The South Carolinian Delegation Pressures President Buchanan for An Appointment

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MILES, William Porcher (1822-1899) was among the ardent States' Rights advocates, supporters of slavery, and Southern secessionists who came to be known as the "Fire-Eaters." Miles was elected as mayor of Charleston in 1855 and served in the United States House of Representatives from 1857 until South Carolina seceded in December 1860. He was a member of the state secession convention and a representative from South Carolina at the Confederate Convention in Montgomery, Alabama that established the provisional government and constitution for the Confederate States of America. He represented his state in the Confederate House of Representatives during the American Civil War. While serving in the Confederate Provisional Congress, Miles chaired the "Committee on the Flag and Seal," which adopted the "Stars and Bars" flag as the national flag of the Confederacy. Miles opposed this selection. Miles favored his own design, which, although rejected by the committee, eventually became the Confederate Battle Flag today known simply as "the Confederate flag."Manuscript Letter Signed “Wm. Porcher Miles,” 2pp., Washington May 20, 1858, written to “His Excellency, The President of the U.S., VG. In large part, “We the undersigned comprising the entire South Carolina delegation respectfully request that you will be pleased to appoint Mr. Henry Laurens Ingraham to the post of 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. ...We understand that there has been but one appointment to the Marine service from South Carolina for very many years while some of the States have received two or more appointments. If our state is to have an appointment at all there is no one we feel well assured better entitled to it than the son of Capt. Ingraham....” Henry Laurens Ingraham, on 3/29/1861 he was commissioned into CS Marine Corps

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