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Charleston's History and Culture

adapted from several historic and educational sources

Charleston, South Carolina, is one of the most beautiful spots in the United States, with it's a stately private homes, plantations, historic public buildings, gorgeous churches and beautiful formal and wild gardens. It is also known for  being an important center of the arts. Almost 4 million people visit Charleston each year to enjoy the arts and culture of the historic city. Spoleto Festival USA, and Piccolo Spoletto festivals transform Charleston into a vibrant cultural center withabout 85,000 people attending and enjoying the arts.

Charleston concentrates it's efforts in architectural preservation, with a 1,000-acre Historic District  where a walk through the past is something a visitor does not want to miss. Charleston is a historic city, with it's history embedded and preserved for 300 years. click here for historic homes page

In 1663, England’s King Charles II chartered Carolina to eight London proprietors, whose intention was to create a manorial society. There  would be a small number of barons, who would hold large tracts of land and be in charge.  At the bottom of the ladder would be lots of powerless laborers and slaves.

The London proprietors recruited experienced settlers from other colonies, like Barbados, the richest of England’s holdings in the West Indies. In 1664, a group of planters from Barbados landed in the Cape Fear valley, where they tried to cultivate European crops like olive oil, citrus fruit, and wine. The first settlement disbanded, but another group of settlers from Barbados gave it a try. At first they went to Port Royal, but ran into opposition from the native Cusabos, and they relocated up the coast to the west bank of the Ashley River, where they founded Charles Town. Ten years later, the settlers moved to Charleston's present location.

The Barbados planters dominated Charles Town, along with members of dissident religious groups like the Huguenots from France. The colonists tried to grow sugar, citrus, cotton, and tobacco, and the proprietors hoped the Huguenots would establish a trade in expensive merchandise, like silk. These attempts failed, and the settlers had to support themselves by supplying lumber, cattle, hogs, deerskin, and native american slaves to Barbados.The colonists traded for these native slaves with an affiliate of the Iroquois nation, the Westos, who captured members of neighboring tribes.

While these Native Americans were being shipped out of Carolina to labor in Barbados, another group of slaves was being shipped into Carolina from Africa. These African slaves took them from struggling settlers into prosperous planters and merchants by establishing a very lucrative rice crop. Some of the settlers already tried to grow rice, but had no clue as to the delicate and complex process. West Africans brought the tools and knowledge to Carolina with them. 

By the time the number of blacks in Carolina equalled the number of whites around the first decade of the 1700s, rice had become the colony’s main product. Black slaves grew the rice out in the country, on malaria-infested plantations among the creeks and swamps. The prosperous and lazy white landowners and slaveholders, leaving their plantations to the care of agents and overseers, built elegant and stately homes in Charles Town on the sweat and labor of the slaves. By 1750, Charles Town was an elegant and charming city of Georgian homes surrounded by big porches, in the West Indian style. Click here for a history of the Gullah Culture in Charleston

These homes also housed the political life of the colony. There were no official buildings for the governor, council, and assembly. Meetings were held in the spacious private homes of the prominent planters, merchants, and lawyers. Charles Town controlled the style and also controlled the life of the country-side. It not only drew all produce to it, but also drained the Low Country of critical talent and leadership and held on tightly to political power. Proud and ostentatious, these politicians had the power and wealth to acquire a showy lifestyle, becoming notable importers of the arts.

In 1736, Charles Town’s elite inaugurated the city’s first playhouse, the original Dock Street Theatre. Charles Town acquired a reputation for presenting the best Shakespearean productions in the colonies. The city also established a concert series by the 1770's. This musical tradition took hold with help from the city’s atmosphere of religious tolerance. A church-building boom took place, with each sect and denomination putting up its own house of worship. This flurry of building activity influenced the city's architectural character - giving Charles Town the nickname of "the holy city", and also providing them with more places and occasions for music-making.

In 1770, civic leaders founded the College of Charleston. A Library Society already had been established in 1748; a Museum Society, the first in the country, was organized in 1773. The College, Library, and Museum are all still in operation. Along with this culture, Charles Town had developed a varied cultural heart, a melting pot in which African influences predominated.The majority of Carolina residents were of African descent. Even though the self-styled aristocrats of Charles Town were separated from them in privilege and wealth, the city’s black population influenced Charles Town's daily life, not just in rice production but also in the cooking, medicine, crafts, music, and language. A blend of a privileged minority of white Europeans with a strong African influence, an English West Indian influence, and a bit of Native American history. Click here for the culture page

Click here for a vintage map of the Siege of Charlestowne, 1776
(will open in a new window)

During the War of Independence, Charles Town was a hotbed of rebel sentiment and a strategic target, and Charles Town suffered greatly, undergoing shelling, fire, and occupation. By the time the war ended in 1783,commerce and trade had been devastated. American independence meant the loss of the region’s second most important crop, indigo, which the British Crown had subsidized since 1742. Without the subsidy, the production of indigo was finished.The end of the war also resulted in Charles Town changing its name to Charleston. As trade resumed, merchants no longer dealt exclusively with Britain but with France and the French West Indies. With the invention of the cotton gin in the 1790's, cotton could be grown profitably inland, adding a new cash crop to the region, and producing an increase in the use of slave labor. In 1800, Charleston opened the Santee Canal, connecting the Santee and Cooper rivers.

Charleston was still small in comparison with the large Northern cities, but the biggest and most powerful city in the South. Charleston took a leading role in secessionist sentiments. In 1828 South Carolina registered its opposition to a new tariff established by Congress and it declared the right of states to nullify federal laws. Four years later, South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union, rather than comply with a permanent tariff. In 1833, Congress backed down by passing a compromise tariff act, and South Carolina withdrew the threat. As the division between North and South increased, so did the militancy of South Carolina’s citizens. The shots that began the Civil War were fired in Charleston on April 12, 1861, as secessionist troops shelled Fort Sumter.

For many years after the Civil War, Charlestonians were poor but proud, so they left the architectural heritage of the previous two centuries untouched. They salvaged what they could from ruins of fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes, but rarely demolished buildings to build something new. By the time the city had recovered, this tradition of conservation and preservation was not a necessity, but their choice. In 1920 Susan Frost of Charleston,  founded the Preservation Society of Charleston to protect the city’s architectural past from progress. In 1947, the Historic Charleston Foundation was formed, establishing standards for the Historic District, and transforming two houses into museums: the Nathaniel Russell House and the Edmonston-Alston House.

Click here for Earthquake of 1886

Charleston, S.C. Civil War Re-Enactment Groups, History and Events
Civil War @ Charleston Site

Slave Voices
From The Broadside Collection, 
Special Collections Library, Duke University

National Register of Historic Places
- State of South Carolina Historic Districts and Maps by county

South Carolina Native Americans

Essential Reading

Vintage Views of Charleston Art Gallery

The Earthquake of 1886     Ghosts of Charleston

Back to the Site Directory      Charleston's Culture

Historic Homes and Gardens

Southern Blues   Sightseeing Info   

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