Upcountry, and an earlier American CIVIL WAR

We had never heard the name ‘Upcountry’ before for the west of South Carolina, but that’s what it is. Up above the Lowcountry, and above the Middlecountry to its east and far east. 

Not huge in more elevation, but enough so the seasons change more visibly and the hills do roll upward to North Georgia and the Appalachian foothills.  The Upcountry is very much distinct from the rest of South Carolina.  It is so in the temperament and political underpinnings of its people as well.

We left camp at Hopewell, UMC, and headed the 20 or so miles north into Greenville, SC, to find libraries and museums.  It was raining, sometimes hard, and the day promised to be gray all day.

Libraries proved fruitless right off.  Greenville County runs on one system and every library has the same policy.  No books for sale, except at the main, and they only open their golden treasures to public inspection and purchase once a month. L . So we trekked across the green plaza from the main branch to the Upcountry Museum.  A place which interprets the heritage of the area in a rather unique way. Pocketbook, Prayerbook, and Planner.

Pocketbook meaning the enterprise and business focus of the Upcountry settlers, farmers, and merchants as opposed to the Lowcountry plantation owners and, as the first Scots-Irish inhabitants to take land from the Cherokee called them, ‘Dandys’.

Prayerbook means the faith and the faith communities that fill Western South Carolina. You can’t hardly spit without finding a church. And while that may be common in most more rural areas of the US, depending upon population numbers, here it is because the origins of Christian faith come from the very founders themselves.  Francis Asbury of the Methodists, and leaders of the Baptist Movement as well trekked these hills starting churches and training ministers in what has been called the Second Great Awakening. And today, with a large influx of Asian, Indian and European factory and technology workers and managers Islam, Hindu, Buddhism are all becoming well represented as well.

We have seen more Ten Commandments on courthouse lawns in North Georgia and west SC than anywhere else so far.

The Planner literally means the other side of the Pocketbook, though the growth of church and church educational institutions would certainly apply as well.

Battered by the Revolutionary War (there were more loyalists in these hills than rebels at the start) the cotton gin created plantations whose owners were proud to say they were NOT like the Dandys of Charleston. 

Smashed by the Civil War, it was only a few years until Western SC had induced the New England Clothing mills to almost completely relocate to their more salubrious clime, and lower cost labor.

Hit hard like the rest of the world first by the 1930’s depression and WW 2 the 1950’s was a time of real prosperity but in the 1960’s the Civil Rights movement changed the Upcountry, and America, forever. And the image of not-so-peaceful responses to demonstrations and sit-ins, while not as violent as in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi, slowed down the desire of American business to move here.  So the Chambers of Commerce of the region brought in the rest of the world.

Michelin, BMW, and many other worldwide corporations now design, manufacture and sell their high tech gear from these old Scottish hills.

But if you want to find the OLD south you go beyond the displays and dioramas of the Upcountry Museum to 15 Boyce Avenue. Located in a beautiful section of the Pettigru  Hill Historic District is a quaint light blue house called the Museum and Library of Confederate History.

It is here that the reconstituted 16^th Regiment, SC Volunteers, sons of Confederate Veterans display their large collection of art and artifacts, books and retail memorabilia of the ‘War Between the States’. I saw no bumper stickers that read ‘The South Shall Rise Again’, but I did see a bit different take on American icons and issues like Abraham Lincoln, Slavery, and the cause of the ‘War of Northern Aggression, 1861-1865’. And I met some of the nicest guys to ever guide or discuss their beliefs with you I’d ever seen in any museum.

  

Rossie, who is almost a spitting image of the Memphis author and Civil War historian Shelby Foote, Michael who has to be a lawyer by his looks (there are TONS of lawyers offices in the Pettigru District), and Rollis who is all retired US Marine. I missed getting the name and photo of a fourth gentleman who was very helpful as well.

Can you tell they are Scots-Irish in their uniforms of the day?  Michael was disappointed that he didn’t have his uniform present to change into for the photo.

The tour I took of the museum is documented on Facebook, as is the Upcountry Museum and our next journey of the day, but I have to share this with you here.

In a box by the cash register in the gift shop was a collection of dirty and aged lead bullets.  All fired and some in almost unrecognizable condition. The sign over them reads simply, ‘Bullets found near Winchester, Virginia. $1.00 each.’  I wondered.

Fort Shenandoah, the quarter mile long rifle and cannon range, 5,000 site campground and home of the North South Skirmish Association, is just a couple of miles north of Winchester, VA. When I and my dad belonged to Knap’s Battery E, Pa Light Artillery, a unit which still competes with the thousands of others in their hundreds of teams at Winchester several times a year I collected such boxes myself.

  

We’d head for the dirt backstops and dig out the lead to re-melt into new bullets ourselves; or sell or give as ‘souvenirs’ of the ‘battle’. Were these bullets of that same type?

I asked the guys around the library table and they smiled and Rollis said, “Well, you’d find our Museum director up there this weekend.” Right! Its Fall National weekend, just as its been since the early 1950s, when the NSSA was formed. Here come more $1.00 bullets to help fund the Museum of the Confederacy in Greenville, SC!

We drove south 50 miles in mid afternoon, as the sky was clearing a bit to participate in a reception at a new Revolutionary War display in the Greenwood Museum.  There we met Kenn Wiltshire, a ward leader on City Council, and a new coffee and wine café owner in town who emigrated here from, guess… Scotland.  He told us of the nearby village and battlegrounds of the old village of Ninety Six.

We left the reception and though the National Park Service visitor’s center would be closed, spent an hour and more at the site, now so well laid out for the tourist to see what happened here in the first and last major confrontation between loyalist and rebel armies in Western SC.

The first attack upon this loyalist settlement was by rebels in 1775. That ended in a stalemate with little loss of life.  The war would become much more brutal between Americans on either side of the issue soon enough.

The second battle was a well organized siege of a new ‘star shaped fort’ led by General Nathanial Green. This was the longest siege campaign in the Revolutionary War, and very bloody.

Once more, the pictures are all on Facebook. But I must say this is one of the best interpreted historical locations we have yet been to.  And seeing it as dusk approaches made it even more ‘real’ for me.  I could easily imagine the loyalist families huddled behind their village stockade walls as the rebels attacked and laid siege to the forts they hoped would protect them.

We call that war the Revolution in history books.  But in the western hill country of many of our young and future states, this was a bloody first Civil War.

Home by midnight after a fine Western SC bar-b-que on Lake Greenwood, the long and beautiful Saluda River reservoir.

-Ken