… by Eliza Pinckney, where it became the colony’s 2nd most important cash crop behind rice. There were three species grown in the US, (“indigofera caroliniana, I tinctoria, and I suffruticosa”). It became an export crop. By 1775, South Carolinan indigo production exceeded 1,222,000 pounds.
When Benjamin Franklin went to France in 1776 to get France’s support for the Revolutionary War, he took 35 barrels of indigo to sell to help the war effort.
(Sketch: 1770’s Carolina rice plantation run by slaves)