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Peculiarities of American Cities. Glazier Willard W.
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Автор произведения Glazier Willard W.
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On October fifth we were ordered to leave Charleston, and were sent, in the foulest of cattle cars, to Columbia, the Capital of the State. We left Charleston without a regret. It was the breeding place of the rankest treason, the cradle of the Rebellion, and the scene of untold cruelties to Union prisoners. At the time of our brief visit to the city, it was undergoing all the horrors of an actual siege. About one-third of its territory had been destroyed by fire during the early part of the war, caused by shells thrown from the Union batteries on Morris Island. This portion of the city was deserted by all its inhabitants save the negroes, who, during every brief cessation in the bombardment, flocked in and took possession, rent free, to scatter as quickly when one or more of them had been killed by the sudden appearance and explosion of shells in this quarter. The balance of the city was forsaken by non-combatants, and the blockade had put an end to all her commerce. The quiet industries of peace had given place to all the turmoil of war. Her streets were filled with military, while the boom of the distant batteries, the whiz of the flying shells, and the noise of their explosion, were daily and familiar sounds.
During the four years of the war, Charleston was one of the chief points of Federal attack, though it remained in possession of the Confederate forces until the beginning of 1865. These were four terrible years to the city. Yet her sufferings she had brought upon herself. The first open and public movement in favor of the dissolution of the Union was made in that city. South Carolina was the first to call a State convention, and to secede from the Union. This convention was held at Columbia, the Capital of the State, but was adjourned to Charleston, where the Ordinance of Secession was unanimously passed on the twentieth of December, 1860. Fort Sumter, which was one of the largest forts in Charleston, a massive fortress of solid masonry, standing on an island commanding the principal entrance, at the mouth of Charleston Harbor, was in command of Major Robert Anderson, with a garrison of eighty men. On the twenty-seventh of December he ran up the stars and stripes. Governor Pickens immediately demanded a surrender of the fort, which was promptly refused. Early on Friday morning, April twelfth, 1861, the initial gun of the terrible four years' war was fired by the Rebel forces from the howitzer battery on James Island, west of Sumter. Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan Island, on the northeast, the gun battery at Cumming's Point, the northwest extremity of Morris Island, and other batteries and fortifications which the Confederates had seized and appropriated to their own use, all followed in a deadly rain of shells upon Sumter. The firing was kept up for thirty-five hours, and Sumter made a vigorous defence, until the quarters were entirely burned, the main gates destroyed by fire, the supplies exhausted, and the magazine surrounded by flames, when Major Anderson accepted the terms of capitulation offered by General Beauregard.
Upon the surrender of the Fort, which was received as a good omen by the South, troops began to pour into the city, so that by the sixteenth of the same month as many as ten thousand had arrived. The blockade of the port was commenced on the tenth of May, and continued until the close of the war. In the latter part of 1861 an attempt was made by the Federal government to seal up the channel of the harbor with sunken ships, to prevent the egress of privateers. On the twenty-first of December seventeen vessels were sunk, in three or four rows, across the channel. But this attempt at blockade proved a failure. The current washed some of them away, and many passages in a water front of six miles were left unobserved, and more vessels ran the blockade and reached the city, than at any other southern port.
On the tenth of December, 1861, a fire broke out in the city, which destroyed nearly all its public buildings, banks and insurance offices, and several churches, besides many dwellings, reducing thousands to homelessness and the extremity of want. The loss occasioned by this conflagration was estimated at ten millions of dollars.
In 1863, the women, children and other non-combatants were ordered out of the city, and free transportation, food and lodgings were furnished those unable to pay for them. Morris Island had been captured by the Federal Army, who used it as a point of attack against Sumter and the city. Its shells had wrought destruction in all parts of the city, especially in its lower portions. On February seventeenth, 1865, Charleston, which had withstood all attacks from the seaward, capitulated to the Union forces, Columbia having been captured by Sherman.
The history of Charleston goes back to earliest colonial times. In 1671 a few persons located themselves on Ashley River, at Old Charleston. But in 1680 this settlement was abandoned, and the foundations of the present city laid, several miles nearer the sea. The whole country, up to 1671, between the thirtieth and thirty-sixth parallel of latitude, was called Carolina, having received the name in honor of Charles IX, of France. In that year the division was made between the Northern and Southern provinces. In 1685 the young settlement received a considerable influx of French Huguenot refugees.
During the early part of the eighteenth century the war of Queen Anne against France and Spain greatly disturbed the young colony; and a little later the Indians threatened its existence. All the inhabitants of the region took refuge at Charleston, which was vigorously defended.
In 1700, the same year that Kidd was captured and taken to England, no less then seven pirates were secured, and executed at Charleston. Subsequently others shared the same fate.
South Carolina was among the foremost of the American colonies to strike for independence. On the twenty-eighth of June, 1776, Charleston was attacked by the British, an attempt being made to destroy the military works on Sullivan's Island. But Colonel Moultrie, in honor of whom the fort was subsequently named, made a gallant defence and repulsed them. In 1779 they made a second attack upon the city, this time approaching it by land, but were again compelled to retreat. Sir Henry Clinton, with seven or eight thousand men, opened his batteries upon Charleston on the second of April, 1780. Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan's Island, was compelled to surrender on the fourteenth, and the city yielded on May eleventh. The British retained possession of the city until the close of the war.
Charleston took a prominent part in the passage of the nullification act by the State, which maintained that any one of the States might set aside or nullify any act of Congress which it deemed unconstitutional or oppressive. The occasion of this nullification act was the Tariff Laws of 1828, which were not considered favorable to the Southern States. A convention of the State declared them null and void, and made preparations to resist their execution. John C. Calhoun, who was at that time Vice-President under Andrew Jackson, resigned his office, became a leader in the nullification movement, and was the father of the doctrine of State Sovereignty, the legitimate outcome of the principles of which was the late attempt to dissolve the Union.
The population of Charleston in 1800 was 18,711; in 1850, 42,985 inhabitants; in 1860, 40,519; in 1870, 48,956; and in 1880, 50,000 inhabitants. It has not made so rapid a growth as other cities, even in the South, but is, nevertheless, a prosperous town, with large commercial, and since the war, large manufacturing interests. It is one of the chief shipping ports for cotton, and also exports rice, lumber, naval stores and fertilizers. Immense beds of marl were discovered in the vicinity of the city in 1868, and now the manufacture of fertilizers from marl and phosphate is one of its principal industries. There are also flour and rice mills, carriage and wagon factories and machine shops. The city is learning that the surest foundation stone for its future prosperity is its manufacturing interests; and, probably, the political battle of 1861, could it be fought over again to-day, in that city, would find the nullifiers largely in the minority. The city which was so marred and blemished during its long state of siege, has been rebuilt, and all traces of the fratricidal conflict removed; and though Charleston would not be true to her traditions if she did not still cherish a strong Southern sentiment, the years which have passed since the cessation of hostilities have done much toward softening the asperities of feeling on both sides.
As a seaboard city, Charleston is most favorably situated. It has an excellent harbor, seven miles in length, with an average width of two miles, landlocked on all sides, except an entrance about a mile in width. This entrance is blocked by a bar, which, however, serves both as a bulwark and a breakwater. Of its two passages, its best gives twenty-two