The ominous storm clouds of reprisal had abated, but the unforgiving intruder's fires of retribution had accomplished its merciless task. With the blinding grey smoke finally whisked away by the Ashley River's appeasing breezes, the remaining heap of suffocating ash blanketed the desecrated landscape. The grand two-story clapboard plantation house with porticoes on either side was now a heap of blackened timber. Only the brick steps and the English style ground floor basement remained. A left over lingering pungent odor crept through the surrounding gardens where the estate's precious Azalea Indica's delicate branches had once flourished in fragrant tranquility, now a trampled and twisted stroll of despair. The glory that was Magnolia Plantation had been laid to near waste. It was the early days of 1865.
In 1861, John Grimke Drayton lamented, "Shadows have become substance--and threats and bitterness have marched out of Congress and off of Paper and embodied themselves in gathering armies and the bristling implements of war. The die is cast and the fears of the Father of his country have been realized--We are no longer one People--a gulf yarns between us--a gulf which, I very much fear the largest concessions can henceforth never bridge...Everything hear looks very dark...our population walking as if it were upon the crust of a volcano."
When the ravaging Union troops grew closer and closer to Charleston, Reverend John Grimke Drayton and his family had fled Magnolia Plantation for their mountain residence at Flat Rock in North Carolina. Around 1859, he built a summer home there and named it Ravenswood. Drayton served as a rector in Flat Rock at the Wilderness Church of St. John from 1843-63. Care of Magnolia and its gardens was left in the hands of his trusted slave foreman, Adam Bennett. The Drayton family waited the inevitable.
According to stories, the marauding Union soldiers tied Adam Bennett to an oak tree on the plantation and threatened to hang him when he refused to tell them where the family silver was buried. They let him live and burned down the house.
Reverend Drayton received a letter from his mother in Charleston that his plantation had been "taken for their own" by his former slaves. In the meantime, as the story goes, Adam Bennett walked the 250 miles to Flat Rock to personally inform the Drayton’s about what had happened and the plantation's former slaves were caring for the remaining gardens.
He and his family returned to Charleston with Adam Bennett. Upon returning, he sold all but 390 acres of the plantation to raise money. He also sold off the family town house at 42 South Bay in Charleston and all of the family's sea island properties on the Coosawhatchie River and Kiawah. He went to work at restoring and expanding the previous gardens to a greater glory with the help of Bennett. His noble vision to create a series of informal romantic gardens focused on emotion, the dramatic, and the spectacular for his wife had always been the driving force. Expressing this affectionate desire to a fellow minister in Philadelphia, he once said, "...to create an earthly paradise in which my dear Julia may forever forget Philadelphia and her desire to return there."
He continued to devote himself to the enhancement of the plantation gardens despite having suffered from tuberculosis. His own cure for the illness was working outside in the gardens he loved. In 1870, the endearingly cultivated gardens were opened to the public for the first time and Magnolia Plantation was saved from ruin, but there was still no house.
Like many Charleston planters of that time, Reverend Drayton owned a summer cottage in nearby growing Summerville, which was serving as their current home. Built prior to the Revolutionary War, it was of a typical design for summer cottages at the time with four rooms--two rooms on each side of a breezeway and an attic above. In 1873, he had the cottage disassembled, loaded onto barges, and floated down the Ashley River 14 miles to Magnolia. It was then mounted on the brick remainders of the devastated house.
Today's one and a half story home has gone through several modifications and additions since Reverend John Grimke Drayton, who did not have any sons, passed the home to his elder daughter, Julia. With this action, he did what his grandfather refused to do due to the practice of primogeniture--only leaving property to a male heir. It was by that twist of fate--his uncle, William Henry, passing without a male heir and his older brother, Thomas, getting shot in a hunting mishap--John Grimke came to inherit Magnolia and the Drayton name. He was the son of Thomas and Mary Drayton's daughter Sarah Daniels, who married Thomas Smith Grimke.
The home's high steps lead to a piazza which is supported by Doric columns and enclosed with a balustrade. The two story stucco tower is set in a gable roof which also features gabled dormers. A porch was added on that surrounds the house. Later, the house was extended south and west with the addition of the present living room, dining room, two upstairs bedrooms, and a water tower. Some of the porch area was lost due to these additions.
More than anyone else, he can be credited with the internationally acclaimed informal beauty of the garden today. He introduced the first azaleas to America and was among the first to utilize Camellia Japonica in an outdoor setting--naming his particular varietal after his wife. He befriended John James Audubon, the famed writer and illustrator of Birds of America. They were such good friends that Audubon painted two of his final works at Magnolia. Later, the estate’s swamp garden would be dedicated to Audubon and bear his name.
Reverend John Grimke Drayton, the renowned horticulturalist at Magnolia-on-the-Ashley, served as rector of St. Andrew's Church until 1891. Located just two miles south of Magnolia Plantation, the church was one of the few buildings along the Ashley the Union troops did not burn to the ground at the end of the Civil War.
Just a final point of fact. Some articles written about the final days of Magnolia Plantation in 1865 attribute the burning of the house to the troops of Sherman. By the time General Sherman left Savannah with his troops, most of Charleston was already devastated by a 15 month bombardment by Union troops on Morris Island. Sherman referred to Charleston as a "mere desolated wreck" and no longer had any military importance. Taking the city would merely be a symbolic victory. Sherman's formidable force headed for Columbia.
It was reported Sherman had felt some affection for Charleston having spent four years stationed at Fort Moultrie in the 1840's. After the war, Sherman visited the Holy City and was stricken by the sight of his former home. "Anyone who is not satisfied with war should go and see Charleston," the general later wrote, "and he will pray louder and deeper than ever that the country may in the long future be spared any more war."
The famous oak tree where Adam Bennett was tied and threatened was taken down by Hurricane Matthew in 2016.
The family town house at 42 South Bay is the William Gibbs House at 64 South Battery today.
