A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from December 31, 2019
South Carolina: “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum”

Entry in progress—B.P.
 
Wikipedia: James L. Petigru
James Louis Petigru (May 10, 1789 – March 9, 1863) was an American lawyer, politician, and jurist in South Carolina. He is best known for his service as the Attorney General of South Carolina, his juridical work that played a key role in the recodification of the state’s law code. He was also known for opposing nullification and, in 1860, state secession.
(...)
After South Carolina seceded in 1860, Petigru famously remarked, “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.” This quote is still used to describe contemporary South Carolinian politics. Petigru opposed the Confederacy, although he did not believe that South Carolina would return to the Union.
       
Newspapers.com
5 January 1876, Saint Louis (MO) Daily Globe Democrat, pg. 4, col. 2:
OLD Judge Pettigru, of Charleston, when asked, in the early days of secession, if he believed South Carolina would cut loose from the Union, replied in the negative, and added that the Pelican State was “too small for a republic and too large for a lunatic asylum.”
 
Google Books
Abraham Lincoln:
The Prairie Years, Volume 1

By Carl Sandburg
New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & Company
1926
Pg. 8:
A minor affair it was that in Charleston, South Carolina, a peculiar and lovable old uncle, James Louis Petigru, lifelong friend of Rhett, whom Rhett regarded as the greatest of living lawyers, was asked if he would join the secessionists. I should think not!” said Petigru. “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for a lunatic asylum.”
 
Google Books
The Atlantic Monthly
Volume 201  
1958
Pg. 80:
“South Carolina,” said Judge Petigru, “is too small for a republic and too big for a lunatic asylum,” but he was almost the lone defender of the Union in Charleston and no one was listening.
 
Google Books
South Carolina:
A Bicentennial History

By Louis B. Wright
New York, NY: W. W> Norton & Company, Inc.
1976
Pg. 171:
To James Louis Petigru, a Unionist to the last, is attributed the comment: “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.”
 
Google Books
South Carolina
By Henry Lieferman
New York, NY: Fodor’s Travel Publications
1997
Pg. 120:
One of the few Unionists left in Low Country plantation and Charleston aristocratic circles, James Petigru, advised a secessionist meeting in Charleston that “South Carolina is too small to be a republic and too large to be an insane asylum.”
 
Twitter
Teresa
@TeresaKopec
“South Carolina. Too big for an insane asylum, too small for a republic.” Still true 150 years later.
11:01 PM · Jan 16, 2012·Twitter for iPad

Posted by Barry Popik
Other ExpressionsOther States • Tuesday, December 31, 2019 • Permalink


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