Named for King Charles II, Charles Towne was founded in 1670 by English settlers along the marshy shores of nearby Albemarble Point. The settlement relocated 10 years later to its present site. Despite Indian uprisings, a threat by the French, epidemics and privateers, Charles Towne developed into a prosperous port and fashionable colonial city by the mid-1700s.
Though drawn reluctantly into the Revolution, Charles Towne repulsed a British attack in 1776 and again in 1778, before it was finally captured in 1880. The British left in 1882, and the city was incorporated as Charleston the following year.
In 1860 South Carolina passed the first Ordinance of Secession at Charleston, and in April 1861 the Confederate troops occupied Fort Sumter. For three years Union ships blockaded the city, battering Fort Sumter with artillery fire, but the defenders refused to yield. Submarine warfare was introduced in Charleston when the Confederate vessel Hunley sank the USS Housatonic. The Confederacy finally abandoned the city late in the war.