South Carolina is a state in south east USA. South Carolina was one of the original thirteen States of the American Union. It was partially explored by the Spaniards in 1525, who named it Chicora. French Huguenots under Ribaut attempted to plant a colony at Port Royal in 1562, but the colonists soon abandoned the undertaking and returned to France.
In 1670 William Sayle and a party of Englishmen, founded Charleston. Charles II gave the territory between 29 degrees north latitude and 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude to eight of his favorites in 1663, and in 1665 he issued a charter to the proprietors by which the virtual control of the colony was placed in their hands. They employed Locke, the philosopher, to draw up a constitution which should provide an ideal government. Locke's Fundamental Constitutions, or the Grand Model, attempted in-vain to set up the feudal system and was formally abandoned by the proprietors in 1693.
In 1700 the colony was separated from North Carolina, the boundary being fixed in 1732. South Carolina became a royal colony in 1729. The Southern boundary caused a dispute with Georgia which was settled in 1787 in favour of Georgia. South Carolina then ceded her western territory, consisting of a strip twelve miles wide, to the general government.
During the American Revolution the important battles of Fort Moultrie, Cowpens, King's Mountain, Camden and Eutaw Springs were fought in South Carolina. The first constitution was made in 1776, the present in 1868. The National Constitution was ratified on May the 23rd, 1788, by a vote of 149 to 73.
The State protested against the gross inequality of the tariff of 1828 by the South Carolina Exposition, in which the doctrine of nullification was defended. In 1832 the tariff of 1828, the tariff of abominations, was modified, but the principle of protection still retained, whereupon South Carolina in convention at Columbia on November the 24th, 1832, declared the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 null and void and prohibited payment of duties after February 1st, 1833. Henry Clay's compromise tariff was passed in 1833 and at the same time a force bill became law; on March 11th, 1833, the nullification ordinance was repealed.
South Carolina was the mother of secession And after 1850 she was ready to secede at any time when she could rely upon the aid of the other States. On December the 20th, 1860, an ordinance of secession was passed, to sustain which the State furnished 60,000 troops out of a population including only 47,000 voters. On April the 12th, 1861, Fort Sumter was fired on.
South Carolina was re-admitted to the Union on June the 25th, 1868. From 1868 to 1873 the carpet-bag State government was exceedingly corrupt and in 1870 and 1871 the Ku Klux Klan aimed at the suppression of the black vote by intimidation. Research South Carolina
Abbreviations
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