WI: No Barbadian settlers in South Carolina?

MAlexMatt

Banned
It's often not widely understood, but there are significant rifts in American culture, much more detailed and granular than 'North', 'South', and 'West'. Those who understand that the South, for instance, is split up at least into the Upper South and Lower South, don't tend to get why this split exists. There are some agricultural reasons brought up from time to time (which crops grew in which areas, that is), there are ideas about climate, there are a million different possibilities that have been brought up.

But I've been reading about one root recently that's cultural that I haven't seen much before: The difference between the Upper South and the Lower South is the difference between how Virginia was settled and how South Carolina was settled. IOTL, Virginia was settled directly from England (and Scotland/Ireland as you get into Appalachia), by a mix of lower class Britons and the second and third sons of nobility. Social stratification was there immediately, but slavery itself wasn't. Tidewater Virginia was, essentially, an idealized vision of 'Merry England', with the stereotypical country gentlemen, operating under a cultural paradigm of noblesse oblige, benevolently overseeing a more or less static social structure of poorer freemen, themselves operating under a cultural paradigm of deference for their 'betters'.

It didn't always play out like that on the ground, but it was the cultural DNA early Virginians brought with them when the Chesapeake was first settled.

South Carolina was different. The earliest settlers didn't come straight from Europe, but were rather sourced from existing American colonies in the Caribbean. Initially this was the island of Barbados. They brought an already-existing slaveholding, cash crop planting culture with them. And this culture was brutal -- a constant stream of slaves was necessary to keep the island plantations adequately staffed because there was such a high attrition rate on sugar plantations. The Barbadian settlers of South Carolina didn't see themselves as Medieval England reborn, they saw themselves as ancient Greece reborn.

This difference ended up being vital in the longer run. Virginian politics had no trouble occasionally turning to abolition, and it was the hearth of Virginia in which early American republicanism was born. There's a reason Thomas Jefferson was from Virginia and not South Carolina. South Carolina was the home, on the other hand, of pro-slavery fireeaters for the entirety of the antebellum period. I can't think of a single Carolinan Founder who freed his slaves in his will, like a whole list of Virginians did.

Virginian culture had spread into parts of Maryland, Delaware, and North Carolina, eventually forming what we think of as the 'Upper South'. Similarly, Barbadian South Carolinan culture spread into the southern part of North Carolina, into Georgia, and across the old Yazoo Purchase into Louisiana and Arkansas.

This would have an immense effect on politics, as mentioned. The 'Lower South' states were the first states to secede after Lincoln's election, and this secession was almost unanimous. Meanwhile, the Upper South states were more reluctant, and didn't secede until it became clear that the Lincoln administration was preparing to use coercion to keep the Lower South in the Union.

But what if you rewound this and one half of the equation disappears? What if the early Caribbean sourced settlement of South Carolina (and the rest of the lower South) never occurs? Think of any PoD or set of PoDs you want: Sunk ships, disease, pre-emption, anything.

How would this change things?

One thing that comes to mind immediately is that Georgia is likely to end up resembling Australia, of all places. Georgia was first settled as a utopian colony where convicts (mostly debtors) were given land and encouraged to rebuild their lives in what was, by contemporary standards, a morally upright way. Combined with an emphasis on settling persecuted protestants from continental Europe, Georgia was a strange mix between Pennsylvania and Australia. IOTL this early settlement was overwhelmed by the spreading plantation culture of South Carolina. ITTL, it would probably survive.

Another would be in South Carolina itself. The earliest settlers came from all over, with the Barbadians being the ones to bring slavery to the colony. Before their arrival, the economy was based in fur trading. The Lord Proprietors would still exist in most scenarios, I think, so the aristocratic character of the area would continue. I could see a South Carolina that more closely resembles Virginia.

What do you guys think? Whence from here?
 
Now might be a worthy time to point out South Carolina kept trying to revive the slave trade well into the civil war and the supermajority of its resident population were slaves at the time of its secession.

I agree the south as a whole would be more Virginia-like, which will improve things greatly. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how slavery can be avoided in a South Carolina without Barbadian settlers: the land allowed for a plantation economy, Virginia already had it and it would likely spread further south, and so forth. And of course, the character would still have a cavalier character.

That said, perhaps the south as a whole, or at least upper south, might be more willing to consider gradually freeing slaves in response to northern pressure or to have them be brought out? I suspect Georgia would still be overwhelmed, but it would be interesting to see it perhaps openly flirt with abolitionism if the conditions are right.

Some obvious benefits: it's probably much less likely that slavery will spread to the territories and that it will poison politics in a binary fashion like it did in the OTL antebellum years of the republic. Slavery may well wither out on its own then. (It's worth noting OTL Jefferson prevented slavery in the old Northwest and tried to do the same for the other territories, to no avail.)
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
I agree keeping slavery out entirely isn't possible, I'm just fascinated by keeping the Caribbean slave-holding culture out of the continent. A Deep South where slave-holding evolves out of a landholder-tenant culture like in Virginia would be significantly different from the OTL Deep South.

However, I do find the possibility of a Georgia that is culturally hostile to slavery, even if not slave free, incredibly interesting.
 
I would be very interesting but remember that Barbados wasn't the only English Caribbean colony, replacing the Barbadian settlers with Jamaicans wouldn't be much of a change.
 
How late would the Caribbean slaver-culture have to arrive for Georgia to be culturally strong enough to "contain" it?

If it stays in South Carolina, that means it doesn't get to the "Black Belt" of Alabama and Mississippi and grow strong there.
 
James Oglethorpe originally founded Georgia as a free colony and in fact banned slavery (along with Catholics and alcohol). The ban didn't last because colonists could go to South Carolina and "rent" slaves to work on their farms. If SC settlement has less or no emphasis on slavery, it raises the possibility of Georgia remaining a free state, or at least having a more Virginia-like attitude toward it.
 
if memory serves then rice was the first cash crop of SC. if you can make it that rice pudding doesn't catch on it's position will stay as a buffer to Spanish America until cotton starts being big.

another option is to have a famine hit the British. people will leave if there if they have nothing left. so SC is populated closer to VA or even PENN.
 
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