386 POPULATION. 



Nevertheless, South Carolina was again lowest, except the "States of 

 Vermont and New Hampshire, and the very erroneous opinion was en- 

 tertained in some quarters that, like those States, she had about reached 

 the limit of the population that her soil would sustain. The next de- 

 cade opened with the first secession agitation ; there was a still lower 

 rate of increase, and South Carolina still stood behind all the States ex- 

 cept Vermont and New Hampshire. Then came the sixth decade, of 

 war and reconstruction ; the political and social doctrines at variance 

 with the publfc opinion of all Christendom came to an open rupture, and 

 were submitted to the arbitrament of the sword. The increase of the 

 population was less than one per cent. ; among the whites there was an 

 actual decrease of one-half of one per cent., and South Carolina was 

 behind all the States but Maine. The dust has scarcely lightened from 

 the ruin wrought bv this great overthrow than a new South Carolina 

 appears, more vigorous than ever. The census of 18S0 shows that, from 

 next to last, she has advanced above twenty-nine of her sister States, and 

 stands eighth in the order of increase of the population. For the ninth 

 decade her increase is forty-one per cent. — higher than it ever was — and 

 more than one-third more than that of the country at large. One of the 

 most remarkable features of this increase is, that it is not due, to any 

 very large extent, to immigration, but chiefly to the large degree in 

 which the migration of her natives to other States has ceased. 



The obvious parallelism between the changes of the aggregate popula- 

 tion and those of each of its constituent elements, indicates most clearly 

 that here there has been no distinctive antagonism of the races and con- 

 ditions of men. Slave insurrections and the dread of them have been 

 much dwelt on. In reality, they have amounted to nothing. Only two 

 are recorded in a period of more than two hundred years. In 1740, a mob 

 of drunken negroes, supposed to have been incited thereto by hostile 

 Spaniards, marched a distance of fifteen miles, murdering two clerks in 

 a warehouse and Mr. Godfrey and his family. They were attacked by 

 the congregation of a small country church at Willtown, who at once 

 dispersed them without suffering any loss. In 1821, some negroes (34) 

 were hanged in Charleston on what was held to be evidence of a con- 

 spiracy to excite a slave insurrection. The Hamburg and Ellenton 

 riots, in 1876, resulted in seventeen homicides, with, possibly, an equal 

 number for all the election conflicts during reconstruction ; and were all 

 the casualties resulting from the contests of the whites and negroes in 

 South Carolina during the whole history of the State counted, the num- 

 ber would not ec[ual that of the agrarian outrages reported in a single 

 year in Ireland. For ninety years the increase of the white And colored 

 population of the State has moved on parallel lines, with only two ex- 



