But thousands braved death rather than remain and be false to their
religion. Some were caught and cruelly punished, but many succeeded
in escaping to Holland, England and even to America. So many Huguenots
now settled in Carolina. They were hard-working, high-minded people
and they brought a sturdiness and grit to the colony which it might
otherwise have lacked. Germans too came from the Palatinate, driven
thence also by religious persecutions. Irish Presbyterians came
fleeing from persecution in Ulster. Jacobites who, having fought
for the Stuarts, found Scotland no longer a safe dwelling-place
came seeking a new home.
These were all hardy industrious people. But besides these there
came many worthless idlers who came to be known as "poor whites."
These came because in the early days when the colony was but
sparsely peopled, and more settlers were wanted, a law was passed
that a new settler need not pay any debts he had made before he came
to the colony; and for a year after he came he need pay no taxes.
These laws of course brought many shiftless folk who, having got
hopelessly into debt somewhere else, ran away to Carolina to get
free of it. Indeed so many of these undesirables came that the
Virginians called Carolina the Rogues' Harbour.
Besides all these white people there were a great many negroes
especially in South Carolina.
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