South Carolina
State in SE USA; nicknamed Palmetto State
Area:
80,600 sq km/31,112 sq mi
Capital:
Columbia
Towns:
Charleston, Greenville- Spartanburg
Physical:
Large areas of woodland; subtropical climate in coastal areas; semitropical
islands including Kiawah, Seabrook, and Isle of Palms ; Frances Marion
national forest
Features:
The Grand Strand, a resort area with 89 km/55 mi of beach, including
Huntington Beach and Myrtle Beach state parks, Pewley's Island, and
Hilton Head Island; plantations, including Magnolia Plantation and Gardens
(begun 1686, with a large collection of azaleas and camellias), Boone
Hall Plantation (1681, with the original slave quarters), Hampton Plantation
state park, and Hopsewee Plantation; Rice Museum at Georgetown, the
centre of the rice plantation area; Charleston, with Greek Revival buildings
(including St John's Lutheran Church 1817, Congregation Beth Elohim
1840, and the Edmonston-Alston House 1828), the French Huguenot Church
(the only church in the USA still following the original Huguenot liturgy),
Nathaniel Russell House (Adam style, 1808), Joseph Manigault Mansion
(1803), St Michael's Episcopal Church (1761, modelled on the church
of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London), the Gibbes Art Gallery, and the
Charleston Museum (1773, the oldest city museum in the USA); Beaufort,
established 1710, with large 18th- and 19th-century houses, including
the John Mark Verdier House (1790) and the George Elliott House (1840);
Cowpens national battlefield and Kings Mountain national military park,
sites of British defeats; Fort Sumter national monument, where the first
shot of the Civil War was fired 12 April 1861; St Helena Island, with
the Penn School historic district and the York W Bailey Museum (the
school was started during the Civil War as the first school for freed
slaves in the South); Patriots Point, Mount Pleasant, the world's largest
naval and maritime museum; Brookgreen Gardens, started 1931 on four
former rice plantations, with the largest outdoor collection of US sculpture;
Middleton Place, with the oldest landscape gardens in the USA (1741);
the Spoleto Festival USA, founded 1977 by Gian Carlo Menotti as part
of his Festival of Two Worlds
Industries:
Tobacco, soya beans, lumber, textiles, clothing, paper, wood pulp,
chemicals, nonelectrical machinery, primary and fabricated metals
Population:
(1995) 3,673,300
Famous People:
John C Calhoun, Dizzy Gillespie
History:
First Spanish settlers 1526; Charles I gave the area (known as Carolina)
to Robert Heath (1575- 1649), attorney general 1629; one of the
original 13 states 1776; joined the Confederacy 1860; readmitted
to Union 1868. The first English settlement was in 1670 at Albemarle
Point, but poor conditions drove the settlers to Charles Town
(now Charleston). South Carolina, one of the original 13 states,
was the first state to secede from the Union 1860, and the first
battle of the Civil War took place at Fort Sumter in Charleston
Harbor, 12 April 1861. Union troops caused widespread destruction
in the closing months of the war 1865, including the burning of
Columbia. Under Reconstruction, the state was readmitted to the
Union 1868, and federal troops left 1877. Tenant farming, or sharecropping,
replaced plantation slave labour and, beginning around 1890, tobacco
and soya beans replaced rice and cotton as the main crops. Textiles
became the state's leading industry after 1900. After 1954, desegregation
proceeded very slowly but peaceably. In 1989 Hurricane Hugo devastated
coastal areas in the state.
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