The founder of the Chesnut family in South Carolina was John Chesnut, whose letters comprise the earliest papers in the collection. He brought his family from Virginia to a home near Camden, South Carolina, after the conclusion of the French and Indian War. Little is known about his son, James, Sr., “the Old Colonel,” except that he was educated at Princeton and was the prosperous owner of several large plantations and reportedly the master of over 1000 slaves. His correspondence indicates strong ties with the North, both of a family and economic nature; his wife Mary Coxe was a resident of Philadelphia. James, Jr., the youngest and most prominent of their thirteen children, was born in 1815 and like his father graduated from Princeton. He read law and was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1837. In 1840, he married Mary Boykin Miller, the daughter of Stephen Decatur Miller.
Miller had been an influential figure in South Carolina politics during the nullification crisis. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1817-1819, in the South Carolina Senate, 1822-1828, as South Carolina's governor, 1828-1830, and as U.S. Senator, 1831-1833. During his term as governor, Miller, a converted anti-Calhoun Democrat, did much to advance the cause of the nullifiers. In 1832 and 1833 he attended the state convention held to deal with the nullification question. In 1832, he voted for state sovereignty, although the following year he had returned to a more moderate position. He retired in that year to a cotton plantation in Mississippi where he remained until his death in 1838.
In 1840, James Chesnut, Jr., began his long years of service in the South Carolina legislature. He served from 1840 to 1852 in the lower house. In 1852 he was elected to the state Senate and until 1856 he was president of that body. In 1858 he was elected to the U.S. Senate. In the meantime he had also become prominent in the secession movement. As early as 1850 he had served as a representative to the Nashville Convention. Feeling that war was imminent he resigned his Senate seat in 1860 to aid in drafting the South Carolina Ordinances of Secession and to serve on the committee to draft the Confederate constitution. During the war he served as aide for General Beauregard and for President Jefferson Davis, as member of the state executive council for South Carolina, and as general of the South Carolina coastal reserves. Although disenfranchised by Reconstruction he continued his political activities, serving as delegate to the convention to protest military rule in 1867 and to two state taxpayers conventions in 1871 and 1874. He died in 1885.
John Manning Lawrence was the scion of the Richardson-Manning dynasty which provided six South Carolina governors during the nineteenth century. Manning served as governor from 1852 to 1854 and as delegate to the National Democratic convention in 1856. During the war he was an aide for General Beauregard. In 1865 he was chosen as U.S. Senator but was not permitted to take his seat.
