South Carolina Confederate Relic room and Military Museum

Founded in 1896, this museum is packed with genuine artifacts and South Carolina’s rich military heritage.

About a third of the museum is dedicated to Civil War artifacts from the Confederate and Union side.

There’s an exhibit on the formerly enslaved black South Carolinians that served in the Union Army.   The Second South Carolina Volunteers even raided plantations with Harriet Tubman.

There is a terrific historic Battle Flag collection on display, both from the Civil War as well as the War for Independence and the Mexican-American War.

There are plenty of artifacts like uniform buttons, rifles and bullets.

Probably the most famous South Carolinian is Francis Marion who during the American Revolution supported the Patriot cause and enlisted in the fight against the British forces from 1780-1781.

He was a lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army and a brigadier general in the South Carolina militia.

Marion’s use of a Irregular Warfare against the British led him to be considered one of the fathers of Guerrilla Warfare.

He was a leader of a irregular militia men, ruthless in terrorizing the royalists. They served without pay, supplied their own horses, arms and often their food.

He rarely committed his man to frontal warfare with British Regulars and preferred surprise attacks and equally sudden withdrawal from the field.   He engaged in 12 major battles and skirmishes in a two year period.

General Cornwallis observed, “Colonel Marion had so wrought the minds of the people partly by terror of his threats and cruelty of his promise of plunder, that there was scarcely an inhabitant between the Santee and the Pee Dee that was not in arms against us”.

Colonel Banastre Tarleton was sent to kill Marion and after pursuing Marion’s troops for over 26 miles through the swamp Tarleton supposedly said “as for this old Fox the Devil Himself could not catch him”  thereby  the name the “Swamp Fox”.

Marion was immortalized in the Disney series Swamp Fox (1959-1961) starring Leslie Nielsen (Naked Gun) and one of the influences for the main character Mel Gibson played in The Patriot (2000).

The Museum’s most unique artifact is a 400-year-old blade, a Katana Samurai sword that a South Carolina soldier claimed from a Japanese officer on Iwo Jima.  The sword supposedly dates to the 1600s which means it had probably been passed from generation to an ancestor of a Samurai.

It was rated to be able to cut through three bodies in one slash.

General Westmoreland was from South Carolina and he oversaw most of the Vietnam war effort.

Spanning almost 300 years this place should really be called the South Carolina Military Museum.

It takes one to two hours to enjoy the exhibits and it’s only $6 for adults and $3 for youths 10 to 17.