…and too large for an insane asylum.”Â
       —former South Carolina Congressmember James L. Petigru on the proposed secessionist “Republic of South Carolina”, 1860
As the Washington Post notes this morning, it’s still true..
“Mark Sanford, Jim DeMint and Joe Wilson. Boy, that’s a trinity isn’t it?” said Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman and longtime resident. “South Carolina is filled with crazy [expletive], excuse my French.”
He forgot Strom Thurmond. Maybe it’s just that South Carolina is the most conservative state in the Union (the latter despite its wishes).
I can think of a few South Carolina politicians whom I respect: former Education Secretary Richard Riley comes to mind. But they are rare. Just go back a few more decades and you get the likes of egregious white supremacist Pitchfork Ben Tillman and reactionaries like Cotton Ed Smith.
Maybe we should have let it secede: the US would have been a more progressive country, and the Republic of South Carolina would have been another backwards, oppressive, impoverished, corrupt dictatorship. of course, getting rid of slavery was worth having to put up with these kinds of politicians. But it really does show how right Sherman was.
Ed Whitney says
Maybe we could still let it secede. It is much closer than the Cayman Islands and just think of the foreign tax shelters you could erect there!
Sean says
My comment earlier in Mark's RESPECT post beat you to the insane assylum/republic quote, though of course it was bound to be brought up. I'll just add a few other notable political specimens from the Palmetto state:
Preston Brooks – the caner of Charles Sumner, whose boots Brooks wasn't fit to lick
John C. Calhoun – the slavocracy's contribution to political theory
Wade Hampton – Klansman extraordinaire, and redeemer of the state from "negro domination."
That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are others, perhaps less successful in their hate and less loud in their objections to any change away from the world as it existed in 1820, which, incidentally, was I think the last time South Carolina's economy looked anything close to dynamic.
Michael says
We are the only country in the modern era that required a fratricidal war in order to get rid of slavery. That is not something to be celebrated, but mourned, investigated, and learned from. I hope. But I'm not holding my breath.