Citizen-Scholar , livre ebook

Citizen-Scholar
Essays in Honor of Walter Edgar
Citizen Scholar
Essays in Honor of
Walter Edgar
Edited by
Robert H. Brinkmeyer Jr.
With the Assistance of Evan A. Kutzler

The University of South Carolina Press
2016 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/
ISBN 978-1-61117-750-3 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-61117-751-0 (ebook)
Front cover photograph
Bowtie courtesy of Brittons, Columbia, South Carolina.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Part 1. Citizen-Scholar
Walter in Metamorphosis
Winston Groom
Walter Bellingrath Edgar: The Permanent File and Academic Citizenship
Many Anne Fitzpatrick
Walter Edgar and Squash
Harris Pastides
Walter Edgar as Listener
Mark M. Smith
Part 2. Essays in Honor of Walter Edgar
Furling That Banner: The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Flag in South Carolina, 1961-2000
Charles Joyner
Walter Edgar and the Southern Military Tradition
Andrew H. Myers
The Grand Jury in Colonial South Carolina: An Index of Societal Concerns
Larry D. Watson
The Worlds of John Tunno: Scottish Emigrant, Charleston Loyalist, London Merchant, 1746-1819
Barbara L. Bellows
Rediscovering Milo H. Berry: Columbia Artisan and Businessman, 1843-1907
John M. Sherrer III
Localism and Confederate Nationalism: The Transformation of Values from Community to Nation in Edgefield, South Carolina
Orville Vernon Burton
Is the Rubicon Passable? African Methodism and the Gospel of Freedom in Nineteenth-Century South Carolina
Bernard E. Powers Jr .
Another Faithful Index : Inventive Activity and Economic Innovation in Nineteenth-Century South Carolina
Peter A. Coclanis
William Gilmore Simms and His World after the Civil War: A New Look at Joscelyn
John M. McCardell Jr .
From Cracklins to Gourmet Bacon Puffs : The Complex Origins and Shifting Shape of Southern Foodways
James C. Cobb
Extended Horizons: Lowcountry Women in World War II
Amy Thompson McCandless
Twenty-First-Century South Carolina s Economic Development Dilemma: The Evolution of a Crisis, 1950-2014
Lacy K. Ford Jr .
Notes
Contributors
Index
Illustrations
B Company staff in high school
Walter Edgar advising in Grenada
Walter Edgar and Harris Pastides playing squash
Walter Edgar atop books
Walter Edgar in Vietnam
Walter Edgar with Mary Anne Fitzpatrick
Walter Edgar, class of 1961
Young Walter Edgar with stick
Youthful cadet Walter Edgar
Walter Edgar in high school play
Introduction
For anyone who has done some exploring into the history of South Carolina, Walter Edgar needs no introduction. He is, quite simply, the most preeminent historian of the state. Throughout his academic career, which began when he became an assistant professor of history at the University of South Carolina in 1972, Walter has been directing his keen historical eye and understanding most closely at the culture and history of the state in which he has lived for five decades. The first two books he edited, The Letterbook of Robert Pringle, 1732-1742 (1972) and The Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives: Sessions Lists, 1692-1973 (1974), looked forward to the historical vision that would be the mark of all of Walter s scholarship: a deep and profound concern with South Carolina s colonial history, together with a wide and capacious interest in the sweep of the entirety of the state s history, including its fraught political history, right up to current issues and controversies. Of the dozen or so other books that Walter has authored or edited, three stand out as landmark works of scholarship that have shaped-and continue to shape-our understanding of South Carolina s history and culture: South Carolina: A History (1998), Partisans and Redcoats: The Southern Conflict That Turned the Tide of the American Revolution (2001), and The South Carolina Encyclopedia (2006). There might be a few people somewhere who know more about the minutiae of a particular historical moment that took place in some small corner of the state, but I d be comfortable betting the house that there s no one who has a more capacious knowledge of South Carolina history than Walter.
It s no accident that Walter spent his entire career at the University of South Carolina, a public university whose primary mission is to serve the people of the state. At USC Walter taught scores of undergraduate and graduate students, and his two-course sequence on South Carolina history (History 409: The History of South Carolina, 1670-1865; History 410: The History of South Carolina since 1865) was one of those legendary courses one finds at most universities, a course that everyone knows about and in which everyone tries to enroll-and a course that, if a student is fortunate enough to take, he or she never forgets. Needless to say, Walter s courses were always filled to the limit. In their course evaluations, students characteristically raved about Walter s skills at making history alive and compelling, even to those who initially thought they didn t care much for the subject matter. He makes the student want to learn and listen, commented one of his students, while another noted that Walter s class was the only eight o clock class that I ve had that I didn t want to sleep. High praise indeed.
At the same time that Walter was instructing and inspiring scores of undergraduates, he was also working closely with a number of graduate students, not only by teaching seminars but also by directing M.A. theses and Ph.D. dissertations. It would take an oversized and reinforced bookshelf to hold all the bound copies of theses and dissertations that Walter either directed or served as a reader for. Many of Walter s former graduate students have gone on to successful careers in academia and elsewhere, with a number following in his footsteps and becoming distinguished professors and scholars of southern and South Carolina history. Several of the contributors to this volume have either worked with Walter as a graduate student or alongside him a colleague. Other contributors came to know Walter either personally or professionally (or both), enjoying his enthusiasm and wit and learning from his scholarship-and in fact there s a lot to enjoy and learn, as anyone knows who has ever read Walter s work or heard him speak.
And speaking of Walter speaking: I doubt there is a more recognizable voice in the state of South Carolina. For several years now, Walter has hosted one of South Carolina s most listened-to radio talk shows (and podcasts), Walter Edgar s Journal , which airs every week on South Carolina Educational Radio stations. During the show s hour, Walter engages in conversation with a notable person or two, exploring the arts, culture, and history of South Carolina and the South. The topics are as diverse as the state itself, ranging, as the South Carolina Educational Radio and TV webpage notes, from books to barbecue, from current events to colonial history. If you think it s easy to converse on the airwaves, week in and week out, with people whose interests go off in all directions and whose personalities differ as much as those of mules and parakeets, think again. Walter handles the conversations, all of them, with grace, charm, and wit. I don t think I ve ever heard him even stumble. It s a never-ending masterful performance. Besides his weekly journal, Walter also broadcasts on South Carolina Educational Radio South Carolina from A to Z , brief commentaries that air throughout the day on topics that span from, well, A to Z. I m particularly fond of this latter broadcast because when in 2007 I was driving to Columbia to start working with Walter at the Institute for Southern Studies, the first voice I heard upon crossing the state line from Georgia was Walter s, providing me with a brief bit of historical insight into the state that was to be my new home. Besides these two shows, Walter for a time hosted another show on South Carolina Educational Radio, South Carolina Reads , in which he spent an hour each week reading out loud notable works of southern fiction. Who says historians don t care or know anything about literature?
His extensive work with South Carolina Educational Radio points to a commitment that Walter held fast to his entire career: to share his academic work not only with other historians but also with the general public. He has always been, in other words, a public scholar, a professor actively involved in his profession as well as his community-locally and statewide. When I first started working at the Institute for Southern Studies, I quickly got a sense of Walter s public involvement. Good luck trying to catch him: if he wasn t in class, he was probably being prepped in his office for a television interview, or running out the door to speak to legislators or to deliver a talk to a community group or at a commemoration somewhere in the state. Or sometimes he was headed out to Charleston, where often he taught a four-semester course, spread out over two years, on the history of South Carolina that was open to the public. When he wasn t teaching that course in Charleston, he was teaching it in Columbia. Occasionally I caught sight of him departing for a barbecue cook-off of which he would serve as judge (yes, he s certified to do that). He served on numerous boards of local c