Question of the Week: 4/12-4/18/21
Have you visited Fort Sumter and Charleston, South Carolina? What was your favorite historic site in the city or around the harbor or what do you most look forward to exploring?
Have you visited Fort Sumter and Charleston, South Carolina? What was your favorite historic site in the city or around the harbor or what do you most look forward to exploring?
Can’t remember the name, but it was rice plantation just outside of Charleston. Original plantation house was burned by Federal troops, but the family had a summer home in the mountains that they moved to the foundation of the burned out plantation home. The tour guide was great for focusing on the slaves bringing rice farming with them from Africa that made Charleston the richest city in colonial America,
I love standing near the corner of the four laws (Meeting and Broad Streets) near the Circular Church and think back to those late December days (19th and 20th) of 1860 when the Secession Convention was going on. Right next to the Circular Church on Meeting Street was Institute (Secession) Hall where the vote was taken, and around the corner on Broad Street was St. Andrews Hall where the convention met the day before to discuss secession. A single year later, the church and both halls would be destroyed in the Charleston fire , December 11, 1861. I like to stand there and imagine the crowds and noise excitement of history being made those two days at that very place.
Just love walking around the old city and reading all of the plaques on the houses. So many layers of history. And don’t forget the Hunley. The visitor center has a lot of informational displays, and she’s looking good even though she’s still underwater in the tank.
The Confederate museum downtown is a must see! Not only does it contain a great collection of relics, but the building itself was a Confederate recruiting station during The War Against Southern Independence.
Another lesser known gem is Magnolia Cemetery. Here you will find a large Confederate monument standing in an extensive section of Confederate graves. This cemetery is also the final resting place of the Hunley submarine crew, as well as many distinguished Southern statesmen such as the great Robert Rhett.
I enjoyed the battery and the large expanse of antebellum houses and structures nearby
Stopped in Charleston during a driving holiday down North Carolina’s Outer Banks, a few years after seeing the movie, “Glory.” We were unable to cruise out to Fort Sumter due to inclement weather… but the image of the speck of a fort from the city, silhouetted against lowering rain-swollen clouds, was one never to be forgotten. [And Fort Wagner was not visited because it is no longer there.]
I visited Fort Sumter last August and thoroughly enjoyed it, despite getting sunburned on the deck of the boat that took us to the fort. I enjoyed walking and driving through some of the more historic areas of the town along the water. I didn’t get to stay long in Charleston and look forward to going back to visit some of the places everyone else has mentioned.
Just one? The Confederate Museum (one of those old-fashioned stuff-in-glass-cases kind of museums, the Battery, the Revolutionary earthwork remnants at Marion Square, Fort Moultrie.
Near downtown Charleston in a building that once housed a slave auction. It is called the Old Slave Mart Museum, 6 Chambers St. It tells the story of the domestic slave trade in pre-Civil War America. By far, the best museum in the city. Chilling and heart-wrenching. Everyone should visit it.
The worst museum is the Charleston Museum, 360 Meeting St. I visited some years ago, so maybe the city fathers have revamped it to make it less objectionable to anyone with the slightest knowledge of history. You get a sense of what’s to come near the front counter where the Civil War is referred to as the War Between the States. Slave rebellions in SC are heartily condemned as blood-thirsty insurrections that killed many whites. How dare those ungrateful slaves rise up against a cruel system of human bondage! Mulattos are defined as the result of “unions” between white men and black women. Of course, we all know that these so-called “unions” in reality were nothing more than rapes.
Every trip I make to Charleston, I make sure to visit the Warren Lasch Conservation Center to tour the CSS Hunley , and to inquire how much they have learned and discovered about the submarine. Then I visit the graves the Hunley crew, in the Magnolia Cemetery.
My family spends a lot of time in Charleston, and I’ve grown to really love the city and its many layers of history and hospitality. It’s a great city for foodees, too!
Favorite Civil War-related things to see: Gordon Rhea and Jim Morgan!