The Charleston Chamber of Commerce (which, like everything else in Charleston dates from long ago, having been founded in 1748) quotes President Taft as calling this port the most convenient one to Panama—a statement which the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce is in position to dispute. The fact remains, however, that Charleston's position on the map justifies the Chamber of Commerce's alliterative designation of the place as "The Plumb-line Port to Panama." This is so true that if Charleston should one day be shaken loose from its moorings by an earthquake—something not unknown there—and should fall due south upon the map, it would choke up the mouth of the Canal, were not Cuba interposed, to catch the debris.
Before the Civil War, Charleston was the greatest cotton shipping port of the country, and it still handles large amounts of cotton and rice. Until a few years ago South Carolina was the chief rice producing State in the Union, and history records that the first rice planted in the Carolinas, if not in the country, was secured and sown by an early governor of Carolina, Thomas Smith, who died in 1694. It may be noted in passing that this Thomas Smith bore the title "Landgrave," the Lords Proprietors, in their plan of government for the colony—which, by the way, was drawn up by the philosopher Locke—having provided for a colonial nobility with titles. The titles "Baron" and "Landgrave" were hereditary in several Charleston families, and constitute, so far as I know, the only purely American titles of nobility that ever existed. Descendants of the old Landgraves still reside in Charleston, and in at least one instance continue to use the word "Landgrave" in connection with the family name.
The prosperity of Charleston since the Civil War has depended more, perhaps, than on any other single product, upon the trade in phosphate, large deposits of which underlie this region.
The real wonder of Charleston, the importance of the place among American cities, cannot, however, be said to have resulted primarily from commerce (though her commerce is growing), or from greatness of population (though Charleston is the metropolis of the Carolinas), but is involved with matters of history, tradition and beauty. The mantle of greatness was assumed by this city in colonial times, and has never been laid aside. Among the most distinguished early Americans were many Charlestonians, and in not a few instances the old blood still endures there, and even the old names: such names as Washington, Pinckney, Bull, Pringle, Rutledge, Middleton, Drayton, Alston, Huger, Agassiz, Ravenel, Izard, Gadsden, Rhett, Calhoun, Read, De Saussure, Lamar and Brawley, to mention but a few.
Charleston's early history is rich in pirate stories of the most thrilling moving-picture variety. Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet and other disciples of the Jolly Roger preyed upon Charleston shipping. Bonnet once held a Mr. Samuel Wragg of Charleston prisoner aboard his ship threatening to send his head to the city unless the unfortunate man should be ransomed—the demand being for medicines of various kinds. Colonel Rhett, of Charleston, captured Bonnet and his ship after a savage fight, but Bonnet soon after escaped from the city in woman's clothing. Still later he was retaken, hanged, as he deserved to be, and buried along with forty of his band at a point now covered by the Battery Garden, that exquisite little park at the tip of the city, which is the favorite promenade of Charlestonians. In another fight which occurred just off Charleston bar, a crew of citizens under Governor Robert Johnson defeated the pirate Richard Worley, who was killed in the action, and captured his ship, which, when the hatches were opened proved to be full of prisoners, thirty-six of them women. Even as late as the period of the War of 1812—a war which did not affect Charleston save in the way of destroying her shipping and causing poverty and distress—a case of brutal piracy is recorded. The daughter of Aaron Burr, Theodosia by name, was married to Governor Joseph Alston. After her father's trial for high treason, when he was disgraced and broken, she tried to comfort him, for the two were peculiarly devoted. Intending to visit him she set sail from Charleston for New York in a ship which was never heard from again. Somewhere I have read a description of the distraught father's long vigils at New York, where he would stand gazing out to sea long after all hope had been abandoned by others. Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel tells us in her charming book, that thirty years later an old sailor, dying in a village of the North Carolina coast, confessed that he had been one of a pirate crew which had captured the ship and compelled the passengers to walk the plank. This story is also given by Charles Gayarré, who says the pirate chief was none other than Dominick You, who fought under Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, and is buried in that city. The husband and father of Mrs. Alston were spared the ghastly tale, Mrs. Ravenel says, since both were already in their graves when the sailor's deathbed confession solved the mystery.
In the Revolution, Charleston played an important part. Men of Charleston were, of course, among the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who gave us the immortal maxim: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!" who was on Washington's staff, was later Ambassador to France and president-general of the Sons of the Cincinnati, was a Charlestonian of the Charlestonians, and lies buried in St. Michael's. Such Revolutionary names as Marion, Laurens, William Washington, Greene, Hampton, Moultrie and Sumter are associated with the place, and two of these are reëchoed in the names of those famous forts in Charleston harbor on which attention was fixed at the outbreak of the Civil War: Moultrie and Sumter—the latter, target for the first shot fired in the conflict.
Nearly thirty years before the Civil War, Charleston had distinguished herself in the arts of peace by producing the first locomotive tried in the United States, and by constructing the first consecutive hundred miles of railroad ever built in the world, and now, with the War, she distinguished herself by initiating other mechanical devices of very different character—a semi-submersible torpedo boat and the first submarine to torpedo a hostile war vessel. True, David Bushnell of Connecticut did construct a crude sort of submarine during the Revolutionary War, and succeeded in getting under a British ship with the machine, but he was unable to fasten his charge of powder and his effort consequently failed. Robert Fulton also experimented with submarines, or "plunging boats" as he called them, and was encouraged for a time by Napoleon I. The little David of the Confederate navy is sometimes referred to as the first submarine but the David was not actually an underwater boat, but a torpedo boat which could run awash, with her funnels and upper works slightly out of water. She was a cigar-shaped vessel thirty-three feet long, built of wood, propelled by steam, and carrying her torpedo on a pole, forward. Dr. St. Julien Ravenel of Charleston and Captain Theodore Stoney devised the craft, and she was built by funds subscribed by Charleston merchants. In command of Lieutenant W. T. Glassell, C. S. N., and with three other men aboard, she torpedoed the United States ship New Ironsides, flagship of the fleet blockading Charleston. The New Ironsides was crippled, but not lost. After this United States vessels blockading Charleston protected themselves with booms. This resulted in the construction of an actual undersea torpedo boat, the Hunley. This extraordinary vessel has been spoken of as having had the appearance of a huge iron coffin, as well as the attributes of one, for she proved a death-trap for successive crews on three trial trips. As there were no electric motors or gasoline engines in those days, she was run by hand, eight men crowded together turning a crank-shaft which operated her propeller. After repeated sinkings, she was raised, manned by new men, and sent forth again. Finally, in Charleston harbor she succeeded in destroying the United States man-o'-war Housatonic, but at the same time went down, herself, drowning or suffocating all on board. A memorial drinking fountain on the Battery, at the foot of Meeting Street, commemorates "the men of the Confederate Army and Navy, first in marine warfare to employ torpedo boats—1863-1865." On this memorial are given the names of sixteen men who perished in torpedo attacks on the blockading fleet, among them Horace L. Hunley, set down as inventor of the submarine boat. The names of fourteen others who were lost are unknown.
Lord William Campbell, younger son of the Duke of Argyll, was British governor at Charleston when the Revolution broke out. He had married a Miss Izard, of Charleston, who brought him a dowry of fifty thousand pounds, a large sum in those times. Their home was in a famous old house which stands on Meeting Street, and it was from the back yard of this house that Lord William fled in a rowboat to a British man-o'-war, when it became evident that Charleston was no longer hospitable to representatives of the Crown. Later his wife followed him to Great Britain, where they remained.