Walter Edgar's Journal

Stephen Swails ( LSU Press) Stephen Atkins Swails is a forgotten American hero. A free Black in the North before the Civil War began, Swails exhibited such exemplary service in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry that he became the first African American commissioned as a combat officer in the United States military. After the war, Swails remained in South Carolina, where he held important positions i...

The glass house at Historic Columbia's Boyd Foundation Horticultural Center on the grounds of the Hampton-Preston Mansion in Columbia, SC. ( Historic Columbia Foundation) In 1961, the Historic Columbia Foundation was formed. It's goal: to save the the 135-year-old Robert Mills House from demolition and restore it. Over 60 years later, the Foundation manages six properties and continues to embrace...

Drayton Hall ( Drayton Hall Preservation Trust) George McDaniel served as the Executive Director of Drayton Hall, a mid-18th-century plantation located on the Ashley River near Charleston for more than 25 years. His new book, Drayton Hall Stories: A Place and Its People (2022, Evening Post Books) focuses on this historic site’s recent history, using interviews with descendants (both White and Blac...

Battle of the Waxhaws (Dale Watson / SC Battleground Preservation Trust) America’s independence was secured in South Carolina, across its swamps, fields, woods and mountains. These events of 1779-1782 directly led to victory in the Revolutionary War. The Liberty Trail – developed through a partnership between the American Battlefield Trust and the South Carolina Battleground Trust – connects battl...

FILE (TexasGOPVote.com / Flickr) The Supreme Court is usually seen as protector of our liberties: it ended segregation, was a guarantor of fair trials, and safeguarded free speech and the vote. But this narrative derives mostly from a short period, from the 1930s to the early 1970s. Before then, the Court spent a century largely ignoring or suppressing basic rights, while the fifty years since 197...

A pelican standing in front of a lake in which two other pelicans are already hunting for food. Coloured wood engraving by J W Whimper. (Josiah Wood Whymper (1813–1903) / Wellcome Collection) At once a literary crime novel and an intergenerational family drama, Roy Hoffman’s novel, The Promise of the Pelican (2022, Arcade Crimewise) is set in the multicultural South, where justice might depend on...

FILE - (Nov. 11, 2008) World War II veteran Harry J. Thomas, right, stands with Brig. Gen. Brett T. Williams, during the singing of the national anthem at a Veterans Day ceremony at the 18th Wing headquarters at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan. (Ryan C. Delcore, U.S. Navy, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons) In 2020, Maj. General (Ret.) William F. Grimsley became South Carolina's first Secreta...

(Courtesy of Middleton Place Foundation) Charles Duell inherited the historic properties Middleton Place and the Edmondston-Alston House, Charleston, SC, in 1969. He was 31 years old. A graduate of Yale, he had begun a career in finance on Wall Street. But the circumstances of his sudden inheritance compelled him to leave New York City and move his family to South Carolina. There he would take up...

Hootie and the Blowfish (Micheal McLaughlin / Courtesy of the University of South Carolina Press) In 1985, Mark Bryan heard Darius Rucker singing in a dorm shower at the University of South Carolina and asked him to form a band. For the next eight years, Hootie & the Blowfish—completed by bassist Dean Felber and drummer Soni Sonefeld—played every frat house, roadhouse, and rock club in the mid...

Interior of a crowded bar moments before midnight, June 30, 1919, when wartime prohibition went into effect New York City. (New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection / Library of Congress) In her book, Baptists and Bootleggers: A Prohibition Expedition Through the South (2021, Evening Post Books) Kathryn Smith takes you to major cities and small towns, all of which strugg...

( pixhere.com) Timmonsville native Johnny D. Boggs has worked cattle, been bucked off horses, shot rapids in a canoe, hiked across mountains and deserts, traipsed around ghost towns, and spent hours poring over microfilm in library archives -- all in the name of finding a good story. He was won a record nine Spur Awards from Western Writers of America, a Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the Na...

(Alexandra Olgin) Shrimp, one of our most delicious food sources, was once only considered worthy of bait. In her new book, Shrimp Tales: Small Bites of History (2022, Primedia eLaunch), author Beverly Bowers Jennings tells the fascinating story of the shrimp industry, from the shrimp boats and their captains to fishing family lore, tasty recipes and more. Jennings talks with Walter Edgar about wh...

Poster: Rural Electrification Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture ( Library of Congress) Early in the twentieth century, for-profit companies such as Duke Power and South Carolina Electric and Gas brought electricity to populous cities and towns across South Carolina, while rural areas remained in the dark. It was not until the advent of publicly owned electric cooperatives in the 1930s...

(Florida Center for Instructional Technology (https://etc.usf.edu/clipart/) “In the most barren inhospitable unhealthy part of North America, opposed by the most savage, inveterate perfidious cruel Enemy, with zeal and with Bayonets only, it was resolv’d to follow Green’s Army, to the end of the World.” So wrote British general Charles O’Hara about the epic confrontation between Nathanael Greene a...

A map of ye English Empire in ye continent of America : viz Virginia, Maryland, Carolina, New York, New Iarsey, New England, Pennsilvania (Morden, Robert (d. 1703), Bookseller; Binneman, Walter, Engraver Daniel, R. (Richard), Cartographer / NY Public Library) In his book, The Grim Years: Settling South Carolina, 1670-1720 (2020, University of SC Press), Dr. John Navin explains how eight English ar...

The Black River at Kingstree, SC (Robin M. Keith / Wikimedia Commons) The Open Space Institute’s mission is to protect scenic, natural, and historic landscapes to provide public enjoyment, conserve habitat and working lands, and sustain communities. Over the past 40 years, the institute has saved 2,285,092 acres of land through direct acquisition, grants, and loans. Having begun by focusing on lan...

FILE - (Nov. 11, 2008) World War II veteran Harry J. Thomas, right, stands with Brig. Gen. Brett T. Williams, during the singing of the national anthem at a Veterans Day ceremony at the 18th Wing headquarters at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan. (Ryan C. Delcore, U.S. Navy, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons) In 2020, Maj. General (Ret.) William F. Grimsley became South Carolina's first Secreta...

( Kuro Neko Niyah / Wikimedia Commons) For many years scholars made assumptions about how Europeans traded with West Africans for other, enslaved Africans, about how many voyages were made by slave ships to the English colonies in North America before 1808, and about why the institution of slavery almost died out in New England. Beginning in the late 1960s, however, a movement began that challenge...

Troops wearing the Revolutionary War uniforms of the 9th Virginia Regiment, Corps of the Continental Line, participate in a drill and firing demonstration during the Cessation of Hostilities Bicentennial Celebration at the Pentagon River Plaza. The flag of the ceremonial 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment, Corps of the Continental Line, is carried in the background. (Sanborn / U. S. National Archive) (Orig...

(Photo by E.C. Jones and Cecil J. Williams. Courtesy of Cecil J. Williams) (Originally broadcast 10/01/21) - In his book, The Slow Undoing: The Federal Courts and the Long Struggle for Civil Rights in South Carolina, Dr. Stephen H. Lowe argues for a reconsideration of the role of the federal courts in the civil rights movement. It places the courts as a central battleground at the intersections of...

Stephen Swails ( LSU Press) Stephen Atkins Swails is a forgotten American hero. A free Black in the North before the Civil War began, Swails exhibited such exemplary service in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry that he became the first African American commissioned as a combat officer in the United States military. After the war, Swails remained in South Carolina, where he held important positions i...

(Courtesy of Middleton Place Foundation) Charles Duell inherited the historic properties Middleton Place and the Edmondston-Alston House, Charleston, SC, in 1969. He was 31 years old. A graduate of Yale, he had begun a career in finance on Wall Street. But the circumstances of his sudden inheritance compelled him to leave New York City and move his family to South Carolina. There he would take up...

Night at the Saluda Riverfront Park (Eric P. Harkins / Courtesy of The River Alliance) (Originally released 08/06/2021) - For decades, Columbia’s rivers were seen as dividing lines between cities and counties. In 1994, the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce along with the Cities of Columbia, Cayce and West Columbia as well as Richland and Lexington Counties began to look at what the Midland’s ov...

( pixhere.com) Timmonsville native Johnny D. Boggs has worked cattle, been bucked off horses, shot rapids in a canoe, hiked across mountains and deserts, traipsed around ghost towns, and spent hours poring over microfilm in library archives -- all in the name of finding a good story. He was won a record nine Spur Awards from Western Writers of America, a Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the Na...

Interior of a crowded bar moments before midnight, June 30, 1919, when wartime prohibition went into effect New York City. (New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection / Library of Congress) In her book, Baptists and Bootleggers: A Prohibition Expedition Through the South (2021, Evening Post Books) Kathryn Smith takes you to major cities and small towns, all of which strugg...