The advertisements started early in the year for the South Carolina Jockey Club's Annual Horse Race. News of the event was spread to New York and Virginia, as this was known to be one of the biggest social events of the season. The races lasted for several days, ending in a ball that topped all social events of the season and culminated in the election of the new slate of officers. The Charleston Mercury...
Internal improvements in the South were underway. The turnpike project near the South Carolina border was going to start next year by the bidder who could complete the project in the fewest years. The expectations were for the road to be completed within three years and to be paid for with bonds and security loans. The project was being headed up by four commissioners who would be in charge of deciding...
On March 27, 1867, after the end of the Freedmen's meeting in Charleston, a group of African-Americans decided to test their right to ride on the Charleston Street Cars. The Streetcar Company's rules denied them this right. At 5 o'clock two to five men entered a streetcar on the King Street line, and sat among the white customers. Conductor Rivers endeavoured to explain the rules of the company and...
Almost exactly one year after being hit by a category three hurricane that destroyed 90 percent of Charleston's homes, on August 31, 1886, the city was hit with another devastating blow. Before it had fully recovered from the effects of the hurricane, the city was rocked by an earthquake that registered a 6.6 on the Richter scale. Eyewitness accounts report that tremors were felt all over the state....
Robert Elfe, Esq. delivered an oration to the Charleston Riflemen about where America has been and where it is going. In the printed version, he used terms such as liberty and fellow citizens in bold face all caps, suggesting that these are words he emphasized in his speech. He spoke on the importance of government, stating Man's elevation or depression in society is the effect of good or bad laws....
Slave owners had many justifications for why holding people in bondage was acceptable. From the idea that African Americans were a lesser race who needed taking care of by white patriarchs to the economic justification, slave owners were always trying to find new ways to dispute those who disagreed with their choice to hold others in captivity. Charleston slave holders were no exception in attempting...
“Blacks achieved greater political power in SC than in any other Southern state.' (Edgar 388) As a result of black Republicans' overwhelming legislative successes (blacks won 255 of the 487 federal and state elections in South Carolina between 1867 and 1876), equal opportunity education was made a top priority. A government-funded public school system was instituted, albeit with segregated secondary...
When Natalie Delage fell ill in 1841, she found support in the community around her. The wife of Thomas Sumter Jr. kept a diary detailing the last year of her life on the plantation in Sumter District, South Carolina. She visited doctors in town, and doctors came to visit her. They prescribed all sorts of medicines: Castor oil salts, elixirs, chocolates, chicken broth, snake root, and creamor tartar....
“In America nearly every man has his dream, his pet scheme whereby he is to advance himself socially or pecuniarily. It is this all-pervading speculativeness which we have tried to illustrate in The Gilded Age.' With these opening sentences to the London edition of his and Charles D. Warner's collaborative effort, Mark Twain summed up the theme of the “fictional' book that would soon lend...
Several citizens of upstate South Carolina approached the state assembly with a petition concerning a runaway slave of special concern to the region. Several years earlier a South Carolina citizen by the name of George Ford had been murdered by a slave named Joe (also called Forest) owned by a Mr. Carroll of Richland County. Both Mr. Ford's relatives, as well as the state, offered more than 1,000 dollars...