Mrs. St.
Julien Ravenel tells us in her charming book, that thirty years later an
old sailor, dying in a village of the North Carolina coast, confessed
that he had been one of a pirate crew which had captured the ship and
compelled the passengers to walk the plank. This story is also given by
Charles Gayarre, who says the pirate chief was none other than Dominick
You, who fought under Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, and is
buried in that city. The husband and father of Mrs. Alston were spared
the ghastly tale, Mrs. Ravenel says, since both were already in their
graves when the sailor's deathbed confession solved the mystery.
In the Revolution, Charleston played an important part. Men of
Charleston were, of course, among the signers of the Declaration of
Independence. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who gave us the immortal
maxim: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!" who was on
Washington's staff, was later Ambassador to France and president-general
of the Sons of the Cincinnati, was a Charlestonian of the
Charlestonians, and lies buried in St. Michael's. Such Revolutionary
names as Marion, Laurens, William Washington, Greene, Hampton, Moultrie
and Sumter are associated with the place, and two of these are reechoed
in the names of those famous forts in Charleston harbor on which
attention was fixed at the outbreak of the Civil War: Moultrie and
Sumter--the latter, target for the first shot fired in the conflict.
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