On-the-Road Histories

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CAROLINA
Kenneth Townsend

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 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2019 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/southcarolina0000town
SOUTH CAROLINA
 On-the-Road Histories

SOUTH CAROLINA

Kenneth Townsend
First published in 2009 by

INTERLINK BOOKS
An imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc.
46 Crosby Street, Northampton, MA 01060
www.interlinkbooks.com

Copyright © Kenneth Townsend, 2009

Design copyright © Interlink Publishing, 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic,
magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Townsend, Kenneth William, 1951-
South Carolina / by Kenneth Townsend.
p. cm. — (On-the-road histories)
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-56656-667-4 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 1-56656-667-3 (pbk.)
1. South Carolina—History. 2. South Carolina—Description and travel.
3. South Carolina—History, Local. I. Title. II. Series.
F269.T68 2006
975.7—dc22
2006014577
Printed and bound in Korea

Color images were provided by www.dreamstime.com, copyrighted by the individual

photographers listed, unless otherwise noted in the text. Historical, blac\ & white
images were bjndly provided by the Library of Congress: www.loc.gov.

Raven Cliff Falls, located in Caesars Head State Pai\, South Carolina © Lyle Finf(
 Contents

I. Inhabitants Before European Discovery i

Origins of the First Americans—Native American
Cultures in South Carolina

II. Discovery and Early Settlement 23

Spanish and French Exploration and Settlements—
English Efforts in North America—
The Founding of Charles Town

III. South Carolina in the Colonial Era 47

Early Patterns of Economic Development in Colonial
South Carolina—African Slavery in Colonial
South Carolina—The Perils of Prosperity

IV. The Turmoil of Revolution 71

Colonial Resistance to King George III—
War Comes to South Carolina

V. Postwar Directions 99
Addressing Postwar Problems—Toward a More Perfect
Union of States—South Carolina Ratifies the
Constitution—New Economic Direction for
South Carolina

VI. Antebellum South Carolina 119

Columbia and Charleston—Education in the Antebellum
Period—Religion, Morality, Reform, and Social Control—
Antebellum Recreation

VII. South Carolina and the Coming of

Civil War 149
Slavery in South Carolina—Slavery as a Cause for the
Civil War—Westward Expansion and the Coming of
War—Secession

VIII. The Civil War 171

The First Shots of War—The Early Course of War—
The Fall of Confederate South Carolina
 IX. Reconstruction 191
A Persistent Defiance—The Counterattack against
Republican Rule—Redemption—Race and the
Conservative Regime, 1876—1890—Economic Patterns to
1890—Education under the Conservative Regime

X. Tillmanism, Progress, and War:

1890-1918 211
Farmer Discontent—Benjamin Ryan Tillman—
The Rise of Jim Crow Agricultural Developments,
1900—1920—Industrialization—Modernization of
Society—Persistent Problems—A Reactionary Moment—
Progressivism: The Return to Reform—The Great War

XI. Between the Wars 233

Controlling Society—Economic Patterns—
The Great Depression—The New Deal

XII. The Palmetto State in World War II

255
The State Mobilizes for War—War Comes to South
Carolina—South Carolinians Settle into War—
War and Race—City Congestion and Wartime
Economics—Returning to Peace

XIII. Joining the Union 277

The Persistent Issues of Race and States’ Rights—
Educational Programs Since 1968—
Postwar Economic Patterns

Chronology of Major Events 307

Characteristics of South Carolina’s Population, 2006 315
South Carolina’s Famous Sons and Daughters 316
Special Events 326
Contact Information 334
Sources and Further Reading 337
Index of Place Names 340

Picturesque St. Michael’s Church in Charleston, built in 1761.

Image © David Davis
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 Inhabitants Before European
Discovery

Origins of the First Americans

Several theories attempt to explain the origin of the peoples
who have become known generically as Native Americans,
or American Indians. The most widely accepted theory
posits that hunter-gatherer peoples of East Asia (eastern
China and Russia) pursued large herds of fur-bearing
animals northeast across the continent and during the Ice
Age moved into present-day Alaska by way of a land bridge
that has since been swallowed by the seas and is today the
Bering Strait. No one is quite certain when the migration
occurred; estimates place it between 20,000 and 30,000 years
ago. According to the theory, once in Alaska these peoples
fanned over North America, principally spreading along
the Pacific Coast into southern California. Those who
remained in North America then swept through the
Southwest and moved eastward toward the Atlantic Ocean,
then northward and ultimately west to the edge of the
Great Plains. As the migration unfolded, these peoples
relinquished the hunt and, between 5,000 and 8,000 years
ago, established sedentary, farming villages.
Within the last 30 years, numerous anthropologists and
ethnologists have suggested that America’s native peoples
may have also migrated directly across the Pacific and
Atlantic Oceans. They propose that migrations originated
in Southeast Asia, with families and entire communities
moving eastward from island to island over the course of
thousands of years, eventually reaching the western coast of
the Americas about 10,000 years ago. Similar passages
crossed the South Atlantic, perhaps from the more
southerly regions of Africa, making landfall in the
continents maybe 8,000 years ago.

i
2 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

These theories are rooted in archaeological evidence, and

scholars today generally conclude that each of these
migration patterns occurred simultaneously. There is,
however, a third explanation for the origin of native peoples
in the Americas. Many American Indians in both continents
hold tightly to the cultural values and spirituality of their
ancestors and are consequently termed “traditionalists.”
Traditionalists contend that American Indians did not
migrate into the Western Hemisphere; instead, native
peoples were always present on this land, placed here by the
force that created all life. Stories of human origin on ancestral
lands are found among all cultural groupings of native
peoples, and each story places human beginnings in those
lands. Most are richly detailed, some are quite simple, and
often they include periods of creation followed by earthly
destruction and the renewal of life.

Native American Cultures in South

Carolina
The earliest evidence of human activity in present-day
South Carolina dates to about 13,000bce. These people
were principally hunters of the bison that still ranged the
eastern regions of North America, which suggests they
were still somewhat nomadic. They supplemented their
diet by gathering berries, nuts, roots, and leaves from the
increasingly lush environment that was developing as the
earth began a warming trend. It appears that they hunted
in groups using clubs, but by 10,000BCE many apparently
had crafted crude spears. Archaeologists also believe small
scraping instruments were fashioned from shell and stone;
in the early 1980s fossilized bones were discovered at Edisto
Island, south of Charleston, that bore gashes probably
caused by scraping meat from killed animals.
As the climate warmed, plant life increased, offering a
wider bounty of foods to sustain native peoples. The
harvesting of fish, crabs, and shrimp in rivers and along
coastal waters added to the increasing supply of readily
available foods. By 1000BCE, bands of native peoples
adopted simple farming, and this more than anything else
directly led to the founding of permanent villages in which
agriculture provided the bulk of food, supplemented now
by hunting and fishing. As sedentary life evolved, native
 ONE: INHABITANTS BEFORE EUROPEAN DISCOVERY
3

peoples crafted elaborate, well-fashioned pottery,

constructed sturdy houses, erected palisades around their
villages for security, and adopted bows and arrows as the
preferred tools for hunting and community defense.
At about the same time, newcomers entered the
woodlands of what is now South Carolina—people
generally identified as “Mississippians.” Probably
migrating from the present Midwest, they were likely
attracted to the region because of its warmer climate and
agricultural potential. They quickly established permanent
agrarian-based villages and cultivated corn, squash, and a
variety of beans. Those who already lived in the Carolinas
considered the Mississippians invaders and regularly
attacked the unwelcome communities. In response,
Mississippians also built palisades around their villages,
structures that were eventually constructed by most native
communities throughout the eastern half of America as
populations soared.
Scholars describe Mississippians as “mound builders.”
In the center of their communities stood massive earthen
structures, some reaching 100 feet high and flattened on
top. Mounds frequently included underground rooms, and
occasionally they served as enclosed graveyards.
Archaeologists believe these were primarily religious
structures, with community ceremonies centered on top or
inside the mound. One of the larger and presumably more
powerful Mississippian villages stood on the bank of the
Wateree River in present-day Kershaw County.
Debate persists regarding the extent of the indigenous
population in North and South America at the time of
Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to the New World.
Widely accepted in the late nineteenth century was a pre-
Columbus hemispheric population of 10 to 15 million, of
which about 850,000 were thought to live within the
current boundaries of the United States. The evolution of
specialized academic disciplines such as anthropology and
ethnology in the early twentieth century, however, brought
reassessment. Specifically, scholars realized that European
fishermen and explorers carried with them to the Americas
Old World diseases and epidemics that ultimately ravaged
the indigenous population long before European settlement
began in North and South America. For example, it is
4 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

virtually uncontested by academics today that in the early

seventeenth century the Native Americans of present-day
Massachusetts suffered a 50 percent reduction in population
due to European germs in the decade before the English
built a permanent settlement there. Given this altered view,
population figures for Indians of the Americas have been
elevated substantially. In the late 1960s, Alvin M. Josephy,
Jr., one of the foremost scholars of the Indian heritage in the
Americas, estimated a total native population of 70 million
in 1492, with about 5 million of those residing inside the
present-day United States. Writing nearly 30 years later,
historian David Stannard placed the total pre-Columbian
population closer to 100 million and pointed to other
scholars who were at that time revising the population
figure upward toward 145 million, with 18 million of those
natives living north of Mexico in 1492.
Equally uncertain is the extent of the Native American
population in South Carolina as Europeans moved into the
Americas. One anthropologist has suggested that at the
time of first encounter with Europeans in the 1520s about
1,800 native people lived along the South Carolina coast, a
region roughly 100 miles long and 80 miles wide. The
general warmth of the region and abundant rainfall made
that stretch of land most conducive to agriculture; the many
rivers and swamps, along with the ocean nearby, offered a
true bounty of fish, and forested inland sections were filled
with small game. The sheer abundance of food alone would
have likely permitted substantial family growth and
therefore a much higher population along the coast. Walter
Edgar, presently the eminent historian of South Carolina,
does not directly refute the shallow population estimate of
coastal natives, but he does support a statewide Indian
population figure of 15,000 in the year 1600 and a range of
17,000 to 30,000 100 years earlier. The higher end of Edgar’s
estimate more closely matches that of renowned
anthropologist James Mooney, who estimates 24,600 native
inhabitants among the largest South Carolina tribes and
approximately 5,000 other Indians comprising all
remaining groups in 1600.
The natives of present-day South Carolina grouped
themselves by language: Algonkian, Siouan, Iroquoian, and
Muskogean. The Cherokee (Iroquoian) resided in the
 ONE: INHABITANTS BEFORE EUROPEAN DISCOVERY
5

westernmost section of South Carolina and spread

themselves throughout the mountainous region of Georgia,
North Carolina, and Tennessee. The Catawba (Siouan)
dwelled in the Carolina foothills in present-day York and
Lancaster Counties, and other Siouan-speaking communities
such as the Yamasee dwelt in coastal areas north of
Charleston. Algonkian-speaking natives such as the
Savannah lived along the river that today bears their name in
central South Carolina, and the Muskogean resided in the
area of Beaufort. A modern traveler should note, however,
that speakers of the Siouan language were ethnically and
culturally distinct from the Sioux, or Lakota, of the
American West, although many coastal Siouan descendants
today dress in the attire of the more popular Sioux.
By the time of first contact with Europeans, the
Woodlands culture of the Carolinas was well developed.
Across South Carolina, agriculture sustained Indian
communities. A variety of crops were planted, harvested,
and preserved for winter use. Some peoples grew tobacco,
primarily for spiritual and medicinal purposes. Deer,
rabbits, squirrels, turkeys, and occasionally bears added to
their diet, hunting typically being the men’s chore. The bow
and arrow served as the principal hunting tool, although
many peoples, including the Cherokee, Catawba, Yamasee,
and Chicora, often hunted birds and squirrels with
blowguns, weapons that were generally five feet long with
small, eight-inch darts. It is important to note that Indians
wasted little of the animals they killed. They fashioned deer
hides and bearskins into winter clothing, bedding, and
home insulation. Bones were crafted into arrowheads and
arrow shafts, sometimes used as buttons on garments, and
often as small tools. Deer hooves were cleaned, crushed into
powder, and commonly employed as a food thickener. Some
parents placed pebbles into a cleaned hoof, covered it with
hide, and attached a small stick to it to create a baby rattle.
Antlers were used as digging and farming implements;
muscle tissue was separated into thin ribbons to be used as
sewing thread; brains rubbed over deer hide softened the
material for loincloths; and ribs sometimes became runners
on snow sleds.
Fishing was also important. In the rivers, Indians
frequently constructed corrals, or pens, in which fish were
 The Catawba Nation

A Siouan language-speaking native people, the Catawba, have lived

in the area of present-day York and Lancaster Counties along the
border separating North and South Carolina for at least 400 years,
probably migrating to the area from the Ohio River Valley. At the time
of first encounter with Europeans, they identified themselves as
Iyeye, or Nieye, meaning “The People.” Spanish records list these
Indians as Esaw, and occasionally Isaw. Since the early eighteenth
century, the Iyeye Nation has operated under the name “Catawba,”
meaning “river people.”
The Iyeye dwelled along the Catawba River, which ranges from
the North Carolina mountains deep into the South Carolina midlands
region. Their western boundary extended to the lands of the
Cherokee, the Catawbas’ historic enemy. Estimates by anthropologists
James Mooney and Barry Pritzker place the total Catawba population
between 5,000 and 6,000 respectively in the early seventeenth
century, most likely making them one of the largest Siouan tribes east
of the Mississippi River and one of the three largest Indian nations
completely within what is now South Carolina. Their homes were
most often circular, bark-covered huts in communities enclosed by a
protective palisade, and they were principally an agrarian people,
although small game and fish supplemented their diet. In the center
of their villages was a common ground where spiritual or community
functions were held.
Throughout much of the colonial period, the Catawba engaged in
a lucrative fur trade with British exporters and, to protect their
commercial interests, allied themselves with the British and Yamasee
Indians in war against the Tliscarora Nation along the Carolina coast.
Angered by what they perceived as an unfair alteration in their trade
relationship with the British, the Catawba joined with the Yamasee in
war against the English, this war ultimately destroying the Yamasee.
With the end of hostilities, surviving Catawbas were forced onto a small
reservation established by the South Carolina colonial government and
into a dependency relationship with the British to ensure their own
survival. European diseases, however, swept through the reservation
and substantially reduced their total population. By 1725, the Catawba
numbered only 1,400. During the American Revolution the Catawba
allied themselves with patriot forces, still angered at earlier British
mistreatment and hopeful that their support would net them positive
gains with victory. Promises of humane treatment and favorable
treaties were forgotten by the newly founded United States government
and by the South Carolina state assembly as war with Great Britain
ended, and many Catawbas chose to vacate their ancestral homes.
Some traveled into tidewater Virginia, intermarried with Pamunkey
Indians and there enjoyed a slightly better reservation existence. A
few others ventured west, taking residency in Cherokee villages.
Disease, warfare, and migration from South Carolina took their toll
on the Catawba people; in 1825 the United States Bureau of the
Census cited a mere 118 Catawbas in South Carolina.
Beginning in the 1930s, the fragile, surviving Catawba Nation
commenced efforts toward tribal regeneration, a move common
among American Indians nationally and encouraged by United
States Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier as part of his
“Indian New Deal” program. The Catawba worked to recover long-
lost artistic skills and renew traditional Catawba culture. In the
1980s, the revitalized Catawba Nation initiated suits in federal
courts to reclaim lands lost to non-Indians over the previous three
centuries, including an effort to exert tribal ownership of all lands
then part of the prosperous Carowinds Amusement Park that
straddled the North and South Carolina state border near Charlotte,
North Carolina. Concurrently, the Catawba Indian Nation petitioned
the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs for status as a federally
recognized Indian nation, receiving that designation finally in 1993.
Today, the tribe’s 5,000 members occupy a 640-acre reservation
between Rock Hill and Fort Mill, and a museum with regularly
scheduled programs is open to visitors. The reservation is located
off South Carolina Highway 21/5, south of Fort Mill. For
information, contact the Catawba Indian Nation at P.O. Box 188,
Catawba, South Carolina or phone (803) 366-4792. Additional
information is available at www.catawbaindiannation.com.

Must-See Sites: Catawba Cultural

Preservation Center

Situated on SC Hwy 5 between Lancaster and Rock Hill, the Catawba

Cultural Preservation Center preserves the cultural heritage of the
Catawba Indian Nation. The museum exhibits tribal artifacts,
provides a visual history of the Catawba people, and throughout the
year sponsors demonstrations and activities to educate visitors on
the culture and history of the Catawba. A gift shop is on the
premises. The center is located at 1536 Tom Stevens Road,
Catawba, South Carolina. Call (803) 328-2427.
8 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

able to reproduce and be readily accessed when desired.

Others temporarily dammed sections of streams from
which they harvested fish floundering in shallow rapids.
Many Indians ventured into the ocean in dugout canoes,
sometimes staying at sea for days and spearing fish that
passed their boats. As with small game, Native Americans
used every part of the fish they caught. The meat was a
source of food, bones were made into sewing needles, and
the remainder served as fertilizer for crops.
South Carolina’s native peoples more often than not
lived in “longhouses,” structures that were typically 10 feet
wide and ranged from 25 to 55 feet in length. Thin tree
trunks lashed together formed the house frame, and twigs
and a mud plaster filled the gaps. In the warmer, coastal
sections of South Carolina, mats of woven reeds were fitted
over the house framing and often were raised or lowered to
control airflow. Longhouses accommodated as many as
twenty family members, separate rooms sectioned by
hanging animal hides or handmade blankets. Smaller
families required less space and, consequently, opted for
smaller, circular-shaped structures. Unless the villages were
situated on islands or peninsulas, they were typically
encircled by palisades as defense against raids by other
groups or as security against potentially dangerous animals.
During summer months, those living near the coast and in
relative peace with their neighbors took temporary
residence along the water’s edge in structures that usually
had a thatched roof, no walls, and were elevated slightly off
the ground for better air circulation. By the 1700s, both the
Catawba and the Cherokee constructed wood-frame houses,
the Cherokee covering their roofs with wooden shingles.
Individual villages in present-day South Carolina
generally numbered no more than 250 residents, although
summer communities on the coast might bring two or three
small villages together until the cool autumn breezes returned
the inhabitants to their inland communities. Most villages
were organized neatly, with the housing area, herb gardens,
and storage buildings all sectioned separately and surr¬
ounding a central commons used for community activities.
Marital relationships varied widely among native
peoples of South Carolina, as they did throughout the eastern
woodlands region. Monogamy was strictly enforced in many
 ONE: INHABITANTS BEFORE EUROPEAN DISCOVERY
9

communities while in others polygamy was accepted. Some

peoples permitted a rather high degree of sexual promiscuity
before marriage, but only a few allowed a man to be
promiscuous without his wifes consent following marriage.
Ethnohistorian Barry Pntzker has noted that among the
Cherokee, for example, men and women, both married and
single, were allowed nearly unlimited sexual freedom. In
sharp contrast, the Catawba punished adulterous men but
seldom denounced female adultery. The Cherokee,
Catawba, and most Indian nations across South Carolina
permitted divorce initiated by either partner. Given that
these nations were matrilineal and women owned the homes
in which the family dwelled, men rejected by their wives
generally returned to their mother’s home. After the death of
a husband, widows were encouraged to remarry quickly,
preferably to the brother of her deceased husband. Still
others demanded and enforced a prescribed period of
mourning before another marriage was allowed.
Pritzker also notes that the Cherokee valued harmony
within the home and larger community highly. Toward
that end, children were treated gently and were rarely
punished. Learning from one’s misdeeds was expected. At
most, Cherokees relied on community scorn and family
ostracism to counter the most offensive behavior.
Warfare among the peoples of the Eastern Woodlands
cultural region, including those in present-day South
Carolina, was rather common. The Catawba, or “River
People,” lived in a near perpetual state of conflict with the
neighboring Cherokee, the two often competing for control
of the hunting territory that separated their areas of
residency. On occasion, Catawba war parties traveled deep
into Tennessee and Kentucky waging war against the
Shawnee, and, as Pritzker notes, on several documented
occasions they battled bands of Iroquois in western New
York. As they most likely migrated into the South Carolina
upcountry from the Ohio River Valley, forced out of that
region by stronger Indian nations and lured into the South
by a warmer climate, it is generally assumed that the
Catawbas’ long-distance raids were acts of vengeance and
retribution to settle old scores.
Warfare became more frequent and intense among
South Carolina’s Indians in the eighteenth century, as
IO ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

English merchants along the coast and neighboring tribal

nations built mutually lucrative trade arrangements with
one another. Throughout the seventeenth century and well
into the eighteenth century, European demand for fur rose
substantially as the continent’s population swelled. Beaver
pelts were ideal for the manufacture of broad-brimmed
hats, and “small furs” such as otter and fox were used to
trim gowns and outer garments. Leather was in ever-
increasing demand for breeches, book covers, saddlebags,
and a host of other uses. The sheer abundance of beavers,
deer, and other furbearing animals across the Americas
made the colonies Europe’s principal supplier of fur.
South Carolina’s native peoples scored lucrative fur
trade arrangements with British settlers soon after the
founding of Charles Town. From hunting expeditions that
ranged southward into Florida and westward into
Alabama, Yamasee hunters brought beaver skins and deer
hides to coastal merchants, receiving in exchange an array
of European manufactured goods. The Catawba in the
foothill region and the Cherokee in the mountains
regularly supplied furs and hides to English traders who
ventured into the western territory.
English-produced metal tools proved much more
durable than those made of bone, clay, stone, and wood.
Hatchets, awls, chisels, knives, fishhooks, hoes, and kettles
were all in demand among Native Americans. European
fabrics were lighter than animal hides, faster to dry, more
colorful, and easier to fashion into garments. Although the
Indians’ bow and arrow delivered a higher rate of fire in
battle, European guns were desired for the greater internal
damage musket balls caused enemy warriors, for the fear
they engendered in enemy hearts, and for the status they
provided their owners. Alcohol, or “water that burns,” was
often sought by Indians for its intoxicating effect and for
the sense of invincibility it inspired. Numerous novelty
items were also popular, among them mirrors and jewelry.
Said one Indian hunter, “The beaver does everything
perfectly well; it makes kettles, hatchets, swords, knives,
bread—in short, it makes everything.” The same could
have been said about the deer.
The volume of deerskins passing through the port at
Charles Town dwarfed the number of beaver pelts,
 ONE: INHABITANTS BEFORE EUROPEAN DISCOVERY II

Must-See Sites: Fripp Island

Fripp Island was a principal hunting area of the

Yamasee Indians until they were driven from South
Carolina and the island was granted to English sea
captain Johannes Fripp for his naval exploits against
French and Spanish shipping along the southern
coastline. Today, Fripp Island is a luxury resort
located nineteen miles east of Beaufort and featuring
nearly four miles of pristine beach, three
championship golf courses, a water park, tennis
courts, and a marina. The island remains a protected
wildlife preserve; deer are plentiful and have grazing
rights wherever they happen to be. For more
information, see www.frippislandresort.com.

averaging roughly 54,000 annually between 1700 and 1715

and topping 150,000 annually for the years 1740 to 1760.
The Yamasee and their Creek cousins together sent more
than 80,000 skins through Charles Town in 1720 alone, and
Cherokee hunters supplied more than one million
deerskins in the twenty years between 1739 and 1759.
The wealth generated for Native Americans and the
fundamental alteration European goods brought to their
standard of living compelled hunters to range deep into the
lands of traditional enemies. The Yamasee challenged the
Tuscarora to the north and ventured into the midlands
region of South Carolina; the Catawba and Cherokee
traveled far into each other’s guarded hunting areas, and
smaller tribal groups often slipped into their neighbors’
forests for the valued skins. Each foray risked retribution,
and frequently the retaliatory raids mushroomed into full-
scale war. Indeed, throughout the first half of the
eighteenth century, South Carolina’s native peoples from
the coast to the mountains endured near perpetual war—
warfare resulting from competition for trade with English
merchants.
The fur trade also affected native cultural traditions
and tribal structures. The Indians’ preference for European
12 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Must-See Sites: Edisto Island

For nearly 4,000 years, Edisto Indians occupied the

island that today bears their name. Surrounded by the
mounting tide of English settlement, the island’s
natives were pressured to sell their land in 1674 to
one of the colony’s Lords Proprietors, Lord Anthony
Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftsbury. English planters
who settled on Edisto Island profited from rice,
indigo, and cotton production and built beautiful
estates. Several magnificent eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century plantations homes are open to
tourists each October. Evidence of the Edisto survives
on the island, most visibly at the Spanish Mount Shell
Mound, the tribe’s refuse heap of clam and oyster
shells, fish and animal bones, and sea shells. Edisto
Island is a popular resort today, and tourists may stroll
through surrounding marshes, walk along the relatively
undeveloped shoreline, visit Edisto Beach State Park,
which preserves the island’s original natural setting,
and get an up-close view of the island’s local snakes
and alligators at the Serpentarium. Accommodations
for travelers range from a quaint campground to
comfortable rental cottages. For more information, see
www.edistobeach.com.

goods over those they had traditionally produced

themselves compelled them to over hunt their lands and in
doing so nearly deplete the deer and beaver populations
across South Carolina by the early eighteenth century. As
these animals’ numbers declined, native peoples faced an
increasingly harsh reality. Without the furs and pelts, trade
with the English declined. Moreover, their traditional
source of food, clothing, shelter, and tools was now gone. In
consequence, communities found themselves with limited
options for survival. They could migrate from South
Carolina to new hunting areas elsewhere and once again be
self -sufficient. A few nations chose this option, considering
migration the preferred alternative to physical or cultural
extinction, but this was considered a most extreme prospect.
 ONE: INHABITANTS BEFORE EUROPEAN DISCOVERY
13

Native peoples were spiritually tied to their lands; it was the

land that defined their cultural values, their world view,
their connection to their Creator, and their very identity. A
second possibility was to provide the English settlers with
another valued trade item—slaves. The Yamasee raided
villages throughout the Lowcountry in the early eighteenth
century, taking prisoners to sell to English merchants in
Charles Town, who in turn sold Indian captives to planters
in the Caribbean. This allowed the Yamasee to continue
their profitable arrangement with the English, but it also
incurred the wrath of nations throughout the region and
led to a series of wars that ultimately devastated the
Yamasee themselves. A third possibility for native peoples
was to break free of their dependency on English goods,
reassert their historic identity, and revitalize their
traditional culture. In so doing, however, they made
themselves vulnerable to both the encroaching English
settlements and the neighboring peoples that continued
their trade lor guns and tools. Other, smaller nations felt
compelled to abandon their independence and their
identity for the security found in larger, stronger
communities. The Sugaree, Esaw, Cheraw, and Pee Dee,
for example, all joined with the more powerful Catawba.
The South Carolina branch of the Tuscarora was so
ravaged by warfare that it retreated into the coastal region
of North Carolina and ultimately relocated from there to
New York. Both the Yamasee and Catawba eventually
waged losing wars against the English, many of the
Yamasee themselves apprehended and sold into slavery and
the Catawba nearly exterminated by mid-century. The only
other considered option for Indians was to acculturate
themselves to European norms and eventually assimilate
with the new dominant culture. But this proved futile as
English settlers remained unreceptive to the notion that
native peoples could ever fully escape their “primitive”
trappings, embrace Christianity completely, and genuinely
adopt European values and customs.
European disease further complicated the Indians’
continued existence in South Carolina. With the exception
of coastal communities, Indians in present-day South
Carolina encountered few Europeans in the 200 years
following Columbus’s first contact with the New World.
 Indian Origin of South Carolina
Place Names

Cities and Towns

Name of City or Town1 Indian Nation County Location

Awendaw Sewee Charleston

Cheraw Cheraw Chesterfield
Cherokee Falls Cherokee Cherokee
Congaree Congaree Richland
Elloree Santee Orangeburg
Eutaw Springs Etiwan Orangeburg
Eutawville Etiwan Orangeburg
Oswego Iroquois (NY) Sumter
Pocotaligo Yamasee Hampton
Pontiac Ottawa (MN) Richland
Saluda Saluda Saluda
Santee Santee Orangeburg
Santee Circle Santee Berkeley
Seneca Cherokee, Seneca Oconee
South Congaree Congaree Lexington
Tamassee Cherokee Oconee
Taxahaw Waxhaw Lancaster
Tokeena Cherokee Oconee
Wysackey ? Lee
Yemassee Yamasee Beaufort

Counties
County Name Indian Nation
Cherokee Cherokee
Oconee Oconee
Saluda Saluda

Rivers
Name of River Indian Nation County
Ashepoo Ashepoo Colleton
Catawba Catawba York, Lancaster,
Chesterfield
Chattooga Cherokee Oconee
Combahee Combahee Hampton, Colleton,
Beaufort
Congaree Congaree Lexington, Richland
Coosaw Coosa Beaufort
Coosawatchie Coosa Allendale, Hampton,
Jasper
Edisto Edisto Aiken through
Charleston
Kadapau ? Chesterfield, Darlington
Pee Dee Pee Dee Marlboro, Darlington,
Marion, Horry,
Georgetown
Salkehatchie ? Barnwell, Allendale,
Colleton, Hampton
Saluda Saluda Greenville, Pickens,
Abbeville,
Newberry, Saluda
Stono Stono Charleston
Thgaloo Cherokee Oconee
Wando Wando Berkeley, Charleston
Wateree Wateree Kershaw, Richland,
Sumter
Waccamaw Waccamaw Horry, Georgetown

Lakes, Islands, and Bays

Name Indian Nation County
Lake Conestee Cherokee Greenville
Lake Keowee Cherokee Oconee, Pickens
Edisto Island Edisto Charleston
Kiawah Island Kiawah Charleston
Winyah Bay Winyah Georgetown

Recommended Websites
www. cherokeesofsouthcarolina. com
Useful site that traces Cherokee history and the Cherokee presence
in South Carolina today.

www.catawbaindiannation.com
The home page for the federally recognized Catawba Indian Nation,

www. sciway. net/hist/Indians

Information from the South Carolina state database regarding
Indian nations within the state. Indian groups may be searched
individually at this site, and for each a brief history is provided
along with the origin of tribal names, population figures, and
cultural patterns.

www.accessgenealogy.com/native/southcarolinit/index
This site is more extensive and detailed than that offered by Sciway,
also including links to federal and state Indian records, census
reports, biographies, myths and legends, and reservations.

www.500nations.com/South_Carohna_Tribes.asp
A collection of links to individual South Carolina Indian group
headquarters, recognized and non-recognized.
16 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Hernando de Soto’s expedition in 1540 passed quickly

through central South Carolina as it moved into North
Carolina and westward into Tennessee before slipping
south to the Gulf Coast. The Spanish, French, and English
settlements that were established later that century or early
in the next purposely hugged the Atlantic shore and
typically isolated themselves from native communities.
Inadequately led, poorly equipped, undermanned, and
generally uncertain just how powerful Indians of the region
might be, settlers rarely ventured inland. Unlike the
permanent colonies planted in New England, the
Caribbean, and Mexico, those founded on the Carolina
coast in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries generally
survived for no more than a few years at best. The
Europeans’ brief tenure on the land and their self-imposed
isolation -from native communities limited the spread of
disease to Indian communities.
Not only was European contact with native peoples
minimal, the actual number of settlers in South Carolina
remained small until the early 1700s. Only a few hundred
Spaniards and Frenchmen called the Lowcountry home
before the English arrival, and even the founding of
Charles Town by the English in the 1680s produced a
minimal European population. In contrast, flotillas of
European fisherman and explorers frequently ranged the
New England coast in the sixteenth century, and Puritans
flooded the region and built a population of nearly 50,000
residents by 1660. Thousands of Spaniards rooted
themselves in the Caribbean, and the islands’ European
population hit nearly 100,000 by 1600. A significant Spanish
population also spread across Central and South America,
ultimately spilling into the present-day US southwest. With
these large populations came European disease and death to
native peoples.
Not only were there fewer Europeans in what is now
South Carolina before the eighteenth century, native
communities were significantly smaller and certainly more
dispersed than those of New England, the Gulf Coast, the
Caribbean, Mexico, or Central America. Indians who
contracted smallpox, typhus, or other diseases would have
most likely infected only their own families and
communities. Disease was unlikely to spread widely or
 ONE: INHABITANTS BEFORE EUROPEAN DISCOVERY
17

affect large native populations.

This is not to suggest that Indians in South Carolina
were unaffected by European disease. In de Soto’s brief
journey through South Carolina, he encountered several
villages that had suffered tremendous loss of life from what
he believed to be disease. Incidental trade with Spaniards at
Port Royal may have introduced European germs to some
Indians, a perspective argued by historians Walter Edgar
and Douglas Summers Brown. Not mentioned by Edgar or
Brown, however, is the likelihood of war parties that
ranged tremendous distances. Catawba ventures into the
Ohio Valley and upstate New York certainly brought them
into contact with native communities likely touched by
European diseases; Yamasee forays southward from
Charleston most probably brought them into contact with
infected Indians who traded with Spanish settlements, and
Tuscarora advances throughout coastal North Carolina
conceivably exposed them to diseases originating among
English settlers at Roanoke Island and perhaps Jamestown.
Disease, however, was not necessarily a European product.
Writes Brown University anthropologist Shepard Krech,
“America was not a disease-free paradise before Europeans
landed on its shores.’’ He cites a variety of diseases that were
particularly vicious among sedentary, agriculturally based
communities especially on America’s mid- and southern
Atlantic coast, and he points to the low protein afforded by
the Indian food staple maize, which made them more
susceptible to infection. Without question, he adds,
European diseases proved far more virulent and
devastating to Indian populations, but Native Americans
nonetheless had their own deadly diseases.
Regardless of its source, scholars agree that disease
rather than warfare accounted for the startling
depopulation of Native Americans, although a firm
estimate of the death rate remains impossible to determine
across the continent or in South Carolina alone. Walter
Edgar’s native population estimate for the year 1500 is set
conservatively at 17,000 and liberally at 30,000, a rather
wide range indeed. For the year 1600, however, he seems
quite secure in fixing the Indian population in South
Carolina at 15,000. Depopulation over those 100 years, then,
amounted to between 2,000 to 15,000 people.
i8 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Estimated Population of the

Largest Indian Nations in
South Carolina, 1600
(Estimates by James Mooney)

Catawba 5,000
Pee Dee 7,000
Waxhaw 5,000
Cusabo 1,200
Edisto 1,000
Santee 1,000
Wateree 1,000
Winyah 900
Waccamaw 900
Sewee 800
Congaree 800
Total 24,600

After 1700, conditions changed radically in what is

now South Carolina. The European population rose
substantially and rapidly. Settlers from the North Carolina
coast inched south while Englishmen sailed directly from
England or routed themselves into South Carolina through
Barbados and other islands to the south. European trade
with Indians developed quickly, with Englishmen traveling
deep into interior lands in the early eighteenth century and
many of them settling among Native Americans. Indeed,
trade proved so profitable for Indians that they themselves
encouraged expansion of the business and, in so doing,
inadvertently exposed their villages more completely to
European diseases. The actual death rate from infectious
disease among South Carolina’s Native Americans remains
impossible to determine, but colonial records regularly cite
widespread illness among native peoples and reference
numerous Indian communities ravaged by one or more
diseases, a reality also noted by traders across the region.
Anthropologist Barry Pritzker claims that the Catawba
 ONE: INHABITANTS BEFORE EUROPEAN DISCOVERY
19

Indians of South Carolina

Today

Federally Recognized Indian Nations (Location &

Year of Recognition)
The Catawba Nation (Rock Hill, 1993)

State Recognized Indian Nations (Location & Year

of Recognition)
Chaloklowa Chickasaw Indian People (Hemingway,
2005)
Cherokee Tribe of South Carolina (Columbia, 2005)
Pee Dee Indian Nation of Upper South Carolina (Little
Rock, 2005)
Pee Dee Indian Tribe (McColl, 2005)
Santee Indian Nation (Pauline, 2006)
Waccamaw Indian People (Conway, 2005)
Wassamasaw Tribe (Moncks Comer, 2005)

Groupings Identifying Themselves as Indian

Nations, Not Recognized (Location)
Beaver Creek Indian People (Salley)
Chicora Indian Tribe (Conway)
Chicora Siouan Indian People (Andrews)
Croatan Indian Tribe of Orangeburg (Cordova)
Edisto Indian Organization (Edisto Beach)
Free Cherokee (Chesnee)
Piedmont American Indian Association (Gray Court)

According to the 2000 United States Federal Census,

there were 13,718 South Carolinians claiming an
American Indian identity.

Nation alone suffered near extinction from smallpox by the

mid-eighteenth century, its population declining from
about 6,000 in 1600 to a mere 500 in 1750.
The effect of European settlement in South Carolina
on native peoples proved nearly disastrous. Death, warfare,
enslavement, and relocation reduced significantly the
number of Indians who dwelled between the Atlantic
 20 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: MISSISSIPPI

Must-See Sites: South Carolina

Indian Affairs Commission
Unity Powwow

Native American residents of the Palmetto State gather

in Columbia each May to celebrate their heritage and to
plan cooperative programs that serve the native
population. Moreover, the powwow reminds all South
Carolinians of the ethnic diversity present in the state
today and throughout South Carolina’s rich history. At
the powwow, traditionally an all-day affair, Indians wear
traditional garments, perform traditional dances,
entertain observers with storytelling and music, and
encourage spectators to participate in games. Exhibits
on display highlight native cultures, and vendors sell
Indian-made goods. For more information, contact
www. south carolinaindianaffairs. com.

Ocean and Appalachian Mountains. Surviving Native

Americans found their cultural traditions and community
structures compromised hy British values, customs,
religion, and economic pursuits. In their altered forms,
some Indian communities continued to exist but did so by
residing in remote, isolated stretches of wilderness not
desired by the English, and later American, settlers. More
often than not, they ultimately confronted the choice to
relocate westward or to acculturate themselves to non-
Indian norms in order to survive as a people.
A small native population remained in South Carolina
throughout the nineteenth century, hut in the 1930s
America’s federal government abruptly changed the course
of its Indian policy and actually encouraged native peoples
nationwide to increase their numbers and revitalize much of
their traditional cultures. The Indian Reorganization Act
(1934) along with a myriad federal programs championed by
I resident Franklin D. Roosevelt collectively gave rise to the
Indian New Deal” and, by the eve of World War II,
renewed tribal identity and structures. Beginning in the
 ONE: INHABITANTS BEFORE EUROPEAN DISCOVERY 21

1960s, Washington further permitted Indian communities

to petition state and federal agencies for official recognition
as nations. Although the procedure for tribal recognition is
quite long and demanding, every Indian community within
South Carolina has, over the last four decades, commenced
the effort to secure legal tribal standing. To date, only one
nation, the Catawba, has secured federal recognition, but
seven others have attained state recognition. The 2000
federal census lists 13,718 American Indians in residence in
South Carolina, about 1,300 of whom use principally their
native Indian language.
 Discovery and Early Settlement

Spanish and French Exploration and

Settlements
By the 1520s, Spain was firmly entrenched in the Americas,
with colonies stretching from the Caribbean islands well
into present-day Mexico. Passion for gold and other forms
of material wealth was intended to enrich the young nation
and in so doing transform Spain into a superpower within
Europe. Explorers, conquistadors, and settlers pushed ever
farther into the newfound continents in search of the
precious metal, and eventually extended the empire
southward throughout most of South America and north
into California and across the Great Plains. Their mission
included the spread of Catholicism to the native
populations, an avowed goal that wrapped their more
earthly pursuits with the mantle of divine blessing.
Spaniards in the Americas exploited every opportunity to
expand the reach of Crown and Church.
In early summer 1520, Francisco Gordillo captained a
vessel westward from Hispaniola, skirting Cuba and
turning north along the Atlantic shore of present-day
Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. In August, Gordillo’s
tiny ship reportedly anchored somewhere just above the
Savannah River—today’s Beaufort, Port Royal, St. Elena,
and Hilton Head area. While some historians question the
credibility of this alleged “first landing of Europeans in
South Carolina,” few doubt the veracity of Gordillo’s
arrival on the South Carolina coast some ten months later
and his encounter farther north, near New York, with
another Spanish explorer, Pedro de Quexos.
Like Gordillo, Quexos was scouting the North
American shore, determining its length and seeking any
resource that might contribute to Spain’s growing wealth.
In their conversations, the two captains hit upon the idea to

23
2-4
ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

transform their respective expeditions from exploratory

missions to a slave-catching enterprise. Throughout the
Caribbean, Spain enslaved Native Americans for mining
operations and agricultural work. Indians there had fallen
victim by the thousands to European diseases, however,
causing a significant decline in available labor. Quexos and
Gordillo recognized the financial windfall that awaited
anyone who could supply Spain’s established colonies with
labor. Their plan conceived, it was now a matter of
implementing their grand design.
On June 21, 1521 the two captains dropped anchor along
the present-day South Carolina coast near the opening of a
river they named for St. John the Baptist; soon afterward
they encountered members of the Chicora Nation. The
initial meeting proved quite tense, but the Spaniards’ gifts
and non-tlireatening demeanor soon allayed the Chicoras’
concerns. In the next few days, the appearance of friendship
induced approximately 150 Chicoras to accept Quexos and
Gordillo’s invitation to inspect the Spanish ships. Once on
board, the Indians found themselves not entertained as
promised but instead faced with Spanish arms. Now
prisoners, they were transported to Hispaniola and sold into
slavery. As historian Walter Edgar noted, and as many
scholars concur, the combined expeditions of Quexos and
Gordillo set into motion “what would become an all-too-
familiar pattern of European treachery and mistreatment of
the Indians in North America.”
One captive took an exceptionally keen interest in the
strangers who enslaved him and, over the two years that
followed, adopted the culture of his captors, mastered the
Spanish language, accepted Catholicism as his religion, and
assumed the name Francisco Chicora. Chicora’s willingness
to acculturate and the speed with which he transformed
himself attracted the attention of one Hispaniola sugar
planter and judge, Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon. Himself
desirous of accumulating greater fortune from the
Americas, Ayllon in 1523 journeyed to Spain seeking a
commission from King Charles V to lead a rather
ambitious undertaking to the land of the Chicora Nation.
Francisco Chicora sailed with Ayllon and provided the
Spanish court with detailed descriptions of the land,
resources, and Indian cultures along the southeastern
 TWO: DISCOVERY AND EARLY SETTLEMENT
z5

stretch of North America. But Chicora could “play a

crov/d aware of the king s wide-eyed enthusiasm for what
he was hearing, Chicora not only embellished his
presentation but also concocted elaborate fantasies that held
the court spellbound. Excited by the prospect of securing new
sources of wealth from the Americas and more than a little
intrigued by Chicora s stories, King Charles V authorized
Ayllon to establish a Spanish colony of one million acres and
instructed him to include priests on his expedition for the
religious conversion of the native peoples.
In mid-July 1526, Ayllon’s expedition sailed from Santo
Domingo with six ships, between 500 and 600 settlers and
missionaries, African slaves, livestock, and Francisco
Chicora as interpreter. Spanish records suggest Ayllon
hoped to settle the area earlier visited by Gordillo and
Quexos, but apparent miscalculations and unfamiliarity
with the coastline carried the settlers much farther north,
presumably to the Cape Fear River at present-day
Wilmington, North Carolina. While scouting the terrain,
Chicora deserted the Spanish now that he was in the
vicinity of his homeland. Unimpressed with the
surroundings, abandoned by his interpreter, and
confronted with growing restlessness among the settlers,
Ayllon turned the expedition southward, passing the
present-day Grand Strand, and founded the settlement San
Miguel de Guadalupe near Winyah Bay in Georgetown,
South Carolina.
The settlement seemed destined for failure from its
founding. En route to Winyah Bay, the sea claimed one ship
loaded with supplies. It was now too lat® in the season to
plant crops. Moreover, the neighboring Chicora still
seethed over Gordillo’s kidnapping of villagers two years
earlier and posed a very real threat to the lives of Spaniards
who ventured too far from the safety of the settlement.
Disease also spread among the settlers, killing many,
including Ayllon himself. A power struggle ensued for
command of the community, and the settlement devolved
into chaos and violence. Starving and desperate for
provisions as winter bore down on the coast, settlers
descended on Chicora villages looking for food and
clothing and willing to use force if they were not freely
given. The Chicora fought fiercely, easily driving back the
 Must-See Sites: Hilton Head Island

South of Charleston is Hilton Head Island, the largest sea island

between New Jersey and Florida. “Discovered” in 1663 by
English sea captain William Hilton, the island became home to
several rice plantations in the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, served as part of the Confederate coastal defensive
network for Charleston and Savannah during the Civil War, and in
World War II was home to an observation post that searched for
the German U-boats that were ravaging Allied shipping along the
US coast. Development of Hilton Head Island as a resort
community began in the 1950s, and today it boasts luxury
accommodations, several marinas, championship golf courses,
beautiful beaches, and unique shops. Located in Sea Pines Forest
Preserve is an Indian shell ring, an ancient refuse heap of shells
and animal bones approximately 150 feet in diameter, several
feet deep, and dating back to the same era in which the Great
Pyramid in Egypt was constructed. For details, see
www.hiltonheadisland.org.

Hilton Head © Alexander Glagolev

 TWO: DISCOVERY AND EARLY SETTLEMENT
2-7

Spaniards. As the new year opened, only 150 of the original

600-man expedition remained alive. Aware that the colony
was lost, the survivors straggled back to Hispaniola.
Ayllon s effort to establish a colony failed miserably;
nonetheless, Spain persisted in its bid to locate and exploit
resources north of Florida. Two more expeditions entered
South Carolina over the following 40 years, one for
discovery and the other for settlement. Hernando de Soto
in 1540 guided 600 men overland from the Florida
panhandle through central Georgia, and then meandering
through the midlands of South Carolina, crossing the
Savannah River, the Congeree River, and the Catawba
River before venturing into present-day North Carolina
and turning westward to Tennessee. In 1561 Angel de
Villefane sailed from Havana under orders from Spain’s
King Philip II to found the colony of Santa Elena in the
Port Royal Sound area of South Carolina. A hurricane
swept from the Atlantic and destroyed three of Villefane’s
four ships as they sailed the Carolina coastline, killing more
than 20 of the expedition’s 100 men. Given the loss of men
and supplies, Villefane scrapped plans to settle Santa Elena
and turned toward Santo Domingo. Spanish activity in
South Carolina had netted nothing of value for the Crown
to date and little profit for expedition leaders. One would
suspect, then, that Spain’s interest in the area would have
waned. Indeed, this might have occurred had France not
threatened Spain’s exclusive dominance of the American
coast and the Caribbean.
France and Spain had watched one another cautiously
since Columbus’s first voyage to the New World in 1492.
The wealth gleaned from Spanish expeditions and
conquests in the Americas since the turn of the century had
transformed Spain into the military powerhouse of Europe
and made Spain’s economy the envy of the continent—
power and wealth that grew consistently under the reigns
of Charles V and Philip II. Both England and France
yearned for access to New World riches, but at mid-century
only France was capable of testing Spain’s stranglehold on
American territory.
Spain’s concerns about French colonial efforts in the
New World were matched by Philip’s fear of France
becoming a Protestant neighbor. Philip viewed the rising
Z8 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

tide of Protestant Christianity across Europe as a serious

threat to what he believed was the true word of God
espoused by the Catholic Church. He was determined to
crush, with military force if necessary, the heretical groups
growing within Spam and throughout Western Europe.
From the Protestant Reformation in France emerged the
Huguenots, and among them were noblemen who enjoyed
enough political and popular support to threaten France’s
Catholic monarchy. Should France fall to the Huguenots,
Philip reasoned, a nation of heretics would border his own
and perhaps aggressively spread its unchristian agenda. By
1560, Philip perceived France as a dual threat—to New
World resources and thus to Spain’s military dominance in
Europe, and to the supremacy of the Catholic religion
defended by Spain. Philip soon realized his fears were well
founded.
In January 1562, Caspar Coligny, a Huguenot and
admiral of the French navy, hatched a plan to construct an
outpost in America. A colony in the New World, he
contended, would likely net substantial wealth for France
and concurrently become a home for French Huguenots.
The prospect of wealth and a corresponding reduction of
the Huguenot population at home convinced France’s
Catholic monarchy to approve the Coligny plan. Coligny
assigned Jean Ribaut as commander of the expedition.
Ribaut was a devout Huguenot, an experienced sea captain,
and a staunch nationalist—all qualities Coligny believed
essential for his plan’s success.
Ribaut’s two ships, crowded with 150 soldiers, departed
France on February 16, 1562 and for ten weeks the tiny
vessels sailed the westward currents before making landfall
in northern Florida. There, in the area of modern
Jacksonville, Ribaut erected a marker that issued French
claim to that land and all territory northward. The
expedition then sailed along the coast in search of Ayllon’s
Jordan River (the Cape Fear). En route, however, the
French ships entered a sprawling, beautiful hartior into
which several rivers emptied. The countryside was lush in
vegetation and home to a magnificent array of fowl. He
scribbled into his journal that the harbor and network of
rivers were filled with “so many sorts of fish that you may
take them without a net or a hook, as many as you want.”
 TWO: DISCOVERY AND EARLY SETTLEMENT 29

To Ribaut and his men. It is one of the goodliest, best and

most fruitful countries ever seen, where nothing is lacking.”
The area seemed so majestic, Ribaut could think of no
better name to give it than Port Royal. Having sufficiently
scouted the region, the expedition established its settlement,
Charlesfort, at present-day Parris Island and within five
days the soldiers erected a blockhouse, mounted cannon in
well-protected emplacements, felled trees for construction
of the fort, and dug a moat to surround the garrison.
Ribaut was convinced that Charlesfort rooted France
in the New World and signaled to Spain that her days of
unmolested command over American resources were at
end. Hoping to expand the fledgling colony, he sailed for
home in June to secure more supplies and additional
settlers, leaving behind about 30 volunteers to complete
construction of the fort, maintain crops, and build strong
ties with Indians in the area. He arrived in France on July
20 only to discover his nation shredded by civil war
between Huguenots and Catholics, a crisis in part
influenced by Spain. More money and manpower for
Charlesfort was not a luxury the colony’s backers could
now afford; the French settlement in America would
receive no aid, and the men who stayed behind would be
left to survive on their own until, at some undetermined
time, rescue ships could sail to Port Royal.
Disillusionment, anger, and fear settled over Port
Royal as it became obvious that supplies and reinforcements
were not coming. The few crops harvested proved
inadequate for the winter that awaited the 30 men, a dire
situation made worse when the blockhouse that stored all
supplies burned to the ground. Edisto Indians offered some
food to their hungry French neighbors but not enough to
ensure the colonists’ survival. In addition, Captain de la
Pierria, who was left in charge of the settlement, proved to
be a severely harsh commander. His cruelty ignited
rebellion and ultimately resulted in his murder. Despair, a
longing for home, and the belief they had been forgotten
led to the settlers to abandon the colony. The men pieced
together a makeshift boat, stitched together blankets and
shirts for sails, and ventured into the Atlantic hoping a ship
might eventually rescue them. Only one man opted to stay
behind, eigliteen-year-old Guillaume Ruffin. Starvation and
 Parris Island Marine Corps
Recruit Depot

Alexander Parris, English aristocrat and army colonel, purchased

the island that today bears his name from Carolina’s Lords
Proprietors in 1715. In little time he built a profitable rice
plantation, and his descendents continued the family business until
the Civil War. In April 1861, the Confederate States of America
rushed to build a ring of defensive fortifications along the South’s
Atlantic coast. Anticipating this, the Union Navy swept into the Port
Royal area and, under the command of Samuel F. Du Pont, seized
Parris Island and from here conducted operations against the
Confederacy. Following the war, the US Navy used the minimal
facilities there as a southern base for the ironclad fleet and for the
training of sailors, and in 1882 converted the base into a fixed
defensive installation with long-range shore guns manned by the US
Marine Corps. This post was meant to repel any enemy vessels that
might threaten the American mainland and to defend ships entering
and exiting the Intracoastal Waterway then being built along the
length of the East Coast for the safe inland waterborne movement of
vital war materiel. Facilities, however, remained rather simple and
limited. In 1909 a Marine Officers’ School was added at Parris
Island, training and graduating 27 new lieutenants in December
and another 16 the following year, but this program was transferred
to Norfolk in 1911 and replaced with disciplinary barracks to
house navy prisoners.
As the Great War in Europe raged and threatened to engulf the
United States, the Department of the Navy in November 1915
designated Parris Island as a Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD)
to provide basic military training to Marine enlistees. When
America entered the war in April 1917, 835 men were in training
at Parris Island; by war’s end, more than 46,200 marines had been
processed through the MCRD and the post had assumed additional
training responsibilities. A non-commissioned officers’ school
graduated 2,144 sergeants, and another 1,500 were processed
through the marines’ clerical, radio, signal, and cooking schools.
The war also brought to Parris Island social services and activities
for marines. The YMCA established a full-service operation at the
training facility, and the Knights of Columbus provided a recreation
center, five shows, a movie theater, sports facilities, and basic
comforts to hospitalized marines and those departing Parris Island
for other duty posts.
During the war years, Army Colonel and student of history
John Millis was stationed in nearby Beaufort. Aware of Parris
Islands history, he scouted and discovered the remains of
Charlesfort. Excavations of the post commenced immediately after
the war, and in 1926 Congress appropriated $10,000 for the
construction of a monument commemorating the 1562 Jean
Ribaut expedition. The navy initiated numerous construction
projects in the interwar period, and by 1929 a new causeway and
bridge connected the island and mainland. The number of training
battalions also increased; indeed, in 1938 Congress authorized a
substantial rise in marine manpower, and the MCRD training
program intensified in anticipation of war.
Japan’s strike on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 abruptly
raised training demands at Parris Island, from an average of 1,600
recruits monthly to 6,800 in the same time span. The Works
Progress Administration of South Carolina committed 100 workers
to Parris Island early in 1942 to build new barracks, dining
facilities, and training areas. This still proved inadequate. To
accommodate the rising volume of new recruits to the available
facilities until WPA construction projects were completed, the
Marine Corps temporarily reduced basic training to five weeks
from its earlier eight-week cycle. During World War U, nearly
205,000 marine recruits trained at Parris Island.
World War II made the United States a global superpower.
Since 1945, the size of the Marine Corps and, subsequently, the
size of the training battalions posted at Parris Island have
expanded and decreased in relative harmony with America’s global
obligations and endeavors, Parris Island has evolved into one of
America’s principal and most respected military training sites and
today trains 18,000 Marines annually.
For information regarding recruit training, MCDR
organization, and visitor information, see www.mcdrpi.usmc.mil
or contact the Beaufort Regional Chamber of Commerce Visitor
Center at (843) 986-5400.
32 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

possibly cannibalism sailed with the men until an English

ship spotted survivors in the waters near the European
continent and pulled them on deck. Back near Port Royal,
Spanish scouting parties discovered Ruffin living with the
Edisto and took the lone Frenchman prisoner.
Civil war in France continued to rage, but in 1564
Admiral Coligny once more posited the notion of founding
a Huguenot colony in North America and scrapped
together adequate funds from previously untapped sources.
That year, 300 Frenchmen sailed west, not for Port Royal
but instead to northern Florida, where they erected Fort
Caroline on the St. John River. Although confronted by
problems similar to those that had plagued the French
effort two years earlier, the colony endured thanks to aid
from England, an unlikely ally but a nation always willing
to help any enemy of Spain. Still determined not to let
French Protestants establish a threat to Spain in the New
World, Philip II dispatched to the region Pedro Menendez
de Aviles, who promptly destroyed Fort Caroline. Those
Frenchmen who eluded capture and execution fled deep
into the woodlands, many of them filtering north toward
Port Royal.
Menendez soon heard stories that Frenchmen once
more occupied the Port Royal—Santa Elena area, and in
April 1566, with a force of 150 soldiers and his prisoner
Guillaume Ruffin as interpreter, he moved north to Santa
Elena and founded Fort San Felipe on Parris Island.
Menendez sent well-armed units inland on exploratory
missions throughout autumn and winter. One team of
soldiers, led by Captain Juan Pardo, reached present-day
Spartanburg and the base of the Appalachian Mountains.
These journeys were, indeed, expeditions of discovery, but
they also were intended to establish friendly relations with
Indians and determine what resources might be exploited
for Spain’s benefit.
Santa Elena enjoyed a brief period of growth and
prosperity. A pleasant climate for farming, plentiful game
and fish, easy access to the sea, and the sheer beauty of the
environment lured hundreds of Spaniards to the colony.
Entire families emigrated to Santa Elena, mostly farmers
who hoped for landholding opportunities not available in
Spain and who were promised short-term farm subsidies by
 TWO: DISCOVERY AND EARLY SETTLEMENT
33

the Spanish government. The colony also became home to

physicians, a variety of artisans, priests, and low-level
government officials. A rather lucrative fur trade with local
Indians generated profits for settlers, and the sale of timber
to Spanish markets brought additional money to colonists’
hands. By autumn 1569, Santa Elena’s population stood at
325, without question the most promising Spanish effort
north of Florida to date.
Despite the colony’s apparent progress, turmoil soon
compromised its development. Santa Elena was
surrounded by land prone to flooding; consequently,
farmers failed to produce an abundance of quality crops as
expected. Moreover, cattle and other livestock promised by
Spanish officials never arrived. Food supplies ran
precariously low in 1570. To ensure his soldiers’ welfare, the
commander of Fort San Filipe appropriated most of the
harvested crops, thereby forcing civilian settlers to rely
increasingly on whatever they could pull from the harbor
and nearby rivers. Malnutrition spread among the settlers,
and as the food shortage worsened, the Spaniards raided
nearby Indian villages for meat and vegetables. This
brought swift retribution from the Indians. A tenuous
detente settled over the region for the next six years, a
period in which food remained critically insufficient for the
settlers, a problem compounded by the lingering presence
of typhus in the colony.
In June 1576, several Spanish settlers murdered three
local natives for reasons that remain unclear, and, driven by
hunger and disease, the Spaniards once again raided several
Indian villages. The Edistos retaliated immediately, forging
a temporary alliance with other Indian nations along the
coast and driving all Spaniards in the region to the refuge
of Fort San Filipe. Rather than endure a protracted siege
waiting for military support that might not come, colonists
fled the settlement for the security of Cuba. With the
settlers’ departure, the allied Indian nations torched the fort
and launched strikes against all Spanish communities as far
south as central Florida. Only St. Augustine survived.
Having destroyed so many Spanish settlements, the
Indians assumed they had regained mastery over the coastal
lands, and their alliance evaporated. Spanish authorities,
however, were not ready to relinquish the Santa Elena area
34 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

to native control. The following year, another Spanish fort

was constructed within sight of Fort San Filipe, which now
lay in ash. Fort San Marcos was much larger and stronger
than its predecessor and was intended to become the
Spanish citadel on the North American Atlantic coast. A
more vibrant town arose around the fortification, attracting
hundreds of new settlers. The community established
closer ties to Spanish settlements in Florida and the
Caribbean, and regular trade generated considerable
prosperity for the reborn colony. Farmers located fertile soil
outside flood zones, and abundant grasslands soon
sustained a fledgling cattle industry. Equally important,
Spanish officials and the military command at Santa Elena
not only recognized Indian power in the region but
acknowledged the necessity of amicable relations with local
natives, at least for the near future. For the first time, it
appeared Spain had learned from its previous mistakes and
now laid successfully the foundation for a permanent
foothold along the Carolina coast. To the settlers’ chagrin,
this would soon change.

English Efforts in North America

England had long envied the wealth and subsequent power
Spain derived from the New World, but it was not until the
1570s, under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, that the
English navy had the capacity to challenge Spain’s secured
shipping lanes. As the new Santa Elena colony rose from
the ashes of Fort San Filipe, English “sea dogs” such as
Francis Drake prowled the Atlantic and pounced on Philip
IPs gold-bearing galleons. Piracy soon gave way to attacks
directly on Spanish colonies in the late 1570s as English
vessels plundered Spanish communities throughout the
Caribbean and along the Florida coast. England’s intention
to ravage Spanish shipping and settlements became even
more evident in 1585, when Sir Walter Raleigh directed the
founding of an English colony on Roanoke Island in the
northern Outer Banks of present-day North Carolina.
Raleigh openly admitted that the colony was partly planned
as a base of operations against Spanish interests in the
Americas. Spain’s far-flung colonies were vulnerable and
the king’s army and navy so dispersed over the vast empire
that the Spanish were unable to counter these devastating
 Must-See Sites: Magnolia Plantation
and Gardens, Charleston

The first record of the Drayton family dates to the Norman

Conquest of England at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and since
then the family has played a prominent role in the history of both
England and America. Descendent Thomas Drayton and his wife
Ann were among the earliest settlers of the Carolina Colony and
there helped establish rice cultivation in South Carolina. In 1676,
Thomas and Ann built Magnolia Plantation, one of the first
plantation homes constructed in the colony and a major supplier
of rice. By the time of his death, Thomas had also created a ten-
acre garden of exotic and local plants, a project that was continued
by his descendents and today is the oldest public garden in the US.
The Drayton family proved central in the state’s economic
development and in each pivotal moment of South Carolina
history: among its members are a signer of the Declaration of
Independence, a co-author of the South Carolina state constitution,
the first judge of the US District Court (appointed by President
George Washington), a governor, and a Confederate Army general.
Visitors may tour the magnificent plantation house, the expansive
and beautiful garden, former slave housing, the family burial site,
and an on-site zoo and nature center. Also available to visitors are
boat excursions on the plantation’s surrounding waterways and
swamps, a Revolutionary War battle reenactment, educational
programs, holiday celebrations throughout the year, and
numerous other special programs and activities. Magnolia
Plantation and Gardens is located at 3550 Ashley River Road in
Charleston. For more information, call (800) 367-3517 or see
www.magnoliaplantation.com.

blows with concentrated force. Philip II understood this

problem and, consequently, ordered that the most remote
colonies be abandoned and Spanish forces regrouped to
more strategic defenses. The king’s decision applied to Fort
San Marcos and the entire Santa Elena experiment, despite
the returns the community now promised. In mid-August
1587, Spanish settlers burned the fort and homes, boarded
ships anchored in the harbor, and vacated the colony.
36 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

For more than 60 years, Spain labored to extend its

presence into the lower region of modern South Carolina.
Both Charles V and Philip II hoped a colony there would
contribute to the agricultural base of the Spanish empire
and that its settlers would ultimately tap into valuable
resources such as gold that would further enrich and
empower the nation. Although an uneasy and inconsistent
peace marked the colony’s relations with the Chicora and
Edisto, Spain still wished to convert the native population
to Catholicism, encourage them to embrace Spanish
culture, and possibly convince them to help the Spaniards
seek mineral wealth. But Spain’s elaborate vision for
development in South Carolina proved grander than its
ability to plant a profitable, secure colony. Poor leadership,
inadequate preparation and planning, and general
ignorance of the region all combined to doom outposts.
Moreover, Gordillo’s enslavement of Chicoras, the settlers’
sporadic attacks on nearby tribes to acquire food, and
Spain’s dismissal of Indian culture corrupted the possibility
of an alliance with local tribes that would have directly
benefited Spain’s effort to establish a permanent colony in
the area. Santa Elena was also a victim of international
rivalry—a distant, isolated outpost in a world for which
three nations competed. As long as all three nations eyed
the same territory, none of their colonies would survive.
Over the 80 years that followed, neither Spain, France, nor
England attempted settlement of Santa Elena.
As Spain abandoned the Carolina coast, England’s
colony at Roanoke also faltered and in 1590 collapsed, with
more than 100 settlers listed as missing; in this case,
however, the financial loss fell on private investors such as
Raleigh rather on the national government. Queen
Elizabeth 1 had remained adamant that treasury funds not
be spent on colony-building projects in the New World
because the nation’s resources were more immediately
needed to expand defense forces against possible Spanish
attack on the British Isles. Indeed, her caution was well
founded; in 1588 Philip II launched his Armada against
England with an accompanying invasion force of 20,000
soldiers. The Roanoke debacle embittered investors.
Elizabeth I died in 1603, after 50 years on the English
throne. Her successor, King James I, openly encouraged the
 TWO: DISCOVERY AND EARLY SETTLEMENT
37

founding of English colonies in North America, but like

Elizabeth committed no government funds to support such
efforts. Ele did, however, issue a charter that allowed for the
creation of the London Company, a joint-stock corporation
to raise private investments explicitly for placing an English
colony in the New World. With the funds raised, the
London Company purchased three ships, hired John Smith
and a small contingent of soldiers to command and protect
the expedition, and recruited 100 settlers to establish
settlement in America. In May 1607, after nearly three
months at sea, Smith’s prospective colonists made landfall
in Virginia and founded the colony of Jamestown.
Similar to Spanish adventures in South Carolina,
England’s Jamestown Colony suffered terribly. Disease
proved rampant, especially malaria. The settlement sat in
marslilands, an area not suitable for agriculture.
Malnutrition and periods of outright starvation took many
lives, as did the high salinity of the James River, from which
the settlement obtained its drinking water. Relations with
the Powhatan Indians who surrounded Jamestown were, at
best, strained from the outset. Captain John Smith was a
strong, competent leader, but serious injury and his
subsequent return to England for medical care left
Jamestown without anyone capable of command until 1610.
In its first year of existence, fully half of the settlers at
Jamestown died; another 500 arrived in spring 1608 and
over the next two years all but 100 of those had perished.
For another five years, Jamestown’s grip on life was
tenuous, but in mid-decade a new tobacco plant that
blended Spanish and Virginia Indian varieties found a
receptive market in England. Tobacco quickly became the
colony’s version of Spanish gold, and Jamestown’s survival
was assured. By 1620, England boasted a permanent and
thriving colony in the New World.
That same year, 1620, nearly 100 men, women, and
children in England boarded the ship Mayflower and
crossed the North Atlantic in an arched route to Virginia.
Autumn storms, however, violently whipped the vessel off
course and cracked the Mayflower's primary support beam.
Lucky to reach shore, the newcomers found themselves
stranded in present-day Massachusetts, homeless, with no
food but the supplies they carried, and facing fast-
38 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

approaching winter in a strange land. Unknowingly, those

who survived the first year would be the first of nearly
40,000 Englishmen to migrate to Massachusetts over the
three decades that followed.

The Founding of Charles Town

As colonies in New England and Virginia grew, British
settlement in the Caribbean also took root and expanded in
direct challenge to Spain’s regional dominance. On
Barbados, tobacco and cotton netted limited profits, but by
the late 1640s sugar production on the island exploded with
unheralded returns. Worldwide demand skyrocketed for
sugar and its byproducts molasses and rum, and by the late
seventeenth century Barbados had emerged as the richest
British colony in the Americas, sustained by African slavery
and governed by a planter aristocracy. Among the island’s
English elite was John Colleton.
Colleton had remained loyal to the Crown during
England’s Puritan Revolution, and with the restoration of
the monarchy to Charles II in 1660, Colleton traveled to
London. Rewarded with knighthood for his support of the
Royalists, the Barbados planter was honored with a seat on
the Council for Foreign Plantations, which netted him close
ties to powerful and influential men such as Sir George
Carteret, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, William Berkeley,
and Edward Hyde, all titled men with direct connections to
the king.
Colleton’s newfound position enabled him to press a
plan he had conceived years earlier: a colony somewhere
between Jamestown and Spanish Florida. Given the
prosperity generated by slave-produced sugar on Barbados
and other islands throughout the Caribbean, members of
the Council of Foreign Plantations believed an agricultural
settlement on the North American mainland might reap
similar profits. Tobacco had substantially enriched
Jamestown, and profits from its production and sale had a
ripple effect on England’s larger economy. Surely, council
members reasoned, a properly structured and governed
colony could make money.
It required little effort to convince King Charles II. He
owed Cooper, Hyde, Berkeley, and the others a debt beyond
the scope of money and titles for their many years of
 Must-See Sites: Charles Towne
Landing State Historic Site *

■ ■<■■4
Situated on the bank of the Ashley River opposite downtown I ' I
Charleston, Charles Towne Landing is the site of England’s first iiiifii
permanent colony in South Carolina, established in 1670. On the
300th anniversary of its founding, in 1970, the South Carolina
General Assembly pronounced the landing site a state historical
park. Spanning 664 acres, Charles Towne Landing includes a
MP
visitor center with interactive exhibits highlighting the colony’s
founding, daily life in the formative years of Charleston and South l®HSI
. Carolina, and the diversity of settlers, slaves, and Native Americans
iifSISl
who inhabited the settlement and surrounding area. Anchored
ggslMlH
nearby is The Adventure, a full-size reproduction of a typical liissstsii
l
trading vessel of the seventeenth century. The park also has a 22-
Mi
acre zoo that features a variety of animals the original settlers ftaftiss
encountered, walking trails around the marsh and through an 80-
Hi Hi|i|§||||§
acre English-style garden, the Legare-Waring Plantation House,
sugar cane and rice fields, and an ongoing archaeological project. iISliiiiii
Each April, Charles Towne Landing celebrates Founders’ Day,
’ sy I. ■ Cv.S \
commemorating the establishment of the settlement and featuring
militia drills, black powder demonstrations, guest speakers, and 5\x-j2 Mjjjf

special historical programs. The landing is located on SC Hwy 171 ;•t/&&&*$■

between SC Hwy 17 and Interstate 26, about three miles west of the
city. See www.charlestowne.org for more information.
4o ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

support that culminated in his restoration to the British

throne. The king also recognized the potential for a
financial return that would not only reward those who
produced marketable crops in a well-situated colony but
would, like Jamestown, benefit the larger English economy.
Moreover, a colony considerably south of Jamestown would
further challenge Spanish dominance of the Americas and
expand England’s empire. On March 24, 1663, Charles II
issued a charter for the Colony of Carolina, which its
custodians named in honor of their king, and assigned title
to eight individuals, or proprietors: Anthony Ashley
Cooper, George Carteret, Edward Hyde, William
Berkeley, John Berkeley, William Craven, George Monck,
and the plan’s initiator )ohn Colleton. The colony’s
boundaries were unlike those of any previous colony
founded by any other nation. Carolina, by charter, stretched
from Virginia south to Florida, and, in direct challenge to
Spain, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.
The Lords Proprietors, as these men were known, were
given extraordinary power. They were entitled to make war,
declare peace, establish towns, raise and maintain an army
and navy, tax settlers, and serve as heads of the colony’s
judicial system. The proprietors could control all Indian
affairs within the colony, including trade with the native
populations, and regulate the import and export of goods.
Equally important, the eight noblemen were to own
hundreds of thousands of acres of land. Indeed, the king’s
grant proved more extensive, more empowering, and more
enriching than any award given to any individual or
collection of Englishmen outside the royal family.
Once the colony was chartered, investors based in
Barbados hired William Hilton to scout the Carolina coast.
Hilton reported hack in 1664, describing in detail the
climate, wildlife, plants, soil quality, location of natural
harbors and river openings, and the temperament of coastal
Indians. His remarks and later published account also
highlighted the sheer beauty of the Carolina coast and the
potential economic windfall that awaited settlers and the
colony’s investors. One serious hurdle had to be overcome
before the Barbados investors, collectively known as the
Barbadian Adventurers, would commit themselves to
colony-building in Carolina. The adventurers worried that
 TWO: DISCOVERY AND EARLY SETTLEMENT
41

few Englishmen then living in Barbados would willingly

relocate to the new colony unless the proprietors made
settlement far more enticing than simply offering the
promise of hard work and potential financial gain. The
Lords Proprietors acquiesced and conceded to all settlers in
Carolina freedom of religion, the right of self-government,
and extensive personal land grants. In fact, the proprietors
wanted to reap profits more than they wished to establish
and rule personal kingdoms; therefore, Colleton and his
seven colleagues each contributed an equal sum of money
to finance a first settlement in Carolina.
Charlestown was established originally at the mouth of
the Cape Fear River (present-day southeast North
Carolina) in late 1665 and boasted nearly 1,000 settlers by
the following summer. The hostility of local Indians,
probably the Tuscarora, raised concerns for the colony’s
security and in 1667 the colony was abandoned. Two years
elapsed before another attempt was made in Carolina. In
April 1669 Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper convinced the
proprietors to invest substantially more money into the
colony-building project. As Walter Edgar notes in his South
Carolina: A History, each nobleman agreed to contribute the
equivalent of nearly $40,000 in 1996 US dollars. A new
venture was about to unfold, one that would ultimately
succeed.
Cooper and his secretary John Locke penned a
document for governing the colony, The Fundamental
Constitutions of Carolina, in part to assure earlier accepted
concessions would be guaranteed by law and in part to
attract to the colony a large enough population to ensure its
survival and prosperity. The Fundamental Constitutions
promised tolerance for diverse religions, including
Anglicans, non-Anglicans such as Quakers and Huguenots,
and Jews. Catholics, however, were denied religious
freedom in Carolina. Despite what seem now like its
limitations, Cooper and Locke’s statement on religion
affirmed the rising spirit of the Enlightenment and
appealed to a broader body of potential settlers throughout
England, Europe, and the Caribbean.
The issue of private land ownership was also
prominent in the Fundamental Constitutions. Land grants
of 150 acres were to be awarded to every adult male settler,
 John Locke
Although an Oxford academic, a trained physician, and colleague to
scientists such as Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton, John Locke is
best remembered as one of England’s leading philosophers. His 1689
work, An Essay on Human Understanding, arguably one of the most
influential works in Western philosophy, posited the idea that humans
are bom with no innate knowledge, only the instinctual needs of all
animals; in short, the human mind at birth is a blank slate, or tabula
rasa. An individual’s knowledge is the product of his experiences,
experiences based on sensation and reflection, and human
understanding and morality are the products of the application of
“reason,” or critical thought, to those experiences. Locke encouraged
people to question the nature of man and of human institutions,
including religion, and denounced those who avoided the labor of
rational thought. He called for universal education and encouraged
humans to pursue truth founded on reason and logic.
Locke’s two-volume masterpiece Two Treatises on Government,
also published in 1689, laid the foundation of a political ideology that
soon altered Western civilization. In this work, Locke argued that man
is born free in “a state of nature.” Con (ran to philosophical trends at
the time, Locke believed that man was neither good nor evil from birth,
but that man seeks certain advantages or protections in life that may
cause him to behave in a manner sometimes detrimental to others.
Humans, therefore, agree to organize as a society and form a
governing structure to protect each person’s “natural rights” to life,
 liberty, and property. This is government’s only task, argued Locke.
Should that governing system fail its responsibility, it is then the duty
of society to end that government and create in its place a system that
will protect the people’s natural rights. This he termed the “right of
revolution.” Locke’s concept of a “social contract” shaped the
thought of later political philosophers and ultimately served as the
foundation for the political ideology of the American Revolution.
Locke’s immediate connection to the Carolina Colony was
through Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, for whom
Locke served as personal physician in London. Lord Ashley firmly
believed that England’s future prosperity hinged on its expansion of
trade; the founding and exploitation of overseas colonies were central
to England’s financial growth and ultimately to the nation’s power
within Europe. As one of the eight proprietors for the new Carolina
Colony, Lord Ashley was in a position to apply his perspective. He
believed that to build a successful enterprise in America, it was
essential to attract to the colony the noblemen necessary to govern the
estate directly and a working-class population committed to the
colony’s welfare and development.
After reflecting on contemporary English politics and the
problems encountered by recent colonies in America, Lord Ashley and
Locke reasoned drat both noblemen and setders must have a vested
interest in the colony, each in possession of certain rights or privileges
that would attract them to Carolina and ensure their commitment to its
success. With Lord Ashley’s support, Locke in 1669 served as co¬
author of the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina. This document
created a two-house colonial assembly, an upper chamber of
noblemen and a lower division of representatives popularly elected
from each district. Property ownership was permitted for all persons,
although the right to vote and to hold elected office was restricted to
individuals who held 500 acres of land or more. The assembly was to
conduct and regulate affairs with native peoples, internal commerce,
land distribution, and slavery. With the exception of Cathohcs, settlers
also possessed the right to worship in any manner they chose,
provided they believe in God. To be sure, the constitution proved
reminiscent of Jamestown Colony’s sovereign status earlier in the
century and was probably patterned on that; however, Jamestown’s
situation was based on the settlers’ immediate need for survival at a
time when King James I of England considered the colony outside his
jurisdiction. The Carolina constitution, in contrast, signaled shifting
currents of political thought in both England and its American
colonies, thought that included the restraint of monarchial authority
and the protection of liberties and rights for citizens.
 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA
44

100 acres to each adult female, and another 100 acres to each
male under the age of sixteen. Although the land grants
were later reduced hy half, the opportunity to own land in
any amount lured thousands to Carolina from European
countries where such opportunity did not exist. Should a
truly industrious settler prosper and accumulate additional
property, his status in society would likewise be elevated,
granting him greater prestige and influence in the colony.
All male landowners in Carolina had the legal right to vote,
itself a rare opportunity for men in the seventeenth century.
Cooper’s vision for Carolina was one of steady growth,
prosperity, and permanency. Opportunity, responsibility,
and security for all settlers, he believed, were essential to the
colony’s success and survival. The Fundamental
Constitutions were completed in July 1669 and within one
month the first settlers to Carolina Colony were at sea.
Three ships sailed from England. The journey would
normally have required two months’ travel, but the
expedition encountered numerous delays and difficulties.
The ships first stopped in Ireland to take on additional
passengers; from there, the vessels plodded through the
Atlantic and in October dropped anchor in Barbados,
where the Carolina passengers rested, acquired supplies,
and bought livestock. The ships again took to sea in late
February; one ship ran aground in the Bahamas, and a
storm swept another vessel farther north to Virginia. Only
one ship landed in Carolina, making landfall in mid-March
1670 near present-day Charleston.
Cooper’s colony builders had originally intended to
settle in the Port Royal area but, now ashore, concluded the
nearby deep-water river was more advantageous. Local
Indians, probably the Yamasee, warmly welcomed the
newcomers anti encouraged them to stay, viewing the
strangers as potential allies against their inland enemies.
Certainly, the English preferred the friendship readily
offered them to the level of diplomacy necessary to foster
favorable relations with natives of the Port Royal region,
whose earlier conflicts with settlers were well known. Also,
the colony site would afford a natural security unavailable
at Port Royal. Being several miles up river, the town would
not be visible to passing enemy warships on patrol and
would be out of range of naval guns should the Spanish
 TWO: DISCOVERY AND EARLY SETTLEMENT 45

learn the village s precise location. A ground invasion of the

town by an enemy force would also prove impractical;
marshlands extended inland from the Atlantic shore,
making the terrain entirely too difficult for an invading
force to cross. The only avenue open for attack was the
river itself, but the settlement would stand on a bluff
protected by a very narrow causeway, on which Spanish
troops would have to be concentrated and, consequently,
would be easily targeted by the settlers’ defenses. Although
the colony would not be impregnable, the colonists
reasoned that taking it would cost an invading army more
lives, materiel, and money than it was worth.
One hundred and thirty Englishmen and women now
called Charles Town home. Over the following 30 years,
waves of new settlers descended on the community from
England, Barbados, and the English West Indies. Charles
Town survived and showed early signs of prosperity. Rising
wealth in the colony along with the spirit of the Fundamental
Constitutions lured thousands of additional settlers to the
community. After so many attempts to establish a European
outpost in the area of South Carolina, one had finally
succeeded.
 South Carolina in the

Colonial Era

C harles Town beckoned Europeans, and

population of both the city and the larger Carolina
the

Colony soon mirrored the Old World’s diversity.

The Lords Proprietors envisioned a colony that would enrich
them personally and concurrently elevate the wealth and
power of England. A community of settlers that could supply
resources to the mother country and become a western
market for English manufactured goods was considered the
key to Carolina’s economic development. Luring people to
the burgeoning Carolina coast was hardly difficult.
The Fundamental Constitutions certainly appealed to
Europe’s dispossessed and ultimately offered hope to
thousands of men and women. The Proprietors also
distributed promotional flyers and brochures throughout the
continent that highlighted the colony’s economic potential, in
much the same way American states in the twentieth century
conducted booster campaigns to lure industries. Visions of
economic opportunity—land ownership especially—crossed
national boundaries and class divisions, bringing to Carolina
a truly diverse population.
The colony was divided in the 1720s, creating North
Carolina and South Carolina. By mid-century, at least eight
separate nationalities had rooted themselves in South
Carolina. English settlers comprised nearly 37 percent of the
total population. Scots accounted for nearly 33 percent of all
settlers, followed by the Irish, Welsh, Germans, Dutch,
French, and Swedes, in that order. It is interesting that in an
English colony more than 60 percent of the total white
population was not English. With such diversity came a
myriad of religious affiliations—Anglican, Presbyterian,
Lutheran, Huguenot, and some Catholics. Moreover, South

47
48 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Carolina’s avowed tolerance for any religious group that

simply professed a belief in God in practice extended to
Catholics and opened the colony to Jewish settlers as well,
many arriving from Spain and Portugal. Most Jewish settlers
lived in Charles Town, and South Carolina’s Jewish
community exceeded that of any other American colony on
the eve of the Revolutionary War.
African slaves from the West Indies were brought into
Carolina Colony in 1671, just one year after Charles Town’s
founding, but little time elapsed before large numbers of
slaves were imported directly from Africa. This dual path
of Africans into Carolina Colony, and later South Carolina
specifically, continued throughout the 1700s. Moreover, the
African population, like the European, was itself highly
diverse. Trading centers dotted the length of the West
African coast and drew slaves from a variety of ethnic
groups representing numerous languages, customs, habits,
values, and spiritual beliefs. Records indicate that about 100
Africans entered Charles Town annually until 1712; over
the next half century, however, slave traders imported 600
yearly to meet the labor demands of the rapidly developing
rice culture. The slave population also experienced a
natural growth rate of about 5 percent yearly throughout
the eighteenth century, far greater than the natural increase
among white settlers.
Perhaps startling to the present-day observer is the
colony’s racial composition. In 1680, approximately 1,000
whites and 200 Africans resided in the vicinity of Charles
Town, Africans totaling less than 17 percent of the
population. By 1775, nearly 70,000 white settlers and 104,000
Africans lived in South Carolina, with Africans comprising
roughly 60 percent of the colony’s total population, which
demonstrates the colony’s agricultural focus.

Early Patterns of Economic Development

in Colonial South Carolina

Hie agrarian base of South Carolina’s colonial economy
provided wealth and fulfilled the Lords Proprietors’
intention for the colony: to produce a crop profitable on the
world market, following the model of Virginian tobacco.
Rice proved most suited to the South Carolina coastal
environment and climate and by 1720 gave rise to a “rice
 South Carolina’s Pirate Connection

Pirates routinely sailed along South Carolina’s colonial shore between

1690 and 1725, hijacking commercial vessels, kidnapping persons of
wealth, and stealing anything of worth. Blackbeard, perhaps the most
infamous pirate, was a constant source of turmoil for South
Carolinians. Few people today, however, are aware of Anne Bonny and
Stede Bonnet, two pirates who also had South Carolina ties.
Anne Bonny, the illegitimate daughter of attorney William Cormac
and his maidservant, was born in County Cork, Ireland sometime
between 1695 and 1700. Soon after Anne’s birth, Cormac and Anne’s
mother left Ireland, settling in Charleston, South Carolina, where he
restarted his life as a local lawyer and plantation owner. Anne was a
rather rambunctious child, given to her own whims, and at age sixteen
eloped with James Bonny, a known pirate operating in the Bahamas.
Anne soon joined the crew of Captain Jack Rackham, dressing like a
man before entering battle, drinking and fighting alongside her
companions in taverns throughout the Caribbean, and eventually
becoming Captain Rackham’s lover. Her wild years came to an end
when Rackham’s ship was attacked by a British warship; the popular
story has Anne remaining on deck to fight British marines while the rest
of Rackham’s crew cowered below and soon surrendered without a
fight. Regardless of the story’s veracity, Bonny was taken into custody,
tried and convicted of piracy, and sentenced to death. Upon hearing the
sentence, she informed the judge of her pregnancy, a condition that
spared her life. Bonny was released from prison and was rumored to
have returned to the Charleston area where she lived as a respectable
married woman until her death in 1782.
Stede Bonnet was not a typical pirate. Bora into a life of privilege,
he built a highly profitable sugar plantation on Barbados. Boredom,
however, drove him to seek adventure. Bonnet purchased a ship, hired
a crew, and engaged in piracy along the Carolina coast. Blackbeard and
Bonnet joined forces for a short time, but Bonnet soon realized
Blackbeard only wanted to use Bonnet's ship and men as a raiding party
along the Cape Fear River. After Blackbeard harassed South Carolina
shipping throughout the summer of 1718, South Carolina’s governor
William Rliett organized a naval force, tracked Bonnet to the Cape Fear
River, and captured the captain and his crew. After being found guilty of
piracy, Ids crew were hanged in Charleston on November 8, 1718;
Bonnet was executed on December 10. For a detailed treatment of
Bonny and Bonnet, visit the “Original Charleston Walks: Pirates and
Buccaneers.” Tickets may be purchased at 45 Broad Street in
Charleston. For additional information, call (866) 550-8939 or visit
www.piratesofcharleston.com.
5° ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

culture,” an aristocratic planter society that relied on slave

labor. Plantations varied considerably in size, ranging from
50 to more than 1,000 acres and worked by 20 to 75 slaves.
Exports soared throughout the eighteenth century, reaching
a production rate of 6 million pounds of rice per year in the
1720s, surpassing 17 million pounds annually in the 1730s,
and exceeding 30 million pounds each season in the 1740s.
Indeed, on the eve of the American Revolution, South
Carolina rice shipments totaled a staggering 66 million
pounds, with an average per acre yield of 1,500 pounds.
Truly, the crop earned its reputation as “Carolina gold.”
While the economic system of colonial South Carolina
may have been largely a “banquet table of rice,” there were
other sources of wealth for colonists. Indigo, a plant used to
produce a blue-colored dye for textile goods, garnered
substantial profits. First harvested in the colony in the 1740s,
farmers exported only 138,000 pounds to European markets
in 1747, but in 1775, just as war with Great Britain
commenced, South Carolina supplied more than one million
pounds of dye to foreign buyers.
Naval stores also generated positive returns. Through¬
out the seventeenth century, England enlarged her navy to
bolster her defense of home waters, to protect English colonies
and challenge Spanish holdings in the Americas, and to secure
shipping lanes to European markets. Crucial in this fleet
expansion were naval stores—tar, pitch, and turpentine—all
used to waterproof and seal wooden hulls. The founding of
Charles Town secured land covered in pine forests, from
which these products were derived. Production of tar and
pitch rose with each year, from 5,000 barrels in 1710 to 50,000
barrels in 1720. Moreover, at the beginning of the 1720s, South
Carolina supplied more naval stores than any other English
source and reaped profits across European markets that
exceeded $6 million. This phenomenal profit ended abruptly
in mid-decade, however, as Britain imposed a new series of
navigation acts that altogether constrained colonial commerce
by forbidding colonies from trading with other nations.
Orange groves also turned a profit in South Carolina’s
mild winters, and hemp emerged as a major source of
income by the 1740s. Hog raising and cattle ranching
brought additional wealth. Free-range foraging and
grazing in the interior grasslands fattened the animals, and
 THREE: SOUTH CAROLINA IN THE COLONIAL ERA
51

the abundance of rivers and creeks satisfied their thirst.

Once slaughtered, meat was preserved in salt for export to
New England and to British ports in the Caribbean.
By mid-century, Londoners strolled on sidewalks made
of Carolina pine, the British fleet sailed on Carolina timber,
English families dined on Lowcountry food crops, and
Britain s nobility dressed in clothing dyed blue' with South
Carolina indigo. Agriculture generated incredible wealth for
the colony s landed population, for export-import houses,
and for shippers. The port at Charles Town (commonly
referred to as Charleston by the mid-eighteenth century)
grew into a rich, thriving city and England’s most important
harbor between Spanish Florida and the Chesapeake.

African Slavery in Colonial

South Carolina
South Carolina’s wealth rested on the back of slave later.
Regardless of the commodity—rice, indigo, or foodi
crops—slavery was considered vital in producing that
wealth. Given the sparse white population and its
ultimately dispersed settlement, encouraged by the
abundance of free or cheap land, white colonial landowners
believed slavery was an essential labor source. As crude and
reprehensible as it sounds to Americans today, colonial
landowners found slavery cost-effective. The long-term
costs of slave ownership fell far short of the hiring of day or
seasonal white workers, had white field hands in fact been
available in the numbers needed.
African slaves were imported at an alarmingly high
rate following the colony’s founding. In 1720, there were
535 white settlers residing in Goose Creek, a community
just north of Charles Town, but there were also 2,027
African slaves living there. Given the profitability of rice
cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry and the
planters’ reliance on slave labor to produce that crop, Goose
Creek’s racial profile resembled that of most other coastal
communities. Indeed, by 1720, fully 65 percent of all South
Carolina residents were African slaves.
Ever fearful of slave insurrection, colony leaders
contemplated methods by which the number of white
settlers in the colony might be increased. Briefly considered
was a plan to recruit one white European servant for every
Five generations on Smith's Plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina
1862

ten Africans brought into South Carolina. To be sure, a

black majority would have persisted in the colony, but the
white population would likewise have grown rapidly and
thus provided a larger sense ol security to white residents.
The measure never gained widespread support because rice
planters preferred the less expensive slave labor system to
the costs associated with establishing whites as independent
farmers at the conclusion of their labor contracts.
Nearly hall of all Africans enslaved in British North
America before 1775 entered the colonies at Charleston and
were held initially on Sullivan’s Island before being
auctioned in the city’s slave market. Said Charleston
merchant and landed aristocrat Henry Laurens, Africans
 THREE: SOUTH CAROLINA IN THE COLONIAL ERA
53

from the River Gambia [Ghana] are preferred to all others

with us [in Carolina] save the Gold Coast.” Ghanaians were
especially well versed in rice cultivation; they brought to
South Carolina plantations valuable knowledge acquired
from personal experience and learned from previous
generations. Their skill and knowledge made them far
more expensive on the auction block than other Africans.
Carolina planters of the eighteenth century typically paid
between 100 and 200 pounds sterling, or roughly $11,500 to
$23,000 in today’s currency, for Ghanaians. Being such a
major investment for planters, Ghanaians generally
performed little manual labor and instead supervised small
teams, or gangs, of “field slaves” taken from the Niger
Delta, the Windward Coast, and Angola.
According to most white South Carolinians early in the
eighteenth century, there existed little racial antagonism;
without question, this was a one-sided, flawed perception.
Through some combination of ignorance, arrogance, and
bias, planters and other whites disregarded the harsh reality
that defined slavery, preferring to see it as a paternalistic,
Christian guardianship. As early as 1702, argued planters,
African slaves at Goose Creek received some academic
training, from the Reverend Samuel Thomas. Writing one
year later, Thomas noted that under his tutelage “twenty
slaves have learned to read.” His observation in 1705
suggested further gains: “Many [slaves] are well affected to
Christianity so far as they know of it and are desirous of
Christian knowledge and seem to be willing to prepare
themselves for it in learning to read.” Benjamin Dennis, an
English educator, founded a school near Charles Town in
1712 and there served African, Native American, and white
children. Another school was established in 1743, this one
in Charleston and expressly for African children, who were
instructed by Harry and Andrew, two adult slaves who had
been trained as Christian missionaries and teachers to slaves
in Charleston.
Efforts to educate African slaves, however, were not
commonplace and were roundly discouraged by white
South Carolinians. It was widely assumed that Africans “of
some learning” would be able to plan and execute successful
rebellions or escapes. Although planters countered this
argument by suggesting that a carefully constructed
54 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

educational program actually produced more manageable

and compliant slaves, the potential threat of an educated
enslaved population seemed too great to permit. Through¬
out the eighteenth century, communities individually
erected laws to ban academic and religious instruction to
African slaves.
White colonists also referenced the inclusion of African
slaves in the colony’s militia. In 1704 the colonial assembly
announced its intention to train slaves for military service
should the colony ever face invasion by Spanish forces or
confront the need to suppress hostile Indians. Although the
plan never materialized to the extent first envisioned, many
African slaves were recruited into the South Carolina
militia for training and combat duty during the Yamasee
War of 1715. Again, in 1742, more than 70 slaves were
enlisted as combat soldiers against Spanish raiding parties
operating near Beaufort. In each instance, slaves served
under the command of their owners, in return for minimal
wages, or, in some cases, for the reward of emancipation.
Regardless of the slaves’ motive for service, white colonists
who championed African service generally believed militia
duty provided slaves with a sense of inclusion and a vested
interest in the welfare of the colony, and thus retarded the
threat of armed slave insurrection.
As in the case of academic and religious instruction for
slaves, South Carolinians largely disapproved of military
training for Africans in bondage. The danger of training
slaves in military skills was obvious. A population prepared
in military tactics, skilled in marksmanship, and victimized
by brutal enslavement would be a grave threat to the safety
and security of white South Carolinians.
White colonists also highlighted the specialized
training many Africans received in what were then termed
“the domestic arts”—cabinetmaking, blacksmithing,
carpentry, and related crafts. Hundreds of male slaves in
eighteenth-century South Carolina did gain these skills and
often were hired out to local whites, typically at a rate of
one dollar per day. White South Carolinians touted the
slave’s opportunity to save his wages, ultimately purchase
his freedom, and once emancipated establish himself as a

Slaves quarters, Port Royal, South Carolina.

mi
56 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

free man employed in a profitable trade. By the end of the

century there was, indeed, a growing free black
population engaged in skilled work and living in
Charleston. But, more often than not, the wages of skilled
slaves were instead paid directly to the planter, and training
in the domestic arts allowed planters to reduce their own
overhead expenses by having slaves manufacture items
needed on plantations instead of purchasing those goods
from a European or colonial supplier.
The colonists’ emphasis on the good slavery brought
Africans only denied the brutal reality generally experienced
by slaves in the colony. The overwhelming majority of
Africans were set to work in the rice fields, widely
considered the most strenuous labor in British North
America. Noted one observer, the slaves stand “mid-leg deep
in water which floats an ouzy fnc] mud, and exposed all the
while to a burning sun which makes the very air they breathe
hotter than the human blood; these poor wretches are then in
a furness of stinking putrid effluvia: a more horrible
employment can hardly be imagined.’’ Their work followed
the sun, beginning at daybreak and continuing until dusk,
with few periods of rest. Any perceived sluggishness in the
field and lack of productivity frequently resulted in reduced
rations, loss of their day of rest on Sunday, and sometimes
severe physical punishment.
Slave housing in eighteenth-century South Carolina
was crude. Huts averaged fifteen feet in length and twelve
feet in width, with earthen floors, no fireplaces, roofs made
of palmetto fronds, and clay walls that eroded in the
excessively wet Lowcountry climate. Homes were
unbearably cold in winter and brutally hot in summer.
Rather than the “highly organized and carefully arranged”
slave houses found on nineteenth-century southern
plantations, slaves in eighteenth-century South Carolina
commonly built their huts in “loosely clustered
settlements,” noted one archaeologist. Generally, meals
were cooked outdoors and were principally rice-based.
Meat was uncommon in the slaves’ diet, and, when
available, consisted of the least-favored parts of the animal
such as the legs, feet, jaw, and skull discarded by the
planter. Rarely were slaves entrusted with firearms to scare
birds from crops and to hunt small game for themselves.
 THREE: SOUTH CAROLINA IN THE COLONIAL ERA
57

Given the deplorable housing, grossly inadequate diet,

absence of personal and slave community hygiene, and the
brutal labor to which slaves were subjected, it is little
wonder that a high mortality rate ravaged the slave
population. Fully one-third of all African children enslaved
in South Carolina died before their first birthday, and two-
thirds did not survive to their sixteenth year. Scholars
frequently ascribe such a macabre record of slave death to
malaria. To be sure, malaria-carrying mosquitoes swarmed
throughout South Carolina’s hot, wet coastal low lands and
infected a large segment of the slave population, but the
slaves’ complete living and work environment must also be
considered. Food preservation proved wholly inadequate
for anything but short-term use. Salt curing of meat was
certainly a practice common to colonists, but salt rations to
slaves were severely limited. The little meat slaves were
provided had to be consumed soon after receiving it.
Moreover, meat given to slaves by the planter’s household
was often already spoiled or of questionable quality. Added
to this was the heat and damp environment that only
hastened the spoiling of meat, vegetables, and fruits and
their infestation by disease-bearing pests.
Waterborne diseases also claimed many lives. The
coastal region of South Carolina was largely marshland and
swamp, making clean water difficult to locate. Many of the
rivers that emptied directly into the Atlantic and were
widely presumed to be freshwater were compromised by a
high salinity level and, consequently, fatal to those slaves
who depended on them as their principal water supply.
Underground water obtained from “shallow wells” was
compromised by a latent salt content along with a high
residue of sulfur and other potentially hazardous minerals.
Unlike the scholarly work conducted in the Jamestown,
Virginia area by historian Tim Breen and others, there
exists no record or serious estimate of the deaths caused by
contaminated drinking water in colonial South Carolina.
Caught in a system utterly destructive of their lives,
African slaves challenged the institution whenever
opportunity arose, and they employed a myriad of tactics—
some hardly noticeable, others dramatic. Common to most
plantations was the slow pace of slave labor, most often a
purposeful attempt to limit the planters’ profits by
 Gullah

The Sea Islands of South Carolina between Georgetown and

Beaufort are home to the Gullah people, a people descended from
slaves who originated along the “rice coast’’ of Africa and included
various ethnic groups from Senegal, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Guinea,
Angola, and Ghana. Scholars believe the name “Gullah’’ is a
derivative of either Angola or Gola, the latter being an ethnic group
that lived between present-day Sierra Leone and Liberia. The
diversity of West African cultures on South Carolina rice plantations,
and the immediate need for these enslaved peoples to communicate
and coexist, gave rise to a new language that melded English with
their native tongues. Cultural traditions and values blended as a
natural consequence of the slaves’ newfound living condition. What
emerged was something of a hybrid African culture in the South
Carolina Lowcountry.
Fiercely loyal to family and community, the Gullah people have
fought to retain their African identity despite centuries of
enslavement and the acculturative influences of twentieth-century
South Carolina; indeed, Gullahs are widely credited with preserving
more of their African heritage than any other African-American
community in the US. Central to the Gullah diet are red rice and
okra soup, both largely the offspring of West African “jollof rice,” a
style of cooking brought to America by the Wolof and Mande
peoples of West Africa. “Root doctors” remain part of community
tradition, providing care using herbal medicines similar to
traditional African remedies. The Gullah have consciously preserved
many skills used in African art, basket making, pottery, and weaving.
Their children are often reared on African tales slightly modified to
fit the contemporary world, and their unequivocally Christian
religion carries some imagery and spiritual inclinations traceable to
traditional West African cultures. The Gullah language is English-
based, but contains numerous unaltered African words from
multiple ethnic and linguistic groups, as well as slightly altered
African words, and the spoken language exhibits substantial African
influence in sentence structure. In 2005, the Gullah community
published a translation of the New Testament in the Gullah language,
a project that required twenty years to complete. In recent years,
they have also renewed their direct connection with West Africa,
sponsoring visits, or “homecomings,” to Sierra Leone in 1989,
1997, and 2005.
In July 2004, South Carolina Congressman James E. Clybum
introduced HR 4683 on the floor of the US House of Representatives.
Titled “The Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Act,” HR 4683 was
based on a report issued by the National Park Service that identified
the Gullah/Geechee coast as one of eleven historic sites in the US
most endangered by urban sprawl, commercial development, and
resort expansion. “The [NPS] study confirmed that extraordinary
steps must be taken to preserve this rich and vibrant culture that is
rapidly disappearing,” said Congressman Clybum. His bill called for
the establishment of a Gullah/Geechee culture heritage corridor, a
coastal heritage museum highlighting Gullah culture and history, a
$1 million annual appropriation from Congress for ten consecutive
years to fund the project, and a commission to manage the
program. “The Gullah/Geechee culture is the last vestige of the
fusion of African and European languages and traditions brought to
these coastal areas,” said Clyburn. “I cannot sit idly by and watch an
entire culture disappear that represents my heritage and the
heritage of those that look like me.” Although Clyburn’s bill received
scant opposition, substantial debate did erupt in Congress over each
of the next two national budgets in the context of the Iraq war,
homeland security, and national debt; consequently, HR 4683 was
not passed until October 2006.
African Americans with direct Gullah roots include football Hall
of Fame star Jim Brown, boxing legend Joe Frazier, Supreme Court
Justice Clarence Thomas, hip-hop giant Jazzy Jay, and Motown icon
James Jamerson.
Several Gullah festivals are held annually in South Carolina. Each
February, the Gullah Celebration at Hilton Head Island features
exhibitions of art, crafts, food, music, and dance. For information,
contact the Gullah Celebration Hotline at (877) 650-0676 or visit
www.gullahcelebration.com. A similar event is held in Beaufort each
May, the weekend before Memorial Day. See www.guOahfestival.org
for more information. To see preserved GuUah culture, visit the
McLeod Plantation on James Island, near Charleston. See
www.guUahtours.com for information.
6o ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: MISSISSIPPI

producing a smaller harvest than had been expected. Slaves

“accidentally” broke the tools with which they worked or
feigned sickness, two methods to interrupt the flow of work
and the productivity of field hands. Although escape was an
option, it was seldom attempted. The network of white
landowners and availability of posses on horseback made
escape rarely successful, and the punishment given to
captured runaways was generally so severe and brutal that
it adequately intimidated other slaves who might
contemplate escape. Commonly practiced throughout the
colony was the branding of a slave who attempted escape
multiple times. Moreover, most planters encouraged
marriage and family-building among their slaves as one
means of discouraging escape. Said one planter, slaves “love
their families dearly and none runs away from the other.”
To be sure, there were occasions when a runaway made a
successful escape. These individuals ran not from
established society but instead directly toward it, into
Charleston itself. The black population of the city was quite
large, with slaves living in town and often hired out to local
businessmen. Given the continually rising city population,
the ever-increasing number of black residents, and the
extensive use of African labor brought from plantation to
the city, it proved rather easy for an escaped slave to go
unnoticed in Charleston. Indeed, said Samuel Dyssli, a
white resident of the city, “Carolina looks more like a
Negro Country than like a Country settled by white
people.” While in the city, he could live with friends or
estranged family members, work and earn a modest
income from a white employer, and eventually hope to
secure passage on a ship exiting South Carolina. Planters
and overseers anticipated slave resistance, but with a
majority slave population in the colony, white South
Carolinians feared violent slave revolts. One such event
occurred in 1739.
Word sifted throughout the southern British colonies
that runaway slaves who successfully found their way to
Spanish Florida were rewarded with both freedom and land.
Indeed, the rumor was true. Early in the century Spain issued
a proclamation that not only encouraged slaves to escape
their British masters but also promised that upon arrival in
St. Augustine they would live as free, propertied men. The
 THREE: SOUTH CAROLINA IN THE COLONIAL ERA 61

Spanish announcement, coupled with the ever-present fear

of slave revolt, compelled South Carolina’s colonial assembly
in August 1739 to pass into law the Security Act. White males
had always been permitted to carry firearms wherever they
went, any day of the week. Such measures were necessary,
colonists believed, for local security against thieves, Indians,
and slaves. Only during Sunday religious services were men
not allowed to bear their weapons. As the Sabbath was
generally a day of unsupervised rest for slaves and white men
were prohibited from carrying firearms, South Carolinians
understandably assumed Sunday mornings to be a propitious
opportunity for a mass slave escape or insurrection. Spain’s
encouragement only made that assessment more serious. The
Security Act, then, was intended to permit white men the
right to bear firearms during Sunday church services and,
consequently, be better prepared to crush an insurrection
should one occur. Only a few weeks after the bill’s passage
into law, the feared scenario unfolded.
On Sunday morning, September 9, 1739, twenty slaves
assembled near the Stono River in St. Paul’s Parish, about
twenty miles outside of Charleston. From there, the slaves
stormed a local firearms store, killing the shopkeeper and
taking his guns and ammunition. Moving south, ultimately
for Florida, they agreed to recruit additional slaves in the
rebellion and exact their vengeance on all whites they
encountered. At the home of one Mr. Godfrey, they burned
the house and killed Mr. Godfrey and his son and daughter.
By midday, the group had torched six more homes and
murdered 25 whites. Now numbering about 60 runaways,
they rested along the Edisto River.
News of the insurrection spread quickly across the
Lowcountry. A posse of nearly 100 heavily armed whites,
most of them recruited from the church pews, charged south
and by late afternoon had encircled the armed slaves and
engaged them in battle. Half of the slaves fell dead or
wounded in the opening volley of musket balls; the remainder
fled into the surrounding swamplands. Over the next month,
all but one runaway were apprehended and executed. The
Stono Rebellion collapsed, but in its wake lay a swath of death
and destruction. Moreover, the South Carolina colonial
assembly quickly framed and passed into law the Negro Act,
a measure that effectively limited the slaves’ free time and
62 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

banned their pre-rebellion opportunities to assemble in

groups, learn to read, and earn money working in local stores
after their plantation duties were complete.
The Stono Rebellion manifested the grave threat
slavery held for colonists. South Carolina’s agricultural
wealth depended on African slaves. The labor drained
from the lives of those men and women produced the
bounty of rice, indigo, beef and pork, timber, and naval
stores sold by the white, planter class across Britain’s
colonies and in Europe, generating a level of prosperity that
made Britain’s American colonists among the richest
peoples globally in the eighteenth century and South
Carolinians among the wealthiest of American colonists.
That this prosperity depended on a most inhumane,
exploitive labor system mattered little to those South
Carolinians whose pockets were fattened with profit. As
long as this “peculiar institution” existed, the fear of slave
insurrection existed. The Stono Rebellion was but the
precursor of much bloodier rebellions to come.

The Perils of Prosperity

South Carolina’s economy grew rapidly throughout the
first half of the eighteenth century. Charleston, the colony’s
center of activity, enjoyed the greatest profits and as a result
attracted new settlers from the British Isles, Caribbean
colonies, and communities along the entire North
American Atlantic coastline. With 3,500 residents in 1706
and a commercial energy that promised extreme growth,
Charleston quickly surpassed Savannah and Williamsburg
in wealth and importance and competed directly with
Boston. Stacks of animal hides, barrels of rice, and chained
Indian captives regularly lined the docks waiting to be
loaded on ships bound for ports in England, Jamaica,
Barbados, and the Caribbean; entering the city by ship were
African slaves of greater financial worth than all of the
exports leaving Charleston. Sails dotted the harbor on
almost every day of the year, and the level of trade entering
and exiting the city gave evidence that Charleston was “as
thriving... as any colony on the continent of English
America. Indeed, the value of South Carolina’s exports
attested to the colony’s economic strength—nearly $28
million on the eve of the Revolutionary War.
 THREE: SOUTH CAROLINA IN THE COLONIAL ERA 63

Prosperity and growth had unwanted repercussions.

Seaborne commerce lured a “meaner sort of people” to
Carolina waters. Although piracy had plagued the
Caribbean since Sir Francis Drake harassed Spanish
shipping in the late sixteenth century, few pirates ventured
farther north until the wealth of Savannah, Charleston, and
Wilmington proved too attractive to ignore. Between 1700
and 1720, roughly 6,000 pirates menaced shipping between
North Carolina and Barbados; ten percent of these pirates
were women. Ed Teach, more commonly known as
Blackbeard, commanded a refuge in the North Carolina
Outer Banks and wielded considerable influence over that
colony’s governor; frequently, he and his three vessels
threatened Charleston.
Throughout most of June 1718, Blackbeard and his 400
men plundered shipping just outside Charleston Harbor.
From the city specifically he demanded 500 pounds of
medical supplies. When Charleston officials balked at this
demand, Blackbeard and half of his crew entered the city and
paraded through the center of town, waving their guns and
promising to burn Charleston to the ground if he were
compelled to take the medical supplies by force. To assure the
safety of town residents and the continued use of the city
docks, Governor Robert Johnson acquiesced and issued
Blackbeard the materials he demanded. The pirates left the
city unharmed and within days they vacated Charleston
waters—at least for now. Blackbeard returned regularly to
harass shipping outside of Charleston, and other pirates such
as Stede Bonnet also found the Carolina waters enticing.
Fear seemed commonplace among South Carolinians
generally and among Charlestonians specifically in the first
half of the eighteenth century. With rising wealth came a
rising population. Indeed, by the 1740s Charleston’s
population reached nearly 10,000 people. Increasingly,
newcomers without marketable skills found it nearly
impossible to secure jobs or property in Charleston.
Unemployment skyrocketed. Prosperous townsfolk
regularly complained of the “number of idle, vagrant...
people” wandering the city’s streets, engaged not in gainful
work but “drinking and debauchery.” Crime became a
more serious problem for the city as well. The unemployed,
constrained by desperate circumstances, occasionally
 Sweetgrass Baskets

Sweetgrass basket making is perhaps the oldest surviving African art

form in the United States. The skill arrived in Spanish America with
West African slaves, and with the founding of rice culture spread
into South Carolina’s Lowcountry in the late seventeenth century.
Slaves relied on baskets to store and transport harvested rice.
They were also used extensively to store shellfish, fruit, cotton,
clothing, and household items. The baskets were made of bulrush,
a marsh grass commonly referred to as “sweetgrass” for its mild,
pleasant aroma and noted as a flexible but durable material.
Sweetgrass baskets were functional and practical, but their
intricate, artistic designs made them desirable for display in the
finest Charleston homes and for use on the dinner tables of the city’s
elite. Indeed, the baskets became so popular across the South
Carohna Lowcountry that slave women found themselves weaving
baskets for their owners to sell at nearby markets.
Following emancipation, the Gullah people supplemented their
meager income by weaving sweetgrass baskets and selling them to
passers-by and local stores. Moreover, maintaining this skill
consciously connected them to their African identity, and the
concentration required to produce such artistic pieces offered
momentary escape from the grind of daily chores and from the
intense racism affecting the Gullah community.
Highway 17, a stretch of road running the length of South
Carolina’s coast, was finally paved in the 1930s and became the
primary artery connecting Charleston to the rest of the state. Basket
makers recognized its construction as a golden opportunity to sell
their creations to motorists, and from roadside stands lining the
highway’s shoulder in the Mt. Pleasant area south to Charleston
Gullah women sold, and continue to sell, sweetgrass baskets.
For more than 300 years, sweetgrass baskets have remained an
integral feature of Gullah culture. When traveling along Highway 17
through Mt. Pleasant, pull off at a sweetgrass basket stand and watch
the basket weaver weave the bulrush into a finished basket. Talk with
the woman making the basket, and perhaps purchase one of the many
she has for sale. For a hands-on experience, visit the Hopsewee
Plantation in Georgetown, located about 50 miles north of Mt.
Pleasant. Hopsewee offers a three-hour class in sweetgrass basket
making for minimal cost, including all materials and instruction. To
find scheduled classes or to arrange a private session, call (843) 546-
7891 or email [email protected].
If you’re visiting the Mt. Pleasant-Charleston area in June,
attend the Annual Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival, which is part of
Charleston’s famed Spoleto Celebration. In 2007, more than 5,000
people attended the Sweetgrass Festival. The annual celebration
highlights the history of Lowcountry basket making, and skilled
basket makers display, weave, and sell their goods. In addition,
the Gullah-Geechee culture is celebrated with music, dancing,
food, storytelling, games, and numerous other activities. For
more information, visit www.sweetgrassfestival.com.
66 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

turned to theft, and sailors on short-term leave from their

ships were “rowdy” and prone to “immoral behavior.”
Alarmed by the rising tide of unemployment and vagrancy,
Charleston residents insisted the city fund and construct a
public workhouse and hospital. Both buildings were
erected and in service by 1738. The city also demanded a
jail be built and the penal code be made stricter. With
money granted by the colonial assembly, the jail was
operational by 1740. The assembly also approved public
whippings, the burning of a convicted thief’s hand with a
hot iron, and for more serious offenses the public pillory of
the convicted individual with “one ear nailed to the post
and one ear to be removed at the end of the sentence.
Overcrowding in the city further allowed for the rapid
spread of communicable disease. A smallpox outbreak in
summer 1738, allegedly brought to the city by two slaves,
was only complicated by a simultaneous outbreak of
whooping cough. By summer’s end, fully ten percent of the
city’s population had died from one or both of these
diseases. Yellow fever settled upon the residents the
following year.
Fire also nearly destroyed Charleston. Autumn 1740
proved unusually warm and dry. By November, the most
casual observer in the city recognized that Charleston had
become a tinderbox. On November 18, a small Fire
accidentally started on the city’s southeast side, but embers
were soon whipped north and west by a stiff wind. Within
only a few hours, Charleston was engulfed in fire; the
“shrieks of women and children” were heard all over the
city, noted one survivor. The conflagration was made worse
at the docks, where barrels of turpentine, deer skins, and
rum ignited and crates of gunpowder exploded. The fire
raged for three days, destroying more than 300 homes and
70 percent of the merchants’ buildings and wares.
Fear of future fires pervaded Charleston’s residents
and unquestionably contributed to the fierce punishment
issued to a slave convicted of attempted arson one year later.
In August 1741, Kate, a slave in Charleston, was arrested
for trying to set her owner’s house on fire. Within 48 hours
of her arrest, she was convicted and sentenced to death.
Kate escaped the gallows by naming her lover as co¬
conspirator. He was promptly apprehended and, like her.
Portraits of African American ex-slaves from the U.S. Works Progress
Administration, Federal Writers' Project slave narratives collections.
Attendants at Old Slave Day, April 8, 1937■
68 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

quickly tried and convicted for plotting arson and

“domestic treachery.” At his trial, he claimed “every white
man he should [ever) meet” is “his declared Enemy.”
Rather than hanging him, the court ordered him burned
alive, in the manner of the house and city he planned to
destroy. He died “like... the impudent hardened wretch he
was,” said one white city resident. His method of execution
certainly serves as example of the “hardened” community
surrounding African slaves and the unspeakable brutality
white society directed against slaves. It further
demonstrates the depth of white South Carolinians’ fear of
slave rebellions, a fear lingering from the Stono Rebellion
two years earlier. The burning of a man for conspiracy was
so vicious, so heinous, that it was meant to serve as a
warning to all slaves in the colony.
The years that followed were little better. Rumors of
slave insurrection persisted, each rumor the product of
speculation and fear. White residents of Charleston worried
that the ongoing illegal sale of alcohol to slaves would
embolden them to rebel; others were certain that the rising
crime wave was the result of slaves securing the money and
material needed to launch an insurrection. So frequent and
increasingly detailed were these rumors that in May 1745
the South Carolina governor requested a battalion of
British soldiers be posted in Charleston “to give heart to our
people.” Only a small detachment of British marines
arrived, and in December another rumor of slaves plotting
to “cut the throats of white people in Charleston” while
they slept once more sent terror through the white
community. Each rumor strengthened white resolve to
secure the city and colony. As that rumor sifted throughout
the Lowcountry, the requested battalion of British soldiers
arrived in Charleston and the alleged ringleaders of the
purported insurrection were arrested. The investigation
revealed the plot to be nothing more than the imagination
of an excited and fearful white population; no rebellion was
in preparation.
Word also reached Charleston of a Spanish military
incursion into coastal Georgia. In anticipation of a similar
strike on Charleston, the colonial militia was called to duty
and enlarged with fresh recruits. Money was appropriated
without debate for the construction of trenches by slave
 THREE: SOUTH CAROLINA IN THE COLONIAL ERA 69

labor, their owners receiving financial compensation from

the Assembly for their work, and the protective wall along
the harbor was fortified. The arrival of a British fleet and
the fierce resistance of Georgia colonists drove the Spanish
force back south to Florida and returned a temporary sense
of security to South Carolinians, but another war between
England and France was brewing—one that could spill
into North America. South Carolina remained on guard
throughout much of the 1740s.
The hrst half of the eighteenth century was one of
tremendous economic growth for South Carolina. Fear,
nonetheless, shadowed South Carolina’s prosperity—fear
of a Spanish strike along the coast, of Indian retaliation for
the enslavement and sale of nearly 12,000 Native
Americans, of slave insurrection from among the tens of
thousands of Africans held in bondage, of plunder by
pirates in commercial shipping lanes, and of the growing
number of unskilled and unemployed residents living
desperate, poor lives. Colonists were determined to secure
South Carolina and its economy; however, a new threat to
the colony’s welfare soon surfaced.
 The Turmoil of Revolution

G reat Britain waged four major wars with France

between 1690 and 1760, the last of which was the
Seven Years’ War, or French and Indian War, as it
was commonly known in the American colonies.
Collectively, these wars drained Britain’s treasury and by
1763 it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Saddled with war
debt and responsible for a vast global empire, King George
III in 1763 announced his intention to erect new
commercial trade regulations and rebuild the nation’s
finances through a series of new taxes. Although the king
and Parliament assumed that most colonists in America
remained firmly convinced of the king’s authority to
initiate any policy he wished without direct input from his
subjects, a contradictory political ideology had evolved
among many over the previous century. Based on the
philosophy of Englishman John Locke and amplified by
Enlightenment philosophers such as Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and Montesquieu, a large segment of Americans
now held a liberal body of thought perhaps best termed
popular sovereignty.
According to Locke and those who conformed to
Lockean philosophy, government is consciously and
purposely established by humans to protect their three
natural rights. These unalienable rights were the right to
life, liberty, and property. Government’s only purpose,
Locke argued, was to protect each individual’s natural
rights. Should government abuse its limited power, attempt
to increase its authority, or fail in its single mission, citizens
retained the right of revolution, meaning they held the
right to scrap that governing system and replace it. In short,
Locke posited the liberal notion that the people, not the
king, held all political authority. King George’s intended
tight control over colonial commerce and his determination

71
72-
ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

to extract taxes from colonists certainly were within his

rights under the banner of royal sovereignty, but his view of
authority conflicted sharply with that of popular
sovereignty. It was fundamentally this constitutional issue
that underpinned the confrontation between Crown and
colonists from 1763 to 1783.

Colonial Resistance to King George III

With the end of the Seven Years’ War, King George issued
his Proclamation of 1763, a royal statement that banned the
colonists’ migration across the Appalachian Mountains into
the Ohio River Valley. Although well intentioned—to
prevent a war promised by Native Americans residing in
the valley should settlers enter their territory, a war that
would require further British expenditures to defend
colonists—Americans interpreted the measure as an
arbitrary decision by the king that prevented colonists from
acquiring property. In essence, the king was not protecting
the settlers’ liberty to venture into new lands, the right to
property, and, consequently, their natural right to life.
Two years later, Parliament crafted its first major tax
law, and George III approved the measure. The Stamp Act
of 1765 placed a tax on all paper products and on certain
government documents. Playing cards, newspapers, birth
certificates, and marriage licenses were among the taxable
items. Retailers and government agencies were to purchase
and affix stamps to paper items prior to their sale and
recoup their costs from consumers by raising the price of
those goods and documents accordingly. The Crown
believed the cost of each stamp to be minimal, but with the
tax imposed throughout the British Empire, the revenue
generated might repair the damage done to the treasury
over the previous decades of war. Moreover, newspapers
and playing cards were not essential items; colonists could
avoid paying the tax altogether by not purchasing taxable
items. Rather than pay the required fee and tax for birth
certificates, death certificates, and marriage licenses,
individuals could simply record that information in a
family Bible and have witnesses confirm those entries. The
tax, however, did not go over well in the American colonies.
Long known in the South Carolina Assembly as a
hothead, Representative Christopher Gadsden immediately
 FOUR: THE TURMOIL OF REVOLUTION
73

emerged as the assembly s principal and most vocal critic of

the Stamp Act. In little time he built a large opposition force
in the assembly to Parliament’s recent legislation. Gadsden, a
Charleston merchant, prided himself on having built his
fortune with the sweat and commitment of his own labor. He
denounced the Crown’s effort to reach into his pocket and
relieve him of any amount of personal wealth. If left
unchallenged, he argued, the Stamp Act could threaten the
financial vitality of Charleston and potentially stymie the
city s continued economic growth. Gadsden’s prediction of
economic doom was clearly exaggerated, but he, like his
supporters in the assembly, believed unequivocally that all
American colonists enjoyed the “the rights of Englishmen.”
He announced in the assembly a basic premise of Lockean
political philosophy, that it was the “inherent right of every
British subject not to be taxed but by his own consent, or that
of his representatives.” Any tax or any other law created by
Parliament or king that did not receive the explicit consent of
the colonists violated this most fundamental principle of
British rights.
That summer, critics of the Stamp Act in Massachusetts
called on each colony to send representatives to New York
City for a “Stamp Act Congress,” a convention of colonists
that would discuss, draft, and present a united call for
repealing the tax and stating the limits of the king’s authority
in the colonies. On September 4, the South Carolina
Assembly sent 26-year-old Charleston attorney John
Rutledge, Georgetown planter Thomas Lynch, and 41-year-
old Christopher Gadsden to New York. Once there,
Gadsden took a commanding role in the congress’s
deliberations and penned both the cover letter to King
George and the resolutions that condemned the Stamp Act.
While the congress drafted its letter to King George III,
colonists continent-wide took a more aggressive response to
the Stamp Act. Starting in New York and Massachusetts, an
organization known as the Sons of Liberty was founded to
challenge any Crown interference with the rights of British
subjects. They considered no tactic too extreme in defense of
the colonists. The Sons of Liberty soon spread into every
colony, and, in September, its members ignited protests in
each colonial capital. In Charleston, tax collectors were
physically assaulted and sometimes tarred and feathered;
 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA
74

stamps were burned or stolen. Enraged mobs shattered the

storefront windows of merchants who complied with the
law, and the governor himself found his home surrounded
and threatened with torches.
On October 18, the Planters Adventure arrived in
Charleston Harbor from England. Aware that the ship
carried the colony’s supply of stamps, the local Sons of Liberty
and their supporters erected a 40-foot-tall gallows near the
present-day Battery and hanged an effigy of a stamp
distributor next to a sign reading “Liberty and No Stamp
Act.” The mob spent that evening and the next day ranging
throughout the city, ransacking government offices, burning
effigies, and disturbing the peace of Charleston. The message
could not have been clearer. Colonists in South Carolina and
the other colonies would not tolerate this tax. Gadsden and his
colleagues from South Carolina attending the congress in
New York applauded the protestors.
Acting Governor William Bull, widely liked among
South Carolinians, ordered the stamps locked up and
protected by armed guards at Fort Johnson, located on the tip
of James Island. Aware the stamps had been removed but
unsure where they now were, a mob descended on the home
of Henry Laurens. Henry Laurens, planter and prominent
political figure in the colony, had denounced the Sons of
Liberty and insisted their call lor “liberty” was nothing more
than a cover for their natural inclination to “commit
unbounded acts of licentiousness and at length burglary and
robbery.” He warned Charlestonians that the city would
likely incur a stern punitive response from the Crown,
possibly the closure of Charleston Harbor by a British fleet or
occupation by British troops, should mob action persist. His
call for calm and his less-than-flattering description of the
local citizenry attracted the attention ol the Sons of Liberty as
well as their anger. Some suggested that Laurens himself
stood to profit from the sale of stamps and that he personally
stored stamps for the Crown in his waterfront home. Nearly
two dozen disguised men converged on Laurens’s home for
a midnight visit and “recommended” that he allow them to
search the premises for the missing stamps. Over his heated
objection, the mouthy and unruly mob stormed into each
room, and rifled through every drawer and cabinet seeking
any evidence of the stamps. Finding no incriminating
 FOUR: THE TURMOIL OF REVOLUTION
75

The South Carolina State Flag

Each feature of the state flag relates directly to South

Carolina’s role in the American Revolution. In 1775, shortly
after the war commenced at Lexington and Concord,
Massachusetts, Colonel William Moultrie fashioned a flag for
the South Carolina troops he commanded on Sullivan’s
Island. He chose royal blue, the color of his soldiers’
uniforms, as the flag’s background color. He placed a
crescent in the flag’s upper left-hand corner, representative
of the three-crescent flag carried by the Charleston Patriots in
their 1765 opposition to the Stamp Act.
Not until January 1861 was the flag altered; at that time,
just one month after South Carolina seceded from the Union,
the palmetto tree was added to the 1775 flag. The white tree in
the center of the flag commemorated Colonel Moultrie’s
defense of Sullivan’s Island against British attack in 1776, a
defense made successful by fortifications constructed of
spongy palmetto logs that absorbed or deflected enemy cannon
fire. The state flag design with the 1861 addition remains the
current flag for South Carolina.
Although the origin of the South Carolina crescent, or
“new moon,” is considered “lost to history,” scholars
speculate that it actually has no lunar reference. Some posit
that the crescent was part of the Governor William Bull family
crest. Others contend that the crescent is a traditional English
symbol, representative of the second-born son in a family,
who by custom was to inherit nothing from his father. So
many emigrants to South Carolina were those not entitled to
their father’s property; consequently, the crescent honors the
building of a colony and a state on the labor and will of the
people rather than on privilege. Still others argue that it was
simply the emblem worn on pre-Revolutionary War soldiers’
caps and around the necks of commissioned officers to
signify a particular army unit or an award for courageous
military service.
76 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

material, the visitors left Laurens but warned him not to

support the Crown on the matter of the Stamp Act. They
“threatened... to carry me away to some unknown place and
punish me” for aiding the Crown, said Laurens. After the
mob left, he scribbled in his diary “Riot is in fashion.”
Finally learning the stamps’ location, a group of 150
Charlestonians armed themselves and forcibly took control
of the lightly guarded post. More than 2,000 local residents
also gathered in the city, burning an effigy of a tax collector
and promising unrestrained force against British agents
should the Stamp Act be enforced in the colony. The
situation having turned critical, Bull and leaders of the mob
agreed that the stamps would be removed from Fort Johnson
and returned to England. The potentially explosive reaction
to the Stamp Act in Charleston and along the length of the
Atlantic seaboard stunned the Crown and their agents in the
colonies. Hoping to quell the escalating violence, King
George repealed the Stamp Act in early 1766.
The Stamp Act crisis exposed a serious rift within the
South Carolinian population. Opposition to the Stamp Act
centered in urban communities, particularly in those along
the coast, where wealth and direct connections to business
interests in England were largely concentrated. People in
the Backcountry, the rural inland region populated mainly
hy small farmers, viewed the crisis as an urban
phenomenon and of little importance to their own lives.
The conflict was also seen in terms of class—the moneyed
interests of the Lowcountry pressing an issue that did not
directly affect the working and farming classes. Little
sympathy surfaced among Backcountry settlers for the
opponents of the Stamp Act.
Soon after he repealed the Stamp Act, King George III
issued the Declaratory Act, a statement asserting the king’s
authority and that of Parliament to create and implement
all laws deemed necessary, with or without popular
consent. South Carolina’s colonial assembly responded,
announcing that only it, in accordance with the will of the
people, held the right to legislate on internal colonial
matters. The ideological division separating Crown and
colony could not have been clearer.
Only one year passed before the Crown demonstrated
again its determination to raise tax revenue from its
 FOUR: THE TURMOIL OF REVOLUTION
77

colonies in North America, passing the Townshend Acts of

1767 without the consent of American colonists or their
representation in Parliament. Unlike the Stamp Act, the
Townshend Acts placed a miniscule tax on numerous
luxury items typically purchased by the wealthy. Certain
paper products once more would be taxed, but levies were
added to paint, glass, lead, and tea. Colonists who opposed
paying taxes on these goods had easy access to suitable
alternatives. Much of the revenue collected by England’s
agents was to cover the cost of defending the colonies and
paying the salaries of government officers and appointed
officials. As correctly understood among the colonists,
under this provision British officials would no longer be
financially dependent on salaries provided by colonial
legislatures and therefore no longer be obligated to support
the colonists’ perspective on matters dealing with the
Crown. If British officials were independent of the
colonists’ control over salaries and other financial matters,
it would mean the Crown’s appointees would be unfettered
by the will of the people being governed—a direct
contradiction of Lockean philosophy. Although George III
and the sponsor of the act, Charles Townshend, both
believed the minor tax placed on numerous goods would
hardly be noticed in the colonies and largely be paid by the
wealthy elite, they ignored the fundamental argument
backed by most colonists who protested the 1765 measure:
legislation must reflect the will of the people. The political
ideology gaining support among colonists was simply that
political authority, or sovereignty, rests with the people; it is
the people who establish government and laws can only be
enacted by the consent of the people.
The taxes levied by the Townshend Acts were aimed
certainly at the colonies’ more prosperous residents, but
they also affected artisans, cabinet makers, bookbinders,
painters, and others of the middle class whose professions
depended on paint, glass, lead, and paper. Once again,
voices of opposition sounded throughout the thirteen
colonies, and the Sons of Liberty called for a ban on the
importation of taxable British goods, a complete boycott of
the sale or use of taxable items presently in the colonies, and
the promise of violent retribution against anyone violating
the boycott. Christopher Gadsden organized public
 Francis Marion

Born in Berkeley County only a short ride from Georgetown on

February 26, 1732, Francis Marion was his Huguenot parents’
sixth and final child. His family relocated to a plantation in
Georgetown soon after Francis’s fifth birthday and there he began
his formal education. Always imaginative and curious, young
Francis yearned to go to sea and at age fifteen joined the crew of a
ship bound for the West Indies. On his return voyage to South
Carolina, a whale collided with the schooner, sending the ship
under the waves so quickly that the crew escaped without any food
or water. Having drifted and suffered for seven days before rescue,
Marion vowed that his seagoing career was now over.
Marion joined the South Carolina militia in 1757 and, as a
lieutenant under Captain William Moultrie, battled beside British
Army regular units to push the Cherokee farther west. War left a
profound imprint on the young officer. His diaries and letters vent
the horror he witnessed as British troops and militiamen laid waste
to Indian villages and killed without remorse. “Some of our men
seemed to enjoy this cruel work, laughing very heartily at the
curling flames,” wrote Marion in one letter to his friend Peter
Horry. “It appeared a shocking sight. Poor creatures!... I could
scarcely refrain from tears.”
As a member of the South Carolina Provincial Congress in
1775, Francis Marion challenged the colony’s continued
submission to British authority. In June he was promoted to the
rank of captain in the 2nd South Carolina Regiment and the
following June served again with William Moultrie in the defense
of Charleston against British military and naval forces. Because
of his inspiring leadership, the Continental Congress promoted
Marion to lieutenant colonel in September 1776.
Until autumn 1780, Marion served with the American
Continental Army, battling British troops along the
Georgia-South Carolina coast. With the fall of Charleston he
organized an irregular force of men—largely local citizens who
had abandoned their farms and families to punish the British
invaders. Known as “Marion’s Men,” they served without
promise of pay and provided their own horses and arms. For the
next several months, Marion led his men against British supply
lines, evading destruction and capture by hiding in the
swamplands and marshes of South Carolina’s Lowcountry. So
elusive were Marion’s Men that Britain’s Colonel Banastre
Tarleton referred to Marion as the “Swamp Fox.” Marion’s union
with Continental Army Colonel Richard Henry Lee and their joint
interdiction campaign against British supplies throughout 1781
effectively crippled Cornwallis’s strength in the South.
After the war and until his death on February 27, 1795,
Francis Marion served multiple terms in the South Carolina State
Senate, commanded Fort Johnson, and managed his vast
plantation, which included 200 slaves. In honor of his long
service to the nation and state, the Francis Marion National
Forest near Charleston is named after him, as is Francis Marion
University in Florence, the Francis Marion Hotel in Charleston,
the town and county of Marion, South Carolina, and numerous
towns across the United States founded by South Carolinians.
8o ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

meetings in the Lowcountry in which he and other

opponents of British policy chastised the king and
Parliament for their persistent affront to popular
sentiment, to the rights of Englishmen, and to the emerging
ideology of popular sovereignty. The Townshend Acts, he
thundered, again threatened the colonists’ “liberty and
property.” Gadsden and his supporters convinced the
colonial assembly to unite with the other colonies in the
boycott of taxable items and to support calls to ban
importation of British goods. In Charleston, Gadsden’s
“Charleston Patriots” barred the unloading of all British
imports at the town’s docks, not simply those taxed under
Townshend’s plan, and resorted to violence against local
merchants not honoring the general boycott. Patriot-led
mobs ravaged the stores of unsupportive merchants and
promised violence toward any shipper determined to
unload his cargo on Charleston docks. Individuals who
attempted to purchase British imports were verbally and
occasionally physically abused. Gadsden and his Patriots,
along with others in the city who supported them, burned
the king and Townshend in effigy and held bonfire rallies
against British taxation. Local newspapers printed scathing
attacks on the Crown’s alleged abridgement of the rights of
Englishmen in America, and broadsides criticizing the
king’s colonial policy littered city streets. Protestors equated
the colonists with “slaves”—slaves to Britain’s king and
Parliament—and warned of rebellion unless the Crown
truly respected American liberty.
The disruption of commerce greatly concerned the
Crown, and the threat of rebellion seemed more real than
ever before. South Carolina in 1767 imported 50 percent
fewer goods than it had the previous year; the Patriots
assured British shippers that 1768 would prove even more
financially disastrous to England. Flushed by the fury of
colonial protest and barraged by the complaints of British
exporters and merchants, whose livelihood was threatened
by the colonists' boycott, George III repealed most of the
Townshend duties, leaving the tax on tea as a symbolic
gesture of the king’s authority.
Divisions within South Carolina society widened with
Patriot action against the Townshend Act. Some Carolinians
labeled Gadsden and the Charleston Patriots traitors and
 FOUR: THE TURMOIL OF REVOLUTION 8l

urged the Crown to apprehend and punish all who

challenged the king s authority. Merchants targeted by
boycotters understandably felt the same, but they also felt
increasingly alienated from the general community. Their
wallets, lightened by the non-importation movement,
forced them to choose between violating the boycott and
thus suffering the wrath of the Patriots or foregoing profit
for survival in the local community. Neither option was
satisfactory. In the Backcountry, taxes imposed by the
Townshend Act had little effect, if any; rural settlers,
therefore, perceived the protests as uniquely urban and,
perhaps, a class conflict with the Crown irrelevant to them.
The division between government officials and general
citizenry also widened as the decade drew to its close. Some
government officers in the colony were appointed to their
posts as favors, or “pay-offs,” from friends or relatives
connected directly to the Crown. Indeed, this practice had
become increasingly commonplace. More often than not,
these “placemen” held no vested interest in the colony and
seldom had experience in the jobs given them. Some, such
as Peter Leigh, were widely considered disreputable before
corning to South Carolina. Leigh had been a New Jersey
lawyer who, through suspicious means, became governor of
that colony. Leigh was accused of misconduct in office and
literally chased out of New Jersey. Soon afterward, the
Crown placed him in South Carolina as the colony’s chief
justice. Across the colony, placemen such as Leigh generally
proved ill-prepared for their assignments and frequently
susceptible to corruption and scandal. The Charleston
Patriots most vocally pointed to the placemen as clear
evidence of the Crown’s corrupted political presence in the
colony and insisted that a governing system based on
popular sovereignty would prevent such unworthy
individuals from holding office.
In response to the protests over the Stamp Act, the
Townshend Acts, and now placemen, South Carolina’s
Crown-appointed governor in 1770 dissolved the colony’s
popularly elected assembly. The governor adhered strictly to
the king’s directive that colonial governments were to be
abolished should they refuse to abide by and to enforce royal
decrees and Parliament’s laws. The governor s action
demonstrated the king’s authority in South Carolina and
82 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

served notice that further signs of disloyalty would be dealt

with quickly and severely. While this was certainly the
message intended by the governor and echoed by many
residents in the colony, it drove many of South Carolina’s
wealthiest aristocrats directly into the Charleston Patriot
camp. William Henry Drayton, for example, viewed the
governor’s action and the king’s directive as an abuse of
political authority, the suppression of popular will, and the
denial of traditional English rights that Patriots had
championed since 1765. Dissolution of the colonial assembly
was the watershed event for many in South Carolina.
For the next three years, a tenuous calm settled over
South Carolina, as it did across the colonies. Trade through
the port at Charleston increased rapidly, with more than
800 cargo ships depositing their wares on the docks in each
of the next three years. Historian Walter Fraser, Jr., in his
book Charleston! Charleston! noted one visitor to the city
who remarked, “the number of shipping far surpasses all I
had seen in Boston.” A wide array of imported goods filled
merchants’ shelves and rising sales fattened their pockets.
More than 10,000 African slaves were moved through the
port to auction blocks and garnered unparalleled profits for
traders. The city constructed a new jail, more streets,
marketplaces, public wells, and a drainage system. A civic
consciousness surfaced among city leaders and society’s
most fortunate residents. The majority of white residents
enjoyed a slight increase in their income and general
standard of living; high society’s elegant dinners and parties
made Charleston evenings sparkle. For those outside
Charleston, particularly in the Backcountry, life remained
very hard. Market prices for farm goods certainly rose, but
the labor required to produce crops remained as back¬
breaking and time-consuming as ever. Indeed, the natural
urge to cultivate more land rose in proportion to higher
profits. The peaceful, prosperous, and rather slow-paced
life of South Carolinians fit well with the seemingly
tranquil years of the early 1770s; this peace and tranquility,
however, would prove short-lived.
The appearance of calm shattered in late 1773. The Tea
Act, issued that year by Parliament and fully endorsed by
George III, was intended to enrich the British East India
Tea Company with a monopoly on the tea trade to
 FOUR: THE TURMOIL OF REVOLUTION
83

America. A select few importers were to move the tea from

India to the American colonies, giving the importers the
full financial benefit of no competition, and prices on the
cargo were to be set lower than those typically charged by
American shippers. A small tax on the tea would channel
American money to the British treasury, an objective that
had failed with the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts.
England stood to gain much. The British East India
Tea Company served as Britain’s source of entry into India
and from there across Southwest Asia. It was widely
assumed in London that the resources and potential
markets of India, along with the points of entry from India
into neighboring territories, would one day generate more
profits for Britain than those ever accrued from the
Americas. Maintaining Britain’s early hold on Indian
resources and markets was deemed critical to England’s’
financial security. Moreover, a tax on tea reasserted the
Crown’s supreme authority over all British colonies. And, it
was reasoned, the tax on tea would be so small, a mere three
pence per pound, that Americans would not notice it once
the actual price of tea was reduced. The Tea Act seemed to
King George III and to Parliament a perfect solution.
Opposition to the Tea Act surfaced immediately in
South Carolina and centered itself in Charleston, much as
the opposition to placemen, the Townshend Acts, and the
Stamp Act had years earlier. As in previous squabbles, the
amount of the tax and the item to be taxed were themselves
not actually the critical points of resistance. Mint tea and
sassafras tea were widely consumed in the colonies instead
of East Indian tea; moreover, coffee had long been a
popular substitute. Colonists could easily have abandoned
East Indian tea and never confronted England’s latest tax,
but South Carolinians condemned this latest tax measure as
one created and enacted without the consent of the people
being governed or the approval of their representatives.
The Tea Act was another attempt by the Crown to assert its
sovereignty, a view of authority in stark conflict with that
now expressed by colonists in America. To accept the tax on
tea would acknowledge the Crown’s right to tax colonists
and to implement laws without popular oversight and
control. “Their personal independence, property, and the
power of their Assembly were again threatened,” wrote
84 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Walter Fraser, Jr. To be sure, many in Charleston and

across the surrounding countryside did agree that the king
and Parliament possessed absolute authority to govern,
with or without the consent of the governed.
Arguments surrounding the Tea Act remained largely
academic until December 2, 1773. That morning, the
London, the first of seven ships scheduled to arrive that day
laden with tea, appeared in Charleston Harbor, dropped
anchor, and awaited instructions for unloading the 260
crates of tea in its hold. Christopher Gadsden, the principal
architect of the Charleston Patriots and the local Sons of
Liberty, recognized that paying the taxes and unloading the
tea would constitute South Carolina’s acquiescence to
British authority over that of the colonial assembly that
represented the will of its constituents. Gadsden quickly
printed and distributed a circular throughout the city,
informing residents that an emergency meeting would be
held the next day at the Exchange Building.
Opponents of the Crown, supporters of the king, and
genuinely curious spectators gathered at the Exchange
Building on December 3. Within moments even the
foggiest brain realized this meeting was aimed at resisting
the Tea Act. In quick succession, those in attendance
selected a presiding officer, penned an order that prohibited
the unloading of the tea, and arranged for committees to
solicit support from local merchants.
Informed in advance of the planned Patriot gathering
and anticipating a scenario perhaps more confrontational
than that which unfolded over the Stamp Act and
Townshend Acts, Lt. Governor William Bull ordered all
tea arrivals stored under lock and key to protect them from
confiscation or destruction by the city’s malcontents. Bull’s
quick action saved the tea from destruction, but it did not
prevent the Patriots’ physical attack on tax collectors and on
town merchants willing to sell the imported tea.
Charlestonians soon implemented another boycott of
British imports, and once more merchants and customers
who violated the ban paid dearly at the hands of Patriots.
Newspaper editorials, broadsides, flyers, and petitions
denouncing the Tea Act sifted through the colonial
population and encouraged all citizens of South Carolina to
resist the Crown.
 FOUR: THE TURMOIL OF REVOLUTION
85

Throughout the American colonies similar responses

to British policies unfolded, reaching a climax with the
Boston Tea Party. Explicitly responding to the Boston
affair, king and Parliament struck back. From the Crown’s
perspective, England had long worked with the colonies to
resolve disputes fairly and to maintain a relationship
financially and politically beneficial to each. Had the king
not repealed the Stamp Act? Had he not also scrapped the
Townshend Acts following colonial opposition? Had
Parliament or king repressed the colonists’ exercise of free
speech, assembly, or dissent, even when it included violence
against British officials and the destruction of both private
and public property? And, despite years of opposition to its
taxes from colonists in America, England continued its
military protection of the seaboard colonies. And, in
defense of its position on royal sovereignty and the rights of
Englishmen, King George III and leaders in Parliament
insisted that the colonists’ perspective had always been
represented in Parliament through the good will of its
members. The time had now come, reasoned Parliament
and king, to assert the Crown’s absolute authority over its
citizens living in America and, in the process, to punish
Boston for the tea its residents had destroyed.
In early 1774 Parliament fashioned the Coercive Acts, a
series of measures American colonists collectively termed
the “Intolerable Acts.” Boston’s harbor was to be closed and
all traffic into the city by land would be halted until all
financial loss caused by the Boston Tea Party was recouped.
Five thousand additional British troops were to be posted in
the city and become, in essence, a policing force of 10,000
troops. Boston residents were to fund the construction of
barracks for those incoming soldiers, and, until barracks
were built, house those troops in private homes. Standing
warrants to conduct general searches without probable
cause were now permitted. British officials charged with
crimes in America were to be tried not in the colonies but
in England, and the Massachusetts colonial charter was to
be revised to reduce its degree of independence from the
Crown. Although the Coercive Acts were immediately and
expressly aimed at Boston, Parliament’s action was a clear
statement to all colonists that the Crown, not the people,
was sovereign.
 Ok>g tnal used By 3 Z2_
Mo. Reg t
in The Betle oe COvypE^s

Battle of Cowpens

Some historians regard the Battle of Cowpens (January 17, 1781) as the
turning point of the American Revolution in the Southern Colonies—the
pivotal battle between British and American forces that led inevitably to
the British military defeat at Yorktown the following October and the
Crown’s agreement to negotiate an end to the war on American terms.
General Nathaniel Greene, commander of the American Continental
Army in the South, ordered General Daniel Morgan into the western
territory of South Carolina to harass British forces and to extinguish Loyalist
activity there. The move compelled Lord General Charles Cornwallis, who
was in pursuit of Greene’s forces, to divide his army into smaller elements
and in so doing weaken the main body of British military might in the
Southern Colonies. Cornwallis directed Colonel Banastre Tarleton, known
among colonists as “Banastre the Butcher,” to destroy Morgan’s regiment.
Tarleton gave chase and tracked Morgan to Grin dais Shoals on the Pacolet
River. Careful to place his own army in an advantageous position, Morgan
selected the frontier crossroads Cowpens as the location at which he would
turn on Tarleton and confront the British.
 The site Morgan chose was a 2,500-square-yard cattle pasture. On
either side of the pasture stood sizeable hills on which Morgan posted
American sharpshooters and cavalry. He purposely positioned his troops
with the Broad River to their rear so that they could not retreat. In earlier
battles, his militia units had broken ranks and fled the battlefield; retreat
here would be impossible, forcing his militia units to stand and fight. His
objective was simple: draw Tarleton into the open land and then allow
the cavalry to envelop the British from two sides. Sharpshooters would
hold their positions to prevent Tarleton from securing the high ground.
The morning of January 17 was bright and unusually frigid.
Tarleton’s scouts informed him of the lay of the land, the river blocking
American retreat, the number and position of militiamen, and the
assessment that victory would come quickly with an all-out attack.
Tarleton immediately instructed his men to take no prisoners and issued
orders to charge. Morgan’s plan, however, worked to perfection and
within one hour British forces were decimated. Tarleton himself and his
few surviving men fled from Cowpens and linked with Cornwallis.
American casualties totaled 12 dead and 60 wounded; the British,
however, suffered more than 100 dead, 200 wounded, and 500 soldiers
captured. The Battle of Cowpens and the Battle at Kings Mountain three
months earlier effectively ended the British military presence in western
South Carolina and drove from the region their Loyalist allies.
The Cowpens Battlefield Park is located near Chesnee, South
Carolina between Gaffney and Spartanburg, Guests may walk the paved
mile-long Battlefield Trail, which includes wayside exhibits open daily,
and drive along the four-mile Auto Loop Road that encircles the Cowpens
battlefield and includes parking areas with walkways onto critical battle
positions. A museum on the property features weapons common to the
Revolutionary War, as well as uniforms, maps, and battle dioramas. On
July 4, the park celebrates Independence Day with a firing history
encampment, activities for children that teach colonial-era arts, and a
fireworks celebration after sundown. On the weekend closest to October
7, Over-mountain Victory Trail marchers arrive at the park to rest and
treat guests as they retrace the path taken by Patriots to battle Major
Patrick Ferguson at Kings Mountain in 1780. The park commemorates
the Battle of Cowpens each year on the weekend closest to January 17.
Among the activities offered at the annual celebration is a firing history
encampment in which guests witness firsthand the typical eighteenth-
century army fife. The park also presents a firing demonstration of
Revolutionary War-era weapons, a small arms drill by a team of battle
re-enactors, lectures by historians and others, a play, and a wreath-laying
ceremony to honor those whose fives were lost at this battle.
For more information about the park, write to Cowpens National
Battlefield, PO Box 308, Chesnee, South Carolina 29323, call (864) 461-
2828, or visit the US National Park Service website at www.nps.gov/cowp.
88 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

War Comes to South Carolina

Once colonists learned of the Coercive Acts and recognized
the obvious message of the measure, New York s dissidents
called for an inter-colony meeting comparable to the earlier
Stamp Act Congress. They asked that representatives from
each colony attend a Continental Congress in Philadelphia
in September 1774 and there discuss the disagreements
between Crown and colonists and, they hoped, devise an
amicable resolution.
The importance of the Coercive Acts and the
Continental Congress was not lost on South Carolinians.
Gadsden, the Charleston Patriots, and the local Sons of
Liberty saw “these hostile acts of Parliament against
Boston” as the first direct assault by the Crown on colonists
resisting absolute Crown authority, as a loss of citizen
rights, and as a possible financial loss caused by
Parliament’s economic policies. On July 6, a General
Meeting convened in Charleston with 100 members of
South Carolina’s aristocracy present. It was the first
assembly in the colony that included substantial
representation from the Backcountry—the inland regions
historically at odds with the Lowcountry’s wealthy planters
and merchants. The delegates, however, were not of one
mind. Arguments raged over the prospect of another
general boycott of British goods, the purpose of
government and the extent of authority commanded by
citizens, and the real intent of the Philadelphia convention.
After three days of squabbling, the General Meeting
instructed its chosen representatives to the Continental
Congress to support no action that would substantially
harm South Carolina’s merchants, artisans, or planters.
Elected to represent the colony at the Continental Congress
were two veterans of the Stamp Act Congress—
Christopher Gadsden and Thomas Lynch. Henry
Middleton, who owned a plantation along the Ashley River
outside Charleston, and the Rutledge brothers—John and
Edward—were also chosen to attend the Philadelphia
meeting. Although the General Meeting openly stated its
intention to represent the colony’s diverse opinions at the
congress, all the delegates except John Rutledge were
supporters of Gadsden’s Patriots. Equally critical, the
General Meeting established the General Committee of 99,
 FOUR: THE TURMOIL OF REVOLUTION 89

a collection of merchants and planters chaired by Charles

Pinckney to serve as the colony’s unofficial political
assembly in place of the Commons House, which the
governor had dissolved in 1770. It would be, in effect, an ad
hoc governing body.
Neither the General Meeting nor the Committee of 99
fully reflected public opinion in South Carolina. Across the
Lowcountry, many merchants whose stores were stocked
with British imports condemned anyone who called for a
general boycott and damned the Sons of Liberty and
Charleston Patriots for the destruction of property they
promised against those who continued to sell British goods.
Others such as Reverend John Bullman of St. Michael’s
Church chastised the Lowcountry elite for rousing the “idle
and illiterate” working population into violent opposition to
legal authority, insisting that the lower class should remain in
its “place.” Similar views were shared by “gentlemen”
throughout the region. And, of course, most of the Back-
country’s small farmers and emerging elite denounced what
appeared to them as a urban crisis generated by the wealthy
to protect their own financial security, under the pretense of
defending the rights of Englishmen.
The First Continental Congress convened as planned,
but it accomplished little. From the meeting came a request
that each colony endorse a general boycott of British wares.
Beyond this, the opinions expressed by delegates ranged from
a call for the colonies’ independence from England to their
total submission to royal authority. Delegates returned home
in October to solicit their constituents’ advice before
returning to Philadelphia in May 1775 for a second congress.
In January 1775, the General Committee convened in
Charleston. Present were six delegates from each South
Carolina parish outside of Charleston. Charleston comprised
two parishes, and by order of the General Committee each
was allowed fifteen delegates, a decision that only reinforced
the Backcountry’s long accusation of political corruption in
the colony and the Lowcountry’s heavy-handed control over
South Carolina’s affairs. Once in session, the Committee
renamed itself the First Provincial Congress and following
some debate agreed to the boycott recommended by the First
Continental Congress. As before, however, delegates to the
General Committee were not of one mind, and heated
90 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

arguments over British policies and the proper colonial

response produced no resolution. Before their delegates
journeyed back to Philadelphia, blood was shed in mid-
April at Lexington Green, Concord Bridge, and along the
twenty-mile road leading from Concord to Boston.
Although Englishmen in both America and England called
for a peaceful, nonviolent resolution to the crisis separating
the colonies from the mother country, almost everyone
understood that the fighting in Massachusetts had been the
opening shots of war.
Learning of the battles at Lexington and Concord one
week after they occurred, South Carolina’s First Provincial
Congress moved to protect Charleston from any British
military move directed toward the Lowcountry. It was
widely known that Parliament had dispatched more
soldiers to the Americas earlier in the month; fear spread in
the Southern Colonies that these troops were destined for
points between Williamsburg, Virginia and Savannah,
Georgia. Late in the evening of April 26, William Henry
Drayton led several members of the Provincial Congress to
the arsenal near Charleston Harbor, gathered the weapons,
ammunition, and powder and hid them throughout the
city. Thus any British troops that might arrive would not
have access to the stores, but locals would be better
equipped to defend the city.
South Carolinians watched the pace of war quicken in
New England throughout May and )une. The colony’s
delegates to the Second Continental Congress in these
weeks committed themselves and South Carolina fully to
the rebellion, even though popular opinion was seriously
divided in the colony. When the congress proclaimed itself
the de facto governing structure for those in rebellion,
South Carolina’s delegates offered no opposition. Indeed,
they supported the move and voted for George Washington
to command a continental army against England.
The revolutionary spirit within South Carolina
coalesced in the Lowcountry. Members of the Provincial
Congress and its thirteen-man executive council, known as
the Council of Safety, publicly pledged their lives and
fortunes to preserve the colonists’ rights as Englishmen and
to chase from South Carolina those who supported the
“oppressive” and “tyrannical” acts of king and Parliament.
 FOUR: THE TURMOIL OF REVOLUTION
91

Must-See Sites:
Kings Mountain National
Military Park

This military park, located approximately 20 miles

southwest of Charlotte, North Carolina on Highway
216 on the state line is the site of the pivotal October
1780 battle between Carolina patriots and a force of
British regular troops and local Tories under the
command of Major Patrick Ferguson. A museum and
video presentation greet visitors, and guests may hike
battlefield trails, camp, fish, visit a nineteenth-century
living history farm, or ride horses. A wreath-laying
ceremony is held on October 7 each year to
commemorate the battle and to honor those who
fought and died at Kings Mountain. The park is open
daily except on holidays, and admission is free. Visit
www.nps.gov/kimo for additional information.

Citizens who refused to support the rebellion were

pronounced “enemies of their country” and subject to the
confiscation of their property and fortunes. The Provincial
Congress also voted to raise and fund three army regiments
for the defense of South Carolina. The sharp tone, divisive
spirit, and stern steps taken by the congress and council
horrified more moderate members; Congress President
Charles Pinckney resigned his position over his colleagues’
intolerant stance. In the weeks that followed, residents
supportive of the Crown, also known as Loyalists, found the
fervor of rebellion spreading throughout the Lowcountry.
Several merchants in Charleston were “tarred, feathered,
and carted through the streets,” one South Carolina Patriot
later recalled. Loyalists were chased from the city and
surrounding towns, and those who had not chosen sides in
the conflict were advised to do so quickly. Slaves were
warned against any behavior that might be construed as
inciting insurrection, as doing so would most certainly
benefit local Loyalist plans to collapse the Patriot rebellion.
Tolerance had no place in this developing civil war.
92 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

The Backcountry of South Carolina did not align itself

with the rebellion. The turmoil that had rocked Charleston
before 1775 had little to do with the region. Many residents
of the area still perceived the confrontation as a commercial
conflict only relevant to the coast’s urban elite. Moreover,
they refused to take arms against the legitimate
government of the colonies, the British Crown. In
September, rumors spread that Royal Governor William
Campbell intended to arm Backcountry loyalists and march
them against Lowcountry rebels. Members of the
Provincial Congress demanded the governor’s arrest.
Evading capture, Campbell fled South Carolina and sailed
to England. Whether or not there was any truth regarding
Campbell’s plot, the fact that Lowcountry residents
considered the rumor true testified to the long-term
animosity each region had for the other.
Events continued to spiral beyond the possibility of
reconciliation. Soon after Governor Campbell made his
exit, a South Carolina rebel regiment moved against Fort
Johnson and took military command of the island that
secured the southern approach to Charleston Harbor. On
November 1, the Provincial Congress ordered the
blockading of the Cooper River, which would protect
Charleston from British naval bombardment. Earthworks
and other defense-related construction projects were
begun, local residents were assigned emergency tasks such
as fighting fire or policing the city, women were asked to
prepare medical kits for their families and to store
necessary supplies for their families, and slaves were
pressed into defense work.
While Charleston readied itself for British attack, Patriot
and Loyalist forces on November 15 clashed at the small
community of Ninety-Six, shedding the first drops of blood
in South Carolina. Loyalists retreated into Cherokee lands
with Patriot forces in pursuit, and in December the Great
Snow Campaign in the area of present-day Greenville
County pitted 4,000 Patriots against nearly 2,000 Loyalists.
The preponderance of Patriot power quelled Loyalist activity
in the Backcountry well into the next year.
Not until June 1776 did British troops directly threaten
South Carolina, a move that ultimately pressed the colony’s
moderates to support the call for total independence from
 four: the turmoil of revolution
93

Britain. Charleston Harbor was vital to the British war

effort. Through it, British troops and supplies could move
inland easily and quickly and in so doing extend the British
army’s range in both Carolinas and northern Georgia.
General Henry Clinton commanded 3,000 British redcoats
and a fleet of warships, and he moved to take the harbor
and city. John Rutledge, South Carolina’s new governor,
mustered a rebel militia of 5,000 men under the leadership
of Colonel William Moultrie, who quickly constructed a
makeshift fort on Sullivan’s Island to guard the harbor’s
entrance. Nearly 500 American Continental Army soldiers
under the command of General Charles Lee arrived from
North Carolina to offer their support. The defensive
structure was made of double rows of soft, almost spongy
palmetto logs.
Clinton began his assault on June 28. Redcoats landed on
the Isle of Palms just north of Charleston, but they were
unable to ford the waterway separating the island from the
mainland. Several of Clinton’s vessels ran aground and were
destroyed by a withering fire from Patriot guns. The
remaining British warships bombarded rebel defenses, but
cannon shells only bounced off the palmetto logs. Patriot
cannon returned fire, sinking one ship and damaging several
others. The British retreated without inflicting any
significant damage on rebel defenders. To honor their local
hero, the earthwork and palmetto structure on Sullivan’s
Island was named Fort Moultrie. One week later, South
Carolina’s representatives to the Second Continental
Congress affixed their names to the Declaration of
Independence.
Although the British threat to Charleston in summer
1776 was reduced substantially by the British debacle at
Sullivan’s Island, along the western frontier the Cherokee
launched a series of stunning raids on Backcountry
settlements. It is likely that the Indians would have
eventually warred With settlers in the region, but their
strikes in July 1776 were encouraged by one British agent,
John Stuart, who was ordered by the Crown to unite
Cherokees with the British war effort against rebel forces.
Stuart’s ignorance—his assumption that all South
Carolinians were rebels— carried serious repercussions for
the British effort in the Backcountry. Indians struck both
94 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Must-See Sites:
Historic Camden
Revolutionary War Site

British forces under General Lord Cornwallis soundly

defeated American troops under General Horatio Gates
at the Battle of Camden in summer 1780. While in
Camden, Cornwallis appropriated a local home for his
headquarters. The Kershaw-Comwallis House, as it is
known today, is open for tourists visiting the battlefield.
At the historic site are log houses common to the
Revolutionary era, a powder magazine, and walking
trails around the batde site. In November each year, the
community holds its Revolutionary War Field Days at
the site, featuring crafts, living history demonstrations,
and regimental drills. The battle site is open Tliesday
through Saturday. Call (803) 432-9841 or email
[email protected] for more information.

rebel and Loyalist communities in the Backcountry. Their

attacks only drove those settlers into rebellion against
England. With little difficulty, Colonel Andrew
Williamson in August assembled an 1,800-man force and
pressed a counterattack with a ferocity and brutality that
surpassed Cherokee depredations. Indians fled into the
western mountains, ceding to South Carolina exclusive
ownership of present-day Greenville, Pickens, Anderson,
and Oconee counties.
For the next three years, South Carolina remained
rather quiet. War still raged throughout New England and
the Middle Colonies, but England did not threaten the
South. The tenuous peace collapsed, however, in August
1779 as Britain abandoned its failed military strategy and
implemented a new plan for victory in America. With a
large navy anti army, supplemented by the abundant
Loyalist base that remained in the region, British forces
decided to conquer Georgia and then roll northward
through the Carolinas, eventually linking up with British
armies in New York. In short, as each southern colony fell
 FOUR: THE TURMOIL OF REVOLUTION
95

to British military power and political authority, rebel

forces would retreat north and at some point become
pinned between two massive British armies. An American
surrender would result.
Savannah fell quickly to British military and naval might.
A fleet of 32 ships and 4,000 French and American troops
were rushed to the South Carolina coast but their
commanders failed to agree on a counterattack strategy,
squandering any chance to push British forces from
Savannah. General Clinton used the American-French delay
to fortify the coastal city with reinforcements and to collapse
the rebel presence inland. At the same time, small skirmishes
dotted the South Carolina—Georgia border, but in May a
British force of 3,000 soldiers sat on the outskirts of
Charleston. Only the arrival of General Benjamin Lincoln’s
American army of equal strength prevented a British strike
against the city at this time. With the city momentarily
secured, local Patriots vented their rage against Loyalists who
still resided in the city. Planters and wealthy merchants who
preferred reconciliation with England were assaulted on the
streets, suffered home invasion and the theft of their
household goods, and occasionally were forced to watch their
property destroyed. General Lincoln was more concerned
about the city’s defenses. His army held few supplies, and he
knew that British reinforcements would soon outnumber his
own army. Lincoln persistently begged the American
congress for greater manpower and more supplies; not until
December did congress give him a portion of what he needed.
In February 1780 General Clinton finally moved
against Charleston. He encircled the city with 10,000
soldiers and blocked the harbor with a British fleet. Over
the next three months, British cannon laid siege to the city.
No quarter was given to Charleston’s civilians. Historian
Walter Fraser reports that one Hessian officer attached to
Clinton’s army heard “A terrible clamor among the
inhabitants” and the “wailing of female voices” coming
from the city following a prolonged bombardment in mid-
April. Food, medicine, and clean water were soon in short
supply among the city’s residents. Not a dog, cat, or rat was
safe with human survival in doubt. On May 7 Fort Moultrie
fell to the British, and one week later Charleston itself
capitulated. Clinton took 5,000 American soldiers as
96 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

prisoners of war, confiscated the American army’s supplies,

and took control of the last port open to American and
French fleets on the Atlantic coast. It proved to be Britain’s
brightest victory in the war.
British cavalry now ranged deep inland, patrolling the
countryside and countering any rebel force that challenged
them. Colonel Banastre Tarleton commanded one such
unit. In present-day Lancaster County, Tarleton cornered a
regiment of Virginia Patriots and slaughtered the entire
unit despite the white flag it hoisted and its shouts of
surrender. Rather than compelling Patriots in the area to
lay down their arms and submit to British authority, as he
assumed such brutality would force, Tarleton’s actions only
enraged Backcountry men and drove the entire section of
South Carolina into the rebel cause.
At the same time, Clinton turned over the operational
duties of his command to Lord General Charles
Cornwallis. Reaching Camden near present-day Columbia
in July, Cornwallis utterly crushed a Continental Army
commanded by General Horatio Gates. Surviving
Americans fled, leaving behind 650 dead Patriots. Gates
himself retreated 150 miles to Hillsboro, North Carolina.
Days later, Colonel Tarleton followed Cornwallis’s victory
at Camden with the rout of another American force, one
commanded by South Carolinian Thomas Sumter,
affectionately known as “the Gamecock" for his fighting
spirit. By summer’s end, British forces occupied Charleston
and much of the Backcountry. Through the harbor came
materiel and manpower for pressing the war inland against
rebel forces across South Carolina.
Lengthening supply lines worried Cornwallis, and
rightly so. Following the Battle of Camden, General George
Washington dumped General Gates, replacing him with
General Nathaniel Greene. Greene was untested in battle,
but his superb organizational skills, his ability to inspire
devotion among his soldiers, and his determination to fight
the British were all traits Gates lacked. Greene based his new
command in Charlotte, North Carolina, about 70 miles north
of Camden. He then dispatched Colonel Richard Henry Lee
to the areas north and west of Charleston, ordering him to
join forces with local militia units in the swamplands
commanded by Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter. Their
 FOUR: THE TURMOIL OF REVOLUTION
97

task, Greene said, was the interdiction of British supplies

moving from Charleston to Cornwallis’s inland units. The
campaign of Lee, Marion, and Sumter became legendary,
Marion and Sumter quickly becoming heroic figures among
South Carolinians and Marion earning the nickname
“Swamp Fox” from his admirers.
Greene then began a slow, tactical retreat from
Charlotte to the northeast, purposely enticing a British
pursuit. To secure the western flank as his army chased
Greene, Cornwallis dispatched Major Patrick Ferguson
into the Carolina foothills to rally Loyalist support and to
crush the few rebel units in the area. Ferguson, a firebrand,
failed to control his use of derogatory terms toward rebels.
He openly doubted the honesty and loyalty of Backcountry
settlers, promised to hang all Patriot leaders he
apprehended, and guaranteed that he would lay waste to all
communities not absolutely obedient to the Crown. His
sharp words enraged colonists in both Carolinas and in the
Tennessee mountains and in response they massed a 1,000'
man force to chase him from the region.
British scouts and Loyalists informed Ferguson in early
October of the approach of “Overmountain Men” who
were filtering out of the Appalachian Mountains and
crossing the hill country toward his army. They advised the
major to seek a suitable defensive position immediately.
British troops and their armed Loyalist allies hurried to the
top of Kings Mountain, located on the border of the two
Carolinas. On October 7, 1780, without resting from their
long march, the Overmountain Men charged Ferguson’s
troops. In only one hour, the battle was decided. More than
800 British and Loyalist soldiers lay dead, including
Ferguson, and another 300 were taken prisoner. The
Overmountain Men hanged some of the captured soldiers
as retribution for the actions of other British commanders,
particularly Banastre Tarleton.
Only three months later, Tarleton himself was targeted
by rebels. General Greene ordered an interdiction
campaign in the South Carolina Lowcountry and
commenced his methodical retreat from Charlotte, and at
the same time sent a regiment commanded by General
Daniel Morgan into western South Carolina to draw away
from himself part of Cornwallis’s army. On Morgans heels
98 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

was Tarleton, armed with 1,000 redcoats and Loyalists

determined to kill every rebel and brand the region with
the king’s authority. On January 17, 1781, Morgan and
Tarleton collided. In a masterfully crafted battle plan,
Morgan’s army trounced the British, killing or capturing
more than 900 British soldiers and sending the remaining
150, including Tarleton, scrambling back to Cornwallis in a
disorganized and panicked retreat. These two battles,
Kings Mountain and Cowpens, effectively sealed the
western Carolinas under Patriot control. Continued
harassment in the Lowcountry by Marion, Sumter, and Lee
prevented Cornwallis from getting the reinforcements and
supplies he desperately needed inland.
Cornwallis continued his pursuit of Greene. Along the
route, frequent ambushes bloodied and demoralized the
redcoats. At Guilford Courthouse (Greensboro), General
Greene turned to fight the weary British and, although
Cornwallis claimed victory in the battle, inflicted a 25
percent casualty rate on the redcoats. Battered, weakened,
fatigued, and demoralized, Cornwallis’s force broke off its
pursuit of Greene, slipped southeast to Wilmington on the
coast, and then moved north to Yorktown, Virginia, where
French and American military and naval forces
surrounded him, forcing his surrender in October 1781.
The campaign in South Carolina proved pivotal in the
Patriots’ claiming victory in the South.
Despite Cornwallis’s surrender, the war officially
continued while diplomats in Paris strove to negotiate an
armistice and peace treaty. In these months, Greene moved
his army into South Carolina, slowly pressing British units
back to Charleston. Battles again flared at Camden,
Ninety-Six, anti Eutaw Springs. Not until December 16,
1782 did the British finally evacuate the coastal city. With
the regular army went nearly 4,000 South Carolina
Loyalists and their 5,000 slaves. South Carolina was now
free of British rule. What had commenced as a debate over
the source of power to govern inside the colonies ended in
1783 with a treaty that granted independence to a new
nation, the United States of America.
 Postwar Directions

W ith a little ink scribbled onto parchment followed

by a few polite nods of agreement, diplomats at
the Paris Peace Conference in 1783 announced
the end of hostilities between Great Britain and her former
American colonies. “The World Turned Upside Down,” a
little ditty played two years earlier at the surrender of
General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia seemed
so appropriate now. A minority of American colonists had
initiated rebellion against the most powerful nation in the
Western world, tenaciously stalled British military conquest
of the colonies, founded a revolutionary government based
on a liberal political ideology, doggedly pursued and
ultimately gained an alliance with France, and eventually
secured a victory whose reward was far greater than
originally anticipated—independence. The monarchs of
Europe, including the French king, now pondered the
implications of America’s revolution on their own peasant
masses and their distant colonial possessions. America’s
Enlightenment-inspired political ideology valued the worth
of all men and theoretically shifted the seat of government
authority from the anointed few to the people themselves. A
revolution had, indeed, occurred; the crowned heads across
Europe now cautiously eyed their own realms and studied
with interest America’s postwar course.

Addressing Postwar Problems

As remarkable and exhilarating an achievement as victory in
the war had been for South Carolina s Patriots, the conflict
left in its wake a reality few had considered seriously just
eight years earlier. The coastal cities of Charleston,
Georgetown, and Beaufort all bore the physical scars of
battle, their business districts lay in shambles, and urban
residents had fled for the relative safety of the countryside.
99
IOO ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

British forces had razed small towns and villages aligned,

or thought to be aligned, with the Patriot cause. Banastre
Tarleton’s rampage through the Backcountry along with
Patrick Ferguson’s vicious swipes against the frontier
population left homes and farms leveled, thousands of acres
of crops destroyed, mills torched, and much of the region
cast into poverty. The war had also taken the lives of many
South Carolinians—farmers, merchants, manufacturers,
traders, and planters alike. By 1783, the war of rebellion
had fractured South Carolina’s social, economic, and
political structures.
To complicate matters, general lawlessness plagued the
Backcountry. Assaults and robberies were frequent, most
conducted by newcomers to the territory who believed the
remote farms and isolated travelers offered easy pickings.
Wartime animosities also lingered, as they do after all civil
wars. Former Tories, or Loyalists, who aided Colonel
Tarleton or Major Patrick Ferguson were remembered for
the brutality British forces wreaked on American soldiers,
militiamen, and civilians. Some of these former Loyalists
were chased from the Backcountry and their property was
auctioned to Patriot supporters; more than a few endured
the pain of physical retribution. No longer a colony but now
a state with nearly the power and responsibility of an
autonomous nation itself, South Carolina’s government
entered the postwar period more than a little apprehensive
but determined to assert its newfound authority, stabilize
society, and establish peacetime prosperity.
The new state government wasted little time
addressing an immediate issue—securing South Carolina’s
economy. Within months of the Peace of Paris, it
incorporated the city of Charleston and in so doing allowed
its residents to form a local government. A city council was
soon formed, and its representatives quickly moved to
protect local business from exploitation by foreign creditors
and former Loyalists. In 1784 the General Assembly
created a uniform tax rate on land, based on assessed value,
and the following year the state permitted South
Carolinians to repay their debts with land rather than
strictly cash. This act alone enabled many merchants,
planters, and farmers to repay their debts. The assembly
also authorized the issuance of secured loans ranging from
 five: postwar directions IOI

$2,000 to $17,000 for rebuilding or expanding private

business in the state. This particularly aided South
Carolina’s exports. With the war’s end came the virtual
collapse of the indigo trade that before 1775 had been
buttressed by British subsidies. Moreover, the export of all
goods from South Carolina directly to England or to the
British West Indies ended with the war’s conclusion;
England now acquired many of the same goods from non-
American producers.
State loans to individuals and to the newly organized
Charleston Chamber of Commerce financially supported
efforts to open new overseas markets. These steps helped
calm the citizenry. Financially strapped coastal and
Backcountry farmers who had banded together
immediately following the war and violently prevented the
foreclosure of properties, threatening open rebellion, now
saw the state provide debt relief and the promise of a
stabilized economy. Planters and merchants whose
investments had teetered on the brink of collapse now saw
before them a path toward financial security and possibly
renewed prosperity.
The General Assembly also worked to restore order in
the general society. In 1785, for example, the state
demanded all wartime Loyalists leave South Carolina. This
order was issued in part to remove from the state a segment
of the population thought to be untrustworthy, un¬
dependable, and perhaps corruptive to South Carolina s
progress. It was also intended to reduce postwar violence
within the state, thus leading to social stability, and to divest
the state’s previous enemy of its local property, in order to
sell it to those who had supported the state and the
American cause. The assembly also commanded the
founding of local paramilitary units in the Backcountry to
protect citizens from thieves and to assure the enforcement
of law in that part of the state. It further acted to reduce
longstanding tensions between the state s two regions. For
decades Backcountry residents had bitterly complained that
they were the victims of a coastal elite that fashioned law
and channeled funds to suit its own ends. This divide had
underpinned the sectional conflict present in South
Carolina throughout the Revolutionary War. The General
Assembly in 1786 relocated the state capital from
 Andrew Jackson

South Carolinians claim the seventh president of the United States,

Andrew Jackson, as their native son. Bom on March 15, 1767 near
Waxhaw just south of Charlotte, he was reared in Lancaster, South
Carolina. His childhood was difficult, though not uncommon for the
times. Only days before his birth, Andrew’s father was killed in a
logging accident. His mother, Betty, moved the family closer to her
parents in Lancaster. Andrew assumed the normal responsibilities
of farm boys on the Carolina frontier, but at night his family tutored
him in the basic academic subjects.
When the Revolutionary War came to South Carolina, Andrew’s
older brother Hugh enlisted in the American Continental Army and
in late June, following the Battle of Stono Ferry twenty miles south
of Charleston, died from heat exhaustion. Andrew, only thirteen,
and his remaining brother Robert enlisted in the Continental Army
the following spring. Together they served as couriers and, together,
in April 1781, were captured by British troops. One English officer
commanded Andrew to clean his mud-caked boots—according to
legend, in language most vile. Andrew refused, using similarly
colorful expressions. Enraged by the insolence, the officer wielded
his saber toward the youngster, slicing Andrew’s hand to the bone.
The officer then retreated issuing a flurry of derogatory terms about
Jackson, the Backcountry, and Americans generally. For reasons
that remain unclear, Andrew and Robert were released from
captivity several weeks later.
Robert died only days after his release, apparently from
smallpox he’d contracted while a prisoner. The boys’ mother left
Lancaster and journeyed to Charleston. She took a job at a hospital
nursing American prisoners of war, but many within her extended
family and some scholars today believe she ventured to the
Lowcountry to be near the grave of her oldest son. Little time passed
before she, too, died—probably from cholera. Andrew, now fourteen,
remained in Lancaster for the next three years.
At seventeen, Andrew traveled to Salisbury, North Carolina to
study law, passing the bar exam in 1787 and becoming a prosecuting
attorney in the state’s westernmost city, Nashville. He earned the
reputation as an aggressive but fair prosecutor and built a network of
influential friends. In 1796, Tennessee was created from North
Carolina’s western territories, and Jackson was elected as the state’s
first representative to the US House of Representatives, followed by a
term in the Senate and on the Tennessee Supreme Court.
Jackson also built a thriving plantation known as The
Hermitage and was made a major general in the US Army. He led
troops in war against the Creek and Seminole Indians in which his
ferocity was praised by his superiors but condemned by Native
Americans and others even today. He was given command of all
American forces along the Gulf Coast during the War of 1812, and
in January 1815 Jackson’s 6,500-man army soundly trounced a
British force of 8,500 men, halting British activity in the region. Old
Hickory, as he was now called by admirers for his stem discipline
and confidence, was a national hero.
Jackson vied for the presidency in 1824 but lost to John Quincy
Adams. Four years later, he challenged the incumbent and, building a
strong grassroots campaign, won handily. He served two terms, from
1828 to 1837. His presidency has been termed “the age of Jackson”
and “the era of Jacksonian democracy,” and, indeed, he inaugurated
sweeping democratic reforms. In response to a new tariff law in 1832,
the Palmetto State issued its Ordinance of Nullification, giving the state
the right to declare void any federal law in conflict with South Carolina
wishes. Jackson blasted his home state for its posturing and assured
South Carolina that the United States Constitution was, in fact, the
supreme law of the land. In Indian affairs, he supported the Indian
Removal Act that forcibly removed the Cherokee and other tribes to
Oklahoma, freeing 100 million acres of land in the South for white
settlement but causing the Trail of Tears, among the most deplorable
actions perpetrated against Native Americans. Jackson retired to The
Hermitage in 1837 and lived his remaining days in relative quiet. He
died on June 8, 1845.
104 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Charleston to a town yet to be constructed but more

centrally located—Columbia. Some suggested the move
was intended to appease more western residents and in so
doing diminish significantly the intrastate wrangling so
common to the state’s history. Others posited that relocating
the capital was a genuine, well-intentioned plan to make
government more accessible to all South Carolinians and
perhaps more responsible to the citizenry, certainly values
consistent with Lockean political philosophy. Perhaps the
move was also an effort to separate South Carolina
psychologically from its colonial past, a symbolic start to the
new, post-British era.
Regardless of the assembly’s motives, an immediate
backlash whipped across the Lowcountry. Charleston was
the founding point of South Carolina; the city specifically
and the surrounding region more generally had historically
been the seat of political authority and the center of wealth.
Lowcountry residents feared that the relocation of the state
capital 100 miles inland would mean a corresponding loss of
political influence in state politics and finance. In spite of
these initial concerns, Charlestonians soon realized that real
power in South Carolina remained where wealth resided,
and for now that continued to be in the Lowcountry’s
aristocracy. Fear and anger soon dissipated along the coast;
anticipation among Backcountry residents grew as
construction of a small, wooden statehouse began in 1786.
Altogether, the steps taken by the postwar General Assembly
brightened the prospects for social and economic stability.

Toward a More Perfect Union of States

The United States’ first national governing system, the
Articles of Confederation, disappointed most propertied
South Carolinians. Charles Pinckney, himself a member of
the national congress, believed there were serious problems
with the governing system that demanded immediate
attention. Each state held the right to coin its own money;
each state regulated its own Indian affairs; each established
its own foreign commercial ties; and each state raised and
maintained its own military force for defense. Moreover,
there existed no national court system. With the latter,
interstate legal issues often went unresolved. The Articles
also required unanimous consent among congressmen
 FIVE: POSTWAR DIRECTIONS

Captain Charles Pinckney, engraving by Charles Balthazar Julien

Fevret de Saint-Memin, 1806.

before a bill could be passed into law. Congress had no

power to issue direct taxes on the states, which crippled it
financially; instead, it could only request states contribute
funds to the national government. Although the Articles
largely conformed to the ideals of the Revolution, in
practice the thirteen states were more like separate
independent nations responsible solely for their own affairs.
Pinckney suggested in 1786 that the Articles of
Confederation be revised to increase the authority of the
national government to strengthen the union of states and
contribute to the development of a prosperous state and
national economy. His was not a lone voice; from a
meeting of state representatives in Annapolis, Maryland
came the same call. In response, Congress authorized a
convention to be held in Philadelphia in May 1787 and
IO6 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

expressly charged it with the duty of making necessary

changes to the existing governing structure—nothing
more. It required little effort for Pinckney to convince the
South Carolina General Assembly to participate in the
convention. The assembly sent four of its own to represent
the state—Charles Pinckney, his cousin Charles
Cotesworth Pinckney, John Rutledge, and Pierce Butler—
all men of wealth from the Lowcountry who favored a
more aristocratic republic.
Contrary to the charge issued by Congress, little time
was wasted at the Philadelphia convention before delegates
invoked John Locke’s “right of revolution” and agreed to
draft an entirely new governing system for the nation.
Throughout the stifling heat and humidity of summer,
working in rooms closed to the public and to fresh air,
representatives offered their ideas, debated feverishly, and
hammered out a series of compromises framed in a new
document, the United States Constitution, which
fundamentally reconfigured the location and scope of
political authority and the rights of the individual states.
Several critical discussions in the convention focused
on southern issues. First, some delegates wanted the new
government to prohibit slavery in America. It was, they
contended, a labor system incongruous with Enlighten¬
ment philosophy and the ideals for which the
Revolutionary War were fought. Much of the South’s
agricultural economy, however, depended on this cost-
efficient labor source. South Carolina’s delegation spared
no words in defending the “peculiar institution.”
Portending a future crisis, Charles Pinckney and his
colleagues all warned that a constitutional ban on slavery
would erase South Carolina’s membership in the Union.
Pleated arguments nearly brought the delegates to blows,
but eventually they reached a compromise. Slavery would
remain the prerogative of the state, but the federal
government would halt the importation of African slaves
twenty years alter the new constitution became the law of
the land. Pinckney and his colleagues were not troubled by
that provision. The South Carolina General Assembly, on
its own initiative, had recently outlawed further
importation of Africans. Rice production had already
reached its limits within the state, no other crop required
 FIVE: POSTWAR DIRECTIONS IO7

such an extensive supply of laborers, and consequently

there was diminishing need for slaves.
Another critical issue concerned congressional
representation. Smaller states feared representation based
solely on population; states with more residents would
certainly command greater influence in governmental affairs
than states with a small population. Intimately tied to this
matter was the issue of slave representation. Southerners
insisted the slave population be counted in determining
House representation; slaves resided in the states and their
labor produced the states’ wealth. States without slavery
believed this gave an unfair political advantage to the South.
Slaves, they countered, were not citizens of the United States
and therefore would not be included as part of a state’s
constituency unless southern states accepted the federal tax
liability for them. The Three-Fifths Compromise broke the
impasse—three-fifths of all slaves would be counted for both
representation and taxation. South Carolina’s delegates to the
convention agreed.
Pinckney and his colleagues from South Carolina also
favored an executive branch stronger than that created
under the Articles, but they championed a six-year term for
the president rather than the four-year term written into
the Constitution. The Pinckney group also suggested the
president be chosen by a vote of the members of Congress
instead of being elected by the duality of popular and
Electoral College votes. South Carolina accepted the
bicameral legislature but argued that congressional
representation be based on the value of state property rather
than on population, a position that, if adopted, would have
made South Carolina possibly the most powerful state in
Congress in 1788. The Pinckney group also pressed the idea
that congressional representatives not receive pay for their
service. Theoretically, uncompensated service would keep
representatives and senators relatively independent of
influence and encourage office-holding in the spirit of civic
virtue rather than self-interest.

South Carolina Ratifies the Constitution

In September 1787, the convention completed its self-
imposed task. After nearly four months of sweltering in
Philadelphia the delegates affixed their names to their
 President Washington's Journey
through South Carolina

Leaving the new nation’s capital in spring 1791, President George

Washington journeyed into the southern states, as he said, “to
become better acquainted with their principal characters and
internal circumstances.” Entering South Carolina on April 27 and
traveling along the coast through Little River, Myrtle Beach, and
Georgetown on a route that today is Highway 17, Washington was
struck by the area’s general lack of development. The region is “pine
barrens,” he noted in his journal, “with very few inhabitants...
[and] a perfect sameness” everywhere he looked. With the
exception of Georgetown’s center, Charleston, and parts of Beaufort,
“there is not within view... a single house which has... an elegant
appearance. They are altogether of Wood and chiefly of logs...
being small and badly provided either for man or horse.” The
president noted that “the people, however, appear to have abundant
means to live well” given the availability of land and the soil’s fertility.
Washington, most often by necessity rather than choice, dined
or spent evenings in the homes of private citizens along the length of
his journey. On April 27, for example, the president rested in the
home of Jeremiah Vereen, which stood near the present-day
intersection of Highway 17 and Lake Arrowhead Road in North
Myrtle Beach. Following a hearty breakfast, “Mr. Vereen piloted us
across the Swash (which at high water is impassable, and at times,
by the shifting of the Sands is dangerous) onto the long Beach of the
Ocean.... Immediately upon crossing this you enter upon Long Bay
[today’s Myrtle Beach].” Washington and his small entourage
continued southward for another 22 miles, moving along what one
of the president’s contemporaries described a “lonely and desolate”
stretch of road, “without shade and with no dwelling in sight.” In late
afternoon, Washington reached the home of a personal
acquaintance, George Pawley. Pawley was a delegate to the First and
Second Continental Congresses in Philadelphia and to the South
Carolina First General Assembly in 1776. After a pleasant meal and
equally pleasant conversation, the president’s troupe ventured a few
more miles before settling in for the night at the home of Dr. Henry
Collins Flagg, “it being about ten miles from Pauleys and thirty-three
from Vereens.” Flagg’s home stood in what is now Brookgreen
Gardens near the “Alligator Pool.”
On April 30 President Washington “crossed the Waccamaw
[River] to Georgetown” and was well received “under a Salute of
Cannon, and by a Company of Infantry handsomely uniformed.”
There, he enjoyed a midday meal with the citizens of the community,
was entertained by the town’s leading ladies at a tea party, and
presented at a formal ball that evening. After leaving Georgetown,
Washington rested and dined at the plantation mansions of Governor
Charles Pinckney and South Carolina’s political giant Edward
Rutledge, reaching Charleston on May 2.
Washington spent one week in Charleston. To be sure, he was
kept in the city’s most elegant homes and entertained by Charleston’s
elite. He spent some time with the general citizenry, attending a
communitywide barbeque on May 3 and religious services over
several consecutive days along Meeting and Broad streets. The
president also toured local sights, including Fort Moultrie on
Sullivan’s Island and Fort Johnson on James Island.
Finally, on May 9, President Washington left Charleston for
Savannah, Georgia, a journey that took another three full days before
he exited the state at Purrysburg on the Savannah River. His trip
through the Palmetto State was a rather quick one, lingering only in
the harbor city. He was surprised by the sparse settlement of Horry
and Georgetown counties and the limited wealth common among
coastal residents, especially when he considered the abundance and
availability of rich farmland and timber tracts. Charleston Harbor, he
concluded, ultimately was the source of South Carolina’s prosperity,
development, and, consequently, its national political influence.

South Carolina swampland © Natalia Bratslavsky

iio ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

work, wiped their collective brow, and looked anxiously at

the next step in the process—state ratification of the United
States Constitution. South Carolina’s General Assembly
called a state convention in early 1788 to review and either
accept or reject the proposed governing structure. Gather¬
ing in Charleston, those men selected by the legislature to
attend the convention disproportionately represented the
propertied class of the Lowcountry, but even among them
the Constitution was read with suspicious eyes.
Chief among their concerns was the enhanced power
the Constitution granted Congress; the ability to expand its
own authority should the need arise seriously concerned the
delegates. Although the South Carolina state government
was itself highly centralized and managed by a tight-knit
collection of merchants, planters, and lawyers, the
centralization of power on a national level far removed
from the state as proposed in the Constitution appeared
threatening to the South Carolina power base.
Representatives of the Backcountry expressed particular
concern for the Constitution’s provision for the Electoral
College. Might this not subvert the will of the people? they
asked. They understood too well that membership in that
body would largely be to the Lowcountry’s favor, and that
those in the Electoral College would be in position to select
as president their preferred candidate regardless of how
voters, especially common people in the Backcountry, might
prefer. It seemed, they said, that the Constitution was
created by the wealthy for the benefit of the wealthy, an
argument fully developed by historian Charles Beard in his
early twentieth-century classic Economic Interpretation of the
United States Constitution.
To be sure, the 55 men who framed the Constitution in
Philadelphia were arguably the richest in America. Among
the southern delegates generally and South Carolina’s
representatives specifically were planters, slave owners, and
merchants with vested interests in international trade. They
not only anticipated the correction of commercial problems
imposed by the Articles but also benefits to their own
commercial class: interstate commerce would be stabilized,
and international trade would receive federal government
protection. Competition for trade among or between states
would be minimal, with the national government holding
 FIVE: POSTWAR DIRECTIONS III

authority to resolve any dispute that might arise. A single

monetary system eliminated questionable exchange rates,
and a federal court system assured the resolution of interstate
legal issues. Inclusion of the Electoral College protected the
will of the higher social and economic class, and slavery itself
remained unmolested and reserved as a state’s right. A
permanent standing military was now available to suppress
any rebellion that might arise. What concerned Lowcountry
and Backcountry alike was the understanding that South
Carolina would be legally subservient to and responsible to
the national government. In effect, adoption of the Con¬
stitution meant a corresponding loss of state independence.
The state convention nevertheless ratified the
Constitution on its first vote, 149 to 73, making South
Carolina the sixth state to do so. The vote reflected the
sectional split present in the state. One observer estimated
that 80 percent of Backcountry residents openly denounced
the new governing system because it seemingly protected the
wealth and power of the Lowcountry and concurrently left
western residents vulnerable to Indian warfare. Historians
readily agree that had the Constitution been put to popular
vote, it would have most surely been rejected in South
Carolina. The split within the state proved comparable to
that in most other states. Those who formed the Lowcountry
elite in South Carolina and those of the urban merchant class
in more northern states generally banded with the emerging
Lederalist Party, while Backcountry residents aligned
themselves with the Democrat-Republican Party. South
Carolina’s Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and John Rutledge,
both delegates at Philadelphia, quickly surfaced as powerful
federalists—Rutledge as a United States Supreme Court
justice and Pinckney as ambassador to Prance and later as the
party’s nominee for vice president in 1800 and for president
in 1804 and 1808.
Distrustful of the power enjoyed by the state’s elite
under the Constitution and fearful of the direction the new
national government might take, Backcountry residents
called for a broad rewrite of the state constitution. The
General Assembly agreed to consider revisions and
authorized another state convention, but it held firm to the
apportionment of representatives arranged for the state’s
earlier ratification convention. Once more, this meant that
I 12 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

one-fifth of the white population, who held three-fourths of

the state’s wealth, controlled the convention. Once in
session, delegates clashed, and sectional conflict spawned a
series of debates.
Among the first initiatives put forth by Backcountry
delegates was reapportionment. Fair representation of the
Backcountry was fundamental to a democratic system, they
insisted. They were grossly outnumbered, and the
Lowcountry majority, determined to retain political power,
defeated the measure. On the heels of this came an effort by
coastal representatives to return the state capital to
Charleston, and by a mere four votes the motion was
defeated. Despite Backcountry efforts to democratize the
state’s political process, the Lowcountry elite retained its
position of power. The right to vote remained tied to
property ownership; to vote, a man must own a minimum
of 50 acres of land or a town lot. This alone excluded most
Backcountry farmers. Moreover, membership in the State
House required at least 500 acres and 10 slaves, and twice
that for a seat in the State Senate, stipulations that
prevented all but a few inland residents from holding any
place in state or national government. The legislature, not
the general population, elected the governor, presidential
electors, United States senators, and state judges. Moreover,
both houses of the General Assembly exercised authority
over numerous offices of local government. Little wonder
the Backcountry feared centralized state government.
Sectionalism within South Carolina, present in the
twenty years before the Revolutionary War, was alive and
well long after America’s independence from colonial rule.
Many inlanders argued that England’s colonial relationship
with South Carolina was replaced with Lowcountry
colonialism of the Backcountry.

New Economic Direction for South

Carolina
Following the Revolutionary War, South Carolina was
restored to a level of social and economic stability, assumed
a leading role in the adoption of the United States
Constitution, and crafted a new state constitution that more
fully entrenched the Lowcountry elite as the economic and
political center of state affairs. Seemingly adrift and at the
 FIVE: POSTWAR DIRECTIONS 113

mercy of the wealthiest planters and merchants were

residents of the Backcountry; a new current, however, soon
swept over the state.
In 1785 the South Carolina Agricultural Society was
organized with the aim of finding a staple crop to replace
indigo. Rice production, too, suffered in the immediate
postwar years. Competitors in nearby Georgia muscled
themselves into the market, but the greater challenge came
from planters in Southeast Asia and India who sold their
crops at cheaper prices. Moreover, Britain no longer was a
guaranteed purchaser of Lowcountry rice.
The society was aware of the incessant global demand
for cotton and that for years one variety of cotton—long-
staple cotton—had been grown along the entire South
Carolina coast and sold to markets worldwide. In 1791
alone, the Lowcountry harvested, baled, and sold 1.5
million pounds of cotton. Although it was a strong but fine,
soft fiber, “Sea Island Cotton,” as it was termed, was
susceptible to sudden shifts in the weather and particularly
suited to the sandier soil of the Lowcountry. Less soft and a
much weaker fiber was short-staple cotton. Although
short-staple cotton was less at the mercy of the weather and
grown easily in the clay-like soil of the Backcountry, or
“upcountry” as the territory around Columbia was now
known, the process of removing seeds from the fiber was
entirely too slow and difficult. One slave could spend as
much as one entire day deseeding, or cleaning, a single
pound of cotton. Upcountry cotton, then, did not appear to
be the potential moneymaking crop sought by the society
until Connecticut inventor Eh Whitney developed the
cotton gin in 1793.
The “cotton engine,” or “gin” as it later was termed,
contained giant rollers on which were fixed thousands of
metal bristles. The rollers were cranked by hand to spin in
opposite directions and shred the cotton, removing seeds
with ease. The gin required only one person to operate it
and was capable of cleaning 50 pounds of cotton in a single
day. A rapid, easy system of deseeding the fiber made short-
staple cotton more marketable worldwide.
With Whitney’s cotton gin, the South Carolina
Agricultural Society trumpeted short-staple cotton as the
new principal cash crop for the state. It was a crop well
 FIVE: POSTWAR DIRECTIONS II5

suited to the upcountry, the sandy coastal plains, and the

western foothills. Conversion to cotton was rapid indeed.
Statewide, South Carolina shipped 20 million pounds of the
“white gold” to foreign ports in 1800 and 50 million pounds
only ten years later. In Richland District (Richland County),
Wade Hampton grossed nearly $1 million (1990 dollar
value) with his first harvest in 1799 and almost twice that in
1810. Cotton production, however, relied on slave labor.
Harvesting the crop demanded an extensive labor force,
and an equally large number of workers were needed to
clear and cultivate new lands. The newfound demand for
slavery mirrored the staggering profits earned by
Backcountry planters. In 1800, just as the section’s farmers
were converting to short-staple cotton, 25 percent of the
area’s farmers owned slaves; in 1820, nearly 40 percent did.
As wealth expanded westward across the state, so, too, did
South Carolina’s black population. Noted historian Walter
Fraser, “This agricultural revolution... silenced Back-
country opposition to slavery and blunted Lowcountry
hostility toward the Backcountry.”
South Carolina’s fortune rested on cotton as the state
pushed into the antebellum period. Central to the new
cotton economy was slavery; slavery and wealth were so
intertwined that the combination would eventually shape
the state’s relationship with the rest of the nation.
Postwar prosperity allowed Charleston Harbor to teem
once again with both foreign and domestic shipping,
elevating both the city’s and state’s wealth to unparalleled
heights. As South Carolina’s wealth increased and
continued to command national attention, the federal
government founded a branch of the First National Bank
in Charleston. For aristocrats and those simply looking
from a distance at the city and region, rising wealth made
life seem grander. Cabinetmakers, furniture makers,
silversmiths, and other skilled craftsmen descended on the
Lowcountry, offering their talents to the established blue-
blood society and the nouveau riche alike. Indeed, the
number of elegant mansions multiplied as the region’s

Broivntown Cotton Gin, Johnsonville vicinity, Florence County.

Photo by Jack Boucher.
II6 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

wealth rose. Chandeliers and windows imported from

England, furniture handcrafted in France, and fine
clothing from across Europe moved through Charleston
Harhor into the homes of area aristocrats. Cobblestone
streets became the norm not only in Charleston but in
Beaufort and Georgetown. Gentlemen gambled at local
horse-racing tracks, and beautiful playhouses visited by
traveling acting troupes from Europe lined the main roads
of coastal communities.
The general population of Charleston and the
surrounding region grew as the potential for profit became
evident. European immigration increased slightly, and
migration from less prosperous areas of the United States
moved steadily upwards. By 1800, South Carolina’s
Lowcountry was one of the most heavily populated
stretches along the Atlantic coast. Charleston was now the
nation’s fifth largest city. Its 9,000 white citizens and 10,000
blacks ranked it slightly behind New York, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and Boston.
As the population of the city and region grew, so too did
concern for the community’s social development. Charleston
was vital to the state and to the nation as an economic center,
and the College of Charleston was founded in 1790 to serve
the demand for higher education among area residents and
to support the commercial and political needs of the
community and state. And throughout the decade and into
the early years of the nineteenth century, citizens
increasingly attended to the needs of parentless children and
impoverished residents. An orphanage and a poorhouse for
the white community opened in 1801, financed largely by
the city and supplemented with private donations. The start
of these services initiated efforts in Charleston to aid the
“less fortunate” that would continue through the
antebellum era. Aid to free blacks was also available as the
new century dawned, but funding for African-American
services was generally the product of contributions made by
local churches.

Historic mansion in Charleston © Brian Patterson

five: postwar directions 117
 Antebellum South Carolina

C hristian evangelical fundamentalism washed over

states north of the Mason-Dixon line between 1820
and 1860 and spawned a myriad of social-cleansing
movements collectively known as the “Age of Reform.”
Crusaders lashed out at Americans’ excessive alcohol
consumption and campaigned to outlaw the Devil’s brew.
They derided the mistreatment and improper care of the
insane, denounced dehumanizing living conditions in
prisons and the excessively punitive policies in those
institutions, voiced disapproval of the inadequate
educational opportunities available to the nation’s children
and the misguided curricula commonly found in public
schools, condemned urban poverty and squalor, criticized
the gender inequality that pervaded society, and called for
the immediate abolition of slavery in the South. Although
the religious-based movement only captured the immediate
involvement and open support of a few, it nonetheless
effected substantial reforms across the region. Most
Northerners not directly tied to the fundamentalist
initiative or sympathetic to the more radical crusades such
as abolitionism still shared the belief that a redirection was
necessary for the welfare and prosperity of the region and
the nation; unlike fundamentalists, the majority of
Northerners championed a reform agenda founded on
economic development. They promoted rapid expansion of
railroads, harbors, and canals; international trade initiatives
such as protective tariffs; urban development; and an
economy based on manufacturing. Evident, too, was the
North’s growing national identity, supplanting the
traditional state focus with a national perspective.
The Christian fundamentalist agenda slipped into
southern society also, but not to the extent or with the
fervor found farther north. South Carolina was
significantly different from any of the states found above
119
120 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

the Mason-Dixon line. While urban growth and manu¬

facturing increasingly defined northern society, South
Carolina remained solidly rural and agricultural. Only five
communities in the state had a population greater than
1,500 in 1860: Charleston with 40,500; Columbia with 8,000;
Georgetown, 1,700; Camden, 1,600; and Greenville, 1,500.
Fully 93 percent of South Carolina’s 660,500 citizens lived
on the state’s 33,000 farms and plantations in 1850. Vast
cotton plantations and small farms reached from the
Atlantic seaboard westward into the mountains. Slavery, a
labor system that historians have consistently argued was
relatively cost-efficient until the 1850s, underpinned cotton
production and stood in sharp contrast to the “free labor”
system of northern states. The population continued to be
rural in residency and in perspective. White South
Carolinians gave allegiance to their state above all; neither
time nor circumstance significantly altered their social
values, and the Old Guard politics long embedded in the
Democratic Party still ruled. Although the Christian
fundamentalist reform agenda gained some supporters in
the Palmetto State and achieved some critical reforms, the
basic structure of South Carolina’s society endured as it had
been since its founding.

Columbia and Charleston

Columbia, the state capital, was born in the 1780s from the
sectional conflict that for decades pitted the Lowcountry
against the Backcountry. Although the town’s population
grew rather slowly, reaching only 3,600 by 1840, it acquired
increasingly greater influence in the state’s economic,
political, and social network throughout the pre-Civil War
years. Cotton’s productivity pumped new wealth into the
region, bringing more residents, new businesses, and
increased public services. Planters, farmers, merchants,
bankers, and attorneys called Columbia home by the 1840s,
transforming the area from the often unruly and
independent-minded Backcountry into the more settled,
developed, and respected upcountry. The extension of
railroad lines to the town in the 1840s contributed to the
city’s growing importance in the cotton trade, and further
railroad construction in the 1850s made Columbia a
transportation crossroads for South Carolina. The state
 SIX: ANTEBELLUM SOUTH CAROLINA 12,1

South Carolina Population,

by Race, 1800-1850
Demonstrating Importance of Slave Labor in
Cotton Production (rounded to nearest thousand)

1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850

White
196 214 237 258 259 275

Black
149 201 265 323 353 394

capital now boasted three major rail lines, connecting it to

Charleston to the southeast, to Greenville to the northwest,
and to Charlotte, North Carolina to the north. Following
the harvest season, city warehouses bulged with cotton yet
to be cleaned, and gins rattled around the clock trying to
keep pace with demand. In the weeks that followed, the
lonesome wail of steam whistles echoed through the
countryside and plumes of black smoke lingered in the air.
Railroad cars filled with cleaned cotton chugged through
Columbia to the Charleston ports or through Charlotte to
northern textile mills. By mid-century, Columbia had
emerged as a vital marketplace built by cotton, and by 1860
more than 8,000 people called the city home.
A new statehouse was under construction, to replace
the 40-year-old facility now deteriorating with age and too
small to house the assembly, and to reflect the growing
prestige and power of Columbia. Seven hotels offered rest
to merchants temporarily trading in the city and to visiting
political figures, and an equal number of churches tended
to the spiritual needs of Columbia’s residents and guests. A
farmers’ market located near the statehouse kept city
residents and restaurants supplied with fresh vegetables
and fruits, the R. L. Bryan Bookstore served the area s
literate population, and a carriage manufacturer produced
buggies sold in faraway cities. The Palmetto Armory
 IZZ ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: MISSISSIPPI

employed 40 skilled workers and manufactured military

hardware such as swords, bayonets, handguns, and
muskets. Numerous other, smaller enterprises hired
hundreds of local residents and sufficiently served the
community’s diverse needs. To be sure, the city flourished
from the expansion of cotton and railroads into the upstate
and did so in a manner consistent with the state’s past.
The spirit of social reform that pervaded northern
communities and increasingly found a kindred sentiment
among Southerners also contributed to the transformation of
antebellum Columbia. City residents actively encouraged the
establishment of public schools and envisioned Columbia as
a center for higher education in the state. An educated
society directly benefited the state and local economy.
Reform-minded residents, in concert with the Christian
fundamentalist movement presently in northern commu¬
nities, believed that educated youngsters would be less
susceptible to Satan’s temptation and also be more capable
witnesses for the faith. And a college in the state capital was
considered essential, its libraries and faculty providing
critical services to political figures, judges, lawyers, and
members of the General Assembly. By the 1820s residents’
expectations were largely met. The South Carolina College
(the present-day University of South Carolina), founded in
1801 , expanded rapidly and by the century’s second decade
was the preeminent college in the state. The student
population was small, but the college library nonetheless
gloried in having a collection of 18,500 volumes, more than
the earlier-established and much-respected Columbia
University in New York and Princeton in New Jersey.
Socially conscious South Carolinians also insisted that
the state care for its population of “mentally fragile”
citizens. Using a Christian fundamentalist argument,
mixed with the Southern code of honor and sense of
responsibility, and buttressed by the advantage such a
facility would provide for Columbia, the General Assembly
authorized the founding of the State Asylum for the Insane,
to be constructed on Bull Street, just north of SCC. South
Carolina was not unique among southern states in
providing an asylum; North Carolina, for example,
founded a similar facility in its piedmont community of Dix
Hill. But South Carolina was the first southern state, and
 SIX: ANTEBELLUM SOUTH CAROLINA 123

one of only three states nationwide at the time, to fund a

facility for the insane with state appropriations. And unlike
most other institutions, which simply housed the insane, the
South Carolina state asylum aggressively attempted the
treatment of patients.
Columbia in the antebellum era was transitioning into a
modern southern city. The city’s numerous unpaved streets
still turned into a muddy quagmire during heavy rain,
assemblymen from eastern districts regularly complained of
the city’s few cultural events and outlets for “gentlemen’s”
entertainment, visitors routinely criticized the coarseness
they found in residents’ manners, and almost everyone
complained of the merciless summer heat and humidity.
Nonetheless, the city was changing. By 1850, most city streets
were paved and lined with gaslights. Troupes of traveling
actors regularly journeyed to the state capital, parks and
gardens offered a charm that mirrored that associated with
coastal towns. Business and politics commanded the city’s
interests, giving Columbia greater centrality in the affairs of
the state and making the city South Carolina’s commercial
center. Still, nothing could be done about the summer heat
and humidity that enveloped the city.
Small towns littered the inland and upcountry by 1860,
most being service centers to area farmers. Darlington,
founded in 1826, was representative of these communities.
Central to the town were its cotton warehouses and
markets, through which area planters and small farmers
sold and shipped their cotton to northern textile mills and
to European buyers. A small general store brought local
farmers the tools of their trade and a variety of goods they
could not manufacture themselves, such as washtubs,
lamps, buttons and sewing thread, sugar, coffee, and finer
fabrics. A church or two, a very small schoolhouse, a
blacksmith, a ginning mill, a post office, a hotel, a
restaurant, and several taverns all tended to the farmers’
souls and earthly requirements.
Antebellum Charleston, however, remained South
Carolina’s preeminent city. Its natural beauty and
aristocratic elegance distinguished it among US cities.
Ancient oaks draped in Spanish moss lined the city s
cobblestone streets and partially concealed equally
magnificent homes dating to the late seventeenth century.
 Gold Mining in South Carolina

In 1799, just across the state line in North Carolina, a twelve-year-old boy named
Conrad Reed literally stumbled over a seventeen-pound gold “nugget” as he waded
in the stream behind his family’s house. Unaware of its value, the Reeds used the
rock as a doorstop for nearly three years before selling it to a Wilmington “rock
collector,” as he termed himself. The buyer quickly cashed in on his purchase,
and the cry “gold" soon echoed throughout the Carolinas and the length of the
continent; within months, Europeans, too, learned of the discovery. By 1802,
North America experienced its first gold rush, with tens of thousands of people
flooding the Carolina Backcountry.
In that same year, prospectors found the precious metal in the area of
Greenville, South Carolina. Hollywood films typically focus on the lone, crusty
prospector crouched over a shallow, cold-water creek, panning for gold. Some
certainly used this method, but most miners in the Palmetto State found “placer
mining” much more productive. They realized that gold nuggets most often were
located near deposits of quartz. Once they spotted the milky pebbles, they took
shovel in hand and scooped shallow pits, similar to half-moons, and sifted through
the dirt looking for gold nuggets and flakes. Once they made a find, they dug
deeper, excavating pits ten to twenty feet in depth and twice that in width.
The most productive placer mining occurred at the Tanyard Pit at the Brewer
Gold Mine in Chesterfield County, with 22,000 ounces unearthed. At the Martin Mine
in York County, individual nuggets were found weighing from nine to seventeen
ounces. Gold embedded in quartz generally contained as much as ten ounces,
although one piece of quartz was discovered with about 200 ounces in it. Highly
productive placer digs were expanded further, the owner of the claim hiring skilled
miners to sink shafts and construct tunnels for a full-scale mining operation, Gold
discoveries were made in eighteen counties across the state. Fifty mines operated in
York County alone by the mid-1820s. The Haile Mine, near Kershaw in Lancaster
County, began operations in 1827 and eventually became the largest gold producer
in the southeastern US. Between the mine’s founding and 1942, more than 280,000
ounces of gold were extracted from it. The city of McCormick was built over the mine
owned by Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the reaper. His mine produced 44,000
ounces between 1852 and 1880 at a value of $1 million. The Ophir Mine in Union
County generated an excess of $100,000 in gold nuggets from 1844 to 1900.
As cotton production expanded westward in South Carolina in the early
nineteenth century, gold mining lured thousands of others into the upcountry;
railroads that carried the state’s vital cash crop to market also hauled gold to the
US mint established in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1830, By the eve of civil war,
South Carolina had produced more than 320,000 ounces of the precious metal,
and mining operations continued through World War II. Since 1945, several mines
have continued to be worked for the gold; however, the high costs associated with
the business have forced owners to concentrate on other metals necessary to the
nation’s industries yet cheaper to extract.
IZ6 ON-THE-HOAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Visitors strolled along the river walk overlooking a majestic

Charleston Harbor and enjoyed other pleasures such as the
city’s museum, horse races, theaters, and numerous topiary
gardens. Bathhouses were scattered throughout the city,
and elegant hotels, a few of which were owned by free
blacks, served the white, moneyed class. Churches also
lined Charleston’s streets, serving large congregations and
beckoning visitors. Their spires were visible to the naked
eye miles inland. A certain air of refinement pervaded
much of Charleston, visible in the gracious hospitality and
deference residents accorded important visitors.
Guests and residents alike were struck by the appearance
of wealth and progress. The financial district ran the length
of Broad Street, compelling some historians to dub the
stretch “South Carolina’s antebellum Wall Street.” Import
and export houses operated along the Ashley and Cooper
Rivers, which emptied into the harbor; small manufacturing
concerns shipped their wares to coastal cities from Boston to
Jacksonville; and merchants and artisans flooded the
Lowcountry with an array of goods.
But Charleston was also in a period of transition. The
city witnessed a population decline from 43,000 in 1850 to
40,500 one decade later. Although the loss was modest,
depopulation reflected two emerging patterns. First, cotton
growing was moving westward throughout the antebellum
period. The upcountry initially benefited from the
migration of planters and farmers, but by 1850 it was
obvious that cotton farmers were seeking fresher lands
beyond the state’s borders. Approximately 200,000 of South
Carolina’s white citizens moved to other states in the
antebellum era in pursuit of fresh lands, most relocating to
western Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. But
the out-migration from Charleston also hinted that the
city’s splendor veiled fundamental problems. As upstate
cotton production drew more wealth and business from the
coastal city, with it went some of the political clout earlier
enjoyed by the Lowcountry elite. Also, diseases such as
malaria, tuberculosis, and cholera haunted residents. Rats
infested the community, living comfortably in the city’s
refuse. City leaders gave scant attention to the sources of
disease, and as a result many citizens escaped Charleston
for more healthful environments. Charleston did take steps
 SIX: ANTEBELLUM SOUTH CAROLINA 12.7

to address the city’s medical needs, opening Roper Hospital

in 1856, but epidemics continued to threaten the general
population. Yellow fever, for example, struck more than
250 residents and claimed nearly 100 lives shortly after
Roper opened its doors.
In addition, Charleston virtually isolated itself from the
rest of the world and was largely self-absorbed. As historian
Walter Edgar wrote in South Carolina: A History (1998),
“Whereas eighteenth century Charleston had prided itself
on being a city of the empire and the world, the nineteenth
century city aspired only to be the cultural capital of the
American South.’’ Their narrowing perspective ran
counter to the widening vision of other South Carolinians
and the expansive reach of the United States. The myopic
nature of Charleston compelled many middle-class
residents to seek their fortune and to rear their families in a
more modern and progressive setting.
But Charleston retained an unrivaled economic
position in the state. The harbor and the import-export
businesses flourishing there provided thousands of jobs and
generated much of the state’s wealth. In 1828, the Low-
country’s largest-ever export of rice and to that date the
city’s second-largest cotton shipment moved through the
city: 215,000 bales. These rates, however, were misleading.
Cotton prices fluctuated considerably from year to year as
rising global production increasingly threatened America’s
agricultural base. Rice production was in a worse state for
the Lowcountry. Most planters, merchants, and exporters
understood that the days of prosperity resting on cotton and
rice were numbered. Aware of this, city business leaders in
the 1830s encouraged a transition to manufacturing, a call
mirrored in the post—Civil War “New South Creed.”
Little time was wasted in developing a manufacturing
component to the city and Lowcountry’s agrarian economy.
By the early 1850s, Charleston and the surrounding area
boasted six iron foundries, more than one dozen grist mills,
dozens of saw mills, six turpentine producers, and a
railroad machine shop. Also located on the city’s outskirts
were wagon and buggy manufacturers, boat builders,
metal-working shops, rice mills, and makers of railroad
cars, furniture, silverware, bricks, and numerous other
luxury and essential goods. Indeed, by the mid-1850s
 SIX: ANTEBELLUM SOUTH CAROLINA 129

Charleston had emerged as South Carolina’s manu¬

facturing center.
Manufacturing also spread across the state in the
antebellum period. Mill towns, such as Graniteville in Aiken
County, were more the product of advanced planning than
evolution. Cotton usually followed a fixed path from southern
fields to northern textile manufacturers; southern planters
profited from the sale of raw cotton and northern mill owners
from the marketing of finished goods. Realizing the potential
for financial gain if South Carolina produced both fiber and
finished goods, and sensing the need for economic
diversification in the state, a small collection of investors
ventured into unfamiliar territory. William Gregg, for
example, saw a three-way benefit from the founding of cotton
mills within South Carolina—wage jobs for poor whites
driven from the land or unable to purchase their own,
economic diversity for a state still dependent on cotton and
rice, and, of course, profits for himself as a mill owner.
Toward these three goals, Gregg founded Graniteville Mill in
1849 and challenged other business owners in the state to
follow his lead.
Graniteville Mill emerged as a pattern soon replicated
across the upcountry. Around the mill stood a self-sufficient
community—a mill town—built by Gregg’s personal
investment and company profits. Small cottages,
constructed at mill expense, housed 300 workers and their
families; two churches served town dwellers, a school
educated non-employed children, and a mill-owned store
provided minimally priced essential goods. Wages averaged
70 cents per day for a six-day work week, comparable to
wages paid in northern mills. Gregg served as company
president and town patriarch. With absolute control over
the mill, store, housing, and school, Gregg reaped a
financial windfall that placed him among the state’s richest
men. By the eve of the Civil War, Graniteville Mill stood as
the largest textile operation in South Carolina, and it would
flourish well into the twentieth century.
Other mill villages arose between Aiken and Green¬
ville Counties. Many surfaced in response to falling market
prices for raw cotton and the displacement of small farmers
driven from nutrient-depleted soil. Each year, cotton
stripped vital minerals from the earth and rendered poorer
quality harvests in succeeding seasons. Commercial
130 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

fertilizers were expensive and not widely available.

Farmers instead depended on a variety of cover crops and
grasses such as clover to replenish lost nutrients, but this
only slowed the inevitable failure of the soil. As long as
market prices for cotton remained high, farmers toiled the
land regardless of its diminishing returns. Once a farmer
conceded defeat, he had several options: focus exclusively
on food crops, abandon the land for property father west, or
seek employment in a nearby mill. Food crops generated
little income. By the late antebellum period the little land
still available was prohibitively expensive. For most small
farmers, then, the answer was rather simple—take
employment in the cotton mill.
By the eve of the Civil War, cotton was still the
economic foundation of South Carolina’s coastal cities and
market centers such as Charleston, Beaufort, and George¬
town, but manufacturing was annually assuming greater
importance. In the upcountry, Columbia had emerged as a
modern city and, being surrounded by cotton and at the
crossroads of interstate and intrastate commerce, had
displaced Charleston as the center of state economic
influence. Now scattered across South Carolina were towns
such as Darlington, serving the market needs of planters
and farmers alike, and mill towns such as Graniteville, the
latter showing the direction the Palmetto State would
pursue following civil war.

Education in the Antebellum Period

South Carolina’s illiteracy rate exceeded that of any other
state in the Union during the antebellum era. Farming
families often depended on the labor of their children to
produce crops; consequently, regular school attendance was
considered an unnecessary luxury. Moreover, many families
viewed formal, public education as irrelevant to youngsters
destined to farm the land. Of what importance to farming
were Aristotle and Socrates, Greek and Latin, and advanced
math and sciences? A common problem, too, was the cost of
attending school. Certainly high tuition prevented most
South Carolina children from ever enrolling in a preparatory
academy, but the price of texts and other required fees,
minimal as they were, proved an obstacle for those parents
still reluctant to educate their offspring.
 Dueling in South Carolina

South Carolinians widely believed any challenge to one’s integrity was a most serious
offense. Gentlemen—men of wealth and high social standing—often defended their
questioned honor by deuling, although it was illegal under South Carolina law.
Former governor John Lyde Wilson in 1838 published a short defense of dueling
and enumerated the rules by which gentlemen could defend their reputation. In The
American Code: Code of Honor, or Rules for the Government of Principals and
Seconds in Dueling, Wilson wrote, “If an oppressed nation has a right to appeal to
arms in defence [«c] of its liberty... there can be no argument... which will not
apply with equal force to individuals.” The “first law of nature,” he wrote, is “self-
preservation”; in the Palmetto State, as across the South, honor secured a man’s place
in society. A man whose honor was openly questioned must either “submit in silence”
or demand and receive a public apology from the offender, with the threat of a duel
if necessary.
Wilson’s rules for dueling were simple. Arrangements were to be made by each
gentleman’s representative, or “second.” Refusal to duel branded the offender as a
coward in the community. On the appointed day, the “second” for each dueler
carried his own loaded pistol “to enforce a fair combat... and if a principal fires
before the word or time agreed on, he [the “second”] is at liberty to fire at him.”
Wilson suggested at least one surgeon be present at the duel and one gentleman
serve as judge. “Seconds” prepared the weapons under the judge’s watchful eye and
placed them in the duelers’ hands, muzzles pointed to the ground, and the duelers
moved to their assigned positions on the field. Once they were ready, the judge
issued the word to fire. If either party was wounded, the duel ended; if neither was
harmed, the challenger could call for another round of shots or acknowledge the
honor of the offender.
Duels often resulted in no physical harm to either party. The smooth-bore
pistols of the era were notoriously inaccurate even at short distances. Often,
combatants considered honor preserved simply by showing up for the duel, making
the duel itself unnecessary. Nonetheless, some duelers suffered hideous wounds, and
many others were killed on the field.
The last known duel in South Carolina occurred in 1880. Camden attorney
Colonel William M. Shannon in September 1879 charged the wife of Colonel E. B. C.
Cash of Chesterfield with fraud in a land transaction. Outraged, Cash reminded
Shannon of their twenty-year friendship that included service in the Confederate Army.
Shannon responded that Mrs. Cash’s honor was never questioned, only tire confusing
details of a contested land sale. Colonel Cash was satisfied.
A Darlington County court ruled against Mrs. Cash on February 7,1880, and she
immediately filed an appeal. Although she won her appeal, she felt the charges made
against her tainted her honor in the community. Within days of her courtroom victory,
Mrs. Cash became ill and on April 4 died. Grieved by the loss of his wife and hurt by
the allegations that challenged her integrity, Cash now believed Shannon had, in fact,
consciously impugned the honor of the late Mrs. Cash, and challenged him to a duel.
Shannon refused. Dueling was outlawed in South Carolina, and he still considered Cash
a friend. Cash persisted, and Shannon eventually felt compelled to accept the offer to
duel in order to preserve his own honor in the community. On July 5 the two men faced
each other. Cash’s bullet fatally wounded Shannon. He was charged with murder, hut,
in October, the judge hearing the case declared a mistrial. At a second trial on June 21,
1881, the jury acquitted Cash, placing honor above the law.
132. ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

The South Carolina General Assembly in 1811 passed

into law the Free School Act, which allotted some state
funds for the construction and maintenance of rural
schoolhouses, but appropriations were generally quite
small. Tiny one-room schoolhouses dotted rural South
Carolina, but qualified teachers were rare, classroom
supplies proved virtually nonexistent, and the buildings
were often unhealthy for youngsters in winter months. The
Free School Act, although admirable in its intent, delivered
little of substance.
Towns and cities obviously offered greater opportunity
for children to receive an education. Child labor was not in
as much demand as in the farmlands, and parents of both
the middle and lower socioeconomic classes urged their
children’s attendance in school. Charleston’s leaders funded
eleven public schools with a total of 600 students in 1856;
only ten years later, the city’s schools served 2,800.
Columbia, too, introduced a minimal system of public
education in the antebellum period, but it never reached the
level provided by Charleston before the Civil War. These
urban schools provided basic instruction in reading,
writing, mathematics, and history. Their goal was fairly
simple: prepare children sufficiently for low-level skilled
positions in the city’s business community. They also
promised a modicum of social control over youngsters,
training children in an approved code of conduct that
would later meld favorably with the interests of the
community. Historian Walter Fraser quotes one
Charlestonian who said in the 1850s, “The ignorant and
uneducated are always the first to engage in outrage and
violence.” The public schools founded in South Carolina in
the final decade before civil war never attained much
respect and never served even half of the state’s white
children; in fact, South Carolina’s public schools were
commonly thought inadequate at best, and more often than
not, simply disgraceful.
T he children of some “free blacks” in Charleston also
gained an education, some attending the few schools
funded by city leaders, and others enrolling in schools
established independently of local government. These efforts
were remarkable since the schooling of African
Americans—slave or free—violated South Carolina state
 six: antebellum south Carolina 133

law. State authorities tried to close black schools in the 1830s

and succeeded in shutting down most of them, but by the
1850s the schools had reopened with the financial support of
the coastal white elite. Urban slaves were routinely “hired
out” to local manufacturers, retailers, and service
providers—the greatest portion of the slaves’ wages being
given to the slave owner. A slave capable of reading and
writing and trained in the basic skills required by Charleston
businessmen fared better in the local job market. Indeed, it
became a common sight in antebellum Charleston to see
black children strolling to and from school. Slave owners also
educated their wards on the plantation, but the general
explanation given by planters was a desire to teach slaves how
to read the Bible and in so doing learn Christianity and the
submissive traits it encouraged.
The wealthy elite of South Carolina sent their
youngsters to private academies. These schools each
typically enrolled 50 to 80 students, and many required the
children’s full-time residency during the academic year.
Some, such as Richard School near Columbia, drew
students from throughout the South and a few from
northern states. Willington Academy in Abbeville, founded
in the late eighteenth century, prided itself on such
graduates as Preston Brooks, a future US congressman, and
John C. Calhoun, who became a US senator and later the
vice president of the United States. Academies prepared
adolescents for college, giving them sound training in
advanced math and sciences, ancient and contemporary
literature, philosophy, debating techniques, politics, history,
and classical languages such as Latin and Greek. “Female
seminaries,” academies for girls, were the equivalent of
“refinement schools.” Madame Talvande’s French School
for Young Ladies, located in Charleston, instructed young
girls in music, dancing, literature, French, and etiquette, all
with an eye toward preparing little darlings for their role as
proper wives for future South Carolina leaders.
Like her immediate neighbor to the north, South
Carolina moved in the late eighteenth century to provide a
system of higher education for her citizens. The state
chartered the College of Charleston in 1785 and live years
later opened the college’s doors to students. Beaufort
College was founded in 1795. Neither school built a sound
 John Caldwell Calhoun

Born near Abbeville on March 18, 1782, John C. Calhoun was the child of
a very prosperous cotton-producing, slaveholding family. As was common
to young men of his social standing in the state, he enrolled in a private
academy, Waddell’s Log College in Georgia. He completed his formal
academic training at Yale University, returned to South Carolina, and was
admitted to the state bar in 1807. Young attorneys from the state’s elite
considered it obligatory to enter politics; Calhoun wasted little time. He
was elected to the state legislature in 1808 and to the US House of
Representatives two years later.
In Congress, Calhoun joined the ranks of strident nationalists who
demanded war with Great Britain in 1812 in response to its persistent
impressments of American sailors into the British navy and its continued
interference with American commercial trade with Europe. Like his
hawkish colleagues, he also believed Great Britain was purposely stirring
Indians on the frontier to violently resist America’s westward expansion.
As a nationalist he promoted the use of federal authority to expand
American business, erect protective tariffs against foreign imports, issue
supplemental funding for the construction of roads, canals, and harbors,
and establish a national bank. Calhoun’s extreme patriotism and
promotion of federal power within the states won him the attention of
James Monroe and earned him the position of secretary of war in the
Monroe administration in 1817. In 1824, he lost his bid to become
president, but was elected vice president under John Quincy Adams and
was reelected in 1828 to serve under Andrew Jackson.
While serving as vice president, Calhoun’s political views began to
change, probably as a result of the nation’s growing debate over slavery
and states’ rights. In 1828 Calhoun authored the South Carolina
Exposition and Protest, a document that endorsed a state’s prerogative to
nullify, or disavow, any federal law within its borders the state legislature
considered unconstitutional. Over the following four years, Calhoun and
Jackson clashed sharply in heated debates on the vice president’s
position, and in 1832 Calhoun resigned his position as a form of public
protest and returned to his home state.
Voters sent Calhoun to the United States Senate in 1842, and he held a
seat there until his death in 1850. He proved himself to be an outspoken
proponent for the institution of slavery, its expansion into western
territories, and states’ rights. He personally directed passage of the Gag Rule
that prevented debate of slavery on the floor of Congress and fought a losing
battle in opposition to the Compromise of 1850 that admitted California as
a “free state." He briefly stepped from the Senate to serve as secretory of
state under President John Tyler (1844-1845) and in that capacity he was
instrumental in the annexation of Texas as a slaveholding state.
 Calhoun died on March 31, 1850 following a lengthy and debilitating
illness and not long after he had been wheeled onto the Senate floor and had
a colleague read a prepared statement in which he denounced excessive
federal authority and defended both slavery and states’ rights. He was hailed
in South Carolina as the state’s leading spokesperson and across the South
as a regional hero. His body was laid to rest in Charleston.

Must-See Sites: Fort Hill, Clemson

Fort Hill is the antebellum plantation home of John C. Calhoun, US senator

and later vice president under Presidents John Quincy Adams and Andrew
Jackson. Calhoun’s son-in-law, Thomas Clemson, bequeathed the
plantation for the site of Clemson College. Fort Hill is situated in the
middle of the Clemson University campus. Admission is free, and the
home is open for touring every day except holidays. Call (864) 656-2475
or email [email protected].
 136 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

academic reputation during the antebellum period, their

level of instruction for the most part no more developed
than that provided in the academies. In a bid to reestablish
itself as a true institution of higher learning, the College of
Charleston closed its doors in 1836, restructured its entire
curriculum, hired notable professors, reopened two years
later, and soon built a strong reputation.
South Carolina College (now USC) in Columbia,
however, may have grown slowly early in the antebellum
era, but the quality of its instruction was never seriously
questioned. Established in 1801 to train future state leaders,
SCC received financing from the state assembly and
generally attracted its students from the upcountry planter
aristocracy, although some of its students hailed from
coastal plantations. The college employed only eight
professors and enrolled about 200 students in 1850, but it
was respected and boasted a faculty that included nationally
admired scholars. It had a strong and deserved reputation
for liberal arts instruction, and worked diligently before the
Civil War to build equally strong programs in engineering
and the sciences.
As SCC grew, the General Assembly in 1824 funded
and opened the School of Medicine in Charleston, the first
medical school in South Carolina. Among the reasons the
assembly selected Charleston, one was perhaps most
urgent—the coastal city was notorious for disease. Malaria,
tuberculosis, and cholera regularly ravaged the city’s
population, and many other deadly diseases struck
periodically. A school of medicine in such a location could
serve a community in desperate need. Moreover, the city
could be treated as a large medical laboratory for young
doctors and their mentors. The school grew quickly, and in
1831 the assembly elevated its status to “college,” changing
the institution to the Medical College of South Carolina,
today’s Medical University of South Carolina.
In 1842, two more colleges were opened to students,
each receiving some funding from state appropriations and
the bulk of financing from private contributors_
Columbia s Arsenal School and Charleston’s South
Carolina Military Academy, or the Citadel. Each provided
excellent academic training, particularly in subjects such as
engineering and military history, but both the Arsenal and
 SIX: ANTEBELLUM SOUTH CAROLINA 137

the SCMA were charged with additional duties. They were

to warehouse the state’s armaments and prepare men as
officers in the state militia. Only four years after opening,
the Citadel was forced to cease operations temporarily
because so many of its students left school to fight for the
United States in the Mexican War. Peace in 1847 returned
students to campus, the college having earned statewide
praise for the patriotism and service exhibited by its cadets.
The direction of higher education in the state
concerned many leading citizens. Since its founding, South
Carolina College had refused to identify itself with any
particular Christian denomination. Its secular position was
barely tolerable to the more devout in the state, but the
rising influence of one faculty member, Thomas Cooper,
and the simultaneous rise of Christian fundamentalism
brought the college and Cooper under fiery criticism.
Cooper had been a friend of Thomas Jefferson’s and shared
Jefferson’s Enlightenment philosophy that valued reason
and science over emotion and belief. Both Cooper and
Jefferson were avowed deists, not Christians. Cooper, like
Jefferson, never concealed his perspective or softened his
views, which only angered those in the state who insisted
the college’s curricula be Christian. Unable to remove
Cooper because of his popularity among the faculty or to
purge SCC of its secularism, religious groups established
colleges that based instruction on denominational
preferences. Among these newly founded institutions were
Erskine in 1839 (Due West, Presbyterian), Furman in 1851
(Greenville, Baptist), Wofford in 1854 (Spartanburg,
Methodist), and Newberry in 1856 (Newberry, Lutheran).

Religion, Morality, Relorm, and

Social Control
Organized religion never commanded much influence in
South Carolina prior to the nineteenth century; indeed,
church membership was never a serious concern for South
Carolinians. Only eight percent of white settlers claimed
any specific denominational affiliation as late as 1799.
Churches certainly were present in Charleston and outlying
towns in the colonial era, but the majority of colonists and
later citizens of the new state—for several reasons belonged
to no one faith over another. First, the bulk of the
 i38 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Must-See Sites: Boone Hall

Plantation, Mount Pleasant

Major John Boone built his plantation in 1681 at the time of

Charleston’s founding. The plantation produced rice but
converted to cotton in the early 1800s. The original home
was destroyed, and a new house was constructed in 1935
based on archival information about the original house.
Slave houses are also present on the grounds, and beautiful
gardens surround the property. The John Jakes TV
miniseries North and South and Alex Haley’s Queen were
both filmed here. Boone Hall is located at 1235 Long Point
Road in Mount Pleasant. The plantation is open daily, with
admission fees. Call 843-884-4371 for more information or
visit www.boonehallplantation.com.

population was dispersed over a vast region of semi-

developed frontier or wilderness land. Establishing a
church at a point central to most residents in such an
environment would still require many members to journey
long distances to attend services, a trip complicated by
possibly unpredictable weather, angry Native Americans,
rebellious slaves, and highwaymen. Complicating this was
the diversity of the population. As noted previously, South
Carolina became home to a noticeable variety of Europeans,
among them Huguenots, Catholics, Jews, Lutherans,
Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and others. What
denomination would be represented in such a remote,
isolated setting? Also, farm work and basic family survival
in the colonial period took precedence over all other affairs,
including religion. A family could worship God within its
own home, in its own manner, without forgoing a day of
labor or rest. Einally, many South Carolinians adopted the
same Enlightenment values as Thomas Cooper, Thomas
Jefferson, and others—reason and science, not religion, best
explained nature and humankind.
By the early nineteenth century, conditions changed in
South Carolina. The frontier line now stood in mid-state;
 SIX: ANTEBELLUM SOUTH CAROLINA 139

wilderness lay not far beyond Columbia. With the state

relatively settled, travel much more secure between farms
and towns, an agrarian economy based on slave labor
continuing to grow, and the population steadily rising, it
became easier to attend religious services outside the urban
centers and increasingly expected that residents affiliate
themselves with a church. And the American people
nationally, much like Europeans, were turning their backs
on Enlightenment philosophy and accepting a more
romantic, spiritual-based perspective of life in which God,
faith, and emotion were again central. By 1810, 23 percent
of all South Carolinians openly aligned themselves with a
specific Christian denomination and regularly attended
church services. The age of Protestant revivalism that
swept northern states, as noted earlier, sifted into the South
by the end of the 1820s, igniting a passion for religion
among state residents. Migration patterns also affected
religion in the Palmetto State. Presbyterianism washed
over South Carolina by the 1830s as Scot-Irish settlers
infused the upcountry; Lutherans from North Carolina’s
piedmont filtered southward into the Columbia area.
Baptists, who took immense pride in their informal
structures, their intensely personal connection to the
Almighty, and their belief that God’s ministers were called,
not trained academically in an institution of man’s,
commanded wide appeal among small farmers, who
helped plant churches wherever and whenever they could
ordain a local man as minister. Less visible but still present
were Catholics and Episcopalians (former Anglicans) who
dominated coastal communities, their ties to their
traditional, European roots remaining firm. And
continuing its eighteenth-century presence in Charleston
and spreading toward Columbia in the early nineteenth
century was a sizeable Jewish population. In fact, South
Carolina’s Jewish population exceeded that of any other
southern state before the Civil War. Methodists, however,
were the largest single group of faithful by 1860. Circuit¬
riding ministers served a district of congregations and
were supported at the local level by trained laymen. Their
message of “free will” and “grace” to those who admitted
their sinfulness attracted ambitious businessmen, planters,
and farmers alike.
140 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

The rapid spread of organized religion in the state was

partly the product of a spirited evangelical revivalism
similar to that found in the North during the same period,
but there were visible differences between the movements.
In South Carolina, as in the northern states, religious
revivalism attacked sinful behavior. Alcohol, gambling,
fighting, spousal abuse, and adultery were all targets of
Christian ministers. Revivalists in northern states generally
agreed that sin was to be purged completely and swiftly
from society prior to the imminent second coming of Jesus.
South Carolinians, however, were less convinced of Christ’s
immediate arrival and championed the regulation of sinlul
behavior. Alcohol itself was not sinful if consumed in
moderation; abuse of alcohol was. Gambling was a sporting
affair for people of means and was permitted provided one
met his financial responsibilities to family, community, and
church. Under that guideline, gambling was enter¬
tainment, not sin. Fighting in defense of honor, family, or
state was acceptable and not a sinful behavior.
It was strictly expected that no behavior remotely
considered sinful occur on the Sabbath, and to enforce the
Sabbath South Carolina drafted and religiously enforced
“blue laws” that forbade business activity, sporting events,
liquor sales, and all behavior that might be construed as
sinful or disrespectful to worshippers. The General
Assembly’s intervention on behalf of Christian morality
was not necessary. Businessmen had always closed their
shops on Sundays because of custom, personal preference,
religious belief, or absent market activity. The ban on
Sunday alcohol sales and gambling also mattered little.
Both were enjoyed among all social classes and considered
non-threatening to one’s moral fiber if enjoyed in
moderation. Moreover, those who wished to drink on
Sunday usually imbibed in the privacy of their homes or
with small groups of like-minded friends.
Far more serious in the eyes of the devout was adultery.
As each South Carolinian understood, adultery violated
God’s commandment. It was, however, a commandment
frequently ignored within aristocratic society, and,
provided the male adulterer conducted his illicit affair
discreetly, high society said little about the matter. Adultery
within lower classes was less tolerated. The presumption
 SIX: ANTEBELLUM SOUTH CAROLINA 141

Must-See Sites: Colonial Cup

Racing Association and
National Steeplechase Museum,
Camden

Camden hosts two nationally renowned steeplechase races,

the Marion DuPont Scott Colonial Cup Race each autumn
and the Carolina Cup Steeplechase each spring. Prior to the
races, visitors may enter the stands and watch
thoroughbreds going through morning workouts. The
nearby Steeplechase Museum includes interactive exhibits
highlighting the history of steeplechase racing and the
sport’s history in Kershaw County. Only a short distance
away is the Fine Arts Center of Kershaw County, which offers
live concerts, chamber music performances, and theatrical
shows. The center also serves as an art gallery, and art
classes for both adults and children are available. In
tandem with the Colonial Cup Weekend, the Fine Arts Center
directs an annual fundraising event open to the public,
titled “Bluejeans, Bluegrass, Barbeque, and Oysters.” Call
(800) 968-4037 to learn about racing events and special
museum exhibits.

was that a sense of propriety and the Southern code of

honor would be sufficient to handle indiscreet behavior
among aristocrats; lower social classes, however, were
thought to be less in control of their emotions and more
inclined to brawling and murder in such cases. In an effort
to reduce the incidence of adultery, church leaders
throughout the state, along with their congregations,
pressured the General Assembly to uphold God’s law with
earthly, civil law. In 1844, 1856, and again in 1860
assemblymen considered legislation criminalizing adultery,
but each attempt failed. Many of the men who cast their
votes in the statehouse had themselves engaged in
extramarital affairs; others believed such a statute exceeded
the state’s authority, that it was not the government’s duty
to determine a code of morality and impose it on all
citizens. Adultery was a personal issue between man and
 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA
I4Z

God, between husband and wife. If made into a public

matter, it was to be handled properly by the offended party.
A man was expected to cast off his adulterous wife to
preserve his honor in the community. She was expected to
leave the city without her children—her husband having full
custody—and she would be disgraced forever in its memory.
Divorce was not legal within South Carolina until 1948, but
a humiliated husband might have his marriage annulled.
The same option was not permitted to an offended wife;
indeed, she had little recourse in the case of a wayward
husband. It was tacitly understood in southern society that
men and women had different natural urges and needs, and
that a wife was a “purer sort” and should not be bothered by
her husband’s frequent sexual needs. She could punish an
adulterous husband by taking a separate bedroom,
abstaining from sex, or other methods, provided her response
remain private, not a public spectacle.
Houses of prostitution were common in South
Carolina and served patrons of all social classes. City leaders
openly condemned the brothels but tacitly condoned the
business. It was generally accepted in coastal communities
that prostitution allowed sailors to secure sexual services
without threatening or endangering “proper women.” The
money prostitutes earned eventually filtered back into the
local economy. They purchased goods and services within
the community, and frequently contributed large sums of
money to local charities and community-building
campaigns. City leaders also insisted, off the record, that the
purveyors of illicit sex confine their trade to sections of the
city removed from the heart of commerce and less traveled
by women and children. These districts in both Charleston
and Columbia, later referred to as “red light districts,”
remained unaffected by local law and social contempt well
into the World War II years. Churches, however,
occasionally sent parishioners into the boardinghouses and
brothels, even those of the “lowest and degraded character,”
and there spread the word of redemption to prostitutes and
clients alike.
Antebellum society also focused attention on the “less
fortunate,” with Columbia and Charleston each construct¬
ing poorhouses and funding them with tax money. This,
like so many of the reform efforts in South Carolina,
 SIX: ANTEBELLUM SOUTH CAROLINA
143

mirrored similar efforts pressed by Christian evangelicals

in the North. The poorhouse was intended to take in “the
victims of misfortune” and provide them temporary shelter
and food. The facilities that first opened in the early 1850s
required aid recipients to undergo a “corrections” program,
which attempted to identify the cause of misfortune and
then direct the aid recipient along an appropriate course of
recovery. It was assumed that “worthy paupers” were hard
workers, reliable, and responsible individuals who had
fallen on hard times. Many men and women seeking aid
could not secure a place in the poorhouse because demand
proved so high late in the decade. On the eve of the Civil
War, government documents in Charleston showed nearly
1,000 “paupers” resided outside the poorhouse and daily
received at government expense bread and a little meat.
This commitment proved costly to the city, with annual
appropriations throughout the 1850s hovering around
$12,000 ($220,000 in 1998 US dollars). Charleston was not
unique; Beaufort, Georgetown, and Columbia all aided
their “unfortunates” with funds supplied by local
government allocations.
In addition to the service provided by government,
private citizens involved themselves in support of those in
need. To many, the system of honor so cherished and
defended among South Carolinians carried with it an
obligation to those who, through no fault of their own,
suffered and endured misfortune. Numerous benevolent
societies consequently formed in South Carolina’s cities,
more than 50 in Charleston alone in the mid-1820s. Among
the more prominent and successful associations was
Charleston’s Ladies’ Benevolent Society, which provided
aid and comfort to the city’s working-class white women.
Many of these women entered the labor force to
supplement their families’ mediocre income or to become
sole providers for their children following the death or
abandonment of their husbands. Wages were typically half
that paid to men and, interestingly, less than those earned
by free blacks. The Ladies’ Society sent its members
directly into Charleston’s seamiest neighborhoods,
determined the most desperate cases, and later returned
bearing food, clothing, and occasionally cash to the
working women considered in most need. In 1861, the
i44 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Ladies’ Benevolent Society raised an endowment of $4,000,

or $70,000 in 1998 US dollars, from the city’s elite.

Antebellum Recreation
South Carolina’s laboring class may have spent most of the
day working, but recreational outlets were necessary and
available. As one would suspect, farm towns and mill
villages periodically sponsored events enjoyed by local
residents and farmers from the surrounding countryside.
Political rallies, such as the Gallivants’ Ferry Annual
Democratic Party Rally held each June since the early
1820s, generally drew large crowds. Rallies afforded
citizens the opportunity to congregate at a local spot, see
and hear candidates address their campaign platforms and
solicit local votes, mingle with friends not frequently
visited because of distance, hear a sermon from a circuit¬
riding minister, or learn the latest market trends from local
businessmen. While political rallies today are scripted,
those in antebellum South Carolina were wildly
unpredictable. A candidate promised whatever the
assembled crowd desired and delivered his speech in a
manner more befitting a “hellfire and brimstone” minister
at a revival than a politician pursuing elective office.
Whiskey was a regular guest at these events, and brawls
between drunken spectators supportive of opposing
candidates were not uncommon. A candidate on occasion
would descend his platform to separate pairs of fighting
men and himself get slapped, gouged, and otherwise
abused. Local musicians played their fiddles and sang,
gathering listeners to sing and clap along. Music and
dancing usually continued into the evening hours, and
families spread their homemade banquets for a picnic.
County seats such as Conway and the state capital in
Columbia hosted annual fairs, usually after the season’s
harvest. Friends and family gathered and enjoyed an array
of entertainment provided by traveling musical troupes,
jugglers, magicians, circuses, and a myriad of sideshows.
Contests determined who had hand-stitched the prettiest
quilt, shucked the most corn, or produced the tastiest
pickles and pies. Local merchants hawked items at
discounted prices, and area residents set up tables from
which they invited passersby to purchase homemade bread,
 SIX: ANTEBELLUM SOUTH CAROLINA
145

cakes, dresses, or bedding. Cockfighting attracted an

exclusively male audience and gambling carried the
evening for many men. Sometimes the fairs coincided with
“court week,” during which time pending legal cases would
be tried, a criminal convicted of a capital offense might be
hanged, and property in tax default might be auctioned.
Fairs in Columbia and Charleston were particularly
enjoyed for the entertainment options not found in county
seats such as Conway. Horse-racing tracks lured the
gentleman class, and fortunes were sometimes made or lost.
The theater drew large evening crowds. The New
Charleston Theater, founded in 1837, accommodated 1,200
people in a three-tier, horseshoe-shaped seating arrange¬
ment. Shakespearean tragedies were the highlights of its
offerings and drew the expected aristocratic audience. The
theater also attracted internationally renowned singers such
as Jinny Lind, “the Swedish Nightingale,” who performed
during the Christmas season of 1850. Fler concerts attracted
far more people than the theater could seat, many patrons
having to sit on the stage itself. Following her final
performance, she donated $3,400 to local Charleston
charities. Smaller theaters, similar to the vaudeville houses
popular much later in the century, offered a more
democratic environment, playing to customers from the
middle and lower classes and encouraging “audience
participation.” Jugglers, dancers, singers, musicians,
comedians, actors performing a soliloquy from Hamlet, and
animal acts all reaped immediate feedback from the
audience—boos, hisses, vulgar jeers, rotten tomatoes, or
enthusiastic applause and coins tossed on stage.
Communities of all sizes across South Carolina
celebrated Independence Day with parades, marching
bands, flag displays, patriotic speeches delivered by local
officials, dances, games, and barbecues. Local militia units
often sponsored the celebrations and frequently performed
close-order drill for spectators and registered new
members. For Christmas, wreaths adorned front doors in
Charleston, Columbia, and other communities, area
residents gathered at local churches, families and friends
partied, carolers strolled city sidewalks, and a gracious,
warm, and generous spirit settled over South Carolina s
cities, towns, and villages. Slaves were given extra beef,
146 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Must-See Sites: McKissick

Museum of the University of
South Carolina, Columbia

McKissick Museum, located on the “Horseshoe” of the USC

campus, is the largest university-sponsored museum in the
southeastern United States. Its collections date to 1801, and
both rotating and permanent exhibits generally feature
South Carolina and the South’s material culture, the arts,
and natural sciences. The museum is located at Pendleton
and Bull Streets. Admission is free, and the museum is open
daily. For additional information, call 803-777-7251 or visit
www.cas.sc.edu/MCKS.

sometimes small gifts, and possibly a few days free from

work.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, South
Carolina’s economy remained inextricably tied to cotton and
slave labor. The cotton culture spread westward across the
state and ultimately provided South Carolina with a level of
wealth unmatched by most other states. South Carolina
remained an agrarian-based state, as it had been since its
founding—its government, civil society, and economy all
connected to the land. But the state’s economy and character
also showed signs of change. Manufacturing was becoming a
more important segment of the economy, and the expansion
of railroads and the business growth it encouraged promised
an economy more connected to national rather than simply
regional interests. Indeed, economic diversification was
becoming more real within the state.
The social and cultural landscape of South Carolina
was also changing. By 1860, the Palmetto State’s population
included a religious diversity heretofore most closely
associated with Middle Atlantic States. Presbyterians,
Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Catholics,
Jews, all called the Palmetto State home, many of them
having relocated into South Carolina from northern states.
I hey often brought with them manners, experiences, and
 SIX: ANTEBELLUM SOUTH CAROLINA
147

values that broadened the worldview of South Carolinians.

There was also an out-migration of citizens, relocating to
Tennessee, western Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and
Louisiana. Although neither in-migration nor out¬
migration cut deeply into the power of the state’s old guard,
both weakened its influence and permitted the rooting of
contrary views.
South Carolinians had successfully instituted a number
of reforms, including aid to the poor, education for both
black and white children, founding institutions of higher
learning, initiatives to combat prostitution, as well as
cleaning and lighting city streets. This is not to say that
South Carolina was yet a truly humane, egalitarian, or
progressive society. The ongoing existence of slavery itself
condemned South Carolina and maintained its connection
to the archaic past. But the state’s citizens and businessmen
nonetheless occasionally lurched forward, linking the state
to a broader, national consciousness and reformist impulse.
South Carolina was neither rigidly fixed in the past nor
reaching enthusiastically to the future. Throughout the
state’s history, it has consistently had one foot in the past
and one in the future; it remains that way today.
"
 South Carolina and the
Coming of Civil War

B etween 1820 and 1860, the relationship between the

states of the South and the North grew ever closer to
rupturing. The break that ultimately resulted in war
in 1861 was due as much to poor leadership as malice.
Several issues surfaced in those four decades that
confounded politicians and divided the two regions.

Slavery in South Carolina

Oaks veiled in Spanish moss line either side of the drive
that leads to a magnificent mansion in Greek revival style,
complete with giant columns; a wealthy cotton planter and
his wife, both immaculately dressed, sit on the wrap¬
around porch, rocking in their chairs and sipping mint
juleps served by their devoted house servant; contented
slaves bagging cotton in distant fields sing a soothing
melody; an air of tranquility and patriarchy prevails over
the scene—these are the romanticized perceptions of
antebellum southern plantations, perhaps best popularized
by Margaret Mitchell’s representation of neighboring
Georgia in Gone with the Wind. Popular images of the past
contain some truth, but truth is typically far more complex
and less glamorous than Hollywood suggests.
As discussed in chapter six, manufacturing was emerging
in Charleston and across the Lowcountry as an important
segment of the economy. Farther west, in and around
Columbia, railroads and warehousing made the state capital
one of the leading distribution centers in the South. The state’s
economy was clearly showing signs of diversification, but
agriculture—cotton and rice production—remained the dual
pillars on which the state’s wealth rested. The agricultural
economy itself depended on slave labor.

M9
I5Z ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

The antebellum plantation was first and foremost

home to a business—the business of producing either
cotton or rice for sale. Although most plantations in South
Carolina raised cotton, the greatest wealth was derived
from rice cultivation. Of the 560 rice plantations spread
along the southeast Atlantic coast in 1860, 446, or 80
percent, were located in the South Carolina Lowcountry.
But whether the plantation produced cotton or rice, the
planters’ income relied on slaves.
Slavery was most concentrated in the rice-producing
region of South Carolina. In 1860 slaves were fully 85 percent
of the population in Georgetown County, for example. But
even cotton-producing areas often had a black majority:
from the rice fields of the coastal marshes deep into the
upland cotton regions of Laurens and Union Counties blacks
totaled more than 50 percent of the population. Thirty to fifty
percent of the population in northern-tier counties was
slaves; only in Horry County in the extreme northeast corner
of the state and Oconee County in South Carolina’s
westernmost territory did slaves make up less than thirty
percent of the population, neither county being focused on
either cash crop. In 1860, blacks, the overwhelming majority
of whom lived in forced bondage, represented 60 percent of
the total population statewide.
Across the South, on average 25 percent of whites owned
slaves. In South Carolina, however, in 1860 almost 46 percent
of white families owned one or more slaves. Slightly less than
two-thirds of slaveholding families in South Carolina owned
fewer than ten slaves, a pattern fairly consistent with slave
owning in other southern states and clearly contrary to
popular images. As one would suspect, the wealthiest South
Carolina planters were the largest slaveholders. On the eve of
the Civil War, nearly 1,200 families owned 50—99 slaves, 360
families owned 100-200, 55 owned 200-300, 22 owned
300-400, and 7 families owned 500-999. Only one individual,
Plowden Weston of Georgetown, held more than 1,000 slaves.
Many planters employed the “task system” for both rice
and cotton production. Each day, a slave was assigned a
certain amount of work to accomplish, generally confined to
a quarter-acre stretch of land. When his duty was completed,
he was granted the remainder of the day to rest, work in his
own small garden, or concentrate on other household chores
 seven: the coming of civil war
153

for himself and his family. If he chose to double his tasks and
complete those in a single day, he then had the following day
entirely for his own pursuits. The built-in rewards of the task
system encouraged attention to work and generally proved
the most effective system for the planter.
In the “gang system,” the use of slave labor most
commonly imagined by Americans today, slaves worked
most of the day in the fields with few breaks and under the
observant eye of the overseer. There was no reward for
working hard, and thus no incentive to be productive.
Overseers often resorted to threats, intimidation, and
sometimes brutal punishment to make slaves meet the
day’s goal.
Farmers who owned fewer than ten slaves often
worked in the fields themselves, frequently laboring
alongside their slaves. The day was divided into regular
periods for work, meals, and rest, with slaves and owners
on the same schedule. Although their labor was still forced
and they still lacked basic freedoms, slaves sometimes
assumed a common investment with their masters in the
production of cotton. Moreover, slaves belonging to small
farmers typically received less severe treatment than those
who worked on the gang system employed by larger
planters. This in no way diminishes the brutality of the
“peculiar institution” nor the fundamental inhumanity on
which slavery rested; it is, however, a reality of slavery
rarely recognized, just as it is not widely discussed that
some emancipated slaves became slaveholding planters
themselves, others worked as overseers, and others
manufactured and sold cotton gins that only perpetuated
the cotton culture. To be sure, these instances were
uncommon, but collectively they indicate the complexity of
this labor system. As we condemn this system today, we
should also understand it in as much detail as possible so
that slaves’ experiences are not lost again to history.
Contrary to Mitchell’s representation of contentment,
slave life was indeed brutal. Food was often limited, long
hours of strenuous work over the course of years bent the
strongest of men, adequate clothing was rarely available,
and the overseers methods were often unpredictable and
cruel. A mild infraction of plantation rules brought
immediate punishment; additional work deprived the slave
154 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Lucy Chambers, ex-slave, taken December 4,1937

 SEVEN: THE COMING OF CIVIL WAR
155

of what little free time he otherwise enjoyed under the task

system, or weekly meat allotments might be reduced or
curtailed completely. More serious violations resulted in
whippings, sometimes so severe the slave required medical
attention and missed days of work. As counterproductive as
whipping may have been on immediate work demands, it
was used to signal a grim message to the plantation’s slaves
that strict obedience was demanded and would be enforced.
The greatest threat hanging over the slave community was
the sale of one or more individuals to other planters in the
area, shattering families; equally feared was the possibility
of being purchased by an upstart planter on the Gulf Coast
where the lifespan of slaves was horrifically short.
Devastating for slaves, too, were the frequent sexual
advances and assaults many white planters made on
women. Single women, married women, and girls just shy
of their teen years all were quite aware that they might be
visited by their owner. Some women and girls acquiesced to
spare themselves reprisals from a rebuked planter, and
some were coerced with the threat that a close family
member might be sold at auction unless she complied with
the planter’s wishes. The violations dehumanized the
women, and caused intense anguish for husbands and
fathers, who could not protect their wives and daughters
from the planters.
For white planters and middle-class farmers, slaves
constituted a cost-efficient labor force for cotton and rice
production and by law were identified as physical property.
Africans enjoyed no rights and no legal protection. They
were subject to sale and commonly considered less than
human. It seems disturbing to Americans today that in the
antebellum era so few whites acknowledged slave
suffering; in fact, most whites were oblivious to the pain
and fear blacks lived with daily. It was a shock when radical
abolitionism challenged the peculiar institution.

Slavery as a Cause for the Civil War

Abolitionism grew from the dogmatic base of the Second
Great Awakening, or Christian fundamentalist evangeli¬
calism, that swept over the North and parts of the South in the
1820s, a movement that rested on the premise of Jesus’s
impending return—the second coming. American society
i56 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

was so filled with sinful behavior and immoral structures that

Americans surely faced damnation, argued the movement’s
proponents. The goal of Christian fundamentalists, then, was
to purge the United States of all sinful ways and
institutions, among them slavery.
Abolitionists called for the immediate eradication of
slavery in the United States and the full equality of blacks
in America. Between 1820 and 1860, abolitionists
trumpeted their message of freedom and brotherhood in
every venue possible. Reverend Theodore Weld, for
example, conducted a series of tent revivals in the Midwest
calling on the devout to unite against the evil of slavery.
William Lloyd Garrison founded his anti-slavery
newspaper The Liberator in 1831 and printed stinging
indictments of the South’s peculiar institution based on the
testimony of former slaves; he also condemned all those
who profited indirectly from the institution and lumped
into the group of sinners all those who did not involve
themselves directly in the abolitionist crusade. This
included not just Southerners but Northerners as well,
particularly northern textile mill owners, mill workers,
garment distributors, and everyone even remotely
connected to the textile industry. Other abolitionists held
public rallies and gave sharp, emotional tirades against
slaveholders and their accomplices, and some attempted to
blockade railroad lines on which cotton traveled to
northern factories, or interfered with the unloading of
baled cotton at northern docks. Across the North,
abolitionists raged against slavery and the sinful profit
derived from this most immoral source, all the while calling
for the grace of God to cleanse America’s errant ways.
Abolitionists may have been a numerical minority, but their
aggressiveness made the movement seem omnipresent.
South Carolinians defended the peculiar institution
with equal fervor and intensity. They frequently retorted
that slavery was, in fact, a “positive good” for blacks. The
system resembled that oi a father and his children, they
argued: the father is responsible for his children’s moral
training; slaves were instructed in the Christian faith. A
father is expected to instill in his offspring a productive
work ethic; slaves learned the value of work. Children were
to be disciplined when they violated their father’s rules;
 seven: the coming of civil war 157

slaves, similarly, were punished and reminded to be

obedient to their caregiver. Moreover, planters added, the
Bible did not demand the abolition of slavery. South
Carolina’s slave owners, and those who anticipated owning
slaves, deflected the abolitionists’ condemnation, arguing
that God blessed slavery. Indeed, many of the largest
slaveholding planters were leaders in South Carolina’s
churches, especially among Episcopalians. Numerous men
of the cloth statewide voiced support for slavery, frequently
citing chapter and verse from the “good book” that
suggested slavery’s propriety.
Beyond the moral issue, South Carolinians responded
with a legal and economic defense that actually carried some
weight in the North. The United States Constitution did not
prohibit slavery; therefore, it remained a legitimate source of
labor and a prerogative of the state, protected by the tenth
amendment. In addition, federal courts nationwide
consistently ruled slaves to be property under the law, and
government had no authority to deprive anyone of his
fundamental right to property. Nor was government entitled
to deprive anyone of his right to life. Without slave labor,
many South Carolinians claimed, the agrarian economy of
the state would collapse and with it the means to sustain their
lives. And, they continued, failure of the South’s economy
would trigger tremendous financial loss in the North if slave
labor could not produce the cotton northern textile mill
owners and factory workers required.
The abolitionists’ crusade strained the tolerance of many
South Carolinians, and their sponsored activities across the
North only exacerbated the rising sense of attack. The
legislatures in nine northern states in the mid-1820s labeled
slavery an ungodly institution that threatened the moral
foundation of the United States and called for its immediate,
unconditional abolition. At the same time, Senator Rufus
King of New York called on Congress to purchase slaves and
then emancipate them. In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowes
Uncle Tom’s Cabin incited the antipathy of Northerners who,
before its printing, had been moderately opposed to the
peculiar institution for its immorality and rather silent about
their profitable connections to the region s textile
manufacturing. Warfare in Kansas in I806 between armed
abolitionists and supporters of slavery further fueled the
i58 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

The Grimke Sisters

Sarah (1792-1873) and Angelina (1805-1879) Grimke

were two of fourteen children of one of Charleston’s leading
citizens, Judge John Faucheraud Grimke. Judge Grimke had
fought in the Revolutionary War, built a prosperous cotton
plantation, and held office in the South Carolina General
Assembly. The girls’ mother also hailed from Charleston
wealth, and the family alternated residency between their
Beaufort plantation and their Charleston townhouse. Sarah
and Angelina were surrounded by slaves throughout their
childhood. Slaves worked the fields and tended to household
duties, and they were cared for by black nursemaids and
played with slave children—a common practice for white
youngsters on southern plantations. Judge Grimke educated
his daughters in the fundamentals of law, although this subject
was considered a man’s realm.
Sarah and Angelina were never comfortable with the
institution of slavery. On numerous occasions they saw
overseers punishing slaves brutally, sometimes for the mildest
infractions, and they witnessed the dehumanizing treatment of
blacks outside the plantation environment, in Charleston.
In 1818 Sarah traveled with her ill father to Philadelphia
and then to Bordentown, New Jersey in 1819, where he later
died. Following his death, she returned to Philadelphia, and
there saw a society without slavery. She found a spiritual home
in the Quaker religion, which encouraged female leadership,
promoted nonviolence, and vehemently denounced slavery.
She settled in Philadelphia and officially converted to the
Quaker religion.
With Sarah gone, Angelina cared for her widowed mother,
but was not content. Slavery surrounded her at home and
across the state, and she detested it, its violence, and the
inhumane treatment of free blacks. She was also disturbed by
the rigid constraints placed on southern women, affecting
everything from their role in society to the clothing they wore.
When Sarah visited in 1827, Angelina found in her sister the
qualities she herself longed for—simplicity, nonviolence,
feminism, and respect for the equality of all persons. Angelina
also converted to the Quaker faith, but rather than relocate to
Philadelphia, the religion’s home, she remained in the South
 seven: the coming of civil war 159

and attempted to spread Quakerism locally. Ostracized by

Charleston society for her views, Angelina joined Sarah in
Philadelphia in 1829.
As the abolitionist movement gained influence in the
1830s, Sarah and Angelina worked full-time with the American
Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), forgoing marriage and family.
Angelina’s letters were printed in William Lloyd Garrison’s
abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and Sarah participated
in a boycott of goods produced directly or indirectly by slave
labor. Their activism drew them to Providence, Rhode Island in
1836, where they pubhshed a series of attacks on slavery,
condemning it as contrary to the teachings of Jesus and
Christian principles. Their writings also called for greater
participation by women in the AASS and the reform efforts then
sweeping the nation. In addition to their writings, they traveled
to dozens of cities to deliver public speeches, which was not
widely considered proper for women at the time. Angelina also
addressed the Massachusetts state assembly, the first woman in
American history to speak before a state legislature.
Angelina married Theodore Weld, a widely respected
abolitionist, in 1838. She chose not to include the phrase “to
obey” in her vows, and Weld openly renounced claims to her
inheritance. The Welds, along with Sarah, established a farm in
New Jersey where they raised Angelina’s children, but the sisters
continued to write articles and to draft speeches for others to
present at anti-slavery rallies. The Grimkes’ combined work
certainly advanced the abolitionist argument to a much larger
audience. And because they were Southerners and of the planter
class, they had a wider readership in the South than such views
would otherwise have found.
The Grimke sisters spent the postwar years founding a
coeducational school in Boston and championing minority
rights. They continued to call for equal rights for women, and
in March 1870 Sarah, age 79, and Angelina, age 66, marched
with 40 other women to cast ballots in a local election. The
bitter cold, the snowstorm, and the harassment by men lining
the streets did not prevent the elderly women from voting.
Sarah died in 1873, and Angelina followed six years later. The
Grimke sisters committed their lives to the battle against
slavery, the cause of racial equality, and the struggle for
women’s rights.
160 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

presumption of an impending violent clash, and John

Brown’s hid to take the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry,
Virginia in 1859, arm area slaves, and initiate a slave rebellion
gave evidence of the depth of abolitionist commitment. In the
wake of the Harper’s Ferry incident, most South Carolina
communities organized watchdog committees to keep tabs
on any and all strangers, and frequently these vigilante
groups questioned, assaulted, and forced outsiders to vacate
the state. Little wonder, then, that South Carolinians saw in
the abolitionist movement a real threat to their state s
established social and economic order. In addition to these
overt acts were numerous developments within the state that
some South Carolinians presumed to be covert operations
supported by abolitionists, or at the least directions
applauded by abolitionists.
Denmark Vesey, a Charleston slave who was permitted
by his owner to earn money hiring himself out to area
planters in his spare time, saved enough cash to purchase
his freedom in 1800. Vesey chose to remain in the city,
living as a free man and working as an independent
carpenter. On Sundays, he attended the city’s African
Methodist Episcopal Church and regularly led a morning
devotional class during which he often read passages from
the Bible that emphasized the worth of all men. One of his
favorite stories was that of Moses leading his people from
bondage to the promised land. In 1822, Vesey and his
closest followers plotted a slave insurrection in Charleston
slated for June 16. Unknown to him, a co-conspirator
turned informant, fearing that a rebellion, successful or not,
would have fierce consequences for those who remained
enslaved in South Carolina. Vesey and 78 other slaves and
free blacks were arrested on June 14 and tried and
convicted two weeks later. Thirty-five were sentenced to
death, and the rest were to be sold to planters outside of
South Carolina. Vesey went to the gallows on July 2, and by
month’s end the remaining plotters who had received the
death sentence were also hanged. There was no evidence of
abolitionist complicity, and none has surfaced since.
Nonetheless, rumors pervaded Charleston society that
Vesey had been in communication with outside “agitators.”
Suspicion grew in 1829 when a similar planned slave
revolt was compromised in Georgetown. Over the four
 seven: the coming of civil war 161

Must-See Sites: Denmark Vesey’s

House, Charleston

Denmark Vesey, a slave in the Virgin Islands, was purchased

by a Charleston planter and brought to South Carolina in
the early nineteenth century. Vesey was permitted to hire
himself out to local merchants when his labor was not
required on the plantation, and with his accumulated
earnings he eventually purchased his freedom, taking
residence in a house on Bull Street and working as a
carpenter. In 1822, Vesey was accused of plotting an armed
rebellion by local slaves and free blacks, was arrested,
convicted of the charges against hirn, and hanged with more
than 30 alleged accomplices. His former home is located at
56 Bull Street. Call (843) 953-7609 for more details.

years that followed, rumors circulated throughout the state

of slave plots, and stories appeared in most newspapers of
violent attacks by slaves on whites in Marion, Lancaster,
and Sumter. Copies of Garrison’s The Liberator filtered into
the state as these developments unfolded and lent some
credence to the charge of an abolitionist association with
slave rebellions and assaults in South Carolina. Long before
the pivotal 1850s, South Carolinians were convinced that
their state was imperiled.

Westward Expansion & the Coming of War

Soil quality declined annually in South Carolina s cotton¬
growing region, and as a result more than 200,000 farmers
and planters exited the state in the antebellum period for
fresh lands on which they could continue producing the
valued fiber. With them went their slaves. A large
percentage of South Carolina’s emigrants relocated to the
Gulf Coast states, a few traveled into Missouri. As the white
population settled into the trans-Mississippi West—
Missouri, Texas, Oregon, California—the issue of slavery
weighed heavily on America. From each new state to the
Union went two senators to Congress. Southerners and
Northerners alike feared an imbalance of power in the
i6z ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Senate, an imbalance that would permit one or the other

section to gain political control and press the United States
in its own direction. Would national or state interests
dominate? Would the nation be pushed toward an
industrial economy or would agriculture remain the
national base? Would slavery be displaced by the free-labor
system championed by northern interests? Whose view of
the United States and the nation’s future would prevail?
Given the seriousness of these concerns, both North and
South concluded that it was imperative that a balance of
power be maintained in the Senate. In the nation’s first test
of slavery’s expansion, the North and the South reached a
compromise, allowing Missouri to enter the Union as a
slaveholding state and Maine to be created as a free-labor
state. The balance of power in the Senate was preserved.
Although content with the compromise, Charles
Pinckney, South Carolina’s venerable delegate to the
Constitutional Convention of 1787 and current member of
the US House of Representatives in 1820, expressed
concern about what he believed to be the federal
government’s interference with the institution of slavery.
Congress held absolutely no authority to determine the fate
of slavery in the states or territories, he argued in a speech
on the House floor. Slaves were considered property under
the law; Congress could not deny anyone his right to carry
his property to a new residence.
Despite Pinckney’s argument, slavery once again
became an issue in Congress with Texas’s application for
statehood in 1848. Northern representatives insisted slavery
had reached its natural limits in Louisiana. Texas, they
contended, was entirely too arid for the expansion of
agriculture, particularly cotton production. Southerners
rehutted the argument, pointing to the success of cotton in
eastern Texas in the 1830s—success in part driven by slave
labor. South Carolina’s congressional delegation and its
citizens statewide defended slavery’s expansion. Nature, not
Congress, they said, determined the limits of agricultural
development in the West, and the Constitution protected the
right of Southerners to own slaves; wherever cotton could be
grown profitably, Southerners held the right to produce it
using slave labor. They echoed Pinckney’s position of 1820,
stating that the federal government did not possess the
 seven: the coming of civil war 163

authority to halt the spread of slavery anywhere in the

United States or its territories and that any discussion of the
subject itself violated the intent of the Constitution’s
framers. Moreover, the blood of South Carolinians had been
spilled in Texas and Mexico. The Palmetto Regiment alone
suffered 440 deaths in combat, about 40 percent of its total
complement of 1,000 soldiers. South Carolinians argued that
given the state’s sacrifice in securing Texas and the rest of the
Southwest from Mexico, Congress had no moral right to
deny slaveholders from taking their property into the newly
acquired regions. Noted Benjamin Perry, at the time one of
the state’s most vocal supporters of the national government,
any effort by Washington to deprive South Carolinians of
their slave property and the movement of slavery into the
West required “an immediate dissolution” of the bonds
joining the North and the South. He and others also accused
abolitionists of fomenting the current crisis. The South
Carolinian’s critique and similar arguments from across the
South carried the issue, and Texas won admission to the
union as a slave state. Despite this success, another challenge
to slave interests loomed large.
In 1848, gold was discovered near Sacramento,
California. The ensuing “gold rush” the following year
brought tens of thousands of men and women to the West
Coast, and in 1850 California met the criteria for statehood.
Again, debate swirled in the halls of Congress and once
more resulted in a negotiated settlement, the Compromise
of 1850. To balance power in the Senate, California entered
the union as a free state. To placate southern interests, the
compromise included passage of the Fugitive Slave Act,
which permitted slave owners the legal right to pursue
runaways virtually anywhere in the United States, and
required local law enforcement personnel in free states to
detain for repatriation all escaped slaves in their
jurisdiction. Clearly, the compromise only added further
discord between the North and the South. Abolitionists
were livid over the Fugitive Slave Act, a move, they argued,
that extended the reach of slaveholders, perpetuated the
immoral institution, and implicated more Northerners in
the sinful system. Rather than purge the nation of this
particular sin, the compromise sustained it and permitted
its growth.
164 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Must-See Sites: Slave Market

Museum, Charleston

This market was one of several sites in Charleston where

African slaves were auctioned and today is the center of the
African American Heritage Museum. The last auction of
slaves at this market occurred in 1863. The museum
includes exhibits on Lowcountry slavery, the “middle
passage” of the slave trade, emancipation, reconstruction,
and the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina. The
museum is located at 6 Chalmers Street and is open daily.
Admission fees are required. Call (843) 958-6467 for
additional information.

Although the compromise gave the South one item it

had long desired, the very notion of a compromise itself
infuriated South Carolinians. James Hammond voiced his
argument that California’s admission as a free state was the
North’s most recent attempt to secure control of the Senate
and in so doing secure control over the South. Once
empowered in the Senate, a federal government dominated
by northerners and backed by the abolitionist crusade
would ultimately destroy the South’s economy and social
structure; in short, death awaited the South. Leading
figures in South Carolina’s cities, towns, and villages along
with newspaper editors and ministers all warned their
listeners of the threat to the state and succinctly posited a
simple alternative—relinquish slavery or quit the Union.
In December 1850 the South Carolina General
Assembly convened for its annual meeting, and secession
was on the lips of many representatives. The assembly
called on all southern slave states to hold a Southern
Convention in Montgomery, Alabama in January 1852 to
discuss a unified response to northern “aggression” against
the South’s agrarian interests, including slavery. South
Carolina voters would decide in an October 1851 election
whom to send to Montgomery. But, extremists in the
assembly worried that the Southern Convention might not
produce any unified or viable response and called for a
 SEVEN: THE COMING OF CIVIL WAR 165

separate state convention to meet in April 1852, three

months after the Montgomery meeting. No southern state
agreed to a January convention, however, which
disconcerted South Carolina protagonists, and at the state
convention in April the secessionists were soundly trounced
by more moderate voices. The crisis of secession dissipated,
but South Carolina had moved further toward disunion
than any other southern state to date.
Radicals in South Carolina remained active, however.
Extremists raised money to support pro-slavery activities in
Kansas, and hundreds of men temporarily emigrated to the
territory in 1856 to fight in the civil war that exploded there
between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. At the same
time, tempers flared in Congress, and an exchange of
stinging speeches between Southerners and abolitionist¬
supporting representatives further alienated the two
sections of the nation. Senator Charles Sumner of
Massachusetts on May 19, 1856 not only rebuked slavery’s
supporters in Kansas but also launched a scathing personal
attack on South Carolina and its Senator A. P. Butler.
Sumner’s tirade went well beyond the scope of slavery,
southern rights, and territorial expansion; the senator
challenged the one thing most valued among South
Carolina’s gentlemen, a man’s honor—in this case, Butler’s.
Butler took no immediate action, but his cousin,
Congressman Preston Brooks from Edgefield, did respond.
On May 22 Brooks left the House floor, burst through the
Senate’s doors, spotted Sumner, and caned senseless the
Massachusetts senator. Sumner’s remarks on the 19th had
been considered at the time too harsh, too personal, and
unwarranted by many of his northern colleagues; Brooks’s
attack, however, recast Sumner as a victim and martyr of
southern aggression. Brooks’s star also rose among
Southerners who championed the congressman as the
defender of southern honor. South Carolinians prided
themselves on having a man in Congress who did the right
thing,” defending the honor of both Butler and the state. A
House vote fell short of the necessary number to expel
Brooks, but the congressman nonetheless resigned his seat.
In a special election held in July to fill the vacant position,
Brooks won an uncontested reelection.
166 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Secession
The concurrent moralistic crusade of the abolitionists heated
the political and economic confrontation to a much greater
emotional intensity and compromised rational debate,
complicated further by paranoid, reactionary Southerners.
As support for the eradication of slavery drew a wider
audience among Northerners in the 1850s, especially after
the publication of Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and civil war in
Kansas, extremists in both the North and the South only
hardened their positions. By 1860, then, Americans stood on
the precipice of a potential national calamity.
The Democratic National Convention in May 1860 was
held in Charleston, much to the chagrin of northern
delegates. No city in the South was more defiant of federal
authority; no city in the South embodied more fully the
radical, pro-slavery stance that had contributed to the series
of crises over the preceding 40 years. Shortly after the DNC
convened, a proposed plank for the November presidential
campaign was presented to the floor. Despite the
longstanding argument that slavery was not an issue lor
congressional debate or action, the plank would have
required Congress to create legislation explicitly protecting
the extension of slavery into the western territories. Northern
delegates, predominantly proponents of free labor and
manufacturing, vetoed the proposal. Alabama’s delegation
stormed away from the convention, led by William Yancey,
who had earlier emigrated from the Palmetto State. South
Carolina and six other southern states followed Alabama’s
lead. The convention was in shambles, and the Democratic
Party was now split. Northern Democrats organized a
separate convention in Baltimore and selected Stephen A.
Douglas as their contender for the White House; Southern
Democrats assembled in Richmond in late summer and
placed John C. Breckenridge as their candidate.
Radicals, willing to secede from the union if necessary,
controlled South Carolina’s Democratic Party. Moderates
reluctantly inched toward the extremist position, largely
driven by popular opinion, but hoping to act as a brake on
the secessionist impulse. By portraying the upstart
Republican Party as the home of abolitionists and
promising secession if that party’s candidate, Abraham
Lincoln, won the election, they believed levelheaded
 SEVEN: THE COMING OF CIVIL WAR 167

Northerners would move from the Republican Party to

support the National Democrat Party to preserve the
Union. The plan rested squarely on the presumption—in
fact, the correct presumption—that most Northerners were
not in the abolitionist camp, although they certainly
preferred free labor to slave labor.
During the campaign of 1860, Lincoln insisted
repeatedly that he had no intention of abolishing slavery
where it already existed and that he, as president, would not
possess the authority to end the peculiar institution even if
he did desire to do so. However, he openly and
unequivocally stated that he opposed slavery’s extension
into western territories and believed Washington had the
power to prevent this. This was the best abolitionists could
expect from any political party in 1860, and in response they
gave Lincoln their unified support.
Aware of abolitionist support for the Republican Party,
South Carolina’s press vehemently denounced Lincoln as a
man not to be trusted and one who fully intended the
abolition of slavery and the promotion of racial equality,
points consistent with abolitionist rhetoric. But the collective
voice arising from South Carolina proved more than a
political tactic to encourage Northerners to support the
National Democrats. Fear was real for South Carolinians.
They truly believed a Lincoln victory would bring with it the
utter destruction of the southern economy through the
eradication of slave labor, and that the collapse of the South’s
agrarian base would directly lead to the demise of southern
institutions and culture. On the November election hinged
everything of value to white South Carolinians.
The election-day scenario desired by South Carolinians
failed to develop. On November 6, 1860, Lincoln won the
presidency; the very next day, South Carolina’s congressional
delegation resigned from Congress and left Washington, and
the General Assembly called for a state convention in
Columbia for December 17. Days before the convention
assembled, reports of a smallpox outbreak in the capital
compelled the assembly to switch the site to Charleston.
Although there remained voices urging moderation, all 169
delegates voted for secession on December 20.
South Carolina was alone at the moment, having taken
the final, desperate act of a state that believed its way of
 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA
i68

life—its very existence—was in jeopardy. Delegates in

Charleston, bolstered by public opinion, saw secession as the
only means by which they could preserve their economic
base, social structure, and culture, and escape the inevitable
political dominance of northern manufacturing interests and
excessive federal authority. They believed that the ideology
of the American Revolution, that government must protect
one’s natural rights of life, liberty, and property, was clearly
threatened by a Republican victory. South Carolinians,
therefore, invoked John Locke’s theory of the “right of
revolution,” that should government fail to protect the
natural rights of the people, the people, then, have the right
to dissolve their bonds with the governing system and replace
it with a new one. Secession was their recourse. Two
questions now pervaded the state: “What will the other slave
states do, and how will Washington respond?’’

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U pon hearing the news of the convention’s vote on

secession, South Carolinians roared their
enthusiastic approval and celebrated independence
from the Union. As they rejoiced, convention delegates
penned “A Declaration of the Immediate Causes” and “An
Address to the People of South Carolina.” The declaration
stated that secession was the state’s response to the North’s
repeated attacks on slavery and the damning effect
abolition would ultimately have on the state financially and
socially; to preserve the state, South Carolina had no
alternative but to separate from the Union. The address
focused entirely on the federal government’s alleged
abridgement of the Constitution. Together, the documents
framed the two central points of contention between South
Carolina and the North over the previous 40 years.
Delegates also called for another convention of all
slaveholding states for the purpose of erecting an
independent confederation.
Not everyone in South Carolina was delirious with joy.
As noted by historian Walter Edgar in his masterful history
of the state, James Pettigrew said, “South Carolina is too
small to be a Republic, and too large to be an insane
asylum.” His colleague Benjamin Perry reluctantly
accepted secession and added that since South Carolinians
were “now all going to the devil... I will go with them.
Indeed, many in the Palmetto State contemplated what
course to follow—-support an independent South Carolina
or remain faithful to the United States.
While many South Carolinians considered their
response to secession and possible war with the United
States, the secessionist convention pursued one additional
matter—what to do with the federal military installations
that ringed Charleston. It appointed three respected men to

m
172 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

negotiate the fate of the forts with federal authorities, and

they arrived in Washington the day after Christmas. That
same evening, Major Robert Anderson, who commanded
federal troops in Charleston, quietly slipped his garrison
from Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island to Fort Sumter
centered in Charleston Harbor. After learning of
Anderson’s move the following morning, Governor Francis
Pickens ordered the state militia to seize Fort Moultrie, the
arsenal, and all other federal properties in the city. A wire
was immediately telegraphed to Washington informing the
White House of the governor’s action, and the negotiations
between the state’s delegates and President Buchanan’s
representatives scheduled for December 27 collapsed.
South Carolina’s secession set the tone for other
southern states, and by February 1, 1861, Mississippi,
Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, and Texas had quit
the Union. As the Charleston convention requested, the
seceded states assembled in Montgomery, Alabama on
February 4, formed a government for the Confederate
States of America, and elected Jefferson Davis of
Mississippi as president. The Confederate Constitution
resembled that of the United States, with a few alterations.
Davis and future presidents would serve a single, six-year
term in office; states retained greater authority than the
national government; and slavery was a state prerogative.
Interestingly, the Confederate Constitution openly
acknowledged its willingness to admit non-slaveholding
states on the same basis as slaveholding states, the consent of
two-thirds of both houses of the Confederate Congress.
In Washington, federal officials and Congress (minus
the southern delegations) worked feverishly to reach some
compromise that would resolve the crisis satisfactorily for
all states. President Buchanan, a lame duck in the White
House, offered little effort and displayed less concern;
nonetheless, several measures were introduced and debated
in Congress, but all were found lacking in substance.
President-elect Lincoln reiterated his pre-election position:
he assured the South that slavery was protected where it
already existed and that he had no intention to abolish the
system; he did, however, remind Southerners that he would
not tolerate its expansion into western territories. He added
one additional point, that no state had the legal right to
 EIGHT: THE CIVIL WAR 173

secede and therefore the United States government did not

recognize the Confederate States of America.
Events in Charleston exacerbated the crisis. The
resupply ship Star of the West entered the harbor on January
9, 1861, bound for Fort Sumter. Cadets from the Citadel
(formerly the South Carolina Military Academy) manned a
battery of cannon and fired several warning shots over the
ship’s bow. Understanding the point, the ship’s captain
reversed course and exited Charleston Harbor. President
Buchanan was promptly informed. Rather than move a fleet
of warships to the South Carolina coast and escort future
resupply vessels, the president chose not to antagonize the
Confederacy and refused to authorize any further effort to
secure the federal posts. Fort Sumter was, for all practical
purposes, left to the mercy of South Carolina.

The First Shots of War

On March 4, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as the
nation’s sixteenth president, and in his address he once more
succinctly stated his view of secession and his promise for the
protection of slavery in the South. Lincoln’s speech received
little interest in South Carolina; the Palmetto State had
proclaimed itself a member of a separate, independent nation,
and Lincoln’s words carried no weight on the Confederacy.
But in meetings with the War Department, the new president
insisted that Fort Sumter would be held at all costs. To
abandon the fort, he believed, would signal the United States’
recognition of Confederate authority. He expected Fort
Sumter to be resupplied, but no additional troops would
reinforce the garrison in Charleston; Lincoln did not wish to
provoke the South into committing an overt act of war but
rather encourage a compromise with the errant states.
South Carolina understood clearly that it could not
tolerate a foreign force within its territorial boundary, and
on April 11, 1861 a delegation of Confederate officials sailed
to the fort and demanded Major Anderson s surrender.
Anderson refused to abandon his position but added that his
provisions would be depleted within one week and he
would then have to evacuate for the sake of his men. The
delegation, however, was aware that Lincoln s navy was
already en route to Charleston Flarbor with fresh supplies
and Anderson’s command would therefore be salvaged.
 Must-See Sites:
Fort Sumter, Charleston

In the 1830s, the United States began in earnest to build

coastal fortifications for the defense of vital harbors.
Charleston’s port was the largest and most active along the
southern coastline, so important that the War Department
ordered the construction of a second fort to supplement
Fort Moultrie, which already guarded American shipping
from its position on Sullivan’s Island. Fort Sumter arose on
a manmade island within one mile of Moultrie and was
nearly completed when on April 12, 1861 the Confederate
battery in Charleston opened fire on Union troops posted
there. The shelling of Fort Sumter officially started the
American Civil War, and from summer 1863 through spring
1865 when the war concluded it was under constant siege by
Union gunboats.
Over the years that followed, Fort Sumter remained an
active military facility. During World War I and World War II,
a United States garrison manned the compound, in both
conflicts serving as a defensive position against German U-
boat activity and in the latter war as an air observation unit that
searched for enemy aircraft. At war’s end in 1945 Fort Sumter
was decommissioned, and three years later Congress
proclaimed the fort a national monument.
Today Fort Sumter is a prominent attraction for visitors
to Charleston. Approximately 340,000 tourists visit the
landmark annually, and the National Park Service budget for
both Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie exceeds $1.5 million
each year. Information regarding tour boat schedules and
costs, hours of operation, and park services is available at
various visitor centers in Charleston and at the National Park
Service website, www.nps.gov/fosu.
For additional color photographs, biographies of
notable Civil War officers and enlisted men, battle reports,
and archival material, visit the following sites: www.us-
civilwar.com/sumter.htm and www.americancivilwar.com.
\~jG ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Montgomery ordered General P. G. T. Beauregard, who

commanded 6,000 Confederate troops in Charleston, to
cripple this obvious delaying tactic and force the issue. At
4:30AM on April 12, 1861, the Confederate battery in
Charleston opened fire on Fort Sumter. Local citizens were
roused from their slumber, and rushed to their windows to
witness the commencement of war. Throughout the day,
gentlemen and ladies in their finest clothing and workers
covered in dirt and grime stood on rooftops and fire-escape
landings to observe the burst of cannon shells over Fort
Sumter. Servants filled champagne glasses for their
aristocrat masters while the middling folk took swigs of
whiskey. Politicians heralded the beginning of a new era in
southern history; their rhetoric gushed with flourishes of
“states’ rights” and “honor.” The worst war in American
history had begun. Charlestonians saw not the impending
death and destruction but the commencement of a
promising new age.
Thirty-four hours of constant bombardment drove
federal troops to the lowest depths of the fort, cannon shots
shattering the top tiers of the structure into absolute rubble.
On April 14, Anderson raised the white flag and
surrendered Fort Sumter. Upon learning of the events in
Charleston, Lincoln immediately called for 75,000
volunteers to crush the southern rebellion and preserve the
Union, a move that compelled the remaining slaveholding
states to consider their options. In the weeks that followed,
Tennessee, Arkansas, Virginia, and North Carolina joined
the Confederacy; four slaveholding states—Maryland,
Missouri, Kentucky, and Delaware—did not secede but
remained in the Union for the war’s duration.
By mid-May, Union warships lined the southern
coastline to block key Confederate ports. Charleston’s
harbor, long considered one of the largest and most active
facilities in the United States, faced layers of enemy ships
stretching deep into the Atlantic. Northerners reasoned
that if they closed Charleston, South Carolina’s economy
would likely collapse and the flow of supplies to and from
the state would halt—control Charleston and cripple the
state’s war effort. The city was also a symbolic target for
Union forces. It was home to the secessionist impulse, “the
vipers’ nest" of rebellion. Facing the Union’s obvious plan
 eight: the civil war 177

to take the city, the Confederate government ordered its

defense to the last man.
A blockade of Charleston was essential to the North,
but the United States War Department believed that to
conquer the city, they would first have to take the
surrounding towns. Beaufort and Georgetown residents
soon viewed northern sails on the horizon. Slaves were
quickly put to work building earthwork defenses around
these communities and on the string of barrier islands
outside Charleston to keep federal troops from landing.
Fortifications in the Beaufort area were soon tested.
On November 7, Union vessels sailed into Port Royal
Sound 50 miles south of Charleston, intent on establishing
a federal supply base on the southern coast. The Federal
force included some 13,000 troops on 36 transports and 15
warships. Confederate guns opened fire on the invading
fleet at 9:00AM, but by noon the contest was decided in favor
of the Union. Fort Walker on Hilton Plead Island and Fort
Beauregard on Bay Point were abandoned, and the Stars
and Stripes flew once more in South Carolina. Beaufort’s
white citizens sought refuge in Charleston; their slaves in
open defiance refused to evacuate. Union troops who
entered Beaufort two days later found blacks resting
comfortably in their masters’ houses. With little further
effort, Federal troops soon occupied the “sea islands” along
the southern stretch of the state. The war that so many
South Carolinians presumed would be won by Christmas
was now perceived more realistically; it would be a long,
brutal war and one that would certainly bring its
devastation to the Palmetto State. Only extreme measures
could save South Carolina and, perhaps, the Confederacy.

The Early Course of War

Throughout 1862 South Carolina maintained both its
legitimate government, framed by its state constitution, and
a separate wartime council established by the Secession
Convention. In practice, the council commanded far
greater authority. To instill order within the state, the
council instituted martial law in coastal communities and
closed taverns located near military encampments. To
prepare the state more fully for a lengthy war, bolster
defenses on the home front, and still provide manpower to
 Mary Boykin Chesnut Observes
the Civil War

Perhaps no diarist of the Civil War era is more renowned than

Mary Boykin Chesnut. A member of one of South Carolina’s most
elite families, Chesnut detailed daily her impression of
Confederate military commanders and politicians, Northerners
and President Abraham Lincoln, and the common soldier
defending the South. The following is an excerpt from that diary:

April 12, 1861:

Anderson [Major Anderson, commander of
Fort Sumter] will not capitulate.... I do not
pretend to go to sleep. How can I? If Anderson
does not accept terms at four, the orders are
he shall be fired upon. I count four St.
Michael’s bells chime out and I begin to hope.
At half past four the heavy booming of canon
[vrn], I sprang out of bed, and on my knees
prostrate I prayed as I never prayed before....
[Chesnut, along with family members, friends
and servants, rush to the rooftop of her house
to observe the battle]. The shells were
bursting.... The regular roar of the canon,
there it was. And who could tell what each
volley accomplished of death and destruction?
The women were wild there on the housetop.
Prayers came from the women and impre¬
cations from the men. And then a shell would
light up the scene.... We watched up there,
and everybody wondered why Fort Sumter did
not fire a shot.
Last night, or this morning truly, up on
the housetop I was so weak and weary I sat
down on something that looked like a black
stool. "Get up you foolish woman. Your dress
is on fire,” cried a man. And he put me out. I
was on a chimney and the sparks had caught
my clothes.

April 13:
Nobody has been hurt after all. How gay we
were last night. Reaction after the dread of all
the slaughter we thought those dreadful canon
were making.... Fort Sumter has been on
fire... These women have all a satisfying faith.
‘‘God is on our side,” they say.
 EIGHT: THE CIVIL WAR 179

the Confederate Army, the council in March 1862 began the

conscription of men into military service, a step taken just
one month before the Confederate government initiated
compulsory military service. This included white men for
military service and black men for manual labor.
Conscription required South Carolina to both provide 3,000
slaves for the construction of forts and earthwork defenses
along the southern coast and to meet whatever quota for
soldiers the Confederate government, now based in
Richmond, deemed necessary.
Conscription immediately drew the ire of poor and
middle-class South Carolinians. Those who could afford it
were allowed to hire someone to serve in their place. Nearly
800 South Carolinians did just that. Planters who owned
twenty or more slaves were exempt entirely from the draft,
as were their overseers. The draft also angered
constitutionalists, who claimed that the Confederate
government had no legitimate authority to enforce
compulsory military service and doing so only mirrored the
abuse of power exercised by Washington. As much as South
Carolina valued states’ rights, it also valued the rights of the
individual. Still others complained that “true” South
Carolinians would volunteer for military service, and
conscription indirectly questioned the honor, integrity, and
loyalty of Palmetto State citizens. Whether in response to
these arguments or simply because they did not wish to
fight in the current war, several thousand draft dodgers
eluded the reach of South Carolina’s armies. Opposition to
the draft was so intense that in some districts conscription
officials refused to press the issue, much less prosecute draft
resisters. Many draft dodgers slipped deep into the forests
of Horry, Marion, Pickens, Greenville, and Spartanburg
Counties and survived the best they could. Others, often
operating in small, armed squads, periodically raided
outlying farms for food, clothing, and similar necessities.
The question of the council’s power and the turmoil
over conscription soon paled in the face of Union military
and naval operations along the South Carolina coast. In
early 1862 Georgetown’s defenses were evacuated, and the
Confederate garrison was shipped to Charleston to
supplement that city’s fortifications. Union warships moved
into Georgetown Harbor, and white residents fled inland,
180 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

taking as many slaves as they could reasonably control.

Federal troops formed a strong perimeter around the
coastal town to secure it from a Confederate counterattack,
and gunboats moved more than 30 miles up the Waccamaw
River seeking rebel encampments along its shores. In June,
6,000 Federal troops landed on James Island outside
Charleston. Confederate defenders ultimately repulsed the
Federal forces but lost almost half of their 600-man
garrison in the battle.
By autumn 1862, along South Carolina’s coast only
Charleston remained free of Federal control. Sixty northern
missionaries and teachers ventured into the narrow region to
begin the process of preparing blacks for life as free citizens.
At the same time, the War Department reluctantly
authorized the enlistment of blacks into the United States
Army. Most Northerners saw the war as one fought for the
preservation of the Union, not the abolition of slavery, and
few accepted the racial equality of blacks. But the enlistment
and training of black troops was a wartime measure by the
Lincoln administration to placate abolitionists. It also had a
dual military advantage, the president believed. First, the
additional manpower would greatly benefit the North’s war
effort. Second, the image of former slaves armed and dressed
in Union blue would serve as a form of psychological warfare
against the Confederacy. In 1862, a segregated army was
established, the United States Colored Troops. On
November 7, the First Regiment of South Carolina
Volunteers was formed and added to the USCT, and one
year later a second regiment was established. Of the 180,000
black soldiers who served in the Union army, nearly 5,500
were former South Carolina slaves.
Federal forces met defeat after defeat in the peninsula
campaign in Virginia, and the North’s efforts to conquer the
Confederate capital in Richmond proved disastrous. New
Orl eans did fall to Union invaders in 1862, but Federal
authorities soon discovered that controlling the city was far
more problematic than taking it. In Tennessee, Union troops
commanded by Ulysses S. Grant did secure victories at Fort
Donnelson and Shiloh and quickly moved southward
toward Corinth and to Vicksburg on the Mississippi River,

Confederate soldier
182 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

but those gains required horrendous losses in Federal

manpower and supplies. Many in the North questioned
which army had actually won the battles. Along the South
Carolina coast, only the city of Charleston remained free of
Union control, but little traffic successfully exited its harbor
and slipped through the awaiting blockade. Rice plantations
and cotton fields in the Lowcountry fell into Federal hands,
and thousancis of slaves found themselves freed. On
September 22, Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation, to take effect on January 1, 1863. The decree
emancipated slaves in rebel states (the four slaveholding
states that had not joined the Confederacy were exempt).
While the proclamation was unenforceable outside Federal
occupied territories, it nonetheless signaled to South
Carolinians that the president wanted more than preser¬
vation of the Union; to them he clearly desired the complete
destruction of the South. The spirit of independence still
pervaded most of the white population, but that spirit would
be further tested over the next 28 months.

The Fall of Confederate South Carolina

The War Department was determined to take Charleston
in 1863 and use it as a staging base for operations against
South Carolina’s interior communities and eventually
Columbia itself. In April, Union naval forces battered Fort
Sumter but were soundly driven off. Confederate gunners
claimed they fired 2,200 rounds and made 520 hits in one
afternoon. Admiral S. F. DuPont, who commanded the
Union navy, confessed the attack was nothing less than a
total disaster for his ships and sailors.
Three months later, in July, as Vicksburg fell to Grant,
and General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate forces were driven
from the Pennsylvania countryside surrounding Gettysburg,
Federal troops struck Fort Wagner on Morris Island, just
outside Charleston. Rebel defenders easily brushed aside the
first attack on the 10th and another assault days later. But on
July 18, Wagner’s 1,000-man Confederate garrison faced a
sight it had not expected—a frontal attack led by the 54th
Massachusetts Regiment, an all-black Union force. Having
earlier learned of the North’s founding of the USCT, the
Confederate government ordered “no mercy” be shown to
black soldiers and their white officers. Small engagements
 EIGHT: THE CIVIL WAR I83

CSS H. L. Hunley

Technological developments made the American Civil War

the nation’s first truly modern conflict. Among the wartime
innovations was a submarine responsible for the first
successful attack on an enemy vessel. H. L. Hunley was
constructed at Mobile, Alabama in 1863 from plans drawn
by James R. McClintock and Baxter Watson, and financed by
Horace Lawson Hunley. A hand-powered, direct-drive shaft
propelled the 40-foot-long Hunley, nine seamen and one
officer manned the vessel. A harpoon torpedo was attached
to its bow, intended to ram the side of a wooden ship, be
released, and detonate once the submarine had reversed
course and reached a safe distance. In August 1863,
Hunley was transported to Charleston, South Carolina to
help defend the city’s harbor against the Union blockade.
The submarine sank and drowned its crew twice before it
was proclaimed operational, Horace Hunley himself going
down with the vessel in the second accident in October. On
February 17,1864 Hunley made her maiden attack against
USS Housatonic, successfully ramming her torpedo into
the Union ship’s hull and retreating before the explosion
ripped through the ship, sinking it within minutes. Hunley,
however, never returned to port and was presumed lost
with her entire crew.
In 1972 a group of historians, archaeologists, and
others financed by private and university funding
commenced the search for Hunley, finally locating her
wreckage off Sullivan’s Island near Charleston in May 1995.
With the help of the Naval Historical Department, Hunley
was raised to the surface on August 8,2000 and taken to the
Lasch Conservation Center, located at the former Charleston
Naval Base, where it was restored and is now open for
public viewing.

with black soldiers had been fought in Mississippi, but never

before had Confederate troops encountered such a massive
wave of black troops. The 54th assembled on the shoreline
late in the afternoon and launched its assault at dusk.
Wagner’s defenders rained artillery fire on the attackers.
 184 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

The Union troops faltered but quickly regained their

composure and pressed the battle. As darkness fell over the
island, the Confederate garrison rallied and drove away the
54th, but not before it had breeched the fort’s walls. Union
and Confederate losses were nauseatingly heavy. The
Union didn’t attempt another frontal strike, but its army
and navy commenced a 50-day siege that eventually forced
the evacuation of Fort Wagner on September 7.
About 22,000 Federal troops occupied Morris Island
and neighboring Folly Island and erected a battery of heavy
cannon that effectively halted all ship movement in
Charleston Harbor and turned Fort Sumter into a
shattered pile of brick and timber. On August 22 Union
guns shelled the city of Charleston itself and terrorized the
local population. Homes, stores, churches, the local
orphanage, and banks all came under cannon fire. On
Christmas night 1863, more than 130 shells fell in the city.
Businessmen moved their operations inland or north to
Wilmington, North Carolina. Residents fled inland as well,
leaving Charleston a ghost town whose spirit was protected
by a weakening Confederate army. The battery fired on the
city daily until Charleston’s surrender in February 1865.
Civilian and military morale dropped as the fate of the
South became increasingly clear in 1863. Desertions from
the army increased, totaling 3,615 South Carolinians by
war’s end. As the war progressed. Confederate soldiers
came to label the conflict as a “rich man’s war” fought by
the poor man. Adding to the soldiers’ frustration was
both a reduction in monthly pay and spiraling inflation that
made their earnings virtually worthless. The carnage of
battle, exacerbated by grossly unsanitary field hospitals,
convinced many soldiers that death awaited them all. Only
the grave offered a reprieve from hell on earth.
Shortages of cloth, thread, paper, salt, sugar, eggs,
meat, and a host of other items forced South Carolinians
to take extreme measures. Women accustomed to the
finer fashions learned to recycle material and sew their
own garments. Meat packers dug into the hard-packed
earthen floors of smokehouses to retrieve salt used in the
curing process. Beef, if available at all, was rationed, and
sugar and flour were completely absent in Columbia.
Across South Carolina, local churches and benevolent
 EIGHT: THE CIVIL WAR 185

societies provided what goods they had to those in most

desperate circumstances. By December 1863, nearly
55,000 South Carolinians statewide were officially listed
as “destitute.” Tens of thousands more barely subsisted.
To meet military demands, church bells were removed
from their steeples, melted, and recast into cannons.
Gunpowder production commenced on the grounds of
the State Hospital for the Insane in Columbia, and most
workshops in the state were converted to the manufacture
of muskets and handguns.
The war also depleted the state of its physicians. Of the
1,000 doctors who claimed South Carolina as home in 1860,
70 percent enlisted their services with the Confederate
army and other wartime agencies. With Charleston’s
hospital and clinics within Union range and shelled
repeatedly, temporary facilities were erected just outside
the city, and makeshift facilities were hastily erected outside
the city and throughout the state. An emergency medical
facility was set up at the state fairgrounds in Columbia, and
buildings at South Carolina College were refitted for the
care of wounded soldiers. Aid stations were placed at
railroad depots, in order to treat more quickly wounded
soldiers removed from combat areas. With so many
physicians gone to the war, the burden of emergency
medical care fell on volunteering women, who worked in
shifts around the clock, performing what had traditionally
been male jobs. Indeed, the demands of war forced the
blurring of long-accepted gender lines.
With rice and cotton lands devastated by Union
military operations, and coastal plantations within range oi
naval guns, many planters abandoned their lands. In some
cases, they simply turned loose their slaves, accepting in
advance the visible outcome of the war. Slaveholders
farther inland, however, increasingly confronted slave
rebellions, especially in Anderson, Chesterfield,
Darlington, Sumter, and as far west as Lancaster. Where
uprisings did not develop, planters raged about the absence
of civil authority to enforce slave laws and regulations, and
throughout South Carolina slaveholders complained that
their slaves were increasingly “insolent, disrespectful,
and “disobedient.”
Conditions in South Carolina only deteriorated in 1864.
 i8 6 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Must-See Sites:
National Cemetery, Beaufort

The National Cemetery was established by President Abraham

Lincoln for the burial of Civil War soldiers. More than 7,500
soldiers are buried here, Confederate and Union alike. Among
the Union graves are the remains of 4,000 unidentified bodies.
The site is located at 1601 Boundary Street.

Telegrams and newspapers reported the absurdly high

battlefield death rates. Few families in the Palmetto State
went untouched by the war. In December, General William
Tecumseh Sherman’s Union army sat in Savannah after
having made Georgia “howl,” as he had promised Lincoln he
would. On February 1, 1865, Sherman moved his 60,000-
man force north. The Confederate defenders, commanded
by General P. G. T. Beauregard, included only 20,000 men,
many of whom were between fifteen and seventeen years old
or over fifty. Beauregard fully believed Charleston to be
Sherman’s primary objective, hut he also knew the Union
army would want to take Columbia, the state capital. Unsure
of where to concentrate his defenses, Beauregard committed
his army to a most undesirable course of action—he divided
his forces, placing a contingent in Charleston, a second force
in Columbia, and a smaller garrison in Augusta. He hoped to
consolidate all forces once it became clear which path
Sherman would take.
Charleston, Sherman figured, was but a shell of a city
in early 1865. Union guns controlled its streets, and its
ability to prolong the war was nonexistent. He therefore
chose to send only a small portion of his army to the city
where secession began but move the mam body inland to
the state s capital. Sherman marched just west of Beaufort
with his army in parallel columns ranging 10 to 25 miles
apart, pushing through Branchville, Orangeburg, and
converging on Columbia. The Union troops laid the state to
waste, leaving a swath of total destruction in their wake.
Sherman s only serious impediment was not the
 EIGHT: THE CIVIL WAR 187

Confederate army but the nasty winter weather, unusually

bitter for South Carolina.
Columbia was in complete chaos as Sherman’s army
approached. The city’s population of 8,000 in 1860 had
mushroomed during the war years to 24,000, many of
whom were refugees from the coast. Fearing the brunt of
Union force would be at Charleston, many residents of the
once-pristine city had shipped their most valuable
possessions to Columbia for safekeeping. As the Union
army drew closer, its artillery shells arched over the
statehouse, destroying homes, churches, banks, warehouses,
and bridges. Thousands poured out of the city, most
gathering what few possessions they could carry and fleeing
north toward Charlotte, North Carolina, 100 miles away.
Not only were Federal forces destroying Columbia, local
looters smashed storefront windows and broke down doors
to steal whatever goods they could get. The terror that
gripped Columbia and the wholesale destruction of the city
crushed what little secessionist spirit remained in South
Carolina. General Beauregard ordered the burning of all
cotton in the city’s warehouses and then evacuated his
remaining troops on the morning of February 17. As the
last of the Confederate soldiers stumbled out of Columbia,
Mayor Thomas Jefferson Goodwyn saddled his horse, rode
out to meet General Sherman, and surrendered the city.
The same day, Charleston tendered its official surrender.
The bluecoats entered Columbia before nightfall.
Soldiers guzzled whiskey taken from civilian homes and
stores, and in their drunken condition harassed and abused
local residents. Fire, probably from the torching of cotton
earlier in the day, was whipped by wind gusts and burned
more than 30 square blocks of the city before morning.
Fortunately, the nighttime melee took no lives. By his own
admission, Sherman “never shed any tears over the event,”
but he demanded his officers restore order, and 370 of his
soldiers were arrested. The destruction wreaked on Charles¬
ton, however, resulted in the death of more than 100 civilians.
Sherman’s army left Columbia on February 20, this
time with four parallel columns moving toward North
Carolina. En route, Federal troops passed through
Winnsboro, Camden, Chester, Cheraw, and Florence and
left a path of destruction almost comparable to their
i88 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

approach to Columbia. Once in North Carolina, Sherman’s

forces consolidated their attack on Fayetteville and then
Goldsboro to the northeast, completing their mission before
learning of Robert E. Lee’s surrender to General Grant at
Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, and consequently the
end of the war, on April 9.
It has been estimated that 60,000 South Carolinians
fought in the Civil War, most of whom served in Palmetto
regiments, but some in North Carolina units that paid higher
enlistment bonuses. Moreover, South Carolina troops fought
in every major battle of the war, distinguishing themselves at
Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Cold
Harbor, Chickamauga, and the Wilderness Campaign. They
were present at General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at
Appomattox and General Johnston’s surrender days later in
Durham, North Carolina. South Carolinians paid dearly in
the Civil War. The state ended the war with a debt of $2.6
million ($24 million in 1998 dollars) and for white citizens the
loss of nearly $300 million ($5.5 billion) in money invested in
human property—slaves. The commercial districts of
Columbia and Charleston lay in ash, and many residential
areas were now in rubble. Bridges, telegraph lines, railway
lines, ports, plantation houses, and farm animals had been
destroyed by advancing Union troops under Sherman. Lewis
P. Jones, in his study of South Carolina, quoted one traveler to
Charleston in 1865 who described the city as one of “vacant
houses, of widowed women, of rotting wharves, of deserted
warehouses, of weed-wild gardens, of miles of grass-grown
streets, of acres of pitiful and voiceless barrenness.” Materially,
South Carolina experienced greater loss than any other
Southern state. The human result of war was equally
catastrophic. Families were dislocated, and some were
shredded by divided wartime loyalties. Records indicate that
nearly 20,000 of South Carolina’s white soldiers and sailors
perished in the war, or about 30 percent of all those who
served. Four years of war had laid South Carolina bare,
destroyed its long-cherished traditions, and left its survivors
facing an uncertain future. Of immediate concern to whites
and blacks alike, what would be the postwar status of former
slaves in a state heretofore defined by race and slave labor?
South Carolina’s former leaders in turn were left wondering
whether the state’s political motives in 1861 had been pure
 EIGHT: THE CIVIL WAR 189

enough to justify such loss—could any perceived offense to its

honor ever justify the death and destruction its defense had
cost? Was slavery so prized, so fundamental to South
Carolina’s wealth in 1861, despite all signs pointing to its
natural demise, that war had truly been the Palmetto State’s
only recourse?

Ruins of home in Charleston and another house in background.

Photograph by Haas and Peale, taken between 1863-65.
 Reconstruction

A numbing silence draped South Carolina in spring

1865. The state remained under martial law, which
served as a constant reminder of the South’s fall to
Union military power. Poverty haunted cities and
countryside. Merchants and bankers were bankrupt, and the
rice and cotton plantations had collapsed from absent labor,
depressed market values, and demolished ports. Hunger was
a constant companion for many people. Local churches
provided what relief they could, but food was in short supply.
People wandered city streets in search of any type of job,
regardless of pay and in many cases regardless of their
prewar social standing in their community. Thousands were
homeless and dispossessed of their land, wonder ing where
they might find temporary shelter. The legacy of death and
destruction scarred the hearts and dulled the senses of most
everyone. Questions loomed large. Who would rebuild the
roads, bridges, houses, and churches? From where would the
money come to resurrect a sound economic base? And what
would frame the new economy? What role would freed
slaves have in the postwar social order of the state? There
were no easy answers to these questions, and no one was sure
what the future would hold.

A Persistent Defiance
Despite the widespread misery that pervaded the state,
there remained a certain resentment and air of defiance
among South Carolinians. Armies may have demobilized,
navies may have returned to port, and guns may have fallen
silent, but another kind of war definitely continued. South
Carolina refused to relinquish entirely all it held dear and
was determined to preserve as much of the past as possible.
Diehard traditional South Carolinians felt they would
simply need patience and new tactics.
191
 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA
I92

President Andrew Johnson named Greenville’s

Benjamin Perry the provisional governor for South Carolina
on June 30, 1865. Governor Perry’s principal duty was to
ready the state for readmission to the Union, and toward that
end he called a constitutional convention to meet in
Columbia. District elections followed, and in September
delegates assembled at First Baptist Church. Hardly a man
or woman in South Carolina was surprised to see the
antebellum elite returned to power, most of whom had
breathed the fire of secession only four years earlier.
Under orders from Washington, southern govern¬
ments were to renounce secession as a legitimate right of
the state and accept the abolition of slavery. Rather than
“renounce” it, the delegates defied the president’s order and
instead “repealed” the Ordinance of Secession. A matter of
semantics, one might think, but South Carolina’s new
governing body consciously selected the term to signify that
it retained what it believed was a fundamental, inherent
right of state government. Delegates then voted to sanction
the eradication of slavery in the state; the measure passed,
but eight men voted “no” on the issue. South Carolina may
have been conquered in war, but some refused to
acknowledge defeat.
The convention did draft a slightly more democratic
constitution. It acknowledged the abolition of slavery,
abandoned property-owning requirements for office holders,
granted the governor veto power, and permitted the general
voting population to elect the state’s chief executive.
President Johnson approved the state’s new
constitution. Elections soon followed, and James L. Orr of
Anderson was elected governor. Orr’s postwar General
Assembly convened in a special session in October 1865 on
the South Carolina College campus, where it ratified the
thirteenth amendment to the United States Constitution,
which banned slavery. The regular session that opened in
December, however, proved a harbinger of coming political
battl es between the state’s Republican government and its
Democratic conservatives.
Although initiatives were desperately needed to
rebuild the state’s economy, the December meeting
concentrated principally on defining the position of freed
blacks in South Carolina society. The General Assembly
 NINE: RECONSTRUCTION 193

produced a series of laws collectively known as “Black

Codes” to restrict the movement, behavior, and rights of
African-American residents, a step also taken in every
former Confederate state. Blacks were legally entitled to
purchase land, files suits in courts of law, and enter into
binding contracts—a modicum of economic equality. Social
and political equality, however, was expressly prohibited.
The new laws forbade interracial marriages, restricted
personal travel between cities and towns, denied blacks the
right to own firearms, required segregated housing and
public facilities, prevented the congregation of blacks on
public streets, and enforced a nighttime curfew on African
Americans living in cities.
In the United States Congress, Radical Republicans, an
extremist minority element within the Republican Party,
were enraged over the Black Codes. Most Radicals were
themselves former abolitionists who promoted full racial
equality and saw these laws as the South’s open defiance of
Republican reconstruction. The Republican-controlled
Congress declared the Black Codes invalid acts of the states,
and Radicals immediately introduced, passed, and in
March overrode President Johnson’s veto of a bill that
ensured federal protection of equal rights for blacks, the
Civil Rights Act of 1866. In June, Radicals and moderate
Republicans joined forces in Congress to pass the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which made
blacks legal citizens of the United States and prohibited
states from depriving any individual his rights because of
race. Congress sent the amendment to the states for
ratification, informing southern states that its approval was
a prerequisite for full readmission to the Union.
The Radicals’ influence grew. Because the prewar elite
who had carried the South into secession once more
commanded state legislatures, Congress in 1867 dissolved
southern state governments, placed the entire region under
federal military authority, and disenfranchised former
Confederate political leaders and military officers. Voting
privileges and seats in the reconstructed state assemblies
were opened to blacks. Congress further insisted each state
hold a convention and draft a new constitution. In South
Carolina, the General Assembly called for a convention, but
voters had to approve its establishment at the polls and then
194 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

select local delegates to attend it. Of the 128,000 citizens

registered to vote in South Carolina’s November 1867
election, 56,000 voters, mostly white, chose not to participate
in the proceedings. The existing system, they contended,
reflected the will of South Carolinians; they condemned
plans for a new constitutional convention as the product of
evil Radicals who wished to complete the final destruction of
the state. Because most registered black voters went to the
polls, the call for a convention passed and black men for the
first time served the state as elected officials.
The convention opened in January 1868 in Charleston
with 124 delegates, of whom 73 were black and 51 were
white—all but four delegates were Republican, the product
of block voting by African Americans. Building on the
democratic direction embedded in the 1865 constitution,
delegates granted the franchise to all men and required the
state to provide a system of universal education, both without
regard for race. They intended to create a political and social
order fundamentally different from the prewar governing
system and that reflected the Radical Republicans’ altruistic
vision of equal opportunity for all persons.
A statewide public school system had long been desired
by white citizens and would certainly have provided their
children with far greater opportunities, but white South
Carolinians denounced the 1868 constitution. They
condemned the new government for its inclusion of blacks
and the Republican Party dominance that allowed for the
“Africanization” of the state. That blacks were permitted to
vote, to hold seats of government, to introduce legislation,
and to enjoy all the rights previously reserved for whites
threatened the historical value of white supremacy in South
Carolina. Neither the document nor the composition of the
convention represented majority opinion in the state. In
short, the majority of South Carolinians felt that the 1868
constitution overturned the values they had defended for
four years on the battlefield and for which so many lives had
been lost.
Another boycott by eligible white Democratic Party
voters allowed easy Republican ratification of the
constitution and netted Republican control of the General
Assembly in the elections that soon followed. In the lower
chamber of the General Assembly, 109 of the 124 elected
Wood engraving by A.R. Waud, 'The First Vote as appeared in
Harper's Weekly, November 16, 1867
196 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

representatives were Republican and of these 75 were black.

In the state senate, Republicans took 25 of the 32 seats; ol
these, 10 were black. With their newfound political clout
backed by the Republican Party, the status of South
Carolina’s African Americans improved substantially. Six
African Americans were elected to the United States House
of Representatives, and others blacks served as lieutenant
governor, secretary of state, state treasurer, and state supreme
court justice. African Americans comprised 61 percent of the
membership in the General Assembly by 1872, and they
chaired the majority of committees. From their position in
the state legislature, black and white Republicans passed
public equality laws that provided access to public facilities
such as restaurants, bars, theaters, retail stores, and
restrooms—access denied to free blacks before the war. The
University of South Carolina (as South Carolina College was
renamed in 1865) was opened to black enrollment in 1868
and employed black professors. But, as black enrollment
increased, the university witnessed an exodus of white
professors to colleges in other southern states that still refused
admission to African-American students and by 1875 the
student body was 90 percent black. Although the university
received appro-priations annually from the General
Assembly, the loss of white students and professors collapsed
most private contributions USC had enjoyed before the war,
forcing many academic programs to be sidelined.
Most African Americans, however, saw little change in
their lives under Republican rule. Although public equality
laws were erected and in cities some blacks exercised their
newly gained right to move freely where earlier they were
not permitted, the majority of South Carolina’s African-
American population remained tied to the land. Without
the cash required to purchase their own property and
without the skills that allowed them to gain employment in
urban settings, many had little choice but to accept
sharecropping as their livelihood. Planters needed laborers
to cultivate the fields and produce crops for sale at market.
Without slavery, they could either hire day hands, a
potentially expensive proposition, or encourage former
slaves to remain on the land as semi-independent farmers.
Sharecroppers resided on a portion of the former plantation
where they could construct a house and live with their
 NINE: reconstruction 197

family. They were to grow their own food, raise their own
sources of meat, and market for their own profit whatever
crops they produced. In return, they were also to grow the
cash crop preferred by the landowner and provide him with
a portion, or share, of the harvest. To ensure the rights of
both planter and sharecropper, legally binding contracts were
drawn and signed. The system, in theory, appeared sound.
On the surface, it appeared that South Carolina was
witnessing the dawn of a new age, particularly regarding
opportunities for blacks; however, a darker reality swirled
just underneath the image of progress. Historians agree that
the ten years following the Civil War were notorious for
bribery, widespread corruption, and graft involving
politicians of both races. Government contracts to private
businesses frequently included kickbacks, and appropriation
bills often were inflated to cover the pilfering of the treasury.
During one session of the General Assembly, more money
was spent on whiskey and wine for legislators than on public
schools. Furniture purchased for the State House was
diverted to the private homes of legislators. What little
money the state took in was being grossly wasted, Democrats
complained. Rather than rebuild South Carolina’s economy,
legislators used the advantage of elected office to line their
own pockets. Moreover, they added, the Republican
government in Columbia was more interested in destroying
the state’s social structure by granting blacks rights which
they were not qualified to exercise than they were interested
in promoting and defending the values held by white
citizenry. The level of corruption in state government
brought waves of charges from Democrats and served as a
point around which the general population rallied and used
to attack the Reconstruction government in general elections.
Carpetbaggers and scalawags further alienated South
Carolinians from Reconstruction efforts. Carpetbaggers,
Northerners who ventured into the state to exploit the
postwar turmoil for their own financial and political
benefit, took ownership of property held by families for
generations simply by paying back taxes. No concern or
compassion did they offer evicted families; they were
interested only in profit. They established businesses in
urban communities that generated profits, but earnings
were not plied back into the economy for community
198 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Must-See Sites: Governor’s

Mansion, Columbia

The South Carolina governor’s mansion is open to the public

for first-floor tours. Guests walk through the state dining
room, library, and small dining areas. The governor and his
family occupy the upper floors of the mansion. Built in
1855, it became the governor’s residence in 1868. The
home includes exquisite furniture dating to the Antebellum
era and paintings of the state’s chief executives in the Hall of
Governors. Located at 800 Richland Street, the mansion is
open Hiesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Call (803) 737-
1710 to book a guided tour.

development. They claimed residency status, voted

Republicans into office, and occasionally were elected to
political seats themselves. With their property holding, net
wealth, and political influence, the carpetbaggers attempted
a wholesale makeover of South Carolina’s society and
institutions for their own advantage. Scalawags, native
South Carolinians who aligned themselves with
carpetbaggers, were despised even more. They exploited
their longtime neighbors for personal gain, truly
dishonorable behavior. Together, the activities of
carpetbaggers and scalawags inflamed South Carolinians
and helped build the foundation from which a Democratic
rebellion would rise.
When South Carolinians surveyed the immediate
postwar period, they were horrified at the changes wrought
by Reconstruction. The presence of a state government
controlled by black and white Republicans rather than the
traditional Democratic Party elite, a new constitution that
turned the social structure of South Carolina on its head, a
level of public equality that countered longstanding norms,
and “outsiders” profiting from the state’s misery altogether
gelled a determination in the hearts of Democrats to purge
the state of its current ills and recapture the old order.
 NINE: RECONSTRUCTION 199

The Counterattack against

Republican Rule
The drive to retrieve prewar traditions first manifested
itself in violence. The Ku Klux Klan surfaced in Tennessee
in 1866 and within two years spread throughout the South,
folding into itself dozens of similar but smaller local
organizations. In South Carolina, the KKK operated
principally in the upstate section, from Columbia west to
the mountains, and intimidated and assaulted Republicans,
carpetbaggers, and scalawags in its bid to chase from South
Carolina what they believed were the sources of most
trouble. Local businessmen were forced to dissolve
contracts with “outsiders,” judges and jurors were
“encouraged” to render decisions in favor of white South
Carolinians who valued the traditional structures, and
bankers were told not to issue credit or loans to
“undesirable residents.” Klansmen burned the homes of
carpetbaggers and scalawags, and those who championed
public equality of the races were warned in no uncertain
terms that their lives were in jeopardy. State legislators
were beaten, and three were murdered in 1868.
As for African Americans, the Klan’s object was not to
hasten a black exodus but rather compel their subservience
to white, Democratic authority, force them to assume a
status akin to their prewar role as a cost-efficient labor force
for white landowners, and strip blacks of the rights granted
by what the Klan saw as an illegitimate state government.
Cloaked Klansmen promised to destroy the businesses,
crops, livestock, and even homes of blacks who did not
separate themselves from politics and white society. The
KKK did not deny blacks their right to cast a ballot, but
they were determined to make sure blacks voted for
Democratic Party contenders. Nighttime visits to African-
American homes on the eve of election day terrorized
families, and Klansmen promised vengeance on any
African-American man who voted for Republican
candidates. Election officials were bribed to prepare lists of
black voters who cast ballots for Republicans, and, as
promised, the KKK inflicted serious injury, and sometimes
death, to those men whose names were recorded. In short,
the Klan waged terrorism against African Americans.
Because they concealed their own physical identity and that
200 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

of their horses under sheets, pledged themselves to silence,

and represented the sentiments of most white citizens in
their communities, few specific charges were ever filed
against individual Klansmen.
So widespread was the violence that the governor in
1869 established a new state militia to restore order in the
state. Whites not affiliated with the Klan believed their
participation would signify support for a corrupt
Republican government and the newfound status of blacks;
therefore, white South Carolinians refused to enlist. Blacks,
on the other hand, hoped a militia could afford protection
against the rising violence being directed against them. By
1871, the militia numbered about 70,000 men, almost
entirely black.
Rather than shrink from the militia’s power, the Klan
and its supporters intensified their statewide rampage.
Across South Carolina, Klansmen torched the homes of local
Republican officials, burned African-American churches,
destroyed black schools, whipped hundreds of persons
supportive of the Reconstruction government, warned
hundreds more to flee the state or suffer brutal punishment,
and ravaged stores owned by African Americans and
Republicans. All the more horrifying, the Klan and white
mobs murdered dozens of African Americans, government
officials, and sympathizers of Reconstruction.
In October 1871, President Ulysses Grant moved
Federal troops into nine upstate counties and declared a
state of martial law. York County, the site of the most
violence and most widespread Klan activities, was
pronounced to be in a state of rebellion and received the
greatest number of soldiers. Troops were also posted in the
counties of Union, Spartanburg, Laurens, Chester,
Chesterfield, Fairfield, Lancaster, and Newberry. Federal
prosecutors compiled a list of 1,300 names of men suspected
to be involved with the Klan or to be Klan sympathizers
and filed charges against them. But, a year later, the courts
had heard only 150 cases and won conviction in only 90.
The trials briefly slowed the KKK, but, as the courts
proceeded with their hearings, Klansmen in 1873 resumed in
force their aggressive campaign. Along with the Klan, whites
rioted across the state against the Reconstruction regime.
Laurens, Abbeville, and Charleston all erupted in violence
 NINE: RECONSTRUCTION 201

and in Aiken dozens of blacks were murdered. Governor

Daniel Chamberlain requested Washington deploy more
troops, and Grant responded with 1,100 fresh soldiers; the
additional soldiers, however, could not stem the tide of
rebellion against the Republican and black state government.

Redemption
Emerging as an opposition candidate to Republican control
was Wade Hampton. A solid member of South Carolina’s
prewar elite and ardent defender of state interests, he held
the respect of Sandlappers. Hampton was a voice of
moderation and cautioned the state against secession in 1861,
but when war broke out he committed himself to the defense
of South Carolina. After April 1865, he encouraged white
Democrats to work within the legal system, permit African
Americans their newfound constitutional rights, and so earn
their votes. With African-American support, Republicans
could be driven from South Carolina and the state would be
freed of external influence. In 1868, Hampton’s appeal to the
KKK for nonviolence secured a brief respite in violence, and
in the 1870s he openly denounced the extent of Klan brutality
directed against Republicans and blacks. Hampton
envisioned a point in the near future when South Carolina
would be freed from what he believed was the oppression of
Washington, and the traditions of the state, minus slavery,
would once again reign supreme.
In 1876 Elampton challenged Daniel Chamberlain’s
reelection bid for governor, and the Democratic Party
promoted him as South Carolina’s savior. Hampton collected
1,000 votes more than Chamberlain on Election Day. The
incumbent, however, claimed Democrats had rigged the
ballot returns and forced the General Assembly to decide the
election. Republicans still dominated the statehouse and
secured Chamberlain’s victory, protected in their duty by
Federal troops stationed around the building. Mobs
descended on Columbia and threatened to battle past the
soldiers and take down by force what they believed was a
fraudulent Republican government. Hampton intervened,
restored a measure of calm, and advised the crowd to go
home. The Democrat, however, had another plan.
While Chamberlain was being inaugurated on
December 7, Hampton spoke before a gathering of his
 NINE: RECONSTRUCTION 203

followers elsewhere in Columbia and announced that he

himself was the legal governor of South Carolina by popular
vote. The following week, Hampton’s supporters swore him
into office; from December 1876 until April 1877 South
Carolina had two governors and two legislatures, each
proclaiming itself legitimate. The matter was resolved in
April by the new president of the United States, Rutherford
B. Hayes, a Republican who had himself won a narrow and
hotly contested election. Hayes interviewed both
Chamberlain and Hampton, studied developments in South
Carolina over the previous decade, and decided Hampton
held the real power in the state. On April 3, rather than risk
further violence and perhaps open warfare in South
Carolina, the president officially ended the period of
Reconstruction and withdrew all Federal troops. Without
the protection of Washington, Chamberlain understood he
could not stay in Columbia and relinquished the governor’s
office to Hampton on April 11. Reconstruction in South
Carolina was over; the old prewar power base once more
controlled the state.
To South Carolinians, the election of Wade Hampton
and a host of other Democrats to public office marked the
state’s redemption from the corruption spawned by Radical
Republicans who spewed their contrary values of racial
equality and the supremacy of federal authority over states’
rights. Hampton’s immediate ring of advisors and elected
officials were former Confederate military officers and
politicians, the prewar landed elite who embodied the
essence of antebellum South Carolina. Controlling the
state’s executive office and both houses of the General
Assembly, the Redeemers quickly moved to purge
Republicans from office, dismantle Reconstruction
programs, and strip from the books most of the statutes
passed under Republican rule.
In matters of race, the Redeemers proved themselves
surprisingly tolerant, in part because blacks still were the
majority in the state’s population and their political support
would be required for Democrats to fulfill their agenda, and
in part because Hampton himself accepted the premise of
fundamental rights for free blacks. African Americans were

Wade Hampton. Photo taken between 1860 and 1870.

zo4 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

encouraged to join the Democratic Party, and nearly 100 of

those who did were appointed to selected administrative
posts. Under Hampton, the funding of black schools was
equal to that of white institutions, truly a rare feature of
South Carolina’s educational system before the 1960s.

Race and the Conservative Regime,

1876-1890
Wade Hampton ran unopposed in his bid for reelection in
November 1878; the following month, the General
Assembly elected him to represent South Carolina in the
United States Senate. By South Carolina’s standards,
Hampton was a moderate, and the state’s Redeemers
believed his presence in Washington would garner a
modicum of respect for the Palmetto State that had been
absent in Congress for decades. But there was another
current moving in political circles. As admired as the
governor was statewide, many South Carolinians hoped to
tighten control over the state’s black population; if
Hampton’s direct influence from Columbia were removed,
antebellum-styled Conservatives might be able to
manipulate his support base statewide and return South
Carolina more fully to the antebellum center.
Because black politicians in the Reconstruction Era
had been rather successful in legislating public equality
measures, the Conservatives’ first target was South
Carolina’s African Americans, who still comprised 60
percent of the total state population. Limit black voting
opportunities, they reasoned, and African American
political power would vanish. Toward this end,
Conservatives introduced and pressed through the
General Assembly over the opposition of Hampton’s
moderates a series of laws that, by 1890, effectively
disenfranchised the black population. An 1882 statute
contained several key measures. Voters were required to
pass a literacy test. This provision alone was expected to
purge the overwhelming majority of African Americans
from the ranks of voters in South Carolina. Those who had
been registered voters in the Reconstruction era and passed
the exam were to re-register by June 1, 1882 or forfeit
forever their right to vote. African Americans who resided
on isolated farms, as most did, found it difficult to leave
 NINE: RECONSTRUCTION 205

their fields and travel to distant registration sites; many

never even learned of the provision. Those who completed
each of these first two steps received a card entitling them
entry to the polls; however, should the voter change his
residency, as often occurred in the years following the war,
he was required to pay a substantial fee for the transfer of
his name to a new polling precinct, generally an expense
few black South Carolinians could afford. Should an
elections official deny anyone registration for any reason,
they could appeal, but the appeals process was made
elaborate and time-consuming in order to frustrate the
under-educated.
The 1882 measures yanked voting privileges from
about 77,000 African Americans, reducing the number of
eligible black voters from 91,000 in 1876 to 14,000 in 1888.
African Americans had no legal recourse. The Fifteenth
Amendment stated that the right to vote would not be
denied to anyone on the basis of race. The 1882 statutes did
not violate the amendment; the requirements were applied
to blacks and whites alike. Estimates placed the loss of
white registered voters at twenty percent, generally the
poorest and least educated whites in the state. Democrats
considered their absence from the elections process a
minimal sacrifice to attain their ultimate objective, the
removal of black voters. Neither was the Fourteenth
Amendment violated. It prohibited any state from erecting
any law that denied any right to anyone on the basis of
race. Again, blacks were entitled to vote in South Carolina,
provided they meet the same qualifications whites faced.
Within the Democratic Party, blacks confronted other
restrictions. County by county, local party units denied
African Americans the right to vote in primary elections.
This measure tested the boundary of constitutional law;
however, since blacks retained the right to vote in general
elections and the matter was confined within the party, no
violation technically existed.
Race remained a pivotal, fundamental issue in South
Carolina well beyond the collapse of the post-Reconstruction
Conservative period, but between 1876 and 1890 other
matters also claimed widespread attention.
206 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Economic Patterns to 1890

Agriculture rooted South Carolina’s economy in the
Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction periods as it had
before the Civil War. Cotton production reclaimed its
antebellum place of primacy and actually expanded well
beyond prewar levels. South Carolina’s farmers produced
350,000 bales of the fiber in 1860 but 750,000 bales in 1890.
Marginal lands were cultivated, and farmers committed
more of their acreage to cotton than to basic food crops, all
in hopes of cashing in on an apparent skyrocketing global
demand for the fiber caused by rising population growth
and new consumer demands. With this startling
production came an unwelcome response—falling market
prices. Not only were South Carolinians growing more
cotton, so were farmers across the South. Added to the total
amount was a corresponding rise in cotton production
elsewhere in the world. In short, excess cotton glutted the
national and global markets, driving down farmers’
earnings. In 1873, notes historian Walter Edgar, cotton sold
for fourteen cents per pound, but in 1880 it brought only
ten cents a pound. The trend persisted well into the
twentieth century. As terrible as declining prices were for
farmers, they never lost faith in a prosperous future for
cotton and, consequently, clung tenaciously to the crop.
But other enterprises added to the state’s income.
Phosphate fertilizer production prospered and contributed
to increased productivity in truck farming (vegetables and
fruit) for farmers who refused to stake their livelihood on
cotton. Some farmers experimented with planting tobacco
and found a ready market for their harvest in Durham,
North Carolina. Tobacco generated little wealth for South
Carolinians in the 1880s, but would emerge as a dominant
crop in the twentieth century. The manufacture of
Edgefield pottery also generated substantial profits. Noted
for the greenish hue that derived from the iron in upstate
clay, factories wheeled out an array of pots annually and
distributed them to markets along the East Coast. Lumber
mills, always present in the state, increased production
following the Civil War, and by the late 1880s South
Carolina supplied nearly fourteen percent of the nation’s
lumber needs. Adding weight to an economy beginning to
diversify was railroad expansion. Between 1870 and 1890,
 nine: reconstruction 207

track mileage almost doubled. State tax breaks and low-

interest state-backed loans attracted railroad companies to
the Palmetto State. By 1890, major cities in North Carolina
and Georgia were connected with rail lines stretching
through South Carolina, such as the connector between
Charlotte and Atlanta. The introduction of textile mills also
added to the South Carolina economy. In 1880, fourteen
mills employing 2,053 workers in Anderson, Greenville,
and Spartanburg Counties converted raw, cleaned cotton
into finished goods. Although the rise of textile
manufacturing was minimal before 1890, it portended a
significant redirection of the state’s economy as South
Carolina entered the twentieth century.

Education under the Conservative Regime

The Reconstruction government established the state’s
public school system, a service maintained by the
Conservative regime that succeeded the Republican era.
Neither government, however, developed educational
services significantly. South Carolina had 3,200 public schools
in 1882 but only 3,400 teachers. Needless to say, the
preponderance of schools were single-room, multi-grade
structures. But South Carolina’s school system going into the
final decade of the century exhibited certain features that
would continue into the post-World War II period, among
them per-pupil expenditures. The General Assembly in 1890
spent an average of $3.38 per child per year, four dollars less
than the South Atlantic average and fourteen dollars below
the national average. Per-pupil appropriations in 1890 for
black children were about fifty cents less than that provided
to white children (between 1890 and 1940 the unequal
funding actually widened significantly).
Appropriations were never adequate. Per-pupil
expenditures barely covered the cost of instruction,
providing largely the salaries of teachers and
administrators. Because teachers in the state earned far less
than their northern counterparts, South Carolina
consistently lost trained and experienced teachers to states
offering higher salaries or supplemental benefits, also a
trend common to the state into the post-World War II
period. As a result, many of the state’s 3,200 schools were
served by instructors barely out of high school themselves.
208 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

African American girls walking single file outside school, Charleston,

1891.

Most schools also lacked essential equipment. Blackboards

and chalk, desks, maps, and even stoves for the winter were
either nonexistent or purchased through donations given
individual schools by local churches or town fundraising
projects. Students purchased their textbooks and at year’s
end passed them on to younger brothers and sisters.
Hugh S. Thompson served the state as superintendent of
education from 1877 to 1882 and as governor from 1882 to
1886. Under his tenure in both seats, Thompson tried to
improve the quality of schools. He secured state financing for
summer institutes that prepared teachers for the classroom.
In 1886 he oversaw the founding of Winthrop College in
Rock Hill for the professional training of teachers, who
received official state certification upon graduation.
Thompson also made repeated calls on the General
Assembly to raise state appropriations for education and
worked to make the citizenry more supportive of the public
school system. Despite his sincere efforts to elevate the
quality of education in the state for both races, Thompson
actually accomplished little. Although South Carolinians and
their elected representatives all championed “good schools,”
illiteracy rates hovered at 75 percent for black children and
20 percent for whites in the 1880s.
 NINE: RECONSTRUCTION 209

Higher education also struggled. The University of

South Carolina closed its doors for three years following
Reconstruction. When it reopened, African Americans
were denied admission, and the university was
appropriated the paltry sum of $2,500. Its nearly
nonexistent budget allowed for only 185 students in 1882.
Inadequate funding prevented the rebuilding of prewar
academic programs, and nationally recognized professors
refused to accept positions with meager salaries. The
Citadel remained closed until 1882, but being the state’s
military academy, its funding more nearly matched its
financial needs. Private, church-supported colleges such as
Furman and Wofford fared better, their operational costs
provided by their Protestant benefactors. Black colleges also
faced uncertainty. The Reconstruction government
established South Carolina Agricultural and Mechanics
Institute in Orangeburg for black students in 1872 and
received supplemental funding directly from the federal
government under an 1862 law that promoted the founding
of such schools. Claflin College, next door to South
Carolina A & T, was sustained by northern Methodists;
Benedict, founded in 1871 by the American Baptist Church,
and Allen College, chartered the same year by the African
Methodist Episcopal Church (both in Columbia), were also
financed principally by sources outside South Carolina.
South Carolinians had rebelled against Reconstruction,
returned the prewar elite to government, and purged
African Americans from the political process. To be sure,
the Reconstruction government and moderate Democrats
in the 1880s ushered in some positive changes, but South
Carolina in 1890 closely resembled its predecessor of 30
years earlier.
 10
Tillmanism, Progress, and War:
1890-1918

Farmer Discontent
Between 1860 and 1890 more land was placed under
cultivation nationwide than in the 250 years from the
founding of Jamestown to the Civil War. New farm
machinery promised greater productivity from fewer man¬
hours and with less cost, and the introduction of
manufactured chemical fertilizers ensured the quality of
soil. In addition, the nation’s population nearly tripled in
those years, from about 32 million to almost 90 million
Americans, giving rise to what appeared to be an insatiable
demand for food crops, cotton, and tobacco. At first glance,
one would presume a windfall of opportunity and
prosperity for America’s farmers, but the reality was far
different. The price of new machinery well exceeded the
farmers’ reach, and transportation costs for the shipment of
crops to distant markets were prohibitive. The advent of
agribusiness (corporate-financed farming) only com¬
pounded the farmers’ difficulties. Market prices became
depressed as southern and Midwestern farmers produced
surplus harvests, and by 1900 farmer income was half what
it had been in 1860.
Farmers solicited help from their state governments
and from Washington, but aid never materialized. With
government aid denied to them, farmers established
organizations for mutual support and political action,
among them the Grange. In South Carolina, 342 local
Grange chapters formed in the early 1870s, a movement
principally the product of D. Wyatt Aiken from
Cokesbury, who traveled the state extensively calling on
farmers to unite. Despite widespread support, the Grange
accomplished little beyond the founding of the Agricultural
Bureau in 1879.
211
212 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

The Farmers’ Alliance replaced the Grange in the mid-

1880s, claiming 60,000 white and black members in the
Palmetto State and 6 million nationwide. The Alliance,
nationally and locally, called for government regulation of
railroads, the addition of silver to the monetary system,
government-backed loans to individual farmers at one
percent interest, government storage of crops to force a rise
in market values, and a federal personal income tax to
finance government aid to farmers. At the time, Alliance
proposals were viewed as revolutionary and a direct attack
on the free enterprise system.
In 1892, the Farmers’ Alliance formed a separate
political party, the Populist Party, held a national
convention, and ran its own candidates for all state offices,
Congress, and the presidency itself. Alliance farmers
naturally flocked to the movement, and they netted support
from northeastern factory workers whose concerns were
included in the party’s campaign planks. Populists lost the
race for the White House, but some were sent to Congress
and many won seats in state legislatures.
Despite the efforts of the Grange and Alliance, South
Carolina’s farmers confronted deteriorating conditions. The
number of acres under cultivation remained constant, but by
1890 eight percent of the state’s farmers had been driven from
their lands because they could not pay their taxes. Many
resorted to selling portions of their property to cover debts,
but this further reduced family income. The loss of income
required many Palmetto farmers to tie themselves into the
dreaded crop-lien system: to finance his work for the coming
season or to pay taxes, the farmer mortgaged his crop to the
local merchant. The merchant held the lien on the yet-to-be
planted and harvested crop, allowing the farmer to purchase
seed, fertilizer, tools, feed, and other necessary supplies.
Merchants’ profits soared as they typically added 20 to 50
percent to the cash price of goods purchased on credit. By
1880, fully two-thirds of South Carolina farmers found
themselves bound in debt to local merchants and unable to see
any avenue for escape. The Conservatives, or “Redeemers,”
who governed the state following Reconstruction offered no
comfort; they were the large landowners, lawyers, and
businessmen who profited from the crop-lien system and
cheap farm labor. But in 1885, a new voice for reform echoed
across the state.
 TEN: TILLMANISM, PROGRESS, AND WAR: 1890-1918 213

Benjamin Ryan Tillman

Benjamin Ryan Tillman was not a veteran of the Civil War,
unlike most of the men who directed the affairs of South
Carolina. He had not attended college, nor was he an
established member of the state’s elite. But Tillman was
certainly not a common farmer. On the eve of civil war, his
Edgefield County family owned 100 slaves and anticipated
acceptance into the state’s ruling class. He himself held 2,200
acres in 1881 and employed 30 day laborers. Nonetheless,
Tillman in the 1880s claimed to understand the farmers’
discontent, after having been battered by a series of droughts
and crop failures. He conceded that an ignorance of profitable
farming techniques contributed to farmers’ problems in
South Carolina, but the Conservative businessmen and
lawyers of the legislature did not understand farmers’
frustrations and did not care to comprehend what farmers
faced, he argued.
Benjamin Ryan Tillman circa 1905
© G. V. Buck
214 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Tillman spoke before the State Agriculture and

Mechanical Society in Bennettsville in 1885 and instantly
shocked both farmers and Conservatives. Conservatives, he
shouted, “hoodwinked the people,” making them believe
government worked for the welfare of the people when in
practice they lined their own pockets with money that
rightly belonged to farmers; the legislature was utterly
corrupted by wealthy men, intent on appropriating funds to
institutions and public services that netted themselves
financial gain and further bolstered the Conservative grip
on South Carolina. The vilest term he could use against
professional legislators in Columbia was “politician,” a
term frequently spoken with a slithering drawl through
curled lips and accentuated with an obvious look of disgust.
Turning on farmers, he blamed them for much of their
own misfortune. Their refusal to band together and apply
sufficient pressure on state government for action could not
be excused. Remaining fixed to outmoded and failed
farming techniques only ensured continued poverty.
Indebtedness to merchants devolved the farmer to the
status of slave. Crop diversification and education, he
thundered, were the two pillars of farm success. Tillman’s
speech popularized his nickname “Pitchfork,” a moniker
he gained possibly because he represented farming
interests, perhaps because Conservatives suddenly believed
the Devil himself stood in their midst, or because he
threatened to “pitchfork” his opponents—all explanations
farmers attributed to Tillman’s assumed title.
In 1886, Pitchfork Ben Tillman and his closest friends
founded the Farmers’ Association to seek solutions to
Conservative rule and farmers’ ills. Any white man who
supported fundamental reform in government was
welcome as a member, whether farmer or businessman.
Tillman was cultivating a political movement, with himself
at the helm. Among the most immediate needs, the
association believed, was an agricultural college. The
following year, Thomas G. Clemson died, and his will
specified his expansive estate and $80,000 were to be used to
found an agricultural college. After much wrangling in the
General Assembly, including intense pressure from the
Farmers’ Association, the legislature in 1889 finally
acquiesced and founded Clemson College, its main
 ten: tillmanism, progress, and WAR: 1890-1918 215

building named in honor of Benjamin Tillman, who had

led the crusade for the school’s establishment.
“Tillmania” swept the state, and in 1890 the Farmers’
Association struck once more at the Conservative regime in
a publicly read document calling Conservatives the enemy
of the people who had “bamboozled and debauched”
honest legislators, forcing them to conform to aristocratic
goals or fall victim to Conservative political power.
Conservatives, the document continued, were antebellum
South Carolinians who inhibited the state’s modernization
and progress.
The Farmers’ Association met again in a March 1890
convention to draft potential candidates for the Democratic
Party slate. Through rather shady methods, Tillmanites
controlled whose names the organization would support and
then moved to capture the Democratic Party itself by
nominating Tillman as the convention’s candidate for
governor. Before the summer party convention, Tillman’s
candidates conducted “stump meetings” in each county, local
face-to-face, personal campaign presentations and speeches
to voters (a system continued today in many small
communities, such as Gallivants Ferry on the Little Pee Dee
River just inside Horry County). More committed to rallying
the voters than to intelligent debate of critical issues, the
“stumps” garnered an enthusiasm heretofore absent among
small farmers and working-class South Carolinians.
Pitchfork Ben himself breathed unrelenting fire against the
Conservatives and their institutions. He derided Charleston
as the “greedy old City” of the state’s elite and the University
of South Carolina as the producer of Conservative aristocrats.
He condemned Conservatives for their backward-looking
rather than forward-looking perspective and blamed them
for low cotton prices, farmers’ land loss, and profiting Irom
the farmers’ troubles. Tillmanites trounced Conservatives in
the convention, and with South Carolina essentially a one-
party state, Tillman carried the November general elections.
Perceived as a reformer, Tillman reaped the endorsement of
the national Farmers’ Alliance.
As governor from 1890 to 1894, Tillman ushered in not
a revolution but instead “changes.” He oversaw the
construction of Clemson College, which opened in 1893
with 400 students, toned down his hostile rhetoric toward
 The Lost Cause

Edward A. Pollard’s 1866 book, The Lost Cause, was a literary exposition
of the South’s defeat in the Civil War, but the title soon entered southern
vocabulary as a phrase that captured the South’s understanding of itself as a
region and culture and defined the very essence of Southerners until recent
years. The “Lost Cause” embodied everything dear to Southerners—
antebellum values of honor, deference, and propriety; defense of states’
rights and the legitimacy of secession; and pride in the region’s culture. It
cast a sense of glory—almost a holy veil—over the Civil War, vaunted the
courage and mettle of the Confederacy’s military commanders and ordinary
soldiers, and ascribed defeat to the South’s exhaustion of resources rather
than loss of will. It presented the North as mechanical and inhuman and the
perpetual exploiter of the South. In short, the Lost Cause spirit defined truth
from a purely southern perspective and shaped the collective memory of the
war and its aftermath. It held the South to be the bastion of godliness and
simplicity, the defender of the common man, and the advocate of true
democracy and equality. Southern politics in practice was anything but
democratic and the region viciously maintained that white supremacy and
race segregation mattered little. The image of the South cast in Lost Cause
terms united the region against the perceived corruptive and dehumanizing
power of the North, which was responsible for the war, the South’s
destruction, and the region’s postwar economic and social deterioration.
Following the period of Reconstruction (1865-1877), the Lost
Cause rooted itself deeply into southern communities. Cities, towns, and
villages all erected statues of war heroes and monuments honoring the
glorious war. Iron figures of solitary Confederate soldiers stood on
courthouse grounds and college campuses, always facing north.
Organizations were founded such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans and
Daughters of the Confederacy. Mirny southern states abandoned any
celebration of Independence Day for the annual Confederate Memorial
Day, a calendar date still marked in South Carolina and until quite recently
honored with a day off work, while President’s Day went unheeded. The
Lost Cause found expression in two classic Hollywood films, Birth of a
Nation and Gone with the Wind. Southern universities developed an
extensive curriculum focused on southern history, literature, and culture,
programs that in the 1920s and 1930s pressed the Lost Cause myth as
reality and expunged the Confederacy of guilt in the Civil War. Although
the content of these programs have changed substantially, to present the
war and the antebellum South in a far more objective fight similar college
courses continue to flourish and attract native Southerners.
Symbols of the Old Confederacy surfaced during the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1960s. The Confederate battle flag was hoisted above
South Carolina’s statehouse and there it remained until 2002. The song
“Dixie” echoed through high school and college football stadiums, and
frequently was heard the statement “The South is going to rise again!”
Civil War museums appeared in many southern communities and
invariably gave greater and more positive attention to Confederate
memorabilia than to any symbol or artifact of the Union. In tourist
communities such as Myrtle Beach, the Confederate flag was
emblazoned on ocean floats, beach blankets, and bathing suits. Tours
of war-era plantation homes, Fort Sumter, the Battery, and the Slave
Market all became popular attractions in Charleston. The Lost Cause
mentality pervaded South Carolina and the larger South, giving its
proponents a sense of belonging, an identity, and greater meaning.
As the twentieth century approached its end, the spirit of the Lost
Cause waned in South Carolina. The state’s population was becoming
much more diverse, a product of “outsiders” moving into the
Palmetto State and diluting the emotional base that sustained the myth.
Moreover, the nation’s population became more transient, breaking
regional identity. Television, music, motion pictures, and the internet
all pulled younger Americans into a national consciousness. And,
sadly, public schools across the United States, including school
systems in South Carolina, reduced student academic requirements in
history and social studies coursework. Time and modernity have
contributed to a diminished awareness of and feeling for the Lost
Cause; despite this, the myth has not died completely.
21 8 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

USC and encouraged financial support for the university,

and kept open the Citadel, though he questioned its
continued service to the state. The Tillman administration
failed to pass railroad reform bills, and from his seat in
Columbia he never attacked the crop-lien system that so
indebted farmers. In his first term, which ended in 1892,
Pitchfork Ben not only accomplished little for South
Carolina farmers but expended little effort on their behalf.
The governor’s 1892 campaign adopted much of the
Farmers’ Alliance platform, including coinage of silver,
control over railroads, and low-interest government loans
to farmers. Following his reelection, Tillman pushed
through the General Assembly legislation establishing a
state railroad commission that was empowered to govern
freight rates and an additional law that limited textile mill
workers to a 60-hour week. As the General Assembly
approached the end of the 1892 session. Pitchfork Ben
slipped a rider onto a rather innocuous bill stating that the
sale of liquor would be directly governed by the state and
profits from the sale of alcohol would go to the state. In
their rush to leave Columbia lor the Christmas holiday
season, few legislators read the rider and ignorantly passed
Tillman’s measure into law. The bill created the State
Dispensary, giving the state exclusive rights to sell liquor,
open liquor stores, and regulate the industry.
In matters of race, Tillman never hesitated to state
unequivocally that white supremacy would always be
enforced statewide. White South Carolinians, he shouted,
“never recognized the right of the Negro to govern white
men and never would acknowledge black governance.
Although he promised to remove from office sheriffs who
allowed lynchings to go unpunished, Tillman openly
supported the lynching of African Americans for the crime
of rape and said repeatedly he would himself lead the mob
in such a situation. Five lynchings occurred during his first
term as governor and thirteen in his second term. Tillman’s
words appealed to farmers throughout the Palmetto State,
and his rabid racism expanded his base of popular support.
Tillman clearly exploited the issue of race. The Eight
Box Law had effectively stripped voting rights from
thousands of black men; in a rewrite of the state constitution
in 1895, poll taxes were added as a requirement for voting
 ten: tillmanism, progress, and war: 1890-1918 219

under the presumption that most blacks would not be able to

afford the cost. Moreover, to enter the polling place, a voter
who had paid his tax was required to present his receipt;
Tillmanites believed few blacks would retain the slip of
paper after paying their taxes. To get around the literacy test
that in practice removed many uneducated whites from the
polls, the Tillman administration added an “understanding”
clause to the constitution. If an illiterate man understood the
state constitution when read to him, he could vote. African
Americans would have a very difficult time convincing white
elections officials of their “understanding.” The governor’s
tactics effectively derailed the Fifteenth Amendment and
removed virtually all black influence in state government.
Tillman’s tenure as governor ended with the 1894
elections, but he continued to wield influence in the state
constitutional convention of 1895. Determined as ever to
restrict the rights of African Americans and to protect
white supremacy in the state, Tillman and his supporters
pressed into the constitution a provision that defined as
“black” anyone who had “one eighth or more negro [sic]
blood.” The new constitution further stipulated that the
two races were to have separate public schools and colleges.

The Rise of Jim Crow

Neither Tillman nor South Carolina was unique in
legalizing segregation; indeed, throughout the South and
eventually in many northern states, segregation laws were
erected and sternly enforced. Collectively and generically
termed Jim Crow Laws, these laws required racial
segregation in all public facilities. The United States
Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 gave
official sanction to the racist measures, provided separate
facilities assured equal opportunity. The doctrine “separate
but equal” became the base of race relations nationwide.
With the court’s decision, segregation became the domain
of local communities and state government alike—common
ground among South Carolina’s whites. Segregation laws
separated the races on trolley cars, railroad passenger cars,
public restrooms, restaurants, water fountains, theaters, retail
stores, public parks, hospitals, textile mills, and any place
where the two races might encounter each other in public.
“White Only” and “Colored Only” signs soon littered public
220 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

establishments in every community in the state. The only time

in which the two races were permitted by law and social
custom to interact in public was in black service to whites—
nursemaids to white children, “errand boys to white
businessmen, and custodians in the white workplace.
Additional customs were also maintained. Blacks were to
address whites as Mr., Miss, or Mrs. although whites
addressed African Americans by their first names. It was not
acceptable for blacks to look squarely into the eyes of whites
when answering or asking questions. In all matters, blacks
were to demonstrate deference to whites. The age of Jim
Crow had descended on the state, as it had on the nation, and
would remain entrenched for another 60 to 70 years.

Agricultural Developments, 1900-1920

Although truck farming and livestock production gained
numerous converts in the early years of the twentieth
century, cotton remained South Carolina’s principal cash
crop, despite its low market value of thirteen cents per
pound in 1913. War in Europe collapsed many of the state’s
overseas markets, and as a result, domestic buyers were
swamped with surplus fiber. Prices plummeted to six cents
a pound in October 1914. The state government responded,
restricting the number of acres on which cotton could be
planted. Reduced supply along with mill production of
war-related items for sale to English and French military
forces reversed the downward spiral and drove prices
upward, a pattern that continued throughout World War I
and shortly thereafter, with cotton ultimately reaching 40
cents per pound in 1920.
Another crop that was acquiring greater importance in
South Carolina agriculture was tobacco. Some farmers in
the colonial era had experimented with the plant, but rice
production proved far more profitable. In the late 1700s
and early 1800s, tobacco was once more harvested, but
depressed market prices for the plant along with the rising
profitability of cotton again reduced interest in tobacco.
This particular pattern, however, reversed following the
Civil War. As postwar cotton values plummeted, Bright
Leal tobacco was developed and offered smokers a flavor
milder than earlier blends. Sales soared, and cigarette
rolling and packaging machines invented in the 1870s
 ten: tillmanism, progress, and war: 1890-1918 2.21

further stimulated sales as consumers no longer had to roll

their own cigarettes. By 1890, South Carolina had a second
cash crop to plant, and farmers hoped it would generate a
prosperity that cotton no longer offered.
Tobacco farming was largely centered in the Pee Dee
region, and the plant, once harvested and cured, was hauled
to local warehouses and auctioned to manufacturers such as
the American Tobacco Company in Durham, North
Carolina. Between 1890 and 1900, harvests rose from
223,000 pounds to 20 million pounds. Demand soared, and
farmers’ profits rose to $154 per acre, in glaring contrast to
the $10 per acre profit gleaned from cotton. But the lure of
rising income drove farmers to overproduce, and tobacco
profits plunged to $54 per acre in 1910. Despite the
substantial drop in profits, tobacco still generated far higher
proceeds for farmers than cotton. South Carolinians had
discovered another cash crop that would, in decades to
follow, displace cotton from its long-held throne.

Industrialization
Under the Conservative regime following Reconstruction,
South Carolinians hoped to diversify the state’s economy and
toward that end took steps to enlarge the textile industry.
Expansion proceeded at a rather rapid rate. In 1880 there
were only fourteen textile mills in the state; in 1900 there were
115, and 165 ten years later. Not only did the number of mills
increase, they also became much larger operations. Two
thousand men and women were employed in the business in
1880, but by 1910 nearly 40,000 South Carolinians were fully
engaged in textile manufacturing. Capital investment also
rose during the same period, from $3 million to $85 million.
The Poe Manufacturing Company in Greenville operated
60,000 spindles, and John Woodside’s mills, also in Greenville,
had 1,000,000 spindles. By 1910, only Massachusetts’s textile
industry produced more goods than South Carolina.
The wealth generated by textile production, however,
was largely concentrated in the hands of mill owners. Mill
workers were almost exclusively poor white farmers who
sought a financial security the land could not provide, but
wages were low. More often than not, several members of a
single family held jobs in the mill to provide sufficient
income for the family’s survival. Owners compensated for
Z22 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

the poor pay by providing company housing for employees,

but houses were poorly constructed four- or five-room
structures and generally rented for 50 cents per room per
month, the equivalent of one week’s wages. Roads in the mill
villages were unpaved, and few modern conveniences such as
indoor plumbing existed. By the early 1900s, however, some
mill towns included a community recreation center and a
school for village children. The system, however, cultivated a
workforce almost entirely dependent on the mill owner.
Textile manufacturing commanded South Carolina
industry into the post—World War II years, but there were
other efforts to diversify the economy. Lumber mills opened
upstate where hardwood trees were plentiful, and the
Lowcountry’s pine forests supplied soft wood for the
manufacture of paper. The production ol naval stores carved
a niche in the state’s emerging industrial base, principally the
manufacture of turpentine. Along the coast, commercial
fishing assumed greater importance supplying shrimp and
crab to markets the length of the Atlantic seaboard.

Modernization of Society
The rising standard of living washing across America’s
burgeoning middle class by 1900 encouraged families to leave
the confines ol northern urban communities lor short visits to
other, more “colorlul” locales. The modern “vacation” gave
rise to South Carolina’s tourist industry, today a centerpiece of
the state’s economy. The romantic ideas ol pre—Civil War
Charleston once more lured Northerners to the city. Aiken
and Camden drew thousands to the annual horse races,
steeplechases, polo matches, and loxhunts. A few vacationers
escaped the heat of New York City to relax in the cool air of
South Carolina’s mountains or lounge on the long, lonely,
desolate strips of beach that today are the Grand Strand.
Others ventured deep into the state's backwoods to hunt wild
game or to fish in the network of streams and rivers that
etched their way through the midlands to the coast. Tourists
brought their wallets to the Palmetto State, and the state
became a little richer from their visits.
In Columbia and Charleston, theaters opened featuring
amateur performances—similar to the vaudeville stages
found in northern communities. Many towns built public
parks, and a few constructed baseball fields to tap into the
 TEN: TILLMANISM, PROGRESS, AND WAR: 1890-1918 2.Z3

rising popularity of intercity competition. Collegiate

football gained popularity across the United States in the
late 1890s and early 1900s, and in the Palmetto State a
rivalry quickly emerged between Clemson and the
University of South Carolina. The teams met yearly at
Columbia’s state fairgrounds. The State Fair as well as
county fairs attracted thousands of South Carolinians each
autumn and provided entertainment affordable to the
general population.
Wealthier South Carolinians in the early 1900s
purchased automobiles, clearly a status symbol for the rich
at the time. Cars sold for about Si,000 in 1904, a price that
did not include optional and costly accessories such as a
windshield. That year, 50 automobiles puttered the streets
of Columbia, the “automobile town” of South Carolina.
Traffic lights were nonexistent in the city until 1922, and
collisions attracted curious spectators and made good copy
in the local newspaper. In 1909, the introduction of the $500
Maxwell, a two-cylinder, twelve-horsepower competitor,
drove auto prices downward, making them affordable to
more residents, but the horse and carriage continued to
dominate city streets into the early 1920s.

Persistent Problems
The importance of agriculture in South Carolina meant
that children living on small and mid-size farms were long
accustomed to helping parents in the fields. Rare was the
boy or girl before the turn of the century who enjoyed the
opportunity of attending school instead of spending the
entire day tending crops and livestock. Even in the years
leading up to World War II, most farm families expected
their sons and daughters to rise before dawn, start the
morning fire in the home’s wood-burning stove, gather
additional wood, and handle other essential chores before
leaving for school. Upon their return home in the
afternoon, their labor was again needed, plowing fields,
caring for farm animals, making repairs to the house or
barn, mending fences, and a myriad of other tasks.
Child labor also extended into textile mills. Youngsters
generally worked in the spinning room, mending snapped
yarn and replacing full bobbins with empty ones. Others
swept floors, ran errands, emptied garbage cans, removed lint
224 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

from machinery, or boxed manufactured goods. Children

fourteen years and older occasionally operated machinery in
the cutting room. Wages were as small as the children—thirty
cents for a twelve-hour shift, six days a week. By 1900, fully 25
percent of textile employees were children under the age of
16. School was not an option for young workers. Illiteracy
served mill owners quite well, assuring the factory of a steady
supply of adult workers in years to come.
In the late 1890s, reformers vented concerns for the
children’s safety and lack of education. N. G. Gonzales,
editor of Columbia’s newspaper The State, and Governor
Miles B. McSweeney initiated an effort to purge industry of
child labor, a movement concurrently pressed in most states
nationwide. Gonzales and McSweeney were supported in
their endeavor by the American Federation of Labor and
the recently formed South Carolina Child Labor
Committee. Progress came slowly. In 1903 the General
Assembly passed a law that banned the employment of
children under twelve years of age. This left 9,000 children
between twelve and sixteen years old in the workplace, or
24 percent of the total work force in 1905, and those
youngsters continued their standard 60-hour work week.
No further restriction surfaced until 1917 when the
minimum work age was raised to fourteen.
Reform efforts in South Carolina seldom addressed the
treatment of convicted criminals. Prisons were intended as
punishment, not as rehabilitation centers. Facilities were
inhuman; little light, stale air, filthy toilets, limited bathing
service, insufficient and poor-quality food, and a dampness
that pervaded cells and hallways altogether made prisons
truly punishing detention centers. Abusive guards further
dehumanized prisoners. Persons convicted of less serious
offenses spent time in local jails, and these varied in quality
according to the community’s willingness and ability to
provide suitable facilities.
The state permitted the use of chain-gang labor. Under
this system, prisoners were outfitted with heavy, striped
uniforms, shackled around the ankle, chained to each other,
and assigned to public works projects such as road repair,
ditch digging, and swamp clearance. Armed guards stood
watch over the prisoners and were authorized to “shoot-to-
kill” those who attempted escape. Chain gangs frequently
 TEN: TILLMANISM, PROGRESS, AND WAR: 1890-1918 225

were camped at the work site until their assignment was

completed. At night, prisoners were exposed to mosquitoes,
rain or high humidity, uncomfortably cool evenings,
minimal food, and physical abuse. Many became ill, and
many died. The chain-gang system, so common in South
Carolina, did come under attack by reformers in the 1920s
and 1930s, but it persisted well into the 1950s.

A Reactionary Moment
As one historian phrased it, after 1900 “Senator Pitchfork Ben
Tillman was still the big frog in the political pond,” but his
Washington residency as United States senator substantially
lessened his direct influence in South Carolina. A modicum of
calm descended on the state following Tillman’s departure
and lasted until 1910. In that year the governor’s seat went to
Newberry resident Coleman Blease. Since 1890 Blease had
bounced in and out of the General Assembly and adopted
many of the political tactics employed by Tillman, but his
coarseness, fanaticism, and borderline demagoguery
compelled even “Pitchfork Ben” to denounce him.
Governor Blease proclaimed himself a friend of the
poor, capitalizing on the growing sense of frustration and
alienation the white lower socioeconomic class felt. He
lashed out at the holders of wealth who buttressed an
economic system beneficial to themselves but which
saddled the working class with debt and few opportunities.
He criticized the temperance movement’s insistence that
alcoholic beverages be outlawed, the one comfort poor men
could afford. Blease praised the fortitude, the loyalty, the
work ethic, and the spiritual base of the common man and
did so in a language they fully understood.
Blease used his two terms as governor (1911-1915) to
attack what he saw as the two enemies of the state’s
working class. He held the opinion that the state s
institutions of higher education only turned out more
members of the exploitative elitist class in the state and
insisted that the General Assembly sharply reduce
appropriations for South Carolina s colleges. He also
despised the idea of African Americans attending school,
believing blacks were naturally inferior to whites and better
suited to a life as subservient laborers. Unable to purge the
state constitution’s provision that authorized funding for
22 6 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

black schools, Blease demanded that allocations to those

schools not exceed the taxes paid by African Americans.
Had the General Assembly conformed to the governor’s
demand, black educational institutions would have nearly
vanished across the state. Blease further tried to censor
newspapers that challenged his views, repeatedly terming
news reporters and editors “liars,” “slime,” and “scurrilous
blackguards.” The governor also battled the legislature’s
social agenda, which included further restrictions on child
labor and efforts to implement compulsory school
attendance laws, factory inspection laws, and medical
examinations for school children—all measures that were
being widely adopted throughout the nation under the
reform banner “Progressivism.” The governor believed the
workingman in South Carolina wanted to be free of all
forms of government regulation; social legislation only
placed the government deeper into family and personal
affairs. Although the frequency of lynching had noticeably
declined in South Carolina, Blease offered pardons to those
convicted of the crime. When confronted by his
counterparts at a southern governors’ conference in
Richmond, who flatly denounced the practice as illegal,
Blease retorted “to hell with the Constitution.”
Blease’s support came from South Carolina’s white
working poor. The state’s dispossessed white citizens felt
shackled in a form of economic slavery governed by a
corporate aristocracy that reaped profits from the sweat of
laborers. Families saw greater benefit from the income
their children could bring home rather than the long-term
rewards of educating their sons and daughters. And, poor
whites despised any progress blacks might attain, a feeling
predicated on the fear of losing their jobs to African
Americans willing to work for lower wages and on the
presumption that, despite their poverty, being white still
meant they were “better” than someone else.

Progressivism: The Return to Reform

The reactionary moment embodied in the governorship of
Cole Blease dissipated as poor South Carolinians realized
he was more mouth than substance. In 1914 voters sent
Richard I. Manning to Columbia as their new governor.
Manning, generally regarded as a Progressive reformer,
 TEN: TILLMANISM, PROGRESS, AND WAR: 1890-1918 227

albeit a conservative one, promised to raise South Carolina’s

economy, modernize the state, and elevate the standard of
living for all citizens. He politically placed himself in the
camp of President Woodrow Wilson, the first postwar
Southerner to occupy the White House and an outspoken
proponent of social, economic, and political reform based
on the spirit of Christian morality.
South Carolina in 1914 held the embarrassing position
of being ranked 47th among 48 states in its level of
statewide illiteracy. During his four years in office,
Manning doubled state appropriations to public schools.
His fight for a compulsory attendance law failed, but he did
manage a “local option” provision that permitted each
community to enact a local ordinance regarding school
attendance. Manning convinced the General Assembly to
establish a state tax commission that was charged with the
responsibility of assessing property values statewide and
collecting taxes on that property, money that would be
spent partially on public education. He and his supporters
believed government should accept some responsibility for
human problems and public services and toward that end
his administration modernized the state hospital for the
mentally ill and laid the groundwork for a second facility in
Clinton. He was instrumental in creating the State
Highway Commission and the State Highway Depart¬
ment, both founded in 1917, to plan the expansion of roads
and oversee their construction. With the power of
Progressives behind him, he raised the minimum work age
from twelve to fourteen, removing 2,400 children from
factories across the state. The legislature adopted a
workmen’s compensation law, and the governor further
advocated the right of workers to organize labor unions.
The Progressive spirit that sifted through the state
during Manning’s years as governor also embraced African
Americans, but rather than seeking direct aid Irom the
General Assembly, blacks initiated “self help” programs.
Taylor Lane Hospital opened in Columbia to serve black
patients with trained black nurses. A Negro Health
Association was established that sought to educate African
Americans in home sanitation, the preparation of
nutritional meals, personal hygiene, and community health.
A Colored Civic League was founded in Charleston, and
228 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

similar organizations surfaced in other cities and towns.

The South Carolina Federation of Colored Women built
the Fairwold Home near Columbia for the care of
orphaned, abused, and delinquent young girls.
The changes brought to South Carolina by the
Manning administration mirrored national trends and
seemed to place the state on a track toward modernization.
Manning was not a political liberal; perhaps more than
anything, he was guided by a sense of Christian duty to
work for the welfare of his fellow man.

The Great War

On April 6, 1917 Europe’s war finally snagged the United
States as President Woodrow Wilson declared war on
Germany, and South Carolina immediately committed its
resources and manpower to the nation’s war effort. Across
the state, Sandlappers rejoiced in the noble crusade to “end
all war” and to “make the world safe for democracy.”
Parades rolled down Main Street in most every community,
replete with marching bands, local militia units, flags, waves
of red, white, and blue streamers, and civic leaders riding in
automobiles and trucks calling on citizens to enlist their time
and money in home front duties. Enlistment posters and
announcements to purchase war bonds covered storefront
windows and lined city sidewalks. Army and navy recruiting
stations multiplied in each county, beckoning young men to
don the nation’s uniform and defeat the Hun. More than 200
community leaders formed a speakers’ bureau in South
Carolina and offered themselves as patriotic promotional
speakers at rallies, blood drives, school assemblies, and
anywhere else their presence was desired. War bond sales
totaled $100 million in South Carolina during the war, which
when figured on a per capita basis made the Palmetto State
one of the largest financial contributors to the war effort. The
patriotic fervor that gripped the state also manifested itself in
the most innocent features of daily life. Anything German
was immediately suspect, including those things that
sounded German. In true patriotic fashion. Dachshunds
became “liberty pups,” German Shepherds were now
“liberty Shepherds,” and sauerkraut “liberty cabbage.” Most
telling of statewide sentiment, South Carolina celebrated the
Fourth of July for the first time since the Civil War.
 TEN: TILLMANISM, PROGRESS, AND WAR: 1890-1918 229

The nation and state that now pressed war in Europe

for the preservation and ultimate expansion of democracy,
however, exhibited some rather undemocratic behavior.
The State Council of Defense in April clearly and
succinctly stated in its Handbook^ on the War that South
Carolinians would support the war effort or be branded
traitors. Opposition was not tolerated. Antiwar rallies in
Lexington, Orangeburg, Newberry, and Charleston
counties confronted angry mobs; newspapermen who
challenged the president’s decision were jailed, and
publications that opposed the war were banned. State
leaders who questioned the war and its motives found their
political careers shattered. The aggressiveness of war
supporters in the Palmetto State mirrored the sentiment
and behavior of Americans nationwide.
Although South Carolinians rallied behind the flag,
Jim Crow nonetheless required racial segregation in all
war-related activities such as bond drives and volunteer
work for the American Red Cross. Blood donated by
citizens for the medical care of servicemen was also
segregated by the race of its contributors. This was not
unique to South Carolina and the practice persisted into the
early months of World War II. Both the War Department
and Department of the Navy strictly enforced the
segregation of its soldiers and sailors in training, unit
assignment, and deployment.
During the war, 307,000 South Carolinians registered
with the military draft; 54,000 were drafted, but thousands
more volunteered. Most served in the 30th Infantry
Division, nicknamed “the Old Hickory Division” in
commemoration of South Carolina’s native son and icon
Andrew Jackson. Following their training at Camp
Jackson in Columbia, one of three army training posts
erected in the state during the war years, the 30th was
shipped to France and immediately engaged German
troops on the dreaded Hindenburg Line. The 93rd Infantry
Regiment of the Old Hickory Division was made up of
African-American troops and was attached to French
combat forces for most of its tenure in France. In battle, the
regiment distinguished itself immensely, earning more
combat medals than most white American units in the
entire United States Army. Among those soldiers was Fred
230 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Stowers of Sandy Springs, who received the Congressional

Medal of Honor (CMH), the only African American
awarded the distinction in World War I. A white soldier of
the 30th Infantry Division, James Dozier from Rock Hill,
was the only other South Carolinian to receive the CMH
for service in France. Following the war, Dozier became
the state’s adjutant general and was central in the creation
and preparation of South Carolina’s Home Guard Units
and domestic defense programs in World War II.
The war provided the Palmetto State with unanticipated
opportunities to draw a greater cash flow into its economy.
Army training posts were established at three locations—
Camp Jackson in Columbia, Camp Wadsworth in
Spartanburg, and Camp Sevier in Greenville. Within weeks
of their founding, servicemen at each camp nearly equaled in
number the civilian population of the surrounding cities.
With the troops and military installations came federal
dollars to local companies to build army facilities and
construct roads to serve the military’s needs. Paychecks
directly benefited local retail stores, banks, grocery stores,
and a host of other area businesses. Although both the
Marine Corps training base at Parris Island near Beaufort
and the Charleston Navy Yard had been founded years
before the war, the financial windfall on their parent
communities was likewise impressive.
Americans nationwide certainly worried for their sons in
uniform who fought in France, but they were equally
concerned for their welfare while in training stateside. So
many American servicemen, like most from South Carolina,
had never ventured very far from home prior to April 1917.
They were, for the most part, innocent to the ways of the
world. Americans feared that military life and the availability
of certain forms of vice typically associated with training
centers would potentially corrupt the moral integrity of their
sons. To reduce the likelihood of young men being serviced by
prostitutes or hilling victim to the Devil’s brew, “sin-free
zones’’ were erected around the nation’s military posts and
bases. In Greenville, Spartanburg, Columbia, Beaufort, and
Charleston, brothels and bars were closed in areas
immediately adjacent to training camps and were declared
off-limits to servicemen elsewhere in the cities. Despite this
national and state campaign, the French proved far less
 TEN: TILLMANISM, PROGRESS, AND WAR: 1890-1918 231

puritanical and the song’s refrain “How are you goin’ to keep
’em down on the farm now that they’ve seen Paree” carried
special meaning to South Carolina’s rural boys.
In November 1918, the guns of war fell silent along the
western front in Europe. Over the next four months, ships
packed with American soldiers inched from docks and
moved toward the open sea. As the men of the American
Expeditionary Force steamed from France, they scanned
the coast, recalling in vivid detail the hell of Belleau Wood,
Chateau-Tierry, and the Argonne Forest and remembered
their friends and comrades who would remain in Europe,
forever young. Ahead of them were victory parades, the
open arms of loving families, and the trappings of civilian
life. Their war was over, and they now wondered what lay
ahead in the postwar years.
From the rise of Ben Tillman to the end of the Great
War, South Carolina teetered between reformism and
reactionary movements. The economy witnessed some
diversification, giving rise to tobacco farming and the
expansion of textile manufacturing, but cotton still ruled the
state. Although the urban landscape of the Palmetto State
became increasingly modernized, with increased railroad
service, automobiles, paved roads, city parks, trolley cars, and
annual expositions, nearly 90 percent of blacks and 60 percent
of whites continued a rural existence similar to that of their
fathers and grandfathers. Clemson was founded as an
agricultural college, the University of South Carolina became
the state’s liberal arts institution, schools opened for the
training of professional teachers, and more local public schools
opened their doors to meet the needs of a growing population.
South Carolina’s illiteracy rate, however, remained abysmally
high and state appropriations were well below regional and
national averages. Many politicians clung desperately to the
values and temperament of the antebellum South; others tried
to lead the state into the twentieth century. Perhaps the only
consistency in South Carolina in those 30 years was the
continued, undying effort to dispossess blacks of all the rights
and opportunities provided to them by the post—Civil War
Reconstruction government. Year after year, state laws
whittled down the number of African Americans eligible to
vote, reducing the number to a few thousand in 1920, and Jim
Crow laws confined blacks to a separate existence.
 Between the Wars

I t was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was

the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness” wrote
Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities. Although the
novel centered on characters and issues in England and
France in the late eighteenth century, the First sentence in
the 1859 masterpiece might have just as easily have applied
to the Palmetto State from 1920 to 1940. In those twenty
years, the South Carolina’s economic base increasingly
diversified and promised greater prosperity for the state,
but South Carolina nonetheless plunged to the dismal
depths of depression. The physical symbols of
contemporary America reached into South Carolina, yet
much of the population lived lives of quiet desperation
untouched by modernity. The out-migration of
Sandlappers increased at the very point in time that
fundamental, constructive change emerged in the state. A
body of sincere, civic-minded reformers led the Palmetto
State toward a brighter future, but antiquated values were
still sung by a vocal Old Guard. That contrary patterns
defined South Carolina was nothing new, but never before
had the state and its citizens confronted such unparalleled
opportunity for redirection.

Controlling Society
Many South Carolinians believed morality itself was under
attack in the 1920s, a perception seemingly validated by the
exuberance of youthful rebellion spreading through the
nation’s urban centers. Indeed, a “modernist impulse”
invaded urban communities in the 1920s, born recently in
the trenches of France and carried home by veterans of the
Great War to an America also wearied and horrified by the
utter destruction of Europe and the loss of so many men in
a “war to end all wars.” More intensely aware of life’s
2-33
234 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

brevity, former soldiers and young people in the general

population held little patience for the “old order of society”
and believed long-accepted social constraints inhibited the
fuller enjoyment of one’s brief existence.
“Flappers” and young men in cities across the state,
region, and nation exuded a spirit of personal independence
that sharply deviated from long-cherished norms. Young
women wore face powder, rouge, and lipstick; hemlines
rose almost to the knee, and necklines dropped to
unacceptable depths. Short hairstyles for women were in
vogue for the first time, and cigarette smoking became
commonplace among women. The most popular song and
dance of the decade bore Charleston’s name and was
condemned by church congregations statewide as sexually
provocative and an instigator of sinful behavior. One priest
claimed the dance’s performance was best suited to certain
houses that have “fortunately been closed by law." Young
couples found a previously unimagined freedom with the
automobile, and “parking” at “passion pits” carried
unwelcome implications for conservative society. Popular
literature and published reports from university research
projects on human sexuality only exacerbated parents’
fears. Demands to rescind the state’s Blue Laws threatened
the sanctity of the Sabbath. The rising secularism, the
advocacy of liberal school curricula, and the “live for today”
attitude of so many young men and women altogether
conveyed the impression that conventional behavioral
patterns were on verge of collapse.
Clearly, there existed a current of rebellion among the
South Carolina’s youth as well as a real loosening of social
constraints, but the appearance of wholesale perversity and
morality’s demise belied reality. The overwhelming
majority of young South Carolinians still pursued
established patterns of employment, land ownership,
marriage, child rearing, church attendance, obedience to
the law, and conservative values. But, images carried
greater weight and resulted in a societal effort to regulate
morality and personal behavior.
To preserve and protect the moral order of the state,
South Carolina’s law enforcement offices effectively curtailed
gambling, and Blue Laws that required all businesses to be
closed on Sunday were strictly enforced. Persons involved in
 eleven: between the wars
z35

public displays of affection, such as kissing, faced a choice of

steep fines or 30 days in jail. Christian fundamentalists
launched a crusade to ban the teaching of Darwin’s theory of
evolution, which contradicted biblical creationism. Although
their effort failed in the wake of the Scopes “Monkey Trial”
in Tennessee in 1925, teachers in small, rural schools were
nonetheless duly warned to avoid teaching Darwin’s heathen
theory. In all these efforts and in many more, church leaders
called for the return of morality in the state. Governors,
legislators, town councilmen, mayors, and officials at all
levels of government answered the call to action.
Even the Ku Klux Klan entered the “battle against
immorality.” The “new” Klan certainly continued its
rousting of African Americans, but it also proclaimed Jews
and Catholics as co-corrupters of Protestant morality.
Rarely did someone of either religious group receive a fair
trial when brought to court in districts dominated by the
KKK; in cities and towns alike, non-Protestants were
“encouraged” to conform to Klan-approved moral codes or
be driven from the state. The KKK officially championed
complete adherence to Blue Laws, Prohibition, sexual
abstinence, and all laws that would make the Palmetto
State the earthly manifestation of godly behavior. That its
treatment of African Americans, immigrants, Jews,
Catholics, and political liberals, along with its own private
defiance of proper moral behavior, was hypocritical of its
avowed stance apparently mattered little. Defense of South
Carolina warranted whatever action was deemed necessary.
Contradictory, too, was the state’s response to
Prohibition. The Eighteenth Amendment to the US
Constitution banned the manufacture, sale, possession, or
consumption of alcohol in an effort to elevate moral virtue
nationwide, and South Carolina’s General Assembly cast its
vote for ratification. In spite of the moral “high ground”
taken by the legislature, liquor flowed with little restriction
outside South Carolina’s smallest and most fundamentalist
communities. Not only did young adults flaunt their
drinking in the era of Prohibition, few older South
Carolinians conformed to the law. Policemen, attorneys, and
judges in Columbia and Charleston often accepted bribes not
to prosecute suppliers of demon rum. Notes Walter Edgar,
“somewhere between twenty-five and forty thousand
Must-See Sites: Brookgreen Gardens,
Murrells Inlet

Brookgreen Gardens is a 9,000-acre natural wildlife and botanical

preserve and includes a 300-acre garden of local and exotic
plants. The grounds once belonged to Archer and Ana Hyat
Huntington, who opened the garden in 1931 as a display site for
sculptures. More than 500 pieces are spread throughout the
garden. Brookgreen Gardens offers guided tours, programs for
local public schools, and activities for the general community. The
preserve and garden is a National Historic Landmark and is
located at 1931 Brookgreen Drive, just off Highway 17S in
Murrells Inlet. For more information, call (843) 235-6000, email
[email protected] or visit www.southcarolinaparks.com.

Image of Murrells Inlet © Ron Chappie Studios

 eleven: between the wars 2-37

Carolinians made a living as bootleggers, moonshiners, and

rumrunners.” Pints of the “devil’s drink,” “home brew,” and
“bathtub gin” sold for as much as $2.50 per pint ($22 in 1998
dollars). Cities were awash in alcohol slipped into the state
by motorboats transporting crates of liquor from ships
anchored in international waters just three miles from shore.
Some distilleries actually continued manufacturing whiskey,
conducting their operations in basements, in remote
buildings in the countryside, or on the premise that their
product was for medicinal use only. Prohibition was a total
failure in South Carolina.
The Klan continued to exert control over African
Americans, who were forced to conclude that any change
for the better would have to come from themselves. The
National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) established local chapters in South
Carolina in the 1920s, although whites in some
communities, such as Greenville, successfully blocked the
founding of local chapters until 1930. In Columbia and
Charleston, the NAACP succeeded in planting a Young
Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) branch and a
public library for black patrons, and in Charleston black
teachers replaced white instructors in African-American
schools. Given the unquestioned dominance of white
supremacy and the strict enforcement of )im Crow laws,
white South Carolinians felt no threat from the NAACP
and believed the few changes and services it was responsible
for actually enhanced racial segregation in public facilities.

Economic Patterns
As the state’s economy weakened in the 1920s, South
Carolina’s cities and towns actively sought a source of
income apart from farming and textile mills. Tourism had
never generated much prosperity for the state. Although
Charleston, Aiken, and Camden had all turned a slight
profit from northerners traveling through the South in the
1880s, native-born South Carolinians were always
suspicious of “outsiders” and did not desire an influx of
strangers lingering in the state. Nonetheless, the fractured
economy required attention.
In 1923, Governor Thomas McLeod organized a
conference of civic leaders from across the state for the
238 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

expressed purpose of promoting tourism. His “Boost South

Carolina” initiative failed to elicit widespread support at
the convention, but several cities and towns accepted
McLeod’s idea and established their own local booster clubs
to lure visitors from outside the state. Aiken and Camden
both promoted their annual horse races, steeplechase, and
horse show; Columbia organized a yearly automobile
convention; numerous towns commenced seasonal beauty
pageants and harvest festivals; and Beaufort opened its
more elegant homes for tours.
Charleston capitalized on its image as a “must-see”
antebellum southern city. To reclaim the attention of
tourists, and in so doing capture some of their money, the
city government founded an aggressive booster club to
promote Charleston’s local attractions and beauty. It also
donated land at the Battery (the location where the first
shots of the Civil War were fired) for the construction of the
Fort Sumter Hotel in 1923. Streets were repaired, historic
buildings and homes refurbished, community gardens
beautified, museums expanded, and theaters founded. The
city also commenced a campaign to clear back lots and
drives of standing pools of water and eradicate the ever¬
growing rat population that infested Charleston. As hoped,
tourists flooded Charleston; by 1929 nearly 47,000 guests
spent $4 million yearly in the rejuvenated city; on the eve of
World War II, the city attracted nearly 300,000 visitors
annually. Charleston’s rise as a modern tourist destination
rested on its historical significance and long-recognized
elegance, but life was being breathed into a community 100
miles up the coast that would ultimately challenge
Charleston’s dominance of the tourist trade.
Throughout much of the 1920s, Florida grabbed
national headlines as the new vacation Mecca. Hundreds of
millions of dollars poured into the “Florida Land Boom.”
Railroad lines soon edged the peninsula, connecting cities
that seemingly rose from sandy soil and swamps overnight.
John T. Woods, a Greenville, South Carolina entrepreneur,
believed he could tap into the southbound travelers’ wealth
by providing them with a stopover point en route to the
Sunshine State. He built Ocean Forest Hotel on Horry
County’s coastline in 1926 and plotted streets for the town
of Myrtle Beach. The Ocean Forest proved such a welcome
 ELEVEN: BETWEEN THE WARS
2-39

rest for vacationers headed to Florida and a windfall profit

to both Woods and the fledgling community that before the
decade ended Garden City Beach and Edisto Island each
were incorporated and followed Myrtle Beach’s lead.
Pawley’s Island advertised its salt marshes, natural wildlife,
general serenity, and closeness to a simpler, quieter era. The
campaign attracted the interest of Anna Huntington, who
built a magnificent vacation home and established an
expansive, beautiful garden in the area (today’s Huntington
Beach State Park and Brookgreen Gardens). Barnard
Barauch, who later served the Franklin D. Roosevelt
administration, purchased hundreds of acres along the
coast between Pawley’s Island and Georgetown and was a
frequent guest in the region.
Most beneficial to the burgeoning tourist industry was
the improvement of state roads. The State Highway
Department had been erected in 1917, and among its first
actions was the creation of a two-cent-per-gallon tax on
gasoline with the revenue earmarked for the repair of
existing roads and the construction of new highways. The
measure contained three fundamental problems. First, few
South Carolinians could afford automobiles, and
consequently gasoline sales remained pitifully low. In 1917,
there were only 40,000 cars in the entire state, or one
automobile for every 41 people. Second, the tax rate was so
minimal that revenue never met the expected costs for road
projects. And, finally, the state’s determination to have a
balanced budget meant that all funds for road projects be
banked before construction began. With each passing year,
inflation cut into the reserved money. As late as 1925 there
were only 300 miles of paved roads in South Carolina and
few bridges over rivers for auto traffic. In 1929, however,
the state attempted a different tactic—floating $65 million
in road bonds to “build now and pay later.” The
department also raised the tax rate to six cents per gallon,
and as car prices dropped in the 1920s, sales rose. A sound
network of highways remained many years in the future,
but in the postwar decade the Palmetto State was at least on
the correct road to progress, and tourism had gotten a
“jump start.”
As tourism showed signs of promise, cotton and
tobacco prices both fell. During the war years and for a
 Mary McLeod Bethune

The fifteenth of seventeen children, Mary Jane McLeod was bom on a

Mayesville cotton farm on July 10, 1875. Her family’s stories of slavery
horrified Mary, but within those recollections she found hope for a better life.
Mary saw education as the only means to escape poverty. Beginning
at age eleven, she walked four miles daily to the nearest schoolhouse for
black children, the Mission Board School of the Presbyterian Church.
Mary excelled in school, earning a scholarship to Scotia Seminary in
North Carolina and another for advanced study at Moody Bible Institute in
Chicago, where she was the only African-American student.
Her academic training complete, Mary returned to Mayesville to
teach at the Mission School. The Presbyterian mission soon transferred
her to Haines Institute in Augusta, Georgia and in 1896 to Kendall Institute
in Sumter, South Carolina, where she met and married Albertus Bethune
in 1898.
Committed fully to her “calling,” she and her newborn son in 1899
moved to Palatka, Florida to manage the Presbyterian Mission School and
to work with prisoners in the county jail, teaching them to read and
helping overturn convictions for those she believed were innocent. Her
husband reluctantly followed her to Palatka, but his job netted little
money. To compensate, Mary sold life insurance after school hours until
moving to Daytona in 1904. Albertus refused to relocate again, and the
two separated on friendly terms.
With boxes for chairs, packing crates for tables, and used mgs on the
floor, Bethune opened Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School
for young African-American women. Students paid $2 each month mid
received instruction in the standard curriculum of reading, writing, and
mathematics, along with courses in cooking, nutrition, home budgets,
sewing, and childcare. Mary supplemented the school’s finances by
working odd jobs. Under her guidance, die school expanded to include a
30-acre campus, eventually becoming Bethune-Cookman College.
Politically active, she joined the Equal Suffrage League of the
National Association of Colored Women in 1912 and lobbied for women’s
voting rights. Despite passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, poll taxes
and literacy requirements remained obstacles for potential black voters.
In autumn 1920, Bethune bicycled from house to house, soliciting
donations to cover the expense of poll taxes imposed on otherwise
eligible voters, and teaching African-American men and women enough
to pass state literacy tests. Her efforts angered the local Ku Klux Klan, 80
members of whom “visited” her home one evening and “requested” she
cease her work. Mary ignored their threats and by Election Day she had
prepared 100 African Americans for the electoral process and personally
led voters to the polls.
Her defiance of the KKK brought Bethune national attention and
garnered her a seat on the National Urban League’s executive board. She
founded a home for wayward black girls, and twice in the 1920s served
as president of the National Association of Colored Women, which had
more than 200,000 members. She directed the National Association of
Teachers in Colored Schools, sat on the Interracial Council of America,
and founded the National Council of Negro Women in the 1930s.
President Calvin Coolidge in 1928 appointed her to the Child Welfare
Conference, and President Hoover sent her to the White House
Conference on Child Health in 1930. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
made Bethune his special advisor on minority affairs and director of the
Negro division of the National Youth Administration from 1936 to 1944,
making her the first African-American woman to direct a federal agency.
She regularly attended White House functions, enjoyed a close
relationship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and spent the World War
II years campaigning for equal opportunities for black women in the
armed forces, winning for African-American women the opportunity to
become commissioned officers in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.
Bethune earned many honors for her selfless work. In 1932,
journalist and muckraker Ida Tarbell listed her as one of the 50 greatest
American women, and she was the first African American to receive an
honorary Ph.D. from any white southern college, being granted the
degree by Rollins College in 1949- Mary was also awarded the Thomas
Jefferson Medal for Leadership in 1942, among many other national and
international honors. She died on May 18, 1955. On July 10, 1974, what
would have been her 99th birthday, a statue honoring her was unveiled in
Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Park. In South Carolina’s statehouse today
hangs an oil painting of the state’s respected daughter.
242. ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

brief period thereafter, farmers produced for both domestic

and European markets. By 1920, however, Europeans had
rebuilt their commercial fleets sufficiently to rely less on
American imports and once more trade with suppliers
worldwide. Added to Europe’s rebound was another
equally disastrous development. In the 1920s, notes one
historian, cotton farmers confronted an “invader” every bit
as destructive as General William T. Sherman in the Civil
War—the boll weevil. The insect, which feeds on cotton,
first entered South Carolina in 1917, migrating from
Mexico, and by 1921 totally destroyed sea-island cotton.
Between 1920 and 1922 the pest infested the entire state,
and cotton production fell 70 percent. Williamsburg
County alone suffered a production collapse from 35,000 to
2,500 pounds, and statistics collected by state agents
revealed similar patterns in all cotton-producing counties in
South Carolina. The boll weevil drove thousands of
farmers into abject poverty, weakened banks that served
rural depositors and issued small loans, crippled farm-
supply warehouses, and threatened the survival of country
stores. Farmers confronted several options: battle the insect
with insecticides, surrender farming for millwork, or
relocate outside South Carolina. Insecticides were
expensive and farmers would have to dip deeply into their
already limited income to buy them; textile mills in the
early ’20s were no longer expanding and therefore did not
require additional employees. Although most white
farmers chose to remain on the land, 24 of the state’s 46
counties in the 1920s experienced a decrease in its white
population. Far more African Americans emigrated from
South Carolina, as they had little investment in the state to
lose. In that single decade, 207,000 African Americans, or
eight percent of the black population, exited the Palmetto
State in search of opportunities elsewhere.
If the boll weevil was not destructive enough, the
increased erosion of the soil and the concurrent depletion of
its fertility added further misery to farmers. Again, rather
than sell their property and abandon South Carolina, many
opted to purchase fertilizer, buying 660,000 tons in 1940,
while Iowa farmers consumed only 16,000 tons. A series of
droughts further damned farmers. Altogether, cotton
production fell nearly 60 percent in the 1920s.
 ELEVEN: BETWEEN THE WARS 243

The Great Depression

Unpaid loans, poor investments, and a souring economy
compelled dozens of banks to close their doors in the late
1920s. Overproduction of manufactured goods in
America’s manufacturing sector, overextended business
expansion, indebtedness, and deteriorating market
conditions forced thousands of businesses into bankruptcy;
those that continued operation had to scale back operations
and lay off employees. The collapse of the stock market
may have signaled the beginning of depression, but the
nation’s economy was shattered long before October 1929.
Depression blanketed the state. In December 1931, People’s
Bank closed its 44 satellite offices statewide, taking with it
the entire city payroll of Charleston. Per capita income in
South Carolina sat at $150.
Tens of thousands of Sandlappers lost their jobs and
teetered on the brink of hunger. Government, however,
chose not to intervene and directly aid the citizenry.
Instead, help came from people in less desperate conditions.
Charities in Columbia supplied nearly 500,000 free meals to
persons “down on their luck" in 1931 and another 715,000
the following year. The Salvation Army, Community
Chest, and Travelers’ Aid Society offered what little
comfort they could provide. Churches raised money to feed,
clothe, and temporarily shelter unfortunate members of
their congregations. Even the Ku Klux Klan chipped in,
delivering food baskets to the rural white poor.
Unemployment skyrocketed between 1929 and 1932,
reaching a national average of 25 percent. The only positive
feature for South Carolina was that so many Sandlappers
remained on farms and so were able to feed themselves,
unless banks called in their mortgage notes. But, in summer
1932, a glimmer of hope surfaced.
South Carolinians, with few exceptions, rejoiced in the
candidacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932. FDR
promised to remember “the forgotten man" if elected to the
presidency and work for the common good. He slashed the
incumbent, Herbert Hoover, ior doing too little too late to
ease the suffering of Americans and for not accepting the
new reality that government does have an obligation to aid its
citizens in times as desperate as the current crisis. He blasted
big business for perpetuating disreputable business practices
244 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

African American convicts working with axes, Reed Camp,

South Carolina, December 1934

and for contributing directly to the economic calamity that

gripped the United States. In the November elections, fully
98 percent of South Carolina’s votes were cast for Roosevelt,
his greatest margin of victory in any state.
The president’s inaugural address on March 4, 1933
convinced South Carolinians that they had made a sound
choice in the recent elections. FDR promised a “new deal”
for Americans, aggressive federal government intervention
in the nation’s economy for the defense of its citizens, much
like how as commander-in-chief he would act against an
invading enemy. He pledged to create policies and
 eleven: between the wars
2-45

programs that would provide immediate relief in the form

of government-sponsored jobs or money payments to
persons in greatest need; programs to affect the recovery of
business and stabilize the economy; and reforms that would
prevent future depressions from occurring. Underpinning
the New Deal was FDR’s conviction that government has a
responsibility to regulate the economy when necessary for
the benefit of all citizens.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s arrival in the White
House did not immediately translate into a new day for
South Carolinians. It took time to erect the myriad of
agencies and programs that would transform the state, and
more time for those agencies and programs to organize,
staff, and shake out their bugs. In the meantime, depression
continued its death grip on the state. By summer 1933, day
laborers on farms earned 50 cents, among the lowest wages
nationally. Nearly 320 banks were no longer open in the
Palmetto State, and the value of crops stood at $63 million
in contrast to $166 million in 1913. Per capita income
dropped to $150, down from $261 in 1929. Cotton prices
also continued their plunge, hitting less than five cents per
pound, its lowest value since the middle 1890s. In
Columbia, 24 percent of working-age residents were
aggressively seeking jobs.

The New Deal

Among the first New Deal programs to provide direct aid
was the Federal Emergency Relief Administration
(FERA), founded in May 1933. FERA’s principal purpose
was to provide food, clothing, and federally funded jobs to
those individuals and families in greatest need. It also
established a school lunch program. More than 400,000
South Carolinians received federal aid under FERA, and,
as one historian has noted, it “literally saved thousands of
Carolinians from starvation.”
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was another of
FDR’s earliest New Deal agencies. It enlisted men 18 to 25
years of age for a period of six months, clothed them in khaki
shirts and pants, and sent them to perform conservation
work at one of the 30 CCC camps in South Carolina. Men
were provided with three hot meals daily, educational
programs in evening hours, and a $30 per month paycheck,
246 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

of which $22 was detoured to their families back home.

Enlistees planted trees and sewed grass where needed, built
ranger towers in forests, implemented soil erosion programs,
fought forest fires and erected firebreaks, constructed roads
deep into wilderness areas, and established state parks at
Hunting Island, Paris Mountain, and Myrtle Beach. Almost
50,000 South Carolinians were enrolled in the CCC between
1933 and 1939.
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and
Public Works Administration (PWA) hired men to
construct a variety of public-use structures, generally in
more populated areas of the state. WPA workers built
Conway’s two-lane, arched bridge over the Waccamaw
River and a highway connecting the county seat to Myrtle
Beach fifteen miles to the southeast (today’s Highway 544).
The WPA built public theaters such as the Dock Street
Theater in Charleston while the PWA improved and
expanded the Charleston Navy Yard. Both agencies
constructed public housing projects, roads, schools,
airports, libraries, museums, college dormitories, and a host
of state and local government buildings in cities and towns
statewide. The WPA ran a historical project that collected
and reprinted government records and distributed copies to
repositories in each state, generally at the flagship
university (USC in the Palmetto State). Its personnel also
conducted interviews of Native Americans, immigrants to
the United States, and former slaves, and the WPA
published historical and travelers’ “guides” to each state of
the Union.
FDR’s Rural Electrification Administration (REA)
carried electrical service into the most isolated reaches of
South Carolina. In 1924, only 1,000 rural families statewide
boasted electrical service; ten years later only two percent of
South Carolina’s farms were electrified. With federal loans
channeled through the REA, communities formed electric
cooperative companies, such as the Horry County Electric
Cooperative, and ran power lines throughout the town and
into nearby rural areas. In 1940, nearly 15 percent of the
state’s farms had electrical service; in 1944, the number
reached 50 percent of the state’s farming families.
The largest New Deal program in South Carolina was
the Santee Cooper Project. Approved by the Roosevelt
 ELEVEN: BETWEEN THE WARS
247

Must-See Sites:
Hobcaw Barony, Georgetown

This 17,000-acre estate was originally a gift issued to John,

Lord Carteret by King George I in 1718 and evolved into a
very prosperous rice plantation. In 1905 it was purchased
by South Carolina native, Wall Street millionaire, and
presidential advisor Bernard Baruch, who used the land as
a winter hunting retreat. At the 13,500-square-foot mansion
Baruch entertained President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and other prominent
figures. Today, Hobcaw Barony is used as a research center
for the colleges and universities of South Carolina. Tours
are available for the house and the rice plantation.
Admission is free to the visitors’ center, which is open
Monday through Friday. The Barony is located at 22
Hobcaw Road just off Highway 17S. Call the office at (843)
546-4623 for more details or email the Barony at
[email protected].

White House in 1935, the plan refaced much of the state

and provided electrical power to tens of thousands of South
Carolinians. Work commenced in May 1939, and within
three years the project was completed under budget. More
than 170,000 acres of land were cleared, 200 million feet of
timber were cut (much of which was sold to the state’s
paper mills), millions of cubic feet of earth were excavated,
and 3 million cubic yards of concrete were poured. Dams
were built, swampland filled in for development,
hydroelectric power plants constructed, inland waters were
made more navigable, flooding along the Santee River
ended, and public lakes for community enjoyment were
created. The Santee Project blessed much of the state,
employing 9,000 men at a time when jobs were most
needed. Over the following decades, the Santee system
expanded, and by 1985 it alone provided electrical service to
half the state.
The Great Depression nearly destroyed South
Carolina’s agricultural base. Farm income in 1932 was only
248 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

39 percent of the 1920 level. Roosevelt’s Agricultural

Adjustment Act (AAA) was designed to create demand for
crops and in so doing elevate farmer income. Farmers who
opted into the program agreed to produce fewer crops on
their land, a practice that generated shortages but increased
market values. Participating farmers plowed under crops
already in the fields or sectioned off the agreed-upon
acreage to lay idle, and received government money to
compensate them for the value of the crops normally
harvested on the now-unused property. In short, farmers
were allotted a certain expanse of land on which to produce
their crops. In 1933, once the AAA was inaugurated, cotton
farmers rushed to enlist in the program and plowed under
500,000 acres of the plant. Tobacco farmers also joined the
AAA but with less determination. As expected, prices for
cotton and tobacco rose, bringing farmers income levels not
enjoyed since World War I.
Textile mills also suffered early in the Great Depression.
Staggeringly high unemployment in the state and nation
yanked consumer demand from the industry, families
choosing to mend and patch garments and then pass them
down to younger children rather than spend what little
money they had on new clothes. Market prices for finished
goods tumbled, and many mills were ultimately driven into
bankruptcy. Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act (NRA)
moved to recover the nation’s businesses. It raised workers’
pay through a minimum-wage provision, regulated
company profits by fixing a price range for marketed goods,
banned child labor completely, and protected labor’s right to
bargain. It also reduced the workweek to 40 hours for
individual employees and limited mill production to 80 hours
per week, steps that compelled the affected companies to hire
additional workers to cover the weekly period of production
and thus to drive down unemployment levels. Stores, shops,
and companies that voluntarily joined the NRA placed
posters or stickers bearing the image of a blue eagle in
storefront windows to identify themselves as participants,
and the Roosevelt White House strongly encouraged
Americans to patronize only those businesses displaying the
NRA symbol.
Columbia and Greenville both held parades in August
1933 to publicize the NRA and, as FDR did from the Oval
 eleven: between the wars
2-49

Office, to solicit community support for local businesses

affiliated with the New Deal agency. Most businesses in
South Carolina joined the NRA and witnessed renewed
consumer confidence, employee satisfaction, and recovery.
The National Recovery Act was directed at every industry
and business in the nation, and it did bring direct, immediate,
and positive benefits to South Carolina’s textile mills. One
mill in Easley, for example, reduced its working hours from
128 to the required 80, but its profits turned upward.
Other New Deal agencies also served as a safety net in
South Carolina. The Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation (FDIC) guaranteed bank deposits and
convinced citizens to return their money to local bank
accounts, deposits that then could be distributed as small
business loans in the community. The Civil Works
Administration (CWA) hired individuals from relief
rosters and unemployment rolls to refurbish public schools,
lay sewer systems, and upgrade roads and bridges. The
Social Security Administration provided an employment
service and established a system of income for the elderly.
The National Youth Administration (NYA) trained high-
school students in a variety of job-related skills and
provided them with part-time work opportunities to gain
experience in addition to needed income. With New Deal
blessings and supplemental funds, Wil Fou Gray organized
adult education programs in South Carolina’s upstate
region, bringing students a curriculum based on individual
needs, teaching some to read, others domestic skills, and
still others the fundamentals of securing off-farm
employment. A network of New Deal agencies and
bureaus in Charleston launched a coordinated effort to rid
the city of its rats, purify drinking water, improve street
drainage, and eradicate malaria—all initiatives that never
received sufficient funding or interest in the 1920s but
under the New Deal made remarkable gains. In
Orangeburg, long noted for its intense poverty, community
recreation centers were built and educational programs
were organized for the town’s poor, black majority.
Roosevelt’s programs put money into the hands of those
who most needed it and returned people regardless of race
to the ranks of the employed, stabilized the state’s economic
structure, raised personal income and business profits, and
250 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

erected a safety net of governmental services that aided

citizens. Across the state, South Carolinians applauded the
president’s boldness and determination to end the economic
crisis and directly help Americans.
Perhaps the most visible evidence of appreciation
emanated from the state’s black population. Since 1865,
African Americans had stood firmly in the Republican
Party camp—the party of Lincoln, the party of
emancipation; South Carolina’s Democratic Party had
historically defended the institution of slavery,
circumvented postwar laws and constitutional amendments
granting rights to blacks, erected Jim Crow legislation, and
openly denounced any threat to white supremacy. But in
the 1936 presidential election, the state’s African Americans
almost unanimously threw their collective support behind
Roosevelt and joined the very party that for so long had
been their antagonist. FDR’s New Deal included African
Americans. It funneled work and employment programs,
educational opportunities, health-care services, and
community development programs into black neighbor¬
hoods. Nationally, more than 100 African Americans were
appointed to administrative posts in the federal executive
branch of government. From South Carolina, Mary
McLeod Bethune commanded the ear of First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt and became the first African-American
woman to have direct influence in the White House. No
president or political party, not even Abraham Lincoln and
the Republicans, had ever accomplished so much for
African Americans.
There were, to be sure, complaints directed against
Roosevelt anti his economic program. FDR’s agencies often
held overlapping responsibilities and were occasionally
complicated by poor administration. Citizens sometimes
complained that WPA wasted entirely too much money
and the agency’s progress in local projects was too slow, a
charge that found its most popular expression in referring
to the WPA as “We Poke Along.” South Carolinians
sometimes expressed their frustration that the CCC limited
an enrollee to six months of service with no opportunity for
another period of enlistment. But the loudest and most
derisive sounds emanated from the state’s fire-breathing
conservatives and die-hard proponents of states’ rights. The
 ELEVEN: BETWEEN THE WARS Z5I

New Deal erected a large bureaucracy that spread its reach

deep into state and local affairs previously immune to
federal intervention. Federal dollars and programs, they
contended, increasingly made the state dependent on
Washington—a variation on colonialism, they seethed.
Increased federal authority smacked of socialism, cried
Roosevelt’s critics, and the New Deal’s inclusion of blacks
threatened white supremacy in the state.
Among FDR’s most vicious opponents in the Palmetto
State was Ellison D. “Cotton Ed” Smith, United States
senator from 1908 to 1944 and unfaltering devotee to cotton
as the state’s continued economic base. His spellbinding
orations and vicious harangues on the stump captivated
listeners, and his tirades became more virulent with each
passing year. Fie blasted the administration’s efforts to
regulate the nation’s industries, preferring the marketplace
cure its own ills. Smith ridiculed work-relief agencies,
criticizing them as inefficient and costly. He warned that
Washington’s programs were collectively creating a climate
of dependency among the nation’s laborers and,
consequently, destroying the work ethic that historically
had driven America forward. And, Smith cautioned,
Roosevelt’s New Deal intended to corrupt the
independence of states, making them subservient to federal
authority. South Carolinians appreciated his promotion of
states’ rights and the protection of the state from federal
intrusion, but the extent of poverty citizens had endured
and the promise of recovery under the New Deal convinced
most residents that some help from Washington was
necessary. So supportive of FDR’s recovery program were
South Carolinians that the president took all but 1,600 votes
in the state in his 1936 reelection race. Roosevelt held little
affection for South Carolina’s senior senator. “Cotton Ed”
and his “colorful ” ranting was frequently the butt of private
jokes in the White House, and his condemnation of the
New Deal was seldom considered serious.
Smith’s dogged defense of white supremacy, however,
reflected the genuine sentiment of his white constituents.
No liberal or progressive politician in the state dared
challenge “Cotton Ed” or attack Jim Crow in public.
Smith’s unbridled racism and devotion to white supremacy
were ever-present thorns for the president, who needed the
252 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

state’s Democratic vote. Notes historian Lewis Jones, Time

magazine described “Cotton Ed as a conscientious
objector” of the twentieth century and “the last of the
spittoon senators” from South Carolina.
In sharp contrast to Smith were South Carolina s rising
stars in the Democratic Party, men who vaunted New Deal
programs and modernization of the state. Olin D. Johnston,
twice-elected governor of South Carolina in the 1930s,
pushed through the legislature reform measures enacted in
most other states of the nation decades earlier. Through his
efforts came a compulsory education law, workers’
compensation, and an eight-month school year. More
money filtered into public education, and he championed
greater economic diversification. Passage of the Social
Security system, the NRA, WPA, CCC, and AAA all
received Governor Johnston’s enthusiastic endorsement.
Burnet Maybank, a Charlestonian who also served as
governor and senator during FDR’s tenure in the White
House, supported New Deal measures as fully as Johnston.
He was instrumental in securing federal funds for further
expansion of the Charleston Navy Yard and the Charleston
Dry Dock Company, and he called for increased spending
on public health programs and adult education for both
whites and blacks.
Of all New Deal politicians in South Carolina, none
commanded as much influence as James F. Byrnes. Elected
to the United States Senate in 1930, he proved central in
securing Roosevelt’s nomination as the Democratic Party
contender against Republican Herbert Hoover in 1932, and
he quickly aligned himself with the Roosevelt agenda once
FDR was elected in November. It was Byrnes who, with
Maybank’s support, pressed the Santee Cooper hydro¬
electric project in Washington and won congressional
approval. Byrnes was South Carolina’s “point man” in
Washington, and through his efforts the reform programs
of Johnston and Maybank met little resistance statewide or
in the halls of Congress. He was also instrumental in 1940
in convincing South Carolinians to support a third term for
FDR in the White House, and 95 percent of the vote went
to Roosevelt. As war in Europe threatened England’s
survival in 1940, Senator Byrnes unequivocally endorsed
America’s defense readiness, backed passage of the
 eleven: between the wars
253

Selective Training and Service Act, and attracted War

Department and Department of the Navy funds to the
Palmetto State that opened training posts, airfields, and
additional ship construction. In 1941, South Carolina’s
senator carried FDR’s Lend-Lease Bill through the Senate.
Roosevelt admired Byrnes’ intellect, his commitment to the
New Deal nationally and inside South Carolina, and his
unabashed determination to prepare the United States for
war. In return, FDR in June 1941 nominated Byrnes to the
United States Supreme Court. As evidence of the respect
given to him by his colleagues, the senate took less than ten
minutes to approve Byrnes as the new justice.
The reformist spirit of the New Deal swept the
Palmetto State with a fresh air of hope; indeed, Roosevelt’s
programs collectively amounted to a watershed in the
course of South Carolina’s development. The New Deal
pumped funds into the state, rescuing the economy and
laying the foundations for South Carolina’s modernization.
Although many problems persisted as the New Deal drew
to its close with the advent of war, Palmetto State residents
had witnessed a fundamental redirection and entered the
twentieth century.
 The Palmetto State in
World War II

A crisp air and sunlit skies welcomed early-risers

from Greenville to Charleston on Sunday,
December 7, 1941. Across South Carolina, most
families made their way to church services as they did every
Sunday; others settled themselves in front of the family
radio to enjoy the music of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey,
and other popular performers while they scanned the
morning newspaper and sipped their coffee. Christmas
advertising and reports of local preparations for the coming
holidays dwarfed analyses of the stalled Japanese- American
negotiations and stories of Britain’s continued heroic
defense of the isles against German air attacks. Results of
Saturday’s Shrine Bowl game between high-school football
stars of the two Carolinas played just across the state line in
Charlotte, North Carolina made the front pages of many
upstate newspapers, and updates on the progress of the
Santee-Cooper hydroelectric power plant’s construction
near Charleston commanded similar space in Lowcountry
papers. This particular Sunday morning began like most
others; little did anyone suspect that their lives would be
irrevocably altered by midday.
News broadcasts of Japan’s strike on Pearl Harbor first
aired just before 2:00pm. Many families, already gathered
around their dinner tables for their traditional after-church
midday meals, moved into living rooms and stood or sat
around their radios to listen more carefully to the
information coming stateside from Hawaii. Bewildered
motorists pulled off the road, adjusted their radio dials, and
sat motionless as they tried to comprehend the reality of the
moment. Local theater managers stopped their movies and
personally informed their audiences, and window-shoppers
25 6 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

strolling city streets in Columbia and Charleston learned of

the Japanese attack from policemen who used their
megaphones to tell soldiers and sailors to return to their
bases immediately.
South Carolinians, like Americans nationwide, were
initially numbed by the reality that war had come to the
United States so suddenly, so viciously. An often unspoken
fear coursed through state residents. Fathers who were
veterans of the Great War remembered the indescribable
horror of modern warfare and now realized their own sons
would most likely face a conflict far more brutal than that
of 1918. Small children often stood silent, stunned to
witness for the first time tears in their fathers’ eyes or to
hear their parents spew improper words and racial epithets.
Fear, however, was soon joined by anger, and the call for
vengeance dominated editorials printed in newspapers by
late Sunday afternoon and over the following week. “Wipe
the Japs off the map!” cried one journalist; a “foul attack by
a foul nation,” proclaimed another. Editorialists, area
politicians, and the ordinary man-on-the-street termed
Japan’s strike “unprovoked,” “unwarranted,” “appalling,”
and “dastardly.” Many described the Japanese as “assassins”
and “members of an unholy alliance... seeking world
domination by brutal force.” “This is the kind of thing that
Americans may expect from the Japanese,” thundered a
writer for Charleston’s News and Courier. “Their
government is destitute of the conception of truth and
honor that Americans have,” stormed the writer. Noted an
editorial in Columbia’s newspaper, the State, “it takes no
skill to double-cross_Cruel, beastly, highly mechanized
force is their only god.” South Carolinians united behind
the demand for the total destruction of Japan. “I hope that
when the war is over the empire of Japan will be as nearly
free of Japanese as the Sahara is of oases,” cried one South
Carolina judge. The United States must “unsheathe [itsj
swords and vow that they will not rest in the scabbards
again until decency has been restored among the peoples of
the earth,” demanded a writer for Florence’s Morning
News. “We enter the war on the side of right,” he
continued, “and for no other purpose than the task of
crushing the evil forces which are seeking to shackle the
freedoms and decencies fundamental to a stable world
 twelve: the palmetto state in world WAR II
z57

order.” “By the grace of God and of all good humanity,”

roared the editor of Conway’s Horry Herald, “we will show
the Japs where they made the greatest mistake in their
history.... Japan fired the first shot. A united America will
see to it that Japan does not fire the last.”
The rage exhibited by South Carolinians was not
directed solely at Japan; most residents believed Hitler was
ultimately responsible for Japanese militarization and
aggression. “It is too obvious that Adolf Hitler encouraged
this warlike gesture of a helpless oriental puppet. This
unwarranted and unheralded bombing today is but the
final plunge of the world’s final defender of democracy into
a cauldron stirred by the crazed Adolf Hitler,” wrote one
Soutlierner. Said another, “The attack on Hawaii is just as
surely an attack by Hitler as if German bombers instead of
Japanese had done the job.” “What airplane, wliat tank,
what battleship, air bomber, or gun that Japan has was a
Japanese invention?” wrote the editor of the News and
Courier. Most South Carolinians argued that without the
direct, conspiratorial involvement of Germany, Japan
would not have been capable of waging modern war;
without the safety net of German military might, Japan
would not have committed itself to war with the United
States. War with Nazi Germany, then, was not only
expected but championed by the state’s residents before
nightfall on Sunday, December 7, 1941.

The State Mobilizes for War

Within hours of Japan’s attack on Hawaii, Governor Joseph
Emile Harley activated South Carolina’s Home Guard, a
defense force organized one year earlier on the assumption
that America’s entry into the global war would require the
federalization of National Guard units and, therefore, leave
the state essentially defenseless. The state’s 6,200 members,
who ranged in age from 16 to 60, stood guard at
predetermined sites by nightfall. Armed with shotguns and
pistols, men controlled traffic flow across bridges both
small and large, such as that which linked Conway to
Myrtle Beach and the recently constructed frame that
connected Mount Pleasant to downtown Charleston; they
patrolled riverbanks and waterways such as the Little Pee
Dee River at Gallavant’s Ferry and points of entry into the
258 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Rising Profitability of Tobacco

Pounds Grown (1000s)

1940 1941 1942 1943

87,550 69,660 96,750 86,480

Cents per Pound

14.6 24.8 37.4 38.9

Source: Eldred E. Prince, Jr., Long Green: The Rise and Fall of Tobacco in
South Carolina (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000), p. 203-

Intracoastal Waterway; they carefully watched all

movement around the Santee-Cooper hydroelectric power
plant; and they stopped vehicles attempting to enter
airports. Despite cold weather and frequent rain, Home
Guard units remained on their assigned posts well into
January 1942 and thereafter regularly received supple¬
mental training at military posts across the South and
conducted small-scale maneuvers at various points within
the state. As the war progressed, younger members
eventually entered the armed forces.
Even before President Roosevelt’s heated message and
request for a declaration of war by Congress on December 8,
army and navy recruiting stations across the state were
inundated with volunteers. “Filled with vinegar,” as South
Carolinians often describe enthused and energetic youths,
young men from every social and economic class rushed to
enlist in the armed forces. Outside the navy recruiting office
in Charleston stood 30 applicants who had waited anxiously
since daybreak for the doors to open. The navy’s Florence
office found itself busier on December 8 than on any single
day since 1917 and extended its hours of operation from the
customary 4:00pm closing to midnight simply to accommo¬
date demand. “They all seem to want to get at the Japs,” said
the officer in charge. One former sailor personally delivered
two of his sons to the recruiter. “Here they are,” he
announced, “and I’ve got two more at home under seventeen
 TWELVE: THE PALMETTO STATE IN WORLD WAR II 259

n South Carolina, 1940-1948

1945 1946 1947 1948

139,520 171,825 155,495 131,560

43.9 48.7 41.8 50.3

years of age. If you can use them, I’ll go back and get them.”
One hundred Greenville men volunteered for naval duty by
December 9. Two hundred men rushed to the army
recruiting office in Columbia before noon that same day,
and the response across the state proved similar. In Conway,
Aiken, Spartanburg, and dozens of other communities,
thousands of young men offered themselves for military
service in the wake of Pearl Harbor. By war’s end, more
than 200,000 South Carolinians served in the nation’s armed
forces; were it not for a rejection rate that surpassed the
national average—largely the result of poor physical health
or illiteracy—many more Sandlappers would have willingly
and enthusiastically served.
Over the next few days, local and state officials
activated civil defense measures. Airplane-spotting
observation towers were manned, and air raid sirens were
tested. Citizens volunteered for community preparedness
work as auxiliary firemen and policemen, demolition
experts, road and bridge builders, and traffic supervisors—
all necessary jobs in the event of an enemy attack on the
state. Charleston’s Roper Hospital registered 375 men and
women to manufacture surgical dressings, and dozens
more did the same at hospitals and clinics in Conway, Loris,
Columbia, Sumter, Greenville, Aiken, and Spartanburg.
South Carolinian support for the nation’s war effort was
immediate and almost unanimous.
260 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Marine recruits in training at Parris Island Marine Recruit Center,

May, 1942

War Comes to South Carolina

Japan’s strike on Hawaii proved that an enemy could reach
the United States, and residents of all coastal states realized
they were vulnerable to enemy attack. Camden’s civil
defense coordinator warned of a possible German air
assault on the East Coast and possibly against Newfound¬
land. Charleston’s officials considered a Nazi strike on the
city’s naval yard and inland military training centers more
likely from aircraft carriers just beyond the horizon or from
bases in the Caribbean. Mayor Henry Lockwood ordered
sandbags be stacked around the community’s hospitals and
city offices. Throughout spring and summer 1942, air-raid
drills were held along the coast in Beaufort, Charleston,
Georgetown, and Myrtle Beach as well as in the interior
communities of Columbia, Sumter, Camden, Aiken, and
Greenville. In many of these drills, the United States Army
Air Corps provided a squadron of bombers to play the role
of Nazi attackers in order to test fully the state’s air
observation and warning system.
 TWELVE: THE PALMETTO STATE IN WORLD WAR II z61

The real threat to America’s coast, however, came not

from warplanes blit from German submarines, or U-boats.
From January 1942 through August 1943 the war for the
Western Atlantic raged, U-boats sinking hundreds of Allied
cargo ships and tankers from Massachusetts to the mouth of
the Mississippi River, sending 171 to the ocean floor by June
1942 alone. The greatest German activity was centered
along the Carolinas, American sailors terming the stretch
“torpedo junction.” Sixth Naval District Commander
Admiral Jules Jones, based in Charleston, confirmed 150 U-
boat contacts on the Carolina coast by war’s end in 1945,
one-third of these spotted between Georgetown and
Savannah. Nazi submarines were both successful and
brazen. In July 1942, U-751 slipped into Charleston Harbor
and laid twelve mines, and on September 18 U-455 dropped
another dozen into the harbor.
Part of the U-boat success against Allied shipping
resulted from the behavior of coastal residents themselves.
Homes, businesses, and amusement parks along the shore
remained lighted at night when not blacked-out by air-raid
drills and, consequently, served as beacons for German
submarines. Coastal lights also silhouetted ships at sea and
made them visible targets. In mid-March 1942, Admiral
William White of the Sixth Naval District fired a letter to
the new South Carolina governor, Richard Manning
Jefferies, advising him of the problem of ship silhouetting
and recommending that at the minimum he order a
mandatory dim-out from Beaufort to Myrtle Beach. The
governor urged seaboard businesses to comply with the
Navy’s request, and many did so grudgingly and expressed
their concerns that “tourist season would be ruined.” The
owner of the pavilion at Folly Beach outside Charleston
agreed to implement a dim-out “if such action becomes
necessary.” By April, however, every city and town on the
South Carolina coast adopted navy-recommended blackout
guidelines—use of parking lights only when driving at
night, no exterior lighting after dusk, and blackout curtains
in oceanfront homes.
To help locate enemy submarines, the navy employed
the Civil Air Patrol organized shortly before Pearl Harbor.
South Carolina’s CAP was based at James Island just
outside Charleston and flew eight missions daily, four to the
z6z ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Barrage balloons are raised into the air near Beaufort, serving as
navigation obstacles against possible enemy bombing raids along
coastal South Carolina, May 1942.

north and four to the south. Should they spot a U-boat, they
were to radio its position to the Coast Guard and keep it
under surveillance until warships arrived. CAP work
proved indispensable in ridding the coast of enemy
submarines.
Federal and state officials also considered extensive use
of the Intracoastal Waterway to secure Allied shipping.
Barges could easily navigate the twelve- to fifteen-foot-
deep channel that extended from Florida to Maine. The
only problem was the lack of barges. Georgetown and
Charleston officials concluded that their local shipbuilders
could quickly manufacture a sufficient number of barges to
handle general cargo and oil shipments for the war effort
and concurrently bring newfound profits to their
communities. In the United States Senate, South Carolina’s
Burnet Maybank introduced a bill to construct a canal
across northern Florida to link the Gulf Coast Intracoastal
Waterway system to that of the East Coast and in so doing
provide inland transportation from Texas to Maine. The
measure passed both houses of Congress and Roosevelt
signed the bill into law in summer 1943; however, by that
time the U-boat menace had evaporated and the waterway
connector was no longer needed.
 TWELVE: THE PALMETTO STATE IN WORLD WAR II 263

South Carolinians Settle into War

World War II transformed South Carolina, in part as a
result of the nation’s military and naval presence in the
state. Since November 1941, the 56th Interceptor Squadron
based in Charlotte, North Carolina used the small Myrtle
Beach Army Air Base as its temporary home from which it
flew gunnery practice missions in the waters off
Georgetown and Murrell’s Inlet. During the war, the base
was substantially enlarged and became a permanent coastal
air defense post, an assignment that continued until
military cutbacks forced its closure in the early 1990s. Just
three days after Pearl Harbor, Washington committed $12
million to construct a pilot training base at Greenville that
would house 400 pilots, 4,500 enlisted men, and 130
bombers. Spartanburg Municipal Airport became home to
the Navy Air Transport Service that ferried recently
manufactured aircraft from eastern factories to the West
Coast. A new air base was constructed at Walterboro for
the search and pursuit of German U-boats, and smaller
training fields were established at Bennettsville, Camden,
Sumter, Aiken, Beaufort, Florence, Spartanburg, Chester,
Anderson, Barnwell, Georgetown, Johns Island, Hartsville,
Greenwood, and Columbia. All of the expanded airfields
and those newly built by the War Department remained in
service following the war, some as permanent military air
stations and others as civilian fields.
In addition to pilot training, several of the new or
expanded air bases trained pilots in the use of live
ammunition before deployment to overseas posts.
Columbia Air Base in May 1942 warned the public to
remain clear of the southern side of Lake Murray, where
warplanes regularly practiced with live rounds. The army
and navy both cautioned coastal fishermen who trawled
along Murrell’s Inlet, Pawley’s Island, and Georgetown to
be on the watch for American aircraft, and restricted the
waters to military use only during certain hours of the day.
The military also required large tracts for bombing ranges.
In Horry County, the War Department designated 54,000
acres of the Red Hill District north of Conway and a 6,400-
acre stretch between the Intracoastal Waterway and the
ocean as bombing ranges for pilots stationed at the Myrtle
Beach Air Base. More than 37,000 acres in the Carver Bay
264 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

section of Georgetown County were also earmarked as a

bombing range. In late December 1941, the War
Department ordered Red Hill’s three hundred families to
vacate the area, their property to be purchased by
Washington at fair market value. By March 1942, the War
Department held title to the needed land and soon
afterward commenced bombing practice missions in the
region. As late as 2008, the Army Corps of Engineers still
required its personnel to search for undetonated bombs
before new neighborhoods were constructed in the area.
Upstate, Sandlappers were invaded by the United
States Army in July 1942. The War Department needed to
train its infantry for European warfare and selected six
counties bordering North Carolina along with ten counties
in the Tarheel State for field maneuvers. Plans were laid
long before Pearl Harbor to give Washington sufficient
time to secure the necessary legal permits from landowners;
by April 15, 1942, every Sandlapper in the affected counties
had waived all trespass rights to the army. Between July
and September, mock battles raged across the region at no
small sacrifice to local farmers and businessmen.
Fort Jackson in Columbia received 40,000 new recruits
for basic training in spring 1942, and throughout the war
years it was one of the largest army training facilities in the
nation. The air bases in Greenville, Spartanburg, Myrtle
Beach, Charleston, and nearly one dozen other
communities also brought thousands of servicemen into
South Carolina. The naval base in Charleston expanded to
become the second largest facility on the East Coast, second
only to the naval station at Norfolk, Virginia. The presence
of so many servicemen strained local community services.
The influx of so many servicemen and military families
forced towns and cities to build recreation halls and public
parks to serve military personnel in their off-duty hours,
parks and recreation centers that remained open to the
general public following the war. In February 1942 Aiken
residents donated chairs, tables, lamps, books, and writing
paper for soldiers who used the town’s servicemen’s
recreation center, and local funds supplied the facility with
a ping-pong table, balls, and paddles. One unidentified
resident paid in full the first year’s rent on the building. In
Columbia, 21 fully supplied recreation centers tended to the
 twelve: the palmetto state in world WAR II 265

needs of both civilians and soldiers, providing tennis courts,

a lighted softball field, a boxing ring, and gardens.
The expansion of army and navy training facilities
brought a massive wave of federal dollars into the state.
Prewar airport development statewide totaled $10 million;
Greenville alone received $12 million in 1942, and another
$6 million went to smaller fields that same year. Larger
airfields also witnessed expansion of civilian use. Eastern
Airlines used Columbia’s facility for air travel between
Miami and New York, and Delta routed traffic through the
city for flights running from Charleston to Dallas, Texas.
Airports at Spartanburg, Greenville, and Charleston all
reaped the financial windfall of wartime civilian air travel.
So lucrative was civilian use that the South Carolina
Aeronautics Commission requested and received $4 million
from Washington for further development of air service in
the state. Millions more were appropriated by Congress for
the expansion of port facilities in Charleston and
Georgetown, the building of army bases statewide, the
construction of roads leading to military posts and the
widening of highways for military traffic, and the extension
of electrical and water service for army and navy bases. The
war also demanded maximum production of cotton,
tobacco, textile goods, and food crops. South Carolina’s
farmers netted windfall profits, as did the state’s
manufacturing sector. Wages for factory and mill workers
also rose to record levels, giving Sandlappers a purchasing
power unmatched in the state’s history. Unfortunately,
wartime rationing left little to buy, and most money sat in
savings accounts until the war ended.
As the war progressed, South Carolinians contributed
more of their time and money to the war effort. Thousands
volunteered their services to the American Red Cross
(ARC), the majority producing a steady supply of surgical
dressings needed by both the army and navy. Marion
volunteers alone produced more than 68,000 bandages by
summer 1943. Other volunteers aided nurses in hospitals,
read to recuperating patients, wrote letters for servicemen
unable to pen their own words, cleaned bedpans, delivered
ice and water to each room, and changed bed linens. Still
others worked as typists, filing clerks, publicists, printers,
and general errand runners. Even those who did not
z66 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Must-See Sites: McLeod Farms

Antique Museum and Roadside
Market, McBee

Four miles south of the little town of McBee on Hwy 151 sits
McLeod Farms, a rest stop heavily visited by travelers to and
from Myrtle Beach. Inside the rustic-looking museum sit
more than twenty antique automobiles, among them a
collection of Model T’s and Model A’s, a 1930 Lincoln, and
a “woody.” A 1968 Chevrolet Camaro, a Nash Rambler, and
other cars manufactured in the ’60s also are housed in the
museum. Visitors can also examine antique farm equipment
and tractors, record players, outdated drink machines, and
a wide array of memorabilia. A roadside market next door
sells fruits and vegetables produced on McLeod Farms,
freshly picked strawberries and peaches being the most
popular. In October each year, visitors can take a wagon
ride into the fields and pick their own pumpkin. The market
also sells fresh-baked pies and cakes and homemade ice
cream. Admission to the museum is free, and both the
museum and market are open daily except on holidays.

contribute time to the ARC nonetheless donated their

blood for Red Cross distribution to hospitals stateside and
to aid stations in combat zones. In June 1945, 620 Columbia
women contributed 8,300 hours of their free time to the
city’s Red Cross office. The pattern was replicated in towns
and cities statewide throughout the war years. The ARC
also desperately needed money to cover its operational
costs, to purchase supplies in demand by army and navy
units, and to help families dislocated by the war.
Throughout the war, the Red Cross held a series of
fundraising campaigns, each town and city assigned a
financial quota to meet. South Carolina’s communities
organized golf tournaments and sponsored dances and
town picnics to raise money for the Red Cross. Spartanburg
County residents contributed $130,000 in the ARC’s spring
1944 fund drive, $34,000 over its quota. Even children
participated. Four Aiken schoolgirls organized a dog show
and netted $117 for the ARC.
 TWELVE: THE PALMETTO STATE IN WORLD WAR II 267

South Carolinians gave their time to many

organizations in addition to the Red Cross. The Travelers’
Aid Society opened offices throughout the Palmetto State
to attend to the needs of servicemen and their families.
Spartanburg, for example, staffed four full-time volunteers
and by August 1944 had aided 4,902 people. Local
community efforts to support area servicemen also
surfaced. Marion’s Junior Chamber of Commerce collected
enough money from town residents to purchase 550 cartons
of cigarettes to send to soldiers from the county stationed
overseas. Churches conducted special services for military
personnel and members of the congregations invited
soldiers and sailors into their homes for Sunday dinner.
Schools held assemblies for students to promote patriotism,
and students crafted checkerboards, stationery, crossword
puzzles, and even furniture for the soldiers’ use in local
military recreation halls.

War and Race

In May 1942, in a personal letter to Major Corbett
Carmichael, a native-born South Carolinian serving at
Maxwell Army Air Base in Alabama, Governor R. M.
Jefferies noted that “the race problem is becoming more
and more serious in the State and I do not know what will
be the final outcome.” The governor’s comment proved
prophetic. Many South Carolinians viewed President
Roosevelt’s inclusion of African Americans in the New
Deal, particularly his appointment of blacks to
administrative posts, as evidence of FDR’s plan to smash
Jim Crow race segregation. The National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had also
pressured the president into creating the Fair Employment
Commission, which established something akin to present-
day affirmative action. War industries throughout South
Carolina were now required to employ black workers in
the same jobs and at the same wages held by whites.
Thousands of African Americans rushed to the better
employment opportunities generated by war manufacturing
demands. Also, the United States Army accepted African-
Americans for pilot training, and the ranks of black officers
in all arms of the service bulged as America entered World
War II. With such advances, many white South Carolinians
z68 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

worried that African Americans would use the crisis of war

to press their own civil rights agenda and ultimately destroy
the longstanding system of segregation in the state. What
surfaced between 1942 and 1945 was a visible white
backlash” against a perceived attack on white supremacy in
South Carolina.
Much of the backlash was violent. In Spartanburg
County in June 1942, 65-year-old Louis Nesbitt, a black
employee of Turner Wholesale Company, was allegedly
overheard telling friends that blacks should not fight “a
white man’s war.” That evening, masked white men
approached Nesbitt’s home in Greer, abducted him, carried
him to a remote location, and severely beat the elderly man.
On August 8, a crowd of white men rampaged through
Greenwood’s business district slapping, punching, and
beating all blacks they encountered. In Charleston on
September 6, a car bearing North Carolina license plates
and occupied by four African Americans innocently drove
through the Dorchester community. Suspicious as ever of
“outsiders,” but particularly blacks, and swept by the
pervading fear of black agitators for civil rights while the
nation waged war, local whites gave chase and fired
birdshot at the car’s passengers, wounding all occupants.
Rumors filtered through the state of an impending race
war. One hinted that African-American women were
buying ice picks to use against whites during nighttime air¬
raid drills. Another claimed that blacks intended to
designate one day each week as “bump day,” during which
African Americans on city streets would purposely collide
with white pedestrians. The most popular rumor centered
on “Eleanor Clubs,” purportedly a South-wide movement
among black domestic workers to walk off the job, leaving
white women to tend to their own household chores, and
possibly directing violence against their white employers.
Word of all these allegations spread statewide, from
Beaufort to Greenville, and so raised the specter among
whites of a black rebellion in South Carolina.
To ensure public safety and reassure whites that
African Americans were not plotting rebellion, Governor
Jefferies instructed the State Law Enforcement Division
(SLED) to survey the sale of weapons and ammunition in
South Carolina to determine if any surge in gun purchases
 TWELVE: THE PALMETTO STATE IN WORLD WAR II

was evident. SLED’s chief, S. J. Pratt, reported on

September 10 that there appeared no unusual activity in the
towns he checked, among them Gaffney, Florence,
Winnsboro, Chester, and Bennettsville. White fears
continued throughout the war years, but no rumor of a
black conspiracy was ever confirmed.
To the contrary, South Carolina’s black population
enthusiastically embraced the war as their own, as
Americans. Of the 200,000 South Carolinians in uniform,
nearly one-third were African Americans. Thousands
more African Americans secured jobs in defense plants,
donated blood, bought war bonds, and volunteered for
defense work. To be sure, within the civilian community,
black wartime activities remained racially segregated.
Thousands more emigrated from the state seeking high-
paying jobs in the North and on the West Coast.

City Congestion and Wartime Economics

War required expanded production of ships at the
Charleston Navy Yard and its neighboring Charleston Dry
Dock Company; expansion required the employment of
additional workers. As a result, thousands of men and
women flocked to Charleston in search of high-paying jobs.
The navy yard hired 6,000 new workers in 1941 and
another 22,000 by summer 1943. Outside the naval facilities,
another 72,000 people secured employment in the city and
county. Many came from within South Carolina, many
from outside the state. So attractive were the high-paying
jobs, teenagers quit school to seek employment. In 1941,
there were 100,000 children enrolled in junior and senior
high schools statewide, and 11,149 South Carolina students
received diplomas. In 1944, however, only 54,000
youngsters attended the state’s secondary schools, and 9,700
graduated high school. Many of the children relocated with
their parents to other states during the war, and older teens
bailed out of school for military service. Most, however, left
school for jobs. South Carolina enjoyed full employment
and respectable wages for the first time in its lengthy
history, but at what expense to the state?
Employment opportunities during the war raised the
population of Charleston County 41 percent, and with that
sudden growth came heightened demands for city and
270 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

county services, along with a degree of wartime

profiteering. Rents skyrocketed, and retail stores and
marketplaces boosted prices. Cars and buses packed city
streets. Bars, nightclubs, theaters, churches, restaurants, all
were jammed with men and women, uniformed and
civilian alike. Charleston was so overcrowded and
expensive, and yet the earning potential so high, that some
workers at the Charleston Navy Yard lived as much as 50
miles from the city and commuted daily to their jobs.
Washington listed Charleston as one of the nation’s eight
most congested cities during the war years.
The war directly affected public school services.
Statewide, teachers were in short supply. Many educators,
both men and women, answered the nation’s call and
entered the armed forces. Others abandoned the profession,
long noted for its sub-par pay and paltry benefits, for much
better salaries in defense plants and private industry. In
addition, South Carolina suffered a loss of teachers to
nearby states; educators who wished to remain in the
profession were promised a far better salary and benefits
package in North Carolina and Georgia than the Palmetto
State offered. In September 1941, white teachers earned
$765 per year in contrast to the national average of $1,500.
During the war, teacher salaries did rise, reaching $1,152
annually in 1945; still, the national average stood at $2,000
at war’s end, with North Carolina at $1,600 and Florida at
$1,700. African-American teachers continued to earn
salaries far less than their white counterparts. Most schools
compensated for the loss by increasing their class student-
to-teacher ratios and hiring the untrained wives of naval
officers and plant supervisors in the city. These “emergency
teachers,” however, seldom stayed in the classroom very
long. The workload drained their energy, many found
better-paying jobs outside the classroom, and others
followed their husbands to naval postings or jobs elsewhere
in the nation.
Not only did schools find it difficult to retain teachers
and provide a reasonable student-to-teacher ratio, per-pupil
expenditures proved dismally insufficient. In 1945, South
Carolina provided $88 per year per white child and only
$36 annually for each African-American child. In contrast,
New York spent more than $200 annually on every child,
 twelve: the palmetto state in world WAR II 271

Must-See Sites: Patriot's Point

Naval and Maritime Museum,
Mt. Pleasant

In 1975, the aircraft carrier USS Yorktoum was berthed in

Charleston Harbor and in October opened as a public
museum at Patriot’s Point, located in Mt. Pleasant. Within a
few years, the United States Navy destroyer USS Laffey and
submarine Clamagore and the Coast Guard cutter Ingham
were placed alongside Yorktown. Located on the carrier’s
hangar deck and on the flight deck is a large collection of
warplanes dating from World War II to the present, among
them the famed F4U Corsair, B-25 Mitchell, A-4 Skyhawk, F-4
Phantom, the F-14 Tomcat, and a variety of military and naval
helicopters. Recently opened to visitors is the Medal of Honor
Museum, which includes interactive exhibits highlighting the
history of the award and honoring some of its army, navy, and
air force recipients. Also housed at the Patriot’s Point Museum
is a replica of a Vietnam War naval support base that features
a patrol boat used in the Mekong Delta, a Huey helicopter, and
artifacts from the war. The Cold War Submarine Memorial
nearby traces the role of America’s navy from 1947 to 1989,
paying particular tribute to the submarine fleet. Around the
central plaza are seven educational stations and a full-sized
replica of a Benjamin Franklin Class Fleet Ballistic Missile
submarine. The Patriot’s Point Naval and Maritime Museum is
among the largest of its kind in the world.
Patriot’s Point is open daily, except on Christmas Day. For
more information, telephone (866) 831-1720 or visit
www.patriotspoint.org.

regardless of race. The disparity in appropriations assured

the continued inferiority of black schools and consequently
the continued relegation of African Americans to the
lowest paying jobs in the state. The unequal distribution of
funds protected white supremacy, despite the wartime goals
of freedom and equality espoused by Americans nationally.
Like Charleston, Columbia was swamped with a
sudden population growth and confronted its own
congestion, but the state capital’s overcrowding was never
Z72. ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

as severe as the coastal city’s. The overwhelming majority

of new arrivals to the Columbia were soldiers, shipped to
Fort Jackson for basic military training and quickly
deployed to advanced training centers elsewhere in the
United States or to overseas duty posts. Fort Jackson was
more like a revolving door, Charleston more like a rest and
refitting station. Civilian employment also rose in
Columbia, but Columbia’s available jobs were principally
centered in construction and the service industries rather
than defense production. Greenville and Spartanburg, each
with moderately-sized military posts, followed the same
pattern as Columbia.
Forty counties in South Carolina actually witnessed
population decline during the war. Residents migrated to
Charleston, Columbia, Greenville, and Spartanburg for job
opportunities. Textile mills hummed 24 hours daily,
supplying the armed forces with military wear and
supplies. Concrete plants in the state shipped their product
throughout the South for road construction projects and
military base development, paper mills churned out
millions of reams of paper, and plywood factories produced
building material for military posts. Fishermen along the
coast increased their haul of shrimp and crab for sale to
both the armed forces and local civilian markets.
Construction companies begged for laborers, and large
farming operations never had enough hands to harvest the
crops or pick the fruit. Many South Carolinians left the
state entirely to shipbuilding plants, aircraft factories, and a
variety of defense factories in states as far north as Michigan
and west to California. At no point in South Carolina’s
history had in-migration or out-migration been so great as
it was during World War II.
Overcrowded cities bred a serious problem—vice.
Charleston, Columbia, and Greenville had the highest
concentration of sailors and soldiers in the state, and in these
communities gambling, drinking, and prostitution
flourished during the war. Bars lined city streets, “juke
joints” were numerous, and houses of prostitution increased
in proportion to the number of servicemen stationed in the
cities. Where these existed, so, too, did rising violent crime
rates—servicemen swindled of their money, assaulted and
robbed. The environment contributed to hundreds of
 twelve: the palmetto state in world WAR II
2-73

fistfights nightly among service personnel and compelled

police forces to hire more officers at the very time when
qualified men were in short supply. A June 1942 article in
PM magazine titled “Sailors Beware of Charleston, SC”
described the city as the most corrupt and dangerous naval
port in the nation. Sailors were targeted for exploitation,
alcohol flowed too freely, “reefers” were too widely available,
violence against servicemen entirely too frequent, and
“entertaining women” far too numerous.
Indeed, infection rates for syphilis and gonorrhea
staggered the imagination. Of every 1,000 men examined
for military service in South Carolina in 1942, 156 were
infected with a “social" disease. Statewide, estimates placed
the civilian infection rate for syphilis at 140,000 and
gonorrhea at 300,000 that year; rather than being reduced,
by 1944 the number of civilians infected were 225,000 and
900,000 respectively. South Carolina ranked second in the
nation in its level of infection in 1942, barely above Florida.
What worried the navy most was the incidence of
venereal disease among sailors. No one was certain just how
many prostitutes worked the city of Charleston, but most
blamed these women rather than the men for the
unbelievably high VD infection rate in the city and state.
Admiral William Allen argued that in Charleston alone
enough sailors each year were sidelined by syphilis to man
an aircraft carrier and its smaller support ships. The
disease, he said repeatedly, reduced the navy’s fighting
capability and consequently benefited the enemy.
Steps were taken beginning in 1942 to deal with
venereal diseases. Admiral Allen declared 25 of the more
notorious Charleston night spots off limits to sailors; within
six months he added another eleven establishments to the
list. Local businesses that served sailors quickly understood
the point: either clean up their establishments or lose
profits. The city, which had traditionally focused on the
diagnosis and treatment of infected women and men, now
concentrated on the enforcement of anti-prostitution laws.
This accomplished little. Prior to Pearl Harbor,
prostitution, though not legal, was tolerated and confined
to a “red light district” where police and social workers
could exert some influence over the trade. But wartime
enforcement of the law only scattered the women and girls
 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA
2-74

throughout the city, from dark alleys to dozens of hotels

and bars. Many women became mobile, plying their trade
in taxicabs. Adequate enforcement had hardly any chance
of success.
In March 1942, the state legislature passed into law new
penalties for violating the anti-prostitution statute. Fines
for first offenders amounted to $100 and 30 days in jail;
repeat offenders faced up to $1,000 and three years in
prison. Even this failed to slow the business. Once convicted
of their first offense, women simply changed their names
and operated under a new identity. Moreover, the law only
addressed the prostitutes; there was no prosecution of the
men who solicited prostitution or those who profited from
the trade. The State Board of Health did initiate treatment
programs that detained infected women in abandoned
Civilian Conservation Corps camps, such as the Pontiac
Camp just east of Columbia. There, the women received
medical care and education before being released back into
the general population. The Board of Health, however,
never received sufficient funds nor adequate facilities and
equipment to make the program very effective. In addition,
the board only quarantined women, not infected men.

Returning to Peace
As it became increasingly evident in late 1944 that an
American victory in World War II was but months away,
South Carolinians began to redirect their attention to
domestic issues. That year, the United States Supreme Court
ruled that African Americans could not be prevented from
voting in the Democratic Party primary elections. South
Carolina responded by passing 147 laws and a state
constitutional amendment declaring political parties to be
private organizations and therefore free of federal regulation.
These measures effectively barred African Americans from
primary elections, sidestepping the court’s ruling.
To prepare for America’s demobilization, the state’s
Research, Planning, and Development Board conducted a
blind survey of 65,000 South Carolinians in uniform to
determine their postwar intentions. Fully 90 percent
indicated that they planned to return home to South
Carolina. Most of these men expressed their desire to
acquire a job in a field different from their prewar
 TWELVE: THE PALMETTO STATE IN WORLD WAR II
2-75

employment. And, African Americans openly stated their

determination to press for equal rights and equal
opportunity, both in quantity and quality.
The state planning board realized demobilization and
the substantial reduction of defense production would
likely spawn a postwar recession. In Washington, South
Carolina’s representatives and senators voted in favor of the
Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (GI Bill) in September,
hoping its provisions would soften the economic and social
blow that awaited the state once peace returned. The act’s
allotment of money for tuition, textbooks, and living costs
while in school proved quite attractive to veterans. College
enrollment jumped once the war ended; the University of
South Carolina, for example, enrolled 2,244 in 1945 but
4,078 just three years later, the majority of whom were war
veterans. Clemson experienced similar growth, as did
private colleges from the coast to the mountains. The bill
also granted low interest rate small business loans;
thousands of veterans took advantage of the provision and
formed their own businesses. The Servicemen’s
Readjustment Act further provided “no money down”
home mortgages for veterans at a one percent interest rate.
Combined, these measures cushioned the impact of
demobilization in South Carolina. With so many veterans
attending college and technical schools, many of those
dismissed from their home front defense jobs at war’s end
were able to find other work; construction companies
needed laborers to build more dormitories, classrooms, and
homes. Farmers produced record crops to feed veterans and
their new families. Retail stores hired thousands of
displaced defense workers as the end of rationing
unleashed a purchasing power based on wartime savings.
Recession did descend on the state but not with the
viciousness anticipated in 1944.
Returning veterans were also determined to effect
political reforms. In the 1946 race for governor was a
decorated airborne infantry war hero, J. Strom Thurmond.
Thurmond publicly condemned the Old Guard control of
South Carolina politics and called for a fundamental
redirection in state affairs. He won the election and during
his tenure in Columbia pushed through the General
Assembly a number of reforms. Thurmond extended the
2.76 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

school year from eight months to nine months and added a

twelfth grade to high school. The poll tax was repealed, the
State Port Authority was given sufficient funds to expand
and modernize the port at Charleston, divorce was
legalized, and aid was granted to dependent children under
eighteen who remained in school. In addition, Thurmond
took a bold stand in 1947 demanding the full prosecution of
21 white men who kidnapped and brutally murdered a
black man who himself was accused of killing a white taxi¬
cab driver. The defendants were found not guilty, but the
nation had witnessed a governor of a southern state defying
the white majority’s acceptance of lynching. African
Americans applauded Governor Thurmond’s courage.
World War II brought unparalleled prosperity to
South Carolina. It stimulated industrial development,
reinvigorated the old economic base, poured federal dollars
into cities and towns, built airbases and highways, and
brought outsiders into the state in record numbers, who
themselves breathed new ideas into a state previously
locked in its past. South Carolina in the wake of war stood
at the proverbial crossroads—one path returning the state
to its past and one leading in a new direction. Many
wondered which path the state would follow once it
readjusted fully to peace.
 13
Joining the Union

W ar joined South Carolina to the rest of the

nation. Federal dollars enlarged the state’s
infrastructure, the immigration of men and
women from every corner of the United States diluted the
power of antebellum values, and the Axis peril had given
Sandlappers a common interest with the rest of the nation.
With the return of peace, the Old Guard intended to
restore prewar norms, but instead it found a people and a
state at the proverbial crossroads of retrenchment and
progress, pulled simultaneously in both directions. For the
next 25 years South Carolinians stood at the “intersection”
and grappled with a choice as pivotal as secession in 1860.

The Persistent Issues of Race and States’

Rights
The United States Supreme Court’s 1944 ruling that opened
Democratic Party primary elections to African Americans
was not well received in South Carolina. In the minds of
many Sandlappers, it was a clear federal violation of states’
rights. That year, the legislature convened, considered, and
passed into law 147 bills to reshape party structure and
elections. Collectively, the laws redefined the Democratic
Party in the state as a private organization, it and its primary
election process free of federal authority. White South
Carolinians believed they had successfully sidestepped the
federal government’s interference in state matters.
But the legislature’s move to secure white supremacy at
the ballot box and so to retrench itself in prewar norms
confronted a wall of opposition that had not existed before
Pearl Harbor. The war had created opportunities for
African Americans to an extent only imagined before
1941—jobs, federal protection in the workplace, equal

2 77
278 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

work and pay in defense factories, educational programs,

administrative positions in government, and movement
into the officer corps in the armed forces. The very goals for
which the United States had waged war—democracy and
equality—were the goals African Americans were
determined to acquire for themselves in the postwar period.
They had defended the nation overseas and on the home
front and were not about to remain second-class citizens.
Within the black population, a determined spirit arose. In
South Carolina alone, black membership in the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) rose from 800 in 1939 to 14,000 in 1948, ready to
challenge in state and federal courts race segregation and
undemocratic policies.
A segment of white society readily offered its support to
African Americans in challenging retrenchment. More than
200,000 South Carolinians had served in the armed forces,
and many took President Roosevelt’s wartime goals to
heart—freedom from fear and want, freedom of religion and
speech, and the protection of democracy for all. In their
encounters with men from diverse walks of life, religions,
and ethnic groups, the state’s white soldiers were exposed to
ideas far different from those they had accepted before the
war. Many witnessed black servicemen in action; others
relied on the work of African Americans who kept supplies
running to the front lines. Combat taught soldiers that a
man’s worth was determined by his courage, loyalty, and
integrity and not by the color of his skin. The war left a
profound imprint on many white veterans. Moreover, whites
that remained on the home front themselves questioned the
logic of defending democracy and freedom while
concurrently depriving African Americans of both.
Interracial conferences were held throughout much of the
South during the war to address the status of African
Americans in white society, and these attracted the attention
and understanding of many whites. Books and articles
printed in nationally distributed magazines championed the
equality of all men, and Hollywood’s wartime productions
highlighted the interdependency of all Americans regardless
of race, ethnicity, and religion. By war’s end, white society
had been inundated with the message of a new
“Americanism,” one that ideologically embraced all persons.
 THIRTEEN: JOINING THE UNION 279

Must-See Sites: Greenville

County Museum of Art,
Greenville

This museum offers visitors a rich sampling of the very

best in American art, with pieces from the colonial era to
the present. Its Southern Collection is nationally
respected, with work created by southern artists or
focused on southern culture. The Andrew Wyeth
Collection includes 32 paintings, representing every
period of his career. The museum houses works by
Georgia O’Keefe, Thomas Hart Benton, Andy Warhol, and
Jasper Johns, among others. The museum is located at
420 College Street. For more information, call (864) 271-
7570, email [email protected], or visit
www.greenvillemuseum.org.

In summer 1947, opposition surfaced among many

white South Carolinians to the legislature’s efforts to
protect the Democratic Party. Party officials in Richland
and Marlboro Counties denounced the legislature’s
reactionary move. In Charleston, Judge J. Waties Waring
struck down the party’s new oath that required all voters to
uphold racial segregation. Waring’s move opened the polls
to 35,000 black voters in the August 1948 primary elections.
Within the Democratic Party itself and from the bench, the
Old Guard confronted white opposition to retrenchment
and the denial of wartime values to African Americans.
South Carolina’s Democratic Party also found itself at
odds with the national organization. President Harry S.
Truman’s special committee on race in 1948 issued its
statement “To Secure These Rights,” a lengthy denunciation
of the second-class citizenship of black Americans and a long
list of suggested federal actions to ameliorate the disparity
between whites and blacks. Separately, the president
desegregated the nation’s armed forces. Truman advocated
the full extension of equal rights to all Americans, regardless
of race, as a fulfillment of the nation’s constitutional
obligation. Additionally, he understood that the votes of
2,80 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

white, southern Democrats were no longer essential to the

party’s national success and consequently he was freed from
bowing to their demands.
South Carolina’s Old Guard viewed the president’s
direction as an attack on states’ rights and Jim Crow
segregation. In response, the southern wing of the
Democratic Party bolted from the 1948 national
convention, reassembled in Birmingham, formed the
States’ Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrats), and
nominated South Carolina’s Governor Strom Thurmond as
the party’s presidential contender. Thurmond repeatedly
voiced the dominant sentiment of white Southerners and
white South Carolinians—opposition to direct federal
intervention into the affairs of individual states, including
matters regarding race and civil rights. In November,
Thurmond won 1 million votes and 39 Electoral College
votes from the South; he carried all but two counties in
South Carolina.
Retrenchment was especially virulent in rural South
Carolina. In rural Clarendon County, the school system
provided bus service only to white children, although there
were nearly three times as many black youngsters enrolled
in the county’s schools. African-American children were
forced to walk miles to the nearest racially segregated
schoolhouse, facilities that were heated with woodstoves
and had no indoor plumbing or electric lights. The white-
controlled school board consistently rebuffed all requests by
the black community for better school buildings and for
school bus service, often in the harshest and most
derogatory terms. African Americans in one remote district
of Clarendon County met with NAACP attorney
Thurgood Marshall in Columbia and, on December 20,
1950 (exactly 90 years to the day after South Carolina had
seceded from the Union), filed suit against the school
district in Briggs v. Elliott. The case intended a direct attack
on the constitutionality of Jim Crow, which had been
sanctioned by the United States Supreme Court in Plessy v.
Ferguson (1896), and was the first challenge of school
segregation in the twentieth-century South. In Charleston’s
federal district court in May 1951, the panel of three judges
ruled 2-1 against the plaintiffs but in their ruling stated
clearly that race segregation has never and would never
 thirteen: joining the union 2.8 x

provide equality. Marshall appealed the court’s decision to

the United States Supreme Court, adding it to four other
pending cases under the banner Brown v. the Board of
Education of Topeka, Kansas.
As the court deliberated over the next two years, South
Carolina moved to improve its national image on race and
give evidence that segregated schools could, indeed, be
equal. James Byrnes, former United States senator, New
Dealer, and White House insider under FDR, was elected
in 1950 as the state’s new governor, Thurmond being
elected to the Senate where he would remain for the next 50
years. Byrnes, like his predecessor, championed states’
rights, but he encouraged the legislature to equalize the
quality of education in the state’s segregated schools. The
General Assembly responded favorably, raising the state’s
sales tax rate to cover the cost of improvements in public
schools. Over the following five years, South Carolina
appropriated $124 million to the school budget, two-thirds
of which was spent on black schools.
In May 1954, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the
Brown case, stating that racially segregated schools did not
provide equal opportunity and calling for desegregation.
South Carolina was enraged by the court’s decision.
Throughout the state, retrenchment-oriented whites fumed
that the ruling amounted to a real threat to state sovereignty
and insisted South Carolina would not obey the court.
Governor Byrnes himself called on the state to commit itself
to total resistance against the intrusion of federal authority
inside the Palmetto State, and local citizens’ councils held
public rallies and pressured all those who wished to or who
attempted to implement the Brown decision in South
Carolina. In May 1955, on the anniversary of its historic,
landmark ruling, the court issued a follow-up statement
commonly referred to as Brown II that demanded the
desegregation of public schools “with all deliberate speed.”
The court’s statement only fueled the rage of South
Carolinians and led the legislature to repeal the state’s
compulsory school attendance law, as a means of assuring
white parents that their children would not have to attend
classes with black youngsters. A referendum was also put
before voters to change the state constitution’s requirement
that a public school system be provided; fortunately, the
z8z ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

South Carolina Tobacco,

Pounds Grown (1000s)

1950 1955 1960 1965
150,480 197,200 147,600 134,808

Cents per Pound

54.3 54.5 61.5 53.3

Source: Eldred E. Prince, Jr. Long Green: The Rise and Fall of Tobacco
in South Carolina (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000), pp. 203-204.

referendum failed. Senator Strom Thurmond in March

1956 co-authored the “Declaration of Southern Principles”
(also known as the Southern Manifesto), which viciously
attacked the audacity of the court in declaring segregated
schools unconstitutional and called on southern states to
prevent racial integration using any legal means necessary.
One hundred and one southern congressmen and senators
signed the document. Thurmond also warned that he and
his southern colleagues would adamantly oppose any civil
rights bill that came to the Senate floor.
Thurmond, Byrnes, and white legislators in the
General Assembly represented the old South Carolina;
many World War II veterans, the NAACP, and newcomers
to the state championed a new direction. Private
institutions began to desegregate voluntarily and
peacefully, among the largest the Lutheran Theological
Seminary in Columbia in 1954. The yearly statewide
conference of Methodists denounced the state’s reactionary
position, and from their pulpits many white ministers of
many denominations advocated racial equality. The South
Carolina (Christian Action Council, an interdenominational
organization, openly associated racial equality with biblical
teachings and decried the unchristian behavior of
reactionary white Carolinians. In 1957 Congress passed a
civil rights bill into law over South Carolina’s official
objection, but the measure received the endorsement of the
progressive element within the state.
 THIRTEEN: JOINING THE UNION 2.83

Postwar Production and Value

1975 1980 1985 1990

189,000 125,450 98,900 109,905

99-5 139-5 172.7 158.6

if

The Civil Rights Movement was in full stride by 1960,

led by the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC). While the NAACP pressed for
African-American equality through the courts, the SCLC
employed peaceful public demonstrations based on a
prescription first advocated by India’s Mahatma Gandhi
“passive resistance.” Given a demonstration of its
effectiveness in a lunch-counter sit-in in Greensboro, North
Carolina in February 1960, African Americans across
South Carolina embraced the tactic. Peaceful protests and
sit-ins were held in Greenville, Spartanburg, Columbia,
Rock Hill, Charleston, and a dozen other communities and
continued for the next ten years wherever African
Americans confronted race segregation and a denial of
their civil rights. Police and state troopers were expected to
maintain order; however, in some communities, law-
enforcement officers unleashed tear gas, fire hoses, and
clubs on marchers and jailed hundreds more in an effort to
break up the rallies. Occasionally, police looked the other
way while white gangs tore into black demonstrators.
So much violence was directed against African
Americans engaged in passive resistance that South
Carolina’s business community worried that outside
investments might vanish in those cities and towns hardest
hit. Prominent business and civic leaders of Greenville met
in 1961 and agreed that the violence and general
confrontation had to cease. In the name of business growth
284 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

and prosperity, they called on city residents to accept

desegregation. Given their status and influence in the
community, the Chamber of Commerce in 1962 founded a
biracial committee to coordinate desegregation of
Greenville and to convince the public to accept the new
direction. The state legislature, however, was not so
accommodating. That year, the General Assembly gave
legal sanction to the flying of the Confederate battle flag on
the statehouse dome as a visible symbol of South Carolina’s
position on states’ rights.
In conflict with the legislature’s move, the chief
executive clearly understood the national current on the
race issue. By proclamation in January 1963, out-going
Governor Ernest “Fritz” Hollings announced his
acceptance of racial integration as he turned the executive
branch over to Donald S. Russell, and Governor Russell
endorsed Hollings’ pronouncement, inviting everyone, of
all races, to his inaugural address and to the barbeque that
followed at the governor’s mansion. From the executive
mansion, South Carolina relinquished its heritage of
segregation and white supremacy, but long-cherished
values were not yet dead in the general population. Jim
Crow still governed the hearts and minds of many private
citizens, and local ordinances requiring racial segregation
were still enforced.
In June 1963, the NAACP announced plans for
demonstrations in key cities statewide unless Jim Crow was
buried on the local level. The sluggish response of city
councils resulted in a series of demonstrations that summer,
mostly in Columbia. But by year’s end, the capital city had
forced local merchants to remove their “whites only” signs
and serve black customers. Change occurred more quickly
in Rock Hill, Florence, and Spartanburg, and numerous
smaller communities from coast to mountains, although
many residents in these towns felt coerced into
desegregation by Washington and “outsiders” who had
relocated to the state.
Historian Walter Edgar argues that the rate of positive
change in race relations in South Carolina was more rapid
than in most southern states and offers several explanations.
First, state government insisted on maintaining law and
order and promised stern punishment to persons of either
 thirteen: joining the union 285

race who violated state or local law. Stability and order were
values long cherished by South Carolinians. They
overwhelmingly opposed mob action as a tool to fight racial
integration, just as they had condemned Ku Klux Klan
violence some 40 years earlier. Second, African Americans in
South Carolina were more willing to work within the existing
legal system and business community than African
Americans in many other states. They were integral members
of their towns communities, with much to lose should they
advocate or participate in violent demonstrations.
Not specifically noted by Edgar but equally important,
much of South Carolina’s economic structure required the
interaction of whites and blacks; without a cooperative
spirit, the already shaky economy might weaken further. It
was the salvation of the city’s business community and local
prosperity that prompted the Greenville’s Chamber of
Commerce to act favorably on desegregation. They worried
that without a peaceful environment economic growth in
the county would vanish. Toward that end, textile mills
began hiring African-American employees, as did
construction companies, restaurants, and most other
businesses that had been exclusively white before 1962. In
addition, the wartime emigration of African Americans
continued, with fully 400,000 blacks exiting the state
between 1945 and 1970. Peaceful coexistence was required
to retard the out-flow of the state’s labor force; if that meant
desegregation, then such would have to become state policy.
Universities also began to desegregate at about the same
time as the business sector. After winning a favorable
decision in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in January
1963, Harvey Gantt was admitted to Clemson University and
began his post-secondary academic career that same month.
Gantt confronted little overt animosity from his fellow
students; he graduated four years later and began a
distinguished career in politics that led to his election as
mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina in 1984. In September,
the University of South Carolina also opened its doors to
black students, and by spring 1965 all public colleges and half
of the private universities admitted students of all races.
Public schools, however, deliberately moved more
slowly toward racial integration. A few black children
enrolled in white public schools in 1963, but they faced a far
z86 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

more serious challenge than Gantt at Clemson. Thousands

of white parents were so determined not to have their
children attend schools with hlack students that they
withdrew their youngsters from public school and enrolled
them in private academies. More than 200 private schools,
most church-based, were founded between 1964 and 1970,
and additional facilities continued to be established well
into the 1980s. By 1975, nearly eight percent of all white
children in the state attended private school. Parents who
could not afford the cost of private school tuition instead
battled local public school districts and pursued legal
avenues to prevent or minimize desegregation. As late as
1969, only 12 of the state’s 93 school districts had integrated.
Change came slowly. By the mid-1970s, all school districts
in South Carolina were in “legal compliance” with school
desegregation laws. Federal court decisions rendered more
than ten years after the Brown case compelled
desegregation, in the 1960s ordering the “busing” of
African-American children to white schools to achieve
racial balance. This was expanded with the 1972 Supreme
Court ruling in Swann v. the Board of Education (Charlotte,
North Carolina), which ordered the busing of white
students into previously all-black schools, and the court’s
decision was applied across the South. Moreover, federal
courts beginning in the mid-1960s also issued rulings that
collapsed most Jim Crow statutes, opening previously white
neighborhoods to African-American residency. In so doing,
communities throughout the South, including those in
South Carolina, were desegregated, and this permitted
racial integration of neighborhood schools. The few rural
schools that remained segregated in the Palmetto State in
the 1990s were by decade’s end consolidated by order of the
state legislature. The long history of schools racially
segregated by law ended as the twenty-first century began.
African-American voting opportunities in South
Carolina also expanded in the 1960s with passage of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965. Protected by federal law, voter
registration soared from 58,000 in 1958 to 220,000 in 1970.
African Americans were elected from within the
Democratic Party to attend the national convention in 1968,
and two years later three African Americans were elected
to the state’s General Assembly, the first African Americans
 THIRTEEN: JOINING THE UNION 287

Must-See Sites:
Darlington Raceway

The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing

(NASCAR) was founded in 1949, and on Labor Day 1950
the Darlington Raceway (Darlington, South Carolina)
hosted its first stock car race, the “Southern 500.” Within
ten years, the Southern 500 drew 50,000 spectators
annually. “Little Joe” Weatherly emerged as a popular
driver among race fans, his antics on and off the track
earning him the title “Clown Prince of Stock Car Racing.”
His victories at Darlington in i960 and 1963 only
endeared him more to South Carolinians, but in 1964 he
crashed into the track wall at Riverside, California and
died before reaching a hospital. In memory of him, the
Darlington Raceway opened the Joe Weatherly Stock Car
Museum and Hall of Fame in May 1965. The museum
houses the world’s largest collection of stock cars and
represents 60 years of the sport. Richard Petty’s 1967
Plymouth and Darrell Waltrip’s 1991 Chevy sit
prominently among them. A Hall of Fame is also located
in the museum, honoring the drivers and the sport with
photos, memorabilia, and exhibits.
The museum and gift shop are open daily. A small
admission fee is required. Visit www.darhngtonrace.com/
track_info/museum for more information.

to sit in the state legislature in the twentieth century.

South Carolina officially pulled the sheet over Jim Crow
and commenced desegregation of all public facilities. The
state was changing its position on race segregation and equal
rights for African Americans, and in the process South
Carolina’s Democratic Party was gravitating toward the
ideals of the national organization. Moderation within the
state’s dominant party, however, spawned a political
realignment. Democrats in the 1960s increasingly
represented a spirit entirely too liberal for many white South
Carolinians. President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society
funneled billions of dollars into human entitlement
programs, public education, medical care, road construction,
and a host of other domestic arenas in his bid to raise the
288 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

standard of living, eradicate poverty, and allow America to

bring the blessings of its wealth to all segments of the
population. Historians typically ascribe to LBJ a personal
desire to “out-Roosevelt Roosevelt,” to make the New Deal
pale in comparison to the Great Society. To accomplish his
goals, Johnson’s program erected an extensive and complex
web of federal agencies and bureaus, and it infused each
state with a mind-numbing body of new laws that touched
virtually every thread of the social fabric. For good or for
ill, with each Great Society program and with every federal
dollar spent, state autonomy withered a little more.
In September 1964 Senator Strom Thurmond appeared
on statewide television to announce his intention to switch
his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. He
condemned Johnson’s open assault on states’ rights and
blasted Washington’s apparent determination to enlarge
the authority of the national government at the expense of
state sovereignty. Thurmond pointed to Johnson’s hand in
nationalizing the civil rights issue, but race was only one of
many examples of LBJ’s efforts to subject the state to the
will of Washington. He found in the post-World War II
Republican Party what amounted to the values of the old
Democratic Party—strict limits on federal authority in the
individual states, fiscal conservatism, and local preference.
In November, Thurmond led South Carolina into the
Republican camp, carrying the state for Barry Goldwater.
Only four years earlier South Carolina had supported John
F. Kennedy.
Thurmond’s abandonment to the Republican Party
was the most visible manifestation of South Carolina’s
disaffection with the Democratic Party since he led the
South in the Dixiecrat movement almost twenty years
earlier. In 1968, the state solidly backed Richard M. Nixon’s
bid for the White House, and in 1974 James Edwards of
Mount Pleasant became the state’s first Republican
governor since Reconstruction and the first to be elected in
the entire South.
The Palmetto State’s Democratic Party continued to
place its members in the legislature and in the governor’s
mansion through the last quarter of the twentieth century,
but the Republican Party’s hold grew tighter during those
25 years. In presidential elections, the state consistently
 THIRTEEN: JOINING THE UNION 289

favored Republican candidates, giving its electoral votes to

Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, and George
Walker Bush. South Carolina supported the shrinkage of
federal programs in the state, reduced federal taxes,
extensive reform of federal welfare programs,
retrenchment from affirmative action, and less control over
public schools. Interestingly, South Carolina’s Republicans
nonetheless considered sacred many of the federal policies
Johnson and his predecessors inaugurated. Numerous
human services programs have remained in place, as has
the state’s willingness to accept federal aid for public schools
and universities, highway construction, and civil rights.

Educational Programs Since 1968

In 1968, the legislature approved a one-cent hike in the state
sales tax with the revenue earmarked for public school
improvement. A chief priority was the establishment of a
statewide kindergarten program. Funding, however, aided
the wealthier school districts, as appropriations were
directly connected to each county’s tax base. In short, school
districts with small tax bases received very little money
from Columbia.
Not until 1977 did the General Assembly pursue a
substantive reform agenda. That year, the legislature passed
the Education Finance Act (EFA), which allocated more
funding for poor districts than for wealthier districts. It also
established the Basic Skills Assessment Act (BSA), which
identified the essential academic knowledge necessary for
graduation and a testing procedure that stretched across a
child’s twelve years in school to determine periodically the
child’s progress and areas for remedial training. The state’s
effort was largely the product of public pressure by South
Carolina’s citizens, who demanded a more equitable
educational program for all residents and an improvement
in the quality of instruction for their children. The two
programs garnered limited benefit; the state’s school
systems still lagged far behind the rest of the nation’s going
into the 1980s, South Carolina typically ranking near the
bottom of all 50 states in quality of education, statewide
literacy level, and high-school graduation rates.
 The Orangeburg Massacre

Jim Crow race segregation and state restrictions on African-

American voting remained in force across most of South
Carolina well into the 1960s, contrary to a litany of federal
laws and US Supreme Court decisions. On the evening of
February 6, 1968, students from the all-black South Carolina
State University and Clalfin College, both located in
Orangeburg, gathered at the city’s All Star Bowling Alley to
protest that night spot’s preservation of Jim Crow. Tempers
rose among the students and among the bowling alley’s white
staff and patrons, but the local police and highway patrol
maintained a tenuous peace. The scene was repeated the
following night, again without any serious incident, although
fifteen students were arrested in a move to break up the
demonstration.
Rather than assemble once more in front of the bowling
alley on February 8, approximately 200 students chose to rally
on the South Carolina State campus and voice their opposition
to race segregation and the racism that pervaded South
Carolina society. Given the recent flurry of campus riots
nationwide, the state highway patrol was ordered to South
Carolina State to ensure order. Students nonetheless ignited a
bonfire, and when one highway patrolman moved to put out
the fire, he was struck with a board. Pandemonium ensued. A
highway patrolman drew his pistol and fired one shot into the
air, hoping the sound would grab everyone’s attention and
return calm to the grounds, but other officers assumed the
shot was fired in self-defense. They pulled their weapons and
fired indiscriminately into the crowd of students, killing three
and wounding twenty-seven.
The Orangeburg Massacre, as it was soon dubbed by
African Americans and sympathetic whites, garnered national
and international attention. Governor Robert E. McNair held a
press conference the next day and said that the event at SC
State was “one of the saddest days in the history of South
Carolina,” but he also ascribed the turmoil on campus and at
the nearby bowling alley to “outside agitators.” Investigations
followed. Nine officers were charged with using excessive
force, not murder or manslaughter, and each was ultimately
 acquitted. Leaders of the demonstrations were also charged
with inciting the “riot” that preceded the shootings. One
student, Cleveland Sellers, was convicted and imprisoned for
seven months. Although he was, indeed, a member of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he was
not an “outside agitator” and no such persons were ever
identified by the state.
Anger simmered for years in the state’s African-American
community, and South Carolina State University students
marked the event annually with rallies on campus. In 1993, an
investigation conducted by South Carolina’s Probation,
Pardon, and Parole Board determined that there was no merit
to the charges that earlier led to Sellers’s conviction, and
board members voted unanimously to pardon him. Cleveland
Sellers is now director of African-American studies at the
University of South Carolina. Ten years later, in 2003, Governor
Mark Sanford issued a formal apology for the state’s role in the
Orangeburg Massacre, the first governor to do so. In March
2007 the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that the
Orangeburg case would be one of about 100 it intended to re¬
examine. The matter became one of national interest when
South Carolina State University hosted the Democratic Party
presidential debate the following month. To the dismay of
many in South Carolina and nationally, the FBI in November
decided against re-opening the case; doing so, said a
spokesman, would most certainly result in double jeopardy for
at least one of the nine officers tried and acquitted in 1968.

With such a dismal educational system statewide, the

out-migration of South Carolinians continued into the
1980s. In addition, international and national corporations
proved hesitant to expand into a state well known
throughout America for its poor academic standing. In an
attempt to elevate the Palmetto State, Governor Richard
Riley in 1984 signed the Education Improvement Act,
which once more raised the state’s sales tax by one penny
but also married state funding to student performance on
standardized tests, for the first time holding schools
accountable for their students’ progress. Appropriations
 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA
294

from the General Assembly also provided for classroom

computers, expansion of library services, a smaller student-
to-teacher ratio, and the construction of additional schools.
South Carolina aggressively pursued reform of its public
schools and received national acclaim for its commitment to
student progress.
Funding was seen as a critical hrst step toward true
reform in the state’s educational programs, but Riley, his
successors, state legislators, the business community, and
parents all wanted more. In the 1990s, the state raised its
certification criteria for those who wished to become
classroom teachers. Those seeking certification to teach on
the secondary level (junior high and senior high) faced a
far more demanding training program. In addition to
earning a degree in education, prospective teachers were
also required to complete a degree program in an academic
discipline. Students who planned to become high-school
history teachers, for example, had to earn a degree in
education and a separate degree in history; before the
criteria changed, a student only needed to pass three
college history courses to become a certified teacher in the
field. The state also opened specialized centers for
secondary students, offering vocational programs and in-
depth work in the arts. High-school curricula changes
were implemented, creating for youngsters programs of
study that either prepared them for college or the post-
high-school labor market. Statewide, in the 1990s nearly 55
percent of all graduating students enrolled in college, the
drop-out rate fell slightly, and standardized test scores rose
significantly.
Between 1950 and 1975, the General Assembly also
chartered and funded technical colleges statewide. Schools
such as Horry-Georgetown and Florence-Darlington
Technical Colleges received adequate appropriations to train
students in specific career programs and prepare others for
transfer to four-year colleges. Students were able to pursue
two-year courses of study in the culinary arts, auto
mechanics, air conditioning, graphic design, golf-course
management, nursing, and a wide range of other career
programs. The schools also tended to the needs of adults
already in the work force, offering certification programs,
skills enhancement, and even high-school diplomas.
 thirteen: joining the union 295

But the state’s colleges and universities reaped few

benefits from education reform efforts and remained
woefully underfunded. Salaries for professors were seven to
ten percent below the national average and three to five
percent below the average for southern universities. Young
assistant professors fresh out of their doctoral programs
frequently took positions in South Carolina with the
intention of getting collegiate-level teaching experience and
establishing themselves as published scholars before securing
a more permanent teaching assignment at an institution
outside of South Carolina where pay was much better. The
state found it very difficult to attract and retain faculty from
prominent universities outside of South Carolina; those who
did stay in the state usually remained for reasons other than
pay. Academic programs were also inadequately financed,
and as a result the state’s universities never claimed high
positions on national rankings. Even the “research
universities”—Clemson, USC, and the Medical College of
South Carolina—faced limited funding from the legislature,
generally receiving less than half their budgets from the
General Assembly and depending on donations, grants, and
business connections for the remainder. Despite the shortfall
of funds, the commitment of faculty in many academic
disciplines and administrators clever enough to locate
supplemental funds together carved out positions of respect
for their universities. Clemson’s agricultural studies program
is today among the best in the South, and the Medical
University is respected regionally. Even smaller universities
developed regional reputations, among them Coastal
Carolina University in Conway-Myrtle Beach, which boasts
a regionally respected marine science program and a
department of history with a record of publication
uncommon for institutions its size. Much work remains, but
progress continues. In 2001, voters approved a state lottery
with proceeds expressly delegated to public schools and
higher education. Lottery proceeds have translated into
instate college scholarships for most academically qualified
students, and student enrollment is rising. Salaries are slowly
rising, and the state’s smaller universities attract faculty from
nationally prominent graduate schools. Academic programs
are expanding, research opportunities increasing, and
technological services growing.
296 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Postwar Economic Patterns

World War II stimulated unparalleled economic growth in
South Carolina, and much progress continued once peace
was restored. Eleven thousand miles of paved roads covered
the state in 1950, nearly three times more than had existed
just before Pearl Harbor. The expansion of electrical services
and telephone lines, construction of new bridges, and port
development all proceeded after the war. The state funded
the building of hospitals and clinics, technical colleges
opened to train workers in modern job skills, radio stations
proliferated, and television broadcasting came to South
Carolina. Auto sales increased, as did home building.
Corporate profits, state revenue, and personal savings that
had spiraled upward during the war were now unleashed on
the state, creating business growth and raising income.
Agriculture was also changing. Mechanized farming,
which had hardly existed in the Palmetto State before 1940,
rooted itself during and after the war. Wartime profits
allowed farmers to purchase tractors, harvesters, combines,
reapers, and other equipment, reducing labor costs and
production times and permitting farmers to cultivate greater
expanses of land affordably. What appeared to many as a
threat to the agrarian base of South Carolina was, in fact, a
positive development. The wartime movement of Sand-
lappers from the land persisted after the war with 150,000
more farmers and farm laborers abandoning farms for the
state’s leading urban centers, Greenville, Columbia, and
Charleston. Sharecroppers, day laborers, and owners of small
farms with limited income were essentially “tractored off the
land,” and those farmers who could afford modern equip¬
ment soon purchased the property they had once cultivated.
The pattern proved commonplace across the state; by the mid-
1970s there were only 32,000 farms in South Carolina in
contrast to 148,000 at war’s end, but farms were nearly three
times larger than they had been in 1945 and more profitable.
Cotton was no longer the principal cash crop. Falling
market prices, the development of synthetic fibers, and
rising production rates in India, Latin America, and Asia
all contributed to cotton’s demise not only in South
Carolina but across the South following the war. In the
I almetto State alone, cotton production plummeted 75
percent between 1945 and 1975.
 THIRTEEN: JOINING THE UNION
2-97

In the 1940s, tobacco replaced the one-time white gold

as South Carolina’s agricultural king. Tobacco production
and value rose and fell with the nation’s economy between
1920 and 1940, but the war unleashed an almost
unquenchable demand for the plant. Most tobacco was
manufactured into cigarettes, and by 1944 nearly one-half
of all cigarettes were earmarked for shipment to
servicemen deployed overseas. Civilians and servicemen on
the home front confronted limited wartime rationing and,
as a result, had reasonable access to cigarettes. Plentiful and
affordable, the product sold quite well. Production soared
during the war, South Carolina’s yield rising from 92
million pounds in 1942 to 172 million pounds in 1946 with
a doubling of market value.
Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, tobacco reigned
supreme in South Carolina’s fields. A downward turn,
however, appeared in mid-decade. In 1964 the United
States Surgeon General’s Office issued its first health
warning to smokers, stating in no uncertain terms that
cigarettes could cause a variety of illnesses, chief among
them lung cancer. The federal government ordered
manufacturers to print the warning on each pack of
cigarettes, and commenced a campaign to encourage
Americans to stop consuming tobacco. In addition, a series
of lawsuits filed against the major producers of cigarettes in
the 1980s and 1990s resulted in hundreds of millions of
dollars in cash awards to individual smokers who contracted
lung cancer and to state governments to cover their costs in
caring for uninsured smokers and in supplementing medical
insurance providers. The number of smokers in the United
States plummeted, with only 25 percent of all adults
continuing the habit in 2008. The sharp decline in demand
and the subsequent drop in market values for the crop hit
tobacco farmers in the Palmetto State hard. By 1991, only
nine percent of South Carolina’s croplands were covered in
tobacco, and two years later production had fallen to 1937
levels. At present, the state’s farmers have not identified
another major cash crop. Many have shifted to soybeans,
some to wheat, and others to peaches and strawberries;
nonetheless, there remains no single plant cultivated in South
Carolina that promises the same level of prosperity that
tobacco and cotton previously provided.
 Image kindly provided by UNC at Chapel Hll

Pat Conroy

Although he was born in Atlanta, Georgia, South Carolina calls Pat Conroy
one of its own most brilliant writers of fiction. His stories live in the lush
marshlands of the Carolina Lowcountry, where images of modernity are
set against the background of the region's natural beauty. His principal
characters are “outsiders” living in the midst of a people few understand
unless native to the Palmetto State. Indeed, his novels reveal the persistent
contradictions of a people and region with one finger hooked on the
contemporary world and the other four tenaciously clutching the past.
Bom in 1945, Pat Conroy was the oldest of seven children. His
father, a career military officer, demanded excellence from all his sons
and daughters, but being the eldest child placed additional
responsibilities on Pat and shaped much of his perspective toward
authority and self. A military family, the Conroys moved frequently; Pat
attended eleven schools in twelve years, including several years in the
Lowcountry. After graduating high school, Pat attended the Citadel in
Charleston, where he was captain of the basketball team and found
literature a welcome major. Before graduating, he wrote and published
his first book, The Boo, which was a personal tribute to one of his
instructors.
He taught English in the Beaufort public schools for a short time and
married a young widow with two children. Whether he found the school
system unsatisfying or the school was displeased with him is unclear, but
probably a bit of both caused his departure from Beaufort to teach poor
children in a one-room school on Daufuskie Island just off the South
Carolina mainland. Although he found the position rewarding and loved
working with the youngsters, his views regarding teaching and discipline
conflicted sharply with the rigid and traditional perspective of the school’s
administrator. After one year on the island, Conroy was dismissed. His
1972 novel The Water is Wide was largely based on his experiences on
Daufuskie Island and won him recognition from the National Educational
Association. The book became the film Conrack, starring Jon Voight.
Four years later Conroy published his novel The Great Santini, a
largely autobiographical story inspired by his rollercoaster relationship
with his abusive father. Writing the novel nearly devastated him
emotionally and directly contributed to his own divorce and that of his
parents.
The Lords of Discipline (1980) was set in the halls and barracks of
the Citadel. Conroy’s years as a student at South Carolina’s military college
brought him in direct, personal contact with overt, unbridled racism; a
level of sexism that exceeded his understanding; and an intensely, brutally
abusive system of discipline quietly condoned by school officials despite
their public stance against “hazing.” The Lords of Discipline was an
expose of the Citadel comparable to the works of early twentieth-century
muckrakers, whose literature often awakened the general, public to
inhumanity and compelled a modicum of reform. Much of the sexism
Conroy described in his 1980 book remained as virulent as ever and
surfaced in the national news media when women first enrolled in the
college in the mid-1990s.
Pat remarried and moved to Rome, where he commenced writing
The Prince of Tides (1986), which would become his most successful
published work and bring him international acclaim. Beach Music
(1996) tracks a young American who relocates to Rome hoping the new
surroundings will ease the painful memory of his wife’s suicide in South
Carolina and be a suitable place to rear his young daughter. It slips back
and forth between his life in Italy, memories of the Vietnam War, his years
in the Palmetto State, and an understanding of the Nazi Holocaust he
acquires while in Europe. The primary character returns to his home in
South Carolina to be with his dying mother and there has to deal with the
memories of betrayal, parental abuse, and sibling rivalries. It
encompasses much of his own life—family conflict, separation, failed
relationships, and the inner quest for personal understanding.
Conroy maintains a residence in South Carolina and has a home on
the West Coast as well. He continues to write, and the Palmetto State
honors him as a “native son.”
300 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Textile manufacturing continued to prosper in the

postwar years, mills supplying their goods to domestic buyers
and to foreign markets in Europe and Asia. By the early
1970s, however, the industry had reached it peak and
commenced its decline into near oblivion. New technology
replaced much of the workforce, driving unemployed
workers into the cities or to other states in search of jobs. As
in the displacement of cotton cultivation, the shift to synthetic
fibers in the manufacturing of garments also reduced the
need for standard milling operations. Perhaps most central in
the industry’s decline was the concurrent spread of textile
production into Asia and Latin America. Labor costs were
far lower than in the United States and workers more
abundant. Import duties on textile goods entering the United
States were also low, a trade-off willingly accepted by
Congress in order to stimulate foreign importation of
American manufactured products. And in the 1970s, labor
unions moved into the larger textile firms and required mill
owners to pay higher wages and provide benefits packages,
which resulted in a decrease in company profits and
increased prices for finished goods, and ultimately provided
an additional incentive for companies to outsource to
countries without organized workforces. By the 1990s, textile
mills that had once dominated the upcountry and supported
the state’s economy closed their doors.
The failure of cotton, tobacco, and textile manu¬
facturing fractured the state’s economy, and in the 1970s
South Carolina’s luture seemed uncertain. Civic and
business leaders in the state, however, recognized the
pattern early enough to begin cultivating new sources of
income for Sandlappers. Together they launched aggressive
campaigns to lure business and capital from foreign
countries and northern states. In the early 1960s, the largest
single recipient of West Germany’s overseas investments
was South Carolina. Michelin Tire Company, a Trench
corporation, placed its United States headquarters in
Greenville. Most European investors, and eventually Asian
investors, focused their attention in the upstate region,
home to the state’s textile industry and wartime
manufacturing concerns. Two dozen foreign companies
conducted business in Spartanburg alone by the early 1970s,
and Greenville and Gaflney also drew significant
 thirteen: joining the union 301

investments from European corporations. The pattern

continued, and in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Honda and
BMW both established production plants in South
Carolina. In 1995, foreign capital investment in the state
totaled $2 billion, nearly one-third of the total investments
placed in South Carolina companies.
Northern companies likewise invested in the Palmetto
State, opening branch operations, purchasing existing
South Carolina corporations, and in some cases actually
relocating their firms to the state. Especially aggressive
were banks; First Union Bank and Nationsbank, both
based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Wachovia Bank of
Winston-Salem, North Carolina incorporated the larger
financial institutions of South Carolina into their ranks.
Northern newspapers, construction companies, and
insurance corporations also acquired financial control over
many South Carolina businesses.
Both foreign companies and American corporations
recognized certain features conducive to business growth in
the state. Corporations were attracted by the fact that wages
in South Carolina were among the lowest in the nation, and
the General Assembly in the mid-1950s passed a “right-to-
work” law that substantially weakened unionization
efforts. Antagonism directed against labor unions by state
government and management clearly made South Carolina
attractive to outside investors and companies contem¬
plating relocation.
Business expansion may have eliminated many
longstanding industries in the state, but it also brought
thousands of jobs into South Carolina and, in time, higher
wages and salaries. Although the corporate tax rate
remained low, South Carolina’s firms prospered and
supplied the state with a revenue windfall necessary for its
further modernization. The growth also transformed
South Carolina from an agricultural state to an industrial
one, a process completed in the 1980s.
Another industry that mushroomed after World War
II was tourism. In the late 1950s, Myrtle Beach civic and
business leaders were convinced the community’s
economic survival depended on a lively tourist trade and
made a conscious effort to lure visitors to the coast. A
pavilion was erected on the beach, replete with a Ferris
 Hurricanes Strike the
Palmetto State

As storms draw westward from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean in late
summer and early autumn, they frequently evolve into tropical
depressions and hurricanes. Water current, wind direction, and the
movement of weather fronts combine to set a hurricane’s course; water
warmth determines its strength. Hurricanes were uncommon along the
European coast and, consequently, colonists on the North American shore
rarely recognized the signs of impending disaster or understood the
destruction the storms could bring.
They learned quickly. Two major hurricanes slammed into the South
Carolina coast within two weeks in September 1752. These storms proved
particularly threatening to Lowcountry rice producers, writes Matthew
Mulcahy in “Hurricane Season in the Colonies” (Business History Review,
20 June 2005). Indeed, the rice harvest following the 1752 hurricanes was
nearly worthless. Rice exports fell more than 50 percent, bottoming out at
37,000 barrels. These same hurricanes also ravaged wharves, warehouses,
and the entire commercial district of Charleston and destroyed homes and
other structures miles inland.
The destruction caused by these storms and those that smashed into
the South Carolina coast well into the twentieth century was made worse
because the storms could not be predicted accurately. Technological
advances made during World War II, however, gave hope to coastal
residents. New meteorological equipment and more powerful aircraft
were combined to permit “Hurricane Hunters” to fly into a storm’s eye
and there measure wind speed, barometric pressure, and water
temperature. This information was paired with the movement of known
fronts and air masses and other forces that could affect the course and
power of a hurricane. Still, much more was needed. On October 15,
1954, Hurricane Hazel crashed onto the South Carolina-North Carolina
border, roughly in the area of Little River, South Carolina and only a few
miles north of Myrtle Beach. Hazel, a Category 4 storm, generated an 18-
foot storm surge that flooded much of the area, and winds that ranged
from 130 to 150 miles per hour. Hazel plowed north along the coast, and
by the time it dissipated, 95 Americans lay dead and the country had
suffered $281 million in damages. In the Caribbean, Hazel had been more
costly, taking 1,000 lives and destroying $100 million worth of property.
Although hurricanes routinely hit or darted by the Palmetto State, it
was not until 1989 that another monster storm arrived. On September 9,
meteorologists and hurricane specialists took note of a storm moving off
Africa’s west coast into the Atlantic. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) tracked its movement. By September 15, Hurricane
Hugo was still hundreds of miles east of the leeward islands and already
measured as a Category 5 storm. The very warm waters it was now entering
only increased Hugo’s speed and aimed it directly for South Carolina.
Mandatory evacuations commenced on the 20th, and traffic backed up for
dozens of miles leaving Charleston, Georgetown, and Myrtle Beach.
Daybreak on September 21 was absolutely gorgeous on the South
Carolina coast—the sky cloudless and blue, the weather warm. On the
roads and highways, however, tens of thousands of motorists were still
inching westward. That evening, Hugo’s strength diminished slightly to a
Category 4 before it struck the Palmetto State near Cape Romaine, some
20 to 30 miles north of Charleston. The Francis Marion National Forest
was flattened. Houses were washed into the ocean, some still occupied
with people who had refused to evacuate. The entire length of the coast
was ravaged. In Garden City and Surfside beaches, third-floor hotel rooms
were devastated by waves, houses were pushed hundreds of feet from
their foundations, fishing peers were crushed, and several inches of sand
concealed beachfront roads. Some oceanfront homes were simply gone;
some had lost their ocean-side walls, exposing interior rooms with
televisions and other items still intact; others were completely unscarred.
Hugo pushed northwest toward Columbia, retracing the march of
General Sherman 124 years earlier. It moved north into Charlotte, North
Carolina, some 200 miles from the ocean, and from there north-
northeast into New England. In all, Hurricane Hugo cost 21 lives and $7
billion in property loss in the US, making it the worst hurricane in
American history in terms of property damage until Hurricane Andrew
struck south Florida in 1992.

Wheel, a roller coaster, an arcade, and a dance hall. Small

shops and restaurants soon opened along narrow Ocean
Boulevard, and motels touted air-conditioned rooms. City
leaders marketed the community as a family vacation site,
and soon the community attracted tens of thousands of
guests each summer. Teenagers also descended on Myrtle
Beach to celebrate graduation from high school, and
college students found it a far more affordable and
accessible destination for spring break than Daytona
Beach, Florida. By the late 1960s Myrtle Beach emerged as
the teenagers’ Mecca, as much a resort town as it was an
“experience in personal independence.” The city, however,
never lost its identity as a family vacation community. In
the 1980s and 1990s, developers opened numerous music
theaters including the Carolina Opry, the Dixie Stampede,
 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

the Alabama Theater, and the Palace, all attracting

nationally and internationally renowned performers.
National franchises such as the House of Blues, Planet
Hollywood, and the Hard Rock Cafe commenced
operations in Myrtle Beach, making the city more
nationally recognized. Shopping centers such as
Waccamaw Outlet, The Factory Stores, and Tanger Outlet
attracted thousands of shoppers looking for bargain prices.
The Grand Strand by the mid-1990s boasted more than
100 golf courses, many earning national recognition and
several hosting professional tournaments yearly. By 1995,
the Grand Strand received 12 million vacationers annually,
who poured hundreds of millions of dollars each year into
the local economy and into the state treasury.
Development stretched the length of the coast between
1965 and 2000. Underpinning much of the development
was the 1968 Housing and Urban Development Act that
offered federally backed insurance to coastal homeowners
and developers. Storms such as Hurricane Hazel that
ravaged the coast in the mid-1950s and utterly wiped out
the investments of thousands who owned small cottages
near the beach no longer carried the same threat. Financial
security spawned development. Also, new construction
techniques devised in the early 1970s lessened storm
damage, expanded drainage systems reduced coastal
flooding, and government-financed beach replenishment
altogether made waterfront property ownership safer. With
these efforts, modern hotels, condominiums, and
extravagant houses replaced small, wooden cottages along
the waterfront from Little River to Beaufort. Brookgreen
Gardens, Huntington Beach State Park, Myrtle Beach State
Park, Murrell’s Inlet, and Francis Marion Wildlife Preserve
all enticed tourists to visit the coast, and Hilton Head
Island, Edisto Beach, Kiawah Island, and Pawley’s Island
all became exclusive resorts.
Following the war, and especially beginning in the
1960s, Charleston also committed itself to the expansion of
its tourist trade. Antebellum and colonial plantation homes
were refurbished, and magnificent gardens were cultivated,
both attracting thousands of visitors each season. Boats
began ferrying tourists to Fort Sumter; the aircraft carrier
Yorktown, a World War II-era submarine, and other vessels
 THIRTEEN: JOINING THE UNION 305

Must-See Sites: Carowinds,

Fort Mill

Sponsored by Paramount Entertainment, Carowinds is a

105-acre park featuring more than 50 “world-class” rides,
numerous shows, and a popular 13-acre water-park
playground. Popular musical artists representing every
genre perform at the park’s Paladium Amphitheatre
throughout the operating season. The park is open March
through October. Visit www.carowinds.com or call (800)
888-4386.

were beached at Patriots’ Point; colonial and Civil War-era

houses inside the city opened to tours; a shopping district
was developed at the old slave market; the Isle of Palms and
Folly Beach just outside the city lured beachgoers; and the
city organized and sponsored an annual Spoleto Festival
showcasing the arts.
Inland, Darlington hosted two NASCAR races each
year, the larger of them being the Darlington 500 held in
September. State parks attracted fishermen and hunters;
thousands gravitated to antique stores that littered smaller
towns; horse shows in Aiken, plantations, the Andrew
Jackson State Park, collegiate sports at Clemson and USC,
museums, and professional sporting events have all brought
tourists into South Carolina and in so doing generated a
level of income the state never imagined before World War
II. In 1995, South Carolina attracted 30 million tourists,
who spent more than $13 billion in the state.
South Carolina’s industrialization and its development
of tourism have together resurfaced the state. Income levels
have risen over the past thirty years, and increased tax
revenues have provided for further expansion of the state’s
infrastructure, social and cultural programs, and
educational services. Economic growth in the Palmetto
State since 1970 has been responsible for a significant
movement of newcomers into South Carolina as permanent
residents. Horry, Beaufort, Berkeley, Dorchester, and
Lexington Counties have all witnessed substantial
306 on-the-road histories: south Carolina

population growth, and nearly hall ol the residents in each

of those counties are not native South Carolinians.
Statewide in 1990, fully one-third of South Carolina s 3.5
million residents were born in other states or countries.
Prosperity and a more diverse population have combined to
remake the state’s values, habits, and expectations. South
Carolina in 2008 has largely freed itself from its past. To be
sure, deep-rooted, traditional values of prewar South
Carolina remain and are defended as intensely as they were
50 or 100 years ago, especially in small towns and rural
areas, but the removal of the Confederate battle flag from
the dome of the state house in 2000 symbolized South
Carolina’s more recent progressive character and its
conscious effort to join fully with the modern South.

Red and white rustic country barn in South Carolina cotton field © Susabell
 Chronology of Major Events

13,000bce Earliest evidence of human activity in present-day South

Carolina
1000BCE Evidence of the beginnings of sedentary, agrarian native
communities, occupied by peoples commonly referred to
as “Mississippians.”
1521 Francisco Gordillo and Pedro de Quexos make the first
documented Spanish landing on the South Carolina
coast, in the vicinity of Beaufort.
1526 Lucas Vasquez de Ay lion establishes Spain’s short-lived
first settlement in South Carolina at Winyah Bay in
Georgetown, naming the community San Miguel de
Guadalupe.
1540 Spanish conquistador Elernando de Soto leads his
expedition of discovery north through central South
Carolina and westward into Tennessee.
1561 Angel de Villefane fails in his effort to establish a
permanent and prosperous Spanish colony at Santa
Elena in the Port Royal Sound.
1562 French Huguenot Caspar Coligny leads 150 soldiers to
the New World and in late May plants the settlement
Charlesfort at Port Royal, hoping to root France in
North America. Within months, the outpost is abandoned.
1566 Spain’s Pedro Menendez de Aviles, with 150 soldiers,
founds Fort San Felipe on present-day Parris Island.
Soon afterward, Menendez sends exploratory missions
throughout present-day South Carolina, as far west as
Spartanburg.
1576 In June, hunger, disease, and warfare with local Indians
compel Spanish settlers to abandon Fort San Felipe for
the security of Cuba. Spain never again makes a serious
effort to implant itself in South Carolina.
1585—90 The Englishman Sir Walter Raleigh attempts the
building of a British settlement on Roanoke Island,
located in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The colony
never succeeds, and more than 100 settlers are
pronounced “missing.”
1607 In May, three ships and more than 100 settlers under the
command of Captain John Smith plant Jamestown
Colony in tidewater Virginia. In spite of a staggering
death rate, Jamestown survives and becomes England’s
first permanent colony in the New World.
1620 Nearly 100 settlers, of whom about 35 are Separatists
(Pilgrims), make landfall in Massachusetts and establish
Plymouth Plantation Colony.
3°7
308 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

1663 On March 24, King Charles II of England issues a

charter authorizing the founding of the Colony of
Carolina under the governance of eight Lords Proprietors.
1664 William Hilton, respected adventurer, is hired by
investors in the planned Carolina Colony to scout the
Carolina coast.
1665 Late in the year, Charles Town is established as the first
settlement in Carolina Colony, at the mouth of the Cape
Fear River in present-day North Carolina. Within two
years, more than 1,000 English citizens reside here, but
the hostility of local Indians forces the settlers to
abandon the community in 1667.
1669 The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, the formal
set of laws governing the new colony in Carolina, is
completed.
1670 Of three ships to sail from England for Carolina, one
makes landfall near present-day Charleston in mid-
March, planting a community of 130 Englishmen and
women.
1671 The first shipload of African slaves bound for Carolina
Colony arrives in Charles Town.
1715 The Yamasee War erupts, pitting English settlers
against the local Yamasee Indians. Within two years, the
Yamasee are completely defeated, their survivors sold
into slavery in the Caribbean.
1718 The pirate Blackbeard plunders British shipping just
outside Charleston Harbor; the pirate captain Stede
Bonet is captured and in December executed in
Charleston.
1720 65 percent of all South Carolina residents are African
slaves.
1739 In the Stono Rebellion in September, twenty slaves
initiate an escape and, in their southward rush toward
Florida, attack white plantations, farmhouses, and
shops, destroying much property and killing 25 white
South Carolinians.
1760 George III becomes king ol England.
1763 The French and Indian War concludes; George III
issues a proclamation banning the movement of
American colonists across the Appalachian Mountains.
1765 King George III and Parliament issue the Stamp Act,
which places a tax on all paper products and
government documents. The Stamp Act Congress, with
three South Carolina representatives, assembles in New
York City and drafts an official letter to the king
protesting the act. Violence against tax collectors and
 CHRONOLOGY OF MAJOR EVENTS 309

supporters of the Stamp Act sweeps across the South

Carolina Lowcountry.
1766 George III repeals the Stamp Act.
1767 Parliament issues the Townshend Acts, a series of taxes
on paper, paint, glass, lead, and tea. The Sons of Liberty
form in South Carolina to enforce a boycott of all British
imports and to punish those who comply with or
administer the tax. In Charleston, the Sons of Liberty is
most frequently termed the “Charleston Patriots.”
1770 The South Carolina General Assembly is dissolved by
the colony’s royal governor.
1773 Parliament issues the Tea Act, with the approval of
King George III. Violent protests erupt across the
Lowcountry in response. Governor William Bull orders
all tea imports stored securely to protect them from
confiscation or destruction by local protestors. In
December, the famed Boston Tea Party is carried out by
the Sons of Liberty under the direct observation of the
Massachusetts governor and the British military
commander in the region.
1774 In spring, Parliament crafts and issues the Coercive
Acts, intended to punish Boston for its Tea Party and to
recoup the cost of all tea destroyed by the Sons of
Liberty. In September, the First Continental Congress
meets in Philadelphia to discuss methods to resolve the
dispute between Crown and colonies. South Carolina
sends five representatives.
1775 South Carolina rice exports reach 66 million pounds, the
largest shipment to date. In April, the Battles of
Lexington and Concord occur in Massachusetts and
signal the start of the Revolutionary War. In May, the
Second Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia
and assumes the responsibility of a wartime,
revolutionary government. In June, South Carolina’s
Provincial Congress assembles and authorizes the
recruitment of three army regiments for South
Carolina’s defense.
1776 In June, a British fleet and British ground forces try to
secure Charleston Harbor and the surrounding islands.
The battle at Sullivan’s Island prevents a British landing
and occupation of Charleston. The defensive structures
are soon afterward converted into Fort Moultrie. On
July 4, South Carolina’s delegates to the Second
Continental Congress affix their names to the
Declaration of Independence.
1779 After Savannah falls to the British in June, scattered
3io ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

fighting ranges north to the outskirts of Charleston, the

biggest confrontation occurring at Stono Creek near
Edisto Island.
1780 In February, the British lay siege to Charleston. On May
7, Fort Moultrie surrenders and on May 14 Charleston
itself falls to the British. In July, British General
Cornwallis defeats American forces commanded by
General Horatio Gates at Camden, a town near
Columbia. On October 7, nearly 1,000 American
militiamen surround and soundly defeat an equal-sized
British and Tory force located on Kings Mountain.
1781 On January 18, after a protracted and purposely
designed retreat, American General Dan Morgan
positions his forces at Cowpens and there defeats a
British force commanded by Banastre Tarleton.
American victories at Cowpens and Kings Mountain
secured the western Carolinas from British control. In
October, British General Cornwallis surrenders his
armies to General George Washington at Yorktown,
Virginia; although the war would continue until an
official peace treaty could be arranged in 1783, for all
practical purposes, this ends the Revolutionary War.
1782 On December 16, British forces finally evacuate Charleston.
1785 The College of Charleston is founded.
1786 The General Assembly relocates the state capital from
Charleston to Columbia.
1788 South Carolina becomes the sixth state to ratify the US
Constitution.
1791 President George Washington travels through coastal
South Carolina and spends one week in Charleston.
1793 Connecticut inventor and resident Eh Whitney invents
the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionizes South
Carolina’s agricultural economy.
1795 Beaufort College, today a branch of the University of
South Carolina, is founded.
1800 Charleston is the fifth largest city in the United States,
behind New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston.
1801 South Carolina College, today’s University of South
Carolina in Columbia, is founded.
1802 The United States’ first gold rush is centered in the area
of York and Chesterfield, Eancaster Counties.
1811 The General Assembly passes into law the Free School
Act, allotting state funds for the construction and
maintenance of rural public schools.
1822 Denmark Vesey, an emancipated slave living in
Charleston, is accused, convicted, and executed for
 CHRONOLOGY OF MAJOR EVENTS 311

plotting a slave insurrection in the Lowcountry.

1824 The School of Medicine is founded in Charleston.
1838 Governor John Lyde Wilson publishes The American
Code: Code of Honor, or Rides for the Government of
Principals and Seconds in Dueling.
1842 The South Carolina Military Academy, now known as
the Citadel, is founded in Charleston.
1849 The state’s first textile mill, Graniteville Mill, is founded
by William Gregg in Aiken County.
1850 In December, the General Assembly issues a statement
calling on southern states to convene a Southern
Convention in Montgomery, Alabama and consider
secession as an response to “northern aggression.”
1851 Furman College, a Baptist-supported institution, is
founded in Greenville.
1860 On November 6, Abraham Lincoln is elected president
of the United States; on December 20, South Carolina
secedes from the Union, the first state to do so.
1861 The ship Star of the West is fired on by cadets from the
Citadel on January 9 as it attempts to deliver supplies to
federal troops posted at Fort Sumter in Charleston
Harbor. On February 4, the Confederate States of
America is founded in Montgomery, Alabama. On
March 4, Lincoln is inaugurated. On April 12,
Confederate batteries open fire on Fort Sumter. The
surrender of the federal installation the following day
officially signals the start of the Civil War. In early
summer, a fleet of Union warships seize Parris Island
and convert the rice plantation into a federal naval
installation.
1862 The United States establishes the United States Colored
Troops, a racially segregated branch of the US Army for
African Americans. On November 7, the First
Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers is formed and
attached to the USCT.
1863 President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation,
drafted the previous September, becomes an official
executive order on January 1 and liberates from
bondage slaves in all states presently in rebellion against
the US government. In July, Union forces attack the
1,000-man Confederate garrison at Fort Wagner on
Morris Island near Charleston. On July 18, the 54th
Massachusetts Regiment, part of the United States
Colored Troops, launches a frontal assault on Fort
Wagner. On September 7, Confederate forces abandon
Fort Wagner and Union forces lay siege to the city of
Charleston.
312 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

1864 The H. L. Hunley, a Confederate submarine, conducts

a successful attack against the Union ship USS
Housatonic in Charleston Harbor on February 17; the
submarine never returned to port and was presumed
lost.
1865 Units of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Union
Army enter Columbia on February 17, and by mid¬
evening the city is ablaze. On April 9, Confederate
forces under General Robert E. Lee surrender,
unofficially ending the Civil War. In October, South
Carolina ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the US
Constitution, which officially ends slavery in the United
States.
1868 A new constitution is drafted and approved for South
Carolina at the constitutional convention held in
Charleston; of 124 delegates in attendance, 73 are
African American. The University of South Carolina
hires African-American professors and enrolls African-
American students, who comprise 90 percent of the
student body by 1875.
1871 The post—Civil War state militia is approximately 97
percent African American. President Ulysses S. Grant
imposes martial law in upstate counties.
1876 Wade Hampton is elected governor of South Carolina,
the first postwar Democrat to hold the office.
1886 “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman establishes the Farmers’
Association, which effectively becomes the state’s
branch of the National Farmers’ Alliance, an agrarian-
based reform movement and sponsor of the Populist
Party.
1889 Clemson College is founded in Clemson, South
Carolina. Its doors open to students five years later.
1896 The US Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson
gives constitutional sanction to South Carolina’s laws
requiring race segregation in public facilities.
1900 25 percent of all textile employees in South Carolina are
children under the age of sixteen.
1910 Coleman Blease of Newberry is elected the state’s first
Progressive governor, championing the working class,
regardless of race.
1914 To reduce child labor, South Carolina raises the
minimum age for full-time employment to fourteen.
The state ranks 47th among 48 states in its rate of
illiteracy. World War 1 begins in August.
1917 The United States enters World War 1 in April. The
State Highway Commission and State Highway
 CHRONOLOGY OF MAJOR EVENTS 313

Department are created to oversee road expansion and

maintenance.
1918 Two South Carolinians earn the Congressional Medal of
Honor while fighting German forces in France—James
Dozier (30th Infantry Division), who became the state’s
adjutant general, and Fred Stowers (93rd Infantry
Regiment), who was the only African American
honored with the medal. In November, an armistice
brings the Great War to its conclusion.
1923 Governor Thomas McLeod organizes a “Boost South
Carolina” convention to promote the tourist industry
statewide.
1929 On October 29, the collapse ol the stock market signals
the official beginning of the Great Depression.
1933 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is inaugurated
into his first term as president. The Works Progress
Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps,
Agricultural Adjustment Act, and other New Deal
programs commence operation in South Carolina.
1935 The Santee Cooper Hydroelectric Power Project is
approved by and receives funding from the federal
government; construction begins in 1939.
1939 World War II begins in Europe on September 1.
1941 On December 7, Japanese naval forces strike America’s
Pacific Fleet Headquarters at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
The United States enters World War II.
1942 The Santee Cooper Hydroelectric Power Plant “goes on
line,” providing electric service throughout the
Lowcountry and Midlands region. By 1985 it would
supply fully half of South Carolina’s energy needs. In
August and again in September, German submarines
(U-boats) deposit sea mines in Charleston Harbor.
1944 Congress passes into law the Servicemen’s
Readjustment Act, or G. I. Bill, providing financial
support for post-secondary education, home purchases,
and small-business startup expenses for veterans. The
measure will have a profound imprint on South Carolina.
1945 World War II ends in Europe in May and in the Far
East in September.
1946 Strom Thurmond, a veteran of World War II, is elected
governor and begins a 55-year career in state and
national government.
1948 The southern conservative wing of the Democratic
Party assembles in Birmingham, Alabama and forms
the States’ Rights Democratic Party, or Dixiecrats, and
selects Governor Strom Thurmond as its presidential
contender.
3 T4 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

1954 In May, the US Supreme Court issues its ruling in

Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas,
declaring racially segregated schools unconstitutional.
1963 Harvey Gantt becomes the first African-American
student at Clemson University.
1964 The University of South Carolina enrolls its first
African-American student since Reconstruction.
1968 In the town of Orangeburg and on the campus of South
Carolina State University in February, African-
American students demonstrations against race
segregation result in the death of three students and the
wounding of many more by highway patrolmen.
1972 A team of archaeologists and historians begin to search
for the H. L. Hunley.
1977 The General Assembly passes into law the Education
Finance Act, which allocated more additional funding
for poor districts than for wealthier districts.
1989 Hurricane Hugo makes landfall near Charleston and
moves northwest across South Carolina and into the
North Carolina piedmont region, the greatest natural
disaster in state history.
1990 Fully one-third of all residents statewide were born
outside of South Carolina.
1995 In May, wreckage of the H. L. Hunley is located near
Sullivan’s Island.
2000 The H. L. Hunley is successfully raised from the ocean
floor on August 8 and placed at Charleston Naval Base.
George W. Bush wins South Carolina in the presidential
race.
2001 Voters approve a state lottery with proceeds earmarked
for public education. Al-Qaeda terrorists attack the
United States on September 11.
2003 The United States invades Iraq.
2004 South Carolina once more votes for George W. Bush,
helping him secure his second term as US president.
2007 The 218th Infantry Brigade of the South Carolina
Army National Guard deploys in force to the war in
Afghanistan. Construction begins on the Hard Rock
Park in Myrtle Beach, a theme park planned to be
second only to Disney World on the East Coast.
2008 On January 26, US Senator Barack Obama from
Illinois, an African American, wins the South Carolina
Democratic Party primary.
 Characteristics of South
Carolina’s Population, 2006

Category South Carolina United States

Population, 2006 estimate 4,321,249 299,398,484
Population % Change,
2000-2006 7.7 6.4
Population, 2000 4,012,012 281,421,906
Population % Change,
1990-2000 15.1 13.1

White, non Hispanic,

% in 2006 65.4 66.4
African American, % in 2006 29 12.8
American Indian, % in 2006 0.4 1.0
Asian Persons, % in 2006 1.1 4.4
Persons of Other Race,
% in 2006 1.0 1.8
Hispanic-Latino, % in 2006 3.5 14.8

Foreign Born, % in 2000 2.9 11.1

Language Other than
English, % 5.2 17.9
High School Graduates,
% in 2000 76.3 80.4
College Graduates, % in 2000 20.4 24.4
Home Ownership rate,
% in 2000 72.2 66.2
Median Value of Housing,
2000 $94,900 $119,600
Number Households, 2000 1,533,854 105,480,101
Persons Per Household,
2000 2.53 2.59
Median Household Income,
2004 $39,454 $44,334
Per Capita Income, 1999 $18,795 $21,587
Persons Below Poverty,
% in 2004 15 12.7
Persons Per Square Mile,

2000 133.2 79.6

Source: U.S. Census Bureau: State and County QuickFacts.

3T5
 Famous Sons and Daughters

artists
Washington Allston (1779—1843)
Washington Allston was born in 1779 in Georgetown. He
traveled extensively, studying at Harvard College, at the
Royal Academy in London, and with various painters in
France and Italy. Artists widely consider him the founding
painter of the American Romanticism movement, known
for its representation of man’s insignificance in Nature and
the all-pervading presence of God in the universe.

William H. Johnson (1901—1970)

Born in 1901, Johnson was reared in abject poverty in a small
African-American community within the city of Florence.
As a child he copied comic strips and displayed an unusual
talent for art. Encouraged by his teachers, he traveled to New
York in 1919 where he eventually studied at the National
Academy of Design and in 1926 relocated to Paris to escape
the racial discrimination he constantly encountered in the
United States. Johnson painted in the Expressionist style, but
in the 1930s he adopted what he termed a “primitive style”
that used bright, contrasting colors and two-dimensional
figures and focused on the African-American experience.
Johnson never received much recognition of his work while
alive; however, following his death in 1970 critics
“discovered” the soul of Johnson’s art and now consider him
one of the most important African-American artists of the
twentieth century.

EDUCATION
James Maif Baldwin (1862—1932)
lames Mark Baldwin received his academic training in
psychology at Princeton in New Jersey and at several
institutions in Germany. He taught at the university level
for many years, co-founded the journal Psychology Review,
and published several important books, among them
Mental Developments in the Child and the Race, Social and
Ethnic Interpretations, and History of Psychology. His career
coincided with that of internationally recognized Sigmund
Freud, and Baldwin directed the course of the International

316
 FAMOUS SONS AND DAUGHTERS 317

Congress of Psychology as its president from 1909 to 1913.

Baldwin was born in Columbia.

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875—1955)

Mary McLeod Bethune was born on July 10, 1875 in
Mayesville, the fifteenth of seventeen children. Her parents
and several of her older siblings had lived as slaves before
1865. Mary received her education at a school established by
the Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church and became
a teacher at several small, racially segregated institutions
throughout the Southeast. She was active in the women’s
suffrage movement, championed women’s rights, served on
the National Urban League Executive Board, and founded
a home for delinquent black girls. Her work won her the
attention of President Calvin Coolidge and President
Herbert Hoover, and she held appointive positions in each
administration. She also served as President Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s special advisor on minority affairs. For more on
Bethune, see pages 240—241.

MILITARY
James Longstreet (1821—1903)
Born in Edgefield on January 8, 1821, James Longstreet
was the son of a wealthy planter. He attended the United
States Military Academy at West Point, was commissioned
as a second lieutenant in the US Army, and served in the
Mexican—American War. When the American Civil War
erupted in April 1861, Longstreet resigned his commission
and accepted the rank of general in the Confederate Army,
where he earned the admiration of the men he commanded
and the respect of soldiers who confronted him on the
battlefield. He served with General Robert E. Lee at
Gettysburg. Following the war, he abandoned the
Democratic Party for the Republican Party and was
appointed minister to Britain in 1880. He died at age 82.

Francis Marion (1732—1795)

Marion is remembered as one of the state’s first military
heroes, beginning his service in the state militia in 1761 in
warfare against Cherokee Indians. During the
Revolutionary War, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel
and conducted guerilla warfare against British troops in
 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA
3l8

South Carolina, earning the nickname the Swamp Fox.

Following the war, he was elected to the state senate.

William Westmoreland (1914—2005)

Born in Spartanburg in 1914, William Westmoreland
began his military career as a student at the United States
Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1936. He
served in the army during World War II and in 1960
returned to West Point as superintendent. In June 1964,
Westmoreland was appointed commander of US forces in
Vietnam and was responsible for raising troop strength to
500,000 men. Following the Tet Offensive in 1968,
Westmoreland was relieved of his command and appointed
chief of staff of the US Army. General Westmoreland
retired from service in 1972.

MUSIC
Alabama
Although the members of the popular county music band
Alabama are not by birth Sandlappers, they are nonetheless
considered South Carolinians within the Palmetto State.
Alabama rose to popularity in the 1980s, getting their
musical start at Myrtle Beach’s nightclub “The Bowery,’’
located on the oceanfront next to the Pavilion. They
currently sponsor the Alabama Music Theater in Myrtle
Beach and appear there frequently.

James Brown (1933—2006)

“The Godfather of Soul” was born in Barnwell. His
childhood was one of intense poverty, his family home
having no plumbing or electricity. The Brown family was a
“colorful” one, known for their many brushes with local law
enforcement, and James himself was frequently in trouble as
a teenager. He swept floors for the Trinity Baptist Church to
earn a little money, and he developed a passion for music.
Brown cofounded the Famous Flames in the early 1960s and
earned quick recognition for the group’s hit song “Please,
Please, Please.” As an individual performer, he brought soul
music into widespread popularity among white listeners
with songs such as “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” and his
“Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” became something
akin to an anthem for the Civil Rights Movement.
 FAMOUS SONS AND DAUGHTERS 319

Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993)

John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie was born in Cheraw in 1917.
Early in his distinguished musical career, he performed
with Cab Calloway and Earl Hines and instantly gained a
reputation as a free-spirited jazz trumpeter. His distinctive
bent horn, puffed cheeks, and almost spiritual relationship
with the trumpet placed him among the most renowned
musicians in American history.

Eartha Kitt (1927—)

Eartha Kitt was born on a poor cotton farm in the
community of North. She and her family frequently
moved, and as a small child she was left with a neighboring
family where she was mistreated. At eight years of age, she
moved to Harlem to live with an aunt. There she was
encouraged to play the piano and sing, although her
relationship with her aunt was never good. She worked
several odd jobs before earning a scholarship to Katherine
Dunham Dance School, through which she began to travel
as a singer and actress. From this she entered a professional
acting career, appearing in numerous movies beginning in
1950 and continuing in the profession to the present.

PROMINENT POLITICAL AND LEGAL FIGURES

Bernard Baruch (1870—1965)
Baruch, known as the “Park Bench Statesman,” made his
personal fortune on Wall Street at the turn of the
nineteenth century. Born in Camden on August 19, 1870,
Baruch and his family moved to New York ten years later
and he attended college there. He became a broker for
A. A. Housman and Company, earned his first million
dollars by age thirty, and took a seat on the New York Stock
Exchange. During World War I, he served as President
Woodrow Wilson’s economic advisor, chaired the War
Industries Board, and participated in treaty negotiations in
Versailles. Baruch owned a 17,000-acre plantation in
Georgetown County, the Hobcaw Barony, where he
entertained Franklin Roosevelt during World War II.
Baruch died on June 10, 1965 in New York, following a
one-month stay at his South Carolina estate.
320 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Harold R. Boulware, Sr. (1913—1983)

A pioneer in civil rights litigation, Boulware was born in
Irmo in 1913. He attended Johnson C. Smith University in
Charlotte, North Carolina and Howard University Law
School in Washington, D.C. In 1941, Boulware became the
chief counsel for the South Carolina NAACP and
campaigned for equal pay for African-American
schoolteachers. He served as lead attorney in the Clarendon
County schools desegregation case, Briggs v. Elliot, which
was joined into the landmark 1954 US Supreme Court case
Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in which
the court ruled against the segregation of public schools. In
1969 he was appointed as associate judge for the Columbia
Municipal Court.

James F. Byrnes (1879—1972)

James Byrnes was born in Charleston. As a public servant,
he served in all three branches of the federal government.
He sat in both the US House of Representatives and Senate,
served as secretary of state and director of war
mobilization, and was a Supreme Court justice. He was
considered seriously by Franklin Roosevelt as a potential
vice presidential candidate in 1944, and from 1951 to 1955
served South Carolina as governor.

John C. Calhoun (1782—1850)

John Caldwell Calhoun was born into a slaveholding
plantation family on March 18, 1782 near Abbeville. As a
young man he graduated from Yale University and was
admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1807. He served in
the state legislature, held a seat in the US Senate, served as
secretary of war in 1817 under President James Monroe,
and was elected vice president of the United States in 1825.
A staunch advocate of states’ rights, Calhoun attained his
greatest fame in 1828 with his assertion that a state had the
authority to nullify any federal law within its borders that
it considered unconstitutional. In the 1840s he fully
defended the institution of slavery and its expansion into
the West and predicted civil war more than twelve years
before it erupted. For more on Calhoun, see pages 134-135.
 FAMOUS SONS AND DAUGHTERS 321

Andrew Jackson (1767-1845)

The seventh president of the United States, Andrew
Jackson, was born on March 15, 1767 in the frontier
community of Waxhaw, and later moved to Tennessee,
where as an adult he built the plantation “Hermitage.”
Jackson was the only president to fight in both the
Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, serving in the
former at thirteen years of age with the South Carolina
Militia. He was the first president born in a log cabin, the
first reared in a frontier setting, and the first to ride on a
train. Andrew Jackson State Park is located nine miles
north of Lancaster, on Highway 521. For more on Jackson,
see pages see pages 102—103.

Jesse Louis JacJson (1941—)

Born in Greenville on October 8, 1941, Jesse Jackson has
emerged as one of America’s most prominent civil rights
leaders. He commenced his career with the Southern
Leadership Conference founded by Martin Luther King,
Jr., founded Operation PUSH (People United to Save
Humanity), formed the Rainbow Coalition, and competed
for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1984
and 1988. Throughout his career, Jackson has traveled the
nation and globe promoting the fair and equitable
treatment of all people regardless of race.

James Strom Thurmond (1902—2003)

Thurmond was born on December 5, 1902 in Edgefield,
earned his degree from Clemson College, and held several
local offices until 1933 when he was elected to the South
Carolina Senate. He sat on the bench of the Eleventh
Circuit Court, served with the 82nd Airborne Division in
World War II, and was elected governor in 1946. From
1954 to 2002 Thurmond represented South Carolina in the
US Senate.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Joseph H. Burckhalter (1912—2004)
Joseph H. Burckhalter was born in Columbia on October 9,
1912. In 1934 he received his Bachelor of Science degree in
chemistry from the University of South Carolina, a Master
of Science in 1938 from the University of Illinois, and the
322 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

coveted Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry in 1942 at the

University of Michigan. After nearly twenty years with
Parke-Davis, he returned to academia as a professor of
medicinal chemistry at the University of Michigan
(1960-1983) and at Florida Institute of Technology (1983-).
He and a colleague jointly developed the synthesis of
fluorescein isothiocyanate (F1TC), which is currently used
in the detection and diagnoses of AIDS, leukemia, and
lymphoma. In 1995, Burckhalter was inducted into the
National Inventors’ Hall of Fame.

Ernest Everett just (1883—1941)

Termed by his biographer the “Black Apollo of Science,
Ernest just attended the Colored Normal Industrial
Agricultural and Mechanics College at Orangeburg (now
South Carolina State College) at the age of thirteen and
later studied biology at Dartmouth College and earned a
Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He worked as a
pioneer researcher in the fertilization of marine
invertebrates and the role of the cell in those organisms.
Opportunities were limited because of the extent of racial
discrimination he encountered, and in 1931 Just relocated
to Europe, where he spent the rest of his career and
published The Biology of the Cell Surface.

Ronald McNair (1950-1986)

Ronald McNair was a crewmember of the ill-fated
Challenger space shuttle that exploded shortly after liftoff
from Cape Canaveral in January 1986; all astronauts on
board perished in the accident. He was born October 21,
1950 in Lake City, attended North Carolina A&T
University, from which he graduated in 1971 with a degree
in physics, and earned Ph.D. in physics from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976. Before his
death in 1986, McNair was a mission specialist on a 1984
Challenger flight.

Charles H. Townes (1915—)

Born in Greenville on July 28, 1915, Townes graduated
summa cum laude in 1935 from Furman University with a
degree in physics. He earned a masters degree from Duke
University and the Ph.D. from the California Institute of
 FAMOUS SONS AND DAUGHTERS
323

Technology in 1939. In his career, Townes held positions on

college faculty, in corporations such as Bell Laboratories,
and in nonprofit organizations, such as serving as the
director of research for the Institute of Defense Analyses. In
1951, Townes specialized in microwave physics and
conceived the idea of the maser (microwave amplification
by stimulated emission of radiation) and helped develop the
laser by decade’s end.

WRITERS
Pat Conroy (1945—)
Perhaps the most prolific writer of novels set in South
Carolina, Conroy is not a native of South Carolina but a
man whose life has been shaped in the state. Born in
Atlanta, Georgia on October 26, 1945, he was the oldest of
seven children and son of a career military officer stationed
in South Carolina. Conroy was a student at the Citadel in
Charleston when he wrote and published his first book, The
Boo. The Water is Wide (1972) was based on his short-lived
teaching experience on Daufuskie Island and made into the
movie Conrad[. Conroy also published The Great Santini,
The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides, and Beach
Music. For more on Conroy, see pages 298—299.

William Gibson (1948—)

Born in Conway, near Myrtle Beach, William Gibson is a
contemporary author of science fiction novels and short
stories. Generally, Gibson’s plots center on an individual’s
loss of personal identity in a dark, depressive society set in a
not-too-distant future in which technology governs
humanity. Perhaps his most popular novel is Neuromancer,
in which computers regulate human emotion and behavior.
Gibson is credited with having coined the term
“cyberspace” in this novel.

Edwin DeBose Heyward (1885—1940)

Born in Charleston, DeBose Heyward worked on the
waterfront as a teenager, where he observed the variety of
cultures that dwelled and worked in the coastal port city.
From his experiences, he published a collection of poems
titled Carolina Chansons (1922) and his first novel, Porgy
(1925), which became the literary base for a successful play,
324

opera, and motion picture. With George

Gershwin, Heyward scripted the novel
into Porgy and Bess, long since considered a
classic, although it didn’t play in South
Carolina until 1970.

Annie Green Nelson (1902—)

South Carolina’s first known female
African-American author, Annie Green
was born on December 5, 1902 in
Darlington County, the oldest of fourteen
children. She spent much of her life seeking
knowledge, beginning with a hve-month
school-year program in her hometown,
continuing at Benedict College as a young
adult, and at the age of 80 studying drama at
the University of South Carolina. She is
known for her poetry and her plays, which
were performed off-Broadway.

Julia Mood Peterlfn (1880—1961)

Julia Peterkin is the only South Carolinian
author ever awarded the Pulitzer Prize in
literature, the honor bestowed on her in
1929 for her novel Scarlet Sister Mary.
Peterkin was born in Laurens County on
October 31, 1880 and attended Converse
College in Spartanburg. Her stories avoid
the stereotypes of African Americans
common in southern literature of the
pre—World War II era, show an
understanding of and a respect for African
Americans, and her characters are fully
developed and credible regardless of
gender or race. Among her greatest works
are Green Thursday (1924), Blac\ April
(1927), and Roll, Jordan, Roll (1933).

Garden and stairway of historic Charleston

mansion. Image © Appleman52
 Special Events

JANUARY
Carolina Marathon (statewide)
Throughout the months of January and February,
individual cities and towns host a variety of races, among
them a 10k run, a 10k wheelchair event, an 8k walk, a 6k
run, and special contests for children. For specific dates and
locations, see www.carolinamarathon.org.

FEBRUARY
Carolina Marathon (statewide)
See preceding description.

MARCH
Atalaya’s Special Day (Murrells Inlet)
Celebrate the wedding anniversary and birthdays of Anna
and Archer Huntington, founders of Brookgreen Gardens.
Visit the castle and relax in the courtyard. Refreshments
provided. Date: March 10. Cost: $10 per visitor. Contact
(843) 235-8755 or visit www.hungtingtonbeachsc.org.

Can-Am Days Festival (Myrtle Beach)

The Canadian-American Festival is held the entire month of
March annually to welcome Canadians on “spring break.”
Activities vary and are sponsored by both the city and local
businesses, but historical tours, musical concerts, and
sporting events are common. For information, call (843) 626-
7444 or visit www.discovermyrtlebeach.com/canamdays.

Carolina Cup Races (Camden)

50,000 spectators gather each year for this steeplechase race
of thoroughbreds, one of South Carolina’s oldest annual
events. The race is held on the last Saturday of March. Call
(803) 432-6513 for details or visit www.carolina-cup.org.

APRIL
Azalea Festival (Pickens)
Usually in April, the myriad colors of the towns’ azalea
gardens are celebrated. Live entertainment, arts and crafts, and
food vendors participate. All profits go to local charities.
Contact (864) 878-7145 or visit www.pickenschamber.org.

3z 6
 SPECIAL EVENTS
3Z7

World Grits Festival (St. George)

On the second weekend of April, the town of St. George
celebrates grits, a dish unique to the South. A grits eating
contest and a beauty pageant that crowns the Miss World
Grits Queen are the highlights, but the town also holds a
parade and offers gospel singing and band performances,
along with booths offering crafts and food. For additional
information, call (843) 563-7943.

Three Rivers Music Festival (Columbia)

More than 100 musical acts perform on eight separate
stages on the first weekend ol April each year. Musical
varieties include gospel, country, jazz, alternative rock,
classical, bluegrass, cajun, and southern beach music.
Activities are available to entertain guests of all ages.
Contact (803) 401-8990.

MAY
Abbeville Spring Festival on the Square (Abbeville)
Tours of homes, a town parade, art show, antique car show,
crafts on display, children’s events, street dance, live
entertainment, and food vendors. Generally held the first
weekend of May. Free admission. For more information,
call (864) 459-1433 or visit www.discoversouthcarolina.com.

Pontiac GMC Freedom Weekend Aloft (Greenville)

Greenville hosts Freedom Weekend Aloft on the last
weekend of May. It features 100 hot-air balloons, games,
crafts, food, and nationally recognized entertainers. Call
(864) 232-3700 for details or visit www.freedom
weekend.org.

Rivertown Jazz Festival (Conway)

The Rivertown fazz Festival is held the first weekend of
May on the banks of the Waccamaw River that runs
through Conway. Stages situated throughout the town and
along the river walk feature jazz performances, and
vendors offer a variety of local foods. Entertainment for
children is available. Admission is free. Call (843) 248-6260
for more details or visit www.rivertownjazzandarts.com or
www.conwayscchamber.com.
3z8 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Canoeing Workshop & Trip on the South Edisto (Windsor)

In mid-month and again on the last weekend of May, a
special course is offered for beginner canoeists. The class
teaches basic skills of paddling followed by a guided two-
mile canoe trip on the South Edisto River. Cost is $20 per
person, and interested visitors must book reservations three
days in advance. For more information, call (803) 649-2857.

Spoleto Festival, USA (Charleston)

Charleston’s celebration of the fine arts, which extends
from the third weekend of May to the first weekend of
June, showcases world-renowned artists and performers in
theater, music, and dance. The festival is one of South
Carolina’s largest and most popular. Call (843) 722-2764 for
additional information or visit www.spoletousa.org.

Gullah Festival (Beaufort)

Held on the fourth weekend of the month, the annual
festival celebrates Lowcountry African-American culture
with exhibits in the Black Inventions Museum, local music
and dance performances, unique foods, and craft booths.
Call (843) 525-0628 for details or visit www.gullah
festival.org.

Hell Hole Swamp Festival (Jamestown)

On the first Saturday of the month, Jamestown residents
and their guests enjoy a day filled with attractions for all
ages, including a tobacco-spitting contest, a greased pole
climb, softball games, horseshoe games, arm wrestling, a
beauty pageant, talent shows, and exhibits of crafts and
local foods. For details, call (843) 257-2233.

JUNE
Harborwal\ Festival (Georgetown)
I he last weekend of June marks the annual Harborwalk
Festival in the historic district oi Georgetown, nestled along
the harbor. A boat show, tours of historic sailing ships, five
stages ol live musical performances, an antique car show,
boat tours of the harbor, a street dance, and booths with
crafts and food are available to guests. Admission is free.
Call (843) 546-1511 for additional information or visit
www.georgetown-sc.com/events.
 SPECIAL EVENTS
32-9

Sun Fun Festival (Myrtle Beach)

This festival runs the entire first v/eek of the month
annually and includes numerous events scattered along the
Grand Strand. Among them are the Miss Sun Fun Beauty
Pageant, the Sun Fun Parade, golf tournaments, fishing
tournaments, beach games, sand-castle building contests,
Jazz in the Park, and special live performances at local
musical theaters. The festival has been held since 1951. For
additional information, call (843) 626-7444 or visit
www.sunfunfestival.com

South Carolina Festival of Flowers (Green wood)

On the fourth weekend of June, visitors to Greenwood are
invited to tour the George W. Park Seed Company’s Trail of
Gardens, which includes more than 1,500 varieties of
flowering plants. The town also offers art and photo shows,
beach music dancing, square dancing, and activities for
children. Call (864) 223-8411 or visit www.scfestivalof
flowers.org.

JULY
Pageland Watermelon Festival (Pageland)
This festival celebrates the local crop, the watermelon.
Events include a parade, concerts, crafts booths, an antique
car show, a beauty pageant, helicopter rides, a petting zoo,
watermelon eating and seed spitting contests, gospel music,
and lawnmower tractor races. The festival is held on the
third weekend of the month. Call (843) 672-5257 or visit
www.pagelandcham.net.

South Carolina Peach Festival (Gaffney)

This eight-day festival in mid-July honors one of the state’s
principal crops. Included in the festival are country music
performances featuring nationally recognized musicians,
sporting events, parades, and “tractor pulls.” Of course,
numerous desserts made with peaches are available. For
details, contact (864) 489-9066 or visit www.scpeachfestival.org
or www.gaffney-sc.com.

An Evening at Prospect Hill (Edisto Island)

This local historic antebellum-era plantation hosts a shrimp
Creole dinner for guests and provides a storytelling hour,
330 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

pottery-making demonstrations, and gospel singing. Call

(843) 869-1954 for reservations.

AUGUST
Summerfest (York)
This one-day event is held on the forth Saturday of August
annually. Admission is free. The day features a 5k run, a “fun
run,” a softball tournament, crafts, food vendors, a parade,
live entertainment, and activities for children. Call (803) 684-
2590 or visit www.greateryorkchamber.com/summerfest.

SEPTEMBER
Aynor Harvest Hoe-Down Festival (Aynor)
Held on the third weekend of the month in Aynor, ten
miles west of Conway, the hoe-down is a Saturday
celebration for the family. More than 200 booths featuring
local crafts as well as foods such as “chicken bog.” A parade
and street dance highlight the day. Contact (843) 365-9154
visit www.aynorscchamber.org/harvesthoedown.

South Carolina Tobacco Festival (Lake City)

Lake City hosts the annual state festival celebrating the year’s
tobacco harvest. Several stages present live entertainment
throughout the weekend, and guests can enjoy radio-
controlled airplane demonstrations, a pet parade, a street
dance, a motorcycle rally, gospel singing, and a tobacco tying
and stringing contest. For more information, call (843) 374-
8611 or visit www.discoversouthcarolina.com.

OCTOBER
Apple Harvest Festival (Windy Hill Orchard and
Cider Mill, York)
I his festival, generally held in mid-month, features apple
picking, hay rides, pumpkin picking, cider making and
baked apple goods. Admission is free. Call (803) 684-0690
for more inlormation or visit www.discoversouthcarolina.com.

Autumn Candlelight Tour (Ninety-Six)

Usually held in mid-month, this evening includes guided
tours on a one-mile length of historic trail, illuminated by
candles and torches. Volunteers dressed in civilian and
military clothing of the Revolutionary Era describe life and
 SPECIAL EVENTS 331

war in colonial America. Contact (864) 543-4068 or visit

www.nps.gov/nisi/planyourvisit/candlelight-tour.htm or
www.discoversouthcarolina.com.

Pawley’s Island Tour of Homes (Pawley’s Island)

In mid-month, visitors to the island are invited to tour both
historic and contemporary homes. Admission is $20 per
person. For details, call (843) 546-5685.

South Carolina State Fair (Columbia)

The state fair stretches over eleven days, beginning the first
weekend of the month. It includes exhibits of flowers,
canned foods, quilting, artwork, baked goods, and
livestock. Stage acts throughout the fair feature comedians,
instrumental bands, singers, dancers, and varied local
entertainers from public schools and colleges. Visitors can
also enjoy a number of popular rides and games. Call (803)
799-3387 for more information or visit www.scstatefair.org.

Carolina Downhome Blues Festival (Camden)

The Fine Arts Center of Kershaw County presents a
variety of performers, generally on the first weekend of
October, and local bars and restaurants in Camden provide
nightly blues performances in intimate settings. Call (803)
425-7676 or visit www.camden.bluesbash.com

South Carolina Sweet Potato Festival (Darlington)

The Sweet Potato Festival attracts approximately 10,000
guests annually. Clowns and mimes provide street
entertainment, and stages located throughout the
community offer live entertainment. In addition to the
extensive display of sweet potato dishes, other booths
feature international foods. Admission is free. For details,
call (843) 395-2940 or visit www.discoversouthcarolina.com.

Beaufort Shrimp Festival (Beaufort)

Held on the second weekend of the month, the Shrimp
Festival celebrates the foods peculiar to South Carolina’s
Lowcountry. A shrimp cooking contest awards prizes for
best recipe and most creative recipe. On the waterfront on
Friday evening is a picnic, with lighted shrimp boats
providing illumination. A 5k run and a 5k walk are held on
332. ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Saturday, and live entertainment and locally made crafts

are highlights of the day. Food is ever present. Visitors are
encouraged to tour local homes and historic buildings. Call
(843) 986-5400 for additional information or visit
www.beaufortsc.org or www.cityofbeaufort.org.

NOVEMBER
Celebrate Freedom (Columbia)
Held at Owens Field Airport, the event features an air and
ground show of World War II history. Restored aircraft
from the period perform aerial demonstrations, and visitors
may get a close-up view of the planes throughout the day.
On display, too, is a replica of an army field hospital,
memorabilia of and representatives from the 82nd
Airborne Division, the 30th Infantry Division, and anti¬
aircraft weaponry. The event is generally held on the first
weekend of November. For details, contact (803) 772-2945
visit www.discoversouthcarolina.com.

Colonial Cup (Camden)

Long noted lor its horseshows, Camden sponsors the
Colonial Cup in mid-November each year. The one-day
event includes six races of thoroughbreds and culminates in
the Colonial Cup steeplechase event that determines the
year’s national champion. In addition to the races, there are
specialty shops and booths for shopping and numerous
children’s activities. Tailgating parties are permitted. Call
(803) 432-6513 for additional information or visit
www.camden-sc.org and www.carolina-cup.org.

DECEMBER
Dickens Christmas Show and Festival (Myrtle Beach)
The Dickens Christmas Show is held yearly at the Myrtle
Beach Convention Center and features nearly 500 booths of
arts and crafts along with a variety of Christmas
decorations. A Victorian theme prevails, with vendors
attired in clothing in the style of the period. The show runs
Thursday through Sunday. For additional information, call
(843) 448-9483 or visit www.dickenschristmasshow.com
and www.myrtlebeachinfo.com/holiday/events.
 SPECIAL EVENTS
333

Colonial Christmas in Camden (Camden)

This celebration includes a parade through the town,
fireworks, and a candlelight tour of selected private homes
and local buildings all in seasonal decor. Service personnel
from local restaurants wear Victorian-era clothing, shops in
the business district extend their hours, and live music
groups perform on town streets. The event is generally held
in mid-month. Call (803) 432-9841 for more details or visit
www.camden-sc.org.

Family Yuletide at Middleton Place (Charleston)

A variety of Christmas-themed activities are provided to
guests of all ages at the Middleton Plantation. Christmas
caroling, craft demonstrations, wreath-making, and a
bonfire are all features of this celebration. This is an evening
event, generally in mid-month. For details, contact (843) 556-
6020 or (800) 786-3608 or visit www.middletonplace.org.

A closeup of a ripe cotton boll in a Southern cotton field © Jay Waldron

 Contact Information

State Tourism Agencies Hilton Head Island

South Carolina Department of Hilton Head Tourist, Visitor,
Parks, Recreation, and Tourism and Convention Bureau
1205 Pendleton Street PO Box 5647
Columbia, SC 29201-0071 Hilton Head Island, SC 29938
(803) 734-1700 or (800) 346-3634 (843) 785-3673
[email protected] www.hiltonheadchamber.org
www.discoversouthcarolina.com
Myrtle Beach
Visitors’ Bureaus Myrtle Beach Area Visitors' Bureau
Charleston PO Box 2115
Charleston-Trident, SC Myrtle Beach, SC 29578
Convention/Visitors’ Bureau (843) 448-1629 or (800) 356-3016
PO Box 975 www.myrtlebeachlive.com
Charleston, SC 29402
(843) 853-8000 or (800) 868-0444 Roc!{ Hill
www.charlestoncvb.com York County Convention and
Visitors’ Bureau
Columbia 130 E. Main Street
Columbia, South Carolina PO Box 11377
Metropolitan Convention and Rock Hill, SC 29730
Visitors’ Bureau (803) 329-5200, or (800) 866-5200
1276 Assembly Street www.yccvb.com
PO Box 15
Columbian, SC 29202 Spartanburg
(803)254-0479 Spartanburg Convention and
www.columbiasc.net Visitors’ Bureau
298 Magnolia Street
Georgetown Spartanburg, SC 29303
Georgetown County Convention (863) 594-5050 or (800) 374-8326
and Visitors’ Center www.spartanburgsc.org
PO Box 2068
Pawleys Island, SC 29585
(866) 368-TOUR or
(800) 777-7705
www.visitgeorgetownsc.com

Greenville
Greenville Convention and
Visitors’ Bureau
PO Box 10527
Greenville, SC 29603
(864) 421-0000 or (800) 351-7180
www.greatergreenville.com

334
 CONTACT INFORMATION
335

Websites

www.discoversouthcarolina.com
Widely recognized as the best internet site for those planning a
visit to South Carolina. It details every state and national park in
the Palmetto State, the hundreds of permanent attractions by
region and city, annual events and programs, and standard tourist
sites as well as those out-of-the-way but equally distinctive points
of interest. Each attraction and event listed includes hours of
operation, costs, restrictions on use, local weather, driving
directions, and contact information.

www.sciway.net
The official state site for a wealth of diverse information, Sciway
(South Carolina Information Highway) provides dozens of
government links covering the state’s history, vital statistics,
entertainment, tourism, calendar of events, maps, churches,
economic development, libraries and museums, and weather. Of
particular interest, Sciway provides “WebCams” that offer live
video feeds from the cities most frequently visited by tourists.
The site also includes state-sponsored links regarding African-
American history in South Carolina, current employment
opportunities, government information, city and county histories,
and general facts about the Palmetto State.

www.sc-heritagecorridor.org
This site is sponsored by the state of South Carolina and was
developed by private citizens’ groups, conservation organizations,
businesses, and individual communities to promote visitation to
sites central in the state’s history. The heritage corridor extends
from Oconee County in the northwestern corner of the state and
runs along the Savannah River to Edisto Island and north to
Charleston. The website highlights nature paths, mountain lakes,
small but historic river communities, railway lines, and two-lane
backroads through less visited towns. It includes a “photo album”
and links to other internet sites.

www.50states.com
This site is similar to Sciway but not as extensive or complete.
Nonetheless, it is quite valuable and recommended.

www.beentheresawthat.com/sc/south_carolina/pages/guide.htm
This website offers photos of the principal tourist destinations
along with links to key attractions, travel books, tourist offices,
maps, places to stay, restaurants, and travel packages.
 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA
336

www.southcarolinabedandbreakfast.com
The South Carolina Bed and Breakfast Association site lists B&Bs
scattered from the coast to the mountains.

www.state.sc.us/ scsl
Site of the South Carolina State Library in Columbia.

www.museum.state.sc.us
The South Carolina State Museum. The site includes summaries of
permanent and special exhibits, tour information, and archival
materials. The museum is located in Columbia.

The following websites are grouped according to principal tourist

destinations:

Aiken
www.aiken.net

Beaufort
www.beaufort.com
www.beaufortcitysc.com

Charleston
local.msc.com/Charleston
www.charleston.net
www.charleston-us.com

Conway
www.cityofconway.com

Florence
www.cityofflorence.com
www.florencechamber.com/area

Greenville
www.downtowngreenville.com

Hilton Head Island

www.hhisland.com
www.hiltonheadisland.org

Myrtle Beach/Grand Strand:

www.welcomecenters.com/PPF/MyrtleBeach/SouthCarolina
www.myrtlebeachgolf.com
www.myrtlebeach-info.com
www.welcomecenters.com/myrtlebeach
www.discovermyrtlebeach.com
 Sources and Further Reading

General Histories
Belcher, Ray. Greenville County, South Carolina: From Cotton
Fields to Textile Center of the World. Charleston: The History
Press, 2006.

Coclanis, Peter. The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death

in the South Carolina Low Country, 1670-1920. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1991.
Edgar, Walter. South Carolina: A History. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1998.
Fraser, Walter J. Charleston! Charleston!: The History of a Southern
City. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991.
Lewis, Catherine Heniford. Horry County, South Carolina,
1730-1993. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1998.
Moore, John Hammond. Columbia and Richland County: A South
Carolina Community, 1740-1990. Columbia: University of
South Carolina Press, 1992.

Specialized Works
Bartlett, Irving, H .John C. Calhoun: A Biography. New
York: W. W. Norton, 1994.
Blurner, Thomas. The Catawba Indian Nation of the Carohnas. Mt.
Pleasant, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2004.
Borick, Carl. A Gallant Defense: The Siege of Charleston, 1780.
Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003.
Brown, Douglas Summers. The Catawba Indians: The People of
the River. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1966.
Chepesiuk, Ron, and Edward J. Lee. South Carolina in the Civil
War: The Confederate Experience in Letters and Diaries.
Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co., 2004.
Cisco, Walter Brian. Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior,
Conservative Statesman. Herndon, Virginia: Potomac Books,
2006.
Cohodas, Nadine. Strom Thurmond and the Politics of Southern
Change. Atlanta: Mercer University Press, 1995.
Detzer, David. Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the
Beginning of the Civil War. New York: Harcourt, 2001.
Dusinberre, William. Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American
Rice Swamps. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Edelson, S. Max. Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina.
Boston: Harvard University Press, 2006.

337
338
ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

Edgar, Walter B. Partisans and Redcoats: The Southern Conflict that

Turned the Tide of the American Revolution. New York:
William Morrow, 2001.
Federal Writers’ Project of the WPA. South Carolina Slave
Narratives. Carlisle, Massachusetts: Applewood Books, 2006.
Frederickson, Kari. The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid
South, 1932-1968. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2000.
Freehling, William. Prelude to War: The Nullification Controversy
in South Carolina, 1816-1836. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992.
Grose, Philip G. South Carolina at the Brink: Robert McNair and
the Politics of Civil Rights. Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 2006.
Hayes, Jr., Jack Irby. South Carolina and the New Deal. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 2001.
Heidler, David S. and Jeanne T. Heidler. Old Hickory’s War:
Andrew Jackson and the Quest for Empire. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 2003.
Helsley, Alexia Jones. Beaufort, South Carolina: A History.
Charleston: The History Press, 2005.
Hirsch, Arthur. Huguenots of Colonial South Carolina. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
Holden, Charles. In the Great Maelstrom: Conservatives in Post
Civil War South Carolina. Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 2002.
Kantrowitz, Stephen. Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White
Supremacy. Chapel Hill: University ot North Carolina Press,
2000.
Krech, Shepard. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History.
New York: W. W. Norton, 2000.
Lau, Peter F. Democracy Rising: South Carolina and the Fight for
BlackEquality since 1865. Lexington: University of Kentucky
Press, 2006.
Lerch, Patricia. Waccamaw Legacy: Contemporary Indians Fight for
Survival. Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 2004.
Lerner, Gerda. The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers
for Women's Rights. Chapel Hill: University ot North
Carolina Press, 2007.
Lesesne, Henry H. A History of the University of South Carolina,
1940—2000. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002.
Littlefield, Daniel. Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in
Colonial South Carolina. Urbana: University ot Illinois Press,
1991.
McCaig, Donald. Rhett Butler’s People. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 2007.
 SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
339

Merrell, James. The Indians of the New World: Catawbas and Their
Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Mooney, James and George Ellison. James Mooney’s History,
Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokges. Fairview, North
Carolina: Bright Mountain Books,1992.
Myers, Andrew H. Blac\, White, and Olive Drab: Racial
Integration at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and the Civil Rights
Movement. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,
2006.
Poole, W. Scott. South Carolina’s Civil War: A Narrative History.
Atlanta: Mercer University Press, 2005.
Prince, Jr., Eldred E. Long Green: The Rise and Fall of Tobacco in
South Carolina. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Pritzger, Barry M. A Native American Encyclopedia: History,
Cultures, and Peoples. New York: Oxford University Press,
2000.
Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson: The Course of American
Democracy, 1833—1845. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1998.
Robertson, David. Sly and Able: A Political Biography of James F.
Byrnes. New York: W. W. Norton, 1994.
Ruymbeke, Bertrand Van. From New Babylon to Eden: The
Huguenots and Their Migration to Colonial South Carolina.
Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006.
Simms, William Gilmore. The Life of Francis Marion. Charleston:
The History Press, 2007.
Sinha, Mamsha. The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and
Ideology m Antebellum South Carolina. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New
World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Thomas, John Peyre. History of the South Carolina Military
Academy. Lexington, South Carolina: Palmetto Bookworks,
1991.
Washington-Williams, Essie Mae. Dear Senator: A Memoir by the
Daughter of Strom Thurmond. New York: Regan Books,
2005.
Weiner, Marli. Mistresses and Slaves: Plantation Women in South
Carolina, 1830—1880. Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1997.
Weir, Robert M. Colonial South Carolina: A History. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1997.
Wilson, David K. The Southern Strategy: Britain’s Conquest of
South Carolina and Georgia, 1775—1780. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 2005.
 Index of Place Names

Must-See Sites are highlighted in bold.

A 296, 302-303, 304; Native

Abbeville 15, 133, 134,200, 327 Americans and discovery 17,
Aiken 201, 222, 237-238, 259, 260, 44; post-war and antebellum
263, 264, 266, 304, 336 99-104, 108-109, 110, 112,
Aiken (county) 14, 129, 311 115-116; 120-123, 126-130,
Anderson 185, 263 132-136, 137, 139, 142-143;
Anderson (county) 94, 207 Recon-struction and
Andrew Jackson State Park 321 post-Civil War progress in
Aynor 330 194, 200,215,222,227;
World War I 229-230, 248;
B World War II 238, 258-259,
Barnwell 262, 318 260-264,269-273
Barnwell (county) 15 Charleston (county) 14-15
Battery, the 74, 217, 238 Charleston Harbor 63, 74, 84, 90,
Beaufort 5, 11, 23, 30, 52, 54, 58, 92-93, 109, 115, 126, 172-173,
59, 99, 108, 116, 130, 143, 158, 184,261,307-308, 312-313
177,186, 238,260-261,263, Charleston Navy Yard 230, 246,
307, 328, 331,336, 338 252, 269-270
Beaufort (county) 14, 305—306 Cheraw 14, 187, 319
Bennettsville 214, 263, 269 Chesnee 19
Boone Hall Plantation 138 Chester 187, 200, 263,269
Brookgreen Gardens 236, 239, 326 Chesterfield 131, 185
Chesterfield (county) 14, 124, 200,
C 310
Camden 94, 96, 98, 120, 186, 222, Cider Mill 330
237-238, 260,263,310,319, Citadel, the 136-137, 172, 209,
326, 330, 332, 333 218,298-299,311,322
Camp Jackson (Fort Jackson) 230, Claflin College 209, 290
264, 272, 339 Clemson University 135, 215, 223,
Camp Sevier 230 231,275, 285, 295, 304, 312,
Camp Wadsworth 230 314,321
Carowinds 6, 305 Colonial Cup 141
Carver Bay 263 Columbia
Catawba Cultural Preservation antebellum 104, 113,
Center 7 120-123, 130, 132, 136, 139,
Catawba River 6, 14, 27 142-143, 144-145; the Civil
Charles Town(e) Landing 39 War in 149, 167, 182-188;
Charleston post-World War II 280-284,
the American Revolution in 289, 296; Native Americans
73-85, 88-98; the Civil War in 19, 20; Reconstruction and
in 149, 158-159, 160, post—Civil War progress in
166-169, 171-173, 174, 192, 197, 199,201-203,209,
176-177, 179, 180-189; the 214,218, 222-223,225-226;
colonial era in 49, 51, 52-53, World War I 230, 248;
56, 60, 62—63, 64, 66—68; World War II 238, 256, 258,
joining the union 279—283, 260, 263-266, 271-274

340
 INDEX OF PLACE NAMES
341

Congeree River 27 Greenville 94, 120, 121, 124, 137,

Conway 19, 144-145, 246, 221,230, 237, 238, 248,255, ’
257-259,295,323,327,330,336 259, 260, 263-265, 272,
Cowpens 86-87, 310 283-285,296, 300,310,
Cowpens National Battlefield 87 321-322,327, 334,336
Greenville (county) 14, 92, 207, 337
D Greenville County Museum of
Darlington 123, 130, 185, 305, 331 Art 279
Darlington (county) 15, 131, 324 Greenwood 263, 268, 329
Darlington Raceway 287
Denmark Vesey House 161 H
Dorchester 268, 305 Hartsville 263
Due West 137 Hilton Head 23, 26, 59, 177, 304,
334, 336
E Historic Camden Revolutionary
Edgefield 165, 206,317,321 War Site 94
Edgefield (county) 213 Hobcaw Barony 247, 319
Edisto Island 2, 12, 15, 239, 310, Hopsewee Plantation 150
329, 335 Horry (county) 15, 109, 152, 179,
Eutaw Springs 14, 98 215, 238, 263,305, 337
Hunting Island 246
F Huntington Beach State Park 304
Fairfield 200
Florence 79, 187, 256, 258, 263, I
269,284,316, 336 Intracoastal Waterway 30, 258,
Folly Beach 261, 305 262, 263
Fort Hill 135 Irmo 320
Fort Johnson 74—76, 79, 109
Fort Mill 7 J
Fort Moultrie 93, 95, 109, 172, James Island 180, 260
174,309,310 John’s Island 262
Fort Sumter 172—173, 174, 176,
178, 184,217, 304, 311,346 K
Fort Wagner 182, 184, 310 Kershaw 125
Fripp Island 11 Kershaw (county) 3, 15, 141, 331
Furman University 209, 311,322 Kings Mountain 87, 97, 310
Kings Mountain National
G Military Park 91
Gaffney 269, 300, 329
Gallivants Ferry 215 L
Garden City 239, 303 Lake City 322, 330
Georgetown 25, 64, 78, 99, Lake Murray 262
108-109,116, 120, 143, 152, Lancaster 102-103, 161, 185
160, 176, 178, 260-262, Lancaster (county) 5, 6, 14, 96,
263-265,303,316, 328, 334 125,200,310
Georgetown (county) 15, 152, 264, Laurens 152, 200, 324
319 Lexington (county) 14, 229, 305
Goose Creek 51, 53 Little Pee Dee River 215, 257
Governor’s Mansion 198 Little River 108, 302, 304
Grand Strand 25, 222, 304, 329, 336 Loris 258
Graniteville 129—130, 179
 ON-THE-ROAD HISTORIES: SOUTH CAROLINA

M S
Me Bee 266 Santa Elena 27, 32*^361
McCormick 125 Savannah River 27, 109, 335
McKissick Museum 146 Sea Pines Forest Preserve 26
McLeod Farms Antique Museum Slave Market Museum 164
266 South Carolina State University
McLeod Plantation 59 292-293, 322
Magnolia Plantation 35 South Edisto River 61, 328
Marion 15, 161, 179,265,267 South Carolina Indian Affairs
Mayesville 240, 317 Commission 20
Middleton Plantation 333 Spartanburg 32, 137, 230, 259,
Mission Board School 240, 317 263-267, 268, 272, 283-284,
Monck’s Corner 19 300,307,318, 324,334
Morris Island 182, 184, 311 Spartanburg (county) 179, 200, 207
Mount Pleasant 138, 257, 288 Stono River 61
Murrells Inlet 236, 326 Sullivan’s Island 52, 74, 93, 109,
Myrtle Beach 108-109,217, 172, 175,309
238-239, 246,256,260-261, Sumter 185,240,259,260, 263
266, 301,302-303, 314,318, Sumter (county) 14—15, 161
326, 329, 332, 334
U
N University of South Carolina
National Cemetery 186 (South Carolina College) 122,
Newberry 15, 137, 200, 225, 229, 136, 185, 192, 196, 295,305,
312 310
Ninety-Six 92, 98, 330
WXY
O Waccamaw River 109, 180,246,
Oconee (county) 14—15, 94, 152, 327
335 Wateree River 3
Orangeburg 14, 19, 186, 209, 229, Waxhaw 18, 102
249, 292-293,314, 322 Williamsburg (county) 62, 90, 242
Windy Hill 330
P Winnsboro 187, 269
Pageland 328 Winthrop University 208
Parris Island 29, 30—31, 32, 230, Winyah Bay 15,25,307
260, 307,311 Wofford University 137,209
Patriots’ Point 271,305 York (county) 5, 6, 14, 125, 200,
Pavilion, the 301-302, 318 310, 330
Pawley’s Island 239, 263, 304, 330
Pickens (county) 15, 94, 179, 326
Port Royal 17,23,29,32,44,54,
307

R
Richland (county) 14-15, 115, 279,
337
Rock Hill 7, 19, 208, 230, 283-284,
334
975.7 Townsend, Kenneth
T William, 1951-
South Carolina .

31707002339110
$20.00
DATE

f ‘oueci ION
20

BLOOMFIELD PUBLIC LIBRARY

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BLOOMFIELD. NJ 07003
973 — 566—6^00

BAKER & TAYLOR

This series offers a glorious, full- T oday, tourists flock to the warm
waters of Myrtle Beach, explore
color tribute to the cultural, geo¬
graphic, and historical riches of the refurbished plantations, and stroll the
United States. picturesque streets of old Charleston.
In this history of the state, Kenneth
Each title includes: Townsend examines the rich and
complicated past of these places.
• A lively, comprehensive account Beginning with the area’s earliest
of the state’s past and present settlers, Townsend traces the state’s
integral role in the American Revo¬
• Contemporary and historical
lution and its rise as an agricultural
photographs and maps
powerhouse; the Civil War and the
• Chronology of major events legacy of slavery; and its recent
economic re-emergence after the
• Famous sons and daughters Civil Rights era. Highlighting major
historical figures, key events, and
• Interesting state tidbits (state
cultural icons from Andrew Jackson
symbols, state songs, and so forth)
to Janies Brown, Townsend sheds
• Literary extracts light on one of the country’s oldest
and loveliest states.
• Visitor resources and must-see sites
Kenneth Townsend is a professor
• Cultural highlights and special of American history at Coastal
events Carolina University in Myrtle
Beach, South Carolina and the
Select bibliography and much
author of World War II and the
more...

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