page_title: South Carolina
section_title: Antebellum
hierarchical_section_title: South Carolina / History / Antebellum
caption_attribution_description: Millford, Wedgefield-Rimini Road, Pinewood, Sumter County, SC. NORTHWEST (FRONT) FACADE, LOOKING EAST.
context_page_description: South Carolina is a state in the Southeastern United States and the easternmost of the Deep South. It is bordered to the north by North Carolina, to the southeast by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the southwest by Georgia across the Savannah River.
  South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on May 23, 1788. It also became the first state to vote in favor of secession from the Union on December 20, 1860. After the American Civil War, it was readmitted into the United States on June 25, 1868.
  South Carolina is the 40th most extensive and 23rd most populous U.S. state. In 2019 its GDP was $249.9 billion. South Carolina is composed of 46 counties. The capital is Columbia with a population of 133,451 in 2018; while its largest city is Charleston with a 2018 population of 136,208. The Greenville–Anderson–Mauldin metropolitan area is the largest in the state, with a 2018 population estimate of 906,626.
  South Carolina is named in honor of King Charles I of England, who first formed the English colony, with Carolus being Latin for "Charles".
context_section_description: America's first census in 1790 put the state's population at nearly 250,000. By the 1800 census the population had increased 38 per cent to nearly 340,000 of which 146,000 were slaves. At that time South Carolina had the largest population of Jews in the 16 United States, mostly based in Savannah and Charleston, the latter being the country's fifth largest city.
  In the Antebellum period (before the Civil War) the state's economy and population grew. Cotton became an important crop after the invention of the cotton gin. While nominally democratic, from 1790 until 1865, wealthy landowners were in control of South Carolina. For example, a man was not eligible to sit in the State House of Representatives unless he possessed an estate of 500 acres of land and 10 Negroes, or at least 150 pounds sterling, diminishing the electorate. Further, the state maintained indirect election of electors by the state legislature until 1868, the last state to do so. Voters thus did not participate in presidential elections, other than through state-wide elections.
  Columbia, the new state capital was founded in the center of the state, and the State Legislature first met there in 1790. The town grew after it was connected to Charleston by the Santee Canal in 1800, one of the first canals in the United States.
  As dissatisfaction with the federal government grew, in the 1820s John C. Calhoun became a leading proponent of states' rights, limited government, nullification of the U.S. Constitution, and free trade. In 1832, the Ordinance of Nullification declared federal tariff laws unconstitutional and not to be enforced in the state, leading to the Nullification Crisis. The federal Force Bill was enacted to use whatever military force necessary to enforce federal law in the state, bringing South Carolina back into line.
  In the United States presidential election of 1860 voting was sharply divided, with the south voting for the Southern Democrats and the north for Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party. Lincoln was anti-slavery, did not acknowledge the right to secession, and would not yield federal property in Southern states. Southern secessionists believed Lincoln's election meant long-term doom for their slavery-based agrarian economy and social system.
  Lincoln was elected president on November 6, 1860. The state House of Representatives three days later passed the "Resolution to Call the Election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. President a Hostile Act", and within weeks South Carolina became the first state to secede.
caption: Millford Plantation (1839–41), an example of Greek Revival architecture
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