South Carolina Society

Military Order of the Stars and Bars

Saturday Convention Tours

The Convention Tours will each have included lunch at the Confederate Relic Room. Your lunch will be catered by Capital City Catering. The menu for this event will be: Hickory Smoked BBQ, BBQ Chicken, fresh green beans, cream corn, wild rice pilaf, fresh peach cobler, tea and lemonade.

Following the lunch there will be a tour for all of the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room which was founded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1896.

After touring the Confederate Relic Room, the two other tours will leave for Congaree Creek and Downtown Columbia.

The Congaree Creek tour will take you to the swamp lands of the Congaree River where the Confederate Army made its last stand to keep the Yankees out of Columbia. Old State Road on which the line of defense is situated, is the same road that was in use during the war. During the summer months the Congaree Creek may be a small creek and the adjacent lands are dry, but during the late winter months the creek is full and the adjacent lands are extremely wet.

The General's At Rest tour will take you to several places in our downtown area that survived the burning of Columbia by the Yankees. The current South Carolina Capitol Building was under construction during the bombardment of the city. The Capitol Building of that time was next door and when it burned, the heat was so intense that the stonework of the new building was damaged. You will also notice "stars" that are located on many parts of the Capitol. These designated the places where cannon balls struck the building. Most of these same places were purposely left unrepaired.

Across the street from the Capitol is Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. Under the ancient oaks and magnolias of Trinity's Churchyard are buried some of South Carolina's most distinguished sons and daughters: General Wade Hampton, General Peter Horry, and Private Robert Stark (all Revolutionary heroes); Dr. Thomas Cooper, president of the South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina) and friend of Thomas Jefferson; General Wade Hampton and numerous others who fought so gallantly for the Lost Cause; Henry Timrod, Poet Laureate of the Confederacy; six governors: Wade Hampton, Richard Irvine Manning, John Lawrence Manning, Richard Irvine Manning, Hugh Smith Thompson, and James F. Byrnes; and eight bishops of the Episcopal Church: Ellison Capers, Kirkman G. Finlay, Henry D. Phillips, C. Alfred Cole, Louis C. Melcher, John A. Pinckney, George M. Alexander, Gray Temple and William A. Beckham.
- http://www.trinitysc.org -

Only a few blocks from the Trinity Church is the Hampton-Preston Mansion. When Sherman's Army destroyed the Catholic Orphanage, the Sisters confronted the general as he promised to keep them safe. Sherman offered any place in Columbia for them to go and they chose the Hampton-Preston Mansion. We will visit it.

Congaree Creek



Stars mark the location of direct cannon ball hits.

Trinity Epicopal Cathedral



Hampton-Preston Mansion