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Little direct military action occurred within the Cooper River region during the Civil War, although its residents certainly felt the effect of the blockade of Charleston Harbor as early as 1862. Most planters and their families left the area and refugeed to farms in the upstate and in North Carolina. Soon after the Union occupation of Charleston in February 1865, Federal troops conducted raids or expeditions in the Cooper River region, burning or vandalizing several houses and churches, such as the plantations at Buck Hall, Limerick, Kensington, Middleburg, and Pawley’s, and Biggin Church.57

The postwar years were a period of social, economic and political transformation for Berkeley County and, indeed, for the entire state of South Carolina. According to South Carolina historian Walter Edgar, “by 1867 forty-five of fifty-one plantations on the Cooper River were idle.”58 The area was generally peaceful, with blacks and whites actually sharing a measure of political power for most of the Reconstruction era.59 In October 1876, however, a race riot occurred at the church of St. Thomas and St. Denis when a political meeting and debate between Republican and Democratic candidates became violent as African-American Republicans fired on a crowd of white Democrats and whites returned the fire; at least six people were killed and many more were wounded in what has been called “the Cainhoy Massacre.” 60

The economic system of the Cooper River region was in transition as well in the years following the Civil War. The antebellum economic system based on the slave-intensive production of rice and other commodities was replaced by a tenancy or sharecropping method. Many former slaves acquired small plots and became excellent farmers.