The road to secession in antebellum Georgetown and Horry Districts was long. Through the use of newspapers and public lectures, local leaders unified their communities against the Second Great Awakening reforms, industrialization, corporate model banks and abolition. The leading statesmen cast a bond of allegiance with the yeoman farmers of the pine forests against slave emancipation and changing economic models to forge Southern Nationalism. Planters and farmers joined forces in the struggle to maintain their agricultural traditions and their sense of identity in a rapidly changing world. Plantation historian Christopher C. Boyle explores the beginning of a critical era in Horry and Georgetown.