The
system was thus more democratic than in Virginia; and in this
connection it is worth while to observe that parochial libraries and
free schools were established as early as 1712, much earlier than in
Virginia.
[Sidenote: The back country]
During the first half of the eighteenth century a very different stream
of immigration, coming mostly along the slope of the Alleghanies from
Virginia and Pennsylvania, and consisting in great part of Germans,
Scotch Highlanders, and Scotch-Irish, peopled the upland western regions
of South Carolina. For some time this territory had scarcely any civil
organization. It was a kind of "wild West." There were as yet no
counties in the colony. There was just one sheriff for the whole colony,
who "held his office by patent from the crown." [1] A court sat in
Charleston, but the arm of justice was hardly long enough to reach
offenders in the mountains. "To punish a horse-thief or prosecute a
debtor one was sometimes compelled to travel a distance of several
hundred miles, and be subjected to all the dangers and delays incident
to a wild country." When people cannot get justice in what in civilized
countries is the regular way, they will get it in some irregular way.
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