Father of South Carolina secession, a Northern man ?

W. Richardson

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Jun 29, 2011
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Mt. Gilead, North Carolina
Chancellor John Auchincloss Inglis 1813-1878

John Inglis was a wanted man with a big price on his head, as the Federal army approached Cheraw, South Carolina, in late February 1865. They suspected him of having been the author of South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession that ultimately led to the war, and placed a bounty of $10,000 on his head (dead or alive).

John Auchincloss Inglis (1813-1878) was one of four chancellors of the Court of Equity in South Carolina. The title chancellor is the equivalent of judge. As a young man he had moved to Cheraw from Baltimore to become principle of Cheraw Academy. He subsequently practiced law and became a chancellor.

In 1860, Inglis had served as a delegate from Chesterfield County to the secession convention of South Carolina, where he was chairman of the Resolutions Committee and presented the Ordinance of Secession for consideration by the assembly. Inglis said that the model for the resolution was a short draft submitted by fellow Chancellor Francis Hugh Wardlaw of Abbeville and Edgefield. Other compelling evidence suggests that the model for the ordinance was a similarly brief text written by W. Ferguson Hutson, a Charleston lawyer.

No matter who the actual author was, Inglis was the man who had introduced the brief resolution on the afternoon of December 20th, 1860. It simply repealed the state’s 1788 ratification of the United States Constitution and dissolved the union between South Carolina and the other states. It had passed unanimously.

Inglis and F. M. Robertson were acquainted through the Presbyterian Church. In 1861 they had been elected by their respective presbyteries to attend a General Assembly in Augusta, Georgia, to establish a new Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America. Robertson was appointed by the Charleston Presbytery as a Ruling Elder to attend the General Assembly. Similarly, Inglis was elected by the Harmony Presbytery as a delegate to attend the convention.

John A. Inglis did escape the fury of Sherman’s army when he fled Cheraw on March 2nd, 1865. The Yankees had to settle for burning his plantation house. His house in town was spared.

Source: Resisting Sherman: A Confederate Surgeon’s Journal and the Civil War in the Carolinas, 1865
By Thomas Heard Robertson, Jr. Pages: 44 – 46
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John A. Inglis was born in Baltimore, Maryland on August 26, 1813, the son of well-known Presbyterian minister James Inglis, then pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in the city. He entered Dickinson College and graduated with the class of 1829 and then taught school for a time in Carlisle, eventually studying law and relocating to South Carolina.

See more: http://archives.dickinson.edu/people/john-auchincloss-inglis-1813-1878
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It shouldn’t be surprising that most people probably do not know the names of the men who framed the document that drew South Carolina out of the union of states known as the United States of American 153-years ago this day, on Dec. 20, 1860.
Indeed, polls have found that few people can name more than three signers of the Declaration of Independence. But for Cecil County, and indeed for Maryland as a whole, there is a very close association to this document that prompted other states to follow South Carolina’s bold lead which led to the bloody and costly Civil War.

See more: http://www.cecildaily.com/our_cecil/article_32b73d42-1515-58a7-abb6-83f063fa74c1.html


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Respectfully,

William
 
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