William Stone (attorney)
William Stone | |
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Born | September 4, 1842 New York, New York, United States |
William Stone (September 4, 1842 – May 22, 1897) was a nineteenth-century Union Army officer, passionate Unionist, dedicated Freedmen's Bureau agent, self-educated attorney, and Attorney General of South Carolina during a turbulent era.
Parentage
William Stone was born on September 4, 1842, in East Machias, Maine. He was the son of Laura Poor Stone, an early anti slavery activist, and
Early life
William spent his early boyhood in Salem, Massachusetts, and later in Bolton, Massachusetts, to which his family relocated after his father's militant anti-slavery sermons led his resentful Salem parishioners to reject him.[2]
The Stone family finances were largely exhausted by
His interest in the greater world in which he lived is typified by a letter to his father in late 1860 in which he predicted Lincoln's election as president. His 18-year-old crystal ball proved murky, however, when in the same letter he predicted with all the assurance of youthful bravado that the "fire eaters of South Carolina" would never follow through on their threat to secede if Lincoln were elected.[4]
Civil War Service
Confederate cannons fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861, and William Stone's boyhood diary records that on May 8 he signed up as an eighteen-year-old volunteer to subdue the Rebellion. After seven weeks of drilling with other volunteers, he "went into camp" on June 28, 1861, as a private in the Nineteenth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment.[5]
Stone fought in major
Freedmen's Bureau Service
At the close of the war in 1865, Stone elected to stay in the army. In early 1866, now a brevet Major, he was assigned to the newly created Freedmen's Bureau. Designed by Congress to bridge the gap between slavery and citizenship for some four million largely illiterate African Americans, the Bureau represented America's first great social engineering project. As an agent of the Bureau in South Carolina, Stone struggled (against the violent resistance of the planter class and the Ku Klux Klan) to achieve the Bureau's objectives of education, equality in the courts, and fair labor standards for the newly freed slaves. He frequently presided over provost courts to ensure fair treatment of freedmen in legal disputes, and was instrumental in establishing schools for children of former slaves in his part of South Carolina.[7]
Marriage and Children
In 1869, Major Stone married Mary Taylor, a
Legal and political career
In 1870, Stone resigned from the army and, aided by his extensive self-study, his agile mind, and driving ambition, was certified to practice law in South Carolina. Following a successful law career in
Final Years
When Governor Chamberlain's re-election was overturned by
Notes
- ^ Thomas T. Stone letter to his brother, August 23, 1894, Bolton Mass. Historical Soc.
- ^ First Church Salem Website http://www.firstchurchinsalem.org/ministers-23.html
- ^ William Stone diaries and journals, Stone Family Archives
- ^ William Stone "To My Dear Father" November 21, 1860, Stone Family Archives.
- ^ William Stone Boyhood Diary, Friday, June 28, 1861, Stone Family Archives
- ^ William Stone Wartime Diary, Stone Family Archives
- ^ Bitter Freedom, William Stone's Record of Service in the Freedmen's Bureau, University of South Carolina Press 2008
- ^ Appointment document dated May 4, 1876. Original in Stone Family Archives.
References
- Adams, John G. B. Reminiscences of the Nineteenth Massachusetts Regiment. Boston Wright & Potter Printing Company 1899.
- Edgar, Walter. South Carolina: A History. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.
- Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.
- Suzanne Stone Johnson, Robert Johnson, introduction by Dr. Lou Falkner Williams, Kansas State University, Bitter Freedom William Stone's Record of Service in the Freedmen's Bureau. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2008.
- Williams, Lou Falkner. The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials, 1871-1872, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996.
- Zuczek, Richard. State of Rebellion: Reconstruction in South Carolina. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1996