A documentary history of a settlement adopted by Lowcountry gentry escaping the heat of weather and war The intoxicating "champagne air" of Flat Rock, North Carolina, captivated residents of lowcountry South Carolina in the nineteenth century because it offered them respite from the sickly, semitropical coastal climate. In Flat Rock of the Old Time, editor Robert B. Cuthbert has mined the collections of the South Carolina Historical Society to publish a documentary history of the place and its people. While many visitors came and went, others chose to become permanent residents. Among the Flat Rock settlers were some of the most distinguished South Carolina gentry: Blakes, Rutledges, Hugers, and Middletons. They established the Episcopal parish church of St. John in the Wilderness Church, where many of them are buried. They also supported a local economy that helped provide livelihoods to native residents who supplied them with goods and services. Visiting each other daily, they swapped news and gossip, sharing their joys and burdens. Lowcountry families refugeed to Flat Rock during the Civil War, thereby escaping the devastation of the coast but not the revolutionary consequences of the war, such as emancipation, occupation, and economic collapse. And through it all they wrote letters. Some refugee-residents sent off missives every day, describing the delicious weather, the activities of their neighbors, and the entwining relationships of family, faith, business, and recreation that sustained Flat Rock. The century chronicled in Flat Rock of the Old Times is viewed with a combination of nostalgia and clear-sightedness, not only by Cuthbert but also by his correspondents. Guided by the editor's copious introduction, annotations, and textual apparatus, readers experience the conjunction of people and place that was Flat Rock.

The Flat rock is a fifteen square mile area in the town of Altona.

Named for the great expanse of rock where the Cherokee Indians used to spend their summers, Flat Rock, North Carolina, is beautifully situated near the Continental Divide in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Flat Rock is known as "the Little Charleston of the Mountains," thanks to the pioneering Lowcountry settlers who flocked to the area after the Revolutionary War. These prominent South Carolina families, drawn to the refreshing cool mountain air that offered relief from the steamy Charleston summers, purchased vast quantities of land and built grand estates for their residences or summer getaways. The photographs in Images of America: Flat Rock illustrate the gorgeous homes and attractions of this National Historic Site, including the Flat Rock Playhouse and St. John in the Wilderness Church, the oldest Episcopal Church in western North Carolina.

Water On A Flat Rock gives readers an intimate portrayal of John and Annie Coker, from their marriage in 1819 through the Trail of Tears and the Civil War, and opens with words from Annie herself: "Osiyo. I am Annie. I have come here to this place in the woods to tell you my story. I am glad you have come, hungry for the story that was lost. Learn that we are not so different, you and I. Learn that tragedy, happiness and love do not change through the years ?Ǫ Learn about John." Readers are transported to 1800s Tennessee where 16-year-old Annie Ratliff meets and marries 41 year-old John Coker. Drawing on the known facts of John and Annie Coker, the author offers a vivid picture, credibly filling in the gaps with imaginative fiction, a compelling love story of two Cherokee people, living in times of turbulence and change

From Lincoln's election to secession from the Union, this compelling history explains how South Carolina was swept into a cultural crisis at the heart of the Civil War. "The tea has been thrown overboard -- the revolution of 1860 has been initiated." -- Charleston Mercury, November 8, 1860 In 1860, Charleston, South Carolina, embodied the combustible spirit of the South. No city was more fervently attached to slavery, and no city was seen by the North as a greater threat to the bonds barely holding together the Union. And so, with Abraham Lincoln's election looming, Charleston's leaders faced a climactic decision: they could submit to abolition -- or they could drive South Carolina out of the Union and hope that the rest of the South would follow. In Madness Rules the Hour, Paul Starobin tells the story of how Charleston succumbed to a fever for war and charts the contagion's relentless progress and bizarre turns. In doing so, he examines the wily propagandists, the ambitious politicians, the gentlemen merchants and their wives and daughters, the compliant pastors, and the white workingmen who waged a violent and exuberant revolution in the name of slavery and Southern independence. They devoured the Mercury, the incendiary newspaper run by a fanatical father and son; made holy the deceased John C. Calhoun; and adopted "Le Marseillaise" as a rebellious anthem. Madness Rules the Hour is a portrait of a culture in crisis and an insightful investigation into the folly that fractured the Union and started the Civil War.

Historians of the Civil War often speak of "wars within a war"—the military fight, wartime struggles on the home front, and the political and moral battle to preserve the Union and end slavery. In this broadly conceived book, Thavolia Glymph provides a comprehensive new history of women's roles and lives in the Civil War—North and South, white and black, slave and free—showing how women were essentially and fully engaged in all three arenas. Glymph focuses on the ideas and ideologies that drove women's actions, allegiances, and politics. We encounter women as they stood their ground, moved into each other's territory, sought and found common ground, and fought for vastly different principles. Some women used all the tools and powers they could muster to prevent the radical transformations the war increasingly imposed, some fought with equal might for the same transformations, and other women fought simply to keep the war at bay as they waited for their husbands and sons to return home. Glymph shows how the Civil War exposed as never before the nation's fault lines, not just along race and class lines but also along the ragged boundaries of gender. However, Glymph makes clear that women's experiences were not new to the mid-nineteenth century; rather, many of them drew on memories of previous conflicts, like the American Revolution and the War of 1812, to make sense of the Civil War's disorder and death.

The vibrant, opinionated, and totally engaging voice of 85-year-old Emily Whaley transforms a guided tour of one of the most visited private gardens in America into a magical adventure, alive with tidbits of advice and deeply moving reflections. Illustrations.