History is the sum total of all our stories. In this history of our beautiful Palmetto State, I have written many different stories about individual people and groups of people. Historians try to select accounts from the past that will accurately tell the bigger story that we call the state's history. We try to select those that are pivotal -- that demonstrate points at which history could have gone in a very different direction. And we try to select those stories that will connect this state's history with the nation's history -- and even the world's. - Introduction.