THORNWELL, James Henley was born on December 9, 1812 in Marlborough District, South Carolina, United States, United States. Son of James and Martha (Terrell) Thomwell. His father died while he was young, and his mother raised him in poverty.
Private school, southern university, university graduate.
After attending an old field school and Cheraw Academy, he graduated first in the class of 1831 from South Carolina College. Although his mother was a Baptist, he was converted to Presbyterianism. Thomwell had two sons by his marriage to Nancy White Witherspoon on December 3, 1835.
After serving as principal of Cheraw Academy, he became a candidate for the Presbyterian ministry at Andover, Massachusetts, and studied at Harvard before obtaining his first pastorate in Lancaster, South Carolina, in 1835. In 1837, he was a professor of logic and belles lettres at South Carolina College, and after serving a pastorate in Columbia, South Carolina, he returned to the college faculty in 1841. He was involved in the Old-New School controversy within the church, and he supported state aid to education.
In 1851, he was minister of a church in Charleston, but he left the same year to become president of South Carolina College. In 1855, he resigned to become a professor at the Presbyterian seminary in Columbia. In 1856, he became an editor of the Southern Quarterly Review.
By 1860, he had become a strong secessionist. As editor of the Presbyterian Review during the Civil War, he defended secession, and he not only directed the separation of the Southern Presbyterians from the Northern, but he called for the organization of a Confederate Presbyterian church. During the winter of 1861-1862, he wrote propaganda to rally popular interest in the war.
His tract “Our Danger and Our Duty” was widely circulated in the army.
"Peculiar institution" of slavery was not only expedient but also ordained by God and upheld in Holy Scripture.
Stands for preserving slavery, states' rights, and political liberty for whites. Every individual state is sovereign, even to the point of secession.
