POWER: Poet, Project, Pork, Progress

The cypress and liveoak river bottoms of South Carolina's coastal fringe near Charleston are festooned with Spanish moss and legend. Here Generals Sumter, Greene and Francis Marion ("The Swamp Fox") harried Tarleton and Lord Rawdon at the Revolution's end. Here Sir Peter Parker's fleet was defeated at Sullivan's Island by General Moultrie, whose name was given to one of the forts near which the Civil War began three generations later. On forested uplands running back from the warm sea stood some of the South's finest oldtime plantations. Along the rivers and their...