Conflict and Compromise in History

South Carolina Suggested Topics:

Colonial Topics

• Conflict and Compromise: Gullah and the Merging of Language and Culture
  (This has been a successful topic in past years but it is often difficult to determine what is a primary source while doing the research)
• Conflict and Compromise: The Church Act of 1706 (This act allowed the Church of England to remain the established church in SC but allowed other protestants the freedom of religion)
• The Yamasee War of 1715-1716: The Colonists Compromise with the Cherokee to resolve the Conflict
  (SC convinces the Cherokee to fight against the Yamassee)
• Conflict to Compromise: Proprietary South Carolina becomes a Royal Colony
  (The proprietors did nothing to assist the colonists with Indian Wars or problems with pirates so colonists urge the King to take over the colony)
• Conflict and Compromise: The Cherokee War of 1758-1761
• The Regulators and the Circuit Court Act of 1769: Vigilantism to the Compromise of Law
• The Man Who Wouldn’t Compromise His Faith: Hugh Bryan and the Evangelical Movement in Colonial South Carolina
• The Stono Rebellion and the Slave Code of 1740: Compromise or Not?
  (Many interpret the slave code as the masters realizing that if they treat their slaves better then there will be fewer ‘problems’ but others interpret it as making laws stricter in response to the Stono Rebellion)
• Blackbeard Holds Charleston Hostage: A City is Forced to Compromise
• Colonial Dorchester: A Century of Conflicts and Compromises 
  (This would be a project on the state historic site)

Revolutionary War Topics

• The Second Cherokee War (1777) and the Treaty of DeWitt’s Corner
• The Wilkes Affair: The South Carolina Commons House Assembly and Its Support of an Imprisoned Radical in England who Opposes the King
• “No New England man, no New Yorker . . . but all of us Americans:” Christopher Gadsden, A Man who did not Compromise for Liberty
• No Compromise! The Impact of No Quarter Tarleton in the South Carolina Backcountry
• Conflict and Compromise: The Role of South Carolina in The Stamp Act and Its Repeal
• Conflict and Compromise During the American Revolution in the South Carolina Backcountry
  (Loyalists and Patriots)
• One Compromise Too Many: The Hanging of Issac Hayne

Early National America

• The South Carolina Delegation and Their Role in the Three-Fifths and Great Compromise at the U.S. Constitutional Convention
• The Capital Moves to Columbia: A Compromise between the Backcountry and the Lowcountry

Antebellum South Carolina

• Conflict and Compromise: A Slave Revolt is Stopped Before It Begins – The Denmark Vesey Case
• South Carolina and the Missouri Compromise
• A World in Shadow: Free Blacks in Antebellum South Carolina
  (Although these people were free, they were not equal and had few, if any, civil rights.  What compromises did they make in a very conflicting society?)
• Conflict and Compromise: The Grimke Sisters and Their Turn from Slave Owners to Abolitionists
• Conflict and Compromise: The History of Manumission in South Carolina
  (Laws dealing with manumission or the freeing of slaves made it ever more difficult for white owners to free their slaves)
• Conflict and Compromise: John C. Calhoun and the Nullification Crisis
• Philippe Stanislav Noisette and His Petition to Manumit His Wife and Their Six Children: Conflicts and Compromises in a Slave Society
  (In 1820 a law was passed requiring owners to petition the General Assembly to allow them to free their slaves. Noisette, a Frenchman who had come to Charleston via Haiti had failed to free his own family before the law had taken affect.)
• South Carolina and the Compromise of 1850
  (A dying John C. Calhoun plays a role in this last of the compromises before the Civil War)
• A Compromise with Religious Segregation: The Growth of the A.M.E. Church in South Carolina
• The South Carolina State House: A Tale of Conflicts and Compromises
• Dave the Potter: Compromising for Art’s Sake
  (The enslaved Dave the Potter created beautiful Edgefield pottery and wrote poetry in the pot before the firing process yet it was illegal for slaves to read or write. Obviously, the law was ignored (or compromised) in the case of Dave the Potter)

Civil War

• No Compromise! The Election of Abraham Lincoln and the Secession of South Carolina
• Conflict and Compromise: The Fall of Fort Sumter 1861
• A Compromising Situation: The Florence Stockade – the Replacement for Andersonville P.O.W. Camp
• Compromises by the Home Front During the Civil War
  Reconstruction
• Conflict and Compromise during Reconstruction: Scalawags and Carpetbaggers in South Carolina
• Conflict and Compromise: Reconstruction and the Election of 1876
• No Compromise with the Reconstructed State: The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina
• Robert Smalls and the Compromise of the Combahee Rice Riots

1877 – 1900

• A Compromise to the Stark Reality of Freedom: The Movement to Migrate to Liberia from South Carolina (1877-1878)
• Sharecropping in South Carolina: A Poor Compromise between Slavery and Freedom
• Compromising the Farm Life: Poor South Carolinians Flock to the Cotton Mills
• Conflict and No Compromise: The Beaufort Delegation walks out of the 1895 State Constitutional Convention
• Compromising the Land: One-Crop Agriculture and the Destruction of the Soil
• Judge Jonathan Jasper Wright and Governor Wade Hampton: Conflict Between Race or Conflict Between Branches of Government?
  (Wright, an African American judge made a ruling that Governor Hampton did not like and the Governor mad things difficult for him.  Was it related to race or was it just the executive branch forcing the judicial branch into line?)

Twentieth Century

• Child Labor in the South Carolina Textile Mills and the Compromise of New Labor Laws
• Compromises Made by the South Carolina Home Front in World War I
• Compromises Made by the South Carolina Home Front in World War II
• No Compromise Even in Death: Segregated Cemeteries
• The Compromising Effects of The Politics of Color: South Carolina Loses the Best and the Brightest: William H. Johnson, Mary McLeod Bethune, Benjamin Mays
  (A topic that discusses how state-sanctioned discrimination left talented African Americans to go elsewhere to achieve their potential)
• The Lynching of Willie Earle: A Compromising Governor but a Very Compromising Jury
  (Governor Strom Thurmond investigated and prosecuted those involved in the lynching but the white jury acquitted the guilty)
• Conflict and Compromise: George Elmore and the Opening of the Democratic Primary in South Carolina
  (Prior to this time, African Americans were not allowed to take part in the South Carolina primary)
• The Honea Path Textile Strike: A False Compromise (Things did not go well for the strikers either during the strike or afterwards)
• Conflict and Strange Compromise: Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats Conflict with the Democratic Party and Thurmond’s eventual shift to the Republican Party
  (South Carolina had always voted Democratic –except during Reconstruction – until Strom Thurmond jumped to the Republican Party.  Since then South Carolina has been predominantly Republican.)
• Conflict and Compromise: Ellenton and the Savannah River Project 
  (The town of Ellenton was forced to move and start again as New Ellenton)
• The Building of Santee Cooper: Farmers Compromise for Progress
  (Many folks had to leave their land so the huge reservoir could be made)
• James F. Byrnes and the Compromise to Make Schools Equal But Still Separate
  (To stem the tide of integration, Governor Byrnes and the state government began to upgrade black school facilities to finally comply with Separate But Equal ruling)
• A Conflict without Compromise leads to Tragedy: The Orangeburg Massacre
  The Architecture of Segregation: Compromising Space
  (How were buildings, state parks, and other spaces designed to comply with segregation?)
• No Compromise! Septima Clark and the NAACP (The State General Assembly ruled that public servants – teachers – could not belong to the NAACP.  Septima Clark, an African American teacher was fired rather than comply.  She later played a significant role in  the Civil Rights Movement.)
• Conflicts and Compromises in Briggs v. Elliott: From Enforcing Separate But Equal to the Arguing for School Integration
• South Carolina Memorializing the Past: Conflicts and Compromises on What We Choose to Remember and What We Choose to Forget
  (Many different memorials dot the landscape and the grounds of the State House, why does a society choose to commemorate certain events and does that society always remember the facts or just an interpretation of those events?)
• Women’s Suffrage in South Carolina: Conflict and Compromise
  (It is very hard to find a lot of good sources for this topic.  Contact your state coordinator if you choose this topic and are having a tough time with sources or, possibly, broaden this topic to the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the United States)
• The South Carolina Education Advisory Committee: Encouraging Compromise and Peaceful, Non-violent Change during the Turbulent Civil Rights Era
  (Many in South Carolina realized that industry and investment would not come to South Carolina if segregation remained the law of the land.  Money may not have been a very noble reason to stand up for equality and integration, but it is a practical one.)
• Conflicts and Compromises: School Integration in South Carolina
  (Sixteen years after the Supreme Court ruling, South Carolina schools finally integrated.  What problems were faced by students, teachers, schools?  What happened because of school integration?)