HISTORY AND ARISTOCRACY
The cool shade of aristocracy....
--SIR W.F.P. NAPIER.
Just now, when we are being unpleasantly awakened to the fact that our
vaunted American melting-pot has not been doing its work; when some of
us are perhaps wondering whether the quality of metal produced by the
crucible will ever be of the best; it is comforting to reflect that a
city whose history, traditions and great names are so completely
involved with Americanism in its highest forms, a city we think of as
ultra-American, is peculiarly a melting-pot product.
The original Charleston colonists were English and Irish, sent out under
Colonel Sayle, in 1669, by the Lords Proprietors, to whom Charles II had
granted a tract of land in the New World, embracing the present States
of Georgia and North and South Carolina. These colonists touched at Port
Royal--where the Marine Barracks now are (and ought not to be)--but
settled on the west side of the Ashley River, across from where
Charleston stands. It was not until 1680 that they transferred their
settlement to the present site of the city, naming the place Charles
Town in honor of the King. In 1671 the colony contained 263 men able to
bear arms, 69 women and 59 children. In 1674, when New York was taken by
the English from the Dutch, a number of the latter moved down to the
Carolina colony. French Protestants had, at that time, already begun to
arrive, and more came after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in
1685. In 1680 Germans came. By 1684 there were four Huguenot settlements
in Carolina. In 1696 a Quaker was governor for a short time, and in the
same year a body of New Englanders arrived from Dorchester,
Massachusetts, establishing a town which they called Dorchester, near
the present town of Summerville, a few miles from Charleston. At that
time a number of Scottish immigrants had already arrived, though more
came in 1715 and 1745, after the defeat of the Highlanders. From 1730 to
1750 new colonists came from Switzerland, Holland and Germany. As early
as 1740 there were several Jewish families in Charleston, and some of
the oldest and most respected Jewish families in the United States still
reside there. Also, when the English drove the Acadians from Canada in
1755, twelve hundred of them immigrated to Carolina. By 1790, then, the
city had a population of a little more than 15,000, which was about half
the number of inhabitants then contained in the city of New York. In the
case of Charleston, however, more than one half her people, at that
time, were negroes, slavery having been introduced by Sir John Yeamans,
an early British governor. By 1850 the city had about 20,000 white
citizens and 23,000 blacks, and by 1880 some 7,500 more, of which
additional number two thirds were negroes. The present population is
estimated at 65,000, which makes Charleston a place of about the size of
Rockford, Illinois, Sioux City, Iowa, or Covington, Kentucky; but as, in
the case of Charleston, more than half this number is colored,
Charleston is, if the white population only is considered, a place of
approximately 30,000 inhabitants, or, roughly speaking, about the size
of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., or Colorado Springs, Colorado.
In area, also, Charleston is small, covering less than four square
miles. This is due to the position of the city on a peninsula formed by
the convergence and confluence of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, which
meet at Charleston's beautiful Battery precisely as the Hudson River and
the East River meet at the Battery in New York. The shape of Charleston,
indeed, greatly resembles that of Manhattan Island, and though her
harbor and her rivers are neither so large nor so deep as those of the
port of New York, they are altogether adequate to a considerable
maritime activity.
The Charleston Chamber of Commerce (which, like everything else in
Charleston dates from long ago, having been founded in 1748) quotes
President Taft as calling this port the most convenient one to Panama--a
statement which the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce is in position to
dispute. The fact remains, however, that Charleston's position on the
map justifies the Chamber of Commerce's alliterative designation of the
place as "The Plumb-line Port to Panama." This is so true that if
Charleston should one day be shaken loose from its moorings by an
earthquake--something not unknown there--and should fall due south upon
the map, it would choke up the mouth of the Canal, were not Cuba
interposed, to catch the debris.
Before the Civil War, Charleston was the greatest cotton shipping port
of the country, and it still handles large amounts of cotton and rice.
Until a few years ago South Carolina was the chief rice producing State
in the Union, and history records that the first rice planted in the
Carolinas, if not in the country, was secured and sown by an early
governor of Carolina, Thomas Smith, who died in 1694. It may be noted in
passing that this Thomas Smith bore the title "Landgrave," the Lords
Proprietors, in their plan of government for the colony--which, by the
way, was drawn up by the philosopher Locke--having provided for a
colonial nobility with titles. The titles "Baron" and "Landgrave" were
hereditary in several Charleston families, and constitute, so far as I
know, the only purely American titles of nobility that ever existed.
Descendants of the old Landgraves still reside in Charleston, and in at
least one instance continue to use the word "Landgrave" in connection
with the family name.
The prosperity of Charleston since the Civil War has depended more,
perhaps, than on any other single product, upon the trade in phosphate,
large deposits of which underlie this region.
The real wonder of Charleston, the importance of the place among
American cities, cannot, however, be said to have resulted primarily
from commerce (though her commerce is growing), or from greatness of
population (though Charleston is the metropolis of the Carolinas), but
is involved with matters of history, tradition and beauty. The mantle of
greatness was assumed by this city in colonial times, and has never been
laid aside. Among the most distinguished early Americans were many
Charlestonians, and in not a few instances the old blood still endures
there, and even the old names: such names as Washington, Pinckney, Bull,
Pringle, Rutledge, Middleton, Drayton, Alston, Huger, Agassiz, Ravenel,
Izard, Gadsden, Rhett, Calhoun, Read, De Saussure, Lamar and Brawley, to
mention but a few.
* * * * *
Charleston's early history is rich in pirate stories of the most
thrilling moving-picture variety. Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet and other
disciples of the Jolly Roger preyed upon Charleston shipping. Bonnet
once held a Mr. Samuel Wragg of Charleston prisoner aboard his ship
threatening to send his head to the city unless the unfortunate man
should be ransomed--the demand being for medicines of various kinds.
Colonel Rhett, of Charleston, captured Bonnet and his ship after a
savage fight, but Bonnet soon after escaped from the city in woman's
clothing. Still later he was retaken, hanged, as he deserved to be, and
buried along with forty of his band at a point now covered by the
Battery Garden, that exquisite little park at the tip of the city, which
is the favorite promenade of Charlestonians. In another fight which
occurred just off Charleston bar, a crew of citizens under Governor
Robert Johnson defeated the pirate Richard Worley, who was killed in the
action, and captured his ship, which, when the hatches were opened
proved to be full of prisoners, thirty-six of them women. Even as late
as the period of the War of 1812--a war which did not affect Charleston
save in the way of destroying her shipping and causing poverty and
distress--a case of brutal piracy is recorded. The daughter of Aaron
Burr, Theodosia by name, was married to Governor Joseph Alston. After
her father's trial for high treason, when he was disgraced and broken,
she tried to comfort him, for the two were peculiarly devoted. Intending
to visit him she set sail from Charleston for New York in a ship which
was never heard from again. Somewhere I have read a description of the
distraught father's long vigils at New York, where he would stand gazing
out to sea long after all hope had been abandoned by others. Mrs. St.
Julien Ravenel tells us in her charming book, that thirty years later an
old sailor, dying in a village of the North Carolina coast, confessed
that he had been one of a pirate crew which had captured the ship and
compelled the passengers to walk the plank. This story is also given by
Charles Gayarré, who says the pirate chief was none other than Dominick
You, who fought under Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, and is
buried in that city. The husband and father of Mrs. Alston were spared
the ghastly tale, Mrs. Ravenel says, since both were already in their
graves when the sailor's deathbed confession solved the mystery.
In the Revolution, Charleston played an important part. Men of
Charleston were, of course, among the signers of the Declaration of
Independence. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who gave us the immortal
maxim: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!" who was on
Washington's staff, was later Ambassador to France and president-general
of the Sons of the Cincinnati, was a Charlestonian of the
Charlestonians, and lies buried in St. Michael's. Such Revolutionary
names as Marion, Laurens, William Washington, Greene, Hampton, Moultrie
and Sumter are associated with the place, and two of these are reëchoed
in the names of those famous forts in Charleston harbor on which
attention was fixed at the outbreak of the Civil War: Moultrie and
Sumter--the latter, target for the first shot fired in the conflict.
Nearly thirty years before the Civil War, Charleston had distinguished
herself in the arts of peace by producing the first locomotive tried in
the United States, and by constructing the first consecutive hundred
miles of railroad ever built in the world, and now, with the War, she
distinguished herself by initiating other mechanical devices of very
different character--a semi-submersible torpedo boat and the first
submarine to torpedo a hostile war vessel. True, David Bushnell of
Connecticut did construct a crude sort of submarine during the
Revolutionary War, and succeeded in getting under a British ship with
the machine, but he was unable to fasten his charge of powder and his
effort consequently failed. Robert Fulton also experimented with
submarines, or "plunging boats" as he called them, and was encouraged
for a time by Napoleon I. The little _David_ of the Confederate navy is
sometimes referred to as the first submarine but the _David_ was not
actually an underwater boat, but a torpedo boat which could run awash,
with her funnels and upper works slightly out of water. She was a
cigar-shaped vessel thirty-three feet long, built of wood, propelled by
steam, and carrying her torpedo on a pole, forward. Dr. St. Julien
Ravenel of Charleston and Captain Theodore Stoney devised the craft, and
she was built by funds subscribed by Charleston merchants. In command of
Lieutenant W.T. Glassell, C.S.N., and with three other men aboard, she
torpedoed the United States ship _New Ironsides_, flagship of the fleet
blockading Charleston. The _New Ironsides_ was crippled, but not lost.
After this United States vessels blockading Charleston protected
themselves with booms. This resulted in the construction of an actual
undersea torpedo boat, the _Hunley_. This extraordinary vessel has been
spoken of as having had the appearance of a huge iron coffin, as well as
the attributes of one, for she proved a death-trap for successive crews
on three trial trips. As there were no electric motors or gasoline
engines in those days, she was run by hand, eight men crowded together
turning a crank-shaft which operated her propeller. After repeated
sinkings, she was raised, manned by new men, and sent forth again.
Finally, in Charleston harbor she succeeded in destroying the United
States man-o'-war _Housatonic_, but at the same time went down, herself,
drowning or suffocating all on board. A memorial drinking fountain on
the Battery, at the foot of Meeting Street, commemorates "the men of the
Confederate Army and Navy, first in marine warfare to employ torpedo
boats--1863-1865." On this memorial are given the names of sixteen men
who perished in torpedo attacks on the blockading fleet, among them
Horace L. Hunley, set down as inventor of the submarine boat. The names
of fourteen others who were lost are unknown.
* * * * *
Lord William Campbell, younger son of the Duke of Argyll, was British
governor at Charleston when the Revolution broke out. He had married a
Miss Izard, of Charleston, who brought him a dowry of fifty thousand
pounds, a large sum in those times. Their home was in a famous old house
which stands on Meeting Street, and it was from the back yard of this
house that Lord William fled in a rowboat to a British man-o'-war, when
it became evident that Charleston was no longer hospitable to
representatives of the Crown. Later his wife followed him to Great
Britain, where they remained.
The Pringle House, as it is now called, formerly the Brewton house,
perhaps the most superb old residence in the city, was the headquarters
of General Sir Henry Clinton, after he had captured Charleston, and was
the residence of Lord Rawdon, the unpleasant British commander who
succeeded Clinton. Cornwallis lived outside the town at Drayton Hall,
which still stands, on the Ashley River. After his capture Cornwallis
was exchanged for Henry Laurens, a distinguished Charlestonian, who,
though he wept over the Declaration of Independence, was before long
president of the Continental Congress, and later went to France, where
he was associated with Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John Adams in
negotiating the treaty of peace and independence for America.
Mrs. Ravenel says in her book that Sherman destroyed all but one of the
superb old houses on the Ashley River, and when we consider that
Sherman's troops invested Charleston just before the end of the War, and
reflect upon the general's notorious "carelessness with fire," we have
cause for national rejoicing that Charleston, with its unmatched
buildings and their splendid contents, was not laid in ashes, as were
Atlanta and Columbia. Had Sherman burned Charleston it would be hard for
even a Yankee to forgive him.
Even without the aid of the Northern general, the city has been able to
furnish disastrous conflagrations of her own, over a period of two
centuries and more, and I find in the quaint reminiscences of Charles
Fraser, already alluded to, a lamentation that, because of fires, many
of the old landmarks have disappeared, and the city is "losing its look
of picturesque antiquity." To make matters worse, there came, in 1886,
an earthquake, rendering seven eighths of the houses uninhabitable until
repairs aggregating some millions of dollars had been made. Up to the
time of the earthquake the old mansion from which Lord William Campbell
fled at the beginning of the Revolution, was adorned by a battlemented
roof. It is recorded that when the shock came, an Englishman was in the
house, and that in his eagerness to get outdoors he pushed others aside.
As he reached the front steps, however, the battlements came crashing
down. He was the one person from that house who perished, and his only
monument is the patch of comparatively new stone where the broken steps
have been repaired.
* * * * *
My companion and I achieved entrance to one of the famous old Charleston
houses which we had been particularly anxious to see, through the
kindness of a lady to whom we had a letter of introduction, who happened
to be a relative of the owner of the house.
It seems necessary to explain, at this juncture, that in Charleston,
many proper names of foreign origin have been corrupted in
pronunciation. A few examples will suffice: The Dutch name Vanderhorst,
conspicuous in the early annals of the city, has come to be pronounced
"Van-Dross"; Legaré, the name of another distinguished old family,
commemorated in the name of Legaré Street, is pronounced "Legree"; De
Saussure has become "Dess-a-sore," with the accent on the first
syllable, and Prioleau is called "Pray-low."
I was unaware of these matters when my companion and I visited the
ancient house I speak of. Though I had heard the name of the proprietor
of the mansion spoken many times, and recognized it as a distinguished
Charleston name, I had never seen it written; however, without having
given the matter much thought, I had, unfortunately, reached my own
conclusions as to how it was spelled. Still more unfortunately, while I
was delighting in the drawing-room of that wonderful old house, with the
portraits of ladies in powdered hair and men in cocked hats and periwigs
looking down upon me from the walls, I was impelled to reassure myself
as to the spelling of the name. Let us assume that the name sounded like
"Bowfee." That was not it but it will suffice for illustration.
"I suppose," I said to our charming cicerone, "that the family name is
spelled 'B-o-w-f-e-e'?"
I had no sooner spoken than I realized, with a sudden access of horror
what I had done. In guessing I had sinned, but in guessing wrong I had
ruined myself. All this came to me instantly and positively, as by a
psychic message of unparalleled definiteness from the dead ancestors
whose portraits hung upon the paneling. It was as though they had joined
in a great ghostly shout of execration, which was the more awful because
it was a silent shout that jarred upon the senses rather than the ear
drums. Then, before the lady replied, while the sound of my own voice
saying "B-o-w-f-e-e" seemed to reverberate through the apartment, I
suddenly comprehended the spirit of Charleston: understood that,
compared with Charleston, Boston is as a rough mining camp, while New
York hardly exists at all, being a mere miasma of vulgarity.
There was a long silence, in which the lady to whom I had spoken gazed
from the window at the rainy twilight. Her silence, I am persuaded, was
not intended to rebuke me; she was not desirous of crushing me; she was
merely stunned. Indeed, when at last she spoke, there was in her tone
something of gentleness.
"The name," she said, "is Beaufoy--B-e-a-u-f-o-y. It is of Huguenot
origin."
Passionately I wished for an earthquake--one that might cause the floor
to open beneath me, or the roof to fall through and blot me from her
sight. How to get away?--that was my one thought. To cover my
embarrassment, I tried to make small-talk about a medallion of an
Emperor of France, which hung upon the paneling. The lady said it had
been given to an ancestor of the Beaufoys by the Emperor himself. That,
for some reason, seemed to make things rather worse. I wished I had not
dragged the Emperor into the conversation.
"It is getting dark," I said. "It is time we were going."
This the lady did not dispute.
Of our actual farewells and exit from that house, I remember not a
detail, save that, as we departed, I knew that we should never see this
lady again; that for her I no longer existed, and that in my downfall I
had dragged my companion with me. The next thing I definitely recollect
is walking swiftly up Meeting Street beside him, in the rain and
darkness of late afternoon. All the way back to the hotel we strode side
by side in pregnant silence; neither did we speak as we ascended to our
rooms.
Some time later, while I was dressing for dinner, he entered my
bedchamber. At the moment, as it happened, I was putting cuff-links into
a dress shirt. With this task I busied myself, dreading to look up. In
the meantime I felt his eyes fixed upon me. When the links were in, I
delayed meeting his gaze by buttoning the little button in one
sleeve-vent, above the cuff.
"Do you mean to say you button those idiotic little buttons?" he
demanded. "I didn't know that anybody ever did that!"
"I don't always," I answered apologetically.
"I should hope not!" he returned. Then he continued: "Do you remember
where we are to be taken to-morrow?"
"Yes," I said. "To the Pringle house."
"Well," said he, "I just came in to ask you, as a favor, not to get off
any fanciful ideas that you may have thought up, about the way to spell
Pringle."