Charleston Light Dragoons
Charleston, Charleston County, South Carolina
Marker Inscription
CLD1861 - 1865To The Heroic Dead.James W. O'Hear, Lieut.J.Allen Miles, Sergt.Alfred Manigault, Corpl.Charles E. Prioleac " Arthur Robinson "PrivatesJames Adger Jr.Josiah BedonJames L. BeeJ.H.W. BooneBenjamin BostickJames CreightonW.R
The Story
The Charleston Light Dragoons were an elite volunteer cavalry company drawn from the planter families of the South Carolina Lowcountry, a unit whose roots reached back into the late 1700s. When war came in 1861, they rode for the Confederacy, and this monument gathers the names of those who did not return — officers, sergeants, and privates alike, honored together as the 'Heroic Dead.' The surnames carved here, among them Manigault and Prioleau, read as a roll call of old Charleston, a reminder that the city's leading households sent their sons into four years of cavalry service and often buried them for it.
Why it matters
It is one of countless Southern memorials raised in the war's long aftermath to fix private grief and civic identity in stone, and it offers a close, personal window into how Charleston chose to remember its Civil War dead.
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Related people
- · James W. O'Hear
- · J. Allen Miles
- · Alfred Manigault
- · Charles E. Prioleau
- · Arthur Robinson
Related events
- · American Civil War
Themes & tags
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