[12] At the time Europeans arrived, marking the end Pre-Columbian era around 1600, there were many separate Native American tribes, the largest being the Cherokee and the Catawba, with a total population being up to 20,000.

[14] About a dozen or more separate small tribes summered on the coast harvesting oysters and fish, and cultivating corn, peas and beans.

In 1540, Hernando de Soto explored the region and the main town of Cofitachequi, where he captured the queen of the Maskoki (Muscogee) and the Chelaque (Cherokee) who had welcomed him.

[13] Sixty years later, in 1629, King Charles I of England established the province of Carolana, an area covering what is now South and North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.

In 1663, King Charles II created the Province of Carolina by granting the same land to eight Lords Proprietors in return for their financial and political assistance in restoring him to the throne in 1660.

[16] His utopia was inspired by John Locke, an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism".

[17]: 65  Between 1670 and 1715, between 24,000 and 51,000 captive Native Americans were exported from South Carolina – more than the number of Africans imported to the colonies of the future United States during the same period.

Meanwhile, Upstate South Carolina, west of the Fall Line, was settled by small farmers and traders, who due to resource competition fought a number of wars with confederated Native American tribes westward.

For example, a man was not eligible to sit in the State House of Representatives unless he possessed an estate of 500 acres of land and 10 Negroes, or at least 150 pounds sterling.

In Texas vs. White (1869), the Supreme Court ruled the ordinances of secession (including that of South Carolina) were invalid, and thus those states had never left the Union.

During Reconstruction, South Carolina maintained a majority-black government, which lasted until approximately 1876 when Democrats and former Confederates committed voter fraud to regain power.

[34][35][36] On October 19, 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant suspended habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties under the authority of the Ku Klux Klan Act.

To prevent that from happening again, Democrats gained passage of a new constitution in 1895 which effectively disenfranchised almost all blacks and many poor whites by new requirements for poll taxes, residency, and literacy tests that dramatically reduced the voter rolls.

[38] The 1900 census demonstrated the extent of disenfranchisement: the 782,509 African American citizens comprised more than 58% of the state's population, but they were essentially without any political representation in the Jim Crow society.

During the constitutional convention in 1895, he supported another man's proposal that the state adopt a one-drop rule, as well as prohibit marriage between whites and anyone with any known African ancestry.

It would be a cruel injustice and the source of endless litigation, of scandal, horror, feud, and bloodshed to undertake to annul or forbid marriage for a remote, perhaps obsolete trace of Negro blood.

The doors would be open to scandal, malice and greed; to statements on the witness stand that the father or grandfather or grandmother had said that A or B had Negro blood in their veins.

It would attract large military bases during World War I, through its majority Democratic congressional delegation, part of the one-party Solid South following disfranchisement of blacks.

[47] Other South Carolina political figures, like Sen. Strom Thurmond, on the other hand, were among the nation's most radical and effective opponents of social equality and integration.

Most of the published luminescence ages from the sand are coincident with the last glaciation, a time when the southeastern United States was characterized by colder air temperatures and stronger winds.

Hail is common with many of the thunderstorms in the state, as there is often a marked contrast in temperature of warmer ground conditions compared to the cold air aloft.

[93] Additionally, there is one federally recognized tribe in South Carolina, the Catawba Indian Nation, and 24,303 identified as being Native American alone, and 83,808 did in combination with one or more other races in 2020.

Major agricultural outputs of the state are tobacco, poultry, cotton, cattle, dairy products, soybeans, hay, rice, and swine.

[105][106] According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of March 2012, South Carolina had 1,852,700 nonfarm jobs of which 12% are in manufacturing, 11.5% are in leisure and hospitality, 19% are in trade, transportation, and utilities, and 11.8% are in education and health services.

In 2017 in the budget proposal, Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman requested the state lease to purchase 1,000 buses to replace the most decrepit vehicles.

[123] On January 5, 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded South Carolina more than $1.1 million to replace 57 school buses with new cleaner models through its Diesel Emissions Reduction Act program.

[124] South Carolina has diverse institutions from large state-funded research universities to small colleges that cultivate a liberal arts, religious, or military tradition.

Markets in which the stations are located include Columbia, Florence, Allendale, Myrtle Beach, Greenville, Charleston, Conway, Beaufort, Hardeeville, Spartanburg, Greenwood, Anderson and Sumter.

[141] An April 2023 Winthrop University poll found that an overwhelming majority of South Carolinians supported legalizing medical marijuana and believed that a separation between church and state was "critical".

A large majority were also found to support same-sex marriage, legalized recreational marijuana and sports gambling, along with an independent commission system for congressional redistricting.