History's Highways: Arriving Charleston
Posted: Tuesday, April 06, 2010
by Walter Rhett
Charleston Perlo
During the spring season, Charleston is crowded with visitors from around the world. Arriving from every direction, they trace a history hidden along their travels. Here is a short narrative of history from the colonial era to the 1861 war to the present, that visitors can experience arriving Charleston from the south, along US Highway 17 or I-95--the same route George Washington traveled in 1791, in the President's Southern tour.
When spring visitors arrived in Charleston in the 1950's, the former inn at Tradd and Church Streets during the social hour offered guests a pitcher of"Oh, Be Joyfuls!" (strawberry daiquiris).
From the south, they crossed the Ashley River Bridge-a working drawbridge-a memorial to World War 1 soldiers that offers a view of the river marina. In 1828, foot passengers crossing bridges or ferries paid 6 1/4 cents per trip, wagons 75 cents. Metered parking today in Charleston is 75 cents an hour.
Johns Island's Angel Oak, the oldest tree in the eastern US, has limbs swirling from a central trunk, spreading high and low in a canopy that recalls a Rasta's knot. The outsized tree grips space and time, bending them into a massive, soaring fan of life. After a visit, jazz sax master Charles Lloyd composed and recorded "Angel Oak" on a CD.
A Carolina Eden / Kiawah Island
Kiawah Island, a barrier sea island, lies east of US 17, and, like Manhattan, was purchased from Native Americans, for Lord Ashley Cooper, one of Charleston's Lord Proprietors in 1675. The Kiawah leader, the Cassique, met the British ships in 1670. The island was resold to a suspected retired pirate, George Raynor, who then divided the island, selling half to John Stanyame.
During the Revolutionary war, British regulars burned John Stanyame's plantation. Mayor of Charleston twice, Governor once, Arnold Vanderhorst II rebuilt the ruined plantation inherited through his wife. He thought Kiawah's free range and weather ideal for raising cattle, and he planted indigo, later cotton. (His city home stands at 28 Chapel St.) During the 1861 war, Confederate ("Secesh") soldiers robbed his African-American caretaker of his chickens and his shoes, and vandalized and burned the rebuilt main house.
After 1865, Quash, the grandson of Arnoldus II (Quash's father was Arnoldus' son, Elias, his mother was an enslaved woman), managed Kiawah, a plantation at Round-O, and one north of Charleston. The family referred to Quash as the Cassique, so revered were his management skills. They had fervently hoped Quash, formerly enslaved, would remain "faithful," loyal to his family.
In letters to Elias' wife, Adele, and his brother, Arnoldus IV, Quash writes [note: the spellings are his]:
I sen the Boot [boat] doon For you I ham giving [ginning] the Cotton and have it Soon Today I Sen you Some potas ( jan 86, Arnoldus IV).
I Cannot Com Dun This Weeak as I Have to get 5 Palmetto raft ready To Sen of Next Weeak. the Logs is ver much scaterd so I Hav To Hall Them.. I Hord Last Weeak That you Went To George Town. So I Though Some one Wais Sick Which I Hop not . . . (june 83, Adele)
Quash describes the terrible 1893 hurricane to Adele:"We Had Agraite stoim Heair and the Tide Caime owpe in my House and Trow Doin one of the Chimbles 9 House on the Plaise is Woish Don also Chimbles I Had To Let some in the Bigge House Haife of the Slate is Blone off the Ruef the inter Cropeis Lost by Wooter the Tide Came over From the Ochorn The Holl Island Wais Owender Wooter From 2 to 8 Feet very Tinge is Destersory Neither man or Beais Cod get Freish Wooter I Had To Cook With Solt Wooter Buith it raine Heair on Thirsday Night so it Litel Beter Now" (aug 93)
He comments on state politics:"[Ben] Tillman is Have Tinges His oneway the Hole state is in Bad Fiex and I caint see Howe the good Peapel of the state Canstan it much Longer it tis Drad Fuill No Man Life is safe Now"(aug 94, Adele) His saluation expresses concern for family: "I Hope This Will Fine all Well Please say Hody To all the Family For me."
So successful were Quash's labors, Adele reunited the island by purchase in 1900.
After his death, stories report Elias was often seen strolling the grounds with Quash, talking over plantation affairs. After his own death, visitors could hear Quash in the evenings, animatedly talking to his father and former master.
At Kiawah's Beachwalker Park (open to the public, closed winters), pure, fine quartz crystal wraps the shore of the finest beach on the east coast. At Kiawah's north end the restored Vanderhorst house looks beyond a greensward of mature oaks to a broad marsh swale. At the island's south end is a cove and inlet and a close view of Wadmalaw Island (almost reachable by wading at low tide). Follow the cove and the landscape changes, brush and maritime trees flourish between the natural dunes and marsh grass as the shadows of gulls and terns flutter silently over your skin. The sky gathers the sounds of wind and waves mingling at land's beginning.
In 1784, Paul and Jacob Walter founded a pineland summer resort they named Walterboro along a high, narrow ridge as a solution to the "May 10 problem." The date marked the day Charleston residents marked an increase of insect borne diseases, including yellow fever or "strangers" fever, scarlet and typhoid fever, diphtheria, malaria, and small pox. It was the traditional day that many city residents abandoned the city for local pineland resorts.
The Stono Rebellion and Military Actions
Near where US 17 crosses the Stono River (a half hour from Charleston), the largest slave uprising in colonial America, took place September 1739. A slave from Angola, Cato, began the Stono Rebellion by playing a single drum and displaying a pennant. The rhythms and pennant summoned an assembly that grew to 100 men. Seizing arms, they set out for St. Augustine, FLA, burning 7 plantations. Attacked the next day, the rebellion ended.
Nearby Parker's Ferry is the site of a key victory site for Francis Marion, whose small, mobile band frequently defeated British regulars. After riding a 100 miles, Marion's men lured the British into an ambush. The British took heavy causalities and abandoned the field, ending strategic plans for gaining control of the colony south of Charleston.
Near Green Pond, a distance southwest of Charleston, two Price sisters, Betty and Mary, left complete management of their 420 acre plantation in the hands of a slave named Solomon. In 1850, their fields produced 135,00 pounds of rice. In 1884, a freedman, Benjamin Garrett, purchased the plantation at a foreclosure auction, and provided land for a community school.
" The Order to Advance"
At Honey Hill, a few hours from Charleston near I-95, a fierce civil war battle clogged a stream with causalities from both sides. People living near Boyd's Creek and Grahamville reported the bodies of soldiers jamming the opening to the Broad River had to be removed months after the battle. After the battle, a news dispatch noted, soldiers "could walk on the dead for over a mile without touching the road." The Savannah Republican noted: "We made a visit to the field the following day, and found the swamp and road literally strewn with their dead."
Before the battle, John Jenkins of the SC 35th V Calvary sent telegrams to Gen. Hardee at Savannah and Jones at Charleston: Ten gunboats, with transports and barges at Boyd's landing, troops near Grahamville. Four gunboats coming up Broad River to MacKey's Point, which is the approach to Pocotaligo."
In a letter to his brother from Lt. Col William Warren Marple, commanding officer of the 34th USCT (a South Carolina regiment formed by African-American volunteers) described South Carolina's third largest battle of the 1861 war: We left Hilton Head at 2 O'clock A.M. Monday Morning - the 29th inst.- [Nov. 1864] and steamed up Broad River - but the Fog was so thick - and night so dark that the Boats got Scattered . . .
Now I will tell you what part the 34th took in the operations of the day . . . The enemy made an attack on me but was repulsed with considerable loss - He did not know that I had Artillery - . . .
I was to hold a cross road near this Creek and prevent reinforcements from passing from Charleston to the Battlefield -
I at once ordered the skirmish line to advance . . . In ten seconds the Air was full of Shrapnell and Grape & Canister thrown by the enemy . . . I had none killed - 6 of the Men were badly wounded, two mortal all were brought from the field. . .
Things were in great confusion that night - . . .The Next morning - the good friend the Spade was brought into use & we now hold the position. We hear nothing from Sherman
Four Union regiments of South Carolina Volunteers, the 33rd, 34th, 35th, and the 102nd USCT, held positions near Bolan's Church or led charges. The "Secesh" (Confederates) used rice dikes as defensive perimeters. Twenty-one year old boatman, runaway slave, and Illinois volunteer Corporal Andrew Jackson Smith won the Medal of Honor for valor for saving the 55 th Mass. regimental colors. The wounded were carried on stretchers made from muskets and blankets.
The New York Times erred in reporting, "Before evening, the Pocotaligo Bridge was destroyed."
Great Day/The Day of Jubilee
St. Helena's Island, across the bay from Beaufort, has two major America firsts: the island was the site of the first freedom or jubilee schools, organized by two women from a Quaker mission in Philadelphia. The Penn Normal School's 1862 legacy lives on in the Penn Center, a multi-program conference and early childhood education site.
St. Helena's also held the nation's first emancipation proclamation celebration. At midnight January 1, 1863, troops and residents celebrated freedom with oratory, spirituals, and an all-night oxen roast. Fifteen minutes after midnght, the jubilee sang, "My country 'tis of Thee." Many freedmen had enlisted in the US Colored Troops (USCT).
February 21, 1865, the South Carolina Volunteer 33 rd Regiment, USCT, marched down Charleston's Meeting Street, in view of auction sites where many of their members had once been sold, to free the city's enslaved! In 2009, the grave of Pvt. David Sparkman of Company K was marked by an official US Army headstone in a ceremony on Daniels Island, up river from Charleston.
After the 1861 war, outside of Charleston, a story stubbornly persisted: that Abraham Lincoln rambled around the Southern countryside. Oral tradition said escorts of cavalry or infantry troops led Abraham Lincoln on horseback or by carriage up the oak alls where he stopped in the yards to greetings of mighty applause by the faithful. Smiling, he asked after families, inquired about food supplies, shook hands and accepted well wishes and prayers. Then standing in his buggy or sitting straight on his horse, he spoke briefly to the crowds about the jubilee and the days ahead. This single repeated myth made concrete the communities' dream of freedom and was the fulfillment and expression of a common hope.
Thanks for reading! /wr
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Photos: Ashley River Memorial Bridge; Honey Hill Road Marker; Cpl. Andrew Jackson Smith, Medal of Honor winner; Penn School on St. Helena's Island; View from the Palmetto Trail, a hiking trail that transverses SC from the ocean to the Applachian Mountains. (Used by fair use and Library of Congress.)
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