Charleston Time Machine

The mayor of Charleston is a prestigious officer who commands respect throughout our community, but that hasn’t always been the case. Nearly two centuries ago, the city’s executive evolved from a nearly powerless, part-time, unsalaried intendant, to a powerful, full-time, salaried mayor. Today we’ll compare and contrast those titles and trace the gradual accretion of powers that define 21st-century Charleston’s most visible citizen.

Sentenced to hang in 1747, Elizabeth McQueen cried out for mercy from the Charleston jail. Her personal grief and Indian customs had been misrepresented as willful murder. Reviewing the facts of her case, the governor and his advisors were drawn into the chasm between patriarchal law and the realities of a woman’s life on the colonial frontier.

Accused of having murdered her newborn child, Elizabeth McQueen was arrested and transported to Charleston to stand trial in 1747. Contemporary documents allow us to reconstruct many of the experiences she endured, from incarceration within the prison under the care of a hot-tempered marshal, to the colony’s makeshift courtroom in a tavern where a brief trial condemned her to an ignominious death.

When an unmarried young woman of Native American ancestry lost a newborn child in 1747, her white neighbors on the South Carolina frontier interpreted her grief as a mask for clandestine guilt and summoned the law. Today we’ll begin to reconstruct the story of Elizabeth McQueen’s journey from “innocence and sobriety” to arrest, humiliation, and incarceration in colonial Charleston.

Charleston was once the most active marketplace for enslaved people in North America. While incoming Africans were sold from the vessels that brought them, enslaved people already living in the Lowcountry during the colonial era were commonly sold at at a long-forgotten, open-air auction site within the heart of Charleston known as “the usual place.”

The arrival of more than 150,000 African captives before 1808 forms one of the most important themes in Charleston’s history, but there are many details about this traffic that remain obscure. To acknowledge the suffering and legacy of those people, many people wish to retrace their first footsteps here. But where did they stand when they were sold into a life of slavery in Charleston?

Indigo forms an important part of the early history of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Although its memory flourishes today, lingering misconceptions have distorted our general understanding of the story. In an effort to help “grow” this colorful conversation, I’ve crafted a series of questions and responses that address some points of indigo history that every Charlestonian should know.

For the anniversary of the incorporation of Charleston, let’s take a close look at the legal document that defined the new municipality. Our focus isn’t politics, but spelling: The city’s 1783 charter shortened its name from “Charles Town,” and the surviving manuscript contains a curious spelling that provides new insight in the evolution of the familiar name “Charleston.”

Reeling from embarrassment after rioting spoiled an afternoon of baseball on Citadel Green, the divided people of Charleston anxiously prepared for a rematch against the Savannah Base Ball Club in August of 1869. The mayor’s show of force inflamed simmering tensions, and boiling frustration led to gunfire while the people hoped in vain for a quiet weekend of sport.

Baseball was a novelty in the summer of 1869. Charlestonians had only recently embraced the game, which provided a relaxing way to escape the city’s tense political climate. When sport, music, and racial politics collided on Citadel Green on July 26th, the pastime erupted into a violent clash that spilled into the streets and threatened to overwhelm the rule of law.