World War One was already raging in Europe, when President Woodrow Wilson called up the National Guard to address a military crisis on the southern border of the US. Soon South Carolina’s citizen-soldiers found themselves bound for a year’s deployment in the “Wild West”. Learn about our state’s soldiers in this largely forgotten military operation just over a century ago.

On May 10, 1871, eight years after the battle in which they had fallen, the remains of South Carolina’s dead from the battle of Gettysburg were reinterred at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston. Their memorial address was given by a distinguished Presbyterian minister and Confederate chaplain. In honor of Confederate Memorial Day, we’ll consider the wartime career and the postwar message of that preacher and soldier, the Reverend John Lafayette Girardeau.

In 1898, South Carolinians rallied to join the United States war effort against Spain. A monument on the State House grounds honors their service and notes a few soldiers by name: soldiers who volunteered for a hazardous mission facing an enemy deadlier to US forces than the Spanish had been. Learn about their heroism in the war on Yellow Fever.

A boulevard in Greenville, Federal and state buildings, statues on the State House grounds and in Statuary Hall in Washington DC – Wade Hampton III’s legacy is widespread. Get to know the leader, and the man, behind this legacy, through stories of his wartime service and personal life.

The hundreds of eager young Royal Air Force flying cadets who arrived in Camden, South Carolina, wanted to fly Spitfires, as the heroes of the Battle of Britain had done. Most would not. Instead, they’d fly to war in Lancaster and Halifax bombers, attacking German cities by night as part of Bomber Command. Learn about South Carolina’s connection to one of the Second World War’s most devastating and costly campaigns.

If you’ve seen “The Sound of Music,” you know Capt. Von Trapp as the dour, if brave and distinguished, man whose household is transformed by his children’s governess, Maria. But before that, he was a bold naval leader with a flair for unconventional tactics – a U-boat captain, a staunch monarchist, and an Austrian patriot.

Columbia, a 10,000-ton light cruiser named in honor of the city of Columbia, SC, was a distinguished US Navy warship engaged in some of the hardest fighting in World War Two. Hear stories of the ship and her heroic crew!

Not only was World War One fought across continents, it was also fought in three dimensions. Radical new “flying machine” technology began to transform warfare, and South Carolinians were among the new breed of warriors who fought among the clouds.  Learn about some of these “Flyboys” and their experience of war, illustrated with original images from their own scrapbooks.

When Sherman marched through South Carolina, his flanks were continuously harried by a young Confederate calvary general whose roughhewn Western troops defeated their Federal counterparts at Aiken, South Carolina, and held the Union advance up for a day at Congaree Creek five miles from Columbia. Thirty-three years later, the same man left Congress to be Theodore Roosevelt's commanding officer in the Spanish-American War! Learn about the fascinating career of the general who earned the sobriquet "Fighting Joe."

Learn how three South Carolinians, at three different levels of military responsibility, had an effect at the 1862 battle of Fredericksburg – and far beyond.