by Patrick J. Wohlscheid
Walking around East Bay and Broad Streets toward the Old Exchange Building and Provost Dungeon, slipping into Washington Square as a shaded detour, seems to exemplify the historical (and especially architectural) history that Charleston has cultivated for itself. The positioning of the Old Exchange Building, itself centered at the end of the long street, is an appropriate placement for a historical site that served as the center of a great deal of political, social, and cultural activity in the late-18th century—both for South Carolina and the eventual United States.
Though the Provost Dungeon might be the most exciting point of interest for visitors (who doesn’t want to visit a dungeon, one that held prisoners of the British during the American Revolution), I was most struck by the political importance of the second floor of the Exchange. Even before the American Revolution, the “Great Hall” of the Exchange was used as the site for electing delegates to the First Continental Congress in 1774, and the outside steps as a public arena for the Declaration of Independence to be read in 1776. During the early 1780s, the building was primarily used for martial purposes under the control of the English, but again entirely returned to its revolutionary political contexts in the later part of the decade, as in 1788 the US Constitution was ratified in the Great Hall. This space, which is now occupied by some antique furniture and public history banners, struck me primarily by how empty it seemed. In a way, the grand space almost parallels the way that these events and philosophical documents are portrayed in American cultural memory. Though historically situated, things like the Declaration and the Constitution are seen (and for some reasons, I think, rightly so) as documents positioned as universal, existing outside of time
However, I see the large copy of the Constitution sitting in the center of the room, which visitors can sign as if they are part of the ratification. I signed my name, small in the corner, already losing sight of it amidst the swell of other signatures. The material contributions to this document and its ratification in this Great Hall bring it out of the rhetorical vacuum, back into a specific historical moment which the Old Exchange Building particularly conveys. The tensions I think of in this particular space, between particular and universal, historical and timeless, are some of the tensions that I think literary study captures so well, too. The banners that discuss the role of women and enslaved peoples throughout the building also capture the specificity with which we should think about Charleston in the 18th-century. On the second floor, the Constitution and Declaration history is “flashier” or perhaps more interesting to many. But juxtaposed with it the discussions of the leaders who frequented the Exchange Building, many of them slave owners, and most all of them men, greatly complicate the grand narrative of the Great Hall. Writing this, I relate this particularly to our course discussions of Franklin and Jefferson, founding fathers with eccentric and interesting literary lives, but whose actions (and even a great deal of their writing) exemplifies the contradictions of 18th-century American life and literature.