Charleston, South Carolina

History

After Charles II of England (1630–1685) was restored to the English throne in 1660 following Oliver Cromwells Protectorate, he granted the chartered Province of Carolina to eight of his loyal friends, known as the Lords Proprietors, on March 24, 1663. It took seven years before the group arranged for settlement expeditions. The first of these founded Charles Town, in 1670. The community was established by several shiploads of settlers from Bermuda (which lies due East of South Carolina, although at 1,030 kilometres (640 mi) it is closest to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina), under the leadership of governor William Sayle, on the west bank of the Ashley River, a few miles northwest of the present-day city center. It was soon predicted by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, one of the Lords Proprietors, to become a "great port towne," a destiny the city quickly fulfilled. In 1680 the settlement was moved east of the Ashley River to the peninsula between the Ashley and Cooper rivers. Not only was this location more defensible, but it offered access to a fine natural harbor. In the year 1718, Charleston was besieged by the pirate Edward Teach, commonly known as Blackbeard. This disrupted trade in Charleston for a time until Blackbeard and his allies abandoned the siege. As the capital of the Carolina colony, Charles Town was a center for inland expansion, but remained the southernmost point of English settlement on the American mainland until the Georgia colony was established in 1732.

The early settlement was often subject to attack from sea and land, including periodic assaults from Spain and France (both of whom contested Englands claims to the region), and pirates. These were combined with raids by Native Americans, who violently resisted further expansion of the settlement. The heart of the city was fortified according to a 1704 plan by Governor Johnson. Except those fronting Cooper River, the walls were largely removed during the 1720s.

The first settlers primarily came from England, its Caribbean colony of Barbados, and its Atlantic colony of Bermuda. Among these were free people of color, born in the West Indies of alliances and marriages between Africans and English, when color lines were looser among the working class in the early colonial years, and some wealthy whites took black consorts or concubines. Charles Town attracted a mixture of ethnic and religious groups. French, Scottish, Irish, and Germans migrated to the developing seacoast town, representing numerous Protestant denominations. Because of the battles between English royalty and the Roman Catholic Church, practicing Catholics were not allowed to settle in South Carolina until after the American Revolution. Jews were allowed, and Sephardic Jews migrated to the city in such numbers that by the beginning of the 19th century, the city was home to the largest and wealthiest Jewish community in North America—a status it held until about 1830.

Africans were brought to Charles Town on the Middle Passage, first as servants, then as slaves. Ethnic groups transported here included especially Wolof, Yoruba, Fulani, Igbo, Malinke, and other peoples of the Windward Coast. An estimated 40 percent of the total 400,000 Africans transported and sold as slaves into North America are estimated to have landed at Sullivans Island, just off the port of Charles Town; it is described as a "hellish Ellis Island of sorts .... Today nothing commemorates that ugly fact but a simple bench, established by the author Toni Morrison using private funds."

By the mid-18th century Charles Town had become a bustling trade center, the hub of the Atlantic trade for the southern colonies. Charles Towne was also the wealthiest and largest city south of Philadelphia, in part because of the lucrative slave trade. By 1770, it was the fourth-largest port in the colonies, after Boston, New York, and Philadelphia; with a population of 11,000—slightly more than half of them slaves. By 1708 the majority of the colonys population were slaves, and the future state would continue to be a majority of African descent until after the Great Migration of the early 20th century.

Charles Town was a hub of the deerskin trade, the basis of Charles Towns early economy. Trade alliances with the Cherokee and Creek nations insured a steady supply of deer hides. Between 1699 and 1715, colonists exported an average of 54,000 deer skins annually to Europe through Charles Town. Between 1739 and 1761, the height of the deerskin trade era, an estimated 500,000 to 1,250,000 deer were slaughtered. During the same period, Charles Town records show an export of 5,239,350 pounds of deer skins. Deer skins were used in the production of mens fashionable and practical buckskin pantaloons, gloves, and book bindings.

Colonial Lowcountry landowners experimented with cash crops ranging from tea to silkworms. African slaves brought knowledge of rice cultivation, which plantation owners cultivated and developed as a successful commodity crop by 1700. With the help of African slaves from the Caribbean, Eliza Lucas, daughter of plantation owner George Lucas, learned how to raise and use indigo in the Lowcountry in 1747. Supported with subsidies from Britain, indigo was a leading export by 1750. Those and naval stores were exported in an extremely profitable shipping industry.

As Charles Town grew, so did the communitys cultural and social opportunities, especially for the elite merchants and planters. The first theatre building in America was built in 1736 on the site of todays Dock Street Theatre. Benevolent societies were formed by different ethnic groups, from French Huguenots to free people of color to Germans to Jews. The Charles Towne Library Society was established in 1748 by well-born young men who wanted to share the financial cost to keep up with the scientific and philosophical issues of the day. This group also helped establish the College of Charles Towne in 1770, the oldest college in South Carolina. Until its transition to state ownership in 1970, this was the oldest municipally supported college in the United States.