“In 1784,” says the Hon. W. A. Courtenay, the city’s most accomplished and enthusiastic historian, “John Teasdale, a merchant of Charleston, shipped from this city to J. and J. Teasdale, Liverpool, eight bags of cotton. When the vessel arrived out the laughable incident occurred of the cotton being seized on the ground that it could not be grown in America. Upon satisfactory proof, which had to be furnished, it was released. This cotton shipment was the first ever made from the United States to a European port!” Though slavery is commonly supposed to have rendered those living under its debasing influence inert and slow to enter upon great commercial enterprises, it is remarkable that Charleston merchants and planters planned and successfully constructed the earliest great railroad line in America. Mr. Courtenay says: “While the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad was being constructed in 1829, under Stephenson’s direction, and Baltimore was reaching out to the Ohio River, Charleston was projecting a railroad to the head of navigation on the Savannah River, which when completed was the longest railroad in the World.”[7] In the royal grants of land in Carolina the Crown reserved an interest in all precious and base metals, and some of the grants reserved for the King a share of the diamonds and precious stones which avarice rather than common sense suggested might underlie tide-water South Carolina. Geologists and lawyers laughed at the idea of precious stones in marshes and sand dunes, though there had been “black diamonds” there for thousands of years. It was not until after the war between the States that Dr. St. Julien Ravenel’s discovery of the commercial value of the immense phosphate deposits brought wealth and prosperity to many whose needs were the greatest. The fertilizer business then established is still in successful operation and Charleston continues to be the largest phosphate shipping port in the world. [Illustration: PHILADELPHIA STREET (COON ALLEY). SCENE IN REAR OF ST. PHILIP’S CHURCH.] Of the war between the States it is not necessary to write at length. Whether one regards “the firing of the first gun on Fort Sumter as the first rash act of a wild and fatal delusion,” or as the beginning of the greatest war in modern times for constitutional liberty and against the lust for power and territorial domination, no fair man can deny the heroism against unnumbered odds displayed by the Confederate soldiers.