Lastly, a staple (cotton) naturally suggestive of manufacturing
enterprise.
When these combined advantages are taken into account, and the section
possessing them compared with the coast, whose sole source of revenue
lay in the fertile, but miasma-laden rice fields, for the cultivation of
which negro labor was an absolute necessity, it is seen at once how
completely “old things had passed away!”
The mere reversal of former conditions, however, was certainly not
calculated in itself to heal the sectional breach. But, fortunately,
ameliorating agencies were at work—the gradual spread of
education—increasing intercourse between the sections, the result of
improved facilities of travel, and also of business enterprises in which
both were interested. And far above and beyond all else in mollifying
power, the four years of fellowship in suffering for a common cause,
which linked the erstwhile jarring sections together in a closer
brotherhood than would probably have been brought about by generations
of peace and prosperity.
The frightful race-problems with which South Carolina found herself
confronted at the close of the Civil War, and the grim burlesque of
government which followed, known as the “Reconstruction” period, during
which chaos and crime ran riot in the land, served to weld still more
firmly the new made bond. And when in 1876, after years of almost
superhuman patience under provocation, the people of South Carolina
decided that endurance had ceased to be a virtue, and rose in their
righteous indignation; and in the face of overwhelming odds, by one
supreme effort the State righted herself, “low-country” and “up-country”
rejoiced together in true fraternal spirit.
Since that time the bond has continued to strengthen. And instead of
being as of old, “a house divided against itself,” the State of South
Carolina is gradually becoming one harmonious and homogeneous whole.