South Carolina in Credo: Early History

1775–83, struggle by which the Thirteen Colonies on the Atlantic seaboard of North America won independence from Great Britain and became the United States. It is also called the American War of Independence.The casualty rate was roughly 120 in 10,000, the second heaviest of any large-scale American war. One way or another everybody within what became the United States took part in the conflict and felt its effects: Natives; Africans; patriots; loyalists; neutrals; Northerners; Southerners; and backcountry folk, both men and women.

In The Columbia Encyclopedia
1780–81, of the American Revolution. After Sir Henry Clinton had captured Charleston, he returned to New York, leaving a British force under Cornwallis to subordinate the Carolinas to British control.

In The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment
The Charleston Library Society, the third oldest library in the United States, was the engine for the American Enlightenment in South Carolina.

From Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History
South Carolina was historically an important producer of cotton and rice, and in the early twenty-first century its economy depended on a variety of crops and animal products, as well as textiles, lumber products, automobiles, and tourism. The agricultural knowledge to construct elaborate systems of channels and dams needed to irrigate rice in the 1700s was contributed by the English settlers' slaves, who tended the crop and came from a similar rice-cultivation culture in western Africa.

From The Reader's Companion to American History
The famous nullification confrontation of 1832-1833, pitting President Andrew Jackson against South Carolina senator John C. Calhoun over whether a state could nullify federal law, was an important step in a long series of attempts to define the proper powers of the states.

The plantation appeared on the North American continent with the first British colonists in Virginia in 1607.

From Encyclopedia of North American Immigration
The Carolina colony, later divided, was the gift of Charles II to eight loyal courtiers who had followed him into exile during the English Civil War. Led by Sir John Colleton, on March 24, 1663, the “true and absolute Lords Proprietors of Carolina” were granted proprietary control of all lands between the Virginia Colony and Florida. There, they developed a plantation society, heavily dependent on slavery, producing wood, naval stores, hides, rice, and tobacco for the international market. By the mid-18th century, slaves made up the majority of South Carolina's population. A policy of religious toleration led to a diverse European population throughout the Carolinas, including large numbers of Scots (15 percent of the European population), Irish and Scots Irish (11 percent), Germans (5 percent), and French Huguenots (3 percent).

Original North American colonies that signed the Declaration of Independence from Britain in 1776.

Any of a group of large-leaved plants belonging to the nightshade family, native to tropical parts of the Americas. Tobacco is indigenous to the Americas and was unknown to Europeans until the late 16th century.

From Bridgeman Images: The Bridgeman Art Library

Credit: A View of Charles Town the Capital of South Carolina in North America, from 'Scenographia Americana', engraved by Pierre Charles Canot (1710-77) published 1758-60 (engraving), Mellish, Thomas (c.1748-82) (after) / Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, USA / The Bridgeman Art Library

From Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century

Bird's Eye View of Charleston. Charleston was considered the cultural center of South Carolina and its largest city. Engraving from The Progress of the Republic by R. S. Fisher, 1856. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

From Bridgeman Images: Peter Newark American Pictures



Credit: Title-page of 'A new description of that fertile and pleasant province of Carolina', printed in London by John Archdale, late Governor of Carolina, 1707 (newsprint), English School, (18th century) / Private Collection / Peter Newark Pictures / The Bridgeman Art Library