a prominent South Carolinian whose accomplishments included an extensive military career, engineering work, a professorship, authorship of a major Roman Catholic inspirational novel, and eventually, in retirement, a slave-holding plantation owner before the U.S. Civil War. He authored what on expert described as "the only Catholic [inspirational] novel from the deep South" in the first half of the 1800s. Ralphton; The Young Carolinian of 1776, A Romance on the Philosophy of Politics, was published in Charleston by Burgess and James in 1848.
