William Henry Gist (22 August 1807-30 September 1874) was the Democratic Governor of South Carolina from 10 December 1858 to 14 December 1860, succeeding Robert Francis Withers Allston and preceding Francis Wilkinson Pickens.
Biography[]
William Henry Gist was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1807, and he became a lawyer in Union in 1827 and built the Rose Hill Plantation. A strong supporter of states' rights and chattel slavery, he served in the State House from 1840 to 1844, in the State Senate from 1844 to 1856, as Lieutenant Governor from 1848 to 1850, and as Governor from 1858 to 1860. On Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency in 1860, Gist secured pledges from Florida and Mississippi to join South Carolina in seceding from the Union, and he signed his state's Ordinance of Secession on 20 December 1861. Two of his sons were killed during the American Civil War, and Gist was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson on the war's end and returned to his plantation, where he died in 1874.