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In 1822, the city government, noting the inadequacy of a nightly watch, petitioned the state government for the establishment of an arsenal, or “citadel,” independent of the city’s police force, to protect the white citizens against “an enemy in the bosom of the state.” By 1825, construction was under way, and, by 1841, by an act of the state legislature, the Citadel was established as South Carolina’s state military academy. Cadets from local families drilled weekly under arms in an intimidating show of white force to Charleston’s black community.
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David M. Robertson (Denmark Vesey: The Buried Story of America's Largest Slave Rebellion and the Man Who Led It)