Charleston - South Carolina - History

The settlement, originally called Charles Town, was established by English colonists in 1670 on the west bank of the Ashley, thus beginning the colonization of South Carolina. Moved to its present site in 1680, it became the commercial centre of trade in rice and indigo. In 1722 it was briefly incorporated as Charles City and Port, and in 1783 it was reincorporated as Charleston.

Charleston was the seat of the provincial congress in 1775 and it was named the state capital the following year. In the American Revolution, the city was held by the British from 1780 to 1782. It ceased to be the state capital in 1790, when the legislature moved to Columbia.  Freed from British trade restrictions, Charleston prospered as the chief winter port of the United States until the War of 1812. It had a large trade in the Caribbean and exported cotton and rice.

As the South's senior city, Charleston led the fight for states' rights from the beginning of that movement up to the formation of the Confederacy. South Carolina's ordinance of secession was passed in Charleston on December 20, 1860, and the capture of Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbour, by Confederates (April 12-14, 1861). The city was blockaded by Union land and sea forces from July 10, 1863, to February 18, 1865, the siege ending only when General William Tecumseh Sherman's advance forced the city's evacuation.

The completion of jetties through the harbour bar in 1896 provided Charleston with a deepwater entrance, and in 1901 a U.S. naval base was established on the Cooper River. The base was expanded in both World Wars I and II, and during the Cold War Charleston became heavily dependent on U.S. defence facilities, as it was the location of a naval shipyard, a naval station, and naval supply and distribution centres (all now closed). The port's trade also expanded rapidly after World War II, and the nearby Santee Cooper hydroelectric project (1942) aided the city's industrial development.