South Carolina: A Bicentennial History

THE history of South Carolina has been often told by competent historians. Works by David Duncan Wallace, Lewis P. Jones, M. E. Sirmans, E. McPherson Lander, and others provide a wealth of detail that needs no repetition. But the general reader may not have time or inclination for so much instruction. My intention has been to provide a brief description of the development of South Carolina from the earliest times to the present, with such interpretation as seemed to me necessary to explain how we South Carolinians came to be the people we are. I have emphasized the early rather than the later periods, for our origins helped to determine our characteristics as a people. Most of our patterns of behavior and our regional differences developed in the colonial period.

Within the limits prescribed for this volume, it has been impossible even to enumerate many stirring events described in more detailed histories, or to mention all of the heroes—and the villains—who had a part in events of the past. Fortunately, local history has been the preoccupation of scores of writers in the state, and the names of few if any doughty Carolinians in any period have escaped the genealogists. During the Tricentennial celebrations in 1970 the records of the past were ransacked to illuminate the story of South Carolina's development from colony to state. One has only to thumb through Professor Lewis Jones's Books and Articles on South Carolina History^1. to see how complete has been the coverage. The magazine, The Sandlapper, has been a useful and entertaining medium for the dissemination of information about local history.

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