Stephen Atkins Swails was a soldier in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Although originally enlisting as a private, he was the first African-American soldier promoted to commissioned rank, as a line officer, in that conflict, as evidenced by the U.S. War Department's initial refusal of that promotion due to his "African descent."

Kingstree is a city and the county seat of Williamsburg County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 3,328 at the 2010 census.