Francis Wilkinson Pickens was elected on the seventh ballot of the South Carolina Legislature as the 69th governor of the state. He replaced W. H. Gist, who was finishing his term. Pickens was a former congressman who had made his name with a forceful speech in the House denying the right of the federal government to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. He had recently returned from the post of ambassador to Russia. Within days he would be the head of the newly independent South Carolina. He served until 1862. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Samuel Wylie Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860-1861 (New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1887), 79.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Campaigns/Elections
