Antebellum South Carolina was a period considered to fall between 1790 and the American Civil War in 1861. In 1786, the cotton gin was established, which led the cotton industry to increase its demand for labor due to the increase in the size of harvests on plantations. Not only was the cotton industry in high demand, but so was the rice harvest, which made South Carolina a state heavily populated by slaves. Images A and B both depict two periods of slavery during antebellum South Carolina. Image A shows an advertisement for a slave sale in Charles Town, South Carolina, on the Ashley Ferry River, while Image B shows an illustration of elderly servants caring for white and black children. Image A was taken before the start of the antebellum period in 1760, unlike Image B which was drawn near the end of this period in South Carolina in 1863. Both images represent the change occurred in the State of South Carolina regarding slavery. First, Image A is an advertisement of slaves from the west coast of Africa. This ad was published in 1760, when slavery was very common in colonial America. South Carolina had one of the largest slave ports that saw thousands of slave owners and enslaved people pass through. This ad was placed in the South Carolina Gazette with the primary purpose of attracting rice and cotton plantation owners. These slaves were imported from the “Wind and Rice Coast,” which was the central Atlantic coast of Africa. This would have been of interest to plantation owners, as slaves in this region were accustomed to growing and harvesting rice under conditions similar to those in lower South Carolina. Those Africans who were brought as slaves...... middle of paper ...... ancient slave trade and slave life in the Americas: a visual record. http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/detailsKeyword.php?keyword=Domestic&recordCount=27&theRecord=11.Krebsbach, Suzanne. “The Great Charlestown Smallpox Epidemic of 1760.” The South Carolina Historical Magazine 97, no. 1 (1996): 30-37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27570134.Opala, Joseph. “Bance Island in Sierra Leone.” The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leonean-American Connection. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/03.htm.Walker, Barrington. “King Cotton.” Lecture 12, Queen's University, Kingston, February 12, 2014. Walker, Barrington. “Slavery and Anti-Slavery in the Era of the American Revolution.” Lecture 10, Queen's University, Kingston, February 3, 2014. Unknown. “Collecting the Pre-War Era.” South Carolina Museum. http://www.scmuseum.org/collections/cultural_history/antebellum.aspx