In that year, he defended the institution of slavery and advocated for secession from the Union to protect it in an address to the Edisto Island Vigilant Association.

[10] During the Civil War, both Union and Confederate forces used the cupola atop the Bleak Hall plantation house as a lookout.

[12] The war had disrupted property records, and Townsend was only able to establish his ownership of the combined plantations through an appeal to U.S. president Andrew Johnson.

An enthusiastic outdoorsman, Meyer bequeathed the 4,630-acre (1,870 ha) plantation to the state of South Carolina as a wildlife preserve, but stipulated that should he predecease his wife Margaret, she would retain the use of the property.

John Meyer died in 1977; his widow remarried as Margaret Pepper, and remained on the plantation, continuing to manage and improve the property for conservation purposes, until her death in 2007.

In 1973, the buildings were listed in the National Register of Historic Places, for their connection with John Townsend and as surviving examples of the Gothic Revival architecture used on the plantation.

The roof is slightly bell-cast, clad with cypress shingles, and topped with a wood finial; a board decorated with large serrated dentils runs around the building below the eaves.

[16] Learning of this, Townsend travelled to Washington, D.C., and persuaded Oqui to return to South Carolina with him, there to lay out extensive Oriental formal gardens.

[8] Twenty-one registered historic sites lie on Botany Bay Heritage Preserve & WMA, including the remains of the Sea Cloud plantation house, the chimney of a slave house, and a beehive-shaped brick well originally built to provide water for the Sea Cloud slaves.

[10][12] The Fig Island Shell Rings, with an age estimated at 3000–5000 years, are on the property; they are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

[17] Botany Bay HP * WMA includes a variety of habitats: 2,500 acres (1,000 ha) of marine and estuarine wetlands, including 2 miles (3 km) of beachfront used for nesting by endangered loggerhead sea turtles and least terns; 1,847 acres (747 ha) of upland, consisting chiefly of mixed pine-hardwood forest; and 283 acres (115 ha) of agricultural fields, managed for dove hunting and as food plots for wildlife.