45.]
The first success in South Carolina appears to have been attained by
William Elliott, on Hilton Head near Beaufort, in 1790. He bought five and
a half bushels of seed in Charleston at 14s per bushel, and sold his crop
at 10-1/2d per pound. In the next year John Screven of St. Luke's parish
planted thirty or forty acres, and sold his yield at from 1s. 2d. to 1s.
6d. sterling per pound. Many other planters on the islands and the adjacent
mainland now joined the movement. Some of them encountered failure, among
them General Moultrie of Revolutionary fame who planted one hundred and
fifty acres in St. John's Berkeley in 1793 and reaped virtually nothing.[5]
[Footnote 5: Whitemarsh B. Seabrook, _Memoir on the Origin, Cultivation and
Uses of Cotton_ (Charleston, 1844), pp. 19, 20.]
The English market came promptly to esteem the long, strong, silky
sea-island fiber as the finest of all cottons; and the prices at Liverpool
rose before the end of the century to as high as five shillings a pound.
This brought fortunes in South Carolina. Captain James Sinkler from a crop
of three hundred acres on his plantation, "Belvedere," in 1794 gathered
216 pounds to the acre, which at prices ranging from fifty to seventy-five
cents a pound brought him a gross return of $509 per laborer employed.
Pages:
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277