Charlestown, Massachusetts

“ The two hundred passengers whom we brought were, by common consent of the old planters, combined together into one body politic, [266] under the same governor. There are in all of us, both old and new planters, about three hundred; whereof two hundred are planted at Naumkeag, now called Salem, and the rest have settled at Massachusetts Bay, beginning to build a town there, which we call Charlestown. But that which is our greatest comfort, and our means of defence above all others, is, that we have here the true religion and holy ordinances of Almighty God taught amongst us. ”

“ These streets passed over the land of John Harris, and he received from the town of Charlestown a compensation in damages for taking the land belonging to him for the streets. In the year 1800, the government of the United States, under the authority of an act of the legislature of Massachusetts, purchased of John Harris several parcels of land now included within the limits of the navy yard, in the town of Charlestown ”

“ While African Americans were not officially excluded from Charlestown’s prewar workforce, few had been employed. When the war created opportunities for them, some whites openly resisted their presence in skilled positions. ”

“ We have been unconscious of their influence in lowering our standing.... I only wish to express my satisfaction at finding Massachusetts again represented by a man with a constitution, so valuable in the latitude of Washington, capable of standing the burning heat of the South and the chilliness of the North.”
Hon. J. Q. A. Griffin, the lawyer and earnest Republican, too early removed from life, wrote from Charlestown:—
“I must thank you for the great gratification I felt in the perusal of your great speech. ”

“ You come again to the intersection of Broad and Meeting Streets and remember that here in 1876 occurred violent Reconstruction riots; that in the Revolution, years before, the statue of William Pitt was in the center and that a British shell struck off an arm. You who have followed me on this incomparable walk have seen things of Charles Town, Charlestown and Charleston. You have seen things reminiscent of early English and early French. You have seen the evolution of a British outpost in a savage land into what William Allen White has called “the most civilized town in America.” ”

“ Constantly new people were arriving and the outpost of civilization rapidly took on the appearance of European manners and customs, notwithstanding the incongruity of savages, red and black, and Indian traders in their bizarre garb. It was Charles Town under the Proprietors, Charlestown under the Royal Government, and Charleston since its incorporation in 1783.
This Carolina metropolis has had part in Indian, Spanish and French wars. It has had bold adventures with pirates. It was conspicuous in the Revolution and in the War for Southern Independence. ”

“ Charlestown is one of the best built, handsomest, and most agreeable cities that I have ever seen. The American women are very pretty, and have great simplicity of character; and the extreme neatness of their appearance is truly delightful: cleanliness is everywhere even more studiously attended to here than in England. What gives me most pleasure is to see how completely the citizens are all brethren of one family. In America there are none poor, and none even that can be called peasants. ”

“ It would not surprise us, to hear a lawyer or a physician—still less a gentleman at large—talk of the burning of Charleston as simultaneous with the battle of Sullivan's Island, because Charlestown burned while the battle of Bunker Hill was fighting—as "John Bull in America" passes in half an hour from Boston, where the folk make wooden nutmegs, roast witches, and bake pumpkin pies, into Charleston, where they gouge and stab, drink mint juleps, eat young negroes, and feed old ones upon cotton seed. ”

“ Taxed tea from England was stored in the Exchange in 1774 and citizens prevented its sale. A second cargo, arriving November 3, 1774, was dumped by merchants of Charlestown into the Cooper River. In July, 1774, delegates to the Provincial Congress gathered in this building and set up the first independent government established in America; the congress also elected delegates to the General Congress meeting in Philadelphia. Patriotic men and women of Charlestown were incarcerated in the Exchange by the British during the Revolution ”

“ Organized in 1748 by seventeen young gentlemen of Charlestown, third oldest in this country, the Charleston Library Society, a private enterprise governed by a Board of Trustees, moved into a new fireproof building in recent years. In 1835 the society bought the building of the old South Carolina Bank, at the northwest corner of Broad and Church Streets, using this until the transfer to King Street. The society has more than 60,000 volumes. ”

“ Across the Charles River north from Boston, on a peninsula, lay the village of Charlestown, and 4 rising behind it was Breed's Hill, about seventy-four feet high, extending northeastward to the higher elevation of Bunker Hill. The peninsula could be reached from Cambridge only by a narrow neck of land easily swept by British floating batteries lying off the shore. ”

“ Being a Scotchman, and partaking of that ignorance of American geography which is so common both in Great Britain and on the continent, he naturally mistook Charleston, South Carolina, for which she was inquiring, for Charlestown, near Boston—an error which has frequently been made. Nor is it as gross a one as some others which have been perpetrated; as, for instance, that of the late Prince Schwartzenberg, minister of Austria, who directed some dispatches for our government to "The United States of New York."
And now behold little Margaret actually launched upon the stormy ocean of life! ”

“ Charleston is not great in population; it is not very great, as seaports go, in trade. [Pg 303] Were cities able to talk with one another as men can, and as foolishly as men often do, I have no doubt that many a hustling middle-western city would patronize Charleston, precisely as a parvenue might patronize a professor of astronomy; nevertheless, Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the cities of the Middle West rolled into one. This is no exaggeration. Where modern American cities strive to be like one another, Charleston strives to be like nothing whatsoever. ”

“ This was the only sign that a war was in progress,—the scanty number of gentry present,—for all save the indifferent were gone to Charlestown or elsewhere. I recall it dimly, as a blaze of color passing: merrymaking, jesting, feasting,—a rare contrast, I thought, to the sight I had beheld in Charlestown Bay but a while before. Yet so runs the world,—strife at one man's home, and peace and contentment at his neighbor's ”

“ How many instances of this kind have I seen—of writers toiling with their pens and brains for the benefit and credit of ungrateful wretches without intellect, or soul, or honor, or common humanity! Charlestown is probably the meanest and most contemptible place in the whole universe—totally unfit to be the dwelling-place of any man who calls himself white. ”

“ This stands on the very site of the old parsonage—General Ward’s headquarters. The evening before the battle of Bunker Hill, Prescott’s division was formed in parade here and joined in prayer with the minister of Cambridge before they marched to Bunker Hill. Anybody will show you Kirkland Street, which is the name now given to the beginning of “Milk Row,” the road over which they crossed to Charlestown. If you are afraid to walk, take your wheel. Two miles, more or less, will bring you eastward to Charlestown Neck. Then turn to your right{205}
LANDING OF BRITISH TROOPS AT BOSTON, 1768. ”

“ A wooden building was erected. This being outgrown a brick church was built on Church Street, on the present site of St. Philip’s. By act of the Assembly, June, 1751, Charlestown was divided into two parishes; the lower, St. Michael’s, and the upper, St. Philip’s. February 17, 1752, the corner stone was laid with much ceremony, the South Carolina Gazette carrying an account. The reputed successor of Sir Christopher Wrenn was the architect and the edifice is declared to resemble St. Martin’s-in-the-Field, London, near Trafalgar Square. From the pavement to the ball of the steeple is 182 feet. ”

“ The wooden shutters of the domestic life are kept closed. So they miss that which is most exquisite, most appealing, in any city—personality.
Charleston is, without doubt, the most exclusive city in America. It gives nothing out to the stranger beyond its physical beauty and tempered climate. One keen observer said of it: “It has only one equal—a German principality, where almost everyone is royal and noble and all intermarried. Other places and social codes exist, of course—New York, Chicago, Denver—but not for Charleston.” ”

“ But get away they must. Charleston is a small town, despite the fifty-eight thousand persons accorded it by the 1910 census, and a town where strangers must give their histories—even though those strangers be paying guests at one of the East Bay sailorman lodging-houses. And to make matters somewhat worse Boston Tommy had met temptation and succumbed to it. ”

“ Charleston has a population of forty thousand inhabitants, about twenty-five thousand of these are free. The city is regularly built, the streets cross each other at right angles. The smallest streets are paved, all have brick side-walks. The paving-stone is imported from the northern states, on this account it is an expensive article, and the paving of the streets can only be gradually effected. In the suburb we passed through a street which was a log causeway. ”

“ Of the mysteries of Charleston I shall not tell you anything, because I know them not, excepting by rumour, and that which I know merely by rumour I leave untold. Dark mysteries, more indeed than rumour has told, cannot fail in a great city in which slavery abides. I have heard it said that there is a flogging institution in Charleston for slaves, which brings the city a yearly revenue of more than ten thousand dollars. Every person who wishes to have his slave punished by the whip sends him there with money for his chastisement. ”

“ The city lies on a spur or promontory between the Ashley and the Cooper rivers, and the land behind it is divided in the same manner by similar creeks, and is sandy and light, bearing, nevertheless, very fine crops, and trees of magnificent vegetation. The steeples, the domes of public buildings, the rows of massive warehouses and cotton stores on the wharfs, and the bright colours of the houses, render the appearance of Charleston, as seen from the river front, rather imposing. From the mastheads of the few large vessels in harbour floated the Confederate flag. ”

“ Things always moved swiftly in Charleston. There is a tale of a saloon-keeper who buried his wife in the morning, killed a man at high noon, and took unto himself a new bride before evening. If that story is not true—and old-timers vouch for it—it is at least indicative of the trend of life in the town.
And to Charleston came those followers of John Ringo and Curly Bill who did not get on with the Earps. Several of them became men of influence down here on the San Pedro. Hither flocked those boisterous spirits who craved more freedom of action on pay-day than the mining town afforded. ”

“ Charleston people are city people par excellence. They have the virtues of city people, the vices of city people, and the civilization and sophistication of those who reside in the most aristocratic capitals. For that is another thing that Charleston is; it is unqualifiedly the aristocratic capital of the United States; the last stronghold of a unified American upper class; the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port and [Pg 304] noblesse oblige are fully and widely understood, and are employed according to the best traditions. ”

“ Greeley said, “I will print Seymour’s speech when the World will print those of our side.”
Before the war, Charleston was one of the most interesting cities of the country. It was a small aristocratic community, with an air of refinement and distinction. The story of Athens proclaims that a large population is not necessary [p92] to exercise a powerful influence on the world; and, after the election of Lincoln in 1860, the 40,000 people of Charleston, or rather the few patricians who controlled its fate and that of South Carolina, attracted the attention of the whole country. ”

“ There is a much larger population of blacks than of whites. Charleston, the metropolis of South Carolina, is an active seaport with sixty-five thousand inhabitants, having a good export trade in cotton, timber, naval stores, rice, fruits and phosphate rock, of which there are extensive deposits on Ashley River nearby. It is a low-lying city, built upon a peninsula between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, just inland from the ocean, and having a good harbor. ”

“ Charleston extended before us. The city, distinguished as a seaport, lies upon a tongue of land, formed by the rivers Ashley and Cooper: we crossed the Ashley to reach the city. A causeway, constructed of fascines, passes through the swamp to the ferry. The river is three-quarters of a mile broad; we crossed it in an eight-horse team-boat. A wooden bridge, which formerly crossed the river here, was destroyed by a severe storm, and never again rebuilt. Upon the right bank, in the vicinity of Charleston, an entirely novel spectacle expanded itself to my view. ”

“ The many handsome churches and public buildings add largely to the attractions of Charleston, and are, to a certain extent, a reflex of the minds of the people. As the descendants of old families concentrate their energies and their pride on their ancestral home, so the good Charlestonians from generation to generation have devoted theirs to the glorification of their beloved city ”