But in
Virginia the planter families lived broadcast over the land, each upon its
own plantation. In South Carolina, to escape heat and sickness, the
planters of rice and indigo gave over to employees the care of their great
holdings and lived themselves in pleasant Charleston. These plantations,
with their great gangs of slaves under overseers, differed at many points
from the more kindly, semi-patriarchal life of the Virginian plantation. To
South Carolina came also the indentured white laborer, but the black was
imported in increasing numbers.
From the first in the Carolinas there had been promised fair freedom for
the unorthodox. The charters provided, says an early Governor, "an overplus
power to grant liberty of conscience, although at home was a hot
persecuting time." Huguenots, Independents, Quakers, dissenters of many
kinds, found on the whole refuge and harbor. In every colony soon began the
struggle by the dominant color and caste toward political liberty. King,
Company, Lords Proprietaries, might strive to rule from over the seas. But
the new land fast bred a practical rough freedom. The English settlers came
out from a land where political change was in the air. The stream was set
toward the crumbling of feudalism, the rise of democracy. In the New World,
circumstances favoring, the stream became a tidal river. Governors,
councils, assemblies, might use a misleading phraseology of a quaint
servility toward the constituted powers in England.
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