Day 2! 12/2/09

I woke up this morning excited to start the day and to finally explore Charleston with a purpose. I went upstairs to the fourth floor of our hotel where there was a complimentary continental breakfast…superb might I add… walk outside to the patio and see…FLOODING!!!!! No way, what kind of southern weather is this???? Come to find out, Charleston is 10 feet below the sea level, so when there is a little bit of rain, flooding is not too uncommon. It was funny seeing the street that we walked down just 15 hours before, covered in knee deep water, yet in front of our hotel, nothing.

We headed out into the city, walking about a half a mile to an Old Slave Mart Museum. Unfortunately we were not able to take pictures inside, but for this museum it was unnecessary as we were able to gain more from the experience just from reading the various exhibits. The woman at the front desk was very knowledgeable and was able to answer any questions that we had. There was a also a vast amount of information packed into this very small but well put together museum. It amazes me that we were standing at a place where just 200 years ago, human beings were being sold like cattle…disgusting if you ask me but as you may know, it was a very profitable business back then. One thing I took away from this museum was what I learned about black slave masters. A student who is in my Senior Thesis group, as I mentioned before, is focusing on the slave trade in Charleston and in reading or historiographical paper I first learned about black and mullato slave masters. The idea that people of the same race would come to own their own people is mind boggling, but I still have not learned enough about that sort of situation to make an accurate judgment, but man would that make for a great Senior Thesis research…

After the visit at the museum we walked about a mile and a half to the Aiken-Rhett house. It was a beautiful four story home…HUGE, as are many of the homes in Charleston. It is no longer a house as it was left to the historical society when the last owner died in the 1970’s. (Truthfully, a house that big should be a hotel). We were unable to take pictures inside, however I was able to take some video footage (You gotta love technology, Professor Lawson don’t hate me!). But we were able to take pictures from the outside. Our tour guide was a bit…dry (to put it nicely). She seemed to think that saying the word “slave” would be offensive….really? She also seemed to get a bit upset if we were not sticking with the group. This museum had these mp3 player guided tours, that would have been right up my alley (again…technology!). But some students in our group…I won’t say any names because…I don’t know who it was exactly, wanted a tour guide. Truthfully I believe we would have gotten much more out of the house if we did our own thing, but overall it was a cool experience. Again the house was beautiful…the owner was wealthy beyond my wildest dreams…I mean the staircase at the back of the house used to be the front staircase, and they had the stairs moved to the back…unbelievable. Even the family cow had his own crib…really? Anyways what was important about this house is it was in the city and the owner had something like 12 or more slaves, which was a lot for people living in cities, somewhat unheard of. Slaves were generally used in greater numbers on plantations just outside cities and people who lived in the cities would have one or maybe two at most, so having this many slaves, along with the many books, and portraits and gold scattered throughout the house, showed the amount of wealth that this family had.

After this stop we went to lunch at a nice small Italian style restaurant and decided to book it back to the hotel because storms were coming…70% at 3pm. So we did that, and the storm didn’t end up coming until 7pm but none of us were complaining, I took a three hour nap…and that was day 2. Stay tuned for more!