BOBBY DIGITAL here. I've planned your deluxe tour of Charleston, SC
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Date: December 11th, 2017 2:10 AM Author: Mewling home
Just kidding! This is CHARLES DIGITAL, Bobby's cash-strapped, less-interesting 2nd cousin. We're going to take a 4-day journey to Charleston and its environs, armed only with an iPhone 6 camera we're not very good at using.
Day 1:
You land at Charleston International Airport mid-Thursday morning, after just narrowly making your connection in NYC by shoving past a shitboomer who was taking their sweetass time getting off the shuttlebus. With that ordeal behind you, it's time to get your rental car...
https://imgur.com/a/Fn4Nz
A Ford Fiesta! It's sporting Missouri plates, so be sure not to break any traffic laws, or corrupt South Carolina cops will definitely notice and target you for fines! Also, you're gonna roll the dice and go driving without any insurance. Drive safe!
Our first few stops aren't in Charleston at all. Instead, we're going to explore the Ashley River, which was once home to several massive rice plantations. Drayton Hall has the oldest main house (the only one to survive both the Revolution and Civil War), while Magnolia has massive, impressive gardens, but the public consensus says the most prestigious plantation of all is Middleton Place, so that's where we're headed:
https://www.charlestoncvb.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Middleton_Place.jpg
Middleton Place was, naturally, the home of the absurdly wealthy and prestigious Middleton family, which spent four generations at the top end of American politics. Henry Middleton was president of the First Continental Congress. His son Arthur Middleton signed the Declaration of Independence. His son, another Henry, was governor of South Carolina and spent a decade as U.S. minister to Russia. And finally, his son, Williams Middleton, signed the Ordinance of Secession, and fervently supported the Southern cause in the Civil War. It didn't end well for him, as the war and subsequent emancipation cost the family almost its entire fortune.
As you enter the plantation, you notice an ominous warning that, under South Carolina law, the owners of Middleton are NOT liable if you die a horrible death engaging in "equine activities." Catherine the Great (or the apocryphal version of her, anyway) is DUNHERE if she visits Middleton.
https://imgur.com/a/vTc6z
You notice the ruins of the original manor house, all that remains after the house was torched by Union troops and then subsequently leveled by the big earthquake in 1886.
https://imgur.com/a/UINZg
Fortunately, a secondary house the family built remains standing, and you can tour it for the low, low price of $15 (in addition to the $28 you paid to come through the front door):
https://imgur.com/a/kOxV4
There's a lot of cool stuff inside the house, such as:
-Original, high-quality paintings of all the major Middleton family members.
-An amusing painting of a girl plugging her ears that hangs right over a noisy clock in the music room.
-A letter from Abraham Lincoln authorizing a woman in the Middleton clan to travel through Union lines to visit a family member
-A diamond-encrusted tiara and a portrait of Tsar Nicholas I, both gifts from Russia to Henry Middleton's family.
-Enough silver to finance a small war.
-The tiny remnant of what was once a vast 10,000-volume Middleton library.
It's all pretty cool, and would make for some good photos, but too bad! The petty fascists of Middleton Place have BANNED photography inside the house, so if you want to see these things again, you'll just have to pay another $43 hehe.
At its peak, Middleton was worked by dozens of black slaves, who harvested rice or worked in a handful of skilled trades. Today, Middleton keeps that legacy alive by, uh, mostly employing white people to do those jobs. For example, this white guy in period dress still works as a cooper (barrel-maker), crafting barrels for sale in the gift shop.
https://imgur.com/a/7mmyi
The forge, at least, is worked by an actual black guy. He complains that people keep asking him about making horseshoes, when in fact the slave smiths never made them, because the soft ground of Middleton Place doesn't require them:
https://imgur.com/a/jYyia
As you explore the various descriptive exhibits, a tour guide approaches you and starts elaborating on the task system, the main way that South Carolina plantations were managed. Under the task system, instead of working sunup to sundown, slaves were given a "task" for the day (such as working a certain amount of the rice field, or making a certain number of barrels), and once the task was completed they had free time to tend their own gardens or even perform paid work elsewhere. The tour guide explains how this system was relatively humane and meant that both masters and slaves "got something" out of labor.
This conversation is a little creepy, but thankfully ends when you discover this chill catdood hanging out in the bucket of recently-sheared wool:
https://imgur.com/a/dKV4X
Wait, wool? That's right. In some bid for authenticity (or maybe pseudo-authenticity), Middleton has a bunch of sheep, roosters, and even cashmere goats, often hanging out in places where anybody can approach them.
https://imgur.com/a/VwQsJ
https://imgur.com/a/vdP5v
https://imgur.com/a/22cR1
Eliza's House, built for freedmen just after the Civil WAr, might be larger than your $3000 a month MFH apartment:
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/byways/Uploads/asset_files/000/009/799/Middleton_LizasHouse.jpg
Eliza's House includes notes the Middletons took over the years on their slaves, showcasing their various prices, and the Middletons' propensity to assign them Roman names. Evidently, the Middletons had a hard go of things during the Revolution, as an awful lot of their slaves either died or fled to Indian Country:
https://imgur.com/a/JZU0Z
https://imgur.com/a/mzj4h
https://imgur.com/a/4XhUZ
The house also includes an ad Henry Middleton put in the newspaper advertising a reward for the return of his escaped property:
https://imgur.com/a/Em7RO
Before leaving the plantation, you take a stroll through the gardens, which claim to be the oldest landscaped gardens in the United States. They were modeled on Versailles, as was the custom of the time, though of course Versailles is a good deal more impressive. These gardens do have a statue set resembling modern XO meetups:
https://imgur.com/a/EXAQJ
This rather dull but hard-to-reach open space is dubbed the "secret garden." You wonder how many residents (or tourists, for that matter) have had sex here:
https://imgur.com/a/hHkpE
Now, it's time to leave this dormant plantation for one that remains active: The Charleston Tea Plantation. While there are small tea gardens across the country. this is America's only large-scale, mechanized tea production enterprise. Of course, making a profit on tea in the U.S. isn't easy, so the plantation pads its revenue by having the plantation itself serve as a tourist destination.
You're led on a trolley tour of the plantation by a Jim, who says he had to become a tour guide after he was expelled from Texas for being a sub-6' "male."
https://imgur.com/a/AEQID
The trolley takes you through the plantation's vast tea fields. The entire operation, from planting all the way to producing brew-ready tea, requires just four workers, in contrast to the hundreds employed on many Third-World plantations. This level of efficiency is made possible by the Green Monster, a custom-made machine created from a modified tobacco harvester:
https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2016/08/05/188-chastea1_custom-6203bef059f581e10bf1a76f3f22d155bb939741-s800-c85.jpg
New tea plants are all clones, cut from existing mature plants and descended from tea plants originally adapted to grow in America way back in the 1700s. The new plants are all grown in this computer-controlled greenhouse, which keeps the growing conditions ideal at all times.
https://imgur.com/a/TkkMf
You learn that it takes about five years for a tea plant to reach maturity, but once it does it can be harvested every few weeks during the growing season for decades or even centuries. Only the top few leaves of a tea plant are cut off to make tea, because all the lower leaves taste like shit apparently.
Some people apparently find all this agricultural science unbelievably romantic, because the plantation is a frequent wedding destination. From the tour trolley, you can see the aftermath of one such wedding:
https://imgur.com/a/JZFT7
All manner of tea and tea-related candies and trinkets are sold in the plantation store. You can also get unlimited quantities of hot and sweet tea, in about a dozen different flavors.
https://imgur.com/a/49MaV
https://imgur.com/a/OY9xX
As you leave the plantation, you say hello to this frogdood chilling by the front door:
https://imgur.com/a/fgn05
Our next stop is an iconic local tree, the Angel Oak. It's frequently called oldest tree east of the Mississippi, but that is egregious flame. It is, however, still worth visiting because it is gigantic and very cool-looking:
https://imgur.com/a/EqiuD
This random dipshit stands in to provide a sense of scale:
https://imgur.com/a/TWXta
The tree is less than 100 feet tall, but creates shade for more than 17,000 square feet. I mean, seriously, look at this ridiculous shit:
https://imgur.com/a/Zztsh
A sign sporting a kooky poem warns you against damaging the tree:
https://imgur.com/a/XcIho
All right, now it's finally time to head into Charleston itself...psyche! We're gonna break into a cemetery first.
As was noted recently by XO Carolinas expert Muscadine wine, Magnolia Cemetery in North Charleston should be a tourist attraction, but isn't for some reason. When you arrive, it's after 5 p.m. and the cemetery is totally supposed to be closed, but nobody bothered to lock the gate:
https://imgur.com/a/BHaTW
You decide to just trespass and hope nobody notices, and indeed, nobody does, because the entire cemetery is utterly deserted. Crumbling graves spanning two centuries are crammed together in a mishmash, separated only by overgrown vegetation and gates that are themselves falling apart:
https://imgur.com/a/PYR64
There's several notable historical figures in Magnolia Cemetery, but we're here to pay our respects to Confederate war dead. The cemetery has a large monument honoring the many men of Charleston killed in the war:
https://imgur.com/a/jCUGd
The most famous graves of all, though, are those of the 21 Hunley crew members, drowned in the ship's three separate sinkings. In particular, we want to pay our respects to the eight men who drowned shortly after becoming the first submarine crew to successfully sink an enemy vessel. Prior visitors have left seashells on the grave of Lt. George Dixon, the doomed vessel's final commander:
https://imgur.com/a/15Vw9
The immense graveyard is getting entirely too spooky as it gets dark, and you're also worried that somebody will eventually close the gate and lock you in overnight. So, you decide to skedaddle and pick up some dinner. Our choice tonight is Home Team BBQ, which comes recommended by XO travel guru RSF. You order a pulled pork platter along with Home Team's signature cocktail, the GAME CHANGER. It's frozen mix of two kinds of rum, pineapple juice, grape juice, and cream of coconut, with a bit of nutmeg on top. Powerful stuff!
https://imgur.com/a/posBD
What a meal! Now, it's finally time to head into Charleston proper. If you were RSF, or this were a DELUXE Bobby Digital experience, you'd doubtless be staying somewhere awesome like the French Quarter Inn. Instead, you'll be staying at the Days Inn, which at least manages to be astonishingly cheap for its prime location.
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/03/17/ac/6c/charleston-days-inn-historic.jpg
You consider a walk around town at night, but are deterred by rain that has gone from a drizzle to a downpour. Let's bed down for now instead.
Tomorrow, we'll take in Charleston's immense U.S. military history, with visits to Fort Sumter, Fort Moultrie, and the USS Yorktown at Patriots Point. Stay tuned!
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3824569&forum_id=2#34888048) |
Date: December 11th, 2017 8:43 AM Author: burgundy rehab
An unexpected holiday treat from Charles. 180.
Guy is trying to make a run at that MPM #1 slot.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3824569&forum_id=2#34888578) |
Date: December 11th, 2017 11:47 PM Author: Mewling home
Day 2:
Wake up, snoozePIG! You didn’t go on vacation to spend your entire morning in a Days Inn. You’re here to pursue SCHOLARSHIP and DECADENCE. And there’s nothing quite as decadent as a southern breakfast. The Days Inn is right next door to Toast, a trendy breakfast joint favorably reviewed by the failing New York Times. We’ll stop by there and get a breakfast that includes biscuits and gravy, fried green tomatoes, a crab cake, and some grits:
https://imgur.com/a/XqvMX
All right, with that out of the way, it’s time to hop in our Fiesta and head east. That’s right, we’re spending ANOTHER day mostly outside Charleston.
First, we cross the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, named after a South Carolina Congressman who once referred to the NAACP as the "National Association for Retarded People," and then subsequently apologized to the retarded rather than to blacks. It’s the third-longest cable-stayed bridge in the Western Hemisphere, which actually doesn’t mean much because China alone has like 30 that are longer.
https://www.hdrinc.com/sites/default/files/styles/carousel_image/public/projects-carousel/6811-arthur-ravenel-jr-bridge-cooper-river-bridge-9173.gif?itok=eUhXBWH5
As we head southeast from the bridge, we pass through Sullivan's Island, one of South Carolina's richer suburbs. Big, nice-looking houses are all over:
https://imgur.com/a/ydU8r
But this is still the South, so every now and then there's a jarring ugly-looking wreck:
https://imgur.com/a/K7kK9
Some wealthy shitlib doesn't want to allow offshore oil drilling in South Carolina:
https://imgur.com/a/KvDnq
Oh, how nice, some couple named Mary and Vince are wishing Twins a happy birthday!
https://imgur.com/a/V7FRd
Anyway, after a nice little drive, we arrive at our first attraction of the day, Fort Moultrie. The fort is located at the southwestern tip of Sullivan's Island, and commands the entrance to Charleston harbor. In 1776, the British made an effort to seize Charleston from the sea, and were driven off after an unsuccessful attack on Fort Sullivan, a half-finished palmetto log fort that was hastily constructed at the current site of Fort Moultrie. As a helpful plaque explains, this victory is why South Carolina is called the Palmetto State, and the fortification on Sullivan's Island was subsequently renamed Fort Moultrie after the winning commander of that battle:
https://imgur.com/a/ggng8
Sullivan's Island is also something of a black Ellis Island. The area was used as a quarantine site for newly-arrived Africans before they were transported to Charleston proper. Around half of all black Americans can trace their heritage to the island, so there is a plaque commemorating that as well. It gets a little shitlibby:
https://imgur.com/a/Ui7ih
Anyway, back to Fort Moultrie proper. The fort was consistently used as a shore defense from the Revolution all the way through World War 2, so different areas of the fort maintain these different aspects. Near the entrance, you can see a large collection of authentic Civil War cannon, including a modified 10-inch rifled Columbiad that Gen. Beauregard used as an experimental supergun for defending Charleston:
https://imgur.com/a/LZfG8
https://imgur.com/a/x3d9E
Fort Moultrie was abandoned late in the Civil War, but continued to be a part of U.S. defensive planning into the 20th century. In the late 1800s, new weapons were installed to protect against a sea assault by Great Britain or another naval power. The remnant of this is a big bunker named Battery Jasper:
http://www.fortwiki.com/images/thumb/f/f9/Fort_Moultrie_Battery_Jasper_-_15.jpg/795px-Fort_Moultrie_Battery_Jasper_-_15.jpg
Small chunks of Battery Jasper are kept open for the public, but it's a lot more fun to trespass onto the unmaintained areas:
https://imgur.com/a/eobjk
Battery Jasper has a fortified shell room, with shells raised by elevator to the gun deck. The gun itself was kept in a hole, and was raised up only for firing. When the gun fired, it used the force of the blast to lower itself back below the parapet, thereby allowing the crew to reload in safety.
https://imgur.com/a/CE9lo
https://imgur.com/a/deiNj
https://imgur.com/a/YDE1m
What the Hell were these little nooks for? They look less than two feet wide, but are quite deep:
https://imgur.com/a/ukxlm
The back areas of Battery Jasper are totally abandoned. Don't go too far or you may find homeless dudes unhappy you've entered their lair!
https://imgur.com/a/AhKc3
Coincidentally, Ft. Moultrie visitors ask a question about Battery Jasper that is very similar to the query many XO posters have had about their wife's cock preferences:
https://imgur.com/a/G0Xgc
After checking out the battery, you head over to see the main Fort, as it existed in the Civil War and, interestingly, World War II.
https://imgur.com/a/I81lO
You can see how the cannon would effectively block an approach to Charleston harbor, especially in concert with Fort Sumter:
https://imgur.com/a/rdnnC
During WW2, Fort Moultrie maintained a small training and reserve garrison, even though its defenses were hopelessly obsolete by then. Inside the fort, several rooms are furnished with WW2 period artifacts.
https://imgur.com/a/kMbtK
Rather randomly, the famous Seminole leader Osceola is buried just outside Ft. Moultrie, as he died here shortly after being captured by the U.S. military.
https://imgur.com/a/ci7o1
Next to Ft. Moultrie is a visitor's center that gives more information about the fort. In a jarring turn, this small museum also has some weird lib rhetoric related to the slave trade. Angola's independence, for example, is rather implausible credited to tactics copied from this 17th century Angolan queen:
https://imgur.com/a/nCbjX
There's also this painting of a black kid in a slave caravan sporting modern-style dreadlocks. Uh...okay then:
https://imgur.com/a/SwdMg
All right, with that rather strange museum wrapped up, it's time to head for our next destination, the USS Yorktown at Patriots Point!
https://imgur.com/a/npLdZ
The Yorktown is an Essex-class aircraft carrier which fought in the Pacific theater of World War II. Originally named the Bonhomme Richard, the ship was renamed following the sinking of a previous Yorktown at the Battle of Midway. The Yorktown is now docked at Patriots point, where it serves as a gigantic museum to U.S. carrier warfare and the U.S Navy in general.
The hangar bay includes a Grumman F6F Hellcat and the Vought F4U Corsair, which did most of the fighter legwork in winning the Pacific War.
https://imgur.com/a/ExyNH
The hangar bay also has a memorial to every single U.S. serviceman who died while serving aboard a carrier.
https://imgur.com/a/6U1Bz
The entire carrier is filled with ship models, like this model of a Japanese carrier paired with an exhibit that is basically "the gradual destruction of the entire Japanese Imperial Navy."
https://imgur.com/a/Jx1Ad
On the flight deck, a tour guide is lecturing an elementary school class about the lopsided damage totals racked up by the Yorktown's flight groups. By the end of the war, very few Japanese planes are being shot down but an awful lot of them are being blown up on the ground due to a lack of pilots and gasoline:
https://imgur.com/a/wTJMs
https://imgur.com/a/BRCiN
The flight deck has post-war planes that the Yorktown carried during Korea, Vietnam, and beyond. The F-14 has tacky shit put on the cockpit cover to make it look like a pilot is inside.
https://imgur.com/a/jnmQ7
The captain's cabin for the Yorktown isn't half bad:
https://imgur.com/a/CHFtP
Charts on the Yorktown's bridge include an utterly exhausting map showing the depth at various points in Charleston Harbor. Don't want to run your gigantic carrier around on some sandbar!
https://imgur.com/a/raVjM
Besides the flight deck, you can go on four other self-guided tours into the interior of the Yorktown. Rooms showing off life on a carrier are mixed in with displays dedicated to notable ships or entire ship classes. For example, one tour dedicates several rooms to the role played by US escort carriers like the Gambier Bay:
https://imgur.com/a/6KN0D
https://imgur.com/a/1rZ8y
A badass model shows the desperate Battle off Samar, where a handful of hopelessly outmatched destroyers and escort carriers attacked a Japanese force of heavy cruisers and battleships, causing massive damage and convincing the Japanese to retreat rather than continue onward to sink US troops transports and possibly kill thousands of men. It's probably the single most-impressive action by the U.S. navy in its history.
https://imgur.com/a/E2HI7
The Yorktown's brig includes a SPOOKY SCARY SKELETON in one cell.
https://imgur.com/a/pOXAM
Sitting on a carrier for months can get dull; luckily they have this chess/checkers/backgammon/dominoes superboard to pass the time.
https://imgur.com/a/uxl7b
For some reason, there's an exhibit and model for the Titanic placed in the Yorktown's mess hall.
https://imgur.com/a/PRxJI
Oh shit, this tour is pretty awesome, but you know what it was missing? DIVERSITY. Special exhibits are dedicated to black carrier aviators as well as women in the navy.
https://imgur.com/a/FH1JV
https://imgur.com/a/DYRzU
The Yorktown is accompanied by the USS Laffey, a WW2 destroyer. During the Battle of Okinawa, the USS Laffey was repeatedly USED and ABUSED by the Japanese navy, being hit by four bombs and no fewer than six kamikaze planes. Nevertheless, the captain refused to abandon ship and the ship refused to sink. For its steadfast refusal to quit despite unrelenting abuse, the Laffey was nicknamed the USS Peterman:
https://imgur.com/a/d2KjA
(okay, it was actually nicknamed The Ship That Wouldn't Die)
Also docked nearby is the USS Clamagore, a submarine. Sadly, the Clamagore isn't open for tours today, and its steadily deteriorating condition means they plan to scuttle the ship for use as an artificial reef in 2018.
https://imgur.com/a/te9Sr
The Laffey's galley has lame plastic food in it for greater authenticity.
https://imgur.com/a/7JRLV
Before leaving, we swing by yet another exhibit at Patriots Point, which honors South Carolinians killed in the Vietnam War. Every dead man has a dog tag, which serves to showcase the relative frequency of last names in the English language.
https://imgur.com/a/jQIWG
All right, after a good three hours checking out the Yorktown, you're finally ready to head for Fort Sumter. But wait! You can't go, because the ferry to the island has been CANCELED due to rain causing an excessive high tide. Yeah, I know.
So instead, we head back into Charleston to visit the Charleston Museum, America's oldest museum. The museum was originally a generic collection of oddities, but eventually it was modernized to focus on the human and natural history of the Lowcountry.
In 1880 a right whale got lost in Charleston harbor. As is their wont, Charleston residents quickly assembled and lynched the interloper. It's skeleton hangs from the ceiling of the Charleston museum to this day.
https://imgur.com/a/50ZmU
A map early in the museum explains how the Lowcountry used to be organized into parishes. All the way up through the civil war, Lowcountry administrative divisions were matched to the boundaries of different Anglican parishes.
https://imgur.com/a/PGSs2
Think it sucks to keep up on on your bar registration? It could be worse. In late 1700s, Charleston, free blacks had to carry around a FREE BADGE proving their freedom. The badge features a Phrygian cap, a classical motif associated with freedom. Failure to carry the badge resulted in a hefty three-pound fine, and if you couldn't pay you'd have to do a month of unpaid hard labor.
https://imgur.com/a/1y324
A sign about S.C.'s slave system notes with some odd pride that South Carolinian slaveowners distinguished between different breeds of African, preferring slaves from Senegambia or the Gold Coast, among other regions, for their preexisting knowledge of rice cultivation:
https://imgur.com/a/Ia26z
A commemorative pitcher honoring George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette notes that "Republicans are not ALWAYS ungrateful," which sounds like a really faint boast.
https://imgur.com/a/eq5Oy
South Carolina was really committed to acting like a supervillain during the Civil War. One sign notes the amusing legal dispute over what to do with prisoners from the 54th Massachusetts (blacks could not be soldiers, legally, so how could they be POW's?), while another mentions efforts by South Carolina just before the Civil War to reenslave the region's sizable free black population.
https://imgur.com/a/qbbS4
An 1863 Charleston newspaper boasted about Robert E. Lee's great "victory" at Gettysburg. Whoops!
https://imgur.com/a/asWoK
In the late 1800s, South Carolina became the first and only state to implement an absolute state monopoly on the sale of all liquor. The measure was promoted as a way to fund schools, but the vast majority of the money was diverted to other ends. Some things never change!
https://imgur.com/a/NWqfx
The museum maintains a huge collection of antique silver, which is mostly just generically impressive shit. However, it does have one notable item: The silver cup used at George Washington's christening:
https://imgur.com/a/Cq1Zu
In a city of opulent houses, it's no surprise the museum has an opulent-as-fuck dollhouse. They also have a tiny violin, much like the ones most of America played when Charleston was burned and shelled during the Civil War:
https://imgur.com/a/3nj4S
https://imgur.com/a/VXBfk
Burma Shave!
https://imgur.com/a/CknrM
As America's oldest museum, Charleston Museum predates the Revolution and is a minor historic site in its own right. As such, the museum still maintains an exhibit showcasing the curiosities it assembled when it wasn't so focused on Charleston itself. Some of the articles include an Egyptian mummy, carved elephant tusks, a giant moa skeleton, a bunch of small animals preserved in jars, and of course, a fucking stuffed polar bear:
https://imgur.com/a/0MhDu
https://imgur.com/a/26c0Y
https://imgur.com/a/pxQAk
https://imgur.com/a/rmSwb
https://imgur.com/a/Ej9Fc
It's been a long day of walking around (we'll finished with more than 26,000 steps!), and we haven't eaten since 8 am, so it's time for some dinner. We've reserved a spot at one of Charleston's trendiest eateries, Magnolias:
https://magnoliascharleston.com/index.php?route=information/menu&information_id=27
Oh crap, that's pretty pricey. You aren't made of money...on second thought, how about we do BBQ again? Muscadine's friends tell him that Rodney Scott's is the "second coming of BBQ Jesus," so you decide to go there. Does it measure up to Home Team from last night?
https://imgur.com/a/fV6c8
Oh, does it ever.
With dinner out of the way, it's time to head down to the Battery at the tip of Charleston peninsula, to the historic Edmonston-Alsten House.
The house is hosting a special event for the holiday season, Christmas 1860. For the event, actors dress up in period costume and act out scenes from the last Christmas of Charleston's golden age, just after secession and before civil war and emancipation destroyed the antebellum order forever. Besides the tour and performance, you also get free apple cider!
https://www.ahoycharleston.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Christmas-1860-at-the-Edmondston-Alston-House.jpg
https://www.charlestoncvb.com/images/news/434715201011223240.jpg
https://www.wheretraveler.com/sites/default/files/styles/node-feature--teaser/public/images/CHS_Christmas1860_AlstonHouse.jpg?itok=yPwSioFd
With that wrapped, we have one final order of business for the night. Despite a rainstorm that has once again become torrential, we're headed for King St. north of Calhoun, home to Charleston's most popular bars. We head straight for Muscadine's favorite location, Midtown Bar and Grill:
https://imgur.com/a/vBWcH
Oh SHIT, it looks like Muscadine's bar is DUNHERE. As a backup, we head to the nearby Stars, and order a locally-brewed pint "in honor of a friend."
"Is he dead or something?" asks the man next to you.
"Worse, he's married," you reply.
https://imgur.com/a/gyMPT
Some chicks are hanging out at the bar:
https://imgur.com/a/jonHJ
You could approach and try to chat them up, but who are you kidding? You're hanging out with a tour guide who likes droning on about Civil War battles. If you wanted a sexhaving tour you should have gone on RSF DIGITAL's tour instead.
With the pint finished, it's time to head back to the Days Inn and sleep. We've got a big day tomorrow, as we make another attempt at Fort Sumter, and finally get a good daytime look at Charleston's historic city center.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3824569&forum_id=2#34895412) |
Date: December 12th, 2017 4:14 PM Author: Boyish violent feces spot
Were you able to visit the grave of Charleston’s first black police chief, Reuben Greenberg?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuben_Greenberg
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3824569&forum_id=2#34900371) |
|
Date: December 12th, 2017 5:17 PM Author: Jade bawdyhouse
xoRubin Greenburg:
"A Black, Jewish, Roller-Skating Cop Brings A New Way to Fight Crime to the Old South."
Charleston's population increased 64% during the time Greenberg was chief, while crime decreased 11 percent.[3]
"calling an anti-war demonstrator a "crazy fat lady" in 2003 (he later said, "I was wrong. She's not fat. She's obese. She's grossly obese. If she doesn't like that, she can do something about it, like the Atkins diet that I was on.")
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3824569&forum_id=2#34900811) |
Date: December 14th, 2017 1:21 AM Author: Mewling home
Day 3:
All right, we’re halfway through our trip, but now it’s finally time to really appreciate historic Charleston itself.
But first, we’re gonna hit Toast again for breakfast, and this time we’re going to have their actual deluxe French toast, as recommended by the NY Times. It’s unnnnngh:
https://imgur.com/a/uNfDb
For our first stop of the day, we’ll swing by the Old Slave Mart. Charleston originally conducted slave auctions in the open air near the docks, but eventually public sentiment began to regard the auctions as rather unseemly, so the state requires all sales to be conducted indoors. The Slave Mart was one of many locations used for such sales:
https://imgur.com/a/vmBGB
Apparently, this used to be a cool site to visit, because they maintained the actual look of an auction site, with a block where the slaves stood, small booths where people could bid anonymously, etc. Then in the 1980s the Charleston government bought the Mart and turned it into a generic shitmuseum. Now, it’s literally just two floors of signs giving information about slavery, without the original look and with almost no artifacts:
https://imgur.com/a/0NX22
The museum does, however, mention the awkward fact that many free blacks bought slaves themselves:
https://imgur.com/a/V1s2O
One of the few artifacts is a broadside announcing an auction of 25 slaves:
https://imgur.com/a/LskX5
Overall, not a very interesting stop, but don’t worry, there’s plenty else to do today. We’re scheduled to do a walking tour of the city, starting from Washington Park near City Hall.
Ironically, Washington Park is named for the father of the United States, but it’s full of monuments to the Confederate cause. A statue at the entrance honors Henry Timrod, Charleston native, poet laureate of the Confederacy, and author of the lyrics to South Carolina’s state song, “Carolina.”
https://imgur.com/a/hZWVp
An obelisk at the park’s center honors the Civil War service of the Washington Light Infantry, a local militia unit that lost 114 men in the war. It survives even today as a local civic organization:
https://imgur.com/a/oZIH0
The plaque at the obelisk’s tagline ends with a line from Horace, “fortuna non mutat genus,” or roughly “Fortune does not change origin.”
https://imgur.com/a/VMt2d
Here, the intended meaning is basically “Even if we lost, we were still right.” Ironically, though, the original meaning in Horace was as an insult; like many XO posters he argued that no amount of wealth or striving could blot out PROLE origins.
The park also has a plaque featuring a prayer by Episcopal bishop and Citadel graduate Ellison Capers, which lays it on rather think about the Confederacy’s “pure record of virtue.”
https://imgur.com/a/81qjq
There’s also a humble monument for P.G.T. Beauregard, who oversaw the taking of Ft. Sumter and later commanded the city’s defense against a long Union siege:
https://imgur.com/a/lm2eK
Lastly, there’s a monument honoring the first South Carolina JEW to die fighting for American Independence:
https://imgur.com/a/puCOz
All right, it’s been fun looking around this park, but it’s time for our tour to start. The tour is being led by Therese Smyth, a seventh-generation Charlestonian and retired lawyer. She says doing tours is way more 180 than law.
https://imgur.com/a/IFULl
Near Washington Park is a the intersection of Meeting and Broad Streets, an intersection that Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! dubbed the Four Corners of Law. City hall, the county courthouse, a federal post office, and St. Michael’s Church each sit at a corner of the intersection:
https://imgur.com/a/Hg1uZ
The Charleston County Courthouse was designed by James Hoban. Washington liked the look when he visited Charleston in 1791, and he later picked Hoban’s design for the White House. You can see a resemblance:
https://imgur.com/a/JdCnb
The owner of one of Charleston’s nicer houses very politely requests that tourists not fucking trespass on his property:
https://imgur.com/a/J91Nj
Therese explains the basics of the Charleston single house, a distinctive house type that dominates the city’s historic residential architecture.
https://imgur.com/a/qbq8x
Typically, single houses are several rooms long on each floor but just one room wide, at least when viewed from the street (hence the name). This design takes advantage of the narrow housing lots Charleston was originally divided into, and also allegedly makes it easier for breezes to circulate through a house when windows are opened at each end. Instead of having a conventional front door, single houses typically have a false front door, which simply opens onto a porch (“piazzas” in local parlance) that runs the entire length of one building side and contains the actual front entrance. These piazzas are almost always located on the south or west side of a building, which exposes them to more pleasant breezes during the city’s brutally hot 8-month summers. Therese notes it is often claimed that the single house’s design was developed due to an old local law that taxed homes based on their amount of street frontage. This, she says, is PREPOSTEROUS FLAME developed by the incompetent tour guides who run the popular carriage tour rides. Speaking of which, hey look, there’s one right now!
https://imgur.com/a/Gxc2a
As we keep walking, we pass by the Nathaniel Russell House (more on that later). In the house’s courtyard, we encounter a joggling board, a distinctive recreational feature of the Lowcountry since the 1800s. It’s basically a long springy board that you can bounce on if you sit in the middle. It can have both therapeutic and recreational purposes, and according to Therese was even used in courtship (a man and woman could sit at opposite ends and slowly joggle toward one another if they were interested). Bouncing on it is admittedly fun in a rather dumb way:
https://imgur.com/a/Vmm6j
The Russell House has a preposterous plastic fruit arrangement over its front door:
https://imgur.com/a/qQSNg
As you keep walking, Therese points out another Charleston quirk: The chevaux-de-frise. It’s the barbed-wire looking thing at the top of the iron fence.
https://imgur.com/a/srGgv
In 1822, black freedman Denmark Vasey was arrested and executed for allegedly plotting a great slave uprising in the city. In the ensuing panic, Charlestonians all over the city topped their fences with chevaux-de-frise to deter home invasions. Eventually, most of it was taken out and melted down to make armaments during the Civil War, but a small bit survives outside what is today a Baptist school. Once, it kept people out, now it keeps them in!
As you walk along the Battery, you can see Fort Sumter looming in the distance, about four miles away:
https://imgur.com/a/l5Lo2
This house is on the National Register of Historic Places because a guy died here after a duel. His ghost allegedly haunts both the house and a nearby alleyway. Notably the sign also gets his name wrong; he was named Joseph Brown Ladd, not Joseph Ladd Brown, but for some reason nobody can be arsed to fix it:
https://imgur.com/a/O6bzb
https://scaresandhauntsofcharleston.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/the-whistling-doctor-of-duelers-alley/
One of the back-alley streets in downtown is dubbed “Longitude Lane,” so a nearby house dubbed its driveway “Latitude Lane,” and their intersection records the exact latitude and longitude:
https://imgur.com/a/1SWmm
In its earliest days, Charleston was a walled town, and bits and pieces of the wall are preserved in a few places:
https://imgur.com/a/fOdLD
As you continue your tour, Therese finally takes you to the iconic Rainbow Row. The name obviously comes from the vibrant pastel colors on the houses here:
https://imgur.com/a/p9dDw
Besides the colors, Rainbow Row is one of the largest concentrations of 1700s Georgian house architecture in the United States. Ironically, the row exists in large part thanks to the desperate poverty Charleston suffered following the Civil War. The old houses fell into ruin, but they also were never torn down because nobody had the money to build something in their place. Change came in the 1920s, when Susan Pringle Frost founded what is today the Preservation Society of Charleston. She and several friends bought up the houses, restored them, and painted them these colors to reflect color schemes popular in the Caribbean (many early Charlestonians came from Barbados). Frost’s efforts led to Charleston becoming the first American city to pass a historic preservation ordinance, and today the Board of Architectural Review rules the city with an iron fist (Therese is a member!). For instance, if you own any house on Rainbow Row, local law requires that you maintain the color, though you can sometimes change the shade as long as you get approval first.
Therese also takes another chance to SHIT on Charleston’s carriage tour guides, who are endless fonts of fraud&lies. Apparently, they often tell tourists that Rainbow Row is much older than it is, and that the rainbow colors were intended to help drunken sailors find the right home at night. Without the strong colors, sailors were allegedly prone to entering the wrong home and fucking women who weren’t their wives. But that shit is all RETARDED FLAME.
This parking lot used to be some kind of factory or processing facility, but the structure burned down. While it’s used as a park lot, the walls are historic and CANNOT be torn down.
https://imgur.com/a/rfgFI
Wow, check out this old, historic Charleston building:
https://imgur.com/a/v3CF4
Psych! This building was only put up in 2005, making it younger than XO. It’s just designed to look old. It even has an award from the Preservation Society for its admirable fakery:
https://imgur.com/a/412Ma
Authentic 1700s buildings often had a coal chute on the side of the building, so to enhance the fraudlies, this building even has a fake filled-in coal chute:
https://imgur.com/a/OS1Hb
There used to be a haberdashery in this building, so there is a cartoon man here composed entirely of hats:
https://imgur.com/a/MuMMi
Charleston maintains a few cobblestone streets. The city didn’t have much stone, but it made use of rocks dumped by British ships that used them as ballast. When the British found out, they got MAF and started taxing the stones:
https://imgur.com/a/IFH2A
It’s hard to read, but this house wants to apply a new coat of paint (in the same color it already was). Even that minor change requires posting a notice and getting approval from the architecture board. Downtown Charleston is pretty much a police state when it comes to modifying your house.
https://imgur.com/a/JLoIu
The tour ends near the Dock Street Theatre, the oldest building in the U.S. purpose-built for use as a theater.
https://imgur.com/a/Uw4CF
After the tour, your next scheduled activity is a ferry to Fort Sumter, but that’s not for a few hours. Let’s walk around some more!
The Powder House is the oldest public building in South Carolina, constructed in the early 1800s. Actually going inside costs like $10, so fuck it, we’ll just snap a photo from outside. The tacky “we’re open!” sign kinda saps a lot of the historic feel:
https://imgur.com/a/78tIp
Nearby is the Circular Congregational Church, which today is no longer circular:
https://imgur.com/a/al9M2
Also, being affiliated with the United Church of Christ, it’s shitlib as fukkk:
http://www.circularchurch.org/about
http://www.circularchurch.org/privilege
Like most of Charleston’s old churches, the CCC has a cool old graveyard:
https://imgur.com/a/qRDWy
This guy’s monument honors his tremendous achievements in the field of dental science:
https://imgur.com/a/AU97s
One of the most famous incidents in Charleston’s history, of course, is when the South Carolina secession convention drafted and approved the Ordinance of Secession in 1860. Want to visit the place where they did that? Too bad! It all burned down in a massive fire in 1861 which devastated a huge swath of the city. So instead, we just have a marker where the building was:
https://imgur.com/a/bSg2U
https://imgur.com/a/yG1UA
Now we’re passing by one of Charleston’s most popular attractions, the City Market. It is egregious tourist trap flame, with shops selling mass-produced candy and shitty knick-knacks for proles. Naturally, we stop by for a look. One booth is selling overpriced signs with stupid witty phrases to appeal to boomers:
https://imgur.com/a/aBTHj
https://imgur.com/a/A1JF7
A nearby shop selling overpriced “funny” shirts hasn’t been notified that law is no longer prestigious:
https://imgur.com/a/e3wkD
The most popular restaurant near the market is Hyman’s Seafood Co., whose popularity with visitors infuriates locals who label it a tourist trap:
https://imgur.com/a/1Cobp
This post is getting really long, so we’ll pause at mid-day for now. In the afternoon, we’ll check out the area around Calhoun Street, set off for Fort Sumter, and go on one of Charleston’s famous SPOOKY GHOST tours.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3824569&forum_id=2#34914981)
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Date: December 15th, 2017 12:25 AM Author: Mewling home
Day 3, Part II:
All right, it’s time to head up north a bit and check out the area around Calhoun Street. Let’s play a quick visit to the campus for the College of Charleston:
https://imgur.com/a/NISiP
https://imgur.com/a/HDXxp
https://imgur.com/a/CUeeA
Chartered in 1785, College of Charleston is one of the oldest colleges in the U.S., and is often rated as one of the most beautiful campuses in the country. It also gets attention on XO for being 60 percent female and having a lot of kyooties. That said, it’s finals week and only 40 degrees out, so you see just a few chicks walking about.
https://imgur.com/a/B6LiI
Ungh.
Anyway, let’s take a short stroll down Calhoun to Marion Square, named after the infamous Swamp Fox Francis Marion (the guy Mel Gibson in The Patriot was based on). Dominating the square is a giant column with John C. Calhoun on top of it:
https://imgur.com/a/aOABj
TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND THE CONSTITUTION
Somebody has left a cross on the backside. Also, it’s hard to read, but the plaque at the base extols a South Carolina lady who saved the funds for a previous monument from Sherman’s army when it burned Columbia in 1865:
https://imgur.com/a/FdgUL
Calhoun was a big defender of slavery and nullification, and was an ideological forerunner of secession. Unsurprisingly, shitlibs want to tear down his monument, but it’ll be a pain: South Carolina's Heritage Act requires a two-thirds vote from both houses of the state legislature before any monuments, streets, bridges, or parks honoring specific individuals can be renamed or torn down.
Also, the city’s history commission recently shot down a retarded idea to add a shitlib plaque to the monument:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article189392624.html
Of course, one reason shitlibs get so touchy about Calhoun is because of what’s nearby. Just a block away is Mother Emanuel AME Church, the historically black congregation where Dylann Roof murdered nine people at a bible study. Let’s say a short prayer as we walk past:
https://imgur.com/a/57Xu5
Oh shit! It’s almost time for the Fort Sumter ferry! Let’s head over to the docks.
https://twistedfencepost.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/fs2.jpg
It’s about a 35-minute ride from Charleston out to Sumter. The view you get upon approach feels very historic.
https://imgur.com/a/bLLOk
Fort Sumter, of course, is famous as the location where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. A small Union garrison inside the fort was shelled for several hours by shore batteries commanded by Gen. Beauregard, and surrendered before either side suffered any casualties. The attack sparked Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers to suppress Southern insurrection, and after that the war began in earnest.
That said, today’s Sumter actually doesn’t much resemble the fort that was fired on in 1861. For starters, that fort was positively blasted into rubble by the subsequent Union siege. In addition, though, Sumter was still a defensive position until after the Spanish American War, so it actually has one of the same Endicott batteries we saw at Fort Moultrie. Today, the battery has been transformed into the fort’s museum.
As you hop off the boat, you see a sign warning about the effect of climate change on Fort Sumter:
https://imgur.com/a/ZdkVw
The most sacred relic of Fort Sumter is the storm flag flown by Major Robert Anderson when the fort was shelled in 1861. More than 350,000 Union soldiers died fighting to raise this flag back above Fort Sumter:
https://imgur.com/a/yak1g
There’s also a program from the ceremony the day the flag was re-raised. The ceremony was held on the same day as Lincoln’s assassination.
https://imgur.com/a/TRhn8
The museum also includes the Palmetto flag used by the South Carolina defenders of the fort from 1861-65:
https://imgur.com/a/qP4X4
Considering the number of men who died to keep the Union flag flying here, you’d think Sumter would be sure to always have the flag up. But no, right now the flagpole is undergoing repairs, so it’s bare:
https://imgur.com/a/Gnh22
You catch a view of Charleston in the distance:
https://imgur.com/a/gql53
To the southwest is Morris Island, site of the Battle of Fort Wagner from Glory. The island is heavily eroded, though, so the location of the fort is largely washed away now.
https://imgur.com/a/azUvG
Back at the dockyard museum, they have samples of Confederate currency. According to Therese, some locations in Charleston will accept it at face value.
https://imgur.com/a/sIoIY
The museum also has an 1800’s ballot box for…some reason.
https://imgur.com/a/B9cgF
Philip Simmons was a black blacksmith who worked in Charleston for nearly a century. There’s a small public garden honoring him near the Sumter ferry. It’s a little obscure, but for some reason Therese INSISTED you visit:
https://imgur.com/a/qplt3
https://imgur.com/a/LEQIq
All right, it’s time for dinner. BBQ is great, but having it three days in a row would be a little nuts. Instead, we’re going to visit Lowcountry Bistro, which offers authentic area cuisine at prices slightly more reasonable than other joints. Let’s get a bowl of she-crab soup and some shrimp and grits:
https://imgur.com/a/M9cDH
https://imgur.com/a/W0t2z
After dinner, it’s time to go on a GHOST TOUR. There are a lot of options, including one that visits the city jail, but we go for the offering by Tour Charleston LLC, because the tour’s founder literally wrote the book on Charleston ghosts, and because it’s a healthy two hours long.
Sadly your pictures are all pretty shit, but rest assured you hear a lot of nice spooky stories. At St. Philip’s Episcopal, a woman’s ghost has been seen weeping at what is believed to be the grave of her stillborn child:
https://imgur.com/a/Aw5iu
The church is a little annoyed by all the ghost-hunters who come by, and suggests they stop by for a different reason:
https://imgur.com/a/VJpQY
You hear quite a few other nifty ghost stories on the tour. Outside the F.W. Wagener Building, you hear the legend of George Poirier.
http://c8.alamy.com/comp/DAG7AR/brick-wagener-building-facade-historic-district-charleston-sc-usa-DAG7AR.jpg
https://scaresandhauntsofcharleston.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/the-f-w-wagener-building-the-story-of-george-poirier/
A cotton businessman, Poirier was ruined by the boll weevil, and shot himself in the Wagener building after he saw his last shipload of cotton destroyed in an accidental fire. Today, Poirier reportedly likes to move furniture around on the 3rd floor, and is particularly fond of stealing people’s drinks when they aren’t looking.
Several other ghost stories concern the Battery Carriage House Inn at the south tip of Charleston:
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/19/5e/c6/charleston.jpg
In Room 8 of the inn, there’s reportedly a torso ghost that floats about, all that remains of a Confederate soldier killed in a munitions accident. Meanwhile, in Room 10, a fellow dubbed the “Gentleman Ghost” frequently gets in bed with female guests, but is very polite and quickly leaves if they object. He’s supposedly the specter left by an incel betacuck college student.
The climax of the tour is the Unitarian graveyard at the center of town. The cemetery is home to one of Charleston’s most-seen ghosts, the Woman in White. Overgrown with vegetation in accordance with Unitarian norms, the graveyard is certainly the kind of place that would be haunted:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/9290045.jpg (sorry about the lack of night photos they almost all turned out shitty)
Your tour guide explains that despite her fame, nobody is sure who the Woman in White is. According to one theory, it’s a wife searching for her husband, who died outside the city and was never brought back to be buried beside her. In another theory, the woman in white is Lavinia Fisher, a highwaywoman that Charlestonians like to hype as the country’s first female serial killer. But the tour guide’s preferred theory is that the Woman in White is Anna Ravenel. The legend goes that, as a young man, Edgar Allen Poe carried on a romance with Anna, the daughter of an elite Charleston family. Unfortunately, her father did not approve, and he conspired to have Poe shipped away from Charleston. Later, Anna died, and allegedly the father had six different unmarked graves dug for her purely to spite Poe so he could not visit her. The tour guide alleges that Anna Ravenel is the subject of Poe’s final published poem, Annabel Lee, and he recites it for you with an actor’s skill and vigor.
All very spooky, though I feel obliged to note there’s no evidence for it (thought Poe did spend a short stint in Charleston) and it’s probably massive flame.
After the ghost tour ends, you take a midnight stroll down to Battery St. to check out the nice-as-fuck houses there:
https://imgur.com/a/uRLpP
https://imgur.com/a/z4sjI
One expensive-as-fuck house has a sign demanding nicer treatment for the carriage horses of Charleston. You think about how hard some guy strived to get this house, only to be stuck with a lib shrew wife:
https://imgur.com/a/dJvmo
As you wander down the otherwise silent, empty streets, you come across an astonishing site: A drunk dood just standing around on the corner:
https://imgur.com/a/LtVBM
Holy shit, it’s Muscadine wine! He went on a bender after an argument with his wife, and now he’s lost alone late at night, far from home, and with a dead phone. He begs you for an Uber ride up to a house just north of the College of Charleston.
“If you help me out, I can show you a good time. No homo,” he says.
Damn! You’d better give him a hand! You call up an Uber and give him a ride back to his place. But once you arrive, he just staggers off and definitely doesn’t show you a “good time,” homo or otherwise. Oh well.
A passing girl (who seems pretty drunk herself) strikes up a conversation with you as you see him off, and is impressed by your act of selfless charity. You walk for a few minutes together until you reach Calhoun Street. She says you’re welcome to walk toward her house with her, but it’s in the opposite direction of the Days Inn and bitch it is like 1 am and we have a BUSY DAY planned for tomorrow. You bid her adieu and head home for a well-deserved rest. You’ve walked more than twelve miles today!
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3824569&forum_id=2#34924298)
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Date: December 16th, 2017 12:24 AM Author: Mewling home
Day 4
It’s Sunday morning! You know what that means, brother: We’re going to church. Charleston has nicknamed both the Holy City and the Sacred City in part thanks to its concentration of churches, and it includes some of the oldest congregations in the country.
We set off from the Days Inn before 8 am to catch our first service, at St. Philip’s Episcopal just a couple blocks away. It’s the most-impressive of quite a few Episocopal churches in the town. It’s also the oldest religious congregation in South Carolina, though not the oldest church building:
https://imgur.com/a/D81BR
These are Episcopalians we’re talking about, so the crowd inside isn’t immense. That said, there are two services on Sunday, and a competing church of the same denomination is literally a block away, so we shouldn’t be too judgmental:
https://imgur.com/a/VYG3L
The sermon is on sin; it is real, and not simply a shallow label used to control people. Sin is rooted in self-centeredness. God has made us to pour out love for others, but instead we love ourselves. But instead of making us happy, this creates suffering, for ourselves and others.
In the entryway, St. Philip’s commemorates parishioners who “died for their country” in the Civil War. They’re impressively detailed on the location and date, and distinguish between men who were killed in action, died of wounds, and died of other causes:
https://imgur.com/a/CxuuJ
St. Philip’s has two graveyards, one typically reserved for those born in Charleston and a “stranger’s graveyard” for outsiders. The most famous denizen of the stranger’s graveyard is John C. Calhoun, who was buried here even though he wasn’t Episcopalian.
https://imgur.com/a/aCR1z
Also buried at St. Philip’s is Charles Pinckney, a signer of the Constitution. Pinckney was basically the UVT of the Constitutional Convention, constantly trying to take credit for the major ideas in the Constitution, much to the chagrin of James Madison and other attendees. He also claimed to be the youngest delegate at just 24, even though he was actually 29 and several delegates were younger than him. That said, he did make two major contributions, successfully inserting a ban on religious tests for office as well as the fugitive slave clause, requiring states to assist in return slaves escaped from other states.
https://images.findagrave.com/photos250/photos/2015/93/4434_1428212972.jpg
Our next stop is another Episcopal church just a block away, St. Michael’s. We don’t have time to attend services here, but it is the city’s oldest standing church so of course we must stop by:
https://imgur.com/a/yeYgE
Like St. Philip’s, St. Michael’s has a monument to its Confederate dead that modern shitlib Episcopalians probably feel super awkward about:
https://imgur.com/a/mxXMd
Also much like St. Philip’s, St. Michael’s has a small graveyard which holds several distinguished South Carolinians.
John Rutledge was South Carolina’s first governor post-independence, and also spent six months as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He chaired the Committee on Detail during the Constitutional Convention, which produced the first full draft of the Constitution and had tremendous impact on the final product. He notably is responsible for barring the Supreme Court from issuing advisory opinions, and was also a major advocate granting only landowners the right to vote. Also, one time he tried to get a tavern keeper banished from the state of South Carolina for insulting him.
https://imgur.com/a/x6t9L
Also buried a St. Mike’s is Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, cousin of Charles Pinckney (yeah, I know). He served in the Revolution, and was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, where he fought hard for a strong national government and slaveholder interests. He was twice nominated for the presidency but was defeated both times, first by Jefferson and then by Madison.
Pinckney was minister to France in the 1890s, where he famously refused to give a bribe to Talleyrand in the so-called XYZ Affair. “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!” They put it on his grave:
https://imgur.com/a/kQver
Amidst all these serious graves is this tremendous troll job of a drinking fountain:
https://imgur.com/a/Y0nOX
Our next stop is St. Mary of the Anunciation, the oldest Catholic congregation in the Carolinas or Georgia. Its architecture fits in well with Charleston but is a little unusual for a Catholic church:
https://imgur.com/a/O5NQY
The church is substantially more crowded than St. Philip’s, so we have to go into the side balcony:
https://imgur.com/a/vXyhx
Otherwise, it’s a standard service and nobody particularly cool is buried in the tiny graveyard, so we’ll move on quickly.
Across the street from St. Mary’s is Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, Charleston’s synagogue. It’s the second-oldest synagogue building in the United States, and the oldest one in continuous use. It was also the first synagogue in the United States to practice the beliefs we today call Reform Judaism. So if you dislike shitlib Reform Judaism, you can heap a lot of blame on these guys:
https://imgur.com/a/5DTi6
The 11th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Park Here
https://imgur.com/a/pMe1r
All right, time to hustle back to the area around St. Philip’s for our next church service, at the Huguenot Church:
https://imgur.com/a/HOqEL
You heard that right: French Protestants. This is the only independent Huguenot church in all of North America; the rest eventually assimilated into various national Reformed religious bodies. In the foyer, they have a plaque listing every U.S. president with at least one Huguenot ancestor. It’s a whopping 21, but they’re on 40-year cold streak:
https://imgur.com/a/lK9dn
Due to its independence, the Huguenot Church practices a unique English-language liturgy it adopted in the early 1800s (one service per year is conducted in French). Notice the latest edition of the liturgy was funded by the Ravenel family, who have popped up a few times on this trip:
https://imgur.com/a/xGjfQ
They also have a custom-printed hymnal:
https://imgur.com/a/rxt6F
Each service opens with a singing of Psalm 68, the traditional battle hymn of French Protestantism. It’s sung in French, so there’s a helpful phonetic pronunciation guide:
https://imgur.com/a/Hgjt8
The preacher’s sermon centers on the theme of names: God knows the name of every individual, and despite his infinite power wants to know and love each of us on an individual level.
After the sermon, a parishioner explains the church’s history, taking a few understandable shots at the Catholic Church along the way. The medal she’s wearing on her left shoulder is the Huguenot Cross, the international symbol of the French Reformed faith:
https://imgur.com/a/LJJJi
The Huguenot Church experienced financial troubles throughout its long life, so one way it stayed open was by allowing people to pay to install plaques in honor of people. Notably, the plaques don’t have to honor actual Huguenots, so a lot just honor famous Americans like Alexander Hamilton or George Washington. Also, one honors a Ravenel who was killed in Korea:
https://imgur.com/a/85bNp
And of course, there’s monument to the Confederate dead, with three more dead Ravenels:
https://imgur.com/a/AZ20c
Our last church visit of the morning is First Scots Presbyterian, another extremely old congregation with an old church building:
https://imgur.com/a/YDz79
First Scots has two bell towers, but it donated its bells to make cannon in the Civil War, and for more than a century after it remained a silent church. That long tradition was broken in 1999 when they put a bell back in the tower. Lame!
For a shitlib mainline Protestant church it has a good crowd, with a big choir and a bunch of string instruments incorporated into the service. The music is excellent even if the theology is terrible.
https://imgur.com/a/KdJ4l
Well, that was a splendid and most GODLY morning. In our next post, we’ll wrap up our Charleston trip by checking out King Street, another historic house, and of course, the Hunley.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3824569&forum_id=2#34932442)
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Date: December 22nd, 2017 3:50 AM Author: Mewling home
Day 4 Part II
Sorry for the delay! It’s time to wrap up our far-too-brief visit to Charleston with a few more cool sites to visit.
Our last post covered Sunday morning, where we stopped by several of Charleston’s old churches. Now, we’re going to head down to one of Charleston’s many historic mansions. There are several to choose from, but one of the most popular is the Nathaniel Russell House. We stopped outside it during Saturday’s walking tour to see the joggling board, but now we’re going to step inside.
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/02/bc/08/17/nathaniel-russell-house.jpg
The Russell House was built by Nathaniel Russell, a wealthy Charleston merchant, so that he could impress Carolina patricians and win high-status husbands for his two daughters.
Back in the day, Charleston suffered from frequent fires, mostly caused by kitchen accidents that grew out of control. Eventually, Charleston tried to solve the problem by requiring that kitchens be built separately from main houses, so old Charleston has a lot of old properties with detached kitchens (which were often slave quarters as well). What makes this notable is that a lot of houses later did additions to join the old kitchen with the main house, and the Russell house is no exception. Handily, this middle area is used by the Russell House as an entryway, shop, and museum so that it doesn’t have to intrude on the original house.
An information display in the small museum notes that Russell only got married at 50. I can still maek it!
https://imgur.com/a/MA1FH
An 1800s sketch shows an artist’s impressively-accurate rendition of how the city looked at the time. All the churches we’ve visited today are in it:
https://imgur.com/a/zN4Hk
The tour guide explains how the Russell House didn’t use mahogany doors. Instead, different woods were painted to LOOK like mahogany, as this was actually more costly and prestigious, and EVERYTHING in the Russell House was intended to be costly and prestigious. Even the walls are painted an orange-ish color in several rooms because this was a costly paint at the time. Also, despite the Civil War, numerous hurricanes, and a major earthquake, the doors still have their original glass windows.
https://imgur.com/a/fFg2U
The most famous feature of the Russell House is its three-story cantilevered spiral staircase, which originally received no support from the wall and instead was anchored only to the ground (today, a tiny steel beam adds some additional support). Sadly, tour groups can’t climb the staircase anymore because hundreds of people walking on it a day was providing too much stress.
https://imgur.com/a/fFg2U
On the main floor, there is a tiny door to the right of the dining room. It doesn’t open into anything; it’s just there to fill space. Apparently they considered a tiny door-to-nowhere more natural-looking than just nothing.
https://imgur.com/a/X0Ebi
One of the rooms has this preposterous painting:
https://imgur.com/a/CaTno
A portrait of a Russell family member in the house is notable for being painted by Samuel Morse, who was a distinguished painter before he became more famous for inventing Morse Code and publishing extreme anti-Catholic polemics:
https://imgur.com/a/lWUHK
The Russell House music room is mad opulent:
https://imgur.com/a/RrINo
This simple-looking chair in the master bedroom is actually an early toilet. There’s a chamber pot on the bottom and you could remove the top cushion to take a shit. Not flame!
https://imgur.com/a/9SVXx
All right, that was a nifty little house. Now, it’s time to head back north.
Near city hall, there is a memorial to longtime South Carolina representative L. Mendel Rivers:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8400/8749780120_cd1138f487_b.jpg
“He spoke for his neighbors and strove to keep his country strong.” Yeah, you probably know what the subtext of this monument is. Rivers was an ardent segregationist and a fanatical supporter of the Vietnam War who wanted to use nuclear weapons to win the conflict. He also was a big defender of My Lai massacre perpetrator William Calley and believed helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson should have been charged with treason for trying to stop the massacre by authorizing his men to fire on U.S. troops.
After all that walking and worshipping this morning, you feel a little hungry. Let’s head up King Street to find a good lunch spot.
Oh shit, it’s the second Sunday of the month, which means King Street has been blocked off to allow a pedestrian-friendly experience full of eating, shopping, and entertainment. There’s tons of booths selling kitsch, and a lot of shops are giving away free samples of candy or cookies.
Some kids in a band are playing Christmas songs!
https://imgur.com/a/xnxUZ
There’s also a barbershop quartet singing some classic tunes:
https://imgur.com/a/26qpI
And what street fair would be complete without a cellist rocking out on his own?
https://imgur.com/a/dPzdz
There’s even a bum begging for cash while wearing a Santa hat!
https://imgur.com/a/59tYS
Anyway, our destination is a little further north. We’re headed to one of Charleston’s most popular restaurants, Halls Chophouse. It’s Sunday afternoon, so people are singing gospel music by the front entrance:
https://imgur.com/a/2qxVg
The man on the right singing with them, by the way, is George the Lawyer, an active figure in the Charleston shitlaw scene. Check out the ludicrous number of degrees he’s collected:
http://georgethelawyer.com/
He happens to sit next to you at the bar, where he’s harassing clients for payment on Facebook. You try to snap a photo but it doesn’t really work out:
https://imgur.com/a/zFxUI
Anyway, we’re not here to people-watch. We’re here to eat. For lunch, we decide to get the steak sandwich, which is very 180:
https://imgur.com/a/ugCt6
All right, time for the last visit of our trip: The H. L. Hunley, a must for all Civil War buffs (surely you’re a Civil War buff if you’re traveling with me, right?).
The Hunley is the first submarine to sink an enemy ship in combat. The ship was named after the man who financed it, who was literally a lawyer prior to the Civil War and his brush with nautical destiny. Hunley himself died during a test voyage of the ship, probably because he was in command of it and accidentally piloted it right into the sea floor. Whoops! There’s probably some metaphor about lawyers to draw from all this. Later, the ship was raised, but lost again shortly after making a successful attack on the USS Housatonic, which was part of the fleet blockading Charleston in early 1864.
In the late 90s, an expedition organized by adventure novelist Clive Cussler discovered the Hunley a few miles off the coast. The ship was successfully raised and brought to North Charleston, where it is the centerpiece of the Hunley Museum.
The Hunley Museum is in a rather non-descript building that you literally enter through a half-opened garage door:
https://imgur.com/a/ADPF5
Having been underwater for almost 140 years, the Hunley can’t be allowed to dry off for long or else it will rapidly fall apart. So instead, it’s kept in a giant chemical solution that allows researchers to very gradually remove encrustation and restore the craft:
https://imgur.com/a/QzHhI
https://imgur.com/a/k9nVK
According to legend, Hunley commander George Dixon survived the Battle of Shiloh only because a bullet was deflected by a gold coin he’d been given by his beloved, Queenie Bennett. Many thought the legend was fanciful nonsense, but incredibly, inside the Hunley researchers actually did find a gold coin bent from the impact of a bullet. On it are inscribed the words “My life preserver.”
https://imgur.com/a/7UYY0
The museum includes letters from schoolchildren, who speculate (with pictures) about why exactly the Hunley sank, as there are still several competing theories:
https://imgur.com/a/Ym47o
A model recreation of the Hunley’s interior lets you imagine the hell of powering a cramped deathtrap of a submarine by hand:
https://imgur.com/a/6OLas
Researchers have been able to reconstruct the appearance of the Hunley crew members, and by analyzing their bones they were even able to deduce that four of the eight crew members were Europeans who had volunteered to serve the Confederacy.
https://imgur.com/a/GXBdG
Confederate tallmos must have known the Hunley was a deathtrap, because only sub-6’1 “men” were on board when it went down:
https://imgur.com/a/JxI7T
And with that, your journey through Charleston comes to an end. You drive your Fiesta back to the airport, drop it off, and hope on a plane back home. We hope you enjoyed your stay in the Holy City, and we hope you will revisit CHARLES DIGITAL Tours in the future for more exciting trips to America's great and not-so-great cities.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3824569&forum_id=2#34981901)
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