SECOND SOLDIER. Nor I. The thought would haunt me to my grave. LUCULLUS. Then take thy death from me. (Philocrates throws himself in the way, receives the blow, and at the same strikes Lucullus. Both fall.) Base slave! Stand off! He's killed me. Oh! to die by a slave's hand! GRACCHUS (looking at Philocrates.) And thou art gone, my last true friend, before me. (Septimulieus creeps behind Gracchus and stabs him.) 'Tis done! I thank ye, Gods! (Dies.) SEPTIMULIEUS. The gold is mine! OPIMIUS. Villain! it is. EDWARD MCCRADY [1833-1903] ALEXANDER S. SALLEY, JR. EDWARD MCCRADY, LL.D., D.C.L., son of the Honorable Ed ward McCrady (1802-1892) and Louisa Rebecca (Lane) McCrady, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, April 8, 1833. He received his preparatory training at the school of Samuel Burns in his native city, and was graduated from the College of Charleston in 1853. After reading law in his father's office he was admitted to the Bar in May, 1855, and immediately entered upon the practice of law with his father. He took an active interest in the militia and in May, 1854, was elected major of a rifle battalion. The next year he wrote several articles on the necessity of militia reform. This led to his appointment on a commission, created under a resolution of the General Assembly in 1859, to examine the militia system of the State. In 1860 he resigned his commission as major of the rifle battalion and accepted the captaincy of a company of guards. His active service in the State military establishment began with the taking of Castle Pinckney in the harbor of Charleston, December 27, 1860, and ended with the surrender of Fort Sumter, April 13, 1861. He then entered the service of the Confederate States, June 27, 1861, as captain of the Irish Volunteers, of Charleston, the first company to volunteer for the war. He was at once ordered to Virginia, and his company was attached to the First (Gregg's) Regiment, South Carolina Volunteers. He was promoted Major December 14, 1861, and Lieutenant-colonel June 27, 1862. When the great battles around Richmond began soon after, Colonel McCrady was sick in bed in that city, but determined to join his command in the field, and so expressed himself to his physician, who positively refused to give his permission, assuring him that he could be of no use in the lines, and predicting death as the penalty of the attempt. Nevertheless, although too weak to ride on horseback, he hired a carriage and had himself driven to the lines, joining his brigade just as the battle of Cold Harbor began, and reporting to General Gregg for duty. As he was unable to walk, General Gregg ordered him toʻ serve on his staff, so that he might remain mounted. In this manner he shared the fortunes of his brigade during the action, rendering valuable services, but fainting three times upon the field. After the battle he was taken back to his sick-bed in Richmond, to linger for weeks with typhoid fever. On July 30, 1862, although scarcely recovered and still very feeble, he rejoined his regiment and commanded it at the battle of Cedar Run and at Second Manassas, where he was severely wounded in the head. Narrowly escaping death from this wound, he missed the Maryland campaign, but rejoined his command after its return to Virginia, during the affair at Snicker's Gap. He was present for duty at the battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862, and rendered good service in assisting in the repulse of the Federal attack on Gregg's brigade, in which General Gregg was killed. On January 27, 1863, while in camp on Morse's Neck, he was seriously injured by a falling tree and rendered unfit for further field duty. Rejoining his command several times, only to find himself physically disabled, he saw his last actual engagement at Mine Run in December, 1863; and in March, 1864, he was transferred to the command of the camp of instruction at Madison, Florida, where he served until April, 1865. While on his way to join the Army of Northern Virginia he heard of General Lee's surrender, and surrendered himself on May 5, 1865. On February 24, 1863, Colonel McCrady was married at Chester, South Carolina, to Mary Fraser Davie, daughter of Major Allen J. Davie, an officer of the War of 1812, and granddaughter of Major William R. Davie, a famous leader of North Carolina militia in the Revolution and subsequently a general in the United States Army, Minister to France, and Governor of North Carolina. In October, 1865, McCrady resumed the practice of law in co-partnership with his father in Charleston. In 1867 he organized the Survivors' Association of Charleston, and two years later accepted its presidency. He was also chairman of the executive committee of the State Association in 1869, and commenced the work of recovering and collecting historical materials of the war between the United States and the Confederate States. His report of 1870 forms the basis of all the information we now have of the troops of South Carolina in the Confederate service. In 1880 he was elected a member of the General Assembly, and was returned by successive reëlections till 1888. During his incumbency he introduced and carried through that body an act to establish a Bureau of Confederate War Records, a bill to prevent dueling, a bill perfecting the railroad laws of the State, and the famous "Eight Box Ballot Law," the first step toward an educational qualification for voters. In 1882 he was appointed Major-general of the State Militia, and had much to do with bringing the militia of the coast region to a high degree of efficiency. His legal services in connec tion with the political trials of the reconstruction period, his defence before the Supreme Court of the United States of the stockholders of the banks broken by the misfortunes growing out of the war between the United States and the Confederate States, and his arguments in the McKeegan and Davie will cases, with others, placed him in the front rank of the bar of South Carolina. In 1899 he was elected president of the South Carolina Historical Society, of which he had been an active member since 1875, and to which he contributed a large number of valuable monographs. He died in Charleston, November 1, 1903. For many years prior to his death Colonel McCrady had applied himself to the writing of the history of his native State, which proved to be the greatest achievement of his life. This monumental work was published by the Macmillan Company of New York under the following titles: 'The History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, 1670-1719' (1897); 'The History of South Carolina under the Royal Government, 1719-1776' (1899); 'The History of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775-1780' (1901); "The History of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1780-1783' (1902). His history thus covers more than one hundred years, from the settlement of the Carolinas to the close of the Revolutionary War. Only one who loved his native State as he did could have felt the long neglect of her history by her own people, the slurs and slanders of alien authors, the richness and glory of her abundant and extraordinary records. Only one fitted by education, patient and determined labor, by trained discrimination in evidence and judgment, could have carried through the painstaking examination into authorities that enabled him to complete a work of such imperishable value. "The author's conception of his duty as an historian," says Professor Wauchope, "is thoroughly modern. He shows sound judgment in the selection and condensation of his material, avoids the vagaries of narrowness and preconception, and never allows himself to sacrifice fact to imagination. With a constant and honest desire to discover and record the truth, he yet does not ignore the atmosphere of adventure that surrounds his subject, and vitalizes the story of those early chaotic times with a touch of romance. Nor is there lack of realistic detail. Without tedious generalization we are supplied with a satisfactory analysis of the causes of things. Liberal in his estimate of men and measures, temperate and philosophical in spirit, the work commends itself to the general reader by its dramatic movement and readable style, and to the investigator by its scientific method and scholarly tone. One may regret the absence of literary finish, picturesque men, and vigor of imagination, but it should be borne in mind that McCrady's work belongs not so much to the literature of feeling as to the literature of knowledge, and that since its appeal is obviously to the intellectual faculties, it would be unfair to expect a preponderance of æsthetic qualities."* Abballey Jr. THE PREDECESSORS OF THE REGULAR SETTLERS From 'History of South Carolina.' Copyright, The Macmillan Company, and used here by permission of the publishers. BEYOND the part of the province which had thus far been settled by the English, the Huguenots, the Irish, the Welsh, and Germans; beyond the points on the rivers to which they had pushed their canoes and carried their periaguers; and beyond the sand hills which stretch in a belt, from twenty to forty miles from the Savannah River to the upper part of the Pee Dee, and thence into North Carolina, and which in some of the first maps is marked Deserta Arenosa-the Great Desert -where we first come to the falls of the great rivers, lies the territory which used to be designated as the Up Country, or as Mr. Logan in his admirable work calls it Upper South Carolina, the magnificent domain now teeming with population and wealth, excelling in agriculture, and abounding in manufactures, which constitutes the present counties of Abbeville, Anderson, Edgefield, Greenville, Oconee, Pickens, Newberry, Laurens, Union, Spartanburg, Fairfield, Chester, Lancaster, York, Kershaw, and Richland. The landscape of this country, when first visited by the English, was neither wholly rugged with mountains nor monotonously tame with unbroken plains, but a series of mingled elevated ranges, undulating hills, and flowing vales, forming a glorious analogue of the true Scotch-Irishman's heart and nature. Interspersed with forests and prairies and vast brakes *See Wauchope's 'Writers of South Carolina.' |