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The Museum Is Older Than the Country. The Fort Still Needs a Boat. · The Red Solo Traveler Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Red Solo Traveler Podcast. Okay, let's unpack this.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I want you to picture something for me.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm picturing it.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: You are standing right on the edge of the harbor,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: and the brochure you picked up at the airport, it, well,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: it sells you on a very specific, meticulously curated image
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: of the city.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: You know the one. Right. The perfectly preserved pastel streets. Right.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: The sound of horse-drawn carriages echoing off cobblestones and like
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: a steaming bowl of she-crab soup waiting for you at
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: some corner restaurant.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: It is a beautiful image. And honestly, it functions perfectly
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: as hospitality copy. You know, it sets this mood that
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: just draws millions of people to the peninsula every single year.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: It totally does. But for our purposes today, we are
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: leaving the calendar date of your trip alone. Right. The
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: dinner plates, the food, the booth circuit, that can all
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: wait for another essay. Today, our mission is to look
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: at the map of underneath the pastel paint. I love that.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: We're pulling from an essay by Louis, the Red Solo Traveler,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: and we're going to give you a highly curated roadmap
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: to the city's true foundations.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how Louis actually structures this exploration.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, we tend to view historic cities as, I
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: don't know, inevitable.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like they just organically sprouted exactly where they stand.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But this city is on this specific map entirely
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: by design, mostly because of this calculated move in 1680
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: to secure a better harbor and, well, because of a
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: ruined fort sitting on an artificial sandbar that you still
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: have to reach by boat.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Which is wild. Before you even walk the streets, you
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: have to understand the sheer human effort it took to
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: put those streets there in the first place.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Because the founding of this city is really a tale
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: of two entirely distinct mornings.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a great way to put it.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So the first morning happens in April of 1670.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: The English boats arrive and land at Albemarle Point, which
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: is over on the west bank of the Ashley River.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: And today that spot is Charlestown Landing.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: And that location was chosen out of pure paranoia.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Seriously.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: The English settlers were like terrified of the Spanish. The
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Spanish had already attempted settlements way further south, like Santa
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Elena down on Parris Island a century earlier.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Right. So they were basically hiding. Completely.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Completely. The 1670 Albemarle Point landing was all about finding
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: a defensible bluff. They wanted to be hidden up the river,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: prioritizing survival over literally anything else.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: But, I mean, hiding up a river is terrible for business. Oh, awful.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I always think of this like it's like realizing you've
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: built your flagship retail store in an alleyway where absolutely
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: no foot traffic can see it.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: That is a perfect analogy.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Because a port that cannot easily see the ocean is
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: really only half a port. So about a decade later,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: the priorities shift from survival to maritime dominance.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the second morning. In 1680, they
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: undertake the massive logistical hurdle of moving the entire colony
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: to Oyster Point.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Which is the peninsula sitting directly between the Ashley and
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: the Cooper Rivers, right?
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And moving an entire colony in the 17th century
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: wasn't just, you know, updating a mailing address.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Right. They couldn't just hire moving fans.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: No. It meant tearing down timber structures, surveying this raw,
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: marshy peninsula. and establishing a brand new grid from scratch.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: And that grid, the one you navigate today with the
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: stone sidewalks and narrow streets and the short blocks south
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: of the French Quarter, that is the 1680 English Peninsula.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: It is an entirely distinct footprint from that original 1670
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: landing site. So when you walk those streets, you are
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: walking the commercial engine of colonial Charleston.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Which is so cool to think about.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: It really is. But I have to ask, how long
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: did it actually take for the city to get its
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: famous name?
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, longer than you'd think. The name officially changed from
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Charlestown to Charleston on August 13th, 1783.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: So right after the American Revolution.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Right. The city was reinventing itself from a royal colony
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: to an American port. And that psychological shift is crucial
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: for travelers to understand.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You are wandering a port town that made its
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: immense wealth long before modern fire codes or urban planning
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: even existed.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Right. You feel the sheer age of the place without
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: anyone having to hand you a script.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Definitely. So once you understand the physical layout of the grid,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: the itinerary naturally takes you toward the center of it.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Moving from the raw colonial streets to the earliest efforts
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: to actually preserve them. Yes.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: And here's where it gets really interesting. The Charleston Museum
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: was founded on January 12, 1773.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Which is mind-blowing.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: It is. That is more than two years before the
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: first shots of the American Revolution at Lexington.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: They proudly call it America's first museum. And that 1773
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: date reflects an incredible level of civic ambition. I mean,
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: the Charleston Library Society had seen the British Museum and
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: they wanted an institution of their own.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: But they weren't like collecting art or royal artifacts, right?
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. They started it as a natural
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: history collection. They wanted to document the raw reality of
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: the province, the soil, the animals, the botany. They were
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: essentially cataloging a new world.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: I love the ambition of that. But I have to admit,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: when I was reading through the itinerary and looking at
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: the route, I felt a genuine letdown.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: Oh? Why is that?
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Well, you walk through all these stunning centuries-old neighborhoods, and
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: you get to 360 Meeting Street, expecting some grand colonial
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: edifice with soaring columns. And instead, you are standing in
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: front of a concrete box built in 1980.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I get that.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, if the building is a 1980s box, is
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: it really the same museum? It feels totally disconnected from
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: its 1773 founding date.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: I completely understand the architectural whiplash there, but we really
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: have to separate the institution from the building.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, fair point.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: It is America's first museum as a continuing collection, not
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: a continuous structure. The fact that the collection survived at
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: all is honestly a miracle.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Right, it bounced around a lot.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: It did. For two centuries, it lived in a courthouse attic,
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: a literary society... the Medical College, the College of Charleston,
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: and the old Thompson Auditorium.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: So it essentially survived by staying one step ahead of disaster.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It actually opened to the public back in 1824.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: And that 1980 box you find so underwhelming, it was
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: actually built just in time.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, really? Yeah.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: The old auditorium on Rutledge, where the collection used to
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: be housed, burned to the ground the very next year.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: So if they hadn't moved to the concrete box, the
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: 1773 collection would have been ash.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, that reframes the building entirely for me. It's
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: basically a vault that finally kept the history safe.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: Precisely.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: And for anyone following this map, that single ticket desk
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: inside the 1980s vault acts like a time machine for
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: your entire afternoon.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Because you can buy a combo ticket that covers the
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: museum and gets you access to two wildly different eras
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: of the city's domestic life.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Right. So from that same desk, you gain entry to
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: the Hayward Washington House, which was built in 1772.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: And that's the one the city famously rented out for
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: George Washington during his visit in May 1791, right?
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: That's the one. And your ticket also covers the Joseph
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Manigault House, which is an 1803 rice planter's urban mansion.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: So you are basically covering the pre-revolution mindset with the
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: 1773 Natural History Collection, the post-revolution optimism with the 1772
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: signer's home that hosted the first president, and the booming
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: antebellum wealth with the 1803 planter's house.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: It perfectly anchors the entire narrative of early American preservation.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, so if the museum represents the conscious choice to
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: preserve history, our next stop on the map represents where
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: modern tourism often warps it. Ah, yes. We walk down
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: to the daily survival of the city, the market. You
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: head over to Market Street, and you find these four
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: blocks of open-air and closed-air sheds running all the way
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: down to East Bay.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: And this is such a bustling area today. Louis describes
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: vendors selling prints, sweet grass baskets, and even a stall
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: flavoring Dominican cigar leaves with bourbon and moonshine.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Sounds amazing. But there is a massive historical misnomer that
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: travelers really need to confront here.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, there is.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Tour buses routinely drive past these sheds and broadcast to
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: their passengers that this is the old slave market.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: And that is a nickname the sheds never actually earned.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: The historical record is incredibly clear about what this space
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: was designed for. Back in 1788, the Pinckney family deeded
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: this specific strip of land to the city with a strict,
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: legally binding restriction.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: What was the restriction?
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: The land had to be used for a public market
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: for meat and fish in perpetuity. It was legally designed
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: as the center market.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Okay. So you have to imagine the sensory reality of
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: the 18th and 19th centuries there. It was loud, hot,
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: and smelled of raw beef and fish. I mean, buzzards
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: literally stocked the meat scraps on the cobblestones.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Now, we need to be incredibly precise here, though. Enslaved
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: people absolutely navigated this space every single day.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, without a doubt.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: The economy of the city relied entirely on their forced labor,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: and they were the ones working these stalls and selling goods.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: But the horrific business of human auctions did not take
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: place under these sheds.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Right. And by mislabeling the center market, tourists inadvertently erased
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: the actual geography of the slave trade.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: So where did the auctions actually happen?
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Well, historically, they took place out on the wharves where
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: the ships arrived or at the exchange building. Later on,
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: when public sensibilities started to view open-air human trafficking as,
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: you know, distasteful for the streets, the auctions were moved
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: indoors into private marts.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to a vital location on the map.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: If you want to understand the foundational trauma of the city,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: you do not look at the souvenir sheds on Market Street.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: You look at 6 Chalmers Street. Exactly. Because that is
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: the location of the old slave mart, a building constructed
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: for a completely different, brutal purpose.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, getting the
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: geography right matters immensely for any traveler.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: It really does.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: We have to be accurate with history so that the
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: souvenir hall on Market Street stays exactly what it is,
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: just a souvenir hall. And the actual sites of historic suffering,
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: like six traumas, received the solemn recognition they demand.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. So walking the peninsula gives you the pastel grid,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: the museum's vaults, and the reality of the market. But
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: to really understand what lies beneath those stone sidewalks, you
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: actually have to get off your feet.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, this is a great transition. Right.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: This is where Lewis's map shifts from a walking tour
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: to a very specific ride.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: You're talking about the 90-minute seated Grayline bus. I am.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: And it is strictly a 90-minute tour because it is
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: purposely timed to drop you off at the dock for
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: the second half of the day.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Which is very convenient.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Super convenient. But during those 90 minutes, the guide strips
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: away the postcard facade and reveals the hidden and frankly
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: jarring geography of the city.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: And the first major revelation is how much of the
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: peninsula is built on filled land.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: The original 1680 footprint was much, much smaller. Just like Boston...
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: Charleston systematically built out into its own rivers to expand
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: its real estate.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: And filling land in the 18th and 19th centuries wasn't
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: exactly an elegant engineering process. Not at all. It basically
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: meant throwing garbage, discarded ship ballast, sawdust, and marsh mud
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: into the water until it piled high enough to build
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: a house on. So you were driving over acres of
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: land that literally used to be water.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Which sets the stage for the disaster that nobody packs for.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, man.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Because the structural integrity of a city built on
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: trash and mud is severely compromised when the earth decides
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: to move.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for the city?
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: It means the earthquake of 1886 was absolutely devastating. Right.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: When you look at these flawless historic homes today, the
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: visual continuity is something of an illusion. Because on August 31, 1886,
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: at about 9.50 at night, the ground just gave way.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: And modern estimates put the magnitude between 6.9 and 7.3, right?
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Yes. And a 7.3 magnitude quake on the East Coast
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: is catastrophic. It remains the seismic benchmark that eastern North
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: America measures itself against.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: That is terrifying. It is.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: And when an earthquake hits filled land, you experience a
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: phenomenon called a liquefaction.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: So the solid ground essentially starts behaving like a liquid.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The marsh mud and loose fill lose all their
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: stiffness and strength. Buildings just sink and shatter. Around 60
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: people died in the initial disaster. The brick facades of
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: those grand homes literally peeled off into the streets. Wow.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: You know, knowing that completely changes the way you look
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: at a wall or a foundation there.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Because those pastels cover a massive historical reset. The city
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: you see today literally had to be restacked brick by
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: brick after 1886.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's incredible resilience.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Definitely. And the theme of catastrophic physical destruction is transitions
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: perfectly into where the bus drops you off.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Right, because the tour ends at Liberty Square, and that
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: sets up the entire second half of the city's story,
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: the fort out in the harbor.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Liberty Square is the site of the Fort Sumter Visitor
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Education Center.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: And there is a crucial logistical detail here for anyone
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: planning this trip. A national park pass does not cover
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: the boat ride.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: That is such an important tip.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't want to get stuck. The visitor center
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: itself is free. But the fort sits out on an
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: island in the middle of the shipping channel. You have
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: to buy a concession ferry ticket, either leaving from Liberty
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Square or from Patriot's Point over in Mount Pleasant.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: You basically have to pay the ferrymen to access the history.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But once you cross that water, you step onto
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: a staggering feat of 19th century engineering.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Fort Sumter is a third system fort. Right.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: And to put that into context for you guys, after
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: the War of 1812, The United States realized its coastal
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: defenses were terribly inadequate.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Very inadequate.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: So the government initiated the Third System of Fortifications. It
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: was this massive program to build heavily armed masonry forts
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: along the coastline to protect vital harbors.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: But the problem in Charleston was that the best strategic
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: location to protect the main shipping channel was a submerged shoal.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. So they couldn't just build on land.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: No, they couldn't. So starting in 1829, the army began
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: dumping tens of thousands of tons of New England granite
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: into the water just to create an artificial sandbar.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: That is insane.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Right. They literally had to build the island before they
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: could even build the fort.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: And it was such a monumental, slow-moving task that the
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Pentagon of brick was still unfinished decades later.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Think about the tension of this moment. South Carolina secedes
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: on December 20, 1860. Six days later, on the night
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: of December 26th, Major Robert Anderson secretly rose his Union
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: garrison over from the vulnerable Fort Moultrie on the mainland.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Slipping through the darkness to occupy this unfinished, man-made brick island.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: It is a brilliant, desperate tactical move. Anderson isolates his
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: men in the center of the harbor, effectively daring the
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: newly formed Confederacy to make the first move.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Which leads to the exact moment the American Civil War erupts.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: At 4.30 in the morning on April 12th, 1861, A
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: signal mortar is fired from Fort Johnson on James Island.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: The shell arcs over the harbor and explodes above Sumter.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: And Anderson returns fire, but he is just massively outgunned
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: and outsupplied, and he surrenders the next day.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: But the story doesn't end there, does it?
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. That initial 34-hour bombardment made Fort
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Sumter globally famous, sure. But the most compelling and, frankly,
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: terrifying part of the fort's history is the duration of
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: what happened a few years later.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: You're talking about the later siege?
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Yes. When Union forces returned to retake the harbor in
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: August 1863, they unleashed a bombardment on the fort and
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: the city that lasted for roughly 545 days.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: A year and a half of constant artillery fire. That
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: is unfathomable.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Millions of pounds of iron were hurled at that brick Pentagon.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: We talked about the physical destruction of the 1886 earthquake.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: The 545-day siege was basically a human-made earthquake. The continuous
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: shelling reduced the imposing three-tiered walls to a shattered, sloping ruin.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: So the fort you stand on today when you step
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: off the ferry is basically just the surviving foundation.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: And Lewis describes a really profound way to experience that ruin.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, the last tour of the day. Yeah.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: He highly recommends taking the last boat of the day
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: out to the island. You get an hour to explore.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: The ranger gives a talk on the parade ground. covering everything,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the 1829 construction, Anderson's night move, and that horrific 545-day bombardment.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: And then, because it's the last tour, the visitors gather
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: to watch the rangers lower the flag over the ruins
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: as the sun sets before everyone gets back on the boat.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: That's just such a cool image.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: It really provides a quiet, evocative closure to a space
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: that was so entirely defined by violence. But as we
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: look at the map, this raises an important question about
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: what we have deliberately left behind today.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Right, because there are several other mornings mentioned in Lewis's
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: essay that are definitely part of the city's fabric, but
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: they require their own dedicated time. Yes. For instance, we
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: mentioned Charlestown Landing up the Ashley River, if you really
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: want to walk that original 1670 footprint. And there is
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: also Fort Moultrie over on Sullivan's Island, which is actually
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: part of the same national park, but you access it
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: by car. Right.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: And we touched on the old slave mart at Six Chalmers,
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: which absolutely requires serious focused attention.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: For sure. There's also the Powder Magazine, the oldest public
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: building in the state, which is just a short walk
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: from those pastel blocks.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: And the essay also names the various plantation houses scattered
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: off the peninsula and, crucially, the International African American Museum,
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: or IAAM.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Right, which just opened on June 27, 2023. Yes.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: And it sits right at Gadsden's Wharf, which is the
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: exact site where so many captive Africans first touched American soil.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Those locations are incredibly vital, but they just fall outside
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: the specific constraints of today's blueprint. Exactly. So for the
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: ultimate Red Solo traveler strategy, the summary is pretty clear.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: You walk the streets on the first day to really
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: understand the 1680 grid.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Give the museum your afternoon so the 1773 mindset and
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: those combo ticket houses give you a proper timeline. Use
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: the Market Street sheds as a morning stroll, but know
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: exactly what you were looking at with the 1788 Pinkney deed.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: And if you buy one ticket on your whole trip
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: that isn't for a museum, buy the ferry ticket to
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: the fort.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Yes. Because the fort is the reason the harbor holds
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: such immense historical weight.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: And the museum is how the city defined its intellect
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: before the country even existed.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Well, the streets deliver the architectural beauty the brochure promised
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: in the first place.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: It all circles back to a single really resonant line
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: from the essay. The peninsula is small. The history is not.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: I love that line. The sheer density of the timeline
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: on that tiny sliver of land is staggering.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: It truly is. It is.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: And as you picture that harbor one last time, I
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: want to leave you with a final thought to mull over.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: Okay, lay it on me.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: We almost always think of history as an event that
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: happens on the land. Like, we imagine armies fighting over
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: territory or generations building their lives on solid, unchanging ground.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: Right, that's the standard way to look at it.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: But when you look at the real mechanics of Charleston,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: you realize how much of its physical ground is entirely manufactured.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: The environment itself literally had to be engineered to accommodate
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: the history. Exactly.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: From an artificial sandbar piled with New England granite in
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: 1829 just to hold a brick pentagon in the harbor,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: to acres of land built out into the rivers with
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: trash and mud to expand a wealthy port.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: And a shattered street grid completely restacked brick by brick
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: after the earth liquefied in 1886. Right.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: So perhaps the most compelling legacy of Charleston isn't just
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: who lived there or who fired the first shot there.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Maybe the real story is the sheer human stubbornness required
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: to force the very ground beneath their feet to exist
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: in the first place.