The City of the Silent 
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Magnolia Cemetery is what Superintendent Beverly Donald calls "the best kept secret in Charleston." To get there, you must drive outside the historic district to an area known as the Charleston Neck. Once you pass the white pillars at the entrance of Magnolia Cemetery and head down its curvy drive, you, too, will be silenced by the quintessentially Southern majesty of this burial ground.

"Planters, politicians, military leaders, bootleggers, whorehouse madams - you name it, anybody from the last 150 years of Charleston's history is out there," says Ted Phillips, author of a soon-to-be published book on Magnolia, City of the Silent. Once a thriving 19th-century rice plantation, the 128-acre cemetery is what Phillips calls a "nice microcosm of Charleston history, of those who were rich and white, since 1850."

Magnolia has always been - and continues to be - a focal point for remembrance of the Confederacy in Charleston. Each Confederate Memorial Day speakers, wreaths and flags pay homage to what many Charlestonians still refer to as the "Lost Cause Movement." For two nights each October, the Confederate Heritage Trust holds its Confederate Ghost Walk, a sellout event that brings to life the some of the people who are buried at Magnolia and the events surrounding their lives. For tickets, contact CSA Galleries.

Massive stone crosses and crumbling brick tombs are set against a backdrop of ancient oaks draped with moss, lagoons trimmed with cattails and the striking marshlands of the Cooper River and its web-like bridges. The sheen of new granite stands out among stones worn nearly smooth by time, elaborately carved Gothic monuments and hand-wrought fences. There are marble towers draped in rope and rose carvings, small markers declaring, simply, "Infant," and even a striking pyramid tomb made of granite, marble and stained glass.

Monuments mark the graves of five governors, including Thomas Bennett, three U.S. senators and two cabinet members. One of these, the grave of George Alfred Trenholm, is Phillips' favorite. "He was a great and noble man, a pioneer cotton broker who served as secretary of the treasury of the Confederacy, a man upon whom many believe the character Rhett Butler was based. He's under a small marker, with just his initials and the dates of his birth and death."

Designed by architect Edward C. Jones in 1850, Magnolia was dubbed the City of the Silent in a poem by the "Poet Laureate of the Confederacy", Henry Timrod.

(Webmaster note: The article is not accurate. Timrod was indeed the "Poet Laureate of the Confederacy", and he penned the poem Ode Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S. C., 1867. But it was William Gilmore Simms, considered the South Carolina Poet Laureate before the title was official, wrote the poem City of the Silent in 1850)

The original plantation farmhouse dates to 1790. It has been renovated and now hosts the cemetery offices. Nearby, a huge live oak bends its heavy limbs to the ground as if kneeling in prayer. The original gatehouse, receiving tomb and probably many of the mausoleums are part of the original 1850 cemetery structures. Union soldiers, who encamped here before they took Charleston during the Civil War, destroyed the chapel.

Around 35,000 people are buried at Magnolia, which is still a working cemetery. There are about 50 acres available for future plots, so if you'd like to finally be in the good company of the famous and the infamous - statesmen, heroes, poets, artists and philanthropists.

The above article is from:
http://lowcountrynow.bestreadguide.com/charleston/stories/19980924/chu_cityofthesilent.shtml 

Article in Post & Courier March 2004

Reinterment of Confederate Sailors exhumed from underneath the Citadel's Johnson Hagood Stadium.

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