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Charleston

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Thoughts Among Ruins

This, Warren, is our trouble now: Not even fools could disavow Three centuries of piety Grown bare as a cottonwood tree (A timber seldom drawn and sawn And chiefly used to hang men on), So face with calm that heritage And earn contempt before the age. -Allen Tate It is on the hunt where the martial prowess is sharpened, where…
Thomas Ellen
August 19, 2024
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The Queen City Humbled

In 1865, a writer for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine described Charleston, South Carolina, contrasting her condition before the war, and after four years of siege, blockade and bombardment: Not many years ago, Charleston sat like a queen upon the waters, her broad and beautiful bay covered with the sails of every nation, and her great export, cotton, affording employment to…
Karen Stokes
October 23, 2015
Review Posts

Southern Core Values

In American higher education of the past forty years, I have observed two American histories, and two American literatures – which teach different American ideals and values, resulting in different societies and different vision of what it means to be an American. Today we have a Northern history and a Southern history; we have a Northern literature and a Southern…
David Aiken
March 3, 2015
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Southern Discomfort

Late in August 2001 my wife Barbara and I visited the classic Southern city of Charleston, South Carolina. We walked around the old town and observed many historic places. This resulted in the following article I wrote in an opinion column ‘County Lines’ published by the defunct Carolina-Kure Beach Weekly News under my pen-name Sam Stark.  I’ve edited the original…
R.E. Smith, Jr.
February 5, 2015
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Siege of Spite

By October 1864, the city of Charleston, South Carolina had been undergoing a bombardment for over a year. The Federal forces were in full possession of nearby Morris Island, and had all but neutralized Fort Sumter’s offensive capabilities. During the previous summer, Union batteries near Morris Island began sending their deadly fire into Charleston, the first attack on the city…
Karen Stokes
October 23, 2014
Review Posts

“In All the Ancient Circles”: Tourism and the Decline of Charleston’s Elite Families

Few American cities have been so meticulously studied, admired or—for that matter—vilified as has Charleston. There are substantial reasons for this. During the Colonial period Charleston, or Charles Town as it was then, rapidly emerged as the urban center of a plantation culture that would, by the middle of the 18th century, spread across the Southern states to become a…
Jack Trotter
September 30, 2014