FREE ESSAY ON RICE

RICE

"…Finally, because South Carolina, from her climate, situation, and peculiar
institutions, is, and must ever continue to be, wholly dependent on agriculture and
commerce, not only for prosperity , but for her existence as a state…" (Boller,
pg.110)
-John C Calhoun: South Carolina explosion and Protest (1828)
While the north was undergoing an "industrial revolution," the south remained
agriculturally based. Rice, which was the first grown in South Carolina in the early
1960's, was a very promising harvest. Between 1820and 1850, the production of rice nearly
tripled, making it a leading colonial crop along the seacoast of South Carolina and
Georgia. Rice had definitely proved to be a "magic crop" of the South. (Boyer, pg.96)
The Carolinas was originally granted in the 1663 by King Charles II of England to a few
of his British supporters. The proprietors named the land Carolina in the honor of King
Charles. Charles in Latin is Carolus. (Olmsted, pg.312) The colony grow hastily at first.
In 1669, however, Anthony Ashley Cooper, one of the proprietors, speeded up settlements
by offering immigration land grants. For each new family member, indentured servant, or
slave brought in, fifty acres of land were given to the family head. The wealth
immigrants, or those with large families, received a large piece of land, which were used
as plantations. The Carolinas was shaped to be agrarian-based bound. (Faulkner, pg. 217)
Until the 1680's, most of the settlers in the Carolinas were farmers. It soon became
obvious that Carolina was not created "so that he settlers could eke out a marginal
existence." Like the Virginians before them, the Carolinas sought their own staple crop
that can make them rich, rice. The plantation owners of North Carolina, like those of
Virginia, raised chiefly tobacco and corn on small farms. Those in South Carolina planted
rice and indigo on a large scale. Rice was probably brought from West Africa. Because the
grain made a few men rich with capitol to invest in costly dams, dikes, and slaves, the
Carolinians began to resemble that of the West Indies. Rice planters earned annual
profits of 25%, causing them, within a generation, to become the only Colonial elite
whose wealth revealed that of the Caribbean sugar planters. (Fite, pg.78)
As early as the early 1700's rice proved to be an extremely profitable harvest. By the
time of the revolution Charleston was exporting annually about 125,000 barrels. Although
the profits of rice tripled between 1820 and 1850, there were also many costs in rice
production. The work of leveling land and building levees and ditches for irrigation was
costly. A rice planter in the 1830's and 1840's needed between $50,000and $100,000 to get
into large-scale production of rice. (Faulkner, pg189)
Rice plantations were exceedingly large enterprises. One plantation owner, Governor
William Aiken of South Carolina, had an estate that contained 1500 acres of rice land,
500 acres of upland, 700 slaves, and livestock and equipment worth $380,000, which was
considered a typical rice plantation. Among the huge plantations were small shops of
cheap clothing and trinket stores such as those of Jews that settled in the Southern
cities. (Boyer, 92)
Rice thriving only within a 40-mile-wide coastal strip extending from Cape Fear, which is
now known as North Carolina, to present day Georgia. The marshy and hot lowlands quickly
became infested with malaria. Carolina grimily joked that " the rice belt was a paradise
in spring, an inferno in the summer, and a hospital in the wet, chilly fall." Planters'
families usually escaped, in the worst of months, to the more healthier and cooler
climate of Charleston, while the overseer supervised the harvest. (Olmsted, pg.315) 
The Carolina rice profits had come to someone else's expense. English undeterred servants
could not survive the humid rice paddies swarming with malaria-bearing mosquitoes. The
planter's solution was to import African slaves. There were two advantages in importing
slaves. Th first, approximately 15% of the imported slaves cultivated rice in their
homeland, and their enterprise was vital in teaching whites how to raise the unfamiliar
crop. Second, most Africans had partial immunity to the malaria that killed many in the
region. A tremendous demand for slaves therefore developed. For a typical rice planter,
farming 130 acres of land required 65 slaves. (Boyer, pg. 94) 
Malaria on plantations caused the number of indentured servants to decrease. Plantation
owners had tom settle for slaves; Negroes, who, although expensive to purchase, worked
for their masters for life. Furthermore, the offspring of the slave would be in servitude
of the master as well. The proportions of slaves in southern Carolina's population
spurted from17% in 1620 to 67% as nearly as 1720. The slave population outnumbered that
of the white farmers, plantation owners, and their families. Life for a slave on a rice
plantation was probably worse than any other. The swampy land made all slaves susceptible
to malaria and other diseases; as Fredric lmsted described in The Cotton Kingdom:
"…in the upper part of this pine land is a house, occupied by his overseer during
the malaria season, when it is dangerous for any but Negroes to remain during the night
in the vicinity of the swamps and the rice fields. Even those who have been born in the
region, and have grown up subject to malaria, are said to be generally weak and
short-lived." (Olmsted, pg.182-3)
The slave issue turned out to be an extremely important one in the shaping of the
ante-bellum South. While the North was fighting slavery, the South was advocating it.
Under President Jackson, the North and West aligned to tax the South by forming the
tariff of Abomination. In December of 1838, the South Carolina legislature called the new
tariff unconstitutional. At first, the south tried to align with the wet. When their plan
failed, South Carolina, led by Vice President John C. Calhoun, threatened to nullify laws
and tariffs which were unfavorable to them. The new tariff, Calhoun believed, would
impoverish the south. After warning Jackson the relief should be provided or the union
"would be shaken to its foundation," Calhoun returned to his South Carolina plantation
where he wrote his essay "South Carolina Exposition and Protest." After several threats
were made by Jackson, including one in which he threatened to hang all the nullifiers,
the issue was quelled, but the Southerners carried a hatred which would eventually bring
about the civil war. (Faulkner, pg.205) 
Economically, the "golden period" in rice production in the South was between 1820 and
1850. In 1839, over eighteen million pounds of rice, most of which was sold in Europe,
the West Indies, the North were produced in South Carolina and Georgia. A decade later
the production of rice increased to 215,313,497 pounds produced. A decline in rice
production occurred in 1850. The decline was most probably caused by the rise of cotton
prices that drew labor or capital out of rice production, or possibly planters hesitated
to risk the lives of expensive slaves in the unhealthy rice swamps. But, whatever the
reason rice growers never occurred in the Southeast and after the Civil war it moved
Westward into Louisiana Arkansas, and Texas. States from 1690, and the production of
rice, as well of the American nation. The South was a threat to the Union. The
incompatibility of the North and South caused the two to completely separate; whether
issues concerning industrialization, slavery, or just the Unity of the nation.
Bibliography
Books:
- Boyer, Paul S.