Charleston County

Butler discovered that various state political leaders were seeking to elect him governor. He emphatically stated that he would not actively seek the office but would accept only as a “point of honor.” On December 19, 1836, the General Assembly elected Butler to the governorship. In his inaugural address, Butler called on South Carolinians to forget divisive issues and pledged to revitalize the state’s militia system.

In 1927 Susan Butler opened a free library and reading room in Dart Hall, using her father’s books, folding chairs, and two tables. The reading room was open Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. Dart served as librarian and operated the room with donations and at her own expense until the Charleston Free Library established the Dart Hall Branch in 1931. The Charleston County Free Library and its branches received money from the Rosenwald Fund and the Carnegie Foundation, while the Dart family rented the building to the county for one dollar a year. The Dart Hall Branch opened to the African American public with 3,600 books.

Over his lifetime Byrnes held many public positions, coming closer than any other South Carolinian in the twentieth century to obtaining the national political influence wielded by John C. Calhoun in the nineteenth century. Byrnes left a series of political legacies in South Carolina, the nation, and the world. His advocacy of highway and New Deal legislation provided numerous material benefits to South Carolinians. His services to President Roosevelt had a major impact on the national economy during World War II. His role as secretary of state was instrumental in defining postwar foreign policy. In the 1950s and 1960s Byrnes’s support of Republican presidential candidates was a key factor in the party’s revitalization in the South.

When he returned to the United States, Cain quickly came to enjoy a prominent position among Charleston’s physician elite, occupying significant posts at public and private medical institutions in the city, as well as operating a lucrative private practice.

By the late 1850s he was an active abolitionist and worked with famous activists such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Delaney.

After Revolutionary leaders discovered Campbell’s clandestine activities, he fled from Charleston on September 15, 1775. The departure of South Carolina’s last royal governor enabled Revolutionary leaders to claim that George III, like King James II during the Glorious Revolution, had “abdicated the government.”

Laws concerning segregation prevented African Americans from utilizing the training ward at City Hospital. McClennan and his associates began efforts to create a hospital that was “owned and conducted by the colored people of Charleston.”

In its shallow bays, tides combine the life-giving nourishment of the ocean with the nutrient-laden freshwaters of rivers to make one of the most productive environments on earth.

Partly on the strength of his military education, he was elected major of a regiment of South Carolina volunteers and participated in the bombardment of Fort Sumter.

Capers became one of the most influential Southern Methodist preachers of his generation.

As a delegate to the 1868 constitutional convention, he served as chair of the education committee and advocated a statewide system of integrated public education. In 1868 he was elected secretary of state, becoming the first African American in the United States elected to statewide office.

Organized in 1857 by a group of prominent lowcountry planters and factors, the Carolina Art Association of Charleston was officially chartered by the General Assembly on December 21, 1858. Its purpose was the cultivation of the arts and art education.

An accomplished linguist and an avid reader of history and literature whose correspondence and conversation drew intellectuals and diplomats as well as artists into her circle, Carson displayed both the conventional propriety expected of Charleston ladies and the independence required to pursue the unconventional goals that attracted her.

Chalmers’s writings did not mark a significant development in medicine, but he was highly regarded in his time by British physicians such as Fothergill, Whytt, and William Cullen of Edinburgh University, one of the most influential teachers of medicine in the late eighteenth century.

In 1874, with the support of the black leaders Francis L. Cardozo and Robert Brown Elliott, Chamberlain became the Republican candidate for governor, and he won the general election that fall.

Despite the burdens of his position, Chamberlain produced more than sixty scientific publications, mostly on birds but also on amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. His most important contribution was South Carolina Bird Life, written with [Alexander] Sprunt.

Known as Sallie F. Chapin, she became one of South Carolina’s most visible nineteenth-century women leaders...A powerful lecturer, she drew the attention of women and men, and her lectures became the first exposure to women’s public leadership for many of her audiences and followers.

Charleston was the first permanent European settlement in Carolina, its first seat of government, and the most important city in the southern United States well into the nineteenth century.

The cold-war base served as host to the 456th Troop Carrier Wing, flying and maintaining C-119 aircraft, known as “Flying Box Cars.” It provided support and intelligence data during the Cuban missile crisis and later transported supplies and troops to Vietnam.

In its modern configuration, Charleston County is a long sliver of land—mainland and islands— bounded at the north and south by the South Santee and South Edisto Rivers. It has existed only since 1882.