Edgar Allan Poe was stationed at Fort Moultrie in 1827 and 1828 under the assumed name of Edgar Perry. While there, Poe was gathering material for the first detective stories in the English language, including The Goldbug, which was set on Sullivan’s Island. He also created the first American detective—C. Auguste Dupin, who was the … Read more
General Sherman went to great lengths during the burning of Columbia, South Carolina to protect a friend whose family he had visited frequently while he was a bachelor stationed at Fort Moultrie between 1842 and 1846. The book and letters that Sherman sent to his friend along with an eyewitness account of his visits, finally … Read more
Isabel Whaley Sloan started teaching ballroom dancing and social etiquette in Columbia when she was 17 years old in 1914. For three-quarters of a century, generations of children, including Gov. Henry McMaster, flocked to her classes. Sloan was also well-known for organizing dances and social events for thousands of servicemen who were stationed at Fort Jackson during World … Read more
Sherman’s brilliant campaign through Georgia and the Carolinas ended in political turmoil with public insinuations from President Andrew Johnson’s administration that Confederate President Jefferson Davis had bought his freedom from Sherman with gold from the Confederate treasury. Sherman was accused by high government officials of being “a common traitor and a public enemy” while subordinates … Read more
Veteran reporter, author and USC Professor Emerita Pat McNeely presents recently edited military diaries and family histories of her husband and her father-in-law who served in the Cold War and World War I respectively. McNeely has added family pictures and additional information to both diaries to make them lasting histories. Hear about how she pulled … Read more
General William T. Sherman created a new form of physical, economic, and psychological “total warfare” against civilians and private property in Georgia and the Carolinas that he readily admitted would be violent and cruel. In addition to physical and economic assaults, he designed a massive psychological strategy of disinformation, deception, and blame designed to cripple … Read more
Joseph McGill will chronicle nights spent in several slave dwellings throughout the United States.
South Carolina is home to several nationally acclaimed African American poets who have left the state to pursue their crafts and careers in stunning fashion. Three South Carolina native poets have gone on to win the National Book Award for Poetry in the last decade. This lecture will explore the work of such poets as … Read more
Julia Peterkin was a white woman who wrote about Gullah people living on her family’s plantation out of a desire to honor and preserve their culture. She was shunned by white Southerners for “betraying her race” but became accepted by Harlem Renaissance writers, such as Langston Hughes and W.E.B. DuBois. Regardless of criticism, she continued … Read more
