George McDuffie (10 August 1790 – 11 March 1851) was a member of the US House of Representatives (DR-SC 6) from 4 March 1821 to 3 March 1823 (succeeding Eldred Simkins and preceding John Wilson) and from SC 5 from 4 March 1823 to 1824 (succeeding Starling Tucker and preceding Francis W. Pickens), Governor from 9 December 1834 to 10 December 1836 (succeeding Robert Y. Hayne and preceding Pierce Mason Butler), and a US Senator from 23 December 1842 to 17 August 1846 (succeeding William C. Preston and preceding Andrew Butler).
Biography[]
George McDuffie was born in Columbia County, Georgia in 1790, and his extraordinary intellect was discovered while he was clerking at a store in Augusta. The Calhoun family sponsored his education, and he established an outstanding reputation, becoming a lawyer in 1814. He rose rapidly and served in the South Carolina General Assembly from 1818 to 1821, and, although he initially opposed states' rights in an 1821 pamphlet, he later became a strong supporter of nullification due to his friendship with John C. Calhoun. He was a Jacksonian Democrat after the split of the Democratic-Republican Party, but he opposed Jackson on the issues of the national bank and nullification. In 1832, he drafted the address of the South Carolina Nullification Convention to the American people, and he went on to serve as Governor from 1834 to 1836 and in the US Senate from 1842 to 1846. He died in 1851.