Incendiary City: Arson in Charleston from Revolution to Reconstruction

Incendiary City: Arson in Charleston from Revolution to Reconstruction

Presented by the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society

Arson was an existential threat to a society that defined legal personhood through the ability to master property. This was doubly true in a society that relied on property in people. Charleston was a city continuously ravaged by fire from the Colonial era to Reconstruction. Enslaved arson was constantly suspected, but often went unproved. Charlestonians used arson scares as an excuse to punish free and enslaved Black people and tried to control fires through an assertion of mastery over them. Disbelieving Black agency, they policed speech by white actors deemed “incendiary.” Elite Charlestonians drove out white ministers that even tepidly suggested racial equality and passed laws that called for the public burning of abolitionist pamphlets. During the Civil War, the burning of plantations and cities in South Carolina during the Civil War formed a central motif of Lost Cause. After the end of slavery, arson was weaponized by white terrorists to attack the gains of freedom. Arson was at times a weapon of resistance, a tool of repression, and a justification of punishment.