In South Carolina, to escape heat and sickness, the planters of rice and indigo gave over to employees the care of their great holdings and lived themselves in pleasant Charleston.

These plantations, with their great gangs of slaves under overseers, differed at many points from the more kindly, semi-patriarchal life of the Virginian plantation.

To South Carolina came also the indentured white laborer, but the black was imported in increasing numbers.
From the first in the Carolinas there had been promised fair freedom for the unorthodox.

The charters provided, says an early Governor, "an overplus power to grant liberty of conscience, although at home was a hot persecuting time." Huguenots, Independents, Quakers, dissenters of many kinds, found on the whole refuge and harbor.

In every colony soon began the struggle by the dominant color and caste toward political liberty.