Throughout its history, Charleston, has left many impressions, and has hosted opinions from many sides. Below, Martin R. Delany weighs in with his first impression, as he visits Charleston for the first time. Delany was one of the great African-american thinkers and doers of the 19th century. He was a trained physician, the first of his race, to be admitted to Harvard's Medical School. He was also the first black officer in the United states Army, appointed a lieutenant while serving the first Army Chaplin for Negro troops. Delany thought and wrote deeply on many topics addressing the social lives and economic progress of African-Americans. His life mirors the complexity and variety of thought that swirled around the twin issues of slavery and freedom for African-Americans. (wr/griot)

IMPRESSIONS OF CHARLESTON, S.C., 1865:

"I entered the city, which, from earliest childhood and through life, I had learned to contemplate with feelings of the utmost abhorrence, a place of the most insufferable assumption and cruelty to the blacks; where the sound of the lash at the whipping post, and the hammer of the auctioneer, were coordinate sounds in thrilling harmony, that place which had ever been closed against liberty by an arrogantly assumptuous despotism, such as well might have vied with the infamous King of Dahomey; the place from which had been expelled the envoy of Massachusetts, for daring to present the claims of the commonwealth in behalf of her free citizens, and into which, but a few days before, had proudly entered in triumph the gallant Schemmelfening, leading with wild shouts the Massachusetts Fifty Fourth Regiment, composed of some of the best blood and finest youths of the colored citizens of the Union.

"For a moment, I found myself dashing in unmeasured strides through the city, as if under a forced march to attack the already crushed and fallen enemy. Again I halted to look upon the shattered walls of the once stately but now deserted edifices of the proud and supercilious occupants. A doomed city it appeared to be, with few, or none but soldiers and the colored inhabitants. The haughty Carolinians, who believed their state an empire, this city incomparable, and themselves invincible, had fled in dismay and consternation at the approach of their conquerors, leaving the metropolis to its fate. And but for the vigilance and fidelity of the colored firemen, and other colored inhabitants, there would have been nothing left but a smouldering plain of ruins in the place where Charleston once stood, from the firebrands in the hands of the flying whites. . . .Whatever impressions may have previously been entertained concerning the free colored people of Charleston, their manifestation from my advent till my departure, gave evidence of their pride in identity and appreciation of race that equal in extent the proudest Caucasian."

Exact origin of this letter is unknown, but is quoted in Ullman, pp. 313+314.