Charleston, which in 1790 had 8089 whites, 7864 slaves and 586 free
negroes, felt as great anxiety as did the rural parishes at rumors of
slave conspiracies, and on the other hand she had a like interest in the
improvement of negro efficiency, morality and good will.

The rice coast community was a small one. Even as measured in its number
of slaves it bulked only one-fourth as large, say in 1790, as the group of
tobacco commonwealths or the single sugar island of Jamaica. Nevertheless
it was a community to be reckoned with. Its people were awake to their
peculiar conditions and problems; it had plenty of talented citizens to
formulate policies; and it had excellent machinery for uniting public
opinion. In colonial times, plying its trade mainly with England and the
West Indies, it was in little touch with its continental neighbors, and it
developed a sense of separateness. As part of a loosely administered
empire its people were content in prosperity and self-government. But in a
consolidated nation of diverse and conflicting interests it would be likely
on occasion to assert its own will and resist unitedly anything savoring of
coercion. In a double sense it was of the _southern_ South.




CHAPTER VI

THE NORTHERN COLONIES


Had any American colony been kept wholly out of touch with both Indians
and negroes, the history of slavery therein would quite surely have been
a blank. But this was the case nowhere. A certain number of Indians were