Excerpt from Edward King's The Great South, 1875
Document Description:
In 1873 and 1874, Edward King, along with illustrator J Wells Champney, traveled through the southern states to study the lives the people since the fall of the Confederacy and the advent of Reconstruction. He notes in his preface that he “traveled more than twenty-five thousand miles; visited nearly every city and town of importance in the South; talked with men of all classes, parties and colors; carefully investigated manufacturing enterprises and sites; studied the course of politics in each State since the advent of reconstruction; explored rivers, and penetrated into mountain regions heretofore rarely visited by Northern men.” He also noted that the people of the South had been very kind and accommodating. These two chapters, excerpted from a much longer book, detail some of their travels through the state of South Carolina. The work offers an outside perspective on the social, political, and economical climates of the south following the Civil War.
Citation:
King, Edward. The Great South. New York: Arno Press, 1875. Published Materials Division, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, Page 454-465.
Correlating SC Social Studies Academic Standards:
Standard 3-5: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the major developments in South Carolina in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century.
Indicator 3-5.1 Summarize developments in industry and technology in South Carolina in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century, including the rise of the textile industry, the expansion of the railroad, and the growth of the towns.
Indicator 3-5.2 Summarize the effects of the state and local laws that are commonly known as Jim Crow laws on African Americans in particular and on South Carolinians as a whole.
Standard 5-1: The student will demonstrate an understanding of Reconstruction and its impact on racial relations in the United States
Indicator 5-1.4 Compare the economic and social effects of Reconstruction on different populations, including the move from farms to factories and the change from the plantation system to sharecropping.
Indicator 5-1.5 Explain the purpose and motivations behind the rise of discriminatory laws and groups and their effect on the rights and opportunities of African Americans in different regions of the United States.
Standard 8-5: The student will demonstrate an understanding of major social, political, and economic developments that took place in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century.
Indicator 8-5.1 Summarize the political, economic, and social conditions in South Carolina following the end of Reconstruction, including the leadership of Wade Hampton and the so-called Bourbons or Redeemers, agricultural depression and struggling industrial development, the impact of the temperance and suffrage movements, the development of the 1895 constitution, and the evolution of race relations and Jim Crow laws.