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This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format.Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship. ... Read more

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Provides an introduction to the history, government, economy, resources, and people of the South Carolina Colony. Includes maps, charts, and a timeline. ... Read more

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In Entrepreneurs in the Southern Upcountry, Bruce W. Eelman follows the evolution of an entrepreneurial culture in a nineteenth-century southern community outside the plantation belt. Counter to the view that the Civil War and Reconstruction alone brought social and economic revolution to the South, Eelman finds that antebellum Spartanburg businessmen advocated a comprehensive vision for modernizing their region. Although their plans were forward looking, they still supported slavery and racial segregation.

By the 1840s, Spartanburg merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, and other professionals were looking to capitalize on the area's natural resources by promoting iron and textile mills and a network of rail lines. Recognizing that cultural change had to accompany material change, these businessmen also worked to reshape legal and educational institutions. Their prewar success was limited, largely due to lowcountry planters' political power. However, their modernizing spirit would serve as an important foundation for postwar development.

Although the Civil War brought unprecedented trauma to the Spartanburg community, the modernizing merchants, industrialists, and lawyers strengthened their political and social clout in the aftermath. As a result, much of the modernizing blueprint of the 1850s was realized in the 1870s. Eelman finds that Spartanburg's modernizers slowed legal and educational reform only when its implementation seemed likely to empower African Americans. ... Read more

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This volume, which spans the long period from the sixteenth century through the Civil War era, is remarkable for the religious, racial, ethnic, and class diversity of the women it features. Essays on plantation mistresses, overseers' wives, nonslaveholding women from the upcountry, slave women, and free black women in antebellum Charleston are certain to challenge notions about the slave South and about the significance of women to the state's economy. South Carolina's unusual history of religious tolerance is explored through the experiences of women of various faiths, and accounts of women from Europe, the West Indies, and other colonies reflect the diverse origins of the state's immigrants.

The volume begins with a profile of the Lady of Cofitachequi, who sat at the head of an Indian chiefdom and led her people in encounters with Spanish explorers. The essays that follow look at well-known women such as Eliza Lucas Pinckney, who managed several indigo plantations; the abolitionist Angelina Grimke; and Civil War diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut. Also included, however, are essays on the much-less-documented lives of poor white farming women (the Neves family of Mush Creek), free African American women (Margaret Bettingall and her daughters), and slave women, the latter based on interviews and their own letters. The essays in volume 1 demonstrate that many women in this most conservative of states, with its strong emphasis on traditional gender roles, carved out far richer public lives than historians have often attributed to antebellum southern women. ... Read more

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Did you know that the Spanish attempted to establish a colony in what is now South Carolina 40 years before the English founded Jamestown in Virginia? Or that the colony's name is derived from two European kings named Charles?

Step back into the early years of South Carolina when the Cherokee and the Catawba were the largest of 29 native groups; and when the colony was one of the few places where Jews and Quakers were welcome in the New World. Learn how the first indigo plants were grown by a 16-year-old girl; and meet such Revolutionary War heroes as Francis "Swamp Fox" Marion and Thomas "the Gamecock" Sumter. ... Read more

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Describes the geography, plants and animals, history, economy, language, religions, culture, sports and arts, and people of the state of South Carolina. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The reconstruction of the state of South Carolina
There is a scene in the uncut edition of the movie version of the musical "1776" where the character of Edmund Rutledge from South Carolina explains to John Adams that his colony is interested in independence--For South Carolina.It was Rutledge of South Carolina that pushed for the clause condemning the slave trade to be dropped from the Declaration of Independence, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina who propagated the doctrine of nullification, and it was South Carolina that was the first state to secede from the Union and the place where the Civil War started when Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.So the story of South Carolina is the story of a state that often did not always want to be a state, which makes it rather unique.

It is not without irony that in "A State of Change," Chapter One of this look at "South Carolina" for the American the Beautiful, Second Series, that R. Conrad Stein focuses on Strom Thurmond, the late senior U.S. Senator from S.C. who was the longest-standing senator in history, as a symbol of that change (even more so today, when we know that Thurmond, who once ran for president as a segregationist, secretly fathered a child with an African-American woman).The history of South Carolina is detailed in the next three chapters, beginning with Chapter Two, "A Colony Carved from the Wilderness," which begins with the "contact period" when the Cherokee first encountered Europeans and ends with South Carolina becoming the eighth state.Chapter Three, "A House Divided" focuses on the primarily on the Civil War but also recovers reconstruction, while Chapter Four, "Twentieth-Century South Carolina," traces the change from a backward, mostly rural state, to a new economy following the Civil Rights revolution.Throughout this volume, Stein's emphasis is on reconstructing the state's image as the place that sparked the Civil War.

Chapter Five explores South Carolina as "A Land of Contrasts," including the topographical changes from the Atlantic coastal plain, to the lowcoutnry, to the upcountry."Life around the State" is explored in Chapter Six, which focuses on each area.Chapter Seven, "Palmetto State Government," covers the politics of South Carolina, which is where young readers get to find out about such state symbols as the state tree (the palmetto, of course) and the state hospitality beverage (tea, which it is the only stage to produce for business)."An Expanding Economy" is the subject of Chapter Eight, focusing on manufacturing, agriculture, and other industries.Chapter Nine, "Upcountry and Lowcountry Culture," looks at population trends in the state along with education.Finally, Chapter Ten, "Arts, Sports, Fairs, and Fun," looks at movies shot in the state (e.g., "The Abyss," "Forrest Gump") and sports stars like Shoeless Joe Jackson and Althea Gibson.

The back of the book includes a Timeline comparing U.S. and S.C. state history and several pages of Fast Facts with lots of key statistics.Like all of the volumes in this informative series, Stein's look at "South Carolina" has plenty of full-color photos, orignal maps, and a whole bunch of sidebars.These sidebars are where young readers get to find out about the buccaneer Anne Bonney, the "Swamp Fox," Battery Wagner, Jesse Jackson, and the Hilton Head Vacationland.The recipe for this volume is for Shrimp Perlou, the main rice dish of South Carolina, and the most famous (you can substitute sausage, chicken, or any other meat, so do not feel compelled to go with shrimp). ... Read more

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Introduction to one of the United States' original colonies, South Carolina. Describes its origins, its leaders, and the colony's role in America's independence from Great Britain. ... Read more

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Briefly explores the Palmetto State's history, geography, and interesting places to visit. ... Read more

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Presents the history, geography, economy, government, plants and animals, people, and social life and customs of South Carolina, one of the thirteen original colonies of the United States. ... Read more

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An introduction to the Palmetto State, including its history, natural resources, famous citizens, and place of interest. ... Read more

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Discusses the land and climate, economy, government, and history of the Palmetto State. Includes Internet links to Web sites related to South Carolina. ... Read more

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Surveys the people, geography, and history of the southeastern Palmetto State. ... Read more

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A study of both the legislation pertaining to runaway slaves and the individual slave uncovers some previously ignored issues from a legal standpoint, and also highlights the efforts made by slaves in the 18th century to confront these controls. The profile presents new research on the legal settin ... Read more

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Eighteen Afro-American folktales from South Carolina, including several tales about Br'er Rabbit. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Classic Collection of Gullah Folklore
Abigail Christensen was the daughter of Northern abolitionists who came down to the South Carolina Sea Islands during the Civil War to assist the newly freed slaves in their transition to freedom.Growing up among Gullah people, she learned their language and heard their extraordinary folktales about Buh Rabbit, Buh Fox, Buh Bear, etc.Later, when she was a college student in the North, her professors encouraged her to compile the stories she had collected and written down into a book.Her "Afro-American Folk Lore" was originally published in 1892.Christensen's knowledge of Gullah was not as deep as that of the former slaveowner Charles Colcock Jones, Jr. whose story collection ("Negro Myths of the Georgia Coast," 1888) is also a classic work of Gullah folklore, but her book is an enormously valuable document of Gullah culture nonetheless.Christensen's stories even contain a few phrases in African languages, reflecting the early date at which they were collected.As far as I know, the African language (or languages) of these phrases has never been identified.This would be a great project someday for some enterprising young linguist.This collection has been igored by scholars for decades (though a full-scale biography of Christensen was recencly published), but with all the interest in Gullah culture these days, it is just a matter of time before these stories are rediscovered and republished in a popular edition.

Somewhat flawed, but fundamental
This book is one of the foundations of African-American folklore collections in the United States. Essentially, Miss Christensen was a White Northerner who recorded the tales of African-American ex-slaves and Gullah speakers in South Carolina's St. Helena Island in the 1870s. In 1877, one of those tales (included here) was among the first known publications of "Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby," a few years before the white Georgian Joel Chandler Harris gained more fame from the "rabbit stories" (as the indigenous call them). While Miss Christensen was the first to publish one of these stories, Harris's collection was published 12 years before she was able to find a publisher for her collection.

Interestingly, one of her informants, a black man named Prince Baskins, says that his African grandfather told him these tales. Recent studies indicate that he may have been right, as simiarities about between these proverbs of rabbits, alligators, and the like and actual African folktales. Unfortuantely, the tales are somewhat marred by Miss Christensen's sentiments that were common to her times, such as refering to the "monkey-like" appearance of some of her black informants. The stories themselves are written authentically in phonetic Gullah, but those who are not familiar with how this dialect sounds to the ear will find the book almost incomprehensible. Like other Gullah folklorists such as Ambrose Gonzales and Samuel Stoney, she does her job a bit too well in this aspect.

Overall, folklorists, storytellers, and those interested in Gullah culture will find this an interesting read. ... Read more