John Lawrence Manning
John Lawrence Manning was the 65th Governor of South Carolina, from 1854 to 1856, and, though elected to the U.S. Senate in 1865, was refused a seat there because of his former Confederate allegiance.
Background and career
He was born in Clarendon County, son of Richard Irvine Manning and Elizabeth Peyre Manning. His father was the Governor of South Carolina from 1824 to 1826. John Manning attended Princeton University and obtained a degree from South Carolina College, where he was a member of the Euphradian Society. A Democrat, he was a member of the South Carolina [House of Representatives] from 1842 to 1846 and of the South Carolina Senate from 1846 to 1852. After his single term as governor, the state constitution made him ineligible for immediate re-election. He was a signer of South Carolina's ordinance of secession in 1860. During the American Civil War, while serving again in the South Carolina Senate from 1861 to 1865, Manning was also a colonel on the staff of P.G.T. Beauregard, a Confederate general. In 1865, after the war, the state General Assembly elected him to the United States Senate but, because of his prominent role in South Carolina's secession and the ensuing war, the Senate Unseated members of [the United States Congress|refused him a seat]. He served again in the state house of representatives from 1865 to 1867 and, after the withdrawal of Union troops, in the state senate from 1877 to '78.In an elite planter society that prided itself on its social grace, Manning was noted for his appealing appearance and demeanor, which possessed one observer to ask, "Who that has ever met him can be indifferent to the charms of manner and of personal appearance, which render the ex-Governor of the state so attractive?" In her famous diary, Mary Chesnut called Manning "the handsomest man alive."