Sonya's Blog - Day 176 - Boone Hall Plantation

Sonya’s Blog - Day 176 - December 15th - Boone Hall Plantation

This morning Blake and I decided to take Kizmet to the dog park that is in the James Island County Park. It is on the other side of the park, so we drove over. We thought it would be a good idea for her to get a good run in, since she cannot come with us today. She had a load of fun at the dog park and was chased around by a year old puppy, which wore her out. The dog park was very wet, due to all the rain yesterday and you could already feel the heat in the air from the humidity. The dog park backs onto a pond and, luckily, there were no alligators in residence and Kizmet was safe. There was a warning sign on the gate as you entered that there may be alligators in the area. We were glad that Kizmet didn’t end up as an alligator snack.

Today it was decided that we would go to the Boone Hall Plantation. I chose this plantation to visit, as there are many in the area, because they acknowledge the Slavery of the past and part of the plantation is dedicated to remembering that history and exploring the Gullah Culture of the African Slaves that worked on the Plantation. During the regular season, they actually offer a live presentation of the Gullah Culture at the Gullah Theatre, which is at the end of Slave Street on the Plantation. Unfortunately, they are not running right now. On Slave Street are several brick dwellings that housed slaves, and each one of the buildings has a self-guided tour in it, detailing a different detail in the history of slavery or in the lives of slaves on the plantation. The enduring tradition of the Gullah Culture that is still very evident in this area today is the Sweetgrass baskets. These baskets are handwoven and this tradition started with African slaves. There are many women that still practice this art form, some three centuries later, and there are many stands along the highway that sell the baskets.

When we got to the Plantation, the house tour was just about to begin so we went and did that first. This house was built in 1936 by a Canadian, Thomas Stone. This is the fourth main house to stand on the property. The first house burnt down, the second house blew down (in a hurricane) and the third house was torn down to build this new house. It is Georgian style and incorporates many items from the previous house (like all the doors are from the previous house and they are solid mahogany). The tour was just of the main floor, as the second floor is still used by one of the owners of the property, on occasion. There have been different families that have owned the plantation over time, starting with Major John Boone who founded the plantation in 1681 after being given a land grant. This picture with the Avenue of Oaks behind us was planted by Boone, on the ground is a cannonball. The owners of the Plantation would also have a house in town and would only stay at the plantation in the winter months, due to the horrific mosquitoes during the summer months. The property was sold in 1817 to the Horlbeck family and they greatly expanded operations and increased the number of slaves. Working conditions for the slaves, according to the tour guide, were much worse under the new owners. Looking at document left by the Boone Family, they had about 60 slaves and tried to keep slave families together. This is evidenced in the will of the last matriarch. The Horlbeck’s were just interested in running a business and getting as much out of the land as possible. There is a lot of clay on the land and they expanded operations to include brick making. Many of the buildings in Charleston were built using bricks from the Boone property. Fort Sumter, where we are going tomorrow, has one million bricks from the Boone Quarry. Many of the slaves on the plantation were probably hired out for labour for building as well.

We also went on the tram tour of the whole property. That was a really good tour and our tour guide was Eddie. He had ancestral ties to the property, but through the slaves. There were many generations of his family that had worked on this land throughout time. He took us all around the property and when we went by the pond we saw an alligator sunning herself on the banks. I guess she has a couple of young ones as well and there is also a large male alligator in the area. They are quite territorial and the male will stay away from the female while she has her young with her. We went by the area where they had the Pecan groves, these were planted after the Civil War when the Plantation lost it’s labour force (the slaves, since slavery was abolished finally). Some slaves stayed on the plantation to work as paid employees, but many left. Currently the property grows tomatoes, squash, strawberries, blueberries, and peaches. It is a u-pick garden and many locals come out when the different produce is in season. In this picture of Natasha and I on the tram, the building in the background was evidently in the movie Queen with Halle Berry. The Notebook was also filmed on the property, as was North and South and Army Wives.

After the tram tour we headed over to Slave Street to take the self guided tour through the 7 cabins. This was really good and gave a very good idea of what life was like for the African Slaves. One cabin dealt with the history of religion and worship for the slaves, one dealt with what home life was like, another one was on emancipation and the Civil War, buying and selling of slaves, an archaeological dig was discussed in another and artifacts that were found. The insight this gave into the slaves daily lives was very interesting. Slaves were prohibited from learning to read and write so there is very little written history from the slaves point of view. These brick buildings were very nice living quarters for the slaves and not all slaves were housed so luxuriously (I am being sarcastic here, but they were much nicer dwellings than most slaves had). Some just had small wooden huts out in the fields, if they were field slaves, that barely kept out the elements. These brick dwellings were for the slaves that practiced a trade and were considered more valuable. These buildings were lived in right up until the 1940’s. It was a very valuable and informative tour. Very educational for the kids.

We also learned what happened after the Civil War with all the freed slaves. I had always thought that the Jim Crow Laws came into effect almost immediately and that life for the blacks barely improved after emancipation, but the Jim Crow laws were not put into effect until almost 30 years after the end of the Civil War. Make no mistake about it, things did not look good for the freed slaves following Lincoln’s assassination. Andrew Johnson became president and he was a Southerner and could not hide his sympathies for the south. He went out of his way to undo any politically progressive measures that aimed to raise the status of the freedmen politically, socially and economically. He famously reneged on a promise made during the war that would give former slaves 40 acres of repossessed land in Georgia and South Carolina. Many of the former slaves refused to work for their Plantation owners, which is understandable. The white elite tried to put laws into effect, called Black Codes, that would force the black population into labour and control their movements, effectively trying to get the blacks back into a position as close to slavery as possible. With Johnson in power, it looked like the former Confederates were going to regain power and this caused a coalition of former slaves, abolitionists and Radical Republicans to take action and create a radical reconstruction of the south. The south was divided into five military districts. New state constitutional conventions were required and these would establish new laws across the south. Southern states also had to agree to ratify the 14th amendment, which declared the equality of former slaves before the law. This period of Radical Reconstruction fundamentally changed life for the blacks, but also for the poor whites in the South. This offered the opportunity for both blacks and poor whites to vote for the very first time. With this new political power in many more hands there was a great change in the Southern governments and the Republican Party swept the state elections (remember that Lincoln was a Republican, which surprised me. Republicans were anti-slavery and the Democrats were pro-slavery in the 1800’s). Just two years after the end of slavery hundreds of blacks held positions in State and Federal government. These new State governments were responsible for taking care of the poor and working class and for the first time in history, in the South, public schools and hospitals were opened across the South. These radical reforms, as they were called, started to alarm the Northern ruling class and not everyone in the Republican party agreed to the reforms. There were two sides to the Republican Party and the more conservative side started to push back agains the reforms. An economic depression in 1873 took the focus off of Radical Reconstruction and the Republicans pushing for more reforms found themselves in the minority. This was the opportunity that former Confederates and other white racists in the South were waiting for and a campaign of terror and murder took place across the South. Black state governments were overthrown by gunpoint from Louisiana to South Carolina. Republicans in Mississippi called for federal troops to intervene and stop a massacre of Black voters to which Ulysses S. Grant replied that the government “was tired” of intervening in the South. Nice. The election of 1877 officially ended reconstruction. The Republicans agreed to withdraw all federal troops from the South if they won the election. The problem in the South was that the “Slaveocracy” that ruled prior to the Civil War was a very small population of the South and their policies did not benefit poor whites any more than it benefitted blacks. These were the people that were forcibly taking back power and a populist movement started up that linked poor white farmers with black sharecroppers and wage earners. This movement was crushed by the emerging Southern ruling class, but it made them worried. These new governments started changing the laws that were put in place during Radical Reconstruction with the aim of restoring full power to the white elite of the South, these laws not only excluded blacks, but also poor and illiterate whites. After the state governments were changed new Jim Crow laws were created to criminalize multiracial collaboration in any sphere, could not work together, play together, worship together, etc. These blatantly discriminatory laws and actions would rule the South until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. Those first ten years after the Civil War held so much promise in the South for a majority of the population which was cruelly and violently ripped away from them by the minority who wanted their power back. It is hard to believe that the actions of the white elite were not considered criminal and that they were able to put things back to the White Supremacy model they wanted in such a short period of time. The South’s politics are interesting, but depressing.

Our time was up at the Plantation, as it was past 5 and the Plantation closed at 5, so we headed back to the RV. Traffic was very bad and it took us over an hour to get back. We had to wait in line with all the Festival of Lights revellers, but it moved pretty quickly. We had a quick supper and then headed over to the festival to check out the walking section since we missed that last night due to the rain. It was really cool. They had a carousel, climbing wall, small train, many food booths and small stores. Lots of light displays and also a row of painted billboards submitted from local schools. There was also a musical lights section, which we enjoyed. Kizmet had a great time with us as many people had their dog(s) with them and she met a lot of friends. We enjoyed the festival and then headed back to clean up and call it a night.

Sonya