VIEW OF CHARLES-TOWN

One of the most remarkable landscapes produced in the early South is of the port of Charleston, painted in 1774 by Thomas Leitch (or Leech). Leitch advertised his plan to sell engraved copies of his "Portrait of the Town," so exact, "that every House in View will be distinctly shown." The ship that dominates the view appropriately alludes to the trade with Great Britain that drove Charleston's economy.  In the foreground are three African American figures, representing those whose labor produced the agricultural goods that made Charleston the wealthiest city in British North America at the time of the Revolution.