Open Thread Thursday: The Power of Place
This week’s Open Thready Thursday is inspired by my travels last week to the South Carolina/Georgia low country. Of all the places that I visited, the one that has remained most visceral was standing on Butler Island Plantation, just south of Darien, Georgia.
There is a direct connection to Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts. Fanny Kemble, who was a friend of the Shaw familiy, was married to Pierce Butler before divorcing him and publishing her personal journals which included a scathing critique of slavery. Shaw mentions Butler and Kemble in his letters home while he was encamped on nearby St. Simons Island.
But that is not why this particular spot remains so vivid for me.