Major Charles E. McGuire

Chapter One:   Charles

Charles Everson Beauregard McGuire was born in South Carolina on August 21, 1823. The full moon illuminated the countryside just outside of Charleston as a host of crickets and cicadas heralded my birth on that sultry summer night so long ago. The summer of 1823 had been hot and dry but the coming day would bring great changes, thunder storms with strong winds and rain to break the long dry spell and quench the thirsty soil.

Looking back I suppose the coming storms were prophetic. Those attending my birth had no idea that within forty years I and my kin would find ourselves surrounded by a storm of a different kind. We would be engaged in a great conflict which would divide our nation and our families, pitting brother against brother and friend against friend. Our world and our way of life would be forever changed. Some of us tested by the flames of conflict would rise from the ashes of our civilization like the Phoenix stronger and better then before. Other families would not survive the holocaust and once prominent names and citizens would pass into history, their legacy scattered to the four winds.

I was born at Grand Oak Plantation in the big Charleston rice bed in the upstairs front bedroom. Ordinarily we would not have been at the plantation at that time of year. August was hot and humid, and usually there were lots of bugs and mosquitoes but since this year had been so dry the insects didn't seem quite so bad. When the midwife told the Captain that his daughter-in-law was carrying a boy he insisted that the child be born at Grand Oak. The Captain always got his way. In the last month of her pregnancy Louisa Rose Everson McGuire, her maid, two servants, the attending midwife and my father, Thomas, sailed up the Ashley River to Grand Oak. They were met at the dock by the house servants, two of whom carried mother up to the house in a sedan chair. Father followed with the servants from Charleston. The Negroes who lived at the plantation carried the rest of the trunks up to the big house. Grandmother had made sure that the big rice bed in the bedroom where I was to be born had been hung with netting to keep out the bugs, and she made sure that there were two pickaninnies on hand to fan mother all during the long hot afternoons. When mother's sister Euphemia found out that Grandfather had insisted that Louisa come to the country for the delivery she was furious. Euphemia was on her honeymoon, taking the cool air in Newport, Rhode Island when the news of what Grandfather had done reached her. She immediately packed up her belongings and her maid and sailed for Charleston leaving her surprised husband to make apologies to their friends in Newport.

"The nerve of that man," said Euphemia, "putting my beloved sister's health at risk just so his grandson can be born at Grand Oak. Everybody knows it isn't safe for a white woman of delicate breeding to be in those bug infested cotton fields in the summer."

Euphemia arrived at Grand Oak a week later. She was relieved to see that Grandmother was there with Louisa. The Captain had at least procured a decent midwife and as grandmother pointed out he was not going to let anything happen to the woman carrying his grandchild. Euphemia thought the his priorities were a little misplaced. She was indignant. She felt as though the Captain viewed her sister as nothing more then one of his breeding mares but she held her tongue. There was nothing left to do but wait. Fortunately the wait was not long. Everything went smoothly and I was born at two o'clock in the morning on August 21st