North and South Carolina

“ Tories becoming daring and insolent; the British overrunning South Carolina and Georgia; the Indians upon the borders, bribed and inflamed against the Americans—all tended to increase the gloom and darken the prospect of achieving our independence. But amidst all the obscurity which shrouded the sun of American independence, there was a gallant band of patriots in the mountains of North Carolina and upper South Carolina, who never quailed in duty before the enemy, struck a severe blow at every opportune moment, and never despaired of final success. ”

“ South Carolina, from her central position, the sea upon one side, and a cordon of slave States between her and danger, has had but little reason for apprehension. Those who suffer most at the hands of the North seem still to bear on for the sake of the Union. When they can bear no longer they can judge for themselves, and should their remonstrances fail to call the enemies of the Constitution back to duty, and the Federal Government cease to protect them, the pathway of revolution is open to them. ”

“ This colony was a failure. The first permanent settlement was made by the English in 1670 on Ashley River near Charleston. Two hundred Negro slaves were brought from Barbadoes in 1671, and since 1820 the Negro population has exceeded the white. In 1685 a large number of French Huguenots settled in South Carolina, and later German, Irish, Scotch and Welsh immigrants arrived. In 1729 George II divided the region into North and South Carolina. ”

“ The State of Rhode Island has men that can administer the Connecticut or the Mississippi; that can organize Niagara into a cotton factory; yes, that can get dominion over the ocean and the land: but the State of South Carolina has men that can manage the Congress, can rule the North and South, and make the nation do their bidding. ”

“ The idea of free society, of which New England is the foremost representative, is gradually subduing every region of these eighteen states to itself.
And just as the New England idea, organized in the great Middle States and the Northwest, is approaching its day of conquest in the North, is the idea of South Carolina subduing the fifteen Southern States. South Carolina is now the most completely aristocratic State in the Confederacy. Fifty-eight per cent of her entire population are slaves. Her basis of representation in her Legislature is equally slave property and white population ”

“ There are three distinct systems of rivers in the State: those that find their way to the Gulf of Mexico through the Mississippi, those that flow through South Carolina to the sea and those that reach the sea along our own coast. The divide between the first and the second is the Blue Ridge chain of mountains; that between the second and third systems is found in an elevation extending from the Blue Ridge, near the Virginia line, just between the sources of the Yadkin and the Roanoke, in a south-easterly direction some two hundred miles, almost to the sea-coast below Wilmington. ”

“ The 'North Counties' are the north-eastern portion of North Carolina, and include the towns of Washington and Newberne. They are an old turpentine region, and the trees are nearly exhausted. The finer virgin forests of South Carolina, and other cotton States, have tempted many of these farmers to emigrate thither, within the past ten years, and they now own nearly all the trees that are worked in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. They generally have few slaves of their own, their hands being hired of wealthier men in their native districts. ”

“ Although Lincoln county contained many who were misled through the artful influence of designing men, and fought on the wrong side, yet, within her borders were found a gallant band of unflinching patriots, both of German and Scotch-Irish descent, who acted nobly throughout the struggle for independence, and "made their mark" victoriously at Ramsour's Mill, King's Mountain, the Cowpens, and at other places in North and South Carolina. ”

“ The most significant feature in the early history of the state was the struggle between the Low Country, which centred about Charleston, and the Up Country, which was settled largely by Scotch-Irish, who came down the mountain valleys from North Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania. The great planters of the low country had wealth, the small farmers of the up country had numbers. Under the first state constitution, adopted in March 1776, the low country element maintained the ascendancy which they had possessed during the colonial period. ”

“ South Carolina is much better cultivated; the people are more civilized, and the commerce more important. The capital of this province, called Charles Town, is finely situated at the confluence of two navigable rivers, having the advantage of a commodious harbour. Their trade, exclusive of the articles we have already mentioned as common to this government and that of North Carolina, consists of two chief staple commodities, rice and indigo, which they cultivate with great success ”

“ We've been insulted; yes, most rascally insulted by the Federal Government, and they keep it up every year. We can't get our rights. Oh! no, sir, there's no such thing in the knowledge of the Federal officers as justice for South Carolina; and you must understand, Captain, that she is the greatest State in the Union, and there a'n't nothing like her people for bravery. The political power's got North and West, the old constitution is being dissected to suit the abolitionists, and they're drawing the cordon around us faster and faster ”

“ It is not likely that any other population, averaging in numbers about five hundred thousand souls, has in a century furnished as many able men. On the other hand, this eastern North Carolina people has given no men of great fame to the history of the country, while a large part of the so-called “poor white” population of the South appears to be descended from the mongrel folk who were turned ashore on the eastern border of North Carolina.
South Carolina was much more fortunate in its early settlers on its seaboard than the colony to the north. ”

“ The American, when he seeks to prove that the Southern States have no right to revolt from a confederacy of states created by revolt, has by the principles on which he justifies his own revolution, placed between himself and the European a great gulf in the level of argument. According to the deeds and words of Americans, it is difficult to see why South Carolina should not use the rights claimed for each of the thirteen colonies, “to alter and abolish a form of government when it becomes destructive of the ends for which it is established, and to institute a new one.” ”

“ The Governor writes very good proclamations, nevertheless, and his confidence in South Carolina is unbounded. “If we stand alone, sir, we must win. They can’t whip us.” A gentleman named Pringle, for whom I had letters of introduction, has come to Charleston to ask me to his plantation, but there will be no boat from the port till Monday, and it is uncertain then whether the blockading vessels, of which we hear so much, may not be down by that time. ”

“ It was not supposed that North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, would have more people than all the other states, but many more relatively to the oilier states than they now have. The people and strength of America are evidently bearing southwardly, and south-westwardly. ”

“ Though embraced in the same charter, North and South Carolina now became separate provinces with distinct governments. Slavery was introduced into both provinces and was recognized by law; the number of slaves [ 29 ] continuing to increase as the population increased and the capacities of the soil became known, which proved to be very suitable for slave labor. There was nothing special in the history of slavery in these provinces during the colonial state. The people did not engage in the slave trade, but were merely purchasers from English and New England traders ”

“ English settlers from Virginia had already established themselves on the north of it, at Albemarle, at the mouth of the Chowan River in North Carolina, and in 1670 the earliest settlement of the southern part of this territory was effected on the banks of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, under William Sale, to be moved in 1680 to the site of what is now the city of Charleston, South Carolina. There, with such inviting climate and fertile soil, newcomers were easily lured. ”

“ It was so called because it was ninety-six miles from the frontier fort, Prince George, on Keowee river, in the present county of Pickens. No portion of South Carolina suffered more during the Revolution than the district around Ninety-Six. The Tories were numerous, bold and vindictive, and for that reason the gallant Whigs of that region frequently called upon their compatriots-in-arms in North Carolina, more particularly in Mecklenburg, Lincoln and Burke counties, for assistance in defending their homes and their property. ”

“ In the Middle and Southern colonies, even more than in New England, expansion of population into the interior was a notable feature of the eighteenth century. In 1700 the estate of William Byrd at the James River Falls was on the Indian frontier; North Carolina was unoccupied south of Albemarle Sound or west of the Nottaway River; there were few settlers in South Carolina north of the Santee, or south or west of it except the Charleston planters who had appropriated all the land within sixty miles of the coast and within twenty of every navigable river. ”

“ In the small section of South Carolina which is traversed by the Appalachian Mountain region a few mountains of the Blue Ridge rise abruptly from the foot-hills to 3413 ft. in Mt Pinnacle, 3218 ft. in Caesars Head, and 3157 ft. in Table Rock. The highest point in the state is Sassafras Mountain (3548 ft.) in the Blue Ridge and on the North Carolina state line. The mean elevation of the entire state is about 350 ft. The principal rivers rise in the Appalachian Mountains
and flow south-east into the Atlantic Ocean. ”

“ Battle of Fort Sumter.
There are two distinct classes of people in South Carolina,—the lowlanders and the uplanders. The settlers of the lowlands were emigrants from England and France, gentlemen with aristocratic ideas. The settlers of the uplands, in the western counties, were pioneers from Virginia and North Carolina,—small farmers, cultivating their own lands. During the Revolutionary war the uplanders were Whigs, the lowlanders Tories. The lowlanders had wealth, the uplanders were poor. ”

“ Not content with his fifty thousand hunting-shirt men from Tennessee, the General arranges for an equal force from North Carolina and Georgia.
If ever a people stood within the shadow of doom it is our treason-forging ones of South Carolina in these days of Nullification, Columbia Conventions, Minute Men, and Blue Cockades. ”

“ The map gives a grand and sober image of the New World. In the west are the great “Charokee Mountains.” Individual peaks are shaded on one side, making them seem massive and solid as they thrust up forcibly from the land. At the eastern side of the range are little trees, delicate signs of green timber growth. Big letters tell us that “Virginia” is at the north, “North Carolina” is in the middle area, and “South” indicates the beginning of South Carolina, below. A meandering, dotted line bounds North Carolina, which was not considered as extensive then, as it is today. ”

“ The fundamental points of difference between North Carolina and South Carolina were exemplified in the slavery conflict. South Carolina led the extreme radical element in the South and was the first state to secede. North Carolina held back, worked for a compromise, sent delegates to the Washington Peace Convention in February 1861, and did not secede until the 20th of May 1861, after President Lincoln's call for troops to preserve the Union. ”

“ I said so.
'Yes, South Carolina's going out of the Union, with or without backers, and she intends to stay out, too; never were people more unanimous. The North has got so far toward being abolitionized as to elect a man avowedly hostile to our institutions, and we are only providing for our safety by seceding. It's quite time. Essentially we are a different people: we shall be the best friends in the world separate. It's all a question of difference of opinion about labor ”

“ Be the leaders never so bloodthirsty, the common people have had enough of fighting. The bastard Unionism of North Carolina, the haughty and self-complacent State pride of South Carolina, the arrogant dogmatism and insolent assumption of Georgia,—how shall we build nationality on such foundations? That is the true plan of reconstruction which makes haste very slowly. It does not comport with the character of our Government to exact pledges of any State which are not exacted of all. ”

“ The true people of the South would soon realize that the three hundred thousand slaveholders are even more their enemies than enemies of the North. A reaction against our upstart aristocracy (an aristocracy resting on tobacco-casks and cotton-bales) would ensue, and the South would be republicanized,—a consummation which slavery has thus far prevented. South Carolina was Tory in the Revolution, just as she is now. Abolish slavery, and we should be United States in fact as well as in name. ”