What It Is About Charleston

The city was a police state, therefore a punitive state as well, because repression and oppression go in company with punishment.  The first thing I saw in Charleston, as we bee-lined to the oldest existing structure, the Powder Magazine from 1713, was a pillory ....

On top of this police state with the nightly curfew that had even white Charleston locking down its mansions and well-to-homes behind their high walls by 8 PM every night (to keep their negroes in and potential negro rebels out -- in the 1700's alone there were over 250 slave rebellions -- that we know of ....), is the sheer churchy-ness of the city.  A churchy-ness that's protestant -- presbyterian -- consequently, the accompanying hypocrisy.

Not an attractive place, this one that traded in slaves in the millions of dollars every year, thus the many, many mansions.

Whereas the Lowcountry of Georgetown, Beauford and the Sea Islands, with its enormous Gullah cultural influence, and the understanding of both black and white that "we are all related, honey," -- very different, from its capital, into which poured all those riches, thereby one huge district after another of even more enormous mansion piles.  This -- even though earthquakes, fires and hurricanes at many times destroyed large portions of the city.