Southern History Series: Review: The Palmetto State: The Making of Modern South Carolina

Editor’s Note: This is a work in progress.

Jack Bass and W. Scott Poole, The Palmetto State: The Making of Modern South Carolina

*SIGH*

I didn’t care for this book.

If you are looking to learn more about South Carolina’s history, you are better off reading the Wikipedia page than Jack Bass and W. Scott Poole’s The Palmetto State: The Making of Modern South Carolina. Do yourself a favor and go straight to Walter B. Edgar’s South Carolina: A History.

Normally, I don’t even bother to mention the liberal bias in these book reviews. I’ve learned a great deal from Wayne Flynt and James C. Cobb who are both raging liberals. I have a very high tolerance for liberal bias so long as I am reading something that is either informative or thought provoking, but this book is a disservice to South Carolina. Basically, the reader is left with the impression that nothing much of significance happened in South Carolina before the Civil Rights Movement.

After I put this book down, I was left with far more questions than answers. This is only a sketch of the history of South Carolina which is 150 years older than Alabama. In spite of the authors, I believe that I know enough about these two states to start comparing and contrasting their historical development. The reason that I focus so heavily on Virginia and South Carolina is because the Upper South and Lower South respectively were largely created in their image.

• South Carolina is the older, parent state. It was founded as a British colony in 1670 whereas Alabama was admitted to the Union in 1819. Bass and Poole acknowledge the Golden Circle thesis.
• As the older, parent state, South Carolina had an extended colonial period and was embroiled in and devastated by the American Revolution. Whereas large scale plantation slavery only lasted in Alabama for two generations (in my area, less than 30 years), slavery lasted in South Carolina for nearly two centuries.
• The South Carolina Lowcountry was dominated by rice and indigo plantations which were never significant crops in Alabama. A different type of Slave Society – one that was more aristocratic – evolved in the Lowcountry which was never reproduced in Alabama. From the beginning, all White men had the right to vote in Alabama whereas democracy was more limited in South Carolina until 1865. After the Fort Mims Massacre, Alabama was Jackson Country. The Old Southwest was and remains the populist heartland.
• Until Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in the 1790s, the South Carolina Upcountry had been dominated by Scots-Irish small farmers. In fact, over half the population of South Carolina was non-English, mostly Scot-Irish, Irish, French Huguenot or German.
• South Carolina and Alabama had similar experiences with Indian wars: the Yamasee War and warfare with the Cherokee in South Carolina and the Creek War in Alabama. The Indians were ultimately driven out of both states.
• Most of the founding settlers of Alabama came from the Piedmont region of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia, although much of North Alabama was settled by Tennesseans and is culturally part of the Upland South.
• The style and form of slavery in Alabama was influenced the most by Georgia and the South Carolina Upcountry.