South Carolina

The colony with a Black majority for most of its history, and the most consistently radical defender of slavery in the country. It was settled from Barbados in 1670 by planters who brought the island's slave code with them, so the harshest legal regime in the English Atlantic arrived fully formed rather than developing locally. Rice made the lowcountry extraordinarily rich, and its cultivation drew specifically on West African expertise from the rice-growing Windward Coast; by 1720 enslaved people were about two-thirds of the population, a proportion unmatched on the mainland. The Stono Rebellion of 1739 produced a Negro Act that restricted movement, assembly and literacy. Charleston was the wealthiest city in British North America and the entry point for perhaps forty per cent of all enslaved Africans brought to the mainland. Politically the state led every escalation: John C. Calhoun's nullification crisis in 1832, secession first on 20 December 1860, and the firing on Fort Sumter that began the war. Gullah culture and language survive on the Sea Islands. Denmark Vesey's planned rising was betrayed in 1822. The state removed the Confederate flag from its capitol grounds in 2015 after the Charleston church shooting. Columbia is the capital and Charleston the historic city. The state is the smallest in the Deep South. Its Sea Islands run the length of the coast. Fort Sumter sits in Charleston harbour. Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach carry the modern tourist economy. The state was the first to secede and the last to hold a popular vote for presidential electors, waiting until 1868.

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