Regions

Despite his ability and accomplishments, however, De Leon had the reputation of being difficult and imperious. He lost his eyesight in 1903 and was thereafter referred to as “The blind laureate of the Lost Cause.”

De Soto entered the territory of present-day South Carolina in search of the chiefdom of Cofitachiqui, reported to contain great wealth. Indians in present Georgia confirmed the account De Soto had heard but warned him of the great wilderness that lay between them and this powerful chiefdom.

Clemson Memorial Stadium, popularly known as “Death Valley,” is the third playing field for Clemson football. Clemson football was initially played on the military parade ground in front of Tillman Hall, known as Bowman Field.

At trading posts the Catawbas, Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws exchanged dressed deerskins for blankets, firearms, shot, gunpowder, cloth, axes, hoes, and brass kettles.

Forced to leave his native state, he later wrote the FBI that he fled South Carolina, “Not to escape justice, but to escape injustice.”

In Pittsburgh, Delany began his efforts to advance the condition of African Americans. Between 1843 and 1847 he developed a black-nationalist perspective in the columns of his weekly newspaper, the Mystery. He called for the creation of separate black institutions and advocated black migration beyond the borders of the United States.

A gifted orator noted for his passion, DeLarge used his political skills to help organize the Republican Party in South Carolina.

DeMint considers himself a conservative who believes in the principles of limited government, a strong national defense, and traditional family values.

By the early twenty-first century, all members of the town council and the mayor were black. The town is the home of Voorhees College, a predominantly black institution that was founded in 1897, and Denmark Technical College, which evolved from a trade school established in 1948.

Dennis came to statewide attention in 1954 when—as a member of the State Democratic Party Executive Committee—he offered the motion to make Senator Edgar Brown the party’s candidate for the U.S. Senate after the unexpected death of the incumbent Burnet Maybank.

Dent’s involvement in ATMI, as a member of the Commission on an All-Volunteer Army, and as a supporter of President Richard Nixon during his second presidential election gained him the recognition of the Nixon administration.

He was a major influence in Thurmond’s switch to the Republican Party in 1964 and in shaping what became the Republican “Southern strategy,” a racial appeal to the segregationist inclinations of southern whites.

DeSaussure and many of his fellow lowcountrymen feared that upcountry growth would overwhelm their interests, especially the protections given to both plantation and slave holdings. Regarding the increasingly egalitarian rhetoric of upcountry leaders and their yeomen constituents with “dread,” he warned of the “ultimate effects of a degrading, calumnating democracy.”

Although in office less than a year, DeSaussure considered the Senate to be “grand theater, the arena where proud Sovereignties are fighting for their rights.”

Deveaux and his Loyalist partisans are believed to have been responsible for burning the Prince William Parish church at Sheldon in April 1779. Deveaux was commissioned as a major in the South Carolina Loyalist militia known as the “Royal Foresters” and served the British army occupying South Carolina for the next three years.

He opposed federal minimum wage and child-labor laws, and his objections to the World War I bonus bill cost him support among veterans.

In 1968 Dickey was appointed the first Carolina Professor at the University of South Carolina and settled in Columbia, beginning thirty years of distinguished teaching there.

Early in his career, he was an influential figure in the chartering of the Medical College of South Carolina (1823). He was elected professor of medicine in the new school and gave the inaugural address for the first entering class in 1824.

In 1950 Alan Schafer, a prominent businessman from Little Rock, built a small diner on Highway 301 at the North Carolina border. From this modest beginning he developed South of the Border, a giant tourist complex. The nearby community of Dillon enjoyed many benefits from its operation, as well as from Schafer’s generosity.

Finally, after five elections, three surveys, and fifteen years of political maneuvering, all of the requirements for the creation of the new county were met. In a referendum on December 14, 1909, voters supported a new county by an overwhelming margin, 1,615 to 272. Dillon was selected as the name based on the name of its largest town.