In any case the intercourse
between the whites and blacks was notably less than in the tobacco region,
and the progress of the negroes in civilization correspondingly
slighter. The plantations were less of homesteads and more of business
establishments; the race relations, while often cordial, were seldom
intimate.
The introduction of indigo culture was achieved by one of America's
greatest women, Eliza Lucas, afterward the wife of Charles Pinckney
(chief-justice of the province) and mother of the two patriot statesmen
Thomas and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Her father, the governor of the
British island of Antigua, had been prompted by his wife's ill health
to settle his family in South Carolina, where the three plantations he
acquired near Charleston were for several years under his daughter's
management. This girl while attending her father's business found time to
keep up her music and her social activities, to teach a class of young
negroes to read, and to carry on various undertakings in economic botany.
In 1741 her experiments with cotton, guinea-corn and ginger were defeated
by frost, and alfalfa proved unsuited to her soil; but in spite of two
preliminary failures that year she raised some indigo plants with success.
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