Jim Hodges will be the second South Carolina governor to be a native of Lancaster county. Stephen Decatur Miller, born in the Waxhaws in 1787 was the first.

Miller, the son of Charles and Margaret White Miller, was drilled in the classics at the Waxhaw Academy. Judge John Belton O’Neall later wrote of this period of young Miller’s life: “He was a bright, energetic, and daring boy, and though not large in stature, possessing unusual strength and activity In the athletic sports . . .he had few equals and no superiors. . . .he delighted to indulge in them after he arrived at a mature age, and reached the highest positions in the State.”

Miller had little money for college and is said to have sold his two or three inherited slaves in order to attend. After his graduation from South Carolina College in 1808, he studied law under John S. Richardson at Sumter and was admitted to the bar in 1811. Miller set up law offices in Stateburg, where he resided, and in the town of Sumterville.

In 1816, Miller’s old mentor resigned from Congress and in a special election on January 2, 1817, Miller was elected to replace him and then won election to a full term on his own. In Washington, thirty-year-old Stephen D. Miller became attached to another political figure, William H. Crawford, relative of Crawfords of the Waxhaws and President Monroe’s Secretary of the Treasury.

Miller married Elizabeth Dick. They had three sons, two of whom died young, and the third died when a sophomore at South Carolina College.

Elizabeth died in 1819 and Miller married Mary Boykin in 1821. They had three daughters and a son: Mary Boykin, who married General and U. S. Senator James Chesnut; a son, Stephen Decatur Miller who became a planter in Alabama; a daughter, Catherine, known as Kate, who married David R. Williams II; and a daughter, Sarah Amelia.

Miller was elected to the state senate in 1822 and served there until elected governor of South Carolina in 1828. By this time Miller had formed and headed the States Rights Party in South Carolina. He was an active Nullifier — one who followed John C. Calhoun’s belief that a state could refuse to accept a federal law that harmed the state’s best interest.

Miller became popular by stating that there were three ways for states to resist congressional legislation: “by the ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box.” Stephen Decatur Miller is considered one of the original leaders of the states’ rights movement which is voiced in the 1832 Ordinance of Nullification.

In those days the governor’s term of office was two years (4-year terms were created in 1917). And, U. S. senators were elected by the legislature. As soon as Miller’s term as governor expired he was elected to the U. S. Senate.

While in the Senate he vigorously opposed the policies of President Andrew Jackson, also a Waxhaws native. However, privately they seemed to have cordial relations.

Miller resigned from the U. S. Senate in 1833, citing ill health. By this time his financial affairs were in disarray. In an attempt to recoup, Miller moved to Raymond, Mississippi in 1835.

There is a passage in the book, Diary From Dixie, which was authored by his daughter Mary Boykin Chesnut in which she tells of a voyage she, as a schoolgirl took with her mother to New Orleans and thence up the Mississippi River to her father’s plantation. It was wild country with Indians lurking about and wolves howling at night from under the house and she only had two books with her, one a mathematics textbook.

Stephen D. Miller died March 8, 1838 in Raymond, Mississippi and is buried there.