congressman manufacturer statesman
David Rogerson Williams, the son of David and Anne (Rogerson) Williams, was born on March 8, 1776 at Robbin's Neck, near Society Hill in old Cheraws district, South Carolina, where his grandfather, Robert Williams, had been a pioneer pastor of the Welsh Neck Baptist Church. The elder David Williams, a wealthy planter of the Peedee section, died before his son's birth, and his widow afterward removed to Charleston, where the family had previously resided.
Under the influence of his mother's pastor, Richard Furman, David was sent for preparatory training to Wrentham, Massachussets, and subsequently to Rhode Island College (now Brown University).
He withdrew from the college during his junior year, 1795, and returned to South Carolina to redeem his inheritance, which had become heavily involved in debt, thus beginning a career as a planter which remained, in spite of numerous other activities, his basic interest throughout life. From 1801 to 1804 he was in Charleston engaged, first with John E. McIver and later with Peter Freneau, a brother of Philip Freneau, in the publication of the City Gazette and the Weekly Carolina Gazette.
Elected as a Democrat, he served in the Ninth and Tenth congresses (1805 - 09) and in the Twelfth (1811 - 13). While he believed that war with Great Britain would benefit only a few merchants at the expense of the general prosperity of the country, he supported the Embargo, although its enforcement bore heavily upon his section. In general, however, he was ill fitted by training and temperament for party regularity. A somewhat theatrical manner and the frequent expression of intense personal feeling won for him the sobriquet "Thunder and Lightning Williams. "
In the Twelfth Congress, as a member of the distinguished South Carolina delegation that included John C. Calhoun, William Lowndes, and Langdon Cheves, he espoused the cause of the War Hawks and, as chairman of the committee on military affairs, delivered a stinging retort to the attack of Josiah Quincy on a measure for increasing the army which the committee had reported. As one of the brigadier-generals appointed by President Madison in 1813, Williams saw service on the northern frontier during the War of 1812, being associated with Gen. John Parker Boyd at Fort George, but he returned home in disgust before the victory at Lundy's Lane and, after an unsuccessful attempt to secure a command in the campaign against the Creeks in Georgia, resigned from the army early in 1814. Later in the same year, when the South Carolina legislature manifested a tendency to disregard the "avowed candidates" for governor, Williams' name was suggested by John Belton O'Neall, and he was overwhelmingly elected although he had not been an aspirant for the office.
At the expiration of his term in 1816, he returned to his plantation, "Centre Hall, " near Society Hill, and, with the exception of three years in the state Senate, 1824-27, resolutely resisted all inducements to enter public life again.
On Cedar Creek near his plantation he erected a mill for the manufacture of cotton yarns. This factory was subsequently enlarged, and in 1829, operating with slave labor, mostly children, under a New England superintendent, Williams was advertising cotton bagging, osnaburgs, and "negro cloth, " and was urging the value of his cotton cordage upon John Branch, the secretary of the navy. He also operated a hat and shoe factory, and engaged extensively in the manufacture of cottonseed oil. He was killed by a falling timber while supervising the erection of a bridge across Lynch's Creek at Witherspoon's Ferry in Williamsburg district.
His administration was a vigorous one, being notable for a spirited controversy with the federal government regarding the equipment of the militia, the settlement of a boundary dispute of long standing with North Carolina, and the purchase of the Cherokee strip in the northwestern portion of the state.
Williams was an outspoken enemy of the protective tariff, but he protested vigorously against the nullification movement; indeed opposition to John C. Calhoun was one of the consuming purposes of the last few years of his life. Rather than nullification he advocated the development of domestic manufactures in the South as a means of lessening the dependence of that section upon New England. In this respect he may be regarded as a prototype of the later Southern industrialists.
He was twice married: first, August 14, 1796, to Sarah Power of Providence, Rhode Island; second, in 1809, to Elizabeth Witherspoon of Williamsburg district, South Carolina.
