What things would you let people know? I know Charleston was one of the old major ports in the South. Is there anything about that area of the South you’d let people know?
Oh, a number of things. At the time of the American Revolution, Charleston was the richest city in North America. The city of Charleston, when the port of Boston was closed by the British—one of the major turning points of the American Revolution—the city of Charleston sent more food and more money to the city of Boston than all of New England and New York combined. The fall of Charleston in 1780 to the British was the worst defeat that would be suffered by an American army until the fall of Corregidor in 1942. Approximately one quarter of the battles of the American Revolution were fought inside the state of South Carolina. One quarter. And we did not have the typical, ‘a quarter of the people are for the revolution, a quarter of the people are against the revolution, the others just wish it would go away’.
Now, we invented partisan warfare, we invented guerrilla warfare, we had war to the knife. We chose a side, or you were considered by both sides to belong to the other side. And the war went on so long that at the end of it…people think Yorktown and the surrender was the end of it. It wasn’t; the war in the Carolinas went on for another year, and some men were so tired that General William Moultrie—who had held Charleston as a Colonel against the first British assault, and thus insured the passage of the Declaration of Independence—with fighting still going on told the state legislature, “I’m tired. I’m going home. I’ve fought long enough.” When mad Anthony Wayne appeared to bring relief to Charleston, William Moultrie asking him a biting question. He said, “What took you so long?”
So, there’s that, and there’s also the fact, on the dark side, that almost all of the slaves who were brought in trade to North America and United States through Africa came through the port of Charleston. Sullivan’s Island, outside of Charleston, could be called ‘The Black Ellis Island’. It certainly needs to be remembered. It also should be remembered that Charleston, during the Civil War, withstood a siege that ranks with the siege of Stalingrad, or Leningrad in WWII—that is, nearly three years of being under constant bombardment. When the war was over…I’ve seen photographs of Charleston at the end of the Civil War, and it struck me because they reminded me very much of the photographs of Berlin at the end of WWII. And with that, I think I’ve told you about as much about the history of Charleston as you need to know, and a lot more than you’re going to use.
Possibly so. But I know that [?] good chances for a run, [?] so I suspect it might make its way on there.
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