much better educations than some receive from institutions of more pretentious claims. The buildings bear the names of those who have been most deeply interested in their construction and in the blessings they bestow upon the community in which they are so well maintained.

The Bennett school for Mr. Wm. Jefferson Bennett; the Memminger school perpetuates the name of the one whose history I am writing; the Crafts school in honor of Hon. William Crafts; the Courtenay school for Hon. Wm. A. Courtenay, while others quite as well equipped bear the names of the streets on which they are located-as the Meeting-street or Mary-street schools. Mr. Memminger did not confine his interest in public education to the city of Charleston alone. No one of our public men did more towards aiding the institutions of the State designed to furnish to its citizens the advantages and benefits of an educational system that would reach all classes and conditions. As early as 1841 we find from an examination of the Journal of the House of Representatives that as a member of that body he introduced the following resolution:

Mr. Memminger submitted a resolution, which, after a few remarks from him, was unanimously agreed to and ordered to the Senate, directing the commissioners to provide for the education of the deaf and dumb children of this State, and to appropriate one-half of the amount for the education of the deaf and dumb to the education of the blind of this State at institutions specially to be provided for the education of the blind.

Thus was commenced the noble charity of the State which gives to those unfortunates who have been deprived of sight, who have no sense of hearing, and are dumb, the means of acquiring an education of other faculties, by which means many are now enabled to make comfortable livings.

CHAPTER IV.

The Lawyer and the Law-giver.

HE ability displayed by Mr. Memminger at the Bar of Charleston, the earnest and faithful manner in which he discharged the duties imposed upon him as an alderman, added to his popularity. So much so, that at the fall elections of 1836 he was chosen one of the members of the House of Representatives from the parishes of St. Philips and St. Michaels, in which was situated the city of Charleston. His election may be also considered as a triumph of the Conservative or Union State Rights Party, which from the reaction that followed the excitement and alarm engendered by the discussions of the Nullification measure, became stronger at this time than it had been before, or has since been, in the goodly city by the

sea.

While the earnest spirit and logical mind of Mr. Memminger had been made manifest in the debating society, the court-room, and in his public addresses; and while these all gave great promise of a future career of distinction and of usefulness, he was yet to evidence those wonderful powers of analysis, and that remarkable sagacity which made him so prominent as a statesman and ranked him among the ablest lawyers of the country. The great political economist and wise legislator, the jurist and the advocate, was yet to become a demonstration, and take his place among the representative men of his time.

Mr. Memminger's introduction into public life was at a most opportune time for the display of his natural endowments, and furnished many occasions for the exercise of the [ 115 ]

talents committed to his keeping by the Creator of all men. We do not fail to achieve success in life for the want of opportunities. These come to all men, and are just such as their abilities enable them to perceive, and their energies enable them to properly improve. It is indeed true that "there is a tide in the affairs of men," and it is also true that this tide must be taken at its flow. It will not take you forward or backward against your will or your wish, but you must take it. It will not rise to some height, where your vanity may have taken you to wait in listless apathy and dream away life in the seductive shades of inaction, where you have allowed yourself to become fixed above the highest water-mark of all opportunity, but it surely comes to "lead on to fortune" those who are willing and active in the judicious improvement of every occasion, however small, to meet its "flood." Such an one never fails to find an occasion, and is sure to meet with an opportunity. Mr. Memminger well understood this, and no one more fully appreciated than he did the value of time and the necessity for decision and prompt action. His remark to a gentleman with whom he was once conversing, that "one often lost more time in deciding what to do, than was required to do it in," is but an expression of his active nature.

In order that the reader may have a clear conception of the general condition of the country at the time that Mr. Memminger entered upon public life as a legislator, I will endeavor here to outline this, and measure, if possible, the "tide" that bore him and others on to fame and fortune.

The great McDuffie was then Governor of the State; he whose prescience was but the intuition of a great mind, and whose record remains with us to-day among the glories of the past a splendid chapter in the history of South Carolina-whose name and face, with that of the great Hayne, is carved upon our State House as the synonym of patriot