Now, the byways swarmed with deserters, diehards headed west for some final show of courage, and union agents hot on the trail of Davis and of what was rumored to be a vast Confederate treasury. But for the ferryman who watched the defeated legion ride toward the sinking sun that day, the passage must have offered a moment of melancholy. As the curtain rang down the Civil War, a wider curtain was ringing down on the era of the river ferry. In 1825, more than a hundred ferryboats regularly crossed South Carolina rivers. By the end of the work, fewer than 20 landings were in operation.
Today there is one.
Yet they were vital to the growth of the new nation. Bridges were rare. Horses ford the streams, and foot travelers go up or down to where the wind, more provident than man, has laid a tree across the river. At certain points strategic to commerce, ferryboat operators were franchised by the state's General Assembly. Ferry owners were entitled to charge travelers a fee.