Beaufort’s First Historian: An Evening with Dr. John A. Johnson (1819-93)
In 1873, during the heyday of Radical Reconstruction, a physician and former Confederate soldier named Dr. John A. Johnson wrote a history of Beaufort, South Carolina. The resulting work — Beaufort and the Sea Islands: Their History and Traditions — is informative, eloquent, and deeply strange. It offers a unique window into how one white […]

