The Antebellum South (1816-1860)

Geddings was an active participant in the intellectual life of antebellum Charleston. He was a friend of the author William Gilmore Simms, who dedicated one of his books to Geddings, and was an early subscriber to the works of John James Audubon, whom he also knew.

In June 1781 Emily Geiger volunteered to be a courier for General Nathanael Greene, who needed an urgent message delivered to General Thomas Sumter. Geiger evaded capture the first day, but the British stopped her on the second day. While waiting for the British to bring a woman to search her, she read and memorized Greene’s message and then ate it.

The Gibbes Museum of Art is the home of the Carolina Art Association, an organization dedicated to the cultivation of the arts and art education in Charleston since its inception in 1858.

During his fifty-four-year career at the College of Charleston, Gibbes taught mathematics, chemistry, physics, and astronomy, and endeared himself to generations of students despite his exacting standards.

Keenly interested in natural history, Gibbes collected bird specimens, mollusk shells, and minerals. He was especially interested in vertebrate fossils, and it was in the field of paleontology that he made lasting contributions.

For Gilman, Charleston was her first permanent home and, even though she retained much affection for the North, she soon came to see herself as a southerner. As hostilities between the two regions increased, Gilman felt compelled to try to reconcile these differences in her writing.

Under Gilman’s leadership, the church expanded and changed its name to the Archdale Street Unitarian Church in 1834. Gilman also helped establish the Charleston Unitarian Book and Tract Society in 1821 and made consistent efforts to spread Unitarian Christianity more widely in the area.

A powerful preacher who was at home with the Gullah dialect, Girardeau attracted large numbers of African Americans to the congregation. To accommodate the growing crowds, a new church building, Zion Presbyterian, was built on the corner of Calhoun and Meeting Streets primarily with money from the Adger and Smyth families of Charleston.

At the battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga, and throughout the Atlanta Campaign, Gist proved a reliable and respected commander.

Gist's biographer Daniel Bell describes him as “influential” in bringing about disunion, but it is doubtful that his personal leadership was truly essential. By 1860 the movement possessed more momentum than could be attributable to any one man.

His first trial resulted in a conviction, but in a second trial he was acquitted. He was elected lieutenant governor of the state in 1872 and reelected in 1874, in which capacity he served as president ex officio of the S.C. Senate. Gleaves also served in the South Carolina state militia as a major and judge advocate in the First Brigade, colonel and aide to the governor, and colonel and judge advocate in the Second Division.

Inspired by the rise of Ben Tillman’s hate-mongering but successful campaign for governor in 1890, Ambrose, Narciso, and their younger brother William, founded the State newspaper in Columbia as an ardent and outspoken anti-Tillman daily.

Hoping to give a voice to the conservative wing of the Democratic Party after Ben Tillman’s election to the governorship, Gonzales joined with his brother Ambrose to found the State Publishing Company in January 1891, with the financial backing of conservative Democrats.

Granby was among the first important trading posts in the South Carolina interior. The town originated as a large Indian village on Congaree Creek.

After some initial teething, the company quickly proved highly prosperous, producing shirting and sheeting that sold well in markets as far away as Philadelphia and New York. Graniteville was also unusual in that it employed the labor of free white laborers, mostly women and teenaged children, at a time when most southern manufacturers used the labor of black slaves.

Grayson is best remembered for his proslavery verse, The Hireling and the Slave (1854), a rejoinder (structured in heroic couplets) to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s depiction of slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

In 1870 Greener graduated with honors, earning the distinction of being the first African American to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard.

The success of the Anderson and Abbeville spurs inspired the creation of other short routes that extended the reach of the Greenville and Columbia in the upstate. In 1854 the Laurens Railroad completed a thirty-two mile line from Laurens to Newberry.

Between 1931 and 1937 Greenville Woman’s College became Furman University’s women’s college. Its buildings were demolished after 1961, when women joined men on Furman’s new campus.

It became a bustling railroad town, with passenger and freight trains steaming through a village served by three railroads by 1890. The Greenwood economy, based on agriculture and transportation, was altered dramatically in 1890 when William L. Durst opened the Greenwood Cotton Mill.