TRANSPORTATION IN SOUTH CAROLINA. " G19 



whites, whereas in the upper country at first, there were no slaves, and 

 their numbers remained small until after the heaviest work on the roads 

 must have been already finished, so that there both road duty and mili- 

 tary duty fell on the same individuals. 



In the second place, in the low country each person could see the im- 

 portance to his individual safety and convenience of every road on which 

 he had to work, either in person or with his slaves, and these roads were 

 used exclusively by those who made and kept them up ; but in the up- 

 per country the highways were intended principally to. promote a traffic 

 between distant points, which brought with it no advantages to the great 

 majority of those wdiose time and labor were consumed in constructing 

 and mending them, while this demand upon their time and labor prevent- 

 ed, retarded, or at least rendered more onerous, the making of such short- 

 er roads as were needed and, would have suffi.ced for the convenience of 

 each neighborhood. After the highways were built and the cultivation 

 of indigo, tobacco and cotton spread throughout the upper country, the 

 benefit of having good roads to Charleston became apparent, and their 

 existence was found to be essential to the material prosperity of the country.. 



During the Revolution the people of South Carolina seemed to realize,, 

 for the first time, that they were all bound together by common interests, 

 and had all a common destiny. Both AVhigs and Tories recognized the 

 unity of the State and acted upon it, and when the struggle was over, the 

 patriotic enthusiasm it had excited manifested itself in efforts to render, 

 intercourse between all parts of the State easy and agreeable. 



Roads, bridges, ferries and water courses were improved, new routes- 

 were established, and there was evidently a desire to improve, too, the 

 methods previously relied upon for making and mending the roads. 



The legislation of this period contains the following Acts of interest or. 

 importance. 



1778. To render navigable the Wateree river, by an assessment upon.the 

 inhabitants, and upon owners of uninhabited lands, within a cer- 

 tain distance on both sides the river. 



This Act seems to have been an effort to break away from the. 

 principle by which for more more than a century all work of that 

 sort in the State had been exacted of the people in kind, but it still, 

 clung to the idea that the locality, and not the whole State, should, 

 pay for such public works. Unfortunately this timid endeavor 

 after a better method seems to have been abortive, and having been 

 tried again and again, during the next decade, was abandoned. 



1784. The road duty age was changed from, between sixteen, and sixty 

 to between sixteen and fifty. 



