Signer of the SC Ordinance – Langdon Cheves, Jr

Langdon Cheves, Jr

This week we honor one of South Carolina’s Sons and brave citizens Langdon Cheves Jr for risking all to lead the way for South Carolina to be free and independant.

Langdon Cheves Jr was born in 1814 and died on the 10th of July, 1863. During the war he was a Confederate Officer as Captain. Born into an upper echelon aristocrat family, he was the son of Langdon Cheves, Sr. As an intellectual, he quickly came to the realization that civil war was inescapable in 1861. He was a delegate to the South Carolina secession convention from the Savannah, GA, St. Peter’s Parish and signed the ordinance on the column 4 number 16 .From his own wealth, he procured arms and equipment for the strengthening and defense of the coastal regions of South Carolina and Georgia. Further, he employed his engineering background to design and supervise the construction of the “Gazelle”, a hot-air balloon for observation. Constructed of imported silk, the Gazelle was relocated to Richmond, Virginia and subsequently was used throughout the June, 1862 Battle of Seven Pines for the purposes of the Confederate military.

In 1862, General John Clifford Pemberton, commander of the Department of South Carolina and Georgia, arranged the construction of Morris Island Battery on Morris Island, South Carolina (the battery would become known as Battery Wagner after its namesake, Lt. Colonel Thomas M. Wagner, was killed). Cheves was solicited to oversee the choosing of the location, the engineering and construction of Battery Wagner. The garrison would become paramount in the defense of Charleston against the land forces of General Quincy Adams Gillmore and the naval forces of Rear-Admiral John Adolphus Bernard Dahlgren. It was only the evacuation of Confederate forces on September 6, 1863, that the Federals were to become the holders of it. Cheves was one of the many deaths that occurred during the defense and assaults of Battery Wagner. On July 10, 1863, he was “sitting in his quarters overwhelmed with grief at the tidings just brought to him of the death of his nephew, Captain Charles T. Haskell, Jr.” Upon hearing the communication of an imminent attack by Union Naval forces, “he roused himself to action” and was killed instantly on the ramparts of Battery Wagner from the first shell hurled from an attacking Union Monitor. After receiving the forbidding news of the death of her husband, his wife lamented; “I know not how I shall live without him”.