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Benjamin Franklin Perry

Benjamin Franklin Perry (20 November 1805-3 December 1886) was the Democratic Governor of South Carolina from 30 June to 29 November 1865, succeeding Andrew Gordon Magrath and preceding James Lawrence Orr.

Biography[]

Benjamin Franklin Perry was born in Pickens, South Carolina in 1805, and he became a lawyer in 1827. He edited the Greenville Mountaineer and ardently opposed nullification, and he fatally wounded the editor of a Nullifier paper in a duel. He went on to serve in the State House from 1836 to 1842, in the State Senate from 1844 to 1849, in the State House from 1849 to 1860 and from 1862 to 1864, and as a Confederate district judge from 1864 to 1865. Perry was adamantly opposed to secession, and President Andrew Johnson appointed him Governor following the end of the American Civil War. In that position, he and the legislature passed "Black Codes" to prevent newly-enfranchised African-Americans from voting. He was elected to the US Senate shortly after, but was not seated by the Reconstruction authorities. He died in 1886, and his son William Hayne Perry later served in Congress.

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