Charleston, South Carolina

Charleston is the largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina, the county seat of Charleston County, and the principal city in the Charleston–North Charleston metropolitan area. The city lies just south of the geographical midpoint of South Carolina's coastline on Charleston Harbor, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean formed by the confluence of the Ashley, Cooper, and Wando rivers. Charleston had a population of 150,277 at the 2020 census. The 2020 population of the Charleston metropolitan area, comprising Berkeley, Charleston, and Dorchester counties, was 799,636 residents, the third-largest in the state and the 74th-largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States.

Charleston was founded in 1670 as Charles Town, honoring King CharlesII, at Albemarle Point on the west bank of the Ashley River (now Charles Towne Landing) but relocated in 1680 to its present site, which became the fifth-largest city in North America within ten years. It remained unincorporated throughout the colonial period; its government was handled directly by a colonial legislature and a governor sent by Parliament. Election districts were organized according to Anglican parishes, and some social services were managed by Anglican wardens and vestries. Charleston adopted its present spelling with its incorporation as a city in 1783. Population growth in the interior of South Carolina influenced the removal of the state government to Columbia in 1788, but Charleston remained among the ten largest cities in the United States through the 1840 census.

Charleston's significance in American history is tied to its role as a major slave trading port. Charleston slave traders like Joseph Wragg were the first to break through the monopoly of the Royal African Company and pioneered the large-scale slave trade of the 18th century; almost one half of slaves imported to the United States arrived in Charleston. In 2018, the city formally apologized for its role in the American slave trade after CNN noted that slavery "riddles the history" of Charleston.

Geography

The city proper consists of six distinct districts.
*Downtown, or sometimes referred to as "The Peninsula", is Charleston's center city separated by the Ashley River to the west and the Cooper River to the east.
*West Ashley, residential area to the west of Downtown bordered by the Ashley River to the east and the Stono River to the west
* Johns Island, far western limits of Charleston, bordered by the Stono River to the east, Kiawah River to the south and Wadmalaw Island to the west
* James Island, popular residential area between Downtown and the town of Folly Beach with portions of the independent town of James Island intermixed
*Cainhoy Peninsula, far eastern limits of Charleston bordered by the Wando River to the west and Nowell Creek to the east
*Daniel Island, residential area to the north of downtown, east of the Cooper River and west of the Wando River

Topography

The incorporated city fitted into as late as the First World War, but has since greatly expanded, crossing the Ashley River and encompassing James Island and some of Johns Island. The city limits also have expanded across the Cooper River, encompassing Daniel Island and the Cainhoy area. The present city has a total area of , of which is land and is covered by water. North Charleston blocks any expansion up the peninsula, and Mount Pleasant occupies the land directly east of the Cooper River.

Charleston Harbor runs about southeast to the Atlantic with an average width of about , surrounded on all sides except its entrance. Sullivan's Island lies to the north of the entrance and Morris Island to the south. The entrance itself is about wide; it was originally only deep but began to be enlarged in the 1870s. The tidal rivers ( Wando, Cooper, Stono, and Ashley) are evidence of a submergent or drowned coastline. There is a submerged river delta off the mouth of the harbor, and the Cooper River is deep.

Climate

Charleston has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification ''Cfa''), with mild winters, hot humid summers, and significant rainfall all year long. Summer is the wettest season; almost half of the annual rainfall occurs from June to September in the form of thundershowers. Fall remains relatively warm through the middle of November. Winter is short and mild, and is characterized by occasional rain. Measurable snow (≥) has a median occurrence of only once per decade at the airport, but freezing rain is more common; a snowfall/freezing rain event on January 3, 2018, was the first such event in Charleston since December 26, 2010. However, fell at the airport on December 23, 1989, during the December 1989 United States cold wave, the largest single-day fall on record, contributing to a single-storm and seasonal record of snowfall.

Downtown Charleston's climate is considerably milder than the airport's due to stronger maritime influence. This is especially true in the winter, with the average January low in downtown being to the airport's for example.

The highest temperature recorded within city limits was on June 2, 1985, and June 24, 1944; the lowest was on February 14, 1899. At the airport, where official records are kept, the historical range is on August 1, 1999, down to on January 21, 1985. Hurricanes are a major threat to the area during the summer and early fall, with several severe hurricanes hitting the area—most notably Hurricane Hugo on September 21, 1989 (a category 4 storm). The dewpoint from June to August ranges from .

Metropolitan Statistical Area

As defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, for use by the U.S. Census Bureau and other U.S. Government agencies for statistical purposes only, Charleston is included within the Charleston–North Charleston, SC Metropolitan Statistical Area and the smaller Charleston-North Charleston urban area. The Charleston–North Charleston metropolitan area consists of three counties: Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, the metropolitan statistical area had a total population of 799,636 people. North Charleston is the second-largest city in the metro area and ranks as the third-largest city in the state; Mount Pleasant and Summerville are the next-largest cities. These cities combined with other incorporated and unincorporated areas along with the city of Charleston form the Charleston-North Charleston urban area with a population of 548,404 . The metropolitan statistical area also includes a separate and much smaller urban area within Berkeley County, Moncks Corner (with a 2000 population of 9,123).

The traditional parish system persisted until the Reconstruction Era, when counties were imposed. Nevertheless, traditional parishes still exist in various capacities, mainly as public service districts. When the city of Charleston was formed, it was defined by the limits of the Parish of St. Philip and St. Michael, now also includes parts of St. James' Parish, St. George's Parish, St. Andrew's Parish, and St. John's Parish, although the last two are mostly still incorporated rural parishes.

History

Colonial era (1670–1786)

King Charles II granted the chartered Province of Carolina to eight of his loyal friends, known as the Lords Proprietors, on March 24, 1663. In 1670, Governor William Sayle arranged for several shiploads of settlers from Bermuda and Barbados. These settlers established what was then called Charles Town at Albemarle Point, on the west bank of the Ashley River, a few miles northwest of the present-day city center. Charles Town became the first comprehensively planned town in the Thirteen Colonies. Its governance, settlement, and development was to follow a visionary plan known as the Grand Model prepared for the Lords Proprietors by John Locke. Because the Carolina's Fundamental Constitutions was never ratified, however, Charles Town was never incorporated during the colonial period. Instead, local ordinances were passed by the provincial government, with day-to-day administration handled by the wardens and vestries of StPhilip's and StMichael's Anglican parishes.

At the time of European colonization, the area was inhabited by the indigenous Cusabo, whom the settlers declared war on in October 1671. The settlers initially allied with the Westo, a northern indigenous tribe that traded in enslaved Indians. The settlers abandoned their alliance with the Westo in 1679 and allied with the Cusabo instead.

The initial settlement quickly dwindled away and disappeared while another village—established by the settlers on Oyster Point at the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper rivers around 1672—thrived. This second settlement formally replaced the original Charles Town in 1680. (The original site is now commemorated as Charles Towne Landing.) The second location was more defensible and had access to a fine natural harbor. The new town had become the fifth largest in North America by 1690.

A smallpox outbreak erupted in 1698, followed by an earthquake in February 1699. The latter caused a fire that destroyed about a third of the town. During rebuilding, a yellow fever outbreak killed about 15% of the remaining inhabitants. Charles Town suffered between five and eight major yellow fever outbreaks over the first half of the 18th century.

It developed a reputation as one of the least healthy locations in the Thirteen Colonies for ethnic Europeans. Malaria was endemic. Although malaria did not have such high mortality as yellow fever, it caused much illness. It was a major health problem through most of the city's history before dying out in the 1950s after use of pesticides cut down on the mosquitoes that transmitted it.

Charles Town was fortified according to a plan developed in 1704 under Governor Nathaniel Johnson. Both Spain and France contested Britain's claims to the region. Various bands of Native Americans and independent pirates also raided it.

On September 5–6, 1713 (O.S.) a violent hurricane passed over Charles Town. The Circular Congregational Church manse was damaged during the storm, in which church records were lost. Much of Charles Town was flooded as "the Ashley and Cooper rivers became one." At least seventy people died in the disaster.

From the 1670s Charleston attracted pirates. The combination of a weak government and corruption made the city popular with pirates, who frequently visited and raided the city. Charles Town was besieged by the pirate Blackbeard for several days in May 1718. Blackbeard released his hostages and left in exchange for a chest of medicine from Governor Robert Johnson.D. Moore. (1997) "A General History of Blackbeard the Pirate, the Queen Anne's Revenge and the Adventure". In ;;Tributaries,;; Volume VII, 1997. pp. 31–35. (North Carolina Maritime History Council)

Around 1719, the town's name began to be generally written as Charlestown and, excepting those fronting the Cooper River, the old walls were largely removed over the next decade. Charlestown was a center for the inland colonization of South Carolina. It remained the southernmost point of the Southern Colonies until the Province of Georgia was established in 1732. As noted, the first settlers primarily came from Europe, Barbados and Bermuda. The Barbadian and Bermudan immigrants were planters who brought enslaved Africans with them, having purchased them in the West Indies.

Early immigrant groups to the city included the Huguenots, Scottish, Irish, and Germans, as well as hundreds of Jews, predominately Sephardi from London and major cities of the Dutch Republic, where they had been given refuge. As late as 1830, Charleston's Jewish community was the largest and wealthiest in North America.

By 1708, the majority of the colony's population were Black Africans. They had been brought to Charlestown via the Atlantic slave trade, first as indentured servants and then as slaves. In the early 1700s, Charleston's largest slave trader, Joseph Wragg, pioneered the settlement's involvement in the slave trade. Of the estimated 400,000 captive Africans transported to North America to be sold into slavery, 40% are thought to have landed at Sullivan's Island off Charlestown. Free people of color also migrated from the West Indies, being descendants of white planters and their Black consorts, and unions among the working classes.

In 1767 Gadsden's Wharf was constructed at the city port on the Cooper River; it ultimately extended 840 feet and was able to accommodate six ships at a time. Many slaves were sold from here.History: Gadsden's Wharf
, International African American Museum; accessed March 29, 2018 Devoted to plantation agriculture that depended on enslaved labor, South Carolina became a slave society: it had a majority-Black population from the colonial period until after the Great Migration of the early 20th century, when many rural Blacks moved to northern and midwestern industrial cities to escape Jim Crow laws.

At the foundation of the town, the principal items of commerce were pine timber and pitch for ships and tobacco. The early economy developed around the deerskin trade, in which colonists used alliances with the Cherokee and Creek peoples to secure the raw material.

At the same time, Indians took each other as captives and slaves in warfare. From 1680 to 1720, approximately 40,000 native men, women, and children were sold through the port, principally to the West Indies such as (Bermuda and the Bahamas), but also to other Southern colonies. The Lowcountry planters did not keep Indian slaves, considering them too prone to escape or revolt. They used the proceeds of their sale to purchase enslaved Black Africans for their own plantations. The slave raiding—and the European firearms it introduced—helped destabilize Spanish Florida and French Louisiana in the 1700s during the War of the Spanish Succession. But it also provoked the Yamasee War of the 1710s that nearly destroyed the colony. After that, South Carolina largely abandoned the Indian slave trade.

The area's unsuitability for growing tobacco prompted the Lowcountry planters to experiment with other cash crops. The profitability of growing rice led the planters to pay premiums for slaves from the "Rice Coast" who knew its cultivation; their descendants make up the ethnic Gullah who created their own culture and language in this area. Slaves imported from the Caribbean showed the planter George Lucas's daughter Eliza how to raise and use indigo for dyeing in 1747.

Throughout this period, the slaves were sold aboard the arriving ships or at ad hoc gatherings in town's taverns. Runaways and minor slave rebellions prompted the 1739 Security Act, which required all white men to carry weapons at all times (even to church on Sundays). Before it had fully taken effect, the Cato or Stono Rebellion broke out. The white community had recently been decimated by a malaria outbreak, and the rebels killed about 25 white people before being stopped by the colonial militia. As a result of their fears of rebellion, whites killed a total of 35 to 50 Black people.

The planters attributed the violence to recently imported Africans and agreed to a 10-year moratorium on slave importation through Charlestown. They relied for labor upon the slave communities they already held. The 1740 Negro Act also tightened controls, requiring a ratio of one white for every ten Blacks on any plantation (which was often not achieved), and banning slaves from assembling together, growing their own food, earning money, or learning to read. Drums were banned because Africans used them for signaling; slaves were allowed to use string and other instruments. When the moratorium expired and Charlestown reopened to the slave trade in 1750, the memory of the Stono Rebellion resulted in traders avoiding buying slaves from the Congo and Angola, whose populations had a reputation for independence.

By the mid-18th century, Charlestown was the hub of the Atlantic slave trade in the Southern Colonies. Even with the decade-long moratorium, its customs processed around 40% of the enslaved Africans brought to North America between 1700 and 1775, and about half up until the end of the African trade.

The plantations and the economy based on them made this the wealthiest city in the Thirteen Colonies and the largest in population south of Philadelphia. In 1770, the city had 11,000 inhabitants—half slaves—and was the 4th-largest port in the colonies, after Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

The elite began to use their wealth to encourage cultural and social development. America's first theater building was constructed here in 1736; it was later replaced by today's Dock Street Theater. StMichael's was erected in 1753. Benevolent societies were formed by the Huguenots, free people of color, Germans, and Jews. The Library Society was established in 1748 by well-born young men who wanted to share the financial cost to keep up with the scientific and philosophical issues of the day.

American Revolution (1776–1783)

Delegates for the Continental Congress were elected in 1774, and South Carolina declared its independence from Britain on the steps of the Exchange. Slavery was again an important factor in the city's role during the Revolutionary War. The British attacked the settlement three times, assuming that the settlement had a large base of Loyalists who would rally to their cause once given some military support. The loyalty of white Southerners towards the Crown had largely been forfeited, however, by British legal cases (such as the 1772 Somersett case which marked the prohibition of slavery in England and Wales; a significant milestone in the abolitionist struggle) and military tactics (such as Dunmore's Proclamation in 1775) that promised the emancipation of slaves owned by Patriot planters; these efforts did, however, unsurprisingly win the allegiance of thousands of Black Loyalists.

The Battle of Sullivan's Island saw the British fail to capture a partially constructed palmetto palisade from Col. Moultrie's militia regiment on June 28, 1776. The Liberty Flag used by Moultrie's men formed the basis of the later South Carolina flag, and the victory's anniversary continues to be commemorated as Carolina Day.

Making the capture of Charlestown their chief priority, the British sent Sir Henry Clinton, who laid siege to Charleston on April 1, 1780, with about 14,000 troops and 90 ships. Bombardment began on March 11, 1780. The Patriots, led by Benjamin Lincoln, had about 5,500 men and inadequate fortifications to repel the forces against them. After the British cut his supply lines and lines of retreat at the battles of Monck's Corner and Lenud's Ferry, Lincoln's surrender on May 12, 1780 became the greatest American defeat of the war.

The British continued to hold Charlestown for over a year following their defeat at Yorktown in 1781, although they alienated local planters by refusing to restore full civil government. Nathanael Greene had entered the state after Cornwallis's pyrrhic victory at Guilford Courthouse and kept the area under a kind of siege. British Army officer Alexander Leslie, commanding Charlestown, requested a truce in March 1782 to purchase food for his garrison and the town's inhabitants. Greene refused and formed a brigade under Mordecai Gist to counter British forays. Charlestown was finally evacuated by the British in December 1782. Greene presented the British leaders of the town with the Moultrie Flag.

Antebellum era (1783–1861)

Between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, Charleston experienced an economic boom, at least for the top strata of society. The expansion of cotton as a cash crop in the South both led to huge wealth for a small segment of society and funded impressive architecture and culture but also escalated the importance of slaves and led to greater and greater restrictions on Black Charlestonians.

By 1783, the growth of the city had reached a point where a municipal government because desirable; therefore on August 13, 1783, an act of incorporation for the city of Charleston was ratified. The act originally specified the city's name as "Charles Ton," as opposed to the previous Charlestown, but the spelling "Charleston" quickly came to dominate.

Although Columbia had replaced it as the state capital in 1788, Charleston became even more prosperous as Eli Whitney's 1793 invention of the cotton gin sped the processing of the crop over 50 times. Britain's Industrial Revolution—initially built upon its textile industry—took up the extra production ravenously and cotton became Charleston's major export commodity in the 19th century.

The Bank of South Carolina, the second-oldest building in the nation to be constructed as a bank, was established in 1798; branches of the First and Second Bank of the United States were also located in Charleston in 1800 and 1817.

Throughout the Antebellum Period, Charleston continued to be the only major American city with a majority-slave population. The city widespread use of slaves as workers was a frequent subject of writers and visitors: a merchant from Liverpool noted in 1834 that "almost all the working population are Negroes, all the servants, the carmen & porters, all the people who see at the stalls in Market, and most of the Journeymen in trades". American traders had been prohibited from equipping the Atlantic slave trade in 1794 and all importation of slaves was banned in 1808, but American merchantmen frequently refused to permit British inspection for enslaved cargo, and smuggling remained common. Much more important was the domestic slave trade, which boomed as the Deep South was developed in new cotton plantations. As a result of the trade, there was a forced migration of more than one million slaves from the Upper South to the Lower South in the antebellum years. During the early 19th century, the first dedicated slave markets were founded in Charleston, mostly near Chalmers and State streets. Many domestic slavers used Charleston as a port in what was called the coastwise trade, traveling to such ports as Mobile and New Orleans.

Slave ownership was the primary marker of class and even the town's freedmen and free people of color typically kept slaves if they had the wealth to do so. Visitors commonly remarked on the sheer number of Blacks in Charleston and their seeming freedom of movement, though in fact—mindful of the Stono Rebellion and the slave revolution that established Haiti—the whites closely regulated the behavior of both slaves and free people of color. Wages and hiring practices were fixed, identifying badges were sometimes required, and even work songs were sometimes censored. Punishment was handled out of sight by the city's workhouse, whose fees provided the municipal government with thousands a year. In 1820, a state law mandated that each act of manumission (freeing a slave) required legislative approval, effectively halting the practice.

The effects of slavery were pronounced on white society as well. The high cost of 19th-century slaves and their high rate of return combined to institute an oligarchic society controlled by about ninety interrelated families, where 4% of the free population controlled half of the wealth, and the lower half of the free population—unable to compete with owned or rented slaves—held no wealth at all. The white middle class was minimal: Charlestonians generally disparaged hard work as the lot of slaves. All the slaveholders taken together held 82% of the city's wealth and almost all non-slaveholders were poor. Olmsted considered their civic elections "entirely contests of money and personal influence" and the oligarchs dominated civic planning: the lack of public parks and amenities was noted, as was the abundance of private gardens in the wealthy's walled estates.

In the 1810s, the town's churches intensified their discrimination against their Black parishioners, culminating in Bethel Methodist's 1817 construction of a hearse house over its Black burial ground. 4,376 Black Methodists joined Morris Brown in establishing Hampstead Church, the African Methodist Episcopal church now known as Mother Emanuel. State and city laws prohibited Black literacy, limited Black worship to daylight hours, and required a majority of any church's parishioners be white. In June 1818, 140 Black church members at Hampstead Church were arrested and eight of its leaders given fines and ten lashes; police raided the church again in 1820 and pressured it in 1821.

In 1822, members of the church, led by Denmark Vesey, a lay preacher and carpenter who had bought his freedom after winning a lottery, planned an uprising and escape to Haiti—initially for Bastille Day—that failed when one slave revealed the plot to his master. Over the next month, the city's intendant (mayor) James Hamilton Jr. organized a militia for regular patrols, initiated a secret and extrajudicial tribunal to investigate, and hanged 35 and exiled 35 or 37 slaves to Spanish Cuba for their involvement. Hamilton imposed more restrictions on both free and enslaved Blacks: South Carolina required free Black sailors to be imprisoned while their ships were in Charleston Harbor though international treaties eventually required the United States to quash the practice; free Blacks were banned from returning to the state if they left for any reason; slaves were given a 9:15 pm curfew; the city razed Hampstead Church to the ground and erected a new arsenal. This structure later was the basis of the Citadel's first campus. The AME congregation built a new church but in 1834 the city banned it and all Black worship services, following Nat Turner's 1831 rebellion in Virginia. The estimated 10% of slaves who came to America as Muslims never had a separate mosque. Slaveholders sometimes provided them with beef rations in place of pork in recognition of religious traditions.

The registered tonnage of Charleston shipping in 1829 was 12,410. In 1832, South Carolina passed an ordinance of nullification, a procedure by which a state could, in effect, repeal a federal law; it was directed against the most recent tariff acts. Soon, federal soldiers were dispensed to Charleston's forts, and five United States Coast Guard cutters were detached to Charleston Harbor "to take possession of any vessel arriving from a foreign port, and defend her against any attempt to dispossess the Customs Officers of her custody until all the requirements of law have been complied with." This federal action became known as the Charleston incident. The state's politicians worked on a compromise law in Washington to gradually reduce the tariffs.

Charleston's embrace of classical architecture began after a devastating fire leveled much of the city. On April 27, 1838, Charleston suffered a catastrophic fire that burned more than 1000 buildings and caused about $3 million in damage at the time. The damaged buildings amounted to about one-fourth of all the businesses in the main part of the city. When the many homes and business were rebuilt or repaired, a great cultural awakening occurred. Previous to the fire, only a few homes were styled as Greek Revival; many residents decided to construct new buildings in that style after the conflagration. This tradition continued and made Charleston one of the foremost places to view Greek Revival architecture. The Gothic Revival also made a significant appearance in the construction of many churches after the fire that exhibited picturesque forms and reminders of devout European religion.

By 1840, the Market Hall and Sheds, where fresh meat and produce were brought daily, became a hub of commercial activity. The slave trade also depended on the port of Charleston, where ships could be unloaded and the slaves bought and sold. The legal importation of African slaves had ended in 1808, although smuggling was significant. However, the domestic trade was booming. More than one million slaves were transported from the Upper South to the Deep South in the antebellum years, as cotton plantations were widely developed through what became known as the Black Belt. Many slaves were transported in the coastwise slave trade, with slave ships stopping at ports such as Charleston.

Civil War (1861–1865)

Charleston played a major part in the Civil War. As a pivotal city, both the Union and Confederate Armies vied for control of it. The Civil War began in Charleston Harbor in 1861, and ended mere months after the Union forces took control of Charleston in 1865.

Following the election of Abraham Lincoln, the South Carolina General Assembly voted on December 20, 1860, to secede from the Union. South Carolina was the first state to secede. On December 27, Castle Pinckney was surrendered by its garrison to the state militia and, on January 9, 1861, Citadel cadets opened fire on the USS'' Star of the West'' as it entered Charleston Harbor.

The first full battle of the American Civil War occurred on April 12, 1861, when shore batteries under the command of General Beauregard opened fire on the held Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. After a 34-hour bombardment, Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort.

On December 11, 1861, an enormous fire burned over of the city.

Union control of the sea permitted the repeated bombardment of the city, causing vast damage. Although Admiral Du Pont's naval assault on the town's forts in April 1863 failed, the Union navy's blockade shut down most commercial traffic. Over the course of the war, some blockade runners got through but not a single one made it into or out of the Charleston Harbor between August 1863 and March 1864.Craig L. Symonds, ''The Civil War at Sea'' (2009) p. 57 The early submarine ''H.L. Hunley'' made a night attack on the on February 17, 1864.

General Gillmore's land assault in July 1864 was unsuccessful but the fall of Columbia and advance of General William T. Sherman's army through the state prompted the Confederates to evacuate the town on February 17, 1865, burning the public buildings, cotton warehouses, and other sources of supply before their departure. Union troops moved into the city within the month. The War Department recovered what federal property remained and also confiscated the campus of the Citadel Military Academy and used it as a federal garrison for the next 17 years. The facilities were finally returned to the state and reopened as a military college in 1882 under the direction of Lawrence E. Marichak.

Postbellum (1865–1945)

Reconstruction

After the defeat of the Confederacy, federal forces remained in Charleston during Reconstruction. The war had shattered the city's prosperity, but the African-American population surged (from 17,000 in 1860 to over 27,000 in 1880) as freedmen moved from the countryside to the major city.Jeffrey G. Strickland, ''Ethnicity And Race In The Urban South: German Immigrants And African-Americans In Charleston, South Carolina During Reconstruction'', 2003, p. 11, Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations. Paper 1541
Blacks quickly left the Southern Baptist Church and resumed open meetings of the African Methodist Episcopal and AME Zion
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