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This chapter illustrates what Charles Town was like in the wake of Jeremiah's execution. Lord Campbell, fearing for his life, was forced to abandon his post and abscond to a dilapidated sloop in the harbor. This was a crucial moment, marking the official end of royal government in South Carolina. In that instant, Campbell had officially joined the ranks of other royal governors who had abandoned their capitals earlier that summer, including Lord Dunmore of Virginia, who had taken refuge aboard the HMS Fowey on Thursday, June 8, and North Carolina's Josiah Martin, who had escaped to the HMS Cruizer on Saturday, July 15. Patriots, quick to interpret Campbell's move, likened the governor's actions to those of King James II, who had fled in 1689 with the Great Seal of England. James II had long symbolized weak and unfit rule and was regarded as a traitor in the eyes of Whigs—who took delight in the fact that he pusillanimously “abdicated” the British throne to William of Orange. Campbell was now in a precarious position. His decaying vessel, along with the Cherokee and the Swallow packet, represented the last vestiges of the king's authority in the province.

The Civil War began and nearly ended in South Carolina, and the state has paid dearly for that most dubious honor. Between the state's opening salvo against Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor (April 12, 1860) and Union General William T. Sherman's march across the state (January to March 1865), some 18,000 to 21,000 South Carolinians became casualties of war. The state's economic infrastructure was also thoroughly destroyed. The emotional scars, social-political ramifications, and resultant cultural conflicts are still being felt and debated. Scattered across the state, especially in the low country, are the scars of war in the form of campsites, battlefields, fortifications, and ruins. This material evidence of the struggle and are, therefore, critical assets for understanding the archaeology of what historian Page Smith calls America's “epic drama.” Archaeologists are using these assets to develop an archaeological perspective of the war distinct from the perspective provided by historic documents alone. This essay summarizes the contributions South Carolina archaeologists have made to date. These studies demonstrate a slow but steady generation of archaeological facts that build upon what we already know.

This chapter tells a story that began at a small, just-completed fort in Charleston Harbor. Whatever its limited strategic value, Fort Sumter had come to symbolize federal authority in South Carolina, a horrible affront to Confederate claims to being a sovereign nation. To the militarily untutored eye of young Emma Holmes, it had looked “almost impregnable,” but she took heart in having “truth, justice and religion on our side.” To many ardent Confederates that was the point, and when the fort was surrendered without the loss of a single life, this seemed nothing short of miraculous. And now for the first time, but far from the last, southern nationalists would celebrate a military victory that proved the Lord was on their side. “Has not God, by this one token, sufficiently declared his will?” asked a Charleston minister who harbored no doubts about the answer.