With 250th anniversary of the American Revolution coming in 2026, much had already happened in SC
By Mike Hebb Special to The Post and Courier
Published Sun Jan 18, 2026 5:00 AM EST
Riots and ransacking in protest of the Stamp Act. Meetings at the Liberty Tree. Hanging effigies. A Tea Party. Forming a Provincial government. Capturing weapons and ammunition before the British could get to them. A Royal governor escapes.
At quick glance, this list may appear to be about events in Boston leading up to and during the Revolutionary War. The truth, however, is these events all occurred in South Carolina. In 2026, we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation. But we won’t just celebrate what happened in 1776. We also will celebrate events of the entire war, which lasted more than eight years and saw South Carolina have a huge impact on its outcome. Before we start celebrating, I’d like to highlight some S.C. occurrences which have already reached their 250-year milestone and which laid the foundations of the Revolution.
Quite often, focus on the early parts of the war goes to Boston – and for good reason. Boston was just a little bit better at poking the English lion than Charles Town was. That brought the British to try to use Boston to set an example to the rest of the colonies and quell the fomenting revolution. That, however, doesn’t mean Boston was the only cradle of liberty. Many events that occurred in South Carolina around the same time almost mirror what happened there yet still go almost unnoticed to the rest of the nation.
In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act in an attempt to recover the costs of the French and Indian War. Colonists considered this “taxation without representation” and protests occurred in Charles Town. Effigies were hanged on Broad Street. The stamp distributor’s house on Tradd Street was ransacked in a hunt for the stamped paper. Henry Laurens, the future president of the Second Continental Congress, even had his property superficially searched by disguised men looking for stamps.
After the act was repealed, Patriots began meeting at the Liberty Tree, located in a pasture near present-day Calhoun and Alexander streets.
We all know the story of the Boston Tea Party in December 1773. What many don’t know is that tea was sent to several cities and had arrived to Charles Town first. Patriots in Charles Town, however, didn’t disguise themselves as natives and throw the precious cargo into the harbor in the middle of the night. Instead, they locked it away in the Old Exchange Building. It later was sold in 1776 to help finance the Patriot cause, in a much less-glamorous act of defiance.
Students learn that the Revolution began on April 19, 1775, in Lexington and Concord, Mass., with the “shot heard round the world.” Local militias quarreled with British troops sent to secretly seize military supplies. That same day, Patriots in Charles Town stole Royal mail and learned that the British also intended to seize their military stores. As a result, in a treasonous act in the middle of the night on April 21, 1775, Patriots liberated 800 muskets and 200 cutlasses from the Armory and the Colonial Statehouse (now the site of the Charleston County Courthouse) at Broad and Meeting streets. They also seized gunpowder stored on the Charleston Neck and in Mount Pleasant.
All this occurred with no knowledge of what happened in Massachusetts. If the Patriots in Charles Town had encountered resistance that night from the British, would there have been two shots heard round the world?
In September 1775, the last Royal Governor of South Carolina, Lord William Campbell, escaped out the back of his Meeting Street house to a British warship in the harbor. He feared for his safety if he stayed in Charles Town, where he had only arrived three months earlier. He would never set foot on South Carolina soil again. Boston at the time was occupied. South Carolina was free. The same month that Boston was finally evacuated by the British, the Republic of South Carolina was formed with John Rutledge as its president.
Many other events in which we’ve already reached their 250th anniversaries occurred in South Carolina. A Provincial Congress, kind of a shadow government, formed in early 1775. The Snow Campaign, the first major military operation of the Revolution in the South, occurred in late 1775. I look forward to celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Revolution and sharing the huge impact this state had on our collective independence. South Carolina recently released a new license plate that reads “Where the Revolutionary War Was Won.” I couldn’t have said it better. Happy New Year, Happy SC250, and Happy America 250!