William C. Preston

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William C. Preston

William Campbell Preston (born December 27, 1794 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , †  May 22, 1860 in Columbia , South Carolina ) was an American politician ( Democratic Party ) who represented the state of South Carolina in the US Senate .

William Preston was born in Philadelphia, where the United States House of Representatives was in session at the time , and his father Francis was a representative of Virginia . During his childhood he received private lessons; then he attended Washington University in Lexington . He graduated from South Carolina College in Columbia in 1812 .

After spending some time in Europe , including studying at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland , Preston returned to the United States in 1819; he was inducted into the Virginia Bar the following year. There he worked as a lawyer until 1822 before settling in South Carolina's capital, Columbia. After an unsuccessful candidacy for the US House of Representatives in 1824, he was a member of the House of Representatives from South Carolina from 1828 to 1834 .

During this time, Preston joined the short-lived Nullifier Party that John C. Calhoun founded in 1828 in the wake of the Nullification Crisis . As their representative he was elected to the US Senate in 1833, where he succeeded the resigned Stephen Decatur Miller on November 26 of that year ; In 1837 he was re-elected after he had meanwhile switched to the Whigs . On November 29, 1842, he finally resigned from his mandate. During his tenure in the Senate, Preston was among other things the Committee on the Library and the Committee on Military Affairs . After his resignation, Preston returned to practice as a lawyer and also served as President of South Carolina College from 1845. In 1851 he gave up this post for health reasons.

William Preston died in Columbia in 1860. His cousin William B. Preston was US Secretary of the Navy from 1849 to 1850 under President Zachary Taylor ; another cousin, who was also called William Preston , sat for Kentucky in the US House of Representatives from 1852 to 1855 .

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