Negro slaves were introduced from the Bar badoes in 1671 and were counted to be 12,000 in number at the close of the Proprietary rule in 1720. They were instructed in the Christian religion and some of them taught to read. It was required of each white militia man that he should train and arm a negro to accompany him in war. The white population had increased from 391 in 1671 to 9,000 in 1720, living chiefly in proximity to Charleston. While the Indians lived principally on game and fish, cultivating only two plants, corn and tobacco, both exotics, the white colony never suffered for subsistence. They got 30 to 80 bushels of corn from an acre, deer supplying meat; an Indian hunter would for $25 a year furnish a family with 100 to 200 deer, besides wild turkey, fish, etc. The culture of rice was introduced in 1693 and the export of this cereal in 1720 amounted in value to f3,350 sterling. The Proprietors refused in 1674 to send out cattle to the colonists, saying they wanted them to be "planters and not graziers," but seven years later they had so increased that many planters had 700 to 800 head. The assembly had to appoint commis sioners to dispose of unmarked animals, and passed a law for the enclosure of crops, which remained in force until 1882.
As early as 1700 Charleston had a large and lucrative trade with the Indians in furs and hides, extending 1,000 miles into the in terior, and a large export trade in forest prod ucts, timber, pitch, turpentine and provisions to the northern colonies and the West Indies. Religious freedom was secured, while the min isters of the Church of England were sup ported from the public funds. The various Church members stood as follows; Episco palians, 42 per cent; Presbyterians and Hugue nots, 45 per cent; Baptists, 10 per cent ; Quakers, 3 per cent. A free public library was estab lished in Charleston in 1700 and a free school in 1710. In 1712 a digest of the English and colonial laws was prepared by Chief Justice Trott. In 1717 a successful war was waged against the pirates infesting Cape Feare and a number of them captured and executed. A duty of ,f30 a head was laid on the importation of negroes.
George I and George II were nursing fath ers to Carolina. The assembly was convened, all actions at law on account of the change of government were declared void and the iudicial proceedings under the provisional administra tion confirmed. Treaties were made with the Indians, who had hitherto stood as independent neighbors and were now constituted allies or subjects. Parishes were laid out and whenever settled by 100 families, they were allowed repre sentation in the assembly. To relieve the bur den on the country people of repairing for the trial of all causes to the general court at Charleston, county and precinct courts were established. Schools were established in each precinct and f25 levied by the justices to as sist in the yearly support of the teachers, who were required to teach 10 poor children free of charge. Between 1733 and 1774, over 200 tutors, schoolmasters or schoolmistresses, were en gaged in the province. The king having bought out the Proprietors for f17,500 purchased also the quitrents due them by the colonists and remitted them. Charleston was the extreme southwestern outpost of the British in America. As late as 1741, when the Spanish possessions lay embosomed on the Gulf of Mexico, with Saint Augustine, the oldest fortified place in America, the French claimed all the territory lying west of a line starting from a point north of Charleston, reaching the Appalachian Mountains, running round the headwaters of the Potomac, across the Mohawk and Hudson, down Lake Champlain and by the Sorel River to the Saint Lawrence. With little aid from the mother country, the colonists had stood as the advance guard against the warring Euro peans and held in check the American savages, the African savages imposed upon them, and the pirates. The first settlers had confined themselves to the neighborhood of Charles ton. Now the settlement of Georgia, 1732-34, protected the Western frontier and the in terior of Carolina, received many immigrants, Germans, and after Culloden many Scotch came into the middle section, and, on Braddock's defeat, refugees from Virginia and Pennsyl vania followed in the Piedmont region. Land was granted free of charge for 10 years and after that the annual rental was four shillings sterling for 100 acres. Great Britain imposed restrictions on the commerce and domestic manufactures of her colonies. While this was prejudicial to the more northern colonies, it did not affect an agricultural people like the Carolinians. The restraint imposed by the navigation acts on colonial exports was removed on the export of Carolina rice. The exports of rice and indigo reached f108,750 in 1747. In 1775 the exports of these two commodities alone were valued at f1,000,000 sterling, a third of what the entire trade of the American colo nies was estimated at in 1768. Between 1725
and 1775 the population increased sevenfold. In 1773 Josiah Quincy, writing from Charles ton, says of the city: °In grandeur, splendor of buildings, equipages, commerce, number of shipping, and, indeed, in almost everything, it far surpasses all I ever saw or expected to see in America." With the most sincere and loyal attachment to Great Britain, the king and his government, the Carolinians sent their children to England and Scotland to be educated and spoke of the mother country as °home." In the midst of this prosperity Carolina was led, step by step, during a period of 11 years, through sympathy with the northern colonies for injuries inflicted on them, to take part against the enforcement by Great Britain of taxation without representation, without desiring or an ticipating the separation from that country, which finally took place. On 28 June 1776, while the congress of the colonies was dis cussing the Declaration of Independence, Colo nel Moultrie, from the Palmetto Fort on Sulli van's Island, repulsed with heavy loss the Eng lish fleet and turned back the expedition of Sir Henry Clinton for the invasion and sub jugation of the South. In the same year Caro lina was the first colony to frame and adopt an independent constitution, but with the pro viso that this constitution is but temporary °until an accommodation of the unhappy differ ences between the colonies and Great Britain can be obtained." In 1778 John Rutledge, governor of the State, declared an accommodation, an event as desirable now as it ever was." The material injuries to Carolina by the Stamp Act, the duty on tea and the other acts of the gov ernment of George III were slight as com pared with the advantages she enjoyed under English rule, but she had enlisted in no luke warm manner in the struggle on account of the principles of right and justice involved. It was not until after the fall of Charleston in 1780, when the State lay prostrate, that the out rages of the British armies roused to resistance the population from the seaboard• to the moun tains. They then flocked to the standards of the partisan leaders, Marion, Sumter, Pickens and others, and so harassed and delayed the northward movement of Cornwallis to join Clinton that Washington and Lafayette were enabled to unite in Virginia and force the Brit ish into Yorktown. There, blockaded by the French fleet under DeGrasse, they were com pelled to surrender and the war virtually termi nated in favor of the Americans. Carolina con tributed $1,205,978 above her quota to this war —only a few thousands less than Massa chusetts, whose war the Revolution was, and who never suffered from invasion —and more than all the other 11 colonies together. One hundred and thirty-seven engagements with the British took place within her borders. In 103 Carolinians alone fought, in 20 others she had assistance and 14, including Camden, were fought by troops from other colonies. °Left mainly to her own resources," says Bancroft, it was through the depths of wretchedness that her sons were to bring her back to her place in the republic after suffering more, daring more, and achieving more than the men of any other State." The eight years of war were followed by eight years of distress and disorganization. The country had been laid waste, churches burned and industries paralyzed. It was estimated that the British had kidnapped 25,000 slaves and sold them. They plundered the planters' homes. Bancroft says they pillaged of plate alone to the value of £300,000. After the fall of Charles ton there arose a 14-years' dispute between the army and navy engaged in the siege as to their respective shares of the plunder. On 9 Aug. 1787 Carolina ceded to the United States her lands (10,000 square miles), not lying within her present boundaries. On 17 September of the same year she ratified the Constitution of the United States. In 1790 the seat of gov ernment was removed from Charleston to Columbia, in the the centre of the State, and another constitution substituted for that of 1776. An amendment in 1808 fixed the number of representatives at 124, allowing one repre sentative for each 62d part of the white in habitants and one for each 62d part of the taxes raised by the legislature. The senate was to be composed of one member from each election district, except Charleston, which was allowed two. This accentuated the differences already existing between the peoples of the lower and the upper country. The former, being the out growth of the city life of Charleston and the first settlers, preponderated in wealth. The other, arising from numerous and separate centres of rural settlement, had the larger and more rapidly increasing number of white in habitants.