From Colonial Frontier to a Slave Society: "Second Slavery" and the Former Backcountry of South Carolina in the Early Republic, 1780-1833

Although the South Carolina backcountry was labeled pre-modern by contemporaries and, later, by some historians, it was the model of a modern, “second slavery” in the Atlantic World as evidenced by cultural, economic, and political changes there to accommodate and promote the expansion of slavery. The former backcountry was exemplarily of “second slavery” because the region modernized to create a slave society, instead of modifying the existing colonial system of mass enslavement in the region. Enslaved people responded to these changes in the former backcountry by spreading their oral traditions in healing and religion, maintaining African traditions, and creating communities across multiple plantations in their locality. Politicians in the former backcountry sought stricter slave regimes sooner than their lowcountry counterparts and desired state intervention as the relationship between the state and slavery was inextricable. The ways in which whites in the region interacted with the institution of slavery shaped their political goals, their connections to one another, and their perspectives of the larger Atlantic World. By employing “second slavery” in the region, the explicit tie between nationhood and the rise of slavery there allows for more robust discussion of how the region transformed from a colonial frontier to a slave society.