The relatively small state of SOUTH CAROLINA remains, with Mississippi, one of the poorest and most rural pockets of the US, although the prime real estate along its coast has lately been developed into exclusive golf courses and tennis clubs. Politics in the first state to secede from the Union in 1860 have traditionally been conservative. Reconstruction was mired in terrible Klan violence, while demagogues openly espoused lynching and enforced "Jim Crow" laws with frightening zeal. The state contains two of the country's most right-wing minor universities - football-fixated Clemson, and Christian Bob Jones University in Greenville, a training ground for the fundamentalist right.

South Carolina's fascinating subtropical coastline of sea islands , great beaches, marshes and lush palmetto groves preserves traces of a virtually independent black culture (featuring the unique patois gullah ), from the days when slaves escaped the mainland plantations. Beyond the grand old peninsular port of Charleston , arguably the most elegant city in the US with its rainbow-colored old buildings and magnificent, tree-lined avenues, restored plantations stretch as far north as Georgetown , en route toward the poseur's paradise of Myrtle Beach . Inland, the rolling Piedmont and flat coastal plain hold little to see.