Thomas Jefferson Withers
Thomas Jefferson Withers (1804 – November 7, 1865) was a Confederate politician from South Carolina who served in the Confederate States Congress during the American Civil War.
Withers was born in York County, South Carolina, and served as a state court judge in 1846. He represented the state in the Provisional Confederate Congress in 1861 and signed the Confederate States Constitution.
Withers is also notable for the sexually explicit letters he wrote in 1826 to a college friend, future governor James Henry Hammond, with whom Withers had a homosexual relationship. The letters, which are housed among the Hammond Papers at the South Caroliniana Library, were first published by researcher Martin Duberman in 1981, and are remarkable for being rare documentary evidence of same-sex relationships in the antebellum United States.[1]
Withers died at Camden in Kershaw County, South Carolina and was interred at the Quaker Cemetery in the same city.
References
- ↑ Duberman, Martin Bauml. "'Writhing Bedfellows': 1826." Journal of Homosexuality 6, no. 1 (1981): 85-101. Reprinted in The Gay Past: A Collection of Historical Essays. Eds. Salvatore J. Licata, and Robert P. Petersen. New York: Haworth Press, 1981. ISBN 0-917724-27-5
External links
Signatories of the Confederate States Constitution | ||
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