Antebellum South Carolina
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Antebellum South Carolina typically defined by historians as the period of between the War of 1812 and the American Civil War. Due to the invention of the cotton gin in 1786, the ecomomies of the Upcountry and the Lowcountry became fairly equal in wealth, although also triggering a massive rise in the slave trade. In 1822, free black craftsman and preacher Denmark Vesey was convicted for having masterminded a plan to overthrow Charlestonian whites by slaves and free blacks. Whites established curfews and forbade assembly of large numbers of African Americans and the education of slaves.
In 1828, John C. Calhoun decided that constitutionally, each state government within that state had more power than the federal government. Consequently, if a state deemed it necessary, it had the right to "nullify" any federal law within its boundaries. Calhoun resigned as vice president, planning on becoming a senator in South Carolina to stop its run toward secession while solving the problems inflaming his fellow Carolinians. Before federal forces arrived at Charleston, Calhoun and Henry Clay agreed upon a compromise tariff that would lower rates over 10 years.
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[edit] The cotton gin's effect on South Carolina
In 1786, leaders of the state agreed to ease tensions between Upcountry and Lowcountry citizens by moving the capital from Charleston to a location more convenient to both regions. With the capital in Charleston, Upcountry citizens had to travel two days simply to reach government offices and courts. The town of Columbia, the first city in America to take that name, was planned and erected. In 1790, the state's politicians moved in, although some state offices remained in Charleston until 1865. The Lowcountry and Upcountry even had separate treasury offices with separate treasurers. In 1800, the Santee Canal was completed, connecting the Santee and Cooper Rivers. This made it possible to transfer goods directly from the new capital to Charleston. In 1801, the state chartered South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina) in Columbia.
Settled first because of its coastal access, the Lowcountry had the greater population. It had achieved early economic dominance because of wealth derived from the cultivation of both rice and long staple cotton, a major crop. This was easier to process by hand than short-staple cotton. In the Upcountry's soil, only short staple cotton could be cultivated. It was extremely labor-intensive to process by hand.
In 1793, Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin made processing of short staple cotton economically viable. Upcountry landowners began to increase their cultivation of cotton and import increased numbers of enslaved Africans and African Americans to raise and process the crops. The Upcountry developed its own wealthy planter class and began to work with the Lowcountry to protect the institution of slavery.
The state's overreliance on cotton in its economy paved the way for post-Civil War poverty in three ways: planters ruined large swathes of land by overcultivation, small farmers in the upcountry reduced subsistence farming in favor of cotton, and greater profits in other states led to continued outmigration of many talented people, both white and black. From 1820-1860 nearly 200,000 whites left the state, mostly for Deep South states and their frontier opportunities. Many of them took enslaved African Americans with them; other slaves were sold to traders for the Deep South plantations.[1] In addition, because planters used up new lands in state or moved rather than invest in fertilizer or manufacturing, South Carolina did not begin much industrialization until much later.
[edit] The Nullification Crisis
In 1811, British ships plundered American ships, inspiring outraged "War Hawk" representatives into declaring the War of 1812. During the war, tariffs on imported goods were raised to support America's military efforts. Afterward, as the North began to create manufacturing centers, Northern lawmakers passed higher taxes on imports to protect the new industries. Because the South had an agricultural economy, it did not benefit from the tariffs and believed they interfered with the South's trade with Great Britain and Europe based on cotton and rice.
In the 1820s, many South Carolinians began to talk of seceding from the union to operate as an independent state with trade laws tailored to its own best interests. Even South Carolina-born John C. Calhoun, who had begun as a Federalist favoring a strong centralized government, began to change his views. He believed rights of his home state were being trampled for the "good" of the North, though he also recognized the political dangers of secession. In 1828, Calhoun decided upon the primacy of "states' rights", a doctrine which he would support for the rest of his life. He believed that constitutionally, the state government of each state had more power within that state than did the federal government. Consequently, if a state deemed it necessary, it had the right to "nullify" any federal law within its boundaries.
To most South Carolinians, this sounded like a reasonable compromise. Some in the state, such as Joel J. Poinsett, novelist William Gilmore Simms, and James L. Petigru, believed that while a state had the full right to secede from the Union if it chose, it had no right, as long as it remained part of the Union, to nullify a federal law. The federal government believed the concept of nullification was as an attack on its powers. When in 1832, South Carolina's government quickly "nullified" the hated tariffs passed by the full Congress, President Andrew Jackson declared this an act of open rebellion and ordered U.S. ships to South Carolina to enforce the law.
In December 1832, Calhoun resigned as Jackson's vice president. He was the only vice president to resign until Spiro Agnew did so, 141 years later. Calhoun planned to become a senator in South Carolina to stop its run toward secession. He wanted to work on solving the problems that troubled his fellow Carolinians. Before federal forces arrived at Charleston, Calhoun and Senator Henry Clay agreed upon a compromise. They had often worked effectively together before. Clay persuaded Congress to pass the Compromise Tariff of 1833, which lowered the tariff gradually over 10 years (see copy on the page). The passage of this tariff prevented armed conflict.
The debate about the relative importance of states' rights versus federal power became a dividing line between the North and South. The political discussion was related to the differing rates of growth of the regions. Increased immigration to the North had meant a faster rate of growth in its population and gave it an advantage in representation, despite the 3/5 compromise that allowed the South to use its enslaved population in figuring Congressional representation.
[edit] Slavery in South Carolina
The diminishing importance of slave labor in the North made it easier for states to decide on ending it, although the slave trade had contributed greatly to Northern wealth. Slave labor and its products and markets were still integral to the Northern economy, for instance, Northern mills produced materials from Southern cotton, and provided clothing and shoes for slaveholders and slaves alike. Activist Northerners began to work for the end of slavery in the South as well. Most abolitionists were Christians who believed in the concept of men made in God's image. They saw protection of African-Americans as a God-given responsibility.
The 19th century religious revival in the South had first been led by Methodist and Baptist preachers who opposed slavery. Gradually they began to adopt the Southern viewpoint. The Methodist and Baptist churches grew as their preachers accommodated slaveholding as a principle of continuity. Southern slaveholders looked to the Bible for language to control slaves. Southern slaveholders generally saw abolitionists as dangerous, self-righteous meddlers who would be better off tending to themselves than passing judgement on the choices of others. Pro-slavery apologists argued that the Northerners had no place in the debate over the morality of slavery, because they could not own slaves and would therefore not suffer the societal impacts that manumission would mean to the South.
The effect of bloody slave rebellions, such as the Vesey revolt of 1822 and John Brown's massacre at Harper's Ferry in 1859, was to reduce moderate abolitionists to silence, particularly in the South.[citation needed] These events inflamed fears and galvanized Southerners into an anti-abolitionist stance that effectively ended reasoned debate on the issue. South Carolinians had earlier tolerated slavery as a necessary evil. In an evolving concept, they came to proclaim slavery a positive good, a civilizing benefit to the enslaved, and a proper response to the "natural" differences between whites and blacks.
Apologists such as Thomas Harper argued that the wage-employee system of the North was more exploitive than slavery itself. So avid had this defense become that by 1856, Governor James Hopkins Adams recommended a resumption of the Foreign Slave Trade. A powerful minority of slaveholders had begun arguing that every white man should legally required to own at least one slave, which they claimed would give an interest in the issue and instill responsibility. The Charleston Mercury denounced the slave trade; a number of newly captured slaves were imported into Charleston against federal law.
[edit] The Vesey Plot and the Indian Removal Act
Since colonial times, South Carolina had always been home to a sizable population of free blacks. Many were descended from enslaved mulattoes freed by their white fathers/owners. Others had been freed for faithful service. Some African Americans purchased their freedom with portions of earnings they were allowed to keep when being "hired out". As long as there had been free blacks, free blacks made the white population nervous.
In 1822, free black craftsman and preacher Denmark Vesey was convicted of having masterminded a plan for enslaved and free African Americans to overthrow Charlestonian whites. Afterward whites established curfews and forbade assembly of large numbers of African Americans. They also prohibited the education of enslaved African Americans, as they believed learning to read and write could make slaves unhappy and less compliant. Free African Americans posed a challenge to slavery by their very presence. South Carolina leaders prohibited slaveholders to free their slaves without a special decree from the state legislature. This was the same path that Virginia had taken when its slaveholders became uneasy about freedpeople.
Like Denmark Vesey, most of South Carolina's free blacks lived in Charleston, where there were opportunities for work and companionship. A free African American subculture developed there. Charlestonian blacks performed more than 55 different occupations, including a variety of artisan and crafts jobs. Some African Americans, such as Sumter cotton gin maker William Ellison, amassed great fortunes. He did so in the same fashion that most wealthy whites had - by using the labor of black slaves.
As settlers pressed against western lands controlled by Native Americans, violence repeatedly erupted between them. Andrew Jackson came to the office of President determined to pave the way for American settlers. In 1830 he signed the Indian Removal Act, which allowed him to offer Native Americans land in unsettled areas west of the Mississippi, in exchange for their lands in existing states. While some tribes accepted this solution, others resisted.[2] The Cherokee Nation had been mostly pushed west and south out of South Carolina into Georgia by this time.
[edit] The Mexican-American War
South Carolina strongly supported the war with Mexico, as leaders believed success would allow acquisition of additional lands open to slavery. They hoped for slaveholding states to acquire greater power in the U.S. Congress. Under Pierce M. Butler, J.P. Dickinson, and A.H. Gladden, the Palmetto Regiment's flag entered Mexico City before any other. South Carolina's fighting prowess was once again proven in battle. Chiefly because of disease, however, only 300 returned alive of the 1,100 South Carolinian volunteers who fought in the war. Through the Civil War, too, disease claimed more fatalities than battles.
With a smaller white population than the North, the South sent and suffered the loss of more soldiers. It was the region that wanted the war. It furnished 435,248 men in the Mexican-American War while the North, whose leaders opposed the war and its goals, sent only 22,136 troops. Leaders of the South thought the Wilmot Proviso was unjust. This proposal by a Pennsylvanian legislator would ban slavery within territory acquired as a result of the Mexican-American War. Southerners who had risked their lives to win a New Southwest were being told they could not bring their slaves if they settled there. John C. Calhoun attempted to rally slaveholding states to oppose Wilmot's plan as an effort to limit slavery. The Southern-led Senate led the bill.
Southern leaders had hoped that the territorial expansion and the spread of slavery might allow the South to ascend to equality or even dominance in national politics. As a result of the Wilmot Proviso, they began to think the North would not permit such expansion. Some leaders thought that while the South remained in the Union, its interests would be overlooked. South Carolina leaders had been promoting this position since the Nullification Crisis 20 years before.
[edit] References
- ^ Walter B. Edgar. South Carolina: A History. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1998, pp. 275-276
- ^ Indian Removal Act, Library of Congress
[edit] Further reading
- McCurry, Stephanie. Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
