Attempts
to colonize the area now called South Carolina began in 1526 when
the Spaniard Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón sailed from Hispaniola with
six ships and 500 colonists. The result was catastrophic, and
only about 150 survived to return to Hispaniola. The Huguenots,
under Jean Ribault, also tried to colonize South Carolina in 1562;
they named Port Royal and built Charlesfort. When Ribault returned
to France for supplies, the men he left behind mutinied, built
a vessel, and sailed for France. By the mid-1570s, settlement
attempts abated for nearly a century.
English claims on the area dated to 1497 when John Cabot visited
the New World and claimed the area for King Henry VII. These claims
were the basis for Charles I's 1629 grant of “Carolana”
to Sir Robert Heath, who failed to settle Carolina before the
execution of Charles I in 1649. During the Commonwealth period
in England, many citizens remained loyal to Charles II. At his
ascension to the throne of England in 1660, eight men pressed
their claims for a reward: Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon; George
Monck, Duke of Albemarle; Lord William Craven; Lord John Berkeley;
Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury; Sir George Carteret;
Sir William Berkeley; and Sir John Colleton.
Charles II granted Carolina to the eight Lords Proprietors in
1663. After the claims of Heath's successors had been disposed
of, the grant was revised and extended in 1665. The Great Plague
of 1665, London's Great Fire of 1666, and war with the Dutch and
French probably interfered with immediate settlement plans. Finally,
in August 1669, three ships with over a hundred colonists sailed
under the temporary command of Captain Joseph West and reached
Barbados by November. Two of the original ships were lost in storms,
but on 15 March 1670, the Carolina and her new sister ships anchored
in what is now called Bull's Bay. Permanent settlement of South
Carolina had finally begun.
The first settlement, called “Old Town,” was on the
western side of the Ashley River at its mouth. The original settlers
were entitled to headright grants—150 acres for each male
over sixteen and a hundred acres for each female and each male
under sixteen—but they chose security over land, surrounding
their houses with a palisade and confining themselves to ten-acre
plots. Their precaution proved wise because three Spanish frigates
attacked the town in August 1670; bad weather forced the Spanish
to withdraw.
A new town was laid out at Oyster Point on the neck of land between
the Ashley and Cooper rivers, with streets intersecting at right
angles. One of the first pre-planned cities in North America,
Charles Town was settled in 1680. Renamed Charleston in 1783,
it was the only repository for South Carolina's public records
until 1785 and remained the capital of South Carolina until the
legislature moved the capital to Columbia in 1790.
South Carolinians first found economic stability in the deerskin
trade, but the resulting encroachment on the territory of the
Yemassee Indians led to war in 1715. South Carolina also was a
leading producer of naval stores, such as pitch and tar. This
trade attracted pirates to South Carolina's shores; a welcome
business in the seventeenth century, it became a real problem
after the Yemassee Indian War. Blackbeard sailed four ships toward
Charles Town in June 1718, stopped ships at leisure, and took
hostages whom he traded for medical supplies. The South Carolina
assembly had repeatedly requested the crown to protect the province,
and about half of the free white men—nearly 600 individuals—signed
a petition to that effect in 1717. The ineffectual policies of
the Lords Proprietors and their apparent inability to defend the
colony led to further disaffection. When a rumor reached Charles
Town in 1719 that the Spanish were readying a fleet to attack
the city, revolution broke out. While not bloody, the revolution
of 1719 nonetheless effectively ended the rule of the Lords Proprietors,
and the crown established a provisional royal government in 1721.
When the crown bought out seven of the eight proprietors in 1729,
South Carolina became a royal colony.
South Carolina is divided, culturally and topographically, into
Up-Country and Low Country. The topographical division runs along
the fall line, approximately from Aiken to Columbia to Camden
to Cheraw. Culturally, Charleston and the surrounding Tidewater
region is the Low Country. Residents of the Low Country tended
toward large rice or indigo plantations with great numbers of
slaves. Residents of the Up-Country tended to work small farms
and in general had few slaves. The government was seated at Charleston,
and residents of the Up-Country often complained of unfair representation.
This was based at least in part on the lack of local government.
During the three decades from the 1730s into the 1760s, the frontier
families of the Up-Country frequently rebelled against the provincial
government. The Low Country elite promised representation, protection
against outlaws and Indian attacks, and churches and schools,
but they neglected to deliver on their promises. As a result of
isolation, hardships, and a growing divergence from the Low Country,
residents of the Up-Country seldom bothered to travel to Charles
Town, except to petition for land. The Stamp Act of 1765, which
imposed taxes on many official and unofficial papers, including
not only legal documents but also playing cards, affected the
pocket books of the Low Country planters. While they had the political
power in South Carolina, residents of the Low Country needed the
support, and numbers, of Up-Country frontiersmen to resist the
Stamp Act. Some autonomy was granted in the District Circuit Court
Act of 1769, which divided the province into seven judicial districts.
About 1772, the first courts were held outside of Charleston.
See Formation of Local Government for a full explanation.
The Revolutionary War found a deeply divided South Carolina. Charlestonians
planned to resist the importation of tea, and the Boston Tea Party
strengthened their resolve; Up-Country Loyalists were equally
resolved and attacked a fort at Ninety-Six in November 1775. The
war raged throughout South Carolina for seven years. The British
attacked Charleston in June 1776 but were forced to withdraw.
Then, in July 1776, a Cherokee War broke out in the Up-Country.
Militia from South and North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia defeated
the tribe, and the northwest corner of South Carolina was ceded
by the Cherokees in the treaty of May 1777. Between 1776 and 1779,
Patriots and Loyalists fought skirmishes and continued marauding
attacks on each other in the Up-Country, although the Loyalists
were largely suppressed. In May 1778, the British once again moved
against Charleston, laying siege to the city. Charleston capitulated
on 12 May 1780, and the British began moving into the Up-Country,
establishing a series of outposts. Meanwhile, the suppressed Loyalists
began guerilla raids on Patriot farms, and local civil war broke
out in several areas. The Patriots also formed guerilla bands
and harassed both the Loyalists and the British. Finally, the
Patriot partisans began driving the British out of the Up-Country,
with major battles at Camden (May 1781), Ninety-Six (May–June
1781), and Eutaw Springs (September 1781); the British were so
weakened that they and the Loyalists were forced to withdraw to
Charleston. When the British finally evacuated Charleston on 14
December 1782, over four thousand Loyalists went with them.
Rice and indigo provided economic stability to South Carolina
during much of the eighteenth century; the debts accrued during
the Revolutionary War and the loss of bounties to support indigo
production threatened to ruin the economy. Loyalists returning
from exile in the Bahamas brought a new strain of cotton that
thrived in the southeast. Then, in 1793, Eli Whitney improved
the cotton gin. Within a decade, short-staple cotton transformed
the Up-Country into a prosperous region.
Like rice and indigo before it, cotton was a labor-intensive crop.
A shortage of laborers led South Carolina to temporarily reopen
the slave trade in 1803; 40,000 blacks were imported in five years.
As cotton pushed its way westward, political and journalistic
battles over the slavery issue divided the United States into
increasingly antagonistic factions. South Carolina and her neighbors
felt threatened by the north's abolitionist movement, and when
Abraham Lincoln was elected to the Presidency, South Carolina
called a secession convention on 17 December 1860. As the first
state to secede, the first state to ratify the Constitution of
the Confederate States of America, and the first state to fire
shots during the Civil War, South Carolina received particularly
harsh treatment when Union General William T. Sherman and his
troops subdued her in 1864. Virtually destroyed, South Carolina
faced difficult decades of racial and economic strife, but she
recovered and today is a prosperous and healthy state.
Other Links:
|
