Part 13

“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.

The economic and commercial history of the city, while not so eventful or of so absorbing interest as its military and civil annals, cannot be entirely overlooked. One crop which is not now cultivated in the State, but which once enriched the people of the planter city, was first cultivated by a woman, Eliza Lucas, the accomplished daughter of Colonel Lucas, Governor of Antigua, one of the Leeward Islands, and afterward the mother of General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and General Thomas Pinckney, of South Carolina. With seed sent her by her father, Miss Lucas, in 1741-42, planted the first indigo in South Carolina. In 1748, Parliament passed an act allowing a bounty of sixpence per pound, and just before the Revolution the export from Charleston had risen to 1,107,660 pounds.

The cultivation of rice was one of the earliest planting experiments in the State, and though Ramsay, the historian, attributes its introduction to Governor Thomas Smith and a small bag of seed procured from Madagascar in 1694, it is certain that rice had been successfully grown in South Carolina as early as 1691. In 1770, the surplus over consumption exported from Charleston had risen to 120,000 barrels, valued at $1,530,000.

As early as 1770, “patches” of cotton were grown in South Carolina, and year by year thereafter for two decades indigo cultivation declined, and was finally entirely abandoned.

“In 1784,” says the Hon. W. A. Courtenay, the city’s most accomplished and enthusiastic historian, “John Teasdale, a merchant of Charleston, shipped from this city to J. and J. Teasdale, Liverpool, eight bags of cotton. When the vessel arrived out the laughable incident occurred of the cotton being seized on the ground that it could not be grown in America. Upon satisfactory proof, which had to be furnished, it was released. This cotton shipment was the first ever made from the United States to a European port!”

Though slavery is commonly supposed to have rendered those living under its debasing influence inert and slow to enter upon great commercial enterprises, it is remarkable that Charleston merchants and planters planned and successfully constructed the earliest great railroad line in America. Mr. Courtenay says:

“While the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad was being constructed in 1829, under Stephenson’s direction, and Baltimore was reaching out to the Ohio River, Charleston was projecting a railroad to the head of navigation on the Savannah River, which when completed was the longest railroad in the World.”[7]

In the royal grants of land in Carolina the Crown reserved an interest in all precious and base metals, and some of the grants reserved for the King a share of the diamonds and precious stones which avarice rather than common sense suggested might underlie tide-water South Carolina. Geologists and lawyers laughed at the idea of precious stones in marshes and sand dunes, though there had been “black diamonds” there for thousands of years. It was not until after the war between the States that Dr. St. Julien Ravenel’s discovery of the commercial value of the immense phosphate deposits brought wealth and prosperity to many whose needs were the greatest. The fertilizer business then established is still in successful operation and Charleston continues to be the largest phosphate shipping port in the world.

[Illustration: PHILADELPHIA STREET (COON ALLEY).

SCENE IN REAR OF ST. PHILIP’S CHURCH.]

Of the war between the States it is not necessary to write at length. Whether one regards “the firing of the first gun on Fort Sumter as the first rash act of a wild and fatal delusion,” or as the beginning of the greatest war in modern times for constitutional liberty and against the lust for power and territorial domination, no fair man can deny the heroism against unnumbered odds displayed by the Confederate soldiers.

It would be interesting to quote the opinion of Lord Wolseley as to the value of the study of the siege of Charleston in its tactical features as compared with the siege of Sebastopol and other great naval attacks. All the world wondered at the marvellous success of the blockade-runners, and the pages of history may be searched in vain for greater heroism than that displayed by Glassell, Dixon and others who first proved to the world the value of the torpedo in naval warfare; but let two sets of figures suffice:

GENERAL SUMMARY FORT SUMTER, FEBRUARY 1, 1865.

Total number of projectiles fired against it 46,053 Total weight in tons of metal thrown (estimate) 3,500 Total number of days under three great bombardments 117 Total number of days under eight minor bombardments 40 Total number of days under fire, steady and desultory 280 Total number of casualties (52 killed, 267 wounded) 319

[Illustration: THE ATTACK ON CHARLESTON BY THE FEDERAL IRONCLAD FLEET, APRIL 7, 1863.]

Charleston with a white population of 24,000 furnished twenty-three companies of infantry, eleven of artillery and eight of cavalry to the Confederate armies.

The comments of a British officer and of two officers who served in the Federal army as to the extraordinary defence of Charleston are submitted;--for one born and reared in sight of Fort Sumter, and as a child carried away from the city to escape the shells from the “Swamp Angel” on Morris Island, cannot write of his people _sine ira et studio_.

Col. H. Wemyss Feilden, colonel and chief paymaster (retired list), H. B. M. Army says:

“We find a large commercial city, at the commencement of a great war defended by nearly obsolete works and with several unguarded approaches, rendered impregnable in a short time by the skill and genius of the general in command, supported by the indomitable valor, devotion and tenacity of its defenders, and by the unflinching spirit of all ages and both sexes in the community.”

Quartermaster-General M. C. Meigs, U. S. A., in an adverse report to Secretary of War Stanton, in August, 1865, upon the petition of various merchants and wharf owners of Charleston, asking that their warehouses and wharves in the possession of the government be restored to them, says:

“Charleston was a hostile fortress. In its defence the merchants and property owners appear to have aided by all means within their power. Its defence ceased only when, after a siege almost unexampled since the invention of artillery, for duration and persistency, the approach of a powerful army from the Mississippi Valley rendered any further resistance entirely hopeless. Then the armed Rebel forces abandoned the town, destroying such stores as they could. There was no capitulation, no surrender by which any of the extreme rights of captors were modified or abated in the giving up of an equivalent. The place was defended to the last extremity, and the whole town is a conquest, and as such the property of the conquering Government.... The warehouses and wharves used in the contraband trade, in violation of the laws and proclamations of the United States, have been used in aid of the Rebellion.... To put an end to this use, to obtain possession of them, has cost the United States the lives of many thousand of patriotic citizens sacrificed in the skirmishes, assaults, battles and bombardments which have made the bloody record of this unexampled siege. Shells and torpedoes, by land and by water, have destroyed our citizens.... To restore this property, which cost the loyal people so much blood, and so much treasure, to the original disloyal owners would, it seems to me, give a shock to every earnest and loyal man. Far better give the property to the families and heirs of the victims of the massacre of Wagner, or of those who perished upon the monitors sunk by the agents of the Torpedo Bureau in Charleston Harbor.”

It only remains to say that President Andrew Johnson did not share the views of Quartermaster-General Meigs and that the property was restored to the claimants.

Ex-Governor D. H. Chamberlain, formerly an officer in the Union army, speaking to a representative young Virginian--a great-grandson of Chief Justice Marshall--in Charleston a few days ago, said:

“When I walk the streets of this city of 65,000 inhabitants, and more than half of them colored, and when I see the poverty of its material resources as compared with the large and flourishing business centres of the North, and when I remember that the population of this city in 1861 was not over 41,000, of which not over 24,000 were white, I marvel at the blind confidence and fatuity of this people in inaugurating the most tremendous war of modern times; but when I walk along the sea wall of the ‘Battery’ and see in the distance Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie and other fortifications which, though often attacked, were never carried by storm, I begin to understand the wonderful spirit of this people. Charlestonians held this stronghold for four years against the most powerful fleet of war vessels ever seen up to that time on this hemisphere.”

[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM MOULTRIE.

FROM A PAINTING BY COL. J. TRUMBULL.]

Disastrous fires have destroyed many of the historic landmarks of the town, and the most interesting public building still standing is the Colonial Exchange, built in 1771, at a cost of £41,470. In its basement Colonel Isaac Hayne and other patriot prisoners were confined, and here General Moultrie walled up one hundred thousand pounds of gunpowder, which remained undiscovered during the three years that the British held the town. It was the scene of a ball and public reception in honor of General Washington when he visited Charleston after the Revolution, and was used as the Post Office from 1783 until the construction of the new granite Post Office, in Italian Renaissance style, during the last decade.

Of the first St. Philip’s Church, built on the present site, Edmund Burke said that it “is spacious, and executed in a very handsome taste, exceeding everything of that kind which we have in America,” and another author (the biographer of Whitefield) called it “a grand church resembling one of the new Churches in London.” That building was constructed in 1723 and was the leading church in the State until its destruction in the great fire of 1835. The architectural proportions and beauty of the present St. Philip’s Church,--with its lofty steeple reaching to a height of nearly two hundred feet, from which shines at night a beacon light to mariners far away at sea,--“though perhaps peculiar to themselves, command the instant admiration of every beholder, professional or otherwise.”

No visitor to Charleston fails to visit St. Michael’s Church, the finest piece of colonial ecclesiastical architecture in the South, and which was first opened for divine service in 1761. The story of its chime of bells attracts the stranger and makes the bells doubly dear to all born within the shadow of the lofty tower. They never jangled out of tune, except on the eventful night of August 31, 1886, when the steeple was swayed by the earthquake. In 1782, Major Traille, of the Royal Artillery, took possession of the bells as spoils of war and sent them back to England, but the next year they were repurchased by a Mr. Rhyner and sent back to Charleston, where they continued to voice the people’s joy or woe until the war between the States, when they were sent to Columbia for safe keeping. When General Sherman burned that city in 1865, two of the bells were stolen and the rest were so injured as to be useless. Once again the bells were shipped to England, where they were recast by the successors of the firm which had made them in 1764, from the same patterns, and again returned to Charleston and replaced in the belfry on March 21, 1867.

The church has been commemorated in the popular lyric of Mrs. Stansberry, _How he Saved St. Michael’s_, though as a matter of fact it was the spire of St. Philip’s that was saved from fire by an heroic negro. Timrod, during the war between the States, refers to the church in one of his tenderest poems entitled, _Christmas_, and Simms, when the steeple was made a target for Federal guns, published his passionate lines beginning:

“Aye, strike with sacrificial aim, The temple of the living God, Hurl iron bolt and seething flame Through aisles which holiest feet have trod!”

[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL’S CHURCH, CHARLESTON.]

From the “pigeon holes,” the highest point in the tower, patriots of the Revolution watched the coming and progress of the British fleets of Parker and Arbuthnot, and almost a century later the war-ships of Dupont and Dahlgren were sighted from the same aerie long before they crossed the bar.

Its congregation is so largely composed of the élite of Charleston society that a local wit had irreverently called the venerable structure “the Chapel of Ease of the St. Cecilia Society.”

It is claimed that the French Protestant (Huguenot) Church in Charleston is nearly if not quite coeval in date with the present city. There is some evidence that the church owes its origin to the colony of French Protestants sent out to the Province in 1680 by Charles II. of England. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the consequent Huguenot emigration to America in 1685 put the church on a solid foundation, though many of the Huguenots who came to Carolina settled at Orange Quarter, on the Santee River, at St. John’s, Berkeley, and possibly in St. James, Goose Creek. In 1687, came Elias Prioleau, the first recognized and regular pastor of the French Church in Charleston. Two of his lineal descendants are now in the eldership of the church. After the fire of 1740, in which the early records of the church were destroyed, the liturgy of Neufchâtel and Valangin was adopted and an English translation of it is still in use.

In 1845 the present tasteful Gothic edifice, the fourth upon the same site, was built, and has been in use ever since, except during the war between the States.

In 1858, before a baptism of blood and fire had put the courage and tenacity of Charleston to the supreme test, and twenty-eight years before the memorable earthquake, James L. Petigru, the head of the bar of Charleston, and President of the Historical Society of South Carolina, said in a public speech: “Perhaps the opinion is tinged with partiality; yet, after making due allowance for such bias, I think I may say that in the circle of vision from the belfry of St. Michael’s there has been as much high thought spoken, as much heroic action taken, as much patient endurance borne as in any equal area of land on this Continent.”

With such a past, Charleston looks hopefully into the future, confidently expecting as signal triumphs in the arts of peace as her sons once achieved against the fleets of France, Spain and England.

[Illustration: SEAL OF CHARLESTON.]

FOOTNOTES:

[7] The crude rules for passenger transportation in “the thirties” read strangely to the traveller who almost annihilates time and space in the modern “vestibule train,” at the rate of sixty miles or more an hour. An early resolution of the South Carolina Railroad Board of Directors declares that there shall be “in future not over twenty-five passengers to any car; speed shall not exceed one car and passengers at fifteen miles per hour; two cars and passengers at twelve miles per hour; three cars and passengers at ten miles per hour.”

[Illustration]

SAVANNAH

NEVER LAST AND OFTEN FIRST

BY PLEASANT ALEXANDER STOVALL