Gone With The Wind

At the University of South Carolina is a striking classical Greek building known as the South Caroliniana Library. It was built in 1840 by the outstanding architect Robert Mills and was said to be the first American college building for a separate library.


The building anchors one side of the open end of a “horseshoe” of sturdy dignified buildings all built before the War for Southern Independence. Antebellum South Carolina College was intended to be and was a strong, recognised institution with an internationally distinguished faculty. The Library contained rare materials, including a first edition Audubon.


The Library escaped Sherman’s fires but South Carolina College did not escape Reconstruction and suffered the same decline as its impoverished state. In the World War II era some insightful people who loved their State, led by Robert Meriwether, formed a South Caroliniana Society. The Society was allowed to take over the Library for the keeping of its assiduously collected historical materials.


The Library thus for decades became busy as a major research institution, drawing outstanding historians from around the world to its collections.


In the early 2020s it was decided that the Library need “renovation,” a project completed in 2023.


I am not surprised to see the Library “brought up to date,” but I am abysmally disappointed at the extent of the “renovation.” Everything reflecting South Carolina history and culture is gone.


I expected the removal of the stone plaque to Preston Brooks, who thrashed the cowardly Charles Sumner of Massachusetts who had refused a duel for his insults. But I did not expect to see the entire removal of anything reminiscent of South Carolina. The Library is now full of trivial “exhibits” that would not be out of place in an Ohio museum. It has also become something of a center for African American materials and meetings, which is fine.


The greatest loss is the removal of the gallery of fine paintings of outstanding South Carolinians, including women, that once was a striking feature.


A few years ago, for more than a decade, the University had a President who had left Michigan just ahead of the sheriff. His tenure finally was ended when an out-of-state newspaper dug up documents from a landfill and he went to his proper place in the penitentiary. I mention this because this fellow tried to remove the portraits to the president’s mansion. But they were the property of the South Caroliniana Society, which blocked his attempt.


But the times have changed. The “renovated” Library has replaced the portraits with exhibits and inferior paintings of unknown people. The precious art has been moved and hidden in a closed room in the big modern library. Insider information tells me that one of the portraits is damaged and another missing. This remarkable vision of old South Carolina history and culture can no longer be seen in public.


​I cannot really blame what has happened on increased African American influence or on the Woke ideology pervasive in academic institutions. The real cause is that the leaders of the State have abandoned their heritage and created a world of Babbitry. They have yearned for a university that resembles the American mainstream, a second string Ohio State.