Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the William Porcher Miles Papers #508, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Alternate Form of Material

Microfilm copy (filmed February 1971 and February 1977) available.

• Reel 1: folders 1-9
• Reel 2: folders 10-20
• Reel 3: folders 21-34
• Reel 4: folders 35-39
• Reel 5: typed copies of volumes 20-21, 1886-1887

Acquisitions Information

Received on loan from William P. Miles Jr. in 1938 and 1940. Additions purchased from Charles Hamilton Galleries of New York, N.Y., in January 1973 and from Historical Collectible Auctions in April 2008 (Acc. 100902).

Additional Descriptive Resources

The original finding aid for this collection is filed in folder 1a.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: SHC Staff, 1965-1973

Encoded by: Nancy Kaiser, September 2005

Funding from the Watson-Brown Foundation, Inc., supported the encoding of this finding aid.

Acc. 100902 was processed with support from Elizabeth Moore Ruffin.

Diacritics and other special characters have been omitted from this finding aid to facilitate keyword searching in web browsers.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Agriculture--Southern States--History--19th century.
• Ascension Parish (La.)--History.
• Charleston (S.C.)--Politics and government.
• Charleston (S.C.)--Social life and customs.
• Columbia (S.C.)--History.
• Confederate States of America--Economic conditions.
• Confederate States of America--Politics and government.
• Confederate States of America. Army.
• Democratic Party (La.)--History--19th century.
• Diaries.
• Families--Southern States--Social life and customs.
• Freedmen--South Carolina.
• Fugitive enslaved persons.
• Houmas Plantation (Ascension Parish, La.)
• Jews--South Carolina.
• Legislators--Confederate States of America.
• Legislators--United States--History--19th century.
• Miles family.
• Miles, William Porcher, 1822-1899.
• Mothers--Mortality--History--19th century.
• Nelson County (Va.)--History.
• Oak Grove Plantation (Nelson County, Va.)
• Plantation life--Louisiana.
• Plantations--Louisiana.
• Plantations--Virginia.
• Politicians--Louisiana--History--19th century.
• Politicians--South Carolina--History--19th century.
• Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)
• Sectionalism (United States)
• Slavery--South Carolina.
• South Carolina College--History.
• South Carolina--History--Civil War, 1861-1865.
• South Carolina--Politics and government--1775-1865.
• Sugarcane industry--Louisiana--History--19th century.
• United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Blockades.
• United States--Politics and government--1857-1861.
• University of South Carolina--History--19th century.
• Warley family.
• Washington (D.C.)--Social life and customs.
• Yellow fever--Virginia--Norfolk.

• Oliver Beirne Papers (#55)
• Wade Hampton Papers (#871)
• James Amedee Gaudet Papers (#2334)

William Porcher Miles was born 4 July 1822 in Walterboro, S.C. He was the second of five sons of James Sanders and Sarah Bond Warley Miles. Miles was taught at home with his younger brothers until 1836, when he spent a few months at James B. Waddel's Willington Academy in the Abbeville District, S.C. He entered the College of Charleston in 1838 and graduated four years later with honors. Miles excelled particularly as an orator and in mathematics.

Miles read law in the office of Edward McCrady in Charleston, S.C., for a year, then returned to the College of Charleston as a professor of mathematics. During the summer of 1855, he traveled to Norfolk, Va., to serve as a volunteer nurse in the yellow fever epidemic. When news of his services reached Charleston, friends recalled his gifted oratory, dignified presence, and social position, and wrote laudatory letters that appeared in the Charleston Mercury. While Miles was still in Norfolk, a group of influential Charlestonians nominated him to be the Southern Rights Party candidate for mayor. Miles accepted the nomination, though he remained in Norfolk until two days before the election. He won in a light turnout, resigned his post at the College of Charleston, and was administered the oath of his new office on 9 November 1855.

Miles' political career took another turn the following year when he ran for Congress on the Southern Rights Party ticket. Miles again did not campaign, but was elected by a small majority. During 1857, he concurrently served out his second year as mayor of Charleston and his first year representing the Charleston District, S.C., in Congress. Miles championed slavery and secession and was active in the southern independence movement. During his three years in office, Miles spent most of his time in Washington and immersed himself in the social life there. He shared his bachelor quarters in Washington with other prominent young men, apparently M. R. H. Garnett and Laurence M. Keitt, and possibly others at different times.

Upon resigning from Congress in 1860, Miles served as chair of the committee on foreign relations in the South Carolina secession convention, and signed the Ordinance of Secession. He represented the Charleston district in the Confederate Congress during its entire existence, including the Montgomery, Ala., convention, where Miles seems to have served as the principal South Carolina leader. He played an active role in drawing up the new constitution, making major decisions, and awarding appointments, and he was chair of the Committee on the Flag and chair of the Committee on Military Affairs. In 1861, Miles served briefly as aide-de-camp to General P. G. T. Beauregard.

Miles married Betty Bierne (d. 1874), the daughter of Oliver Bierne, a wealthy Virginia and Louisiana planter, in 1863. From 1865 to 1867, Miles and his family resided in Charleston, but unable to prosper in the depressed post-war conditions, they moved to Oak Grove Plantation in Oakridge, Nelson County, Va., which had been purchased by Oliver Bierne. After Betty died in 1874, Miles and the children stayed on at Oakridge for several more years, with the continued financial support of his father-in-law.

In 1880, William Porcher Miles returned to South Carolina to become president of South Carolina College. He resigned this position in 1882 to manage his father-in-law's recent inheritance, Houmas Plantation (now Burnside) in Ascension Parish, La. Miles became one of the largest planters in the state, controlling at least seven plantations that produced twenty million pounds of sugar annually. He served as president of the Ascension branch of the Louisiana Sugar Planters' Association and was one of the founders of a sugar experiment station and of The Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, a weekly newspaper published in New Orleans. Miles continued to be active in state and local political matters, though he did not seek elected office. He opposed the state lottery, the sugar tariff, and other measures of the Republican Party.

Miles died at his home, Houmas House, on 11 May 1899.

See also Ruth McCaskill Daniel's "William Porcher Miles: Champion of Southern Interests," M.A. thesis, University of North Carolina, 1943).

The collection consists of personal, political, and military correspondence, diaries, and a few business papers and clippings of William Porcher Miles. Papers, 1784-1860, concern Miles and Warley family, friends, and social activities; Jews in Charleston; Miles's work at the College of Charleston; and local, state, and national politics. Political materials relate to Miles's tenure and responsibilities as mayor of Charleston, S.C., then as a United States congressman representing the Charleston district. There is extensive commentary on controversial issues leading to the Civil War, including slavery and runaway slaves, the Kansas-Nebraska bill and various other bills before Congress, the South Carolina Democratic Convention, the national Democratic Party nominating convention, elections, the South Carolina secession convention, anticipated foreign relations, and other problems facing the South as the war approached. Other topics include the 1855 yellow fever epidemic in Norfolk, Va., and improvements to the Charleston port, customs house, post office, canals, and statuary.

Papers, 1861-1865, document many political and military aspects of the Civil War. Topics include appointments and appropriations; secession and the Montgomery, Ala., convention; foreign policy for the Confederacy; financial and military preparations for war; troop morale, health, and logistics; confiscation of property; defense of coastal and inland South Carolina; runaway slaves, the removal of slaves from the low country, and the possible use of slaves as soldiers in the Confederate Army; the disposition of prisoners; and civilian morale in Charleston. Also included are a few letters relating to personal matters, in particular Miles's 1863 marriage to Betty Beirne. The April 2008 addition consists of a letter, 19 February 1864, written by William Porcher Miles to South Carolina Governor Milledge L. Bonham, concerning use of the blockade runner Alice of Bee and Company to export South Carolina's cotton and his hope for a reform of the Confederate government's control over blockade running.

Papers, 1866-1906 and undated, document postwar conditions in Charleston, including economic and social conditions during Reconstruction and perceived effects of citizenship and wages on freedmen. Also included are materials relating to Miles's efforts to find work in an academic setting, first at Johns Hopkins University and then at South Carolina College and the Peabody Educational Fund; his management of Oak Grove Plantation, Oakridge, Nelson County, Va., and Houmas Plantation, Ascension Parish, La.; his involvement in state and local Democratic Party politics in Ascension Parish, La., especially with regard to the lottery, sugar tariff, and sugar bounty; and his leadership role in the Louisiana Sugar Planters Association. There are a few materials relating to flood control and levees in the lower Mississippi and Episcopal Church matters. Also included throughout this period are letters with news of family, friends, and social activities.

The diaries, 1867-1897, consist of daily entries giving a brief resume of the daily activities of Miles and his family, including visits and visitors, debts incurred, bills paid, work on the plantations, and letters written. The diaries give a general picture of Miles's way of life, indebtedness, political and religious beliefs, and personal relations while running the Oak Grove and Houmas plantations and as college president at Columbia, S.C. Also documented is the 1874 death of Betty Bierne Miles in childbirth.

• Oversize papers (OPF-508/1)
• Microfilm (M-508/1-5)
• Transcription volumes (TV-508/1-10)