Governor Stephen Decatur Miller

Stephen Decatur Miller (May 8, 1787 – March 8, 1838) was an American politician, who served as the 52nd Governor of South Carolina from 1828 to 1830. He represented South Carolina as a U.S. Representative from 1817 to 1819, and as a U.S. Senator from 1831 to 1833.

He was born in Waxhaw settlement, South Carolina and graduated from South Carolina College in 1808. After he studied law, he practiced in Sumterville. Stephen Decatur Miller was married twice. His first wife, Elizabeth Dick, died in 1819. None of their three children lived to adulthood. Miller remarried in 1821; his second wife was a girl sixteen years his junior, Mary Boykin (1804−1885). They had four children together. Despite the age difference, their marriage was happy and passionate.

During his successful campaign for the Senate on a platform of abolishing tariffs, he made a speech at Stateburg, South Carolina in September 1830 where he said "There are three and only three ways to reform our Congressional legislation, familiarly called, the ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box". Stephen Miller renounced his political career in 1833 and ventured into farming in Mississippi. He died in Raymond, Mississippi, in 1838, leaving his wife and children in debt.

Their daughter Mary Boykin Miller (1823–86) married James Chesnut, Jr. (1815–85), who later became a U.S. Senator and a Confederate general. Mary Chesnut became famous for her diary documenting life in South Carolina during the Civil war

Source: Wikipedia

Representative, Senator and Governor from South Carolina. He began his studies with a private tutor in Lancaster and in 1808 graduated from South Carolina College. He went on to study law in Sumter, South Carolina and was admitted to the South Carolina Bar in 1811. In 1818 he was elected as a U.S. Congressman in the Fourteenth Congress. He was reelected to the Fifteenth Congress and served until March 3, 1819 when he declined re-election; resumed the practice of his profession. In 1822, he became a South Carolina State Senator from Claremont County. He served for three terms, until 1828 when he became Governor of South Carolina, serving until 1830. In 1830, he was elected as a Nullifier to the U.S. Senate where he served from March 4, 1831 until March 2, 1833 when he resigned due to ill health. In 1835 Miller moved to Mississippi where he was engaged in cotton planting. His daughter, Mary Boykin Chesnut wrote the now famous "Diary From Dixie", originally published in 1905. It was later re-edited by Yale University and published as "Mary Chesnut's Civil War". It won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for History. (bio by: [fg.cgi?page=mr&MRid=46799227" target="_blank Pattie)]

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: May 10 2018, 0:48:33 UTC