Daniel Henry Chamberlain
From Philosopedia
Chamberlain, Daniel Henry [Governor] (23 June - 13 April 1907)
Chamberlain, who was born in West Brookfield, Massachusetts, graduated with honors from Yale and became a second lieutenant in the U. S. Army.
He was elected Attorney General of South Carolina (1868-72 term), and served as Governor of South Carolina from 1874-1877. Chamberlain was elected during a period of waste and corruption in state government and high taxation, abuses which his administration, regarded by history as honest, temporarily ended. Chamberlain was to be the last Republican to fill a high office in South Carolina until the late 1960s. The gubernatorial election of 1876 was marked by irregularities on both sides. The votes of two counties had not been counted. Wade Hampton, Chamberlain's rival and a war hero, claimed victory. Two state governments were in effect for about a year while Chamberlain refused to leave office. When Pres. Rutherford B. Hayes removed all federal troops from the South, Chamberlain left office.
Chamberlain was a planter, lawyer, author (writing Charles Sumner and the Treaty of Washington), and became professor of constitutional law at Cornell University. His rationalist views were not well-known, but he wrote an article for the North American Review, later reprinted in The Freethinker, describing himself as "a Freethinker" saying that he was skeptical about any future life, and
- I reject the whole Christian religion [and] a presiding or controlling Deity.
