The cultivation of rice in the ante-bellum South, and in South Carolina in particular, shaped economy and culture. From humble beginnings in the eighteenth century, rice cultivation flourished in the geography and climate of South Carolina and provided the "rice barons" of the South with a luxurious lifestyle, an existence predicated on the use of slave labor. So voracious was the need for slave labor that a majority of African-Americans in this country today can trace their ancestry to the port of Charleston and the entry way of Sullivan's Island.


Carolina Gold, a type of rice highly prized for its golden yellow husk and very white grain when processed, was the mainstay of the economy. Shipments of Carolina Gold to English ports provided a relatively inexpensive food for the poor of northern Europe. Carolina Gold was an apt name for this grain which provided a lucrative trade for plantation owners.


There are no real records recording the origins of rice cultivation in this area, although legends abound. One story relates that a ship from Madagascar came into Charleston with a bushel of rice in the hold and that the captain presented it to one of the settlers who successfully farmed the new crop. The Carolina Gold strain is closely related to a rice crop in Madagascar. Other stories connect African slaves to early rice cultivation, claiming that enslaved people brought rice with them. Regardless of origins, by 1708 rice had become South Carolina's largest export (Ball 102).


Rice cultivation required large amounts of human labor. Because rice required tremendous amounts of water and a swampy growing medium, animals were too heavy to be used. As Edward Ball states in his book, Slaves in the Family, "In New England, a modest sized field might be prepared by four horses and two drivers with plows. On Comingtee, with handwork, the same field took twenty people"(103). Rice kernels were planted and covered individually with cultivators using their toes for the former and their heels for the latter. Alternatively, rice could be coated with mud to produce a heavier kernel which would not float away when the fields were flooded. Germination required a flooding called the "sprout flow", protection of growing plants from weeds and animals required a flooding called the "stretch flow", and the "harvest flow" kept the stalks upright for collection. The growing of rice was only part of the process. Processing also required manual labor with slaves harvesting the crops by hand with a sickle, drying the grain on the stalks and then separating the stalk and heads, pounding the rice to remove the husks, and fanning the rice to remove the perishable bran. Rice in the husks could be sold as rough rice and rice damaged in the pounding could be used as "Negro rice", food for the workers.


As demand for rice increased, planters augmented the natural swampy areas with tidal fields along the Cooper and Ashley Rivers. Ball recognizes the contributions of slaves in cultivation when he states, "It may have been this method, tidal rice farming, was brought to Americans by West Africans, who showed the technique to Carolina landlords. A drawing made by an English traveler in Sierra Leone in the year 1794 shows rectangular rice fields surrounded by banks, with a portal for water to pour in and out. Tidal agriculture would not have been taught to Africans by whites, because the traffic of culture between Africa and America moved in a single direction. Before tidewater farming, each field had to be weeded by hand with a hoe. By watering the plots and trapping the flood, workers now suffocated some of the weeds in a bath known as the 'long water', while the rice plants standing above the flow survived. Tidal farming saved weeks of stooped-over hoeing during the season, and few workers were needed to cope with more land." (249). Still, workers were needed to clear land, build dikes, dig the runnels for this new system and for harvesting, transporting the harvest, and processing the rice.


Both Ball and Middleton Place, a former rice plantation, which exists today as an interpretive center and foundation, recognize the contributions that skilled slaves brought to rice cultivation. Middleton Place does admit that "records reflect that planters were reluctant to give credit to slaves for skills acquired in Africa", however. (www.middletonplace.org African-AmericanHistory 2). This idea was new when Peter Wood voiced it in his book Black Majority, published originally in 1974. He begins Chapter II, "Black Labor-White Rice", with, "No development had greater impact upon the course of South Carolina history than the successful introduction of rice."(34) He continues with, "Scholars have traditionally implied that African laborers were generally 'unskilled' and that this characteristic was particularly appropriate to the tedious work of rice cultivation. It may well be that something closer to the reverse was true early in South Carolina's development...it is worthwhile to suggest here that with respect to rice cultivation, particular knowhow, rather than lack of it, was one factor which made black labor attractive English colonists."(56). Finally, he states, "It is important to consider the fact that literally hundreds of black immigrants were more familiar with planting, hoeing, processing, and cooking of rice than were the European settlers who purchased them. Those slaves who were accustomed to growing rice on one side of the Atlantic, and who eventually found themselves raising the same crop on the other side did not markedly alter their annual routine. When New World slaves planted rice in the spring by pressing a hole with heel and covering the seeds with the foot, the motion used was demonstrably similar to that employed in West Africa. In summer when Carolina blacks moved through the rice fields in a row, hoeing in unison to work songs, the pattern of cultivation was not one imposed by European owners but one retained from West Arican forebears. And in October when the threshed grain was 'fanned' in the wind, the wide, flat winnowing baskets were made by black hands after an African design"(61). The ability of Africans to withstand the diseases of the Carolina low country because of their immune systems was an added bonus.


Perhaps in recognition of the abilities of their slaves or perhaps in an effort to encourage productivity, South Carolina rice barons employed a task system rather than a gang system, assigning slaves certain tasks to fulfill and allowing them time to pursue their own activities once the assigned tasks were completed. A slave, depending upon his or her age and ability, would be assigned a full task, half task, or quarter task. According to Middleton Place, "tasks were standardized for each project- hoeing the fields (usually 1/4 to1/2 acre per day) was a full task as was beating rice (as many as 7 mortars full, or 21 pecks in 1755). However, even a full task was designed to occupy the laborer for just a portion of the day, typically 8-10 hours work." (www.middletonplace.org African American History 1). The interpreter at Drayton Hall Plantation, another rice plantation, estimated that rice slaves would work approximately 10-12 hours per day.


Plantation had, in addition to the plantation house, a "slave street" lined with small houses. Historians, using archaeological evidence, photographs, memory, and structural remains, hypothesize that the early open structures suitable for the African climate were later replaced by rough hewn wooden houses with, in some cases, whitewashed interiors. Eliza's house at Middleton Place was a two-family two-room structure.


Gullah, a new culture combining African roots and Southern conditions, developed in coastal areas of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. Gullah produced its own language (a creole mixture of English and West African), its own cuisine, and its own religion. One of the first African American regiments, the 33rd USCT (or U.S. Colored Troops) also known as the First Carolina Africa drew most of its members from the Sea Islands inhabitants with Gullah background. This culture provides a rich topic for study.


Edward Ball, the descendant of an important slave holding family, researched his family's written records in an attempt to construct the family histories of African-American slaves on his family's plantation. In the course of his research, he talked with the descendants of former slaves on the Ball plantation who had written down the oral histories passed on for generations. Combining these historical methods, Ball was able to trace the history of Priscilla, a young woman from Sierra Leone who was captured in the eighteenth centry, transported aboard the Hare (an American ship out of Newport, Rhode Island), brought to Charleston where she was sold by Austen and Laurens, and purchased by the Balls. So unusual is it for African-Americans to be able to trace their lineage back to Africa that at the current exhibition on slavery at the New York Historical Society, a portion of the exhibition focuses on Priscilla.