Colonial Period (1670-1764)

Burke was elected as an anti-Federalist to the First Congress of the United States, commencing service in New York on March 4, 1789. He served on thirty-three committees and was instrumental in crafting bills that led to the judiciary act and the creation of the Library of Congress, the postal system, and the patent system. His congressional service was marked by an incident with Alexander Hamilton, whom Burke felt had slighted southern soldiers when Hamilton eulogized General Nathanael Greene.

Although Butler served in the General Assembly from 1776 to 1789, his most significant political accomplishments came at the national level. In 1787 the legislature elected Butler to both the Confederation Congress and the constitutional convention scheduled to meet later that spring in Philadelphia. In the constitutional debates, Butler generally supported proposals for a strong central government, a single executive, and wealth rather than population as the basis of representation. He also championed South Carolina interests, especially slavery, and vigorously opposed the three-fifths compromise, arguing that slaves represented property wealth and should be counted fully for purposes of representation.

He is widely considered to be the first African American to have his medical findings appear in print.

After Revolutionary leaders discovered Campbell’s clandestine activities, he fled from Charleston on September 15, 1775. The departure of South Carolina’s last royal governor enabled Revolutionary leaders to claim that George III, like King James II during the Glorious Revolution, had “abdicated the government.”

Of the three ships that left England to found the new colony, only the Carolina had successfully reached what would become South Carolina.

Not a trained artist, Catesby did not figure all of his animal subjects as well as might be desired, but many of his plants are exceptional...The first extensively illustrated work on the natural history of any region of North America, Catesby’s volumes were used by Linnaeus for the inclusion of North American flora and fauna in his system of classification of plants and animals.

Chalmers’s writings did not mark a significant development in medicine, but he was highly regarded in his time by British physicians such as Fothergill, Whytt, and William Cullen of Edinburgh University, one of the most influential teachers of medicine in the late eighteenth century.

Charleston was the first permanent European settlement in Carolina, its first seat of government, and the most important city in the southern United States well into the nineteenth century.

Among the collections of the Charleston Library Society are rare books, pamphlets, a manuscript collection, and the society’s records. The most significant collection is the society’s newspaper files, which contain the world’s largest and most complete collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century Charleston newspapers.

The Cherokee Path was one of the most important trade networks of early Carolina, connecting the city of Charleston with the Cherokee Indians of South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

The conflict that led to war began in Virginia in late 1758, when settlers attacked and killed several Cherokee warriors returning from battles against the French. The Cherokees retaliated in North Carolina in spring 1759, and the conflict spread southward.

With the introduction of rice as a staple crop in the early eighteenth century, Christ Church became a parish of planters and slaves.

According to its provisions, the act allowed dissenters to practice their faiths and participate in politics but they were denied public support for their churches or the right to perform marriages.

The first Church of England, or Anglican, house of worship in South Carolina was built in Charleston about 1681, with the Reverend Atkin Williamson serving as its first priest.

Admitted to the bar in 1783, Colhoun opened a practice in Charleston. On October 8, 1786, Colhoun cemented his ties to the lowcountry elite by marrying Floride Bonneau, heiress to an extensive plantation in St. John’s Berkeley Parish.

On his arrival in South Carolina in November 1686, Colleton strictly enforced the antipiracy policy, apparently with some success. It soon became forgotten, though, as Colleton became embroiled in a furor generated by a pair of devastating Spanish raids on South Carolina in August and December of the same year.

Until his death, Colleton was the foremost leader of the Lords Proprietors. Under Colleton’s direction, the proprietors set out to populate “Carolina” with settlers from existing New World colonies, including New England, Virginia, and the Caribbean islands, especially Barbados.

In 1712 South Carolina’s legislature passed an act appointing its first permanent agent to remove “the pressure which the Trade of this colony now lies under . . . by a fair and impartial representation of the same to the Parliament of Great Britain.” The colonial agent reported regularly to the Commons House on matters of interest to the colony.

Married in 1672 when she was free from indenture, Affra and Coming founded a substantial plantation, Comingtee on the Cooper River; acquired their own servants; and ceded part of their land claim at Oyster Point for the construction of what is now Charleston.

In 1707 the Commons House of Assembly created the Board of Indian Commissioners to regulate the traffic between Indian traders and nations such as the Cherokees, Creeks, and Catawbas.