Today In Charleston: January 25

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1735

Andrew Rutledge married Sarah Hext, widow of Hugh Hext, one of the richest men in South Carolina. Hext left Sarah a plantation in Christ Church on the Wando Neck and twenty-three slaves. His other holdings were left as a legacy for his eight-year daughter, Sarah, to inherit when she turned twenty-one or upon her marriage, whichever came first. They included: two houses in Charlestown, a 550-acre plantation at Stono and a 640-acre plantation at St. Helena (Beaufort).

1771

Major Pierce Butler of the British Army married Mary Middleton. She was heiress to a vast fortune, the orphaned daughter of Thomas Middleton, a South Carolina planter and slave importer. Two years later Butler resigned his commission in the British Army and settled with Mary in South Carolina.

Pierce Butler

Pierce Butler

The War for Independence cost him much of his property, and his finances were so precarious for a time that he was forced to travel to Amsterdam to seek a personal loan. Butler won election to both the Continental Congress (1787-88) and the Constitutional Convention. In the latter assembly, he was an outspoken nationalist who attended practically every session and was a key spokesman for the Madison-Wilson caucus. Butler also supported the interests of southern slaveholders. He served on the Committee on Postponed Matters. He was one of the four signers of the Constitution from South Carolina. 

His later career was spent as a wealthy planter. In his last years, he moved to Philadelphia, apparently to be near a daughter who had married a local physician. Butler died there in 1822 at the age of 77 and was buried in the yard of Christ Church.

 

Today In Charleston History: January 24

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1735
tavern2

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.
col fremont
          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.

Today In Charleston History: January 23

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1800 – Deaths.

 Governor Edward Rutledge died “with perfect resignation, and with perfect calmness.” He was buried in the family plot in St. Philip’s graveyard. He was replaced as governor by John Drayton.

Edward Rutledge

Edward Rutledge

Born to an aristocratic family, Edward Rutledge spent most of his life in public service. He was educated in law at Oxford and was admitted to the English Bar. He and his older brother John both attended the Continental Congress and unabashedly supported each other. Edward attended Congress at the remarkable age of 26 and was the youngest man to sign the Declaration of Independence.

During the Revolution he served as a member of the Charleston Battalion of Artillery, and attained the rank of Captain. The colonial legislature sent him back to Congress in 1779 to fill a vacancy. During the defense of Charleston, Rutledge was captured and held prisoner until July of 1781.

In 1782 he served in the state legislature, intent on the prosecution of British Loyalists. In 1789 he was elected Governor.

1861 – Secession.

Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard was appointed superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. It was the shortest term in the post ever. Six days later his commission as superintendent was revoked, the day after his native Louisiana seceded from the Union. The Federal powers-that-be did not trust Beauregard’s Southern sympathies. One month later, Beauregard resigned his captaincy in the U.S. Army Engineers and offered his services to the Confederate government being formed in Montgomery, Alabama.

Pierre Gustave Toutant Beuaregard

Pierre Gustave Toutant Beuaregard

Beauregard was born into a prominent Creole family in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana and raised on a sugarcane plantation outside of New Orleans. He was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1834 at age sixteen and became a popular cadet, earning several nicknames including “Little Napoleon” and “Little Creole,” due to his slight statue – 5’7”, 150-pounds. His favorite teacher was his professor of artillery, Robert Anderson. He graduated second in his class in 1838 and remained at the school to serve as Anderson’s assistant artillery instructor.

During the Mexican War he serving under Gen. Winfield Scott and during the 1850s served as a military engineer clearing the Mississippi River of obstructions. He also spent time as an instructor at West Point before becoming the school’s superintendent for less than a week.

On February 27 in Montgomery, Alabama, Beauregard was appointed the first brigadier general of the Confederate Army and sent to Charleston. On April 12, he ordered the first shot of the Civil War fired at Fort Sumter, commanded by his former West Point instructor, Major Anderson.

Today In Charleston History: January 22

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1787

The Columbian Herald called for drastic measures to prevent burglaries and robberies:

The danger which threatens the inhabitants from a gang of villains who now actually invest this city [Charleston], calls loudly for an extraordinary exertion of the police, but also of the inhabitants themselves. – It were to be wished that voluntary associations might be entered into to patrol the streets, guard the property of citizens, detect the villains, and bring them to condign punishment.

1800 – Slavery.

 The newly freed slave, Telemaque, now called Denmark, chose his former owner’s surname as his own, Vesey. Most freedmen chose a name that cut their ties with their former owners. Denmark, however, knew that making his living in Charleston would be hard enough and the linguistic association with a prominent white man’s name would give him a better chance to make his way in the city. 

He was unable to purchase freedom for his wife, Beck and their three children. He was also not allowed as a free black to live in the home of his wife’s master. Due to Charleston’s growth, city expansion and ship building Denmark began to make his living as a carpenter in Charleston. A Freeman carpenter could earn a respectable $1.50 per day so Vesey apprenticed himself to a “free black” carpenter named Saby Gaillard, who lived at 2 Wentworth Street.

Vesey “soon became much respected and esteem’d by de white folks … distinguished for his great strength and activity.”

vesey statue copy

Denmark Vesey statue @ Hampton Park, Charleston

 

Today In Charleston History: January 21

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1683 – Deaths 

Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper died in Amsterdam.

anthony ashley cooper profile

1813 – Births

John C. Fremont was born in Savannah, Georgia, the illegitimate son of Mrs. Ann Pryor and her French tutor, Charles Fremon. As a young man, John Fremont attended the College of Charleston and in 1838 he was appointed second lieutenant in the Corps of Topographical Engineers of the U.S. Army. He assisted and led multiple surveying expeditions through the western territory of the United States and beyond. Due to his extensive explorations Fremont was nicknamed “The Great Pathfinder.”

Frémont_1856In 1842 Fremont met frontiersman Kit Carson for the first time on a Missouri steamboat in St.  Louis. The two men then led a five-month journey into present-day Wyoming. During a second expedition Fremont and Carson mapped the second half of the Oregon Trail, from South Pass to the Oregon Country, following a route north of the Great Salt Lake, down the Snake River to the Columbia River and into Oregon.

They came within sight of the Cascade Range peaks and mapped Mount St. Helens and Mount Hood. Rather than continue west through the Columbia River gorge to Fort Vancouver, the party turned south and followed Fall Creek to its headwaters near the present-day northern border of California. They ventured into the Sierra Nevada, becoming some of the first Americans to see Lake Tahoe.

Upon his return, Frémont produced a new map, using data gathered during the first expedition to update an earlier map by Gibbs.  Congress published Frémont’s “Report and Map”; it guided thousands of overland immigrants to Oregon and California from 1845 to 1849 which helped guide the forty-niners through the California Gold Rush. 

Fremont later served as a General in the U.S. Army during the Civil War, one of the few Southerners who did not join the Confederacy. He created a controversy when given command of the Department of the West by President Abraham Lincoln. Always an independent-minded man, Frémont made decisions without consulting Washington D.C. or President Lincoln. In 1861 Frémont issued an emancipation edict that freed slaves in his district, and was relieved of his command by President Lincoln for insubordination. Lincoln claimed that Fremont “should never have dragged the Negro into the war.” Two years later, Lincoln would issue his own Emancipation Proclamation and be forever celebrated. Ironically, the first Federal official to free slaves during the War was a Southerner who was reprimanded for his actions. 

In 1856 Fremont was the first Republican to be nominated as a Presidential candidate.

Today In Charleston History: January 20

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1672

Secretary Dalton wrote that the number of colonists transported to Carolina by this date was 337 men, 71 women and 62 children – 470. Sixty-four had died, leaving a population of 406.

1733

James Oglethorpe and Col. William Bull explored the territory around the Savannah River together, scouting for a good location for a permanent settlement. They decide on Yamacraw Bluff on the river, where Savannah sits today.

1807

Joel Roberts Poinsett, dined with Czar Alexander at the Palace in Russia. During the meal Alexander attempted to entice Poinsett into the Russian civil or military service. Poinsett was hesitant, which prompted Alexander to advise him to “see the Empire, acquire the language, study the people,” and then decide. Poinsett spent the next several months traveling across Russia.

1837

Angelina and Sarah Grimke began a six-week series of successful lectures about slavery in a New York City Baptist Church.

grimke sisters

Today In Charleston History: January 19

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1787

Four sailors allegedly “attacked a gentleman on the Bay, supposed with the intent to rob him.” The victim retreated to his store, “where he not only…defended himself, but…at length beat them off.”  No comment 😉

1814

Langdon Cheves was elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, replacing Henry Clay.

Langdon Cheves

Langdon Cheves

Cheves was born at Bull Town Fort, on the Rocky River in South Carolina.  At the age of ten he went to Charleston to earn a living, and at sixteen had become confidential clerk in a large mercantile house. In 1797 he was admitted to the bar to practice law. In 1808 his yearly income exceeded $20,000, making him wealthy for his time. He also became Attorney General of South Carolina, serving until 1810.

In 1806 he married Mary Elizabeth Dulles, of Charleston and was elected to the  U.S. House in 1808.. Cheves soon distinguished himself as the best orators in Washington. His speech on the merchants’ bonds in 1811 was so eloquent Washington Irving, who was present, said for the first time it gave him an idea of the manner in which the great Greek and Roman orators must have spoken.

Cheves became the ninth Speaker of the House on January 19, 1814, and served until March 4, 1815, when his Congressional term ended.

 

 

Today In Charleston History: January 18

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1788 – U.S. Constitution

The Assembly, at the urging of John Rutledge, Cotesworth Pinckney and Charles Pinckney, agreed on a holding a ratifying convention for the Constitution. It was scheduled for May 12 at the Exchange Building.

1865 – Civil War
Andrew Gordon Magrath

Andrew Gordon MacGrath

South Carolina governor, Andrew Magrath, pleaded with Confederate President Jefferson Davis to protect Charleston. There was great and reasonable fear that Sherman’s troops, breaking their Christmas camp in Savannah, were next heading for Charleston. 

Magrath is most famous for resigning his judgeship when Abraham Lincoln was elected  president in 1860. In U.S. District court on the day after Lincoln’s election, November 7, 1860, Magrath rose from the bench and said:

In the political history of the United States, an event has happened of ominous import to fifteen slaveholding States. The State of which we are citizens has been always understood to have deliberately fixed its purpose whenever that event should happen … So far as I am concerned, the Temple of Justice, raised under the Constitution of the United States, is now closed. If it shall be never again opened, I thank God that its doors have been closed before its altar has been desecrated with sacrifices to tyranny.

Magrath was active during the Secession Convention and served as Secretary of State for South Carolina. As the War was coming to a conclusion, Magrath was appointed governor by the S.C. Legislature in December 1864. He served for less than a year as governor, was arrested by the Union Army on May 25, 1865 and sent to Fort Pulaski for imprisonment. Magrath was released in December and resumed the practice of law in Charleston. He died on April 9, 1893, and was buried at Magnolia Cemetery.

1908 – Murder!

One chain gang inmate was hanged in Charleston for the murder Captain Herman Stello. The captain was killed when his throat was slit by the inmates during an escape attempt from the Seven Mile Stockade at Ashley Junction.

The inmates feigned illness in order to remain at the stockade while the other prisoners worked on the chain gang for the Drainage and Sanitary Commission. One of the inmates asked Captain Stello for water and when he opened the door to deliver it he was attacked. He was struck over the head with the bucket before one of the inmates cut his throat with a knife.

 Captain Stello was placed into their cell along with two other inmates who refused to participate in the escape. Then the three subjects fled the camp. The man who cut Captain Stello’s throat was arrested a short time later. He was convicted of Captain Stello’s murder, sentenced to death, and subsequently executed by hanging on January 18th, 1908.

Today In Charleston History: January 17

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1711

The town of Beaufort was chartered on the Port Royal Sound, making it the second oldest town in South Carolina. It was named after Henry Somerset, the 2nd Duke of Beaufort and a Lord Proprietor from 1700-14. The Beaufort settlement made the Yemassee Indians unhappy, as it usurped a large part of their territory.  It was one of the factors that led to the Yemassee War, 1715-17.

1781 – British Occupation

The Knights Terrible Society was organized at Mr. Holliday’s Tavern, for the purpose of drinking once a week during the British occupation. They disbanded after the British evacuated the city.

1782 – American Revolution

Gov. John Rutledge and the South Carolina House convened in Jacksonboro, thirty miles from Charleston, near the site of the Stono Slave Rebellion on the Edisto River. Only persons loyal to South Carolina were allowed to vote. Christopher Gadsden was elected governor, but declined due to his health, which had suffered during his imprisonment in St. Augustine. John Mathews was chosen as governor, “a younger and more even-tempered individual.” 

Laws were quickly passed for raising Continental troops and for punishing “conspicuous Tories.” Called the “Act for Disposing of Certain Estates and Banishing Certain Persons” it banished Loyalists and provided for the confiscation and sale of their estates. The list of confiscation contained more than 700 individuals.

gadsden and rutledge

Today In Charleston History: January 16

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1825 – Religion. Charleston First

Several members of Beth Elohim “withdrew from the congregation, and joining a larger number who were not members, establishing a new place of worship.” They called themselves the Reformed Society of Israelites. They met at Selye’s Masonic Hall on 209 Meeting Street. This was the first Reformed Jewish Society in America. 

1825 – Slavery.

Charleston erected a treadmill in the city workhouse for the punishment of slaves, relieving white masters from the distasteful practice of whipping their slaves. For a fee, the master could send the slaves to the workhouse for punishment administered by city authorities. The slaves would walk on the treadmill in shifts, providing power for the grinding of corn. Overseers with rawhide whips maintained order.

jail and workhouse - illustration

LEFT: Jail & Workhouse, rear view, looking north from Roper Hospital on Queen Street. RIGHT: Traditional work treadmill.