Simkins, a son of Edgefield, while recognizing faults in Tillman's racial policies, stated that "no South Carolinian, with the single exception of Calhoun, has ever made a profounder impression on his generation than Tillman." The late senator's supporters and protégés remained long in South Carolina, encouraging a view of Tillman as a great man in state and national history. James F. Byrnes, for example, repeated Tillman's themes of race war on the floor of the House of Representatives in 1919. In 1940, Byrnes, by then a senator and soon to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, dedicated a statue of Tillman outside the South Carolina State House and called him the state's "first New Dealer". Protestors have since asked for that statue to be removed. Others who knew and at one time admired Tillman included Strom Thurmond, son of Tillman's Edgefield attorney, who saw and was inspired by Tillman's campaigning style as a boy. Other Southerners were highly negative: Lyndon B. Johnson said of Tillman, "He might have been president. I'd like to sit down with him and ask how it was to throw it away for the sake of hating."