South Carolina

By: Paul Finkelman, Alan Gallay

Source:

 Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

South Carolina

South Carolina was not the first mainland English colony to form a plantation society—Virginia preceded it by decades—but South Carolina was the only mainland colony where slavery was present from the initial settlement and where slaves made up a majority of the population. Many of the first white settlers came from the Caribbean and brought slaves with them. By 1712 slightly more than half the settlers were black slaves. By the late 1730s the colony was two-thirds slave. In areas of the Lowcountry, 70 to 90 percent of the inhabitants were African and African American. This rice-producing region created some of the richest families in America. Dependent on slavery to generate their vast wealth, they were wary, sometimes frightened, and occasionally terrified by being so outnumbered. Little wonder that by the mid-eighteenth century many wealthy slave owners became absentee planters, a choice that grew increasingly popular in the nineteenth century, whereby planters no longer lived on their plantations except perhaps for a few winter months. The absentee planters truly had created agribusinesses, an impersonal economic operation in which slaves were viewed as little more than automatons, whose purpose in life was to labor for the wealth of others.

Slaves never viewed themselves in these degraded terms and carved out an existence that made bondage more than bearable. There was great stability in the Lowcountry, so that many slave families lived on the same plantation for generations, developing deep ties with one another and the land. This stability instilled a strong sense of community among slaves, giving strength to individuals as the community assumed privileges and rights that undermined some of the harshest aspects of slavery. Various accommodations were reached whereby slaves performed the work necessary to maintain profitability but largely were left to their own devices (within understood limits), even to the extent of supervising their own work. The creation of this society did not occur overnight. The basic characteristics of slavery, the lives of and relations between slaves and masters were the products of a long and peculiar history.

Founding the Colony

Carolina was founded in 1670 as a proprietary colony owned by several English families, and many of Carolina's first European settlers arrived from the island of Barbados, bringing their slaves with them. The slaves worked side by side with their masters or unsupervised, clearing land, erecting buildings, fishing, hunting, and even soldiering. In short, they filled virtually every labor need required in new colonies. These black pioneers introduced open-field grazing of cattle, which were fattened and then sent to the West Indies. South Carolina became, in the words of the historian Peter H. Wood, “a colony of a colony,” supplying Barbados with not only cattle and a rich variety of foodstuffs but also lumber and wood products.

The European immigrants also engaged in a vicious and destructive Indian slave trade. During the first fifty years of Carolina's existence, the colony's elite enmeshed the entire South in a series of wars to procure Indian slaves. Most of the slaves were sold and transported to other colonies, and the profits were used to purchase Africans who would be less able to run away in the unfamiliar terrain. The slaving wars by which the white population attained Indian slaves ended by 1720, but the violence continued, as South Carolina remained at loggerheads with Spanish Florida, French Louisiana, and its own increasingly hostile African slave population. This long-term fear of external and internal threats and their own disrespect for authority (except when it suited them) led the elite to become short-tempered and forthright in defense of their rights—particularly in regard to sovereignty over their slaves but also over their wives and lesser white men.

“Arx Carolina,” captioned in German “from a copperplate engraving in Olfert Dapper's America, 1675.” Dapper (1635–1689) was a Dutch writer, geographer, historian, and translator; “America” may refer to his Die Unbekante Neue Weltwe (“The Unknown New World”), in which, along with more trustworthy information, he describes unicorns on the Canadian border and near what is now the Bronx, New York. The same image of Arx Carolina, perhaps from The History of the World, edited by Hans F. Helmolt (1902), is captioned “Built between the Rivers Ashley and Cooper, the Ancient Fortified Settlement at Charleston, South Carolina.”

New York Public Library, Picture Collection, Branch Libraries; Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

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Most of the first African arrivals in Carolina had been acculturated to slavery in the West Indies, but with the introduction of rice, which more than likely resulted from African familiarity with and introduction of the crop, planters began to import laborers directly from Africa, particularly from rice-producing areas. Rice became as important to South Carolina as tobacco to Virginia and sugar to the West Indies. Although it could be exported to Europe, especially Spain and Italy, it was initially most viable as a relatively inexpensive source of food for the slaves of the West Indies. Special circumstances were required for profitable rice production. In addition to a long growing season, South Carolina possessed low-lying fertile land that could be flooded with freshwater moved by saltwater tides. The other requirement was a large labor force to build the dikes and sluices necessary to regulate the periodic flooding of the rice fields.

The rice-culture landscape could be profitable for its owners but deadly for its human inhabitants. Lowland South Carolina was one of the most disease-laden areas of North America, with malaria ever a potential threat in the mosquito-infested rice paddies. Malaria weakened inhabitants, who then succumbed to other illnesses. African resistance to malaria through possession of the sickle-cell trait was unknown in the eighteenth century. Still, Europeans could not help but notice that Africans survived the tidal lands more easily than Europeans, though another reason for this was “seasoning,” whereby those born into or having lived in an environment fare much better than newcomers. Europeans deduced that Africans were necessary for the difficult labor in this inhospitable environment—and, in fact, were particularly suited for it—and that white laborers were simply incapable of plantation labor. By the mid-eighteenth century white planters held it as a truism that Africans were necessary for all hard labor in “hot countries,” not just in rice fields, and that Europeans were unsuited for labor in tropical and subtropical environments.

On the Sea Islands along the Atlantic coast and in the Lowcountry, Gullah culture flourished. Gullah developed as a mixture of African languages with English, a dialect understood by few Europeans. Gullah helped bridge the huge linguistic and cultural differences among the African population. Africans did not think of themselves as Africans. Their larger cultural identity was as Ibo, Benin, Angolan, Bantu, or Kongolese, but even these identities rarely were as important as the more localized identities they carried. Ultimately, Gullah tied together the diverse population of Lowcountry Africans, creating a culture of many shared values and practices.

Many of the African newcomers were traumatized by their enslavement: they had just been violently removed from their homeland, separated from loved ones, denied their liberty, and introduced to the brutality of plantation labor. And the plantations were indeed brutal: most early-eighteenth-century masters believed that Africans would work only if compelled by force. Their slaves gave them reason to think so: new slaves were extremely hostile to their condition. A few committed suicide, while others ran away. Perhaps all slaves considered killing their masters, and though most made no attempt to do so, enough did to frighten all the owners. Subtle acts of resistance were ubiquitous and less dangerous—breaking tools, feigning ignorance or illness, cursing masters in a native tongue or Gullah. Nevertheless, many slaves took more strident measures to resist their condition, through theft, destruction of crops, and the burning of houses and outbuildings.

Resistance, Revolt, and Reaction

Running away, or as the historian Peter H. Wood terms it, “Slaves who stole themselves,” was a common form of resistance, despite the potential hazards. Escaping South Carolina was difficult. Heading north was hardly an option, as the runaways would just be entering other slaveholding colonies and have to prove they were free. Southward, Spanish Florida offered freedom to the slaves of the English. The Spanish kept African slaves but were extremely annoyed with the English for settling South Carolina, which they considered Spanish territory, and for Carolinian-sponsored attacks by allied Indians on the Florida missions. The Spanish issued proclamations promising freedom to runaways, who most likely learned of the offers from Indians who traveled freely between Florida and South Carolina. Hundreds of slaves received refuge in Spanish Florida in the 1730s.

Escaping west was difficult, because Indian slave catchers returned runaways for rewards, and Africans had little knowledge of how to reach the more distant Indian peoples who could provide refuge. Some slaves sought freedom eastward, by joining ships' crews at Charles Town (named Charleston in the mid-eighteenth century). From one-fifth to one-third of English merchant ships were manned by African sailors, as captains desperate for labor were apt to overlook the status and background of those willing to work.

Most South Carolina runaways, however, did not leave the colony at all; this remained as true in 1820 as in 1720. Some bondpeople tried to pass themselves off as freemen in Charleston, but most hid out in the plantation districts in difficult-to-access terrain. These slaves took extended vacations, as they visited kin and friends, receiving food and aid from other slaves, but a permanent existence of this sort was rare.

As pioneer conditions gave way to plantation agriculture, there was growing discontent among the enslaved. Masters increasingly confined their slaves to the plantations, withdrawing privileges allowed under earlier pioneer conditions. Slaves resented the unhealthy and strenuous work of the rice fields, and a pervasive atmosphere of distrust developed between slaves and masters. By the late 1730s planters were haunted by the specter of rebellion, especially as its frequent occurrence in the nearby West Indies was widely reported in the South Carolina Gazette and by visiting ships' crews. A new proclamation from Saint Augustine offering freedom to the slaves of the English led South Carolina's lieutenant governor to make a personal trip to Florida to see if he could persuade the Spanish to settle their differences and stop inspiring South Carolina slaves to insurrection—for the offer of freedom was nothing less than that. The Spanish refused.

In September 1739 about twenty Kongolese, who had only recently arrived in America, revolted in the Stono Rebellion. Although it was crushed within thirty-six hours, the revolt frightened Europeans and showed them the capability of their slaves to conquer the colony. The rebels successfully obtained arms, killed and decapitated their enemies (sparing Europeans who were considered humane masters), and attracted about eighty slaves to their standard. The failure of the rebellion, though it may not have been realized at the time, meant the permanence of slavery in South Carolina. The slaveholders dug in to secure the institution.

Masters sought even greater control over their slaves, institutionalized through the slave code of 1740, the model for future codes in Georgia and the states of the Old Southwest. The law further restricted slave activities and even proscribed white behavior, making all white males responsible for maintaining slavery. To forestall rebellion, masters were required to provide better living conditions for their slaves. The actual impact of the code is difficult to assess. To the extent that better living conditions were put in place, it probably resulted from factors other than the threat of government fines and despite the attempts to restrain slave behavior. South Carolina grand juries continued to make complaints against slave activities exactly like those that occurred before Stono: slaves gaily riding in carts through Charleston, public alcohol consumption, thievery, and so forth.

In the aftermath of Stono the first public condemnations by whites of the treatment of slaves arose. In 1740 the great English evangelist George Whitefield visited South Carolina and published a public letter to the slaveholders that condemned their brutal treatment of slaves and called for conversion of Africans to Christianity. Although Whitefield faced great opposition in the colony, local followers established “Christian” plantations and welcomed slaves into their churches. Nonevangelical churches followed suit. Christianity became central to the lives of many South Carolina African Americans. Slaves identified with the Hebrews of the Old Testament who ultimately were redeemed from bondage, and they took comfort in the promise of a Christian afterlife. Christianity also provided a tie between masters and slaves, perhaps helping each to recognize the basic humanity of the other. Conversion did not alter the slaves' desire to be free nor the masters' desire to keep slaves (except in relatively few instances), but it did help stabilize slavery in South Carolina as masters and slaves accommodated one another. Masters learned how to use rewards and the threat of the whip rather than draconian punishments to get slaves to work. Many controls were relaxed over slaves, who asserted their rights to socialize with other slaves on and off the plantation, placed expectations on their masters for physical comforts, received Sundays free of labor, and often were given small plots of land for their own use.

The institution of slavery altered in other important ways. Some changes were demographic and evolutionary. In the second half of the eighteenth century, ethnic differences among slaves diminished as Africans became African Americans, though, in relative terms, African origins retained more power in Carolina than in most other colonies. The ratio of males to females also declined as the balance between the sexes became more equal. More hospitable living conditions led slaves to form marriage relations and have children. Masters generally approved of these arrangements, as barracks-style housing gave way to family units in cabins. Family life made slaves less inclined to run away or rebel, while also providing slaves with mutual support and socialization. The plantation itself took on more of an extended family atmosphere, especially in Lowcountry Carolina, where there were relatively few whites.

By the third quarter of the eighteenth century most slaves were born into slavery. These bondpeople had not experienced Africa, freedom, and the deadly trauma of the Middle Passage, and they were socialized by their fellow slaves to survive as slaves. They learned what they could and could not do within slavery and also how to extend the restrictive lines around them to gain more for themselves. Slavery remained onerous, potentially deadly, and a constant struggle physically and emotionally. But within the system, Carolina slaves carved out lives for themselves that had their rewards: establishing families and communities, obtaining material comforts, taking pride in work (if not for their masters, then on their own private plots of land), and engaging in numerous forms of recreation.

Not all slaves got along, of course, and some even turned in others for rewards—whether they were thieves, runaways, or alleged conspirators. Moreover, African Americans, slave or free, could not testify against whites, but they could against blacks. Slaves also stole from each other and committed other criminal acts against fellow bondpeople. It took only one slave to foil an uprising, and the reward was often freedom, making insurrection difficult to accomplish. (More than thirty slaves received rewards for their opposition to the Stono Rebellion.) Slavery created a sense of shared community for many bondpeople, but not all slaves perceived an identity of communal interests, and some masters worked to divide the community and set slaves against one another. Overall, however, the sense of community and shared experience outweighed the divisiveness.

Slavery and Revolution

With the expansion of rice culture and indigo cultivation, slavery boomed in South Carolina's Lowcountry until the American Revolution restricted growth and led to a vast reduction in numbers. Thousands of slaves ran away during the war, and many were carried off by the British army at the end of the conflict. Some slaves achieved freedom in Canada or elsewhere, but most are presumed to have been returned to slavery by the British in the West Indies or South America.

South Carolina whites were probably least influenced, compared with the whites of any other state, by the antislavery movement of the Revolutionary era. Few Carolina masters freed their slaves, and the state legislature did not consider emancipation, as did most other states. During the war the Continental Congress authorized South Carolina to raise regiments of black soldiers who would receive freedom for their service, but the legislature refused. White South Carolinians were too worried about their fleeing and increasingly recalcitrant slave population to consider emancipation, and they desired more slaves rather than fewer. After the war the state received a steady influx of slaves from Virginia, which had a surplus. But the domestic slave trade did not fulfill planters' demand for more slaves. At the Constitutional Convention (1787), the South Carolina delegation played the key role in working into the document the continuation of the international slave trade for another twenty years. The South Carolinians argued vociferously for the three-fifths compromise (to count slaves for purpose of representation) and bans on export taxes while also defending the legitimacy of slavery. South Carolina delegates Pierce Butler and General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney also introduced the fugitive slave clause of Article IV of the Constitution. The South Carolina delegates were delighted with the protections for slavery in the Constitution. Pinckney bragged to the South Carolina legislature after the Convention, “In short, considering all circumstances, we have made the best terms for the security of this species of property it was in our power to make. We would have made better if we could; but on the whole, I do not think them bad.” Other important population shifts took place in the Revolutionary era. Largely owing to the phenomenal development of cotton, South Carolina's slave population exploded from 107,000 in 1790 to 196,000 in 1810. Part of this growth was the result of importing nearly 100,000 Africans into the state from 1800 to 1807, when the African slave trade was closed. The population then increased to over one-quarter million in 1820 and to 315,000 by 1830. This increase occurred despite the migration of many planters and their slaves to new cotton lands in the Old Southwest. Moreover, in 1760, 90 percent of the slaves lived in the Lowcountry, but by 1790 more than half lived in the Backcountry (though they outnumbered whites only in the Lowcountry). After the closing of the slave trade some South Carolinians smuggled slaves into the state—a practice that continued until the Civil War. Throughout the 1850s a number of politicians from South Carolina continually called for a reopening of the African trade.

If South Carolina's masters were little inclined to end slavery, particularly in light of the great profits to be earned from cotton and rice, their bondpeople held very different views. Slaves always desired freedom, but the ideology of freedom then sweeping the Atlantic world held out the growing possibility that emancipation could come soon. Across the Atlantic, the French Revolution abolished slavery in the French Empire, showing the world that a European power could emancipate its slaves. Yet there were no signs of South Carolina's masters freeing their slaves, even as debates raged in other states and thousands of slaves received emancipation. In Saint Domingue slaves overthrew their masters and created the republic of Haiti. French masters fled, sometimes with their slaves, to the United States, particularly to South Carolina, where they spread news of the revolution.

The ideology of freedom—and its potential realization—inspired slaves in Charleston to risk their lives in a daring attempt for freedom. In 1822 Denmark Vesey, a black who had earned his freedom through winning a lottery and in freedom remained utterly opposed to the institution of slavery, organized a widespread conspiracy. Vesey had been a slave in the Danish West Indies, then a cabin boy for a captain who sailed the Caribbean. Vesey's solution was a practical one, given his Atlantic world experience. He and his comrades intended an uprising but not a takeover of South Carolina. In the midst of the upheaval they would board ships and sail to freedom in Haiti. They spread word of their plans to the countryside, so slaves could flock to Charleston at the appropriate moment. The conspiracy, however, was exposed, and the rebels were tried and convicted. Thirty-five were hung and thirty-seven transported out of the United States.

Vesey's plan failed, but it was realistic—slavery was too entrenched to overthrow in South Carolina without outside assistance. The only alternative was escape. South Carolina's whites stood united to maintain the institution and eyed with hostility not just the ideology of freedom but virtually all outside forces, particularly the federal government. They feared anything that might interfere with their control over their slaves. By the late 1820s white Carolinians were turning to and developing the ideology of states' rights to defend slavery. The slaves themselves would have to await more fortuitous circumstances before they could claim their freedom.

South Carolina after 1830

From 1830 to the Civil War, South Carolina's economy expanded and contracted with the price of cotton and the gradual exhaustion of soil. Along the coast the rice planters of the state remained among the wealthiest Americans. Despite the out-migration of many South Carolinians and the sale of many slaves, the slave population of the state grew steadily throughout the century, growing far faster than the white population. In 1790 there were 140,000 whites and 107,000 slaves in the state. By 1810 the white population was up to 214,000 and the slave population had grown to 196,000. A decade later the slave population exceeded the white population, with 237,000 whites and 258,000 slaves. In 1830 there were 257,000 whites, compared to 310,000 slaves. In 1860, on the eve of the war, there were only 291,000 whites, while slaves numbered 402,000, with another 10,000 or so free blacks. When South Carolina voted to leave the Union, in December 1860, the state was almost 59% black.

The small free-black population—a mere 9,914 in 1860—contained a number of wealthy free people of color, some of whom owned both land and slaves. In 1860 about a third of these—3,237—lived in Charleston. These free blacks owned more than $1.5 million in taxable property, including slaves and real estate. Over three hundred African American families in Charleston owned real estate, with over one hundred families having real estate worth more than $2,000 and over thirty families having real estate valued at over $5,000. Most of these landowners were light-skinned blacks of mixed ancestry. The most prosperous and elite were members of Charleston's Brown Society, while others joined the Friendly Moralist Society. These free blacks were educated in their own schools. Some members of this antebellum community would later lead the state during Reconstruction. Francis L. Cardozo would serve as state treasurer after the war. George Shrewsbury, a prosperous mulatto butcher and the owner of four slaves before the war, would serve on the Charleston city council. Henry Shrewbury, a schoolboy when the war began, later served in the state legislature. Robert C. DeLarge, a barber and prominent member of the Brown Society, obtained a high-school education in Charleston along with Shrewsbury and Cardozo. After the war DeLarge held a number of state offices and served one term in the U.S. Congress. A hundred miles away, in rural Sumter County, William Ellison, a mechanic-turned–cotton gin manufacturer and cotton planter, owned approximately nine hundred acres of land and more than sixty slaves. Ellison had been born a slave and was most probably the son or half-brother of the man (also named William Ellison) who freed him. By 1860 he was one of the wealthiest blacks in the United States.

Despite their wealth and success, the small population of free African Americans in South Carolina lived on the margins of a society that had little use for them. South Carolina prohibited non-resident free blacks from moving into the state and even insisted on jailing free black sailors who entered Charleston temporarily while their ships were docked there. A law from 1834 prohibited teaching any blacks, slave or free, to read, although elite free blacks in Charleston were able to evade this law until the eve of the Civil War. By then, however, the rights of free African Americans were precarious and thousands moved out of the state.

The free blacks in South Carolina, whether wealthy or poor, were a tiny minority of the African Americans in the state. Most blacks were slaves, living in the most intense slave culture in the United States. Whether working along the coast, producing rice, or in the upcountry growing cotton, the state's black majority toiled from sunrise to sunset. Within their own communities they embraced Christianity, but added their own sense of self to the faith, along with forms of worship that combined African culture with that of evangelical Protestantism. Along the coast the Gullah people retained significant amounts of African culture in their language, foods, religious services, and handicrafts. Slaves along the coast and especially on the Sea Islands retained many remnants of African culture long after the slave trade had ended; indeed, much of this culture survived into the twenty-first century.

Secession began in South Carolina in December 1860 and the Civil War began there in April 1861. South Carolina was at the center of southern nationalism, secession, and proslavery ideology. The Civil War ultimately freed all of South Carolina's slaves. However the war affected the slaves in the state in very different ways. In November 1861 a combined attack by the U.S. navy and army led to the taking of Hilton Head Island in Port Royal Sound off the coast of Charleston. The planters living on the islands fled to the mainland, abandoning their slaves, in effect becoming fugitive slave owners. The thousands of slaves on the island were soon under the care of the army, and of missionaries and teachers who came from the North. By spring 1862 General David Hunter, the commander at Port Royal, had begun using blacks for military purposes and was training them for military service, even though he had no formal authority to do so. Hunter was surrounded by thousands of former slaves, many of whom were eager to make war on their former masters. Thus Hunter pushed the Lincoln administration to allow him to create a black regiment. He pushed too hard. The administration was not yet ready to commit to black troops. Hunter was soon gone, but on 25 August 1862 his replacement, General Rufus Saxton, was given orders to begin enlisting black troops. On 1 January 1863 the First Regiment, South Carolina Infantry (Colored), was mustered into service at Beaufort. It would later become the 33rd U.S. Colored Infantry. Even before the regiment was officially mustered into service its soldiers saw action in Florida and Georgia. In May and June the 2nd and 3rd South Carolina Infantry regiments would be mustered into service. By the end of the war more than 5,000 South Carolina blacks, almost all from the Sea Islands, would serve in the U.S. Army in six infantry and one artillery regiments. For most of the war the rest of South Carolina was insulated from the fighting. However General Sherman's army left Savannah, Georgia, on 19 January 1865, heading for South Carolina; he and his troops crossed into the state the next day. Within a month he had marched across the state, taking Charleston and the capital at Columbia. In March 1865 the 7th Colored Infantry Regiment was being organized in Charleston, but the war ended before the unit could be mobilized.

In addition to many common soldiers who fought and died in the African American units, South Carolina's slave culture produced one genuine war hero, Robert Smalls. In 1862 the twenty-three-year-old slave was employed as a pilot, ferrying boats in Charleston's harbor. In a daring move he piloted the Planter, a Confederate naval vessel out of the harbor and into the hands of the U.S. navy. Smalls was given a commission as a second lieutenant in the navy, and given command of thePlanter. He was also given a $1,500 reward for delivering the Confederate ship to U.S. forces.

After the war Smalls hired teachers, from whom he learned to read and write. He then entered politics. Smalls was one of six blacks to serve in Congress from South Carolina after the war. He remained active in politics until the end of the century. Between 1866 and 1877 more than 300 blacks held political office in the state or were delegates to the state constitutional convention. African Americans in the state held a number of high offices. These included two lieutenant governors (Richard H. Gleaves and Alonzo J. Ransier), a state treasurer (Francis L. Cardozo), two secretaries of state (Cardozo and Henry E. Hayne), two state commissioners (Hayne and Robert G. DeLarge), two speakers of the state house or representatives (Robert B. Elliott and Samuel J. Lee), and the only black to serve on a state supreme court, Jonathan J. Wright. Besides these prominent political leaders, there were scores of other black politicians. From 1868 to 1877 blacks had a majority in the South Carolina House of Representatives, which in fact reflected the population of the state. In 1870 there were approximately 290,000 whites in the state and 416,000 blacks. By 1880 the white population had grown to 391,000, but the number of African Americans had grown even more, to 604,000—representing more than 60 percent of the entire state population.

Blacks thirsted for education during Reconstruction. The Freedmen's Bureau set up schools throughout the state while a handful of colleges opened. Claflin University was founded in Orangeburg in 1869. A year later the American Baptist Home Mission Society founded Benedict College in Columbia, while the AME Church founded Allen University in the same year and the same city. In 1896 the state finally funded a college for blacks, South Carolina State University in Orangeburg. In 1897 Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute, founded Denmark Industrial School, which later became Voorhees College.

By the time the state funded its first college for blacks, Reconstruction was long over and black political power had all but disappeared. South Carolina's whites never accepted the changes brought about by the war. From 1870 to 1871 the federal government was forced to suspend habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties in order to suppress the Ku Klux Klan, which had been responsible for countless beatings, savage mutilations, rapes of black women, murders, and burnings of churches and schools. The army and federal prosecutors managed to stop the Klan at this time, but it could not suppress the violence or hatred that whites felt towards former slaves and white Republicans. The white population was better educated, wealthier, more literate, better armed, and had more army veterans that the blacks. Moreover, significant numbers of white terrorists were willing to use torture, murder, and arson in order to intimidate black politicians and voters. The white elite of the state may not have dirtied its hands with such outrages, but it was willing to ignore violence perpetrated against blacks. Thus it was only a matter of time before the white population was able to use election fraud, intimidation, nonlethal force, and outright deadly violence to push the state's African Americans out of power, reducing them to the semi-slave status of sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and laborers.

Reconstruction ended in the state in 1877; by 1884 there were 50 percent fewer black voters than there had been in 1880. By this time the state's African Americans were among the poorest people in the nation, with some of the worst educational opportunities. In 1890 “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman won the governorship on a platform that promised to remove all blacks from the political structure of the state. Tillman's family had owned more than eighty slaves when the war began, and he was determined to recreate the white supremacy of his youth, even if he could not re-enslave the African Americans in the state. Between 1873 and 1876 he was involved in terrorist activities that included murdering black political leaders and voters. Whether the future governor killed anyone himself is unknown, but members of his organization, the Sweetwater Saber Club, certainly did.

In 1895 Tillman engineered a state constitutional convention for the sole purpose of disfranchising the remaining black voters in the state. At this time blacks were still about 60 percent of the population, but they were only able to elect five delegates to the state constitutional convention. At the convention Robert Smalls, the Civil War hero, argued for the right of blacks to vote and to be part of South Carolina's society. His efforts were defeated, and disfranchisement followed. It was a sad end to an experiment in equality that had begun on the state's Sea Islands in 1861. Moreover, the future for blacks in South Carolina remained bleak. An illustration of the influence of Tillman and the extreme racism of his movement can be seen through his personal lawyer, William Thurmond, whose son, Strom Thurmond, would become a U.S. senator, a segregationist candidate for president in 1948, and a longtime opponent of integration, civil rights, and racial equality. The racial violence that led to Tillman's rise in the 1870s suggested that little had changed in South Carolina since the 1670s, when it became the first American colony to establish slavery and racial subordination at the moment of settlement.

See also Black Codes and Slave Codes, Colonial; Black English Vernacular; Black Family; Black Seafarers; Caribbean; Class; Demographics; Florida; Fugitive Slaves; Gullahs; Haitian Revolution; Health and Medicine; Louisiana; Military; Native Americans and African Americans; Race, Theories of; Religion; Resistance; Riots and Rebellions; Slavery: Upper South; Slave Trade; Stono Rebellion; Vesey, Denmark; Virginia; and Work.

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