In October 1777, General Horatio Gates won the Battle of Saratoga, convincing France to agree to become the colonies’ allies and creating a turning point in the war. The British then focused their war efforts more on the South, believing there were more loyalists there, but Generals Nathanael Greene and Daniel Morgan prevented the South’s takeover. In October 1779, Henry Laurens, a Charleston native and one of the presidents of the Continental Congress, was sent to Hollands to negotiate a treaty and loan but got captured by the British on September 3, 1780. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London on October 6, 1780 until he was exchanged for General Lord Charles Cornwallis, who lost the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. He joined John Jay, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin to negotiate the Peace of Paris, which was signed on September 10, 1783, officially ending the war. 

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When attempting to determine the amount of delegates each state would have for the House of Representatives at the US Constitutional Convention of 1787, there were three proposals: the Virginia plan, which suggested each state would be represented based on their population or wealth; the New Jersey plan, which suggested each state would be equally represented; and the Connecticut plan, also known as the Great Compromise, which proposed both. However, this raised the issue of how the population would be counted since slaves were not free people. Eventually, they came to an agreement known as the three-fifths compromise, which stated that only three out of every five non-free persons would be counted as part of the population, allowing the South to have more delegates than they would otherwise. 

Their population would only increase with the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1792 with the encouragement of his employer Catherine Greene. It was introduced to South Carolina in 1801 and caused the slave trade to be reopened in the state in 1803. This caused an increase in plantations and slave labor, inhibiting city growth and industries and causing South Carolinians to rely on cotton as their source of income. In 1808, the international slave trade was ended by the US government, which limited their population growth. Unfortunately, the price of cotton dropped from 25 cents in 1808 to 14 cents in 1810, causing financial issues since they needed to make at least 20 cents to make ends meet. Several South Carolinians became belligerent with the belief that the embargo was hurting commerce, which was mirrored by their congressmen, and on June 18, 1812, the War Hawks successfully convinced congress to vote 79-49 in favor of Congressman John C. Calhoun’s recommendation to start war against England. 

In 1822, Denmark Vesey attempted to organize a slave revolt on June 16, but one of the slaves told their masters, leading to the arrest of suspected conspirators. The revolt resulted in stricter control over slaves and free blacks, such as prohibiting the freeing of slaves through will or deed. However, Governor Thomas Bennet, Jr. did not support the injustice of the trials and the restrictions put in place, resulting in the election of Governor John L. Wilson. South Carolina also passed the Negro Seaman Acts, which was highly controversial since it affected ships outside of South Carolina by requiring free blacks to be held in detention during the duration of the ship’s visit and requiring the captain to pay for those expenses or they would be sold into slavery. 

This escalated tensions between north and south since South Carolina obstinately continued detaining free blacks even after the act was declared unconstitutional by the US Circuit Court and US attorney general in 1823. In 1842, Congressman John Quincy Adams attempted to investigate, but South Carolina representatives accused him of going against their states rights, which later became one of the rationales for leaving the Union. 

On Dec 10, 1832, President Andrew Jackson issued the Proclamation to the People of South Carolina better known as the Nullification Proclamation, which stated that states did not have the right to nullify a federal law, in response to the South Carolina convention declaring the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 as going against the constitution and, therefore, null and void in South Carolina. In addition, he also passed the Force Act, which allowed the usage of the military against states resisting the tariff acts. In 1833, Henry Clay negotiated with John C. Calhoun to create the Compromise Tariff of 1833, ending the nullification crisis.