August 1619

The Lords Proprietors were anxious to secure Carolina against Spanish attacks from San Augustine in Florida, and to do so, they needed to attract more colonists.

Sir John Yeamans

The Lords decided to combine their shares to establish a profit-seeking proprietary settlement, Carolina, between the English colony of Virginia and Spanish Florida. To ensure financial success, they sent representatives to study the lucrative sugar plantation system on the Caribbean island of Barbados.

South Carolina and the African Slave Trade As with Native Americans, Africans were often sold into slavery by enemy tribes. More commonly, however, tribes sold their own members to Europeans as punishment for an infraction or crime, including such offenses as murder, theft, or treachery against the tribal king.

South Carolina’s giant slave population was largely due to the lowcountry’s suitability to rice culture. Rice was both incredibly labor intensive and incredibly profitable. So not only did rice planters need more help than other planters, they could afford it.

Overall, by the end of the colonial period, African arrivals in Charleston primarily came from Angola (40 percent), Senegambia (19.5 percent), the Windward Coast (16.3 percent), and the Gold Coast (13.3 percent), as well as the Bight of Benin and Bight of Biafra in smaller percentages.

Magnolia Plantation

Here are the 10 Safest Cities in South Carolina for 2021

• Woodruff.
• Fort Mill.
• Tega Cay.
• Mount Pleasant.
• Bluffton.
• Isle of Palms.
• Hanahan.
• Walhalla.

Old St. Andrew’s Parish Church

Shirley Plantation

At the height of slavery, the National Humanities Center estimates that there were over 46,000 plantations stretching across the southern states. Now, for the hundreds whose gates remain open to tourists, lies a choice. Every plantation has its own story to tell, and its own way to tell it.