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“S” is for Sawyer, Frederick Adolphus (1822-1891)

“S” is for Sawyer, Frederick Adolphus (1822-1891). U. S. senator. A native of Massachusetts, Sawyer graduated from Harvard. In 1859 he accepted a teaching position in Charleston. In 1864 he secured a pass for himself and his family through the lines to a Union post. Back in the North he campaigned for Lincoln’s reelection. In 1865 he returned to South Carolina and advanced Reconstruction measures. In 1868 he was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate and devoted his energy to appealing for federal aid to the devasted South. An opponent of corrupt Republicans in South Carolina he bolted the party in 1872 and was not re-elected to the Senate. After leaving the Senate, Frederick Adolphus Sawyer remained in government for many years, serving in the U.S. Treasury Department, the Coast Survey, and the War Department.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.