Historical Association, greatly improved sections of the “Traveling Women” chapter that
have been included in The Proceedings 2007 volume. A somewhat revised version of the
sixth chapter, “My very much beloved dear Anna,” is to be part of a book on Thomas
Green Clemson, commissioned by Clemson University to commemorate the bicentennial
of the birth of its founder and published by the University of South Carolina Press. I am
grateful to Clemson University historian, Jerome V. Reel, Jr., for the concept of the 2007
celebration that provided the perfect opportunity to promote the school’s past from the
perspective of Anna Calhoun Clemson. However, without the endorsement and expertise
of Wayne Chapman, Executive Editor of the Clemson University Digital Press, the publication of my own work on Anna Calhoun Clemson would not have been possible. Funding for this project was aided by a grant from the United Daughters of the Confederacy as
a provision of the Mrs. Simon Baruch University Award. My heartfelt thanks go to Peggy
Palmer, who made me aware of its existence, and to Pamela Wright, who also encouraged
me to enter the competition. I am privileged to be included in the following chronological
list of historians who have received this coveted award:
Recipients of the Mrs. Simon Baruch University Award
1927—Jesse Thomas Carpenter. The South as a Conscious Minority 1789-1861. New York University
1920. University of South Carolina, 1991 (reprint).
xi
1929—Theodore M. Whitfield. Slavery Agitation in Virginia, 1829-1832. Out of print.
1931—Ralph Betts Flanders. Plantation Slavery in Georgia. Out of print.
1933—Samuel Thompson. Confederate Purchasing Agents Abroad. Out of print.
1935—Bell Irvin Wiley. Southern Negroes 1861-1865. Yale University Press, 1938.
1937—Louise Biles Hill. Joseph E. Brown and the Confederacy. Out of print.
1940—F. Stansbury Haydon. Aeronautics of the Union and Confederate Armies. Out of print.
1942—John Stormont. The Economic Stake of the North in the Preservation of the Union in 1861. Not published.
1945—Harold Sessel Schultz. Nationalism and Sectionalism in South Carolina 1852-1860. Duke
University Press, 1950.
1948—Allen P. Tankersly. John Brown Gordon: Soldier and Statesman. Privately printed.
1951—Richard C. Todd. Confederate Finance. University of Georgia Press, 1953.
1954—Ralph E. Morrow. Northern Methodism and Reconstruction. Michigan State University Press,
1956.
1954—Horace Cunningham. Doctors in Gray. Louisiana State University Press, 1958.
1957—Martin H. Hall. The Army of New Mexico – Sibley’s Campaign of 1862. University of Texas
Press, 1960.
1960—James I. Robertson, Jr. Jackson’s Stonewall: A History of the Stonewall Brigade. Louisiana State
University Press, 1963.
1960—Tom Henderson Wells. The Confederate Navy: A Study in Organization. University of Alabama Press, 1971.
1970—Conrad Delaney. John McIntosh Kell, “Luff” of the Alabama. University of Alabama Press,
1973.
1972—Michael B. Dougan. Confederate Arkansas: The People and Politics of a Frontier State. University of Alabama Press, 1976. Reprinted 1991 in paperback.
1974—Sarah W. Wiggins. The Scalawag in Alabama Politics, 1865-1881. University of Alabama
Press, 1976.
1976—Larry Earl Nelson. Bullets, Ballots and Rhetoric. University of Alabama Press, 1980.
1978—Kenny A. Franks. Stand Watie and the Agony of the Cherokee Nation. Memphis State University Press, 1979.
1980—Walter L. Buenger. Stilling the Voice of Reason: The Union and Secession in Texas, 1854-1861.
University of Texas Press, 1984.
1982—Richard M. McMurry. John Bell Hood and the War for Southern Independence. University
Press of Kentucky, 1982.
1984—Rev. Larry J. Daniel. Cannoneers in Gray: The Field Artillery of the Army of Tennessee, 18611865. University of Alabama Press, 1984.
1988—Dr. Mary Ann DeCredico. Patriotism for Profit: Georgia’s Urban Entrepreneurs and the Confederate War Effort. University of North Carolina Press, 1990.
1990—William H. Nulty, Jr. Confederate Florida: The Road to Olustee. University of Alabama Press,
1990.
1992—Dr. Lynn Willoughby. Fair to Middlin’: The Antebellum Cotton Trade of the Apalachicola/Chattahoochee River Valley. University of Alabama Press, 1993.
1994—Dr. J. Tracy Power. Lee’s Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia From the Wilderness
to Appomattox. University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
2002—Dr. John D. Fowler. Mountaineers in Gray: The Story of the Nineteenth Tennessee Volunteer
Infantry Regiment, C.S.A. University of Tennessee Press, 2003.
2006—Dr. Ann Ratliff Russell. Legacy of a Southern Lady, Anna Calhoun Clemson, 1817-1875.
Clemson University Digital Press, 2007.
Finally, I am personally grateful for the love and support of family and friends. The
keen insight of my sister-in-law, Cheryl Russell, made me see the meaningful significance
of mental illness for those intimately associated with the afflicted. The many peppy phone
calls from my cousin, Gwen Grote, in Texas, always left me with renewed confidence that
I would not only finish what I had started but someday see a dissertation become a book.
The memory of my parents, John and Ruby Ratliff, gave me direction throughout the
xii
difficulties of this daunting task, and I think they would be proud of the end result. To
my daughters, Angela Bradley Newton and Kathryn Baring Russell—thank you, Angie
and Kathy, for being the most important thing that I have ever done. Both of you, along
with my son-in-law, Mike Newton, and grandchildren, Russell, Anna, and Alex, have so
enriched my life and enabled me to appreciate what matters most. I am glad for this opportunity to tell you how I feel. And to my husband, Brad, at last and in his own words
to me: “What can I say?” (See Bradley Russell, “Three Papers On Optimal Strategies In
Surveillance Theory” [A Dissertation, Florida State University, 1968] x.)
Genealogical Branches of the Clan Colquhoun
James Patrick Calhoun, grandfather of John Ewing Colhoun, was possibly the first to
“Americanize” the family name.†
Ezekiel Calhoun was the father of Rebecca Floride, who married Revolutionary War hero
General Andrew Pickens. Ezekiel was the father of John Ewing Colhoun, who changed
the spelling of his surname at the time of the American Revolution and then married
Floride Bonneau.
John Ewing Colhoun m. Floride Bonneau
John Ewing Colhoun, Jr.
Floride Bonneau Colhoun
James Edward Colhoun (Calhoun)††
John Caldwell Calhoun m. Floride Bonneau Colhoun
Andrew Pickens Calhoun
Anna Maria Calhoun
Patrick Calhoun
John Caldwell Calhoun, Jr.
Martha Cornelia Calhoun
James Edward Calhoun
William Lowndes Calhoun
†Patrick Calhoun was the son of James Patrick and the father of John Caldwell Calhoun. John Caldwell Calhoun married Floride Bonneau Colhoun, who was the daughter of his first cousin John Ewing Colhoun.
††Apparently James Edward changed the spelling of his surname to agree with his ancestor James Patrick Calhoun.
xiii
C a s t
o f
C h a r a c t e r s
Principal Subjects
Anna Maria Calhoun Clemson was the daughter of John C. Calhoun and
wife of Thomas Green Clemson and, in her own right, left a legacy of land
and love.
John C. Calhoun was an American statesman who served his country in the
U.S. House of Representatives, as Secretary of War, Vice-President, Senator,
and Secretary of State. He was both the master of Fort Hill plantation in the
South Carolina upcountry and a noble and loving father.
Thomas Green Clemson was a mining engineer, planter, diplomat, and
founder of The Clemson Agricultural College of S.C. He suffered from
chronic depression throughout his married life.
Floride Bonneau Colhoun was Anna’s grandmother who inherited land
holdings in the South Carolina lowcountry from her father, rice planter
Samuel Bonneau, and in the upcountry from her husband, U. S. Senator
John Ewing Colhoun.
Floride Bonneau Colhoun Calhoun, Mrs. John C. Calhoun, was Anna’s
mother, a former Charleston belle who, as the wife of John C. Calhoun, gave
birth to ten children and raised seven. She was known as “an elegant lady” in
Washington, D.C., when her husband was Vice-President and, later, when
she was mistress of Fort Hill. She died at her “Mi Casa” home in Pendleton in
1866, an emaciated figure “eaten away” by cancer at the age of seventy-four.
Anna’s siblings
Andrew Calhoun was expelled from Yale and then attended South Carolina
College. He first married Eugenia Chappell of Columbia and then Anna’s
friend, Margaret Green of Washington, D.C. Master of Cane Brake plantation in Alabama, he also acquired Fort Hill from his mother in 1854. The purchase price remained unpaid at the time of his death in 1865. Money matters
ruined Andrew’s relationship with Anna and Clemson, but the marriage of his
grandson to his sister’s granddaughter in 1895 would end “the family feud.”
Patrick Calhoun, Anna’s much beloved, dear Pat and “a favourite” with her
husband, was a West Point graduate who attained the rank of army captain.
He died, unmarried, of lung disease in 1858 at the age of thirty-seven.
John Calhoun, Jr. attended Hallowell’s Academy in Alexandria, Virginia,
and later enrolled at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he
was forced to withdraw for health reasons. His tubercular condition seemingly arrested, he studied medicine in Charleston and received a medical diploma in Philadelphia. He first married Anzie Adams of Pendleton and then
Kate Putnam of St. Augustine, Florida. He fathered two sons and died of lung
disease in 1855 at the age of thirty-two.
Cornelia Calhoun, an invalid who bore her afflictions with a cheerful disposition, was her mother’s constant companion until her sudden death in
1857 at the age of thirty-three.
James Calhoun attended Hallowell’s Academy with his brother John and
also enrolled at the University of Virginia, where he was later expelled. He
entered South Carolina College, where he became a serious student and a
class leader, and then studied law in Charleston. In the early 1850s, he went
to California, where he made investments on behalf of his brother-in-law,
Clemson. These investments became the source of friction between the two
men. James died, unmarried, of consumption in San Francisco in 1861 at
the age of thirty-five.
Willie Calhoun was Anna’s youngest brother, who, at age thirteen, she
found to be as “full of tricks as a little monkey.” A graduate of South Carolina College, he first married Margaret Cloud of Columbia and then his
brother John’s widow, Kate. He was master of Brier Thicket plantation
along the Savannah River, where he died in 1858, a few months after his
brother Patrick, of a chest inflammation at the age of twenty-nine, leaving
behind his wife and a baby son.
Anna’s children
Calhoun Clemson, named for his grandfather, held as a young boy the
promise of manly talent. However, poor health and civil war overshadowed
his future, and a tragic accident took his life at the age of thirty.
Floride Clemson, as a little girl, always seemed to be able to take care of
herself. A sometimes rebellious and disobedient youth, she developed into an
elegant and accomplished young lady. She died from an illness at the age of
twenty-eight, leaving behind a husband and baby daughter.
Nina Clemson was a precious, precocious child who brought great joy to
her family for the three years of her short life.
xv
Anna’s Other Relations and Friends
Floride Isabella Lee Calhoun, Anna’s granddaughter, married her cousin
Andrew Pickens Calhoun II, the grandson of Anna’s brother Andrew.
Creighton Lee Calhoun, Jr. is the grandson of Floride Lee Calhoun and
Andrew Pickens Calhoun and the great-great grandson of Anna and Thomas Clemson.
Maria Simkins Calhoun was Anna’s dearest girlhood friend who married
her very own forty-year-old bachelor uncle James within three months of
Anna’s marriage to Thomas Clemson. She died in childbirth, along with her
baby, at the age of twenty-seven.
James Edward Calhoun was the younger brother of Anna’s mother, who,
after serving in the navy, became a prominent planter and slave-owner along
an upper stretch of the Savannah River. He was master of Millwood plantation, where he lived much in seclusion after the death of his wife and child.
He also served as benefactor of his sister Floride’s family.
Francis Pickens was Anna’s favorite cousin. His first wife, Eliza Simkins,
was the sister of Anna’s best friend, Maria. He was master of Edgewood
plantation in Edgefield, South Carolina, served in the U. S. House of Representatives and as U.S. Minister to Russia, and was elected governor of South
Carolina in 1860. He ended his term in office in 1862.
Aunt Elizabeth Barton was Anna’s sister-in-law (her husband’s younger sister), whose finishing school in Philadelphia was attended by her daughter
Floride.
Louisa Clemson Washington was Clemson’s older sister, who, as the widow of Samuel Washington, a grandnephew of President George Washington, was the mistress of Harewood plantation near Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.
Anna described her as “the kindest woman I ever knew.”
Uncle Elias Baker was Thomas Green Clemson’s uncle from Altoona, Pennsylvania, where he owned the Alleghany Furnace iron works. He looked out
for Anna and her daughter Floride’s welfare in Maryland when Clemson
and his son Calhoun went South after the outbreak of civil war in 1861.
xvi
D. W. Lee was Clemson’s financial advisor and brother-in-law of his late
friend, Charles Leupp. He was dubbed the “gallant defender” by Anna and
Floride in the absence of the Clemson men during wartime.
Gideon Lee, Jr., brother of the “gallant defender,” married Floride Clemson
in 1869 with Anna’s blessing and resided with his bride in Carmel, New
York at his “Leeside” home on 150 acres of farmland.
James Rion, a Calhoun family friend who became Clemson’s lawyer, described Anna “as a child who inherited more of her father’s great talents than
any other of his children” and “a wife worthy of any man that ever lived.”
R. W. Simpson was a lawyer who wrote the Clemson will that provided for
“the establishment of an agricultural college upon the Fort Hill place.” He
believed that South Carolina was as much indebted to Anna as to her distinguished husband for Clemson College
Women Travelers
Margaret Fuller was a New England intellectual and writer sent to Europe
on her own as a foreign correspondent for the New York Tribune in 1846;
like Anna, who lived in Brussels from 1844 to 1851 when her husband was
Charge´ d’Affaires to the Belgian Court, she found the distress in European
society’s unequal class structure to be the fault of an undemocratic political
system.
Harriet Lowndes Aiken was a Charleston hostess extraordinaire whose trips
to Europe with her husband, William Aiken, Jr., were primarily for pleasure—to pursue culture and purchase such items of sophistication expected
to belong to the city’s aristocracy. She was the niece of Congressman William Lowndes, whose family the Calhouns had lived with for a short while
in Washington, D.C., and for whom Anna’s father had named his youngest
son.
Lucy Holcombe Pickens, the third wife of Anna’s cousin Francis, captivated Czar Alexander ll and his opulent court when her husband served as
U.S. Minister to Russia. Later at home, she reigned as South Carolina’s First
Lady during her husband’s term as governor from 1860 to 1862.
xvii
C
H
R
O
N
O
L
O
G
Y
ANNA CALHOUN CLEMSON
February 13, 1817
Anna Maria is born at Bath plantation, near Willington, South Carolina,
along the Savannah River in the Abbeville District
December 1817-July
1826
resides in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.
1826–1829
attends the Edgefield Female Academy following her family’s return to
South Carolina and the Clergy Hall home of her grandmother, Floride
Bonneau Colhoun, in the Pendleton District
1829 -1831
enjoys family life at the enlarged Clergy Hall, called Fort Hill after
1830
1831-1832
attends the South Carolina Female Collegiate Institute outside of the
capital city Columbia
1833-1838
resides at home at Fort Hill
1834 -1838
winters in Washington
April 21, 1836
the death of her grandmother, Floride Bonneau Colhoun
1836
her father, John C. Calhoun, assumes ownership of the Fort Hill
property from the estate of his mother-in-law
Summer 1836
makes northern trip to Niagara Falls
November 13, 1838
marries Thomas Clemson at Fort Hill
1838 -1839
visits her husband’s family in Philadelphia
February 4, 1839
her “beloved friend,” Maria Simkins, marries James Calhoun in
Washington
August 13, 1839
gives birth at Fort Hill to her firstborn, a baby girl who died three weeks
later
1839 -1840
resides with her husband at the Millwood plantation of her Uncle James
and his wife Maria in the Abbeville District
July 17, 1841
gives birth to John Calhoun Clemson at Fort Hill
February-May 1842
visits Havana, Cuba
July-October 1842
lives at “Miner’s Hut,” the O’Bar gold mine in Dahlonega, GA
December 29, 1842
gives birth to Elizabeth Floride Clemson at Fort Hill
January to September
1844
resides at Canebrake plantation in the Edgefield District
April 17, 1844
Maria Simkins Calhoun dies
October 1844October 1848
lives abroad in Brussels, Belgium, while Clemson serves as Chargé
d’Affaires to the court of King Léopold I
November 1848-May
1849
returns to America
1849–1851
again resides in Brussels, Belgium
March 31, 1850
Anna’s father, John C. Calhoun, dies
August 27, 1850
Anna’s mother, Floride Calhoun, receives title to Fort Hill property
1851–1853
travels from the South to the North in America
1853–1864
settles at “The Home,” a farm in Bladensburg, Maryland, outside of
Washington, D.C.
1854
Anna’s mother sells Fort Hill to her son Andrew
1855
Mrs. Calhoun and her daughter Cornelia move to Pendleton, leaving
Anna’s brother Andrew, his wife, Margaret, and their children at Fort
Hill
October 3, 1855
the birth of Cornelia (Nina) Clemson
July 31, 1855
the death of her brother John Caldwell Calhoun, Jr.
May 2, 1857
the death of sister Cornelia Calhoun
June 1, 1858
the death of brother, Patrick Calhoun
September 19, 1858
the death of brother William Lowndes Calhoun
December 20, 1858
the death of little daughter Nina
March 1860
she suffers a miscarriage
March 1860
is visited by her father in a vision ten years after his death
April 1861
the outbreak of civil war between the North and South
June 1861
her husband, Thomas Green Clemson, and son, John Calhoun Clemson,
go South and ultimately join Confederate forces, leaving Anna and
daughter Floride back in Maryland
November 29, 1861
the death of brother James Calhoun
April 1864
visits son John “Calhoun” Clemson at Union prison camp on Johnson’s
Island in Lake Erie, near Sandusky, Ohio
1864
stays temporarily at Beltsville, Maryland, near Baltimore
1865–1872
returns with daughter Floride to South Carolina and the “Mi Casa”
home of her mother in Pendleton
March 16, 1865
the death of brother Andrew Pickens Calhoun, leaving Anna as the sole
survivor of all her siblings
Summer 1865
with Floride, Anna is reunited, in Pendleton, with her husband, Thomas
Clemson, and son, Calhoun Clemson, in the aftermath of the Civil
War
xix
January 22, 1866
the codicil of the original will of Floride Calhoun makes Anna her
mother’s principal heir as the recipient of three-fourths of the bond and
mortgage title on Fort Hill
March 1866
a lawsuit is initiated by Floride Calhoun, in conjunction with her sonin-law, Thomas Clemson, as administrator for the estate of his late sisterin-law Cornelia (a shareholder with her mother in the ownership of
the Fort Hill property), against the family of her son, Andrew Pickens
Calhoun, for the debt owed by his estate on Fort Hill
July 1866
a court decision is made to foreclose against Andrew’s heirs on the Fort
Hill title to which Mrs. Calhoun had named Anna to be the primary
beneficiary
July 1866
immediate appeal by the Andrew Pickens Calhoun family for reversal
in the case
July 25, 1866
the death of Floride Calhoun, leaving Anna as the last member of the
immediate family of John C. Calhoun
August 2, 1869
Floride Clemson marries Gideon Lee, Jr., of New York
May 15, 1870
the birth of Anna’s granddaughter Floride Isabella Lee
July 23, 1871
the death of daughter Floride Clemson Lee
August 10, 1871
the death of son Calhoun Clemson
September 29, 1871
Anna Calhoun Clemson’s last will and testament is signed and sealed,
naming her husband as heir to all then-present and future property in
her estate
January 21, 1872
Anna gains her official inheritance of the Fort Hill property from the
disputed estate of Floride Calhoun
1872–1875
Anna’s last years at Fort Hill
September 22, 1875
Anna dies at Fort Hill
September 24, 1875
her burial at St. Paul’s Episcopal Churchyard in Pendleton
xx
Chapter One
“Her Father’s Daughter”
A life of duty, not decoration, was reality for the Southern lady as a type. The
Southern lady, as with all women, both black and white, was supposed to be
subordinate to men. Anna Calhoun Clemson first experienced male domination
at home from the father whose talents she favored and under whose guidance
she flourished. Raised by John C. Calhoun to be a dutiful daughter, she did not
question the wisdom of the man to whom she was devoted, and she enthusiastically endorsed his views and values. Educated in the same way other elite young
women were in the South—to be accomplished in aesthetic sensibilities as well
as knowledgeable in academic studies—she was further fortunate to be at her
father’s side in the political arena in Washington. Marriage to Thomas Clemson
did not alter Anna’s affection for the man she so admired although her obligatory
allegiance to her husband was nonetheless that of an obedient wife. Motherhood
provided her with an opportunity to impart her father’s ideals to her children in
the hope that they too would be influenced by his counsel. A view of the life of
Anna Calhoun Clemson must first capture a reflection of her relationship with
her father, the family’s patriarch and man she adored.
“… How keenly I feel for my dear Anna.… She adored her father, and he loved her
dearly.”
F
loride Calhoun wrote the above words about her daughter to Richard Crallé, onetime newspaper editor and close Calhoun friend and associate, not long after her
husband’s death on March 31, 1850. Anna who unabashedly thought of herself as
her father’s “favourite child,” was in Brussels with her husband and children when John C.
Calhoun died and deeply felt the distance from her family in distress at home in America.
In a letter to her brother James, she wrote of her grief at being so far away from those who
shared the loss of such a sympathetic parent whose high morals and dignity were plainly
known to his children. Sustained in her sorrow by the power of her father’s memory, Anna
saw his whole life as an example of the sentiment she had often heard him express: “The
duties of life are greater than life itself.” This moral adage was not only a source of strength
for her at such a difficult time but a mode of conduct she thought worthy for all and one
that she had already introduced to her young children, Calhoun and Floride.1
Anna’s devotion to her father and his affection for her made for one of the strongest
bonds in the lives of both. Born on February 13, 1817, at Calhoun’s Bath Plantation,
located near Willington, along the Savannah River in the Abbeville District (now McCormick County), little Anna Maria would grow up to be the joy of her father’s life. The story
of their special relationship begins on December 30, 1831, with the first of a long series
of compassionate letters from Calhoun to his beloved Anna, by then a young adolescent
girl. According to Clyde N. Wilson, Editor, The Papers of John C. Calhoun, she was “the
person who was to become perhaps closer to him in mind and temperament than anyone
on earth.” Despite the political controversy that prevailed over the tariff question, a subject of serious concern for Calhoun as vice-president in the first-term administration of
President Andrew Jackson, he was his daughter’s regular correspondent from Washington,
D.C., during her stay at the South Carolina Female Collegiate Institute. Also known as
“Barhamville,” this combined secondary school and junior college just outside of Columbia2 had been in existence for five years when fourteen-year-old Anna Maria Calhoun
enrolled at the end of 1831. Considered by her father to be the institution providing the
best education for women in South Carolina,3 the school, with a tuition of about $200
a year, had a student body of more than 150 girls from several southern states. However,
for the most part, the majority of the Barhamville girls were daughters of central South
Carolina planters.
Established in 1826 by Charleston native Dr. Elias Marks, the Institute was in the
forefront of the movement to provide higher education for women. After Dr. Marks’s
graduation from the New York Medical College he had returned South to pursue an early
interest in academics. “‘Educate a woman and you educate a family’” was his belief upheld
also by both his first wife, Jane Barham, for whom the school’s location was named, and
his second wife, Julia Pierpont Warne.4 Julia, a former pupil of educator Emma Willard,
studied first at a female academy in Middlebury, Vermont, and later at the Troy Female
Seminary in New York, and then she accepted a position in 1831 as lady principal at Barhamville. She helped Dr. Marks, whom she married in 1833, establish the South Carolina
Female Collegiate Institute as a southern version of the Troy school. The Troy curriculum,
the first of its kind for women, resembled that of contemporary men’s colleges in that it
4
Legacy of a Southern Lady
covered “mathematics, science, modern languages, Latin, history, philosophy, geography,
and literature” but only as deemed appropriate for women in the domestic sphere. Southern girls like Anna Calhoun were not expected to compete with males but, rather, to raise
their children in an enlightened environment. At Barhamville, young women could fulfill
their limited potential with the study of subjects that they could later impart to their offspring. Thus, in the instruction bestowed upon Anna Maria Calhoun and her classmates
there was in reality a modicum of the national reform movement for female education.5
Dr. Marks spared no expense in the salaries of his faculty, many of whom, in the fine
arts and language fields, were Europeans. Southern elites such as the Calhouns, who could
afford to educate their girls but did not expect them to work in a professional sphere,
wanted accomplished daughters. Subjects that ambitious middle-class northerners, many
of whose own daughters trained to be teachers, considered optional and “ornamental
branches’’ were, to those southerners who could pay for their girls’ education, well worth
the additional tuition cost. Selective courses such as music, drawing, painting, crafts and
social duties were valued as essential subject matter for young women in the South. Southern antebellum girls’ schools such as the one attended by Anna Maria Calhoun may even
be credited for promoting the presence of fine arts in today’s college curricula.6
The lonely, sandy road that stretches two miles from Columbia to Barhamville
brought Anna Calhoun to the wooded, rural setting advertised by Dr. Marks in the State
Gazette as “sufficiently removed from those everyday excitements and interruptions” that
could hinder the regularity of an academic routine. Only two times a year—for graduation ceremonies at South Carolina College and Washington’s birthday on February
22—did the girls leave the school’s seclusion and, chaperoned by the staff, travel by carriage to Columbia. Once inside Barhamville’s gates and within the carpeted hallway of
the three-storied central building, where a black butler was customarily in attendance at
the front door, the young Miss Calhoun found herself confined to a systematic regimen
regulated by intensive study. Arising early, Anna and her fellow students went to prayers
before breakfast and then spent the whole day, until evening, studying. Diligent teachers,
who disparaged memorization, demanded that the young women think through their lessons for understanding. No annual public examination of pupils was held at Barhamville,
where the doors were opened five days a week, from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m., for visitation from
patrons and others supportive of the Institute’s program of “Female Education.”7
In Calhoun’s first letter to his daughter away at school, he expressed an interest not
only in her courses and teachers but also in the other young ladies there and her own
particular companions. Not surprised that Anna, in the midst of strangers, was at first
lonesome away from the family’s upcountry Fort Hill plantation home, he commended
her for not giving way to tears but, instead, for becoming acquainted with those around
her. Confident that his daughter’s good sense would guard her against a close association
with everyone, he advised her to be familiar with only a select and worthy few. Wary of
the possibility of much socializing among the many family friends in Columbia, he had
already admonished her about visiting too many households and going to large parties
until she was at least two or three years older.8
Pleased to receive remarkably well-written letters from his dear Maria, Calhoun, who
considered these missives as high accomplishments, was gratified to learn that she stood
at the head of her class. Attributing Anna Maria’s achievement to both effort and ability,
Chapter One
5
he acknowledged her great dislike for getting up early and praised her perfect attendance
at morning prayers. Although undoubtedly proud of his daughter’s spirited pursuit of her
academic studies, Calhoun commented on the importance of dancing, music, and other
aesthetics in her education. Good posture in connection with health he considered to be
especially important among the social graces as he advised her to be careful of her sitting
position while studying. Supportive of her interest in music, he encouraged her to give her
best voice to singing in one of Barhamville’s most creative departments.9
Proud of the academic achievements of his gifted daughter and clearly pleased by her
stated concern about political events from which she felt far removed at school, her father
professed himself to be not one of those who thought women should stay completely out
of politics. Although typically portraying activism as unbecoming for those thought to
be inferior to men, Calhoun was an advocate of enlightenment for females in the arena
of public affairs. That Calhoun espoused this belief for his own beloved daughter by no
means indicates that he endorsed such enlightenment in white women of lower class or
in women of color. All women of Anna’s day were subordinate to men, but the degree of
domination depended on color and status. “Gender, race, and class,” according to historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, determined the place of southern women in society.10
Like Calhoun, fellow South Carolinian Henry Laurens felt that publicly expressed
political opinions would not be appropriate for a young woman such as, in his case, his
daughter Martha. Both men, though believing in the submission of their daughters, desired them to be confidantes capable of understanding the public world in which their
fathers frequently took center stage.11
Anna’s school days at Barhamville ended after one year, a period that she would later
look back on nostalgically as those “happy times” when the days were too short for the
freshness of life’s early enjoyment. Wary of looking too longingly back at past happiness
rather than forward to future joys, she would indeed wonder by the time of her twentieth
birthday if she would ever be as happy again as when the awareness of just being alive had
consumed her days from dawn to dusk.
At the same time that Anna prepared to return home from school at the end of
1832, her father accepted his election to the U.S. Senate by the South Carolina legislature. Calhoun resigned office as Vice-President primarily because of his political support
for the nullification of federal tax laws deemed discriminatory and unconstitutional by
southerners. Not only did a new political era thus emerge for Calhoun, but a wider world
eventually opened for Anna herself, as she joined him with enthusiastic expectations in
Washington, beginning as his confidante and copyist in the winter of 1834. A “beautiful”
and “accomplished” girl, in the words of Calhoun biographer Charles M. Wiltse, she had
“a deep and thoroughly partisan interest in politics” nurtured by her father and in which
he took great pride. According to recollections recorded in her album, she held little fancy
for the youthful activities of other girls her age and preferred instead the presence of politicians to the promise of “balls, parties, beaux and compliments.”
Unlike Anna, Elizabeth Blair, daughter of Frances Preston Blair, editor of the Washington newspaper the Globe, truly enjoyed the social whirl of the nation’s capital and
relished her role there as a society belle. Like Anna, she was her father’s copyist, and she
transcribed documents, correspondence and editorials for him.12
Then a young lady of seventeen, Anna was scheduled to go with her parents to Wash-
6
Legacy of a Southern Lady
ington in a traveling party that included her cousin Francis Pickens, newly elected to the
U.S. House of Representatives in 1834, and Maria Simkins, his sister-in-law and Anna’s
own childhood friend from early school days in Edgefield. “We girls,” she wrote in her
album, “were the pets of the establishment” at Dowson’s boarding house on Capitol Hill.
Despite what she described as the “dirt & discomfort” that the name recalled, the memory
of the pleasant company in the “merry mess” at the boarding house remained for her, as
well. Her father’s fellow senator Colonel William Campbell Preston and his wife, Louisa,
were most enjoyable companions, along with Major Felder, an unusual fellow from South
Carolina, and Felder’s niece, an outstanding girl.
Judge Mangum, a senator from North Carolina, and nice old Benjamin Watkins
Leigh, a senator from Virginia, as well as Mr. Archer of the House, were part of a very
diverse group in which everyone was very amicable. Although Anna thought of Mr. Archer as somewhat of a sour old bachelor, Major Felder, also an old bachelor with “a sort
of Irish potato countenance,” was the very picture of merriment, especially when he had
indulged in his “favourite apple Toddy.” Dancing in the drawing room in the evenings to
the violin playing of Judge Mangum or Senator Linn from Missouri, who lived next door
to Dowson’s, was later almost like a diverting dream for her to remember.
The diversion of Anna’s dancing at Dowson’s in the midst of what she called “dirt &
discomfort” is further elucidated by the English novelist, Charles Dickens, who penned the
following description during his stay at the City Hotel in Washington in 1842:
The hotel in which we live is a long row of small houses fronting on the street,
and opening at the back upon a common yard, in which hangs a great triangle.
Whenever a servant is wanted, somebody beats on this triangle from one stroke
up to seven, according to the number of the house in which his presence is
required; and as all the servants are always being wanted, and none of them
ever come, this enlivening engine is in full performance the whole day through.
Clothes are drying in this same yard; female slaves, with cotton handkerchiefs
twisted around their heads, are running to and fro on the hotel business; black
waiters cross and recross with dishes in their hands; two great dogs are playing on
a mound of loose bricks in the center of the little square, a pig is turning up his
stomach to the sun and grunting “That’s comfortable!” and neither the men, nor
the women, nor the dogs, nor the pig, nor any created creature takes the smallest
notice of the triangle, which is tingling madly all the time.13
While spending March to December back in South Carolina, Anna played hostess
there to her friend Margaret Green. Margaret had accompanied her home from Washington in the spring and later returned with the Calhouns to the nation’s capital at the end
of 1835. The daughter of Duff Green, editor of the Washington newspaper the Telegraph,
and niece of politico Ninian Edwards, the nineteen-year-old Margaret had begun a serious
courtship with Anna’s older brother Andrew during her stay at the Calhouns’ Fort Hill
plantation. Following a steamboat voyage that started in Charleston on December 10, the
Calhoun party arrived in Norfolk after a rough four days at sea. They continued up the
Chesapeake to Baltimore, where they took the train into Washington, arriving back in
the capital city the week before Christmas. Due to the frail health of Anna’s grandmother,
Chapter One
7
Floride Bonneau Colhoun, her mother had remained behind in South Carolina.14
In a letter to her dearest friend, Maria Simkins, who was back home in Edgefield,
Anna described the group of congressmen and their wives with whom she and her father
lived and took regular meals together at Mrs. Lindenberger’s boarding house on Capitol
Hill. Along with her cousin Francis Pickens and his wife, Eliza, and Maria’s older sister
from Edgewood plantation in Edgefield, Anna found herself to be the “only young person”
in the company of Senator and Mrs. William Preston of Columbia, Colonel James Hammond and his wife, Catherine of Redcliffe plantation in the Barnwell District, and General Waddy Thompson of Greenville.15 All of these congressmen that Anna mentioned
would continue to serve South Carolina and the nation in various capacities during the
coming years. Francis Pickens accepted a post as U. S. Minister to Russia in 1858 and was
elected governor of South Carolina in 1860. James Henry Hammond also held office as
governor, though earlier, from 1842 to 1844, and was elected to the U. S. Senate in 1857.
William Preston became the president of South Carolina College in 1845, and General
Waddy Thompson, Jr., was appointed U.S. Minister to Mexico in 1842.
The years of Anna’s association with her father during Congressional sessions in Washington increased her admiration for him, and she became his greatest personal champion.
As the copyist of some of his voluminous correspondence, as well as other writings, she
believed herself to be taken more fully into his confidence than anyone else and told him
her views on any subject about which he inquired. Entries in her journal extolled his virtues as a true patriot and affirmed for posterity the purity of his noble heart and dignity of
his every thought and action. In a statement of heartfelt sentiment, she wrote:
It is an old saying that no one is a hero to his valet de chambre but he can be no
common person of whom even a daughter however prejudiced can with perfect
safety affirm that she has never known him to do or say anything which she
would not have been willing for the whole world to know.16
Anna was appreciative of the opportunity, at her father’s side during the last year of
President Jackson’s second term and the first half of Martin Van Buren’s tenure in office, to
know with certainty those who were, as she said, “the great actors of the age.” She specifically referred to her father’s senate colleagues, Henry Clay of Kentucky and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts. She also took advantage, as Calhoun’s daughter, of any chance to
present the southern view shaped by its interest in slavery—a sensitive subject for someone
who was surely aware of its political consequences for her father. As a staunch pro-slavery
advocate, Calhoun undoubtedly inspired Anna’s thinking after his own; and, according
to recollections of Washington society by one Josiah Quincy, a Boston mayor, graduate
of the Harvard College class of 1821, and author of Figures of the Past, “Miss Calhoun”
was “a lady so skilled in political discussion” that he well remembered the clearness of her
opinions and the ingenuity that she displayed in responding to his proposed objections to
them. Impressed with the fashionable southern ladies who could converse about politics
and would prove to have the courage of their convictions, Quincy agreed with the cynical
comment of a friend that their sisters in the North, despite costly education in fashionable
schools, did not know whether they lived “‘in a monarchy or a republic.’”17
The close companionship between Calhoun and his daughter could well have contin-
8
Legacy of a Southern Lady
ued had not her intelligence and charm captivated the worldly, well-educated, confirmed
bachelor Thomas Green Clemson of Philadelphia. As a southern lady, Anna apparently
gave priority to class over geographic section in considering marriage to a “Yankee” such
as Clemson. In all likelihood, she met the man for whom she would consent to leave her
dearest father due to introductions by Senator Lewis Linn of Missouri, a colleague of
Senator Calhoun as well as a business associate of Clemson and one of Anna’s acquaintances since her days at Dowson’s Capitol Hill boarding house. Senator Linn, along with
his colleague, Judge Mangum from North Carolina, had played the violin for dancing in
the drawing room during Anna’s first winter in Washington.18
Writing to her friend Maria Simkins as she left behind the political world of Washington and prepared to begin the “quiet of domestic life,” Anna declared unequivocally:
“You know there was no affectation, in the determination I always expressed never to
marry. I thought there were duties enough in life for me to perform.” Of those, usefulness
to her father Anna had felt to be primary and judged that she was not without purpose in
life while she contributed to his pleasure in any way. Although falling in love with Clemson changed her mind about marriage, the idea of giving up the man who had been “the
cherished object” of her life was cause for tears at the thought that no one could take her
place at his side or that it might be taken by another. Confident that Maria, who knew she
idolized her father, would be sympathetic, Anna shared her innermost thoughts with this
childhood friend, as she had always done.19
The candlelight wedding of twenty-one-year-old
Anna Maria Calhoun and Thomas Green Clemson, ten
years her senior (a normal age difference for the time),
was solemnized before a large gathering on the evening of
November 13, 1838, underneath a beaded crystal chandelier in the parlor of her family’s Fort Hill plantation
home. Father William Taylor Potter, Rector of St. Paul’s
Episcopal Church in the nearby town of Pendleton, officiated at the ceremony. The still-standing, timber-frame
St. Paul’s Church, with its white clapboard siding, was
built in the shape of a cross in 1822, founded by Charlestonians who established plantation homes in the South
Carolina upcountry. The Clemson nuptials were duly recorded in the Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun FamThomas Green Clemson
ily Bible that had been presented to Anna’s mother for
her performance upon the organ of Trinity Church in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1807.
Theodore Dehon, the Trinity Rector at the time, later married Sarah Russell, daughter of
wealthy Yankee merchant, Nathaniel Russell, whose house on Charleston’s Meeting Street
was perhaps “the finest private home in the South.”
At the time Anna married Clemson, her mother Floride Calhoun was considered
to be one of St. Paul’s most devoted parishioners; and undoubtedly this former Charleston belle, who had “danced at St. Cecilia assemblies, worshipped at St. Michael’s, [and]
summered at Newport,”20 graciously received the guests invited to witness her daughter’s
wedding vows and share in the celebration of her marriage. Weddings like Anna’s were
wonderful occasions to which most everyone was invited and served supper in lavish style.
Chapter One
9
Calhoun, according to his eldest son, Andrew, was decidedly more “abstracted” than “affable” in giving away Anna, “his favorite, his pride, his confidant.”21
Although the world of Anna Maria Calhoun seemed serene on her wedding day, an
article in the same local newspaper that cited her marriage to Thomas Clemson reported a
recent “CONFLAGRATION” in which a barrel full of abolitionist papers and pamphlets
were burned on Main Street in Pendleton. According to The Pendleton Messenger, dated
November 16, 1838, a “base compilation of falsehood” from New York, Pennsylvania,
Boston, Baltimore, Michigan, Maine, Vermont, and Cincinnati, sent south in “a great
display of folly for the Abolitionists,” was handed over by the postmaster to the police of
the city for disposal.22 The ultimate consequence of abolitionism in civil war23 could not
then have been possibly considered by the happy couple who spent their first night as
husband and wife in the sanctity of the bride’s family’s Fort Hill home.
Although Anna, like most elite southern women, accepted the institution of slavery
without question, two sisters from South Carolina, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, rejected
the racist role of their prominent Charleston family and became abolitionist activists in
the North. They took to the platform as public speakers in the 1830s at a time when
women had no legitimate political voice and brought the cause of women’s rights alongside the abolition movement. Embracing the activism that Anna’s father and undoubtedly
their own father considered unbecoming for their sex, they rebelled against the constraints
and confines of the woman’s sphere to become, in the words of historian Gerda Lerner,
“pioneers of a future freedom.”
A few days before Christmas, the Clemsons left South Carolina to visit family in
Philadelphia, where Thomas Clemson wrote to his father-in-law, at the end of February,
that Anna was “as well as it is possible for her to be and as contented and happy as you
know she always is.” A little over two weeks later, Anna described herself to her brother
Patrick, who was preparing for an Army career at West Point, that she was quite well and
very happy. She was by that time four months’ pregnant and, despite the dread of childbirth, with its high death rate for women, said that her only fear was of being completely
spoiled by an indulgent husband who anticipated her every wish.24
Although Calhoun missed his daughter very much, he approved of his son-in-law’s
acceptance, in April, of the offer made to him by Pennsylvania Governor David R. Porter,
to become the State Geologist. In letters to both Anna and to Mr. Clemson, Calhoun
acknowledged the prestigious office to be one well-suited to Clemson’s professional talents
as a mining engineer and one that would afford him enough leisure to spend much of the
next summer in South Carolina. When the arrangement for the job failed in May, Calhoun, sympathetic with his daughter’s dislike of Philadelphia, was glad that the Clemsons
could now spend the whole summer at Fort Hill. However, considering that the position
with its pecuniary possibilities would have afforded his son-in-law the professional chance
to display his great attainments, he regretted the outcome of the situation. Calhoun hoped
that Clemson could perhaps receive the appointment in the winter and that Anna would
relent in her reluctance to reside so far North.25
Anna was impatient to return to South Carolina when her husband concluded that
the time had come to go back. She told her brother Pat that she was counting the days
until their reunion at Fort Hill. Although she knew he could not join them from West
Point for the trip south, she expected him to be not long behind in his departure home
10
Legacy of a Southern Lady
because of a leave from school and looked forward to having the pleasure of soon seeing
her “dearest brother” once again.
Nine months after her marriage to Thomas Clemson, Anna Maria, in residence with
her husband at Fort Hill, gave birth, on August 13, 1839, to a baby girl described by her
aunt Martha Colhoun (Mrs. John Ewing Colhoun, Jr.) as a “Daughter of unusual promise.” Sadly, the baby died three weeks later in the midst of a fever epidemic that had sickened the entire family and left Anna seriously weakened. Ironically, only two days before
the little girl’s death, John Calhoun had written to his brother-in-law, James E. Calhoun,
a cheering account of the family’s health and described the child as being much better.26
During the next few years, while Clemson frequently managed plantation affairs
when Senator Calhoun was away in Washington, Anna’s well-being was the source of
great concern for her father, who was solicitous about his daughter’s lingering ill health.
He was happy to hear full accounts about farm matters from his able son-in-law, who was
glad for the chance to pursue his interest in planting. Nevertheless, Calhoun the affectionate father was deeply distressed that his devoted daughter reported that she felt “badly all
the time.” Anna had suffered from a sedentary life since the death of her infant child in
1839. She apologized to her father for the dull, lifeless letters she was forced to write while
lying down well over a year later. In responding to her melancholy mood, Calhoun acknowledged his appreciation of her situation and encouraged her to bear the affliction of
her weakness with continued fortitude. Reminiscent of his fatherly role during her school
days at Barhamville, he advised Anna on the importance of diet, exercise, and rest and
gave assurance of her recovery. Calhoun’s confidence that his daughter would get well may
in reality have been a facade in the face of fear that she might not. Although motherhood
was glorified for the southern lady as an opportunity to realize her potential in the raising
of children, many women succumbed to the rigors of childbearing for which there was no
effective prevention.27
Anna, a dutiful daughter, tried to follow Calhoun’s advice but, early in 1841, confided in correspondence with her close friend Maria, who was married by then for almost
two years to Anna’s own Uncle James, the fear that the failure of her health would be
permanent. She was four months pregnant by the end of February, needing, as she wrote
Maria, a “serviceable” rather than a “very elegant” dress. Anna also longed to see her father,
whose kindly affection she considered to be one of the greatest blessings that she possessed. She admitted in her letters to him how keenly she felt their separation.28
Calhoun, in reality, felt exceedingly uneasy about Anna but was glad to hear from his
son-in-law of her steady improvement, which he could see for himself when he returned
from Washington to Fort Hill in the spring. Back in the nation’s capital for an extra session of Congress in the summer of 1841, he received by mail the happy news of her safe
delivery of a fine boy on July 17. Expressing great joy at Clemson’s favorable account of
the birth, Calhoun was confident that Anna would continue to do well and be completely
restored to health. Determined to name her son John Calhoun Clemson, after her father,
Anna maintained that he would have to be referred to as “Calhoun” with so many John’s
in the family.29
Restricted to complete bedrest to prevent the return of her prolonged debility, Anna
was stricken with a swollen breast during the first week she was up and about. She wrote
in a letter to Maria that she was having a tough time of it. Enduring agonizing pain,
Chapter One
11
Anna ultimately yielded to the lance that provoked a dreadful discharge. Again in early
September, she was stricken in the same way and, this time after a natural break in the
enlargement, had two holes in what was now, she said, her “freely” leaking breast. Despite
this setback for the recovery of her stamina, she characterized to Maria her condition at
the end of the year as much improved. She expressed the hope that, in time, a complete
cure might be effected.30
A little over seventeen months after the birth of her son Calhoun, Anna safely delivered a fine little girl late in the afternoon of December 29, 1842. According to Clemson
who relayed the news to her father in Washington, both she and the child, called Elizabeth
Floride after her two grandmothers, were doing as well as could be expected, and, from
what the ladies in attendance said, he reported that Anna had had a very easy time in giving
birth. In the midst of Christmas holidays, Clemson also conveyed in his correspondence
to Calhoun the appearance of happy contentment by all on the plantation, in particular
the merrymaking of the slaves, who, after dancing in the kitchen one evening until after
midnight, dispersed orderly without any disturbance.31 What seemed to Clemson to be
a carefree celebration may well have been influenced by his own relief at the safe delivery
of his wife in childbirth. However, a case of attempted arson on the part of a female slave
within a few months of the festivities belied his belief that all was well at Fort Hill.
Unfortunately, Clemson’s next letter to his father-in-law contained the disturbing
personal news that four days after his daughter’s confinement she had become suddenly
very ill with a high fever and a rapid pulse. Anxious about Anna, Clemson himself, in the
emergency, took the care of his wife into his own hands. Fortunately, all that he did had
been approved by the physicians when they came from nearby Pendleton, and he could
tell Calhoun that Anna’s health was then much better and should remain stable if she
could attend to her general well-being and not take cold.
Happy at first to hear of Anna’s delivery of a fine daughter at the end of the year,
Calhoun was, later on, quite distressed and disturbed when he learned that she had been
kept in bed throughout the month of January. Also upsetting to him was Clemson’s communication from Fort Hill, in early February, 1843, of the great calamity of a house fire,
in which Calhoun feared that Anna might have suffered serious injury from the shocking
situation. In her account to Maria of the incident, Anna wrote that one very cold night,
a suffocating smoke from a pine beam underneath a fireplace poured through every crack
of the floor in the upstairs hall. “I jumped up barefooted & ran into the other room,” she
exclaimed, while Clemson, awakened by his eighteen-month-old son, had taken charge
of the confusion. Seeing to it that “blankets were piled on me,” he proceeded to save the
house in a narrow escape from disaster and issued “such a scolding” when “I dared to approach the scene of action.”32
By spring, Anna was in good health again and seemed to her mother to look as well
as she ever had. In a letter to her son Patrick, then an army lieutenant at Fort Towson
in the Arkansas Territory (now Oklahoma), Floride Calhoun relayed the news about his
sister and mentioned that the house had taken fire under the hearth in midwinter. She
also recounted a recent incident of attempted arson that had occurred around the first of
April. Apparently, Issey, a female slave, had tried to burn everybody up by putting a large
burning coal under the pillow of thirteen-year-old William Lowndes Calhoun before his
bedtime. The smell of burning feathers led to the discovery of the fire in time to save the
12
Legacy of a Southern Lady
house and its occupants. Issey, who was immediately apprehended, confessed to everything but claimed that she, after becoming alarmed at her action, had intended to take
away the smoldering ember when she turned down the bed. Mrs. Calhoun blamed Issey’s
father, Old Sawney, who took up his hat and stick and ran off as hard as he could when
the fire signal was given. Although all the slaves seemed shocked at the act and said that
the girl ought to have been hung, they might well have feared for themselves when faced
by an irate master. In actuality, the use of arson by slaves in defiance against their owners
could bring the perpetrators to court for a crime not considered private but recognized as
an attack against the system of slavery itself. Punishable by death, Issey’s crime was kept a
profound secret, and Patrick was instructed by his mother to burn the letter that told of
Issey’s guilt. Two years later, in 1845, Issey was sent away from Fort Hill to the Alabama
plantation of the Calhouns’ son Andrew.33 Separation of slaves from their families was not
uncommon in a system that considered human beings equivalent to capital, to be bought
and sold.
The abortive arson incident in early April occurred right around the time that Calhoun, who had retired from the United States Senate, effective March 4, 1843, returned
to Fort Hill while his Democratic supporters were campaigning for him in his run for
president in the next year’s election. Anna found her father to look very well and to be
in good spirits. She was delighted to have him home once again although aware of the
significance of his political prospects. She was primarily interested then in her husband’s
purchase of the Canebrake plantation, over a thousand acres of land owned by Arthur
Simkins, her friend Maria’s brother. After a trip North, Clemson decided that, at that
time, investing in the iron business with his uncle, Elias Baker of Altoona, Pennsylvania,
would not be profitable.
Eager to establish a home for her family, Anna was pleased to move to Edgefield District early in 1844, even though the home where Arthur Simkins and his family had lived
on the Little Saluda River was now a dilapidated place. The prospect of not getting into
a new house before fall, as it was impossible to get lumber, coupled with the discomfort
of living in the existing one where, as she wrote Maria, “the wind does whistle through
the cracks,” were but trifles so long as the children were happy and well. Elite women
like Anna, despite their privileged status and protection by white men, were essentially in
charge of all household chores although, according to social historian Orville Vernon Burton, they had “more leisure time, more formal social duties, and more managerial responsibilities” than their less fortunate contemporaries. The same white men who protected
the privileged position of the southern lady dealt harsh treatment to black female slaves
who resisted their authority and challenged the authority of their white mistresses.34
Although beset with domestic duties, Anna felt keenly her father’s inability to gain
the political support needed to secure the Democratic presidential nomination, and she
was indignant that his friends, as she saw it, had failed him. Just at the time of her move
to Canebrake, his announcement not to place his name as a candidate before the National Convention in Baltimore was published in the Charleston Mercury. In the address
Calhoun had made to his constituency, he reaffirmed his opposition to a protective tariff
and abolitionist agitation and explained why, in his opinion, adherence to the majority principle that he opposed in the convention’s organization would ultimately deal a
death blow to the South. According to the Calhoun Papers’ editor, Clyde Wilson, what
Chapter One
13
Calhoun objected to was the winner-take-all selection of state delegates to the national
convention and the representation of states by population rather than party strength,
which disfranchised many party members and made it easier for politicians to deal and
to manipulate.35
The fortunes of both Calhoun, in preparing to enjoy the pleasures of life at Fort Hill,
and his daughter, in fixing by degrees her domicile at Canebrake, were soon to be altered
by a festive Washington event turned tragic. On February 28, 1844, the U.S.S. Princeton,
on an official Potomac cruise with invited guests, suffered an explosion when one of its
large guns was fired just as the vessel rounded Mount Vernon. Among those on board was
Lt. Patrick Calhoun, who, as soon as the damaged ship returned in the evening, quickly
wrote to his father of the most dreadful accident that he had ever known. Among the
five dead that he had found lying around the faulty cannon were Secretary of State Abel
Upshur, Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gilmer, and his father’s very dear friend, Virgil
Maxcy.36
In less than a month, Anna was informed by her father that President John Tyler had
offered him the State Department position left vacant by Secretary Upshur’s death. Owing
to the important pending negotiations over the annexation of Texas and settlement of the
Oregon question, his reluctance to accept the appointment was tempered, he told her, by
the appeal made to his patriotism, honor, and defense of the South. In a subsequent letter
to his son-in-law, he relayed by mail the news of his expected nomination and confirmation, and that he had received a number of letters that strongly urged his acceptance. Unable to see how he could decline without a loss of character, Calhoun apprised Clemson
that he had, therefore, accepted the State Department appointment and planned to leave
for Washington in a week. He would be traveling by stage coach to Edgefield, expecting
a stop at the Edgewood plantation home of his cousin and political associate, Colonel
Francis Pickens. There, he suggested meeting with Clemson and Anna, who, he hoped
for convenience sake, could come and bring the children the twenty-some miles distance
from Canebrake and save him a day’s time in his trip to the capital. Calhoun arrived in
Washington at the end of March and was immediately sworn into office as Secretary of
State. His son-in-law, Thomas Green Clemson, although but a Canebrake planter, had
accompanied him in light of Clemson’s interest in the possibility of a diplomatic appointment abroad, where he had spent some time during the late 1820s and 1830s.37
Although Clemson returned to Canebrake without any commitment of a foreign assignment, Calhoun wrote to his daughter, in early May, that President John Tyler had said
he could name his son-in-law to head the Belgian Mission to the court of King Léopold
I. According to Anna, her husband was pleased with the idea and very much obliged to
Calhoun for his personal interest in the matter. She herself welcomed Clemson’s appointment as Chargé d’Affaires (a position formerly held, from 1836 to 1842, by her father’s
late friend, Virgil Maxcy) because she felt that he would never be contented with life in
America unless he had the chance to see what he could do in Europe, where he had lived
and studied as a young man. However, her personal objections and misgivings she confided to her father. In accordance with the accepted behavior of her gender, she would not
have openly opposed her husband’s wishes, but, as the twenty-seven-year-old mother of
two small children—Calhoun, age three, and Floride, not yet two years—Anna expected
travel to be filled with troubles and discomforts rather than pleasures. The difficult age of
14
Legacy of a Southern Lady
her little children, along with her own disinterested view of society’s irksome functions
and decorum, dulled her outlook as did consideration about the operation of Canebrake.
There, for the present, she would have really preferred to remain. Nevertheless, despite
her reservations, she prepared in the summer of 1844 to embark on an ocean voyage that
would take her, for a little over six years, to Europe and the court of His Majesty the King
of the Belgians.38
King Léopold I, a ruler whose noble family ties allied him with the monarchies in
both France and England, failed to impress Anna, who nonetheless described him to her
father as a sensible man. However, the king’s frequent absences from Brussels and inaccessibility when in residence, rendered his rule ineffective. Pleased to find herself a real
republican in the midst of what she saw as royalty’s “most ridiculous and childish business” in the “little second rate” Belgian court, she pictured society’s patrons in Europe as
“better educated, & more stupid, & twice as ugly, with better manners,” than their American counterparts. Even in the magnificent Tuileries in Paris or the Court of St. James in
London, she thought the grandeur of the palatial scene would be foolish at best. Although
by class a member of the American elite, Anna found fault with the European aristocracy,
whose royal rule she scorned. Obviously outspoken in letters written to her father, she
dutifully observed the prevailing political conditions around her and was pleased to detail
for him the intricacies of Belgian politics. During a ministerial crisis in the summer of
1845, for example, she noted the irreconcilable differences between the Catholic and Liberal parties, the forced resignation of the Minister of the Interior, and the king’s frolicking
in England away from his responsibilities. Commenting on the difficulties of a Protestant
ruler in a Catholic country, she found no sympathy between Léopold and his subjects.39
By this time, Calhoun’s political future had seemingly plummeted with his termination as Secretary of State early in 1845, when on February 17 the newly elected President
James Polk named James Buchanan to head the State Department. In a letter to Anna
written on March 11, the day he left Washington for Fort Hill, Calhoun had told his
daughter of Mr. Polk’s decision to form an entirely new cabinet. He had mentioned also
the president’s offer to him to head the British Mission, which he had declined in favor of
returning to the quiet of private life. Settled by spring at his South Carolina plantation,
Calhoun had written that he had seriously begun again his treatise on the elementary
principles of political science. Owning that he had made great strides toward the completion of the rough draft, his plan, following the completion of this work in progress, was to
begin the treatise on the Federal Constitution. He felt that he would be able to finish this
treatise during the course of the year, provided that he could remain at home. However,
his election to the U.S. Senate by the South Carolina legislature in the fall of 1845 (much
against his own inclination) changed the course of his life one more time.40
Anna, who learned from the newspapers of her father’s return to the Senate, was much
gratified to know that he would be serving the country there at a time when his leadership
could, in her opinion, keep the lawmakers from becoming an unruly crowd. Her sentiments reflected those expressed much earlier by Senator Daniel Huger, Calhoun’s successor (in 1843) who graciously resigned in 1845 so that the state’s leading citizen might once
again be sent to the U.S. Senate. Huger feared that the whole country could be sacrificed
to the fury of the rabid abolitionist spirit if the “Planting States” in Congress did not rally
in response. He had called upon Calhoun, in the name of South Carolina, to afford the
Chapter One
15
nation the benefit of his experience and influence.
Political commentary in Anna’s letters to her father was interspersed with personal
details about her husband and children that she knew would be of interest to him. Clemson’s success in concluding the negotiation of a commercial treaty between Belgium and
the United States in the fall of 1845 prompted her to report proudly his great diplomatic
influence with the Belgian government. Also a source of pride for Anna was the fact that
her husband, she said, had “come out wonderfully” as a businessman zealously representing American interests. Pleased, as well, with her children’s growth and development, she
described them to their grandfather as very good and very loving.41
She proudly commented to her father, early in 1846, on her children’s progress,
expressed an interest in news from America, and detailed Clemson’s diplomatic affairs.
Describing the children, Calhoun and Floride, as much more than average in intelligence, she noted her daughter’s memory and ability to learn and her son’s originality, good
company, musical, and artistic talents. Concern over the possibility of war between the
United States and Mexico captured much attention abroad as did the controversy over
the Oregon question, itself a potential source of conflict for America with England. Her
husband, she wrote, was “over head & ears in business” at work with the legation in Brussels as well as in the consul’s office in Antwerp. She herself was engaged in the process of
copying as secretary of the legation, hoping that whatever money she could earn would
supplement their income.42 Payment based solely on the value of her work would not have
been a factor in Anna’s thinking as a southern lady. She had been raised to reign in the
domestic sphere albeit always under male domination.
Anna took great pleasure in all that her father told her about himself and his political
position, always the subject of greatest interest to her. She was gratified to learn in March
of extravagant praise from the press over his Senate speech on the Oregon question. Expressing more about himself to Anna than he would to anyone else, Calhoun acknowledged that, in the midst of congratulations on all sides, he had also excited the jealousy of
partisan party leaders. According to Anna, the wounded vanity of her father’s opponents
was hard to heal and made for the harshest enemies whose self-serving policy contrasted
strongly with his own disinterested and patriotic course. She was pleased to say that he was
now “the man, & the only man” whose opinion mattered in Europe rather than just “one”
of the distinguished Americans spoken of with honor; and she took pride in thinking that
she understood and appreciated him more than any others.43
Always a devoted daughter, Anna felt intensely the distance from her dear parents,
and her attachment to them only increased during her years in Belgium. All the “luxuries
& splendours of Europe,” she wrote, were nothing compared to “dear old Fort Hill,”
and, given a choice, she even preferred the old house at Canebrake over a homeplace at
the French monarchy’s Versailles palace. Despite such a seemingly farfetched comparison, Anna’s obvious disenchantment with Versailles was later shared by one Carey North,
whose marriage to Charles Lockhart Pettigrew in 1853 united two prominent Carolina
families. On her honeymoon trip to Europe, Carey, the niece of South Carolina’s leading
lawyer, James Louis Petigru, deemed Versailles to be absurdly pretentious and described
the “Grandes Eaux” on the grounds as “very ridiculous to a plain republican.”44 Southern ladies such as Anna Clemson and Carey North were not impressed with what they
thought to be superficial rather than substantial. Their snobbish scorn for this royal resi-
16
Legacy of a Southern Lady
dence, indicative of their republicanism, implied a contempt, as well, for the European
aristocracy with whose elite status they apparently did not identify.
Anna considered herself too American to appreciate the things Europeans valued as
treasures and also saw the great men of Europe as, in her words, “such mental pigmies”
[sic]. The “luxury, & often factitious splendour of these old, & rotten countries,” as she
described them to Calhoun, could not compensate for life in her own glorious country
whose faults she defended as “those of youth, & too much life, & therefore curable.”45
Calhoun praised his daughter’s judgment in preferring a new and growing country
such as the United States but warned that she should not undervalue Europe whose advancement he foresaw to be far greater than the heights Europe had yet attained. However,
he expressed to her his fear that the failure of political ideology to keep pace with technological promotion might lead to turmoil and upheaval in both Europe and America.46
After a long harsh winter, Anna welcomed the onset of spring in 1847, and she commented on those conditions that could well result in the realization of her father’s fear for
society’s future. The miserable lives of the poor in stark contrast to the indulgence of the
wealthy created an immense class disproportionality that she found disturbing. Allowing
for the right of individuals to amass wealth, she nevertheless thought a system that caused
such disparity to be wrong. Obviously, her own privileged status as a southern lady dependent upon a subservient slave population did not seem untenable to her as one who
expressed concern for suffering as she saw it. Going from the grand residences of the rich
into streets pressed with paupers, she had her eyes opened to the dread of political change
by the powerful. Recognizing Belgium to be the most progressive country in Europe,
with a relatively charitable wealthy class, she speculated as to how bad conditions must
be elsewhere.47
Anna noted Calhoun’s fear that the United States was “following in the footsteps of
Europe” and faced a “most uncertain future.” She insisted that the “glittering rotteness,
[sic] of social & political life” abroad, and especially in France, was a long way from that at
home. The trials of French ministers for corruption and a leading aristocrat for his wife’s
murder prompted the expression of her true belief that France, was “the most utterly depraved, & corrupt nation, which exists, or ever did exist.” Acknowledging America’s many
and great faults, she still confessed her confidence in the freshness of her country despite
her father’s certainty that neither the government nor the people paid much attention any
longer to preserving laws and liberty.
Calhoun was, he said, “extremely desireous” [sic] of seeing his grandchildren again
as well as Anna and her husband, and he longed for the day when his son-in-law would
think it in his interest to return to the United States. In 1848, after four years away from
home, Clemson did apply for a leave of absence despite, in Anna’s words, “the most unsettled state in Europe.” Revolution in Paris, in February, had resulted in repercussions in
Berlin and Vienna and throughout the Continent—everywhere that nationalist agitation
prevailed.48
The Second French Republic, established with the overthrow of the monarchy, appeared to endanger European peace, and the country most immediately at risk was Belgium. Dreading the possibility of that country’s annexation by France, Anna wrote her
father, in the spring, that only outside intervention could save Belgian independence if
the French invaded. She was unaware that in March both the French Ambassador Sérurier
Chapter One
17
in Brussels and the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs d’Hoffschmidt had concurred that
fear of such an invasion was unfounded. Minister d’Hoffschmidt had, at that time, notified King Léopold that he could dispense with his efforts to solicit support from those
European powers that had guaranteed his country’s neutrality.
Anna formed her political opinions from conversations that she remembered with
her father and questioned the real republican nature of the new French government with
its immense centralization in Paris. In reality, the end of royal rule had not changed the
bureaucracy that seemed to please all Frenchmen; and her prediction of the ultimate failure of the revolution proved to be true with the eventual rise to power of Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte as emperor. Calhoun shared his daughter’s concern over events in Europe and
thought her opinions to be very perceptive and fair.49
He sent to Clemson, who lacked the funds to bring his family back with him during
his leave, the required $600 for their passage because his return without Anna and the
children would have been, Calhoun said, “a cause of great grief ” to all. Although expenses
did force the Clemsons to travel by sailing vessel rather than the preferred steamer, the entire family, accompanied by the children’s Belgian nurse, Mimi, made the long trip across
the Atlantic in the fall of 1848. The nurse was, Anna wrote to her father, “an excellent
person, & such a treasure.” Leaving from Antwerp, on October 4, on the sailing packet
Roscoe, the Clemson party arrived safely in New York a month later, having ridden out a
hurricane off the coast of Newfoundland.50
Their stay in the United States over six months passed all too quickly for Anna, who
actually saw little of her father during this busy time for both of them. Despite his failing health, Calhoun continued with his official Senate duties while Anna was at home.
She and her family resided first at Canebrake and then in Philadelphia, visiting with her
mother-in-law, Elizabeth Baker Clemson, whose own poor health was another reason
for their trip. Even with her father in Washington during Christmas and the New Year,
Anna was happily occupied at Canebrake in the midst of much of her family. In the
completed new house that was “quite commodious and comfortable,” they were joined by
Clemson’s younger sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Barton, “a great favourite” of Anna’s and of her
own younger sister, Cornelia. Writing to her father that Cornelia looked unusually well,
Anna also observed that her mother was very fine and happy and of much help with the
steady arrival and departure of company.51
One such visitor was her cousin, the former congressman Colonel Francis Pickens,
who had been acting as Clemson’s general agent at Canebrake in his absence. Pickens,
who kissed her profusely at first sight and declaring that no brother could be happier to
welcome her than he was, tearfully told Anna in private how “artful persons” had alienated
her father and himself since she had been away in Europe. Making a last attempt at reconciliation with Calhoun, Pickens gave her an account of all that had occurred since the rift
with her father over the Oregon question. Convinced of his repentance, she admitted to
her father that, though undoubtedly Pickens’s behavior had been influenced by ambition,
the desire to prove his political independence and bad advice, she believed his denial that
he had “slurred Calhoun” at a public meeting in Edgefield in June of 1846. Writing to
her in response to her petition on Pickens’s behalf, Calhoun said that he would postpone
his reflections on the matter until they could see each other but avowed that he was not
swayed by others in his actions, as Pickens had implied, and that he felt only profound
18
Legacy of a Southern Lady
regret at the course their relationship had taken.52
Her father’s declining health, weakened by congestive fever early in 1845, was of
much greater concern to Anna than the deterioration of his relationship with their cousin
Francis. She urged her father to take better care of himself in a letter of January 27, 1849,
the day after the receipt of the newspapers that mentioned his illness: “What will become
of the country if you, who appear to be the only really honest & fearless politician, are not
there to give them timely warning of the breakers towards which they are rushing?” The
preservation of his health, she asserted, was important, not only for his family but for the
whole country and for the South in particular. Wishing that she could be there to nurse
him, she advised him to “wrap up warm” and keep his feet dry and not to exert himself too
much. Although the daughter who loved him “more than any one else in the world” was
sometimes so afraid that he would get used to doing without her and miss her less, Anna
knew that he would always love her and appreciate her affection for him.53
The Clemsons spent time in Washington and Philadelphia in March and April before
going to New York in May, less than a week before their departure on the sailing ship
Northumberland. With little enthusiasm for going about, Anna wrote to Calhoun, now
back at Fort Hill, that she would not have done so had it not been for the accompaniment
of her sisters-in-law, Elizabeth Barton and Louisa Washington, neither of whom had seen
New York. Squired around for a few days of sightseeing by her mother’s well-to-do bachelor cousin, Edward Boisseau, she begged off from an outing to have time to write her
father. She confided to him her sadness as the time approached again to leave her “country
& friends, & undertake such a long & dangerous voyage.” With no excited anticipation
for what she was to experience in Europe, she could only think of the pleasure of being
reunited with her family in America and hope that it would be sooner than she thought.
Her heart “too full to write” more, she prayed that God would bless all her loved ones at
home and keep them in good health.54
After six-weeks of travel that included a stopover in London, Anna, her husband, and
their two children arrived, in early July, back in Brussels, where she received her father’s
response from Fort Hill to the woeful letter she had written from New York. He voiced
his understanding of her distress at departing for such a distance for so long a time but
hastened that she look forward to being reunited and not to humor herself in sorrows that
served no purpose. In a personal postscript to his letter, he called to her attention that in
the address he had dropped “the M & put the C” in place of her middle name, a change
that he had earlier encouraged her to adopt.55 Hereafter, her signature, Anna Calhoun
Clemson, reflected his wish.
Constantly occupied with domestic details in Brussels, she postponed her correspondence until the middle of August and promised her father then to be more punctual.
The continuing strife in Europe caused her despair over the chaos brought by what now
seemed to her such “stupid movements” that she had given up trying to understand them.
The Belgians, she thought, with the example of the rest of Europe before them, were right
to remain calm and celebrate the tranquil state in which they lived despite their country’s
dwindling treasury and evident poverty. Belgium’s international stature and internal stability had survived the threat posed by the 1848 revolutions, and, according to historian
E. H. Kossmann, the people were proud of their “dignified calm” when confronted with
the crisis of conflict throughout the continent.
Chapter One
19
Disgusted with European politics and pessimistic for the future of government abroad, Anna
particularly pitied the poor Hungarians, whose fate
(“a disgrace to the 19th century”) she described in
a letter to her father at the end of October 1849.
Russian intervention in support of Austrian absolutism had brutally repressed Hungary’s attempt
at autonomy within the Hapsburg Empire. She
feared an epoch of tyrannical leadership, believing
that revolution and fighting had hurt the cause of
rational freedom.56
When Calhoun returned to Washington on
the last day of November, Anna warned him not to
work too hard, to speak only “when necessary,” not
to go out at night or see too much company and
to “live generously & drink wine & warm toddy at
night.” She thought that if he would follow these
rules and keep his feet and chest warm, he would
go through the winter comfortably and be ready to
enjoy the fine spring weather when it came. The
upcoming session of Congress would be “stormy
John C.Calhoun
& decisive with regard to the future position of the
south,” but she hoped that “our people will understand, & protect their rights, with firmness.” Controversy over the slavery issue, specifically in the territories acquired as a result
of the Mexican War, seemed to have reached its climax at year’s end; and, in her view, to
fail at this time would ruin the South’s future, leaving it without hope and leaving the
country’s fate “gloomy indeed to those who wish well to humanity.”57
Chided by Anna for his lack of correspondence from Washington, Calhoun replied
kindly to his daughter that she must attribute part of the reason he had not written more
frequently to the great amount of writing he had to do. He also reminded her of the fact
that she had in her mother and sister two faithful family correspondents. Since their parting in the spring he had written well over 300 pages of his “discourse on the Constitution & government of the United States” and “revised, corrected & had coppied [sic] the
elementary disquisition on government” that was now ready for publication. As he had
stated to her in his letter of June 15, he had “without fear, favour, or affection” hoped to
lay “a solid foundation for political science.” However, Calhoun saw no prospect of any
satisfactory adjustment to the increased excitement over the slave question. He was “exceedingly anxious” to be heard in the on-going Senate debate, even if what he intended
to say had to be written out and then read by his colleague James Mason of Virginia. Calhoun had suffered a spell of pneumonia in January, and his strength was not sufficiently
restored in time for him to deliver his speech on March 4.58
In Brussels, Anna could not reconcile the fact that the papers from America, dated
January 21, reported Calhoun was ill while his volunteer secretary, Joseph Scoville, did
not mention the matter in a letter to Clemson just five days earlier. Urging her father to
get someone, if he could not do it himself, to write her and her husband everything about
20
Legacy of a Southern Lady
himself, she insisted that he leave Washington and go home to Fort Hill to live quietly and
fully in the fresh air. She felt more keenly than ever the trial of their separation and wanted
so much to be near him to anticipate his every wish; she longed to hear that he was back
at Fort Hill. In this letter, possibly the last one he received from his ever devoted daughter,
Anna bade her dear father “Adieu.”59
The news of Calhoun’s death in Washington on March 31, 1850, was communicated
by his secretary, Scoville, via the Department of State, to the Clemsons in Brussels. The
only family member present at the senator’s bedside, his son John, later sent a moving
account of their father’s last days to Anna, who desired to know how the end came. In
his letter to Anna, John described their father as the most affectionate of parents and
the country’s most illustrious and patriotic citizen. Having earlier mailed her a lock of
Calhoun’s hair, he enclosed in his letter a sprig of “box” taken from their father’s coffin by
Judge A. P. Butler of Edgefield, who begged that it be sent to Anna with his best respects
and kindest sympathy.60
South Carolina Senator Andrew Pickens Butler of Edgefield was first married to Susan Simkins, the sister of Anna’s close friend Maria. Later, he would be the target, along
with the state itself, of what historian Walter Edgar has called “a vicious verbal attack” by
Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in 1856. Slandered by Sumner for his support
of slavery in the Kansas Territory, the aged Butler was ridiculed as well by his colleague,
who mocked the Judge’s tendency to spit while speaking. Angered by what Edgar has
called “a mean-spirited speech” that even appalled some of Sumner’s supporters, fellow
Edgefieldian and Butler cousin, Congressman Preston Brooks, retaliated in defense of his
kinsman and of South Carolina. Since the Massachusetts senator had already announced
he would never accept a dueling challenge (considered a gentlemanly response to disagreement by southerners), Brooks resorted to a merciless caning of the unsuspecting Sumner
as Sumner sat at his Senate Chamber desk. Vividly described by Pulitzer Prize-winner
Robert A. Caro, in his Master of the Senate, the attack was even more brutal because
Sumner’s leg “became so entangled that he could not rise as the blows rained on his head
and blood began pouring from his wounds.” 61
In a letter that Anna wrote at the end of June to her brother Patrick, she gave her own
touching tribute to the family’s patriarch and the man she adored:
Our noble father can never be restored to us. We shall never look upon his like
again. In all history I find no man who combined so much talent, heart, philosophy and simplicity.… His life and death are bright and encouraging examples to
everyone, for they prove that a firm adherence to truth and principle, will in the
end be appreciated as they deserve.… Can we ever forget his sweet smile, and
ready sympathy in all our pleasures and pains. He was our friend our guide our
head and he is gone.62
Chapter Two
A “mother’s love”
Large figure: Floride Bonneau Colhoun Calhoun, wife of John C. Calhoun. Featured below:
Calhoun and Floride Clemson on either side of their mother, Anna Calhoun Clemson. At lower
right: a carved likeness of Nina, Anna’s third child, who brought joy to the family in a short,
three-year life-span.
Anna’s adoration of her father did not diminish the affection she undoubtedly felt
for her mother. Although somewhat of a background figure in her daughter’s life, Floride
Calhoun was the one responsible for raising Anna to be a southern lady. Caring for her
family was the focus of Floride’s life just as it was the focus of Anna’s. The dutiful nurturing of her children was indeed a reflection of her own mother’s life.
“I think I deserve to succeed with my children for I devote myself to them,.…”
A
nna Calhoun Clemson wrote the above words to her dear father in a letter from
Brussels that in all likelihood he did not receive, considering the required post
time from the date it was written, on March 4, 1850, and the day of his death, on
March 31.1 Although much of her correspondence with him had covered political matters, her world, like that of most southern ladies and women in general, centered around
domesticity. The role of homemaker was one of increasing stature in the nineteenth century, when marriages like her own were no longer family arrangements but emotional
unions based on love; and discipline that had been the mainstay of the parental relationship in the eighteenth century had, by the 1800s, given way to nurturing and affection
as one of the important values in child rearing. Confiding to her father that she often felt
very anxious about her judgments as a mother, she conveyed her concern, lest she should
judge wrongly and make mistakes. Believing her nine-year-old son, Calhoun, to have the
promise of manly talent and her seven-year-old daughter, Floride, to be one of the very
smartest and most sensible little persons, she determined to do conscientiously her best
in their upbringing.2
Only Calhoun and Floride, of Anna’s four children, grew to adulthood, her firstborn
baby girl having been lost in a fever epidemic at three weeks and her youngest, little
Nina, having been struck down suddenly by scarlet fever at the age of three, in 1858.
Considering the gender conventions of the day, Anna was not too concerned about the
consequences of her actions as a mother to Floride, whose sphere as a woman was limited
by a patriarchal society.3 Actually, this gender subordination was universally accepted at
the time and, therefore, was not strictly a southern phenomenon. Nonetheless, Anna was
adamant that her headstrong daughter conform to lady-like behavior befitting her elite
status. The future for Floride, Anna felt, would be best fulfilled by her adherence to the
traditional virtues of the southern lady, or “piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity,”
as historian Barbara Welter has observed. For Anna’s son, Calhoun, the prospects of his
potential were promising for one who, at an early age, appeared to be of good mind and
heart.4 Sadly, the untimely deaths of twenty-eight-year-old Floride and thirty-year-old
Calhoun, in the summer of 1871, ended the lives of those in whose happiness Anna had
truly found her own. Blessed with the joy and care of little Nina, Calhoun, and Floride,
Anna experienced as a loving mother great satisfaction as well as profound sadness. Looking at her relationship with her children reveals much about her and the person she was.
NINA
On October 3, 1855, at age thirty-eight, Anna gave birth to a baby girl whom she
named after her sister Cornelia. Known as Nina, this child was the delight of the Clemson
family for the three years of her short life, spent at their Maryland farm home just outside
of Washington, D.C. The Clemsons had established residence in this area after several
years abroad in Brussels. Much younger than both her teen-age brother, Calhoun, and
her sister Floride, Nina brought great joy to the family with her little winning ways.5 Very
gay and good, she called herself “papa’s Nina” and was a little companion for Anna, who
described her baby daughter as a great chatterbox when she was just over two-and-a-half
years old.6
24
Legacy of a Southern Lady
The task of caring for baby Nina, often very wearying, was primarily Anna’s responsibility; however, she was assisted in the kitchen and with household chores by two German
women, Augusta (Gusta) and Babette Sauer. Later on, she was aided by a black woman,
Lucy, who washed and ironed, and Mrs. Lisette Daub from New York, who proved to be
a treasured help with everything and a true friend, as well.7
Not long after Calhoun’s departure in August 1856, for treatment in Northampton,
Massachusetts, of a spinal affliction, and the departure of Floride for her aunt Elizabeth
Barton’s finishing school in Philadelphia, the almost one-year-old Nina began to suffer the
ill-effects of teething. At times, this condition disturbed her sleep and, consequently, that
of her mother, as well. Nursing Nina until the age of eighteen months, Anna found herself fatigued by the little girl’s constant sucking at night when in distress from discomfort
in her gums. “If this dont make me thin,” she said in a letter to Floride, “nothing will.”
Despite the doctor’s advice that in her fretful state Nina must not be fed at all and have
only the breast for nourishment, Anna and the maid Babette together determined that the
child did in fact need food. Pleased at her rapid improvement upon eating, they were glad
they had acted on their own initiative.8
Much of Anna’s time at home was taken up with sewing for Nina, who was described
by her mother as the heartiest and hardiest little creature, as full of fun as a monkey.
Calhoun, who after three months had returned home from his medical treatment in Massachusetts, was devoted to his little sister. His father thought there was never such a child
as Nina,9 who at the sound of his footstep called his name before she even saw him. Very
fond of music, she clapped her hands while Clemson played the violin and, when she was
two, had memorized the French melody “Mon ami Pierrot,” a song that he had only occasionally sung to her.10
Although Anna described her little girl, at two years of age, as really pretty with her
good colour and healthy looks, Anna had also declared that Nina, with her large head, red
hair, pug nose and pale complexion, needed to improve greatly if she was ever to be known
for her beauty. More importantly to her mother, Nina continued to be bright, good natured, and affectionate despite her constant mischievous behavior. Her worst habit, that of
“screeching,” Anna said, whether to show anger or displeasure, was admittedly disruptive
to the household especially when company was there.11
Amusing Nina assuaged some of Anna’s avowed loneliness in the absence of her other
two children. Calhoun had resumed his studies in the fall of 1857 with his father’s older
brother, Baker Clemson, an Episcopal minister in Claymont, Delaware. After a summer spent at home, Floride had returned as a student to her Aunt Barton’s academy in
Philadelphia. Separated from Floride and Calhoun, a “hard trial” to bear, Anna wrote her
older daughter that, “if it were not for Nina,” she could not stand such a situation. Bad
weather in the winter of 1858 prevented the Clemsons from indulging Nina in going to
Washington as snow-covered ground and colder conditions hindered open carriage travel
from their farm into the capital city. To divert her little daughter indoors, Anna brought
some of Nina’s toys into the sitting room. Nina played there busily with her own table
and dishes, set of drawers, and a bedstead complete with a really beautifully dressed doll
that she named “Floride” and called her “darling sister.” Quite proud of her painstaking
handiwork, Anna, who had clothed Nina’s baby doll from chemise to crochet shoes, was
rewarded by the little girl’s taking pleasure in the one toy that she would not let out of her
Chapter Two
25
sight.12 Nina was a good patient for a child not yet two-and-a half years of age that February. She took her medicine for catarrhal fever and thanked her “mamma” and “pappa” for
whatever they did for her. High fever at night, coupled with a breathing difficulty that
made sleep impossible, caused both her and her mother to lose much rest.13
By the time Calhoun returned home from his Uncle Baker’s in the early spring, Nina
seemed very hearty and was much smarter than he had expected her to be. According to
Anna, she was delighted with the young man whom she called “her darling brother” and
was looking forward to the return of her “sweet sister Folide” in the summer.14
Nina, at age two-and-a-half, was in her mother’s eyes “really a good child—tho’ not
too good.” Amiable, cheerful and affectionate for the most part, she was now well-behaved
in the presence of doting company. Growing very pretty, she often asked when her sister
was coming home so that she could curl her hair. The precocious little girl was truly a
pleasure for Anna to see in the morning, looking so clean, fair and bright, pursing up her
mouth and saying “kiss me mamma I love you dearly.”15
Anna did not mention Nina much in her letters to Floride during a trip with her
father to New York and Newport in the summer of 1858. Indeed, Anna did not write
about Nina’s sudden death from scarlet fever on December 20, until almost a year later.
The unbearable grief that Anna endured upon the death of three-year-old Nina could only
be expressed privately, and the overwhelming sorrow at her loss she poignantly put into
words in her personal album:
Oh Nina oh my angel where are you? Why are you taken? When shall I see you
again? Never—never. When we lose a friend of mature years we look forward to
meeting them in another world with unmixed delight for let our separation be
long or short—we resume our intercourse as we should on this earth after a long
absence but when a mother loses her child it is lost forever. She may hereafter
meet its pure spirit & enjoy a happiness of which we can here have no conception in so doing but her child she never meets again. That sweet dependence on
the mother is lost—that feeling that no one can supply our place is gone—it has
learned to do without us & looking at it from here every change in the sweet relation of mother & daughter must make their meeting hereafter a disappointment
to a mother’s heart.16
Evidently the sculptor Hiram Powers, who in the mid-1830s in Washington had patterned busts of both Anna and her father, who was then serving in the U.S. Senate, was commissioned to do one of Nina
from her death mask. The child’s marble bust was eventually
placed in the Calhoun family’s Fort Hill plantation home, after
the Clemsons came to live there in 1872.17
Nina’s marble bust served to keep her presence in the family in an age when the memory of the dead was preserved by
the elite in various ways. Large and lavishly bound Bibles, with
dates of life and death inscribed on colorfully decorated inserts,
and both framed photographs of family headstones and locks
marble bust of Nina
of hair were all items of remembrance that could be properly
26
Legacy of a Southern Lady
displayed throughout the home. Jewelry fashioned from the hair of the “dear departed”
was thought to be an appropriate accessory to acknowledge the life of a loved one.
The mourning rituals in mid-nineteenth-century America were influenced by those
of the British during Queen Victoria’s illustrious reign when a lengthy lamentation period
was fashionable. Although Victorians have been criticized for a seemingly morbid pleasure
in commemorative customs for the departed, they were merely copying those of the upper
classes in a previous generation in the eighteenth century. Funerals during the 1800s were
often occasions for extended group gatherings that appeared as festivals where food was
the focus; however, in reality the long distances traveled by family members necessitated
that meals be dutifully provided. At a time when keepsakes were especially treasured,
some flowers from little Nina’s grave in Maryland were sent to South Carolina by a former
neighbor of the Clemsons’ in October of 1874, almost sixteen years after the child’s death.
Carefully preserved by Anna, the leaves remain today in the extant collection of Clemson
papers as a token of sad sentiment and the symbol of a mother’s love.18
CALHOUN AND FLORIDE
Born only seventeen-and-a-half months apart, John Calhoun Clemson and Floride
Clemson Lee died as young adults within seventeen days of each other, leaving Anna
and Thomas Clemson shocked and devastated at the loss of their two surviving children.
Calhoun, the first-born of the two, died last in a tragic accident that took his life less than
three weeks after his sister had sadly succumbed to an illness.
Spending their first years at Fort Hill plantation, South Carolina, where they were
both born, Calhoun and Floride lived in Europe from 1844 until 1851, when Clemson
was the Chargé d’Affaires in Brussels. In a letter from abroad to her father in America,
Anna identified “intelligence, energy, & a good temper” as “three sterling qualities in a
woman,” revealing her personal values for the little girl, whom she described as one who
would always be able to take care of herself. Anna also felt optimistic for a future of good
fortune for her son, who possessed a developing mind, very noble character, and kindly
disposition. Since both children wanted to take as their own their grandfather’s motto,
“The duties of life are greater than life itself,” Anna wrote her “dearest father” about the
admiration they had for him, thinking how much it would mean to Calhoun.19
After the death of statesman John C. Calhoun in 1850,
a grief-stricken Anna in Brussels gathered for her son, her
father’s nine-year-old namesake, personal memorabilia that
praised the life of his grandfather. She lovingly entitled the
collection “Sacred to the Memory of the best of Fathers”
and intended it to be a lifelong inspiration for her little boy.
She hoped that its perusal would induce him to follow and
be guided always by the noble example of his grandfather’s
unostentatious virtues, cheerful philosophy, and often- expressed sentiment about the importance of life’s duties.20
In 1854, three years after the Clemsons returned from
Brussels, they were joined at their Bladensburg, Maryland,
farm by Mr. Leopold Reis, a Belgian tutor hired to conCalhoun
Chapter Two
27
duct lessons for Calhoun and Floride. His charge for their
schooling being completed about two years later, Reis went
south to the Pendleton area in South Carolina to work with
the William Van Wyck family in the fall of 1856. Calhoun,
who shortly before his fifteenth birthday had developed a
spinal affliction, had been sent to Northampton, Massachusetts, in August for special treatment under the care of
Dr. Charles Mundé. At the same time, Floride had been
enrolled in her aunt Elizabeth Barton’s finishing school in
Philadelphia. Apparently class superseded regional identity
in the selection of an appropriate academy for the young
southerner whose father, after all, was from the North.
Anna felt lost at home without her by then grown-up teenFloride
agers. However, she was busy with household demands and
21
the care of her baby girl Nina.
Separation from her children, as she wrote to her “darling daughter” Floride, now old
enough to be a companion and friend, was a great personal sacrifice for one who desired in
compensation her son’s improved health and her daughter’s development into an elegant
and accomplished young lady. Anna wanted Floride to write her very often about everything she did and thought lest the almost fourteen-year-old girl stray from “the duties of
life.” Floride’s attendance away at school marked her first absence from home and proved
typically to be an emotionally traumatic experience for both mother and daughter.22
Above all, Anna expected obedience in her daughter’s behavior. She told Floride to
“rule your tongue” and give as little trouble as possible to your aunt as well as your dear
grandmother, Elizabeth Baker Clemson, in whose room the girl slept. Floride’s good behavior, Anna believed, was a necessity for her daughter’s happiness and a reflection on her
own success as a dutiful mother. Settled at school comfortably with family, Floride, in
Anna’s eyes, fared far better away from home than Calhoun did, sick and among strangers,
although by all accounts improving and decidedly better.23
Undoubtedly Anna was pained to learn from her brother Pat, who visited his niece in
Philadelphia, that her Aunt Barton did not find her to be as obedient as she would have
liked. Further word from her husband that their daughter was obstinate and indifferent
to the school’s rules made Anna all the more unhappy. She was hurt, as well, to think that
Floride’s behavior was a reflection on her maternal supervision. Concerned about Floride’s
faults, Anna also feared for Floride’s health at the news from Calhoun that his sister told
him Floride had eaten chalk and slate pencils. Considering this school girl practice to be
ridiculous and dangerous, Anna threatened sorrowfully to forego all correspondence with
her daughter until she received a letter from her promising that she would never eat anything of the kind again. Pleased that the tone of Floride’s response showed a determination to correct her misbehavior, Anna was relieved to learn that the story told to Calhoun
about the chalk was foolishly made “in fun.”24
Calhoun had returned home in November with his father by way of Philadelphia.
Though far from well, he looked much better to his mother. However, plagued with a
wretched cough and constant headaches, Calhoun was incapacitated for reading and writing and subject to a loss of appetite. Anna confided to Floride that she bore a continual
28
Legacy of a Southern Lady
anxiety about Calhoun’s health. She felt that Floride needed to be prepared should the
necessity to reverse the accepted state of affairs arise and Floride, instead of Calhoun, become the mainstay of the family in the future. If Calhoun continued to be sickly, Floride
might be called upon to function outside the confines of the female sphere for her family’s
welfare. Pleased at Floride’s evident studiousness and improvement, Anna was comforted
by her daughter’s progress as her son seemed to languish interminably.25
Both parents were proud of Floride, whose letters to Anna from school were her
mother’s greatest pleasure while those to her father served to soothe a troublingly tenuous
relationship. Anna assured Floride of her father’s affection for her despite his irritation
with her actions at home. She attempted to assuage the friction between the two by directing Floride to address some of her correspondence to her father specifically. Pleased at the
decided improvement shown in Floride’s letters and compositions, Anna felt confident
that she would not become an abhorrent object, “a mere giggling school girl.” Instructing her daughter to try to understand what she learned from her studies and thereby gain
ideas, Anna also maintained the importance of looking neat and fresh and expressed the
hope that Floride was improving in her voice and music.26
Anna was glad to learn from her husband of Floride’s particular progress in singing,
although to her father she looked well, “tho’ thinner,” after nine months away at school.
The worrisome news that her daughter bit her nails was cause for motherly concern about
what she described disparagingly as a “filthy & disfiguring habit.” Suggesting that the girl
wear strong mitts whenever studying or just sitting and even while sleeping, Anna was
adamant that Floride cure herself of the offensive practice before she came home for the
summer. She was, therefore, subsequently pleased to hear that the young teenager had in
fact made a beginning in that direction.27
Floride’s second year at her aunt’s academy followed a summer spent at home with
her family in Maryland. Unfortunately, her presence seemed to provoke her father’s bad
temper and, although Anna missed her daughter’s companionship upon Floride’s return
to school in September of 1857, Anna found the “uninterrupted quiet” of the house after
her departure to be a blessing. In the aftermath of an apparently angry dispute that had
ensued on the day Floride left, Anna attempted to ease her daughter’s mind with the assurance that all was well as long as she kept to herself and avoided Clemson, who had not
seen his daughter off nor made any mention of her going.
The cost of his sister’s school that Clemson grudgingly bore did not include the extra
pocket money that Anna secretly sent to Floride with $5 bank notes received from her
grandmother, Floride Calhoun, in South Carolina. Directing her daughter to change immediately upon receipt all the notes into gold and entrust it to her aunt until the amount
acquired a value of $40, Anna also advised Floride to keep a record of every penny spent
from this personal source. She seriously instructed her to make no mention to her father
of the extra money. Afraid that Clemson would want to “borrow,” she said, or simply use
any amount sent by his mother-in-law, Anna later secreted a lump sum of $30 at the bottom of a bundle carried by her brother Pat to Philadelphia and deposited with Floride at
school. She reminded her daughter of the importance of the judicious use of money and
complimented her discretion in the handling of such a large sum. Anna felt the money
would be “safer” with Floride rather than herself at home because, from the early days of
their marriage, finances had been an increasingly sore subject in the household. Clemson
Chapter Two
29
had depleted his own funds to loan money primarily to her brother Andrew and also to
her father.28
Confiding in Floride that she lived for and through her children, with her only happiness in their improvement and joy, Anna professed much pleasure in the excellent accounts of Floride’s accomplishments reported by her Aunt Barton. Grateful to Floride
for her efforts, Anna was further cheered by contented commentary from Calhoun, who,
in November of 1857, had resumed his education with his uncle, The Reverend Baker
Clemson, in Claymont, Delaware. Anna depended greatly on Floride’s influence with
her brother to guide him through life, and she stressed the importance of kindness and
affection in her daughter’s approach to Calhoun, admonishing her never to assume an air
of authority or superiority over him. A condescending attitude toward her brother would
have been inappropriate for Floride, according to the gender conventions of the day. Anxious about her son’s welfare, Anna asked Floride to write all that she knew or heard about
Calhoun and to visit him at his Uncle Baker’s as often as convenient.29
The appearance of her children was as important to Anna as their aptitude and application in school, as she instructed Floride to urge Calhoun to be neat in his attire as well
as in his person. She further advised Floride to have all that she needed to look respectable
but was adamant that she “never borrow even a collar.” To Anna, that foolish school girl
habit of borrowing was unacceptable and one that she could not condone for her daughter
or for herself. “A lady,” she said, “considers herself better dressed in a calico of her own,
than the richest dress of another.” Belaboring the point, she stated with conviction, “I do
not remember ever borrowing the smallest article of dress in my life, & would do anything
except go naked, rather than do so.”30
Anna’s contentment and exultation over Floride’s progress in school was overcast in
December when letters received from both her daughter and her sister-in-law, Elizabeth
Barton, dealt with the subject of Floride’s stubbornness. Although Floride confessed to her
mother that she had been stubborn sometimes, she blamed her aunt for being hard on her
and scolding her unjustly. Reminding her darling daughter that she knew Floride could be
obstinate when she chose to be so, Anna affirmed that Floride should conform to the rules
and strive to please her aunt, who had much to worry about with the responsibilities of
her position as headmistress. Undoubtedly, Anna was appalled at the account of Floride’s
strident proclamation in class that she intended being the “black sheep” of the school. She
beseeched her daughter to accept the prescribed gender behavior of a “lady” subject to
sensitivity, manners, and decency. Criticized by her sister-in-law for Floride’s shocking
conduct, Anna acknowledged her responsibility to have been in relying too much on her
daughter’s own good sense to remedy the few failings that otherwise obscured her many
good qualities. Anna was hopeful that, hereafter, her daughter’s demeanor would be a
credit to both of them and thus exonerate her maternal confidence. “Oh darling,” she
wrote, “come to your own better self & let these disgraceful scenes end. Dont stubbornly
endeavour to excuse your own conduct & blame others—look your faults boldly in the
face & determine to conquer them & if you have not the magnanimity to go to your aunt
& ask her pardon as I should desire you would at least determine by your future conduct
to prove your repentance, & determination to conquer your stubborn nature.”31
The painful topic of Floride’s bad behavior was passed over in the new year of 1858
as Anna praised her daughter’s presence in society when Floride began to attend formal
30
Legacy of a Southern Lady
functions at age fifteen. Here again, Anna relied on Floride’s good sense not to be swayed
from her studies as she acquired a needful appreciation of the social scene during her last
months at school and seemed to be having a nice time. Glad to hear from her sister-in-law
descriptions of Floride’s lady-like behavior and becoming looks in her new party dresses,
Anna was, nevertheless, somewhat disturbed that her darling had been sick at one of the
parties she attended. Fearing that Floride had been dressed too tight for good health, she
proceeded to lecture her as follows on the “science of dress”: “A dress that you cannot
fasten easily yourself, if open, before, or another cannot, without an effort, if behind, is too
tight.” Adamant that there should be “no pressure needed” to close a dress, she held forth on
a subject that she was sure she understood and whose rules, unlike style, never changed.
The “lines of the pattern,” she said, determined the beauty of the fit and not the tightness
of the clothes. The French, a people who, she felt, appreciated dress better than any other,
maintained that to fit well “a garment must be easy,” and no one, she declared, could be
comfortable or graceful when too tightly dressed.32
During this period, Anna once again tried to promote a mutually loving relationship between Floride and her father in the interests of family love and harmony that she
prized dearly. Anna reassured her daughter of Clemson’s love for and pride in her despite
his worry that Floride sometimes spoke crossly, implying that she did not care for him.
Equally pleased with each other’s letters, Floride and her father seemed to be getting along
better as Anna wondered why they did not write one another more often and hoped, in
fact, that they would do so in the future.33
Her happiness over Floride’s conduct and concern for her father waned with word
from her sister-in-law that her daughter suffered a bad cold and cough at winter’s end.
Despite Floride’s pledge to her mother in early April that she was well, Anna remained
anxious at the news from others that she had actually been sick with pneumonia. Upset at
Floride’s lack of candor, she insisted that her daughter always tell her “everything,” lest her
letters be only a weekly bulletin upon which Anna could not rely for “the truth, the whole
truth, & nothing but the truth.”34
With just a short time left until Floride’s return to Maryland in the summer of 1858,
the separation between mother and daughter was nearing an end. Calhoun, who in the
spring had enrolled at Hallowell’s Academy in Alexandria, Virginia, was spending his
weekends away from school at home in Bladensburg. Doing well in his studies, he was,
Anna reported to Floride, “growing frightfully,” just like their two-and-a-half-year-old sister Nina. It appeared to Anna that Calhoun might even be taller than his father, whose
height was well over six feet.35
Counting the days until Floride’s coming at the end of June, Anna was deeply touched
by a letter from her daughter, who openly expressed such love and appreciation for her as a
mother that she then felt life had yet many duties and pleasures left for her. The love and
respect of her children was reward enough for a mother who, at age forty-one, saw herself
as “old, fat, & ugly.” “You will all be at home once more,” she wrote to Floride, with Calhoun’s holidays due to begin right at the time his sister was expected from Philadelphia.
Leopold Reis, the Belgian tutor who had been working with the William Van Wyck
family in South Carolina for over a year after being employed by the Clemsons, was
visiting in Bladensburg close to the time of Floride’s anticipated homecoming. Although
Anna thought that he would have already left for California by the time of her arrival,
Chapter Two
31
she instructed Floride, who evidently did not care for him,
to be nice if he happened still to be there. “There is not the
least need you should like him,” she said, but she felt that
the fifteen-year-old should not let her manner express her
likes or dislikes so openly, especially to guests in the house.
“Without the least hypocrisy we may be polite & pleasant
to every one,” she declared.36
The lengthy, painful parting from her daughter was
one that Anna did not dare repeat, particularly since Floride
could continue to improve herself by reading wisely at home
in Bladensburg and by taking music and singing lessons in
nearby Washington, D.C. Not yet ready for her daughter
Anna, who viewed herself as
to “come out as a young lady,” Anna simply wished to have
“old, fat, & ugly”
her at home and thought as well that she should no longer
be diverted from the household duties that would inevitably shape the course of her life.
Joyful at the idea of having Floride with her again, she also acknowledged that the severe
winter climate of Philadelphia posed an unfair risk to her daughter’s health.37
In late July of 1858, after only a month’s stay in Maryland following her return from
boarding school, Floride was off on a trip to New York and Newport accompanied by her
father. Continuing her travels the next summer, she visited her aunt, Clemson’s older sister, Louisa Washington, at her Harewood estate near Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Described
by Anna as “the kindest woman I ever knew,” Louisa, the mother of four children and
the manager of a farm, was also the widow of Samuel Washington, a grandnephew of
President George Washington. So, happy to hear how much Floride was enjoying herself,
Anna wrote to her daughter that her only pleasure was in contributing to the happiness
of those around her. In light of Floride’s proposed fall trip south to see her grandmother,
Anna urged the young traveler to come home as soon as possible, considering their short
time to be together.38
In the fall of 1859, Floride went to South Carolina escorted by Mr. William Van
Wyck and his son Gussy, son-in-law and grandson of Samuel Maverick, whose Montpelier
home was close to that of her grandmother’s in Pendleton. Mrs. Calhoun had, earlier in
1854, sold the family’s Fort Hill plantation to her son Andrew and moved to Pendleton
the following year. At first renting a house that she called “‘Paradise,’” she had later purchased the place next door, which she named “Mi Casa.” Delighted to hear how well and
happy Floride was in her new surroundings, Anna felt certain her daughter would have a
pleasant winter in the company of her grandmother. As usual, she instructed Floride to
write about all that she did and all of the people she saw, reminding her that such letters
would be her own greatest pleasure.39
Word from Mrs. Calhoun assured Anna that Floride, well on her way to becoming
a belle, had received a great deal of attention when she went to the state fair in Columbia with her Uncle Andrew and Aunt Margaret from Fort Hill. Although hostile to his
brother-in-law over an unpaid debt, Clemson, according to Anna, only “grumbled a very
little” as she read tranquilly aloud Floride’s account of the event. Pleased and amused at
her daughter’s own unusually well-written and very interesting version of what happened,
Anna nevertheless warned Floride to avoid speaking out to everyone in such a way that
32
Legacy of a Southern Lady
she might become feared and disliked. With all her heart, Anna approved of her daughter’s
popularity, provided, she said, that she did not let her “head be turned & get stuck up &
affected.” She further admonished Floride to guard against boisterous behavior and to let
simplicity guide her manners. Anna was proud that her mother and sister-in-law Margaret, whose courtship with Andrew had begun through her friendship with Anna, thought
Floride’s clothes to be so nice. Since she had selected her daughter’s scanty, inexpensive
wardrobe, she felt flattered about her own admittedly old-fashioned notion of style.40
Anna then turned to the serious subject of insurrection at the U.S. armory and arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. Floride’s cousin, a great-grandnephew of George Washington and
the son of her father’s sister Louisa, had been one of the hostages held by abolitionist
John Brown in his abortive attempt in October to arm slaves in the area with illegally
seized weaponry. Convicted of “treason, murder, and fomenting insurrection,” Brown,
who was sentenced to hang for his crimes on December 2, 1859, carefully cultivated his
own martyrdom in his closing trial speech. The Clemsons were personally concerned for
the safety of Louisa Washington, whose Harewood home was in the midst of the Harper’s
Ferry furor.41
Anna’s primary interest, as the year came to a close, continued to be centered on
Floride in South Carolina, where both she and her grandmother busily visited friends,
who received them with great kindness and attention. Happy to hear from her mother
of the good impression Floride was making, Anna was doubly pleased to find her child
fulfilling the wishes and prophecies she had for her as she thanked her daughter for her
expression of good wishes at Christmas. For Anna Floride’s well-being was the basis of her
contentment as she considered herself to be her daughter’s most sympathizing friend from
whom nothing would ever be concealed.42
While Floride and Mrs. Calhoun socialized down South, Anna did her own share of
calling in Washington. The institution of visiting was one of the boundaries of the world
in which most women lived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Described in
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg’s work on gender in Victorian American as “that endless trooping of women to one another’s homes for social purposes,” it was a popular practice for
Southern ladies.43
Anna was unsuccessful in seeing the South Carolina senators’ wives—Catherine
Hammond, of whom she was very fond, and Mary Chesnut, whom she did not know at
all. Catherine Fitzsimons Hammond, who Anna thought to be “an amiable & excellent
lady,” and her husband James Henry Hammond, had lived in Mrs. Lindenberger’s Capitol
Hill boarding house with Anna and her father during one winter in Washington when
Hammond was in the House of Representatives and Calhoun in the Senate. Although she
expressed her fondness for Catherine Hammond, Anna never said anything specifically
about her husband, whose term as governor had ended in disgrace in 1844. The disclosure
of his sexual dalliances with his four nieces had outraged their father, Hammond’s brother-in-law, Wade Hampton II, who spoke openly about the matter to influential friends.
Hammond’s own diaries, edited by historian Carol Bleser under the title Secret and Sacred,
document his engagement “apparently en masse, in the most intimate cuddling” with the
teen-age girls while he was governor of South Carolina from 1842 to 1844. Although
Hammond essentially blamed the young women for his indiscretions, his political fate
seemed sealed until his election to the U.S. Senate by the South Carolina legislature in
Chapter Two
33
1857. From this forum, he would deliver his “‘Cotton is king’” speech in 1858, and, until
Bleser’s publication of his diaries, it would be for this speech that he would be primarily
known as a political figure in the Old South.44
Anna did not know Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of James Chesnut, Jr., but Mary
Chestnut, like Anna Calhoun Clemson, was the daughter of a prominent man, Stephen
Decatur Miller, a United States congressman, a South Carolina state senator and governor.
Unable to see either Mary Chesnut or Catherine Hammond on her social calls in Washington, Anna did, however, visit with Miss Harriet Lane, the niece of President James
Buchanan, and with Mrs. Jacob Thompson, wife of the Secretary of the Interior, both of
whom kindly inquired about Floride and regretted her absence.
Knowing that Floride would be pleased at the news, Anna was glad to tell her of
Secretary Thompson’s offer to her father to head the agricultural department of the Patent
Office, a prominent position that Clemson proudly accepted in January of 1860. Anna
was elated about the job, thinking that the salary would be very acceptable.45
Anna was eager for her daughter, who was favorably regarded at the continual round
of weddings and parties in Pendleton during the Christmas season, to complete plans
for a trip to the races in Charleston in early February. Appropriate clothes had to be sent
ahead, and she was concerned about their arrival in time
for the festivities. Anna was also “really vexed” to find out
that Floride had worn “the cape like your dress” to an evening party instead of the full dress of low neck and short
sleeves attire that Anna preferred for her. In the evening,
she told her daughter, “a girl or young lady should always
wear low neck & short sleeves at all events not a cape like
her dress.” Whatever her daughter’s ideas were on the subject, Floride, who wore full dress very well, must go out in
the evening, as did others of her age, attired in low neck
and short sleeves. When in Charleston, Floride could ask
her hostess, Floride Noble Cunningham, a favorite cousin
of Anna’s, for advice on what was accepted as proper dress
in that respect. Anna averred that a woman should careFloride Elizabeth Clemson,
fully avoid attracting attention to herself by singularity
age 15
in dress.46
Anna’s cousin and her daughter’s hostess-to-be in Charleston, Floride Noble Cunningham, was also the sister-in-law of Anna’s Barhamville schoolmate in Columbia, Ann
Pamela Cunningham. Using the nom-de-plume “The Southern Matron” for the first four
years of her efforts on behalf of the women of America to own and preserve Mount
Vernon, Ann Pamela Cunningham was by 1860 ready for the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association to take formal possession of “this sacred spot.” Anna insisted that Floride go and
see her old friend in Charleston if she and cousin Floride Cunningham were on friendly
terms. Concerned about what she termed the “bad reputation” attributed to Floride Cunningham’s husband John, Anna warned her daughter to show no family familiarity to one
she called such a “bad man” though she must necessarily be polite and pleasant. Apparently, Anna’s reference to Cunningham’s “reputation as a roué,” based on rumors of his
unfaithfulness to his wife with both black and white women, masked between mother and
34
Legacy of a Southern Lady
daughter the issue of miscegenation. This painful subject was a source of bitterness and
distress for elite southern womanhood in the antebellum era.
The personal letters and diaries of southern ladies express privately their anger and
humiliation at the sexual transgressions of the white male master, the journal of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas of Georgia being one such example. This diarist notes the issue of
miscegenation and, consequently, adultery as two evils of slavery that she found degrading more so to the white man than the black woman, even though she knew she should
keep silent on the subject. Within whatever household on the plantation, black and white
women were powerless to prevent sexual violence.47
Anna was actually relieved to hear later from Floride that the trip to Charleston had
been canceled as she was getting very anxious to have at home her daughter and son, who
had been away on a hunting and fishing expedition in Florida. Insisting that Floride return to Maryland by the first of April, Anna supposed that she would take the opportunity
to bring with her the son of Mrs. Calhoun’s cook and personal maid, Nelly, who had died
in childbirth a few years before. Little Andy, like his mother, was given especial treatment
as a slave, and Anna wanted to begin his training when he was young.48
At the same time, Anna also mentioned to Floride how worried she was about the
possibility of losing permanently her invaluable household servant, Mrs. Lisette Daub,
whose services would be very much needed in the summer. When in early March Anna, at
age forty-three, suffered a miscarriage, the reason for this concern was apparent. Touched
by her daughter’s letter of comfort and cheer, Anna was very appreciative of such kind
words from one who seldom expressed her feelings. Other letters from Floride delighted
Anna with their words of affection and sympathy. Both Floride and her brother, who had
joined his sister in South Carolina by the end of March, finally returned to Maryland in
the spring of 1860. They were accompanied by their grandmother, whose visit with the
Clemsons extended until well into the fall, and by the young slave Andy, who would later
assume the status of Floride’s personal property.49
Anna, who really preferred entertaining guests in her home to socializing elsewhere,
planned for the almost eighteen-year-old Floride to begin her debut in Washington society
during the winter. The city’s society had long been influenced by accomplished southern
women, with their inherent good taste and acquired social ability; and apparently Floride
was very much liked and admired by President Buchanan’s niece and official White House
Mistress, Harriet Lane, though there was a twelve-year age difference between the two
of them. The young Miss Clemson was an invited guest to a small state dinner, held on
October 4, in honor of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward Vll) during his acclaimed
royal tour to Canada and the United States in the summer and fall of 1860. Miss Lane described Floride as “beautifully dressed & looking very handsome,” which made her mother and grandmother proud. Some thirty years earlier, her grandmother had also been “an
elegant lady” in Washington when her husband John C. Calhoun was Vice-President.50
Only a few days after the White House festivities for Prince Edward, Floride was off
to New York City and a visit with the family of her father’s good friend, the late Charles
Leupp, formerly a successful leather merchant and art collector. Pleased to hear that she
was enjoying herself, Anna was grateful for the kind attentions shown to her daughter.
Concerned about Floride’s reported sore throat, Anna urged her to take care of herself
and always write exactly how she was feeling. Further complaints from Floride about her
Chapter Two
35
throat prompted Anna to suggest that she come home soon in light of New York’s unsuitable cold, damp climate in the fall. Eagerly looking forward to being with Floride again,
Anna warned her daughter to avoid worrying her father, who had recently returned from
official government business in Europe, and to bear patiently whatever behavior she might
encounter from him.51
Anna felt that, because Calhoun was visiting in South Carolina with his grandmother and great-uncle James Calhoun, the Clemson household, free from the young man’s
exuberance, could exist in a more tranquil state with Floride’s cooperation. However,
Republican President Abraham Lincoln’s election in early November 1860, perceived as a
triumph for slavery’s opponents by the South, put the Clemsons in a great state of excitement at the attitude South Carolina assumed in support of secession. Although acknowledging southern honor to be at stake, Anna worried that the alternative to drawing back
was a dreadful one, and she looked upon it as “the beginning of the end.”52
In both the North and South, the anti-slavery sentiment of the Republican Party
bespoke of revolution. The dire prediction from Calhoun, on his deathbed in 1850, of the
union’s disintegration transpired a decade later, as South Carolinians seceded in the interests of what historian Walter Edgar has said was “the good order and harmony” of their
lives threatened by abolition. Prompted by Lincoln’s election, South Carolina’s secession
in December preceded the subsequent formation of the Confederate States of America
in February 1861. Historian Lacy K. Ford, Jr., who described Calhoun as “that quintessential Southern statesman,” concluded that a unified South Carolina seceded because of
the old “country-republican” ideal of personal independence strangely strengthened by
slavery. His examination of the important South Carolina Upcountry explained why the
white majority of the Old South supported the secession movement.53
Clemson resigned his government position on March 9, 1861, and, accompanied
by Anna, made a brief business trip to South Carolina, where she was able to visit with
her mother at her Mi Casa home in Pendleton. Receiving news, in Anna’s words, that
rendered war between the North and South “inevitable & imminent,” the Clemsons decided to return on April 11, the eve of the firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston’s harbor,
quickly to their son and daughter in Maryland, anxious lest any rail tracks be destroyed.
For Anna’s mother, Floride Calhoun, who later found it impossible to say how much she
missed her own “darling daughter” Anna, the parting was particularly difficult at such a
crisis time with the outbreak of the most frightful of catastrophes in civil war.
Another member of a prominent South Carolina family who, like Anna, was living
away from home at the start of the war in 1861 was Eliza Middleton Fisher. Daughter of
Henry Middleton who had served in Congress with Calhoun, Eliza was married to Joshua
Francis Fisher of Philadelphia, where she would spend the war years as a southern sympathizer waiting “in anguish” for an end to the conflict.54
The first shots of the conflict provoked by President Lincoln’s decision to provision
Fort Sumter were described vividly in the diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut, in Charleston
with her husband James Chesnut, Jr., who had recently resigned as a United States senator. On April 12, hearing the chimes of St. Michael’s at 4 o’clock in the morning and
cannon fire thirty minutes later, Mary Chesnut first knelt in prayer and then joined other
excited women and men on the rooftops to watch the shelling light up the sky.55
The onset of war between the North and South in 1861 divided the country for four
36
Legacy of a Southern Lady
years, separated friends and families such as the Clemsons and Calhouns and, in the words
of historian Bruce Catton, brought an end to America’s “age of innocence.” The future
would not be lived by the traditions of the past, and Americans would have to endure
a terrible ordeal before life could be resumed in peace. A time of trial and triumph that
tested ideology and individuals was at hand, and the ensuing conflict would excite the
interest of generations to come as no other event in the nation’s experience. Perhaps the
continuing study of this trauma is an attempt in part to treat a wound that has not yet
healed.
Despite the reality of war and its uncertain implications for the future, Clemson
made an effort, when again settled in Maryland, to plant crops and fruit trees on his farm.
His mother-in-law back in South Carolina, concerned that her grandson Calhoun was
doing nothing but lounging about the house when she thought he should be training in
Richmond to fight with the Confederate army, also got word to Clemson that he should
send Anna and Floride to the South. Fearful of fighting in Baltimore, Mrs. Calhoun felt
that the Clemson home would be surrounded by conflict and the family subject to insult
and plunder and devilment of all kinds.56
Although mindful of her mother’s concern, Anna decided to remain in Maryland
with her daughter when her husband, under suspicion of disloyalty to the Union government like other secessionist sympathizers, and her son, Calhoun, went South in June
1861. Maryland, as a border state between the nation’s capital and the rest of the Union,
maintained a precarious position throughout the war. Unionists and secessionists created
unrest everywhere and especially in Baltimore. Apparently Clemson himself was confident
that friends and family, along with the household help, would look out for the welfare of
his wife and eighteen-year-old daughter. The Southern sympathies (not unlike Anna’s) of
the wife of former President John Tyler, for example, did not keep Julia Gardiner Tyler
from leaving the Confederacy upon her husband’s death in 1862 and going to live at her
mother’s estate on New York’s Staten Island. Like Anna, whose father had served as Secretary of State under Julia’s husband, the President’s widow was loyal to the South while
living among the enemy.57
Twenty-year-old Calhoun Clemson enlisted at Camp
Pickens (now Sandy Springs), Anderson District, in South
Carolina, as a private in a Confederate rifles’ regiment.
Early in 1862, when many northerners believed in war
and an easy reunification process, he was commissioned
as a second lieutenant, effective from December 16, in
Company H, First Regiment South Carolina Artillery.
One of the founding officers of this battalion and the colonel of the regiment was Calhoun’s own cousin Ransom,
the son of Anna’s late uncle, John Ewing Colhoun. By
1863, when the reality of the war’s lengthy duration and
sweeping scope was apparent, Calhoun had resigned his
commission and accepted an appointment in the regular
Confederate army as first lieutenant in charge of Fort RiCalhoun,
pley in Charleston’s harbor and, according to his mother,
in military attire
had been promised the rank of captain.
Chapter Two
37
In Maryland, Anna heard fairly often from her son and husband in South Carolina,
where Clemson remained with her mother for two years until he also joined the Confederate service in May 1863. Based on his scientific credentials as a chemist, he was sent as
a first lieutenant to Texas to head the state’s unit of the Nitre and Mining Bureau, TransMississippi Department.58
During Clemson’s absence, Anna was in close touch with his uncle Elias Baker at Altoona, Pennsylvania, and it was to him that she confided how tired she was of “this dreadful war,” “ruining the country north & south.” Although relieved that both her husband
and son were well, she felt keenly the frightening uncertainty of the future and did not
expect to escape without her share of troubles.59
Confederate defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in the summer of 1863 ultimately
assured a northern triumph, although war would be waged for almost two more years. In
reality for Anna and Floride, despite the hardship of separation from Clemson and Calhoun, who had joined his father’s mines and metal works bureau, their life in Maryland
did not prove to be unduly hazardous during the war years. Conflict notwithstanding,
Floride even continued with her travels, making over a month-long northern trip from
the end of July to mid-September.60
Beginning her journey at the Greek-revival mansion of her father’s uncle, Elias Baker,
in Pennsylvania, she wrote to her “Darling Mother” that the excitement of traveling soon
dispelled her “dumps” at leaving Anna, whose presence would have made her perfectly
content. Settled comfortably in Altoona in such a large affluent neighborhood where
the subject of war seemed not to matter, Floride wrote her mother that she had taken “a
great fancy” to everyone. As usual Anna expressed pleasure in Floride’s enjoyment and was
interested in an account of all her daughter’s doings. Apparently the southern sympathies
of neither mother nor daughter were offended by the nonchalance of their northern relatives to the conflict consuming the country. The fact that Clemson and Calhoun were
in Confederate service seemed of little significance in light of Floride’s welcome by her
father’s family.
The person of D. W. Lee, Clemson’s financial advisor and the brother-in-law of his
late friend Charles Leupp, was a source of pleasant companionship for Anna in a house
quite dead without Floride. In the absence of the Clemson men, the protection of their
southern ladies had passed to one dubbed by mother and daughter as their “gallant defender.” Lee, described by Anna as “charming & fascinating,” was also a suitor of Floride’s
and the uncle of her bosom friend, Laura Leupp. The Clemsons had known the prominent Lee family of New York for several years through Thomas Clemson’s friendship with
Charles Leupp, whose marriage to the daughter of Gideon Lee, Sr., a businessman and
political figure, entwined thereafter the lives of the Leupps, Lees, and Clemsons.61
Although Anna regularly sent Floride summaries of the war news, she cautioned her
to “be quiet” about the southern cause among her relatives in the North. Elated to send the
report that Charleston was still withstanding attack, she was hopeful for another glorious
victory over the attempt of Union forces to capture the coastal city. The valiant resistance
of Charleston, the civilian population of which had been the target of Union bombardment for four months, was blessed news for Anna and Floride to share as “a day of fasting
& prayer,” designated in the South as August 21, 1863, approached.62
Grateful to hear from Floride that her father’s family never mentioned the fighting
38
Legacy of a Southern Lady
and were much more considerate of her political views than she ever dreamed possible,
Anna reminded her daughter of the fact that Uncle Elias’s Alleghany Furnace iron works
had “enormously increased” in value since the war started. Floride saw for herself on a tour
with her cousin Sylvester the extensive nature of her great-uncle’s machine shops with all
possible kinds of working in iron. Though Baker family members were “sincere & earnest
christians” to Floride, Anna found them, like other good northerners, in “favour of a war
of invasion, for the avowed purpose of abolition, & subjugation, against their brethren”;
and she found it indeed hard to fathom in light of the very principles fought for by their
common forefathers.63
When Floride desired to be baptized in Altoona, Anna gave her blessing because the
virtue of piety was paramount over all others for the southern lady. “Religion,” she wrote
to her daughter, “were it not a duty, & an instinct, would be a necessity. We must have
something, not of this world, to sustain us in the many trials & temptations of life, &
you more than others, need a deep & abiding faith.” Apparently, Floride who attested to
her own weakness, had always felt that she personally needed the support of faith and,
for some time, had been convinced of the truth of most of the tenets of Christian belief.
Anna was glad that Floride had elected the Episcopal church, her family’s choice on both
sides. Her paternal uncle, Baker Clemson, performed the baptismal sacrament on August
23, in the morning service at St. Luke’s Church, with two cousins standing as witnesses.
Instructing Floride to “live” her religion daily and not to expect miracles from it, Anna
told her daughter of the very sincere sympathy she held for religious faith. Floride, indebted to her mother for such a kind letter, trusted that her baptism would enable her to
be a better daughter.64
But Floride, who had initially been dispirited at leaving her mother, found herself,
after a month away from home, once again down in the “dumps.” She took a good crying
spell over newspaper headlines that heralded the continuing bombardment of Charleston
by Union artillery. Floride was distraught by Anna’s fear that “in time” the city must fall
and keenly felt her absence from those who would sympathize with and understand her
anxiety during the country’s difficult days of trial. Despite the kindness of her northern
relatives in the face of her concern, she knew they were overjoyed at what made her miserable.65
Missing her mother and regretting to leave Altoona after such a pleasant visit, Floride
expected to enjoy visiting Niagara Falls before returning home to Maryland. Along with
four other young women, under the protective wing of Uncle Elias, she set forth in early
September 1863, on a trip similar to one made by her mother so many years before, in
the summer of 1836.66
Anna hoped that Floride’s trip would be as enjoyable as was her own undertaking
when she was nineteen years old. She remembered that she had not really cared about
going but that her father had decided the chance to travel with fellow senator Colonel
William Preston and his wife, Louisa, afforded a good opportunity for her to see the
northern portion of the country. Delighted with sightseeing in Philadelphia, Anna wrote
to her dear friend, Maria Simkins, in South Carolina that she was even more glad to be a
southerner. The very people, true northerners, with such splendid houses in the fashionable streets, reportedly lived sparingly on “shad,” a type of herring, six months out of the
year and seldom opened their homes to guests.67
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39
Defining New York as the greatest city on the continent with an air of bustle and
prosperity exceeding anything she had ever seen, Anna also described in her album a dinner party hosted by one of the town’s millionaires as more splendid than the state dinners
in Washington. Her short time sailing from New York to West Point was most enjoyable,
as was the two-day stay at the latter. Entertained by gentlemanly cadets at one night’s evening ball and on a moonlight rowboat ride up the Hudson the next, she had found that
West Point, in its exquisite setting, fulfilled the wildest dreams of her imagination.68
In addition to Col. and Mrs. Preston, Anna’s other traveling companions included
the charming South Carolinian, Miss Susan Hampton, the youngest child of prominent
planter Wade Hampton I, and the very agreeable William King, senator from Alabama.
Every want of the blissful party was met by Susan’s slave Delphia, joined by Senator King’s
German valet, Fritz. Anna, Susan, Senator King and Fritz were surrounded by carpet bags
atop the coach that traveled from Albany to Saratoga. From that vantage point, Anna took
her first view of Niagara by moonlight.
Like her daughter some twenty-seven years later, Anna could not put into words her
feelings about the Falls, convinced after a five-day stay that Niagara was, she wrote in her
album, “a thing to be felt not described.” Floride, in her time, wanted her mother there to
enjoy it with her and even cried when she first caught sight of what she never imagined
would be so grand. The great Falls, she wrote to Anna, surpassed her highest expectations
when first seen from the Canadian side. Glad to be out of the so-called United States in
a place so thoroughly English, Floride further elaborated on the impressive sight she observed from underneath the Falls. Much against the wishes of her companions, who feared
for her safety, she and a mulatto guide went under the torrential stream of water, stood on
a rock ledge, and looked up and out at the shooting Falls about six feet from where they
were standing.
The day that Floride took off her hoops (and all above them) and donned an oil cloth
dress to go under the Falls she did not know that her brother Calhoun was taken prisoner
by Union cavalry troops in Bolivar County, Mississippi. At the time of his capture on September 9, 1863, as a lieutenant in the Confederate army serving in the mines and metal
works bureau headed by his father, Calhoun was in charge of a seven-man squad transporting Confederate currency for General Kirby Smith’s department payroll. However, his
mother and sister would not learn the details of his capture until early in October, shortly
after Floride’s return to Maryland.69 Floride admittedly anticipated being back at home
after such a seemingly long absence, being tired with, but not of, traveling and wanting
so much to see her mother. She promised Anna that she could account satisfactorily for
nearly all the money that she had spent.
In her diary for October 4, two weeks after her return home, Floride recorded news
of Calhoun’s capture and imprisonment from an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Anna
immediately attempted to arrange a trip to see her son on Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie,
near Sandusky, Ohio. She contacted President Abraham Lincoln, who acknowledged in
writing, on Executive Mansion letterhead, to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton his
respect for her late father and granted her permission for the privilege of a visit with the
secretary’s approval. But Stanton, according to Floride’s diary, rebuffed Anna, stating that
he would let her go when northern ladies were allowed to visit the prisoners South. Although she went to see him personally, he again refused her request.70
40
Legacy of a Southern Lady
In one of the first letters written to his mother and sister from prison, Calhoun Clemson commented on the cold weather and the crowded conditions caused by over sixty men
sleeping in the same cramped room contaminated with vermin; however, the fact that he
said he was well cheered Anna and Floride, who quickly sent him what his sister called “a
nice box of eatables.” Besides this food, Calhoun also received from D. W. Lee, his father’s
financial advisor and friend, the sum of $20.00 as immediate funds.71
In the absence of the Clemson men, Lee, the “gallant defender,” had assured Anna
that he would execute “with great pleasure” her and Floride’s requests. With regard to
Calhoun’s situation, he encouraged her to persevere in the attempt to secure a pass to see
her son but advised against her pursuing a transfer for him from the island to a prison on
the mainland.
Heartened by this support from Lee, Anna turned to Clemson’s uncle, Elias Baker, in the hope that he might be acquainted
with someone in Washington whose word would carry weight
with Secretary Stanton in regard to the desired pass to visit Calhoun. Although Uncle Elias was more than willing to accompany Anna to Sandusky, he thought that she would have trouble
in getting the coveted permission to see her son without federal
authority. He did not know any important political figures but
desired very much to assist her and promised to speak on her behalf to his lawyer, S. S. Blair, a former congressman. This gentleman, who had become acquainted with both Anna’s father and
Elias Baker
husband some twenty-years earlier, promised to do everything
he could in her favor when he was next in Washington.72
Separated from her son for over two years, since the summer of 1861, Anna felt
increasingly frustrated at her inability to secure the necessary pass. She would of course
prefer a parole for him to come home until a possible prisoner exchange. She dreaded his
exposure to the increasing cold as winter approached, though he was relatively comfortable on Johnson’s Island under the command of Colonel William Pierson. Calhoun had
a history of weak lungs that in part had forced his withdrawal from the Virginia Military
Institute before the beginning of the war.73
Anna, who felt she should see for herself if her son was suffering, was downhearted
that family matters interfered with Mr. Blair’s plans to go to Washington before the end
of the year. Although Calhoun’s regular letters were cheerful, she knew he would hide
whatever would make her miserable. Troubled with worries about her son in prison, the
management of her farm and her daughter’s always delicate health, she was grateful for
the kind interest of Uncle Elias. He, like Anna, was greatly disappointed that Blair, who
made a short trip to Washington early in 1864, proved not to be a man of his words and
promises and apparently did nothing to further her favor with Secretary Stanton about the
pass. Considering that the former congressman was a Democrat, he did not, in any case,
have much chance to get what Anna wanted from the Republican secretary.74
In reality, Anna’s eagerness to go to Ohio was tempered by the great uncertainty surrounding the fate of the prisoners on Johnson’s Island, and, according to Floride’s diary,
her mother had given up going to Sandusky. A letter from Calhoun at the end of January
stated that “dame reumor [sic] with her thousand tongues is buisy [sic] with reports of our
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41
speady [sic] removil [sic] from this land of cold & ice” to some point he thought likely to
be rather worse than better.
Also in doubt at this time was Anna and Floride’s personal situation in Maryland,
as the Clemson women faced a probable move of their own in the spring although they
did not know where they would be going. Anna had become convinced of her inability to
manage the farm without reliable help and was frustrated in the face of enormous prices
for everything. She hoped that Uncle Elias could get someone to rent the place and rid
her of both a burdensome load and a great expense.75 Mother and daughter, concerned
over their own fate as well as Calhoun’s, faced an uncertain future in a world troubled and
torn by the turmoil of war.
In his letters to Anna from prison, Calhoun had expressed to his mother and sister
the poignant yearning to see them:
There is no use telling you how much I desire to see you. & F but it is not allowed so I can only wish & that has to do....Suffice it to say my thoughts are
always about you & F. and I sencearly [sic] hope the time will soon come when
we may all meat [sic].
However, in February, he accepted resignedly his mother’s decision to cancel her trip,
for the time being, and wrote to her: “I am glad you did not come for without a pass you
cannot see me & ten to one you could not get across the bay.”76
Rumors of a possible move for the men on Johnson’s Island persisted, but, by the
end of February, Calhoun’s location indeed seemed permanent. Perhaps the loss of hope
that a prisoner exchange might take place prompted him in a March 27 letter to write his
mother about his wish to see her and his father.
I had a dream about you & the old jentleman [sic] last night: you had both come
to see me, and I was very glad to see you; but yett [sic] there was something on
my mind that made me sad; I suppose it was my being a prisoner, thoug [sic]
I was not on Johnsons Island so much for dreams: I mention this to show you
how much I think of you all, thoug [sic] I will not say like the poet ‘that even in
a dream to be blessed is so sweet that I ask for no more’. I will amend the above
by saying that I ask for something more.
This plaintive appeal was a call from Calhoun that Anna could not refuse.
Apparently, after several months in prison, during which time he had derived much
pleasure and comfort from all the boxes of provisions and bundles of clothes sent to him
from the two he termed his “most considerate sister and devoted mother,”77 the young
Confederate captive was suddenly overwhelmed by the enforced separation from his family. Within less than a month’s time after receiving this sorrowful statement of longing
from her son, Anna made arrangements for the trip to Sandusky.
Although Uncle Elias had offered to accompany her, she accepted instead the assistance of Calhoun’s friend, G. H. Dunscomb, an Englishman who numbered among
Floride’s several suitors. Concerned about her daughter’s poor health, weakened by both
intestinal and optic disorders, she was comforted by recent word from her husband, who
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Legacy of a Southern Lady
was serving with Confederate forces in the South, that at least he was well. Leaving Floride
in the care of friends, Anna departed with Dunscomb for Sandusky on the morning of
April 18, 1864.78
A twenty-hour train delay in Pittsburgh made for a dismal time that Dunscomb
described in a letter to Floride that he wrote upon arrival in Cleveland on the afternoon
of April 20. While her mother had spent a sleepless night suffering in the midst of crying babies in overheated railway cars, he was also quite miserable on a bench in a Tavern
Bar Room. Anna, disgusted with the whole trip, soon recovered, and her spirits revived
after meeting a couple on the same errand as she.79 Eager to succeed in seeing her son on
Johnson’s Island but worried for fear of failure in obtaining the necessary pass from U.S.
Army headquarters in Sandusky, she was increasingly excited and uneasy.
The weary travelers changed trains in Cleveland in the afternoon and arrived safely
but exhausted in Sandusky that evening. The next morning, Anna received a most cordial
and courteous reception from General H. D. Terry, who had assumed command of the
U.S. prison at Johnson’s Island earlier in the year. Seemingly, with no difficulty, she was
granted the coveted pass to see her son.80
Accompanied by Dunscomb, she crossed over from the mainland to Johnson’s Island
and, later, in a letter to her daughter, wrote of a most unreserved conversation she had there
with Calhoun, during a two-hour stay before her return to Sandusky. Her remark that her
son looked “very well, save a sore leg” sounded somewhat subdued considering their longawaited reunion. Dunscomb’s description of the meeting was decidedly more colorful in
his own letter to Floride. Her mother was ready, he wrote, to “break a blood vessel or go
into hysterics” at the sight of Calhoun grown much bigger and very good looking.
On the morning of April 22, Anna and Dunscomb again went to Johnson’s Island
for one last visit with Calhoun before starting back to Maryland that evening. As Anna
prepared for the trip home, Dunscomb wrote to Floride just before leaving on the train.
Not only was Calhoun’s condition much improved, but her mother had appeared to be
“holding court,” surrounded by a “little levee” of federal officers. Obviously taken with
Anna’s charming manner, Union General Terry and his staff extended great courtesy to
a gracious southern lady who had braved enemy lines to see her son in a Yankee prison.
Fortunately, the journey to Johnson’s Island was a successful one for the thankful mother
who was relieved that her son seemed to be healthy. She could not have foreseen then the
hardships he would have to endure in the dark days that lay ahead.81
The same week that Anna returned to Maryland from her visit with Calhoun, a family tragedy affected Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his wife Varina. On April
30, 1864, their five-year-old son Joseph was killed in a fall from the corner of the porch
of the Confederate White House in Richmond. Within two-months’ time following their
loss, Varina Davis gave birth on June 27 to a baby girl, Winnie, who would be known one
day as the “Daughter of the Confederacy.”82
In earnest, Anna began preparations to leave Bladensburg and the burdensome responsibility of her farm. Her plan to go to Beltsville, near Baltimore, on the railroad depended mainly on getting a good and responsible tenant although the amount of annual
rent was an important factor, as well. Early in June, a Mr. Edward Towers took possession
of the property for $40 a month, a sum less than the $600 to $700 yearly income that she
had hoped to receive.83
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43
Anna wrote to Uncle Elias from her new, comfortable quarters within a mile of Beltsville, which Floride described in her diary as a very pretty five-room place surrounded by
trees. Undoubtedly glad to inform Clemson’s uncle that her husband was living quite well,
although anxious about his family, Anna regretted to say that Calhoun fared very badly.
Since the departure of Union General Terry, food rations for the men had been reduced to
meat and bread, and the sutler was not allowed to furnish anything for them.84
Correspondence from Calhoun convinced Anna of the rigors of his year-long confinement and the need for her to persevere in the attempt to get him away, possibly on an
exchange of prisoners. With the help of D.W. Lee, the “gallant defender,” she had some
hope for her son’s release as well as passes for herself and Floride to go South to join her
husband and mother. Now that the responsibility for the farm had been relinquished, she
wrote to Uncle Elias that nothing any longer kept her from going South if she could do so.
Although no southern passes were being given out at the end of October, she thought that
she had a good prospect of success to procure them soon and was hopeful that Calhoun
could be exchanged before she left. She dreaded another cold winter of captivity for her
son with his weak lungs and was especially concerned about no longer being permitted to
send him food and comforts.85
She continued to be stymied “in all directions,” and, at the end of November, she told
Uncle Elias that she saw little chance of getting off until perhaps after spring. Floride recorded in her diary her own wish for passes to return South. Both she and her mother felt
keenly the uncertainty of the state in which they lived, waiting for events. Anna trusted
God’s wise judgment, she wrote Uncle Elias, admitting at the same time that she sometimes almost lost courage.86
A few days after receiving a telegraph message from Sylvester Baker (on December
7, about his father Elias’s death), Anna and Floride learned unexpectedly that they would
be given passes by General George Shepley, the military governor of Norfolk. Though
saddened by the loss of dear old Uncle Elias, a kind friend whom they had loved very
dearly, mother and daughter nevertheless quickly got their things ready to leave once they
received word that they could go. Apparently, a business friend of Clemson’s, Tazewell
Taylor, had approached General Shepley about the matter of Anna’s request. Since one
of the general’s beloved cousins, Mrs. Gideon Barstow, was a close friend of Anna’s, he
decided in favor of her personal petition to travel South.87
The Clemson women departed, encumbered with five trunks, a large carpet bag for
shawls, and two baskets of provisions, along with two hand bags that were later supplemented along the way by the addition of a huge umbrella. Despite their friends’ efforts to
dissuade them from leaving Beltsville within a week of Christmas, Anna was determined
to join her mother in South Carolina, and Floride would not be left behind alone. They
stayed a day and a half in Baltimore, tending to shopping and making arrangements.
Then, escorted by Calhoun’s friend, G. H. Dunscomb, the travelers left late in the afternoon in a wretched little boat for Norfolk. Buffeted by a cold wind that made sleep
scarcely possible, they arrived first at Fortress Monroe, off the Virginia coast early in the
morning, entering the city by nine o’clock. General Shepley cordially received them at his
office, where their passes were issued. Politely treated by the people at the Atlantic hotel
during their weekend stay, mother and daughter even went to church on Christmas. In
Dunscomb’s company, they boarded the next morning a special “flag of truce” train for
44
Legacy of a Southern Lady
Suffolk, a place that, upon arrival, looked abandoned to them.88
At two o’clock in the afternoon of the same day, they left behind their faithful escort,
Dunscomb, and trudged forth on foot in the falling rain. Walking with their driver on
soggy ground alongside the only available horse and buggy, followed by two mule carts
loaded with their baggage, the weary women went some twenty miles, covering half the
distance after dark. Continuing their trek after a night’s lodging, they did the remaining
eight miles to Murfrees Depot, about forty miles from the next scheduled stop at Weldon,
North Carolina, where they would be able to board a train. Bidding their driver good-bye,
they waited until early afternoon in a log hut at the station and then crossed the Blackwater River in a boat ferried for them by the first Confederate detachment they had seen
since starting the trip.
After an overnight stay in Weldon in a room with no fire and broken windows, described by Floride as the dirtiest she had ever seen, mother and daughter once again forged
ahead, traveling by train to Raleigh and Charlotte. For the last twenty-five miles of the
trip, because of the train’s breakdown, they found themselves crowded into a baggage car,
mostly with soldiers going home on furlough. Despite a dangerous speed, further engine
failure caused them to miss their connection to Columbia, South Carolina, and they had
to remain overnight in Charlotte.
Arriving in Columbia on the morning of December 30, they went the rest of the way
to Mrs. Calhoun’s Mi Casa home in the company of one of her neighbors, Fanny Adams,
whom they met on the train from Charlotte. She offered them a ride to Pendleton in her
carriage. According to Floride’s diary, her grandmother was not much surprised at their
coming but was overjoyed to see her loved ones,89 who had by all counts proven themselves capable of the challenges confronted throughout their harrowing ordeal.
The presence of Anna and Floride at Mi Casa was a great comfort at a dismal time
for a domicile that included not only Mrs. Calhoun but her daughter-in-law Kate and
two of her sons, besides a few servants. Both Mrs. Calhoun and Kate were sickly and
in great need of help with all the responsibility faced by women alone. Floride, in fact,
found the greatest need among the very dispirited people she saw to be that of men, as
every able-bodied male in Pendleton was in Confederate service, fighting the battles of his
cause. Truly the long days of war had forced many elite southern women to acknowledge
their own individual identities without the masculine protection that supported their
privileged position and defined its accepted weakness.90 Three generations of Calhoun and
Clemson women, together in South Carolina in 1865, faced the end of the Confederacy
with little food, in fear of Union raids, and with few men left to fight. Like their female
contemporaries, who also endured a world disrupted by conflict, Floride Calhoun, Anna,
and Floride Clemson were distraught by the uncertainty of the frightening future that lay
ahead. Their situation in Pendleton was experienced elsewhere in South Carolina by many
other women of such prominent families as the Petigrus, Allstons, and Porchers. Not only
had the war shattered the institution of slavery, but also the precarious pedestal (perhaps,
in actuality, only present in postwar romances) that enshrined the southern lady had been
broken.91
Adèle Allston and Louise Porcher, sisters of the late James Louis Petigru, South Carolina’s preeminent lawyer who defined his family’s prominence in the nineteenth century,
also faced the Confederacy’s fate as women alone without any males to provide protec-
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45
tion from marauding Yankees. Adèle Allston had been widowed for almost a year since
the death of her husband, Governor Robert Allston, the very wealthy Georgetown rice
planter. With her daughters and a few black female servants, she fled their home at the
Chicora Wood plantation on the Pee Dee River at the end of February 1865. They returned to the family’s inland Croly Hill farm, where they had lived in retreat much of the
time since 1863. Burying the wine and silver before the Yankees arrived, they had neither
a white nor a black man to protect them while federal soldiers unsuccessfully searched the
house and grounds for the hidden valuables. No one was harmed.92
Louise Porcher, like her sister Adèle, also faced the enemy without any male protector, after her husband Philip had been conscripted into the militia that February. At her
Goslington home on the morning of February 21, she was told by retreating Confederate
troops from Columbia to expect the Yankee army. A warning from an advance of federal
officers threatened harm to both mistress and servants by black soldiers, at whose arrival
Louise trembled. In her own words, “‘wild hideous figures naked to the waist brandishing their arms & pointing their guns as if to shoot us as we stood still on the piazza,’” the
black troops devoured the supplies saved for the women who watched and waited. The
Porcher house became the headquarters of the Union commander, who, after a little over
two weeks, allowed Louise and her party to leave and take the train to Charleston.93
Within a week of the taking of Columbia (on February 17, 1865) by Union troops
under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman, Floride Clemson noted despairingly in her diary that there seemed to be little opposition from a dejected populace
to the Yankees’ march of destruction in South Carolina. Hearing in church, on February 19, the dreadful news of the capital city’s surrender, Floride professed a very anxious
and desponding heart at the thought of what might yet happen in the state. The scarcity
of provisions in Pendleton, the coming of many more expected refugees, and the quick
conclusion of a disgraceful peace prompted her unfeigned plea for God’s mercy and protection.94
In reality, the citizenry of Columbia, reduced in wartime to mostly women, were
critical of Georgia for succumbing so quickly to Sherman’s army and solemnly promised
to fight in the face of impending doom. Frenzied preparations for a bazaar held in the
statehouse in January stifled fear and hysteria as the emotional week-long event with its
magnificent decorations shut out the surrounding horrors that lay ahead. The removal of
all Confederate forces from the capital city on February 17 left a reality of utter desolation
for Grace Brown Elmore, whose mother, Harriet Chesnut Taylor, was the granddaughter
of the man who owned the land upon which Columbia had been built. Standing at the
gate of her house to give wine and blankets to the retreating soldiers, the young twentyfive-year-old woman, single and alone with her mother and sisters, awaited the Yankees,
who came and pillaged but did not defile their persons.95
Before the onslaught of Sherman’s army in Columbia, Grace Elmore, like many other
upper-class women, most of whom were single and childless, worked as a volunteer on the
South Carolina College campus, which was converted into a military hospital. Under the
determined and dedicated leadership of the state’s most intellectual woman, Louisa Cheves McCord, daughter of the late Langdon Cheves and widow of David McCord, both
of whom had been prominent in law, politics and banking, the hospital became a home
to wounded Confederates. Louisa, a well-regarded writer on political economy and social
46
Legacy of a Southern Lady
theory, had effectively defended slavery and women’s subordination to men in her poetry
and drama. McCord was said to be “South Carolina’s preeminent bluestocking.”96
On the morning of February 17, Louisa McCord stood on the staircase of her Columbia home to keep Union soldiers from abusing the women hiding upstairs. Although
struck, grabbed, and pinned to the wall by the leader of a crowd of seemingly inhumane
men, this brave southern lady was saved from further attack by the arrival of General O.
O. Howard. Second in command to Sherman, this officer proceeded to make her house
his headquarters.97
The fact that the beautiful capital city had been “laid in ashes by the Northern
Vandals” after a four-day occupation in February was reported by Floride in her diary,
following a month-long lapse in her writing. To help alleviate the suffering of those who
were starving, utterly destitute, and homeless, she and her mother and grandmother gave
as much as they could afford at the time— $200, some cloths, five bushels of corn, and
a ham.
A month after the fall of the state capital, Anna’s brother Andrew died suddenly of
heart congestion, on March 16, as Floride noted in her diary. He had just visited Mi Casa
in response to a note from Anna, telling him about Mrs. Calhoun’s poor health and her
desire to see her sole surviving son after over a year-long estrangement over the debt he still
owed for the purchase of Fort Hill some ten years earlier. Mother and son both enjoyed
being together again. Now, with Andrew’s death, Anna remained, as Floride remarked, the
“only one left of all the seven children grandfather left when he died.” A year later, Floride
Calhoun would file suit against her son’s family for his estate’s unpaid debt for Fort Hill,
and a few weeks before she died in July of 1866, the court decision for foreclosure against
her daughter-in-law, Margaret, and the grandchildren would be issued.98
Late in April of 1865, the news of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender
and President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination reached Pendleton, bringing a sense of
bewilderment to the community. Fearing no mercy from the Yankees, the women at Mi
Casa were terrified by the frequent sound of alarms all during the month of May. For three
nights in succession, they were roused from bed before midnight by warning sounds that
signaled the imminent menace of raiders. Although everything of value had been buried,
they remained vulnerable to the threat of personal insults and were dreadfully afraid in the
face of the worst horror imaginable.
Above all other dangers, women feared rape, which dishonored white women more
than death itself, sexual purity being one of the virtues prized by the southern lady. In
actuality, the violation so feared by the southern lady was endured repeatedly by AfricanAmerican women during the antebellum era. Historian Catherine Clinton’s book, Tara
Revisited, recognizes rape as “a frequent byproduct of slavery,” with black female slaves as
the primary victims of white men. Ironically, the protectors of privilege were at the same
time perpetrators of violence in a patriarchal society where race determined the deed.
Fortunately the approximately one-thousand Yankees who passed through Pendleton
at the end of May did little or no harm to persons or private property. No one of them set
foot on Mi Casa although many rode right by the gate and all passed in full view over the
opposite hill. Other than the taking of some horses at Fort Hill, there was apparently no
significant damage done there, either.99
In the same month that the women at Mi Casa prepared for the worst from the
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47
Yankees, Confederate President Jefferson Davis held his last War Council, meeting some
forty-five miles away from Pendleton in Abbeville at the home of lawyer Armistead Burt
and his wife, Martha, a Calhoun cousin. The overnight stay of Davis and his men in Abbeville was part of their journey from the fallen Confederate capital of Richmond through
the defeated Confederacy.100
With the arrivals in Pendleton, first of Calhoun and, then, his father in the summer
of 1865, the Clemson family was reunited at Mi Casa with Mrs. Calhoun. Kate Calhoun
and her two boys, who were there when Anna and Floride came from Maryland, moved
away to another house and eventually returned to Kate’s family’s home in Florida. Both
Calhoun and Clemson looked pretty well upon their return from Confederate service,
although Floride noted in her diary the drastic deterioration of conditions on Johnson’s
Island during the last year of conflict. Food rations were severely cut, and many prisoners
of war died of starvation while some were killed by the sentinels, and a few actually killed
each other. Unsuccessful in his many attempts to escape, Calhoun said that the prisoners
“nearly went mad” as they lost hope in the face of “constant disappointments.” Despite
the dreadfully stooped nature of her brother’s over six-foot stature, Floride described his
otherwise very fine figure as well-proportioned. Even with his rough manners and profanity, she thought him to be “quite elegant, & styelish” [sic] when he chose to be.101
Determined to care for her family in the aftermath of America’s bloodiest war, Anna
also faced the responsibility of ministering to her mother, who then suffered terribly with
what had been diagnosed as incurable cancer. The struggles of her children, Calhoun
and Floride, to find themselves as young adults in a world where opportunity and hope
seemed lost gave her cause for further concern. Mrs. Calhoun’s condition caused an impatient Floride to postpone a visit to Maryland, Virginia, and places in the North as,
now that the war was over and her family reunited, she admitted to her mother an often
overwhelming feeling of homesickness for those that she had left behind. Although she
dramatically likened life in Pendleton to being “buried alive,” Floride actually did have
some good times there. Undoubtedly, Anna worried about her daughter’s well-being in
the distressful world around her as Anna encouraged Floride’s participation with other
young people in riding parties, costumed festivals, balls, and tableaux— festivities where
she was much admired and which she seemed to enjoy.102
Mrs. Calhoun’s death came after a year in which her seemingly incessant “screams &
cries,” described as such by Floride in her diary, had resounded throughout the house.
Assisted by Floride and an experienced nurse, a Mrs. Burns, Anna bore the burden of
her mother’s illness though often worn down by what Floride saw as her grandmother’s
unreasonable demands. Unable to bear the pain and addicted to opiates, Mrs. Calhoun, in
her granddaughter’s eyes, would be saved from all her misery if only she could die instead
of carrying on with constant moans, cries and shrieks. Apparently a neglected abrasion
from a kidney infection had brought on the dread disease that, according to Anna, had
“eaten away” the lower part of her mother’s abdomen and “split open her groin, nearly
to the bone.” The terribly offensive odor from the cancerous discharge permeated her
room and sickened all those in attendance during the hot summer days that preceded her
death at the age of seventy-four. Following a slight stroke that made speech and sensibility
virtually impossible for the last two days of her life, her fearfully emaciated figure finally
succumbed to its ordeal with cancer in the evening of July 25, 1866. Coincidentally, a few
48
Legacy of a Southern Lady
months before Mrs. Calhoun’s death, confirmation of a report was received in Pendleton
that Kate Calhoun had died from “‘bilious dysentery’” at her family’s home in Florida in
May.
Anna and Floride made the arrangements for Mrs. Calhoun’s funeral, which was held
at 6 o’clock in the evening of July 26, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, the Reverend A. H.
Cornish officiating. Fortunately, Clemson and Calhoun, who had gone to Dahlonega,
Georgia, on business returned in time for the service. In the presence of a large crowd,
Mrs. Calhoun, whose husband had been buried befitting his stature as a statesman in St.
Philip’s Churchyard in Charleston, was laid to rest beside their daughter Cornelia and son
William Lowndes. Her brother, James Edward Calhoun, would later be placed between
the graves of his sister and her son, after his death in 1889.103
According to the terms of Mrs. Calhoun’s will, inclusive of codicil, as read on August 6, 1866, Anna was named her mother’s principal heir. She was the first recipient of
three-fourths of the bond and mortgage claim on Fort Hill owed to her mother by her
brother Andrew’s estate, along with most of the extant personal property and furniture,
silver and jewels. However, litigation over Fort Hill that now centered on Anna and the
Andrew Calhoun family would not be resolved until January 1872. Floride Clemson,
who acknowledged her grandmother’s noble part on her own behalf, received outright a
fourth part of the Fort Hill property title and was the designated successor to her mother’s
separate estate that would go to her brother, Calhoun, only if she died without either a
will or an heir. Thus the Fort Hill land that had been inherited by Anna’s grandmother,
Floride Bonneau Colhoun, upon the death of her husband in 1802, came to Anna and
Floride through Mrs. Calhoun, who had received title to the property after her husband’s
death in 1850.104
Soon after her grandmother’s funeral, Floride began preparations for her trip back
North, and Calhoun, still without the regular employment that he had hoped to find
at the end of the war, left Pendleton once again for the Abbeville District. The sportive
gentleman who had joined the Confederate cause in 1861 was now a sober young man
who seemed to be very anxious to get to work. Floride noted in her diary Calhoun’s supposed interest in a saw mill “& other irons in the fire.” Since Calhoun’s behavior often
irritated his father, Anna was glad to see him go. In reality, her son spent most of his time
away from Mi Casa in leisure, visiting at the Millwood plantation home of her uncle
James Calhoun, who considered the same young man who had made his father mad to be
“hearty, cheerful & always ready to make himself useful.”105
Even though Anna appeared to Floride to be never lonely, she missed the companionship of her daughter during her nine-month long travels. A year after her return to Mi
Casa, Floride contracted pneumonia in the summer of 1868 and thereafter suffered from
a chronic inflammation of the lungs. However, the debilitating condition did not deter
her efforts to publish poetry, dedicated to her mother, that she had been writing since the
early years of the war. Trying to help raise money for her war-impoverished neighbors, she
sent her poems to Benjamin Latrobe, a family friend in Baltimore, in the hope that there
would be a market for her work in magazines. Instead, Latrobe arranged for the printing
of over 500 copies of a small volume entitled Poet Skies and Other Experiments in Versification that claimed its author to be C. De Flori, an appropriate pseudonym to provide the
proper protection of Floride’s privacy as a young lady. But none of the poems that glorified
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49
the Confederate cause were suitable for publication in Baltimore, in December, 1868,
and so those heartfelt pieces of her daughter’s were preserved by Anna in manuscript form
and, much later, were eventually published. Floride, like other women of the Civil War
era who became writers of letters, journals, songs, poetry and novels, created a world of
literary fantasy where she could, in the words of historian Drew Gilpin Faust, “invent new
lives, and could imagine new selves, new identities and new meanings” in the attempt to
survive.106
Early in 1869, the twenty-six-year-old Floride became romantically interested in
Gideon Lee, Jr., of New York. Like her mother Floride was a southern lady who found
no problem falling in love with a northern gentleman. The fact that status superseded
regional identity was obvious in their choosing one another. A man almost nineteen-years
older than herself, Gideon was a veteran of the Mexican War of 1846, a first lieutenant
in Captain Baylor’s Company, Chevallie’s Battalion, Texas Mounted Volunteers. He was
the brother of the “gallant defender,” D. W. Lee and uncle
of her good friends, Laura and Isabella Leupp. They could
perhaps have met during the trip Floride made with her
father to New York and Newport in the summer of 1858,
although such a meeting was not documented in any extant family papers. Their engagement in the spring of 1869
came after a two-month courtship that followed Gideon’s
arrival in Pendleton at the end of February.
Anna found her future son-in-law to be an honest and
sincere man and thought that he and Floride were very
Gideon Lee
devoted to each other. However, in a private letter to her
Uncle James at Millwood, she also expressed concern about the cost of the forthcoming
wedding that Clemson said he could not possibly finance. Anna, on her own, had written
to Henry Gourdin, a longtime Calhoun family friend and her husband’s financial agent
in Charleston, about the possibility of using some stock he held in her name as collateral
for a $500 loan from Uncle James. Mortified to think that her daughter might have to be
married without appropriate clothing befitting her background, she assured her uncle that
she would be an honest creditor if he could save her from such a painful embarrassment
by granting her request for money.107
James Calhoun not only agreed to loan Anna the amount that she needed but also
sent the bride a gold chain, a lump of pure gold for the wedding ring along with some
wines and liquors and “1 bottle Madeira 43 yrs. old,” all from his private stock. Fascinated
with gold mining before the Civil War, he continued to be preoccupied with it afterwards
and was successful enough with the endeavor to make a wedding gift of a lump from his
mine to his great-niece, Floride. Although he could not attend the ceremony himself, his
generosity helped make it the special occasion that Anna desired for her daughter, despite
the querulous behavior of both Clemson and son Calhoun about the wedding.108
Married at ten o’clock in the morning on August 2, 1869, at St. Paul’s Episcopal
Church, the happy couple received friends for an hour or so and then, early in the afternoon, left Pendleton by train for Carmel, New York. There Gideon had previously
acquired his “Leeside” home, consisting of 150 acres of farmland that included a house
later completed in 1870. Although Anna admittedly missed Floride, she was pleased to
50
Legacy of a Southern Lady
read her weekly letters from the happy new bride. Delighted by her daughter’s apparent
joy in marriage, Anna unselfishly did not wish her back.109
On May 15, 1870, Floride gave birth to a baby girl, Floride Isabella, an event that
not only brought joy to the family but made even more meaningful the relationship
she had with her own mother. Sadly, when little “baby Lee” was
just barely fourteen months old, Floride died, on July 23, 1871.
Entries made in Gideon Lee’s journal reveal, in early June, a serious flare-up of his wife’s respiratory troubles that soon spread.
Although he spent much money for the best medical treatment
available in New York City, his beloved Floride succumbed at
home after great suffering to probable tuberculous peritonitis.
Her grief-stricken family back in South Carolina had been duly
informed of her deteriorating condition by the distraught husband. The baby girl, Floride Isabella, would be raised by a stepFloride Lee,
mother after Gideon Lee’s marriage, in 1876, to Ella Lorton of
age 2 1/2
Pendleton, a close friend of his late wife.110
Floride Clemson Lee, dead at age twenty-eight, was apparently the elegant and accomplished young lady that Anna had envisioned her to become
when she entered boarding school as a thirteen-year-old girl in 1856. From a sometimes
rebellious and disobedient youth whose misbehavior both saddened and dismayed her
mother, she had matured in Anna’s eyes into a “noble & talented woman, & a universal
favourite.”111
On the evening of August 10, 1871, Calhoun Clemson, less than a month after his thirtieth birthday and six years since his release from a Yankee prison, was killed in a train wreck
not far from Pendleton. Riding on the Blue Ridge Railroad, he suffered a fatal trauma when
a Greenville Railroad lumber train, following too closely, collided with the passenger car in
its path. Warned by the Blue Ridge conductor of the imminent collision, several passengers,
including Calhoun, attempted to get into the forward baggage car. At the moment of impact,
suspended between the two cars, he was thrown violently ahead against the door facing and
died instantly when one of his ribs ruptured his heart. This terrible accident, only seventeen
days after his sister Floride’s death, left the Clemsons devastated. The following words, inscribed on young Calhoun’s tombstone in St. Paul’s Churchyard, indicate the intensity of emotion sustained for both the defenders of the South and the objective to which they committed
themselves:
Noble, Patriotic, Brave
On The Other Side Of The River He Has Joined The Gallant Band
That Fought Beneath The Torrid Banner Of The “Lost Cause.”112
The future of good fortune that Anna had anticipated for her son, long before in a
distant land, had not come to pass. Ill health, the dreadful ordeal of civil war and its aftermath, and ultimately, an avoidable calamity could not have been imagined by the loving
mother who, at that time, took such delight in her little boy.113
Chapter Three
The “glory of the house”
Fort Hill mansion
James H. Rion, a Calhoun family friend, described Anna Clemson after her death “as
a child who inherited more of her father’s great talents than any other of his children.” One
of ten children in the family of John and Floride Calhoun, Anna’s birth followed the deaths
of two baby sisters born after her brother Andrew. It would be this sibling who saw his sister
at the time of her marriage to Thomas Clemson as the true “glory of the house.” At a time
when gender conventions universally accepted female subordination, Andrew’s affirmation
of Anna’s attributes did not alter the fact that her sphere as a woman was limited by the patriarchal society that promoted the potential of her brothers. Under her father’s tutelage and
her mother’s supervision, she could shine as a southern lady, but she would never be allowed
to assume authority over those considered to be of the superior sex.
Always one who cherished family life, Anna treasured her time in the midst of the Calhoun brood and did her best to promote harmony in the home. She especially doted on her
brother Patrick and was particularly attentive to the special needs of her semi-invalid sister,
Cornelia. In essence, she was a good sister who took her role as a sibling seriously, but loyalty
to her husband superseded all else in his rift with her brother Andrew over money. Ironically,
the ruined relationship between Anna and her brother would ultimately be resolved, in a
different generation, by the marriage of her granddaughter to Andrew’s grandson in 1895.
A close look at Anna’s relationship with her siblings will span the time from her birth, in
1817, to her return, to the Calhoun family’s Fort Hill home with Clemson, in 1872, three
years before her death.
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53
“Now mother is the only one left of all the seven children grandfather left when he died.”
S
ix years before her own untimely death in 1871, Floride Clemson had made the
above remark in her diary after the death of her uncle Andrew in 1865.1 With the
passing of her grandmother, Floride Calhoun, the following year, her mother became the sole surviving member of the immediate family of John C. Calhoun. The unnatural tragedy of the loss of both Floride Clemson Lee and her brother, Calhoun, as
young adults left Anna in despair, grown old beside her husband, as she returned with him
to live at Fort Hill in 1872.
Although “dear old Fort Hill,” for which she had longed during her Belgian years,
was the home of cherished family memories, it was not the place of her birth or early
childhood years. Born at her father’s Bath plantation in the Abbeville District, little Anna
Maria left the South Carolina upcountry at the age of nine months. In November 1817,
she traveled by carriage with her parents and six-year-old brother Andrew to Washington,
D.C. A member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 1811, during the presidency
of James Madison, John C. Calhoun had accepted President James Monroe’s offer of the
Cabinet post of secretary of war. Motivated by “a sincere desire to add” to the national
prosperity, he arrived with his family in December in the nation’s capital, where they
would reside for the next eight years.2
Living, at first, as the guests of a close political friend, Congressman William Lowndes,
and his family, the Calhouns later moved into a big house in the center of Washington,
at 6th and E streets, located halfway between the Capitol and the White House. During
their return to South Carolina in 1819, Mrs. Calhoun gave birth to her fifth child in October. Anna’s baby sister, Elizabeth, who lived for only five months, died from complications with a cold on March 22, 1820, back at the family’s home in Washington. Two other
baby girls, Floride and Jane, had died before Anna’s birth in 1817. Within less than a year,
Patrick, the brother that Anna would later come to characterize by “his kind manners &
noble heart,” was born on February 9, 1821, just a few days before her fourth birthday.3
Residing with the Calhouns in Washington was Mrs. Calhoun’s fifty-five-year-old
mother, Floride Bonneau Colhoun, who would be a presence in the life of her granddaughter during Anna’s childhood and teenage years. Married in 1786 to lawyer John
Ewing Colhoun, John C. Calhoun’s first cousin, Anna’s grandmother Floride had initially
inherited, in 1788, King Street property in Charleston from her father, Samuel Bonneau,
a wealthy rice planter of St. John’s Parish in Berkeley County. In this instance, her father
ensured the protection of his daughter’s property after her marriage. According to historian Suzanne Lebsock’s study of the women of Petersburg, Virginia, the acquisition of a
separate estate that gave a woman legal property was, at that time, rare. Mrs. Colhoun,
who eventually acquired the family’s Cooper River plantation, Bonneau’s Ferry, the wedding place of Anna’s parents in 1811, was indeed a woman of privilege with inherited
land holdings from both her father and husband, a United States Senator at the time of
his death in 1802. She purchased for her daughter Floride’s family in 1822 a summer
place in Georgetown Heights, a pretty part of the Washington area that bordered above
the northern boundary of the town. The deed to the property signed on April 1, 1823,
was registered in the name of her son, James Edward, then a midshipman in the United
States Navy.4
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Legacy of a Southern Lady
For the next few years, the Calhouns divided their time in Washington between
Georgetown and the city’s center, close to the Capitol. In their house at 6th and E Streets
the “addition of a fine boy” to the family on May 17, 1823, was reported ten days later
by Anna’s father to her uncle John Ewing Colhoun, Jr., back in South Carolina. Although
as yet unnamed, the parents were disposed to call him John. The baby, baptized John
Caldwell, joined young Andrew, Anna Maria, and Patrick in the family of John and
Floride Calhoun. The next year in May, another letter from Calhoun to his brother-in-law
in South Carolina noted that his sister Floride had “added a fine daughter to our family,”
with the birth in Georgetown of Martha Cornelia on April 22. Apparently, there was no
indication at the time that this child, after whom Anna would one day name a daughter,
would be deformed and deaf and live her life as something of a semi-invalid. Sources do
not definitively indicate whether these defects were congenital, hereditary, acquired during development, or the result of an accident.5
Less than a year after Cornelia’s birth and the day after Anna’s eighth birthday, on
February 13, 1825, President-elect John Quincy Adams, still serving in his capacity as secretary of state, notified Calhoun of his own election “to the office of Vice-President of the
United States.” In the same month of his inauguration, in March, he sold his Washington
house at 6th and E Streets and, after a summer spent in South Carolina, returned to the
nation’s capital in November and settled his wife and children in Georgetown, in what
became their principal residence. Named “Oakly” by Calhoun, the property, known today
as “Dumbarton Oaks,” was home to his family until they left again for South Carolina
in July 1826. Their household at that time included a baby boy as well as Andrew, Anna,
Patrick, John, and Cornelia, because Floride had given birth, on April 22 (coincidentally,
on Cornelia’s second birthday), to a son called James Edward, after his uncle.6
In a letter written in June to his mother-in-law in South Carolina, Calhoun informed
her that he and Floride concluded their family’s best interest would be advanced by moving to the South for a more healthful climate. Earlier, he had written to her about very
severe colds with coughs that had plagued all of the children except baby James and about
three-year-old John, Jr., who, despite his recovery, had been near death for almost a week
in May. Although Floride preferred waiting until fall, when the roads would be dry, a relapse in John’s condition, symptomatic of a serious lung infection for which there seemed
no medical remedy, prompted the family’s hurried departure, on July 19, for the upcountry Pendleton District (now Anderson, Pickens, and Oconee counties). Once settled
there, the children flourished, as Calhoun gladly reported to Floride’s brother James, who
was by then a navy lieutenant on the frigate Macedonian, off the coast of Brazil. Calhoun
later mentioned that nine-year-old Anna Maria had gone to Edgefield, to attend a female
academy, while Andrew was going to a local school and while Patrick, John, and Cornelia
were being tutored at home. “Maria,” he noted in another letter to James, written right
after her tenth birthday, in February of 1827, acquired knowledge “with the greatest facility.” This assessment, made by his long-time friend, Eldred Simkins, with whose family
she stayed in Edgefield,7 undoubtedly pleased the proud father.
The Clergy Hall residence of Mrs. Calhoun’s mother was home for the Calhoun family on their return to South Carolina in the summer of 1826. The town of Pendleton, just
a few miles away, provided “churches, an academy, merchants, artisans, a weekly newspaper, an agricultural society, a circulating library, twice-weekly mail, and connection with
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55
the outside world by flatboat, freight-wagon, and regularly scheduled passenger stages to
Greenville and Augusta.” Located upon land inherited from her husband, the late Senator
John Ewing Colhoun, Floride Colhoun’s modest house, Clergy Hall, having been built
originally as the Presbyterian manse for the nearby Old Stone Church, consisted of only
four rooms. Also owned by Floride Colhoun, the Keowee plantation that her late husband built in 1792 was the residence of her son, John Ewing Colhoun, Jr.. Although her
son-in-law John Calhoun intended to build a new house adjacent to the former rectory,
he and his wife, Floride, ended up enlarging the simple structure to a total of fourteen
rooms to accommodate their family’s needs. Their last child, named William Lowndes
for Calhoun’s good friend, who had died in 1822, was born on August 13, 1829, in the
renovated and expanded house that by 1830 Calhoun began to call “Fort Hill” in his
home correspondence.
Interestingly, in the community today where the Calhouns and Clemsons once lived,
there is an historical marker on the bank of Twelve Mile River at the juncture of Six Mile
Highway and the Old Six Mile Road that identifies John Ewing Colhoun and the site of
his Keowee plantation home which was inherited by his son, John Ewing. This marker,
erected in 1966 by the Foundation for Historic Restoration in the Pendleton Area, makes
the connection between Senator Colhoun’s daughter Floride and her husband, John C.
Calhoun (Floride’s father’s cousin), and their Fort Hill plantation home (2 1/2 miles
south). Also noted in the bygone community is the nearby Hopewell residence of Colhoun’s sister Rebecca, wife of the Revolutionary War hero General Andrew Pickens.
The birth in 1829 of the Calhouns’ last child, William Lowndes, coincided with
Anna’s return from school in Edgefield and Andrew’s entrance into the junior class at Yale,
along with their father’s resumption of the office of vice-president in the new administration of Andrew Jackson.8
Calhoun was surprised but delighted that his
oldest boy, Andrew Pickens, named for his greatuncle the Revolutionary War General, had decided
to enroll at his father’s own alma mater, Yale. Understandably, the vice-president found quite painful the unexpected news of his son’s expulsion in
late August of 1830. Although fifty-five students
apologized for the class disruption that had caused
their dismissal from school and were consequently
reinstated, Andrew was not one of them. Calhoun
wrote Professor James Kingsley of his great distress
at what had happened and directed Andrew to return immediately to South Carolina. The following
year, both Anna and her brother entered schools in
Columbia, with her enrollment at the South CaroAndrew Pickens
lina Female Collegiate Institute just outside the city
and his at South Carolina College in the center of the capital. While she stood at the head
of her class during her one-year stay, he left before the end of his senior year, in 1832,
without a diploma.9
Fifteen-year-old Anna returned home to Fort Hill, where she began to instruct her
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Legacy of a Southern Lady
younger brothers in reading and writing and to enjoy once again being in the midst of her
family. The twenty-one-year-old Andrew, who had married Eugenia Chappell of Columbia, in January 1833, decided to settle at his father’s Bath plantation in the Abbeville District. Unfortunately, his wife died a year later, not long after the birth of a baby daughter,
followed by the child’s death on New Year’s Day, 1835. Andrew was once again left in a
state of bereavement until his courtship with Anna’s friend Margaret Green began in the
spring. Anna had accompanied her father, then serving in the U. S. Senate, to Washington for the winter, and she returned to South Carolina in March with Margaret, whose
father, Telegraph newspaper editor, Duff Green, strongly supported Calhoun’s presidential
ambitions.10
Visiting in Edgefield with Anna’s close friend Maria Simkins while en route to Fort
Hill, Anna and Margaret were joined there in late April by Andrew, who escorted them
the rest of the distance to the Calhoun plantation. Romance flourished at Fort Hill between Margaret and Andrew, following what Anna described as “indeed a disastrous trip”
in which one of the horses pulling their stagecoach drowned at a crossing on the Savannah
River. When the girls returned to Washington with Calhoun in December, Andrew soon
arrived to reside with his sister and father at Mrs. Lindenberger’s Capitol Hill boarding
house. Anna, though surprised to see her brother, had really expected him to come.
On May 5, 1836, Andrew Calhoun married Margaret Green in the nation’s capital,11 a happy event especially meaningful for Anna, whose friend Margaret was now her
brother’s wife. Two weeks prior to their wedding in Washington, the seventy-one-yearold Mrs. Floride Colhoun died in South Carolina, on April 21. The death of the family
matriarch after a long illness was somewhat of a relief and the division of her large estate
among her three children—John Ewing, Floride, and James Edward—resulted in her sonin-law, John C. Calhoun’s gaining ownership of the Fort Hill property that he and his wife
Floride had been renting for ten years. John Ewing took over the Keowee plantation and
James Edward, who had ended his naval service in 1829 and was still a bachelor, acquired
extensive landholdings held by his mother in the upcountry.12
Expecting their first child in the summer of 1837, Andrew and Margaret were reunited with Anna at Fort Hill as they awaited the birth of the baby. Having returned to
South Carolina after another winter of working for her father in Washington, Anna had
been on hand for the advent of President Martin Van Buren’s administration. Back at
home, she was surrounded by all of her siblings except for Patrick, who, at age eighteen,
was a cadet at West Point. Determined to correspond faithfully with her dear brother, she
wrote him regularly about events at home, beginning with the visit of British geologist
Mr. George Featherstonhaugh.13
This entertaining gentleman, whom Anna described as being very amusing during his
four-day stay at Fort Hill, had been in the Pendleton area once during the preceding year.
Quite taken with the lovely mountain scenery, the healthy country air and the hospitality
of his amiable hosts, Featherstonhaugh noted in the record of his travels that he found
Fort Hill to be “a charming house, amidst all the refinement and comfort that are inseparable from the condition of well bred and honourable persons.” He was appreciative of the
exquisitely prepared Carolina cuisine served at Mrs. Calhoun’s table, and his account of an
admirable breakfast at Fort Hill complimented the “excellent coffee with delicious cream,
and that capital, national dish of South Carolina, snow-white hominy brought to table
Chapter Three
57
like macaroni, which ought always to be eaten, with lumps of sweet fresh butter buried
in it!” In the most agreeable companionship and interesting conversation enjoyed on the
portico after dinner in the evenings, he saw a big difference in the manners of the southern
elite and those at the head of society in the middle and northern states. He observed an
outlook in the South that was “always liberal and instructive” and also “a great solicitude”
for the welfare of the slaves, especially on the part of the southern ladies, who, he said,
showed a great deal of compassion and affection to all those born on the family plantation.
In all likelihood, such feelings did exist but without reciprocating sentiment from the
slaves themselves, so the veracity of Mr. Featherstonhaugh’s view is subject to speculation.
The scene at Sunday morning service at nearby Pendleton’s Episcopal Church, “a neat
temple prettily situated in a shady grove,” reminded him of “an English country church
in a good neighborhood.” According to the visiting Englishman, the Episcopal church in
Republican America, like England’s own national church, was “a strong bond of union
amongst the educated and well-bred.”14
Fort Hill was temporarily without an adult white male in residence, with Calhoun
gone to Washington by the end of August. Andrew, by then the father of a baby boy, accompanied by Featherstonhaugh, was away for two weeks at his father’s O’Bar gold mine
near Dahlonega, Georgia. Fourteen-year-old John, as Anna wrote to Patrick, now sat
at the head of the table as the “oldest man” in the house. On a more serious note about
thirteen-year-old, crippled Cornelia, Anna confided to her brother that their poor sister,
although no worse, was not at all improved and with little expectation that she ever would
be. In reply to Patrick’s account of a certain Miss Pettigrew’s firing the canon at West
Point, Anna’s own response to such a notorious thing was as follows: “It is hard enough to
avoid being talked of do what we will but I never should think of provoking observations
by any of those things which many ladies are apt to think give them an air of independence when indeed they only show off their desire for notoriety.”15
Although Anna had planned to spend the winter with Maria Simkins at her family’s
home in Edgefield, she ended up, instead, staying nearby at her cousin Francis Pickens’s
Edgewood plantation. Both his wife, Eliza, and Maria, her sister, were nursing their dying
mother, Eliza Smith Simkins, at Edgewood. Thinking herself to be of assistance in helping them with Mrs. Simkins’s constant care, Anna had decided that she would not be in
the way at such a difficult time. The suffering Mrs. Simkins died of consumption on New
Year’s Day, 1838, and Anna planned to remain for a while at Edgewood with Maria and
Eliza. About two weeks before the death of Mrs. Simkins, the child of Andrew and Margaret, “little John C.,” had died unexpectedly at Fort Hill, on December 21.
No one had missed her dear Pat more than Anna had, and, as one who loved him very
much and took great interest in his welfare, she hoped that he would follow her example
of promptly replying when answering letters. She was preparing some “scolding” remarks
when a letter that arrived at Edgewood from West Point saved his credit and prevented
her from sending any such reprimands. She promised her brother that if she had the opportunity to go to Washington in the spring, she would beg their papa to take her to see
him. “I do not know anything that would delight me more than to spend a few days with
my dear brother,” she told Patrick, towards the end of January.16
By early March, her plans to start for Washington were set so long as good weather
continued. Accompanied by Maria’s brother Arthur, Anna wrote to Patrick that she would
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take to the capital what was said to be an excellent route from Charleston via steamboat
and railroad, with very little stage traveling. She reassured him that she would do all in her
power to make their reunion possible, having last received from him such a loving letter
of anticipation at the idea of seeing his father and sister. “Indeed my dear Pat,” she said, “I
never knew how much I loved you, or how necessary you were to my happiness before.”
She promised not to indulge in useless sentiment, although feeling inclined to give way
to her emotions and have a good cry remembering the many pleasant days they had spent
together in the past and thinking how much time must elapse before they could enjoy
such again. She told her brother that, had it not been for his affectionate expression that
made her feel more acutely than usual the distance between them and the many changes
that might take place during their time apart, she would not have unduly entertained
such thoughts. Instead of encouraging what seemed to be his depression by showing how
much her feelings were in accord with his, she wrote him that she should try to present a
brighter prospect to his view. Their happy meeting and the pleasure that all could enjoy in
his improvement would amply repay the separation from one another.
However, Anna urged her “dearest brother” to always cherish the attachment between
them so that, whatever might occur, they could each feel that the other was a friend who
truly cared. In a last bit of advice for one whose feelings she felt to be so honourable and
just, she nevertheless stated the importance of not doing anything of doubtful propriety.
At least by following strictly this rule of conduct one would never have to face his own
guilt at any unintentional error.17
Anna continued to correspond with Patrick at West Point once she was settled by
mid-April in Washington with her father and was sympathetic about the regulations with
which he had been expected to comply under the authority of his commanding officer.
Praising her brother for what she knew to be his good sense in realizing that obstinate
behavior did not show either spirit or independence, she was glad that he had acquiesced
in the requirements rather than rebelled against them. In her own words to him on the
purpose of education, she expressed the following opinion: “You do not go to school to
show your spirit, but to improve your mind, and render yourself a worthy member of
society, and leave it to your future life, to exhibit on all proper occasions, that you possess
true courage, which is always accompanied by gentleness.” Proud to tell him that their
father was very happy with his son’s conduct and standing, she felt certain that Patrick,
like herself, would be much pleased and inspired by the praise of a loved one.
Cornelia seemed to be contented and happy while staying with the Duff Greens, the
family of Andrew’s wife Margaret, and receiving treatment from Baltimore physicians for
her crooked spine. In Anna’s view, little hope of a cure existed for the fourteen-year-old’s
condition; however, arresting the disease at its present state, she believed, would be worth
every effort. The general prognosis of the examining specialists in what was beginning to
be termed orthopedics was promising, and, within five weeks time, Cornelia’s continuing
improvement had prompted the doctors to give the family much greater hopes of her recovery. Their sister, as Anna reported to Patrick, was more animated than she had ever seen
her. Anna even had hope that the “dear little creature” could perhaps be cured. Although
the treatments were beneficial and the wearing of braces enabled her to move about much
more normally than she ever had, Cornelia’s spine was never completely straightened.18
After spending the winter so quietly at Edgewood, Anna confessed to Patrick that
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she presumed she would enjoy very much the capital city’s many spring events. She rather
dreaded, however, the humorous thought of “commencing the round of dissipation” that
lay ahead for her in May. Sometime during this month, amidst races, balls, and the theater, the twenty-one-year-old Anna met Thomas Clemson, the man she would marry and
whose courtship of her must have been well under way by the start of summer. In letters
to both her friend Maria and brother Patrick, there are only intimations to the relationship that would become one of the most meaningful in her life. At the same time Anna
was apparently falling in love with Clemson, she openly expressed her feelings of delight
to Patrick about the prospect of seeing once more a brother she loved so much. Quick to
communicate the good news that their father had arranged a leave of absence for Patrick
to join them in Washington towards the end of June, she wrote: “I am so happy at the
idea of seeing you, that I can scarcely write coherently.” Unaware of Patrick’s pranks while
on a recent brief leave in New York City, Anna praised her brother for his good conduct
and high-class standing that she thought had prompted Calhoun to think of this plan as a
reward. The seventeen-year-old cadet settled the extravagant debts he had incurred while
drinking and gambling by borrowing funds from his mother’s wealthy merchant cousin,
Edward Boisseau. Having thus paid for his illicit expenses, Patrick obviously escaped the
censure of his father, who had somehow learned of his son’s escapades but still followed
through on the procurement of a furlough for him.19
Apparently, sometime between the reunion with her brother in June and her return
to South Carolina with her father in mid-July, Anna had accepted the proposal of Thomas
Clemson. From Fort Hill, she wrote to Maria, on July 22, about the wedding “event”
planned for the fall, and she wrote to Patrick, a month later, about her concern over his
feelings for Clemson. “I am anxious you should love him for my sake,” she said, “and am
sure you will do so when you know him better.” With the onset of fall at Fort Hill, she
missed Patrick more than ever. The sight of trees slightly tinged with color and the hazy
atmosphere recalled memories of their nice rides and walks. “If you were only here,” she
wrote, “what a delightful gallop we might take.” Melancholy at the thought of how long
it might be before she should ride with him again, she asked God to bless her dearest
brother.20
By late October, the wedding date had been set for November 13. The gathering of
family and friends for the nuptials brought Andrew back from Alabama, where he had
found land to his liking in Marengo County. In need of money to purchase the Canebrake plantation there, he arranged for the matter of financing with his father and future
brother-in-law during the trip home for the festivities. At the same time that Clemson’s
love for Anna brought him into the Calhoun family, the fateful business venture that he
entered into essentially ruined the relationship between his wife and Andrew who did not
pay him back for the loan. Loyal to her husband, Anna felt keenly his resentment of her
brother, in whose eyes she shone on her wedding day as truly “the glory of the house.”
The total cost of $20,000 for the Alabama property was primarily financed by a bank
loan procured by Clemson on the backing of a joint bond held by Calhoun and his son
Andrew. Clemson was frustrated that by the fifth year of the investment, when he needed
money to finance his own plantation in the Edgefield District, he had yet to receive “the
first cent” of profit from Andrew. To purchase additional slaves, he had to resort to loans
negotiated by himself and his father-in-law. Anna, writing to Patrick at his Fort Towson
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post in Arkansas Territory, admitted that her husband’s troubles worried her, as well, especially since they came, as she said, “from my family.” Wistfully, she expressed the hope that
they would “prove but summer clouds & blow away leaving the heavens but the brighter
from contrast.”21
Ever since her marriage, Anna had looked forward to having her dear Pat spend as
much time as he could with Clemson and herself. Before his graduation from West Point
in 1841, she informed him of her pleasure in hearing that he had become more comfortable with the ladies. Believing that all women of any breeding exhibited a certain ease and
social grace which they imparted to their associates, she approved of Patrick’s presence in
their company. Of course, she told him, “I mean in moderation. I should regret much to
see you a mere ladies man,” a “despicable character,” in her view.
In the fall of 1842, thirteen-year-old William (“Willie”) Lowndes was the oldest boy
about the house at Fort Hill, with Patrick serving as an army lieutenant and John and
James attending a Quaker boarding school in Alexandria, Virginia. Anna, who awaited
there the birth of her third child, found her youngest brother to be as “full of tricks as a
little monkey” and proposed to “box him up & send him” to Patrick for his amusement.
Even though she herself was indisposed in her last month of pregnancy, the rest of the
household was quite well. Cornelia, she thought, could hear a little better, thanks to a pair
of ear cornets and would hopefully improve still more when she consented to have her ear
cleaned and treated with oil.
After only four months away at boarding school in Alexandria, sixteen-year-old
James, according to nineteen-year-old John, had become, like his brother Patrick, careful
in his dress and comfortable with the ladies. However, with James’s return home in the
spring of 1843, Anna expressed to Patrick her concern that this brother would fall back
into his aimless hunting habits. John, on the other hand, showed signs from his letters
at the Virginia University, where he had entered in March, of
acquiring a true understanding of what really mattered in life.
His rapid progress in school was unfortunately offset, she said,
by poor health from his old throat infection and constant cough
and chest pain.
Andrew returned to Fort Hill for a week in the fall to conclude some business, exhibiting enthusiasm and unusual good
will. Anna wrote to Maria, by then the wife of James Edward
Calhoun, that her brother looked as well as she had ever seen
him and had cordially conducted negotiations with their father
James Edward Calhoun and her husband concerning the money owed to Clemson. The
three men signed a statement that seemed to settle Calhoun’s
and Andrew’s indebtedness by the terms of a due bill on demand and two promissory
notes, payable in installments. Calhoun continued to view Andrew’s Alabama plantation
as profitable and productive and believed that cotton sales could cover all their financial
obligations.22
The illness of his son John was another source of personal concern to Calhoun in
1843. The young man seemed to Anna to be improving when home from Virginia on
summer vacation, but he was soon forced to withdraw from school for health reasons.
Trying to recuperate, he traveled around among family and friends and, early in 1844,
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joined the Clemsons, who had just moved into Canebrake, their Edgefield District home.
During John’s four-month stay, Anna found her brother to be a fine young man whose
presence was truly a pleasure. Mistaken, at first, by his almost three-year-old nephew,
Calhoun Clemson, for his “uncle Paddy,” John endeared himself to his sister’s little boy.
Her son especially missed him after his departure with Patrick, in late spring, to join a
troop of dragoons at Fort Bent, a distance of some 700 miles from St. Louis. Very worried
about John, who went west with Patrick for his health, Anna hoped that he might get
better during the trip.
While John and Patrick spent the summer months on the plains, Anna prepared to
move her family to Europe because her husband had accepted a diplomatic appointment
as Chargé d’Affaires to the Belgian court. Both the Clemsons’ arrival in Brussels, in late
fall of 1844, and the coincidental enrollment of James at the University of Virginia, in
Charlottesville, required personal adjustments. Anna’s longing for her family in America,
especially her father, made adaptation to life abroad somewhat difficult for her. Within
seven months, the nineteen-year-old James’s aversion for study and academic discipline
led to his expulsion from school, much to the chagrin of his parents. Just as Andrew’s
refusal to apologize for his part in a class disturbance, fifteen years earlier at Yale, had
resulted in his dismissal from college in 1830, James’s refusal to testify against fellow students involved in disorderly behavior had the same consequence at Virginia in 1845. Evidently, Andrew and James did not share their sister Anna’s belief that a stubborn attitude
rebelled against the purpose of education to “improve your mind, and render yourself a
worthy member of society.”23
As Anna struggled from abroad with the teaching of her own youngsters, Calhoun
and Floride, and admitted to her father that she found them boisterous and sometimes
unruly during their morning lessons, he contended with the educational problems of two
of her brothers. James and Willie, after only a few days in attendance, dropped out of Erskine College, in Due West, in the fall of 1845. Having been taken to the school by their
Uncle James, they proceeded to spend the following months at his Millwood plantation
in the Abbeville District and eventually enrolled at South Carolina College. Within two
years of his matriculation in 1846, James, now a serious student, was a class leader. His
nineteen-year-old brother, Willie, after testing well, was admitted to the sophomore class.
By the time the Clemsons arrived home for a visit in the fall of 1848, not only were James
and Willie doing fine, but John had received his medical diploma in Philadelphia. His tubercular condition, seemingly arrested since his summer trip west with Patrick and a winter spent with Andrew and Margaret in Alabama, had not prevented him from studying
medicine in Charleston and moving to Philadelphia for the completion of his degree.
Unfortunately Anna, who after a six-months’ stay in America had set sail with her
family from New York in May, was unable to attend John’s wedding at Fort Hill on July
3, 1849. From afar in Brussels, she made note of the general consensus that the bride,
popular Anzie Adams of Pendleton, was thought to look like her and had the qualities of a
good woman. Glad that all appeared to be very fond of Anzie, she hoped that her brother
had a wife who would make him happy and take care of him throughout his life.24
Followed by John’s good fortune, the news from Patrick, stationed in New Orleans
for four years since 1845, made Anna increasingly uneasy about her brother. He was not
only recovering from cholera, the dread disease that had taken the life of his command-
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ing officer, but was also struggling with tuberculosis. Declared in his condition unfit for
service for a few months, he left New Orleans in November to convalesce, much as John
had done, at Andrew’s Alabama plantation. There, in the winter of 1850, the ailing Patrick
received from Anna a letter of sympathetic advice in which she revealed much about the
nature of her relationship with her husband.
“Dont give way to low spirits,” she wrote her dear Pat. She reminded him of her own
ill health for four years, from the death of her infant child in 1839 to the months following the birth of her daughter Floride at the end of 1842, and attributed her recovery
primarily to her attitude in the face of adversity. Furthermore, she continued, “we all
know the state of the mind influences greatly the body, & nothing is more injurious, even
to those who are in good health, than habitual despondency,” her own husband, “Mr
C.,” being “a case in point of that.” Although he was, she told Pat, liable to the “blues”
and “dyspeptic & ailing” at the time of their marriage, “he is now as hearty a man as you
will meet in a summer’s day.” She always believed that his ill health arose mainly from his
mental state and confided “entre nous”:
I commenced by never worrying him myself, & trying to prevent his having any
real cause to fret, & then, when he got low spirited, I amused him, & joked with
him, & tho’ I took him too old, & can never make him a gay or amiable man it is
really wonderful how much he has improved.
In telling comments to her brother about her husband’s behavior, Anna admitted that
Clemson, though sometimes “cross” in spells of gloom, was much easier to humour and
cheer up again. “The fits,” she said, “are far apart & yield easily to my efforts.”25
Patrick’s illness was undoubtedly troubling for his family, but of even graver concern
was the condition of the patriarch himself, John C. Calhoun. In declining health ever
since a bout with congestive fever in 1845, he died of consumption on March 31, 1850,
with his son John the only family member present at his bedside in Washington. Grieved
at the passing of her dearest father and at being so far away from those who shared the
loss of such a sympathetic parent, Anna wrote from Brussels to her brother James that in
a grief like theirs they should “cling the closer to those who are left.” Deeply interested
in his success in life, she asked her dear brother still in college to write her about what he
intended to do. “Perhaps my experience in life,” she wrote, “may enable me some times to
give you good counsel.” Maturity, she thought, would help him to appreciate the importance of family. Should James and Willie, also in school, think they could profit from a
year or so in Europe before beginning their life’s work, she assured James that they would
always be welcome at the home of the Clemsons.26
Grief-stricken at the death of her father, Anna was also saddened at the thought that
Fort Hill, encumbered by debt, would be dismantled. She was pained that some of the
slaves, for whom she thought her father had been such a kind master, might now be sold
or at least separated. Clemson’s main concern, however, centered around the money for
the Alabama investment, valued at $16,000 with interest, still owed to him jointly by
Calhoun’s estate in conjunction with Andrew.
In a letter to Patrick at Fort Hill, Clemson acknowledged, in June, that Anna’s father
had left no will with the rest of the estate not to be divided until Willie came of age in
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August. Since he had heard from no one on the subject of Calhoun’s affairs, Clemson
informed Patrick that he had asked Armistead Burt, a lawyer and family relation, to represent his interests regarding the settlement of the debt due him. Clemson also wrote
Andrew P. Calhoun, via a letter forwarded by Burt at Clemson’s request. His position was
a very hard one, as he wrote in a letter to Patrick. The Edgefield plantation, which he had
proposed to stock with funds owed to him by Calhoun and Andrew, had, he said, “but
little more than paid its expenses, & the interest on the debt so irregularly paid.” He had
lost money and was forced to live very frugally in his diplomatic post. Requesting that the
amount in arrears be paid by January 1851, Clemson asked Patrick to aid him in concluding the painful matter.27
Clemson also asked for a personal leave of absence from Secretary of State John
Clayton, as he needed to be in the United States to assist in settling Anna’s interest in
her father’s estate. Another reason that made his return home almost a necessity, he told
Patrick in early August, was the need to dispose of his Edgefield plantation. The property,
he said, had been a burden on his back, had given him much trouble, and had brought no
profits. By this time, however, the fact that he had had no response to his petition to the
secretary of state was, he supposed, owing to the death of the president and the change of
the cabinet. President Zachary Taylor had died on July 9, 1850, and Daniel Webster had
become the secretary of state in the new administration of Millard Fillmore.
Fortunately for the Calhoun family, a group of Charlestonian friends had presented
“a purse of $27,000” to the statesman’s widow in July 1850. Money collected to relieve
Calhoun’s debts and send him to Europe for his health was used to save Fort Hill. Clemson encouraged his mother-in-law to accept the generous gift on behalf of one who had
worked his whole life at the sacrifice of private interests for the welfare of his state and
nation. In a letter to her granddaughter Floride, Mrs. Calhoun wrote on August 11, two
days before her youngest son Willie’s twenty-first birthday: “The State has made Grandmother a present of $27,000 dollars, to do as she pleases with. Have they not been very
kind?”28
Mrs. Calhoun received title to the Fort Hill property of 1,341 acres for the token sum
of $10,000 in a “Deed of Conveyance” signed and sealed on August 27, 1850, by all of
her children except Anna, who was in Brussels. Along with Cornelia and John, who were
to live at Fort Hill, Anna shared in the ownership of the property with their mother while
the other sons were partners in the Alabama plantation.
In October, Anna learned from her mother the sad story of the death of John’s wife
Anzie in childbirth and his plan to move to Florida for his health. As Cornelia was hard
of hearing, Mrs. Calhoun planned to look for a white woman companion to live with her.
The angry exchange of letters between Clemson and her son Andrew would not affect her
love, she assured Anna. “Being the Husband of a daughter, I love devotedly,” she wrote,
“would induce me to think well of him, so long as he treats her well and is kind to me.”
The rest of the family also, she said, “think highly of Mr. Clemson and nothing Andrew
can say to us would make us think the less of him.” As to her husband’s feelings towards
his son-in-law, she had never heard sentiments that echoed Andrew’s views, nor did she
believe that Calhoun ever had them.
Apparently Clemson’s letter to Andrew by way of Armistead Burt in June had provoked what he considered to be an unheard of and injurious reply from his irate brother-
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in-law. Clemson, in turn, had written to Patrick at the end of August and defended himself to his wife’s family, for whom he professed the sincerest affection. He could not bear
to think that anything could cause a coolness in their future relations and maintained
that, if he and Calhoun had acted alone in the Alabama venture, they would have had no
difficulty between them. Having loved and respected Calhoun as his own father, Clemson
was, he said, more hurt than he could express by Andrew’s accusations that he had been
critical and unkind.29
Meanwhile, according to a letter from Mrs. Calhoun to Andrew in Alabama, Anna
was worried to distraction by her brother’s correspondence with her husband. In very precarious health, she had sustained heart and chest spasms and anticipated not living long.
She had told her mother that, although her father’s death had shocked her nervous system,
the matchless feelings she had on reading Andrew’s letter had put her under a doctor’s care
ever since. Every insult to her husband she took personally. Admonishing Andrew about a
temper that would always mislead him, Mrs. Calhoun hoped that this occurrence would
forever after be a lesson learned through life. She said, “Should you be the reason of your
sister’s death, I know you will never get over it, while you live.” Reminding Andrew that,
above all else, Clemson “is your sister’s husband and your brother-in-law, and one she is
devotedly attached to,” Mrs. Calhoun advised her son to let Clemson do what he wanted.
In the attempt to soothe things between her children, she encouraged Andrew to write
immediately to Anna and apologize for his angry words. Furthermore, Mrs. Calhoun had
written her daughter to say that her brother would be pained if he knew how much his
sister had been wounded by his letter.30 No extant correspondence suggests what action
Andrew may have taken to mend relations with Anna.
By the end of the year Clemson received notification from then Secretary of State
Daniel Webster of the appointment of a new American Chargé d’Affaires to the Belgian Court. However, having already made arrangements to spend the winter abroad, he
and his family did not leave Europe until the spring of 1851. Now that James Calhoun,
studying law in Charleston, was the administrator of his father’s estate, it was to him that
Clemson again affirmed his desire for the still-outstanding debt held jointly by that entity
and by Andrew. Wishing to satisfy his brother-in-law’s request in a single payment, James
approached Andrew about a simultaneous transaction of shares. Although Andrew came
to Fort Hill in the summer in the attempt to conclude a final settlement with Clemson,
the controversial matter remained in the hands of a mediator; meanwhile, Anna reached
an agreement with her mother to sell her interest in Fort Hill to Mrs. Calhoun for the
sum of $10,000. A bequest from the estate of her cousin Edward Boisseau would cover at
least half of this amount for Mrs. Calhoun. About ten months after arriving home from
Europe, Clemson received payment, in February of 1852, on the debt owed him from
Calhoun’s estate. There is no record of a settlement between Andrew and Clemson on the
disputed debt, over $8,000, and, in later years, Clemson often declared “that he had been
cheated.”
Back from abroad, Clemson bought a farm close to Washington, near Bladensburg,
Maryland. After traveling around with his family from south to north for two years, he
made a purchase in June of 1853 that enabled him to try his hand again at agriculture. The
sale of the Canebrake property had been completed shortly after his family’s return from
Europe and with no present prospect of another diplomatic post, he decided to try plant-
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ing crops again. At the same time that Anna was establishing a new home for her family in
Maryland, her mother in South Carolina was considering giving up her responsibilities as
mistress at Fort Hill. Since Andrew, in Alabama, had been advised that his wife, Margaret,
needed a healthier climate in which to live, he approached his mother in 1854 about buying the Calhoun family plantation. Because John had moved away to Florida a few years
earlier, Mrs. Calhoun and Cornelia agreed to the sale for $49,000, inclusive of fifty slaves
and supplies, along with the house and land, with living quarters in the home reserved for
both mother and daughter. Unfortunately for Andrew’s finances, the contract that he had
negotiated for the sale of his plantation was rescinded by the prospective buyer after he
had already approached his mother about selling her home. The resulting settlement between the two men left Andrew stuck with the ownership of his Alabama property at the
same time that he had entered into the agreement with his mother and sister Cornelia to
buy Fort Hill. Despite a large debt and the management of two plantations, he moved his
family back to South Carolina and left an overseer in charge of his land in Alabama.31
Several months before Anna settled her family in Maryland, her brothers Willie, in
love with Margaret Cloud of Columbia since his years at South Carolina College, and
John, a widower for over two years, had both married in January 1853. Sadly, Willie’s wife
died of unknown causes a little over two years later in the spring of 1855. Knowing how
hard the death of Margaret would be on the devoted Willie, Anna invited him to visit and
suggested that Floride also write to her uncle and tell him how very sorry she was. “He
loves you so much,” Anna said, “it will gratify him.” By the time of Willie’s wife’s death,
John, a physician turned planter in Florida, was in the final throes of his life-long struggle
with lung disease. He had wed Kate Putnam of St. Augustine, only child of lawyer Benjamin Putnam, one of Florida’s wealthiest men, after his first wife’s death. When he died
at thirty-two years of age, on July 31, 1855, after two-and-a-half years of marriage, he left
behind a wife and two sons.
Shortly after her brother’s death, Anna gave birth to a baby girl on October 3, with
Mrs. Calhoun and Cornelia having traveled from South Carolina to Maryland to help her
with the household. The little girl, called “Nina,” named for her auntie Cornelia, became
the darling of the family and an angel in her mother’s eyes. With both the baby and Anna
doing well, her mother and sister soon returned to Pendleton, where they had moved early
in 1855. Mrs. Calhoun, who had quarreled violently with Andrew and her daughter-inlaw, Margaret, following their move to Fort Hill in 1854, had left the plantation in anger
and rented the house that she called “‘Paradise.’” Before coming to Bladensburg for her
daughter’s confinement, she had informed Anna of how very much she and Cornelia liked
their new home and how they wanted the Clemsons to come and see them.32
Not only did little Nina delight her family during the three years of her short life, but
also her uncle Patrick, whom she called “Paba,” found her to be the smartest and happiest
little child he ever saw. Writing to Floride away at her Aunt Barton’s boarding school in
Philadelphia in the fall of 1856, Anna expressed the wish that her brother could stay with
them all winter. Pat, on active army duty since 1851 and a captain two years later, was
forced by ill-health to take another military leave in 1855. The following year, he sought
an assignment in Florida. Considering his dreadful cough, Anna voiced the fear to her
daughter that her uncle’s health was very delicate.
Correspondence to the Clemsons from James, who had gone to California after com-
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pleting his legal study in the early 1850s, conveyed the impression that his health also
was not very good. Early in 1857, Anna told her daughter that Cornelia had described
Willie’s health as wretched and John’s widow, Kate, who was visiting with her children
from Florida, as quite ailing. After a several months’ stay with her late-husband’s family,
Kate was ready to return home with her two little boys on the first of January.
During the time Kate and her children spent in South Carolina, a romantic affection
had developed between Anna’s youngest brother Willie and their sister-in-law. Despite the
poor health of both, they had decided to marry. Cornelia’s news in the spring that Willie
had gone to Florida to wed Kate upset Anna, who viewed the marriage with disdain. Mrs.
Calhoun and Cornelia were to await the return of the honeymooners at Willie’s newly
decorated Savannah River “Brier Thicket” plantation, which was close to that of Uncle
James’s at Millwood. “I am disgusted,” Anna wrote Floride, because she thought that, notwithstanding the bond of sympathetic grief between them, Willie and Kate should have
“waited a little longer.” Admonishing Floride to be careful of what she said about their
marriage in correspondence, she admitted that finding fault would only hurt and offend
them. Yet she personally thought their behavior to be “indecent.”33
Agitated in her response to Willie’s marriage in the spring of 1857, Anna was shocked
and sorrowful to hear from Uncle James that thirty-three-year-old Cornelia had died unexpectedly on May 2. While awaiting the return of her brother from Florida at his Brier
Thicket home, she had passed away peacefully after little suffering. Anna reminded Floride
how much she loved her sister and admired her fine character and disposition, which was
so cheerful despite her afflictions. Although acknowledging Floride’s deep attachment to
her aunt, Anna maintained that the one most affected by the family’s loss was her mother.
Without Cornelia as a constant companion whose care had been an occupation for many
years, Mrs. Calhoun, Anna knew, would be sadly lonely. She urged her mother to come
North and live with the Clemsons so that, as her mother grew older, Anna could dutifully
and with pleasure add to her every comfort. As in the case of Elizabeth Baker Clemson,
Anna’s mother-in-law, who had died two weeks earlier, in April, Anna found solace thinking that Cornelia was safe in heaven. However, Anna admitted to Floride that the passing
of two such fine and dear loved ones within so short a time was hard to bear.34
Instead of accepting Anna’s invitation to live with the Clemsons in Bladensburg,
Mrs. Calhoun shocked the family by buying an adjoining place in Pendleton, the “Dunean” home of Mrs. William Adger, for the sum of $8,000. Although Anna remembered
it to be beautiful as the former “Friendville” home of her girlhood companion Catherine
Campbell, she was quite concerned about her mother’s ability to keep up a much larger
household that required more servants and more money. Anna knew that her brother
Patrick would be worried as well.
Having spent some time in South Carolina while awaiting assignment to a new military post, Patrick had been in Hot Springs, Virginia, in September of 1857 taking the
waters for his health. He then traveled from Washington to his sister’s home in Bladensburg. His thinness and cough disturbed Anna who found him to be somewhat debilitated, rather than rejuvenated, by the baths at Hot Springs. Pat’s low spirits in part could
be attributed to the break-up of his latest romance with Miss Betty Beirne, daughter of
very rich Virginia planter, Oliver Beirne. “Dont tease him about it, for he does not like
it,” Anna instructed Floride, who was soon to see her uncle in Philadelphia on his trip to
Chapter Three
67
New York. “We get on very quietly,” she commented to her daughter, with “no change
or storm” since the last letter. “Your uncle P., is you know, a favourite, & he [Clemson] is
always more pleasant when he is here.”35
Continuing to be uneasy about Pat’s condition, Anna was also concerned about the
health of her brother James in California, as he wrote little about himself. By this time
Clemson was becoming increasingly alarmed about the stability of investments he had
made through his brother-in-law, beginning almost three years earlier, in February of
1855. Impressed then with James’s knowledge of San Francisco real estate, he had initially
invested over $8,000, later increased to $13,000, in a business venture he thought would
be profitable. Sporadic contact with James, over the next few years, troubled Anna in
terms of her brother’s well-being, especially with regard to the little hacking cough he had
had all his life. By virtue of the fact that her husband’s money was once again jeopardized
by a member of her family, Anna undoubtedly felt frustration in the face of impending
discord. Early in 1860, an angry Clemson called James’s hand in the matter by requesting a cash remittance of $5,000. With no reply received until June, Clemson followed
through with a series of sharp enquiries that greatly embarrassed his brother-in-law, who
did admit that there was some reason for Clemson’s harsh treatment of him.36
Anna, in the meantime, suffered a miscarriage in March 1860 and, in a letter to
Floride, who was visiting her grandmother in Pendleton, expressed surprise and some
relief at “the accident.” Within less than two years, Anna also sustained the loss of her
brothers Patrick and Willie and her own little girl, Nina. Patrick, who had been assigned,
early in 1858, to army duty in Utah, had gone South that spring to escort their mother to
Maryland before going to take up his new post. While wintering in St. Augustine, Florida,
with Willie and Kate at the Putnam family home, Mrs. Calhoun informed Anna that
Patrick had taken sick after his arrival and was unable to travel. In a letter to Clemson, Pat
spoke of being weak but indicated that he planned to consult with a Charleston physician,
Dr. Eli Geddings.
Anna was “very anxious” about her brother. She wrote to Floride, who was at school
in Philadelphia, that “his affection seems so much like that of your grandfather & uncle
John’s – Irritation of throat finally extending down to the lungs.” She hoped that Pat
would take Clemson’s suggestion to take a steamer from Charleston to Baltimore and
come stay in Bladensburg where she could nurse him. According to Dr. Geddings, who
had been consulted by Clemson, Pat’s situation was “precarious & his lungs deeply affected.” Willie had described his brother as dreadfully emaciated yet able to make the trip
from the humid, hot air of Charleston to Pendleton. Only three days after arriving there,
at Mrs. Calhoun’s “Mi Casa” home, which had been purchased a few months before, Patrick died on June 1, 1858, at the age of thirty-seven. Floride heard from Anna about Pat’s
death and about her concern for her mother’s situation. In Mrs. Calhoun’s brief letter to
announce her son’s passing, she also mentioned to Anna that Andrew and Margaret had
come from Fort Hill to pay their respects.37 Overcome with emotion, Andrew had seemed
in earnest about wanting to make up for the past.
Less than four months after Patrick’s death, Willie, after suffering poor health for
almost two years, also succumbed to an inflammation of the chest. He died at his Brier
Thicket plantation on September 19, a little over a month after his twenty-ninth birthday.
Once again, his wife, Kate, was left a widow as she had been some three years earlier, when
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Legacy of a Southern Lady
her first husband, John, died in July, 1855. Now the mother of three sons—John’s two
and Willie’s little namesake, born prematurely in November of 1857—Kate would spend
the next several years at her family home in St. Augustine and at Mrs. Calhoun’s Mi Casa
abode in Pendleton.
Although, at about the time of Patrick’s death in June of 1858, Anna had heard
from James in California to the effect that he was expected to come home soon, he did
not return to the East Coast nor did he continue to correspond. With no extant response
from him to Clemson’s request early in 1860 for a small part of the money entrusted to
him to invest, an irate Clemson now threatened to sue his brother-in-law in defense of his
own interests. Embittered about the whole matter, he engaged in June an Oakland entrepreneur, J. Mora Moss, to act on his behalf in an investigation of James’s business affairs.
Moss’s unpromising report revealed James’s muddled finances and confirmed Clemson’s
fears that he had in fact lost the money. However, Leopold Reis, the Clemson’s former
Belgian tutor, who had gone to California in 1858, defended James in a letter to Clemson
in July 1860. Though he “may have acted in your case” in an unjustifiable way, as a kindhearted man, James’s intentions were good, nevertheless. Reis further stated that he had
no doubt that, if James’s current speculation proved successful, he would pay his debts
to Clemson. He pointed out that Mrs. Clemson did not approve of an investment made
through her brother when the opportunity had presented itself in 1855. Reis reminded
Clemson that he had heard her repeatedly make the remark that, in the interest of peace
and harmony, she did not wish that any more members of her family should have a hand
in her husband’s money matters. Although there is no extant copy of Reis’s letter in the
collection of Clemson correspondence, this “Extract of a letter from Mr. Reis dated California July 11th 1860” was copied, in Anna’s album by her own hand.
A year or so later, Moss, who had pursued the situation and gone to see James, found
the thirty-five-year-old man dying with consumption, destitute, and dependent upon the
generosity of his southern friends. Moss advised Clemson that there would be no point
to press his brother-in-law anymore about the financial loss he had sustained. Sadly, “this
most promising” of all John C. Calhoun’s sons, according to biographer Margaret Coit,
died in San Francisco on November 29, 1861. In a letter of sympathy to James’s brother
Andrew, a longtime family friend, Henry Gourdin, attributed James’s early death to excessive labor and, even more so, to the mental strain of excessive anxiety. According to
Gourdin, James had undertaken too much in California.38
At that point, Andrew and Anna were all that remained of the children of John C.
and Floride Calhoun. The rift in the relationship between brother and sister that dated
from the early years of her marriage to Clemson had not healed. During a brief trip to
South Carolina in the spring of 1861, seven-and-a-half months before James’s death, the
Clemsons did not hear from Andrew and his family at Fort Hill. As the Clemsons prepared to return to Maryland on April 11, aware that Civil War was at hand, Anna at Mi
Casa wrote to Floride in Bladensburg that there had neither been a message from nor a
sighting of anyone at Fort Hill. Regretting the rebuff that she claimed was the talk everywhere, she told Floride that her grandmother worried about the offense as she had made
sure that Andrew’s family knew that Anna was there. Anna did not expect to see any of
“The Fort Hillions” although, until recently, it was their custom to visit Mrs. Calhoun.39
By the time Anna returned to South Carolina, at the end of 1864, the terrible ordeal
Chapter Three
69
of Civil War, which had begun during her short stay in the spring of 1861, was still being
waged as she and Floride joined her mother and sister-in-law, Kate at Mi Casa. During
the final months of the four-year conflict, Anna became the surviving sibling of her family,
following the sudden death of her brother Andrew at Fort Hill, on March 16, 1865. Less
than a week earlier, on March 10, she had sent him a secret note, asking that he consider
coming to see his ailing mother, as the two had been estranged for over a year in an argument about the debt still owed for Fort Hill. Mrs. Calhoun’s wish to be reconciled with
her sole surviving son before she died compelled Anna, in good conscience, to contact
him without her mother’s knowledge. First, she told Andrew that she wished to have him
free to act as he thought best, and, then, she was sure their mother would be more gratified
if he came of his own accord, having heard that she was sick. If he did not come, Anna’s
note would remain in confidence between them. Whatever his decision, Anna hoped that
he would feel and appreciate her motives and believe in her sincere desire to establish family harmony. According to Floride’s diary, her uncle’s visit with her grandmother, who did
not know of Anna’s intervention, went well. Although Mrs. Calhoun thought her death
to be imminent at the time, ironically, her son died of a heart attack three days later. Andrew—survived by his wife and seven children, whose grief, as Floride described it, was
really harrowing—was fifty-three years old.40
Mrs. Calhoun’s health continued to fail throughout the following year, and her death,
in July 1866, left Anna as the lone surviving child of John C. and Floride Calhoun. By the
terms of a January 22, 1866, codicil to her mother’s original will of June 27, 1863, Anna
was named her principal heir as the recipient of three-fourths of the bond and mortgage
title on Fort Hill—documents which were held in trust by lawyer Edward Noble, a cousin
from Abbeville. Mrs. Calhoun had appointed a trustee to hold the Fort Hill property for
her daughter because, at that time, “this was necessary under the law of South Carolina
relating to married women.” Anna was empowered “to change trustee at will” and was
given the right to dispose of the Fort Hill inheritance as she saw fit in “a last will and testament duly executed by her.” Upon her mother’s death, the Calhoun home place would
therefore be hers to have and, subsequently, to give. Floride, as the designated successor
to her mother’s separate estate in the codicil to her grandmother’s will, was also therein
given the power to dispose of the property as she pleased by “a last will and testament,
duly executed by her.” Mrs. Calhoun’s remaining quarter share of the Fort Hill bond and
mortgage title, left outright to Floride, was to go to Mrs. Calhoun’s grandson, Calhoun
Clemson only if Floride died without issue. Should either Floride or Anna die before Mrs.
Calhoun, their respective bequests from her would not revert to the residue of her estate
but, rather, be passed to the survivor. Therefore, no doubt remained as to Mrs. Calhoun’s
intention concerning ownership of the property to which she still held the bond and
mortgage of her deceased son, Andrew.41
In March of 1866, four-and-a-half months before her death, Mrs. Calhoun, along
with Clemson as administrator for his late sister-in-law Cornelia, brought suit against
Andrew’s family for the nearly $40,000 his estate owed on the Fort Hill debt. The court
decision to foreclose against Andrew’s heirs, issued early in July, was immediately appealed
by the defendants, who began a legal battle for reversal. With Mrs. Calhoun’s death, the
case for Clemson, now the plaintiff in the matter—as well as for Edward Noble, as Mrs.
Calhoun’s executor—was of special significance since Anna had inherited three-fourths of
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Legacy of a Southern Lady
the securities in dispute.
Litigation over the ownership of Fort Hill, which now centered on Anna in contention with her brother Andrew’s family, lasted until early 1872. In December 1871, she
named her husband as “trustee of her inheritance,” thereby relieving Edward Noble of the
responsibility. Anna, as her mother had intended, inherited in January 1872 three-fourths
of the property. Floride, whose two-year marriage to Gideon Lee, Jr., of New York had
ended tragically in her untimely death in 1871, left behind a baby daughter, Floride Isabella, who inherited her mother’s one-fourth share. With the settlement of the long-standing legal dispute over Fort Hill resolved in Anna’s favor, the Clemsons prepared to move
there and away from Mi Casa, Anna’s residence since the end of 1864 and her husband’s
since his return from Confederate service in the summer of 1865. There is no recorded
response to the suggestion from family friend Henry Gourdin, that Clemson might lease
the Calhoun home to one of Andrew’s sons in the attempt to reunite the family. After
a trip to New York to see their little granddaughter, Anna and Thomas Green Clemson
moved to Fort Hill in June of 1872.42
In 1895, at age twenty-five, Floride Isabella Lee,
daughter of Floride Clemson Lee, would wed her cousin
Andrew Pickens Calhoun II, son of Duff Green Calhoun,
thus uniting in matrimony Anna’s granddaughter with
her brother Andrew’s grandson. The bride’s record of their
marriage in the Calhoun Family Bible concludes with
the following inscription: “So ends the family feud. (I. L.
C.).” Although references in this book to the Clemsons’
granddaughter are in the name “Isabella,” she was called
Floride, after her mother. The only grandchild of Floride
Lee and Andrew Pickens Calhoun ll, Creighton Lee CalFloride Isabella Lee
houn, Jr., is the sole surviving descendant of Anna and
Thomas Clemson.
After a career in the United States Army, Creighton Lee Calhoun, Jr., is the former
owner of Calhoun’s Nursery in Pittsboro, North Carolina, where he lives with his wife,
Edith, and their adopted son, Andrew Duff. The author of a book entitled Old Southern
Apples (Blacksburg, Virginia: McDonald and Woodward, 1995), Lee is an authority on the
subject and is responsible for the development of the Southern Heritage Apple Orchard at
the North Carolina Horne Creek Living Historical Farm, north of Winston-Salem. From
family lore, he learned of the commanding presence of his grandmother, Floride Lee Calhoun, who died when he was only one. He has his own fond memories of his gentlemanly
grandfather, Andrew Pickens Calhoun ll, who died when Lee was eight years old.43
Chapter Four
Her “dearest Maria”
“‘The letters!’ exclaimed Cecilia, springing up.”
From Maria Edgeworth’s novel Helen, as illustrated by Chris Hammond (London
1896), p. 324
Southern ladies such as Anna Calhoun and her best friend, Maria Edgeworth Simkins, lived in a distinctly female environment of confinement in a patriarchal society of
sexually segregated individuals. These women lived in a world where the formal and often
stiff interaction between men and women was offset by the mutual affection expressed by
women who, like themselves, were emotionally dependent upon one another. The spontaneous and playful nature of relations between young women contrasted sharply with
their distant contacts with young men. While heterosexual desires were inhibited, a close
relationship among females was not considered taboo in nineteenth-century American
society, which recognized such intimacy as socially acceptable. A strongly felt same-sex
association represented one facet of the female experience that was regarded as a basic
feature of American life from the late 1700s through the mid-1800s. Although a lifelong friendship like Anna’s and Maria’s can perhaps best be understood as something
simple and universal, it can also be considered from a theoretical perspective. The work
of historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, for example, proposes that such lasting and intense
relationships between women can be studied from the standpoint of “rigid gender-role
differentiation,” in the context of general relations between women, and in terms of the
characteristically loving language of correspondence sent to and from friends.1
Anna’s friendship with her “dearest Maria” Simkins not only enriched her life’s journey, but
cherished memories of their love were etched in her mind and lay hidden in her heart. Our considering the happy times of their youth in light of Maria’s tragic death in childbirth at the age of
twenty-seven adds another dimension to our portrait of Anna as a sensitive human being.
“... [M]y heart will always be the same, towards the friend of my youth.”
W
ith the above words, Anna Calhoun meant to reassure her “beloved friend,”
Maria Simkins, despite appearances to the contrary, that she could at all times
be counted on for sympathy and affection. Blessed with Maria’s friendship
since their “extraordinarily rich and wondrous time” in girlhood, Anna was surely as close
to Maria as to any of her six siblings, and she was deeply grieved by her friend’s seeming
doubts about her commitment to their friendship. Writing from the nation’s capital in
June 1838, Anna attempted to convince Maria, who was home in Edgefield, that Maria’s
thoughts and feelings were of interest and concern to her, as one whose love prevailed over
unjust accusations. Anna attributed her delay in responding to Maria’s letters to her courtship by Thomas Clemson and to work copying some very important papers for her father.
Evidently, Anna’s relative silence in response to Maria’s religious sentiments—a subject
that she seemed very enthusiastic about—was another source of friction between the two
friends who, as Anna affirmed, loved each other too well to argue about trivialities.2
The close friendship between Anna Calhoun and Maria Simkins began in the fall of
1826. At that time, nine-year-old Anna enrolled at a newly established female academy in
Edgefield, the county seat of a rural district composed of thirty-eight families. Residing
in the home of John C. Calhoun’s longtime friend, Eldred Simkins, Maria lived near the
courthouse square in a household that included several other children. Christened Maria
Edgeworth, apparently as the namesake of the popular Anglo-Irish novelist of the day,
Maria was the third daughter in one of Edgefield’s “oldest, wealthiest, most illustrious, and
most influential families,” as the
Simkins are described in Orville
Vernon Burton’s study of family and community there. Maria’s
grandfather Arthur Simkins, who
exchanged land from his Cedar
Fields plantation for the Edgefield
Court House in 1785, was considered to be the town’s founder. Her
father, Eldred, established a prosperous law practice and had served
as South Carolina’s lieutenant governor, as a United States congressman, and as a state senator. Her Law offices of Eldred Simkins, George McDuffie, Francis W. Pickens,
Francis H. Wardlaw, John C. Sheppard, and James O. Sheppard
mother, Eliza, according to family
scrapbook narratives about life in “Old Edgefield,” exemplified a gracious hospitality sustained, in part, by faithful slaves as she might welcome her many guests with traditional
fruit cake, preserves, brandied peaches, homemade pickles, and a browned turkey.3
Beauty, breeding, and charm notwithstanding, the southern lady’s legendary hospitality in the antebellum era was enabled by the enslavement of an African-American labor
force. In a study of southern women, historian Margaret Ripley Wolfe found that in the
seventeenth century, a “triad of racism, classism, and sexism” developed that prevailed
until well into the twentieth century. Obviously, women carried the burden of this dis-
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Legacy of a Southern Lady
crimination, especially toward Native Americans and African Americans.4
A year after Anna’s enrollment at school with Maria, the Simkins’ eldest daughter,
Eliza, married Francis Pickens, grandson of famed Revolutionary War General Andrew
Pickens and son of former South Carolina governor Andrew Pickens, Jr.. Being a Calhoun
cousin by way of his grandmother, Rebecca Calhoun Pickens, Francis had spent a number
of his childhood years at the family’s Hopewell Plantation in the upcountry Pendleton
District, before moving to Edgefield during his father’s term as governor, from 1816 to
1818. The site of the still-standing Hopewell mansion is noted at the approach to Cherry
Crossing over Lake Hartwell. An historical marker, erected in 1966 by the Foundation for
Historic Restoration in The Pendleton Area, documents the nearby location of the Pickens’ Hopewell home. The affectionate relationship that developed between Francis, Eliza,
Anna, and Maria began with his marriage to Eliza in October 1827.5
The Edgewood plantation house that Francis’s father began building for him in 1829,
which was Anna’s last year at school in Edgefield, was partially constructed from timber
taken from the Cedar Fields homestead of Maria’s grandfather, Arthur Simkins. The layout
of the completed structure, built in stages, was of a rambling one-story design bolstered by
nine-foot pillars. Standing at the end of an avenue of entwined cedars, it was set amidst
formal gardens, in English fashion, adorned with statuary and boxwoods and enhanced
by the presence of a pond. Inside Edgewood, the family enjoyed the luxury of mahogany
furniture and varied works of art. Anna often traveled from the Calhouns’ Fort Hill home
to stay with Maria and her sister Eliza’s family at the Edgewood plantation. Their cousin
Francis, having surrounded himself with the riches of a southern gentleman, combined
elegant hospitality with rural exuberance. Anna, as another one of his lady friends, besides
his sister-in-law Maria, was a subject of some amusement to her cousin, who delighted in
laughing at her teenage antics.6
The two girls enjoyed visiting one another over the years and, at the end of 1834,
made their first long journey together. Traveling with a party that included Anna’s designated “favorite cousin” Francis, newly elected to the U. S. House of Representatives, they
arrived in Washington, D.C., from Columbia, South Carolina, after a week-long jolting
ride in the stages. Maria had been permitted to accompany her brother-in-law, Francis,
after Anna pleaded that nothing would give her so much pleasure than sharing the journey
with her friend. When looking back on this special time in her youth, Anna wrote in her
album: “Dear Maria your love has been one of the greatest of my enjoyments through life
may I always deserve & retain it whether absent or present.”7
During the second of the four winters that Anna spent in Washington working with
her father, her separation from Maria, who had accompanied her in 1834, caused her to
lament at her lonesomeness. Even in the presence of her father, cousin Francis, and his
wife, Eliza, Anna likened her wanderings to those of “a troubled ghost” and urged her
friend to come in the spring before she wasted away to nothing. To Anna, Maria was
irreplaceable; “I did not imagine how much I should miss you,” she wrote. Despite the
gloom of wintry weather, she was determined to enjoy the warmth in her heart by writing to Maria and sent her a little needle case like her own. Spending all her time at the
Congressional debates during much of January, Anna reported some account of them to
Maria, whom she knew would have been pleased at the “lashing of the Executive [i.e.,
Andrew Jackson].” Since Maria’s sister Eliza seemed to send all the necessary information
Chapter Four
75
about parties for which Anna herself cared little, Anna felt less inclined to describe to
Maria those social events that she found to be dull. Anna was delighted to learn from her
cousin Francis that Maria and his father would be starting for Washington at the end of
the month. “Do dear creature,” she wrote, “make haste and make me happy—indeed, you
dont know how much I want to see you.”8
With Maria’s return to South Carolina by mid-summer of 1836, Anna again felt very
lonely as she prepared to go on a trip north, at her father’s request, with Senator William
Preston, and his wife, Louisa. In spite of the kindness of the Prestons, the nineteen-yearold Anna, who did not really care about going, would have so much more enjoyed everything she saw if Maria had been with her. Though enjoying her journey, she longed, upon
her return to New York at the end of August, to “fly to dear old Pendleton” and, before
many hours, to alight at Maria’s door. Indeed, the absence from Maria had only shown
her how much more necessary this friend from childhood was to her happiness. Eager to
share what she had seen with Maria, she gave her friend fair warning of the danger of being “talked to death” for at least a week when she came home to the South.9
Back in Washington with her father at the time of her twentieth birthday, on February 13, 1837, Anna again felt gloomy away from Maria and was upset by the latter’s
indication that she would be unable to come again in the spring. Without Maria there,
Anna might complain, “Oh if Maria was here, how much I should enjoy myself.” Complimenting her friend on the style of her letters, Anna declared Maria’s accomplishment in
letter-writing to be “quite equal” to that of “Walpole’s Private Correspondence,” which she
had just finished reading. Like her father, Anna apparently considered letter-writing to be
an achievement for her sex to cultivate. She enjoyed reading the reviews of Shakespeare’s
plays and explanations of the Greek drama in “Schelegel’s [sic] Dramatic Literature.” Not
wanting Maria to think that she had given up reading novels, Anna assured Maria that
she had finished reading several and was then engaged in Rienzi,The Last of the Roman
Tribunes, the latest novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton that she thought by far the least of all
his works.10
The two young women did not see each other until July when Maria, accompanied
by her sister Eliza and brother-in-law Francis, arrived at Fort Hill for a visit. Their return
to Edgefield after only a few weeks’ stay was too soon for Anna, who missed Maria all the
more after her departure. She felt wretched that day “and wandered about the house like
the ghost of departed joys.” Even at home, Anna felt unsettled without Maria there.
Anna agreed to be a bridesmaid in the September wedding of Catherine Campbell,
who lived in the “Friendville” home of her aunt Mary Martha Campbell Stuart, in Pendleton. But Anna said that only for Maria would she be a bridesmaid again. However, what
Anna thought would be a dull time turned out to be a pleasurable occasion as Maria was
there for the festivities. Both of them apparently enjoyed the gala event. Also present were
Anna’s uncle John Ewing Colhoun, Jr., and cousin “Cuddy” (Martha Maria), who came
from their nearby Keowee plantation.11
Encouraging Maria to write more often, Anna promised to do the same as she compared their friendship to the fictional one between Clarissa Harlowe and her friend Miss
Anna Howe in the epistolary novel Clarissa. Both girls, who wrote at least three letters
a day to one another, “really shame our indolence,” Anna said humorously, as she told
Maria to read this invaluable book and model herself on Clarissa Harlowe. Conversely,
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Legacy of a Southern Lady
Anna fancied herself better suited to emulate Miss Anna Howe. “We know nothing of
true politeness,” she wrote Maria, with amusement, as these two friends, though intimate,
“always addressed each other as Miss.”12
With the coming of the new year in 1838, Anna did not leave South Carolina to join
her father in Washington until March, staying on in Edgefield after the death of Maria’s
mother there, on New Year’s Day. Accompanied by Maria’s brother Arthur, Anna returned
to the nation’s capital for a few months, during which time, she apparently became engaged to Thomas Clemson.
Maria’s brother, Arthur Augustus Simkins, in his late teens at the time he accompanied Anna to Washington, later became editor of the Edgefield Advertiser, the South’s oldest newspaper “published continuously under the same name.” Orville Vernon Burton’s
social history of Edgefield shows that Arthur’s Simkins surname signifies kinship ties in
the community between blacks and whites because Arthur fathered the first child of his
slave Charlotte in 1849 before his cousin fathered the second. Charlotte later married
a fellow slave, George Simkins, and her two sons, Paris and Andrew, “fathered by the
whites,” were made a part of the black Simkins family.13
Within a week of Anna’s arrival back home at Fort Hill in mid-July, she wrote Maria
about the wedding to take place in the fall and reminded Maria that she would need a
“white dress” to stand by her side in at the ceremony. Already nervous at the thought of
it, Anna did not know how to write about the thousand things that she could so “easily
talk” over with Maria, whom she had never wanted to see so badly in her life. Anna beseeched Maria to come quickly, confident that Maria would comply with her wishes when
convenient. If only Maria knew how much Anna needed her advice and company, Maria
“would fly on the wings of the wind” to be with her.14
Unable in her own mind to think that she was going to be married, Anna did not
wonder that Maria could scarcely realize it. Although Anna would not be guilty of the
affectation of saying “I regret what I have done,” she wrote to Maria confidentially that
she did at times feel very melancholy when thinking of the future. About to enter into
new scenes and duties, she did not know how well she would be able to perform her part.
She often thought long and sadly on the separation that to some degree must necessarily take place between herself and Maria, although their hearts, she knew, would never
change towards one another. On the eve of her marriage, Anna did not regret that she
was a different being from what she had been the year before. “My character is essentially
changing,” she said, as the commitment she was about to make made her more thoughtful because she had more to consider. She described herself to Maria as “graver, without
being sadder,” an improvement for one who, she said, had always been “too rattle brained”
for her own taste.15
Accompanied by her brother Arthur, Maria came up to Fort Hill in the stage around
the middle of August and remained there with Anna until the first fall frost in October.
After only a few weeks’ stay back in Edgefield, Maria returned to Fort Hill for Anna’s wedding on November 13, and she stood beside her friend at the ceremony in the parlor. Four
days later, Anna, “still devotedly” Maria’s friend, wrote that she and her husband would
soon be visiting at Edgewood before traveling to Philadelphia to stay with his family. Fort
Hill had been so quiet after all the guests departed that she found it almost impossible to
realize the “exciting events” of the wedding day.16
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A month after her marriage to Thomas Clemson, Anna was ecstatic at Maria’s plans
to wed Anna’s very own uncle, James Edward Calhoun. Surprised that the two, who had
known one another for so long, should suddenly make such a match, Anna found her
uncle James, a forty-year-old bachelor, to be quite smitten with Maria’s perfections and
“more altered, by love,” than anyone she had ever seen. To her brother Patrick, who was
at West Point, she asked in confidence: “What do you think, of your aunt Maria”? Such
sentiments as those Anna attributed to her uncle James were seen typically among nineteenth-century youth but not restricted to them alone. Historian Orville Vernon Burton
cites James Edward Calhoun’s feelings for “Anna Clemson’s best friend, Maria Simkins of
Edgefield,” as not unlike those of younger men who under familial and societal pressure to
excel discovered security in love in “what could otherwise be a very unsure world.”17
Anna’s Uncle James, a prominent planter and slave-owner along an upper stretch of
the Savannah River, had initially inherited both land and slaves from his father, United
States Senator John Ewing Colhoun. James apparently changed, on his own, the spelling
of his surname, reverting to that of his immigrant ancestor, James Patrick Calhoun, possibly the first of the Clan Colquhoun to “Americanize,” as such, the family name. On the
other hand, James’s brother, John Ewing Colhoun, Anna’s uncle, who resided with his
family at Keowee, retained the spelling change that their father himself had made at the
time of the American Revolution. With the marriage of their sister Floride Bonneau Colhoun (Anna’s mother) to their father’s cousin, John C. Calhoun, Floride’s name, therefore,
changed to his. Anna’s parents were, in fact, only first cousins once removed.
Ending eleven years of service in the navy in 1829, the thirty-one-year-old James
returned to South Carolina to take over the management of his land, applying the most
advanced agricultural and mechanical innovations. From his first plantation, called Midway, he soon shifted his operations to another area, called Millwood. By 1834, he began
building his home there on acreage that he had bought and combined with land he had
inherited. As the master of Millwood, he, like other large landowners and less affluent
farmers, as well, depended on slave labor for his work force. These field hands included
men, women and children who usually worked in labor gangs subject to their owners’
temperaments. Tyrannical treatment of those in bondage was common, and, in a letter
written soon after he moved to Millwood, James Calhoun ordered a runaway slave, if
caught, to be whipped one hundred times. He even maintained the option to administer
the punishment himself to make an example.18
James Calhoun and Maria Simkins were married in Washington, D.C. on February 4, 1839, with Anna, then in the first trimester of pregnancy, at her friend’s side. The
newlyweds went on to New York, taking with them Maria’s younger sister, Emma who
was returning there to school. Anna continued to travel with her husband in the following
months and announced to her “dear auntie” Maria, now the mistress of Millwood, their
intention to return to the South and stop first at the home of James and Maria Calhoun.
Glad to shortly embrace Maria once more, Anna declared, “I did not know I cared so much
for all of you, as I find I do.”19
Back at Fort Hill for the birth of her firstborn, in August, and suffering there the loss
of her child at three weeks, Anna found the infant’s death difficult to bear. She was much
gratified at Clemson’s decision to spend the winter in the South and very pleased to stay
for a time with her uncle James and with Maria at Millwood. When her uncle and her
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husband agreed to crop together for at least a year or more, she and Maria were so very
happy at the thought of being together.20
However, seriously weakened by sickness from the fever epidemic that had taken the
life of her infant child, Anna continued in a state of ill-health while at Millwood. There,
her uncle added an extra room to accommodate her and her husband, who was going
to manage the nearby Midway plantation. Unfortunately for both Anna and Maria, the
arrangement between the men did not work out because Clemson, after several months,
found James to be completely ineffectual in everything about farming and concluded that
he could do neither James nor himself justice.
Advised by his father-in-law, John C. Calhoun, to remain no longer at Millwood and
to depart on civil terms, Clemson and Anna moved back to Fort Hill in the fall of 1840.
Describing the whole situation to her brother Patrick as an embarrassing subject, especially to herself and her husband, Anna maintained that they were on the best terms with
her uncle James and did not want him to know the true reason for their leaving.21
Ever interested in planting, Clemson decided to stay the winter at Fort Hill and,
much for Anna’s sake, to look about for suitable lands in South Carolina. Even though at
home again, Anna longed to see Maria and found their separation difficult. Still sickly, she
felt herself to have so few enjoyments independent of the society of friends as she awaited
the birth of her second child. Sewing and making shirts for “Mr C.” occupied her time.
She apologized to Maria for a delay in writing as having the stitching and everything ready
for Daphne, her personal slave, had taken all her time and strength.22
After her confinement and recuperation in July of 1841, she wanted to show off her
fine baby boy to Maria. Though “no beauty,” she described young Calhoun at two-months
of age as an alert, bouncing fellow and a great plaything with his father. Because of her
painfully swollen breast, Clemson had strongly urged her to wean the child as the only
certain means of cure. Having agreed to act as a geological consultant for a private concern
in Cuba, he left for Havana from Charleston on October 26 and planned to come back
for Anna and the baby if he had to remain longer than expected.23
Early in 1842 Patrick Calhoun, who on leave from the army had gone with his
brother-in-law to Cuba, returned from Havana to accompany Anna and her six-monthold son to join Clemson. After a delightful but dusty trip down, Anna stayed for a week in
Charleston at Stewarts Hotel, a small inn close to a slave mart on Chalmers Street in the
French Quarter between Meeting and State streets. Anna and little “Buddy” (John Calhoun Clemson), were comfortably settled at Stewarts, she wrote Maria. The picturesque
place with its wide piazzas next to a garden provided them with a pretty respite before
sailing on the Hayne. The proximity of the slave mart to Stewarts, where Anna was settled
safely with her baby boy, was probably of little significance to one who accepted without
question the buying and selling of people as property. Discovering to her sorrow that she
could not take with her her own female slave, Daphne, Anna was pleased to find a suitable
young English woman who would make the trip for ten dollars a day. Ten months after
Anna left “Stewarts,” Emily Wharton Sinkler from Philadelphia, the nineteen-year-old
bride of Charles Sinkler, from Eutaw Plantation in lowcountry South Carolina, arrived in
Charleston for her own stay on Chalmers Street. The cobblestone street remains unique
today, with the Fireproof Building at its corner on Meeting Street, home to The South
Carolina Historical Society.24
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Writing to Maria from Havana, Anna hoped that her wonderful appetite and sleeping abilities were a sign of returning health, as she felt her dear friend would surely not
know her to be so much improved. She was pleased that her form was fast recovering its
“sylph like proportions,” as she supposed that exercise was bringing her to her natural size.
“El ciudad del Havana,” she described as a queer town where magnificently dressed ladies,
adorned with splendid lace mantillas, paraded the streets almost dangerously crowded
with two-wheeled horse-drawn carriages (volantes). Anna attended several of the best
churches but found Catholicism the “most ridiculous affair” she had ever seen, with seemingly absurd rituals by practitioners who observed Sunday with greater gaiety than usual
throughout the town. Havana, in her eyes, was a place of little beauty despite its abundant wealth. The native gentlemen took pride in silver-plated volantes while their wives
flaunted formal dress.25
The Clemsons returned to Fort Hill at the end of May 1842, and Anna anxiously
awaited a visit from Maria. Clemson soon left for Dahlonega, at the request of his fatherin-law, to examine the operation of the O’Bar gold mine, in North Georgia, that Calhoun
had owned since 1833. Anna urged Maria to come, if she had a chance, even without her
uncle James, who seemed reluctant to visit. “You see,” she said, in a challenge to the male
dominance that prevailed in southern society, “I incite you to rebellion against the lawful
authorities.” According to historian Orville Vernon Burton, Anna was writing “in a humorous manner to Maria” about what to do if her husband refused to come to Fort Hill.
Nevertheless, the “legal basis of the husband’s ‘rule’” in South Carolina at that time, was
the cause of her comment about inciting rebellion “against the lawful authorities.”
Despite the fact that she had her heart set on being a lady of leisure after coming
home from Cuba, Anna necessarily busied herself in all the dreadful details of shirt-making, an employment that she felt always stupefied her senses. In the midst of sewing, she
wrote Maria that she took time to accompany her mother on a number of calls upon
neighboring households.26 Sewing and visiting may well not have suited Anna’s sensibilities, but, as important skills for a southern lady, she needed to develop them.
Meanwhile, after a few weeks at O’Bar, Clemson’s chief concern appears to have been
his separation from his wife and son. Determined to join her husband despite her mother’s
unease at her going, Anna made her way to Dahlonega by carriage in the care of her nineteen-year-old brother John. Along with little Calhoun and the Negro slave Daphne, Anna
came to live in a log cabin that had no doors, windows, shutters or chimney. After having
spent only three days at the mines, she was called home to her mother and arrived back at
Fort Hill much fatigued to find both Maria and her uncle James already there. Informed
by a messenger of Mrs. Calhoun’s extreme illness, they left Millwood only to arrive at Fort
Hill to find her better, pronounced by the physicians entirely out of danger.27
In early August, the lonely Clemson came unexpectedly to Fort Hill to see how Anna
was and to bring her back to the mine himself, now that her mother was recovering so
well. After being bruised during a rough road trip by carriage and stage, Anna wrote Maria
that she was enjoying all the delights of living in a miner’s camp. Perched in her hilltop
“Miner’s Hut,” a little improved with some nice doors and windows, she was happy in the
wilderness and had even been horseback riding for the first time in three years.28
Anna received in a letter from her aunt Martha (the wife of John Ewing Colhoun),
the sad news of the death of Maria’s inestimable sister Eliza. The account in the Edgefield
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Advertiser, kindly sent by cousin Francis, confirmed as fact what Anna had wished was
not true. She hoped “that Time the soother & softener of all griefs” would gradually wean
the inconsolable Maria’s mind from its first crushing sorrow and leave only the cherished
cushion of sweet memories. The additional news of the death of little three-year-old Eldred Pickens by congestive fever, on August 10, 1842, two days before that of his mother,
Eliza, compounded Anna’s sorrow and sympathy for the gloomy spectacle of her poor
cousin Francis’s household. “How my heart bleeds for him,” she wrote to Maria, because
he was left with four daughters and greatly grieved.29
Knowing that her sympathy could not alleviate Maria’s misfortune, Anna did not
dwell on the subject in her correspondence but, instead, wrote about the life that she
herself now led. Her monotonous existence, interspersed only by the arrival of mail, was
not at all disagreeable except for the “dirt” that was everywhere. As one who did not care
much for the formality of society, she was content to lead a simple life; and, although
amidst “plenty of people to be sure,” she found them to be so boring that her greatest wish
was never to see them at all. Unable to leave her thirteenth-month-old son alone for fear
of his getting into all the boxes and climbing on top of all the trunks to make mischief,
she thought he would break his neck before long. Though misbehaving, he was, she said,
becoming very interesting in his imitations of everything around him.30
Once back at Fort Hill in October, Anna admitted to Maria that she was not in the
best of spirits since her husband’s departure for the North on a trip to visit his family. Not
yet accustomed to his absence, which she feared might be for almost two months, she disliked even this unavoidable separation from him. Being far along in her third pregnancy,
she did not want to run the risk of traveling the distance alone with little Calhoun.31
Returning to Fort Hill earlier than expected, Clemson decided to take up farming
again, anticipating greater success than he had two years earlier with Anna’s uncle James
at Midway. Clemson negotiated with Maria’s brother Arthur for the purchase of his Canebrake plantation (now located in Saluda County), in the Edgefield District. By the time
the Clemsons were ready to make the move to their new home early in 1844, their baby
girl Elizabeth Floride, born on December 29, 1842, was just over a year old.32
Curious with excitement as to what Maria’s “tremendous secret” could possibly be,
Anna wished her friend a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and prepared to leave
Fort Hill for Canebrake at the end of 1843. Although surprised by Maria’s pregnancy,
already six months advanced, Anna, who had made up her mind that Maria would never
have any children, was pleased that a child would add to her friend’s happiness and sense
of purpose. Two children would be enough, Anna thought, a “boy the oldest,” followed
by a girl, which she then had. That number would be enough, both for the worry and the
joy of which Maria would now have her share. “Children are little plagues to be sure,” she
said, “especially to one who hates to nurse them & be kept awake at night as I do but they
are an infinite source of pleasant anxiety & do contrive to wind themselves wonderfully
close round our hearts.” Advising Maria to take as much exercise as she possibly could
without fatigue and to keep her spirits up, Anna maintained that often times exertion
benefited even the weary.33
Anna, quite anxious to see Maria “especially now,” wanted to go to Edgewood where
she was staying with cousin Francis and his family. Maria had been a help to her brotherin-law with his four daughters since the death of her sister Eliza some eighteen-months
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before. With Clemson away in Charleston for a week in the middle of February, Anna
would have gone down and spent the time with Maria had their newly ordered carriage
been available. It had been in Hamburg across the river from Augusta for two weeks, and,
with road conditions so wretched, they had decided to let it remain there until Clemson
returned from his trip. In response to Anna’s predicament, Maria sent her carriage to
Canebrake for Anna after the roads improved. She continued in very sickly condition
after her husband’s return to Millwood, though in good enough shape to take a little ride
every evening. With the chance that Clemson would be able to come for Anna in their
new carriage, Maria admonished James not to come up until later as she thought the two
men should see as little of each other as possible. If they could not be on “friendly” terms,
she hoped they would not be in the same home. Should Anna still be there when James
arrived, Maria wrote, “do meet her affectionately, as I do not wish her to think you are
cool to her.”34
Apparently unaware of Maria’s concern about a possible confrontation between their
husbands, and ignorant of her uncle James’s reserve even towards her, Anna was preoccupied primarily with her friend’s pregnancy and was truly delighted that her own mother
would be going down to Edgefield to aid Maria, who would spend her confinement at
Edgewood. Appreciating how knowledgeable her mother was about pregnancies, Anna
would have proposed that her mother assist, had she realized that Floride’s health permitted her to travel.35
Floride Calhoun was constantly tied down to Maria as Maria approached childbirth,
and Floride could not leave her even long enough to come and see Anna at Canebrake.
Since her father, recently confirmed as Secretary of State, was making a stop at Francis
Pickens’s Edgewood plantation, on his way to Washington at the end of March, the Clemsons went the twenty-some-miles’ distance to Edgefield. Clemson’s decision to accompany
his father-in-law, Calhoun, to the capital caused Anna to stay at Edgewood until he came
back. While there, she saw Maria spitting blood and, thinking that Maria was consumptive, feared that her friend might suffer the same fate as had her mother and sister. Anna,
who did not want Maria to know how she really felt about her condition, left her dearest
friend only because she did not believe her to be in any immediate danger. However, a
little over a week after the Clemsons returned to Canebrake, Maria Simkins Calhoun, at
twenty-seven years of age, died in childbirth, with her baby, on April 17, 1844. The tragedy of this loss so overwhelmed her husband James that he sought sanctuary at Millwood
for the rest of his long life.36 The inscription that he had carved on her monument reads
as follows:
TO
The Memory
of
MARIA E. SIMKINS
Wife of
JAMES EDWARD
CALHOUN,
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Legacy of a Southern Lady
Born May 8, 1816,
Died April 17, 1844.
She was lovely,
accomplished, useful,
and so pure that God
was satisfied with
her short probation.
Less than a month after Maria’s death, Anna received word from her father in early
May that he had named Clemson, who had expressed an interest in a diplomatic appointment abroad, to head the Belgian Mission to the court of King Léopold l. Although she
had personal objections and misgivings about going, she welcomed her husband’s post as
Chargé d’Affaires, for she felt it was something that he wanted to try, having previously
lived and studied in Europe. Thus, in the summer of 1844, just a short time after the
heartbreaking loss of Maria, Anna prepared to embark on an ocean voyage that would take
her away from home for a little over six years. The memories she retained of her beloved
Maria would remain in her mind and soul.37
Chapter Five
Traveling Women
Harriet Lowndes Aiken
Margaret Fuller
Anna Calhoun Clemson
Lucy Holcombe Pickens
Anna Calhoun Clemson’s reluctance to go abroad in 1844 was not typically shared by
other elite women, many of whom enthusiastically embraced the cultural phenomenon of European travel. An expanding economy, improvements in transportation technology for North
Atlantic steamships, navigational charts that shortened the voyage, and Europe’s railway networks—all of these factors increased the popularity of travel abroad for Americans, in general,
during the nineteenth century, despite the expense, time, and danger involved. In particular,
comparing Anna with a select sample of three traveling women of gentility will show all of
them to have welcomed the experience that she endured as a duty. Margaret Fuller, Harriet
Lowndes Aiken, and Lucy Holcombe Pickens, like Anna Calhoun Clemson, were but a few
among the many Americans who traveled in Europe during the 1800s. Collectively, they were
part of a wave of tourists, and, although typical of travelers to Europe at that time, they were
by no means ordinary women, as the following account of them indicates.1
Representative of accomplished, elite-class, southern womanhood, Anna, Harriet, and
Lucy differed from Margaret, the New England intellectual dedicated to professional achievement and public activism. Although they all traveled as tourists when abroad, Anna, Margaret,
and Lucy actually established residence in Europe for extended periods of time whereas Harriet
went there on three separate vacation trips. She and Lucy lived in style, supported by their rich
spouses, while Anna, the mother of two young children, struggled to make ends meet on her
husband’s salary as a diplomat and while Margaret depended upon her wages as a journalist
to survive.
Looking at the world of Anna Calhoun Clemson in Europe from 1844 to 1851, one finds
that she lived a rather cosmopolitan existence dominated by domestic concerns. The travel
experiences of Margaret Fuller, Harriet Lowndes Aiken, and Lucy Holcombe Pickens, respectively, are each of interest in their own right and serve to enrich our view of Anna’s story.
“...[W]ere I a few years younger or my children a few years older I should enjoy the
idea of visiting Europe much but as it is I expect to have more of the fatigues & disagreeables of travel than the pleasures.”
T
he twenty-seven-year-old Anna Clemson told her father what she thought and felt
about the weighty matter of going abroad with the responsibility of her two small
children at a troublesome age. At three and almost two years old, her son and
daughter were not yet old enough to enjoy or even benefit much from the trip that their
mother would have preferred not to make. For one thing, Anna found her husband’s diplomatic appointment to the Belgian Court, with its obligatory ceremonies and etiquette,
to be rather an annoyance more than anything else. Nevertheless, in support of his desire
to live once again in Europe, she readied the family to leave their Canebrake plantation
home, where they had been for less than a year.2
The Clemsons, accompanied by a black slave boy named Basil, sailed from New York
in September 1844, and, after docking at Le Havre, proceeded to Paris en route to Brussels. During the short time that they were necessarily detained in the French capital, they
were kindly treated by the U. S. Minister to France, William R. King, a former Senate
colleague of John C. Calhoun. A traveling companion of Anna’s during her northern trip
with the William Prestons in 1836, King presented Clemson, as a matter of courtesy, to
His Majesty Louis Philippe at the monarch’s St. Cloud residence. With diplomatic credentials as Chargé d’Affaires to the Belgian Court of Louis Philippe’s son-in-law, Léopold l,
Clemson gladly took advantage of the opportunity for an audience with the French king.
Interestingly, in his student days in Paris at the Sorbonne and the Royal School of Mines,
Clemson had actively participated in the Revolution of 1830, which had toppled the rule
of the Bourbon King Charles X and placed Louis Philippe, of the House of Orléans, on
his country’s throne as a constitutional monarch. Within two weeks of arriving in Brussels
on October 4, Clemson was received privately by the Belgian ruler on October 16. Their
conversation preceded Anna’s own presentation to King Léopold and Queen Louise-Marie,
followed by a dinner at the Belgian Court. The original portrait of Anna in her court attire
hangs in the home of her great-great grandson, Lee Calhoun, Jr., and his wife Edith.3
Upon their arrival in Brussels, the Clemsons had entered into a country whose existence as the independent Belgian State had followed the outbreak of revolution in Europe
in the summer of 1830. The overthrow of the reactionary French Bourbon monarchy
in July preceded riots in Brussels that led to the assertion of Belgian independence from
Dutch authority and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in 1831. At the same
time that Belgian neutrality was proclaimed by the European powers, Prince Léopold of
Saxe-Coburg, chosen by the National Congress, became the country’s first king. In 1832,
his marriage to one of the daughters of King Louis Philippe of France contracted a direct
alliance with the liberal Orléans monarchy, and the later accession of Princess Victoria,
Léopold’s niece, to the British throne further increased his importance in Europe.4
While Anna’s letters from Europe to her father gave astute political commentary on
prevailing conditions around her in Belgium and throughout much of the continent, her
world abroad, as it had been at home, centered around domesticity. Having planned to be
the instructor of her children, she began at the end of the year to take French lessons to
prevent them from feeling awkward and from encountering the difficulties that had beset
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Legacy of a Southern Lady
her since arriving in Belgium. In order to travel abroad, knowledge of at least one modern
language, she found, was much more essential than knowledge of classical Greek or Latin.
A month or so after her Belgian Court presentation, Anna’s main concern centered
around her son’s health as he became very ill as the result of an inflammation of the eye.
With her child so sick and suffering in the midst of strangers, she would have given the
world to have had her mother there for counsel and comfort in the crisis. Although much
thinner and marred by a three weeks’ ordeal, the little boy appeared to be on the mend by
early December, as she wrote to her father.5
Although she did not at all regret that her son’s sickness had prevented her from going
out much, Anna saw that there was an absolute need to socialize as the wife of a diplomat.
The business of society and ceremony, she thought privately, was such nonsense, yet she
was determined to go out as gracefully as she could and to enjoy herself when she took
the trouble to do so. However, her most serious objection to the whole situation, as she
explained to her father, was the lack of money for even the plainest and cheapest dress,
which Clemson’s annual salary of $4,500 could not spare. Even with an additional $4,500
outfit allotment for such expenses, together with the strictest economy, she doubted that
they could live off of their income abroad.6
But a few weeks’ visit to Paris in the summer of 1845 was agreeable enough, despite
some rather unpleasant noise and heat. Entertained, once again, by the popular U.S.
Minister, William King, the Clemsons joined the ranks of at least 400 other Americans
who, Anna heard, did no credit in any way to themselves. Indignant at the speeches some
of them made, she only wished they could be punished by law for the bad taste of abusing
their country. They were a pack of people who had made money “easily, or dirtily,” and
come to Paris to follow closely the fringe of society. (Might these, by any chance, have
been “Yankees”?) With the sudden commencement of hot weather in Paris, Clemson and
the children were all a little indisposed, and her husband, in particular, gave Anna quite
a fright. On an after-dinner walk one evening, he suddenly became very weak and could
hardly get into a café, where, by giving him brandy and bathing him with cologne, she
kept him from fainting and contrived to get him home in a carriage. After a few days of
feeling badly, Clemson had no similar spells and, once back in Brussels, was as well as
usual, despite the fact that he worried greatly about money matters.7
Anna asked her father for advice and for kind words for her husband, who, like herself, did not think they could meet their expenses abroad. A devoted husband and father
who could not bear the idea that his family should want for anything, Clemson, she said,
made himself miserable thinking about what he would do when he left Europe and about
the future prospects of his children.8
The Clemsons resided in the little village of Torveuren that fall until their house was
furnished. Although Anna felt the country air benefited all of them, she thought they
needed to get into town with the coming on of cold weather. Provoked by the intolerably
slow Belgian working classes, whom she characterized as dishonest and mean, she knew
that she must have patience in dealing with them. Aware of the hard character she gave to
such people, she nevertheless felt her observation to be just and thought that her mother
would consider blacks perfection after six months experience with the white “slaves” of
Belgium. Indeed, she did not know what she should do without her own slave, Basil,
who also seemed to hold the Belgian servants in perfect contempt.9 As an American elite,
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87
Anna’s snobbery, when confronted with common people abroad, was apparent in her
harsh characterization of the Belgian workers.
Comfortably settled in their new house in Brussels by early November, the Clemsons
had all been a little sick since their return to the city. Nevertheless, much to the credit of
“Mr C,” a commercial treaty between Belgium and the United States was almost completed. Proud of her husband’s diplomatic success in the negotiations and the fact that he
was “a personal favourite” at Court, she was also pleased at her children’s fine growth and
interesting development. Calhoun was a “saucy little fellow, & full of fun,” and his sister,
Floride, had become “a great bouncing miss, with a round face, & red cheeks.” Though
much humored by both parents, Anna, in truth, could not say that they were spoiled.10
News from home, in January 1846, about conditions at Canebrake, pleased the
Clemsons, and Anna was especially glad at what her mother had to say about the welfare
of the slaves. She often felt quite sad lest they should be neglected or mistreated by an
overseer. Solicitous for their safety, she showed genuine concern for those she thought
racially inferior. Two of the Canebrake slaves in particular, Daphney (Daphne) Lawrence
and Susan Clemson, had been gifts to Anna from her father.
Later on, when Clemson decided to sell his Canebrake plantation, Anna would insist
that Daphne, her husband, and son be allowed to select their master. However, their decision to be sold along with the other Canebrake slaves was attributed, by historian Orville
Vernon Burton, to a strong sense of community and “attachment to place” that “slaves on
a plantation forged for themselves.”
Susan Clemson, whose mother had also been owned by Anna’s father, was part African and part Native American. Her memories of life at Fort Hill and Canebrake, as told
in later years, recalled that, as a young girl at Fort Hill, she slept in a small room adjoining that
of Mrs. Clemson, with a string tied around her wrist that ran to Anna’s bedside. Awakened by
a pull of the string during the night, she could then attend to the needs of her mistress.11
Anna staunchly defended the South’s “peculiar institution.” The talk of slavery irritated her since she had never seen in all her life in the South the amount of suffering and
misery that she saw all around her in one month abroad. German emigré Karl Marx, who
prepared to launch his career as a revolutionist by studying and writing in Belgium, might
well have agreed with Anna’s perception of the plight of the poor. “Make your working
classes in Europe as happy as our slaves,” she said to all who mentioned the subject to her,
“& then come back to me, & we will talk about the abolition of slavery.” She again declared her preference for blacks over whites as servants and reiterated her reliance on Basil who,
“tho’ careless & negro like,” she found to be “faithful, & honest, & really a treasure.”12
After almost a year-and-a-half abroad, domestic demands, coupled with the assumption of secretarial duties for the American legation and the acceptance of social invitations
at night, took up all of Anna’s time. Needing more money to keep from going into debt
as her family did not even keep a carriage during the winter, she thought the government
should provide funds for anyone who did such work. Anna worked primarily to help her
husband, who had taken over the consular business at Antwerp in addition to his assignment for the legation in Brussels. At that time, a small vocal fringe group of feminists in
Europe and the United States felt that women should be paid for whatever job they did,
but the abolitionist ideals that characterized the early feminist movement would have
made it abhorrent to such a staunch defender of slavery as Anna. Raised as a Southern lady
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Legacy of a Southern Lady
to be submissive and domestic, she might surely have taken exception, too, to the public
behavior of women activists.13
Watching her children grow, Anna characterized them to her father, in the spring of
1846, as being very hearty and lively, with Calhoun “as good company as many grown
persons” and Floride, only three-years-old, able to make the “most appropriate & apt quotations” from little pieces of poetry. Although in five months she did not say that her dear
little children were prodigies or great beauties, she found them then to be “quite smart
enough, & quite good looking enough” to suit her as their mother. Even with their wild
romps too much for one house on a rainy day and often trying for her patience during
the morning lessons’ hour, she was glad that they were so healthy and happy, with good
hearts and dispositions. Her five-year-old son was harder to care for than his little sister, a
difference, she surmised, that might be caused by a boy’s more impatient and active temperament. She knew that they could master their lives if they chose to do so, and therefore
she did not feel uneasy at their “very slow progress, up the ladder of learning.”14
The commencement of fine spring weather in 1847 made Anna more homesick than
ever as her thoughts turned to the fresh country air at her family’s Fort Hill plantation.
She had spent only a few weeks at the seaside during the past summer, and she longed for
a change from the constant residence in town. However, for the sake of economy, traveling for her family was out of the question, and, without even a garden to their house, the
children could not be out in the open air all day as she would have liked. She remembered
too well her father’s lessons and example—that one must do without what cannot be
had—and she determined to content herself with things as they were.
Yet, even if Anna had found living in Europe more agreeable to her taste than previously, she was pained by the thoughts of so many “suffering fellow beings.” The poorer
classes, hard hit by the potato famine during the long and severe winter of 1847, caused
her concern. She now understood the excesses of the indigent during the French Revolution. An unjust political system caused the “immense disproportion in the classes of
society,” she wrote her father, who was reassured that her children would become good
Americans. She encouraged their feeling of love for their country, convinced of the virtue
of patriotism.15 Her reaction to the rule of royalty in Europe was a common one among
southerners at a time when the concept of “republicanism” did not necessarily embrace
the ideal of equality and its contradiction of slavery.
Anna longed for the bright blue skies of sunny Carolina while living under those of
eternal grey in Brussels, but she was nevertheless thankful that her family was very well
and her children everything that she could wish them to be after almost three years away
from home. Their health and cheerfulness were more important than book-learning that
admittedly moved slowly. “They are full of life, & hate their books, & I am inexperienced,
& much interrupted by my many avocations,” she wrote to her father in the fall of 1847.
She supposed that with patience they would begin to read one of these days.16
Invited along with her husband to the country estates of two wealthy Belgians, she
determined to be reasonable and remain in Brussels with too much trouble and expense
involved in leaving the children at home. As one who felt that “God made the country &
man the town,” she would very much have liked to go, especially since she had not been
anywhere in over a year. However, she assured her father that she managed to get along
very well because, fortunately, her happiness did not depend on where she was.17
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The outbreak of revolution in Paris in February 1848 left a lamentable state of anarchy, from all that Anna could learn. For her part, she thought the French too corrupt
and the ideas of a republic they held too wild to have any confidence, not only in France’s
future but in their leadership in solving the great problems of government throughout
Europe. With all Europe in agitation, she, like everyone else, felt it impossible to say where
things would be in six months.
Despite this most unsettled state, Clemson applied for a leave of absence to return
home to attend to business at his Canebrake plantation and to visit his ailing mother
in Philadelphia; and, by August, Anna was in the midst of preparations for her family’s
departure for America. Remembering the pleasure of once more seeing her loved ones at
home, she tried not to think of all the suffering and fear that she faced on the long voyage
ahead. They decided to sail because they lacked money to pay for the preferred passage by
steamer. Indeed, the family needed “every cent” in order to make ends meet for the trip.
“If I can only take the children looking so well & so gay as they do now, I shall be very
happy,” she wrote to her father, two months before leaving. Her son, now age seven, and
daughter, almost six years, “tho’ very wild & full of life,” were “affectionate, reasonable, &
obedient, & have excellent principles.”18
Accompanied by a Belgian nurse for the children, the Clemsons left from Antwerp
on the Roscoe, on October 4, and arrived in New York, a month later, after a hurricane off
the Newfoundland coast hindered their travel. They spent the first part of their more than
six-months’ stay in America in the South before traveling to Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, where portraits that they had had painted in Belgium were opened and found
to have arrived safely. Much acclaimed by all who saw them as “such likenesses & such
paintings,” they were placed on display in the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts at the
insistence of the director, who promised to send them on to South Carolina in a month.
The Clemsons agreed to this arrangement, knowing that the artist was eager to come to
portrait of Calhoun Clemson
portrait of Floride Clemson
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America and that if his work were to be seen, he might receive encouragement to do so.19
The artist, Jacob Joseph Eeckhout, signed in 1848 the framed oil-on-canvas portraits of
Anna Clemson and her children, Calhoun and Floride, which hang in the parlor at the
Fort Hill historic house museum.
The Clemsons sailed back to Europe from New York on the Northumberland, on
May 24, 1849. They encountered a stormy thirty-six days’ crossing, made even more
anxious when the children came down with measles. After the long and tedious journey,
which included a stop in London, they arrived, early in July, in Brussels, where Anna was
much occupied with settling her family in a smaller but more comfortable house with a
garden, where Calhoun and Floride could play. Anna and her husband decided to buy
their own furniture since rented pieces were so miserable and uncomfortable. “It is very
easy to furnish very cheaply” or “very extravagantly,” she wrote her father, but to employ
“economy & good taste” in the acquisition of what would be worth carrying home when
they left she thought to be a problem almost as difficult to solve satisfactorily as one in
math or politics.
Uneasy with the spread of cholera in Brussels, Anna and Clemson decided that they
would be careful and remain quietly at home in the city as the disease was everywhere
throughout the country. Pleased at her children’s rapid growth, she had made arrangements for them to take lessons in gymnastics and dancing, which she thought to be very
necessary for their health and carriage. With slow but steady progress in the learning of
their daily lessons, they were, she felt, still a little backwards in books but more advanced
than others of their age in education.20
After almost four years abroad, Anna felt gratified to have been treated with the greatest kindness by everyone, from the king down. She believed, she told her father, that
an American in Europe, though asserting an independent spirit, could be respected and
well received if he avoided hurting the feelings of those with whom he sincerely differed.
Unfortunately, she regarded her countrymen abroad, generally, in one of two extremes;
and she was critical of those Americans she termed disagreeable and contemptible, either
in their exhibition of dislike for Europe or in their affectation of disgust for their own
country.21
The puzzling state of affairs in Europe, she confided to her father, appeared to be one
of corruption in which the silly policies of all parties displayed ignorance so that she had
no patience any more to read about politics. By the end of the year, she seemed to sense “a
pause, in the current of events” that signaled she knew not what.
The Clemsons had enjoyed the previous winter in South Carolina, where the weather
was warm, and, back in Brussels, Anna dreaded the coming on of a “miserable, wet, dark,
& dismal” season. She also feared her father’s declining health with the onset of winter
cold in Washington. She wished that he could see his portrait painted from a daguerreotype by photographer Matthew Brady, anticipating that he would be pleased with both it
and the magnificent frame that she and her husband had made for it. Not only was the
painting a fine portrait, she said, but a work of art, as well. Today, this oil-on-canvas portrait of John C. Calhoun, painted by Eugene DeBlock, hangs in the State Dining Room
at the Fort Hill historic house museum.22
She mentioned to her father a very complimentary notice that she and her husband
had been given in a newspaper description of a beaux-arts ball. In the midst of the winter
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merriment of balls and parties that she found to be “as tedious as a twice told tale,” she
was invited, she wrote to her brother Patrick, to “walk a quadrille” with the Crown Prince
Léopold. (Twice-told Tales was actually the title of writer Nathaniel Hawthrone’s first book
published in 1837.) Although she had never danced in Brussels until then, the request was
one that she could not refuse.23
Anna’s last letters to her father written before his death on March 31, 1850, pictured
her children as healthy and strong, the development of their bodies greatly affected by a
regular course of gymnastics. Much distressed to hear of their grandfather’s illness, they
sent him “a thousand kisses,” at the same time that Anna bade him “Adieu” and, joined
by Clemson, sent him love.24
A little over two months after the death of his father-in-law, Clemson proposed privately to Secretary of State John Clayton the possibility that he be granted personal leave
of absence in the United States. In actuality, Clemson’s position in Brussels had been in
doubt ever since the Whigs had come to power in Washington in March 1849. As a result
of the sad loss of John C. Calhoun, Clemson felt that his own presence at home might be
necessary, for a short time, although he thought that the likelihood of a leave was doubtful. The death of President Zachary Taylor, in July, and the change of the cabinet in the administration of his successor, Millard Fillmore, brought about the appointment of Daniel
Webster as the new Secretary of State. Clemson, who felt that his letter to Clayton had not
arrived before the president’s death and the secretary’s subsequent retirement, contacted
Webster in August about visiting South Carolina. He received an official denial to his
request in September and was notified of the appointment of a new Chargé d’Affaires for
Brussels in December. Having already made arrangements to spend the winter in Europe,
the Clemsons did not leave for home until spring 1851.25
Although reluctant to go abroad, Anna had proven herself capable of coping with the
challenges of her European experience during her Belgian years. Dutifully following her
husband, she had cared for her family in a foreign land while detailing for her father the
intricacies of politics in Belgium and throughout much of the continent. Supportive of
Clemson’s diplomatic endeavor and devoted to her children’s development, she was proud
of his success and pleased at their growth. Despite her disinterest in the pomp and circumstance of the Belgian Court, she was presented there in style, accepted with good grace
the obligatory social invitations, and danced with the Crown Prince at a beaux-arts ball
in Brussels. However, homesick for her family in America and “dear old Fort Hill,” she
longed to return to her own glorious country as all the “luxuries & splendours of Europe”
were no compensation for what she had left behind.26
Anna Calhoun Clemson would have been greatly offended by the abolitionist ideals of Margaret Fuller, a leading figure in the early feminist movement. A New England
intellectual and writer, Fuller had, as a young girl, dreamed of going abroad. The daughter
of a fourth generation Puritan, Timothy Fuller, a Harvard educated lawyer who served in
the U. S. House of Representatives from 1817 to 1825, Margaret Fuller had rigorously
studied history, politics, classical and modern languages, English literature, mathematics,
and the Bible under her father’s direction. For a few years after his death in 1835, she
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taught school to support her mother and six siblings. In 1840, she became editor of The
Dial: A Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, and Religion, and, in 1844, she was hired as
a book reviewer by New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley. She became one of the first
women to join the ranks of the working press and, in her mid-thirties, in 1846, was sent to
Europe as a foreign correspondent. Her interpretive letters from abroad, sent to New York
as dispatches to the Tribune, were, in the words of historian William W. Stowe, a “marketable literary product” that enabled her to travel and personally convey the true meaning
of her experiences. According to Stowe, Fuller’s ideal traveler was “a poetic interpreter,” “a
visionary with the power to see into the life of things.” Her vision, according to biographer
Charles Capper, was shaped by the idealistic notions of Thomas Jefferson, “the intellectual republican” rather than “the radical democrat.” Interestingly, Fuller’s thoughts shared
something with the thinking of the virtuously patriotic Anna Clemson, who faulted an
undemocratic political system for the distress caused by European society’s disproportionately unequal class structure.27
Unlike Anna, whose presence in Europe was recognized in relation to the political
reputation of her father and the diplomatic credentials of her husband, Margaret Fuller,
whose literary renown had preceded her trip abroad, was acknowledged there as an author
in her own right. Her treatise Woman in the Nineteenth Century, a work posing “revolutionary perspectives on the relationship between men and women,” as claimed by Bernard
Rosenthal in the introduction to its 1971 edition, was the first book in the United States
to address women’s subordinate place in society and to offer an alternative to their situation. Whereas Anna, like other elite southern women, whose place in a patriarchal society
was defined by gender, race, and class, generally conformed to the conventional feminine
attributes articulated by historian Barbara Welter as “piety, purity, submissiveness and
domesticity,” Margaret did not conform as a rather atypical northern woman. She saw
employment, in the eyes of Charles Capper, mainly as a means to reconcile her central
concern with “women’s intellectual and spiritual character,” and, during her sojourn in
Europe as a newspaper reporter, she broke all the rules by which Anna lived. Deeply engaged in southern culture that shaped her sense of self as a woman, Anna lived by different
standards than Margaret did. For Margaret, Jefferson’s role model as an active American
intellectual connected her with her country’s culture and gave her a realistic sense of herself. For Anna, as a wife and mother in Brussels, the European experience was primarily domestic while, for Margaret, as a professional journalist passionately committed to
republican principles, traveling from England, Scotland, France to the Italian peninsula,
Europe’s most meaningful scene was in Rome during a tumultuous time of political upheaval in which she actively participated.28
Margaret Fuller’s involvement in the struggle for Italy’s unity put her in the middle of
a movement that had become heatedly active in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. The long-standing partition of the Italian peninsula into several separate authoritarian states had been challenged during the wars of the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic era. The French ruler’s empire both negated nationality and fostered national
aspirations in the early policy towards the Italians. Their partial administrative unity under Napoleon’s domination, together with legal and military matters, contributed to an
increasingly popular desire for unification in what historians R. R. Palmer and Joel Colton
have called a “liberal national state.” Following Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, the reorgani-
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zation of Europe by the Congress of Vienna ensured a predominant Austrian presence
throughout the Italian peninsula and recognized the restoration of papal power from the
Holy See in Rome. Among Italians, there was a sentiment to resurrect what Palmer and
Colton described as the “Italian grandeur of ancient times and of the Renaissance.” By
1848, the dream of an Italian unification, or rebirth, had been invested with almost a
spiritual sense by the writings of well-known nationalist philosopher, Giuseppe Mazzini,
whose friendship with Margaret Fuller dated back to the time of her arrival in Europe,
two years earlier.29
Margaret’s address in London in the fall of 1846 greatly pleased Mazzini, who wrote
his mother about the impressive speech of an American lady who called for an international exchange among countries to share their best traditions. Her praise of Italian arts as
an inspiration to beauty and honesty did not ignore political struggle in a country seeking
freedom. Margaret’s newspaper contract kept her from fulfilling Mazzini’s request to write
for a journal that he hoped might unofficially speak for a “People’s International League”
to represent the plight of oppressed nationalities. Although for the next few years both of
them were too busy to maintain the contact they wanted, the relationship that had developed between the European revolutionary idealist and the American literary intellectual
became increasingly important to each of them. Under Mazzini’s influence, Margaret the
writer became even more a crusader for the cause of Italy’s unification.30
Beginning her Italian stay early in 1847, she soon began to send from Rome dispatches to New York that, from the nature of their political tone, made apparent her
interest in the emerging revolutionary climate. At the end of the summer, she spoke of
a potential conspiracy and consequent disturbances that seemed to indicate some type
of inevitable change. In October, she wrote of the people’s joy over meaningful reform
measures enacted by Pope Pius lX but stated her view that “Rome, to resume her glory,
must cease to be an ecclesiastical Capital; must renounce all this gorgeous mummery.” Her
Tribune dispatches criticized the attitude of expatriate Americans who, after years abroad,
showed little sympathy for the Italian people in their struggle against government corruption. She called for financial contributions from individuals at home to aid the cause
she saw as “OURS” and expressed disgust for her countrymen abroad, who reasoned that
because the Italians were degraded by bad institutions, they, like the American slaves,
were not fit for better. For Margaret, the cause of oppression and injustice was the same
everywhere. Referring to slavery as “a terrible blot” and “a threatening plague,” she now
thought favorably about the abolitionists at home who had once seemed to her so tedious
and so rabid.31
The events of 1848, the year of revolution in the Italian states and elsewhere throughout Europe, were duly reported by Margaret, who, in September, sustained a personal
peril of grave proportions. Amid the Apennine mountains outside of Rome, in the village of Rieti, she gave birth to an illegitimate child. Ready to return in December to her
professional assignment in the city she described as “so beautiful, so great,” she was forced
to leave behind “what was most precious” in the care of two young servant women, who
were retained by the baby boy’s father. Twenty-seven-year-old Marchese Giovanni Angelo
Ossoli, the radical son of an aristocratic family, had met Margaret by chance, not long
after her arrival in Rome; and their shared commitment to the cause of Italian unification
intensified the passionate mutual attraction between the young nobleman and the com-
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pletely captivated Margaret, who felt so energetic and excited in his presence.32
She found some compensation for leaving her son by returning to Rome and a house
adjacent to the Piazza Barberini, on the street of the Four Fountains, on one side, and the
Pope’s Quirinal Palace, on the other. The temper of life in the classical city appeared to
her as one of composure despite the summer furor precipitated by the dethronement of
the French king Louis Philippe early in 1848. Margaret wrote movingly in her year’s end
Tribune dispatch: “The great Past enfolds us, and the emotions of the moment cannot here
importantly disturb that impression.”33
Ever loyal to Mazzini, she wrote to him on March 3, 1849, as he prepared to return
to Rome as one of the Triumvirs in the Republic recently proclaimed after Pius lX fled
from the city. Her touching, loving tribute offered political encouragement, a prayer, and
a blessing for him and those who might follow his lead. Soon after Mazzini’s arrival in
Rome, he sought out Margaret, who believed him to be the only one capable of defending
the new government from its enemies. By this time, revolution had already been defeated
throughout the Italian peninsula, except in Rome, Venice, and Florence; and the future
of the Roman Republic, faced with treachery within and without, dominated the tenor
of Margaret’s dispatches as she continued to solicit sympathy for the Italians from her
countrymen in America.34
Writing in May from Rome, which was barricaded against French troops bent on
restoring the temporal power of the Pope, Margaret predicted a valiant but vain attempt
to preserve a people’s government. Ironically, the Second French Republic, exemplary no
longer for representative rule, with Napoleon’s nephew, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, as its
president, intervened against Mazzini’s Roman Republic. Margaret, like Anna Clemson,
lacked confidence in France’s future as a republic and its political leadership in Europe, as
the French military fought, in the summer of 1849, on behalf of the papacy against the
people.35
When the French attacked Rome in June, Margaret was an eyewitness to the events
that would eventually topple the government and dash the dreams of Mazzini and his
followers. From her residence, she viewed “a smoking, smoldering” city, as the “flower of
the Italian youth,” she said, fought and fell gloriously for a cause that was lost. Throughout the siege, her own beloved Ossoli battled bravely while she worked tirelessly with the
wounded and was appointed director of the Trinity of the Pilgrims hospital. According to
the United States’ Chargé d’Affaires, Lewis Cass, Jr., Margaret did her duty with complete
compassion and devotion, surrounded by the pain and horror of the dead and dying and
was spoken of in Rome in endearing terms seldom applied to a foreigner, especially a
Protestant. Aware of the desperate danger that surrounded her and Ossoli, she entrusted
to Cass important personal papers, such as the certificates of their marriage and those of
the birth and baptism of their child.36 Undoubtedly, Margaret Fuller’s participation in the
defense of the Roman Republic had proved her support for its ideals to be more than mere
rhetoric and, rightfully, earned her the respect of its citizens.
Margaret and Ossoli survived the fall of Rome in July 1849, were reunited with their
son, and spent their last days on the Italian peninsula in Florence, where she wrote a history of the revolution that she had witnessed. Hoping to begin life anew in America, she
wrote back home to family and friends of her concern about where to live and what to do
after, in her own words, “these bygone rich, if troubled years” abroad. In a tragic end to
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the life of one of America’s most talented and highly cultivated daughters, Margaret, along
with her husband and child, perished on July 19, 1850, in a shipwreck on the rocks of Fire
Island Beach, Long Island. Conflicting reports as to the recovery of their bodies say, on the
one hand, that only the son Angelo was found and, on the other, that they were “lost to
the sea and scavengers” and that there was no trace of any of them.37
Ironically, contained in the cargo of the ship Elizabeth, which carried Margaret, Ossoli, and their little boy to their deaths, was American sculptor Hiram Powers’s statue of
Anna Clemson’s beloved father, who had died at the end of March. Although Margaret
and her family drowned, the Calhoun marble mass was eventually exhumed, sent first to
Charleston and, later, during the Civil War, to Columbia, South Carolina, where it was
destroyed in the burning of the state capital in 1865.38
Unlike Anna Calhoun Clemson, who went abroad for six years to do her domestic
duty as a wife, and mother and Margaret Fuller, who was sent for four years to work as
a foreign correspondent, Harriet Lowndes Aiken, one of Charleston’s grandest hostesses,
traveled to Europe three separate times. Primarily for pleasure, intellectual and cultural
enrichment and to purchase items for her house at 48 Elizabeth Street, Harriet traveled
under circumstances quite different from those experienced by Anna and Margaret. The
well-educated matron spoke three foreign languages, played several musical instruments,
and as a member of the planter society, traveled to Europe with her husband, William Aiken, Jr., taking, in the words of essayist Wendell Garrett, “the intellectual Grand Tour and
making the cultural pilgrimage,” along with a number of other Charlestonians. Until very
late in the nineteenth century, the popular perception prevailed in the United States and
probably in Europe, as well, that Americans lacked the sophistication and culture found
abroad. Charlestonian elites such as the Aikens traveled to Europe, not only to vacation
as rich people, but to pursue the desirable elements of gracious and refined living. The
daughter of wealthy Lowcountry plantation owner Thomas Lowndes and Sarah Bond
l’On, Harriet was the niece of Congressman William Lowndes, with whom the Calhouns
had lived for a short while in Washington and for whom Anna’s father had named his
youngest son.39
Harriet’s townhouse, at 48 Elizabeth Street, inherited by her husband from his prosperous Irish immigrant father in 1833, had been rental property in the Wraggborough
district of the city before becoming the couple’s home. Almost immediately upon acquiring it, they began to remodel the roughly fifteen-year-old structure by enlarging it in the
Greek Revival style then fashionable. But, only two years after their marriage in 1831,
the twenty-one-year-old Harriet and twenty-seven-year-old William left the renovations
behind to travel to Paris, where they bought household furnishings and especially crystal
and bronze chandeliers.40
Upon their return visits to Europe in 1848 and, again, in 1857, the Aikens were
mainly interested in the fine arts and acquired one of Charleston’s noteworthy collections
of sculpture and paintings. Considered to be connoisseurs as collectors, they were among
those who supported the new Carolina Art Association, which was developed, according
to art historian Maurie D. McInnis, in the belief of its founders that a “‘picture gallery
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[w]as an important feature of modern city life.’” During their trip to Europe in the 1850s,
an art gallery in the ornate popular Rococo Revival style was added to their home and
floor plans were mailed to them abroad so that purchases could be made with specific
measurements in mind. By this time, William Aiken, who had been politically active as
governor from 1844-1846 and as a member of the U. S. House of Representatives from
1851-1857, had become one of the state’s wealthiest planters, listing 878 slaves in the
1850 slave schedules. In addition to his investment in cotton and rice, he also had money
in railroads and other business concerns.41
Well able to afford the European paintings emblematic of the culture and refinement
expected of Charleston’s aristocracy, the Aikens made notable buys on their trips abroad
from the works of Salvator Rosa, David Teniers, Carlo Marratti and Michelangelo. Romeo
and Juliet, a work they commissioned by the contemporary painter Luther Terry, was
on exhibition in Rome for a year-and-a-half before being sent to them in Charleston.
Their most significant acquisitions, works of sculpture, bought mostly in Florence and
Rome, included such surviving pieces as Mary Magdalene by D. Menconi, an unsigned
First Grief, busts of Proserpine and Shepherd Boy from sculptors Hiram Powers and Edward Sheffield Bartholomew, respectively. Along with these contemporary works, they
also purchased a smaller scale copy in marble of Antonio Canova’s Venus Italica for one
of the statuary niches in their newly built art gallery. The American artists abroad whom
the Aikens and others on the Grand Tour patronized were, like journalist Margaret Fuller,
among those professional people who traveled to Europe during the 1800s to either establish or enhance their own identities away from home and get needed training not available
in the United States.42
A small travel notebook kept by Harriet Aiken during her trip to Europe in the
1850s gives at least a glimpse of some of the places where she stayed, the sights that she
saw and the people whom she met. Of special interest are the sometimes rapid travel pace,
the frequent changes of venue, and the demanding social schedule of her European tour.
Accompanied by her husband, twenty-one-year-old daughter Etta, and, in all likelihood,
some personal slaves, Harriet left from New York on August 19, 1857, on the English
Steamer Persia bound for Liverpool. Harriet’s ten-day crossing by steamship, though more
costly, was far shorter than those lengthy sailing voyages made back and forth across the
Atlantic by Anna Clemson in the 1840s, and, undoubtedly, this was the preferred passage for those who could afford it. Traveling by train to London after a few days at the
so-called Queen’s Hotel in Manchester, where she attended an Art Exhibition, Harriet
Aiken stayed for only one day before going on to the Isle of Wight. There she was visited
by U.S. Minister Dallas’s wife before departing, once again by steamer, for the continent,
where she took the train to Paris. With an admittedly absurd number of trunks packed in
three carriages, she arrived at the very magnificent Hôtel du Louvre on the second week in
September and spent ten days. Although disappointed not to get a French maid, she saw
many acquaintances, as well as U.S. Minister Mason, prior to her departure for Cologne,
on September 19, en route to Berlin.43
Visiting palaces and public buildings for seven days in the Prussian capital, Harriet
Aiken also met with U. S. Minister Wright and was honored to be introduced to Count
Datzfeldt, a member of the German nobility before leaving for Leipzig at the end of the
month. After one night at the Hôtel de Pologue, where a band of musicians serenaded the
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guests of the restaurant in the evening, she proceeded to Dresden and arrived at the Hotel
Bellevue. There in the gallery of paintings, she met friends from home—notably, members
of the Izard family along with John and Caroline Preston, accompanied by their widowed
sister-in-law, Ann Fitzsimons Hampton. John Preston, one of the founders of the Carolina Art Association, supported by the Aikens, had brought his family to live in Europe
for a few years following the sale (for over a million dollars) of his wife’s portion of her
Hampton family’s “Houmas” sugar plantation in Louisiana. Following a ten-day visit in
Dresden, the Aikens left by rail for Prague, the capital of Bohemia in the Austrian Empire.
Unfortunately, the satisfaction of a pleasant day spent there was marred by the misfortune
to lose Murray (presumably a pet dog), possibly stolen by one of the waiters.44
After a day’s train trip from Prague to Vienna, Harriet Aiken began her stay on October 10 at the Hôtel de L’Impératrice Elisabethe. Upon arriving there at night, she was
astonished and amused at the effusive greeting given to her and her family by all on the
staff, who affectionately kissed everyone’s hands. She was invited to dine by U.S. Minister
Jackson, later attended the ballet and opera, and spent ten days touring churches and galleries in the Austrian capital before leaving by train for Gratz and Trieste on the way to
Venice. On traversing the Adriatic Sea at night, she had a very bad, stormy passage before
arriving in the middle of the afternoon on October 23. Harriet spent a week sightseeing
from a gondola. She admired the beautiful churches and their paintings. She then left
Venice by rail for Verona and a visit to Mantua before continuing on to Milan.45
After a week in the capital of the Italian state of Lombardy, Harriet traveled to Tuscany and the city of Florence for about a six-weeks’ stay at the Hôtel d’Italie. Settled in
Rome just before Christmas, she found Lewis Cass still to be the U.S. Minister there and
attended what she described as a “very stupid” reception given by his wife. The Aikens
had vacationed in Europe in 1848, the same time that Margaret Fuller had lived in Rome
and its environs.
Leaving by coach for Naples on February 25, 1858, Harriet found the trip’s postillions, or mounted guides, to be very annoying and beggars in the town of Gaeta a serious
nuisance as she made her way to one of the favorite destinations with travelers on the
Grand Tour. Once safely lodged in Naples, she took excursions to Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius, where continuing small eruptions fascinated her and other tourists. Other outings
made during her month-long stay in the Neapolitan city were to Sorrento, where, though
most beautiful, the wind at night was fearfully disturbing; Salerno, where sunset over the
Bay of Naples was breathtaking; and Pestum, where she did not find the ruins worth seeing after what she had endured to get there.46
The Aikens spent Holy Week back in Rome, attending Palm Sunday services at Saint
Peter’s, where the ceremony seemed to Harriet much the same as at Christmas. Easter
Sunday at Saint Peter’s she found to be very grand and the illumination of the building in
the evening very beautiful. Leaving the “Eternal City” four days later, on April 8, the Aiken party went by carriage to Siena, where they took the train to Pisa and then, by coach,
resumed their travels along the Mediterranean to Genoa. After a side trip to Turin, they
returned to Genoa for a day before departing for Nice. Harriet Aiken’s travel notebook
ends here but notations made inside the back cover indicate that, from May to August, she
wrote letters from Paris and London to friends and family back home.47
Some time after her return from Europe in 1858, Harriet posed for artist George
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Whiting Flagg in what may be, according to Angela D.
Mack (Curator, Gibbes Museum of Art) and decorative arts
authority J. Thomas Savage, “the last of Charleston’s antebellum portraits conceived in the Grand Tour mode.” This
imposing portrait, obviously influenced by the full-length
genre introduced to Charlestonians by George Romney’s
Mrs. Mary Rutledge Smith, painted in London in 1786,
is remarkably similar to the one of Anna Clemson in her
court presentation attire in Brussels. Although the name of
the artist in Anna’s case cannot be discerned, her portrait,
though not nearly as large as Harriet Aiken’s, appears to be
of like quality (see frontispiece). Whereas Anna’s portrait is
at present in the private possession of her great-great grandson, Lee Calhoun, at his residence in Pittsboro, North
portrait, Harriet Aiken
Carolina, Harriet’s hangs in her family’s former home, now
owned by the Historic Charleston Foundation. The house
at 48 Elizabeth Street, furnished in part by acquisitions the Aikens made in Europe, is
open daily to the public and interpreted, in one aspect, as “a testament to the wealth and
fashions of antebellum Charleston.”48
While Harriet Lowndes Aiken was ending her “Grand Tour” of Europe in the summer of 1858, Lucy Holcombe Pickens, the third wife of Anna Calhoun Clemson’s cousin
Francis, arrived in Liverpool with her husband, the new U.S. Minister to Russia. The
steamship Persia, which had brought Harriet abroad a year earlier, was the same one that
carried Lucy, Francis, two of his daughters, two slaves, and an official secretary across the
Atlantic. Traveling as a bride, the twenty-five-year-old Lucy suffered misgivings at the last
minute about going so far away from her beloved family in Texas. Persuaded to go by
assurances from Cunard Captain Charles Judkins that he and the ship would bring her
home if she wanted to come back after they landed, she was actually invigorated by the
seven-day passage that made the rest of her party seasick. Enjoying the attention and companionship of her fellow passengers on board, Lucy arrived in Europe hoping to dazzle the
most magnificent court on the continent.49
Known for her beauty and charm from New York to New Orleans, where her family frequently visited, Lucy Holcombe had met former U.S. Congressman Francis Pickens while husband-hunting, in 1857, with her mother at the fashionable White Sulphur
Springs resort in Virginia. There, the fifty-year-old Francis, a widower with five daughters,
proposed marriage to the lovely young woman he described as a “sweet and lovely girl”
with “joy in her eye and peace upon her radiant brow.” She was, he wrote, “Soft and bright
as the morning dew-drop glistening on the bosom of the mountain flower. Pure as the
spark on ocean’s foam from whence Venus rose.” (Pickens’s passion for Lucy was reminiscent of the sentiments attributed by Anna to her forty-year-old uncle James Calhoun
when quite smitten with her best friend “Maria’s perfections.”)50
The fact that the “average-looking bewigged” Pickens, described as such by his biogra-
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pher, John B. Edmunds, Jr., owned hundreds of acres of land in Alabama and Mississippi,
as well as 2,250 acres of land in his native South Carolina, undoubtedly made his marriage
offer more attractive to Lucy. Besides his money, Pickens’s likely selection by President
James Buchanan for a diplomatic position could well have appealed to her expressed interest in travel and dream of going abroad. In any case, ambition and wealth influenced this
southern belle, who had been engaged to another, to marry Pickens.
Betrothed at nineteen, according to Holcombe family history, to Colonel William
Crittenden of Kentucky, who was killed in a filibustering invasion of Cuba in 1851, Lucy
later wrote about the failed liberating expedition in a novel entitled, The Free Flag Of Cuba.
(The final attempt led by revolutionary soldier Narcisco López to overthrow Spanish rule
in Cuba was the focus of Lucy’s novel, which glorifies a “cause célèbre” that, in reality, had
been a fiasco.) Unlike Margaret Fuller’s treatise Woman in the Nineteenth Century, written
to propose an alternative to women’s definable place in society, Lucy Holcombe’s novel,
penned under the pseudonym, H. M. Hardimann, not only celebrates filibustering but,
in addressing the clearly determined gender roles of southern women, finds acceptable
the perception that married women were mature and patient and unmarried women were
beautiful and charming.51 However, even after her own marriage to Francis Pickens, Lucy,
herself, undeniably, retained the attributes of a belle.
The Holcombe family, originally from Virginia and Tennessee, where Lucy was born,
had recovered as planters of wheat and cotton in Texas the financial prosperity they had
previously lost. However, Pickens’s wealth was probably not an insignificant factor in her
parents’ reluctant acquiescence to their daughter’s determination to marry a man older
than her own father. With a letter from President Buchanan appointing him U.S. Minister to Russia and orders to leave for the St. Petersburg post by mid-May, Francis Pickens
arrived in the east Texas town of Marshall on April 24, 1858. After Lucy’s almost twomonth silence to his declarations of love, he had come in response to her summons after
she had received his own curt note, quoted as follows in Elizabeth Wittenmyer Lewis’s
biography of this beguiling woman: “‘I’ll be walking amid marble palaces under gilded
domes.... Farewell, farewell.’” Two days after his arrival in Texas, the couple was married
at the Holcombe family’s “Wyalusing” plantation (named after an Indian word meaning
“friend to the friendless”), on April 26. After additional festivities, they left three days later
for South Carolina accompanied by the slave girl Lucinda, a wedding gift to Lucy from
her parents.52
Spending only a week at Pickens’s Edgewood plantation, the newlyweds took the
train for Washington on the way to New York and their scheduled departure for Europe on May 28, 1858. Included in their party were Francis’s two unmarried daughters,
twenty-four-year-old Rebecca, the youngest by his first wife, Eliza Simkins, and twelveyear-old Jeannie (sometimes spelled “Jennie”), the only child of his second wife, Marion
Antoinette Dearing. In attendance were Lucy’s slave girl, Lucinda, and Pickens’s man-servant, Tom. Anna Clemson, who had been a close friend of Eliza (her dearest friend Maria’s
sister), whose death in 1842 had left her cousin Francis with four daughters in his care,
barely knew Marion. She described her as “a very pleasant person,” whose rich father was
the first president of the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company. William Dearing, who
had moved his family from Athens to Charleston, had raised his daughter well so that she
had the shy gentleness expected by Pickens. The child Jeannie, who had lost her mother as
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a young girl, when Marion died in 1853, became devoted to Lucy, who in turn loved her
dearly. The Pickens entourage that arrived in England en route to Russia in early June also
included Francis’s friend John Bacon, who was to act as his business secretary.53
Beginning with her passage to Europe on the steamer Persia, Lucy started to send
to the Memphis Eagle and Enquirer unofficial letters that gave their readers curious detail about her activities abroad. (Lucy’s hometown of LaGrange, Tennessee, was about
fifty miles from Memphis.) As the primarily descriptive personal accounts of a diplomat’s
wife, Lucy’s letters, testifying to her own privileged experience, represent the most simple
form of the nineteenth-century travel chronicle. Whereas correspondent Margaret Fuller
wrote interpretive letters as dispatches to the Tribune that paid her a salary, Lucy’s letters
to the Eagle and Enquirer exemplify what William Stowe’s work on European travel in
nineteenth-century American culture cites as “the only respectable public channel for
the voice of the supposedly private and domestic female.” 54 Southern ladies would have
looked askance at the marketing of Margaret Fuller’s literary skills whereas Lucy’s letters
were written within the realm of genteel respectability.
After a few nights in Liverpool, at the Queen’s Hotel, where Lucy described the accommodations as very nice but the eating miserable, the Pickens party left for London,
where they eventually exchanged their small rooms at Fenton’s, on St. James Street, for
ones more agreeable at Morley’s, on Trafalgar Square. During a several days’ stay in England, Lucy enumerated and embellished with details the events that she attended, including the Royal Exhibition of paintings, a performance of Macbeth, a reading by Charles
Dickens of his “Story of Little Dombey,” and a very imposing service at Westminster
Abbey. However, she was not presented to Queen Victoria, because the court assembly attended by her husband, she said, was only a levée for gentlemen. While enjoying London’s
beautiful sights, Lucy was nevertheless not sorry to leave, having found that there was
nothing charming about the comfort of an English hotel.55 In Paris, a city Lucy portrayed
as the lovely capital of fairy land and pleasure, she went to the Louvre, dined at American
Minister Mason’s house, saw the Tomb of Napoleon, and met a great many Americans
whom she found to be all kindly and hospitable. Received by the Emperor Louis Napoleon lll, Lucy regaled the readers of the Eagle and Enquirer back home with the following
description of her court dress: “A blue silk lace with three point lace flounces, over which
a long train of lace is worn, looped with diamond sprigs, jewels of the same, breastpin,
earrings and bracelet.” The gold jewelry adorned with diamonds had been a surprise gift
from Francis on her twenty-sixth birthday celebrated in London. Complaining, however,
in a letter from Berlin to her mother, that the stay in Paris was nothing but dresses and
balls, Lucy vowed that her love for the simplicity and affections of home would not be
changed by European society and pretensions.56
Coincidentally, the marriage of the French Emperor Louis Napoleon lll and his wife
Eugénie had come about in much the same way as that of Lucy and Francis Pickens.
Eugénie’s mother, the Countess of Montijo, “the most famous matchmaker of the century,” as cited in Nancy Nichols Barker’s diplomatic history of the Second French Empire,
took her daughter to Paris in pursuit of a husband—in particular, the French Republic’s
bachelor president, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. Like Lucy, who was in her mid-twenties
when she met Francis at the Virginia resort, Eugénie, at the same age when she met Louis
Napoleon, needed to wed. Like Francis, the French president fell in love at first sight with
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a young, beautiful, charming, and vital woman. Their marriage in 1853 gave his newly
declared Empire “a style and an individuality” that it needed, according to Barker’s Distaff
Diplomacy.57
Boarding a ship at Stettin on the Baltic, after spending a day in Berlin, the Pickens party sailed to Russia. Upon their arrival, on the morning of July 6, at the port of
Kronstadt, which is but a short distance from St. Petersburg, Lucy reported a strange
sensation that came over her as she stood for the first time on Russian ground. Although
relations between the United States and Russia were, in diplomatic terms, of “the most
friendly character,” the sight of the long beard and singular dress coupled, with the confused sounds of such unfamiliar speech, made her feel truly isolated. Once settled in
St. Petersburg, in rooms at the Hotel de Russia, she indulged in a good cry, declaring:
“Who that has a heart susceptible of kindly feelings, ever abandoned his native land and
home,…without a pang of regret”! She enjoyed sightseeing along the city’s wide streets,
surrounded by the nobility’s palaces. In the midst of gaily dressed soldiers, she said, poignantly, “my heart sank within me with that sad longing for home” known only to those
“whose feet press a foreign shore.”58
Lucy did not meet the Romanov ruler, Czar Alexander ll, and his wife, the Czarina
Marie, until an imperial dinner and ball held in mid-July at their Peterhof Palace. Within
an hour’s ride by rail from the city, their summer residence was the setting for her court
presentation as “Madame the Ambassadress.” The herald announced Lucy’s arrival together with her husband and stepdaughter Rebecca. Led by the aide-de-camp of ceremonies
and accompanied by the courtiers, they were conducted to their rooms to rest until four
o’clock, at which time they returned to the grand salon to join the whole diplomatic corps
for a dinner that was, according to Lucy, “beyond imagination in richness and beauty.”
To an undoubtedly impressionable audience at home, she described both her dinner and
ball gowns of silk and lace, the magnificence of six palace drawing rooms leading into a
large ballroom, and the grand entrance of the Emperor preceded by a blast from a silver
trumpet. His Majesty, Czar Alexander, she said, “has a noble person, with fine blue eyes,
and the most benevolent of faces.”59
Easily enamored by feminine charm, the middle-aged monarch, though not a flirt,
unlike Lucy, who was one by nature, became fascinated with her uncommon beauty. At
his insistence that she converse with him in French, although he spoke English, she took
language lessons and also hired a voice teacher to train her clear natural soprano. Actually,
Lucy was already well-versed in French, having studied the subject during her three years
as a student at the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Often invited to sit in the Imperial Box at the Opera and ride in the royal carriage to the
theater or ballet, she enjoyed the czar’s hospitality that first summer of new experiences in
Russia, and she even developed a friendship with his wife the Empress. At their command,
the entire Pickens entourage eventually moved into diplomatic quarters on the Quai de la
Cour, between the Winter Palace and the residence of the czar’s brother, the Grand Duke
Constantin. Feeling quite comfortable at first in the company of the Russian aristocracy,
Lucy grew to love her villa in the midst of royalty.60
Francis Pickens, apparently quite proud of the attention shown to his wife by the
Russian ruler, wrote to her mother, early in 1859, that at a large ball the Emperor had
singled Lucy out to converse with him on a special stand reserved for the imperial family.
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Honored in such a way seldom seen by a foreigner, Lucy was, he said, soon paid special attention by all in attendance at court. News of her pregnancy, by mid-February, prompted
the czar and his wife to provide the Pickens family, during the confinement period, with
living quarters in the Winter Palace. There Lucy could rest comfortably and view for
amusement the ice skaters on the frozen Neva River.61
With an American physician and her own Lucinda in attendance, Lucy gave birth
to her child in the privacy of her palace rooms on March 14. Although she had earlier
written to her sister Anna Eliza that “no human being could imagine my sore disappointment in a girl,” she undoubtedly thanked God for a healthy baby daughter. The fact that
Lucy wanted a son for her first-born reflected that patriarchal view prevalent everywhere
in the world. Ironically, Margaret Fuller, the New England feminist, had given birth in
a mountain village outside of Rome to such a son that Lucy had set her heart on having.
The palace guns sounded, and the Imperial band performed in celebration of the little
Pickens girl’s birth, and, with all the fanfare befitting a royal child, she was later christened
Eugenia, for Lucy’s mother. Diamonds given to Lucy and her daughter by Czar Alexander,
along with unprecedented royal attention given to the baby’s birth, aroused speculation
by some that the monarch himself might be the father. However, assuming that Lucy’s
pregnancy was full-term, as it appeared to be, the child born in March could not have
been conceived after mid-July, when she first met the czar at Peterhof Palace.62
Even though Lucy planned to nurse her baby, she employed a Russian girl, “Mumka,”
as a wet-nurse, and it was “Mumka” who affectionately gave the child her lifelong name of
“Douschka,” meaning “Little Darling.’’ A month after the baby’s birth, word from home
about Lucy’s mother’s health made Lucy determined to take her daughter and Mumka
and leave immediately for America, but Francis, whose word as her husband was final,
refused to grant her request to go.
Although promising that she could spend the fall and winter in Rome, Pickens sent
Lucy instead, in October, to enroll her thirteen-year-old stepdaughter, Jeannie, in a German boarding school. By this time the twenty-five-year-old Rebecca Pickens had married
the legation secretary, John Bacon, under difficult circumstances that pained and mortified her father and disturbed Lucy, who feared the marriage would be an unhappy one.
Lucy found Rebecca, a young woman of her own age, to be as uncongenial a companion
as she had ever had. She had done everything for her and bore her demands with patience,
Lucy wrote to her sister in Texas. Escorted by Rebecca’s husband, who had resigned his
official position with Francis Pickens, Lucy left her six-and-a half-month-old baby behind
in Russia to take Jeannie—whom she described as a friendly, unselfish, loving child— to
Frankfurt.63
Upon her return to St. Petersburg, Lucy moved to a different part of the city. She
lamented leaving her quarters on the Quai de la Cour, which she had come to love even
though her new house, as she told her sister, was much nicer. Homesick for the companionship of her family in America, Lucy had come to feel the “miserable emptiness of
European society” in Russia much as Anna Clemson had felt social ceremonies to be such
nonsense in Belgium.
“One who has had the happiness of living always in God’s favored land, America,” as
Lucy wrote, “can form no idea of the pettyness [sic] of men and women abroad, covered as
they are with titles and diamonds.” Although both Anna and Lucy had been received with
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great kindness at court, neither woman, though having lived abroad under quite different
conditions, lost her republican perspective in the midst of pomp and circumstance.64
Not only was Lucy ready to return to America, but Francis, eager to take part in the
political events that would decide the future of the United States, wanted also to go home.
From correspondence with his political friends, he knew of the steadily increasing strife
between the abolitionists in the North and secessionists in the South, and, during the
winter of 1859-60, he got letters of support for his presidential candidacy. Although both
Francis and Lucy were appalled by the absolute poverty and ignorant state of the Russian
masses, the majority of whom were serfs, neither one compared them to the slaves in the
South. Francis resigned his post in St. Petersburg in April 1860, but, since he could not
leave until the appointment of a successor, Lucy took fourteen-month-old Douschka,
fussy with a cold and teething, to a German Spa at Schawlbach outside of Wiesbaden.65
Attended by Lucinda and a German nursemaid, they crossed a rough Baltic Sea in
mid-July to pick up Jeannie from school in Frankfurt, where they boarded the train for
Wiesbaden. After a three-hour trip by carriage and on foot up the mountain to Schawlbach, they settled comfortably, as Lucy wrote her mother, into a suite of rooms at the hotel
Au Duke de Nassau. “If there be any virtue in the waters, regular hours and exercise,” she
said, she hoped to flourish as Douschka had done by her exposure to a more moderate
climate.66
While Francis made final arrangements for the trip home, Lucy spent time traveling
on the Continent, visiting with friends and shopping. Although she dreaded crossing the
Atlantic, having just been seasick on the Baltic, she was pleased and thankful to be going
home to her “dearest best friend,” her own “precious Mother.” Leaving from Southampton
aboard the Collins fleet’s steamship, the Adriatic, on October 23, the Pickens entourage
arrived home on November 5. The country they had left in peace, almost two-and-a-half
years earlier, was now, as they returned, on the eve of war. Their arrival in New York was
noted in the Charleston Mercury of November 8, 1860, the same issue that announced
the election of Abraham Lincoln as President. Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861,
would coincide with Czar Alexander II’s Act of Emancipation, on March 3, that abolished
serfdom and freed the peasants.67
Lucy Pickens became the First Lady of South Carolina with her husband’s election as
governor in December 1860. During his tenure in office, she was a great asset to him at
the time of secession and in the early years of the Civil War. Contributing to the outfitting
of Confederate troops with the sale of jewels given to her by the czar, she had a regiment
named in her honor as the “Holcombe Legion.” Her picture, in different poses, graced
Confederate one- and one-hundred-dollar bills. Although famed Civil War diarist, Mary
Boykin Chesnut, when irreverently describing Governor Pickens’s appearance at a reception, could write, according to her biographer, Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, that “‘old Pick was
there with a better wig—& his silly & affected wife,’” Chesnut would, in public, flatter
the woman who was Pickens’s “sweet and lovely girl.”68
Pickens and his family went from Columbia to their Edgewood plantation when his
term as governor ended in December 1862; and, with Lucy’s efforts, the home that had
been without a mistress for many years was transformed into an elegant one. Lucy lived
there for the rest of her life and, after her death in 1899, thirty years after that of Francis,
Edgewood remained in the family until being sold in the 1920s.69
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As travelers to Europe in the nineteenth century, Anna Calhoun Clemson, Margaret
Fuller, Harriet Lowndes Aiken and Lucy Holcombe Pickens were representative of the
elite in society and each, in her own way, made an impact abroad. Anna’s loyal support of
her husband and loving devotion to her children must have been obvious to all who knew
her in Belgium. Margaret, who found personal fulfillment in Rome in her passionate
love for an Italian nobleman entwined with their dedicated participation in the defense
of the Roman Republic, received public recognition in the midst of grave danger. What
an impression she must have made on those whom she nursed during the siege of Rome
in the summer of 1849! Harriet’s purchases of paintings and sculpture, acquired with her
husband while touring Europe, resulted in one of the most acclaimed fine arts collections
in Charleston and undoubtedly earned her the respect, both at home and abroad, due a
genuine connoisseur. Though homesick for family back in America, like Anna, Lucy captivated Czar Alexander and the opulent Russian court because of her beauty and charm
at the age of twenty-six.
Certainly, each of these women graced the European stage, and, surely, they enhanced
the general impression of American women abroad. With the exception of Margaret Fuller,
who lost her life in a tragic accident, the others returned home safely. Lucy Pickens came
back from her relatively short stay in Russia to a divided country on the brink of Civil War
whereas Anna Clemson and Harriet Aiken resumed their lives in America temporarily at
peace. Before the catastrophe of conflict came to pass in 1861, Anna gave birth to and
buried a child, having lost four of her siblings, as well. Harriet, back home by the fall of
1858, presumably resumed the refurbishment of her Charleston townhouse, which would
ultimately withstand the heavy Union bombardment of the city in 1863. She would continue to live there until her death in 1892, five years after that of her husband, William.
Lucy resumed her life at home on a high note, despite the outbreak of war soon
after her return from Europe. Having dazzled the Russian court during her husband’s
diplomatic service, she was well-suited to her role as South Carolina’s First Lady, which
put her, once again, in the spotlight. Anna Calhoun Clemson, on the other hand, though
glad to settle her family on a farm in Maryland after several years in Belgium, was forced
to face the reality of her husband’s depressive disorder, which worsened with his inability
to secure another foreign appointment. Unlike Anna’s cousin Francis Pickens, successful
in his desire for political prominence, Clemson was stymied in his pursuit of government service. The frustration of this failure, with its irate effect on his behavior, created
an emotional distance between husband and wife that would never have seemed possible
with Clemson’s protestations of love following their engagement in 1838. Although Anna
had longed to return to life in her own glorious country while abroad, Clemson wanted
to be there, and she might well have looked back on the Belgian years as some of the best
in her marriage.
Chapter Six
“My very much beloved dear Anna”
Whether maiden or mistress, Anna Calhoun Clemson, like other Southern ladies of
her era, responded to the demands of men. Pleasing first a father, and then a husband,
was behavior befitting to those of a supposedly subordinate gender in a patriarchal society.
Anna’s purity, as a virtuous young lady loved dearly by her father, was particularly appealing to the man she would marry. Thomas Clemson’s passionate pursuit of Miss Anna
Calhoun, albeit primarily in letters as prompted by their separation from one another,
preceded their marriage on November 13, 1838. Obviously an emotional union based on
love, rather than a family arrangement that had typified nuptials in the 1700s, their marriage committed Anna as a wife to the traditional duties of domesticity, which was held in
esteem in the nineteenth century. Like all wedded women of her day, Anna would follow
her husband’s lead and hold their family together despite the sometimes perilous path of
their journey.1 A last view of the life of Anna Calhoun Clemson will observe her relationship with her husband from the time of their marriage in 1838 to her death in 1875, and
it will reveal her legacy of land and love.
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“My very much beloved dear Anna – …I live through you – you are more dear than
life – your happiness is my only desire – you are the first and the last – the blessed
idol of my life.”
I
n Philadelphia in the summer of 1838, Thomas Green Clemson made the above
overture to the young woman who would soon become his wife. Six weeks after their
parting and having had no word from Miss Anna Calhoun in response to his letters,
he passionately reaffirmed his feelings for her. Although they had apparently reached “an
understanding” before she left Washington, D.C., for her family’s Fort Hill plantation in
South Carolina, the fact that he had heard nothing from her since then not only added to
his ardor but bewildered him, as well. After almost a dozen epistles and no answer to any
of them, Clemson likened his worry, in a letter of August 19, to “a load of excruciating
suspense and accumulating anxiety.” Fortunately, he heard from her the following day and
experienced what he described as a most remarkable “revolution of feeling.” Happy that
her mother, father, and sister-in-law Margaret spoke kindly of him, he expressed confidently his belief that “if love and devoted affection to Anna will veil my numerous and
various faults, then I shall be perfect.”2
Although excited about what she referred to as the wedding “event” scheduled for fall,
the bride-to-be conceded her nervousness to her dearest childhood friend, Maria Simkins,
in whom she confided about everything. Maria, who knew that Anna idolized her father,
would surely be sympathetic to her pain in giving up the man she considered to be “the
cherished object” of her life, even though she thought her choice “the best” in the matter
of a husband.
While true that Anna was probably closer to her father than anyone else, and that
her place in his life was never assumed by anybody after she married Clemson, it can
be said that in their case the father gained a son rather than lost a daughter. The smart
and multi-skilled Clemson, the son of a rich Philadelphia merchant, had many attributes
characteristic of his illustrious father-in-law. Being one of six children, Clemson received
a substantial share of his father’s estate, estimated at $100,000, at his death in 1813. Educated as a mining engineer with training in geology and chemistry and gifted, too, in the
fine arts of music and painting, Clemson became interested in agriculture and diplomacy.
With his tall, lean stature and dark hair, he even resembled Calhoun,3 according to some
observers.
As a seemingly confirmed bachelor who is said to have declared that there was no
woman whom he would ever marry, Clemson was apparently quite smitten by Anna’s
purity and loveliness. Captivated by her large, dark eyes—their extraordinary animation
softened by the most attractive sweetness—he wooed and won the woman who had herself expressed a determination never to wed. Their marriage on November 13, 1838, was
solemnized in the parlor of the Calhouns’ home at Fort Hill plantation.4 Following her
husband, as all wedded women were wont to do, she traveled widely in the North, journeyed as far south as Havana, ventured to live in a “Miner’s Hut” in Georgia, and, finally,
traveled abroad to Belgium.
The separation from her family in America, especially her father, during the six years
of Clemson’s diplomatic service at the court of King Léopold l in Brussels, was particularly
painful for Anna, who dreamed every night of the pleasure of seeing them all again. She
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felt deeply the distance from her dear parents and found herself unimpressed with whatever she thought Europeans valued as treasures. Indeed, she did not enjoy her experience
abroad but rather endured it as a duty to her husband. After a little more than six years
spent in Belgium, she gladly returned home permanently in May of 1851, and, following
a summer at Fort Hill, she moved about with her family for another two years to various
locations in the North before finally settling on a farm near Washington in August 1853.
Unable to obtain a foreign post in the administration of Millard Fillmore’s successor, President Franklin Pierce, Clemson had decided to become a planter again, although he still
maintained an interest in government service. Clemson had authorized Francis Pickens,
his Edgefield neighbor, to negotiate the sale of his Canebrake property in South Carolina
with Alfred Dearing, Pickens’s brother-in-law.5
Grateful to have her own homeplace in America, Anna designated the farm her husband had purchased in Bladensburg, Maryland, to be called, simply, “The Home,” and
she proceeded to cope with the demands of managing the household there. During the
following years, Clemson’s increasing irascibility made life difficult for those around him
and particularly Anna, who thought so much of family love and harmony that she promoted these virtues in every way. She had admitted earlier (to her brother Patrick) that
her husband was sometimes “cross” in spells of gloom, though she still felt that she could
humor his fits and that he had much improved since the time of their marriage when he
was liable, she said, to the “blues” and “dyspeptic & ailing.” Believing that his ill-health
was related to habitual despondency, she had tried never to worry him and to amuse him
when his spirits were low. Consequently, she felt that his mental state had much improved
towards the end of their stay in Belgium. However, Anna’s letters to her daughter Floride,
then away from The Home at her Aunt Barton’s boarding school in Philadelphia, seemed
to indicate more of an evolution in Clemson’s later chronic moodiness, rather than a swing in
the opposite direction.6
The condition of dysthymia, from which Clemson apparently suffered, caused
a chronically depressed mood (though not a major depression) that adversely affected
his behavior, especially with regard to such medical symptoms as “subjective feelings of
irritability or excessive anger,” “poor appetite,” and “feelings of hopelessness.” It is not
surprising that without pharmacological therapy, now recognized as effective in the establishment of an anti-depressive personality, Anna’s attempts to cheer her husband out
of what she called the “blues” succeeded only in the short term. Today, with appropriate
therapeutic treatments, including drugs, counseling, and psychotherapy, an estimated 80
percent of all clinically depressed people can improve quickly. Life-long relief from this
widespread psychological illness is, by all accounts, realistic. Unfortunately, in Clemson’s
case, without the care that is now available, the seriousness of his misunderstood condition worsened and caused personal distress, even disability, within his family, despite all
that Anna could do to keep the peace she prized dearly.7
Anna wrote to Floride, who was away at school in September 1856, that her father
ate little but complained much, knowing that her daughter would be glad to hear that he
was still very kind and amiable. She advised Floride not to mention this in her response,
which Clemson would probably read, because she did not wish him to think mother
and daughter spoke of such matters. Aunt Barton could be trusted to keep confidential
the subject of Clemson’s depression. As he seemed to miss both Floride and her brother,
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Calhoun, who was being treated for a spinal affliction in Northampton, Massachusetts,
Clemson was more devoted than ever to his little one-year-old daughter, Nina, born in
the fall of 1855. Anna, who knew Floride would know how lost she was without her and
Calhoun, confided to her daughter that, “If it were not for baby, I could not stand it.”
Despite being far from well, Clemson remained pleasant and amiable, though, as usual,
convinced, according to Anna, that he would “die in a poor house.”8
Another expense would be the calisthenics training that Anna thought necessary for
Floride’s educational curriculum. As Anna did not like to oppose Clemson’s wishes, she
regretted that his sister, rather than speaking to him about Floride’s taking the course, had
not simply billed him for the cost, to which he typically objected beforehand. Distressed
also at his refusal to give money for a cloak that his sister had said Floride needed, Anna
promised to send $20 herself in March to pay for the item. She also sent $5 bank notes
to her daughter that she had received from her own mother, Floride Calhoun, in South
Carolina.9
With her son’s return home from the North in November 1856, Anna and Clemson
concluded that the fifteen-year-old’s health must receive priority in their lives for the next
few years. Unable to do any reading or writing because of headaches, Calhoun, like his
parents, worried about his backwardness. Not only did Clemson try by conversation to
interest his son in science, but, according to Anna, he continued to keep up with the water
cure treatment that Calhoun had undergone in Massachusetts. Rousing the household at
5 o’clock in the morning with his preparations, Clemson proceeded to pack the unwilling boy for one hour in a wet sheet, covered by five blankets. He then rubbed his son
with a wet and then a dry sheet and, later in the day, supervised a sitz bath with Calhoun
wrapped in a blanket in a tub of water for thirty minutes. A wet bandage worn around his
waist and a diet of the simplest food completed the hated regimen that Calhoun called the
“water tortures.” “I really feel for him,” Anna wrote to Floride, and “it is enough to run
one crazy, to see the state of the two rooms, which I must right up.”10
Calhoun’s condition did improve by Christmas and New Year’s, and, by spring 1857,
Anna also had good news to report to Floride about her father, who had been approached
by the Belgian minister, M. Bosch, in regard to the matter of his being sent back to Europe. Upon instructions from the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the King, M. Bosch
had requested that the new president, James Buchanan, and his Secretary of State, Lewis
Cass, give the Belgian mission to Clemson, who felt highly complimented. As the matter
appeared certain, Clemson made plans to sell The Home, if possible, and have Anna live
with Floride in a house in Philadelphia, near his youngest sister, Catharine North. Calling
the mission a godsend for her husband, Anna thought it the best thing that could happen,
as she told Floride that her father’s worrying and dissatisfaction made him and everyone
around him miserable. In particular, she said, “it is a good thing Calhoun should be
separated from him for a while”; and, although she disliked greatly both the idea of leaving The Home and the trouble of moving, the pleasure of being with her daughter again
reconciled her to the situation.11
However, after six weeks with no commitment by the government to Clemson’s appointment to the Belgian post, the possibility of his resuming diplomatic service became
much less certain. President Buchanan had said that great political pressure prevented him
from acceding to Belgium’s request on behalf of Clemson; and, since, according to Anna,
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he had been “so buoyed up” by the hope of getting “so essential” an office, she dreaded
the effect of a disappointment that would make him very miserable. Thus, instead of
preparing to move in June 1857, she, along with the whole household, anxiously awaited
Floride’s homecoming from school.12
Apparently the fourteen-year-old’s summer stay at The Home turned out to be a
stressful one, ending in a family quarrel the day she departed for Philadelphia in September. Described by Anna as “that thunder storm,” the unexplained dispute followed
three months of friction and seemingly “left no material for further explosives.” Since her
daughter’s departure, “Quiet, if not peace, has reigned,” she wrote to Floride. Clemson’s
failure to receive the diplomatic appointment to Belgium could well have resulted in a
depressive spiral characterized by a dysphoric state of anxiety with an irritability that contributed to hostility between father and daughter.13
Even though Clemson would not improve much, Anna nevertheless wanted Floride
back at school to let her mind be at ease. Calhoun, she said, was unusually affectionate and
attentive to her at home, and they got on very well. In fact, the arrival of her brother Pat,
“a favourite” with her husband, meant “no change or storm,” as Clemson, she reminded
Floride, was in her uncle’s presence always more pleasant.14
Despite Anna’s disapproval, Clemson’s decision to send Calhoun to study with his
paternal Uncle Baker in Claymont, Delaware, led to a hard trial of loneliness for her.
With Floride already away at her Aunt Barton’s academy in Philadelphia, she wrote to her
daughter, “If it were not for Nina, I do not think I could bear it.” The little girl, at a yearand-a-half and “one of the smartest children” in her mother’s eyes, would sit at length on
her father’s lap and call herself “papa’s Nina.”
Some months following both Calhoun’s and Floride’s return to The Home, it was
their little sister’s unexpected death from scarlet fever on December 20, 1858, that provoked such a despondency in Clemson that Anna’s mother Floride Calhoun urged her
daughter to do all in her power to prevent her husband from committing suicide. In a
letter that she had received from him almost eight months after Nina’s passing, Mrs. Calhoun found her son-in-law to be “still dwelling on going to his child” because “life is a
burden to him.” Fearing that he would put an end to himself, she admonished Anna that
he would lose his mind or something worse if he did not lay aside those awful feelings.
Apparently the severe emotional stress caused by his daughter’s death had brought about a
clinical condition of double depression with a major depressive episode superimposed on
the distraught Clemson’s dysthmic disorder.15
Shortly after Mrs. Calhoun’s warning, Anna learned from Laura Leupp that her own
father, Charles Leupp, Clemson’s close friend and financial adviser and a wealthy New
York City leather merchant, had shot himself, partly the result of his involvement with
the financial schemer, Jay Gould. This news deepened the despondency that Clemson had
suffered since Nina’s death. He sounded “so depressed in spirits” in a letter to his uncle
Elias Baker who expressed his astonishment at such language of despair from one whom
he thought should be a happy and contented man. “You must not always look at the ‘Black
Side’ of things,” his uncle had responded to Clemson’s grumbly complaints, as he advised
him to look, instead, on the bright side. Although sympathetic to the pain of Clemson’s
loss of both his little daughter and friend Charles Leupp, Elias reminded his nephew that
he had a wonderful wife and two fine children, a competence in money matters and the
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enjoyment of a lovely home. “Why should you,” he wrote, “grumble, complain, and make
yourself miserable?” If all was well with Anna, then Clemson, his Uncle Elias maintained,
should not complain about anything.16
Anna may well not have shared fully with Clemson her personal feelings of sadness in
the aftermath of Nina’s death. In her personal album, however, she had written poignantly
of her sorrow. Questioning where her “angel” Nina was, and why she had been taken,
wondering when she would see her again, and musing solemnly on what the nature of
their relationship would be “in another world,” Anna grieved at the thought that mother
and child would never meet again. A child’s devotion and sweet dependence, so special to
a mother, would, she wrote, be lost forever and any meeting of the spirit hereafter a disappointment to her heart. Recalling other loved ones, as well, in a reverie of the past, when
young and happy, she felt her heart close and life become once more sad and gloomy with
the approach of a footstep.17
Evident here in her album’s private expression of sentiments is the effect in part of
Clemson’s desolation and despair on his wife, his “very much beloved dear Anna.” Understanding what psychiatric scholar, Kay Redfield Jamison, describes as the “compelling,
contagious, and profoundly interpersonal” nature of moods, one can see how Clemson’s
depressive disorder altered not only his own perceptions and behaviors but also those of
his wife.18
While Floride went South, in the fall of 1859, to spend some time with her grandmother, Anna remained with Clemson and Calhoun at The Home. Apparently, she must
have indicated some apprehension about her daughter’s not being there when she wrote
to her sister-in-law, Sue Clemson, the wife of Clemson’s younger brother, William. Her
sister-in-law, who hoped that she would have a pleasanter winter than anticipated, wondered why Anna had not kept Floride with her and had sent Calhoun away as she had
planned. “Sister Sue” also urged that Anna open her heart and confide openly about her
son’s condition. William Clemson, in a letter to his niece, Floride, made his own caustic
comments about her “poor sick brother,” but expressed real concern that her “poor mother”
would be “cooped up” during the winter with her husband and eighteen-year-old son. “I
am afraid it will be more than she can bear,” he wrote, trusting that God would “protect
her.” Irritated about Calhoun’s not going to school and, instead, being allowed to hunt
and ride and generally do as he pleased in order “to restore his weak and shattered frame
and strengthen his delicate constitution,” his uncle exclaimed, “Poor boy! what will he turn
out to be”?19
Calhoun, in fact, soon left The Home for a hunting and fishing expedition to Florida
in the company of his English friend, G. H. Dunscomb. Anna, “cooped up with only
her husband,” wrote to Floride that Clemson was “uncommonly amiable, as he always
is when we are alone, both because he is dependent on me & when you children are not
here, many reasons why I must interfere with him do not exist, & I can let him do as he
chooses.” Nevertheless, she admonished her daughter to guard her comments in correspondence, as he always asked to read Floride’s letters and seemed to be much interested
in them.20
When, in January 1860, Clemson accepted the offer of Secretary of the Interior
Jacob Thompson to head the Patent Office’s agricultural department, Anna felt that the
occupation would be a great thing for her husband, and he, in turn, was much pleased
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at the compliment. Finding Clemson to be in excellent health and spirits at the time
he assumed the duties of his position in February, Anna thought the government work
would be rejuvenating for him, even though the $2,000 salary was much less than he had
anticipated.21
Anna informed Floride that her father got on famously in his new office. In preparation for spring planting on the farm, “you know I am overseer,” she said, with Clemson
giving the orders and she executing them. Anna was also pleased to note her husband’s
inclination to improve the place and hoped that he would continue in that spirit.
She made no direct mention of the fact that she was pregnant with her fifth child,
though she indicated needing household help for the summer. In early March 1860, at
age forty-three, she suffered a miscarriage. “I cannot imagine what caused the accident,” she
told Floride and her own mother. Since for three months she had felt badly, she supposed
“it was to be.” Even though still somewhat weak and confined to bed by the doctor, she
was, she said, wonderfully well. “Your father,” she told Floride, “is as kind as he knows
how. He was terribly frightened & stranger still very much disappointed.” Perhaps Anna’s
observation that Clemson’s disappointment was strange might signify a sense of relief
rather more than grief for her part in the matter.22
While she was recuperating after her miscarriage, a vision of her father, who had
been dead for ten years, appeared to her in a dream that she subsequently recorded in her
album. “I lay in bed,” she wrote,
but not it seemed to me asleep, though my eyes were shut, when suddenly, but
with an evident intention to avoid alarming or surprising me, my father stood
beside me.—I come, my daughter, said he, to speak with you, & I do so now,
that your mind is more independent of your body, than when you are awake,
that I may spare you the shock, always felt, when matter comes in contact with
disembodied spirit. You are right, my daughter, not to give way to the delusions
of spiritualism—I do not say there are devils, for evil is not created, but from want
of knowledge, comes error.—I cannot explain to you many things—human language has no words, for what the human mind cannot conceive, of the great
mysteries on this side. Continue to strive to know & do the right, & to elevate by
every measure your soul, & when you come on this side all will be clear.
Anna seemed to hear from her father the words she wished but did not dare say to her
husband:
—Tell Mr Clemson he must do this also, or those he loves will be as invisible
to him on this side, as they are now—for the universe is vast, & like dwells with
like—Tell him he has not fulfilled the trust I had in him when I gave him my
daughter. And now I go my daughter, but before I leave you, it is permitted you
should to see all those you love on this side.—Then I saw them all, each with the
most familiar & loved expression—Their eyes were more living than in life, & as
I encountered the glances of each, they seemed to emit as it were, an unspoken
language. Soul spoke to soul. Tho’ perfectly life like, they seemed less flesh like.
The soul seemed to pierce its outward covering— It seemed to me there was less
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of form than countenance—March 186023
We will have to surmise the meaning of this encounter for Anna, but various levels
of possible interpretation have been suggested by Reverend Bob Haden, an authority in
dream analysis for therapists, clergy and individuals. From the spiritual perspective, the
dream primarily reflects communication with a world beyond this one and therefore is
reassuring of the existence of that world. In a secular sense, the dream shows the strong
bond that Anna shared with John C. Calhoun. Representing the “wise old man” with a
message for herself and Mr. Clemson, her father is a positive “primary animus” (animating or actuating spirit), a figure advising each of them “to strive to know & do the right,
& elevate by every measure your soul.” Anna might well have thought that she heard here
an echo of Calhoun’s often expressed motto, “The duties of life are greater than life itself.”
Clemson, the “other primary animus figure,” represents a certain negative aspect of Anna’s
“critical nature within,” an aspect that somehow restricts the development of her character to its possible potential. The dream, in part, is about her need as a wife to work with
Clemson in order to fulfill her own individual identity; and it seems to be calling for her
to”receive the wisdom” from Calhoun and convey its message to Clemson. Her alienation
from the man she had once thought to be “the best” is evident as her vision of Calhoun
directs Anna to tell Clemson, first, that he must heed his advice “or those he loves will be
as invisible to him on this side as they are now,” and, second, that “he has not fulfilled the
trust” with which Calhoun gave his daughter to Clemson in marriage. Although Anna
recorded the dream soon after its occurrence, she did not show it to anyone until she gave
a copy to close family friend James H. Rion, fifteen years later, in 1875, fully aware that
he would later show it to Clemson.24
During her recuperation after the miscarriage, Anna received delightful understanding and affectionate letters from Floride. She basked in Floride’s love since she got “so
little of that kind of thing.” Despite the fact that Clemson’s disposition had improved
dramatically since his suicidal sentiments had so concerned Mrs. Calhoun and his uncle
Elias Baker, Clemson apparently could not communicate with his wife. The “feelings of
hopelessness” symptomatic of Clemson’s condition of dysthmia caused “clinically significant distress or impairment” in his relations with others and could well have prevented
the expression of emotions Anna longed to hear.25 Soon after the return of both Floride
and Calhoun to The Home in the spring of 1860, Clemson was off to Europe on official
government business that summer. Back home from abroad at the end of October, he was,
according to Anna, in a “wonderfully good humour,” although “how much longer it may
last,” she observed to Floride, “there is no knowing.”
With Calhoun off to South Carolina (to spend time in the company of his grandmother and great-uncle James) and with Floride in New York City (visiting Laura Leupp,
the daughter of her father’s late friend Charles Leupp), Anna was getting anxious to have
her daughter at home again. Floride’s cooperation, she felt, would be necessary if the
household was to live tranquilly, as Clemson seemed desirous that it should. “Let it not be
our fault,” she continued, “if he again breaks out” in anger. Begging her daughter, for both
of their sakes, to act patiently with her father upon return home, Anna asked of Floride
no more than she earnestly demanded of herself. “I make no reference to past events, &
strive to avoid all subjects of discussion,” Anna wrote.26
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Glad that Calhoun, in fine spirits, was going to do all in his power to please his uncle
and hopeful that all might turn out well for him in the year ahead, Anna nevertheless worried what action would result from the recent election of antislavery Republican President
Abraham Lincoln. Sympathetic to the southern view that Lincoln’s election pushed to
extremity the reasons to secede, she acknowledged that South Carolina and all the South
“could not perhaps draw back from their solemnly expressed determination without dishonour.” Anarchy and confusion seemed inevitable since Anna had no faith in disunion
as a “remedy.” Nevertheless, she reveled in the thought that her state preferred “death to
dishonour” and trusted that all might turn out better than she could imagine possible. She
did not want to be blamed if the office of Superintendent of Agricultural Affairs, which
was “all important” to her husband, was terminated. She said little about what Clemson
should do, leaving him, she said to Floride, “free to act as he pleases.”27
Clemson resigned his government position on March 9, 1861, following the formation of the Confederate States of America in February. South Carolina led the way by
seceding in December under the political leadership of Anna’s cousin, Governor Francis
Pickens. The promise for the future, which Anna felt when her husband had received
his government appointment in January 1860, was now overshadowed with peril as war
erupted in April 1861, dividing the country for four years and separating families such
as the Clemsons. Clemson and his son, Calhoun, left Maryland in June and ultimately
joined the Confederate forces although Anna and Floride did not go South until near the
end of the fighting.28
Mother and daughter moved temporarily, in June 1864, to a comfortable five-room
place outside of Beltsville, near Baltimore, on the railroad. Having rented The Home and
its land, they found that the packing up of personal possessions that they could not carry
with them was a troublesome task. Of particular concern to Anna must surely have been
her husband’s handsome collection of pictures acquired during his diplomatic tenure in
Brussels. Along with his own amateur works in oil, some of them copied from King
Léopold’s collection of paintings in the Royal Art Galleries, were pieces by such notables
as Rubens, Hals, Robbe and Bossuet. Anna packed and sent them to relatives in Altoona,
Pennsylvania, where they safely survived the war.29
Six months after their harrowing journey South, Anna and Floride, in the summer
of 1865, were reunited first with Calhoun and then with Clemson at Mrs. Calhoun’s “Mi
Casa” home in Pendleton. Having taken on June 9 the oath of allegiance to the United
States of America, “a bitter pill” for both, the two men arrived within a week of one another in South Carolina. Calhoun, who had been held captive for twenty-one months at
a Yankee prison on Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie, and Clemson, who was discharged from
the Army of the Trans-Mississippi Department following its surrender by Confederate
General E. Kirby Smith, seemed to be surprisingly well to the women. To Floride, her
brother, who arrived on foot on June 25, looked “very handsome & well, considering his
privations.” Clemson arrived on July 1, riding unceremoniously in an open wagon on the
morning of his fifty-eighth birthday, looking, she thought, “pretty well for a man well on
to 60.” He had officially ended his Confederate service in Shreveport, Louisiana, when,
in very shaky script, he signed his Parole, issued by the United States Government as “Supervisor of Mines & Metal Works.” A little over two weeks after their reunion at Mi Casa,
Floride found her father to be nicer and more pleasant than she had ever seen him. Really
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affectionate and amiable, she described him as “a dear old fellow.”30
During the war, the Clemsons had experienced hardship and adversity; and, although
the crisis of conflict was now over, perhaps the most difficult days were yet to come. The
war had staggered South Carolina’s economy and widespread suffering reigned with a
merciless rule throughout the state. The once prosperous Pendleton was beset with misery and need, and those who had lived the good life there were reduced to a state of
abject poverty. White South Carolinians continued to fight for their right to control their
community’s own affairs and to restore its order and harmony. Both Anna and Thomas
Clemson felt strongly sympathetic to the distress of those around them. She especially
participated in every good endeavor and distinguished herself among her neighbors as
few women ever had. In the role of community leader, which she undertook alongside
her husband, her service was truly a credit to the memory of her father, whose maxim,
“The duties of life are greater than life itself,” she had imparted to her son as a young boy.
Amidst the prevailing poverty, the Clemsons contacted some of their wealthy northern
friends and asked for money to provide relief for the pitiful plight of their neighbors. The
class identification of the elite that had transcended sectionalism during the war continued in its aftermath, as well.
In April 1866, acknowledging the receipt of $500 from Washington banker William
Wilson Corcoran, Anna not only thanked Corcoran for his noble gift but for the pleasure
it gave her to bring comfort to so many hearts. Clemson also appealed to Corcoran for financial aid in rebuilding the worthless and shattered economic life of South Carolina and
was hopeful that the state would survive with help from such supporters as he. A patron
of the arts as well as a businessman, Corcoran was described in the 1850s by Virginia Tunstall Clay, wife of Alabama Senator Clement Clay, as “the prince of entertainers.” Noted
for the weekly dinners and frequent evening dances hosted at his mansion, Corcoran,
who was sympathetic to the South during the Civil War, went abroad in 1862 and did not
come home until the end of the conflict.31
Despite the constant care required by Mrs. Calhoun, dreadfully ill with cancer until
her death at Mi Casa in late July, Anna supported her husband’s interest in the promotion
of scientific education in the South. She made their home a focus of life in Pendleton,
providing hospitality to those who shared his vision of an animated system of agriculture
as the main remedy to the distress which the region was suffering. Well-qualified for
leadership in the Pendleton Farmers’ Society, because of his expertise in agricultural affairs, Clemson was elected in 1866 and again in 1868 as its president, a position formerly
held by John C. Calhoun. At a meeting of the Society in November 1866, Clemson was
appointed to a committee, along with the Hon. R. F. Simpson and Col. W. A. Hayne, to
appeal by “Circular” for the founding of “an institution for educating our people in the
sciences to the end that our agriculture be improved, our worn impoverished lands be
recuperated, and the great natural resources of the South developed.” Concluding that the
location of such an institution would appear best adapted to upper South Carolina, “not
excelled, if equalled” for health and climate by any other part of the continent, the “Circular” claimed that the picturesque mountain region was comparable to Switzerland.32
About the matter, Clemson’s personal contact with Anna’s Uncle James, at his Millwood plantation in the Abbeville District, was encouraging. Commending the circular’s
formidable argument for such a scientific institution, James Calhoun offered up to 1,000
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acres of his lands in the Pickens District for a proper site sufficiently spacious for an
agricultural college. James considered himself financially disadvantaged in the aftermath
of the war, having lost about $130,000 that he had invested in slaves. The 1867 tax records show that he owned 10,194 acres of real estate, but this wealth was substantially
less than his holdings before 1860. He may then have used his cash reserves to purchase
previously owned property when prices dropped sharply after the Confederacy’s defeat.
James did not imagine that the circular’s appeal for an academic agricultural institution
could be resisted, but it did not generate the widespread support needed to launch such
an enterprise.
By 1870, Clemson, utterly discouraged by the seeming lack of interest in scientific
education in the South, withdrew from the Pendleton Farmers’ Society. He would later
renew his efforts for a school with his wife’s support.33
Anna was sympathetic to her husband’s goal and understood the discouragement
he felt at his inability to promote an interest in the scientific study of agriculture. At the
same time, she was pleased that Floride, who had married Gideon Lee, Jr., of New York,
in 1869, was happy in her new life at their “Leeside” home in Carmel. The birth of a baby
girl, Floride Isabella, on May 15, 1870, not only brought much joy to the family but also
strengthened the bond between Anna and her daughter. Writing from Leeside early in
1871, Floride assured her mother that the baby, who had been ill and weak, was trying
to play, calling her father, sitting up feebly and even giving faint smiles. As to her thumbsucking, a habit of which they had tried to break the child, the doctor advised that they
must not worry her since it was her only comfort now. In a telling reference to Clemson’s
apparent antagonism towards his daughter, Floride wrote, “As to father’s anger with me,
it is probably not real…I am sorry for it, but know nothing I could do would help it. I
know if the chance comes you’ll make the best of it.” Very likely, Clemson’s frustration at
the failure to spark an interest in the scientific study of agriculture not only aroused his
ire towards the South but affected his attitude towards Floride, as well. The effect of this
important issue on Clemson also had an impact on Anna.34
Unfortunately, on July 23,1871, the untimely death of twenty-eight-year-old Floride
Clemson Lee from, it seems, tuberculous peritonitis, left a grief-stricken family to mourn
her loss. It also left a child who would never know her mother. Stunned and shocked at
the demise of their daughter, the Clemsons were further devastated by the sudden death
of their thirty-year-old son, Calhoun, killed instantly in a train wreck only seventeen days
later on August 10. Referring to the tragic accident in a note of sympathy, Clemson family friend and Charleston financial agent Henry Gourdin said simply, “Humanity cannot
comprehend the justice of such terrible calamities.”35
Anna, now alone beside her husband, faced a man grown old and bitter. Disheartened by the inability of his earlier efforts to establish an agricultural school for South
Carolina and now despondent at the death of his children, Clemson depended upon his
wife to sustain his sagging spirits. His discouragement about the school he had envisioned
was overshadowed by the unmitigated tragedy they had endured. His dream of an agricultural and mechanical college for South Carolina now grew increasingly important to Anna
as a merited monument to her father and her son Calhoun. Despite the legal controversy
that prevailed with her brother Andrew’s family over her inheritance of the property from
her mother’s estate, Anna knew that the land needed for such an institution would be
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hers when the matter was settled and she took possession of Fort Hill. At the time of Mrs.
Calhoun’s death in 1866, Anna’s mother still held her deceased son’s bond and mortgage
title on the disputed property to which Anna was the principal heir. Making her own last
will and testament within two months after her son’s death, Anna left ownership of all
present and future property in her own estate, as well as the right to give away said inheritance, to her “beloved husband.” Should she survive him or should he as the survivor die
intestate, her “granddaughter, Isabella Lee,” would become her heir.36
Litigation involving Anna and Clemson, acting as her trustee, in contention with her
brother Andrew’s family over the estate of Floride Calhoun, was settled by an auction of
the Fort Hill property in nearby Walhalla, on January 21, 1872. Mrs. Calhoun’s executor,
lawyer Edward Noble, secured Fort Hill for Anna by his bid on the property with the
mortgage willed to her as its principal recipient. Her deceased daughter Floride’s fourth
part of the Fort Hill property title had passed to Anna’s granddaughter. Except for insignificant court costs, no money was involved because Anna inherited a three-fourths share
of the estate, and Floride Isabella Lee had inherited her mother’s one-fourth share. The
following year, Anna and Gideon Lee, as his daughter’s guardian, officially apportioned
the property, with Anna receiving 814 acres, including the Fort Hill home, where she and
her husband were already living, and with little Floride receiving 288 acres. With Clemson as the heir to Anna’s real property and estate, the opportunity for him to establish the
agricultural college that he had long desired was thus made possible by the bequest of his
wife, signed and sealed on September 29, 1871.37
The long spell of cold and disagreeable weather that followed the settlement of Mrs.
Calhoun’s estate, in January 1872, was, as Anna reported to her Uncle James at Millwood,
“very hard on Mr Clemson’s health & spirits—confining him to the house, & preventing
persons coming in to distract his mind.” Despite Clemson’s continuing very indifferent
disposition and her own discomfort with neuralgia, she was looking forward to a visit
from her son-in-law, who planned to personally escort her and her husband back to his
home in New York. In the midst of preparations to move from Mi Casa to Fort Hill, the
stay at Leeside was a happy interlude after a wearisome four-day journey by land from
Pendleton to Carmel. At first, Clemson’s health was better and his spirits somewhat improved. However, he seemed to Anna “gradually falling back into the old hopeless state,”
and she greatly feared he would never be better. Their “dear little grandchild,” she found
“very bright & interesting,” “very affectionate” and “wonderfully little spoilt, considering.”38
The Clemsons returned to Mi Casa after more than two weeks in the North and were
able to move to Fort Hill at the end of June. They found the farm in much disorder after
several years of tenant occupancy, with the exception of the main house, and, in Anna’s
view, because of the “utter neglect, & wanton mutilation of the place” by her brother
Andrew’s family. Once again a planter, Clemson, like others in the South during the postbellum period, was forced to enter into a contractual relationship with free black laborers
in the attempt to find a manpower replacement for his former slaves. However, his central
concern, as well as Anna’s, was promoting interest in the school they both desired to see
established.39
On August 9, 1874, Anna personally selected a committee to issue a “Circular” calling for statewide support of a plan to build on land at Fort Hill a scientific agricultural
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institution whose existence would commemorate the career of her father. Prepared by
William Henry Trescot, one of the leading scholars of the state, the “Circular,” as cited
by Alester G. Holmes and George R. Sherrill in their Clemson biography, was entitled
“Scientific Education” and noted the Calhoun legacy at Fort Hill and the statesman’s role
in South Carolina history. “No nobler monument could be raised to the great Carolinian,” the Circular asserted, “than such an institution on the spot where the tradition of his
great and beautiful life would be most strongly felt.” Four years later, in a letter to his old
Washington friend, W. W. Corcoran, Clemson himself would ask for aid with the school
project that he and Anna had been unsuccessfully promoting for lack of funds.40
Anna complained little about her health problems. She was much overweight and
suffered from neuralgia and heart trouble that could take her life suddenly as it had that
of her brother Andrew. On September 22, 1875, while Clemson was away from home, he
received word from a messenger that his wife was quite sick. Hurrying home in his buggy,
he met a servant just outside the inner gate of the yard who told him that she was dead.
Horrified at the news, he rose up and gave his horse a tremendous cut. As the animal
dashed through the gate, the wheels of the buggy hit the gate post so that Clemson was
pitched some distance from the vehicle, causing some to think for a time that he, too,
was dead.41
At age fifty-eight, Anna had succumbed to a heart attack, as she had predicted she
would. Family and acquaintances of the Clemsons were formally invited to attend afternoon funeral services for her at St. Paul’s Church in Pendleton on September 24, the
same day that the The News and Courier in Charleston carried the announcement of her
death:
Mrs. Clemson, the last surviving child of the Hon. John C. Calhoun, died at
Fort Hill, Pendleton on Wednesday evening at 5 o’clock. The tidings of her
death, which will be universally regretted, carry the people of South Carolina
back, in thought, to the time when her illustrious father guided the destinies of
the State, and remind them how often, in the trying days since the war, we have
vainly longed for a single hour of that “dead Dundee.”
There was little comfort for Clemson who buried his wife beside their son in the
churchyard at St. Paul’s. The grieving husband’s despair was movingly expressed in a letter
to his friend, Henry Gourdin, as noted in Ernest McPherson Lander, Jr.’s work on the
Calhoun family and Clemson: “How disconsolate and wretched I feel,” Thomas Clemson
wrote, “it is impossible for anyone to imagine.”42
Among the many messages of sympathy that Clemson received, the one that must
have meant the most to him came from James Rion, “the former Calhoun protégé” who
would later become Clemson’s own financial adviser and lawyer.
You have lost a wife, who was in every sense of the word a companion for you,
not only worthy of affection but of the highest esteem. Her good nature, high
spirit, elegance of manners, extensive information and reading, fine intellect,
and all the more valuable female accomplishments, fitted her to be a wife worthy
of any man that ever lived. Rion, who had paid a visit to Fort Hill shortly before
Chapter Six
119
Anna’s death, said further: “It is a great, though sad, consolation to me that I saw
her so soon” before she died.
Rion, who had come to live with the Calhouns at Fort Hill in 1844, when his mother
was hired as a housekeeper there, was treated as “one of the family” and educated at the
expense of Anna’s Uncle James. An interesting aside to Rion’s role in the lives of the
Calhouns and Clemsons is the rumor that he was the son of the Dauphin of France who
should have ruled as the Bourbon King Louis XVll but was prevented from doing so by
the execution of his father, King Louis XVl, during the French Revolution. Not until the
time of Rion’s death in 1886 were the details of his alleged royal heritage revealed. (According to the recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander, a business associate of
Rion’s after the Civil War, Rion told his family on his deathbed that his father was the
French Dauphin, who, as a lieutenant in the British army, had been stationed in Canada,
where he met Rion’s mother. Rion further stated, in Alexander’s account, that John C.
Calhoun, as Secretary of War, was privy to information about the marriage of his parents
and about his own legitimate birth. Calhoun’s interest in his welfare, he explained, was
due to the “knowledge of his identity.”43)
Apparently, in August 1875 Anna gave Rion a copy
of the dream, recorded in her album, in which a
vision of her father had appeared to her fifteen
years earlier. Presumably, she expected Rion
to share with Clemson her father’s message
to her and her husband, which he later did.
Thinking that the end could possibly be
near for her, as it proved to be, and aware
of what difficult days would lie ahead for
Clemson, she obviously wanted him, in
the words of her father to “continue to
strive to know & do the right.” With concern for Clemson’s welfare, in light of all
that they had lost, and perhaps fearful of
what he might do when left alone, she omitted from Rion’s copy of the dream the direction from her father to tell Clemson that he had
“not fulfilled the trust” with which he had given when
John C. Calhoun
he offered Anna in marriage. Thomas Clemson would
never know how much he had failed his “very much beloved dear Anna.” Cursed with chronic depression throughout their marriage, he could
neither control his belligerent behavior nor convey convincingly the “love and devoted
affection” he had professed for her on the eve of their marriage.44
Three months after Anna’s death, Clemson sent a copy of his wife’s vision of her father to a spiritualist, Dr. John J. F. Gray, for an explanation of its meaning. The two men
had met a few years earlier when Clemson, while visiting at his son-in-law’s in Carmel,
had attended séances in New York City. Evidently interested in spiritualism, Clemson
had, according to Anna, enjoyed “wonderful experiences” communicating with the spirit
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Legacy of a Southern Lady
world. Glad to hear from Clemson personally and to possess a copy of the vision, Dr. Gray
replied with absolute certainty that “Mr. Calhoun appeared to & spoke with his daughter,
as related by her.” The powerful phenomenon of Calhoun’s presence was apparently more
meaningful to Dr. Gray (and presumably to Clemson, as well) than was the message to
“continue to strive to know & do the right.”45
Thomas Green Clemson
Chapter Seven
Epilogue
A library bookplate from the era of Clemson Agricultural College.
“My purpose is to establish an agricultural college which will afford useful information to the farmers and mechanics[;] therefore[,] it should afford thorough instruction in agriculture and the natural sciences connected therewith—it should combine,
if practicable, physical and intellectual education, and should be a high seminary of
learning in which the graduate of the common schools can commence, pursue and
finish the course of studies terminating in thorough theoretic and practical instruction in those sciences and arts. . . . I trust that I do not exaggerate the importance
of such an institution for developing the material resources of the State by affording
to its youth the advantages of scientific culture, and that I do not overrate the intelligence of the legislature of South Carolina, ever distinguished for liberality, in assuming that such appropriation will be made as will be necessary to supplement the fund
resulting from the bequest herein made.”
—from the Will of Thomas Green Clemson, August 14, 1883
Chapter Seven
F
123
or a time after Anna’s death, Thomas Clemson lived in seclusion at Fort Hill and,
for many years, worried about what would happen with the plan he and his wife
had conceived to found a scientific school. Dissatisfied with the will that James
Rion drafted in 1883, Clemson called upon attorney R. W. Simpson, son of his former
associate in the Pendleton Farmers’ Society, R. F. Simpson, to help rewrite the document.
The new instrument, which was signed on November 6, 1886, with Rion named as executor, provided for “the establishment of an agricultural college upon the Fort Hill place,”
with the provision that “the dwelling house” should remain standing and “kept in repair”
and that all the furnishings should be kept intact and always open for visitors. Rion’s death
in December necessitated a codicil, which was drawn up on March 26, 1887, by R. W.
Simpson, who by that time served as executor of both the aforementioned last will and
testament and its codicil. Thus, the final document was in place toward the founding of
the school desired by both Anna and Thomas Clemson.1
In 1883, according to communicant Ben Skardon’s informal history of Holy Trinity
Episcopal Church, Clemson’s will “set in motion certain circumstances” that would ultimately affect the future of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, where the Calhouns and Clemsons
had worshipped. With the opening of Clemson Agricultural College in 1893, a need arose
for organized churches nearby, and, in 1899, Holy Trinity Chapel was consecrated as an
Episcopal Church on property across from the school’s campus; however, its official designation as an “organized mission” of the Diocese of South Carolina was not proclaimed
until 1901. In a “Founding Statement,” The Rev. B. M. Anderson referred to the “Mission” as a former “Chapel of Ease” to St. Paul’s Parish, Pendleton, a most appropriate
designation for a church built for the convenience of parishioners at the college. Although
initially Holy Trinity Episcopal Church was subordinated to St. Paul’s, today the roles are
reversed. The “old gray church,” in Floride Clemson’s poem “Our Festival,” is cared for by
the clergy and congregation of what was once a “fledgling” flock.2
On April 6, 1888, Clemson’s death, at the age of eighty, left a legacy to the state of
South Carolina that was made possible by his wife’s bequest of property to him. Despite
the controversy of a court contest initiated by his son-in-law, Gideon Lee, on behalf of
his daughter Floride and despite opposition from South Carolina College, in Columbia,
which was the recipient of federal funds for their own agricultural and mechanical program, the Clemson will was upheld by a ruling of the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals,
in May 1889, and its acceptance was signed into law by Governor John Richardson in
November. The college, established on the site of Clemson’s 814 acres, later bought, for
$10,000, an additional 288 acres that belonged to his granddaughter, Floride.3
The Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina, envisioned by its founder,
Thomas Green Clemson, to become “a high seminary of learning,” celebrated its centennial
academic year as Clemson University in 1988-1989. In light of this celebration, and the
coincidence of the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the Clemsons’ marriage —with the
renewed appreciation for the prominence of Fort Hill as the home of statesman John C. Calhoun—Lemon Professor Emeritus Carol Bleser conceived of a “landmark conference” that
was hosted by the university. Writers and scholars from around the nation presented original
essays on the topic of “Women, Family, and Marriage in the Victorian South.” These essays
were subsequently compiled in a book entitled In Joy and in Sorrow, with the 1848 Jacob
Joseph Eeckhout portrait of Anna Maria Calhoun Clemson appearing on the dust jacket.
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Legacy of a Southern Lady
Also in conjunction with the university’s centennial commemoration was the paving
of a brick walkway, from inside the entrance at St. Paul’s Churchyard, in Pendleton, back
to the grave sites in the Clemson Plot, and the erection of a marker that credited the work
“RESTORED IN 1989 BY CLASS OF 1932 AND 1934.” Clemson alumnus Sam Lowry
(Class of 1932), who worked with the restoration project, has confirmed that the tombstone
of Anna Calhoun Clemson, beside that of her son and her husband, is the same one that was
in place at the time of the centennial commemoration. Possibly her original tombstone—the
location of which was made known by St. Paul’s Churchyard caretaker extraordinaire Jim
Reed—lies in the crawl-space, damaged, under the church sanctuary. At the base of the slab,
the inscription reads: “ERECTED BY HER DISCONSOLATE HUSBAND THOMAS
G. CLEMSON.” The rest is set in agreement with the one in the family plot:
ANNA CALHOUN CLEMSON
LAST SURVIVING CHILD OF
HON. JOHN C. CALHOUN
AND
FLORIDE CALHOUN
BORN
FEBRUARY 13, 1817
DIED
SEPTEMBER 22, 1875
Believing this life to be one of probation
ho[?w] for an immortal existance [sic] hereafter
and governed in every act by a conscientious sense of duty she lived a model
Daughter, Wife, Mother, and Friend.
Her intelligence and accomplishments
made her an ornament of every sphere in
which she moved.4
Today, “dear old Fort Hill,” as Anna regarded the beloved house after 1830, is the
site of an ongoing $1.8-million-dollar restoration that began in April 2001, under the
direction of Will Hiott, the university’s current Director of Historic Houses, and Debbie
DuBose, former Executive Director of Clemson’s Alumni Association. On the occasion
of the “Fort Hill Bicentennial and Restoration Reopening,” on March 31, 2003, James
Frazier Barker, the fourteenth President of Clemson University, commissioned the “Fort
Hill Fanfare,” a musical composition for brass to commemorate the occasion.
As a symbol of the past, the Fort Hill historic house museum stands in the present, on
the campus of a school that has grown from 446 male cadets to a full-service university with a
co-educational enrollment of over 17,000 students, nearly half of which are women. In light
of the current gender distribution and in recognition of Anna Calhoun Clemson’s part in the
university’s origin, the point made by Clemson alumna Carol Stout is a good one: that her
school’s alma mater should acknowledge its “daughters” as well as its “sons.” Were it not for
Thomas Clemson’s “beloved dear Anna,” the school she wanted in order to commemorate
the illustrious career of her father, John C. Calhoun, might never have come into being.5
Notes
N
O
T
E
S
Preface
1.
Julia Wright Sublette, “The Letters of Anna Calhoun Clemson, 1833-1873,” 2 vols. (Ph.D. dissertation,
Florida State University, 1993); hereafter titled as Sublette. Edith B. Gelles, Portia: The World of Abigail
Adams (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana Univesity Press, 1992), xiii-xv. Jill Ker Conway, True
North: A Memoir (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1994), 65.
2.
Gelles, Portia, xv. Margaret Ripley Wolfe, Daughters of Canaan: A Saga of Southern Women (Lexingon,
Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1995), ix, 1.
3.
J. C. Calhoun to Maria Calhoun, March 10, 1832, in Clyde N. Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. Xl, (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1978), 561. Anna Maria Calhoun’s Album,
February 13, 1837, in Clemson Papers, Special Collections, Clemson University; Anna Maria Calhoun
(Clemson)’s Album, Clemson Papers, Clemson University; Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, August 25,
1842, in Sublette, vol. 1, 297.
4.
Anna Maria Calhoun (Clemson)’s Album, Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Anna C. Clemson to Patrick Calhoun, February 1, 1850, in Sublette, vol. 1, 464.
5.
Anna to Maria Simkins, August 2, 1838, in Sublette., vol. 1, 188.
6.
Anna to John C. Calhoun, June 1, 1844; Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, September 27, 1846, in
Sublette, vol. 1, 382, 415.
7.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, February 14, 1858, in Sublette, vol. 1, 647.
8.
Anna Maria Calhoun’s Album, October 1, 1838, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Wolfe, Daughters
of Canaan, 8, 34. Alester G. Holmes and George R. Sherrill, Thomas Green Clemson: His Life and Work
(Richmond, Virginia: Garrett and Massie, 1937), 27-28.
9.
Ann Russell, “Anna Calhoun Clemson and the Origins of Clemson University,” Presentation at the First
Southern Conference on Women’s History, The Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH),
Converse College, Spartanburg, SC, June, 1988. Russell, “Anna Calhoun Clemson and the Origins of
Clemson University,” The United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine (Richmond, Virginia: United
Daughters of the Confederacy, June, 1990), 15. Holmes and Sherrill, Thomas Green Clemson, 32. The State
of South Carolina, “Will of Anna C. Clemson,” September 29, 1871, Probate Court Records of Oconee
County, Walhalla, South Carolina.
10. Anna C. Clemson to James Edward Calhoun, March 24, 1872; Anna C. Clemson to James Edward Calhoun, June 23, 1872, in Sublette, vol. 2, 884-885, 888. Ernest McPherson Lander, Jr., The Calhoun Family
and Thomas Green Clemson: The Decline of a Southern Patriarchy (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1983), 241. Russell, “Anna Calhoun Clemson and the Origins of Clemson University,” The United
Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine, 15.
11. Margaret Callison Pridgen, “Letter from the Editor...,” Clemson World (September 1987), 28.
12. R. W. Simpson to W. M. Riggs, November 5, 1911, in Riggs Papers, Special Collections, Clemson University.
Richard W. Simpson, History of Old Pendleton District (Anderson, South Carolina: Oulla Printing and Binding Company, 1913), 8, 28-29. Along with his brother Tally, Dick Simpson saw Confederate service in the
Third South Carolina Volunteers, and their wartime letters have been edited by Guy R. Eversen and Edward
H. Simpson, Jr., in a book entitled Far, Far from Home, published by Oxford University Press in 1994. Liz
Newall, “Heart of the University,” Clemson World (Spring 2003), 10-13. R. W. Simpson’s statement about
Mrs. Clemson is similar to the one made by African-American educator, Booker T. Washington, about his
wife: “No single individual did more toward laying the foundations of the Tuskegee Institute so as to insure
the successful work that has been done there than Olivia A. Davidson.” In his autobiography Up from Slavery
, Washington credits Miss Davidson (a co-teacher), both before and after their marriage in 1885, with securing funds in the North and South to repay the loan for the acquisition of the school’s property and to finance
its continued operation. Built on the site of a former plantation in the Alabama countryside, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University), was established by Washington in 1881. Booker T.
Washington, Up from Slavery, World’s Classics edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 65,72-73,
75, 82-83. Caroline Gebhard, Vivian L. Carter, and Gwendolyn Jones, “Invisible Legacy: African-American
Women as Healers and Educators at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, 1881-1925,” Presented at
the panel entitled “Educating Women, Educating the World,” the Sixth Southern Conference on Women’s
History, the Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH), the University of Georgia, Athens, GA,
June, 2003. Interestingly, Washington established the Tuskegee school exclusive of gender and race. Vivian
L. Carter, Tuskegee University, personal conversation, June 6, 2003. Thomas Clemson also placed no restrictions on gender and race in his founding of The Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina.
Notes
127
Chapter One
1.
Floride Calhoun to R. K. Crallé, May 5, 1850, in Calhoun Papers, Special Collections, Clemson University. Irving H. Bartlett, John C. Calhoun: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), 246, 319,
378. Anna Maria Calhoun’s Album, October 1, 1838, in Clemson Papers, Special Collections, Clemson
University. Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, March 4, 1850; Anna C. Clemson to James Edward
Calhoun, May 7, 1850, in Sublette, vol. 1, 470-472.
2.
Ann Russell, “Her Father’s Daughter, Anna Calhoun Clemson,” Carologue (Charleston, South Carolina:
South Carolina Historical Society, Autumn, 1996)., 14. Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family
Bible, Fort Hill historic house museum, Clemson University. Clyde N. Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C.
Calhoun, vol. Xl (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1978), xxxi. For a detailed account of the
tariff debate that would ultimately be a factor in Calhoun’s resignation as vice-president in 1832, refer to
Walter Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 330-336.
Christie Anne Farnham, The Education of The Southern Belle (New York: New York University Press, 1994),
67, 287.
3.
Sarah H. Rembert, “Barhamville A Columbia Antebellum Girls’ School,” in South Carolina History Illustrated, vol. 1, no. 1 (Columbia: Sandlapper Press, February, 1970), 44. John Niven, John C. Calhoun and
the Price of Union: A Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 223.
4.
Rembert, “Barhamville A Columbia Antebellum Girls’ School,” in South Carolina History Illustrated, vol.
1, no. 1, 44-46, 48.
5.
Anne Firor Scott, “The Ever Widening Circle: The Diffusion of Feminist Values from the Troy Female
Seminary 1822-1872,” in History of Education Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 1 (New York: New York University,
Spring, 1979). Farnham, The Education of The Southern Belle, 66. Nancy Woloch, Women and the American
Experience: A Concise History, (New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, 1996), 79. Shirley Ann Hickson,
“The Development Of Higher Education For Women In The Antebellum South,” Abstract (Ph. D. dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1985), 1. Although editor Gerda Lerner in The Female Experience: An
American Documentary (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977), maintained that educator Emma Willard was
not a feminist advocate, Anne Firor Scott’s article, “The Ever Widening Circle,” concludes that Willard’s
role in nineteenth century social history was complex and that the education for women she fostered “appears to have been a major force in the spread of feminism.”
6.
Rembert, “Barhamville A Columbia Antebellum Girls’ School,” in South Carolina History Illustrated, vol.
1, no. 1, 46. The work of Barhamville art teacher, Frenchman Eugene Dovilliers, is displayed today in
certain Columbia homes. Woloch, Women And The American Experience, 79-80. Farnham, The Education
of the Southern Belle, 3, 86, 88. South Carolina Female Collegiate Institute Papers, The South Caroliniana
Library, University of South Carolina.
7.
Rembert, “Barhamville A Columbia Antebellum Girls’ School,” in South Carolina History Illustrated, vol.
1, no. 1, 45-47. South Carolina Female Collegiate Institute Papers, University of South Carolina.
8.
John C. Calhoun to Miss A. M. Calhoun , December 30, 1831; John C. Calhoun to Miss A. M. Calhoun,
January 11, 1832, in Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. Xl, 532, 541-542.
9.
John C. Calhoun to Miss A. M. Calhoun, February 13, 1832; John C. Calhoun to Maria Calhoun, March
10, 1832, in Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. XI, 550, 561-562. Rembert, “Barhamville A
Columbia Antebellum Girls’ School,” in South Carolina History Illustrated, vol. 1, No. 1, 46.
10. Eugene Genovese, “Toward a Kinder and Gentler America: The Southern Lady in the Greening of the
Politics of the Old South,” in In Joy and In Sorrow: Women, Family, and Marriage in the Victorian South,
1830-1900, ed. Carol Bleser (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 127-128. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 43. John C. Calhoun to Maria Calhoun, March 10, 1832, in Wilson,
ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. Xl, 562.
11. President of the Continental Congress during the American Revolution, Henry Laurens was later a diplomatic prisoner in the Tower of London, and, in 1782 (the year of Calhoun’s birth), an official negotiator
of the new nation’s peace treaty with the British. Joanna Bowen Gillespie, The Life and Times of Martha
Laurens Ramsay 1759-1811 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 1, 80-81.
12. The history of Barhamville ended with the Union occupation of Columbia at the end of the Civil War in
1865. The school’s buildings survived unscorched, protected by a band of Irishmen not allowed to enter
the city with the rest of General William Sherman’s army for fear that they might try to save Roman Catholic property in the capital. However, the trying years after the war saw few planters able to afford educa-
128
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
Legacy of a Southern Lady
tion for a daughter, and the abandoned buildings of Barhamville fell into ruin. Rembert, “Barhamville A
Columbia Antebellum Girls’ School,” in South Carolina History Illustrated, vol. 1, no. 1, 48. Anna Maria
Calhoun’s Album, February 13, 1837; October 1, 1838, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. (Anna did
not “commence to journalise [sic]” about the four winters she spent in Washington with her father until
shortly before her marriage to Thomas Clemson.) Virginia Jeans Laas, ed., Wartime Washington: The Civil
War Letters of Elizabeth Blair Lee (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991). J. C. Calhoun to Edward
Livingston, Secretary of State, December 29, 1832, in Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. Xl,
685. Charles M. Wiltse, John C. Calhoun: Nullifier, 1829-1839 (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1949), 306.
Anna Maria Calhoun’s Album, October 1, 1838, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Declared by John
C. Calhoun to be “‘the most promising man in the State,’” Francis Pickens was elected to the Twenty-third
Congress in 1834. John B. Edmunds, Jr., Francis W. Pickens and the Politics of Destruction (Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 20. The Willard Hotel, considered today to be “the crown jewel
of Pennsylvania Avenue,” is located on the site of Dickens’s accommodations there at the Fourteenth Street
intersection. Richard Wallace and Marie Pinak Carr, The Willard Hotel: An Illustrated History (Washington,
D.C.: Dicmar Publishing, 1986), 11-12, 106.
J. C. Calhoun to William C. Preston, November 23, 1835, in Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun,
vol. Xll (1979), 572. Anna Calhoun to Maria Simkins, December 18, 1835, in Sublette, vol. 1, 75-78.
Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union, 119.
Anna to Maria Simkins, December 18, 1835, 78, 78 (n. 6), 79, 79 (n. 7). Anna Maria Calhoun’s Album,
October 1, 1838, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Edmunds, Jr., Francis W. Pickens and the Politics of Destruction, 140, 153. Carol Bleser, ed., Secret and Sacred: The Diaries of James Henry Hammond, a
Southern Slaveholder (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 87, 132, 270-271, 325. Thompson, a
successful planter as well as a lawyer, conducted much of his practice before the United States Supreme
Court. Archie Vernon Huff, Jr., Greenville: The History of the City and County in the South Carolina Piedmont (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), 117.
Miss Mary Bates (school teacher from the North who came to work in Pendleton, South Carolina), The
Private Life of John C. Calhoun (Charleston: Walker, Richards And Co., MDCCCLll), 10. Anna Maria
Calhoun’s Album, October 1, 1838, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Ibid. An Empire sideboard, known as The Constitution Sideboard , now seen in the State Dining Room at
the Fort Hill historic house museum is said to have been a gift from Henry Clay to Calhoun. The piece
is believed to have been made from the paneling of the Officer’s Mess in the U.S.S. Constitution. Clay is
reported also to have given Calhoun an arborvitae that stands today on the Fort Hill grounds along with a
hemlock thought to be from Daniel Webster. Mary Caroline Crawford, Romantic Days in the Early Republic (Boston: Little, Brown, 1912), 417 (n. 2). Josiah Quincy, Figures of the Past (Boston: Roberts Brothers,
1883), 264-265. Josiah Quincy was a distant cousin of Abigail Adams, wife of the late President, John
Adams, and mother of John Quincy Adams, in whose one term as President from 1824 to 1828, John C.
Calhoun had served as Vice-President. Paul C. Nagel, The Adams Women: Abigail & Louisa Adams, Their
Sisters and Daughters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 54.
Ernest McPherson Lander, Jr., The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson: The Decline of a Southern
Patriarchy (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1983), 3. Anna Maria Calhoun’s Album, October 1, 1838, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Anna Maria Calhoun’s Album, October 1, 1838, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Anna to Maria
Simkins, August 2, 1838, in Sublette, vol. 1, 188-189.
Compiled by Edwin H. Vedder, Records of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church of Pendleton, South Carolina (Greenville, South Carolina: A Press, 1982), 36. Book of Common Prayer, presented in 1807 to Miss Floride
Colhoun, before her marriage to John C. Calhoun, by the “Rector, Wardens, and Vestry of Trinity Church
in Newport as a small token of their sense of her skill and kindness, in performing upon the Organ of
the Church, while the Church is unavoidably destitute of an Organist.” Dehon, as an Episcopal bishop
in South Carolina, turned to the private citizens of Charleston for pledges to support a chapel next to the
almshouse in his ministry to bring religion to Charleston’s poor. Barbara L. Bellows, Benevolence Among
Slaveholders: Assisting the Poor in Charleston, 1670-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1993), 42. Floride Colhoun’s Book of Common Prayer came to serve as the Calhoun Family Bible and is
now the property of the Fort Hill historic house museum. The Pendleton Messenger, November 16, 1838.
Merrill D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1987), 25-26. A lace sleeve from Floride Calhoun’s own wedding dress (1811), is on display at the
Fort Hill historic house museum. In 1848, ten years after her daughter Anna’s wedding, Mrs. Calhoun was
Notes
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
129
instrumental in the purchase of the organ that is currently in use at St. Paul’s.
R. W. Simpson, History of Old Pendleton District (Anderson, South Carolina: Oulla Printing and Binding,
1913), 18. Mary Bates (wedding guest), to Anna C. Clemson, April 19, 1850, in Calhoun Papers, Clemson University.
The Pendleton Messenger, November 16, 1838. Sublette, vol. 1, 41. Gerda Lerner, The Grimké Sisters from
South Carolina: Rebels against Slavery (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), 2, 4, 111, 145. For an abbreviated account of the Grimké sisters’ involvement with the issues of racial and sexual equality, refer to Nancy
Woloch, Women and the American Experience: A Concise History (New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies,
Inc., 1996), 120-121.
Peter Kolchin, “Slavery and Freedom in The Civil War South,” in Writing the Civil War: The Quest to Understand, eds. James M. McPherson and William J. Cooper, Jr. (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1998), 242.
John C. Calhoun to Armistead Burt (Abbeville lawyer whose wife Martha was a Calhoun cousin), December 24, 1838; Thomas G. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, February 27, 1839, in Wilson, ed., The Papers of
John C. Calhoun, vol. XlV (1981), 499, 503-504. Anna Clemson to Patrick Calhoun, March 15, 1839, in
Sublette, vol. 1, 213, 213 (n. 2). Anne Firor Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830-1930
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970), 37.
J. C. Calhoun to Mrs. A. M. Clemson, March 18, 1839; J. C. Calhoun to Thomas G. Clemson, April 3,
1839; J. C. Calhoun to Mrs. A. M. Clemson, April 6, 1839; J. C. Calhoun to A. M. Clemson, May 4,
1839, in Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. XlV, 594, 598, 600, 612.
Anna to Patrick Calhoun, May 22, 1839, in Sublette, vol. 1, 217, 219, 219 (ns. 1, 2). Wilson, ed., The
Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. XlV, 589. Martha Colhoun to Maria Calhoun (the former Maria Simkins),
August 16, 1839; J. C. Calhoun to James Ed. Calhoun, September 1, 1839, in ibid., 624, 626.
Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. XV (1983), 380. Agriculture was one of Clemson’s many
interests. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 2. J. C. Calhoun to A. M. Clemson,
January 3, 1841; J. C. Calhoun to Thomas G. Clemson, July 25, 1841, in Wilson, ed., The Papers of John
C. Calhoun, vol. XV, 409, 651. Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, , December 21, 1840, in Sublette, vol.
1, 252, 254. Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830-1930, 37.
Anna to John C. Calhoun, January 24, 1841; Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, January 31, 1841; Anna
to Maria Simkins Calhoun, February 20, 1841, in Sublette, vol. 1, 258-259, 262- 263, 263 (n. 1).
J. C. Calhoun to T. G. Clemson, January 26, 1841; J. C. Calhoun to T. G. Clemson, February 23, 1841; J.
C. Calhoun to Cadet Patrick Calhoun, March 9, 1841; J. C. Calhoun to T. G. Clemson, March 10, 1841;
J. C. Calhoun to Thomas G. Clemson, July 25, 1841, in Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol.
XV, 471, 514, 522-523, 651. Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill historic house
museum. Anna Clemson to Maria Simkins Calhoun, September 16, 1841, in Sublette, vol. 1, 279.
Anna Clemson to Maria Simkins Calhoun, September 16, 1841, in Sublette, vol. 1, 278; and Anna to
Maria Simkins Calhoun, December 17, 1841, in Sublette, vol. I, 281.
Thomas G. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, December 30, 1842, in Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C.
Calhoun, vol. XVl (1984), 581, 583. Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill historic
house museum. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 57.
Thomas G. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, January 5, 1843; John C. Calhoun to Thomas G. Clemson, January 8, 1843; John C. Calhoun to Thomas G. Clemson, January 21, 1843; Thomas G. Clemson to John
C. Calhoun, January 29, 1843; J. C. Calhoun to Mrs. A. M. Clemson, February 6, 1843; J. C. Calhoun
to Thomas G. Clemson, February 14, 1843; Anna Clemson to Lt. Patrick Calhoun, February 19, 1843,
in Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. XVl 589-590, 592-593, 620, 636, 657, 666-667, 678.
[Signature obliterated.] to Maria Simkins Calhoun, February 11, 1843, in Sublette, vol. 1, 325-326.
Floride Calhoun to Lt. Patrick Calhoun, April 3, 1843, in Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol.
XVll (1986), 135-136. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 69-70. Fox-Genovese,
Within the Plantation Household, 329-330. On May 30, 1988, the Fort Hill historic house museum sustained damage from a fire deliberately set by two teen-age brothers attempting to create a diversion from
a jewelry store burglary. In this instance of attempted arson, the perpetrators of the crime ignited plastic
containers of gasoline outside of the house and broke a glass window in the parlor that then allowed fire to
enter the room where Anna Maria Calhoun had married Thomas Green Clemson in 1838. In the course
of the burglary and fire, the brothers torched an apartment complex (as part of the diversion) where a
young woman died. Following their arrest, the young men pleaded guilty to the charges against them and
each received “ a life-plus-80-years sentence.” Jack Abraham, “Brothers Charged In Arson Fires,” in Fire
130
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
Legacy of a Southern Lady
Command , May, 1989, 25-29.
Anna to Patrick Calhoun, December 3, 1842; Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, March 5, 1843; Anna
to Maria Simkins Calhoun, April 9, 1843; [Letter concludes without a closing signature.] to Maria Simkins
Calhoun, January 28, 1844; Anna to John C. Calhoun, February 11, 1844, in Sublette, vol. 1, 319, 319
(n. 1), 328 (n. 1), 335, 368-369, 371-372. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 56, 59,
71. Orville Vernon Burton, In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield,
South Carolina (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 124. Fox-Genovese, Within
the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South, 27.
Anna to John C. Calhoun, February 11, 1844, in Sublette, vol. 1, 373. “The Address Of Mr. Calhoun To
His Political Friends And Supporters” (Published Version), January 29, 1844, in Wilson, ed., The Papers of
John C. Calhoun, vol. XVll, 739-740. Irving H. Bartlett, John C. Calhoun: A Biography (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1993), 305, 352-353.
Bartlett, John C. Calhoun, 306-307. [Letter concludes without a closing signature.] to Maria Simkins Calhoun, January 28, 1844, in Sublette, vol. 1, 368. Patrick Calhoun to J. C. Calhoun, February 28, 1844,
in Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. XVll 806-807.
J. C. Calhoun to Mrs. A. M. Clemson, March 15, 1844; J. C. Calhoun to Thomas G. Clemson, March
16, 1844; “Oath Of Office as Secretary of State,” March 30, 1844, in Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C.
Calhoun, vol. XVll, 867-869, 906. Anna to John C. Calhoun, February 11, 1844, in Sublette, vol. 1, 371.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 2, 78.
J. C. Calhoun to Anna Clemson, May 10, 1844, in Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. XVlll
(1988) , 470. Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, June 1, 1844, in Sublette, vol. 1, 381-383. Department
of State Document signed on July 6, 1844, by Secretary of State J. C. Calhoun authorizing the passage
of Thomas G. Clemson to Belgium as Chargé d’Affaires of the United States to the Belgian Court. This
official notification is part of the memorabilia at the Fort Hill historic house museum.
Comte Louis De Lichtervelde, Léopold First: The Founder of Modern Belgium (New York: Century, 1930),
128, 155. Anna to John C. Calhoun, December 5, 1844; Anna to John C. Calhoun, July 4, 1845, in
Sublette, vol. 1, 389, 393-394.
Bartlett, John C. Calhoun, 323, 327. J. C. Calhoun to Anna Clemson, March 11, 1845; J. C. Calhoun to
Anna Clemson, May 22, 1845; J. C. Calhoun to Thomas G. Clemson, December 13, 1845, in Wilson,
ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vols. XXl (1993), 389-390, 567, XXll (1995), 339.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, November 10, 1845, in Sublette, vol. 1, 401, 401 (n. 1),-404.
Bartlett, John C. Calhoun, 327. Daniel E. Huger to John C. Calhoun, February 22, 1844, in Wilson, ed.,
The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. XVll, 798. Huger’s appeal to Calhoun was made shortly before his
unexpected appointment as Secretary of State in March of 1844.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, January 24, 1846, in Sublette,” vol. 1, 406-408.
J. C. Calhoun to Anna Clemson, March 23, 1846, in Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol.
XXll, 747-748. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate, 419. Calhoun, as the leader of the “‘peace coalition’” in
Congress, favored compromise with the new British minister, Lord John Russell, over the disputed Oregon
boundary. Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, April 20, 1846, in Sublette, vol. 1, 409-410.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, April 20, 1846, in Sublette, vol. 1, 410-411. Anna Clemson to John
C. Calhoun, September 27, 1846, in Sublette, vol. 1, 415. Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, A Family
of Women: The Carolina Petigrus in Peace and War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
1999), 96, 98. Clyde N. Wilson, Carolina Cavalier: The Life and Mind of James Johnston Pettigrew (Athens:
The University of Georgia Press, 1990), 30.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, April 20, 1846; Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, September 27,
1846, in Sublette, vol. 1, 411, 415.
J. C. Calhoun to Anna Clemson, November 21, 1846, in Wilson and Shirley Bright Cook, eds., The Papers
of John C. Calhoun, vol. XXlll (1996), 544-545.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, April 11, 1847, in Sublette, vol. 1, 420-421.
J. C. Calhoun to A. M. Clemson, June 10, 1847, in Wilson and Cook, eds., The Papers of John C. Calhoun,
vol. XXlV (1998), 394-395. Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, September 13, 1847; Anna Clemson to
John C. Calhoun, April 18, 1848 in Sublette, vol. 1, 429, 432-435. Lichtervelde, Léopold First, 213-214.
William L. Langer, The Revolutions of 1848 (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 19, 104, 109. Anna
Clemson to John C. Calhoun, April 18, 1848, in Sublette, vol. 1, 433-434. Brison D. Gooch, Belgium
and the February Revolution (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963), 31, 33, 33 (ns. 2-3). J. C. Calhoun to
Mrs. A. M. Clemson, April 28, 1848; J. C. Calhoun to Anna Maria Calhoun Clemson, June 23, 1848, in
Notes
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
131
Wilson and Cook, eds., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. XXV (1999), 366, 498.
J. C. Calhoun to Anna Maria Calhoun Clemson, July 30, 1848, in Wilson and Cook, eds., The Papers of
John C. Calhoun, vol. XXV (1999), 641. Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, August 7, 1848, in Sublette,
vol. 1, 435-437, 439.
J. C. Calhoun to A. M. Clemson, January 24, 1849, in Wilson and Cook, eds., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. XXVl (2001), 246. Sublette, vol. 1, 435. Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, Christmas Day,
1848; Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, January 27, 1849, in Sublette, vol. 1, 439, 444. Lander, The
Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 113.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 79. Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, Christmas Day, 1848, in Sublette, vol. 1, 440-442. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate, 419. Edmunds, Francis W.
Pickens and the Politics of Destruction, 96, 98-99, 101, 106. J. C. Calhoun to A. M. Clemson, January 24,
1849, in Wilson and Cook, eds., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. XXVl, 247.
Peterson, The Great Triumvirate, 404. Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, January 27, 1849, in Sublette,
vol. 1, 443-445.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, May 22, 1849, in Sublette, vol. 1, 450-452. A monogrammed coin
silver coffee urn, a gift from Edward Boisseau to Floride Calhoun, is among the collection of memorabilia at
the Fort Hill historic house museum. Mrs. Calhoun had written her son Patrick, a cadet at West Point, early
in 1839, that Cousin Edward Boisseau, in New York, had asked her acceptance of “a silver Coffee Urne,” [sic]
for which he wished in return only “a good cup of coffee” when he came to see her. Wilson, ed., The Papers of
John C. Calhoun, vol. XlV, 542. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 38.
Sublette, vol. 1, 452. J. C. Calhoun to A. C. Clemson, April 10, 1849; J. C. Calhoun to A. Calhoun Clemson, June 15, 1849, in Wilson and Cook, eds., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. XXVl, 373, 434, 437.
Anna Calhoun Clemson to John C. Calhoun, August 12, 1849; Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun,
October 26, 1849; Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, December 22, 1849, in Sublette, vol. 1, 452,
454, 457, 460. E. H. Kossmann, The Low Countries 1780-1940 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 204.
The brutal repression of the “passionately nationalistic Magyars” in 1849 followed a year of independent
administration for the Kingdom of Hungary within the Hapsburg Empire. Led in 1848 by the eloquent
newspaperman, Louis Kossuth, the Hungarians, for whom local politics was a “lively and responsible” diversion, kept their demands for reforms strictly legal, but were ultimately denied an autonomous kingdom.
Priscilla Robertson, Revolutions of 1848: A Social History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952),
237, 260-261, 266, 268, 306. Langer, The Revolutions of 1848, 33.
Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, December 22, 1849, in Sublette, vol. 1, 459-460.
Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, January 22, 1850, in Sublette, vol. 1, 461. J. C. Calhoun to A
Calhoun Clemson, June 15, 1849, in Wilson and Cook, eds., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. XXVl.
J. C. Calhoun to Mrs. A. C. Clemson, October 14, 1849; J. C. Calhoun to Mrs. A. C. Clemson, February 24, 1850, in Calhoun Papers, Clemson University. Calhoun determined that one or two of his letters
had failed to reach Anna since he had written her as many as four or five since they parted in the spring.
Bartlett, John C. Calhoun, 369, 371.
Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, February 18, 1850, in Sublette, vol, 1, 467-468, 469 (n. 1).
Joseph Scoville to Thos. G. Clemson, April 1, 1850; F. Calhoun to Mrs. A. C. Clemson, April 4, 1850; J.
C. Calhoun to Mrs. A. C. Clemson, June 20, 1850, in Calhoun Papers, Clemson University. Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill historic house museum. This source notes the death of
John Caldwell Calhoun in Washington, D. C., at the building called the “‘Old Capitol,’on Capitol Hill.”
Edmunds, Francis W. Pickens and the Politics of Destruction, 128. Edgar, South Carolina, 306, 347. Robert
A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 22.
Anna C. Clemson to Patrick Calhoun, June 24, 1850, in Sublette, vol. 1, 475, 475 (n. 1).
Chapter Two
1.
2.
3.
Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, March 4, 1850, in Sublette, vol. 1, 469 (n. 1), 470.
Glenna Matthews, “Just a Housewife”: The Rise and Fall of Domesticity in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 9-10. Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, February 18, 1850; Anna C. Clemson to
John C. Calhoun, March 4, 1850, in Sublette, vol. 1, 468, 470.
Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, March 4, 1850, in Sublette, vol. 1, 470. In her 1988 Journal of
American History article, “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Women’s Place, and the Rhetoric of Women’s
History,” Linda Kerber placed elite southern women within a separate sphere of confinement in a patriar-
132
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
Legacy of a Southern Lady
chal society during the antebellum era.
Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly (1966): 150-174. Anna
C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, February 18, 1850, in Sublette, vol. 1, 468.
Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill historic house museum at Clemson University. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 1, 1857, in Sublette, vol. 2, 622.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, May 31, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson September
12, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, May 16, 1858, in Sublette, vol. 2, 592, 598, 690.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, August 24, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 16, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, October 25, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride
Clemson, November 8, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, March 21, 1858, in Sublette, vol. 2,
488 (n. 3), 530, 619, 623, 624 (n. 1), 668.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 14, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 21, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, October 5, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride
Clemson, October 13, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, October 19, 1856; Anna C. Clemson
to Floride Clemson, October 26, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, April 5, 1857, in Sublette,
vol. 2, 494, 499, 507, 511, 514, 520, 577.
The hand-operated sewing machine that belonged to Anna Calhoun Clemson is in the collection of memorabilia at the Fort Hill historic house museum. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, February 1, 1857,
in Sublette, vol. 2, 553-554.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 9, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, December 21, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 15, 1857, in Sublette, vol. 2, 525,
539, 627-628.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, December 28, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 22, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 29, 1857, in Sublette, vol. 1, 542,
629, 631, 634.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 1, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, February 21, 1858, in Sublette. vol. 1, 621-622, 650-652.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, February 28, 1858, in Sublette, vol. 2, 655-656.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, March 28, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, April 4,
1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, May 16, 1858, in Sublette, vol. 2, 672, 674, 677, 690.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, April 18, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, May 2,
1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, June 6, 1858, in Sublette, vol. 2, 682, 684, 699.
Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill historic house museum. Anna C. Clemson
to Floride Clemson, November 27, 1859, in Sublette, vol. 2, 737-738, 738 (n. 7). Joanna Bowen Gillespie, “The Challenges of Writing Women’s Biography,” Symposium Presentation at the Fifth Southern
Conference On Women’s History, The Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH), University
of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia, June, 2000. Anna Maria Calhoun (Clemson’s) Album, Clemson Papers,
in Special Collections, Clemson University.
Sylvia E. Crane, White Silence: Greenough, Powers, and Crawford American Sculptors in Nineteenth Century
Italy (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1972), 180-181. Hiram Powers’s Carrara marble bust of
Cornelia (Nina) Clemson is on display at the Fort Hill historic house museum.
Robert Wood, Victorian Delights (London: Evans Brothers, 1967), 158-159. A brooch containing the hair
of John C. Calhoun and a bracelet made of his hair are both on display at the Fort Hill historic house
museum. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, April 4, 1858, in Sublette, vol. 2, 675 (n. 1). Anna C.
Clemson, “From my darling Nina’s grave Sent by Emily Wood October 1874,” Clemson Papers, Clemson
University.
Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, May 22, 1849; Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, February
18, 1850; Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, March 4, 1850, in Sublette, vol. 1, 450, 468-471.
“Sacred to the Memory of the Best of Fathers,” August 15, 1850, in Calhoun Papers, Special Collections,
Clemson University.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, April 20, 1855; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, August 30,
1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 14, 1856, in Sublette, vol. 2, 478 (n. 5), 487,
491 (n. 3), 497. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 151,157,159. Lydia Van Wyck,
whose husband was from New York, was the daughter of Samuel Maverick, said to be “‘the richest man in
South Carolina.’” Mr. Maverick also owned “ranches and vast herds of cattle in Texas.” Compiled by Mary
Stevenson, The Diary of Clarissa Adger Bowen, Ashtabula Plantation, 1865, and... The Pendleton-Clemson
Notes
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
133
Area, South Carolina, 1776-1889 (Pendleton, South Carolina: Research and Publication Committee Foundation, 1973), 39.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, August 24, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 28, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 9, 1856, in Sublette, vol. 2, 487-488,
503, 527. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Voices of Gender in Victorian America (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1985), 66. The essay, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between
Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” originally appeared in Signs, 1 (Autumn 1975), 1-29.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, August 30, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 14, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 28, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride
Clemson, November 16, 1856, in Sublette, vol. 2, 490, 495-496, 503, 528.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, October 13, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 16, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 30, 1856, in Sublette, vol. 2, 511,
528-529, 533.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 16, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, December 21, 1856, in Sublette, vol. 2, 529, 537.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, December 28, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, January 18, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, February 22, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride
Clemson, March 8, 1857, in Sublette, vol. 2, 541, 552, 563, 569-571. Anna attributed the irritation
between father and daughter to their resemblance in character to one another.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, May 10, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, May 31,
1857; Anna Clemson to Floride Clemson, June 14, 1857, in Sublette, vol. 2, 582, 591, 596.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 12, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 27, 1857, in Sublette, vol. 2, 598, 600-601, 604. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green
Clemson, 9.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 1, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 8, 1857, in Sublette, vol. 2, 621-623.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 15, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 29, 1857, in Sublette, vol. 2, 626, 632-633.
{No customary closing signature.} to Floride Clemson, December 13, 1857, in Sublette, vol. 2, 636-638.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, January 10, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, February 21, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, February 28, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride
Clemson, March 7, 1858, in Sublette, vol. 2, 643, 651, 654-655, 658.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, February 14, 1858, in Sublette, vol. 2, 647.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, March 28, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, April 11,
1858, in Sublette, vol. 2, 670, 678.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, March 28, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, May 9,
1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, June 6, 1858, in Sublette, vol. 2, 671, 686, 699.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, May 2, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, May 30,
1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, June 13, 1858, in Sublette, vol. 2, 684, 697, 701.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, June 13, 1858, in Sublette, vol. 2, 702.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, June 13, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, August 3,
1859; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, August 7, 1859; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson,
August 24, 1859, in Sublette, vol. 2, 702, 714, 717, 723. On display in the parlor of the Fort Hill historic
house museum are a horsehair upholstered sofa, in the rare “Dolphin” style, and a Windsor chair that
originally belonged to George Washington’s family and were inherited by Thomas Clemson from his sister,
Louisa Clemson Washington.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 2, 1859; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 13, 1859, in Sublette, vol. 2, 725, 727,729 (n. 2), 732. The Maverick family heritage is preserved
today in their still standing Montpelier house outside of Pendleton, South Carolina. The Greenville News,
February 1, 1995. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 144, 163. In 1857, Floride
Calhoun purchased the Pendleton home “Dunean” of Mrs. William Adger and renamed it “Mi Casa.”
Stevenson, The Diary of Clarissa Adger Bowen, 47-48, 95. Mi Casa still stands as a private residence.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 27, 1859, in Sublette, vol. 2, 735-736, 738.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 27, 1859, in Sublette, vol. 2, 739, 739 (n. 9). James M.
McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 205-206,
208-209.
134
Legacy of a Southern Lady
42. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, December 25, 1859, in Sublette, vol. 2, 747, 750.
43. Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct, 61.
44. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, March 7, 1858, in Sublette, vol. 2, 660. Anna C. Clemson to
Floride Clemson, January 8, 1860, in Sublette, vol. 2, 752. Carol Bleser, ed., Secret And Sacred: The Diaries
of James Henry Hammond, a Southern Slaveholder (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), vii, xi-xii,
xviii. James Henry Hammond’s own words in his diaries reveal much not only about himself but also, in
general, reflect something of the mind of the Southern planter class.
45. Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1981), 12-13, 17. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, January 8, 1860, in Sublette, vol. 2, 752,754.
46. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, December 11, 1859; “Your ever devoted mother Anna” to Floride
Clemson, January 22, 1860, in Sublette, vol. 2, 741-742, 757, 759.
47. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, January 22, 1860, in Sublette, vol. 2, 757-758, 758 (n. 2). Historical Sketch of Ann Pamela Cunningham: “The Southern Matron,” Founder Of “The Mount Vernon
Ladies’ Association” (Jamaica Queensborough, New York: Marion Press, 1903), 6-7, 20. Ann Pamela
Cunningham was the daughter of very wealthy Laurens planter, Robert Cunningham, who had studied
law with John C. Calhoun. Marion R. Wilkes, Rosemont and Its Famous Daughter (Washington, D.C.: M.
R. Wilkes, 1947), 8, 16. In the Autumn 1998 issue of Carologue magazine, the South Carolina Historical
Society announced the fourth doll in its “‘Great Women of South Carolina Doll Series’” to be Ann Pamela
Cunningham. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 189. Anne Firor Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics 1830-1930 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970), 52-54.
Virginia I. Burr, “A Woman Made to Suffer and Be Strong: Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, 1834-1907,”
in In Joy and In Sorrow: Women, Family, and Marriage in the Victorian South, 1830-1900, ed. Carol Bleser
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 220. Catherine Clinton, Tara Revisited: Women, War, & The
Plantation Legend (New York: Abbeville Press, 1995), 128-129.
48. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 13, 1859; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, February 12, 1860; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, February 26, 1860, in Sublette, vol. 2, 730, 766,
769-771. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 156.
49. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, February 26, 1860; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, March
8, 1860; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, March 18, 1860; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson,
March 29, 1860; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, April 15, 1860; Anna C. Clemson to Floride
Clemson, October 9, 1860; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, August 2, 1863; {No closing signature.} to Floride Clemson, August 6, 1863, in Sublette, vol. 2, 769-770, 772, 772 (n. 2), 773-774, 776,
778, 781, 827 (n. 9), 830 (n. 5). Ernest McPherson Lander, Jr., and Charles M. McGee, Jr., eds., A Rebel
Came Home: The Diary and Letters of Floride Clemson 1863-1866, Revised Edition (Columbia: University
of South Carolina Press, 1989), 18. The original manuscript of Floride Clemson’s diary is in Special Collections, Clemson University.
50. Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, Reminiscences of Peace and War (New York: MacMillan, 1904), 81. Anna C. Clemson
to Floride Clemson, October 14, 1860; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 4, 1860, in
Sublette, vol. 2, 784, 785 (n. 2), 795. The bachelor President, James Buchanan, deferred to his niece, Harriet Lane, in “all matters of social protocol.” Philip Shriver Klein, President James Buchanan: A Biography
(University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962), 273. During Miss Lane’s
White House residency, according to Virginia Tunstall Clay, the wife of Senator Clement Clay of Alabama,
“functions rose to their highest degree of elegance.” Ada Sterling, ed., A Belle of the Fifties: Memoirs of
Mrs. Clay, of Alabama, covering Social and Political Life in Washington and the South, 1853-66 (New York:
Doubleday, Page, 1904), 114. Giles St. Aubyn, Edward Vll: Prince and King (New York: Atheneum, 1979),
46-48. The prince became so popular in the United States that it was said he could be nominated for
president. Upon his return home, his mother Queen Victoria was particularly pleased with a letter from
President Buchanan speaking of her son’s “noble and manly bearing” and conduct that befitted his royal
station. J. Mora Moss to T. G. Clemson, September 24, 1866, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
51. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, October 9, 1860; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, October
21, 1860; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, October 28, 1860; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 4, 1860; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 11, 1860, in Sublette, vol. 2,
781, 782 (n. 3), 788, 790-791, 794-795, 798. Ernest McPherson Lander, Jr., The Life And Times Of Ella
Lorton, A Pendleton SC Confederate (Clemson, South Carolina: Clemson Printers, 1996), 100-101.
52. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 11, 1860, in Sublette, vol. 2, 798-799. McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom, 228.
Notes
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
135
Ibid., 232-235. Walter Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1998), 341-342, 352. Lacy K. Ford, Jr., Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry,
1800-1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, March 24, 1861; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, April
11, 1861, in Sublette, vol. 2, 806, 815. Floride Calhoun to Anna Clemson, April, 1861; D. W. Lee to
T. G. Clemson, May 6, 1861, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Eliza Cope Harrison, ed., Best
Companions: Letters of Eliza Middleton Fisher and Her Mother, Mary Hering Middleton, from Charleston,
Philadelphia, and Newport, 1839-1846 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), xxxix, xli,
503-504.
C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 45, 45 (n.
4), 46.
D. W. Lee to T. G. Clemson, May 6, 1861; Floride Calhoun to Floride Clemson, May 17, 1861, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 207-208. Barbara Jeanne Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1985). New York Times, June 20, 1999.
Alester G. Holmes and George R. Sherrill, 22. Thirty-five-year-old West Point graduate, Ransom Colhoun, later died from a gunshot wound to the heart in a duel with Major Alfred Rhett on September 5,
1862, in Charleston. C. Russell Horres, Jr., “An Affair Of Honor At Fort Sumter,” in The South Carolina
Historical Magazine, vol. 102, no. 1, ed. W. Eric Emerson (Charleston: The South Carolina Historical
Society, January 2001), 6-7, 9, 13, 20. The sword carried by Ransom Colhoun during his Confederate
service is part of the Civil War memorabilia at the Fort Hill historic house museum. McPherson, Battle
Cry of Freedom, 858. Both Union and Confederate victories in a divided country attested to a prolonged
conflict and President Lincoln’s freeing of the slaves in the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, in
January of 1863, expanded the purpose of the war. Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, April 5, 1863; Anna
C. Clemson to Elias Baker, May 18, 1863, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Lander, The Calhoun
Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 211.
Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, April 5, 1863; Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, May 18, 1863; Anna C.
Clemson to Elias Baker June 13, 1863, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 858. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 211.
Floride Clemson to Anna Clemson, July 29, 1863, in Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 119,
121. Anna Clemson to Floride Clemson, July 30, 1863; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, August
2, 1863; [No signature.] to Floride Clemson, August 9, 1863, in Sublette, vol. 2, 824-825, 833. Lander,
The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 150. Lander, The Life And Times of Ella Lorton, 100-101.
After Gideon Lee Sr.’s (former New York mayor and United States congressman), death in 1841, Charles
Leupp headed the family’s business firm, then called Charles M. Leupp and Company, in association with
two of his brothers-in-law, D. Williamson and W. Creighton Lee.
Anna Clemson to Floride Clemson, July 30, 1863; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, August 2, 1863;
[No closing signature.] to Floride Clemson, August 6, 1863; Anna Clemson to Floride Clemson, August
16, 1863, in Sublette, vol. 2, 824, 826, 829, 839. Floride Clemson to Anna Clemson, August 19, 1863,
in Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 134. Since early April of 1863, Charleston, “the citadel
of secession,” had been the target of Union attacks to subdue the city “whose symbolic significance was
greater than its strategic importance.” McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 646.
Floride Clemson to Anna Clemson, August 2, 1863; Floride Clemson to Anna Clemson, August 16, 1863,
in Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 123, 132. [No closing signature.] to Floride Clemson,
August 9, 1863, in Sublette, vol. 2, 833-834. In his book, Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in
America, 1701-1840 (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1987), Larry Tise took note of the religious
response to abolitionism in the 1830s as one of general condemnation of an amoral movement bent on the
destruction of society.
Floride Clemson to Anna Clemson, August 19, 1863; Floride Clemson to Anna Clemson, August 24,
1863, in Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 135, 139, 140. Anna C. Clemson to Floride
Clemson, August 20, 1863, in Sublette, vol. 2, 844-846. In editor Carol Bleser’s work, Tokens of Affection:
The Letters of a Planter’s Daughter in the Old South (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), the
letters of Maria Bryan, a young woman in antebellum Georgia, reveal her regard for her religious deficiencies and resolve to correct them. The journal of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, 1848-1889, entitled The
Secret Eye by editor Virginia Burr (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1990), portrays
136
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
Legacy of a Southern Lady
a woman who saw her individual virtue measured by her Christian value. Catherine Clinton in her book,
Tara Revisited, claimed that southern women found their salvation from the calamity of war in the Christian faith.
Floride Clemson to Anna Clemson, August 24, 1863; Floride Clemson to Anna Clemson, August 27,
1863; Floride Clemson to Anna Clemson, August 30, 1863, in Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came
Home, 134, 144. {No signature.} to Floride Clemson, August 27, 1863, in Sublette, vol. 2, 852.
Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 38. Floride Clemson to Anna Clemson, August 19, 1863;
Floride Clemson to Anna Clemson, August 30, 1863, in Ibid., 134, 144. Anna Clemson to Floride Clemson, August 30, 1863, in Sublette, vol. 2, 856.
Anna Calhoun to Maria Simkins, July 4, 1836; Anna Calhoun to Maria Simkins, July [?], 1836, in Sublette, vol. 1, 95, 99, 102.
Anna Maria Calhoun’s Album: July 9, 1836, July 12, 1836, July 15, 1836, July 18, 1836, July 20, 1836, in
Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Anna Maria Calhoun’s Album, Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel
Came Home, 41, 41 (n. 51), 42. Floride Clemson to Anna Clemson, September 7, 1863; Floride Clemson
to Anna Clemson, September 9, 1863, in Ibid., 148, 150-152. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas
Green Clemson, 214. Susan Frances Hampton married John Laurence Manning in 1838, the same year that
Anna married Thomas Clemson. (In 1845 Susan died in childbirth, and later from 1852-1854, Manning
served as governor of South Carolina.) Bleser, ed., Secret and Sacred, 322. The Greek Revival Manning
Mansion, Millford, near Pinewood in Sumter County, today “stands restored as one of the showpieces
of South Carolina architecture.” South Carolina Historical Society ‘94 Fall Plantation Tour Brochure.
William King in 1844 received a diplomatic appointment to Paris under Anna’s father, then serving as
Secretary of State, and later in 1852, was elected vice-president. Anna Calhoun to Maria Simkins, July [?],
1836, in Sublette, vol. 1, 104 (n. 4).
Floride Clemson to Anna Clemson, September 13, 1863, in Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came
Home, 38, 41-44,158-159. Copy of a summary of a letter signed by Abraham Lincoln on October 9, 1863,
and priced for sale in 1968 at $1,000 by the auction house of Charles Hamilton, Inc., in New York City.
Assembled over the years by Justin G. Turner of Los Angeles, the greatest private collection of Lincolniana
contained this remarkable piece indicative of Lincoln’s respect for Calhoun, the staunch advocate of states’
rights and slavery. Clemson University was unable, at the time, to find a donor for the item. Clemson
Papers, Clemson University. According to Clyde N. Wilson, Editor, The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Lincoln said he admired Calhoun’s precision and concision of rhetoric and supported Calhoun’s last bill to
give public lands to the states, which Lincoln wanted to use for internal improvements in Illinois. By the
fall of 1863, the time of Calhoun Clemson’s capture and confinement, the president’s wife, Kentucky native, Mary Todd Lincoln, had lost three of her family members in Confederate service. For those that she
considered traitors, the first lady reportedly wept but did not grieve. Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A
Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, l987), 222-223.
Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 43. Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, November 10, 1863,
in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Crowded, unsanitary living conditions in bad housing, coupled
with even worse food and deplorable medical care in poorly policed prison camps, caused the deaths of
“26,436 Southerners and 22,576 Northerners” during the Civil War. Bruce Catton, The Civil War (New
York: The Fairfax Press, 1980), 233. D. W. Lee to Anna C. Clemson, October 17, 1863, in Clemson
Papers, Clemson University.
D. W. Lee to Anna C. Clemson, June 21, 1861; D. W. Lee to Anna C. Clemson, November 3, 1863, in
Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, August 2, 1863, in Sublette,
vol. 2, 825. Elias Baker to Anna C. Clemson, November 5, 1863; Elias Baker to Anna C. Clemson, November 10, 1863, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, November 20, 1863, in Ibid.. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas
Green Clemson, 182.
Elias Baker to Anna C. Clemson, November 23, 1863; Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, December 13,
1863; Elias Baker to Anna C. Clemson, December 24, 1863; Elias Baker to Anna C. Clemson, December
31, 1863; Elias Baker to Anna C. Clemson, March 3, 1864; Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, March 6,
1864, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 48. J. C. Clemson to Anna C. Clemson, January 28, 1864,
in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. The poor spelling that Anna had admonished Floride never to
ridicule Calhoun about is evident here. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 158-159.
Notes
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
137
Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, December 13, 1863, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Calhoun’s “poor spelling” is again evident. J. C. Clemson to Anna C. Clemson, December 14, 1863; J.
C. Clemson to Anna C. Clemson, December 22, 1863; J. C. Clemson to Anna C. Clemson, February
3, 1864, in Ibid.. Johnson’s Island, located in the waters of Sandusky Bay, not far out in Lake Erie, was
supplied from the mainland by boat in the summer and over the ice in the winter. Edward T. Downer,
“Johnson’s Island,” in Civil War Prisons, ed. William B. Hesseltine (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University
Press, 1962).
J. C. Clemson to Anna C. Clemson, January 20, 1864; J. C. Clemson to Anna C. Clemson February 29,
1864; J. C. Clemson to Anna C. Clemson, March 27, 1864, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. By
1864, the system of prisoner exchanges that had operated periodically between the opposing governments
in the early years of the war had been canceled by the Union. Catton, The Civil War, 230.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 184, 217, 219. Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker,
April 17, 1864, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home,
51.
G. H. Dunscomb, “A. S. F. [A Special Friend?],” to Floride Clemson, April 20, 1864, in Clemson Papers,
Clemson University.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, April 21, 1864; “Head Quarters U. S. forces at Sandusky and
Johnson’s Island, Sandusky, Ohio, April 21, 1864, Pass Mrs. Clemson and Mr. Dunscomb to the island
return today, H. D. Terry,” in Ibid.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, April 21, 1864; G. H. Dunscomb, “A. S. F.,” to Floride Clemson,
April 22, 1864, in Ibid. Ann Russell, “‘Holding court’ at a Yankee Prison: Anna Calhoun Clemson Behind
Enemy Lines,” Carologue (Charleston, South Carolina: South Carolina Historical Society, Spring 1990),
18.
Carol K. Bleser, “The Marriage of Varina Howell and Jefferson Davis: A Portrait of the President and the
First Lady of the Confederacy,” in Intimate Strategies of the Civil War: Military Commanders and Their
Wives, eds. Carol K. Bleser And Lesley J. Gordon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 19.
Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, May 1, 1864, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Lander and
McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 53, 53 (n. 1).
Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, June 12, 1864; Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, July 3, 1864, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 53.
Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, August 2, 1864; Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, October 6, 1864;
Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, October 24, 1864, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, November 20, 1864, in Ibid.. Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came
Home, 67.
Ibid., 68, 68 (ns. 29, 30), 71. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 9, 1856, in Sublette, vol.
2, 525 (n. 1).
Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 71-72. Anna C. Clemson to Sylvester Baker Esq., December 21, 1864, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Both Clement Clay, Confederate Senator from
Alabama, and Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, were later imprisoned at Fortress Monroe in
May, 1865, just five months after Anna’s and Floride’s brief stop there during the last days of the war that
would end in a southern surrender at Appomattox in April. Carol Bleser and Frederick M. Heath,”The
Clays of Alabama: The Impact of the Civil War on a Southern Marriage,” in In Joy and In Sorrow, ed.
Bleser, 146.
Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 69, 72-74, 74 (n. 10). Floride’s diary makes note of the
fact that her twenty-second birthday on December 29, 1864, was spent on the road between Raleigh and
Charlotte.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 222. Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came
Home, 74. R. W. Simpson, History of Old Pendleton District (Anderson, South Carolina: Oulla Printing &
Binding Company, 1913), 19. Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South
in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
Scott, The Southern Lady.
Clyde N. Wilson, Carolina Cavalier: The Life and Mind of James Johnston Pettigrew (Athens: The University
of Georgia Press, 1990), 30, 181, 247 (n. 2). Unionist James Louis Petigru was “laid to rest with highest
honors” in Charleston in March of 1863, despite his “loyal opposition” to the Confederate cause. At the
time of Petigru’s death, Wilson’s work cites a published memorial with tributes from partisan opponents as
“a vivid illustration of how the gentlemanly code for personal relations transcended political considerations
138
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
Legacy of a Southern Lady
in the Old South.” Pamela J. Clements, ed., “‘Great Events Have Taken Place’: The Civil War Diary of
Adèle Allston Vanderhorst,” in The South Carolina Historical Magazine, vol. 102, no. 4, ed. W. Eric Emerson (Charleston: The South Carolina Historical Society, October 2001), 311. Elizabeth Allston Pringle
(Patience Pennington), A Woman Rice Planter (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992),
xix, xx. Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, A Family of Women: The Carolina Petigrus in Peace and War
(Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 199. Chicora Wood Plantation was on the
South Carolina Historical Society’s “Fall Plantation Tour 2003” advertised in the Summer 2003 issue of
Carologue magazine.
Pease and Pease, A Family of Women, 201-202.
Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 75-76. For an eyewitness account of Sherman’s arrival
in Columbia in February, 1865, refer to A Heritage of Woe: The Civil War Diary of Grace Brown Elmore,
1861-1868, edited by Marli F. Weiner (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1997). The burning of
Columbia described in the diary of Grace Brown Elmore and referred to in the diary of Floride Clemson
is identified in James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom as “the greatest atrocity charged against Sherman,”
a brutal deed still surrounded by controversy. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 829.
Leigh Fought, Southern Womanhood & Slavery: A Biography of Louisa S. McCord, 1810-1879, (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 2003), 167-169. Weiner, ed., A Heritage of Woe, 101. Grace Brown Elmore’s
father, Franklin Harper Elmore, had served briefly in the U. S. senate following the death of Calhoun in
1850.
Fought, Southern Womanhood & Slavery, 83, 102, 156-157. Pease and Pease, A Family of Women, 128. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel
Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 243, 256, 287. Louisa McCord’s play Caius Gracchus:
A Tragedy in Five Acts, set in the republican society of ancient Rome and published in 1851, gives a good
picture of her “view of the world and her own place in it.” Pease and Pease, A Family of Women, 128.
Fought, Southern Womanhood & Slavery, 169-171.
Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 77-79. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green
Clemson, 233.
Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 81-85, 87. Weiner, ed., A Heritage of Woe, 81. Clinton, Tara
Revisited, 128.
Bleser, “The Marriage of Varina Howell and Jefferson Davis,” in Intimate Strategies of The Civil War, eds.
Bleser and Gordon, 19-21. Following Davis’s capture by federal cavalry in Georgia, he was imprisoned by
the federal government at Fortress Monroe, Virginia. His wife Varina who was with him at the time of his
taking into custody, and, herself, later placed, for a while, under virtual house arrest in Savannah, played
“an active role in the campaign to free her husband.” The home where Davis stayed in Abbeville is now a
National Landmark restored as the Burt-Stark Mansion and is open for tours to the public. Heritage Corridor Historic Abbeville South Carolina Brochure.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 228. Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came
Home, 88-90.
Joe Gray Taylor, “The White South from Secession to Redemption,” in Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honor of Sanford W. Higginbotham, eds. John Boles and Evelyn Thomas Nolen (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 180. Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 90,
93-94, 97-99, 105.
Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill historic house museum. This source also
notes the death of Kate Putnam Calhoun on May 5, 1866, at Pilatka, [sic], Florida. Calhoun family
gravesites, St. Paul’s Episcopal Churchyard, Pendleton, South Carolina. Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel
Came Home, 88, 92, 104-105, 107-108. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 235.
Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home,, 109. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 233, 239. “romance of fort hill: The Beautiful Old Home of John C. Calhoun,” in South Carolina
Magazine, September, 1955, 14. Deed of Conveyance, State of South Carolina, Pickens District, August
27, 1850, framed document at Fort Hill historic house museum.
Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 89, 96,106, 109. J. E. Calhoun to T. G. Clemson, June 14,
1866, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Lander and McGee, eds., A Rebel Came Home, 116. Anna C. Clemson to James Edward Calhoun, June
8, 1869, in Sublette, vol. 2, 873. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 236. Harriet
R. Holman, ed., The Verse of Floride Clemson (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1965), x-xi,
xiv-xv. A copy of Poet Skies and Other Experiments in Versification, published in Baltimore in 1868 by J. W.
Notes
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
139
Woods, printer, can be found in Special Collections, Clemson University. This volume of Floride’s verse
was originally given by Anna, after her daughter’s death, to Miss Anna Simpson, sister of R. W. Simpson,
Clemson’s lawyer who became the first chairman of the Board of Trustees of Clemson Agricultural College. Miss Simpson presented her copy of Floride’s published poems to the Clemson library in 1905. The
Verse of Floride Clemson, edited by the late Harriet R. Holman, former member of the Clemson English
faculty, includes not only the poems of Poet Skies but also previously unpublished manuscript pieces (many
of which have Confederate themes), contained in a collection entitled The Prize Album that is now the
property of the Fort Hill historic house museum. Faust, Mothers of Invention, 178.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 152, 236. Company Muster Roll, reproduced at
the National Archives, currently in the possession of Lee Calhoun, Jr.. Lander, The Life and Times of Ella
Lorton, 100-102, 104. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, August 8, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to James
Edward Calhoun, June, 1869, in Sublette, vol. 2, 713 (n. 2), 871, 871 (n. 2), 872, 874-875. Gideon Lee
to J. E. Calhoun, May 28, 1869, in James Edward Calhoun Papers, The South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina.
James Edward Calhoun to Anna C. Clemson, June 3, 1869; James Edward Calhoun to Anna C. Clemson,
July, 1869, in James Edward Calhoun Papers, University of South Carolina. Anna C. Clemson to James
Edward Calhoun, June [?], 1869; Anna C. Clemson to James Edward Calhoun, July 13, 1869, in Sublette,
vol. 2, 874, 878. Sharyn Kane & Richard Keeton, Beneath These Waters: Archeological and Historical Studies
of 11,500 Years Along the Savannah River (Funded by U. S. Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District:
Administered by Interagency Archeological Services Division National Park Service Southeast Region,
1994), 237.
Anna C. Clemson to James Edward Calhoun, October 3, 1869, in Sublette, vol. 2, 881. Book of Common
Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, at the Fort Hill historic house museum, shows the following notation:
“Gideon Lee & Floride Clemson were married August 2 1870 at Pendleton Mi Casa.” The correct year is
1869 and the ceremony took place at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Lace from the wedding dress of Floride
Clemson is on display at the Fort Hill historic house museum. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas
Green Clemson, 237. Lander, The Life and Times of Ella Lorton, 103, 110.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 237. Sublette, vol. 2, 882. Book of Common
Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, at the Fort Hill historic house museum, notes the baby’s name only as
Isabella and erroneously dates her birth in 1871. This same source shows correctly the place, Carmel, New
York, and date, 1871, of Floride Clemson Lee’s death. Anna C. Clemson to James Edward Calhoun, June
23, 1872, in Sublette, vol. 2, 890. Lander, The Life and Times of Ella Lorton, 109, 111, 126.
Anna C. Clemson to James Edward Calhoun, July 2, 1869, in Sublette, vol. 2, 877.
Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill historic house museum. The Anderson Intelligencer, August 17, 1871. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 237. Although Anna
referred to her son’s “title” during his confinement at Johnson’s Island as “Lt. J. C. Clemson” and all the
records show this to be his highest attainable rank, Clemson himself placed the tombstone over Calhoun’s
grave with the inscription: “John Calhoun Clemson, Born July 17, 1841, Died Aug. 10, 1871, CAPT. C.
S. A..” Anna C. Clemson to Elias Baker, November 20, 1863, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Holmes and Sherrill, Thomas Green Clemson. Tombstone, St. Paul’s Episcopal Churchyard, Pendleton,
South Carolina.
Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, March 4, 1850, in Sublette, vol. 2, 470-471.
Chapter 3
1.
2.
3.
Ernest McPherson Lander, Jr., and Charles M. McGee, Jr., eds., A Rebel Came Home: The Diary and Letters
of Floride Clemson 1863-1866, Revised Edition (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989),
79.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, September 27, 1846, in Sublette, vol. 1, 415. Book of Common
Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill historic house museum at Clemson University. J. C. Calhoun
to James Monroe, November 1, 1817; J. C. Calhoun to Mrs. Floride Colhoun, November 15, 1817, in
Robert L. Meriwether, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. l (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1959), xxxii, 419-420.
John Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union: A Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1988), 61. Merrill D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 85, 87. Walter Muir Whitehill, Dumbarton Oaks: The History of a Georgetown
140
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Legacy of a Southern Lady
House and Garden 1800-1966 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1967), 39. The Calhouns’ Washington house was located “at 6th and E streets, N.W., just north of the
present National Gallery of Art.” J.C. Calhoun to Mrs. Floride Calhoun, April 9, 1815; J. C. Calhoun to
Patrick Noble (a Calhoun cousin), January 7, 1819; J. C. Calhoun to Thomas Worthington (former Ohio
Senator), October 17, 1819; J.C. Calhoun to John E. Colhoun, Jr. (Mrs. Calhoun’s older brother), March
23, 1820, in Meriwether, ed., Meriwether and W. Edwin Hemphill, eds., The Papers of John C. Calhoun,
vols. l, lll, lV (1967, 1969), 283, 286 (n. 2), 413, 377, 730. Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family
Bible, Fort Hill historic house museum. This source, erroneously, notes the birth of Elizabeth in September
of 1819, and makes no mention of her date of death. The births but not the deaths of Floride and Jane
are recorded. Anna Maria Calhoun (Clemson’s) Album, in Clemson Papers, Special Collections, Clemson
University.
J.C. Calhoun to Midshipman James E. Calhoun, May 7, 1820; J.C. Calhoun to J.E. Colhoun, October 8,
1822, in Hemphill, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vols. V, Vll (1971, 1973), 95, 298. Book of Common
Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill historic house museum. Andrew P. Calhoun, Jr., Genealogist,
Clan Colquhoun Society. Last Will and Testament, Samuel Bonneau, November 12, 1788, in John Ewing
Colhoun Papers, The South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina. Nancy Woloch, Women
and the American Experience: A Concise History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), 127. J. Russell Cross,
Historic Ramblin’s Through Berkeley (Columbia, South Carolina: R.L. Bryan, 1985), 91-92. A portrait,
by an unknown artist, of Floride Bonneau Colhoun at the time of her marriage in 1786 is part of the
permanent collection of Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. The pair of fabric covered high-heeled shoes (over
two-hundred years old), that she wore at her wedding are part of the memorabilia at the Fort Hill historic
house museum. Whitehill, Dumbarton Oaks, 11, 36, 38-40.
J.C. Calhoun to John E. Colhoun, May 27, 1823; J.C. Calhoun to J.E. Calhoun, May 6, 1824, in Hemphill, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vols. Vlll, lX (1975, 1976), 75, 78-79. Book of Common Prayer,
the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill historic house museum. Also on display there are the embroidered
christening dress made by Mrs. Calhoun and worn by her children and Cornelia Calhoun’s walking stick
made from a rose bush. Compiled by Mary Stevenson, The Diary of Clarissa Adger Bowen, Ashtabula Plantation, 1865, and ... The Pendleton-Clemson Area, South Carolina, 1776-1889 (Pendleton, South Carolina:
Research and Publication Committee Foundation, 1973), 71. Irving H. Bartlett, John C. Calhoun: A
Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), 230.
John Quincy Adams to John C. Calhoun, February 14, 1825, in Hemphill, ed., The Papers of John C.
Calhoun, vol. lX, 561. John Quincy Adams’s election to the presidency by majority vote in the House of
Representatives on February 9 followed the failure of any one candidate in the 1824 contest to receive a
majority vote in the electoral college. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate, 126, 128-129. Whitehill, Dumbarton Oaks, 43-44, 83-85. “Dumbarton Oaks,” the former “Oakly” residence of the Calhoun family, is
now the site of Harvard University’s Center for Byzantine Studies. Its name became known throughout
the world in 1944 when an informal peace conference to plan for the postwar world was held there. J.C.
Calhoun to Floride Colhoun, April 23, 1826, in Clyde N. Wilson and Hemphill, eds. The Papers of John
C. Calhoun, vol. X (1977), 90. Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill historic house
museum.
”Oakly” was, at first, rented by Calhoun and later sold by his brother-in-law, James Edward, in whose
name the deed had been registered. Whitehill, Dumbarton Oaks, 44-45. J.C. Calhoun to Floride Colhoun,
May 28, 1826; J.C. Calhoun to Floride Bonneau Colhoun, June 14, 1826; J.C. Calhoun to Lt. James E.
Calhoun, December 24, 1826; J.C. Calhoun to Lt. James E. Calhoun, February 14, 1827, in Wilson and
Hemphill, eds., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. X, xviii, 105-106, 130, 239, 264.
Wilson and Hemphill, eds., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. X, xviii, 435. J.C. Calhoun to J.E. Colhoun, June 14, 1826; F.W. Pickens (cousin and political associate), to John C. Calhoun, May 24, 1829;
J.C. Calhoun to the Rev. Jeremiah Day (Yale College, New Haven, Connecticut), September 1, 1829, in
Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Xl (l978), 46, 72. Revolutionary War hero, General Andrew
Pickens, one of the first elders of the Old Stone Church is buried, beside his wife Rebecca, in a brick-walled
enclosure adjacent to the still-standing structure. For more information about the historic Old Stone
Church, refer to R.W. Simpson, History of Old Pendleton District (Anderson, South Carolina: Oulla Printing and Binding, 1913). Commemorative marble markers have been placed at the graves of both General
Andrew Pickens and his wife Rebecca by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The Andrew Pickens
Chapter of the D.A.R. made the request, in 1908, for the raising of an on-site memorial to Fort Rutledge,
erected in 1776 for protection against the Cherokee Indians. The original fortification that Calhoun could
Notes
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
141
see to the South of his new home, set on a high point in the land, prompted his designation of “Fort Hill”
as the name for his family’s estate. Further detail about the original six-hundred acres’ land grant and its
acquisition by John Ewing Colhoun can be found in the article “romance of fort hill: The Beautiful Old
Home of John C. Calhoun,” in South Carolina Magazine, September, 1955. Noted in this publication is
the fact that the Calhouns changed the front entrance to the house from the north to the east. In the parlor
to the right of the double doors that open into a small hall can still be seen the initials of sixteen-year-old
“A P Calhoun” carved on the wall in “1827.” Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill
historic museum.
Margaret L. Coit, John C. Calhoun: American Portrait, (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South
Carolina Press Published in Cooperation with The Institute for Southern Studies and the South Caroliniana Society of the University of South Carolina, 1991), 218-219. J. C. Calhoun to James Luce Kingsley,
August 30, 1830, in Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. Xl, 226, 534, 586.
Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union, 220-221, 223. Anna to Maria Simkins, April 5, 1834, in
Sublette, vol. 1, 64 (n. 2). Ernest McPherson Lander, Jr., 8.
Anna to Maria Simkins, May 3, 1835; Anna to Maria Simkins, January 23, 1836, in Sublette, vol. 1, 67,
67 (n. 2), 86. Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill historic house museum.
The Pendleton Messenger, April 29, 1836. After identifying Mrs. FLORIDE COLHOUN as the “relict of
the late Hon. John Ewing Colhoun,” the obituary concludes as follows: “If a long life unceasingly devoted
to good works, and a self-sacrifice in the cause of the Redeemer availeth any thing, then may her friends
confidently hope that she will occupy a mansion not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” Niven,
John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union, 219. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 12.
Meriwether, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. l, 418 (n. 156).
Anna to James Edward Calhoun, January 1, 1837; Anna to Maria Simkins, July 26, 1837; Anna to Patrick
Calhoun, December 24, 1837, in Sublette, vol. 1, 111-112, 112 (ns. 4, 5), 119, 123, 123 (n. 5), 140.
With regard to Washington society and the advent of the Van Buren administration in 1837, Anna made
the following observation, in a letter to her Uncle James, about the President’s new Cabinet and Elizabeth
Blair, the daughter of Francis Blair, editor of the Globe newspaper and the belle of the social scene: “Miss
Blair, tho’ ugly and disagreeable in her manners is treated with more attention by the members, than any
one in Washington—.” On behalf of his son Patrick, Calhoun, on March 9, 1837, had petitioned Secretary
of War, Joel Poinsett, for a West Point appointment.
Anna to Patrick Calhoun, August 27, 1837, in Sublette, vol. 1, 127, 127 (n. 2). George W. Featherstonhaugh, A Canoe Voyage up the Minnay Sotor, vol. 2, Reprint Edition (St. Paul’s: Minnesota Historical
Society, 1970), 266-271.
Anna to Maria Simkins, August 8, 1837; Anna to Patrick Calhoun, August 27, 1837, in Sublette, vol. 1,
125, 127-129.
Anna to Patrick Calhoun, September 18, 1837; Anna to Patrick Calhoun, December 24, 1837; Anna to
James E. Calhoun, January 10, 1838; Anna to Patrick Calhoun, January 19, 1838, in Sublette, vol. 1, 136,
140, 140 (n. 1), 143-144, 144 (n. 1), 146, 146 (n. 1), 148.
Anna to Patrick Calhoun, March 4, 1838, in Sublette, vol. 1, 149, 149 (n. 1),-150.
Anna to Patrick Calhoun, April 14, 1838; Anna to Patrick Calhoun, May 21, 1838, in Sublette, vol. 1,
156-158, 158 (n. 2), 172. Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union, 221-222.
Anna to Patrick Calhoun, April 30, 1838; Anna to Maria Simkins, May 21, 1838; Anna to Patrick Calhoun, May 21, 1838; Anna to Patrick Calhoun, May 30, 1838, in Sublette, vol. 1, 163-164, 166-168,
171-172, 174, 175 (n. 1). Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union, 222-223.
Anna to Maria Simkins, July 22, 1838; Anna to Patrick Calhoun, August 18, 1838; Anna to Patrick Calhoun, September 23, 1838, in Sublette, vol. 1, 181, 181 (n. 1),-182, 182 (n. 2), 192, 185-196.
Anna to Maria Simkins, October 27, 1838; Anna to Lieutenant Patrick Calhoun, March 8, 1843; Anna
to Lieutenant Patrick Calhoun, April 15, 1843, in Sublette, vol. 1, 199, 332, 338-339. Mary Bates (wedding guest), to Anna C. Clemson, April 19, 1850, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Lander, The
Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 8-9.
Anna to Patrick Calhoun, November 4, 1840; Anna to Lieutenant Patrick Calhoun, October 29, 1842;
Anna to Patrick Calhoun, December 3, 1842; Anna to Lieutenant Patrick Calhoun, March 8, 1843;
Anna to Lieutenant Patrick Calhoun, June 11, 1843; Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, October 5, 1843,
in Sublette, vol. 1, 250, 313, 321, 330-331, 348, 356. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green
Clemson, 38, 71. The due bill payable to Clemson on demand was in the amount of $7,114, and the “two
promissory notes of $8,500 each, due in March 1845 and March 1846.”
142
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
Legacy of a Southern Lady
Sublette, vol. 1, 68, 80, 87. Anna to Patrick Calhoun, April 14, 1838; Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun,
July 16, 1843; Anna to Lieutenant Patrick Calhoun, April 11, 1844; Anna to John C. Calhoun, June 1,
1844, in Sublette, vol. 1, 157, 349, 379-380, 383.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, September 27, 1846; Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, March
4, 1850, in Sublette, vol. 1, 416-417, 469. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 87-89,
102, 109, 112, 118.
Ibid., 87-88, 119, 123. Anna Calhoun Clemson to John C. Calhoun, August 12, 1849; Anna C. Clemson
to John C. Calhoun, January 22, 1850; Anna C. Clemson to Patrick Calhoun, February 1, 1850, in Sublette, vol. 1, 455, 461, 461 (n. 1), 463-466.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 124. Anna C. Clemson to James Edward Calhoun, May 7, 1850; Anna Clemson to Patrick Calhoun, June 24, 1850, in Sublette, vol. 1, 472-475.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 132-133. Thos G. Clemson to Major Patrick Calhoun, June 18, 1850, in Calhoun Papers, The South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina.
Thos G. Clemson to Major Patrick Calhoun, August 6, 1850, in Ibid.. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate,
404. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 132. Floride Calhoun to Floride Clemson,
August 11, 1850, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Current Restoration of the Fort Hill historic
house museum was funded by over a million dollar allocation from the South Carolina state legislature and
a private donation of $500,000 distributed through the Clemson University Foundation. The proposal for
the state’s funding was drafted by Will Hiott, Director of Historic Properties, Clemson University.
Deed of Conveyance, State of South Carolina, Pickens District, August 27, 1850, framed document
at Fort Hill historic house museum. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 133-135.
Floride Calhoun to Floride Clemson, August 11, 1850; Floride Calhoun to Anna Clemson, October 1,
1850, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Floride Calhoun to A. P. Calhoun, November 13, 1850, in Calhoun Papers, University of South Carolina.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 135-139, 141-143.
Ibid., 139-140, 143-144, 153-155. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, May 6, 1855, in Sublette, vol.
2, 483, 483 (n. 1), 484. Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill historic house museum. Gravesite, St. Paul’s Episcopal Churchyard, Pendleton, South Carolina. John Caldwell Calhoun, Jr.,
is buried at the far side of the plot where his sister Cornelia, mother, Floride Calhoun, uncle James Edward
Calhoun and brother Willie are also laid to rest. Anna Maria Calhoun (Clemson’s) Album, Clemson Papers,
Clemson University.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 16, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson,
November 30, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, December 21, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to
Floride Clemson, January 4, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, March 22, 1857, in Sublette,
vol. 2, 529-530, 534-535, 539, 547, 573, 573 (ns. 1-2). Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green
Clemson, 156, 160, 171-172, 191.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, May 10, 1857, in Sublette, vol. 2, 582-583, 583 (n. 2). Lander,
The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 161. Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible,
Fort Hill historic house museum. Tombstone, Martha Cornelia Calhoun, St. Paul’s Episcopal Churchyard,
inscribed: “She has found the joy of heaven and is now one of the angel band.”
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 163, 172. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 27, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, October 10, 1857, in Sublette, vol. 2,
604, 606, 614-615. Anna’s friend Catherine Campbell lived in the “Friendville” home of her aunt, Mary
Martha Campbell Stuart, whose husband, Dr. James Stuart, had built the house “circa 1830.” “South
Carolina’s Historic Pendleton” Brochure.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 8, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, January
10, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, May 23, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson,
June 6, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 27, 1859, in Sublette, vol. 2, 624, 624
(n. 2), 645-646, 694, 698, 736. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 191-192, 194,
196.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, February 28, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, March
28, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, April 4, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson,
May 9, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, June 13, 1858; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, March 8, 1860, in Sublette, vol. 2, 656, 656 (n. 1), 671-672, 676, 676 (n. 2), 687-688, 701, 701
(n. 1), 772, 772 (ns. 1-3). Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 166-167, 172-173,
Notes
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
143
175. Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill historic house museum. Tombstone,
Patrick Calhoun, St. Paul’s Episcopal Churchyard, inscribed: “CAPT. 2ND DRAGOONS. U. S. A..” In
memory of Anna’s “dearest brother,” the stone pillar that stands adjacent to her own burial site alongside
her husband and son testifies to her wish that his resting place be marked by a “neat monument.” Anna C.
Clemson to Floride Clemson, January 8, 1860, in Sublette, vol. 2, 755.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 177, 193-196, 208. Anna Maria Calhoun (Clemson’s) Album, Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible,
Fort Hill historic house museum. Gravesite, St. Paul’s Episcopal Churchyard. Anna C. Clemson to Floride
Clemson, November 29, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, June 6, 1858, in Sublette, vol. 2,
632, 698. Coit, John C. Calhoun, 375.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, March 24, 1861; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, April 11,
1861, in Sublette, vol. 2, 808, 808 (n. 1), 816. Although on April 3, Andrew was away at the state Convention where the Constitution of the Confederate States was ratified and Margaret was at Fort Hill awaiting
“her confinement,” Anna was hurt that no contact had been made by the time of the Clemsons’ departure
on the morning of April 12.
Obituary, ANDREW PICKENS CALHOUN, Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort
Hill historic house museum. Gravesite, Andrew Pickens Calhoun, Calhoun Plantation Cemetery, Cemetery Hill, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina. Anna Clemson to Col. A. P. Calhoun, March 10,
1865, Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Lander and McGee, A Rebel Came Home, 77-79. Andrew’s
youngest son Patrick, born at Fort Hill in 1856, was almost nine- years- old at the time of his father’s death
in March of 1865. When marauding Yankee soldiers arrived at Fort Hill in May, he later referred to their
intrusion as “‘the most terrifying experience’” of his life. As a young man Pat became a lawyer and railroad
financier and in 1885 married Sarah (Sally) Williams, daughter of Charleston merchant, George Williams.
The family’s Meeting Street residence, a $200,000 house that “dazzled Charleston,” was the couple’s wedding place and later their own home known as the Calhoun mansion. Now one of the city’s “pricier downtown homes” valued at 6.5 million is sometimes mistakenly identified with statesman John C. Calhoun.
Ernest M. Lander, “Patrick Calhoun: The Fabulous Railroad Entrepreneur,” Carologue, (Charleston, South
Carolina: The South Carolina Historical Society, Summer, 2000), 16, 18-19. The Post and Courier, August
13, 2003.
“Digest Of Court Opinions,” in The Clemson Agricultural College Bulletin, vol. XXl, no. 1 (Post Office,
Clemson College, South Carolina: The Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina, January, 1925),
22-25. Alester G. Holmes and George R. Sherrill, Thomas Green Clemson: His Life and Work (Richmond,
Virginia: Garrett and Massie, 1937), 175. Floride’s diary reports that her grandmother left Mi Casa to her
aunt Kate’s boys with ownership to revert to the Clemsons if they died without issue. Clemson had started
paying rent there for his family after Mrs. Calhoun’s death in 1866. Lander and McGee, A Rebel Came
Home, 109. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 234.
Ibid., 233, 239, 241.
Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, Fort Hill historic house museum. Harriet Hefner
Cook, John C. Calhoun - The Man (Columbia, South Carolina: R. L. Bryan, 1965), 121. Author’s personal
visit with Lee Calhoun, November 3, 2002.
Chapter 4
1.
2.
3.
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Voices of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1985), 53-54, 59-60, 63, 68, 73-74. The essay, “The Female World of Love and Ritual:
Relations Between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” originally appeared in Signs, 1 (Autumn
1975), 1-29.
Anna to Patrick Calhoun, May 21, 1838; Anna to Maria Simkins, June 21, 1838, in Sublette, vol. 1, 170,
170 (n. 1), 176-177. Kristen Golden, “Introduction,” in An Intricate Weave: Women Write about Girls and
Girlhood, ed. Marlene Miller (Laguna Beach, California: Iris Editions, 1997), xiii.
Orville Vernon Burton, 28-29, 66, 83-84. Owen Clark, “The Simkins Family And Their Cemetery,” Parts
1, 3-4, in Quill, vols. XlV-XV, nos. 4, 6, 1, ed. Carol Hardy Bryan (Edgefield, SC: Old Edgefield District
Genealogical Society, 1998-1999), 66, 104, 6-7. The Simkins Law Building, reconstructed in the late
1800s, is still standing in its original location near the courthouse square. “Edgefield...a true picture of
Southern historical charm” was the site of the 2002 Fall Tour of the South Carolina Historical Society. W.
Eric Emerson, ed., Carologue (Charleston, SC: The South Carolina Historical Society, Summer, 2002), 20.
144
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
Legacy of a Southern Lady
Francis Butler Simkins, “ The Simkins Family of Edgefield,” in Francis Butler Simkins 1897-1966 Historian
of The South: A Pamphlet Published by His Family in Memory of the Edgefield Native Who Spent His Teaching
Career at Longwood College in Farmville, Virginia (Columbia, South Carolina: State Printing, 1966), 50,
80. Francis Butler Simkins was the grandson of John Calhoun Simkins, one of Maria’s younger brothers
who was born during the years that Anna attended school in Edgefield. A graduate of the University of
South Carolina, Francis Simkins received a Ph. D. degree from Columbia University in 1926. A longtime
professor at Longwood College and author of several books, he served as president of the Southern Historical Association from 1953 to 1954, and an award in his name is currently presented biennially by the
organization. THE SOUTHERN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION program, 69th ANNUAL MEETING, 2003, 19.
Margaret Ripley Wolfe, 32.
John E. Colhoun to Lt. J. Edward Calhoun, December 9, 1827, in James Edward Calhoun Papers, The
South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina. General Andrew Pickens: An Autobiography, edited by Lynda Worley Skelton (Mrs. B. R.), in January, 1976, is a handy reference for more information on
Hopewell and its residents and is for sale in pamphlet form at the Pendleton District Historical and Recreational Commission located just off the town square. Today at the “Ten Governors Cafe” off of Edgefield’s
town square Andrew Pickens, Jr., and son Francis are two of the men honored among those politicians for
whom Edgefield was home. A statue of the “most famous among them,” the town’s “first citizen,” U. S.
Senator Strom Thurmond, stands in the square. The Post and Courier, May 14, 2001. John B. Edmunds,
Jr., Francis W. Pickens and the Politics of Destruction (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
1986), 7, 24.
Ibid., 21, 24. Simkins, “The Simkins Family of Edgefield,” in Francis Butler Simkins 1897-1966 Historian
Of The South, 53. Anna to Maria Simkins, May 2, 1833, in Sublette, vol. 1, 55, 55 (n. 2). Ernest McPherson Lander, Jr., The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson: The Decline of a Southern Patriarchy
(Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1983), 14.
Anna to Maria Simkins, May 2, 1833; Anna to Lieutenant James Edward Calhoun. July 4, 1833; Anna to
Maria Simkins, April 5, 1834, in Sublette, vol. 1, 54, 59, 62. Anna Maria Calhoun’s Album, October 1,
1838, in Clemson Papers, Special Collections, Clemson University.
Anna to Maria Simkins, December 18, 1835; Anna to Maria Simkins, January 6, 1836; Anna to Maria
Simkins, January 23, 1836; Anna to Maria Simkins, March 5, 1836, in Sublette, vol. 1, 75, 79, 81-82,
84-87, 94.
Anna to Maria Simkins, July 4, 1836; Anna to Maria Simkins July, 1836; Anna to Maria Simkins August
24, 1836, in Sublette, vol. 1, 95, 101, 106-107, 109.
Anna to Maria Simkins, February 13, 1837, in Sublette, vol. 1, 114, 114 (n. 1), 115, 115 (ns. 2, 4), 116.
Anna’s comparison of Maria’s epistolary style to that of Horace Walpole put her friend in the class with one
whose literary reputation was based largely on letters renowned for their charm and wit. Margaret Drabble,
ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 5th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 1041.
Augustus William Von Schlegel, “‘the founder of the modern romantic school of German literature,’” gave
a series of public lectures in Vienna in 1808 that comprised the book to which Anna referred. Augustus
William Schlegel, Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, Revised, According to the Last German Edition (New York: AMS Press, INC, 1965), 2, 4, 7, 15. “‘Rienzi,’” a popular historical novel in the
“prolific literary output” of Bulwer-Lytton, was published in 1835. It succeeded The Last Days of Pompeii
that came out in 1834 and other works of social and political significance. Drabble, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 144.
Anna to Patrick Calhoun, July 6, 1837; Anna to Maria Simkins, July 26, 1837; Anna to Maria Simkins,
August 28, 1837; Anna to Patrick Calhoun, September 18, 1837, in Sublette, vol. 1, 120, 122, 130-131,
131 (n. 1), 134, 134 (n. 1). With Anna Maria Calhoun as a witness, Catherine Campbell wed Paul Hamilton at “Friendville” on September 13, 1837. Compiled by Edwin H. Vedder, Records of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church of Pendleton, South Carolina (Greenville, South Carolina: A Press, 1982), 36. Anna’s cousin,
Martha Maria Colhoun (“‘Cuddy’”), along with her brother Ransom were “frequent visitors at Fort Hill.”
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 154.
Anna to Maria Simkins, August 28, 1837, in Sublette, vol. 1, 132, 132 (n. 2). Anna’s mention of “Clarissa
Harlowe” is in reference to the eighteenth-century novel Clarissa by Samuel Richardson.
Clark, “The Simkins Family And Their Cemetery,” Part 4, in Quill, vol. XV, no. 1, 6. Burton, In My
Father’s House Are Many Mansions, 188, 194, 241.
[Signature faded] to Maria Simkins, July 22, 1838; Anna to Maria Simkins, July 25, 1838, in Sublette, vol.
Notes
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
145
1, 181-182, 184, 186.
Anna to Maria Simkins, August 2, 1838, in Sublette, vol. 1, 188-189.
Anna to Patrick Calhoun, August 18, 1838; Anna to Maria Simkins, October 27, 1838; Anna to Maria
Simkins, November 17, 1838, in Sublette, vol. 1, 191, 199, 203-204, 204 (n. 1).
Anna Calhoun to Patrick Calhoun, December 15, 1838, in Sublette, vol. 1, 206-207. Burton, In My
Father’s House Are Many Mansions,” 369-370 (n. 30).
Sharyn Kane and Richard Keeton, Beneath These Waters: Archeological and Historical Studies of 11,500 Years
along the Savannah River (Funded by U. S. Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District: Administered by
Interagency Archeological Services Division National Park Service Southeast Region, 1994), 1, 176, 178,
181-182, 187-189. The Millwood plantation of James Edward Calhoun eventually encompassed about
10,000 acres in South Carolina and Georgia. Today the Richard B. Russell (Georgia’s late U. S. senator),
Dam (built in 1984), and Lake submerge this site in Abbeville County, South Carolina and Elbert County,
Georgia. Andrew P. Calhoun, Jr., Genealogist, Clan Colquhoun Society. A. S. Salley, Jr., “The Calhoun
Family Of South Carolina,” in The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, vol. Vll, ed. A. S.
Salley (Charleston, South Carolina: South Carolina Historical Society, 1906), 18-19. J. Edward Calhoun
to Andrew P. Calhoun, February 24, 1834, in James Edward Calhoun Papers, University of South Carolina.
Floride Calhoun to Cadet Patrick Calhoun, February 1, 1839, in Clyde N. Wilson, ed., The Papers of John
C. Calhoun, vol. XlV (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1981), 541-542. Anna to Maria
Simkins Calhoun, May 11, 1839, in Sublette, vol. 1, 214, 214 (n. 1),-215.
Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, September 19, 1839; Anna to Patrick Calhoun, November 29, 1839;
Anna to Patrick Calhoun, January 4, 1840, in Sublette, vol. 1, 219, 224, 226.
Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, April 29, 1840; Anna to Patrick Calhoun, October 4, 1840, in Sublette,
vol. 1, 235, 235 (ns. 1-2), 249.
Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, August 24, 1840; Anna to Patrick Calhoun, November 4, 1840; Anna
to Maria Simkins Calhoun, February 20, 1841; Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, April 4, 1841; Anna to
Maria Simkins Calhoun, April 25, 1841, in Sublette, vol. 1, 245 (n. 4), 250-251, 263, 263 (n. 1), 271272.
Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, September 16, 1841; Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, December 17,
1841, in Sublette, vol. 1, 278-279, 281, 282 (n. 5).
Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, January 28, 1842, in Sublette, vol. 1, 283, 283, (ns. 1-2), 284. Anne
Sinkler Whaley LeClercq, ed. Between North and South: The Letters of Emily Wharton Sinkler 1842-1865
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 1, 5-6.
Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, February 23, 1842, in Sublette, vol. 1, 286, 286 (n. 1)-287.
Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, June 1, 1842; Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, June 14, 1842, in Sublette, vol. 1, 289, 289 (n. 2), 290, 293-294. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 46.
Burton, In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions, 99-100.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 47-48. Maria Calhoun to Lieut. Patrick Calhoun,
July 23, 1842, in James Edward Calhoun Papers, University of South Carolina.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 51. Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, August 14,
1842; Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, August 25, 1842, in Sublette, vol. 1, 297-298.
Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, August 25, 1842, in Sublette, vol. 1, 305, 305 (n. 2). Edmunds, Francis
W. Pickens and the Politics of Destruction, 69.
Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, September 4, 1842 in Sublette, vol. 1, 307-308.
Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, October 24, 1842; Anna to Lieutenant Patrick Calhoun, October 29,
1842, in Sublette, vol. 1, 310, 310 (n. 1), 314, 314 (n. 2).
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 56.
Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, December 2, 1843; Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, December 31,
1843; Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, January 28, 1844, in Sublette, vol. 1, 364, 366, 368-369.
Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, February 17, 1844, in Sublette, vol. 1, 375, 375 (n. 2)-376. M. E. C. to
James Edward Calhoun, Esq. February 21, 1844, in James Edward Calhoun Papers, University of South
Carolina.
Anna to Maria Simkins Calhoun, February 17, 1844, in Sublette, vol. 1, 376, 376 (n. 3).
Anna to Lieutenant Patrick Calhoun, April 11, 1844, in Sublette, vol. 1, 378-379, 379 (n. 3). Edmunds,
Francis W. Pickens and the Politics of Destruction, 75. Obelisk-style gravestone, Maria Simkins Calhoun,
Cedar Fields Cemetery, three miles north of Edgefield Court House, Edgefield, South Carolina. Clark,
Legacy of a Southern Lady
146
37.
“The Simkins Family And Their Cemetery,” Part 4, in Quill, vol. XV, no. 1, 6.
J. C. Calhoun to Anna Clemson, May 10, 1844, in Clyde N. Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun,
vol. XVlll (Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 1988), 470. Anna to John C. Calhoun, June 1,
1844, in Sublette, vol. 1, 382-383. Carmen Renee Berry and Tamara Traeder, Girlfriends: Invisible Bonds,
Enduring Ties (Berkeley, California: Wildcat Canyon Press, 1995), 200.
Chapter 5
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
William W. Stowe, Going Abroad: European Travel In Nineteenth-Century American Culture, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994), xi, 8.
Anna to John C. Calhoun, June 1, 1844, in Sublette, vol. 1, 382.
John W. Rooney, Jr., Belgian-American Diplomatic and Consular Relations 1830-1850 (Louvain: Publications
Universitaires De Louvain, 1969), 189, 196. Clemson to Calhoun, October 17, 1844, in Despatches From
United States Ministers To Belgium, 1832-1906 (Washington: The National Archives, National Archives And
Records Service General Services Administration, 1950), Microcopies of Records in the National Archives: No.
193. Roll 4 Volume 3 October 17, 1844 - January 8, 1851. Alester G. Homes and George R. Sherrill, 8.
Personal visit with Lee and Edith Calhoun, Pittsboro, North Carolina, November 3, 2002.
Comte Louis De Lichtervelde, Léopold First: The Founder of Modern Belgium (New York: Century, 1930),
vii-viii, 8-10, 13, 128, 155.
Anna to John C. Calhoun, December 5, 1844, in Sublette, vol. 1, 387-388.
Anna to John C. Calhoun, June 1, 1844; Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, December 5, 1844, in
Sublette, vol. 1, 381 (n. 1), 388-389.
Anna to John C. Calhoun, July 4, 1845, in Sublette, vol. 1, 392-395.
Sublette, vol. 1, 395.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, September 5, 1845, in Sublette, vol. 1, 397-399.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, November 10, 1845, in Sublette, vol. 1, 402-404.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, January 24, 1846, in Sublette, vol. 1, 405. Orville Vernon Burton,
151. Susan Clemson (known as such in Red Bank Baptist Church records), married Billy Richardson
after moving with the Clemsons to the Edgefield District in 1844. (An historical marker at the site of
the church’s present day brick structure in Saluda notes the congregation’s founding in 1784.) Susan died
in Aiken in 1910, around the age of eighty, and some of her memories were recalled in 1958 by Myrtle
Herlong of Leesbury, Florida, whose grandmother had employed “Aunt Susan” after the Civil War. This
document is part of the memorabilia at the Fort Hill historic house museum at Clemson University.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, January 24, 1846, in Sublette, vol. 1, 406. Bruce Mazlish, The Meaning Of Karl Marx (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 60-62.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, January 24, 1846, in Sublette, vol. 1, 405-408. Kathryn Kish Sklar’s
essay, “Women who speak for an entire nation,” in The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture
in Antebellum America, eds. Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1994), puts female abolitionists into the international scene at the World Antislavery Convention in London in 1840. The rejection of female delegates by their male counterparts resulted in the eventual organization by Lucretia Mott (a delegate), and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (the wife of a delegate), of the first separate
women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, April 20, 1846; Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, September 27,
1846, in Sublette, vol. 1, 411-412, 416-417.
Sublette, vol. 1, 417. Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, April 11, 1847, in Sublette, vol. 1, 420-422.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, June 27, 1847; Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, September 13,
1847, in Sublette, vol. 1, 424-425, 430.
Sublette, vol. 1, 428-429.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, April 18, 1848; Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, August 7, 1848,
in Sublette, vol. 1, 432-433, 435-437.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, August 7, 1848, in Sublette, vol. 1, 436. Sublette, vol. 1, 439. Anna
Clemson to John C. Calhoun, April 15, 1849, in Sublette, vol. 1, 448.
Sublette, vol. 1, 452. Anna Calhoun Clemson to John C. Calhoun, August 12, 1849; (Anna’s underlining
of her maiden name is in response to her father’s request that she drop the “M” for Maria in her signature
and, instead, substitute the “C” for Calhoun.) Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, October 26, 1849,
in Sublette, vol. 1, 452-453, 456-457. Ernest McPherson Lander, Jr., The Calhoun Family and Thomas
Notes
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
147
Green Clemson: The Decline of a Southern Patriarchy (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1983),
120. Clemson to Clayton, July 11, 1849, in Despatches From United States Ministers To Belgium, 18321906, Microcopies of Records in the National Archives: No. 193. Roll 4 Volume 3.
Anna Calhoun Clemson to John C. Calhoun, August 12, 1849, in Sublette, vol. 1, 453.
Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, October 26, 1849; Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, December 22, 1849, in Sublette, vol. 1, 457-458, 458 (n. 2), 460. The painting’s magnificent frame with its
gilt finish and gadrooned molding is due to be restored with funding from a National Park Service Save
America’s Treasures Grant in conjunction with non-federal matching money from the Clemson University
Foundation. The Greenville News, November 21, 2002.
Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, January 22, 1850; Anna C. Clemson to Patrick Calhoun, February
1, 1850, in Sublette, vol. 1, 463, 465.
Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, February 18, 1850; Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, March
4, 1850, in Sublette, vol. 1, 468, 470.
Clemson to Clayton, June 9, 1850; Clemson to Webster, August 9, 1850; Clemson to Webster, December
25, 1850, in Despatches From United States Ministers To Belgium, 1832-1906, Microcopies of Records in the
National Archives: No. 193. Roll 4 Volume 3. Rooney, Belgian-American Diplomatic and Consular Relations
1830-1850, 222.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, April 20, 1846; Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, September 27,
1846, in Sublette, vol. 1, 411, 415.
Stowe, Going Abroad, 14, 22-23, 25. Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition, and Duties of Woman (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968),
398-399. Margaret Bell, Margaret Fuller (Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1930), 19-20.
Perry Miller, ed., Margaret Fuller: American Romantic, a Selection From Her Writings and Correspondence
(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1963), x,-xi. Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), v. The Dial: A Magazine For Literature, Philosophy, and Religion,
Volume l, 1840/41 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1961), Preface to i. Charles Capper, Margaret Fuller
An American Romantic Life: The Private Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 133.
Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, vi, vii. Joseph Rossi, The Image Of America In Mazzini’s Writings
(Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1954), 47. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within
the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1988), 43, 268. Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860,” American
Quarterly, 18 (Summer 1966): 151-152. Capper, Margaret Fuller An American Romantic Life, 134, 295.
Stowe, Going Abroad, 124. Ossoli, Woman In The Nineteenth Century, 402.
R. R. Palmer and Joel Colton, A History of the Modern World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 417,
438, 513. Felix Markham, Napoleon and the Awakening of Europe (New York: Collier Books, 1965), 100,
102. Harold Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna a study in Allied Unity: 1812-1822 (New York: Harcourt,
Brace, 1946), 195.
Rossi, The Image of America in Mazzini’s Writings, 47, 50-51.
Joseph Jay Deiss, The Roman Years of Margaret Fuller: A Biography (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1969),
83, 89. Margaret Fuller, “These Sad But Glorious Days”: Dispatches From Europe, 1846-1850 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1991), 146, 155-156, 159-161, 165-166.
Deiss, The Roman Years of Margaret Fuller, 145, 153, 157, 165, 183. Fuller, “These Sad But Glorious Days,”
238, Bell, Margaret Fuller, 243.
Fuller, “These Sad But Glorious Days,” 211, 238, 242.
Rossi, The Image of America in Mazzini’s Writings, 57. Palmer and Colton, A History of the Modern World,
484. Ossoli, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 375-376. Fuller, “These Sad But Glorious Days,” 259-261.
Ibid., 274, 276. Palmer and Colton, A History of the Modern World, 476, 513, 517. French military forces
remained in Rome until 1870 when they were withdrawn during the Franco-Prussian War. With the
subsequent annexation of Rome to the Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed, under the leadership of Victor Emmanuel ll of the House of Savoy, as a parliamentary monarchy in 1861, inclusive of Sicily, but not Venetia
(added in 1866), Italian unity was complete. Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, April 18, 1848, in
Sublette, vol. 1, 432-433.
Fuller, “These Sad But Glorious Days,” 285, 291-292. Miller, ed., Margaret Fuller, xvi. Ossoli, Woman in the
Nineteenth Century, 390-392.
Fuller, “These Sad But Glorious Days,” 310. Ossoli, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 379, 383, 386,
392, 397, 404, 420. Miller, ed., Margaret Fuller, xxviii. Internet: Contributed by Danuta Bois, 1998,
148
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
Legacy of a Southern Lady
“Margaret Fuller (1810-1850 )” (www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/fuller-m.html). American
Transcendentalism Web, “[Sarah] Margaret Fuller 1810-1850” (www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/
authors/fuller/). Article by Joan Goodwin, “Margaret Fuller” (www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/margaret
fuller.html).
Ossoli, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 385. Sylvia E. Crane, White Silence: Greenough, Powers, and
Crawford, American Sculptors in Nineteenth Century Italy (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1972),
239. Today the home of Margaret Fuller, until the age of sixteen, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a
“National Historic Landmark” that is currently the site of a neighborhood community center open to the
public during its hours of operation. Internet: “Margaret Fuller House” (www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/
margaret fuller.html).
Aiken-Rhett House tour, March 21, 2003. Maurie D. McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement: Charlestonians
Abroad 1740-1860 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 6, 35, 49, 228, 292, 317.
Stowe, Going Abroad, 5. Harriet’s father, Thomas Lowndes, not only owned several Lowcountry plantations, but a Charleston town house and “a summer residence in Flat Rock, North Carolina.” Currently,
an autumn week in this home is offered by “long-time South Carolina Historical Society friend,” Burnet
R. Maybank (a Lowndes descendant through Harriet’s daughter Henrietta), to the ticket winner of an annual fund-raising benefit raffle. W. Eric Emerson, ed., Carologue (Charleston, South Carolina: The South
Carolina Historical Society, Summer, 2002), 36. N. Louise Bailey, Mary L. Morgan, Carolyn R. Taylor,
Biographical Directory Of The South Carolina Senate, 1776-1985, Volume l (Columbia, South Carolina:
University Of South Carolina Press, 1986), 41. N. Louise Bailey, Biographical Directory Of The South Carolina House Of Representatives, 1791-1815, Volume lV (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South
Carolina Press, 1984), 359, 361. Brochure, “The Charleston Museum’s Aiken-Rhett House” (Charleston,
SC: The Charleston Museum, n.d.). The preceding three references were seen in the Aiken Family Genealogical File Reference 30-04, South Carolina Historical Society (SCHS), Fireproof Building, 100 Meeting
Street, Charleston, South Carolina. The brochure “The Charleston Museum and Its Historic Houses,”
“The Aiken-Rhett Mansion” (Charleston, SC: The Charleston Museum, n.d.) is in the personal possession
of the author.
Brochure, “The Charleston Museum’s Aiken-Rhett House”; “Harriet Lowndes was born in Charleston, the
18th of January 1812,” in the Aiken Family Genealogical File Reference 30-04, SCHS. McInnis, In Pursuit
of Refinement, 3. Brochure “The Charleston Museum And Its Historic Houses,” “The Aiken-Rhett Mansion.” “William Aiken Jr. married Harriet L. Lowndes, second daughter of Thos. and Sarah B. Lowndes,
the 3rd of February 1831— .” Aiken Family Bible, Index (Charleston, SC: Charleston Museum, Historic
Charleston Foundation, 2001), 43, in Box #80 Aiken-Rhett Collection, Charleston Museum. This index
was made available by Katherine A. Saunders, Associate Director of Preservation Initiatives for the Historic
Charleston Foundation, 40 East Bay, under whose auspices it was begun in 1999, four years after their
acquisition in 1995 of The Aiken-Rhett House property from The Charleston Museum.
McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 49-51, 228, 317. Brochure “The Charleston Museum and Its Historic
Houses,” “The Aiken-Rhett Mansion.” Miscellaneous, Index 44 in Box 90, Folder A, Aiken-Rhett Collection, Charleston Museum. The floor plan of the Aikens’ art gallery may well have been moved from a box
marked “‘miscellaneous’” to a more appropriately designated container. Bailey, Morgan, Taylor, Biographical Directory of the South Carolina Senate, Volume 1, 40.
McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 49-51. Stowe, Going Abroad, 7.
McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 228, (n. 6). Mrs. William Aiken’s travel notebook, Brochure AikenRhett Collection, Charleston Museum, Courtesy of Katherine Saunders, Historic Charleston Foundation.
Aiken Family Bible, Index 43, Aiken-Rhett Collection, Charleston Museum. The birth of “Henrietta
Aiken daughter of William and Harriet,” is given here as “July 17th 1836.” There is no definitive documentation to date on the number of slaves traveling to Europe with the Aikens in 1857. Valerie Perry, Associate
Director of Museums, Historic Charleston Foundation, Telephone conversation, January 15, 2003.
Mrs. William Aiken’s travel notebook, 1. Carol Bleser, ed., Secret and Sacred: The Diaries of James Henry
Hammond, a Southern Slaveholder (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 319, 324-325.
Mrs. William Aiken’s travel notebook, 1-2.
Ibid.. 3-4. McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 196.
Mrs. William Aiken’s travel notebook, 1, 4-5.
McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 33-35. Brochure “The Charleston Museum And Its Historic Houses,”
“The Aiken-Rhett Mansion.” Brochure, “The Charleston Museum’s Aiken-Rhett House.” The house at 48
Elizabeth Street was inherited by Harriet Lowndes Aiken and her daughter Henrietta Aiken Rhett after
Notes
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
149
the death of William Aiken in 1887. It remained in the family until 1975 when it was donated to The
Charleston Museum and is today owned by the Historic Charleston Foundation.
John B. Edmunds, Jr., Francis W. Pickens and the Politics of Destruction (Chapel Hill: The University of
North Carolina Press, 1986), 139-140. Elizabeth Wittenmyer Lewis, Queen of the Confederacy: The Innocent Deceits of Lucy Holcombe Pickens (Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press, 2002), 74, 77-79.
Emily L. Bull, “Lucy Pickens: First Lady of the South Carolina Confederacy,” (The Proceedings of the South
Carolina Historical Association, 1982), 5, 7. Lewis, Queen of the Confederacy, 63, 64. “From one who loves
you dearly & devotedly” F. W. Pickens to Miss Lucy Holcombe, August 27, 1857, in Francis Wilkinson
Pickens Papers, The South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina. Anna Clemson to Patrick
Calhoun, December 15, 1838, in Sublette, vol. 1, 206.
Edmunds, Francis W. Pickens and the Politics of Destruction, 137-139. Lewis, Queen of the Confederacy,
64-65. Bull, “Lucy Pickens,” 7, 9. Orville Vernon Burton and Georganne B. Burton, eds., The Free Flag
Of Cuba: The Lost Novel of Lucy Holcombe Pickens (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002),
2-3 (n. 7), 4, 7-9, 15,15 (n. 36), 46. Originally with a derogatory concept, the word filibuster was taken
from a designated term for English pirates in the 1600s, but by the 1800s, filibustering, at its best, had
come to represent the idealism of American imperialism. H. M. Hardimann, The Free Flag of Cuba; OR
The Martyrdom of Lopez: A Tale of the Liberating Expedition of 1851 (New York: DeWitt and Davenport,
1854). This novel “written by Lucy Petway Holcombe of Texas, the future Lucy Pickens of South Carolina,” available for study, until recently, only in a copy with select pages at The South Caroliniana Library
and in a very brief division at the Perkins Library at Duke University, has now been found in its entirety.
James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 106-107.
Bull, “Lucy Pickens,” 6. Lewis, Queen of the Confederacy, 26, 33,72, 74-76.
Ibid., 76-77, 107, 173, 221 (Chapter Nine, n. 7). Edmunds, Francis W. Pickens and the Politics of Destruction, 24, 91, 104, 128, 140. Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, January 27, 1849, in Sublette, vol. 1,
444. Lin Dearing, great-great grandson of William Dearing and great grand nephew of Marion Dearing
Pickens, Telephone conversation, January 18, 2003.
Jack Thorndyke Greer, Leaves from a Family Album (Waco: Texian Press, 1975), 63. Bull, “Lucy Pickens,”
5. Stowe, Going Abroad, 10, 56, 61.
Greer, Leaves from a Family Album, 63-64, 66. Lewis, Queen of the Confederacy, 82.
Greer, Leaves from a Family Album, 64, 66-67. Lucy P. H. Pickens to her Mother, July 2, 1858, in Francis
Wilkinson Pickens Papers, University of South Carolina.
Nancy Nichols Barker, Distaff Diplomacy: Eugénie and the Foreign Policy of the Second Empire (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1967), 7, 13. Lewis, Queen of the Confederacy, 64.
Lucy P. H. Pickens to her Mother, July 2, 1858, in Francis Wilkinson Pickens Papers, University of South
Carolina. Greer, Leaves from a Family Album, 67. U. S. Serial Set Index: Senate Documents, 1858-59, vol. l
(Washington: William A. Harris Printer, 1859), 13.
Greer, Leaves from a Family Album, 70-71.
Edmunds, Francis W. Pickens and the Politics of Destruction, 140. Stephen Graham, Tsar Of Freedom: The
Life And Reign Of Alexander ll (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935), 69. Bull, “Lucy Pickens,” 14.
Lewis, Queen of the Confederacy, 18, 24, 90, 99. Greer, Leaves from a Family Album, 68.
Ibid., 52. F. W. Pickens to Mrs. Beverly Holcombe (The last part of a letter.), in Ibid., 77-78. Lewis, Queen
of the Confederacy, 102-103. Bull, “Lucy Pickens,” 10.
Lewis, Queen of the Confederacy,103-104. Lucy H. Pickens to Mrs. E. Greer, January 9, 1859; Lucy Pickens to Anna E. Greer, August 19, 1860, in Greer, Leaves from a Family Album, 74-75, 98. Burton and
Burton, eds., The Free Flag of Cuba, 24. Bull, “Lucy Pickens,” 10-12.
Lewis, Queen of the Confederacy, 104-106. Edmunds, Francis W. Pickens and the Politics of Destruction, 143.
Lucy Pickens to Mrs. E. Greer (Not dated), in Greer, Leaves from a Family Album, 81-82.
Lucy Pickens to Mrs. E. Greer, December 20, 1859, in Ibid., 85. Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun,
December 5, 1844; Anna Calhoun Clemson to John C. Calhoun, August 12, 1849, in Sublette, vol. 1,
388, 453.
Edmunds,. Francis W. Pickens and the Politics of Destruction, 142, 144-145. Lewis, Queen of the Confederacy, 93-94,114-117. Greer, Leaves from a Family Album, 70.
Lewis, Queen of the Confederacy, 116-117. Lucy Pickens to Mrs. Beverly Holcombe, August 16, 1860, in
Greer, Leaves from a Family Album, 95.
Lewis, Queen of the Confederacy, 119. Greer, Leaves from a Family Album, 98. Edmunds, Francis W. Pickens
and the Politics of Destruction,146, 148. Bruce Catton, The Civil War (New York: The Fairfax Press, 1980),
150
Legacy of a Southern Lady
15. Palmer and Colton, A History Of The Modern World, 536. Graham, Tsar Of Freedom, 47.
Lewis, Queen of the Confederacy, 143, 150. Edmunds, Francis W. Pickens and the Politics of Destruction,
169. Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1981), 100. C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1981), 275. F. W. Pickens to Miss Lucy Holcombe, August 27, 1857, in Francis Wilkinson Pickens Papers,
University of South Carolina.
69. Edmunds, Francis W. Pickens and the Politics of Destruction, 172. Lewis, Queen of the Confederacy, 158, 197,
199-200. Today Francis Pickens’s former Edgewood plantation home, having been dismantled and moved
from its original location, stands still beautiful on the campus of the University of South Carolina at Aiken
where it is used by the school for its “Studies in Southern History Program.”
68.
Chapter 6
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
Glenna Matthews, “Just A Housewife”: The Rise and Fall of Domesticity in America (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987), 9-10. Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress: Woman’s World In The Old South
( New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 37, 40.
Thos. G. Clemson to Anna Calhoun, August 5, 1838; Thos. G. Clemson to Miss Anna Calhoun, August
19, 1838; Thos. G. Clemson to Anna Calhoun, August 20, 1838, in Clemson Papers, Special Collections,
Clemson University. [Signature faded] to Maria Simkins, July 22, 1838, in Sublette, vol. 1, 182 (n. 2).
[Signature faded] to Maria Simkins, July 22, 1838; Anna to Maria Simkins, August 2, 1838, in Sublette,
vol. 1, 181-182, 188-189. Clyde N. Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. XlV (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1981), xv-xvi. Ernest McPherson Lander, Jr., The Calhoun Family
and Thomas Green Clemson: The Decline of a Southern Patriarchy (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1983), 1.
Ibid., 3. Thos. G. Clemson to Anna Calhoun, August 5, 1838, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Anna to Maria Simkins, August 2, 1838, in Sublette, vol. 1, 188.
Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, April 20,1846; Anna Clemson to John C. Calhoun, September 27,
1846, in Sublette, vol. 1, 410-411, 415. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 138139,141-142. Lin Dearing, great grand nephew of Alfred Dearing, Personal conversation.
Anna C. Clemson to Patrick Calhoun, February 1, 1850; 476; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson,
April 20, 1855; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, February 14, 1858, in Sublette, vols. 1, 2, 464-465,
476 (n. 1), 647. John M. Davis, M. D., Ph. D., and James W. Maas, M. D. eds., The Affective Disorders
(Washington, D. C.: American Psychiatric Press, Inc., 1983), 233.
Patti Connor-Greene, Alumni Professor of Psychology, Clemson University, Telephone conversation, May
21, 2003. Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (Washington, D. C.:
American Psychiatric Association, 2000), 376-379. Davis and Maas, eds., The Affective Disorders, 236,
238, 406. Public Document, National Institutes of Health, Depression: Effective Treatments Are Available
(Rockville, MD: NIH Publication No. 96-3590, U. S. Department Of Health and Human Services,
1996). Rich Wemhoff, Ph. D., ed., Anxiety & Depression: The Best Resources to Help You Cope (Seattle,
Washington: Resource Pathways, Inc., 1999), 2, 30. Depression is often “misunderstood” by both those
sufferers and “their loved ones who share the pain.”
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 14, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 21, 1856, in Sublette, vol. 2, 494, 497, 500.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 16, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 20, 1857, in Sublette, vol. 2, 531, 601.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 9, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson December 21, 1856; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, December 28, 1856, in Sublette, vol. 2, 524-525,
537, 542.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, January 4, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, April 5,
1857, in Sublette, vol. 2, 545, 576, 576 (n. 1)-578.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, May 17, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, June 14,
1857, in Sublette, vol. 2, 586, 596.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 12, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 20, 1857, in Sublette, vol. 2, 598, 600. Davis and Maas, eds., The Affective Disorders, 236.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 20, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, September 27, 1857, in Sublette, vol. 2, 600, 604, 606.
Notes
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
151
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, May 31, 1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, October 19,
1857; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 1, 1857, in Sublette, vol. 2, 592, 617, 621-622.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 179. Floride Calhoun to Anna Clemson, August
12, 1859, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,
373, 377.
L Leupp to Mrs. Clemson, October 6, 1859; Elias Baker to Thos. G. Clemson Esq, October 24, 1859, in
Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 183.
Anna Maria Calhoun (Clemson’s) Album, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Thos. G. Clemson to Miss Anna Calhoun, August 19, 1838, in Ibid.. Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with
Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness And The Artistic Temperament (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 18,
25.
Sister Sue to Anna Clemson, October 24, 1859; Wm F. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 13,
1859, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 184. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson,
November 13, 1859; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, December 11, 1859, in Sublette, vol. 2, 730,
743.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, January 8, 1860; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, February
12, 1860, in Sublette, vol. 2, 754, 766.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, February 26, 1860; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, March
8, 1860, in Sublette, vol. 2, 769-772, 772 (ns. 2,3).
Anna Maria Calhoun (Clemson’s) Album, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
The Reverend Bob Haden, Individual Analysis of “Anna C. Clemson’s Vision Of Her Father, John C.
Calhoun, Ten Years After His Death.” Bob Haden, Director of the Haden Institute in Charlotte, North
Carolina, is a Jungian Pastoral Counselor, Episcopal Priest, and Diplomate of the American Psychotherapy
Association. He has a Master’s in The Use of Dreams in Spiritual Direction, and studied at the C. G.
Jung Institute in Switzerland. Ann Russell, “Her Father’s Daughter, Anna Calhoun Clemson,” Carologue
(Charleston, South Carolina: South Carolina Historical Society, Autumn, 1996), 14, 23. Anna to Maria
Simkins, August 2, 1838, in Sublette, vol. 1, 188. Copy of “Vision” March 1860, August,1875,Calhoun
Papers, The South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, March 18, 1860, in Sublette, vol. 2, 774. Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders, 380-381.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 196, 198. Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson,
November 4, 1860; Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 11, 1860, in Sublette, vol. 2, 794795, 798-799.
Anna C. Clemson to Floride Clemson, November 11, 1860, in Sublette, vol. 2, 799-800.
Ann Russell, “‘Holding Court’ at a Yankee Prison: Anna Calhoun Clemson Behind Enemy Lines,” Carologue (Charleston, South Carolina: South Carolina Historical Society, Spring, 1990), 4.
Compiled by Mrs. P. H. Mell, “The Clemson Collection Of Paintings Donated To Clemson Agricultural
College,” Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Labels of identification that Anna wrote and pasted on
the back of each picture, along with a manuscript inventory of personal property made after returning to
America from abroad, would later form the basis of a catalogue for “The Clemson Collection of Paintings
Donated To Clemson Agricultural College.” Alester G. Holmes and George R. Sherrill, Thomas Green
Clemson: His Life and Work (Richmond, Virginia: Garrett and Massie, 1937), 35.
Ann Russell, “Anna Calhoun Clemson and the Origins of Clemson University,” The United Daughters
of the Confederacy Magazine (Richmond, Virginia: United Daughters of the Confederacy, June, 1990),
13. Ernest McPherson Lander, Jr., and Charles M.. McGee, Jr., eds., A Rebel Came Home: The Diary and
Letters of Floride Clemson 1863-1866, Revised Edition (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South
Carolina Press, 1989), 88-89, 89 (n. 41), 90-91. Parole of Thomas G. Clemson Issued By United States
Government June 9, 1865, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Russell, “Anna Calhoun Clemson and the Origins of Clemson University,” The United Daughters of the
Confederacy Magazine, 13-14. Walter Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 377, 396. Holmes and Sherrill, Thomas Green Clemson, 27-29,
145. Anna C. Clemson to William Wilson Corcoran, April 28, 1866, in Sublette, vol. 2, 865, 865 (n. 2).
Sterling, Ada, ed., A belle of the fifties: Memoirs of Mrs. Clay, of Alabama, covering social and political life
in Washington and the South, 1853-66 (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1904), 120-122. Margaret Leech,
Reveille in Washington, 1860-1865 (New York, London: Harper and Brothers, 1941), 435.
152
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
Legacy of a Southern Lady
Anna C. Clemson to William Wilson Corcoran, April 28, 1866, in Sublette, vol. 2, 865-866. Holmes and
Sherrill, Thomas Green Clemson, 28, 143, 145. D. W. Lee to Thos. G. Clemson Esq., January 29, 1867,
in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. The first president of the Pendleton Farmers’ Society, founded in
1815, was Col. Thomas Pinckney, son of former Governor Thomas Pinckney and grandson of Eliza Lucas
Pinckney, “who had long ago introduced indigo culture into South Carolina.” Compiled by Mary Stevenson, The Diary of Clarissa Adger Bowen, Ashtabula Plantation, 1865, and ... The Pendleton-Clemson Area,
South Carolina, 1776-1889 (Pendleton, South Carolina: Research and Publication Committee Foundation, 1973), 105. “Circular,” Pendleton Farmers’ Society, November 24, 1866; Minutes of the Pendleton
Farmers’ Society, October 8, 1868, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
J Edwd Calhoun to Hon. T. G. Clemson, December 29, 1866, in James Edward Calhoun Papers, The
South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina. Sharyn Kane and Richard Keeton, Beneath These
Waters: Archeological and Historical Studies of 11,500 Years Along the Savannah River (Funded by U. S.
Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District:: Administered by Interagency Archeological Services Division National Park Service Southeast Region, 1994), 210-211, 215. Ernest McPherson Lander, Jr., “The
Founder, Thomas Green Clemson, 1807-1888,” in Tradition: A History of the Presidency of Clemson University, Second Edition, eds. Donald M. McKale, Jerome V. Reel, Jr. (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University
Press, 1998), 14-15. Russell, “Anna Calhoun Clemson and the Origins of Clemson University,” The United
Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine, 14.
Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible, at the Fort Hill historic house museum at Clemson
University. Anna C. Clemson to James Edward Calhoun, October 3, 1869, in Sublette, vol. 2, 881.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 237. Floride C. Lee to Anna C. Clemson, February 4, 1871, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Lander, “The Founder, Thomas Green Clemson,
1807-1888,” in Tradition, eds., McKale, Reel, 14-15.
Ernest McPherson Lander, Jr., The Life and Times of Ella Lorton, A Pendleton SC Confederate (Clemson,
South Carolina: Clemson Printers, 1996), 111. Russell, “Anna Calhoun Clemson and the Origins of
Clemson University,” The United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine, 15. H. Gourdin to T. G. Clemson, August 12, 1871, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas
Green Clemson, 152.
Russell, “Anna Calhoun and the Origins of Clemson University,” The United Daughters of the Confederacy
Magazine, 15. United States Circuit Court, District of South Carolina, Isabella Lee vs. Richard W. Simpson,
11, in Richard W. Simpson Papers, Special Collections, Clemson University. The State of South Carolina,
“Will of Anna C. Clemson,” September 29, 1871, Probate Court Records of Oconee County, Walhalla,
South Carolina.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 239. “Will of Anna C. Clemson.” “Digest of
Court Opinions,” in The Clemson Agricultural College Bulletin, vol. XXl, no. 1 (Post Office, Clemson College, South Carolina: The Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina, January, 1925), 14.
Anna C. Clemson to James Edward Calhoun, February 8, 1872; Anna C. Clemson to James Edward Calhoun, March 24, 1872; Anna C. Clemson to James Edward Calhoun, May 26, 1872; Anna C. Clemson
to James Edward Calhoun, June 23, 1872, in Sublette, vol. 2, 882, 884-886, 888. Lander, The Calhoun
Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 241. Russell, “Anna Calhoun Clemson and the Origins of Clemson
University,” The United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine, 15.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 240. Anna C. Clemson to James Edward Calhoun, February 24, 1867, in Sublette, vol. 2, 868. James L. Roark, Masters Without Slaves: Southern Planters in the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 163. Labor Agreement, Jan.
1874-75, State of South Carolina, County of Oconee, “Articles of Agreement between Thos. G. Clemson
Trustee on the one part and the undersigned freedman, and women on the other part,” Clemson Papers,
Clemson University. Holmes and Sherrill, Thomas Green Clemson, 150.
Ibid., 150-153. Russell, “Anna Calhoun Clemson and the Origins of Clemson University,” The United
Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine, 15.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 241-242. R. W. Simpson to W. M. Riggs, November 5, 1911, in Riggs Papers, Special Collections, Clemson University.
Russell, “Anna Calhoun and the Origins of Clemson University,” The United Daughters Of The Confederacy Magazine, 15. Handwritten invitation: “The friends and acquaintances of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas G.
Clemson are invited to attend the funeral services of the latter at St. Paul’s Church today at 3 o’clock P.
M..” Sept. 24th 1875, Clemson Papers, Clemson University. The News and Courier, September 24, 1875.
Lander, The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson, 242.
Notes
153
43.
Ibid., 80, 93 (n. 7), 247-248. Jas. H. Rion to Hon. Thos. G. Clemson, September 25, 1875, in Clemson
Papers, Clemson University. Gary Gallagher, ed., Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections
of General Edward Porter Alexander (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 32. An
earlier published pictorial study of historic homes in the South Carolina Upcountry, that includes Rion’s
fine house in Fairfield County’s Winnsboro, refers to him as “the Lost Dauphin of France” but explains his
connection to Calhoun with a somewhat different “twist.” Kenneth Frederick Marsh and Blanche Marsh,
Plantation Heritage in Upcountry South Carolina, Revised Edition (Asheville, North Carolina: Biltmore
Press, 1965), 155.
44. Thos. G. Clemson to Miss Anna Calhoun, August 19, 1838; Thos. G. Clemson to Miss Anna Calhoun,
August 20, 1838; Anna Maria Calhoun (Clemson’s) Album; Jas. H. Rion to Hon. Thos. G. Clemson, September 25, 1875, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University. Copy of “Vision” March 1860, August, 1875,
Calhoun Papers, University of South Carolina.
45. Ibid.. Anna C. Clemson to James Edward Calhoun, June 23, 1872, in Sublette, vol. 2, 889. Dr. John J. F.
Gray to Hon. Thos G. Clemson, December 28, 1875, in Clemson Papers, Clemson University.
Chapter 7
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Ernest McPherson Lander, Jr., The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson: The Decline of a Southern
Patriarchy (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1983), 245. Helene M. Riley, Clemson University: The College History Series (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2002), 7. “Will Of Thomas
G. Clemson,” in The Clemson Agricultural College Bulletin, vol. XXl, no. 1 (Post Office, Clemson College,
S. C.: The Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina, January, 1925), 8-9, 11-13.
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York: Oxford University Press, 1991), ix-xi. Sam Lowry, Telephone conversation, June 4, 2003. Tombstone, Clemson Plot, Anna Calhoun Clemson.
Anna C. Clemson to John C. Calhoun, September 27, 1846, in Sublette, vol. 1, 415. The Greenville News,
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Reopening,” March 31, 2003. Donald M. McKale, Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of Humanities,
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Fourteenth President of Clemson University,” April 7, 2000. Brochure, “Clemson University Facts Fall
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B
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John C. Calhoun Papers.
Thomas G. Clemson Papers.
W. M. Riggs Papers.
Richard W. Simpson Papers.
The Charleston Museum
Aiken-Rhett Collection, Index and Reprint of Mrs. William Aiken’s travel notebook, courtesy of Historic
Charleston Foundation.
The South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina
James Edward Calhoun Papers.
John C. Calhoun Papers.
John Ewing Colhoun Papers.
Francis Wilkinson Pickens Papers.
South Carolina Female Collegiate Institute Papers.
Other Primary Materials
Document
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South Carolina.
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Despatches from United States Ministers to Belgium, 1832-1906. Roll 4 Vol. 3 October 17. 1844-January 8, 1851.
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The Anderson Intelligencer. 17 August 1871.
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from the Past: Women’s Letters, Diaries, and Writings, ed. Carol Bleser. Athens: The University of
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Gillespie, Joanna Bowen. “The Challenges of Writing Women’s Biography, Symposium, Fifth Southern Conference on Women’s History, SAWH, University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia, June
2000.
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Dissertations
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Internet
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Calhoun, Jr., Lee, great-great grandson of Anna Calhoun Clemson. Personal visit, Pittsboro, North Carolina, 3 November 2003.
Connor-Greene, Patti, Alumni Professor of Psychology, Clemson University. Telephone conversation,
21 May 2003.
Dearing, Lin, great-great-grandson of William Dearing and great-great-grandnephew of Marion Dearing
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Material Culture
Fort Hill historic house museum at Clemson University
Anna Calhoun Clemson’s hand-operated sewing machine.
Book of Common Prayer, the Calhoun Family Bible.
Brooch and bracelet crafted from the hair of John C. Calhoun.
Colonel Ransom Colhoun’s Confederate sword.
Cornelia Calhoun’s walking stick.
Deed of Conveyance. State of South Carolina. Pickens District, August 27, 1850.
Department of State Document, July 6, 1844, official notification signed by Secretary of State John C.
Calhoun authorizing the passage of Thomas G. Clemson to Belgium as Chargé d’Affaires of the
United States to the Belgian Court.
“Dolphin” style sofa and Windsor chair from George Washington’s family.
Embroidered christening dress made by Floride Calhoun for her children.
Eugene DeBlock’s oil-on-canvas portrait of John C. Calhoun.
Hiram Powers’s Carrara marble bust of Cornelia (Nina) Clemson.
Jacob Joseph Eeckhout’s oil-on-canvas portraits of Anna Clemson, Calhoun and Floride Clemson.
Lace from the wedding dress of Floride Clemson, 1869.
Lace sleeve from Floride Calhoun’s wedding dress, 1811.
Memories of former Calhoun/Clemson slave, Susan Clemson, recalled by Myrtle Herlong.
Monogrammed coin silver coffee urn, a gift from Edward Boisseau of New York to his cousin, Floride
Calhoun.
Pair of fabric covered high-heeled wedding shoes worn by Floride Bonneau Colhoun, 1786.
The Constitution Sideboard, a gift from Henry Clay to John C. Calhoun.
The Prize Album, manuscript pieces of Floride Clemson’s poetry.
Historical Markers
“Hopewell,” General Andrew Pickens. Foundation for Historic Restoration in the Pendleton Area, 1966.
“Keowee,” John Ewing Colhoun. Foundation for Historic Restoration in the Pendleton Area, 1966
Red Bank Baptist Church, Saluda, South Carolina.
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Cedar Fields Cemetery, Edgefield, South Carolina:
Simkins, Maria E.
St. Paul’s Episcopal Churchyard, Pendleton, South Carolina:
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LEGACY OF A SOUTHERN LADY
Clergy House, also known as Clergy Hall (later Fort Hill), 1815
First students at Clemson College, 1893