August 27, 2024 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Tommy Dew’s Walking Tour of Charleston, SC, has been praised and recommended by the likes of The Wall Street Journal and TripAdvisor. Tommy is here to share the story of Charleston—from the American Revolution to today.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Tommy Due's walking
tour of Charleston, South Carolina has been praised and recommended
by the likes of the Wall Street Journal to Trip Advisor.
Tommy is here to share this story of Charleston from
the American Revolution to today. Here's Tommy Due.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
The South collapsed in eighteen sixty five and was left
for dead. Charleston paid a terrible price for her role
in the war. Secession began in Charleston. The first secession
document was signed in downtown Charleston December twentieth, eighteen sixty
and then the first shots are fired here at Fort Sumter.
So the political start to the war was in Charleston,
(00:51):
the military start, and we were a philosophical target. The
Federal government bomb Charleston for five hundred and eight eighty
seven consecutive days. It's the second longest artillery siege in
modern warfare after Leningrad. The Germans bombed the Russians for
nine hundred days during the World War II, and the
Federal's bomb bus for five eighty seven and by eighteen
(01:14):
sixty five, it is a ruin. And that's a for instance,
why Sherman didn't come here. In large part, we were
not viewed as a viable target. He did not need
to waste his time on us. As much as he
wanted to raise Charleston. He did more harm to South
Carolina in the Confederacy by burning the middle of the state.
He cut a fire sixty miles wide through central South Carolina.
(01:34):
And then we were occupied after the war for fourteen years.
There was a six thousand men federal occupying force martial law,
and then when they pulled out, the place was essentially
left for dead, and it took about one hundred years
to start to recover. Healthy cities in those hundred years
embraced urban renewal. They were inclined to tear down their
old stuff because it stood in the way of progress,
(01:57):
and Charleston couldn't participate. As a result, we've got about
one hundred buildings downtown from before seventeen seventy six and
about one thousand from before.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Eighteen sixty one.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
But I think more, maybe more importantly than the architectural preservation,
is the cultural preservation. People understand that the South is different,
but they don't always understand why. And I would say
it's because it was uninfluenced, undisturbed.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
By the outside world.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
There was hardly any immigration here until relatively recently, and
even accents are impacted. Southern accents tend to be much
older because immigrants moved the tongue and there was just
not a lot of immigration here and so on. All
these fronts were frozen in time, architecture, culture, accents. If
(02:45):
we had been healthy, this would be anywhere USA. Everything
would have been bulldozed. We talk about slavery a lot
of my tour. You can't talk about Charleston without talking
about slavery. We were the number one slave trading city
for the United States. A third of slaves that entered
the US entered through the port of Charleston, and that's
(03:06):
a shocking statistic, but it makes sense. Charleston was the
largest city in the South until eighteen twenty. That's when
New Orleans overtook US, and the slave trade had already
concluded as of eighteen oh eight as part of the
US Constitution. So this was the largest Southern harbor through
legal importation, and the South, with the superior farming conditions,
(03:27):
had an appetite for that labor. The wealth here, and
that's important to understand, these are the wealthiest Americans, these
are the most educated Americans. I liken it to what
was happening really around the world. But the plantation culture
that evolved here is, in my estimation, the repackaging of
Old World feudal culture. They're playing it being English, French
(03:48):
and German royals in.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
A place where that's possible.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
We have a year round growing season, we have fifty
to fifty five inches of annual rainfall, and we have
no rocks for one hundred miles. We're in an alluvial
plain where nothing but top soil and sand, and so
it's some of the finest farming in the world, the
Southeast Coastal Plain, and so they take that old World lens.
In England, you would have large estates. You've got royals
(04:14):
in the big house, the peasants.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Are in the field.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
The peasants don't get to vote, they don't own the land.
They can be bound to the estate. And then the
royals would have a town in London or Paris or Vienna.
So the royals of the world would gather in the
capitals after fall harvest. In the capital you make your
political relationships and then you make your business deals, and
then the social fruits are in the city, in the
(04:37):
capital as well, so literary season, debutante season, theatrical season,
all that's dead of winter stuff. So they come in
with a mindset and they apply it and it works.
They're able to live like royals in the new world,
and it is seductive, and that's ultimately the issue.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
They're not interested in new ideas.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
The North was an agent of change in the mid
Asian hunters, and these families were prideful, and they were
not great negotiators, and they would rather fight than yield.
They saw the federal government as unconstitutional five hundred miles away,
controlled by people that lived even further away, and they
were not about to lie down before it, and so
they ended up fighting to the death. And by eighteen
(05:21):
sixty five it's over total collapse. And so the wealth here,
the prestige here is absolutely built on forced labor. You
can't separate the two. But I do think it's important
to understand. Everybody now understands that slavery is immoral, it's
not negotiable, But two hundred years ago it was kind
(05:43):
of fuzzy. People didn't see it the way we see it,
just as an example, in eighteen forty, only two percent
of northern people were abolitionists, just two percent critically opposed
to slavery in the North in eighteen forty, and at
the same time, across the South, in less than ten
percent of white families owned slaves. See that as probably
(06:05):
the biggest misconception. People assume that the average white guy
in the South was a slave owner, and it's not close.
Over ninety percent did not own slaves. If you look
at the mountains of the South, the Appalachian counties were
slave free. Literally, county after county had zero slaves. Because
you can't own slaves in the mountains and make money,
just like you can't own slaves in New England and
(06:27):
make money. And so the conditions here were ripe, high volume,
industrial level farming with sort of a feudal patriarchal lens.
And it's a pretty dagon good fit. And so it
is logical we're the number one slave trading city for America,
(06:47):
and there's always gonna be pushback on that. You know,
I noticed it, and I've probably noticed it more now
than before because people are increasingly talking about these things.
I think we swept it under the rug for a
long time. I think people just maybe even tried to
(07:08):
try to tend like it didn't happen. That's I've never
had that approach. I love talking about slavery, and I
find that my guests, particularly if I have black tourists,
they want you talking about this stuff. They don't want
you shying away from it. Those are my favorite compliments
when I have black tourists, and afterwards I say, thank
you so much for being frank, thank you so much
(07:29):
for not mincing words. It's refreshing because you don't learn
if you don't discuss it. So I think one of
the great joys for giving tours in Charleston is outside
people do not understand the significance of Charleston because it
collapsed in eighteen sixty five. This was the fourth largest
(07:49):
city in the United States in seventeen ninety Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Charleston.
South Carolina educated more children in Europe than the other.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Twelve colonies put together.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Nine of the ten wealthiest families in America were living
in South Carolina for a period of time prior to
seventeen seventy six, all at once nine out of ten,
and so the role of Charleston is not well understood
the American Revolution, I think offers insight.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
This is the bloodiest theater of the Revolution. There were more.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Battles in South Carolina and more people were killed in
South Carolina than any of the other twelve colonies. And
that's just a huge surprise for guests. We had four
signers of the Declaration of Independence from Charleston, four signers
of the Constitution from Charleston.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
And that's not well understood.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
George Washington spent a week in Charleston in seventeen ninety one,
and he wrote that he had never been entertained more lavishly.
He said the most elegant parties he had ever attended
were in Charleston, and that the prettiest ladies he'd ever
seen were in Charleston.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
You're listening to Tommy Do and it's not a walking tour,
but you're getting a great chronological tour, a great economic tour,
and a great social tour of one of America's great cities.
When we come back more with Tommy Dues Walking Tour
of Charleston, South Carolina, and we continue with our American
(09:41):
stories and with Tommy Dues Walking Tour of Charleston, South Carolina,
which has been praised and recommended by everyone from the
Wall Street Journal a trip Advisor. Let's return to Tommy
with more of the story of his hometown.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Another really big surprise for outsiders is the permission theness
of Charleston.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
We have so many social firsts.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
The first theater in America, first racetrack in America, first
golf club in America, widespread gambling city back lotteries. The
oldest profession was legal from the beginning through World War II.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Our navy base.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Matriculated hundreds of thousands of soldiers post World War Two,
and they were riddled with STDs, and so because of
medical concerns they had to write laws against it for
the first time. That's in the nineteen forties. The French
called us the Paris of the New World. The British
called us the crown Jeuel of America. But at the
(10:37):
same time New Englanders called Charleston Sodom and Gamore. They
saw Charleston as centers on a Biblical level, Sodom and Gomore.
And what surprises people The confusion comes from the fact
that they're now inclined to call us the Bible Belt,
but really, the North was the Bible Belt for the
first one hundred and fifty years. So the real question
is what happens wide to the North and the South
(11:00):
swap personalities, and it's about immigration. Once again, we stopped
getting people in the early eighteen hundreds when they started
industrializing and building factories. Immigrants go north. They also invest
in infrastructure, railroads, canals, and it's a magnet for immigration,
and the South is backwatered. So basically from the eighteen
(11:22):
twenties to the nineteen seventies, there's one hundred and fifty
years where the Southeast as not receiving people at the
same rates as everybody else, and so Southern families grow
deep roots and they tend to have a longer.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
More traditional view.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
And the North, which had been uptight, was overwhelmed by
immigration two hundred years ago and suddenly found herself to
be multicultural, more liberal, more progressive, and the South was
increasingly homogeneous, conservative and more realistic. It impacts everything. Accents
talked about that a little bit. But the Southeast coastal
(11:57):
accent as Elizabethan English. So Maak, coming from Richmond, I've
got a form of what is called the Toddwater accent,
so around the Chesapeake Bay that accent was established by
people from southern England in the.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Early sixteen hundreds. It's called a non rhotic accent. It's
very soft. You drawl, you hold your vowel and you
pull the R out of the word I throw a ball.
I don't throw a ball. I go to the bathroom,
not the bathroom. My grandfather loved to go down.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Into the river tomatoes and patatas. And that's Elizabethan English English.
It's linguistically closer to Elizabethan English and what is currently
being spoken in England. And I know that's difficult to believe,
but it is a linguistic fact. And if you go
up into the mountains of the South, it becomes Scottish.
The Scots are the next great migration, and they go
up the rivers looking for available land, and the mountains
(12:45):
catch them and it suits them. There's an old saying
in the South. The Glen and Glade of Appalachia settled
by the scot And so instead of drawling and holding
your vowel, you lilt. You get it up to the
back of your mouth more like by it.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
It's a brogue and so you.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Have a Scottish brgue in the mountains of the South
and an English drawl on the coast, and they're old because.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
They were generally undisturbed.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Another subtlety of the South and the lack of immigration
is how we view ourselves. Southerners tend not to be
ethnic people. We don't care about where we're from, came
from overseas. We care about being Southern. So the joke
is Southerners of Southern Yanks are ethnic. Northern people are
consistently more newly rived people, and they tend to get
(13:32):
excited romanticize where.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Their grandparents are born.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
So Northern people tend to have these little flavors attached
to them Irish American, Italian American and Puerto Rican American
and Chinese American, and Southerners tend not to see themselves
that way.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
We've been here long enough to be from here. You
definitely notice it. If you ask a.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Northerner where they're from, it's usually where they woke up
this morning. And if you ask a Southerner where they're from,
it's where their people are. People always say are you
from Charleston, will say, no, I'm from Richmond. Well you've
lived here for thirty five years. You're from Charleston, And
I will say, no, I am not.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
I am from.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Richmond and my people are from Virginia. I live here,
but I'm from there. And that's a subtlety. It's where
your people are, that's where you're from, It's not where
you live. Right now, I get so many tourists who
will say, this is my favorite city. I love it
so much, You're so fortunate to live here. There is
(14:30):
a secret, sauce. There is a feeling I get when
I come to Charleston and I can't explain it.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
What is that?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
And I would say, ultimately, it is the defense of
the human scale. So in the late eighteen hundreds, engineering
really improved. They invented the ibeam and the elevator, and
the first skyscraper comes to fruition in Chicago eighteen eighty.
This place was so screwed up it was it up
(15:00):
in bankrupt There was no money to justify a big building,
and that would not come until after World War Two,
and by the time there was some desire to go big,
it was too late because preservation laws and the zoning
laws were well crafted. Preservation says if a building is
seventy five, you're not going to tear it down, and
you can't corrupt the facade. You can't do anything to
(15:22):
the exterior of an older building that's going to compromise
its accuracy. And so to put a skyscraper in downtown Charleston,
you'd have to tear it down a block of old things,
and that directly violates preservation. And there is a four
story threshold through much of the city, and that's.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Called the human scale.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Until the I beam and the elevator were invented, cities
around the world built to four stories and stopped because
the great materials of human history are wood, brick and stone.
Wood brick and stone have the same load potentials. They
get you to four stories efficiently, and then you got
to stop. You can actually add a fifth story, but
(16:02):
it would double the cost of construction. You had to
make the foundation so massive to carry that fifth layer.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
It just did not make sense. And so there's always
been an economic.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Efficiency of four stories or less around the world for
thousands of years, and so cities around the world had
very similar, very predictable densities.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
If you maintain a four.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Story threshold, your population will live worship, work, go to school, socialize,
shop within a one two three mile radius, the bulk
of your existence will be in one place. You're not
spread too thin, and as a citizen, you can pour
(16:43):
yourself into that piece of turf. Big cities embraced the
new technology, ripped out the human scale, and started going vertical.
They created jobs, but they also created commuters. So now
large cities suffer from millions of anonymous workers, people who
often travel more than an hour to get to work.
(17:04):
The commute was awful, it was busy. They had to
be aggressive to be competitive, and unfortunately they're anonymous, and
civility inherently breaks down in that situation. In a place
like Charleston, you don't get to be anonymous. You see
the same people day after day, and you know them
in various ways. You cannot walk the streets of Charleston
(17:27):
without seeing people that you know, and so you'll have
frequent and often deep engagements block to block, and that
enhances civility. The reason that this has been voted the
most mannered city in America is because the human scale
provides accountability. You do not get to be anonymous, and
(17:48):
so when you live in Charleston, you feel like you
live in a village, yet we have the amenities and
the cultural impact of a city that's millions and millions
of people. I think one of the most interesting barometers
of civility is how people use their car horn. People
(18:09):
in Charleston refrained from.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Using their horn.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
They'll give you a little toot to say hi, or
they may honk the horn if there's an emergency, but
they don't use the horn to.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Express themselves block to block.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
I had a tourist from Philadelphia on my tour a
few years ago, and the night before the tour, she
had pulled into town and she was lost, and she
was at a stoplight five o'clock rush hour traffic.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Couldn't find her hotel.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
She was buried in her map, and she spaced out,
and when she looked up, the light was yellow and
turned red. She sat at the front of the line
through an entire green light, and she looked in the
rear view mirror and there are a line of cars
and not one car blew its horn. Every car behind
(18:56):
her gave her the benefit of the doubt, and it
blew her mind. She had an epiphany. She said, this
is the way that life is supposed to be, and
so I feel people come to Charleston from busy situations,
from these large metros, long commutes, spread utterly too thin,
(19:19):
and they come here and it nurtures their soul. This
is the way that life used to be and perhaps
is supposed to be.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
And what a beautiful piece.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
A special thanks to Tommy Deo is walking tour of Charleston,
South Carolina, captured by our own Philip Graham, who moved
from San Diego to Charleston, and a special thanks to
Greg Hangler for the production on the piece as well.
And by the way, we learned so much historically about
this city and culturally about this city. If you've not been,
(19:50):
by all means, visit, but that idea of the defense
of the human scale, and it's true when you go there,
you'll be struck most by the fact that there are
just no tall buildings and there's a lot of light
because of that, and there's a lot of intimacy because
of that. Tommy Doo's story here on our American Story
And we continue with our American stories. Tommy Due's walking
tour of Charleston, South Carolina has been praised and recommended
by the likes of the Wall Street Journal to Trip Advisor.
Tommy is here to share this story of Charleston from
the American Revolution to today. Here's Tommy Due.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
The South collapsed in eighteen sixty five and was left
for dead. Charleston paid a terrible price for her role
in the war. Secession began in Charleston. The first secession
document was signed in downtown Charleston December twentieth, eighteen sixty
and then the first shots are fired here at Fort Sumter.
So the political start to the war was in Charleston,
(00:51):
the military start, and we were a philosophical target. The
Federal government bomb Charleston for five hundred and eight eighty
seven consecutive days. It's the second longest artillery siege in
modern warfare after Leningrad. The Germans bombed the Russians for
nine hundred days during the World War II, and the
Federal's bomb bus for five eighty seven and by eighteen
(01:14):
sixty five, it is a ruin. And that's a for instance,
why Sherman didn't come here. In large part, we were
not viewed as a viable target. He did not need
to waste his time on us. As much as he
wanted to raise Charleston. He did more harm to South
Carolina in the Confederacy by burning the middle of the state.
He cut a fire sixty miles wide through central South Carolina.
(01:34):
And then we were occupied after the war for fourteen years.
There was a six thousand men federal occupying force martial law,
and then when they pulled out, the place was essentially
left for dead, and it took about one hundred years
to start to recover. Healthy cities in those hundred years
embraced urban renewal. They were inclined to tear down their
old stuff because it stood in the way of progress,
(01:57):
and Charleston couldn't participate. As a result, we've got about
one hundred buildings downtown from before seventeen seventy six and
about one thousand from before.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Eighteen sixty one.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
But I think more, maybe more importantly than the architectural preservation,
is the cultural preservation. People understand that the South is different,
but they don't always understand why. And I would say
it's because it was uninfluenced, undisturbed.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
By the outside world.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
There was hardly any immigration here until relatively recently, and
even accents are impacted. Southern accents tend to be much
older because immigrants moved the tongue and there was just
not a lot of immigration here and so on. All
these fronts were frozen in time, architecture, culture, accents. If
(02:45):
we had been healthy, this would be anywhere USA. Everything
would have been bulldozed. We talk about slavery a lot
of my tour. You can't talk about Charleston without talking
about slavery. We were the number one slave trading city
for the United States. A third of slaves that entered
the US entered through the port of Charleston, and that's
(03:06):
a shocking statistic, but it makes sense. Charleston was the
largest city in the South until eighteen twenty. That's when
New Orleans overtook US, and the slave trade had already
concluded as of eighteen oh eight as part of the
US Constitution. So this was the largest Southern harbor through
legal importation, and the South, with the superior farming conditions,
(03:27):
had an appetite for that labor. The wealth here, and
that's important to understand, these are the wealthiest Americans, these
are the most educated Americans. I liken it to what
was happening really around the world. But the plantation culture
that evolved here is, in my estimation, the repackaging of
Old World feudal culture. They're playing it being English, French
(03:48):
and German royals in.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
A place where that's possible.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
We have a year round growing season, we have fifty
to fifty five inches of annual rainfall, and we have
no rocks for one hundred miles. We're in an alluvial
plain where nothing but top soil and sand, and so
it's some of the finest farming in the world, the
Southeast Coastal Plain, and so they take that old World lens.
In England, you would have large estates. You've got royals
(04:14):
in the big house, the peasants.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Are in the field.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
The peasants don't get to vote, they don't own the land.
They can be bound to the estate. And then the
royals would have a town in London or Paris or Vienna.
So the royals of the world would gather in the
capitals after fall harvest. In the capital you make your
political relationships and then you make your business deals, and
then the social fruits are in the city, in the
(04:37):
capital as well, so literary season, debutante season, theatrical season,
all that's dead of winter stuff. So they come in
with a mindset and they apply it and it works.
They're able to live like royals in the new world,
and it is seductive, and that's ultimately the issue.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
They're not interested in new ideas.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
The North was an agent of change in the mid
Asian hunters, and these families were prideful, and they were
not great negotiators, and they would rather fight than yield.
They saw the federal government as unconstitutional five hundred miles away,
controlled by people that lived even further away, and they
were not about to lie down before it, and so
they ended up fighting to the death. And by eighteen
(05:21):
sixty five it's over total collapse. And so the wealth here,
the prestige here is absolutely built on forced labor. You
can't separate the two. But I do think it's important
to understand. Everybody now understands that slavery is immoral, it's
not negotiable, But two hundred years ago it was kind
(05:43):
of fuzzy. People didn't see it the way we see it,
just as an example, in eighteen forty, only two percent
of northern people were abolitionists, just two percent critically opposed
to slavery in the North in eighteen forty, and at
the same time, across the South, in less than ten
percent of white families owned slaves. See that as probably
(06:05):
the biggest misconception. People assume that the average white guy
in the South was a slave owner, and it's not close.
Over ninety percent did not own slaves. If you look
at the mountains of the South, the Appalachian counties were
slave free. Literally, county after county had zero slaves. Because
you can't own slaves in the mountains and make money,
just like you can't own slaves in New England and
(06:27):
make money. And so the conditions here were ripe, high volume,
industrial level farming with sort of a feudal patriarchal lens.
And it's a pretty dagon good fit. And so it
is logical we're the number one slave trading city for America,
(06:47):
and there's always gonna be pushback on that. You know,
I noticed it, and I've probably noticed it more now
than before because people are increasingly talking about these things.
I think we swept it under the rug for a
long time. I think people just maybe even tried to
(07:08):
try to tend like it didn't happen. That's I've never
had that approach. I love talking about slavery, and I
find that my guests, particularly if I have black tourists,
they want you talking about this stuff. They don't want
you shying away from it. Those are my favorite compliments
when I have black tourists, and afterwards I say, thank
you so much for being frank, thank you so much
(07:29):
for not mincing words. It's refreshing because you don't learn
if you don't discuss it. So I think one of
the great joys for giving tours in Charleston is outside
people do not understand the significance of Charleston because it
collapsed in eighteen sixty five. This was the fourth largest
(07:49):
city in the United States in seventeen ninety Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Charleston.
South Carolina educated more children in Europe than the other.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Twelve colonies put together.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Nine of the ten wealthiest families in America were living
in South Carolina for a period of time prior to
seventeen seventy six, all at once nine out of ten,
and so the role of Charleston is not well understood
the American Revolution, I think offers insight.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
This is the bloodiest theater of the Revolution. There were more.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Battles in South Carolina and more people were killed in
South Carolina than any of the other twelve colonies. And
that's just a huge surprise for guests. We had four
signers of the Declaration of Independence from Charleston, four signers
of the Constitution from Charleston.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
And that's not well understood.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
George Washington spent a week in Charleston in seventeen ninety one,
and he wrote that he had never been entertained more lavishly.
He said the most elegant parties he had ever attended
were in Charleston, and that the prettiest ladies he'd ever
seen were in Charleston.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
You're listening to Tommy Do and it's not a walking tour,
but you're getting a great chronological tour, a great economic tour,
and a great social tour of one of America's great cities.
When we come back more with Tommy Dues Walking Tour
of Charleston, South Carolina, and we continue with our American
(09:41):
stories and with Tommy Dues Walking Tour of Charleston, South Carolina,
which has been praised and recommended by everyone from the
Wall Street Journal a trip Advisor. Let's return to Tommy
with more of the story of his hometown.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Another really big surprise for outsiders is the permission theness
of Charleston.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
We have so many social firsts.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
The first theater in America, first racetrack in America, first
golf club in America, widespread gambling city back lotteries. The
oldest profession was legal from the beginning through World War II.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Our navy base.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Matriculated hundreds of thousands of soldiers post World War Two,
and they were riddled with STDs, and so because of
medical concerns they had to write laws against it for
the first time. That's in the nineteen forties. The French
called us the Paris of the New World. The British
called us the crown Jeuel of America. But at the
(10:37):
same time New Englanders called Charleston Sodom and Gamore. They
saw Charleston as centers on a Biblical level, Sodom and Gomore.
And what surprises people The confusion comes from the fact
that they're now inclined to call us the Bible Belt,
but really, the North was the Bible Belt for the
first one hundred and fifty years. So the real question
is what happens wide to the North and the South
(11:00):
swap personalities, and it's about immigration. Once again, we stopped
getting people in the early eighteen hundreds when they started
industrializing and building factories. Immigrants go north. They also invest
in infrastructure, railroads, canals, and it's a magnet for immigration,
and the South is backwatered. So basically from the eighteen
(11:22):
twenties to the nineteen seventies, there's one hundred and fifty
years where the Southeast as not receiving people at the
same rates as everybody else, and so Southern families grow
deep roots and they tend to have a longer.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
More traditional view.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
And the North, which had been uptight, was overwhelmed by
immigration two hundred years ago and suddenly found herself to
be multicultural, more liberal, more progressive, and the South was
increasingly homogeneous, conservative and more realistic. It impacts everything. Accents
talked about that a little bit. But the Southeast coastal
(11:57):
accent as Elizabethan English. So Maak, coming from Richmond, I've
got a form of what is called the Toddwater accent,
so around the Chesapeake Bay that accent was established by
people from southern England in the.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Early sixteen hundreds. It's called a non rhotic accent. It's
very soft. You drawl, you hold your vowel and you
pull the R out of the word I throw a ball.
I don't throw a ball. I go to the bathroom,
not the bathroom. My grandfather loved to go down.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Into the river tomatoes and patatas. And that's Elizabethan English English.
It's linguistically closer to Elizabethan English and what is currently
being spoken in England. And I know that's difficult to believe,
but it is a linguistic fact. And if you go
up into the mountains of the South, it becomes Scottish.
The Scots are the next great migration, and they go
up the rivers looking for available land, and the mountains
(12:45):
catch them and it suits them. There's an old saying
in the South. The Glen and Glade of Appalachia settled
by the scot And so instead of drawling and holding
your vowel, you lilt. You get it up to the
back of your mouth more like by it.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
It's a brogue and so you.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Have a Scottish brgue in the mountains of the South
and an English drawl on the coast, and they're old because.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
They were generally undisturbed.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Another subtlety of the South and the lack of immigration
is how we view ourselves. Southerners tend not to be
ethnic people. We don't care about where we're from, came
from overseas. We care about being Southern. So the joke
is Southerners of Southern Yanks are ethnic. Northern people are
consistently more newly rived people, and they tend to get
(13:32):
excited romanticize where.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Their grandparents are born.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
So Northern people tend to have these little flavors attached
to them Irish American, Italian American and Puerto Rican American
and Chinese American, and Southerners tend not to see themselves
that way.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
We've been here long enough to be from here. You
definitely notice it. If you ask a.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Northerner where they're from, it's usually where they woke up
this morning. And if you ask a Southerner where they're from,
it's where their people are. People always say are you
from Charleston, will say, no, I'm from Richmond. Well you've
lived here for thirty five years. You're from Charleston, And
I will say, no, I am not.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
I am from.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Richmond and my people are from Virginia. I live here,
but I'm from there. And that's a subtlety. It's where
your people are, that's where you're from, It's not where
you live. Right now, I get so many tourists who
will say, this is my favorite city. I love it
so much, You're so fortunate to live here. There is
(14:30):
a secret, sauce. There is a feeling I get when
I come to Charleston and I can't explain it.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
What is that?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
And I would say, ultimately, it is the defense of
the human scale. So in the late eighteen hundreds, engineering
really improved. They invented the ibeam and the elevator, and
the first skyscraper comes to fruition in Chicago eighteen eighty.
This place was so screwed up it was it up
(15:00):
in bankrupt There was no money to justify a big building,
and that would not come until after World War Two,
and by the time there was some desire to go big,
it was too late because preservation laws and the zoning
laws were well crafted. Preservation says if a building is
seventy five, you're not going to tear it down, and
you can't corrupt the facade. You can't do anything to
(15:22):
the exterior of an older building that's going to compromise
its accuracy. And so to put a skyscraper in downtown Charleston,
you'd have to tear it down a block of old things,
and that directly violates preservation. And there is a four
story threshold through much of the city, and that's.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Called the human scale.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Until the I beam and the elevator were invented, cities
around the world built to four stories and stopped because
the great materials of human history are wood, brick and stone.
Wood brick and stone have the same load potentials. They
get you to four stories efficiently, and then you got
to stop. You can actually add a fifth story, but
(16:02):
it would double the cost of construction. You had to
make the foundation so massive to carry that fifth layer.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
It just did not make sense. And so there's always
been an economic.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Efficiency of four stories or less around the world for
thousands of years, and so cities around the world had
very similar, very predictable densities.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
If you maintain a four.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Story threshold, your population will live worship, work, go to school, socialize,
shop within a one two three mile radius, the bulk
of your existence will be in one place. You're not
spread too thin, and as a citizen, you can pour
(16:43):
yourself into that piece of turf. Big cities embraced the
new technology, ripped out the human scale, and started going vertical.
They created jobs, but they also created commuters. So now
large cities suffer from millions of anonymous workers, people who
often travel more than an hour to get to work.
(17:04):
The commute was awful, it was busy. They had to
be aggressive to be competitive, and unfortunately they're anonymous, and
civility inherently breaks down in that situation. In a place
like Charleston, you don't get to be anonymous. You see
the same people day after day, and you know them
in various ways. You cannot walk the streets of Charleston
(17:27):
without seeing people that you know, and so you'll have
frequent and often deep engagements block to block, and that
enhances civility. The reason that this has been voted the
most mannered city in America is because the human scale
provides accountability. You do not get to be anonymous, and
(17:48):
so when you live in Charleston, you feel like you
live in a village, yet we have the amenities and
the cultural impact of a city that's millions and millions
of people. I think one of the most interesting barometers
of civility is how people use their car horn. People
(18:09):
in Charleston refrained from.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Using their horn.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
They'll give you a little toot to say hi, or
they may honk the horn if there's an emergency, but
they don't use the horn to.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Express themselves block to block.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
I had a tourist from Philadelphia on my tour a
few years ago, and the night before the tour, she
had pulled into town and she was lost, and she
was at a stoplight five o'clock rush hour traffic.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Couldn't find her hotel.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
She was buried in her map, and she spaced out,
and when she looked up, the light was yellow and
turned red. She sat at the front of the line
through an entire green light, and she looked in the
rear view mirror and there are a line of cars
and not one car blew its horn. Every car behind
(18:56):
her gave her the benefit of the doubt, and it
blew her mind. She had an epiphany. She said, this
is the way that life is supposed to be, and
so I feel people come to Charleston from busy situations,
from these large metros, long commutes, spread utterly too thin,
(19:19):
and they come here and it nurtures their soul. This
is the way that life used to be and perhaps
is supposed to be.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
And what a beautiful piece.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
A special thanks to Tommy Deo is walking tour of Charleston,
South Carolina, captured by our own Philip Graham, who moved
from San Diego to Charleston, and a special thanks to
Greg Hangler for the production on the piece as well.
And by the way, we learned so much historically about
this city and culturally about this city. If you've not been,
(19:50):
by all means, visit, but that idea of the defense
of the human scale, and it's true when you go there,
you'll be struck most by the fact that there are
just no tall buildings and there's a lot of light
because of that, and there's a lot of intimacy because
of that. Tommy Doo's story here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!