Carolina Day

 

Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,
Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause.

In seeds of laurel in the earth
The blossom of your flame is blown,
And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
The shaft is in the stone!

Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years
Which keep in trust your storied tombs,
Behold! Your sisters bring their tears, 
And these memorial blooms.

– Henry Timrod,  Poet laureate of the Confederacy

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June 28th is an official holiday in the state of South Carolina, although outside of Charleston, it has almost entirely been forgotten. South Carolina’s Code of Laws, 53-3-140, reads as follows:

June twenty-eighth of each year, the anniversary of the Battle of Fort Sullivan in 1776, is declared to be “Carolina Day” in South Carolina.

Known as Palmetto Day or Sergeant Jasper’s Day prior to 1875, this day marks one of the defining moments of the South Carolina’s antebellum history and would set the tone for the major role she would play in the War to Prevent American Independence —a war in which British troops, at the behest of King George III, tried to coerce 13 seceded colonies back into the British Empire.

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