Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

22
Slavery in South Carolina
South Carolina distinguished itself in the eighteenth century for being the
first Southern colony to develop a great agricultural staple other than tobacco.
First grown in South Carolina in 1694, rice very rapidly became the staple of
the colony, with the port of Charleston the center of the rice trade. So successful
was the expansion of rice grown on large plantations in the coastal
swamps, that Britain added it to the "enumerated list" of commodities as
early as the Navigation Act of 1704. By 1722, South Carolina was exporting
nine million pounds of rice per year, and by 1750, the total had increased to
twenty-seven million.
By midcentury, South Carolina had begun to grow another staple crop,
which rose swiftly to second rank beneath rice. This was indigo dye, introduced
successfully into the colony in 1744 by Elizah Lukas, who later married
Chief Justice Charles Pinckney. Also grown on lowland swamps, indigo
proved a natural seasonal complement to rice; and large plantations intensively
staffed with Negro slaves proved to be ideal for combining the two
products. By the mid-l75Os indigo production in the colony was in high gear,
and 500,000 pounds were being exported annually.
The rice and indigo plantations differed significantly from the tobacco
plantations of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay area. The former were
smaller, more concentrated, and more intensively cultivated, that is, they
required considerably more slaves per acre. Hence, the proportion of Negro
slaves to whites became considerably higher in South Carolina. In 1750, the
Southern colonies had the following ratio of Negroes to whites:
Maryland
Virginia
North Carolina
South Carolina
Negroes
49
141
34
39
(in thousands)
Whites
115
199
76
25
As we can see, the tobacco colonies had considerably fewer Negroes than
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