Macduff

MACDUFF, burgh and seaport, Banffshire, Scotland, on the Deveron, I m. E. of Banff and m. N.W. of Aberdeen by the L.N.E.R. . Pop. (1931) 3,276. The site was formerly occupied by the fishing village of Doune, but after its purchase by the st earl of Fife, about 1732, the name was altered to Macduff by the 2nd earl. In honour of its constitution as a burgh in 1783 he rebuilt the market cross, in front of the parish church. Behind it is a War Memorial in the shape of a tower 7o ft. high. The harbour is safer and more accessible than that of Banff. The inhabitants are chiefly employed in the herring fishery. Grain and fish are exported and coal imported. A stone bridge across the Deveron connects with Banff. Good bathing, a bracing climate and a mineral well attract numerous visitors.

McDUFFIE, GEORGE

(c. 1788-1851), an American statesman, of South Carolina, was the son of John and Jane McDuffie, energetic, intelligent and unspoiled Scots who had migrated to Georgia after the Revolution. George was born about 1788 or 1790 (authorities differ) near Augusta. In 1804 Calhoun and Wilson, of Augusta, employed him as a clerk; and in 18io William Calhoun, brother of James and John C. Calhoun (q.v.) took him into his family and sent him to Willington academy. George McDuffie justified the expectations of his patron. He graduated from South Carolina college in 1813, was called to the bar in 1814, and after a brief period of preliminary experience in law and politics entered into a partnership with Col. Eldred Simkins, of Edgefield, who possessed a good library and large practice. He secured election to the State Legislature in 1818, and to Congress in 1821.

In the national House of Representatives he won distinction and served continuously on important committees until 1834 While the Calhoun influence was strong upon him, George Mc Duffie maintained a vigorous intellectual independence which dis played itself in facile writing, strong debating, and an intense, rapid and fiery but logical oratory; also, in his gradual change from liberal construction to strict construction he was in advance of his contemporaries. In the end he was a free trader after the

heart of Thomas Cooper, a believer in the right of revolution like Patrick Henry, supporting nullification on revolutionary rather than on constitutional grounds, and an opponent of in ternal improvements. But he was the leader of "the bank interest" in the house. In 1834 he denounced the Jackson adminis tration, retired from Congress, and served as governor of South Carolina, 1834-36, with marked effectiveness, giving particular attention to the compilation of the statute laws of the State and to the reorganization of South Carolina college. He did some thing to promote Southern "direct trade with Europe," and while in England in the spring of 1839 was invited by J. B. Smith to participate in free trade activities of the Anti-Corn Law League, but this he declined.

In Dec. 1842 George McDuffie was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he helped to bring about the annexation of Texas, the "amicable adjustment" of the Oregon question with Great Britain and the passage of the low Walker tariff of 1846, displacing the high Whig tariff of 1842 almost in conjunction with the repeal of the British corn laws. Indeed, his bust was sent with Calhoun's to the Free Trade Hall at Manchester during this period of inti mate relations between the free traders of both countries. Mc Duffie's public services practically ended with these adjustments in Anglo-American relations; for an old wound in the spine received in a duel in 1822 compelled him to resign his seat in the Senate, Aug. 17, 1846. He died at Cherry Hill, in the Sumter district of South Carolina, on March II, 1851. He had married in 1829, but his wife had died within a year, leaving him an only daughter, Mary, who became the wife of Gen. Wade Hampton.

There is no biography of George McDuffle, but see J. B. O'Neall, Bench and Bar of South Carolina, ii. (1859), 463-468 ; and D. F. Houston, Nullification in South Carolina (1896), passim which still contains the best sketches and estimates available. (T. P. MA.)