Title: Landmarks of Charleston
Author: Thomas Petigru Lesesne
Release date: February 20, 2019 [eBook #58921]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Broad and Meeting Streets: its Steeple and Chimes Famous Courtesy of South Carolina National Bank
INCLUDING DESCRIPTION OF
An Incomparable Stroll
BY
THOMAS PETIGRU LESESNE
AUTHOR OF
History of Charleston County
RICHMOND
GARRETT & MASSIE, INCORPORATED
MCMXXXIX
COPYRIGHT, 1939, BY
GARRETT & MASSIE, INCORPORATED
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
One’s task in discussing Landmarks of Charleston is to describe the more outstanding from the beginning of Charles Town to this present year. It is an agreeable task, but it leaves undone some things one wishes he had done.
An Incomparable Stroll will give the visitor information of people and places of Charles Town under the Lords Proprietors, Charlestown under the Royal Government, and Charleston under the Republic.
The gardens which bring thousands of visitors to Charleston each spring are reached by excellent highways. Middleton Place and Magnolia-on-the-Ashley are on the Ashley River Road; Cypress off the Coastal Highway, United States 52. These gardens are so different that they are not competitive, and the visitor questing for beauty that baffles description should see all three, and, time permitting, journey toward Georgetown and enjoy the famous Belle Isle Gardens, on Winyah Bay.
In this work the index has been compiled with great care and should be consulted freely. Charleston’s points of interest are too scattered to be grouped on a single route. Near Charleston are traces of fortifications used in the Revolution and in the War for Southern Independence. They are too numerous for individual enumeration. Books have been written about them.
From the building of the Colonial Powder Magazine to the building of the Cooper River Bridge, the third highest vehicular bridge in the world, is a tremendous gap.
It is unnecessary to say that the author has consulted many authorities; his quotations suffice to reveal this.
Thomas Petigru Lesesne.
Charleston,
South Carolina.
Why Charleston? Three European nations were claiming this southern country—the Spaniards called it Florida, the French Carolina and the English Southern Virginia. The Spanish claim was through Ponce de Leon, 1512; the French through Verazzano, a Florentine, 1524, and the English, it is said, by virtue of a grant by the Pope of Rome, and through John Cabot and his son, Sebastian, both of them in the service of the English King Henry VII, 1497-98. To Edward, Earl of Clarendon, and his associates Charles II of England gave a charter in 1663—“excited by a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the Gospel.”
The Proprietors planted colonists on the Albemarle and the Cape Fear, North Carolina. Things did not go well and many of these people subsequently found their way to old Charles Town, which was established, not by English design, but through circumstances. Robert Sandford, “Secretary and Chiefe Register for the Lords Proprietors of their County of Clarendon,” had explored this coast in the summer of 1666, and would have seen the site of Charles Town, but his Indian pilot confused his bearings “until it was too late.” Sandford however, renamed the River Kiawah the Ashley in honor of Ashley-Cooper, later the Earl of Shaftesbury, one of the Proprietors.
Sandford, off Edisto, near Charles Town, was sought by the Cassique, or Chief, of the Kiawah Indians and importuned to plant an English colony near the Kiawah village on the west bank of the Kiawah (Ashley) River. The Cassique, Sandford related, was known to the Clarendon colonists. Sandford agreed to investigate, but missed the entrance and chose to lose no further time by putting back. The Sandford report so impressed the Proprietors that they authorized the planting of a colony, not at Charles Town, but at Port Royal, to the south. Colonel William Sayle, soldier of fortune, was commissioned Governor when Sir John Yeamans, already Governor of the more northern colony, left the adventurers. Three ships were in the enterprise, but one of these was separated. The other two made land at present-day Bull’s Island in the spring of 1670. The Cassique of Kiawah was there and Governor Sayle was importuned to abandon Port Royal and bring his colonists to the Kiawah country.
Sayle, however, followed his instructions and proceeded to Port Royal, arriving in mid-April of 1670. The Cassique of Kiawah had told the colonists that the Indians were on the warpath and his story was confirmed. Carteret, who was in the “friggott” Carolina, flagship, says: “Wee weighed from Porte Royall and ran in between St. Hellena and Combohe (Combahee).” Here the first English election in Carolina was held, five men “to be of the Council.”
The sloop which had come with the Carolina was “despatched to Keyawah to view that land soe much commended by the Casseeka,” and soon returned with “a report that ye land was much more fitt to plant than in St. Hellena which begott a question.... The Governour adhearing for Keyawah and most of us being of a temper to follow though we know noe reason for it, imitating ye rule of ye inconsiderate multitude, cryed out for Keyawah, yet some dissented from it being sure to make a new voyage, but difident of a better convenience, those that inclyned for Porte Royall were looked upon strangely, so thus wee came to Keyawah.”
So, it was the Cassique, or chief, of the Kiawahs, that was responsible for the choice of the site of old Charles Town. First the colonists named their settlement Albemarle Point, but in the fall of 1670 they renamed it Charles Town, in honor of their King, Charles II. Carolina they named for him also, but the French had previously called it Carolina for their King, Charles IX. However, there were no French in Carolina when the English colonists arrived; the French effort at colonization had ended in tragedy, a hundred years before.
No sooner were the colonists established at Albemarle Point (where the Seaboard Air Line Railroad touches the west shore of the Ashley) than they looked with favor on the peninsula between the Ashley and the Cooper (the Indians called this river the Etiwan), as much the more desirable for their town, and in 1680 the change was officially in force. The new town was facilitated by the voluntary action of Henry Hughes and of John Coming and “Affera, his Wife,” in surrendering land for the new town. John Culpeper was commissioned to plan it. “The Town is regularly laid out into large and capacious streets,” said “T.A., Gent.,” clerk aboard H.M.S. Richmond, “in the year 1682.”
Charles Town on the peninsula prospered as a port and as the capital of the plantations. To ships in its commodious harbor came the things of the fields, the woods and the streams. Constantly new people were arriving and the outpost of civilization rapidly took on the appearance of European manners and customs, notwithstanding the incongruity of savages, red and black, and Indian traders in their bizarre garb. It was Charles Town under the Proprietors, Charlestown under the Royal Government, and Charleston since its incorporation in 1783.
This Carolina metropolis has had part in Indian, Spanish and French wars. It has had bold adventures with pirates. It was conspicuous in the Revolution and in the War for Southern Independence. It furnished men for the famous Palmetto Regiment in the Mexican War. The War of 1812 little affected it. Its men served in the Spanish-American War and the World War. It is said that from the tops of the highest buildings come under the eye more historic places than come under it from any other place in the United States, explaining the slogan, Charleston—America’s Most Historic City. It is in order to remind that William Allen White, in an address, said that “Charleston is the most civilized town in America,” and that William Howard Taft, then President of the United States, pronounced it, “the most convenient port to Panama.”
In Charleston survive buildings that were erected during the Proprietary Government, many buildings that were erected during the Royal Government. Survive scars of wars and storms and fires that raged in the long ago. Survive street names that were bestowed when Charles Town was in its swaddling clothes. It is a far cry from old Charles Town, bounded on the south by Vanderhorst Creek (Water Street); on the west by earthworks and a moat (Meeting Street); on the north by earthworks (Cumberland Street), and on the east by the Cooper River. King, Queen and Princess Streets are reminiscent of the Royal Régime. St. Philip’s, St. Michael’s, St. Andrew’s, Berkeley, and St. James, Goose Creek, were of the Church of England, under the Bishop of London, albeit the present St. Philip’s was erected half a century after the Revolution, replacing the Proprietary building that was burned in 1835.
But this work is concerned, not with the history of Charleston, but with Landmarks of Charleston, and in the pages that follow are tales of prominent landmarks, places and buildings that are storied. Eminent Carolinian names pass in review. The greatness of the lustrous past is linked with the more convenient present. The Charles Town that was and the Charleston that is are brought before the reader. The author’s effort is to present the facts accurately.
Outstanding landmarks include Fort Sumter, Fort Moultrie, the Old Exchange Building, the Powder Magazine, the Rhett and Trott Houses for their antiquity, the Miles Brewton House as enemy headquarters in the Revolution and the War for Southern Independence.
Fort Sumter from the Air
Would you, guest within the gates of Charleston, see things reminiscent of old Charles Town rubbing elbows with things of modern Charleston? Take this stroll, a little more than a mile, and you will be abundantly compensated.
Begin at the Mosque of Omar Temple of the Mystic Shrine, on the site of the Granville Bastion, southeastern edge of Charles Town in 1680. Proceed, southward, along East (or High) Battery, washed by the Cooper River. You behold the harbor declared by Admiral Dickins capable of accommodating the fleets of the world at one time. Seaward you see gallant Fort Sumter. To its left, Sullivan’s Island, on which is Fort Moultrie of Revolutionary fame; to its right, by the Quarantine Station, Charles Town’s first fort, Johnson, named for a Proprietary Governor. On the west side are some of Charleston’s most desirable residences. You reach South Battery.
Here you see the monument to the brave Confederate defenders of Fort Sumter, to face that famous fortress. Continue on the promenade which has inspired extravagant phrases. In the park you see the capstan from the battleship Maine, blown up in Havana harbor in February, 1898; monuments to the defenders of Fort Moultrie in 1776, and to William Gilmore Simms, novelist, historian, editor. Across the park, at the foot of Church Street, you see the home of Colonel William Washington, Virginian, who achieved a lustrous record as a Revolutionary officer in South Carolina; across Church Street is the Villa Margharita, built as the home of Andrew Simonds, banker. At the foot of Meeting Street, you see a memorial fountain to the gallant Confederates of the first submarine.
Stay on the promenade and enjoy the sight of stately palmettos bordering a beautiful park in which majestic oaks are many. At the foot of King Street, you come to the Fort Sumter Hotel. This building includes the site of the landing stage used by Queen Victoria’s daughter, the Princess Louise, in 1883; first member of the English royal family to visit the capital of the former English colony and province. Go north in King Street. At No. 27 is the celebrated Miles Brewton House, used by the British as headquarters in the Revolution and by the Union commanders in the War for Southern Independence. Note the picturesque old coach house.
Turn east and proceed through Ladson Street. At the northwest corner of Ladson and Meeting Streets is the home of the last Royal Lieutenant Governor, William Bull, and across Meeting Street (No. 34) the home of the last Royal Governor, Lord William Campbell, who escaped through Vanderhorst Creek (now Water Street) to H.M.S. Tamar, carrying with him the Great Seal of the Province. Next to the Bull House is the home of the late General James Conner, distinguished Confederate officer, and eminent for his work during Reconstruction. At Water Street you come to a corner of old Charles Town.
Continue north in Meeting Street. At No. 51 is the home of Governor Robert Francis Withers Allston, some time a convent of the Sisters of Mercy, now the home of Francis J. Pelzer. At the southwest corner of Meeting and Tradd Streets is the First (Scotch) Presbyterian Church, organized in 1731, an offspring of the old White Meeting House. On the northwest corner is the old Branford (also called Horry) home, the portico over the street being less ancient. On the east side (No. 72) is the hall of the South Carolina Society, which also houses the St. Andrew’s Society, founded in 1729; in this building are tables and chairs used in the Secession convention. On the west side is the post office park, including the site of the old Charleston Club, and of the United States courthouse that collapsed in the earthquake of August 31, 1886. On the southwest corner of Meeting and Broad Streets is the United States post office, completed in 1896; this houses the United States court. On the northwest corner is the county Court House, on the site of the old State House, burned in 1788. Behind the Court House is the Daniel Blake double house, one of the first of its kind in the country.
On the southeast corner is St. Michael’s Church, on the site of the original English church, St. Philip’s. In its yard sleep illustrious Charlestonians, including James Louis Petigru, the epitaph on whose grave is famous. On the northeast corner is the City Hall, with its great municipal art gallery, including John Trumbull’s renowned portrait of General George Washington. This was the building of the United States Bank, on the site of the early market place. Behind and beside the City Hall, Washington Park, in the northwest corner of which is the country’s first fireproof building.
Proceed east in Broad Street. No. 73 is the site of Lee’s Hotel, known also as the Mansion House, “kept by a dignified and distinguished looking mulatto, once the most fashionable hotel in the city and probably the best kept and most expensive,” said William G. Whilden in his Reminiscences. Across the street (No. 62) is the Confederate Home which before the War for Southern Independence was the Carolina Hotel, a noted caravansary. At the northwest corner of Broad and Church Streets, is the Chamber of Commerce, oldest in the country, organized in 1773; this was the old South Carolina Bank building, later the home of the Charleston Library Society, which moved into modern quarters, elsewhere on this stroll. At the northeast corner is the Citizens and Southern Bank, on the site of Shepheard’s Tavern, birthplace of Ancient Free Masonry in America, Solomon’s Lodge, No. 1, having been chartered by the Grand Lodge of England in 1735, and birthplace also of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Free Masonry, 1801. A block to the eastward, at the foot of Broad Street, is the Old Exchange, as historic a building as there is in all America.
Northward on Church Street, at the southeast corner of Church and Queen, the only Huguenot church in America! Opposite, on the southwest corner, the restored Planters’ Hotel (1803), including the reproduction of Charleston’s first regular theater (1735), the company of players coming direct from England. North of Queen Street, on the west side, the reputed Pirates’ houses. St. Philip’s graveyard is divided by Church Street, running through the foundations of the building burned in 1835. The first St. Philip’s was on the site now occupied by St. Michael’s and the present St. Philip’s is the third. In the graveyards sleep, Edward Rutledge, Signer of the Declaration of Independence; William Rhett, captor of the notorious pirate, Stede Bonnet, 1718; Christopher Gadsden, Revolutionary patriot; John Caldwell Calhoun, eminent statesman.
Proceed through the western yard. You are paralleling the northern boundary of old Charles Town, a matter of yards away. You are in the Gateway Walk of the Garden Club. Midway of the yard, you are behind the first brick house in Charles Town, that of Judge Nicholas Trott; it was standing in 1719. Next to the Trott House is Charles Town’s oldest building, the Powder Magazine, 1703, owned and used by the Colonial Dames of America. Into the yard of the Circular Church, cradle of Presbyterianism in Carolina. Illustrious dead are buried here. The newspaper building to the south is on the site of the South Carolina Institute Hall, in which the Ordinance of Secession was signed December 20, 1860, and in which, several months before, the famous Democratic convention of 1860 was held. You come to Meeting Street, the Circular Church as the White Meeting House giving its name. Down Meeting Street, at the southwestern corner of Queen, is the St. John Hotel, on the site of the old St. Mary's Hotel, opened in 1801; General Robert E. Lee and President Theodore Roosevelt were of the notables who have been guests of this house.
At Meeting Street you are at the western edge of old Charles Town. Cross the street and pass through the yard of the Gibbes Memorial Art Gallery, a section of the old Schenking Square. Thence into the yard, of the Charleston Library Society, dating to 1748, among the oldest in the land. You come now to King Street. Down the street on the east side of the next block is the Quaker burial ground and site of the meeting houses that were burned. Cross King Street into the walk of the Unitarian Church, its building used by the British during their occupation in the Revolution for stables, and, to the north, the first Lutheran church, St. John’s. You come to Archdale Street, named for pious John Archdale, Quaker, Proprietor and Governor. Go southward to Queen Street, at the corner of Legare (it used to be Friend, reminiscent of the early Quakers in the colony) is the convent of Our Lady of Mercy, a community of consecrated Sisters, now more than a hundred years old. Opposite the convent, in Legare Street, is the Crafts public school, memorial to William Crafts.
On the left, at the corner of Broad Street, is the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, on the site of the Cathedral of St. Finbar and St. John, burned in 1861; here Bishop John M. England built the first St. Finbar’s on the site of the Vauxhall gardens. Go east in Broad Street. No. 119 (south side) is the residence of Irving Keith Heyward with one of Charleston’s finest formal gardens. Next door, to the east, is a property once occupied by Edward Rutledge.
On the north side of Broad Street, No. 118, is the site of St. Andrew’s Society hall in which President James Monroe and the Marquis de Lafayette were guests of the city, Monroe in 1819 and Lafayette in 1825; in which the Ordinance of Secession was adopted December 20, 1860. Next door, No. 116, is the former house of John Rutledge, “The Dictator,” later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; here President William Howard Taft was the guest of Robert Goodwyn Rhett. No. 114, once the home of Colonel Thomas Pinckney, is the residence of the Bishop of Charleston, the Most Reverend Emmet Walsh. No. 112 is the Ralph Izard house; the coach house in the yard is one of the most picturesque in Charleston. This neighborhood was in Mr. Hollybush’s farm, just outside of old Charles Town. No. 100 Broad Street was at one time the residence of James Louis Petigru.
You come again to the intersection of Broad and Meeting Streets and remember that here in 1876 occurred violent Reconstruction riots; that in the Revolution, years before, the statue of William Pitt was in the center and that a British shell struck off an arm. You who have followed me on this incomparable walk have seen things of Charles Town, Charlestown and Charleston. You have seen things reminiscent of early English and early French. You have seen the evolution of a British outpost in a savage land into what William Allen White has called “the most civilized town in America.”
POWDER MAGAZINE, 23 Cumberland Street: In the early days of Charles Town this storehouse for ammunition was built of brick covered with “tabby.” It is known to have been in use in 1703. It continued as a storing place of gunpowder years after the town limits had been pushed northward of Cumberland Street. When the British were besieging Charlestown in 1780, a shell exploded near the magazine and attention was thus directed to its danger. It was abandoned as a magazine. Nowadays this ancient building is the property of the Charleston Society of the Colonial Dames of America. In it are many interesting and valuable relics. How this magazine escaped through the years is one of the mysteries.
NICHOLAS TROTT’S HOUSE, 25 Cumberland Street: Next door to the Powder Magazine is Charleston’s first brick house, standing in its old appearance until a few years ago when it was done over for business offices. It was the home of Nicholas Trott, one of the chief men of Charles Town. It is a large two-story building, its back to St. Philip’s western graveyard. Trott, born in England in 1663, came to Charles Town from the Bahamas about 1690. He was Attorney General in 1698, Speaker of the Assembly in 1700, Councillor in 1703 and the Chief Judge after that. With the overthrow of the government of the Proprietors, Trott’s star waned. He revised and published Laws of South Carolina (two volumes, 1736) and Laws Relating to the Church and the Clergy (1721). He died in Charlestown in 1740. Dr. Shecut says that the Trott House was standing in 1719. “The great ability and legal attainments of Chief Justice Trott, who acted as Chief Justice in all for some fifteen or sixteen years,” Henry A. M. Smith wrote, drew all the business and litigation to it; his became practically the only court in the Province. The Proprietors sustained Trott when the people complained “and the response on the part of the people was to overthrow the Proprietary Government,” Judge Smith is quoted.
WILLIAM RHETT’S HOUSE, 58 Hasell Street: Wade Hampton, South Carolina hero of the Reconstruction period after the War for Southern Independence, acclaimed as the savior of his state, was born in the house wherein lived William Rhett, captor of Stede Bonnet, notorious pirate, and his fellows, who were hanged, in 1718. William Rhett was a great man in the early Carolina and Wade Hampton in the later. Rhett’s large square house was in excellent condition in 1722, says Joseph Johnson, M.D., in his Traditions of the Revolution. It is in good condition in this year, 1939. It is entered through a broad piazza on the west side and contains four large rooms on each floor. Colonel Rhett is remembered chiefly for his capture of the pirates, but other marks in his record are lustrous. He commanded the little fleet that in 1706 put down the harbor against a hostile French fleet under Le Feboure: the Frenchman weighed his anchors and went to sea without offering a single shot. A few days later Rhett’s flotilla, a short distance up the coast, captured a French vessel; among his prisoners was the chief land officer, Arbouset. Rhett was born in London, September 4, 1666, and came to Charles Town in November of 1694; he died here in June of 1722. On his tomb in St. Philip’s western graveyard, it is chiseled that “he was a person that on all occasions promoted the public good of this colony and several times generously and successfully ventured in defense of the same.... A kind husband, a tender father, a faithful friend, a charitable neighbour.”
QUAKER GRAVEYARD, 138 King Street: Graves among the oldest in Carolina are in the yard of the old Quaker Meeting House property. The first Quaker house of worship was built on this site in 1694. John Archdale, Quaker, Proprietor and Governor, came to Charles Town in 1695, and attended services with his fellow Friends. The property is a parcel of the old Archdale Square, nowadays bounded by King, Queen, Meeting and Broad Streets. It was just outside the town in those early years. This building was blown up in July, 1837, to stop a fire. The rebuilt Meeting House was destroyed in the conflagration of 1861. Quakers came to Charles Town while it was across the Ashley River. A letter from Shaftesbury, dated June 9, 1675, said: “There come now in my dogger Jacob Waite and two or three other familys of those who are called Quakers. These are but the Harbingers of a greater number that intend to follow. ’Tis theire purpose to take up a whole colony for themselves and theire Friends here, they promised me to build a Town of 30 Houses. I have writ to the Gov’r and Council about them and directed them to set them out 12,000 acres.” The Society of Friends owns this property, but there is now no meeting house in Charleston. The name of Governor Archdale is preserved in the street of that name, on which are the Unitarian and St. John’s Lutheran Churches.
THE GATEWAY WALK, from Church to Archdale: No visitors to Charleston should forego the pleasure of using the Gateway Walk of the Garden Club. A bronze plate on a gate at the Charleston Library says:
Through hand-wrought gates alluring paths
Lead on to pleasant places,
Where ghosts of long-forgotten things
Have left elusive traces.
This verse speaks eloquently for it. East to west, the walk is through St. Philip’s graveyard, through the yard of the Circular Congregational Church, thence across Meeting Street, through the yard of the Gibbes Memorial Art Gallery, through that of the Charleston Library Society, across King Street, through the yards of the Unitarian and St. John’s Lutheran Churches. There are two graceful wrought-iron gateways between the Gallery and the Library which formerly had place at the home of William Aiken, King and Ann Streets, used nowadays by the Southern Railway System for offices. Mr. Aiken was president of the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company from 1828 to 1831. Aiken, near Augusta, popular winter resort, was named in his honor. The railroad company a hundred years ago built the world’s longest steam railroad. In the large yard behind the Gibbes Gallery is an attractive pool with growing water plants. To describe the Gateway Walk at length would operate to rob a visitor of the tranquil pleasure of moving through it leisurely. In the yards of St. Philip’s and the Circular Church are graves of early citizens of Charles Town. It is enough to say that the Garden Club has achieved a unique and worthwhile project. Elsewhere in this book is found information of the six properties traversed by the walk.
ST. ANDREWS HALL SITE, 118 Broad Street: The St. Andrew’s Society of Charleston was organized by Scots in 1729. It is Charleston’s oldest benevolent society, active and flourishing into this season. Its hall was built in 1814 and here the Marquis de Lafayette was entertained in March, 1825. The distinguished Frenchman was the guest of the city and was showered with attentions. Here he met his friend, Colonel Francis K. Huger, who some years before had engaged in the frustrated scheme of aiding Lafayette to escape from an Austrian prison. Here on Tuesday, March 15, 1825, he “received the salutations of the reverend clergy, the officers of the militia, judges and gentlemen of the Bar, and many citizens, after which he visited Generals Charles C. and Thomas Pinckney, Mrs. Shaw, the daughter of General Greene, and Mrs. Washington, relict of the late General William Washington.” In this hall was passed the Ordinance of Secession December 20, 1860 (it was signed in the Institute Hall, however). It was among the many buildings razed by the flames in 1861. The St. Andrew’s Society is housed in these seasons with the South Carolina Society, certain of the chairs and tables used in the Secession convention being preserved. In the years before the War for Southern Independence St. Andrew’s Hall was the scene of many brilliant social entertainments, including balls of that eminent Charleston order, the Saint Cecilia Society, which had its beginning as a musical society, presenting concerts.
Looking North on Meeting Street
Right Middleground, Portico of South Carolina Hall; Background, St. Michael’s Church
JOHN STUART’S HOUSE, 104 Tradd Street: John Stuart, born in England in 1700, came through Charlestown with General James Oglethorpe, founder of Georgia, in 1733. Thirty years later he was appointed the British general agent for Indian affairs in the South. Captured by the Cherokees, he was saved by Attakullakulla (the Little Carpenter). With the breaking of the Revolution he engaged to incite Cherokees, Chickasaws and Creeks (Muscogees) to war against the whites. The Indian outbreak was to coincide with Sir Peter Parker’s attack on Charlestown in the spring of 1776. It was foiled by alert Kentucky settlers. His plot being exposed Colonel Stuart fled to Florida, thence to England where he died in 1779. His property was confiscated by the independent government. To escape the British, it is related that General Francis Marion leaped from a window. His coattails caught and his liberty was in peril. (That’s the story, but the house from which Marion fled is at the northeast corner of Legare and Tradd.) Certain of the interior of this house has been reset up in Minneapolis which has broadcast its pride in the accession.
SITE OF FORT JOHNSON, James Island: The first fortification erected for the defense of old Charles Town was at the northeast end of James Island, within the present-day Quarantine reservation. It was devised to meet the threatened invasion by the French under Le Feboure and was named Fort Johnson in honor of the then Governor, Sir Nathaniel Johnson. In 1759 a second fort of tabby (or tapia) was built on the site and this was the Fort Johnson of the Revolution—“in plan triangular, with salients bastioned and priestcapped, the gorge closed, the gate protected by an earthwork, a defensible sea wall of tapia extended the fortification to the west and southwest.” In 1765 stamped paper was transferred from a British sloop-of-war and stored in Fort Johnson while in Charlestown excitement prevailed, resulting in seizure of the stamped paper by three companies of volunteers under Captains Marion, Pinckney and Elliott. The British garrison was placed under guard and preparations made to resist any attack from the sloop-of-war. At this time was displayed the first form of the South Carolina State flag—a blue field with three white crescents. The naval commander agreed to carry the stamped paper from Charlestown and the incident passed off without clash at arms. This was ten years before the Battle of Concord. In 1775, the spirit of liberty gaining strength, Fort Johnson was again seized by order of the Council of Safety, as a precaution against the last of the Royal Governors, Lord William Campbell, British troops being expected. In November of this year (1775) three shots were fired from Fort Johnson on the British sloops-of-war Tamar and Cherokee, which were engaged in blocking Hog Island Channel. June 28, 1776, Fort Johnson was commanded by Colonel Christopher Gadsden, but had no opportunity of engaging Sir Peter Parker’s fleet, which was repulsed by soldiers under Colonel William Moultrie at Fort Sullivan, known afterward and now as Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan’s Island. In 1780 Sir Henry Clinton reported Fort Johnson “destroyed.” In 1793 the third work at this site was built, but in 1800 a tropical storm so damaged it that it was abandoned, being restored in the War of 1812. At the site of Fort Johnson the Confederate forces defending Charleston located a mortar battery from which to bombard Fort Sumter. It now became “an extensive entrenched camp of considerable strength and capacity.” The Confederates evacuated this fort February 17, 1865, and the works were allowed to fall into decay. Latterly there has been an earnest effort at restoration.
FORT MOULTRIE, Sullivan’s Island: A glorious day in the annals of South Carolina was the twenty-eighth of June, 1776. A partially built fort of palmetto logs repulsed the proud British fleet under Sir Peter Parker. Above this rude fort floated a South Carolina flag with a blue field in which was one crescent and the word LIBERTY. It was this flag that Sergeant Jasper rescued, his gallant deed commemorating his name. The first government of any of the thirteen American colonies was established at Charlestown, March, 1776, with John Rutledge as president, Henry Laurens as vice-president and William Henry Drayton as chief justice. Against Colonel William Moultrie’s rude fort on that June day in 1776 was pitted a trained fleet of eleven armed vessels carrying 270 guns. Moultrie’s garrison comprised 435 men. While Moultrie was engaged with Sir Peter Parker, Colonel William Thomson with 800 men and two cannons prevented Sir Henry Clinton from landing his soldiery. In the Battle of Fort Moultrie the defenders suffered only thirty-seven casualties while the fleet suffered more than 200, and the loss of a frigate. It was from Fort Moultrie that Major Robert Anderson on the night of December 26, 1860, removed his Union garrison into Fort Sumter. The Confederates used Fort Moultrie against the invading Union forces until Fort Sumter was abandoned by the South’s defenders. Before Anderson left Moultrie, he had spiked the guns and burned their carriages. Fort Moultrie helped make Morris Island an unhappy place for Union troops under General Gilmore. At the entrance to the old fort is the grave of Osceola, chief of the Seminoles, who was brought a captive after the war in Florida a hundred years ago. In these years the fort gives name to a reservation which is the headquarters of the Eighth Infantry, a small detail of Coast Artillerymen being on duty with the coast defense guns.
FORT SUMTER, at the Entrance to the Harbor: Facing the open sea stands gallant Fort Sumter. No fortress in all America awakens greater memories. It is a shining emblem of Secession, enduring monument to the incomparable defense of Charleston by the Confederates. The bravest of the brave served within this shell-torn fortress, withstanding the siege of Union land and sea forces. Sumter is not alone a proud fortress, but a landmark invested with a wealth of patriotic sentiment. It is stirring American drama. “In the annals of the Federal army and navy, there is no exploit comparable to the defense of Charleston harbor. It would not be easy to match it in the records of European warfare”—the Rev. John Johnson, D.D., quoted an English historian. In skeleton, Fort Sumter’s great story includes: April 7, 1863, it had part in the repulse of the United States armored squadron after a severe engagement. In August it “suffered its first great bombardment of sixteen days, ending in the demolition and silencing of the fort, chiefly by land batteries of Morris Island.” Confederates effected immediate repairs. While these were making, the defenders of Sumter beat off a night attack by small boats. Then came the “second and third great bombardments, one of forty-one days, and the other, and last, of sixty days and nights continuously, both being borne without any thought of failure or surrender.” The quotations are from an article by Dr. Johnson in The News and Courier. In all, the siege lasted until Charleston was evacuated February 17-18, 1865, “after 567 days of continuous military and naval operations.” The famous fortress of Sumter, named for the Revolutionary hero, General Thomas Sumter, the “Game Cock,” was built upon a shoal, the Secretary of War approving the plans in December, 1828. It is about a mile southwest of Fort Moultrie, Sullivan’s Island, and the same distance northeast of Fort Johnson, James Island. It was nearing completion when on the night of December 26, 1860, Major Robert Anderson removed the Union garrison of Fort Moultrie to it. On the twelfth and thirteenth of April, 1861, it was bombarded by the Confederates for about thirty hours, Major Anderson surrendering. He evacuated the following day, embarking his men for the north. The Confederates at once put the fortress in order for defense. There had been no casualties on either side. Lieutenant Colonel R. S. Ripley was the first Confederate commander of Fort Sumter and Major Thomas A. Huguenin the last, the Confederate occupation extending from April 14, 1861, to February 17, 1865. Fort Sumter nowadays is without a garrison. It is part of the defenses of Charleston. A military caretaker lives within the battle-scarred walls. Modern coast defense guns are mounted. As a grim sentinel, Sumter still faces the open seas.