South Carolina Books

Patrick O'Kelley seems to have covered every Revolutionary War Battle and Skirmish for 1781 for N.C. & S.C. in this book. He has done the same for 1771-1779, 1780 & 1782 in his other books. These are a must have for the Revolutionary War enthusiast or researcher. Most of the South Carolina Battles are in this book.

As with his first two volumes, O'Kelley continues with chronological briefings of all skirmishes and battles in the Carolinas and Georgia, this volume covering the year 1781. Nearly all of the reports include the order of battle and commanders for both sides, with the outcome where known reported in terms of causualities (killed, wounded, captured and missing) as well as overall victor and significance of the fight.

The value of O'Kelley's book are the narrative reports of skirmishes and small encounters as well as the major battles of Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse. The narratives are concise, but usually with enough detail to get more than a flavor of the actions and personality of the leaders, particularly in the bloody clashes between Whig and Tory partisan bands, many of which gave no quarter as some clashes were more for revenge than for political or military gain. "Nothing but Blood and Slaughter" demonstrates that nowhere in the colonies was the fighting so extensive, so personal, so destructive as in the Carolinas.

All of the "Nothing but Blood and Slaughter" volumes are essential for any student of the American Revolutionary war and/or for students unconventional warfare.

O'Kelley is a retired Special Forces Master combat veteran and an avid participant in Revolutionary War recreations, and with those experiences provides an insight most historians miss. His research is extensive, with much of the incidents he reports about being ignored in the history books. He does an excellent job of separating myth from fact. For example, many believe the Revolutionary War ended with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. Not so. O'Kelley is now working on a fourth volume, reporting on incidents of warefare in 1782 and beyond.

The only negatives are more of a nuisance rather than flaws in reporting. Volume III is riddled with typos and, as in Volumes I and II, he uses endnotes rather than footnotes, requiring the reader to constantly be thumbing back and fourth. However the end notes are extensive,often more enlightening, adding to the authenticity of O'Kelley's exceptional work.

The poems in this small (eighty-three page) collection don't rhyme and don't have regular meter, but are built out of colorful images slapped one atop the other, like paint in the hands of a brilliant artist. Mostly short poems evoking love, death, sex, the earth, history and hope. There is even a poem in honor of Mark Sanford's inauguration as governor of South Carolina, and it's surprisingly moving.

I think what strikes me most about these wonderful poems is their earthiness, their delightful physicality. These poems are not rarefied, but real, steeped in reality. Birds, storms, rivers, dying, grieving and lovemaking all find elegant expression.

Poet Marjory Wentworth is the Poet Laureate of South Carolina, part of a tradition that goes back to Archibald Rutledge. What a treasure for South Carolina! I enjoyed Noticing Eden and I recommend it highly. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

In the tradition of Pablo Neruda, R.M. Rilke, James Agee and Joseph Brodsky, Wentworth (the poet laureate of South Carolina)presents a series of poems, grouped into four chapters. The poems use mangnificently crafted imagery to conjure memories of windswept shores, night skies and other natural elements. These images, in turn, serve as metaphors for life, love and being. Her thoughtful writing is always original and understandible while never losing a sense of finding believeable magic in everyday things. These are poems to be treasured like fond childhood memories, which reward careful and repeated study with rich experience. Wentworth is a masterful poet working within a great tradition.

The editorial review says this book is ideal for 80ish retirement home individuals. I completely agree, but also feel like it is idea for anyone still inhaling oxygen! The author is absolutely adorable and every time I don't think I'll be able to laugh any more, all I have to do is turn the page. Don't let anyone stick this book into a category based on age- it is a book about a lady who not only appreciates life, but can laugh at it, often in spite of herself.

I have read all of Effie Wilders books. I was happy to see a new one out. I loved going back to Fairacres and seeing all my friends. If you haven't read Mrs. Wilders books you are in for a Delight. Charlotte

If you want a great time be sure and read all three of Effie Wilders books about Hattie McNair and her FairAcres gang. It is most enjoyable. I read all three. I hope she writes more. It makes me understand my Mom more. It almost makes me want to move to a retirement home. Granted there are sad times but also lots of good times. You find out how loving and helpful people are. Have some fun and read this book.

This book added to my appreciation of older adults as vital people with much to contribute. It is well-written and a pleasure to read. Also read other books by this author!

Most of us have stood in some little spot - maybe just a crossroads or a church - and studied a marker commemorating that place. We think about it for a bit and move on. Over time, we accumulate memories of a dot here, a dot there, each worthy in its own right, but forming at best only a vague shape, at worst no shape at all.

Jim Wise connects the dots to reveal for us the full picture of William Tecumseh Sherman's trail through North Carolina. I suspect that even Civil War buffs will whisper "Well, I'll be doggoned" to themselves. The rest of us can say it out loud.

The only problem I have with the book is where to keep it: on the bookshelf or in the glove compartment. I suggest the latter. Mr. Wise has skillfully blended history in with a travelogue. He takes us from interstates through back roads and even along dirt roads when necessary, giving precise driving instructions. At each stop he tells us what we are looking at, and how that place, whether humble or significant, fits into the grand scheme of things. As the outline forms, he oftimes puts shading inside the spaces by using anecdotes and letters and other correspondence (plus lots of pictures) to take us back in time.

The author's droll wit keeps him mindful of situations that a portentous historian might be inclined to let slide: go with Mr. Wise along a dirt road to the small hexagonal brick meeting place of the Richmond Temperance and Literary society. There, on the ceiling, a gold star was painted for each member. The star was painted silver for those deceased. If a member fell off the wagon, his star was painted black. Some stars have been repainted... several times.

What you might want to do is start out lazy, like me, and kick back with an easy, pleasant read as you ride along Sherman's Trail without leaving your chair. Then put the book in the glove compartment. You never know.

Civil War addicts have always had one big gap in knowledge. That's expecially true for those of us from the South.

What happened to Sherman after he burned Columbia? He shows up a few weeks later with his men marching up Pennsylvania Avenue as the Grand Army of the Republic celebrates the victory of the Union, but what happened to him and his men after they left South Carolina's capitol?

Finally, the mystery is solved. Jim Wise, historian and newspaperman from North Carolina's Triangle Area is the sleuth who has ferretted out the truth. ON SHERMAN'S TRAIL is the answer. He opens up this hidden period of our history with a clear, direct, description of the weeks as the big war wound down. Skirmishes, pitched battles, marches through swamps and fields of North Carolina are laid out as the desperate troops of the South tried to block the massive army that had conquered Tennessee and Georgia, sweeping all before it up to the center of South Carolina. Grim fighting. Deadly. Incessant. Some brilliant efforts. Some hopeless stands. Jim tells the whole story down to the last gasps in the outskirts of Durham, N.C., where he lives.

Jim Wise tells the story, but there's an extra I can't wait to test -- he connects all the places and events to the geography of today. The book can be used as a traveller's guide to the back roads of North Carolina -- roads, villages, and cities that Jim knows like the back of his hand. One can take this book and follow what Sherman's men did. See where he forded the creeks or got stuck in the swamps. Visit the cross-roads and farms he marched by and fought over.

The BIG story is just beyond this one. The story about Lee's effort, ended at Appomatox, to break through and join Johnson for a renewed struggle. We KNOW THAT story -- but this is the critical piece that's been missing.

Thanks to Jim Wise for giving us this lost chapter of the story.

Loren B. Mead

When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
But the union makes us strong.

This old labor hymn was written by Ralph Chaplin way back in 1915 and is the unofficial anthem of the US labor movement. It's sung at labor rallies and gatherings, but with an interesting twist. Organizers often pass out songsheets because many of the assembled labor activists don't know the words.

It's a sobering and even embarrassing moment for the US labor movement which is now down to about 8% of the private sector workers. Those who romanticize organized labor based on college history classes or nostalgic folksong fests need to remember that solidarity always begins with a hope....not a certainty.

And if solidarity ends in even a small partial victory, you can bet there will have been lot of hard work, hard feelings and heartaches along the way to that ecstatic moment when the victory celebrations begin.

Suzan Erem and E. Paul Durrenberger have put together a book that tells how solidarity really works and that yes, the words that Ralph Chaplin penned can become a reality even to those of us who can't remember the lyrics without a songsheet.The book is the product of years of research and writing from a team that consists of a former union organizer and an anthropologist . You couldn't ask for a better combo.­

January 19, 2000 was a bad night for the City of Charleston S.C. and the Port through which so much of it economy depends. What had been planned as a routine picket of a ship being unloaded by a non-union crew escalated into a bloody melee involving hundreds of mostly Black dockworkers and mostly white police. Even though some of the picketers were white, no one doubted that there was an ugly racial component to the behavior of the cops. It's a wonder no one was killed.

South Carolina has a long violent racial history that stretches back to the earliest slave days and many Black South Carolinians had to die before the chains of slavery and later Jim Crow were finally cast off. Although modern South Carolina likes to pretend that its days of white supremacy are over, its citizens know better.

The authors of On the Global Waterfront describe in detail what happened that January evening. Later, local police and union officials both concluded that the confrontation had simply gotten out of hand. Some workers apologized to the police the next morning for the rocks and railroad ties they had thrown. For their part, the local police wanted to settle the whole thing as simple cases of trespass. Police behavior that night was far from exemplary and their provocations and brutality had been fully recorded on video.

City officialdom wanted the whole incident disposed of quickly and quietly so as not give the city a reputation for being "troubled". Troubled ports repulsed rather than attracted the kind of shipping business that the Charleston economy had come to depend upon.

But this was a new Millennium and the realities of a globalized economy made it impossible for Charleston to quietly bury that violent evening.

The 5 men who were charged with serious felony offenses as a result of the riot become the focal point of a complex international struggle that involved competing US dockworker unions, an international network of dockworker militants who saw Charleston as an opening salvo against dockworkers everywhere, a politically ambitious rightwing Christian fundamentalist politician, competing interests among the shipping owners themselves and an expensive legal battle that managed to cross oceans before being resolved.

It would have been easy to lose readers in this bewildering story, but Suzan Erem and E. Paul Durrenberger manage to tell it without resorting to facile oversimplification. One comes away with a special appreciation for ILA Local 1422 President Ken Riley who led his local through the entire struggle with an intelligence and grace under fire that was key to their eventual victory.

Ken Riley's union was the East Coast based International Longshoremen's Association(ILA), an organization with a tainted history of corruption and gangsterism that had endeared them to the worst of the brutal shipping company owners. Ken Riley represented a new generation of dockworker leaders, people who wanted to clean up the union and adopt a militant stance toward the pressures of the new globalized economy. The oldline leadership of the ILA hated Ken Riley and everything he stood for. It would take many months before the national ILA leadership lifted a pinky finger to help Local 1422.

Fortunately, the West Coast based International Longshore and Warehouse Union(ILWU) had a much different tradition that had grown out of the bloody 1934 San Francisco General Strike. Their leadership evolved from the leftwing movements of the 1930's and their legendary former leader Harry Bridges had been accused of being a communist, not a Mafia thug. Their tradition was one of labor solidarity and alliances with social movements for peace and civil rights.

The modern ILWU leadership grasped immediately the importance of Charleston. If the international shipping industry could break ILA Local 1422 and the port of Charleston went non-union, the results could be catastrophic for dock workers everywhere. The ILWU immediately contacted Ken Riley and offered him the kind of money and international contacts he needed to save not only the 5 workers facing serious charges but his very union local.

On the Global Waterfront takes the reader step by step on how another kind of globalization was evolving, the globalization of the labor movement. As Charleston 5 defense committees sprang up and the creaky wheels of the AFL-CIO leadership began to turn in favor of ILA Local 1422, the authors make it clear that all of this was the result of long exhausting hours of work done by a core of very smart and very committed people with the support of thousands around the world.

When victory for the Charleston 5 and Local 1422 finally came in March of 2002 it was a time for joyful celebration. It also became a time of deep reflection as labor activists around the planet pondered their next move in a globalized economy when money crossed borders at light speed and the economies of entire nations were dwarfed by the largest global corporations

Global capital by its very nature seeks to cheapen the price of labor to increase its profits. To do this it must maintain efficient production while fighting to keep workers as disunited and divided as possible. But efficient modern production is difficult with a dispirited demoralized labor force, so the more far-seeing multinational corporate owners see a place for compromise with the global labor movement. This is not compromise based on any sort of moral values or sense of justice, but a cold calculation of power relationships.

It's class war. But even in war, enemies sign treaties and ceasefires while they anxiously assess what the capabilties of their adversaries might be when the peace is finally broken again.

The last chapter of On the Global Waterfront is called "Not Just Another Labor Story". The authors aren't kidding. It's easy to say,"Think globally, but act locally". But what are we exactly supposed to think about? And what actions are we supposed to take?

The morning after that bad night of violence in Charleston SC, Ken Riley and the other Local 1422 activists did not have immediate answers to those questions. But with their own formidable inner resources and the help of others around the world, they came up with some pretty good answers later on. How they did it is an organizers textbook for anyone concerned about social justice.

What Ken Riley and the members of ILA Local 1422 discovered when they took their campaign on the road was that there really is a solidarity community out there and it is truly global. We don't hear about it much from our corporate-owned media (surprise.....surprise), but it's real, it's growing and we here in the USA really need to take our place in this global community.

Whether you are a union militant, a feminist, an environmentalist, an anti-racist organizer, a peace advocate, a combination of all these things or any kind of social activist at all, it really is Global Solidarity Time.

Living in the world capital of individualistic dog-eat-dog cat-eat-mouse economics, solidarity is not something we are taught in school, inherit as part of our common culture or learn about on "Reality TV". It's going to take some effort, but the Ken Riley's of the world are patiently waiting to teach us all about it.

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the union makes us strong.

This compelling account of the fight to stop decimation of the labor movement by global corporations working in league with the racist anti-labor government of South Carolina may well be the best written and best researched book of its genre. The captivating story pits longshoremen's union local president Ken Riley against South Carolina Attorney General Charley Condon in a David vs. Goliath battle that will have you staying up late to finish the book. The skills of anthropologist Durrenberger and journalist Erem merge seamlessly to produce a tour de force that tells the story of labor action on the waterfront in Charleston before expanding globally to give the reader a clear understanding of how the religious right, neoconfederate southern racists, neoconservatives, and globalizing corporations are teaming up to crush and impoverish workers everywhere by criminalizing dissent while themselves disregarding law and propriety. In the process, the reader is treated to a course on the labor movement more concise and useful than any college semester on the subject. The high global stakes in what would appear on the surface to be an isolated local labor strike are clearly laid out, leaving the reader with an understanding of the threat we all face from the globalization juggernaut. If you only read one book on labor or globalization, this must be it.

Orangeburgh District, 1768-1868, History and Records
by Daniel Marchant Culler

Old Orangeburgh District, in the middle-western section of South Carolina, existed for a century before losing its "h" (and much of its territory) and being transformed into Orangeburg County. The land area originally encompassed by Orangeburgh was vast, taking in areas that were later to become Barnwell District and Saxe Gotha (Lexington), and most of the present-day counties of Calhoun, Orangeburg, and Aiken.
Orangeburgh was inhabited before the Revolution by English, Scotch-Irish, and Irish families, a large group of settlers of German and Swiss origin, some French Acadians from Canada, and colonists, including French Huguenots, from the Low Country. These groups settled in Orangeburgh, Amelia (St. Matthews), and Saxe Gotha townships, and in the areas between the North Fork of the Edisto and Savannah rivers and between the Lower Broad and Saluda rivers. The fertile ethnic mix represented by the pioneer families of the region gave rise to "a society - - - as civilized and well-rounded as any district in South Carolina founded solely on an agricultural or plantation system." By the time of the War Between the States, Orangeburgh District had become one of the greatest cotton-producing areas in the South and even as recently as 1967 was considered one of the foremost agricultural counties in the United States.
Daniel Marchant Culler was a descendant of early Orangeburgh families, a lawyer, judge, farmer, real-estate developer, and civic leader who was also a brilliant scholar and historian. He began work on the history of Orangeburgh District in 1950 and continued his research until his death in 1968. His work was edited by his daughter, Justine Bond Culler, a teacher in the Columbia schools, with the assistance of his wife, Justine Smith Hundley Culler, and grandson, Mason Culler Wolfe, a writer.
The result is a much-needed history of the District which focuses primarily on the period of time between the Revolutionary and Confederate wars and on the sections that later became Orangeburg and Calhoun counties. It is thoroughly researched and scholarly, with ample bibliography and notes, and is also extremely readable, containing an excellent blend of factual information, historical interpretation, biographical data, and items of genealogical interest.
Topics treated in this eight-hundred-page work include: growth and development of Orangeburgh District; Orangeburgh District in 1790 (which includes the 1790 census); roads, bridges, and ferries; villages and resorts; courthouses and jails; nineteenth-century homes (many of which are shown in the illustration sections); churches and their influence; schools, academies, and teachers; lawyers, legislators, and public officials (a long chapter with abundant biographical and genealogical information); doctors, druggists, and medicine (similar to the preceding chapter); newspapers; blacks-slave and free; and "The End of an Era."
Around two hundred pages of appendices include minutes of early public meetings, marriage records, the census of 1850, and other lists which give names of road and school commissioners, alumni of South Carolina College, Confederate military companies, Cherokee War soldiers, local legislators, and district officials.
This volume contains a wealth of information on such family names as: Arthur, Barton, Beard, Brown, Bruce, Bull Chevillette, Collins, Cornelson, Culler, Dantzler, Darby, Dibble, Dreher, Dukes, Dulles, Elliott, Fair, Farrar, Felder, Fishburne, Frederick, Fridya, Gaillard, Geiger, Giessendanner, Glover, Golson, Govan, Gramling, Haigler, Hampton, Hart, Heatly, Holman, Houser, Huger, Humphrey, Izlar, Jamison, Jones, Keitt, King, Kohn, Legare, Lloyd, Louis, McMichael, Minnick, Moore, Myddleton, Parkinson, Peoples, Porcher, Reid, Richardson, Richmond, Riggs, Roach, Robinson, Robison, Rowe, Rumph, Russell, Sabb, Salley, Sellider, Sheridan, Shuler, Smoke, Stroman, Theus, Thomson, Tucker, Wannamaker, Waters, and Williams. This is merely a sample of the individuals and families covered in this book-for an exhaustive list the reader should consult the every-name index, which contains over twelve thousand persons and places.
Oringally copyrighted in 1995, second printing in 2004. Changes only in the dust jacket.

This book is an almost indispensable tool for genealogists researching in South Carolina and the area known as the old Orangeburgh District. Lack of official records in South Carolina, especially in the "burned counties," makes it frustratingly difficult to track down the kind of information that fills in the gaps for family historians. Culler's efforts have brought together a wealth of information about the area, not only the bare facts and figures, but the kind of details that make the people and places come alive. Chapters include Nineteenth Century Homes, Churches and Their Influence, Newspapers and Periodicals, Blacks--Slave and Free, Schools Academies and Teachers, Lawyers Legislators and Public Officials, among others. There is also information from the 1850 Orangeburgh District census, listings of Confederate Military Companies, listings of local legislators, and more. While there are occasional factual mistakes, the book is well-researched and generally quite accurate.

"Origins of Southern Radicalism..." traces the evolution of Upstate South Carolina from a frontier of subsistance farms to a cotton and slave dependent society preceding the civil war. It reflects the economic situation (supported by a surprising amount of data), the development of trading, merchants and towns, the religious sentiments of the time, and how the mixture of cotton, money, society and externally ineffective religious conviction led to disharmony and war. If anyone wants a clear window into the conditions and issues that led to our Nation's worst horrors, read this book.

"Origins" is academic in nature, and a "slow read". But, it needs to be in order to accurately document what was going in the decades leading up to the civil war. The book is built on primary evidence, and is as unfiltered a flow of facts and events as is possible. The author shows no Northern/Southern bias - just reveals the facts of the times. More than any of the numerous books I have read on the civil war, this one answers the biggest questions: "How was this tragedy of slavery perpetuated and how did this horrible war happen?"

There is a lesson here for all future generations concerned about human rights and the failure of politics to achieve favorable outcomes.

As an insatiable devourer of antebellum studies, I heartily concur with Mr. Diffey's comments below concerning this astute, if somewhat textually dense, socio-political analysis the Old South. Only W. J. Cash's seminal "Mind of the South"; the superbly myth-busting "The Southern Agrarians" by Conkin; Blassingame's somber and sobering "The Slave Community"; and Wyatt-Brown's indispensable capstone study "Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South" are in the same league, in my estimation.

As a systems analyst, moreover, I'd like to share my appreciation for a valuable lesson this book offers to anyone attempting to construct or evaluate a "factor analysis" of historical events, or any other complex dynamics.

There's a principle in cognitive/systems theory to the effect that the all-too-finite human mind can contain only so many discrete concepts at once -- the number is classically stated as "seven, plus or minus two". Look at a random batch of examples of visually displayed information, for example, and you'll find yourself boggling over any of them with more than 7-9 boxes, symbols, or whatever, to be considered as an integrated whole.

Ford's book is instructive because he posits about seven factors (as I recall, plus or minus one), as each being necessary for the rise of the uniquely radical tenor of South Carolinian politics in the antebellum era. He reviews other analyst's attempts to do with various combinations of three or four of these factors (the one-party system, Calhoun's overwhelming personality, etc.), but manages to argue convincingly that no less than the whole lot were crucial -- the absence of any one of them would have vitiated the collective dynamic which led to the South Carolinians' intransigence, even by the other Southern states' standards, and their initiatory secession.

The appreciative reader has to both salute Mr. Ford on his masterly delineation of the key factors and their interactions, and wonder whether anyone could pull off a convincing resolution of a complex issue employing very many more factors than those required here.

In any case, the book is a tour-de-force in the art and science of reducing amorphous data to concrete elements of an overall pattern, as well as a potentially sobering object lesson on the outer limits of intelligibility/communicability confronting anyone considering the pursuit of a similar objective.

P.S. "The Japanese Mind", by the dauntingly accomplished R. C. Christopher, achieves a correspondingly complex feat with regard to Japanese culture, and is highly recommended -- as are "Fragile Glory" by Bernstein, for anyone wanting to understand the dual (and dueling) nations of France and Paris, and Luigi Barzini's "The Italians", for similar gratification on that national/cultural front. On the U.S. socio-cultural scene, do read Aldrich's "Old Money: The Mythology of Wealth In America", for all that's essential to and fascinating about this rarefied, hyper-enfranchised psychosocial stratum....

This is the story of Hugh Koehler, scion of the St. Louis brewing family, and reputed illegitimate son of the crown prince of Austria. (Remember Mayerling.)
He grew up in society, attended Harvard, and then the US Naval Academy. Upon graduation he served in China, then in the Great War commanded a subchaser group based in Ireland.
He became noted for his incisive reporting and after the war, visited Germany, sat in on the peace conference, and then went via the Black Sea to Russia where he observed the fighting in South Russia during the Russian Civil War.
This period was the highlight of his life. He died at a comparatively young age in his fifties as did his father and grandfather before him.
Many of his reports on the situation in the Balkans read as if they were written ten years ago, not eighty, especially the conflict between Greeks and Turks.
Well written and well worth the reading. Belongs on the same shelf as the books by the British agents who operated in Central Asia during the same period.

This book follows an American Naval Officer on his assignment to observe the White Russian forces on the Crimean penninsula. Hugo Koehler arrives when Baron Vrangel is in charge and the war is winding down, but is not yet concluded. Interesting insight and observations are made; this book is a must for those with an interest in this part of Russian history.

Hard to easily categorize but North Carolina residents will find this a compelling cultural account. Marimar McNaughton's Outer Banks Architecture provides a survey of North Carolina's outer banks region, examining the architectural heritage of cottages, lodges, and other structures. Black and white photos of selected structures are accompanied by descriptions, architectural notes, and history.

Marimar McNaughton's Outer Banks Architecture: An Anthology Of Outposts, Lodges And Cottages is a compendium of facts, anecdotes and photos showcasing the North Carolina Outer Banks' architectural history and styles that range from simple cottages to elaborate custom built homes and striking commercial buildings to lodges, light houses, life saving stations, and community structures. Outer Banks Architecture is a superb regional architectural study and a valued contribution to the growing literature of American architectural history and accomplishment.