University of South Carolina (USC) reviews

Chartered in 1801 as South Carolina College, the University of South Carolina was the first state university to be supported continuously by annual state appropriations. In the years before the Civil War, it rapidly achieved a reputation for academic excellence in the classical tradition and was known as one of the best endowed and most distinguished colleges in the United States. Its faculty included Francis Lieber, editor of the Encyclopedia Americana and author of Civil Liberty and Self Government, the nationally known scientists John and Joseph LeConte, and chemist William Eller, who produced the first daguerreotype in the United States. By the 1830s, distinguished alumni almost literally filled the state's General Assembly. James H. Hammond and Wade Hampton were the most prominent of a parade of future governors, senators, judges, and generals who graduated during the ante-bellum period.