Benjamin Franklin Perry may be Greenville’s most complicated Civil War-era political figure. He was a lawyer, editor, legislator, Unionist and reluctant Confederate supporter. He spent most of his public life warning South Carolina against disunion. Then, when secession came, he went with his state.
Early Life and Career
Born in 1805, Perry came to Greenville as a young man to study law. In the 1830s, he became the leading Upcountry voice against nullification. As editor of the Greenville Mountaineer, he argued that nullification was not a harmless constitutional theory. It was a road toward disunion and war.
Greenville largely agreed. During the Nullification crisis, the district stood strongly with the Union Party. In 1832, Greenville Unionists defeated the Nullifiers by large margins. Perry’s opposition was principled but not gentle. His newspaper battle with Turner Bynum of the Southern Sentinel ended in an 1832 duel in which Perry killed Bynum.
Late Career and Legacy
For decades, Perry remained Greenville’s anti-disunion conscience. In 1850, as South Carolina again moved toward secession, he helped found The Southern Patriot to rally Unionist sentiment. He believed secession would ruin South Carolina. Perry opposed secession, not slavery. Like many white Southern Unionists, he believed slavery could be safer inside the Union than outside it.
After the war, President Andrew Johnson appointed Perry provisional governor. Because the state had no governor’s mansion, Perry worked from Greenville. For a brief moment, Greenville stood at the center of South Carolina politics.
Perry’s postwar career also shows the limits of his Unionism. He helped restore civil government, but he supported Black Codes that tried to keep freed people under white control. He had seen the danger of secession clearly, but he did not see freedom clearly. Perry was right about the Union, wrong about racial justice, and complicated in ways Greenville still has to reckon with.
Original reporting: Greenville Journal — read the source article.
