William Porcher Miles Papers, 1784-1906

ArchivalResource

William Porcher Miles Papers, 1784-1906

William Porcher Miles Papers, 1784-1906

http://www2.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/m/Miles,William_Porcher.html

William Porcher Miles (1822-1899) was aSouth Carolina educator, mayor of Charleston, S.C. (1855-1857), United StatesRepresentative (1857-1860), member of the Confederate House of Representatives andchair of its Military Affairs Committee. After the Civil War, he was a planter inVirginia, then president of South Carolina College, then a planter again, this timein Louisiana. Miles married Betty Bierne (d. 1874), the daughter of Oliver Bierne, awealthy Virginia and Louisiana planter, in 1863. The collection consists of personal, political, andmilitary correspondence; diaries; and a few business papers and clippings of WilliamPorcher Miles. Correspondence with many leading political, military, andintellectual figures of the day discusses slavery and runaway slaves, Jews inCharleston, secession, foreign relations, patronage appointments, appropriations,financial and military preparations for war, defense of coastal and inland SouthCarolina, Reconstruction economic and social conditions in Charleston, S.C., andperceived effects of citizenship and wages on freedmen. Also included are materialsrelating to Miles and Warley family, friends, and social activities; Miles's work atthe College of Charleston; the 1855 yellow fever epidemic in Norfolk, Va.;improvements to the Charleston port, customs house, post office, canals, andstatuary; Miles's management of Oak Grove Plantation, Nelson County, Va., and HoumasPlantation, Ascension Parish, La.; his involvement in state and local DemocraticParty politics in Louisiana, especially with regard to the lottery, sugar tariff,and sugar bounty; and flood control and levees in the lower Mississippi. Thediaries, 1867-1897, contain brief but regular entries and give a general picture ofMiles's way of life, indebtedness, political and religious beliefs, and personalrelations while running the Oak Grove and Houmas plantations and as collegepresident at Columbia, S.C. Also documented is the 1874 death of Betty Bierne Milesin childbirth. The April 2008 addition consists of a letter, 19 February 1864,written by William Porcher Miles to South Carolina Governor Milledge L. Bonham,concerning use of the blockade runner of Bee andCompany to export South Carolina's cotton and his hope for a reform of theConfederate government's control over blockade running. Alice

6,000; 7.5

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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection