(male narrator) For thousands of years, the Atlantic kept the American mainland in isolation, while Europe looked in upon itself, preoccupied with its own land-locked empires.

To the European, the Atlantic was nothing more than a barrier between this world and the next.

Only the ends of the earth, said their philosophers, lay over the shifting horizon.

Then, quite suddenly, the view changed.

A new spirit appeared, one of inquiry, of seeking.

Christopher Columbus, in his cockleshell ships, beat his way westward into the void and struck land.

Thus, the Atlantic became a highway, a difficult and dangerous highway, but, nonetheless, a road that went somewhere.

Eventually, some of the ships that left English ports began to disappear westward bound for New England and Virginia, carrying men and women who would never again look on the shores of England.

The age of colonization had begun.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (narrator) "May it please your Lordship, "this, after begging your honor's pardon, "is to give a perfect account that we are with our ships "now riding at anchor in the downs.

"May it please your honor, "I have taken all care "to fit out and make ready with what expedition I could "all the ships, now expecting a good wind.

"I intend to set sail for Ireland, "and upon our arrival, "your honor shall receive a further account "than I can at present give.

"Your most humble and obedient servant, Joseph West."

♪ And so in 1669, the scene was set as the ships at anchor off the Devon coast prepared themselves for the hazards of a journey across the Atlantic.

The shores of the New World already held the colonies of New England and Virginia, but the land encompassing the Carolinas remained uncolonized.

With Charles II on the throne, a new patent had been drawn up and an expedition fitted out.

Exploration was undertaken, locations were identified in various parts of the mainland, and the name Carolina was given to the area known as Florida.

Hence, in 1669, the first group of colonists were assembled off the English coast, a company of honest, hard-working men looking for a new and fair life across the sea.

Three ships undertook the voyage: the frigates "Carolina" and "Port Royal" and the sloop "Albemarle."

The "Albemarle" was wrecked on the Barbados coast, and the "Port Royal" abandoned in the West Indies, leaving the "Carolina" to limp, battered, around Albemarle Point into the Ashley River in April of 1670.

After long hardship and several encounters with hostile Spaniards and Indians, a settlement was established numbering 200 persons and called, in honor of the reigning king, "Charles Towne."

The English were not for long the only group in the still-precarious settlement which, ten years after the first landing, crossed the river to Oyster Point.

By 1680, German immigration had set in.

Events in France culminating in the violent Protestant persecutions of 1685 worked to allow an addition to the population.

And by the following year, there were four Huguenot settlements nearby.

Scots and Irish, Quakers and Jacobites all found Charleston a refuge.

By 1700, the population stood at almost 3,000, and Charleston was a bustling port.

What was Charleston like in those early days?

How did it look to the men and women who had left behind almost everything in the old world to start again in a land filled with wild animals, overgrown forests, partly covered with swamps, and roamed over, rather than inhabited, by savage tribes?

From the beginning, Charleston was different.

Lord Ashley Cooper, chief among the Lords Proprietors, planned it to be the bulwark of aristocratic principle in government, the western citadel of the English estate.

John Locke's "Fundamental Constitutions," prepared for the colony to avoid a too-numerous democracy, was to be the guiding instrument of stability.

♪ Charleston was unique in another respect.

Alone among the cities along the East Coast, Charleston was a city-state, a "Venice of the West" built on mud, cribs of palmetto logs loaded with cobblestone ballasts, and diked and protected against hurricane tides with seawalls of crushed oyster shell known as tabby.

♪ The location of the city after 1680 may have done much to influence the character of its existence.

As one 19th-century traveler observed, "One yields readily to the illusion that the city springs directly from the bosom of the waves."

♪ Joseph Dalton, a member of the Grand Council writing to Lord Ashley, said of Oyster Point, "It is, as it were, "a key to open and shut this settlement "into safety or danger.

Charles Towne can defend itself."

And indeed, it did defend itself against the fleets of Spain, France, England, and the Union.

The location of the city, at the confluence of two rivers, gave rise to the witticism that the Ashley and Cooper Rivers come together in Charleston to form the Atlantic Ocean.

♪ Of all the early English colonies, Charles Towne was the only one with a complete architectural plan.

Lord Ashley Cooper sent a model to serve as a blueprint for the new settlement.

Above Oyster Point, a line was drawn from the Ashley to the Cooper River to mark the northernmost boundary of the city.

That boundary is marked in part today by Beaufain Street.

The first Charleston was a town composed of houses in the European style, laid out on broad streets with spacious squares dividing the houses.

The vigorous growth of the city, however, precluded the following of Lord Ashley Cooper's plan.

For example, Oyster Point was crisscrossed with a series of small, irregular channels, and when land was developed, it tended to border these meandering streams rather than follow the more regular streets.

Even the streets themselves sometimes followed the channels, as does the present Water Street.

♪ Much of the charm of the city springs from this unplanned development.

To Charleston, each nationality brought something of its own background.

♪ And so from the first, it was composed of numerous individual designs and schemes, developed more or less at random.

However, develop it most certainly did.

At the magnificent natural harbor, developed as a center of trade, the first and most gracious of the early streets was built down by the harbor where part of East Bay stands.

Rice, the staple crop of the colony, came from England in the 1670s.

By the end of the century, the harvest was so considerable that there was great difficulty finding vessels to transport it.

Rice built most of Charleston and educated most of its sons.

Indigo joined rice as a source of revenue.

It has been said that indigo did more to enrich the people of the province than the mines of South America for the king of Spain.

♪ ♪ Above all, trade with the Indians probably brought the most prosperity.

Each spring the town was filled with noisy crowds in from the back country to sell their goods.

By the mid-years of the 18th century, Charleston exported annually more than 100,000 deerskins brought to the coast by the traders.

♪ ♪ "These sparkes," wrote a contemporary, "made little of drinking 15 or 16 pounds at one bout."

That would be about 48 dollars.

Charleston's taverns and punch houses, such as the Bowling Green House, seldom lacked for business.

And so the town, by its position and natural resources, prospered.

♪ Nearby, the Spaniards and the French still regarded the English as, at best, trespassers, and in 1703, the town suffered its first military attack.

However, the French soldiers who composed the besieging army found the town so well fortified and with such a stoutly constructed wall that the siege proved hopeless from the start.

The picturesque quality of the growing city was matched by the beauty of its surroundings.

In 1707, Governor Archdale wrote, "Out of Charleston for three or four miles runs Broadway, "as delightful a road and walk, "of great breadth and pleasantly green, "that I believe no prince in Europe with all his art could make so pleasant a sight for the whole year."

♪ Little is left of the buildings of the first 50 years in the original city and few remain in the outlying areas, Medway, Middleburg, and the churches of St. James Goose Creek and St. Andrew's, to name a few.

The Quakers' lot on King Street forms part of Governor Archdale Square.

The occupancy and title go back to among the oldest without change in the city.

So things stood at the beginning of the 18th century: a small town with enormous possibilities for growth, thriving, and beginning to prosper.

War interrupted the rapid growth.

The war of the Spanish succession and the sudden and devastating Indian war with the Yemassee left Charleston untouched but led to the devastation of surrounding areas and filled the town with distraught refugees.

This setback, however, was only temporary.

The wave of prosperity continued to carry Charleston and its inhabitants forward at a surprising speed.

The walls of old fortifications came down, and up went the new houses and churches that today make Charleston unique among American cities.

The town began to spread out westward across land reclaimed from marshes that cut across the peninsula and northward through country held by independent owners, eastward through Rhettsbury, Ansonborough, and Middlesex to the present King Street.

And to the rest, everything belonging to the Wraggs and the Comings.

Then, as now, Charleston was a gracious city.

Painter Charles Fraser in his "Reminiscences," written before the end of the century, tells of the many greens throughout the city.

"There was Savage's green "at the lower end of Broad Street, "which, until the building of the old theatre, "was entirely vacant and spacious enough "to be used for military exercise.

"The old battalions often paraded and fired their pieces here."

Sketches of Governor Ferguson's house, which bordered this particular green, show elements of mid-century architecture.

The great body of buildings constructed in this mid-century period were within the walls.

The most notable examples are to be found on the west side of Church Street between Tradd and Water Street.

Charleston, from its earliest history, has been subject to two great forces of destruction: fire and flood.

The fire of 1740 that obliterated a large area of what is today the East Battery was one of many.

Equally, storms played havoc with the sea defenses in the town itself.

An eyewitness writing in 1752 records, "The Gulf Stream poured in like a torrent, "filling the harbor in minutes.

"Before 11:00 all the vessels of the harbor were onshore "except the man-of-war 'Hornet,' "which made it out by cutting away the masts.

"Wharves and bridges were ruined "and houses and stores upon them beaten down, "as were many houses in town, with an abundance of roofs, chimneys, etc."

Again in 1761 came such a fearful storm "...as to plow Ashley River to the bottom and lay the channel bare," five vessels being sunk outright, and many others losing their masts.

But still, in spite of these frequent disasters, Charleston continued to prosper and to grow in size.

♪ Perhaps this very prosperity accounted for the fact that it was from Charleston the first rumblings of the approaching revolution were heard.

The arrival of a British sloop of war in Charleston harbor carrying universally-condemned stamp papers aroused considerable local feeling.

Three companies of volunteers organized under Captains Marion, Pinckney, and Elliot who, one night after the sloop's arrival, embarked from the west end of South Bay Street to the landing at Fort Johnson and hoisted the state flag, then three white crescents, from the topmost point of the fortification.

All the cannons were loaded, and without more adieu, the sloop beat a hasty retreat.

A small action, perhaps, but it predicted great things.

By 1772, Charleston was defended towards the waters by seven batteries, or bastions.

A new work, which had been begun in 1757 and was later to be called Fort Moultrie was being fitted out.

In 1775, Dr. Milligan, a loyal subject of his Britannic majesty, wrote, "At last, the demon of rebellion "took possession of their hearts "and almost banished humanity from among them, together with every other virtue."

♪ Charleston played a large part in the first stages of the revolution.

In 1775, Fort Johnson fell with little resistance into colonial hands.

And in 1776, Sir Peter Parker's fleet appeared offshore from Charleston, and attacked the still- unfinished Fort Moultrie, or Fort Sullivan, as it then was.

The attack was repulsed with great heroism by the garrison under Colonel Moultrie, whose name was given to the fort he had so bravely defended.

In 1780, the British rearguard action in the Southern states began, and Charleston was once again in the front line.

A siege ended in capitulation of the city, followed by two years of British occupation.

♪ ♪ Charleston, in spite of extensive damage and suffering, seemed in 1781 to be in comfortable circumstances, and trade continued very brisk.

In 1782, the former lieutenant governor Bull wrote, "Buildings are raising into the ashes in that part of the town burned two years ago."

That is the area fronting the Cooper River.

But, he added, "...not like a phoenix with equal beauty."

Ruins were hastily patched up, and houses equally hastily constructed.

Then, in 1782 came the battle of Eutaw, in which General Greene, in command of the American forces, inflicted heavy casualties on the British levies under Colonel Stuart, and Charleston was soon after set at liberty, this time, in a free republic.

These events launched another wave of remarkable prosperity, which reached its peak between 1790 and the War of 1812.

Rice and the rich river fields, cotton, which replaced indigo, mechanical advances that spread their preparation, all contributed considerably to the new prosperity.

Tobacco was coming in to take the place of the Indian trade.

All these new crops produced the wagon trade of upper King Street.

When the building of the Santee Canal bypassed the dangerous passage below the mouth of the river, business increased along the already-bustling wharves.

The architecture of the time reflected this sudden affluence.

The gracious lines that were favored by discerning Englishmen of the period were found in innumerable Charleston houses such as that of Joseph Manigault.

The revolutionary fortifications to the north of the city were soon engulfed by the expanding suburbs.

Business gradually took over King Street and made it the commercial center of the town.

It was on King Street that the wagon yards were located.

These areas housed the cumbersome wagons that came rumbling in from the outlying areas, bringing the crops to market.

♪ ♪ The new, elegant houses being laid out in new subdivisions were, to some extent, built according to a plan.

Wragg Square and Wragg Mall are the happy results of these efforts.

A declaration of war in 1812, however, put an abrupt end to this rapid expansion.

Just how abrupt is shown in the unfinished steeple of the Second Presbyterian Church, which could not be completed when money became scarce in the wagon yards, and also in the failure of Radcliffeborough inhabitants to complete St. Paul's Church.

During the prewar period, Charleston welcomed two very illustrious figures.

In 1791, George Washington arrived at what is now Mount Pleasant and crossed the river to the city, accompanied by two bands and a flotilla of small craft, and was lavishly feted by the inhabitants.

"Go on, sir, as you have done.

"Continue to possess as well as to deserve the love and esteem of all your fellow citizens," said the address of welcome.

♪ The following year, Citizen Genet, whose welcome was as vivid but less formal than that of the President, visited the city.

The French revolution was in favor at the time, and French privateersmen paraded the streets with sabers at their sides.

However, when America took a neutral position, this attitude changed.

Charles Fraser records how he "...saw the cannons "of the old artillery stationed on Beale's wharf "to prevent the sailing of a privateer which had threatened to batter the city."

When the War of 1812 ended, Charleston found herself in a new world.

The steamship had appeared and was diverting trade to Savannah.

The town made one attempt to recapture some trade by building a railroad inland, but its success was temporary, and the remainder of the trade fell off dramatically.

However, the sea was still hers, and rice produced a substantial profit.

Consequently, the speed with which building was carried out decreased, but did not cease.

Robert Mills, perhaps the greatest of American architects, was working at this time, and his efforts produced the famous Fireproof Building and the First Baptist Church.

The ponderous Gothic Revival came soon after.

Probably the best-known example of a building in this Neo-Gothic style is the Huguenot Church.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ During these years, the city was visited by President Monroe, and in 1825 came Lafayette, forty-eight years after his dramatic landing in America.

He was welcomed by the citizens for whom he had become a symbol of political liberty.

The most magnificent and moving occasion of the period was the burial of John Calhoun in 1850.

The cortege consisted of the largest gathering of citizens ever seen in the city.

The whole town was in mourning.

♪ ♪ The middle years of the last century were full of a constant uneasiness and a sense of impending disaster.

Economic and political pressures were building up, and in Charleston, the restlessness to be felt in the atmosphere was so much the stronger.

Charleston in 1860 was everything that the aristocratic Lord Ashley had dreamed.

There was no other society like it in the United States.

It was third in the nation in per capita wealth, trade was brisk, and cotton was king.

Then, on the 20th of December that year, the union was dissolved as South Carolina seceded from the "union of states."

♪ This action was heard almost immediately by the firing on the provisioning ship "Star of the West" from Fort Moultrie.

By the following April, the tension within the city-- indeed, the entire South-- had increased to fever pitch.

On the morning of April 12, 1861, the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter.

War had begun.

♪ Charleston suffered very little physical damage, but the economic damage was complete and devastating.

Charleston became a city under siege, confronted on the sea by federal blockades and finally sealed into itself by the arrival of Sherman's troops to the rear.

The country surrounding the city suffered at the hands of the Union troops, as hundreds of plantations and villages were put to the sword.

♪ [rhythmic drum beats] [rhythmic drum beats] Henry Timrod, laureate of the Confederacy, wrote of Charleston at a time when the fate of the city still hung in the balance: "Calm as that second summer which precedes "The first fall of the snow, "In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds, "The City bides the foe.

"As yet, behind their ramparts stern and proud, "Her bolted thunders sleep-- "Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud, "Looms o'er the solemn deep.

"No Calpe frowns from lofty cliff or scar "To guard the holy strand; "But Moultrie holds in leash her dogs of war "Above the level sand.

"And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched, "Unseen, beside the flood-- "Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched "That wait and watch for blood.

"Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade, "Walk grave and thoughtful men, "Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's blade "As lightly as the pen.

"And maidens, with such eyes as would grow dim "Over a bleeding hound, "Seem each one to have caught the strength of him "Whose sword she sadly bound.

"Thus girt without and garrisoned at home, "Day patient following day, "Old Charleston looks from roof and spire and dome, "Across her tranquil bay.

"Ships, through a hundred foes, from Saxon lands "And spicy Indian ports, "Bring Saxon steel and iron to her hands, "And Summer to her courts.

"But still along yon dim Atlantic line, "The only hostile smoke "Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine, "From some frail, floating oak.

"Shall the Spring dawn, and she still clad in smiles, "And with an unscathed brow, "Rest in the strong arms of her palm-crowned isles, "As fair and free as now?

"We know not; in the temple of the Fates "God has inscribed her doom; "And, all untroubled in her faith, she waits The triumph or the tomb."

♪ ♪ ♪ Because of the resultant poverty which gripped the city after the war, building came to a standstill.

Thus it is possible to enjoy even today many of the beautiful homes and buildings which were constructed before the city's fall in 1865.

Charleston's growth during the years following the war was slowed by the depressed economic condition of the state.

But as time passed, the old wounds began to heal.

♪ Today Charleston is again reaching for the greatness of the past.

The sea is still hers.

Charleston's natural deep-water harbor has once again become one of the leading ports.

Ranked 65th in 1947, it has risen to 15th today.

Due to the vigorous and far-sighted planning of the South Carolina Port Authority, ships reach out from Charleston to almost every major port in the world.

They serve South Carolina from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to Zanzibar, East Africa.

♪ Millions of tons of materials pass through the cavernous warehouses along the city's wharves each year.

Such items as horses from Australia, frogs destined for medical laboratories, pinball machines for Europe, and a statue for Irmo pass through this warehouse.

♪ It is interesting to note that only 198 ships called at this port in 1947.

Today a ship enters or leaves this port every two hours and 34 minutes.

The Charleston port facilities include warehouse storage areas, spacious docking facilities for large ocean-going vessels, railroad connections, trucking line facilities, a huge grain elevator, and, most of all, friendly cooperation.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Busy, growing ports demand faster inland means of transportation, and Charleston is no exception.

Highways feed into the city from all directions, pouring the wealth of the nation into the city.

New superhighways are creeping closer to the sea.

Indeed, they are nudging at the city limits.

Yet there are still remaining many of the picturesque, oak-lined highways of the plantation era.

♪ These roads and highways not only provide an avenue of commerce for Charleston, but bring a wealth of tourists to America's most historic city.

Tourists from all over the nation make Charleston a "must stop" each year.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ They come to the city to view the places where history was made, such as The Battery facing the sea with Fort Sumter in the distance.

♪ They come to walk cobblestone Chalmers Street and admire the old houses and gates which are so much a part of modern and historic Charleston.

♪ ♪ Historically speaking, Charleston with its surrounding area is a city of firsts.

The Chamber of Commerce Building dates from 1784 and houses one of the oldest city commercial organizations in the United States.

The Charleston Chamber of Commerce was formed in 1773.

♪ At the foot of Broad Street is the Old Exchange Building, completed in 1771 as a customs house.

It was here in 1776 that the Provincial Congress established the first independent government in America.

♪ Market Hall, built in 1841, is now used as a museum.

Behind the main building are colorful open-air markets where local produce is still sold.

♪ The oldest public building in the city is the old Powder Magazine.

Used during the Revolution for storing munitions, it is now a museum.

♪ The mother church of the colony is St. Philip's Episcopal Church.

The present building dates from 1835.

The churchyard is the resting place of such famous Carolinians as John C. Calhoun and Edward Rutledge.

The chimes of this church were recast into cannons during the Civil War and never replaced.

The Huguenot Church is the last remaining French Huguenot church in America which adheres to the old Huguenot liturgy.

Services have been conducted in French here for over 150 years.

♪ ♪ The Dock Street Theatre, the first building in America solely designed for theatrical purposes, opened its doors in 1736.

Twice burned and rebuilt, the building is still in use by local theater groups.

♪ The Charleston Museum, founded in 1773 by the Charles Towne Library Society, is considered the oldest museum in the United States, operated by the city and county of Charleston for the people of South Carolina and its visitors.

While its collections and exhibitions include examples of natural history and the products of man's culture from all over the world, special emphasis is placed on the South Carolina material.

♪ Along East Battery Street, Rainbow Row presents an ideal example of the early architecture of the merchant houses.

Once used by city merchants as counting houses, the buildings have been restored and are among the showplaces and landmarks of the city.

♪ ♪ St. Michael's Episcopal Church was begun in 1752.

The bells, clock, and organ were brought from England, but the bells have crossed the Atlantic four times.

They were captured by the British during the Revolution, returned, then sent back to England for repair after they were damaged during the War Between the States.

♪ City Hall, across from St. Michael's, was erected in 1801.

Its council chambers contain very valuable works of art, the best-known being the John Trumbull painting of George Washington, painted in 1791 at the time of the President's visit.

♪ Charleston suburbs are noted today for their beauty and ease of living.

Perhaps the best-known is Summerville, a town of gardens and flowers.

Summerville was once the place where Charlestonians escaped the heat of the city under cool oaks and spacious lawns.

Today it is a showplace of gardens and the year-round refuge for those who wish to avoid the rush and bustle of modern Charleston.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Oak-shrouded Highway 61 from Summerville into Charleston is lined with several restored plantation gardens, among them Middleton Gardens, the oldest landscaped formal garden in America.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Just as Charleston's strategic military value was recognized by the early pioneers, so it is today.

The Charleston airport is the center of military air travel for the lowcountry.

The U.S. Air Force operates a global air service from this field, becoming involved in the international scene to transport large numbers of people to and from areas during times of crisis.

♪ ♪ The Navy has played a key role in the development of Charleston.

Today's Navy is as much a part of Charleston as were the wooden vessels of the Revolution, indeed, even the ships that brought the first colonists.

A modern Navy needs modern facilities in order to keep pace with a rapidly-advancing technology.

♪ The nuclear-powered Polaris submarine is one of many modern vessels to be served at the Charleston base.

With the completion of this new dry dock, many more vessels will be stopping in Charleston.

♪ ♪ The heritage of Charleston's past is rich and varied, but it is the future, locked in the minds of these children, that will further enrich and expand her greatness.

Charleston's children are her future, and the key to that future is education, for it is from schoolrooms such as these that will emerge the Pinckneys, Rutledges, Calhouns, and Moultries.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ These are the merchants, craftsmen, tradesmen, planters, and politicians of tomorrow.

They will inherit these buildings, houses, and fortifications built for another age and time and construct a new and greater city beside the old and historic.

The past is their destiny, their key to greatness, and our hope for the future, and it is in the schools of higher education that the children of Charleston will realize the heritage that has been passed to them.

♪ Here, at the College of Charleston, the first city-chartered college in the United States, they will feel and hear the presence of the great merchants and lawyers of the past.

♪ ♪ At the Citadel, students recognize the city's and state's greatness in the roll call of cadets who have marched across the parade field to take their place of honor among the military greats of this country.

The Citadel's heritage goes back over 100 years, when the school was located in the old citadel.

♪ ♪ The Medical College of South Carolina is a leader in the training and education of people for the medical profession.

Here, also, the heritage of such great men as Dr. Milligan and those who preceded and followed him is felt.

Here, too, a tradition is being followed and pursued.

♪ ♪ ♪ Charleston is not only a city of tradition and history.

It is a city of great beauty and constantly-changing moods.

There is a stark, cold beauty in her wintry facade, which changes with the spring to a brightness and warmth which fills every garden and pathway, captures the hearts of visitors, and quickens the steps of its residents.

Charleston's world-famous gardens attract thousands of visitors each spring, of which a great many are local residents who each year renew their love for the city they call home.

The stately homes along The Battery, the winding streets, and the historic landmarks all take on a renewed warmth with the arrival of spring.

Charleston's shifting moods take on a different pattern with the approach of autumn.

This mood is borne in the warm doldrums of the mid-Atlantic and crosses thousands of miles of ocean to rattle the city to the old palmetto log foundations to remind her that the sea is still master of her fate.

This is hurricane season, a time held in much respect by the citizens of Charleston.

"Was it not strange there was no strangeness in it, "but only beauty and the dreams fulfilling?

"Always as if we'd found the end of searching, "reached the goal of longing, found the precious treasure, "come, after wandering, "surely, joyously, to the visioned homeland, to the magic country of our hearts' desire."

So wrote South Carolina's first and only poet laureate.

His name is Archibald Rutledge.

Rutledge was born in McClellanville in 1883.

Three years later he moved with his family to the Hampton Plantation.

His education was taken in Charleston, and he graduated from Union College in 1904.

Later in life he became famous for his penetrating poetry and prose.

In 1934, the South Carolina Legislature passed a resolution calling for a poet laureate.

Mr. Rutledge was chosen for the honor.

♪ This is the home of Archibald Rutledge today.

Its roots are sunk deep into the history of South Carolina, and the nation's greatest men visited here: George Washington, Daniel Webster, Francis Marion, Audubon, Robert E. Lee, and others.

Eleven motion pictures have been filmed on these grounds, including "Gone with the Wind."

Rutledge is the author of somewhere around 80 books, and they are all mirrors of man, beauty, and love of nature.

His writings, like those of any good author, are provoking.

Read once, they mean a great deal, but read repeatedly, they mean still more.

Dr. Rutledge says honesty and straightforwardness are the virtues a man ought to have.

He himself is deeply interesting and surprisingly candid about Rutledge, the poet.

In answering a question about his greatest source of inspiration, Dr. Rutledge said... ♪ Well, my first real inspiration came when I woke up to the fact that I had three boys in college at one time and it was necessary for me to do something strenuous.

I have been interested in writing since I was a little child.

Some people consider you a writer of prose rather than of poetry.

What do you think about that?

I like to be considered a poet because my prose is rather poetic, and I have had a greater response from the public to the poetry.

I have written 29 books of poems.

That's my first love, poetry.

This is a short poem called "Wood Song."

"O walk into the woods with me "and drink a wine of wizardry!

"Nature's wild beauty brims the cup; "Tiptoe, Titania holds it up.

"This innocent golden chalice drain "and come to peace beyond all pain; "to joy beyond dreams of youth, "to insight elder than the Truth.

"Vision more poignant, to descry "in the violet's little brimming eye.

"In rockrose and in goldenrod, the mercy and the love of God."

I am asked what my philosophy is about the knowledge of man.

Well...

I'll answer it in this way.

In Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra," Iras and Charmian, the great queen's two ladies-in-waiting, are going to have their fortunes told.

And they're teasing this old soothsayer.

And they ask him if he knows anything.

He says, "In nature's infinite book of secrecy, a little have I read."

That's my idea of the knowledge of man, at this point.

What is your reflection on religion?

Well, it is reflected, I think, in my writings.

I believe in God and immortality and in a region where eternal spirits dwell.

Have you ever worried about the future?

Do you mean on this earth or hereafter?

On this earth, say, either, uh, financially, or... Well, everyone is more or less concerned about the future since the income tax came into being.

And, uh, all of us try to do the best we can under the circumstances.

I think perhaps I have been fortunate in not having to worry too much because my writing has been successful.

What is the most gratifying part of your life as a writer?

I have made a good deal of money, but that isn't the answer.

The answer is the gratitude of readers.

My mail is heavy... with letters from readers who are glad to find writing that can be read aloud to the family.

Do you feel your readers have been affected by your poetry?

Yes, I know they have.

I wrote one poem that I know for a fact prevented a suicide.

And that affected me deeply, because Samuel Johnson said, "To have an influence on one other human being is an event of immense spiritual importance."

And here's a brief poem called "Hillcrest Pine."

Here's this old pine standing on top of a hill all alone, but he has his beauty.

"By all comrades long forsaken, "by the storm and thunder shaken, "He a grim deep root has taken.

"Him the wintry blast discover; "but the wild moon is his lover; "close to him the white stars hover: "silent, stark, eternal token "of the anguish kept unspoken, "of the will that is not broken.

"This the stars in heaven divining, "their tall thrones of light resigning, for a crown on him are shining."

(narrator) Archibald Rutledge has a heritage that reaches far back into history.

He lives on a plantation where 140 Negroes still share-crop.

More than a writer, he is a true Southerner, and he believes in the South just as his forefathers did.

Here's the way he expresses it.

♪ I think that the South is-- has more promise than any other part of the country.

The other parts of the country almost look to me as if they have lived their life.

The South seems to me to be a young person coming forward and coming into the beauty of manhood and womanhood.

We are just beginning to develop our own resources.

(narrator) Someone put it this way when the subject of Archibald Rutledge came up, "He is South Carolina's answer to Robert Frost and then some."

What is Dr. Rutledge's philosophy of life?

Perhaps he himself expressed it best in his work, "The Beauty of Storms."

"We are prone to lament that the world is not better, "yet the fact that it is full of trouble "affords us our only chance to spend our hearts.

"A time of prosperity is a dangerous time.

"The soul loafs and grows fat.

"Times of storms and peril "are the ones that show what we are made of.

"Loss and grief are always life's summonses to us to be great."

Meaningful words from one of South Carolina's most learned men, Archibald Rutledge.

♪ ♪ He was, however, only one among many who have been inspired by the beauties of this ancient city.

Dubose Heyward, in writing the book "Porgy," captured something of the remarkable atmosphere.

It was his dramatic work that fired the imagination of musician George Gershwin.

♪ Charleston is many things, and Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" captures only a part of its diversity.

Yet for all this, here is Charleston.

Let us take a look at the city through the eyes of its composer.

♪ ["Summertime"] ♪ (woman) ♪ Summertime... ♪ ♪ and the livin' ♪ is easy.

♪ ♪ Fish are jumpin', ♪ ♪ and the cotton ♪ is high.

♪ ♪ Oh, ♪ your Daddy's rich, ♪ ♪ and your ma ♪ is good lookin'.

♪ ♪ So hush, ♪ little baby, ♪ ♪ don't you cry.

♪ ♪ ♪ One of these mornings ♪ ♪ you're goin' ♪ to rise up singing.

♪ ♪ Then you'll spread ♪ your wings, ♪ ♪ and you'll take ♪ the sky.

♪ ♪ But till ♪ that morning, ♪ there's a-nothin' ♪ can harm you, ♪ with daddy ♪ and mammy ♪ ♪ standin' by.

♪ ♪ [wordless chorus] ♪ [wordless chorus] ♪ ["Bess, You Is My Woman Now"] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ This, then, is Charleston, a city by the sea, a city of historic progress that reaches into the hearts of all who visit or live here to quicken their blood and liven their step in an effort to carry Charleston to new and greater things.

♪ ["The Charleston"] ♪ ♪ Captioned by: CompuScripts Captioning www.compuscripts.com ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪