and the opposition to law and order natural to the many adventurers
and _enfans perdus_ who flocked to Carolina as to other colonies,
and despite wars with the Indians in 1712 and 1715, commerce and
population rapidly increased. In 1680, when the new town became the
seat of government, there were as many as sixteen vessels discharging
and loading cargo at one time.
[Illustration: PLAN OF CHARLESTON. FROM A SURVEY OF EDWARD CRISP IN
1704.
A--Granville bastion.
B--Craven ”
C--Carteret ”
D--Colleton ”
E--Ashley ”
F--Blake’s ”
G--Half Moon.
H--Draw-bridge _in the line_.
I--Johnsons _covered half moon_.
K--Draw-bridge _in half moon_.
L--Palisades.
M--Lt.-Col. Rhetts bridge.
N--Kea L. Smiths bridge.
O--Ministers house.
P--English Church.
Q--French ”
R--Independent Church.
S--Ana-Baptist ”
T--Quaker Meeting House.
V--Court of Guard.
W--First rice patch _in Carolina_.
1--Pasquero and Garrets house.
2--Landsacks house.
3--Jno. Crofskeys house.
4--Cheveliers house.
5--Geo. Logan house.
6--Poinsett house.
7--Elicott house.
8--Starling house.
9--M. Boone house.
10--Tradds house.
11--Nat. Law house.
12--Landgrave Smith house.
13--Col. Rhetts house.
14--Ben Skenking house.
15--Sindery house.
]
John Locke, who had written the _Fundamental Constitutions_ for the
colony, was a Socinian, but doubtless by instruction from seven of the
Lords Proprietors,--Lord Shaftesbury, the eighth, was a Deist,--the
philosopher declared that the Church of England was “the only true and
Orthodox and the national religion of the King’s Dominions.”
Not until 1680 are there any authentic records of any church in
Charleston, but there appears to have been a rapid growth in grace
as well as population, for in 1704 there were five places of public
worship, St. Philip’s (Episcopal) Church, the Huguenot Church, the
First Baptist Church, the White Meeting House (Presbyterian and
Congregational), and the Quaker Meeting House.
General Edward McCrady, the State’s latest and ablest historian,
writing of the period of 1715, says of the colony:
“In this small community of less than 6,000 there were Churchmen
from England and Barbadoes, Independents from England, Old and New,
Baptists from Maine, and Huguenots from France and Switzerland,
all zealous of their peculiar religious tenets, and many, if not
most, with tenacity of bigotry and fanaticism. Carolina was a
Church of England Province under its charter, and the Fundamental
Constitutions, while offering the greatest religious freedom,
provided only that God was acknowledged and publicly and solemnly
worshipped, still provided for the establishment and maintenance of
that Church.”
[Illustration: ST. PHILIP’S CHURCH, CHARLESTON.]
In 1706, the Spaniards, who had always been a menace to the infant
colony, made their first and last attack on Charleston, and, one
hundred and ninety-three years later, when it was rumored that
Cervera and his fleet would menace the South Carolina coast and storm
Charleston, the old story of their futile effort was read with intense
interest. It was in Havana that Monsieur Le Feboure, the captain of
a French frigate, planned and organized the memorable attack. His
fleet of four armed sloops stopped at St. Augustine for reinforcements
and supplies, and on August 25th “five separate smokers appeared on
Sullivan’s Island as a signal to the town that that number of ships was
observed on the Coast.” Yellow fever was then raging in Charleston, but
Lieutenant-Colonel Rhett, commanding the militia, ordered a general
alarm by drum-beat, and sent messengers to Governor Sir Nathaniel
Johnson, who was at his plantation, Silk Hope, on Cooper River, and to
the militia companies in the neighboring parishes, calling them to the
relief of the town.
On Tuesday morning the allied fleet crossed the bar, and the next
day Le Feboure sent Governor Johnson a demand for the surrender of
the town within an hour. The Governor replied that “it needed not a
quarter of an hour or a minute’s time to give an answer to the demand
... that he valued not any force Le Feboure had; and bid him go about
his business.” In addition to the fortifications ashore Governor
Johnson relied for defence upon three ships, a brigantine, two sloops
and a fire-ship, which he had manned and equipped with Colonel Rhett
as vice-admiral. The Governor’s spirited reply to Le Feboure’s demand
probably unnerved the Spaniards and French, who did not attempt to
attack the town, but ravaged a part of the mainland and one of the
islands of the landlocked harbor, where they met stout resistance from
the militia. On Saturday, Rhett with his improvised fleet drove the
four invading war-ships from the harbor to the open sea, and would
have destroyed them, as he did the ships of Stede Bonnet, the pirate,
twelve years later, but for a threatening storm.
Nothing more having been heard of the allied fleet, the country militia
was discharged. Then the news came that a French war-ship, commanded
by Captain Pacquereau, had appeared in Sewee Bay with two hundred men.
He had come to join Le Feboure, but was unaware of his commander’s
failure. On September 2d, Captain Fenwicke and his militiamen met the
French landing party, killed fourteen and captured fifty prisoners.
Colonel Rhett demanded and received the surrender of Pacquereau’s ship,
with ninety men aboard. Charleston had two hundred and thirty French
and Spanish prisoners, but whether or not they died of yellow fever,
Hewatt, the only historian of the time, does not say, and unfortunately
Charleston could not boast of a newspaper until twenty-six years later.
The failure of this first of three attempts to take Charleston by naval
force proved that “the sinews of war are the sinews of valiant men,”
for its defenders were weakened by yellow fever and had neither full
ranks nor strong fortifications. Doyle, the English historian, says:
“The settlers who held Charlestown against the allied forces of France
and Spain were partners in the glory of Stanhope and Marlborough, heirs
to the glory of Drake and Raleigh.”
[Illustration: A MODERN CHARLESTON RESIDENCE.]
Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts visited Charleston in 1773, with a view
to sounding the leaders of public opinion and seeing if the colony
was ripe for rebellion. He was surprised at the material prosperity,
wealth and hospitality of the people. He says, in his published
diary: “This town makes a beautiful appearance as you come up to it
and in many respects a magnificent one. I can only say in general
that in grandeur, splendor of buildings, decorations, equipages,
numbers, commerce, shipping and indeed everything, it far surpasses
all I ever saw, or ever expect to see in America.” He was entertained
at the elegant residence of Miles Brewton and records a remarkable
conversation which would seem to have forecasted the results of the
war between the States eighty-eight years later. The same house stands
to-day, the finest survival of colonial architecture to be found among
the residences in the city.
He attended a concert of the St. Cecilia Society, where he saw upwards
of two hundred and fifty ladies, and he notes, with evident wonder,
that three members of the permanent band were employed at a salary of
five hundred guineas a year, and another musician was occasionally
employed at fifty guineas a month. His description of the St. Cecilia
concert is brief, but the longest that has ever appeared in print.
This society, one hundred and thirty-five years old, the oldest
“dancing club” on the continent, is in active operation to-day, though
the musical feature has long since disappeared. Now, as in Quincy’s
time, admission to one of its three annual entertainments cannot be
bought for any sum, but gives a gentleman the open sesame to the most
exclusive social circle in the United States. Some, even of those who
are connected with it and others whose qualifications for membership
are indisputable, regard this ancient society as an anachronism, but
Charleston has many anachronisms. The South Carolina law which declares
the marriage tie indissoluble for any cause is perhaps regarded as an
anachronism, not only in Chicago, but in every city and State in the
Union, and the unwritten law which prohibits and has, so far, prevented
the publication of any report of a St. Cecilia ball in the public
prints would doubtless excite derisive laughter from every “Society
Reporter” in this country except those of Charleston. The invitation
list of the St. Cecilia Society is the Almanach de Gotha of Charleston
society. Once the name of a lady is entered upon it, that name is never
taken off unless the lady dies or marries out of the charmed circle, or
out of the city.
Isolated from other English colonies by a wide region of forest, the
Charlestonians, with Spaniards to the south and Indians to the west
of them, and with Cape Hatteras as a menace to commerce with the
North Atlantic seaboard, were compelled from the first to think and
act for themselves. In 1698, they made the first attempt to form a
public library; in 1735, they organized the “Friendly Society,” their
first insurance company; and as early as 1774 a Chamber of Commerce was
established in Charleston. They made in 1764 the second attempt in the
colonies to provide for the care of the insane.
At the opening of the war of the Revolution Charleston was one of the
three leading seaports of the country. Apart from its strategic value
and as a base of supplies, the British government doubtless desired
especially to punish the rebels of one of the most favored colonies,
which by bounties on indigo and otherwise had been most generously
treated by the mother country. There were many Charlestonians who were
loyal to the King and who fought for England during the Revolution,
sundering family ties, and, some of them, self-exiled like Bull and
Moultrie, eventually dying in London. The presence of these loyal
adherents of the King only served to heighten the intensity of those
who were anxious to unite the colonies, and, as a consequence, as far
back as 1765, South Carolina took the first steps toward a continental
union before the measure had been agreed upon by any colony south of
New England. “Massachusetts,” says Bancroft, “sounded the trumpet,
but to South Carolina is it owing that it was attended to. Had it not
been for South Carolina, no congress would then have happened.” The
first independent constitution in any of the colonies was that of South
Carolina, formulated in Charleston in March, 1776, though the Colony
had had a virtually independent government from the 6th of July, 1774.
[Illustration: DEFENCE OF FORT MOULTRIE.
FROM A PAINTING BY J. A. OERTEL.]
“On the 11th of January, 1775,” says Simms, “the first Revolutionary
provincial Congress met and laid the foundation for the more regular
meeting of the convention of March, 1776, by which the first
constitution of South Carolina was formed.”
On June 28, 1776, Charleston was besieged by a British fleet under
Sir Peter Parker, as well as by a land army, under Sir Henry Clinton,
and the first great victory of the Revolution was won by the gallant
General Moultrie. The military student will tell you that Sir Peter
Parker could easily have run his great fleet past the palmetto fort
on Sullivan’s Island, and that he met disaster and defeat by following
a military rule of that day,--never to leave an enemy in a fortified
post behind you. It is interesting to know that the twenty-four
pounder, the largest ball in use at the battle of Fort Moultrie, was
the smallest in use during the siege of Charleston in the war between
the States.
[Illustration: THE ATTACK ON FORT MOULTRIE BY THE BRITISH FLEET, 1776.]
The devoted city was again besieged in 1779 by the British under
General Augustine Provost, and was again successfully defended.
The third siege by the British was successful and the city was
surrendered on the 12th of May, 1780, after a siege of four months and
heavy bombardment. It was held by the British under military rule until
evacuated by them December 14, 1782. General William Moultrie in his
_Memoirs_ thus describes the reoccupation of the city by the American
forces:
“I cannot forget that happy day when we marched into Charlestown with
the American troops; it was a proud day to me, and I felt myself much
elated at seeing the balconies, the doors and windows crowded with
the patriotic fair, the aged citizens and others congratulating us on
our return home, saying, ‘God bless you gentlemen! You are welcome
home gentlemen!’ Both citizens and soldiers shed mutual tears of joy.”
The Duke La Rochefoucault-Liancourt, who visited the United States
in 1796, after the Revolution, when the people had in great measure
recovered from its effects, was as extravagant in his praise of the
people of Charleston as Josiah Quincy had been. The enthusiastic
Frenchman wrote:
“I cannot close this long article on South Carolina without
mentioning with deserved praise the kind reception I experienced
in Charleston. This is a duty which I owe to the inhabitants of
all the parts of America which I have traversed, but especially
to this place. In no town of the United States does a foreigner
experience more benevolence or find more entertaining society than
in Charleston.... They keep a greater number of servants than those
of Philadelphia. From the hour of four in the afternoon, they rarely
think of aught but pleasure and amusement.... Many of the inhabitants
of South Carolina having been in Europe, have in consequence acquired
a greater knowledge of our manners and a stronger partiality to them
than the people of the Northern States. Consequently the European
modes of life are here more prevalent. The women here are more lovely
than in the North. They are interesting and agreeable but not quite
so handsome as those of Philadelphia. They have a greater share
in the commerce of society without retaining for this the loss of
modesty and delicate propriety in their behavior.”
Time does not appear to have changed the character of the people or
their social amenities, for, in 1836, an Englishman, the Honorable
Charles Augustus Murray, writes:
“A gentleman must be very difficult to please if he does not find
Charleston society agreeable; there is something warm, frank and
courteous in the manner of a real Carolinian; he is not studiously,
but naturally polite; and though his character may not be remarkable
for that persevering industry and close attention to minutiæ in
business which are so remarkable in the New England merchants, he is
far from deficient in sagacity, courage or enterprise.”
One characteristic of the Charleston women which still abides with them
is noted by Mr. Murray, who says:
“They are pretty, agreeable and intelligent, and in one respect have
an advantage over most of their Northern sisters--(if the judge is
to be a person accustomed to English society)--I mean as regards
voice; they have not that particular intonation which I have remarked
elsewhere, and which must have struck every stranger who has visited
the other Atlantic cities.”
There was little of the Puritanical element in the thriving capital of
South Carolina. Many of its citizens had frequented, in their college
days, the pit of Drury Lane or Covent Garden, others who had come
as adventurers had found the fortunes they sought, and an important
element of the population was that strain of Huguenot blood from which
Calvinism had not eradicated the _joie de vivre_ inherent in the
Frenchman.
William Dunlap, the first and most painstaking of the historians of
the American stage, states that the first dramatic performance ever
given in America was in Williamsburg, Va., where a theatre was opened
on September 5, 1752, and this date was generally accepted as correct,
and the centennial of the introduction of the drama in America was
celebrated with all the honors at Castle Garden, New York, a hundred
years later.
Later investigators claim that New York was treated to a performance
by professionals in September, 1732, and that Addison’s _Cato_ was
rendered in Philadelphia by a regular company as early as 1749. The
South Carolina _Gazette_ for January 18, 1734, has the following
advertisement:
“On Friday, the 24th instant, in the Court Room, will be attempted a
tragedy called ‘The Orphan or the Unhappy Marriage.’ Tickets will be
delivered out on Tuesday next, at Mr Shepheard’s at 40s each.”
That this was probably a success is proved by its repetition on the
Charleston boards on January 28th, and again February 4th, with the
addition of “A new pantomime entertainment in grotesque characters
called ‘The Adventures of Harlequin and Scaremouch, with the
Burgo-Master Trick’d.’”
No city on the continent had a higher standard of scholarship a few
decades before and after the Revolution of 1776.
Many of its leading citizens had been educated at the English
universities, and brought and established here the literary tastes and
pursuits which had been contracted in those then greatest seats of
learning in the world. South Carolina headed all the colonies in the
list of the London Inns of Court, and up to the time of the Revolution
had forty-five representatives out of the one hundred and fourteen
American students of the “lawless science of the law.”
Among other Carolina youth who were sent to England to complete
their education were Arthur Middleton, Thomas Heyward, Thomas Lynch,
Jr. (three of the signers of the Declaration of Independence), John
and Hugh Rutledge, C. C. Pinckney, Thomas Pinckney, W. H. Drayton,
Christopher Gadsden, Henry Laurens, John Laurens, Gabriel Manigault,
William Wragg and John Foucheraud Grimké. All of these gentlemen,
except one, William Wragg, were military and civil leaders in the
Revolution.
Mr. Wragg, who was loyal to the King, was at first confined to the
limits of his plantation, “The Barony,” as it was then styled, and
finally expatriated by order of the patriot Council of Safety. He
went to England never to return, and up to our own day he was the
only American whose name was commemorated in Westminster Abbey.
Many Charlestonians were wealthy enough to travel through Europe as
gentlemen of leisure, and one of them, Ralph Izard, maintained an
establishment in London and travelled through France, Italy and a part
of Germany.
While the pursuit of culture for its own sake is an evidence of
a highly enlightened civilization, it is unfortunate that the
intellectual coterie of Charleston and the neighboring parishes left
so little, comparatively, to posterity. Perhaps their most notable
productions during the last century were the novels of Richard
Beresford and _The First Comprehensive Theory of Dew_, by William
Charles Wells, both of whom, however, left their native State and lived
and wrote in England. Both Darwin and Tyndall pay hearty tribute to the
ability and scientific discoveries of Wells, whose paper on the theory
of natural selection furnished the groundwork for many scientists of
our day. Other works of South Carolinians of the last century were
the histories of Ramsay and Drayton, the military memoirs of Moultrie
and the political memoirs of Drayton, the _Flora Caroliniana_ of
the botanist Walter, a few brochures of indifferent poems and some
occasional plays, two of which were selected by the _Dublin University
Magazine_ as the subject of ridicule in an article on the “Beginnings
of the American Drama.”
The Augustan Age, if we may apply such a term to the insignificant
South Carolina literature, was early in the thirties, when Hugh S.
Legaré, Stephen Elliott and other kindred spirits founded at Charleston
the _Southern Review_, which, while it continued to exist, “had a more
brilliant reputation than any like publication ever obtained in this
country.”
A little later there was a coterie of specialists in natural history,
such as Bachman, the natural historian, Holbrook, the herpetologist
and ichthyologist, John Lawrence Smith, mineralogist, the two Ravenels,
McCrady, Gibbes, Porcher and others.
Agassiz found very congenial friends here and lent invaluable aid to
the Museum of the College of Charleston, and Audubon published jointly
with Bachman _The Quadrupeds of North America_, the figures by Audubon,
the text by Bachman.
Dr. John Lawrence Smith is probably as well known in Europe as in
America. He was employed by the Turkish government to explore its
mineral resources. He received two decorations from the Sublime Porte,
the order of St. Stanislaus from Russia and the cross of the Legion of
Honor from Napoleon III., and succeeded Sir Charles Lyell as member
of the French Institute. He was also the inventor of the inverted
microscope.
Simms, the novelist and poet, and Paul Hamilton Hayne and Henry
Timrod, the poets, are the three Charlestonians whose names are best
known to the world of letters. Their memory will be cherished more
and more at the home of their birth, as wealth increases, and all the
effects of the fierce struggle for existence which followed war and
reconstruction have disappeared. The enthusiastic reception and rapid
sale of the recently published memorial edition of Timrod’s poems is a
hopeful sign of reawakened interest in the sweetest love poems and most
stirring martial lyrics ever penned by a Southern poet.
No great artist first saw the light in Charleston, but the city boasts
of several of more than mediocre ability. Early in the eighteenth
century Henrietta Johnson executed a number of crayon portraits which
are still treasured by some of the old families. Portrait painting was
indeed almost the only branch of art encouraged for over one hundred
years, the local portrait painter Theus having opened his studio in
Charleston in 1750, and done much excellent work, some of which is
still extant. But if there were no great painters at home, the wealthy
Charlestonians brought back art treasures from Europe, and some of
their stately homes were beautified by works of Allan Ramsay, Zoffany,
Romney, Gainsborough, West, Copley and Gilbert Stuart.
“The pride though of the art lovers of Charleston,” says Dr. G.
E. Manigault, “in the closing years of the last century as well
as the early years of this, was in the miniatures on ivory by
Edward Malbone, who ranks as having been the greatest of American
miniaturists. He ... first opened a studio here in 1800, where he
probably painted more portraits than in any other city. Our own
miniaturist, Charles Fraser, should also be mentioned with him. He
executed over 300 portraits during a long life and while there is not
the same uniform excellence in them all as in those of Malbone, his
master-pieces certainly entitle him to a high rank in his art.”
Washington Allston spent several years in Charleston, where were many
of his relatives, whose descendants still possess several of his
paintings.
“Saint Mémin, limner,” is one of the names to be found in the
Charleston City Directory for 1809; but few of the original crayon
drawings and copper plates of that industrious French gentleman have
escaped the tooth of time. Louis R. Mignot, the son of a French
confectioner, was the only landscape painter from Charleston whose
ability is recognized in Europe. S. G. W. Benjamin considers him one
of the most remarkable artists of our country and says that he was
equally happy in rendering the various aspects of nature, “whether it
was the superb splendor of the tropical scenery of the Rio Bamba in
South America, the sublime maddening rush of iris-circled water at
Niagara, or the fairy-like grace, the exquisite and ethereal loveliness
of new-fallen snow.”
The only living Charlestonian known to the art world is the
artist-author Rufus Fairchild Zogbaum, who was born in August, 1849,
was educated at the Art Students’ League in New York and studied under
Donnat in Paris. He is still in the heyday of his powers, and has no
superior in the United States as a delineator of military and naval
subjects.