About
Charleston, South Carolina, was founded in the late 1600s and was the South’s biggest, richest city by Crèvecoeur’s time, as well as one of the American colonies’ most bustling ports. Its thriving cotton and rice trades drew heavily on the labor of enslaved people. Though James will go on to criticize slavery, his distaste for slavery seems perhaps more connected to his disdain for idle, indulgent lifestyles (which wealthy planters exemplified) than to his concern for the rights and dignity of enslaved people.
