His 18-year-old crystal ball proved murky, however, when in the same letter he predicted with all the assurance of youthful bravado that the "fire eaters of South Carolina" would never follow through on their threat to secede if Lincoln were elected.
[4] Confederate cannons fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861, and William Stone's boyhood diary records that on May 8 he signed up as an eighteen-year-old volunteer to subdue the Rebellion.
Designed by Congress to bridge the gap between slavery and citizenship for some four million largely illiterate African Americans, the Bureau represented America's first great social engineering project.
He frequently presided over provost courts to ensure fair treatment of freedmen in legal disputes, and was instrumental in establishing schools for children of former slaves in his part of South Carolina.
Following a successful law career in Charleston, he became active in state politics and, in 1876, was appointed by Governor Daniel Henry Chamberlain as Attorney General for South Carolina.