If anyone cared to look, there was an analogy to be found in a new novel by Charles Dickens, called Great Expectations, just then being published in installments in an English literary weekly. The first installment appeared in December 1860. One of the book’s key characters, Miss Havisham, seemed the perfect embodiment of South Carolina. Having been stood up at the altar, she retired from the world, stopped her clocks, wore her wedding dress forever, and even left her nuptial feast in place, rotting on the table. Jilted at the altar of the Railroad Age, South Carolina had retreated into its
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