Stephen Decatur Miller

Miller, Stephen Decatur (May 8, 1787 - Mar. 8, 1838), representative, senator from South Carolina, and Nullifier, was the son of William and Margaret (White) Miller. His ancestors were Scotch Presbyterians who emigrated to South Carolina from the north of Ireland and were among the first white settlers in Lancaster District, where he was born at the Waxhaw settlement. His father died early leaving little wealth. The few slaves the boy inherited were sold to pay for his education. He received the usual classical preparation of the time, in 1808 was graduated from the South Carolina College, and then studied law in the office of John S. Richardson of Sumter. He was admitted to the bar in 1811, was known as a good lawyer, and had a large practice. From 1817 to 1819 he was a member of the South Carolina delegation in the national House of Representatives. His next public service was as state senator for the Sumter District from 1822 to 1828. Then he became governor for two years. At the conclusion of his term he was elected, against William Smith, to the United States Senate and took his seat on Dec. 5, 1831. During this period he opposed most of the measures of President Jackson although, like Jackson, he was an enemy of the Bank.

When he entered Congress he was an anti-Calhoun Democrat, but repeated demands of the protectionists converted him to Calhoun's nullification doctrine. When the tariff of 1827 was under consideration, he was a member of a special committee of the state Senate that reported a series of resolutions announcing the compact theory of government and condemning the tariff acts of 1816, 1820, and 1824, federal appropriations for roads and canals, and federal support of the American Colonization Society as violations of the Constitution. As governor his speeches did much to crystallize nullification sentiment. There were, he insisted, three ways of reforming unequal congressional legislation, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box. It was the prerogative of the people to elect a convention to nullify the federal tariff laws, which all South Carolinians admitted were unconstitutional and oppressive. If the laws were once nullified, juries, regardless of the opinions of federal judges, would not sustain them. Yet, if all other means failed, there still remained the right of resistance. In the United States Senate he spoke and voted against the tariff of 1832, and, when it passed, he and nearly all the other members of the South Carolina delegation united in an "Address to the People of South Carolina." The addressers rejected the lower rates of that act as unsatisfactory, since protection still remained "the settled policy of the country." All hope of fair dealing from the federal government seemed to them to have vanished. The remedy, they declared, was in the sovereign power of the state. He was a member of the state conventions of 1832 and 1833, called to consider nullification. He voted for the nullification ordinance in 1832. In the convention of 1833 he opposed the measure to require of all office holders the test oath of paramount allegiance to the state, which was, nevertheless, passed with a good majority.

He resigned from the Senate on Mar. 2, 1833, on account of ill health and retired to Mississippi, where he had removed three years earlier and had set up as a cotton planter. He died at his nephew's house in Raymond, Miss. He was married twice. His first wife was a Miss Dick of Sumter whom he married about 1814. She died in 1819. Their three sons died in youth. In May 1821 he married Mary Boykin of Kershaw, S. C., who survived him with their son and three daughters.