My object in the following paper is not to present a summary of South
Carolina history, enumerating well-known dates and facts already
recorded by much better writers, but rather to furnish sundry varied
items of information which, while not themselves entitled to rank as
history, may yet serve a useful purpose as side-lights upon history
proper.
South Carolina has always occupied an almost unique position in the
family of States. Geographically small, numerically weak, she has
nevertheless managed to make her influence felt throughout the
Federation.
Thus much concerning her is known to the world at large, but the very
peculiar conditions which existed for many years within her borders are
not so generally known to outsiders. Yet it is these conditions which to
a great extent moulded State character and influenced State politics.
Indeed they are the key without which it would be impossible to explain
many anomalies, in both her political and social history.
Presenting an unbroken front to the world, a solid unit on all questions
of national policy, within herself she was divided into two jarring and
irreconcilable factions. How this sectional antagonism originated, or
when it first showed itself it is impossible to say. But the unnatural
animosity once developed, the exceptional conditions existing in the
State were unfortunately calculated to aggravate and perpetuate it. The
root of the evil was that old grudge of the mass against class. Broadly
speaking, the wealth and cultivation of South Carolina were confined to
a single section of the State instead of being scattered throughout the
whole. Orders and degrees of men have existed in all times and in all
lands, but in South Carolina they were, so to speak, geographically
distributed—the “orders” being found in the interior, and the “degrees”
along the sea-board.
Thus, socially considered, a very broad line of demarcation separated
the State into two distinct sections; and in many respects in manners,
in habits, even in speech, the people of the two differed widely one
from the other.
Along the coast lay the great rice-plantations, containing thousands of
acres and worked by hundreds of slaves; their proprietors constituting
the landed aristocracy of the State. In the interior, the plantations
were smaller, there were fewer slaves, and their owners were “farmers”
rather than “planters,” devoting themselves to the cultivation of a
variety of crops instead of confining their efforts to the exclusive
production of a single staple.
Thus in a very important particular South Carolina differed from both
Virginia and Georgia—the two members of the State-sisterhood which in
many respects she most closely resembled: for in Georgia the sea-board
bore so small a proportion to the interior that the influence of the
coast-dwellers could not be a very appreciable factor in the general
equation. And in Virginia, a difference of climate produced a
corresponding difference in the mode of life of the country
gentry—Virginia planters for the most part making their homes on their
plantations the year round, whereas Carolina planters were compelled by
considerations of health to abandon their plantations during the summer
months. Though some went no farther than to settlements among the pine
woods or along the seashore near at hand, the great majority either
spent their summers in Charleston—the center of South Carolina
refinement and cultivation—or traveled abroad into the great outside
world, thereby rubbing off their rusticity and keeping themselves in
touch with passing events and current interests. Necessarily, the
combined advantages of wealth, education and travel produced in the
coast-folk a polish of manner and a breadth of mind not possessed by the
dwellers of the interior of the State who, year in and year out,
vegetated contentedly on their native soil.
The difference between the denizens of the two sections was inevitable.
The trouble was that, instead of regarding their superior advantages as
entailing upon them corresponding duties towards their less favored
neighbors, the people of the sea-board arrogated to themselves the
position of critics, and looked down with scarcely veiled condescension
and contempt upon their rustic brethren of the interior; by whom, it is
unnecessary to say, this attitude was deeply resented.
But having meted out the blame that of right belonged to the
“low-country” in this matter, justice demands the statement that—as in
all family disputes—the provocation was by no means entirely on one
side. Except in the matter of politics, the coast had little in common
with the interior. As a class, the people of the “up-country” were
ignorant and unpolished. Their lack of breeding disgusted, their want of
cultivation repelled, their marvelous thrift and instinct for
money-getting absolutely bewildered the low-country intelligence. And
when brought together the people of the coast recoiled with the feeling
that they were in contact with an alien race.
Both sections were in fault and both paid the penalty. The development
of the interior was greatly retarded by its obstinate antagonism to all
that savored of the more advanced civilization of the coast; and the
coast suffered in its turn, by frequently finding itself in a weak
minority as regarded measures of sectional advantage. Each faction of
the State Legislature was determined to consult solely its own interests
whenever these appeared to conflict.
Such was the condition of affairs up to the period of the Civil War. At
its close, a new era dawned in the life of South Carolina. Previous
conditions were now reversed. The sea-board—formerly the garden spot of
the State—was left depopulated, beggared, ruined; while the interior had
escaped from the terrible ordeal almost unscathed.
It was also evident that in recuperative power, there could be no
comparison between the two sections; the conditions which had formerly
operated adversely to the progress of the interior now conducing to its
development.
First, and chief of its advantages, were to be reckoned climatic
conditions permitting of white agricultural labor.
Secondly, the greatly lessened disparity in numbers between whites and
blacks in its population.
Thirdly, a hardier and more homely mode of life, which enabled its
people to adapt themselves with greater readiness to the new order of
things.