Francis Wilkinson Pickens

Francis Wilkinson Pickens (1805/1807 – January 25, 1869) was a South Carolina politician and planter who served as governor of South Carolina when that state became the first to secede from the United States. Born into the Southern planter class in Edgefield District, South Carolina, he was a grandson of Revolutionary War general and former South Carolina governor Andrew Pickens and a cousin of United States Senator John C. Calhoun. Raised in a prominent political and slaveholding family, he was educated in the classical tradition typical of the Southern elite and read law before entering public life. His family connections and social position helped ease his early path into politics and firmly situated him within the pro-slavery, states’ rights wing of South Carolina’s leadership.

Pickens entered public office as a young man and became active in state politics during the turbulent years leading up to the Nullification Crisis. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the South Carolina House of Representatives, where he became an ardent supporter of the doctrine of nullification of federal tariffs that many South Carolinians believed unfairly burdened the Southern economy. His advocacy of states’ rights and resistance to federal authority reflected the increasingly radical political climate in South Carolina and helped establish his reputation as a staunch defender of Southern interests.

Building on his prominence in state politics, Pickens was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a Democrat. In Congress he continued to champion Southern rights, limited federal power, and the protection of slavery as an institution central to the Southern social and economic order. His service in the House further solidified his standing among pro-secession leaders in South Carolina and the wider South. Over time, he became closely identified with the most extreme advocates of states’ rights, and his views aligned with those who believed that secession was a legitimate remedy if Southern interests were threatened.

By the late 1850s, Pickens had also gained experience in diplomatic and executive roles, which enhanced his stature as a potential state leader. He was chosen governor of South Carolina in 1860, assuming office just as the secession crisis reached its peak. Under his administration as governor (1860–1862), South Carolina seceded from the Union and demanded the surrender of the Federal forts in Charleston Harbor. Although he strongly advocated the secession of the Southern states and was a leading public voice for disunion, he did not sign the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession, contrary to some later accounts. He regarded the federal union as dissolved once South Carolina seceded and sought to negotiate what he considered an equitable settlement of assets and debts between the state and the United States.

As governor during the Fort Sumter crisis, Pickens played a central role in the opening phase of the Civil War. He protested Major Robert Anderson’s removal of the United States garrison from Fort Moultrie to the more defensible Fort Sumter, viewing the move as an affront to South Carolina’s sovereignty. He offered to acquire Fort Sumter from the United States as part of a broader settlement, but no agreement was reached. On January 9, 1861, Governor Pickens sanctioned the firing upon the relief steamship Star of the West, which was bringing supplies to Anderson’s beleaguered garrison, an act widely regarded as one of the first overt hostilities of the conflict. In a letter dated January 12, 1861, he demanded of President James Buchanan that he surrender Fort Sumter because, as he wrote, “I regard that possession is not consistent with the dignity or safety of the State of South Carolina.” He also approved the subsequent bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861, which marked the formal beginning of the Civil War. Throughout his governorship he remained a fervent supporter of states’ rights and the Confederate cause.

Pickens’s tenure as governor was dominated by the challenges of war: organizing the state’s defenses, coordinating with the nascent Confederate government, and managing the economic and social strains of mobilization. Although a committed secessionist, he also had to contend with the practical difficulties of sustaining a war effort and maintaining civil order in a state that became an early and enduring battleground. On December 9, 1862, with his term completed and his influence waning amid shifting Confederate politics, Pickens quietly left the governorship and returned to his home in Edgefield, where he remained through the remainder of the war.

After the collapse of the Confederacy, Pickens reemerged briefly in public life during the early phase of Reconstruction. In a notable reversal of his earlier role as a leading secessionist, he introduced the motion in the state convention to repeal South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession. His short speech in favor of repeal was received in silence, in striking contrast to the rejoicing that had greeted the original passage of the Ordinance in 1860. This episode underscored both the profound changes wrought by the war and the altered standing of former secession leaders in postwar South Carolina. Francis Wilkinson Pickens spent his final years in relative retirement on his plantation in Edgefield. He died there on January 25, 1869, leaving a legacy closely tied to South Carolina’s secession and the opening of the Civil War, as well as to the state’s reluctant formal return to the Union he had once so vigorously opposed.