Tomorrow will be nineteen years since my first post on this blog. By coincidence, this past weekend I returned to the same place I first wrote about here: Ninety Six National Historic Site. They were celebrating the 245th anniversary of the siege of the Star Fort, and, since activities were promised and I hadn't been there in a while and I actually didn't have to work this Saturday for the first time this month and I thought it would be appropriate to visit a Revolutionary War-related site in this the 250th year of our nation, I went. It was a longer drive this time than last time, and alas, the activities, particularly the musket demonstration, were curtailed by the humidity and threat of rain. But I did get a guided tour with a ranger, which improved my understanding of the site. I was impressed to hear that the tunnel begun by Kościuszko and his men in an attempt to undermine the fort's walls was, by virtue of being dug into thick clay, still intact when the federal government took over the site in the '70s; and, somewhat meanly, I chuckled as the ranger said that the reinforcements that the British army intended to bolster defense of the fort, previously held by American Loyalist militiamen, came directly from fighting in Ireland and were kitted out in uniforms suited for that environment and not for marching the approximately 170 miles as the crow flies from Charleston to Ninety Six in June. It all reminded me of what a miracle it is that we won.
 |
| the Black Swan Tavern in the Logan Log House |
No comments:
Post a Comment