1735
Shepheard’s Tavern
The first record of a theatrical season in Charleston began with the show The Orphan, or the Unhappy Marriage by Thomas Otway. It was performed in the long room of Shepherd’s Tavern, which once stood on the corner of Church and Broad Street. Tickets cost 40 shillings. (Note: one shilling =12 pennies, so the ticket cost would be appx. $8.)
1781 – American Revolution.
Patriot commanders Lieutenant Colonel “Light Horse” Harry Lee (father of Robert E. Lee) and Brigadier General Francis Marion the “Swamp Fox” of the South Carolina militia combined their forces and raided Georgetown, South Carolina, which was defended by 200 British soldiers.
1847
A leader in the successful fight to wrest California away from Mexico, the explorer and mapmaker John C. Fremont, the Great Pathfinder, briefly became governor of the newly won American territory. Fremont, CA is named after him.
Fremont attended the College of Charleston, and later mapped the Oregon Trail with Kit Carson. He was one of the first two senators from California, serving only 175 days in 1850-51. He was a Free Soil Democrat and was defeated for reelection largely because of his strong opposition to slavery. He was the first presidential candidate of the new Republican Party in 1856.
EMANCIPATION CONTROVERSY. Frémont took command of the Department of the West for the Union Army in 1861. On August 30 Frémont, without notifying President Lincoln, issued a controversial proclamation putting Missouri under martial law. The edict stipulated that civilians in arms would be subject to court marital and execution, the property of those who aided secessionists would be confiscated, and the slaves of rebels were emancipated. President Abraham Lincoln asked Frémont to revise the order of emancipation. Frémont refused to do so. Lincoln publicly revoked the proclamation and relieving Frémont of command on November 2, 1861, saying, that Frémont “should never have dragged the Negro into the war.”
The FIRST Federal official to free slaves was a Southern man. Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, re-enslaved the freed blacks because it was not politically convenient … at that time.
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