CONFEDERATE MUSEUM, _at the Head of the Market_: Valuable relics of the
Confederacy are preserved in their hall at the head of Market Street, at
Meeting Street, by the Charleston Chapter of the United Daughters of the
Confederacy. A gun on the porch was fashioned from Swedish wrought iron
from one of the first locomotives operated by the South Carolina
Railroad, the world’s oldest long-distance steam railroad. It was among
the first rifled cannon made in the United States. This piece was in
Columbia when General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Union troops occupied
that town, and Union soldiers tried to burst the cannon, cracking it
near the muzzle. During riots in the period of Reconstruction the
Washington Light Infantry manned the gun. The Confederate Museum is in a
hall over the west end of the old City Market established between 1788
and 1804, extending from East Bay Street to Meeting Street. Through many
years all household marketing was done in the stalls. Into recent years
it was a common sight to see a gentleman doing the marketing, a negro
with a large basket following him from stall to stall. There survive
stalls in the Market, but the long low building is not congested as it
was in other years. The telephone has contributed much toward the
discontinuance of the good old Charleston custom of marketing in person.
MARION SQUARE, _King, Meeting and Calhoun Streets_: Named in honor of
General Francis Marion, hero of the Revolution, affectionately called
the “Swamp Fox,” this six-acre square in the very heart of Charleston
was from 1882 to 1921 the parade ground of The Citadel, the military
college of South Carolina, giving rise to the nickname, Citadel Green.
The Citadel is now at Hampton Park, on the Ashley River, but its main
building and four wings stand as reminders. In Lowndes Street, from
Calhoun to the Citadel sally port, is a statue of John Caldwell Calhoun,
eminent South Carolina statesman, atop a tall granite shaft. On the
Meeting Street side is a monument to General and Governor Wade Hampton,
savior of his State in Reconstruction, and on the west side a section of
“horn work,” part of the Revolutionary line of fortifications for the
defense of Charlestown against the invading British. It was just outside
the town, Boundary Street becoming Calhoun Street after the town limits
were extended to their present line in 1849. Before the purchase by the
now defunct Fourth Brigade, the square was solidly built. After the
evacuation of Charleston until 1882 the United States army was in
possession of the Citadel buildings. On the east side and on the west
side are fountains fed by a great artesian well near King and Calhoun
Streets, formerly in the waterworks system.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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