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by MARK POWELL
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The sudden passing of U.S. senator Lindsey Graham has left South Carolina Republicans to play a frantic game of musical chairs as they scramble to pick his replacement on November’s ballot. While Graham’s death has created a political crisis no one saw coming, it’s far from unique. In fact, it’s been the norm in Palmetto politics over the years. And it’s often happened at the worst possible time, too.
Take 1850. The country was teetering on the brink of civil war. Not a metaphorical breakdown in government, but an actual muskets-and-cannons showdown between North and South. It was the gravest crisis the nation had ever faced up to that point.
There were three major leaders (the “Great Triumvirate”) in the Senate at that time. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts thundered for the North. Henry Clay of Kentucky sounded a voice of compromise. And South Carolina’s own John C. Calhoun spoke for the South.
In a loud, quarrelsome, and often heated process, the Senate cobbled together what eventually became the Compromise of 1850 – which bought the United States another decade of uneasy peace. In the run-up to it, the public eagerly awaited hearing what each of the “big three” had to say.
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At one of the most crucial moments of his life, though, Calhoun’s health failed. He’d fought tuberculosis for decades and by early March, as the debate was reaching its climax, the 67-year-old senator couldn’t get out of bed. His friend James Mason of Virginia had to read his speech for him on March 4. Calhoun died in a Washington, D.C., boarding house three weeks later.
His final words foreshadowed what was soon to come: “the South, the poor South!”
But the political turmoil didn’t end with his Calhoun’s passing. South Carolina governor Whitemarsh Seabrook appointed as his successor the long-time president of the state bank, Franklin H. Elmore. And that should have been that – except Elmore unexpectedly died himself less than eight weeks later. Planter Robert W. Barnwell was then appointed, serving until a special election was held that December.
In that race, his great-nephew Robert Barnwell Rhett was chosen to serve out the rest of Calhoun’s term – meaning the Palmetto State had four U.S. senators fill the same seat over a period of less than nine months.
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That wasn’t an isolated incident, either. South Carolina came close to a succession crisis of sorts more than eight years ago.
In November 1941, Burnet Maybank resigned as governor of South Carolina after being elected to the U.S. Senate. That cleared the way for lieutenant governor Joseph Emile Harley to take the top job on November 4. The transition went smooth was silk. The trouble was, Harley was a very sick man – and he was growing sicker by the day.
He had terminal throat cancer, which was tantamount to a death sentence in the 1940s. Within weeks of taking office, Harley could communicate only in writing. The end came on February 27, 1942 – a little less than four months after he succeeded Maybank.
The problem? There was no lieutenant governor on deck to succeed Harley – and at that time, the S.C. Constitution had no provision for filling the vacancy. So, the governorship fell to the S.C. Senate’s president pro tempore, Richard M. Jefferies, who inherited a major headache along with his new position.
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RELATED | 2026 SENATE SPECIAL
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That’s because during Harley’s brief tenure as governor, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor out of the blue – instantly thrusting the United States into World War II. Jefferies’ short tenure was spent helping transition South Carolina from peacetime to a wartime footing, no easy task in any era.
Like most powerful legislative leaders, Jeffries didn’t want to be governor. With 1942 being an election year, he filed to reclaim his old state Senate seat, which he did that November – although he was miffed that his 11 months as the state’s chief executive cost him the decade-and-a-half of seniority he’d accumulated in the Senate. Jeffries went on to serve another 16 years in that chamber (which speaks volumes about where the real power lies in South Carolina’s government), and later headed Santee Cooper as well.
Time does not permit us to revisit our state’s many other famous deaths in office – including congressman Preston Brooks, who had famously beaten Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner senseless with his cane on the Senate floor the year before. Or Mendel Rivers, who died in December 1970 just weeks after being elected to his sixteenth term in the U.S. Congress.
More recently, arguably the most powerful state legislator of the 21st century – the late Hugh Leatherman – died in office in November 2021
Ironically, one South Carolina official who did not die in office was Strom Thurmond, who, at age 100, was (and still remains) the oldest person to ever serve in the U.S. Senate when he retired in January 2003.
Thurmond’s successor? Lindsey Graham…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.
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