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 Charleston: American independence, wealth, tradition and access to the sea held the state's cultural and political heart in Charleston. Here you'll find the very best of the South. A genteel nature, so inviting.
South Carolina Luxury Hotels
South Carolina Luxury Tours & Vacation Packages
So gracious. And an indomitable strength that has proudly withstood great fires, earthquakes, pirates, a civil war and hurricanes with little more than a bat of an eye. Indeed, the Charleston area is a place that visitors rarely want to leave. In 1995, Glamour magazine rated the area one of the top 10 travel destinations in the U.S. With a metro population of over 500,000, this aristocratic colonial port boasts 73 pre-Revolutionary buildings, 136 from the late eighteenth century and more than 600 others built prior to the 1840s. Come wander along cobblestone streets, smell the sea breezes, explore antique shops and boutiques and treat yourself to delicious fresh seafood. Come experience the Charleston area - her streets, her homes, her people By horse-drawn carriage, air-conditioned bus, boat, bicycle or on foot, a tour of Charleston is a remarkable journey through time.
Every day the marshes are alive with the calls of birds and rustling flight. Fish leap in the dark clear streams that feed the wetlands; an alligator lifts its blunt nose through the surface of a still, brackish slough and aims for a place in the sun. By night, the moon will bathe a beach, a ruined church, a moss-bearded palm and live oak grove in silvery light.
Add to the natural romance of this place the range and quality of activities, from water sports, golf, tennis, cycling and beachcombing, through to the arts, sightseeing and plain relaxing, and the sum is one of the world's most superb vacation or retirement areas. Hilton Head Island, with its four main resort communities of Palmetto Dunes, Port Royal Resort, Sea Pines and Shipyard Plantation, features 12 miles of broad beaches. The island offers more than 20 public or semi-private championship golf courses, several frequented by renowned master players. The MCI Classic is played here, and private lessons, golf schools and clinics are available at many clubs. Tennis is also a big attraction on Hilton Head with some 300 courts, more than any other resort of its size in America. Tournaments abound and the island hosts the Family Circle Magazine Cup annually. Mild temperatures, averaging in the 50s in winter and high 80s in summer, encourage outdoor pleasures most days of the year.
While beach and resort areas are more crowded in the summer, the spring and fall are long, idyllic seasons cherished by golfers and other active-sports enthusiasts. Winters are brief and blessed with frequent shorts-and-T- shirt days. Off-season rates at some resorts and hostelries help make these cooler months all the more attractive. Accommodations range from oceanfront camping through modestly-priced motels, cabins and guesthouses to luxury hotels, seaside villas and apartments. Bountiful fresh seafood and the best in traditional Southern cooking share the regional menu with a nearly endless variety of good food, from the grand resorts to country crossroads. If you haven't yet tried she-crab soup, so-called because crab roe provides the unique flavor, get acquainted here.
Temperatures average in the 80s in summer, cooled to comfort by the sea breeze, and 50s in winter, under the sun. Natural beauty, a climate with distinct but mild and pleasant seasons, and a variety of activities, almost as limitless as the seashells, have made the Grand Strand the choice vacation and retirement spot for generations of Carolinians, along with a swelling tide of national and international tourists. Fisherfolk delight in the piers, deep-sea and inland waterway excursions, along with the estuaries where crabs and shellfish abound. The Gulf Stream, a massive, undersea river warm from the tropics, flows about 40 miles offshore, tempering the climate for humanity as it does for a vast and varied population of marine life. Shoppers flock to such popular treasure hunting sites as the Waccamaw Factory Shoppes and the Myrtle Beach Factory Stores in Myrtle Beach, Barefoot Landing in North Myrtle Beach, and Broadway at the Beach in Myrtle Beach, the area's newest entertainment, dining and shopping mega-complex. Several charted shipwrecks (and how many as yet undiscovered?) await the adventurous diver. Sunrise on the ocean, sunset on marsh and river, the feeding birds, the fleets of fishing boats as they come and go are only a part of a photographer's field day. The big thrill, voted near the top by all, is the food. Miles of restaurants offer heavenly smells and the best in seafood of the day, if not the very hour. The after-dinner fun begins when Myrtle Beach lights up its Pavilion, as the infinite sky lights the moon and stars.
The Blue Ridge mountains are forested and steep, in some places penetrable only along narrow passes cut by roaring, cliff-walled rivers. From the mountain heights, some of the rivers plunge hundreds of feet. Whitewater Falls is the best-known, tumbling out of North Carolina into the headwaters of Lake Jocassee, plummeting almost 900 feet in two cascades. Another favorite destination of hikers is the 400-foot Raven Cliff Falls, in northern Greenville County near Caesars Head. Come in the spring to drive S.C. 11 through the glowing pink orchards of Spartanburg and Cherokee counties. Come in the summer ? as thousands do ? to pick, eat and buy fresh peaches. Gaffney is not kidding with that peach-shaped water tower ? orchards are a way of life. Postcard-pretty mainstreet towns seem set aside in time. Yet quaint and remote as some of its countryside may seem, the Olde English District is scarcely, at its most rural, more than an hour from city lights, entertainment and amenities such as airports, amusements, theaters and concert halls. A country bed and breakfast inn may offer a lullabye of whippoorwills after a long day at a theme park or outlet mall.
Championship golf and trophy fishing, history tours and horse farms, water slides and nature hikes, lakeside camps and draped four-posters, fish fries and dainty teas, the choices abound.
For over a century Aiken has been a principal wintering place for the wealthy. Three Winter Colony Historic Districts, where a "cottage" may have 90 rooms, bear architecturally-fascinating witness to the area's popularity. The unpaved roads and equestrian stoplights are reminders that much of the traffic here still trots with aplomb on four iron-shod feet. The trails in beautiful Hitchcock Woods, a 2,000-acre preserve in the heart of Aiken, are a haven for both nature lovers and horses. Cars are not permitted.
In a less genteel moment, Aiken was the site of an 1865 free-for-all when Sherman sent a detachment of Union soldiers to destroy the cotton mill at Graniteville. Confederates met the raiding party on Main Street; the fighting was straddling the railroad track when a locomotive pulling mill goods came into sight, whistle blasting. The embattled troops paid no attention and the engineer made a timely reverse, backward to Graniteville and safety
"Gay parties of ladies and gentlemen mounted on prancing steeds dashed over the country adjoining the delightful fields of our celebrated pine woods...all (other entertainments) paled to insignificance before the brilliant and successful introduction of James Gordon Bennett's popular national game, polo...."
South Carolina History
The colony of Carolina was settled by English settlers, mostly from Barbados, sent by the Lords Proprietors in 1670, followed by French Huguenots. The original Carolina proprietors were aware of the threat posed by the French and Spanish presence to the south, whose Roman Catholic monarchies were enemies of England and English values. They needed to act swiftly to attract settlers. Therefore, they were one of the first colonies to grant liberty of religious practice in order to attract settlers who were Baptists, Quakers, Huguenots and Presbyterians. Jewish immigration was specifically encouraged in the Fundamental Constitutions, since Jews were seen as reliable citizens. The Jewish immigrants were fleeing the Spanish Inquisition, which was being perpetrated in the Spanish colonies in the New World.[10] Most immigrants in the colonial period were African slaves, who constituted a majority of the colony's population throughout the period. The Carolina upcountry was settled largely by Scots-Irish migrants from Pennsylvania and Virginia, following the Great Wagon Road. The formal colony of "The Carolinas" split into two in 1712.
Between 1715–1717 the Yamasee War, between colonial South Carolina and several Indian tribes, was one of America’s bloodiest Indian Wars, which for over a year seriously threatened the continued existence of South Carolina. South Carolina became a royal colony in 1719. The state declared its independence from Great Britain and set up its own government on March 15, 1776. On February 5, 1778, South Carolina became the first state to ratify the first constitution of the United States - the Articles of Confederation. The current United States Constitution was proposed for adoption by the States on September 17, 1787, and South Carolina was the 8th state to ratify it, on May 23, 1780.
The American Revolution caused a shock to slavery in the South. Tens of thousands of slaves killed themselves. others secured their freedom by escaping. Estimates are that 25,000 slaves (30% of those in South Carolina) fled, migrated or died during the disruption of the war.
This historic home is at "The Battery," a neighborhood/park area at the Downtown Historic District of Charleston - a well-known historical city in South Carolina. "The Battery" is also known as White Point Gardens.South Carolina politics between 1783 and 1795 were marred by rivalry between a Federalist Elite supporting the central government in Philadelphia and a large proportion of common people, often members of 'Republican Societies', supporting the Republican-Democrats headed by Jefferson and Madison who wanted more democracy in the US especially in South Carolina. Most people also supported the onset of the French Revolution (1789-1795) as anti-British feelings were still running high after the devastation of the war during the American Revolution and Charleston was the most French-influenced city in the USA after New Orleans. Leading South Carolina figures such as Pinckney and Governor Moultrie backed with money and actions the plans of the French to further their political, strategic, and commercial goals in North America. This pro-French stance and attitude of South Carolina ended soon due to the XYZ Affair.
South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union on December 20, 1860. On April 12, 1861, Confederate batteries began shelling Fort Sumter and the American Civil War began. Charleston was effectively blockaded and the Union Navy seized the Sea Islands, driving off the plantation owners and setting up an experiment in freedom for the ex-slaves. South Carolina troops participated in the major Confederate campaigns, but no major battles were fought inland. General William Tecumseh Sherman marched through the state in early 1865, destroying numerous plantations, and captured the state capital of Columbia on February 17. Fires began that night and by next morning, most of the central city was destroyed.
Coastal towns and cities often have hurricane resistant Live oaks overarching the streets in historic neighborhoods, such as these on East Bay Street, Georgetown.After the war, South Carolina was reincorporated into the United States during Reconstruction. Under presidential Reconstruction (1865-66), freedmen (former slaves) were given limited rights. Under Radical reconstruction (1867-1877), a Republican coalition of freedmen, carpetbaggers and scalawags was in control, supported by Union army forces. The withdrawal of Union soldiers as part of the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction. Whites used paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts to intimidate and terrorize black voters, and regained political control under conservative white "Redeemers" and pro-business Bourbon Democrats.
The state became a hotbed of racial and economic tensions during the Populist and Agrarian movements of the 1890s. With the new constitution of 1895, almost all blacks and many poor whites were effectively disfranchised by new requirements for poll taxes and literacy tests. By 1896 only 5,500 black voters remained on the registration rolls. The 1900 census demonstrated the extent of disfranchisement: African Americans comprised more than 58% of the state's population, with a total of 782,509 citizens essentially without any political representation. "Pitchfork Ben Tillman" controlled state politics from the 1890s to 1910 with a base among poor white farmers.
20th century
Early in the 20th century, South Carolina developed a thriving textile industry. By 2007, textile employment had dropped significantly. The state also converted its agricultural base from cotton to more profitable crops, attracted large military bases, created tourism industries. Most recently, the state has attracted European manufacturers.
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