Preston Brooks: The Undergraduate
This site being styled in part based on my interest in Preston Brooks, a historical figure and former congressman from South Carolina, I have been putting some effort into researching his background. I know much, but there is much to learn.
I pinpointed a citation to an article devoted in its entirety to the man and his image: Preston Smith Brooks: The Man And His Image, South Carolina Historical Magazine, 79 (Oct. 1978), p. 296-303. I was able to pull this from the campus library, and it has some humorous insight into his time spent at the University of South Carolina.
As a student at South Carolina College, Brooks caused the administration great consternation by maintaining an acceptable academic record while frequently missing classes to visit the taverns in Columbia. . . . Only his capable scholarship apparently saved him from being abruptly dismissed from college on several occasions. . . . As a student . . . he engaged in a scuffle with a fellow student after a petty dispute over the outcome of a school election. The brief confrontation, which occurred when Brooks adamently [sic.] refused to duel, led to expulsion for his adversary, but only temporary suspension for him. Another imprudent episode took place just before his graduation, when he heard an exaggerated account of his brother being subjected to ‘ignominious treatment’ in the Columbia jail. Brooks, impulsively waving a brace of pistols, rushed to the jail where he was quickly disarmed without incident. The exasperated faculty used this latter event, which came after they had developed a repugnance for Brooks’s truancy and his relaxed academic attitude, to withhold his degree from the college.
I have requested the works cited in this paragraph in hopes of finding out the nature of the school election, and other particulars about his misdeeds before he failed to graduate. I am also following up with the Archives at the University of South Carolina to see what materials are available.
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