SC celebrates the 250th

I have a confession to make. When I first moved to South Carolina, I was just about the furthest thing from a history buff. In school, history always felt like my most boring class, focused on memorizing names and dates. As the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding approached, however, I started writing about history, and I realized just how fascinating the past could be.

There were women like Rebecca Brewton Motte, who agreed to light her own home on fire to help defeat the British. There were battles like the one at Hanging Rock, where a 13-year-old Andrew Jackson tended to soldiers’ horses as the Patriots pillaged the Loyalists. There were moments of triumph, such as the surprising win for the Patriots at the Battle of Cowpens, and moments of bravery, such as when William Jasper braved British fire to replant a fallen flag during the Battle of Sullivan’s Island.

The Fourth of July, to me, is usually a day for eating hot dogs and watching fireworks. This year, though, as the country celebrates its 250th birthday, I’m thinking about what it took to get here. I’m also thinking about some of the big questions a historian recently asked me at the opening of the State Museum’s Revolutionary War exhibit. Among those: What did liberty and freedom mean for our country’s founders, and what does that mean for us today?

I’ll eat some hot dogs and watch some fireworks, too, of course.

“We’re doing this in the 250th anniversary of our country, and I’m telling a story of a boy who was orphaned and then defrauded by his own relatives and left with nothing.” - Allison Peacock, who is helping conduct genealogy research to identify soldiers who died at the Battle of Camden.