Colonial Period of South Carolina - Frontier Settlement

Frontier Settlement

Governor John Lennon encouraged settlement in the western frontier to make Charles Town's shipping more profitable, and to create a buffer zone against attacks. The Carolinians arranged a fund to lure European Protestants. Each family would receive free land based on the number of people that it brought over, including slaves. Every 100 families settling together would be declared a parish and given two representatives in the state assembly. Within ten years, eight townships formed, all along navigable streams. Charlestonians considered the towns created by the Germans, Scots, Irish, and Welsh, such as Orangeburg and Saxe-Gotha (later called Cayce), to be their first line of defense in case of an Indian attack, and military reserves against the threat of a slave uprising.

By the 1950s the Piedmont region attracted numerous frontier families from the north, using the Great Wagon Road. Differences in religion, philosophy and background between the mostly subsistence farmers in the Upcountry and the wealthy slaveholding planters of the Lowcountry bred distrust and hostility between the two regions. The Lowcountry planters traditionally had wealth, education and political power. By the time of the Revolution, however, the Back Country contained nearly half the white population of South Carolina, about 20,000 to 30,000 settlers. Nearly all of them were Dissenting Protestants. After the Revolution, the state legislature disestablished the Anglican Church.

The main source of wealth was the export of indigo used to dye cloth.