SIDE-LIGHTS ON CAROLINA HISTORY
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.
Fourthly, the varied character of its industries; and
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.