CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE “JEWEL” HAS MANY FACETS

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE “JEWEL” HAS MANY FACETS

We were told by Cleo in Beaufort, South Carolina that Beaufort is the “small jewel” in between the “big jewels” of Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina. We arrived in the more northerly Big Jewel, Charleston, on Sunday, July 8. We planned to spend three full days here to explore and to allow Art to get some computer programming done. Today, our first full day, we rented a car to go to the places that are too far for us to walk. We drove down the nostalgia lane of live oaks on the way to Art’s summer family paradise, Kiawah Island. I can only imagine what his daughters must have been thinking, as they entered this exotic Southern terrain. This has to be one of the best roads in the country to lead you to a vacation, away from the ordinary and routine lives of school and work. Having a house on the beach, bikes to ride all over the island, fresh seafood – what an idyllic moment in time. I remember that our family went to the Jersey Shore, at Seaside Heights and Manasquan, and those vacations were also incredibly different from anything we did in “real life”. First of all, our father was with us, not at his 7 day a week job as Bethlehem Steel. Secondly, we had bamboo fishing poles and fished off a dock. Thirdly, we walked on the “boardwalk” and went on amusement park rides at Asbury Park. And we all got sunburned, only to pay years later with repeated M.O.H.S. surgeries on our sunburned faces.

This adventure with Slow Motion brings back those childhood vacations in sharp relief. When we weren’t going to the shore, we were driving to different states in order to visit their state capitals. We made the pilgrimage to Washington D. C. one year to visit our nation’s capital. Oh, the Capitol steps! The sheer number was daunting, but with little girl legs, the work getting up and down them was not something I had expected to do on a vacation. What a difference sixty years make. Now when I get the chance to visit a lighthouse, I test myself by climbing up the 200 plus stairs, and back down, and what a sense of accomplishment I feel! I think I’ll take on the Capitol steps again, later this summer when we dock near Washington D.C. But here at this moment, we are in the Big Jewel of South Carolina, and it has plenty of steps. Just to get off the Megadock, where Slow Motion is tied up, we have to walk nearly a third of a mile. There were steps all over Fort Moultrie, which we visited in the heat (90’s) of the day -- up to an observation tower, down to the command station. There were steps at the Charleston Museum, where we saw the first ever submarine (an exact likeness of it), the Hunley. The Hunley itself had been sunk during the Civil War, but it was not found until 1995. Now it’s in the U.S. Government’s clutches, apparently at an unknown location. No steps at the Magnolia Plantation, but it was way, way too hot to walk around, or even to ride in the open air tram, sweating from head to toe, while touring gator swamps and gardens.

We ended our first day in the Big Jewel having fresh seafood at the Charleston Crabhouse, right down on the water, the Intracoastal Waterway in fact. I must have spent a good half hour tearing the meat out of one blue crab. Art said that any Marylander would have eaten the meat of three crabs in the time it took me to get the food out of the body of one crab. Thank God I had only ordered two, or I would still be there trying to suck the last tiny piece of meat out of a skinny crab leg. The taste of this crab meat was exquisite, not tainted by bay seasoning or any seasoning for that matter. The fresh crab was preceded by the most succulent shrimp (with bay seasoning) I have ever had. Art indulged in oysters and scallops. The waitperson was unobtrusive, but incredibly efficient in bringing more napkins when needed and filling my non-sweet iced tea glass again and again. YELP! I just wrote a restaurant review while merely trying to share a little bit of our satisfying dining experience with you.

Get this – we stopped at the downtown Post Office at about 4 p.m. to pick up the mail that our neighbor, Olivia sent to us express. And there are big signs inside that say that the “lobby” is only open between 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Is this really the way to stay in business – to limit access to your daily services to customers in the South who much prefer the cool, cool hours between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. over the wretched heat of the day? I love the U.S. Postal Service and all their really neat stamps (except the ones that say “Love”), but they’re really testing my loyalty with worse than banker’s hours.

Since the Post Office was on Broad Street, and since I recently read Conroy’s South of Broad Street, I suggested we drive south of Broad to look at all the old southern mansions. My God, that’s a different world. And I wonder how many times they have had to renovate the first floors after hurricanes and floods. Today they looked impenetrable, every bit the match for wind and rain. South of Broad goes out to the Battery. The river was really rough today, full of whitecaps, some of which jumped the seawall. I don’t really get it, why you would build such a lavish residence in a storm zone. Can they get insurance? If not, are they so rich it doesn’t matter how much it costs to rebuild? Or are they just nuts? Conroy would probably opt for door number three: the craziness of the landed gentry of the  South.

The Big Jewel was definitely tarnished by its history of slave trading. For the five year period between 1770 and 1775, thousands upon thousands of West Africans, stolen from their homelands, were brought in chains to Sullivan’s Island. It served as the “Ellis Island” for many African American families. Fort Moultrie was practically on the same soil as the slave trading industry on Sullivan’s Island, but the 400 soldiers at Ft. Moultrie were too busy repelling the 9 British ships and 2500 troops that came into the Charleston Harbor in 1776 to turn their attention to the cruelties visited upon the South Carolina slaves. And according to the accounts I have read, at Ft. Moultrie and in the Charleston Museum, the slavery of Africans contributed immensely to the prosperity of South Carolina. It was the slaves who knew how to grow rice and showed the plantation owners that it could be a lucrative crop. It was indeed the most lucrative crop in South Carolina for years. So what cost economic prosperity? Forcing a whole race of people to work for nothing, treating them like chattel, or even worse, beating them, separating family members willy nilly – this was certainly conduct unbefitting the folks who polished the Jewel of the South.

When you’re in Charleston, the juxtaposition of its physical beauty with its ugly past of slavery is sometimes overwhelming. I see why it’s called the “Jewel”. So many parts of the city and the rivers that run on both sides of it just shine like radiant diamonds. This city caters to tourists more than any of the other cities we have visited to date. It offers day trips to Ft. Sumter, to plantations, to the City Market, through the mansions of South of Broad, through the museums on the Museum Mile on Meeting Street, to Patriots Point, to the Carolina Polo and Carriage Company, and on and on. There is a festival every month. March has three festivals. This is a vibrant place, and everywhere you turn, people want to help you get to know more about Charleston. That is, about Charleston today, without slavery, and about Charleston’s great history despite slavery. I just can’t get past the “despite slavery” part of the equation. It’s like saying Germany is the Jewel of Europe, despite the Holocaust. Tomorrow I get to see more facets of this Jewel called Charleston, and I promise I’ll keep an open mind.

So I went to Ft. Sumter today and learned a lot more about the Civil War and Charleston’s “way of life” before it. Take for example, Henry Laurens, a “wealthy lowcountry merchant, planter and slave trader.” Oh yes, this is the way you want the first line of your biography to read, isn’t it? He arranged to drag Africans against their will from Sierra Leone to Charleston. And oh, by the way, he helped after the Revolution to establish our democracy and served as the President of the Second Continental Congress. His life wasn’t all money and glory, based on the stolen lives of others. He suffered too, when he was imprisoned in the Tower of London after being captured at sea by the British. His slave trading partner bailed him out. And ultimately, his freedom was traded for the freedom of Lord Cornwallis, the very one who surrendered at Yorktown. So Laurens was no small potatoes. The last line in his brief bio at Ft. Sumter read: “Deeply religious, Laurens eventually abandoned his role in the Atlantic slave trade, but not his role as a slave owner.” Oh my. I know, I know, Jefferson owned and impregnated slaves, and look how great he was. Never as great as someone who did not own slaves, in my opinion. He was certainly one (small) evolutionary step above the slave traders. But back to this “deeply religious” conversion from slave trader to slave owner – pretty shallow, actually, and not very much in line with the Golden Rule.

I turned to Abraham Lincoln for some words of wisdom, and this is what is attributed to him as a Congressman in 1848: “Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, – a most sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.” This kind of idealism sounds like Arab Spring stuff, and it would seem to be directed at any oppressive dictatorship, maybe any oppressive government, no matter what its configuration – even an oppressive representative democracy. Oops, not so fast Southern secessionists, Lincoln certainly wasn’t thinking of you, when he said these words. Or was he? After all, he said that a house divided cannot stand – either the US of A was going to be all slavery or no slavery. And y’ all in the South chose all slavery all the time. So what’s a slave state to do – exercise its “sacred right” to rise up and shake off the “union” government and form the Confederate States of America, right? Abe, I think you stuck your big foot in your oratorical mouth.

Of course, at his first inauguration on March 4, 1861, President Lincoln was whistling a different tune (and it wasn’t “Dixie”). He said: “Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations…is the only true sovereign of a free people.” Interesting choice of phrase, “free people”, for a guy who campaigned on the platform that slave states would retain slavery, but slavery would not expand into any non-slave states or into any new territories, like Kansas or Missouri. So when he was campaigning against Senator Douglas, Abe said he was willing to accept the fact that a lot of people in the country were not free, and willing to let their state governments keep them subjugated. But when he became President, he apparently wanted everyone to be free. The 1857 Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court holding that slaves were property, not people, clearly had not impressed Lincoln. And Abe had the majority in the Northern population to bring freedom to all the people in the minority slave states.

This is where the Ft. Sumter guide enters the picture. He said the North was fighting for liberty and the South was fighting to “preserve their way of life.” He must have used this last phrase more than 20 times in a 10 minute synopsis of the issues that led to the Civil War – the first shots having been fired at Ft. Sumter by Confederate troops on April 12, 1861. It sounds so pastoral: “preserve their way of life.” Like the balls and cotillions we saw in Gone with the Wind? Or like kidnapping people on another continent and dragging them to your country to force them to do whatever work you demanded of them? Slavery should not be called a “way of life.” It is a scourge, a cruel imprisonment way beyond anything ever done at Guantanamo. It is the exact opposite of freedom. It is dehumanizing, certainly to a person forced to be a slave, but also to the “slave owner”. This must be one of the reasons when Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as President of the Confederate States of America, he saw only death in the future of the states that had seceded. And, as many of you know, South Carolina was the very first state to secede. I read that around this time, 7 of the 10 wealthiest people in American lived in South Carolina. They most certainly wanted to “preserve” the “way of life” that made them so wealthy – in land and slaves. For them, secession was the only way to keep their wealth. Their wealth, not their “way of life.” And thousands of not wealthy, very young Confederate soldiers from South Carolina gave their lives to allow the slave owners to remain wealthy.

On the way to Ft. Sumter the sky became charcoal, and it appeared like a midday thunderstorm was going to strike, while we rode the tour boat to the remains of the fort. Well, it was definitely a storm that hit the fort when we arrived, but not any normal midday thunderstorm. It had a slew of lightning bolts zapping land and sea from many directions and lots of rolling thunder. Art called while I was huddled with a group in the museum at Ft. Sumter, avoiding electrification, and reported that there were 83 mile an hour winds back at the marina. A sailboat owner had an anemometer which measured the prodigious winds. I called the Marina to ask for the courtesy van, told Tess that I was out on the water, and she said: “Omigod, did you get hit by the “spout”? Unbeknownst to me a “spout” (water tornado) had torn across the harbor, as we were returning to the Ft. Sumter tour boat marina. Art kept me posted on flying fenders at the marina, and I called for the courtesy van again. Turns out the driver, Robert, had chosen to drive upon the most flooded, clogged streets of downtown Charleston, and a trip of 5 minutes took him 50 minutes to show up. We worked on an alternate route to return to the marina, and, except for one flooded road, with a disabled vehicle in the middle of it, we made it back in 5 minutes or so.

Now, safely back at the marina, I took some photos of the fishermen (haven’t seen a fisherwoman) preparing their bait – ballyhoo and mullet – for their 5 a.m. departure to the Gulf Stream to catch the biggest billfish – marlin, sailfish—tomorrow. There’s a $20,000 prize. But the cost of one of these fishing boats, and the fuel costs, and the cost of the fishing gear – astronomical. So they must do it for the love of fishing. Art noted that our megadock is currently weighed down by the excess of testosterone – yes, Art noted this – up and down both sides of this ¼ mile long dock. Mmm, love the smell of testosterone in the morning – at 5 a.m.

We’re enjoying Charleston, even though Art has put in 10 hours of computer programming today, and I am the “party of one” on all the tours. He’s been here many times before, but this is my very first time. Hope my diatribes against slavery are not off-putting. I know I haven’t injected much humor into this Blog. But stick around. We’re bound to come across something that tickles your funny bone, and I will faithfully report it. Till then, we shall overcome.