John Caldwell Calhoun (March 18, 1782 - March 31, 1850) was a leading United States Southern politician and political philosopher from South Carolina during the first half of the 19th century, at the center of the foreign policy and financial disputes of his age and best known as a spokesman for slavery, nullification and the rights of electoral minorities, such as the Southern states. After a short stint in the South Carolina legislature, …

Jefferson Finis Davis was an American politician who served as President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history from 1861 to 1865 during the American Civil War. Davis believed that corruption had destroyed the old Union and that the Confederacy had to be pure to survive. During his presidency, Davis was never able to find a strategy that would defeat the larger, more industrially developed Union.

Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 - July 9, 1850) was an American military leader and the twelfth President of the United States. Known as "Old Rough and Ready," Taylor had a 40-year military career in the U.S. Army, serving in the War of 1812, Black Hawk War, and Second Seminole War after achieving fame while leading U.S. troops to victory at several critical battles of the Mexican-American War. A Southern slaveholder who opposed the spread of slavery to the territories, …

George Fitzhugh (November 4, 1806 - July 30, 1881) was a social theorist who published radical racial and slavery-based sociological theories in the antebellum era. He argued that "the Negro is but a grown up child" who needs the economic and social protections of slavery. Fitzhugh described capitalism for spawning a "war of the rich with the poor, …

William Lowndes Yancey (August 10, 1814 - July 27, 1863) was an American leader of the Southern secession movement as a journalist, politician, orator, and diplomat. Part of the group characterized as the Fire-Eaters, Yancey was seen by many as one of the most effective agitators for secession and rhetorical defenders of slavery. Throughout the critical 1850s Yancey, sometimes referred to as the "Orator of Secession", …

Alexander Hamilton Stephens (February 11, 1812 - March 4, 1883) was Vice President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War.

John Rutledge was Governor of South Carolina, delegate to the Constitutional Convention, signer of the United States Constitution, and served on the U.S. Supreme Court (Chief Justice from August to December 1795). He was the elder brother of Edward Rutledge, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Abraham Baldwin (November 23, 1754-March 4, 1807) was an American politician, Patriot, and Founding Father from the U.S. state of Georgia. Baldwin was a Georgia representative in the Continental Congress and served in the United States House of Representatives and Senate after the adoption of the Constitution.

Solon Borland (September 21, 1811 - January 1, 1864) was a newspaperman, soldier, diplomat, Democratic United States Senator from the State of Arkansas and a Confederate officer during the American Civil War. Borland was born in Suffolk, Virginia. When he was a youth, his family moved to North Carolina, where he attended preparatory schools. He later studied medicine and opened a practice. In 1843, he moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, …

Robert Lewis Dabney (March 5, 1820 - January 3, 1898) was an American Christian theologian, a Southern Presbyterian pastor, and Confederate Army chaplain. He was also chief of staff and biographer to Stonewall Jackson. His biography of Jackson remains in print today. Dabney and James Henley Thornwell were two of Southern Presbyterianism's most influential scholars. They were both Calvinist, Old School Presbyterians, and social conservatives.

Nathaniel Macon (December 17, 1758 - June 29, 1837) was a spokesman for the Old Republican faction of the Democratic-Republican Party that wanted to strictly limit the federal government. Macon was born near Warrenton, North Carolina and attended the College of New Jersey and served briefly in the American Revolutionary War. He was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1791 to 1815; from 1801 to 1807 he was Speaker of the House.

Oliver Ellsworth (April 29 1745 - November 26 1807), an American lawyer and politician, was a revolutionary against British rule, a drafter of the United States Constitution, and third Chief Justice of the United States. He is also widely recognized for having first coined the phrase 'United States.'

John Young Mason (April 18, 1799 - October 3, 1859) was an American politician and diplomat. He was born in Greensville County, Virginia, and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1816, and then studied law in Connecticut. In 1819 he was admitted to the Southampton County, Virginia, bar. He married the daughter of a prominent land-owner in 1821 and became a planter himself, as well as continuing as a lawyer.

Charles Cotesworth (C.C.) Pinckney (February 5, 1746 - August 16, 1825), was an early American statesman and a constitutional delegate.

William Gilmore Simms (April 17 1806 - June 11 1870) was a poet, novelist and historian from the American South whose novels achieved great prominence during the 19th century, with Edgar Allan Poe pronouncing him the best novelist America had ever produced. In recent decades, though, Simms' novels have fallen out of favor, although he is still known among literary scholars as a major force in Antebellum literature.

Thomas Roderick Dew was an American educator and writer; a son of Captain Thomas Dew and Lucy Gatewood Dew. His father was a Revolutionary War soldier and founder of Dewsville, a prosperous plantation near Newtown, King and Queen County, Virginia. He was born in King and Queen Co., Virginia, and graduated in 1820 at the College of William and Mary.

James Henley Thornwell (December 9, 1812 - August 1, 1862) was an American Presbyterian preacher and religious writer. Born in Marlboro District, South Carolina on December 9, 1812; Thornwell graduated from South Carolina College at nineteen, studied briefly at Harvard, then entered the Presbyterian ministry. He became prominent in the Old School Presbyterian denomination in the south, preaching and writing on theological and social issues.

Pierce Butler (July 11, 1744 - February 15, 1822) was a soldier, planter, and statesman, recognized as one of United States' Founding Fathers. He represented South Carolina in the Continental Congress and the U.S. Senate.

Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (September 22, 1790-July 9, 1870) was an American lawyer, minster, educator, and humorist, born in Augusta, Ga. He graduated at Yale (1813) and practiced law in Georgia, becoming a district judge in 1822 and holding the position for several years, after which he resumed his legal practice in Augusta, did editorial work, and established the "Sentinel", which soon merged with the "Chronicle" (1838).

Thornton Stringfellow (1788-1869), was the reverend of Stevensburg Baptist Church in Culpeper County, Virginia. He is perhaps best known for his condoning African American slavery.

Samuel Seabury (1801-72) was an American Protestant Episcopal clergyman, grandson of Bishop Samuel Seabury. He was born at New London, Conn., was ordained priest in the Protestant Episcopal church (1828), was editor of the "Churchman" (1833-49), rector of the Church of the Annunciation in New York City (1838-68), and professor of biblical learning in the General Theological Seminary (1862-72).

Benjamin Morgan Palmer (January 25, 1818 - May 25, 1902), an acclaimed orator and Bible-based theologian, was the first moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America. As pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans, his Thanksgiving sermon in 1860 had a great influence in leading Louisiana to join the Confederate States of America. After 1865 he was minister in the Presbyterian Church in the United States.

Reverend Nehemiah Adams (born February 19, 1806; died October 6, 1878) was a clergyman and writer. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1806 to Nehemiah Adams and Mehitabel Torrey Adams. He graduated from Harvard University in 1826, and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1829. He was ordained as co-pastor of First Congregational Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that same year. In 1832, he married Martha Hooper.

Samuel Adolphus Cartwright (November 3, 1793 - May 2, 1863) was a Confederate States of America physician who was assigned the responsibility of improving sanitary conditions in the camps about Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Port Hudson, Louisiana. He was honored for his investigations into yellow fever and Asiatic cholera. Cartwright was also considered to have been an antebellum authority on the health problems of African Americans, but that work has since been discredited.

Robert Barnwell Rhett, Sr. (October 21, 1800-September 14, 1876), was a United States secessionist politician from South Carolina. Rhett born in Beaufort. His name was originally Smith, but after entering public life he changed it for that of a prominent colonial ancestor Colonel William Rhett. He studied law and became a member of the South Carolina legislature in 1826. His great-uncle was Congressman Robert Barnwell the father of Congressman Robert Woodward Barnwell.

Lafayette Hall 2100 I St. Lafayette Hall has undergone three name changes in the past 40 years. John C. Calhoun Hall first offered housing for male students in the 1963-1964 school year. Calhoun, a native of South Carolina, served as vice president under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, in addition to being a member of Congress. However, Calhoun was a defender of slavery.