The first election was held in Charles Town, choosing twenty men as a Parliament and Sir John Yeamans as speaker. Over half the councilmen were Barbadians. Five men were then selected to represent the people as the Grand Council – Mr. Thomas Gray, Mr. Maurice Mathews, Lt. Henry Hughes, Mr. Christopher Portman and Mr. Ralph Marshall. Yeamans took every opportunity to question the legality of West’s appointment as governor.
John Coming, first mate of the Carolina, wrote that “the Barbadians endeavor to rule all.” Yeamans complained that “West is proud and peevish.” Others called Yeamans “disaffected and too selfish.” The colony was firmly divided into separate factions.
1766 – American Revolution – Foundations
John Rutledge, conveying the wishes of the South Carolina Assembly, instructed Charles Garth, their agent in London, to oppose the stamp tax, and any other tax by Parliament. Rutledge claimed it was “inconsistent with that inherent right of every British subject, not to be taxed but by his own consent, or that of his representatives.”
1781 – American Revolution
Col. John Laurens arrived in Boston with two shiploads of military supplies and half a million dollars in aid from the French.
A Dutch privateer sloop belonging to Captain Stool from New York anchored in Charles Town. Stool reported that while in St. Augustine they learned that a French ship was planning to attack Carolina. While he was making his report, five columns of smoke appeared on Sullivan’s Island, the signal that a fleet was off the bar.
It was a French squadron from Martinique led by Captain De Feboure which included the frigate Soleil (22 guns), two 8-gun sloops, two smaller sloops and a galley. On board were more than 700 Spanish soldiers.
Some of the Spanish landed on James Island and burned a plantation.
1775
Miles Brewton House, 27 King Street, Charleston, SC
Miles Brewton, Charleston merchant, set sail for Philadelphia with his wife and three children. They were never seen or heard from again, and were listed as “lost at sea.” His sister, Rebecca Brewton Motte, inherited Mount Joseph, her brother’s plantation on the Congaree River in St. Matthews Parish, the Miles Brewton House on King Street in Charleston and one of South Carolina’s largest fortunes.
After Charles Town surrendered to the British, following a 40-day bombardment, the Miles Brewton House became British HQ for General Clinton and Lord Rawdon. In 1865, the house became HQ for Union Generals Meade and Hatch.
1785
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
The Agricultural Society of South Carolina was founded. Thomas Heyward, Jr invited a select group of planters to the Exchange Bldg. for “the purpose of forming a Society in this state to encourage Agriculture and other Rural Concerns.”
On October 29th, 1923, a black musical named Runnin’ Wild opened on Broadway, with songs by James P. Johnson and Cecil Mack. The first act of the show ended with the song “Charleston.” Elizabeth Welsh, as the character of Ruth Little in the show, performed the dance with chorus boys called the “Dancing Redcaps.” Elida Webb, the choreographer, claimed to have invented the dance, which, of course, was not true.
The dance called the Charleston has deep roots that trace back to the Ashanti tribe from the Gold Coast of Africa. As those Africans were enslaved and brought into America, many of their tribal customs were passed down through generations living on South Carolina low country plantations along the coast. By the turn of the 20th century hundreds of thousands of emancipated slaves, called “geechie” – slang for people from the low country, had moved to Chicago and New York for economic opportunity. Their syncopated minstrel-style music of the 1890s became ragtime, blues and ultimately, jazz. The Jenkins Orphanage Band of Charleston performed on the streets of Harlem during the first decade of the 20th century and the description of their dance steps sounds very much like the modern-day Charleston.
In fact, the composer of the song “Charleston,” James P. Johnson, talked about his inspiration for the song.
“The people who came to The Jungle Casino [Harlem] were mostly from around Charleston, S.C. They picked their [dance] partners with care that would give them a chance to get off. It was while playing for these Southern dancers that I composed a number of Charlestons, eight of them, all with the same dance rhythm. One of these later became my famous ‘Charleston’ when it hit Broadway.”
Another Harlem piano player, Willie “the Lion” Smith recalled that “the kids from the Jenkins Orphanage Band of Charleston used to do Geechie steps when they were in New York on their yearly tour.” What cannot be denied is that by the end of 1923 everybody in America was doing the Charleston.
Nothing else epitomizes the spirit and joyous exuberance of the 1920s as the Charleston. Other dance crazes have had their fifteen minutes of fame: the Waltz, the Tango, the Hokey-pokey, the Twist, the Hustle, the Macarena, and even Break dancing. None of them, however, managed to influence and infect an entire generation so thoroughly the way the Charleston did. Almost 100 years later, the image of the Jazz Age is always a Flapper doing the Charleston. No other American decade can be so neatly summed up in one simple image.
Tin Pan Alley songwriters in New York quickly turned out hundreds of “Charleston” songs. Charleston contests became a regular part of Dance halls and hotels everywhere, from big cities to small towns. One of the most famous scenes in American cinema is the Charleston dancing contest in It’s A Wonderful Life with James Stewart and Donna Reed falling into the swimming pool as the dance floor opens up. Hospitals across America began to admit patients complaining of “Charleston knee.”
Many non-dancing jobs of the day required black employees to be competent to dance or teach the Charleston in order to be hired. There were hundreds of advertisements in the New York papers looking for a waiter, a maid, a cook, or a gardener with the stipulation: “Must be able to Charleston!”
However, not everyone was infected with Charleston fever. In London, sixty teachers of ballroom dancing were taught the “Charleston” in July 1925 and pronounced it “vulgar.” That is, until the Prince of Wales, Prince Edward, learned it and performed it very skillfully in public. The Vicar of St. Aidan’s however, thought that “any lover of the beautiful will die rather than be associated with the Charleston. It is neurotic! It is rotten! It stinks! Phew, open the windows!”
In 1925, tragedy struck. The press found a physician in Seneca, Kansas, who claimed that “pretty Evelyn Myers,” age 17, had died of peritonitis brought on by dancing the Charleston too violently. Variety Magazine reported that in Boston, the vibrations of Charleston dancers were so strong that it caused the Pickwick Club to collapse, killing fifty of its patrons. The headline screamed:
WAS THIS BUILDING STAMPED DOWN BY ‘CHARLESTON’ DANCERS?
More than 200 people – police, fireman and volunteers – worked for twenty hours digging through the rubble of the building to free the trapped victims. Following the catastrophe, the Boston mayor’s office issued an edict banning the Charleston from public dance-halls. Other cities followed suit, banning the dancing of the Charleston for safety reasons, but nothing could stop the Charleston stampede. The more the authorities preached against it, the more popular the Charleston became.
Mayor Frank Borden, Jr, of Bradley Beach, New Jersey, outlawed the dance from the city-owned ballroom. He cited “broken shins” as his reason. “I have no objection to a person dancing their feet and head off, but I think it best that they keep away from the Charleston.”Richard Zober of Passaic, New Jersey also banned the Charleston in his town. “I think it would be safer and better for all concerned,” he said. An article syndicated by the International Feature Service read:
“From coast to coast the ‘Charleston’ has caught the country swaying to its curious rhythm. No dance, since jazz first came into vogue, has created such a furor. Enthusiasts ecstatically stamp to its syncopated measures, while others, equally in earnest, denounce it. But the controversy that is carried on everywhere concerning this latest mania has failed to stem its tide of popularity. America is “Charleston” mad!”
Emil Coleman, a famous orchestra leader, declared that the “Charleston” is “the most characteristically American of any of the modern dances whose peculiar accent in time is the musical expression of the native (black) temperament.” One female evangelist in Oregon called the Charleston “the first and easiest step toward hell.”
Some dance ballrooms gave up trying to discourage the frenetic Charleston all together and just posted large signs on the dance floor that read: PCQ – PLEASE CHARLESTON QUIETLY!
News arrived that Boston, New York and Philadelphia had joined Georgia and Rhode Island in breaking their agreements with the non-importation Association. Henry Laurens wrote:
I am so disappointed in my Expectations of several Colonies North … to their late important Resolutions that I am in a humour to disbelieve the Sincerity of the majority of all Politicians …
1783
Henry Laurens left the American treaty negotiations in Paris to travel to Vigan, France in order visit his ailing brother, James.
1864 – Bombardment of Charleston.
That night, the Swamp Angel resumed shelling Charleston, on the thirty-sixth round the gun barrel blew up, the psychological threat remained real.
Swamp Angel, the Federal gun that fired upon Charleston.
A Federal shell burst just north of the City Market at the corner of Pinckney and Church Streets. It was a 200-pounder shot from the “Swamp Angel.” British war correspondent and illustrator, Frank Vizetelly, was staying at the Charleston Hotel on Meeting Street. Unable to sleep, he was in his room reading Les Miserables when he was:
startled by a noise that …resembled the whirr of a phantom brigade of cavalry galloping in mid-air. My first feeling was that of utter astonishment; but a crash, succeeded by a deafening explosion in the very Street on my apartment was situate, brought me with a bound to the centre of the room … At first I thought a meteor had fallen, but another rush and whirr right over the hotel, and another explosion, settled any doubts I might have had: the city was being shelled.
I will defy anyone who witnessed what I witnessed on leaving my room, not to have given way to mirth … terrified gentlemen rushing about in the scantiest of costumes …One perspiring individual of portly dimensions was trotting to and fro with one boot on and the other in his hand and this was nearly all the dress he could boast …
Frank Vizetelly’s illustration of the first shot
Capt. Charles C. Pinckney, an ordinance officer stationed in Charleston under General Roswell S. Ripley, wrote:
I rode down Smith Street about 2 o’clock A.M. The streets were entirely deserted, yet every house was lighted up. What does it mean? Have the Yankees slipped in and taken the town while I was asleep? I urged the horse, & reached Headquarters. Without notice, a city full of sleeping women & children – a bombardment without military significance … was clearly & purely spite!
Miss Pauline Heyward wrote in her diary:
Father went to Charleston on Sunday, and returned today, the Yankees are shelling the City … One shell went thro the roof of a house and straight thro the first floor … and thro the brick wall … into the yard that was paved, and there buried itself six feet into the earth.
Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard wrote Union Gen. Gillman, accusing the Union officer:
you now resort to the novel measure of turning your guns on the old men, the women and children, and the hospitals of a sleeping city, an act of inexcusable barbarity … if you fire again on this city … without granting a somewhat more reasonable time to remove non-combatants, I shall feel compelled to employ such stringent means of retaliation as my available …
During the night a free “Negro” fire company extinguished the first fire from the bombardment.
A small fleet of ships, commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir John Narborough, was dispatched “for suppressing pirates in the West Indies.” It was England’s first serious attempt at restraining the ever-growing threat from buccaneers. Pirates coming into any of the ports of the province [English controlled] were “to be seized and imprisoned, and their ships’ good and plunder were to be taken and kept in custody until his Majesty’s Royal pleasure should be known.”
One observer remarked “only the poor Pyrats were hanged; rich ones appear’d publicly and were not molested in the least.”
1863 – Bombardment of Charleston.
Gen. Gillmore wrote a note to General P.G. T. Beauregard, which was delivered to Gen. Johnson Hagood, commander of the Confederate Battery Wagner on Morris Island at 11:15 a.m. Gillmore demanded that Morris Island and Fort Sumter be evacuated, or the city would be shelled. He wrote that should Beauregard:
refuse compliance with this demand, or should I receive no reply thereto within four hours after it was delivered into the hands of your subordinate at Ft. Wagner for transmission, I shall open fire on the city of Charleston from batteries already established within easy and effective range at the heart of the city.
Later than night, Lt. Nathan Edwards took a compass reading of the white steeple of St. Michael’s Church from the “Swamp Angel” battery, in order to properly aim the gun at Charleston.
P.G.T. Beauregard
Beauregard was out inspecting the city’s fortifications and not present when the Gillman’s note was delivered to Beauregard’s chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Thomas Jordan. Gillmore forgot to sign the note (whether by accident or by design has never been ascertained) so Jordan returned it to Gillmore’s headquarters for verification. By the time the note was signed and returned to Confederate headquarters it was 9:00 a.m. the following morning and sixteen Union shells had already hit Charleston.
In an attempt to establish an accurate land and rent roll, the Assembly passed the Quitrent Act. It voided all of the old Proprietary patents and ordered that, within eighteen months, these and all other land titles must be registered.
A law also established the South Carolina currency at a ratio of seven for one with sterling.
1781
St. Michael’s Alley, circa 1920
Francis Sheftall, a Jew who came to Charlestown after the fall of Savannah, wrote that after the occupation she:
rented a house in St. Michael’s Alley at the rate of 50 pounds sterling a year, and where the money is to come from god only knows for there is nothing but hard Money goes here and that I can assure you is hard enough to be got.
1776 – American Revolution – Continental Congress.
Edward Rutledge wrote that the states would not approve the Articles of Confederation “as they stand now.” The southern delegations opposed the provision that each state should contribute financially in proportion to their population, including slaves.
In an argument which was to continue for the next ninety years, Southern delegates argued that slaves were wealth-producing property, not people. Thomas Lynch, Jr. of South Carolina said that if the North wanted to debate whether slaves were property “there is an End of the Confederation.”
Edward Rutledge argued it was “unfair to base taxes on one form of wealth-producing property and not others, such as land and livestock.” He also wrote:
I propose that the States should appoint a special Congress to be composed of new Members for this purpose – and that no Person should disclose any part of the present plan.
Henry Laurens wrote his daughter, Martha, from Philadelphia, as he was preparing to leave for England.
My dearest Patsy, remember my precepts; be dutiful, kind and good to your Aunt … let all your reading, your study, and your practice tend to make you a wise and virtuous woman, rather than a fine lady; the former character always comprehends the latter, but the modern fine lady … is too often found to be deficient both in wisdom and in virtue.
1775 – American Revolution – Slavery.
Thomas Jeremy, a free black man, was hanged at the workhouse green on Magazine Street, next to the Jail. Known as “Jerry the pilot” he was convicted of conspiring to foment a slave insurrection. His body was taken down and burned.
Jeremy, worth £1000 sterling and a slave owner himself, had supposedly claimed that if British warships came, he would pilot them across the Charlestown bar himself. Lord William Campbell, Carolina Royal Governor, became convinced that Jeremy was innocent. He believed that the swirling emotions of rebellion, fueled by the massacre at Lexington and Concord, created an atmosphere in which Jeremy was an unwitting victim. The day after Jeremy’s execution Campbell wrote, “I could not save him My Lord!”
1682 – A fourth version of the Fundamental Constitutions was drawn up by the Lords Proprietors. It was never ratified.
1696 – Arrivals.
John Archdale, a Quaker from London, who owned a Proprietary share in Charles Town, arrived as Governor of Carolina, sent at the behest of the Proprietors. He retained Joseph Blake as Deputy Governor. He wrote to the Proprietors that:
When I arriv’d I found all matters in great confusion and every faction apply’d themselves to me in hopes of relief; I appeased them with kind and gentle words and so soon as possible call’d an assembly.
Archdale moderated restrictions against the Indians and was acknowledged for his more humane settlements of conflicts. He also reinforced the liquor act – prohibiting the sale, except by license, of any “beer, cider, wine, brandy, rum, punch or any strong drink whatsoever under the quantity of one gallon.”
He also passed an act stating that “laws passed by the Commons House of Assembly … could not be repealed by London without the consent of the assembly.”
1863 – Bombardment of Charleston.
Under the direction of Union General Quincy Gilmore, Colonel Edward Serrel of the Volunteer Engineers supervised the mounting of a 16,500 pound eight-inch Parrot gun, called the “Swamp Angel.” It was located five miles (8000 yards) south of Charleston, in a muddy stretch of land between Morris Island and James Island.
The Swamp Angel was a rifled gun, which changed artillery forever. No longer did cannons have to merely shoot round balls, the “rifling” inside the cannon barrel (a series of grooves cast into the gun’s tube) enabled them to shoot a long, slender projectile bullet more accurately, and over greater distances.
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