The fact remains, however, that Charleston's position on the
map justifies the Chamber of Commerce's alliterative designation of the
place as "The Plumb-line Port to Panama." This is so true that if
Charleston should one day be shaken loose from its moorings by an
earthquake--something not unknown there--and should fall due south upon
the map, it would choke up the mouth of the Canal, were not Cuba
interposed, to catch the debris.
Before the Civil War, Charleston was the greatest cotton shipping port
of the country, and it still handles large amounts of cotton and rice.
Until a few years ago South Carolina was the chief rice producing State
in the Union, and history records that the first rice planted in the
Carolinas, if not in the country, was secured and sown by an early
governor of Carolina, Thomas Smith, who died in 1694. It may be noted in
passing that this Thomas Smith bore the title "Landgrave," the Lords
Proprietors, in their plan of government for the colony--which, by the
way, was drawn up by the philosopher Locke--having provided for a
colonial nobility with titles. The titles "Baron" and "Landgrave" were
hereditary in several Charleston families, and constitute, so far as I
know, the only purely American titles of nobility that ever existed.
Descendants of the old Landgraves still reside in Charleston, and in at
least one instance continue to use the word "Landgrave" in connection
with the family name.
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