South Carolina
Get Rich Quick!
Charleston
The first settlers arrived in Charleston, which then was called Charles Town in 1670. The area had a semitropical climate, wonderfully fertile soil, and a growing season of up to 295 days a year.
High Standard of Living
In South Carolina slaves are the most valuable commodity produced in our colony. Owners of the largest plantations became fabulously wealthy, and even lesser planters enjoyed a high standard of living. Conditions for African slaves, however, were brutal. Africans slaves were imported here from the outset, but only after 1690 did we develop a staple crop -rice- that increased the demand for slave labor. After rice became the our region's major cash crop, African slaves became more valuable. With a black majority, a lethal environment, and wealth concentrated in an elite, we resembled the Caribbean islands more than any other English colony in the mainland. In only a few decades, we had become a slave society, not simply a society with slaves: slavery stood at the center of everything.
Research taken from Of The People.