Sheriff Rick Clark of Pickens County*, S.C., refused to lower his flag for Mandela, who “did great things for his country and was a brave man but he was not an AMERICAN!!!”
The post did not comment on whether the sheriff was referring to the flags of the Union of the Confederacy.
*Pickens County was Cherokee Indian Territory until the Cherokees sided with the British. After Andrew Jackson’s ethnic cleansing, South Carolina was largely freed of red people, including the land that became Pickens County. The country was name after Brigadier General Andrew Pickens, whose plantation was on the present County.
At one time the plantation, now owned by Clemson University, had 103 slaves.
Clemson’s brochure about the Pickens’ family slaves extolls General Pickens for being kindly to his slave Richard Pickens — also known as Dick. Dick Pickens fought at the Battle of Cowpens, where he procured a pair of boots for his owner from a deathly ill British officer while simultaneously attending to the dying requests of his foe for water. …. Gen. Pickens demanded in his last will and testament that “Dick (Old Pompey), with his wife, Fillis; Jame and his wife, Seala; Bob and his wife,Clarase; July and Sambo be freed from slavery, and150 acres of land …. two young work horses with two plows with gears and tacking, each of them to be given a good weeding hoe, the men each an axe with a pair of iron wedges, the women each a cotton wheel and card; likewise to be given five good young cows and calves, six head of sheep, and for breeding sows, to be supplied with provision for themselves and creatures, . . . from the provision on the plantation, and likewise with three bushels of salt for the firstyear.”
What actually became of the Hopewell slaves after this is unknown
