Believing it
“necessary to the public man, as to the pupil,” Simms undertook The History of South Carolina explicitly
for the education of the state’s young people, so as to tell them the vibrant
history of the state and the distinguished accomplishments of her leaders. There
is evidence to suggest that Simms was particularly motivated to write such a
history in order to provide an historical account of South Carolina and notable
South Carolinians, to his eldest child Augusta, who was attending boarding
school in Massachusetts in the late 1830s. Simms seemingly found no existing history
suitable for such a purpose, and undertook to correct this by writing The History of South Carolina. Across the various editions, Simms’s book
presents two main lessons to its readers:
first, that South Carolinians should depend on native leadership in
times of crisis, and second, that a united front against external threats is
necessary at all times. While The History paints a broad picture of
the European settlement of South Carolina, the Revolution figures as the most
prominent, and most lengthy, section in all three editions. In Simms’s presentation, the American
Revolution is the central and transformative moment of South Carolina’s
history.
Simms began the composition of The History in 1839; by the spring of
1840, the first edition was finished, and it was published that summer by S.
Babcock & Co. in Charleston. In 1842, Simms released a second edition of The History, with a companion piece, The Geography of South Carolina, coming
to print a year later; both were published by Babcock. Simms’s initial plan was to publish The History and The Geography together as a single volume, but setting the plates
for such a volume was cost-prohibitive. In 1847, Simms began the research that would
lead to a rewriting The History of South
Carolina, an overhaul likely founded in a desire to include the historical
contributions of South Carolina’s “upcountry” more robustly. This third edition was issued simultaneously
in New York (Redfield) and Charleston (Russell & Jones) in January 1860;
both were published from the Redfield setting. Sean R. Busick characterizes Simms’s 1860
edition as a diligently researched and careful revision that expands the
earlier editions by over 100 pages. In
1866, the third edition was republished by Richardson and Co. of New York.
From the beginning, Simms’s desire
for The History was that it “become a
school book throughout the state,” a
desire that was met, at best, with mixed results. While the South Carolina Military Academy
used The History as a primary history
textbook throughout Simms’s life, South Carolina would never adopt the book for
widespread use in its schools. Though
the 1840 edition received a generally positive critical reception throughout
the southern press, Simms’s “school book” desire was stymied by the State
Legislature. Simms’s frustration over this issue is seen
acutely in a December 1841 letter, in which he complains about the State
House’s voting against an appropriation of $2000 to distribute The History in the “free schools.” Simms saw this as a personal insult to him by
the legislators, as they adopted Thomas P. Lockwood’s A Geography of South-Carolina, a book Simms calls “very paltry,
ungrammatical, & altogether worthless,” instead of The History.Simms
sustained his desire for The History to
be used as a textbook over the three editions and made the book more attractive
for educational use; for example, the third edition, besides being
significantly expanded, also features the regular insertion of discussion
questions throughout, questions that were not included in the first two
editions of The History. Nevertheless, Simms’s ambition to see The History used in South Carolina’s
classrooms was not widely realized until well after his death, when his
granddaughter, Mary C. Simms Oliphant, revised the book and achieved public
school adoption of it in 1917. In the ensuing years, The New Simms History of South Carolina went through multiple
printings and editions, remaining in public schools until 1985.
The 1840 edition of The History features a plain brown
cover, with a gilt stamp on the spine: [double rule] | HISTORY OF | SOUTH CAROLINA | [double rule] |
[double rule] | [double rule]. The title
page features: THE | HISTORY | OF |
SOUTH CAROLINA, | FROM | ITS FIRST EUROPEAN DISCOVERY | TO ITS | ERECTION INTO
A REPUBLIC: | WITH | A SUPPLEMENTARY CHRONICLE OF EVENTS | TO | THE PRESENT
TIME. | [rule] | BY WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS, | Author of "The
Yemassee," "The Partisan," "Damsel of Darien," &c.
| [rule] | CHARLESTON. | PUBLISHED BY S. BABCOCK & CO. | [rule] |
1840. The 1842 edition is similarly bound, with only a slight
difference—S. CAROLINA instead of SOUTH CAROLINA on the gilt spine stamp. The 1842 title page features: THE | HISTORY | OF | SOUTH CAROLINA, | FROM |
ITS FIRST EUROPEAN DISCOVERY | TO ITS | ERECTION INTO A REPUBLIC: | WITH | A
SUPPLEMENTARY CHRONICLE OF EVENTS | TO | THE PRESENT TIME. | BY WILLIAM GILMORE
SIMMS, | Author of ''The Yemassee,'' ''The Partisan,'' ''Damsel of Darien,''
&c. | [rule] | SECOND EDITION. | [rule] | CHARLESTON. | PUBLISHED BY S.
BABCOCK & CO.| [rule] | 1842. The
1860 Redfield edition is bound in a green cover, with flat, double-border
stamping on the front and back. The gilt
stamp spine appears as follows, featuring the distinctive Redfield mark: HISTORY | OF | SOUTH | CAROLINA | [rule] |
SIMMS | [rule] | [Graphic of flag, rifle, haversack, drum, and book] | [double
rule] | REDFIELD. The Redfield edition’s
title page is as follows: THE | HISTORY
| OF | SOUTH CAROLINA | FROM | ITS FIRST EUROPEAN DISCOVERY | TO ITS | ERECTION
INTO A REPUBLIC | WITH | A SUPPLEMENTARY BOOK, BRINGING THE NARRATIVE DOWN | TO
THE PRESENT TIME | BY WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS, | AUTHOR OF ''THE YEMASSEE,''
''EUTAW,'' ''CASSIQUE OF KIAWAH,'' THE SCOUT,'' ETC. | NEW AND REVISED EDITION.
| [Circle formed of snake biting its own tail with burning lamp in the
center] | REDFIELD |34 BEEKMAN STREET, NEW YORK | 1860
Michael Odom and W. Matthew J. Simmons
Butterworth and Kibler note a review in the Charleston
Mercury that remarked
The History “indeed seems to us to be in its kind perfect.”