Thomas Green Clemson

Thomas Green Clemson

Thomas Green Clemson IV (born July 1, 1807 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , †  April 6, 1888 in Fort Hill , South Carolina ) was an American politician and diplomat, before the Civil War director of the American Department of Agriculture and founder of Clemson University .

Early years

Clemson was born to Elizabeth Baker, daughter of a prominent family, and Thomas Green Clemson III, a Quaker and merchant. Clemson's father was very successful in business and very wealthy for the time. He had five other children: John Baker, he became a bishop in the Episcopal Church , William, Louisa, she married Samuel Washington, a great-nephew of George Washington , Catherine and Elizabeth. Thomas Green Clemson III died when his son was six years old, leaving him and his siblings $ 100,000. Little is known about the upbringing in his early youth. He attended schools in Philadelphia until he was 16, after which he went to college in Norwich for two years . At the local military academy he received a scientific education and made experiences with student life. In 1826, at the age of 20, Clemson made the Grand Tour of Europe made possible by his father's legacy . He studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and the Royal School of Mines , where he graduated with a diploma in mineral testing. Already during his studies Clemson became interested in politics, especially the experience of the revolution of 1830 in Paris.

Career as a scientist and diplomat

After returning to the USA, he wrote numerous scientific articles. He traveled to profitable projects like the LaMotte Mine in Missouri and a coal mine in Cuba .

On November 13, 1838, at the age of 31, he married on John C. Calhoun's Fort Hill plantation in South Carolina , his daughter Anna Maria Calhoun, who was ten years his junior. John C. Calhoun was a Senator from South Carolina and the 7th  Vice President of the United States . The couple initially lived in Philadelphia for two years before moving to Fort Hill in 1840. They had three children in the first few years of their marriage. The first-born daughter died after just three weeks; two more children followed: John Calhoun Clemson (* 1841) and Floride Elizabeth Clemson (* 1842). Both lived through adulthood.

One consequence of his marriage to the Calhoun family was Clemson's entry into agriculture. He should have a lifelong interest in it. In 1843 he bought his own plantation of 1,000 acres in the Edgefield District , which he named Cane Brake . With his language skills in French and German, he served the US from 1844 to 1851 as chargé (chargé d'affaires) in Belgium . This made him the highest-ranking US diplomat in Belgium. He shared his interest in art with the Belgian King Leopold , from whom he received the Leopold Order . John C. Calhoun died in 1853 while the Clemsons were still in Belgium. Calhoun's wife Floride Calhoun , Anna Clemson, and two other Calhoun children inherited Fort Hill . The property was sold to Calhoun's eldest son Andrew Pickens Calhoun in 1854 with 50 slaves for $ 49,000. Upon returning to the US, Clemson sold Cane Brake and the family moved to a small farm in Bladensburg near Washington, DC called The Home .

After the death of another child (Cornelia "Nina", * 1855) at the age of three, Clemson compensated for his grief by concentrating on his scientific work. Among other things, he supported the founding of the agricultural college in Maryland, now the University of Maryland . Clemson's agricultural talent was well known in Washington circles, and in 1860 he was appointed to the Department of Agriculture , which at the time was not a cabinet officer. He thus held a post that today corresponds to that of Minister of Agriculture . He was heavily involved in the Morrill Land-Grant Act , legislation governing agricultural education. Due to opposition from the southern states , ironically based on his father-in-law Calhoun's philosophy of state rights , the passage was postponed until 1862. In the course of the secession , Clemson's position was also increasingly called into question. As the outbreak of the Civil War became more likely, Clemson resigned from the Department of Agriculture on March 4, 1861. Like many other Americans, he had to choose one side and chose his homeland by marriage. After the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, he left Maryland for South Carolina.

Civil war

Clemson, 54, was enlisted in the Confederate Army and served in the Army of the Trans-Mississippi Department . He served in Arkansas and Texas where he developed nitramines . After serving four years, he was released in Shreveport on June 9, 1865 , while his son, Captain John Calhoun Clemson, who had also served in the Confederate Army, was held as a prisoner of war in Johnson's Island, Ohio , for two years . Clemson himself returned to Pendleton to the home of Floride Calhoun, where his wife and daughter Floride came. He was elected President of the Pendleton Farmers Association in 1866. His goal was to establish an institute for practical training in agriculture and science in South Carolina. The idea for Clemson University was created in the Farmer's Hall , where the idea was supported by Colonel Richard W. Simpson and Daniel K. Norris, who would later become members of the college's board of trustees.

Later years

Statue of Thomas Green Clemson on the Clemson University campus

In the post-Civil War reconstruction period, Clemson, like many of the earlier Confederates, was a man without a land. He had given up his political career voluntarily. His daughter Floride, now Mrs. Gideon Lee, died of tuberculosis in 1871 at the age of 28, and their young daughter Floride Isabella grew up with her father in New York. In the same year, Clemson's son John, who was still unmarried, also died in a train accident.

After the Civil War and Andrew's death in 1865, Floride Calhoun wanted to obtain a foreclosure sale against Andrew's heir and held on to it until her own death in 1866. After a lengthy legal battle, Fort Hill was finally auctioned off in 1872. The executor was awarded the contract for the plantation, which was divided between the heirs. Floride Calhoun's daughter Anna Clemson received the manor house with 814 acres of land and her great-granddaughter Floride Isabella received 288 acres of land. Thomas Green and Anna Clemson moved to Fort Hill in 1872.

After Anna died of a heart attack in 1875, Thomas Green inherited Clemson Fort Hill . Although Anna had not explicitly determined that a college should be founded at Fort Hill , her husband's will was also in her favor. Her only grandchild lived in New York and all other relatives had died. In his will, Clemson established a school for the sons of peasants and former Confederate soldiers. In the last 13 years of his life he designed his ideas for this institute. His will is an important document in the history of education and a sign of his altruistic intentions. In addition to founding the college, he also determined that his father-in-law's house should be preserved and restored. Ultimately, 814 acres and over $ 80,000 went to the State of South Carolina, with its only granddaughter, Floride Isabella, receiving $ 15,000 and 288 acres, which the College Board of Trustees later bought.

Clemson died of pneumonia at the age of 81. He was buried next to his wife in St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Pendleton.

Commemoration

The college was founded in 1889 and opened its doors in 1893. The Clemson Agricultural College was renamed Clemson University in 1964 . A statue of Thomas Green Clemson stands on campus, the Fort Hill building itself, is part of the university that is open to the public.

Enoch Walter Sikes, president of the university from 1925 to 1940, once stated that Clemson had given more to the college named after him than John Harvard Harvard and Elihu Yale Yale .

In 2009, Alma Bennett published a biography of Clemson.

literature

• Edgar, Walter, The South Carolina Encyclopedia , University of South Carolina Press, 2006 ISBN 1-57003-598-9 , pp. 188-189.
• Holmes, Alester G. Thomas Green Clemson: His life and work (1937) Richmond, VA: Garrett and Massie, Inc.
• EM Lander, Jr., The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson: The Decline of a Southern Patriarchy (1983) University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, SC.

Web links

• The Life and Career of Thomas Green Clemson
• Clemson University page on Thomas Green Clemson

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Amazon.com biography on Thomas Green Clemson.