William Herbert “Skip” Boyer, 32°
15817 N. 6th Place
Phoenix, Arizona  85022
Skip.Boyer@bestwestern.com

Today’s Charleston, the site in October of the Bicentennial Biennial Session of the Supreme Council, is a vibrant city and a national historic treasure.
 

High Battery, Charleston, S.C.

When the moon is down and the eight bells of St. Michael’s begin to chime midnight, when the dripping fog creeps up from the Ashley River to cloak the Battery and Murray Boulevard, when the broken parapets of Fort Sumter disappear in the clammy darkness, then the Army of the Dead strides down the cobblestone streets of Charleston.
It’s true, say native Charlestonians. On certain streets, such as Trapman between Broad and Queen, on certain nights, the ghosts of the Confederate dead rise from their graves and begin marching with their heavy guns and equipment to the aid of General Lee. They began marching during the last days of the Civil War, when the armies of the Confederacy desperately needed men. They have been marching ever since.
This tale of the marching ghosts is best told in a Charleston accent. Even non-believers find themselves wondering when a quiet voice --- one that rounds the rough Yankee edges off the vowels and repairs the damage done to the King’s English by Westerners --- begins to tell the story.
For some reason, it seems absolutely correct that Charleston should have ghosts. Most are probably hanging around just to see what’s going to happen next. Charleston’s history has been anything but dull. For 15 months, in the closing years of the Civil War, for example, the United States Navy shelled the city. A major earthquake in 1886 and two raging fires in the 1920s almost finished what the Navy had started. Adding insult to injury was an economy that took more than half a century to recover from the aftermath of the Civil War. Charlestonians, many with family roots deeper than the American Revolution, are survivors and proud of it.
They have reason to be proud.
 

Charleston, S.C.

Today’s Charleston is a vibrant city and a national historic treasure that is being carefully returned to its ante-bellum appearance. Already, more than two-thirds of the city has been restored, including elegant homes with sweeping verandas, cobbled streets, and beautifully proportioned brick office buildings.
A walking tour of the historic district of the city is the only way to appreciate the detail and the authenticity of the restoration work and, perhaps, run into a ghost or two.
For most visitors, that tour usually begins on Church Street, a street that runs from the edge of the Battery through the heart of the restored area. In addition to artists’ studios and shops, a walk down Church Street will include a visit to the Dock Street Theatre at 135 Church Street. It was the first building built in America solely for the purpose of presenting dramatic performances. It is the birthplace of American theater.
If you are walking north, look to your right as you cross Broad Street. On the corner at 46 Broad Street is a bank building constructed in the late 1920s. If you read the numerous commemorative markers, you will learn that this is one of the most significant places in the history of Freemasonry. Here, at the corner of Broad and Church Streets is the site of Shepheard’s Tavern, originally constructed about 1720. It would burn down at least twice during its long and useful lifetime before finally being demolished in 1928 for new construction. Like many Charleston taverns, Shepheard’s (known for a time as the Swallow) served as something of a community center.  Aside from being a place to eat and drink, it was a post office and a place to meet and discuss the affairs of the day, often revolutionary in nature.
Local organizations began to meet there, including one of the first Masonic Lodges in the United States, Solomon’s Lodge No. 1, Free and Accepted Masons. It was organized at the tavern on October 29, 1736. Sixty-five years later, on May 31, 1801, in what was probably the third tavern to be built on the site, Col. John Mitchell and the Rev. Frederick Dalcho opened the Supreme Council, 33rd Degree, for the United States of America. This year, we celebrate the bicentennial of this great event as the Supreme Council abandons its usual venue, Washington, D.C, to return to its birthplace, Charleston, for the 2001 Bicentennial Biennial Session, September 30 though October 3. Before you continue your walk, pause a moment to read the markers on the wall at 46 Broad Street. If there are truly ghosts in Charleston, perhaps they include the Eleven Gentlemen of Charleston who labored here to lay the foundation of Scottish Rite Masonry.
 

Drayton Hall, Charleston, S.C.

You might also pause a moment for reflection in the churchyards of St. Michael’s and St. Philip’s. Both churches are nearby, and Frederick Dalcho, one of the Founders of the Supreme Council, was married in St. Philip’s and was an assistant minister in St. Michael’s. Elsewhere, in the Jewish Cemetery on Coming Street, you’ll find the last resting places of four more of the Eleven Gentlemen of Charleston, the Founders of the Supreme Council. It is the oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in the South. A special marker, erected by the Supreme Council, honors these four Founders.
From the Colonial and Federalist periods of American history, it’s only a short walk along the famed Battery, facing the Ashley River to the south and the Cooper River to the east, to come face-to-face with the Civil War. Graceful, multi-storied homes with brass door trim and wrap-around veranda porches line the Battery. On the horizon in the harbor is the indistinct lump of Ft. Sumter, key to the first battle of the Civil War. On this Battery, Edmund Ruffin, a firebrand newspaper editor, grabbed the lanyard of a big gun and sent the first shell of the war screaming toward the Union troops in the unfinished fort. (When the war ended, Ruffin was so angry with the outcome that he wrapped himself in a Confederate battle flag and shot himself.)
Residents of this area of Charleston are known, usually affectionately, as S.O.B.s. To a Charlestonian, that means “South of Broad Street.” The South of Broad Street area is a pocket where most of the city’s oldest homes and architectural treasures are located. To be an S.O.B. in Charleston is a desirable thing.
Touching the Battery and White Point Gardens is Meeting Street. The Charleston Museum and two of its historic homes are located on Meeting Street, as is the Nathaniel Russell House, built in 1808 and preserved by the Historic Charleston Foundation, the primary moving force for more than four decades in restoring this Southern seaport city. At the Charleston Museum, take time to visit the bicentennial exhibition of the Scottish Rite. It officially opens to the public on October 1.
Also on historic Meeting Street is the King Charles Inn, located on the site of three previous hotels, dating back more than 200 years. One of those earlier hotels was the famous Pavilion, where Edgar Allan Poe wrote portions of his story “The Gold Bug.”
Then there’s Cabbage Row, not far from the King Charles Inn, just off Church Street. Vendors peddling their produce from wooden carts gave this short alley its name. You would recognize it more quickly, perhaps, by the name given it by author DuBose Heyward and songwriter Brother George Gershwin: Catfish Row, the musical home of Porgy and Bess.
It’s a long way from Porgy’s Catfish Row to a fine arts tradition that attracts worldwide attention, but that’s what the Charleston accent is really all about --- doing things with a touch of style. One special touch is the renowned Spoleto Festival USA, annually one of the premier fine arts events in the world. It was founded a decade ago by artistic director Gian Carlo Menotti, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the opera The Saint of Bleecker Street. Menotti’s other operas include Amahl and the Night Visitors, the first opera commissioned for television performance; The Medium, a thriller about a clairvoyant haunted by spirits; and The Consul, a heart-wrenching Cold War drama. The Festival attracts some of the world’s finest performing artists year after year.
Captivating though it is, the city’s historic district is only one reason to visit what was once the cultural capital of colonial America. The city is surrounded by beautiful parks and plantations. To savor Charleston and its surroundings fully, take a drive out River Road, northwest along the Ashley River. Your first stop will be Drayton Hall (p. 9), the only pre-Revolutionary mansion remaining on the Ashley River. Not far from Drayton Hall is Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, a blazing collection of more than 250 varieties of azaleas and 900 varieties of Camellia japonica. Famous since the 1680s, the plantation gardens are some of the most impressive in the South.
Incidently, unlike most visitors, Scarlett O’Hara, the heroine of Gone With the Wind, didn’t think too much of Charleston: “There was more social life...but Scarlett did not like the people who called, with their airs and their traditions and their emphasis on family.... She thought if she ever again heard voices that said ‘paams’ for ‘palms’ and ‘hoose’ for ‘house’...she would scream. Then she went back to Tara. Better to be tormented with memories of Ashley than Charleston accents.”
Today, more than a century after Scarlett and Ashley and Tara and Rhett Butler, the Charleston accent still includes “paams” and “hoose.” It has also come to symbolize that touch of class that makes Charleston a national treasure. And, frankly, Scarlett, Charlestonians are damned proud of it!