CHARLESTON.
First Visit to Charleston.--Jail Yard.--Bombardment of the
City.--Roper Hospital.--Charleston During the War.--Secession of
South Carolina.--Attack and Surrender of Fort Sumter.--Blockade
of the Harbor.--Great Fire of 1861.--Capitulation in 1865.--
First Settlement of the City.--Battles of the Revolution.--
Nullification Act.--John C. Calhoun.--Population of the City.--
Commerce and Manufactures.--Charleston Harbor.--"American
Venice."--Battery.--Streets, Public Buildings and Churches.--
Scenery about Charleston.--Railways and Steamship Lines.--An
Ancient Church.--Magnolia Cemetery.--Drives near the City.--
Charleston Purified by Fire.
My first introduction to the city of Charleston can scarcely be said to
have been under propitious circumstances. True, a retinue of troops
conducted my companions and myself, with military pomp, to our quarters
in the city. But these quarters, instead of being any one of its fine
hotels, were none other than the Charleston Jail Yard, for the year was
1864, and we were prisoners of war.
After a varied experience of prison life at Richmond, Danville, Macon
and Savannah, I had been sent, with a number of others, to Charleston,
South Carolina, to be placed under the fire of our batteries, which were
then bombarding the city. We had received more humane treatment at
Savannah than at any previous place of detention; therefore it was with
a sinking of the heart that we found ourselves, when we arrived at our
destination, thrown into the jail yard at Charleston, which was the
grand receptacle of all Union prisoners in that city. The jail was a
large octagonal building, four stories high, surmounted by a lofty
tower. A workhouse and a gallows also occupied the yard. The jail
building was for the accommodation of criminals, military prisoners, and
Federal and Rebel deserters, all of whom at least had the advantage of
shelter from sun and storm. The war prisoners were permitted the use of
the yard only, which was in the most filthy condition conceivable,
having been long used as a prison-pen, without receiving any cleaning or
purification whatever. The only shelter afforded us were the remnants of
a few tents, which had been cut to pieces, more or less, by former
prisoners, to make themselves clothing.
This jail yard was in the southeastern portion of the city, and
apparently directly under the fire of our batteries on Morris Island.
But though the shells came screaming over our heads, and proved a
subject of interest, discussion, and even mathematical calculation among
the prisoners, who were thankful for anything which should take their
minds, even momentarily, from the misery which they endured, so
carefully were they aimed, not to do us mischief, that though they
exploded all about us--in front, behind, and on either side--not one of
them fell within the prison enclosure. The scene at night was of
peculiar beauty. These messengers of death presented the spectacle of
magnificent fireworks, and every explosion sounded as the voice of a
friend to us, assuring us that the great Northern army was still
exerting itself to crush out the rebellion and open our prison doors and
set us free.
[Illustration: VIEW ON THE BATTERY, CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA.]
Reaching Charleston and its jail yard September twelfth, 1864, on the
twenty-ninth I was transferred to the Roper Hospital, having given my
parole that I would not attempt to escape. The quarters here were so
much more comfortable that it was almost like a transition from hell to
heaven. Leaving behind me the filthiness of the jail yard, and my bed
there on the chill, bare ground, where I had protection against neither
heat nor cold, storm nor sunshine, to be permitted the freedom of the
beautiful garden of the hospital, and to sleep even upon the hard floor
of the piazza, were luxuries before unenjoyed in my experience of
southern prisons. And here the Sisters of Charity, those angels among
women, did what they could to alleviate the sufferings of the sick, and
to add to the comfort of us all. Their ministrations were bestowed
indiscriminately on Rebels and Federals, with a charity as broad and
boundless as true religion.
On October fifth we were ordered to leave Charleston, and were sent, in
the foulest of cattle cars, to Columbia, the Capital of the State. We
left Charleston without a regret. It was the breeding place of the
rankest treason, the cradle of the Rebellion, and the scene of untold
cruelties to Union prisoners. At the time of our brief visit to the
city, it was undergoing all the horrors of an actual siege. About
one-third of its territory had been destroyed by fire during the early
part of the war, caused by shells thrown from the Union batteries on
Morris Island. This portion of the city was deserted by all its
inhabitants save the negroes, who, during every brief cessation in the
bombardment, flocked in and took possession, rent free, to scatter as
quickly when one or more of them had been killed by the sudden
appearance and explosion of shells in this quarter. The balance of the
city was forsaken by non-combatants, and the blockade had put an end to
all her commerce. The quiet industries of peace had given place to all
the turmoil of war. Her streets were filled with military, while the
boom of the distant batteries, the whiz of the flying shells, and the
noise of their explosion, were daily and familiar sounds.
During the four years of the war, Charleston was one of the chief points
of Federal attack, though it remained in possession of the Confederate
forces until the beginning of 1865. These were four terrible years to
the city. Yet her sufferings she had brought upon herself. The first
open and public movement in favor of the dissolution of the Union was
made in that city. South Carolina was the first to call a State
convention, and to secede from the Union. This convention was held at
Columbia, the Capital of the State, but was adjourned to Charleston,
where the Ordinance of Secession was unanimously passed on the twentieth
of December, 1860. Fort Sumter, which was one of the largest forts in
Charleston, a massive fortress of solid masonry, standing on an island
commanding the principal entrance, at the mouth of Charleston Harbor,
was in command of Major Robert Anderson, with a garrison of eighty men.
On the twenty-seventh of December he ran up the stars and stripes.
Governor Pickens immediately demanded a surrender of the fort, which was
promptly refused. Early on Friday morning, April twelfth, 1861, the
initial gun of the terrible four years' war was fired by the Rebel
forces from the howitzer battery on James Island, west of Sumter. Fort
Moultrie, on Sullivan Island, on the northeast, the gun battery at
Cumming's Point, the northwest extremity of Morris Island, and other
batteries and fortifications which the Confederates had seized and
appropriated to their own use, all followed in a deadly rain of shells
upon Sumter. The firing was kept up for thirty-five hours, and Sumter
made a vigorous defence, until the quarters were entirely burned, the
main gates destroyed by fire, the supplies exhausted, and the magazine
surrounded by flames, when Major Anderson accepted the terms of
capitulation offered by General Beauregard.
Upon the surrender of the Fort, which was received as a good omen by the
South, troops began to pour into the city, so that by the sixteenth of
the same month as many as ten thousand had arrived. The blockade of the
port was commenced on the tenth of May, and continued until the close of
the war. In the latter part of 1861 an attempt was made by the Federal
government to seal up the channel of the harbor with sunken ships, to
prevent the egress of privateers. On the twenty-first of December
seventeen vessels were sunk, in three or four rows, across the channel.
But this attempt at blockade proved a failure. The current washed some
of them away, and many passages in a water front of six miles were left
unobserved, and more vessels ran the blockade and reached the city, than
at any other southern port.
On the tenth of December, 1861, a fire broke out in the city, which
destroyed nearly all its public buildings, banks and insurance offices,
and several churches, besides many dwellings, reducing thousands to
homelessness and the extremity of want. The loss occasioned by this
conflagration was estimated at ten millions of dollars.
In 1863, the women, children and other non-combatants were ordered out
of the city, and free transportation, food and lodgings were furnished
those unable to pay for them. Morris Island had been captured by the
Federal Army, who used it as a point of attack against Sumter and the
city. Its shells had wrought destruction in all parts of the city,
especially in its lower portions. On February seventeenth, 1865,
Charleston, which had withstood all attacks from the seaward,
capitulated to the Union forces, Columbia having been captured by
Sherman.
The history of Charleston goes back to earliest colonial times. In 1671
a few persons located themselves on Ashley River, at Old Charleston. But
in 1680 this settlement was abandoned, and the foundations of the
present city laid, several miles nearer the sea. The whole country, up
to 1671, between the thirtieth and thirty-sixth parallel of latitude,
was called Carolina, having received the name in honor of Charles IX, of
France. In that year the division was made between the Northern and
Southern provinces. In 1685 the young settlement received a considerable
influx of French Huguenot refugees.
During the early part of the eighteenth century the war of Queen Anne
against France and Spain greatly disturbed the young colony; and a
little later the Indians threatened its existence. All the inhabitants
of the region took refuge at Charleston, which was vigorously defended.
In 1700, the same year that Kidd was captured and taken to England, no
less then seven pirates were secured, and executed at Charleston.
Subsequently others shared the same fate.
[Illustration: GARDEN AT MOUNT PLEASANT, OPPOSITE CHARLESTON, SOUTH
CAROLINA.]
South Carolina was among the foremost of the American colonies to strike
for independence. On the twenty-eighth of June, 1776, Charleston was
attacked by the British, an attempt being made to destroy the
military works on Sullivan's Island. But Colonel Moultrie, in honor of
whom the fort was subsequently named, made a gallant defence and
repulsed them. In 1779 they made a second attack upon the city, this
time approaching it by land, but were again compelled to retreat. Sir
Henry Clinton, with seven or eight thousand men, opened his batteries
upon Charleston on the second of April, 1780. Fort Moultrie, on
Sullivan's Island, was compelled to surrender on the fourteenth, and the
city yielded on May eleventh. The British retained possession of the
city until the close of the war.
Charleston took a prominent part in the passage of the nullification act
by the State, which maintained that any one of the States might set
aside or nullify any act of Congress which it deemed unconstitutional or
oppressive. The occasion of this nullification act was the Tariff Laws
of 1828, which were not considered favorable to the Southern States. A
convention of the State declared them null and void, and made
preparations to resist their execution. John C. Calhoun, who was at that
time Vice-President under Andrew Jackson, resigned his office, became a
leader in the nullification movement, and was the father of the doctrine
of State Sovereignty, the legitimate outcome of the principles of which
was the late attempt to dissolve the Union.
The population of Charleston in 1800 was 18,711; in 1850, 42,985
inhabitants; in 1860, 40,519; in 1870, 48,956; and in 1880, 50,000
inhabitants. It has not made so rapid a growth as other cities, even in
the South, but is, nevertheless, a prosperous town, with large
commercial, and since the war, large manufacturing interests. It is one
of the chief shipping ports for cotton, and also exports rice, lumber,
naval stores and fertilizers. Immense beds of marl were discovered in
the vicinity of the city in 1868, and now the manufacture of fertilizers
from marl and phosphate is one of its principal industries. There are
also flour and rice mills, carriage and wagon factories and machine
shops. The city is learning that the surest foundation stone for its
future prosperity is its manufacturing interests; and, probably, the
political battle of 1861, could it be fought over again to-day, in that
city, would find the nullifiers largely in the minority. The city which
was so marred and blemished during its long state of siege, has been
rebuilt, and all traces of the fratricidal conflict removed; and though
Charleston would not be true to her traditions if she did not still
cherish a strong Southern sentiment, the years which have passed since
the cessation of hostilities have done much toward softening the
asperities of feeling on both sides.
As a seaboard city, Charleston is most favorably situated. It has an
excellent harbor, seven miles in length, with an average width of two
miles, landlocked on all sides, except an entrance about a mile in
width. This entrance is blocked by a bar, which, however, serves both as
a bulwark and a breakwater. Of its two passages, its best gives
twenty-two feet in depth at flood tide, and sixteen feet at ebb.
The harbor of Charleston is impregnable, as the Union troops learned to
their cost during the late war. Standing directly in the channel are
forts Ripley and Sumter. On a point extending out into the strait,
between the two, is Fort Johnson. Directly in front of the city, one
mile distant from it, is Castle Pinckney, covering the crest of a mud
shoal, and facing the entrance. Sullivan's Island, a long, low, gray
stretch of an island, dotted here and there by clumps of palmettoes,
lies on the north of the entrance of the harbor, with Fort Moultrie on
its extreme southern point, as a doorkeeper to the harbor. On the
southern side is Morris Island, long, low and gray also, with tufts of
pines instead of palmettoes, and with batteries at intervals along its
whole sea front, Fort Wagner standing near its northern end. Sullivan's
Island, the scene of fierce conflict during the Revolution, and later,
during the Rebellion, is to-day the Long Branch or Coney Island of South
Carolina, containing many beautiful cottages and fine drives, and
furnishing good sea bathing. The village occupies the point extending
into the harbor.
As one approaches Charleston from the sea, the name which has been
applied to it, of the "American Venice," seems not inappropriate. The
shores are low, and the city seems to rise out of the water. It is built
something after the manner of New York, on a long and narrow peninsula,
formed by the Cooper and Ashley rivers, which unite in front of the
city. It has, like New York, its Battery, occupying the extreme point of
the peninsula, its outlook commanding the entire harbor, bristling with
fortifications, so harmless in time of peace, so terrible in war. The
Battery contains plots of thin clover, neatly fenced and shelled
promenades, a long, solid stone quay, which forms the finest sea-walk in
the United States, and has a background of the finest residences in the
city, three storied, and faced with verandahs. The dwelling-houses
throughout the city are mostly of brick or wood, and have large open
grounds around them, ornamented with trees, shrubbery, vines and
flowers. The city is laid out with tolerable regularity, the streets
generally crossing each other at right angles. King street, running
north and south, is the fashionable promenade, containing the leading
retail stores. Meeting street, nearly parallel with King, contains the
jobbing and wholesale stores. Broad street, the banks, brokers' and
insurance offices. Meeting street, below Broad, Rutledge street, and the
west end of Wentworth street, contain fine private residences.
The City Hall, an imposing building, standing in an open square, the
Court House, the Police Headquarters, and the venerable St. Michael's
Church (Episcopal), all stand at the intersection of Broad and Meeting
streets. St. Michael's was built in 1752, after designs by a pupil of
Sir Christopher Wren. The view from the belfry is very fine, embracing
the far stretch of sea and shore, the shipping, fortresses of the
harbor, and near at hand buildings as ancient as the church itself. It
is the church of the poem--a favorite with elocutionists--"How he saved
St. Michael." Says the poem, in one of its stanzas, its spire rose
"High over the lesser steeples, tipped with a golden ball
That hung like a radiant planet caught in its earthward fall,
First glimpse of home to the sailor who made the harbor round,
And last slow fading vision, dear, to the outward bound."
Next in interest among the churches of Charleston is St. Philip's
Episcopal Church, in Church street, near Queen. The building itself is
not so venerable as St. Michael's, though its church establishment is
older. The view from the steeple is fine; but its chief interest centres
in the churchyard, where lie some of South Carolina's most illustrious
dead. In one portion of the churchyard is the tomb of John C. Calhoun,
consisting of a plain granite slab, supported by brick walls, and
bearing the simple inscription "Calhoun." The ruins of St. Finbar's
Cathedral (Roman Catholic) stand at the corner of Broad and Friend
streets. The building, which was one of the costliest edifices of
Charleston, was destroyed by the great fire of 1861, and the walls,
turrets and niches still standing are exceedingly picturesque. Other
handsome church edifices abound. The old Huguenot Church, at the corner
of Church and Queen streets has its walls lined with quaint and elegant
mural entablatures.
[Illustration: CUSTOM HOUSE, CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA.]
The Post Office, at the foot of Broad street, is a venerable structure,
dating back to the colonial period, the original material for its
construction having being brought from England in 1761. It received
considerable damage during the war, but has since been renovated.
The new United States Custom House, which, when completed, will be the
finest edifice in the city, is of white marble, in very elegant
Corinthian style, and is situated south of the market wharf, on Cooper
River.
The old Orphan House of Charleston is one of the most famous
institutions in the country. It stands in spacious grounds between
Calhoun and Vanderbuist streets, and a statue of William Pitt, erected
during the Revolution, stands in the centre of the grounds. John Charles
Fremont, the conqueror of California, and once a candidate for the
Presidency, and C.C. Memminger, Secretary of the Treasury of the
Confederate States, were both educated here. The Charleston Library, at
the corner of Broad and Church streets, founded in 1748, and the College
of Charleston, located in the square bounded by George, Green, College
and St. Philip streets, and founded in 1788, are both spacious and
commodious buildings.
One of the most characteristic sights of Charleston is to be seen
between six and nine o'clock in the morning, in and about market Hall,
in Meeting street, near the Bay. The Hall is a fine building in temple
form, with a lofty portico in front, and a row of long, low sheds in the
rear.
There is nothing picturesque in the country around about Charleston. On
the contrary, it is low, flat and uninteresting. Looking across the
Ashley River, which is more than a quarter of a mile wide here, there is
on the opposite side a long, low line of nearly dead level, with
occasional sparse pine forests, interspersed with fields of open sand.
There are no palmettoes, but here and there are gigantic oaks, hung with
pendants of gray Spanish moss, and occasional green spikes of the
Spanish bayonet. The view across the Cooper is very similar. Large
extents of country in the neighborhood of Charleston, especially that
lying along the streams, and stretching for many miles inland, are low
and swampy. The region is sparsely settled, and furnishes no thriving
agricultural or manufacturing population, which, seeking a market or a
port for its productions, and wanting supplies in return, helps to build
up the city. Several railways connecting with the North, West and South
centre here; and she is also connected, by means of steamship lines,
with the principal Atlantic seaports and some European ones. She is also
the centre of a great lumber region, and annually exports many million
feet of lumber.
There are few points of interest about the city. Besides Sullivan's
Island, Mount Pleasant, on the northern shore of the harbor, so named,
probably, because the land is sufficiently high to escape being a swamp,
is a favorite picnic resort. The antiquarian will find interest in the
old Church of St. James, about fifteen miles from Charleston, on Goose
Creek. It is secluded in the very heart of the pine forest, entirely
isolated from habitations, and is approached by a road scarcely more
than a bridle-path. The church was built in 1711, and the royal arms of
England, which are emblazoned over the pulpit, saved it from destruction
during the Revolutionary War. On the walls and altars are tablets in
memory of the early members of the organization, one dated 1711, and
another 1717. The pews are square and high, the pulpit or reading desk
exceedingly small, and the floor is of stone. On the other side of the
road, a short distance from this church, is a farm known as The Oaks,
approached by a magnificent avenue, a quarter of a mile in length, of
those trees, believed to be nearly two hundred years old. They are
exceedingly large, and form a continuous archway over the road, their
branches festooned with long fringes of gray moss, which soften and
conceal the ravages of age.
Magnolia Cemetery lies just outside the city, on its northern boundary.
It is beautified by live oaks and magnolias, and contains, among other
fine monuments, those of Colonel William Washington, of Revolutionary
fame, Hugh Legare and Dr. Gilmore Simms, the novelist. The roads leading
out of the city by the Cooper and Ashley rivers afford attractive
drives. What the scenery lacks in grandeur and picturesqueness is made
up in beauty by the abundance of lovely foliage, composed of pines,
oaks, magnolias, myrtles and jasmines, exhibiting a tropical
luxuriance.
On the twenty-seventh of April, 1838, Charleston was visited by a fire
which proved exceedingly disastrous. Nearly one-half the city was swept
by the flames, which raged for twenty-eight hours, and were finally
averted only by the blowing up of buildings in their path. There were
1158 buildings destroyed, involving a loss of three millions of dollars.
The most shocking feature of the catastrophe was that, in the
carelessness of handling the gunpowder in blowing up these buildings,
four of the most prominent citizens were killed, and several others
injured. The fire of 1861 exceeded this in destructiveness, and to it
were added the terrific effects of a four years' besiegement. So that it
can be truly said that Charleston has been purified by fire. She is
to-day fully recovered from the effects, and as prosperous as her
geographical position will permit.
[Illustration: MAGNOLIA CEMETERY, CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA.]