Background
PRESTON, John Smith was born on April 20, 1809 in Abingdon, Virginia, United States, United States. Son of Francis Smith and Sarah (Buchanan) Preston.
General lawyer military philantropist planter
PRESTON, John Smith was born on April 20, 1809 in Abingdon, Virginia, United States, United States. Son of Francis Smith and Sarah (Buchanan) Preston.
Attended Hampden-Sydney College, 1823-1825, University of Virginia, 1825-1827. Studied law at Harvard.
He attended HampdenSidney College from 1823 to 1825 and the University of Virginia from 1825 to 1827, before studying law at Harvard. He was a Presbyterian and a Democrat. He had children by his marriage to Caroline Martha Hampton, daughter of the future Confederate General Wade Hampton, on April 28, 1830.
Preston practiced law in Abingdon before moving to Columbia, South Carolina, in 1840. He then acquired a large and profitable sugar plantation in Louisiana, “The Homus,” moved there in 1841, and made a fortune. He returned to South Carolina in 1848.
From 1848 to 1856, he was a member of the South Carolina state Senate. From 1856 to 1860, he lived in Europe. He returned in 1860 and was chairman of the South Carolina delegation to the Democratic convention in Charleston.
The following February, he was a commissioner to Virginia to urge that state's secession. When the Civil War began, Preston volunteered for service in the Confederate Army. At Fort Sumter and First Manassas, he was an aide to General P.G.T. Beauregard.
In August 1861, he was named assistant adjutant general in command of the 2nd Brigade of Kentucky troops. Preston assumed command of the Confederate prison camp at Columbia, South Carolina, in January 1862 and held this position until Secretary of War James A. Seddon named him superintendent of the Bureau of Conscription in Richmond on July 30, 1863. Preston managed this bureau ably until the end of the war.
He was promoted to brigadier general on June 10, 1864. When the war ended, he returned to South Carolina. He remained “unreconstructed,” and he argued against reconciliation with the North.
He lived in England fora time before returning to South Carolina in 1868. Preston lived in semi-retirement and traveled to make speeches in defense of the right of secession.
"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.
Member South Carolina. Senate, 1848-1856.
Married Caroline Hampton, April.