South Carolina

The first inhabitants arrived about 11,000–12,000 years ago and lived by hunting and gathering for roughly ten millennia, developing agriculture about 1000 BCE; Mississippian cultures, with villages and earthen mounds, arrived about 1100 CE and disappeared soon after contact with Europeans in the 16th century.⁠[1]

In 1600 about 15,000–20,000 Native people lived in the area, speaking languages of three groupings: Siouan (including the Catawba), Iroquoian (the Cherokee) and Muskogean (peoples related to the Creek); the largest tribes were the Cherokee and the Catawba. By the American Revolution, disease, conflict and European expansion had nearly eliminated the Indigenous population.⁠[1][2]

In 1521 Spanish explorers from Santo Domingo (Hispaniola) became the first Europeans to visit; in 1526 Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón founded what is believed to be the first European settlement, which failed within a few months. In 1562 French Protestants under Jean Ribaut unsuccessfully tried to occupy Port Royal on the Sea Islands, and in 1566 the Spanish established Santa Elena on Parris Island, an important base until 1587.⁠[1]

In 1665 Charles II granted a charter to eight lords proprietors to establish Carolina, extending between 29° and 36°30′ N latitude from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In 1670 the English made their first permanent settlement at Albemarle Point on the Ashley River; about a decade later the government and most inhabitants moved to the peninsula between the Ashley and Cooper rivers, the site of present-day Charleston.⁠[1][2]

The colony’s income came from the deerskin trade and, after 1710, from naval stores such as turpentine and tar; indigo was first planted in 1671, and the first free library was established in Charleston in 1698. By 1720 enslaved Africans formed the majority of the colony’s population, which numbered about 19,000 that year and was settled almost entirely along the coast.⁠[1][2][3]

Conflicts with the proprietors led to the overthrow of proprietary rule in 1719, and the colony came under the crown. Under royal rule, exports of rice and indigo built wealth and Charleston entered a golden age: the first mutual fire insurance company was established there in 1735, and the Dock Street Theatre, the first building used solely as a theatre, was constructed in 1736. In 1739 a slave insurrection took place in the Stono area near Charleston.⁠[1][2]

After 1760 Scotch-Irish settlers arriving overland from PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaPennsylvania (officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States; its capital is Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are its two great metropolitan areas. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, the second state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 13,002,700.Open the full entry caused a population boom inland, and a conflict between Low Country planters and Up Country farmers continued into the 19th century. The first cotton was exported to England in 1764, and the first business publication, the South Carolina Price Current, appeared in Charleston in 1774.⁠[1][2]

In 1775 a British flag was replaced by an American flag in Charleston for the first time. On March 26, 1776, the Provincial Congress set up an independent government, the first among the American colonies. On June 28, 1776, William Moultrie defended the palmetto-log fort on Sullivan’s Island against the British fleet.⁠[2][4]

More Revolutionary War battles and skirmishes were fought in South Carolina than in any other state, with major engagements at Sullivan’s Island, Camden, Kings Mountain and Cowpens. British troops occupied Charleston; in South Carolina the war was largely a civil war between patriots and loyalists, and the major American victories came at Kings Mountain (1780) and Cowpens (1781).⁠[2][1]

In 1786 the capital moved from Charleston to the newly created inland city of Columbia, a move intended to reduce conflict between the regions. In January 1788 the General Assembly chose Charleston as the site of the ratifying convention by a vote of 76 to 75, and in the convention’s final vote the Federalists won, 149 to 73. The first cotton mill was built on James Island in 1789. The state constitution of 1790 preserved Low Country dominance in government. The State Archives holds the constitutions of 1776, 1778 and 1790.⁠[5][6][2][7]

After the cotton gin spread at the end of the 18th century, cotton plantations and slavery moved into the Piedmont, giving the Low Country and the Up Country shared economic interests. Tea was first planted at Middleton Barony in 1802, and in 1830 the “Best Friend of Charleston” became the first steam locomotive built in the United States for regular railroad service. In the 1820s John C. Calhoun developed the theory of nullification.⁠[5][2][3]

After 1814 a handful of mainly northern-born manufacturers moved into the state and set up small upcountry spinning mills, and in 1849 the Graniteville Manufacturing Company, developed by William Gregg, began operations as the state’s most important antebellum cotton mill.⁠[8]

On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union, the first Southern state to do so; the State Archives holds the Ordinance of Secession of 1860 and its drafts, along with the Constitution of 1861 produced by the convention of 1860–1862.⁠[3][7]

On April 12, 1861, Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, beginning the Civil War. The bombardment opened at 4:30 a.m., when a gunner at Fort Johnson fired a ten-inch mortar; General P.G.T. Beauregard directed the Confederate attack, and Major Robert Anderson commanded the U.S. Army garrison. After defending the fort for 34 hours, the garrison marched out on the afternoon of April 14 and left Charleston Harbor on April 15; an accidental explosion during the salute before the evacuation killed Private Daniel Hough and wounded five others.⁠[3][9]

In early 1865 General William T. Sherman marched through South Carolina, burning plantations and most of Columbia, and the Confederacy was finally defeated that year. President Johnson’s plan left the antebellum elite in control and did not include Black suffrage; South Carolina’s Black Code, enacted in December 1865, restricted work and travel for African Americans only and was invalidated by the military governor as a means of “reestablishing slavery in everything but name.”⁠[3][10]

In 1867 Congress required the registration of all adult male voters in the South and elections for constitutional conventions, and South Carolina’s freedmen registered to vote. Of the 124 delegates to the 1868 constitutional convention, 73 were Black or of mixed ancestry. In April 1868 voters approved the new constitution in the first referendum on a state constitution in which men of all races could vote; it gave the vote to every male aged 21 or older regardless of education or property, required public education open to children of all races, abolished imprisonment for debt and legalized divorce. After the newly elected legislators ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, South Carolina was officially readmitted to the Union.⁠[10][11]

African Americans made up about 60 percent of the voting population. The South Carolina Land Commission was created in 1869, while the period also saw the bond fraud of 1870–1871 and growing state debt. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan whipped or beat hundreds of victims and murdered scores, and legislators Solomon Dill, Benjamin Franklin Randolph and James Martin were assassinated in 1868; Congress passed the Ku-Klux Act in 1871, and nine upcountry counties were placed under martial law. The 1876 governor’s race was marked by violence and fraud, and both Wade Hampton III and Daniel H. Chamberlain claimed the office; Chamberlain resigned in April 1877, ending Reconstruction in South Carolina, and federal troops withdrew.⁠[10][3]

After 1880 the textile industry grew rapidly; by 1900 South Carolina was second only to MassachusettsMassachusettsMassachusetts (officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital and largest city is Boston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on February 6, 1788, the sixth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 7,029,917.Open the full entry as a cotton-textile-producing state, and by 1930 it ranked second behind North Carolina. In the 1900 U.S. Census, 30 percent of the state’s mill hands were between the ages of ten and sixteen. By the 1920s mill village life had become central to about one-sixth of white South Carolinians, with companies controlling not only housing but often retailing, schooling, religion and recreation.⁠[8]

By the early 1920s the value of manufactured goods had exceeded that of agricultural products.⁠[12]

Ben Tillman, elected governor in 1890 and re-elected in 1892, had called for a new constitution since 1885. A referendum in 1894 approved a convention by 31,402 votes to 29,523; the 1895 convention included 112 Tillmanites, 42 Conservatives and 6 Republicans—five African Americans from Beaufort and one delegate from Georgetown—and the five Beaufort delegates refused to sign the document. The Constitution of 1895 effectively took the vote away from African Americans; it remains South Carolina’s constitution, though later amendments have totally altered many of its provisions.⁠[13][7]

A period of intense, if sporadic, labor conflict in the textile industry began in 1929 and peaked with the General Textile Strike of 1934, at that point the largest strike in American labor history.⁠[8]

African American parents in Clarendon County began with a simple request for a school bus, which was ignored; Rev. Joseph A. DeLaine fostered a meeting between the NAACP and the brothers Levi and Hammett Pearson. On November 11, 1949, an NAACP petition to begin a new court case arrived in the community; Harry Briggs signed first, and 107 parents and children signed in all. When the case was re-filed on December 22, 1950, the petition was limited to 20 people, 17 of the adults signing a second time. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court found that Black schools in South Carolina were inferior to white schools but denied the request to abolish segregation. The NAACP appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court; the case was the first of five lawsuits later consolidated into BrownBrown UniversityBrown University is a private nonprofit research university in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Ivy League. Chartered by Rhode Island's colonial legislature in 1764, it is known for its undergraduate Open Curriculum, which has no common required core. Christina H. Paxson, president since July 2012, announced on August 3, 2026, that the 2026–27 academic year would be her last in office. As of October 1, 2026, the search for Brown's 20th president remained underway.Open the full entry v. Board of Education, and the Court announced it would hear Briggs and Brown in its 1952 term.⁠[14]

From 1950 to 1980 nonagricultural employment grew exponentially, and per capita income, long far behind the rest of the country, approached the national average by the 1980s; the urban population grew many times faster than the rural population. After 1975 migration reversed, and more people, both Black and white, moved into the state than left it. In the mid-1970s Michelin built two plants in the state and later located its American headquarters in Greenville.⁠[15][16]

The most serious incident of the period occurred in 1968 at Orangeburg, where state police confronted students of South Carolina State College who had been trying to integrate a bowling alley and opened fire, leaving three African American students dead. Two years later three African Americans were elected to the state legislature.⁠[3][15]

On September 21, 1989, Hurricane Hugo struck the South Carolina coast, causing great damage to homes, businesses and natural areas.⁠[3]

In 1994 BMW opened its first complete automobile manufacturing plant outside Germany in Greer. By the turn of the 21st century, manufacturing accounted for just over 20 percent of South Carolina’s gross state product.⁠[16]

From the 1970s producers in developing countries increasingly undercut South Carolina’s textile makers on cost; after 1997 the decline accelerated, and by 2001 the industry was approaching collapse, ending the textile era of South Carolina history.⁠[8]

In the apportionment following the 2020 census, South Carolina kept its seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, with an average of 732,102 people per seat. South Carolina has nine electoral votes in the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections.⁠[17][18]

South Carolina’s population grew by 79,958 between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025; the increase of 1.5% was the highest of any state, and the numeric gain ranked fifth.⁠[19]

The legislature is the General Assembly: the Senate has 46 members elected from single-member districts of about 87,200 citizens for four-year terms, and the House of Representatives has 124 part-time members elected every two years. Voters elect nine constitutional officers: the Adjutant General, Attorney General, Commissioner of Agriculture, Comptroller General, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, State Treasurer and Superintendent of Education. The Judicial Department comprises trial courts, appeals courts and the Supreme Court. The state has 46 counties.⁠[20][21][2]

The South Carolina Supreme Court is the state’s highest court; its five members, a chief justice and four associate justices, are elected by the General Assembly to ten-year terms.⁠[22]

As of November 2026 the governor is Henry McMaster, who served as lieutenant governor from November 4, 2014, to January 24, 2017, and assumed the office of governor on January 24, 2017; his current term runs to January 2027. He was earlier appointed U.S. attorney by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and was elected attorney general of South Carolina in 2002 and reelected in 2006.⁠[23][24]

South Carolina is in the Eastern Time Zone. By U.S. Census Bureau measurements based on state boundaries as of January 1, 2010, it has a total area of 32,020 square miles (82,933 km²), of which 30,061 square miles (77,857 km²) is land and 1,960 square miles (5,076 km²) is water. The highest point is Sassafras Mountain in Pickens County, at 3,560 feet (about 1,085 m); the lowest point is sea level on the Atlantic Ocean.⁠[2][25][26]

U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 estimates put South Carolina’s population at 5,570,274 on July 1, 2025, up 8.8% from the April 1, 2020, estimates base of 5,118,250; population density in 2020 was 170.3 people per square mile. In 2020–2024, 5.8% of residents were foreign-born, and 32.1% of those aged 25 and over held a bachelor’s degree or higher.⁠[27]

Bureau of Economic Analysis data put South Carolina’s nominal GDP at $378.83 billion ($378,830.6 million) in 2025 and $357.07 billion ($357,074.4 million) in 2024. Median household income for 2020–2024 was $69,324 (in 2024 dollars), and the state had 122,958 employer establishments in 2023.⁠[28][27]

South Carolina’s nickname is the “Palmetto State”; it was once called the “Iodine State.” Its mottoes are “Animis Opibusque Parati” (“Prepared in Mind and Resources”) and “Dum Spiro Spero” (“While I Breathe I Hope”).⁠[29][4]

On April 2, 1776, the General Assembly authorized the President and Privy Council to design a seal; William Henry Drayton and Arthur Middleton were its principal designers, and President Rutledge first used it on May 22, 1777. The seal has two ovals linked by palmetto branches, one showing a palmetto with a fallen oak and the other the goddess Spes (Hope) on a beach at dawn above discarded weapons.⁠[4]

The state flag derives from the flag Colonel William Moultrie designed in 1775 for South Carolina’s Revolutionary troops, with blue matching their uniforms and a crescent copying the silver emblem on their caps; on January 28, 1861, the General Assembly adopted the current version, which adds a palmetto tree honoring Moultrie’s defense of the palmetto-log fort.⁠[4][29]

The state song “Carolina” was adopted in 1911; the state flower is the yellow jessamine (1924), the state tree the palmetto (1939) and the state bird the Carolina wren (1948); the white-tailed deer (state animal) and striped bass (state fish) were adopted in 1972; milk (beverage), the shag (dance), the peach (fruit) and a second state song, “South Carolina on My Mind,” in 1984; the Boykin spaniel became the state dog in 1985; and Porgy and Bess was named the state opera in 2001.⁠[30]

State of South Carolina: Official website: https://sc.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[20]

S.C. Governor Henry McMaster: Official website: https://www.governor.sc.gov/governors-biography (opens in a new window).⁠[24]

South Carolina Department of Archives and History: Official website: https://scdah.sc.gov/node/25 (opens in a new window).⁠[2]