History of slavery in South Carolina

The Fundamental Constitutions of 1669 stated that "Every freeman of Carolina, shall have absolute power and authority over his negro slave"[1] and implied that enslaved people would supplement a largely "leet-men" replete workforce.

[2][3] Although African slavery was not mentioned in the “Declarations and Proposals to all that will Plant in Carolina” (1663), which distributed land using the headright system, the Lords Proprietors revised their stance motivated by their own financial stakes[3] and to accommodate the wishes of the Barbadian settlers;[4] these settlers, whom the Lords Proprietors sought to attract to the colony, expressed a desire to bring their enslaved African laborers with them.

Similar to Virginia, numerous enslaved people in South Carolina were imported from the West Indies,[4] with the majority from the British colony of Barbados;[6][5] they were considered to have a certain level of immunity to prevalent diseases like malaria and yellow fever that were common in the region, and their proficiency in using native plants for medicinal purposes helped them adapt to the semitropical environment.

[7] The Lords Proprietors charged the colonists with being disorderly, lazy, involved in piracy, and unlawfully enslaving the native people in the first thirty years of settlement.

[3] Reverend Gideon Johnston, the colony's commissary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, called the English in Charles Town "the Vilest race of Men upon the Earth" and "the most factious and Seditious people in the whole World.

[4] South Carolina Lowcountry differentiated itself by utilizing a task system;[4] it allowed enslaved people time to work on their own projects after their assigned work had been completed, and they were also allowed to accumulate a small amount of property[4][12] where "they planted corn, potatoes, tobacco, peanuts, sugar and water melons, and pumpkins and bottle pumpkins.

[14] Historian Winthrop Jordan argued that prohibitions on interracial sexual relations between White women and Black men were the most strict.

[4] There were many unsuccessful attempts at getting South Carolinian residents, who preferred trading for deer skins with the Native Americans, to produce cotton in the 17th century.

[4] In pre-revolutionary America, wealthy merchants and planters with spare time had the resources to "tinker" new agricultural crops such as cotton, and ultimately became more successful in expanding its cultivation compared to the Lords Proprietors.

During the early eighteenth century, Charles Town (renamed to Charleston in 1783) started to receive large numbers of enslaved people directly from Africa.

[21] Historian Frederic Bancroft found that there were no fewer than 50 slave traders, called "brokers" in Charlestonian parlance, working in the city in 1859–60.

[23] Low-country South Carolina's geography encouraged the creation of these communities since "back swamps"[28] interlocked with tidal rivers such as the Cooper, Santee, Ashley, Edisto, Savannah, etc.

[31] London newspaper adverts from the 1700s show that enslaved people from South Carolina were brought to Britain where many elected to free themselves by running away.

On the night of the 8th of December 1702 an enslaved young woman, about 16 years of age, named Bess (Elizabeth) left the residence of Captain Benjamin Quelch.

"A Negro Maid, aged about 16 Years, much pitted with the Small-Pox, speaks English well, having a piece of her left Ear bit off by a Dog: She hath on a strip’d Stuff Wastcoat and Petticoat, absented herself from her Master Capt.

The Betty was a slave ship, making its return journey after delivering enslaved Africans from an unknown location to Port Royal, Jamaica.

The Quelch's would go on to have another son, also called George, baptised in Enfield almost a year to the day later and would return home at some point prior to 1709, when Elizabeth inherited her brother's estate.

Detail of contrabands aboard USS Vermont (1848) , Port Royal, South Carolina , photographed 1862 by Henry P. Moore (Metropolitan Museum of Art 2005.100.897)
Family on Smith's Plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina, circa 1862. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress and learnnc.org.
Workers carrying sheaves of rice, South Carolina.
Enslaved people working on a plantation carrying rice in South Carolina
Enslaved people on South Carolina Plantation, 1862.
Enslaved people on South Carolina Plantation, 1862.
This image is from a sketchbook of watercolours depicting places visited by Francis Meynell while on a Royal Navy anti-slavery patrol off the west coast of Africa and includes several ship portraits. This is one of two watercolours, the other being MEY/2.1, which show slaves above and below deck. They were painted on board the Albanoz, a captured Spanish slave ship in 1846, so the people shown had in fact been liberated though not yet landed and released. They nevertheless provide a rare eyewitness view of conditions in the hold of a slave ship. Those shown are not chained—and there are no signs of chains—but rather imprisoned in a confined space. During the Middle Passage, the enslaved were usually not kept constantly below deck, unless the weather was particularly bad or there was a serious threat of revolt on board. In order that as many Africans should reach the Americas with some of their health intact, they were allowed out of the fetid holds and to exercise on deck.
This image is from a sketchbook of watercolours depicting places visited by Francis Meynell while on a Royal Navy anti-slavery patrol off the west coast of Africa and includes several ship portraits. They were painted on board the Albanoz , a captured Spanish slave ship in 1846, so the people shown had in fact been liberated though not yet landed and released. They nevertheless provide a rare eyewitness view of conditions in the hold of a slave ship—imprisoned in a confined space.