Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 5 (of 8) / The English and French in North America 1689-1763

by Unknown

CHAPTER V.

THE CAROLINAS.

BY PROFESSOR WILLIAM J. RIVERS.

NORTH CAROLINA: Proprietary Government.—It was certainly manifest to England that her claim to vast regions of valuable territory would be substantiated, and her commerce and political power augmented, by the settling of her subjects in North America. Yet the history of her colonies bears, on many pages, evidence of the indifference and inexcusable neglect of the mother country. Instead of a liberal contribution of arms and munitions of war, the means of sustenance, and the protection of her ever-present sovereignty to all who were willing to leave the comforts of home and risk their lives in her service, far away across the Atlantic, enough appeared to have been done if lavish gifts of land were bestowed upon companies, individuals, or proprietors, for their especial emolument, and through them some paltry acres offered to emigrants, with promises of a little more religious freedom and a little larger share of political privileges than they were permitted to enjoy at home. The genesis of a new and potent nationality may be said to have been involved in the acceptance, by the colonists, of these conditions, as inducements to emigration, with all else dependent on their own manly courage.

NORTH CAROLINA.

[This is a sketch of the map in Hawks’ North Carolina, ii. 570, showing the grants and divisions from 1663 to 1729.

Quaritch in his Catal. for 1885, no. 29,516, prices at £25 a MS. map of the south part of Virginia (North Carolina), showing the coast line from Cape Henry to Cape Fear, and signed “Nicholas Comberford, fecit anno 1657.” It measures 18¾ × 14 inches.—Ed.]

One of the colonies that struggled, through neglect and almost insurmountable hardships, into permanent existence was Carolina. Before its settlement, other colonies had successfully established themselves in New England, and in Maryland and Virginia. In 1663, Charles II., in the second year after his restoration, granted the region south of Virginia and extending from 31° to 36° north latitude, and westward within these parallels across the continent, to some of his adherents, to whom he was indebted for distinguished services. It is stated in the grant that this extensive region is called “Carolina,” a name used before, and now, no doubt, retained in honor of the king.[704] The favored noblemen are thus introduced to us: “our right trusty and right well-beloved cousins and counsellors, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, our High Chancellor of England, and George, Duke of Albemarle, Master of our Horse and Captain-General of all our Forces, our right trusty and well-beloved William Lord Craven, John Lord Berkeley, our right trusty and well-beloved counsellor, Anthony Lord Ashley, Chancellor of our Exchequer, Sir George Carteret, Knight and Baronet, Vice-Chamberlain of our Household, and our trusty and well-beloved Sir William Berkeley, Knight, and Sir John Colleton, Knight and Baronet;” who, we are deliberately informed, “being excited with a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the Christian faith, and the enlargement of” the British dominions, humbly besought leave of the king, “by their industry and charge, to transport and make an ample colony” of his subjects, “in the parts of America not yet cultivated or planted, and only inhabited by some barbarous people who have no knowledge of Almighty God.”[705] Had these high functionaries of the realm acted in accordance with this solemn announcement of their pious zeal for the propagation of Christianity, the blessing of Heaven would, no doubt, have rested more largely upon their noble enterprise.

An adverse claim was soon made to the same territory under a grant obtained in 1629,[706] by Sir Robert Heath, attorney-general of Charles I. But he had failed to form a colony, and the claims of those to whom he had conveyed his rights were on that account set aside. The Proprietors under the new charter began to make immediate exertions to form a settlement, that the king might see they did not “sleep with his grant, but were promoting his service and his subjects’ profit.”[707]

AUTOGRAPHS OF THE LORDS PROPRIETORS.

These follow fac-similes given in the Charleston Year Book, 1883.

Before this, settlers from Virginia had moved at various times southward and taken up their residence on some good lands on and near the river Chowan, in what is now the northeastern part of North Carolina. Among these was a considerable number of Quakers, at that time subject to religious persecution. It happened that Sir William Berkeley, one of the new Proprietors, was governor of Virginia. He was empowered by the other Proprietors to form a government forthwith in this settlement, and appoint its officers; the appointment of surveyor and secretary alone being reserved to the Proprietors in England. “We do likewise send you proposals to all that will plant, which we prepared upon receipt of a paper from persons that desired to settle near Cape Fear, in which our considerations are as low as it is possible for us to descend. This was not intended for your meridian, where we hope to find more facile people, who, by your interest, may settle upon better terms for us, which we leave to your management, with our opinion that you grant as much as is possible rather than deter any from planting there.” Sir William, it is inferred, followed these instructions. William Drummond was appointed governor;[708] the tract of land, at first forty miles square, was named Albemarle in honor of the duke, and a council of six was constituted to make laws with the consent of the delegates of the freemen. These laws were to be transmitted to England for approval by the Proprietors. Lands were granted to all free of rent for three years; and such lands as had been taken by previous settlers were confirmed to them.

Almost simultaneously another colony (Clarendon) was settled in what is now North Carolina. As early as 1660 some adventurers from Massachusetts had gone to the Cape Fear, sometimes called the Charles, River, and purchased lands from the Indians; but in a few years abandoned the situation, leaving their cattle and swine in care of the natives. To the same locality the attention of the inhabitants of Barbadoes[709] was directed on the grant of the territory to the powerful noblemen whose names are given in the charter. The passage already quoted from the letter to Sir William Berkeley had reference to them and their proposal. Explorers, employed by “several gentlemen and merchants” of Barbadoes, were sent out (1663) under command of Hilton, who ascended the Cape Fear far inland, and formed a more favorable opinion of the country than the New Englanders had been enabled to form near the mouth of the river. They purchased from the Indians “the river and land of Cape Fair,” as they express it, and returned to Barbadoes on January 6, 1664. An account of their exploration was published the same year, to which were appended proposals from the Proprietors, through their commissioners, Thomas Mudyford and Peter Colleton, to all who should settle, at their own hazard and expense, south and west of Cape Romano, sometimes called Cape Carteret. This was a bid for volunteer settlers south of the Cape Fear settlement. Nothing whatever, it appears, was accomplished under this offer of the commissioners. In a Description of the Province, with liberal privileges offered to settlers, issued also in London (1666), it is stated that a new plantation had been begun by the English at Cape Fear on the 29th of May, 1664. In the following November, Robert Sandford was appointed secretary and John Vassall surveyor of “Clarendon County.”[710] It was time the Proprietors should agree upon some definite and satisfactory terms for settlement in their territory. While they did not sanction the purchase of lands from Indians, as they had also disallowed the claims of the New England adventurers, they made to all colonists, from Barbadoes and elsewhere, liberal offers for settlement; and under “concessions and agreement” a method of government was framed, and John Yeamans of Barbadoes was knighted by the king (through means of Sir John Colleton), and commissioned, in January, 1665, governor of the newly formed Clarendon County[711] and of the territory southward as far as Florida; for in this direction the Proprietors designed to place a third colony or county.

The two counties, Albemarle and Clarendon, were formed under the charter of 1663. Another charter was granted by the good-natured king in June, 1665, enlarging the limits of the province to 36° 30´ on the north, and on the south to 29°. This extension may be ascribed to the desire of the Proprietors to secure beyond doubt the section on which the Chowan colony happened to be formed near Virginia, and to embrace, southwardly, the limits claimed with respect to Spanish Florida.

We have very little knowledge concerning the administrations of Drummond and of Yeamans. It is said that the latter, being near the sea, began at once to export lumber and opened a trade with Barbadoes; and reports so favorable were carried thither, and so many were induced to follow the first emigrants, that the authorities of the island interposed, and forbade, under severe penalties, “the spiriting off” of their people. In Albemarle, Drummond was succeeded by Samuel Stephens as governor in 1667. In Clarendon, the colony soon ceased to prosper, and most, if not all, of the colonists had abandoned it in 1667. We shall understand better why they did so if we bear in mind that the territory of the Lords Proprietors was very extensive. There were other places, not yet explored, more convenient for commerce, more defensible, more fruitful, more desirable in all respects; the advantages of which would naturally draw off settlers from the less favorable localities selected before a thorough knowledge of the country was obtained. The Proprietors, as we have said, thought of forming, with larger preparations, a colony still further south. The famous harbor of Port Royal, in what is now South Carolina, was the locality they desired to occupy and (with unusual display of wisdom) to fortify. For reasons, however, which will appear hereafter, when we treat of South Carolina, the colonists, after visiting Port Royal, and after a temporary settlement at Albemarle Point on the western bank of the Ashley River, finally settled down on the opposite side, at the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper rivers, and founded the present city of Charleston. There was, indeed, enough to discourage the settlers at Cape Fear independently of the more extensive preparation by the Proprietors to place a colony in a better situation. Secretary Sandford (in his Relation of his voyage in 1666) incidentally mentions: “Wee were in actuall warre with the natives att Clarendon, and had killed and sent away many of them, for they [the more southern Indians] frequently discoursed with us concerning the warre, told us the natives were noughts, their land sandy and barren, their country sickly.” Surveyor-General Vassall, in a letter from Virginia (Oct. 6, 1667), speaks of the loss of the plantation on Charles River and his furnishing shipping to carry away “such weak persons as were not able to go by land.” And a letter from Boston (Dec. 16, 1667) states that Cape Fear was deserted, and the settlers “come hither, some to Virginia.”[712]

Here let us notice the policy and plans of the Proprietors with respect to their distant colonies. The two charters differ only in a few particulars. The second increases the extent of territory, its main object, gives power to subdivide the province into distinct governments, and is a little more explicit with regard to religious toleration. No person was to be molested for difference of religious opinion or practice who did not actually disturb the peace of the community. With regard to political privileges, there is an important clause in both charters conferring upon the Proprietors power to ordain any laws and constitutions whatsoever (if consonant to reason and, as far as possible, to the laws and customs of England), but only “by and with the advice, assent, and approbation of the freemen,” or the majority of them, or of their delegates or deputies, who, for enacting such ordinances, were to be duly assembled from time to time. These privileges, we shall see in the history of the colony, were maintained by the people with a pertinacity commensurate with their importance, whenever their lordships attempted to control the colonists without due regard to their approbation and consent. The charter reserved to the king only allegiance and sovereignty; in all other respects the Proprietors were absolute lords, with no other service or duty to their monarch than the annual payment of a trifling sum of money, and in case gold or silver should be found a fourth part thereof.

On August 6, 1663, a letter to the Proprietors, from members of a Cape Fear company of New England adventurers, claimed full liberty to choose their governors, make and confirm laws, and to be free from taxes, except such as they might impose on themselves, and deprecated “discouragement in reference to their government” as to the accustomed privileges of English colonists. While their claims were not conceded, this letter was answered generally by their lordships, on August 25th, announcing their concessions to all wishing to settle in Carolina.[713] The New England claim of privileges is worthy of notice for what we now call “advanced ideas.” And if we compare the charters of Connecticut (1662) and Rhode Island (1663) with that of Carolina (1663), it will appear that the self-interest of Clarendon[714] and his associates stood in the way of their securing to their colony some civil privileges which it would not have seemed strange at that time to concede. And it may as well be stated here, at once, that besides considerations of self-interest it was also the express policy of their lordships to “avoid erecting a numerous democracy” in their province. To carry out this policy, a grand scheme of government, called the Fundamental Constitutions, was framed by Shaftesbury and the philosopher Locke, and solemnly confirmed as a compact among themselves,—the Proprietors,—and which was to be unalterable forever. A scheme more utopian, more unsuited to the actual condition of the colonists, could hardly have been devised. Yet its adoption by the people was recommended, ordered, stubbornly insisted on by their lordships at the risk of balking—as, for a while, it did balk—the prosperity of their colony. The first set of the unalterable Constitutions is dated 21st July, 1669; the second was issued in March, 1670,—and so on till a fifth set had been constructed. Under the right conferred by the charter, respecting the consent of the freemen, or their delegates, in establishing laws and constitutions, such consent was never formally given; and the code was, at least in South Carolina, again and again rejected. It was a gage of political contention foolishly thrown down; but in taking it up, the colonists were made ardent students of political rights.

By these Constitutions, the eldest Proprietor was made Palatine,—a sort of king of the province. The other seven Proprietors were to be high functionaries: admiral, chamberlain, constable, chief justice, chancellor, high steward, and treasurer.[715] There was to be a Parliament: eight superior courts, one to each Proprietor according to his high office; county and precinct courts; and a grand Executive Council, among whose duties was the preparation and first enactment of all matters to be submitted to Parliament. Among the carefully composed articles in these Constitutions should be noticed such as enjoin that no person above seventeen years of age could have the benefit and protection of the law who was not a member of some church; and no one could hold an estate or become a freeman of the province, or have any habitation in it, who did not acknowledge a God and that He is publicly and solemnly to be worshipped. Moreover, in the set of the Constitutions printed and sent over for adoption, the Church of England[716] was made the established church, and “it alone shall be allowed to receive a public maintenance by grant of Parliament.” It was also enjoined that no one seventeen years old should have any estate or possession or the protection of the law in the province, unless he subscribed the Fundamental Constitutions and promised in writing to defend and maintain them to the utmost of his power.

Their lordships in England, and most, if not all, of their appointed officers in the colonies, as in duty bound, contended strenuously for the adoption of this preposterous form of government till the year 1698; and hardly then did the incontrovertible logic of events convince them of their folly. A late historian of North Carolina remarks, “Their lordships theorized, the colonists felt; the Proprietors drew pictures, but the hardy woodsmen of Carolina were grappling with stern realities. Titles of nobility, orders of precedence, the shows of an empty pageantry, were to them but toys which might amuse children; but there was no romance in watching the savage, or felling the forest, or planting the corn, or gathering the crop, with the ever-present weapon in reach of the laboring hand.”

There was another cause of irritation on the part of the colonists, both in North and South Carolina. The terms of the tenure of land were of paramount interest to them and their children. The quantity offered in 1663 was augmented in 1666, and two years later, by the “Great Deed of Grant,” the fear of forfeiture was removed for not clearing and planting a specified portion of the land; in other words, settlers were permitted to hold lands as they were held in the adjoining royal province of Virginia. At first each freeman received one hundred acres, the same for his wife, each child and manservant, and fifty for each woman-servant; paying a half-penny per acre. After the expiration of servitude, each servant received a liberal quantity of land with implements for tillage.[717] In 1669, in the settling of the colony at Ashley River, one hundred and fifty acres were offered to all free persons above sixteen years of age, and the same for able-bodied men-servants; and a proportionate increase for others, if they arrived before the 25th of March, 1670; then a less number of acres for subsequent arrivals. The annual rent was a penny or the value of a penny per acre (as also announced in the unalterable Constitutions); payments to begin September, 1689.[718] When Governor Sayle died (a year after settling on Ashley River), Sir John Yeamans came from Barbadoes to the new settlement; and having been made a landgrave claimed the government as vice-palatine under the Fundamental Constitutions. Such claim was denied by the colonists;[719] but he soon received a commission, and his first measure, on assuming control, was to have an accurate survey made and a record of lands held by settlers in South Carolina, with a view to the collection of quit-rents for the Proprietors. When ten years of outlay for their province had brought them no pecuniary return, they began to think “the country was not worth having at that rate.” They removed their former favorite Yeamans, because further outlays were incurred, and placed West in authority, who had attended more successfully to their interests. In November, 1682, all prior terms for granting land were annulled, and if a penny an acre (the words “or the value of a penny” being omitted) was not paid, a right of reëntry was claimed: “to enter and distraine, and the distress or distresses then and there found to take, lead, and carry and drive away and impound, and to detain and keep until they shall be fully satisfied and paid all arrears of the said rent.” This produced inequality of tenure, or operated to the injury of many who had previously taken up, on more liberal terms, only part of the lands they were entitled to.[720] Their lordships were too just to interfere with the stability of titles, but the alteration of the tenure for new grants or of the mode of conveyance, from time to time, was at least unwise. Besides, there was scarcely any coin in the province, and the people found it hard that they could no longer pay in merchantable produce. To their reasonable request for relief and a better encouragement to new settlers came the reply, “We insist to sell our lands our own way.” With this reply a peremptory order was sent that the third set of the unalterable Constitutions should be put in force.

A part of this manifest diminution of the generosity of the Proprietors and their unwillingness to bestow further concessions may be accounted for by the opposition their favorite scheme of government had encountered in both colonies, and especially by a rebellious outbreak which had just occurred in Albemarle County. Clarendon County at Cape Fear had broken up and disappeared, as we have related; and henceforth our attention must be directed to Albemarle at the northern end of the province and the Ashley River colony at the south, remote from each other, with a vast forest intervening, the dwelling place of numerous tribes of Indians. Before the province was authoritatively divided (1729), it had divided itself, as it were, into North and South Carolina; and it is best that, in this narrative, we should begin to call them so.

In North Carolina, the Quakers, who were in close association and unison, and so far influential in action,[721] opposed the Fundamental Constitutions and the Church of England establishment; and all the settlers looked upon the enforcement of the recent orders of the Proprietors—the displacement of an easy and liberal method of government without asking their assent—as a violation of the terms of settlement, and of the inducements at first held out to them.[722] Governor Stephens endeavored to enforce the orders of the Proprietors, but he died soon after receiving them, and was succeeded by Carteret, president of the council, till an appointment should be made. Carteret appears not to have been of a nature to contend against the disaffection and turbulence which had arisen, and, in 1675, went to England to make known personally, it is said, the distracted condition of the colony. But two of the colonists, Eastchurch and Miller, had also gone over to represent, personally, the grievances of the people. They seemed, to the Proprietors, the ablest men to carry out their instructions; and the former was made governor and the latter deputy of Earl Shaftesbury and secretary of the province; he was also made, by the commissioners of the king’s revenue, collector of such revenue in Albemarle. They sailed for Carolina in 1677, but the new governor remained a long while in the West Indies (winning “a lady and her fortune”), and died soon after reaching Albemarle. Miller as representing Eastchurch, but really without legal authority to act as governor, ruled with a high hand. He had gone to represent the grievances of his fellow colonists; he returned to harass them still more. The new “model” of government, the denial of “a free election of an assembly” (as the Pasquotank people complained), the attempt to enforce strictly the navigation laws, the collection of the tax on tobacco at their very doors,[723] his drunkenness and “putting the people in general by his threats and actions in great dread of their lives and estates,” as the Proprietors themselves express it, became intolerable to the colonists.

The New Englanders, with their characteristic enterprise, had long been sailing through the shallow waters of the Sound in coasting vessels, adapted to such navigation, and had largely monopolized the trade of North Carolina; buying or trafficking for lumber and cattle, which they sold in the West Indies, and bringing back rum, molasses, salt, and sugar, they exchanged these for tobacco, which they carried to Massachusetts, and shipped thence to Europe without much regard to the navigation laws. Miller, according to instructions sent to Governor Eastchurch, sought to break up this thriving and lucrative business, and to introduce a more direct trade with England. The populace generally, including the Quakers, had their own grievances, and fraternized with the New England skippers. Gillam, one of these bold captains, arrived with his vessel laden with the commodities the people needed, and armed, this time, with cannon. A wealthy Quaker, Durant, was on board with him. On land, John Culpepper, who had lately left South Carolina, where he had created commotions, became a leader of the malcontents. Influenced, no doubt, by the recent rebellion of Bacon in Virginia, some participators in which had taken refuge among them, and led on by men of courage whose hard-earned emoluments were threatened with ruin, the insurgents seized and imprisoned Miller and seven of the proprietary deputies, and took from the former a large amount of money which he had collected for the king. They had won over to their side the remaining deputy, the president of the council; and together they now governed the colony as seemed best to them. But they were aware that violence and usurpation could not be passed over with impunity by higher authority; and as Miller and some of his adherents had escaped and gone to England, Culpepper and Holden were also sent to the Proprietors on a mission of explanation. The explanation of neither party was entirely satisfactory. Miller lost his offices, and Culpepper, though he was unpunished by the Proprietors, was seized by the Commissioners of the Customs to answer for the revenue money which had been used in the time of the disorders. He was put on trial, in 1680, for “treason committed without the realm.” It is said by Chalmers that the judges ruled that taking up arms against the proprietary government was treason against the king. Notwithstanding this view of the case, Culpepper was acquitted of treason, because Shaftesbury asserted that the county of Albemarle had not a regular government, and the offence of the prisoner amounted to no more than a riot.[724]

At this time the Earl of Clarendon sold his proprietary share to Seth Sothel, who was appointed governor. Mr. John Harvey, as president of the council at Albemarle, was to exercise the functions of governor till Sothel’s arrival. The latter, on his voyage, was captured by an Algerine corsair; Harvey died; Jenkins was made governor, and was deposed by the people without reprimand from the Proprietors; and in February, 1681, Wilkinson was appointed. These sudden changes in executive authority were unfortunate for the prestige of proprietary power in the colony; for all this while and until Sothel came in 1683, the old adherents of the Culpepper party, or the popular party, held control in Albemarle. But still more unfortunate for the Proprietors was the coming of Sothel. He seems to have purchased his place as Proprietor and to have come as governor in order to have a clear field for the exercise of his rapacity. If he was “a sober, moderate man,” as his colleagues thought when they intrusted their interests and the welfare of the county to his hands, his association with the Algerines must have materially changed his character. In 1688, the outraged colonists seized him, intending to send him to England for trial. On his appeal this was not done, but the case referred to the colonial assembly, who condemned him. His sentence, however, amounted only to banishment for twelve months and perpetual deposition from authority, Proprietor though he was. He went to South Carolina, and his further career will be noticed when we review the history of that colony.

The next year Philip Ludwell, of Virginia, was made governor, and after four years was transferred to South Carolina and appointed governor of both colonies. For more than twenty years North Carolina was governed by a deputy of the governor at Charleston, or (when there was no deputy appointed) by the president of her own council. The Albemarle colony had become to the Proprietors only a source of vexation. At any rate, they acted wisely in leaving its management, in some measure, under the control of those more conversant with its affairs than their lordships in England could possibly be. Their own mismanagement, in truth, was the principal cause of the turbulent spirit of the people.[725]

After Sothel’s banishment the executive authority belonged, as a rule, to the president of the council till Ludwell received it in 1689. On the latter’s removal to Charleston, S. C., Lillington acted as deputy in Albemarle. In 1695, Thomas Harvey became deputy governor by appointment from Archdale, the Quaker Proprietor (who was sent over to heal grievances in both colonies), and was followed in 1699 by Henderson Walker, president of the council. In 1704, Robert Daniel was appointed deputy by Governor Johnson, of South Carolina. John Porter, a Quaker, or sympathizer with the Quakers (sent to England to complain of Daniel and legislation in favor of the Church of England in the colony by “The Vestry Act”), with the assistance of Archdale, prevailed on the Proprietors to order Daniel’s removal, and Governor Johnson appointed (1705) Thomas Carey in his place. He was as little acceptable to the Quakers in North Carolina as his predecessor had been, and through their influence in England at this conjuncture the appointment of a deputy by the executive in South Carolina was suspended, Carey was removed, and a new Proprietary Council formed, including Porter and several Quakers. Porter returned to North Carolina in 1707, and called together the new council, who chose William Glover, a Churchman, president, and, as such, acting governor. He, however, as Carey had done, required conformity to the English laws respecting official oaths, which were displeasing to the Quakers; and Porter in opposition declared Glover’s election as president illegal, formed a coalition with Carey, whom he had before caused to be displaced, and secured his election to the presidency of the council. There were now two claimants for executive authority, and no power at hand to decide between them. Carey and Glover sat in opposite rooms with their respective councils. Daniel, being a landgrave, and having thereby a right to a seat in the Upper House,—as the council with the governor was styled,—sat alternately with one and the other, and no doubt enjoyed their altercations.

A new rebellion, so-called, now broke out, based apparently on local party strife. At first Carey and his Quaker supporters opposing Glover and his party sought and obtained control of the assembly; and when Edward Hyde came from England with letters on authority of which he claimed executive power,[726] the Carey party, at first favorable to him, finally, on losing control of the next assembly, directed itself against him. Hyde’s life was endangered by Carey’s armed opposition; and Spotswood, the energetic governor of Virginia, sent him military aid and put down his opponents.[727] Carey, on his way through Virginia, was arrested by Spotswood and sent to England for trial. This was the occasion of Lord Dartmouth’s circular letter to all the colonies “to send over no more prisoners for crimes or misdemeanors without proof of their guilt.”

According to the latest history,—that of Rev. Dr. Hawks,—another result of this acrimonious contest was the deplorable massacre of hundreds of defenceless white settlers, men, women, and children, by the Tuscarora Indians. This is doubtless merely post hoc ergo propter hoc. We must ascribe hostilities solely to encroachments on the lands of the natives; to ill treatment by traders and others; and to the killing of one of their number, which called for revenge. The Tuscaroras, it was thought, could muster 1,200 warriors. They suddenly made their onslaught at daybreak, September 22, 1711. Their special task in the diabolical conspiracy was to murder all the whites along the Roanoke, while other tribes conducted a simultaneous attack upon other sections. The wielding of the blood-dripping knife and tomahawk, the conflagration of dwellings and barns, the murderous rush upon the victims who, here and there, had hidden themselves and who ran out from the blazing fires to a fate scarcely less dreadful, with other horrors we are unwilling to relate, continued for three days. One hundred and fifty were slain on the Roanoke, more than sixty at Newbern, an unknown number near Bath; and the carnage was stopped only by the exhaustion and besotted drunkenness of the bloodstained savages. Governor Hyde was powerless to confront the foe. He could not raise half the number of men the enemy had. The Quakers were non-combatants; and with them were affiliated many others who opposed the government. Governor Hyde was compelled to resort to arbitrary measures in impressing vessels and in procuring provisions for such troops as he could muster; and these were so inadequate, and so wide-spread was the Indian combination, that he called for assistance from Virginia and South Carolina. Both responded with alacrity. While Spotswood could not supply troops, he checked the further combination of tribes in his direction. South Carolina sent troops onward through the forests, under Colonel Barnwell, who defeated the Tuscaroras and put an end to the war for the time being. But after he retired to South Carolina, suffering with wounds, the Indians treacherously renewed hostilities; and it was believed they would soon be joined by more powerful northward tribes. To add to the calamities of the people, an epidemic (said to be yellow fever) broke out. The mortality was fearful, and among the victims was the governor of the colony. The council elected Colonel Pollock as their president and to act as commander-in-chief. The following mournful picture is given us from manuscripts left by Colonel Pollock: “The government was bankrupt, the people impoverished, faction abundant, the settlements on Neuse and Pamlico destroyed, houses and property burned, plantations abandoned, trade in ruins, no cargoes for the few small vessels that came, the Indian war renewed, not men enough for soldiers, no means to pay them, the whole available force under arms but one hundred and thirty or forty men, and food for the whole province to be supplied from the northern counties of Albemarle only.” South Carolina, being again called on for help, sent Colonel James Moore, eldest son to Colonel James Moore, late governor of the colony. On the 20th of March, 1713, he conquered the last stronghold of the savages, who soon after, broken and disheartened, left the province in large numbers, and joined themselves with the Iroquois in what is now the State of New York. Such of them as remained in North Carolina entered into a treaty of peace with the whites. During these exhausting calamities the Proprietors were appealed to; and it was a poor response to refer the matter to General Nicholson “to enquire into the disorders of North Carolina.”

The next year (May, 1714) Charles Eden, an excellent officer, was appointed governor. The adherents of Carey, or the popular party, however, seemed to be actuated against all who were sent to rule the colony. What grievances they had to palliate or justify their conduct, on this occasion, we know not; but soon their active opposition had to be dealt with by the constituted authorities. We shall see, when we treat of South Carolina, that a few years later the colonists, in that section, threw off, effectually, the inefficient rule of the Proprietors, and placed themselves under the immediate control of the Crown; deposing the last proprietary governor, and electing Colonel Moore governor in the king’s name. It is probable that the same spirit actuated the people in North Carolina. Yet her historians have not made it evident that the continued disaffection and turbulence and rebellion of the people are indications of their readiness to act as their more southern brethren acted. Perhaps they had not, at that conjuncture, the same amount of provocation. When we read the letter of the Lords Proprietors to the council and assembly (June 3, 1723),[728] “We received an address from you, transmitted some time since by our late governor, Mr. Eden, wherein you signified to us your great dislike to the rebellious and tumultuous proceedings of several of the inhabitants of South Carolina, and your constant and steady adherence to our government and the present constitution,” we are to bear in mind that this governor and council were the appointed officers of their lordships. We are to ask, Where are the records of the assembly,[729]—records of the thoughts and actions of the representatives of the people? These, no doubt, will show, if they can be found, that a spirit of local self-government actuated the people, and is the thread of development to be followed by the future historian of the State. We need the testimony of Porter, of Carey, of the able and virtuous Edward Moseley (chief justice from 1707 to 1711), and of other leaders of the people against the repressive policy of their lordships in England and their governors and councils.

Some interesting subjects, indicative of the condition of the colony in these early times, must be briefly noticed: the emission of paper money consequent upon the expenses of the Indian war; the occasional rating of commodities for exchange; the indigenous products of the soil and staples of export; the forwarding of tobacco abroad through Virginia, and troubles about boundary lines; the customs and modes of life among the gentry or planters and the humbler classes, and among their close neighbors, the Indian tribes; the visits of pirates to the coast, both in North and South Carolina, notably Teach or Blackbeard, and the romantic defeat of him in Pamlico Sound; the settling, at first, along the streams, which became the principal highways for travel and commerce; the ill effects necessarily resulting from the habitations being far apart, and from the fact that there was very little social intercourse; the transmission of letters only by special messengers; the disadvantageous nature of the coast section, retarding the prosperity of the colony.

During the proprietary period, or the first sixty-six years of the colony, the people clung to the seaboard and that part of it which had no good port of entry. This was as great a misfortune as it was to cling to the border line of Virginia. The accession of population, including foreigners, came chiefly through that border. In 1690 and again in 1707, bodies of French Protestants arrived, and settled in Pamlico and on the Neuse and Trent; and three years after some Swiss and Germans settled at Newbern. The whites in the province numbered at this time about 5,000. Large tracts of unoccupied land lay between the selected points of settlement. A few towns had been begun: the first, forty-two years after the first settling in the province. If a good harbor had been selected and a town properly fortified built there for exports, the progress of North Carolina might have been more rapid and substantial. The metropolis was Edenton (founded 1715) on the Chowan. The legislature met there. It contained forty or fifty houses. There was no church there. The Rev. Dr. Hawks says: “For long, long years there were no places of worship. They never amounted to more than some half dozen of all sorts, while the Proprietors owned Carolina; and when their unblessed dominion ended, there was not a minister of Christ living in the province.” There had been, however, missionaries sent out by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel; and there were some pious gentlemen in the colony who gave them welcome and all the assistance in their power. But while a few of the missionaries were exemplary and accomplished much good, others were a positive hindrance to “the propagation of the gospel.”

Among the misfortunes of the colonists we must not fail to notice the incompetent governors sent from England. Favoritism, and not fitness for office, dictated the selection. Archdale, Hyde, and Eden are considered the only governors sent to the province who did it much service. The last two whom their lordships favored with the dignity of executive authority were Burrington, pronounced “a profligate blackguard,” and Sir Richard Everard, whom his superseded rival railed against as “a noodle and an ape,” and “no more fit to be a governor than Sancho Panza.” It was in the administration of Sir Richard that the colony passed by purchase under the immediate control of the king. Two thousand five hundred pounds sterling were paid for each of seven shares; Lord Carteret declining to dispose of his, as it had come to him by inheritance.[730] The claims for arrears of quit-rent due from settlers were also purchased. Before the surrender of the charter many changes had occurred in the ownership of shares in the province; and not one of the original Proprietors remained alive to witness the failure of their successors in the noble enterprise committed to their management by the munificence of Charles II.

Royal Government.—The method of the royal government will be noticed when we come to write of South Carolina. The more thoughtful in North Carolina no doubt felt relieved in escaping from the negligent rule of the Proprietors; but the transition from the old to the new form of administration appears to have been a matter of indifference to the people at large. All they saw in 1731 was that George Burrington, who had been displaced for Everard in 1725, came back with a commission as the first royal governor, to displace in turn his former rival. Burrington, favored for his father’s services to the king, was unsuited for his position, and soon became involved in disputes with his council, the assembly, and the judges. He appeared to think the foremost duty of the assembly was to provide for him a salary suitable to his new dignity, to raise money for other royal officers and an adequate and permanent revenue for the king. The assembly was prorogued for declining to do so. His violence and tyranny caused complaints against him to be sent, through Chief Justice Smith, to the authorities in the mother country. One service, however, he rendered, in conciliating the Indians on the western border. To this end he sent Dr. John Brickell with a party of ten men and two Indian hunters to assist them.[731] The account of the expedition adds to our knowledge of the condition of that remote section of the province, as the interesting work of Lawson does with respect to other sections. In 1734, on the return of the chief justice, the governor retired to Charleston and sailed thence to England. Soon afterwards he was found murdered in St. James’ Park, in London.[732] Nathaniel Rice, secretary of the province, and the first named of the councillors, administered the government from April till November, when Gabriel Johnston, a Scotchman and man of letters, received, through the influence of his patron, Lord Wilmington, the royal appointment. For nearly twenty years he prudently administered the affairs of the colony. At first he found a formidable obstacle to a successful management of the people in their disregard of laws and of gubernatorial dignitaries, imposed upon them by foreign authority. Many hard things have been said of the people by those who, perhaps, did not consider the neglect, mismanagement, and tyrannical provocation under which they lived for two generations, and the increasing intercolonial influences in behalf of popular sovereignty. One of the Virginia commissioners, for laying off (in 1727) the northern boundary, states that the borderers preferred to belong to the Carolina side, “where they pay no tribute to God or to Cæsar.” Governor Johnston, at this time, was in need of the latter kind of tribute. The salaries of the crown officers were to be paid from quit-rents due to the Crown, the collection of which depended on enactments of the assembly. The governor, finding great difficulty in having a satisfactory enactment passed, prorogued the assembly and attempted to collect the rents on his own authority. Not only was this resisted by the people, but the assembly, being again convened, denied the legality of the acts of the governor, and imprisoned his officers who had distrained for the rents.[733] The assembly was consequently dissolved (March, 1736). At the next session, in the following September, the governor addressed the representatives of the people on the general condition of the province, the lack of moral and educational advancement, and of proper regard for law and good order, and assured them “that while he was obliged by his instructions to maintain the rights of the Crown, he would show a regard to the privileges, liberties, and happiness of the people.” In the spirit of compromise a law was passed with the concurrence of the governor, but which the authorities in England rejected as yielding too much to the demands of the popular assembly.

At this time (1738) commissioners were empowered to run the boundary between North and South Carolina, and completed the work from the Atlantic as far westward as the Pee Dee. The original division of the coast section into three counties—Albemarle with six precincts, Bath with four precincts, and Clarendon with one (New Hanover)—was altered, and the precincts were denominated counties. The very names of the original counties disappeared. Soon other counties westward or inland were formed as the population increased, chiefly by overland immigration. To each county the governor appointed a sheriff, selected from three persons recommended by the county court. The judiciary system was modified to suit the new administration and augmentation of population. The governor had before (1736) deplored the fact that no provision had been made “or care taken to inspire the youth with generous sentiments, worthy principles, or the least tincture of literature;” but not until 1754 was an act passed to establish a public seminary. It did not receive the royal assent. That there were not many schools is doubtless due to the sparseness of settlements, and not to any general indifference to education.[734] During the period of the royal government there were two schools that we read of,—those at Newbern and Edenton. In the building of the former, a wooden structure, the lower house of assembly occasionally held its sessions. In 1749, printing was introduced at Newbern, from Virginia; and a weekly paper styled the North Carolina Gazette, issued “on a sheet of post-sized folio,”—“with freshest advices, foreign and domestic.” In 1752 appeared the first edition of the Provincial Laws.

At the town of Wilmington, so named in honor of the Governor’s patron, and sometimes at Newbern, the assembly now met instead of at Edenton, near the Virginia boundary. A new assembly was convened at Wilmington, and an attempt was made to establish an equalization of representation, with a consequent diminution of the number of representatives from the old and more northern counties,—from five members each to two members.[735] Dissatisfaction was the result; and the six northern counties would neither recognize the assembly at Wilmington nor pay taxes, nor would the jurors attend the courts. The colony, however, was more thriving than it had been at any previous period. It was favored by the mother country with bounties on its exports; and the general prosperity was augmented by the coming in of the banished Highlanders and of emigrants from Ireland, and especially by the beginning of the great flow of overland immigration into the central and more western section of the province. Under the prudent management of Johnston, harmony at last prevailed, and such laws were enacted as were necessary. On the declaration of war between England and France, the defences of the coast received legislative attention, and a fort mounting twenty-four cannon was erected on the south bank of the Cape Fear, and called Fort Johnston, in honor of the governor.[736]

Governor Johnston died in August, 1752. What he had written to the Duke of Newcastle, in 1739, was now even more applicable, that after years of effort he had brought the colony “to system, where disorder had before reigned, and placed it on a firmer foundation.” The administration again devolved on Nathaniel Rice; and on his decease in January, Matthew Rowan, the next councillor, acted as governor till the arrival of Arthur Dobbs, in 1754. Rowan’s short term of service was distinguished by liberal contributions for building churches and purchasing glebe lands for the support of ministers of the gospel; and by the convening of the assembly to provide for aiding Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, by whose order George Washington had gone to examine the alarming movements of the French on the Ohio. The militia of North Carolina amounted at that time, as stated by Rowan, to 15,400 men.

Besides the early coast-line settlements, and those along the bottom lands of the northeastern streams, there came, mainly after Braddock’s defeat, a remarkable tide of immigration from the western frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania into central and western North Carolina. Between 1750 and 1790 the accession to the population is computed[737] to be as much as 300,000. Many seeking fertile lands moved over into the “Up Country” of South Carolina, and westward into Tennessee. These hardy and liberty-loving German and Scotch-Irish settlers formed a section of North Carolina which for a long time was “distinct in population, religion, and material interests.” Their final fraternization and blending in political union with the people of the eastern section is a subject for the later history of the province and State.

Governor Dobbs, a native of Ireland, and who had been a member of its Parliament, brought to the colony cannon and firelocks, as a present from the king; and, as a present from himself, “a number of his relations, who had hopes of offices and preferments.”[738] While, on the one hand, he sought to conciliate the Indian tribes, on the other he continuously embroiled himself in contests with the assembly and on trivial matters. It was, however, the irrepressible conflict of that day,—the conflict we have been expecting all along in this history,—the outgrowth of antagonism between the royal prerogatives and the rights and privileges of the representatives of the people. Contributions of men and money were called for by the governor for the general defence of the provinces, and for fortifications within the limits of North Carolina. The assembly were ever ready to defend their frontiers and render aid to the neighboring colonies. But in the acts for founding new counties, they disallowed “the royal prerogative of granting letters of incorporation, ordering and regulating elections, and establishing fairs and markets.” In enactments for a new court system, the further emission of paper money, and the appointment of an agent in England to solicit the affairs of the province, disputes ensued between the assembly and the executive. A new assembly being convened was equally jealous of its rights and privileges, and ably maintained them in lengthy communications to the governor, but without moving him from his convictions of duty under the royal instructions. The assembly was prorogued after appointing, by resolution, the agent to England, whom the governor had rejected. Upon reassembling, and again in a new assembly, on various bills the struggle for legislative rights was continued with the Upper House or council.

Two very different events here arrest our attention: the grant of the king, through Parliament, of £50,000 to indemnify Virginia, North and South Carolina, for their war expenses, and the proposal to the colonies to form a union for common defence against general attacks of the French and Indians; the one fostering attachment to the Crown, the other teaching the method of effectual resistance.

Governor Dobbs was now infirm and over eighty years of age, and, having obtained leave of absence, there was sent over, as Lieutenant-Governor, the able and energetic William Tryon, a colonel in the Queen’s Guards, who became, on the decease of Dobbs, in 1765, governor of North Carolina. He was succeeded by Martin, the last royal governor. We close this brief narrative, pondering upon the province’s progress in wealth, population, and political stability; on the intercolonial influences developing union and constitutional self-government; and on the portentous shadow of the approaching Revolution.[739]

SOUTH CAROLINA.

Proprietary Government.—In 1665 the Lords Proprietors placed in charge of Sir John Yeamans—whom they had, in January, commissioned governor of Clarendon county at Cape Fear—the further discovery of the Carolina coast southward of the portion embraced in the report of Hilton, Long, and Fabian in 1663. Yeamans and his party left Barbadoes in three vessels in October. After separation by a storm, they all reached the Cape Fear or Charles River. But there a violent gale wrecked the vessel containing the greater part of their provisions, arms, and ammunition. Being in distress for supplies, their sloop was despatched to Virginia for aid, and Yeamans himself returned to Barbadoes, leaving Robert Sandford in commission to obtain a vessel and complete the exploration of the southern coast. Sandford appears to have first entered the North Edisto River, where he met the Cassique of Kiawah, who had traded with the settlers in Clarendon county, and who now invited Sandford to his country. But the explorers sailed on to Port Royal, arriving there early in July. Their reception was apparently very friendly, and Dr. Henry Woodward remained among the Indians to learn their language, while a nephew of the chief accompanied Sandford. They designed, on their return, to visit Kiawah; but by a mistake of the Indian who acted as guide, they passed beyond the entrance (now Charleston harbor) which led to that country, and the wind not being favorable for putting back, the voyagers proceeded northward and returned to Cape Fear.[740]

In 1667, the Proprietors took measures to found, in the region reported on by Sandford, a colony worthy of themselves and of the munificence of the king in granting them almost royal authority in the extensive territory lavishly bestowed by the charter. The elaborate plan of government which Locke assisted in maturing was devised for this new enterprise, and was solemnly agreed upon as a contract among the Proprietors. Twelve thousand pounds sterling, a large sum at that day, were expended in preparation for founding, in what is now South Carolina, a colonial government calculated to bring both glory and emolument to their lordships. In August, 1669, three vessels were ready to sail from England: the “Carolina” frigate, the “Port Royall,” and the sloop “Albemarle.” On board the first-named were ninety-three passengers. How many were in the other vessels is not at present known; but the intention appears to have been to begin the settlement with at least two hundred. They stopped at Kinsale in Ireland to take in other emigrants, receiving, however, only seven; and according to instructions sailed thence to Barbadoes, which they reached in October. They were to obtain there such plants as the vine, olive, ginger, cotton, and indigo, and some swine for the new colony; and, no doubt, as many emigrants as could be induced to join the expedition. The fleet was consigned to Thomas Colleton, brother of the Proprietor, Sir Peter Colleton. It seems that the Proprietors were not pleased with the management of Sir John Yeamans in the previous expedition and his leaving the perils of exploration to Secretary Sandford; yet his experience and ability rendered his coöperation desirable, and power was given him to fill a blank commission sent to him for the governorship of the new colony. Living in Barbadoes, and familiar with projects of colonization, he acted on this occasion on behalf of their lordships, with authority as their lieutenant-general, and assisted and encouraged the adventurers. But many disasters occurred: at Barbadoes the “Albemarle” was driven ashore in a gale and lost, in November; and in January the “Port Royall” suffered the same fate at the Bahama Islands. A sloop obtained at Barbadoes in place of the “Albemarle” became separated in a storm, and the “Carolina,” in a damaged condition, put in at Bermuda for repairs. A part of the equipments was lost by the wrecks; and Yeamans, to the discontent and indignation of the colonists, withdrew from further participation in their fortunes, saying he was obliged to return to Barbadoes as one of the commissioners appointed to negotiate “with French commissioners the affair at St. Christopher’s.” He persuaded the colonists to take Colonel William Sayle, and inserted his name as governor in the blank commission sent to him by the Proprietors. He describes Sayle as “a man of no great sufficiency, yet the ablest I could then meet with.”[741]

The expedition sailed again on the 26th of February, 1670, in the “Carolina” and a sloop bought at Bermuda (where Sayle had, twenty years before, founded a colony of Presbyterians).[742] The Barbadoes sloop, with about thirty persons on board, had gone to Nansemond, Virginia, and joined the rest of the expedition at Kiawah in the month of May. The other two vessels, about a fortnight after leaving Bermuda, had reached the coast at a place called Sewee,[743] in March, and proceeded thence to Port Royal harbor, their point of destination, and where the instructions of the Proprietors directed them to go. They remained there a few days. Governor Sayle summoned the freemen, according to instructions annexed to his commission, and they elected Paul Smith, Robert Donne, Ralph Marshall, Samuel West, and Joseph Dalton their representatives in the council, which consisted of ten, the other five being deputies named by the Proprietors. The governor and council, by the same instructions, were to select the place for building a fort and a town. Upon examination the land at Kiawah was judged better, and a more defensible position could there be found than at Port Royal. A discussion was held, and, the governor favoring Kiawah, it was determined to remove and settle there permanently. Weighing anchor, they sailed northward as to their home at last, and in the month of April selected for their residence a bluff which they named Albemarle Point, on the western bank of Kiawah River, now called the Ashley, and began to build a town which they named Charles Town, and to erect fortifications. Safely settled after a perilous voyage, when now, borne down with daily toil, they sank to rest, soothing dreams of prosperity and happiness, no doubt, renewed their courage for the labors and dangers of the morrow.[744]

The administration of the colony devolved on the governor, representing the Palatine (the Duke of Albemarle),[745] and the council, representing partly the other Lords Proprietors and partly the people. On the 4th July, 1670, the governor and council—because the freeholders were “nott neere sufficient to elect a Parliament,” as the instructions required—promulgated certain orders for the better observance of the Sabbath; and a certain William Owens, arguing that a parliament was necessary for such legislation, persuaded the people to elect one among themselves, “which they did and returned to said governor.” But this 4th July spirit of independence was not persisted in, the members elect receding from their own “election into dignity.”[746] The council continued to exercise all necessary legislative and judicial as well as executive power, till a parliament was formed.

Sayle was about eighty years of age and in feeble health, and died on 4th March, 1671, transferring his authority, as he was empowered to do, on the man of his choice. He selected Joseph West, his able assistant, who had brought the colonists from England under commission as “Governor and Commander in Chief of the Fleet.”

Scarcely had the English entrenched themselves when the jealous Spaniards sent a party to attack them; but finding them stronger than they expected, they returned to St. Augustine. The chief reason for not settling at Port Royal, as they were directed to do, was evidently the exposure of that situation to attacks, both from hostile Indians and the Spaniards who instigated them, and who, from their early exploration and settlement, claimed the noble harbor, of which Ribault had said, a century before, the largest ships of France, “yea, the argosies of Venice,” might enter therein.[747]

Sayle’s nomination of West, to act with all the authority conferred upon himself, was of force only till the pleasure of the Proprietors could be known. When they were informed of Sayle’s decease, they gave the position of governor to Sir John Yeamans (commission dated August, 1671); continuing West, however, as superintendent of important interests in the colony. He was made governor when Yeamans was displaced (1674); and in December, 1679, their lordships wrote to him, “We are informed that the Oyster Point is not only a more convenient place to build a town on than that formerly pitched on by the first settlers, but that people’s inclinations tend thither; we let you know the Oyster Point is the place we do appoint for the port town, of which you are to take notice and call it Charles Town.” The public offices were removed thither and the council summoned to meet there, and, in 1680, thirty houses were erected. Even before this, some settlers had left old Charles Town and taken up their residence at Oyster Point. Great interest was aroused in all that pertained to the colony by the active exertions and liberal offers of the Proprietors. Every vessel that sailed to Charles Town brought new-comers. The Proprietors’ trading-ship “Blessing” followed the first expedition, its “main end” and chief employment being to transport emigrants from Barbadoes, where Yeamans and Thomas Colleton were to advise and help Captain Halsted in this work of emigration. The “Carolina,” in a return voyage from the same island, had brought sixty-four settlers, and the “John and Thomas” forty-two. In the “Phœnix” from New York a number of German families arrived, who began to build James Town on the Stono River. When Sir John Yeamans came to reside at Charles Town (April, 1672) he brought the first negro slaves into the colony. In 1680, the date of the removal to Oyster Point, the settlers numbered about 1,200; in 1686, they were estimated at 2,500, English, Irish, Scotch, French, and Germans. It is of significance, with respect to the first political acts of these settlers, to bear in mind that they were mostly dissenters. Boone, agent in London for a large portion of the people, stated in his petition to the House of Lords (in 1706) that after the reëstablishment of the Church of England by the Act of Uniformity, many subjects of the Crown, “who were so unhappy as to have some scruples about conforming to the rites of said Church, did transplant themselves and families into said Colony, by means whereof the greatest part of the inhabitants there were Protestant Dissenters from the Church of England.” We must remember, too, that religious freedom was promised as an inducement to emigrate. As Governor Archdale said, the charter “had an overplus power to grant liberty of conscience, although at home was a hot persecuting time.” And this overplus power was at first very fairly used. All denominations lived harmoniously together, till Lord Granville became Palatine, whose tyrannical disruption of the religious privileges of the colonists (by excluding dissenters from the colonial legislature) nearly cost the Proprietors their charter. The felling of forests, clearing of plantations, experimenting in agricultural products, establishing stock farms, building habitations, opening a peltry trade with the Indians, forming military companies for mutual defence against hostile tribes, and against the French at times, and at times against the Spaniards, exploring the adjacent country, caring for and nursing the sick who succumbed to the malarial influences of the sultry low country along the coast, where the settlers were for many years compelled to reside,[748]—amidst such circumstances there was no disposition for religious dissension and none for political differences among themselves. And when political opposition did arise, it was for civil rights, and between the colonists as one party and the Lords Proprietors and their official representatives as the other party. The rights for which they contended against irritating obstacles engendered a persistent spirit of political advancement which led to the overthrow of the proprietary government in 1719, and in further development through the royal administration culminated in constitutional self-government. In this respect, the history of no other colony presents a more interesting and instructive record. The awakening of the people to a determined maintenance of what they deemed right and just began with the stubborn efforts of the Proprietors to force the colonists to adopt their scheme of government, the Fundamental Constitutions. The people declared the charter of Charles II. to be fundamental enough for them. The facts involved in this contention are now to be related.

Locke and Shaftesbury’s elaborate and cumbrous system, solemnly adopted by the Proprietors, suited only (if it could be made to suit) a large population. A copy was sent out for the first governor, but not to be immediately put in force. He was to govern by “instructions” annexed to his commission, and prefaced with the words “In regard the number of the people which will at first be set down at Port Royal will be so small, together with want of Landgraves and Cassiques, that it will not be possible to put our Grand Model of government in practice at first;” the instructions, coming as nigh as practicable to the Grand Model, must be used instead. The same “paucity of nobility” and people is given as the reason for two sets of Temporary Laws (1671, 1672) and the Agrarian Laws (1672). The governor and council are told to follow always the latest instructions; a prudent order, for they came in so quick succession, and with so many alterations, that they may have confused the wisest of governors. In these official papers two principles are prominent: one that nothing should be debated or voted in the parliament (the majority representing the people) “but what is proposed to them by the council” (the majority representing their lordships); the other “that the whole foundation of the government is settled upon a right and equal distribution of land,”—for the Proprietors and provincial aristocracy, first; then the common people could have their subordinate little share.[749]

Contrast with these official regulations framed in London the actions of Governor West and his council as recorded in the “Council Journals” for 1671-72, still preserved in the office of the secretary of state. They were exercising, on account of the “paucity of nobility,” all executive, judicial, and legislative powers with promptness and energy, and were fully supported by the people. They proclaimed war against the Kussoe Indians, had all fire-arms repaired, began to construct a fort, raised military companies, commissioned their officers, and reduced the enemy to submission. They heard and decided complaints and legal issues, and punished criminals, distributed lands, and provided for the health and security of the community. They denied to Sir John Yeamans, Landgrave though he was, any claim to gubernatorial authority, under the Fundamental Constitutions, and had him before their tribunal for cutting timber not his own. It is said he retired again to Barbadoes. But he was commissioned governor and reappeared in the colony, and was “disgusted that the people did not incline to salute him as governor.” In obedience to instructions, he immediately summoned, by proclamation, the freemen to assemble and elect a parliament of twenty members, and to select five of their number to be members of the grand council. This legislative body (April, 1672), the first we have knowledge of in the colony, had at this time very little power, compared with the council; but it was destined to become, as the representative of the people, the most potent factor in the political development of subsequent years. Sir John Yeamans, two years later, gave place again (as before stated) to his rival, Colonel West, whom the Proprietors declared the “fittest man” to be governor.[750] He had, more than any other in the province, promoted the best interests both of the people and of their lordships. There was some scarcity of provisions at the close of Yeamans’ administration, and he was charged with exporting, for his own advantage, too great a quantity of the agricultural products of the colony. Commotions ensued, and John Culpepper, surveyor, was engaged in them or instigated them; and having left Charles Town, he found in North Carolina popular discontents more ready for rebellious activity. The cause of the commotions at Charles Town does not clearly appear. The settlement was so prolific in all that sustains life—in forest, in fields, in a harbor abounding in fish, in herds of swine and cattle—that it is strange to hear of a scarcity of food; even in 1673, when want is said to have threatened the people, provisions were exported to Barbadoes.

Governor Sayle, for reasons already stated, was not to put in force altogether the Fundamental Constitutions; there was, however, a copy “sent under our hands and seales,” as is mentioned in his commission. The project of founding the new colony was based on this special scheme of government. It is positively stated by the colonists, in their letter to Sothel (1691), that this set originally sent bore date July 21, 1669; was “fairly engrossed in parchment, and signed and sealed” by six of the Proprietors; and as all persons were required to swear submission to them before they could take up land, “several hundred of the people arriving here did swear accordingly.” A MS. copy[751] of this set, but without signatures, is in the Charleston library. It does not contain the article establishing the Church of England. In other respects it is as favorable to settlers as the revised set bearing date March 1, 1669-70, and containing that article. That many colonists (the majority being dissenters) preferred the first set sent with Sayle’s commission may thus be reasonably accounted for. It was afterwards repudiated by the Proprietors (those who were then Proprietors) as “but a copy of an imperfect original,” to use the words ascribed to them in the letter to Sothel; and they say themselves in their letter to the Grand Council, May 13, 1691, “The Constitution, so-called, and dated 21 July, 1669, we do not nor cannot own as ours.” The second set was printed, and, it is said, was not known at Ashley River till February, 1673.[752]

In 1687, under Governor Colleton, the endeavor to force the adoption of the Constitutions occasioned such contention between their lordships’ officers and the representatives of the people that no laws were passed for two years; and as all laws were limited to twenty-three months, there was in 1690 not one statute law in force in the colony. A new position was taken and with boldness. “The people having not, according to the royal charters, assented or approved of any fundamental constitutions in parliament, have unanimously declared that the government now is to be directed and managed wholly and solely according to said charters.” Their revolutionary spirit went still further. The representatives in Parliament denied “that any bill must necessarily pass the grand council before it be read in parliament.” They maintained this position, and in consequence were dissolved. The Proprietors instructed their favorite, Landgrave Colleton, brother of one of themselves, to call no more parliaments “unless some very extraordinary occasion should require it.” Colleton proclaimed martial law. The Proprietors thought he did right. In his arrogance, he imprisoned a clergyman and fined him £100 for preaching what he considered a seditious sermon. The Proprietors thought it best to remit the fine. The people, however, raised a cry against his “illegal, tyrannical, and oppressive way of government.” Fortunately for him, Seth Sothel, a Proprietor by purchase of Clarendon’s share, arrived,—having been turned out of North Carolina by its assembly,—and assumed control of affairs in the more southern colony, and acted pretty much as he pleased, till he was turned out of his new position by his colleagues in London. The Proprietors, by their aristocratic folly, had kept the people continually studying and maintaining their rights. A new policy began, about this time, in England,—to revoke proprietary charters. The spirit, too, of the colonists, demanded from the Proprietors some conciliatory concession. Yet it cannot but appear a triumph for the people, and not a good-will concession, when “the true and absolute” lords wrote to the Grand Council (1691), almost in the words which they had written to Andrew Percival and to the provincial authorities,—as if they wished to make an emphatic apology,—that there had been “no alteration made in any of the Constitutions, but for the greater security of the people of Carolina from oppression, either by ourselves or our officers, as any one that will please to peruse the several alterations may plainly perceive; the last in date still bounding our own power most, and putting more into the hands of the people.” But they were forced soon—and it must have been with some little feeling of vexation—to acknowledge the failure of their Grand Model, and to write to their next governor, Ludwell (who could not conciliate the “factious” assembly), that they now thought it best for themselves and the colonists to govern by all the powers of the charter; but that they would part with no power till the people were disposed to be more orderly. This was written to Ludwell; but to the public it was at last definitely announced “that as the people have declared they would rather be governed by the powers granted by the charter without regard to the Fundamental Constitutions, it will be for their quiet and the protection of the well-disposed to grant their request.” The Proprietors, however, still held to the Constitutions as a compact among themselves and as a regulation of their mutual interests; and even endeavored once more to tempt the people to adopt some part of them in the fifth set, reduced to 41 Articles. They were then laid aside entirely.

The assembly (we shall no longer call them parliament), not yet aware of the action of the Proprietors, prepared a summary of grievances: that the latest form of conveying land was not satisfactory; that courts ought to be regulated by laws made by the assent of the people; that the representatives of the people are too few in the assembly and not appointed according to the charter; that the power of enacting necessary laws should not be obstructed; that the application of the laws of England to the province ought not to be by authority of a Palatine Court (established by their lordships), but such laws are applicable of their own force, or are to be so by act of the assembly; that the powers of the assembly and the validity of their enactments are not to be judged by inferior courts, but by the next succeeding General Assembly; that martial law should not be resorted to except in case of rebellion, tumult, sedition, or invasion; that there should be more commoners in the council; that the deputies of the Proprietors were forbidden to confirm a certain set of laws (necessary at times for the immediate welfare of the people) until their lordships’ assent should be given, which could not be known in the province “in less time than one year, sometimes two,” and they do not conceive the Patent of Carolina gives any such powers to their lordships.

There was a further principle announced by the people: that the Proprietors could send what “instructions” they pleased, but they certainly could never have intended that they should have the force of statute laws without the assent and approbation of the people, except in such matters as wholly belonged to their direction according to the charter. With so intelligent and progressive a people to control, the almost impotent “absolute lords” on the other side of the Atlantic might well have written to Ludwell as they did to Morton, “Are you to govern the people, or the people you?” Yet a further signal triumph for the people was at hand. The Proprietors had already seen fit to modify their rule that the assembly of the people should neither debate nor vote on any matter except what the Grand Council should propose to them; but their modification at that time amounted to very little, namely, that if a necessary law was delayed by the council, and “the majority of the grand juries of the counties” presented the matter for legislation, then only might “any of the chambers” take cognizance of it. It was now the good fortune of Governor Smith,[753] successor to Ludwell, to announce that “the Proprietors have consented that the proposing power for the making of laws, which was heretofore lodged in the governor and council only, is now given to you as well as the present council.”[754] Henceforth the assembly claimed the privileges and usages of the House of Commons in England.

COOPER AND ASHLEY RIVERS.

[This is a side-map in a large folding one called A new map of Carolina, by Philip Lea, at the Atlas and Hercules, in Cheapside, London. Courtenay considers it to be of a date before 1700. There is a fac-simile of the whole in Charleston Year Book, 1883. For the associations and landmarks of these rivers see C. F. Woolson’s “Up the Ashley and Cooper,” in Harper’s Monthly, Dec., 1875; and P. D. Hay’s “Relics of Old South Carolina,” in Appleton’s Journal, xix. 498. In the Charleston Year Book (1883) there is a large map, showing the town and the early farms on the west bank of the Ashley; the present site of the city up to near the Clements’ Ferry road, with all lines of fortifications and historic points. Cf. W. G. Simms’ “Description of Charleston,” in Harper’s Monthly, June, 1857.

Moll’s map of South Carolina (1730) is given in fac-simile in Cassell’s United States, i. 439.—Ed.]

When there was no longer any reasonable expectation for the adoption of the Grand Model of government, a carefully prepared set of Instructions, in 43 Articles, became the rules for the colony, all former Instructions and Temporary Laws being abrogated, except such as related to lands. These rules continued as long as the Proprietors owned the province. It is not necessary to explain them. They were for the interest of their lordships; simple enough, but establishing a proprietary oligarchy. The Palatine and three other Proprietors, and, in the colony, the governor and three other deputies, constituted the governing power, with, apparently, a complete check upon the representatives of the people. The people could not complain if their lordships carried out what they wrote to Ludwell, that “they would part with no power” conferred on them by the charter “till the people were disposed to be more orderly;” for the people had demanded to be governed solely by the charter. The prominent question now would be: Do their lordships properly interpret and apply the powers granted them in the charter?

But fresh political subjects engaged attention: the tenure of lands, naturalization of the French Huguenots, payment of quit-rents, now for some years due, the jury laws, and that relating to elections. Governor Smith lost courage; he could be no champion for their lordships against his friends and neighbors. The only way out of the difficulties occasioned by the maladministration of the Proprietors was that some Proprietor should be sent over “with full power” to heal all grievances. This plan was adopted. The grandson of Earl Shaftesbury was appointed, but declined to come. A pious, benevolent Quaker came, John Archdale, whose policy was a smiling patience, but a strict requisition of every penny that was due to the “true and absolute lords” of the province,—himself among them. He thought his patience would, as he expressed it, allay their heats. But this could only be done by concessions. He yielded to their request to have thirty representatives in the assembly. He also remitted, after a struggle, arrears of quit-rents to Michaelmas, 1695, on condition that the remaining debts were secured, rents for the future strictly provided for, and the town fortified by taxation. Some political advancement was gained by the assembly;[755] the repeal of any law not infringing on the rights of the Crown or of the Proprietors, or relating to land, was not to be made without the consent of the General Assembly. The council, too, was so constituted by the pious Quaker as to be more in harmony with the dissenters. But he seemed to fear that he might be prevailed upon to grant too much, and appointing his friend, Joseph Blake, in his place, hastened away (1696). He lived to see the peace and tranquillity vanish which he hoped he had firmly established. Two years later the “House of Commons” petitioned (among other things) for the privilege of coining; and for the removal of duties on the chief exports from the colony. They also prayed that no more than 1,000 acres be in future granted in one piece; that an authenticated copy of the charter be sent them; and that the colonial authorities have power to repeal laws (if expedient to do so) which had been confirmed by the Proprietors: and though some of these things (they said) were beyond their lordships’ power to grant, their interest with the king was great enough to secure them for their colonists. Their lordships, as might have, been expected, were astonished that Blake, himself a Proprietor,[756] should allow such an address to be issued,—a precedent for so much future evil.

The century now closed. Governor Blake died in 1700. As required under the 43 Articles, the deputies elected a Landgrave to succeed Blake, till the Proprietors could be heard from. At first they chose Morton. He was set aside afterwards by the council, as were all the Landgraves in the colony, and Colonel James Moore, a deputy, appointed. This competition gave origin, for the first time in the history of the colony, to what may be denominated party strife. Besides Moore, several able leaders now appeared,—among them, Major Daniel, Colonel William Rhett, and Sir Nathaniel Johnson; while to Nicholas Trott the foremost place must be assigned for distinguished learning and ability. On his arrival he espoused the popular cause; but with numerous offices and honors bestowed upon him by the Proprietors, he and his brother-in-law, Colonel Rhett, became their zealous champions. These able men so largely influenced their lordships that at a word from them governors and councils were sometimes set at naught.

At the opening of the new century, we must cease to look upon South Carolina as the home of indigent emigrants, struggling for subsistence. While numerous slaves cultivated the extensive plantations, their owners, educated gentlemen, and here and there of noble families in England, had abundant leisure for social intercourse, living as they did in proximity to each other, and in easy access to Charles Town, where the governor resided, the courts and legislature convened, and the public offices were kept. The road that led up from the fortified town between the two broad rivers so enchanted Governor Archdale that he believed no prince in Europe, with all his art, could make a walk for the whole year round so pleasant and beautiful. From the road, to the right and to the left, avenues of water-oaks in mossy festoons, and in spring-time redolent with jasmines, gave the passer-by glimpses of handsome residences, from whose spacious verandas could be seen on the east the beautiful waters of the Bay, on the west the Ashley River. Hospitality, refinement, and literary culture distinguished the higher class of gentlemen.[757]

Governor Moore and his party gained control of the council by filling vacancies with those of whose good-will they were assured. But they ineffectually sought, by every means in their power, to elect a majority of assembly-men in their interest. Even violence was resorted to, and some estimable gentlemen, opponents of the party in power, were set upon and maltreated in the streets. The assembly resolved to investigate the abuses at the election, and were, therefore, prorogued from time to time; and it was reported that martial law would be proclaimed. When at last the assembly convened, they began with recriminations. If the public welfare had required their counsels, why had the governor, through pique, prorogued them? And was it true that he designed to menace them with coercion? “Oh! how is that sacred word Law profaned when joined with Martial! Have you forgotten your Honor’s own noble endeavor to vindicate our liberties when Colleton set up this arbitrary rule?”[758] But further disputation was averted. The governor had planned a secret and sudden attack on St. Augustine. The assembly joined in the scheme. They requested him to go as commander instead of Colonel Daniel, whom he nominated. They voted £2,000; and thought ten vessels and 350 men, with Indian allies, would be a sufficient force. The doors are closed. Men, and even women, who had been to St. Augustine, are interrogated concerning its defences. An embargo is laid on the shipping in the harbor. Moore with about 400 men sets sail, and Daniel with 100 Carolina troops and about 500 Yemassee Indians march by land. But the inhabitants of St. Augustine had heard of their coming, and had sent to Havana for reinforcements. Retreating to their castle, they abandoned the town to Colonel Daniel, who pillaged it before Moore’s fleet arrived. Governor Moore and Colonel Daniel united their forces and laid siege to the castle; but they lacked the necessary artillery for its reduction, and were compelled to send to Jamaica for it. Unfortunately the agent sent put back to Charles Town, and the governor sent Colonel Daniel himself to Jamaica. Before he returned, two Spanish ships appeared off St. Augustine. Moore instantly burned the town and all his own ships, and hastened back by land. Colonel Daniel, coming from Jamaica with the artillery, narrowly escaped the Spanish ships, and was convoyed to Charles Town by an English man-of-war which he met at sea. The expense entailed on the colony was £6,000.

When this attack on St. Augustine was planned, it must have been anticipated in the colony that war would be declared against Spain and France. The impending danger to South Carolina, a frontier to Spanish Florida, induced the Proprietors to appoint as governor the soldierly Sir Nathaniel Johnson (June, 1702). James Moore was made receiver-general; Nicholas Trott, attorney-general; Job Howes, surveyor-general; and Rhett, Broughton, and other men of ability, adhering to the government in its hour of peril, increased thereby the power of the dominant party. Colonel Moore, being sent out by Johnson (December, 1703) with fifty Carolinians and one thousand Indians, ravaged the country of the Apalatchees, allies of the Spaniards, and utterly defeated them and a body of Spanish troops that came to their assistance. Three years later, in August, when yellow fever was prevalent and five or six deaths a day, in the small population of Charles Town, was not a rare occurrence, a French fleet of five vessels under Le Feboure, aided by the Spanish governor at Havana, suddenly appeared off the harbor. Troops were disembarked at several points. A council of war was held, and the Carolinians determined to go out and meet the enemy. Colonel Rhett, Captains Fenwicke, Cantey, Watson, and others, with many gentlemen as volunteers, defeated the invaders, and brought 230 French and Spanish prisoners into town. Thus perished the first attempt to take Charles Town by a naval force, a feat which never yet has been accomplished. The governor, handsomely rewarded by the Proprietors, thanked the troops for their valor and their unanimity at a time when violent estrangements existed between political parties in the colony.

We must now revert to 1704, and relate the occasion of these estrangements. The governor and dominant faction favored Episcopacy. Lord Granville, the new Palatine, was an uncompromising zealot for the Church of England. It was determined to establish that Church in South Carolina. This was not contrary to the charter; but most of the colonists were dissenters, and it would be useless at that juncture to endeavor to win over a majority of the assembly to the support of such a project. The assembly stood prorogued to the 10th of May. They were summoned earlier; and on the 4th a bill was proposed and read, requiring “all persons that shall hereafter be chosen members of the Commons House of Assembly, and sit in the same, to take the oaths and subscribe the declaration appointed by this bill, and to conform to the religious worship of this Province, according to the Church of England, and to receive the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper according to the rites of said Church.”[759] Some of the members called for the reading of the charter: but the opposition was soon overcome; the bill passed and was ordered to the governor and council, who passed it and returned it to the House; Landgrave Morton, of the council, being denied leave to enter his protest against it. It was pushed through the requisite proceedings and ratified under date of the 6th. It was passed by one majority,—twelve for it and eleven against it; seven members being absent. Some who voted in the negative are said to have been Episcopalians. The assembly was then prorogued till October. It was required by this law that in case a representative elected refused to qualify as directed, the next on the sheriff’s return should be entitled to the seat, or the next, and so on till the list was exhausted; then only should a new writ be issued. The effect was not only to exclude dissenters, but ten men could elect a member against the votes of a thousand. Another tyrannical abuse of party power was exhibited in an Act establishing Religious Worship (passed on the reassembling of the Commons), which authorized a lay commission for the trial of ecclesiastical causes. Dalcho says in his Church History, that they “were authorized to sit in the judgment-seat of spiritual officers, and thus to wrest the ecclesiastical authority out of the hands of the Bishop of London.” This gave offence to Churchmen. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, by whose liberality the colony had been greatly benefited, resolved not to send or support any missionaries in South Carolina, till the law, or at least that clause of it, should be repealed. The dissenters, already elected members of assembly, were not allowed (on reassembling in October) to enter their protests against the conduct of the Church party. The Rev. Mr. Marston was called to account by the commission and deprived of his benefice, for opposing the action of the oligarchy. But the case was carried to a higher tribunal, the House of Lords in England. Upon an able representation of the matter, redress having been refused by the Proprietors (under lead of Granville), a report was made to the queen, which caused the annulment of these two provincial laws. Nor was this all; the Board of Trade recommended the annulment of the proprietary charter (April, 1706). Since the accession of James II. there had been a disposition in the English authorities to revoke the charters to companies or individuals, and bring all the American colonies into a closer dependence on the Crown. Though the surrender of the Carolina charter was not on this occasion effected, yet it was manifest to the colony that an authority more potent than that of their lordships was interested in their welfare.

Lord Granville was succeeded in the Palatinate by Lord William Craven, and Colonel Edward Tynte was made governor. The once dominant faction, which had been transmuted, said Archdale, by Johnson’s “chemical wit, zeal, and art” into a High Church party, now fell asunder. Much attention had been awakened in England to the fortunes of the colony by the publications of Archdale and of Oldmixon and the “Case of the Protestant Dissenters;” and Governor Tynte entered upon his duties with kindly assurances and the wish to “render Carolina the most flourishing colony in all America.” He did not live long, and Colonel Charles Craven, brother of the Palatine, and previously an officer in the colony, was appointed in his place (December, 1710). Since the days of Joseph West, “moderate, just, pious, valiant” (says Archdale), no man more capable and beloved than Charles Craven had governed South Carolina. A sentence from an address of his to the Commons (April, 1712) shows the spirit of his administration. However great the honor of this office might be, “yet I shall look on it as a greater glory if, with your assistance, I could bring to pass so noble designs as the safety of this province, the advancement of its riches, and, what is more desirable” than riches, the unanimity and quiet of its people. “To what a prodigious height hath the united provinces risen in less than a century of years, to be able to create fear in some, envy in others, and admiration in the whole world!” The people, aroused by the expectation or apparent reality of their increasing importance, voted £1,500 for the erection of a State House and £1,000 for a residence for the governor. Unparliamentary altercations gave place to a generous emulation for the public welfare. The governor expressed the “greatest tenderness” towards all dissenters and assured them that nothing should ever be done by him injurious to their liberties. Though the law excluding them from the assembly was repealed, yet the Episcopal party retained ascendency and the public support of the Church (by a new Church Act) was continued. The parish system was inaugurated, and the representatives were increased to thirty-six. The turbulence of elections at Charles Town gave place to unmolested elections in the respective parishes. Libraries and a free school were open to all, and religious and educational advancement was promoted. Under Craven’s prosperous administration, it even seemed likely that the public debt would be liquidated, which had begun with the unlucky expedition against St. Augustine. But fresh expenditures were demanded in assisting North Carolina in her conflicts with the Tuscaroras; and scarcely had Barnwell and Moore rested from that campaign, when the most disastrous Indian war that South Carolina ever had to encounter broke suddenly upon her unsuspecting inhabitants. The Yemassees had been employed against the Apalatchees, and, at a later date, against the Tuscaroras. Being enticed by the Spaniards, whom their chiefs often visited, and being largely in debt to the English traders and irritated by their oppressive misconduct, they turned their experience in war against those who had taught them to fight, and, hoping for help from St. Augustine, began an indiscriminate slaughter on the line of settlements westward from Charles Town. Knowing the colonists to be formidable opponents, they had allured into conspiracy with them other Indian nations, notably the Creeks. So wide-spread was the combination formed that the governor asked assistance from other colonies. North Carolina in response sent aid under Colonel Maurice Moore (brother of James Moore), a friendly service which was gratefully appreciated and acknowledged by the assembly. But “expedition is the life of action,” said Craven; and not awaiting assistance, he fought the foe at once, and Colonel Mackay, in another direction, surprised their town, in which they had vast quantities of provisions and plunder, and attacking a fort to which they had betaken themselves carried it by assault and completely routed them. This effectually checked the Yemassees, and dispirited the tribes engaged to assist them. The assembly met, and, despatching such business as was necessary, adjourned to take up their muskets. All available forces were raised and placed under command of Lieutenant-General James Moore and Colonels John Barnwell and Alexander Mackay. The Yemassees, though joined by the Apalatchees, were forced beyond the Savannah, and took up their residence in Florida. We have not space to narrate the heart-rending or romantic incidents of this contest. The Yemassees had acted prematurely; otherwise the disasters to the colony would have been far greater. Many lives were lost (estimated at 400), an immense amount of cattle, produce, and other valuable property destroyed, and it was said that the traders alone lost £10,000 in debts due them. But the invincibility of the colonists was so forcibly impressed upon the minds of the Indians that they entered into no more combinations, and never again, except in straggling parties, penetrated to the vicinity of the fortified English settlements.

On account of the death of Sir Anthony Craven, the governor returned to England, leaving Colonel Robert Daniel to be deputy (1716) till the arrival of Robert Johnson (son of Sir Nathaniel), who was appointed to succeed him. At this time the French were extending their cordon of forts from Canada down to Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico, and courting the alliance of the Indians who dwelt on the outskirts of the whole line of English colonies. In view of these new dangers and of the deserted condition of the westward parishes of the colony, the Carolinians were compelled to keep up garrisons and troops of rangers from the Santee to the Savannah. The expense of defending themselves and their great losses in the recent Indian war caused an application to the Proprietors for relief. Lord Carteret, Palatine in place of the Duke of Beaufort (who, before, had offered on his part to give up the colony rather than have it in need of adequate relief and protection), wrote to the Board of Trade, “We, the Proprietors, having met on this melancholy occasion, to our great grief find that we are utterly unable of ourselves to afford our colony suitable assistance in this conjuncture; and unless his majesty will graciously please to interpose, we can foresee nothing but the utter destruction of his majesty’s faithful subjects in those parts.” The board asked if such of the Proprietors as were not minors were “willing to surrender the government to the king.” There was no king upon the throne now gratefully sensible of the distinguished services of a Clarendon, Monk, Berkeley, Carteret, or Craven. It was not, on the other hand, the influences of a Danson, Amy, Blake, or even the descendants of the original Proprietors, that formed a barrier to the manifest interests of the whole British nation; but it was the admirable love of justice in the rulers of England that saved to the Proprietors the lavish gift of Charles II., even after their confession of utter inability to help their colonists. It was evident, however, that the termination of the proprietary authority must come. The colonists made it come. We shall now relate how this was done.

The assembly had been forced to issue bills of credit; at first to meet the debts incurred by Moore’s expedition against St. Augustine. This easy method of making money was continued, and of course the bills depreciated. The London merchants complained, and the bills were ordered to be called in and cancelled. To do this required £80,000. This large sum the assembly undertook to pay in three years by a tax on the lands and negroes of the colonists. Before this could be effected the colonial income, applicable to other expenses, was reduced by a royal order to cease the tax of ten per cent on importations of British manufactures; and at the same time an expensive expedition became necessary to suppress the pirates who infested the coasts, and at times seized every ship leaving the harbor of Charles Town. If the Proprietors were unwilling “to expend their English estates to support much more precarious ones in America,”[760] whom were the colonists to ask for aid, except the king? When Governor Johnson met his first assembly, he inveighed against addresses sent to England without consulting the Proprietors as “disrespectful,” “unjustifiable and impolitic.” He then offered the distressed colonists a “donative” from their lordships of a small remission of quit-rents. The assembly declined the donative. They instructed their committee “to touch slightly (but not by way of argument or submission) on what the last two assemblies have done heretofore in addressing his majesty to take this province under his protection.” The governor was anxious they should accept the donative; and equally anxious they should, in return, order a rent-roll for the benefit of the Proprietors. He said, “As the assembly is to pass wholesome laws even to private persons, much more to the Lords Proprietors, who are our masters.” The assembly replied, “We cannot but approve of your honor’s care of their lordships’ interest, who are, as you say, your masters.” “If you look over their charters,” was the answer, “you will find them to be your masters likewise.” (December, 1717.)

The assembly elected Colonel Brewton powder-receiver. The governor, as military chief, required the assembly to order forthwith the keys to be delivered to Major Blakeway, whom he had commissioned. The House refused. The governor offered a compromise: “My officer shall keep the magazines and give receipts to your officer for all powder delivered into his keeping.” “What is the use,” replied the House, “of a powder-receiver who does not keep the powder?” “But I insist upon keeping it,” said the governor, “for I am his majesty the king’s lieutenant.” He soon saw an advertisement by the House, signed by their Speaker, declaring their right to appoint “all officers who receive a settled salary out of the public treasury of this province,” and to “put out, call to account, and put in place,” at discretion, all such officers; and commanding, under penalty, the powder-tax to be paid by all ships to the officer elected by the assembly.

The people, however, were fond of Governor Johnson. They did not always harmonize with strangers sent over to govern them. But Johnson was almost one of themselves, and they admired him for his conspicuous bravery. He had gone personally in pursuit of the pirate Worley, and after a desperate encounter brought in alive only the chief and one of his crew, they having been smitten down with dangerous wounds; and he had immediately caused them to be tried and executed. At this time, too, Colonel Rhett had captured Bonnet, pursuing him into Cape Fear River, and brought him and about thirty of his crew to Charles Town, for speedy execution. The people knew that the governor was in duty bound to promote the cause of the Proprietors. But some of his adherents they justly regarded with ill-will. There had been, as before mentioned, a change, very acceptable to the people, in the mode of electing their representatives. Trott and Rhett had had great control in elections while the ballot was in Charles Town; and the former had been writing to their lordships against the new method of election by parishes. To the surprise of the governor and of all but Trott, orders came from London to disallow that method, to dissolve the assembly, and to summon another to be chosen by the old method; to repeal also the act for electing the powder-receiver, and other laws, such as that for the rehabitation of the Yemassee lands by bringing over Irish settlers to live there, which the people deemed of great importance to the welfare of the colony.[761] The argument was, with their lordships, What right have the assembly to alter anything determined by us? It is true our deputies sanctioned these laws; but we are not bound by what our deputies do, being ourselves the head and source of legislative power in our colony. The people thought, on the other hand, that an enactment by the assembly ratified by the governor and council, the appointed agents of the Proprietors, should not be set aside by the mere whim of a few persons on the other side of the Atlantic, or by the dictation of a man like Nicholas Trott. This gentleman had now to confront the long-delayed denunciation of Whittaker, Allein, and other prominent lawyers, who had for years endured his arrogance and tyranny in court. Thirty-one articles of complaint against him were presented to the assembly, and by them communicated to the governor and council. They knew the allegations to be well founded, and united with the assembly in requesting the Proprietors to restrict their favorite’s power. It had even been ordered from London that no quorum of the council should sanction a law unless Trott was one of the quorum. For a time, too, the whole judicial power was in his hands. Francis Yonge, a member of the council, deputy of Lord Carteret, and surveyor-general, was deputed, with suitable instructions, to proceed to London and confer with the Proprietors (May, 1719). Lord Carteret was absent on an embassy. The others kept Mr. Yonge waiting, without conference, for three months; then sent him back with sealed orders. In fact, some of the Proprietors were minors; others lived away from London; the few who exercised authority left many matters to their secretary: and thus, says Yonge, “a whole province was to be governed by the caprice of one man.” If the secretary managed the Proprietors, Trott and Rhett managed him. When the sealed orders were opened, it was found that Chief Justice Trott was thanked, the governor reprimanded, his brother-in-law, Colonel Broughton, turned out of the council, together with Alexander Skene and James Kinloch; Mr. Yonge alone being permitted to remain, in courtesy to the absent Palatine (Carteret) whose deputy he was. A new council was appointed, and the governor again ordered to dissolve the assembly and call a new one under the old method of election.

The deputies excluded from the council and other prominent gentlemen now became active among the people. The arguments they used must have been: Have not the Proprietors, spurning all appeals, protected a tyrannical judge, and continued him in power over the lives and property of the people? Have they not refused to part with an acre of their immense uncultivated domains for public use in supporting the garrisons? Have they not obstructed our efforts to bring an increase of settlers here for the strengthening of our frontiers, and divided out the land, by thousands of acres, for their own emolument? To foster the power of a few favorites, have they not annulled our laws for the equitable representation of the people by fair and peaceful elections? Have they helped the colony in its distress, beat back the Spaniards, resisted the invasion of the French, suppressed the pirates, or quelled at any time an Indian horde? Can they now, masters as they claim to be, protect us in any emergency? And if, after all these provocations, we choose to rebel and throw off their vaunted absolutism, where are their forces to check our revolt? Will King George, our sovereign, to whom we appeal for protection, furnish them with an army to reduce us to submission? Influenced by such sentiments, the people came again to the polls at Charles Town, to elect their last assembly under the proprietary government. Mr. Yonge, who was there, tells us, “Mr. Rhett and Mr. Trott found themselves mistaken, in fancying they could influence the elections when in town, so as to have such members chosen as they liked, for it proved quite the contrary; they could not get so much as a man chosen that they desired. The whole people in general were prejudiced against the Lords Proprietors to such a degree that it was grown almost dangerous to say anything in their favor.”

It happened at this conjuncture that war was again declared by England against Spain, and an attack from Havana was in preparation either on Charles Town or the island of Providence. Advices being sent to the colony, the governor called together the council and such members elect of the assembly as he could collect, to provide for repairing the fortifications; and as the recent repeals had left him without adequate funds, he proposed an immediate voluntary subscription. The members of the assembly whom he consulted told him the duties provided by law would suffice. “But the Act raising these duties is repealed by the Proprietors.” They replied, “They did not and would not look on their repeal as anything,” and dispersed to their homes. The governor then ordered a muster of all the provincial troops. This afforded an admirable opportunity for a complete combination. An association of leading citizens was secretly formed; the people assembled at the muster; they almost unanimously signed the resolutions submitted to them by the association, and agreed to support whatever measures they should adopt. The first notice the governor had of these proceedings was a letter signed by Mr. Skene, Colonel Logan, and Major Blakeway (28th November), telling him the whole province had entered into an agreement “to stand by their rights and privileges, and to get rid of the oppression and arbitrary dealings of the Lords Proprietors,” and inviting him to hold his office in behalf of the king. The members elect of the assembly, in the mean while, held private conferences and matured their plans.

On meeting at the time required by their writs (December 17), they waited upon the governor, as was customary; and Mr. Middleton, in their name, informed him that they did not look upon his present council as a legal one (the Proprietors having appointed twelve members, instead of seven, the usual number of deputies), and would not act with them as a legal council. Anticipating, it appears, a dissolution, they had resolved themselves into a convention, delegated by the people, and passed resolutions so revolutionary in character as to alarm the governor and his few adherents, who resorted to every menace and means of persuasion without moving the assembly or convention from their fixed purposes. The governor, therefore, issued a proclamation dissolving them. The proclamation was torn from the marshal’s hands; and the convention issued a proclamation, in their own names, ordering all officers, civil and military, to hold their offices till further orders from them. Having failed to win Johnson to their interest, they elected their own governor, Colonel James Moore.

Johnson, who had gone up to his plantation, hearing that the people intended to proclaim Moore governor in the king’s name, hastened back and used every effort to prevent it. But he found the militia drawn up, colors flying at the forts and on all the ships in the harbor, drums beating, and every preparation made for proclaiming the new governor. An eye-witness says it would be tedious to tell all the frantic ex-governor did. But the leaders of the revolution had sent Mr. Lloyd to keep with him under pretence of friendship and adherence, and prevent any rash action on his part. The troops began their march, inspirited by patriotic harangues, and escorted the members of the convention to the fort: where, by the united acclamations of the people, James Moore was proclaimed governor of South Carolina in the name of the king of England (December 21, 1719).

A council of twelve was chosen, as in other colonies under the royal government; and the convention then resumed its functions as a legislative assembly, and proceeded to enact such laws as the state of the province required. They addressed a letter to the Board of Trade explanatory of their action, and their agent in England (Mr. Boone, with whom also Colonel Barnwell was sent to act) laid before the king an account of the misrule of the Proprietors and implored his protection. Johnson and the Proprietors were equally active, and the decision of the English government was anxiously awaited by both parties. During nearly a year such anxiety continued; and as the clergy in the province were unwilling to perform the marriage ceremony without, as previously, a license from Johnson as governor, and a large number of people followed his advice and example in not paying taxes until executions were issued against them, he supposed he had a party ready to reinstate him. But it was not till he received aid from the crews of several English men-of-war that he formed a plan of seizing the government. The Spanish fleet (to resist which the people had been mustered) had not come to Charlestown, but had gone to the island of Providence, and had been there repulsed by Governor Rogers. The “Flamborough,” Captain Hildesley, and “Phœnix,” Captain Pearce, arrived in Charlestown harbor in May, 1721; and chiefly, it appears, by the advice of Hildesley, Johnson appeared in arms with about 120 men, mostly sailors from the “Flamborough,” and marched against the forts, whose garrisons were obeying the orders of Governor Moore. The forts opened fire upon them. Whereupon, Captain Pearce was deputed by Johnson, together with some of his council, to negotiate with the revolutionists. They refused to negotiate; for they knew from their agents that the regency in England had determined to protect the colony, and that General Francis Nicholson had been appointed provisional royal governor. Johnson requested to see the orders of the regency and the despatches from the agents. As soon as he read them, he disbanded his men and gave up all opposition to the existing government. Nicholson’s commission is dated 26th September, 1720. He arrived in the colony 23d May, 1721, and was gladly received by Governor Moore, the assembly, and the people. The revolution was now complete; although the surrender of the proprietary charter, for such a sum of money as was finally agreed upon, was not effected till 1729.

Royal Government.—We have before us the ninety-six articles of instruction to Nicholson (30th August, 1720) and the additional ones to Governor Johnson (1730), detailing the method of the royal government, and which continued in force, with some modifications, till the separation of the colony from the mother country. It is not necessary to give a full synopsis of this method. The enacting clause is “by the governor, council, and assembly;” and the assembly had the same powers and privileges as were allowed to the House of Commons in England. The Episcopal was the established Church, under jurisdiction of the Bishop of London. School-masters were licensed by the bishop or by the governor. If the governor died or left the province, and there was no commissioned lieutenant-governor, the eldest councillor, as president, acted in his stead. Special care was enjoined for the encouragement of the Royal African Company for the importation of negro slaves. If any part of the instructions was distasteful to the people, it was that which conferred equal legislative authority with the assembly upon the council; a council of twelve, nominated (or suspended) by the governor, and three of whom, with the governor, could form a quorum, in emergencies. On this point contests soon arose, the assembly thinking that the governor and three or more of their own neighbors or relatives, who happened to be councillors, ought not to have the power to counteract the deliberate will of the entire body of the representatives of the people; that is, of the freeholders who alone voted for members of the assembly.

But, for the time being, all were happy at their release from “the confused, negligent, and helpless government of the Lords Proprietors.” Governor Nicholson, on his arrival, found in all parties a cheerful allegiance to the king and zeal for the advancement of the colony.[762] Ex-Governor Moore was made Speaker of the assembly, with Nicholson’s cordial approbation, and all laws demanded by the condition of the province were promptly enacted. Peace having been declared between England and Spain, the new governor applied himself to the regulation of Indian affairs, and succeeded in bringing the tribes on the frontier into alliance with British interests. With peace and security everywhere, he addressed himself to forming new parishes, building churches and obtaining clergymen by the help of the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Additional free schools were established by bequests from three benevolent citizens, and the people generally emulated the public spirit of their good governor. In 1725 he returned to England, and the administration of his office devolved upon Arthur Middleton as president of the council. He had it not in his power to be the generous benefactor Nicholson had been, and his views of duty to the royal authority placed him in opposition to the progressive spirit of those with whom he had been associated in the recent revolution. His stubborn contest with the assembly prevented the enactment of any laws for three years. They thought it necessary for the good of the people to pass a bill for promoting the currency of gold and silver in the province. The council rejected it as contravening an act of Parliament in the reign of Queen Anne; and insisted on the passage of a supply bill by the assembly, to meet the expenses of the government. This the assembly refused unless their bill was first agreed to. Middleton resorted to prorogations and dissolutions. This availed nothing; for the people supported their representatives by reëlecting them. From 1727 to 1731 the same bill was eight times sent up to the president and his council, and always rejected. He prorogued them six times, and six times ordered new elections. Among other things in this contest, the assembly claimed the right to elect their clerk without consulting the council;[763] ordered an officer of the council to their bar, and put him under arrest for delay in making his appearance; and maintained that—as in Nicholson’s time—members elect should qualify by holding up the hand in taking the oath before the council, if they thought that best, instead of swearing on the Holy Evangelists, as the governor required them to do. The contest was not terminated until the arrival of Governor Johnson (December, 1730) as successor to Nicholson.

Sir Alexander Cumming had been sent to form a treaty with the Cherokees who lived near the head of the Savannah River and far westward,—a powerful nation with 6,000 warriors. They sent a deputation of their chiefs to England with Cumming to visit King George. It was important to secure the friendship of these Indians before the French should allure them to their interest. The chiefs returned from England in company with Governor Johnson. Middleton had before sent agents among the Creeks and Cherokees, to avert, if possible, the influence of the French, whose enterprise and energy were likely to become more formidable to the English settlements than the hostility of the Spaniards had been. While guarding against danger in this direction, they had to contend against molestations from their inveterate enemy in Florida. Runaway slaves were always welcomed there, were made free, and formed into military companies. Roving bands of the defeated Yemassees from the same refuge-place plundered the plantations on the frontier. No compensation could be obtained for such ruthless spoliation. At length Colonel Palmer was sent to make reprisals; and with about 300 men, militia and friendly Indians, he completely laid waste the enemy’s country up to the gates of St. Augustine, and taught them their weakness and the superior power of the English colonists. Unfortunately, no definite boundaries were settled upon between the claims of Spain and England.

PLAN OF CHARLESTOWN, S. C., 1732.
(From Popple’s British Empire in America.)

[This was reëngraved in Paris in 1733, “avec privilège du Roi.” There is a fac-simile of a plan of Charleston (1739) in the Charleston Year Book, 1884, p. 163-4.—Ed.]

The colonial government, however, had erected in Governor Nicholson’s time Fort King George on the Altamaha, and were determined to keep the Spaniards to the westward of that river. A Spanish embassy came to Charlestown to confer with President Middleton about the erection of this fort. But the only definite understanding reached was in the avowal by the ambassadors that his Catholic majesty would never consent to deliver up runaway slaves, because he desired to save their souls by converting them to the Christian faith. Cunning emissaries from St. Augustine continued to tamper with the slaves, and rendered many of them dangerous malcontents. Not long after (1738) an armed insurrection was attempted in the heart of the English settlement; the negroes on Stono River marching about plundering, burning farm-houses, and murdering the defenceless. The planters at that time went to church armed. It was Sunday. Lieutenant-Governor Bull, riding alone on the road, met the insurgents, and escaping them by turning off on another road gave the alarm. The male part of the Presbyterian congregation at Wiltown—notified of the insurrection by a Mr. Golightly—left the women in church, and hastening after the murderous horde found them drinking and dancing in a field, within sight of the last dwelling they had pillaged and set on fire. Their leader was shot, some were taken prisoners and the rest dispersed. More than twenty persons had been murdered. It might have been an extensive massacre, if so many armed planters had not attended divine service that day.[764]

CHARLESTOWN IN 1742.

[This follows a steel plate, “The city of Charleston one hundred years ago, after an engraving done by Canot from an original picture by T. Mellish, Esq.” A long panoramic view of Charlestown in 1762 is given in the Charleston Year Book, 1882; and in Cassell’s United States, i. 355. The name “Charleston” was substituted for “Charlestown” in the act of incorporation of 1783.—Ed.]

There were in the colony above 40,000 negro slaves. The necessity for increasing the number of white inhabitants had long been apparent to the English authorities. Some of the German Palatines in England (1729) and more of them in 1764 were sent over to the colony. Mr. Purry, of Neufchatel, and his Swiss were granted (1732) an extensive tract of land near the Savannah River. Some Irish colonists settled at Williamsburgh (1733). Colonel Johnson, before he came over as royal governor, proposed to the Board of Trade a plan for forming a number of townships at convenient points, with great inducements to both foreigners and Englishmen to remove to the province. Above all, the proposal by Lord Percival (1730) to establish the colony of Georgia (between the Savannah and Altamaha), and the carrying of the project into effect under General Oglethorpe (1733), gave promise of adding materially to the security and strength of South Carolina. With a new fort at Beaufort (Port Royal), and abundant artillery and ammunition furnished by his majesty, and ships of war protecting the harbor, we have but to look forward a few years to the settlement and improvement of the healthy and fertile “up country” by overland immigration from Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the moving up of population from the coast, to reach the period of permanent prosperity and the greater development of the material resources of the province. Many families moved to the upper part of South Carolina when Governor Glen established peace with the Cherokees; many came when Braddock’s defeat exposed the frontiers of the more northern colonies to the French and Indians; while by way of Charlestown Germans came up to Saxegotha and the forks of the Broad and Saluda—as the Scotch-Irish had come to Williamsburg.

From 200 to 300 ships now annually left Charlestown. In addition to rice, indigo, pitch, turpentine, tar, rosin, timber of various kinds, deer-skins, salted provisions, and agricultural products grown along the coast, the interior plantations raised wheat, hemp, flax, and tobacco; fruits, berries, nuts, and many kinds of vegetables were abundant; and fish from the rivers, and turkeys and deer and other game from the forest, furnished luxuries for the table, without counting the ever-present supplies from swine, sheep, and cattle. But we must now go back a few years.

Governor Johnson died 3d May, 1735, and Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Broughton on 22d November, 1737. William Bull, president of the council, succeeded to the administration till the arrival of Governor James Glen (December, 1743).[765] The lieutenant-governor was a prudent ruler. He assisted in the settlement of Savannah and in the war of Georgia upon St. Augustine (sending the Carolina regiment under Colonel Vanderdussen), and managed wisely in every emergency. Governor Glen with greater energy and activity extended the fortification of the province,—visiting every portion of his government, going among the Cherokees, obtaining a surrender of their lands for the erection of forts, and erecting them; as Prince George on the upper part of the Savannah, 170 miles above Fort Moore, and Fort Loudon on the Tennessee among the Upper Cherokees, 500 miles from Charlestown. These forts and those at Frederica and Augusta in Georgia were garrisoned by his majesty’s troops for the protection of both provinces. When Glen, in 1756, was superseded by Governor William Henry Lyttleton, war was declared between England and France. On the termination of hostilities, the Cherokees, who had aided the British troops in the more northern colonies, were returning home through Western Virginia, and committed depredations, appropriating to their use such horses as came in their way, and were set upon and some of them murdered. In retaliation they killed the whites wherever they could, indiscriminately. Among their victims in Carolina were a few of the garrison of Fort Loudon. This was done by roving bands of headstrong young Indians. The troops at Prince George despatched the news to Governor Lyttleton, who instantly began preparations for war. The Cherokees sent thirty-two of their chiefs to settle the difficulty, as the nation at large desired peace and the continuation of their old friendship with the English. Lyttleton kept the chiefs under arrest, and took them with him along with his troops. His ill-usage of them and his folly involved the province in a disastrous war with the whole Cherokee nation. Then, being appointed Governor of Jamaica, he left the calamities he had caused to the management of Lieutenant-Governor Bull. Not till 1761 were hostilities ended by the help of Colonel Grant, of the British army. Dr. Hewatt, who had the advantage of the acquaintance of the last Lieutenant-Governor Bull, and probably his assistance in the compilation of his history, gives a detailed and graphic narrative of this deplorable conflict, carried on in pathless forests, hundreds of miles from Charlestown. So wasted were Colonel Grant’s men “by heat, thirst, watching, danger, and fatigue” that when peace was made “they were utterly unable to march farther.” In the provincial regiment assisting Grant were Middleton, Laurens, Moultrie, Marion, Huger, Pickens, and others who became distinguished in the war of the Revolution.

The Peace of Paris (1763) happily put an end forever to hostilities arising from French possessions in America. The succeeding royal governors of South Carolina were Thomas Boone (1762), Lord Charles Greville Montague (December, 1765), and Lord William Campbell (1773).

The most interesting and continuous thread of events running through all the colonial history of South Carolina is the development of the power of the assembly or representatives of the people. Taking up this subject where we left it at the close of Middleton’s contest with the assembly, we observe that the choice of their clerk was conceded to them by the succeeding governor. In the policy both of the proprietary and royal government, the elective franchise was granted to the people or freeholders only in choosing members of the assembly. We do not find that they balloted for any executive or other officer. The success of the assembly in electing a few administrative officers and holding them accountable to themselves was an important acquisition, and was followed by a further gain of power in the same direction. Governor Glen, addressing the authorities in England (October 10, 1748), said in substance “that a new modelling[766] of their constitution,” in South Carolina, “would add to the happiness of the province and preserve their dependence upon the Crown, any weakening [of the] power of which and deviation from the constitution of the mother country is in his opinion dangerous. Almost all the places of profit or of trust are disposed of by the general assembly.” “Besides the treasurer they appoint also the commissary, the Indian commissioner, the comptroller of the duties upon imports and exports, the powder-receiver, etc. The executive part of the government is lodged in different sets of commissioners,” “of the market, the workhouse, of the pilots, of the fortifications, etc. Not only civil posts, but ecclesiastical preferment, are in the disposal or election of the people, although by the king’s instructions to the governor” this should belong to the king or his representative. The governor is not prayed for, while the assembly is, during its sittings, the only instance in America where it is not done. “The above officers and most of the commissioners are named by the general assembly, and are responsible to them alone; and whatever be their ignorance, neglect, or misconduct, the governor has no power to reprove or displace them. Thus the people have the whole of the administration in their hands, and the governor, and thereby the Crown, is stripped of its power.” In the next place, the assembly claimed, and with success, the sole power of originating tax bills, notwithstanding instructions to the contrary. They refused to the council even the power to amend such bills. In the words of the Journals of the House (no. 21, 1745), they asserted their “sole right of introducing, framing, and amending subsidy bills,”—which they based on the English Constitution as paramount to the royal instructions. It was furthermore intimated that the council had no right to legislative functions at all,—a view soon after ably advocated by Mr. Drayton. It was contended that the council was not a counterpart of the House of Lords, but simply a body advisory to the governor. It was even argued that, similarly with the mother country, colonial usages and precedents were to be regarded as constitutional in South Carolina.

The last development of the power of the assembly tended to check the governor’s prerogative of dissolution and prorogation. In a contest with Governor Boone, beginning in 1762 and continued to May, 1763, dissolution and prorogation failed entirely as a means of controlling the actions or sentiments of the representatives of the people, where the people were of one mind with the assembly. The subject of dispute involved the assembly’s sole right to judge of the validity of the election of its own members, and the argument on the part of the House was conducted chiefly by Rutledge and Gadsden. But about this time came proposals that committees from all the colonial assemblies should meet to consider the British Stamp Act. We conclude this brief narrative with the remark that in the Continental Congress that ensued the leading statesmen of the South Carolina popular assembly stepped as veterans to new battlefields with the dust of recent victories still upon them.[767]

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

By the Editor.

IT is claimed that Sir Robert Heath conveyed his rights under the grant of 1630 to the Earl of Arundel, and that these eventually became invested in Dr. Coxe, as presented in a memorial to William III., and assumed in the Carolana of his son, Daniel Coxe.[768] The Heath grant,[769] however, was formally annulled August 12, 1663.[770] De Laet’s map, showing the coast of what was subsequently North Carolina at the period of Heath’s grant, 1630, is given in fac-simile elsewhere.[771]

Dr. Hawks, in his North Carolina, prints from Thurloe’s State Papers (ii. p. 273) a letter dated at Linnehaven, in Virginia, May 8, 1654, from Francis Yardley to John Farrar, giving an account of explorations during the previous year along the seaboard. In 1662 (March) the king granted the first charter, and this was printed the same year, but without date, as The first Charter granted by the King to the Proprietors of Carolina, 24 March.[772] In 1665 (June 30) the second charter extended the limits of the grant. Both charters are found in a volume printed in London, but without date, and called The two Charters granted by King Charles to the Proprietors of Carolina, with the first and last Fundamental Constitutions of that Colony. Issues of this book seem to have been made in 1698, 1705, 1706, 1708, etc.[773]

Mr. Fox Bourne, who in his Life of John Locke (London, 1876, vol. i. pp. 235, etc.) gives the most satisfactory account of Locke’s connection with the new colony, writes of the Fundamental Constitutions that Locke had a large share in it, though there can be hardly any doubt that it was initiated by Lord Ashley, modified by his fellow-proprietors. He adds: “The original draft, a small vellum-covered volume of seventy-five pages, neatly written, but with numerous erasures and corrections, is preserved among the Shaftesbury Papers (series viii. no. 3), and this interesting document has been printed, verbatim et literatim, by Mr. Sainsbury, in the Appendix to the Thirty-third report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records (1872), pp. 258-269.”

The same author refers to a draft extant in Locke’s handwriting, dated 21 June, 1669, which varies in some respects from that later issued by the Proprietors, in print.

There is, or was, in 1845, in the Charleston Library, presented to it by Robert Gilmor, of Baltimore, in 1833, a MS. copy in Locke’s own handwriting, dated July 14, 1669; but the earliest printed copy is one entitled thus: The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, in number a Hundred and Twenty, agreed upon by the Palatine and Lords Proprietors, to remain the sacred and unalterable form and rule of government of Carolina forever. March 1, 1669.[774] Printed first in 1670, the document was reissued, with some modifications, in 1682, and again, with more important modifications, in 1698.[775] It is also contained in A Collection of several pieces of Mr. John Locke, never before printed, and not extant in his works. London, 1720.[776]

It would seem from a map which is given in fac-simile in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, December, 1883 (p. 402), that it describes the “Discovery made by William Hilton of Charles Towne in New England, Marriner, from Cape Hatteraske, Lat: 35° 30′, to the west of Cape Roman in Lat. 32° 30′, In y^e yeare 1662, And laid down in the forme as you see by Nicholas Shapley of the town aforesaid, November, 1662.” A small sketch of the map, which is annexed, shows that he passed along the islands which form a barrier to Pamlico Sound, without noticing, or at least indicating, that interior water, and then entering Cape Fear River tracked its shores up to a point where he designated three branches, which he called East, North, and West. The fac-simile given in the Proceedings by Mr. Hassam, from a photograph of the original in the British Museum,[777] is too obscure to make out all the names which occur along the river, while only “Hatterask” and “C. Romana” are noted on the coast. The intervening points, Cape Lookout and Cape Fear, are not named.

Hilton had come to Plymouth (Mass.) while a child, in 1623, whence he followed his father to Piscataqua, but later settled in Newbury and Charlestown, and in the latter place he died in 1675. Shapley is supposed to have been the same who was clerk of the writs in Charlestown in 1662, dying in that town in May, 1663. Although the New England antiquary, James Savage, and others have not supposed this Massachusetts Hilton to have been the same who led the Barbadoes party to Cape Fear the next year, this map and its record would seem to indicate that when the merchants of that island determined to accept the proposals of the Proprietors of Carolina to furnish them with colonists, they placed the expedition which they sent out in August, 1663, under the charge of one who had already explored parts of this coast,—no other than this William Hilton of New England. This exploring party landed at St. Helena and Edisto, and returned to Barbadoes after an absence of five months. Hilton’s True Relation was published in London in 1664.[778]

SHAPLEY’S DRAFT.

The year before (1663), according to Hawks,[779] the Proprietors had issued proposals for the encouragement of settlers within their grant, and we have, as Mr. Rivers has stated, the outcome of the Sandford expedition (1665) preserved in a manuscript among the Shaftesbury Papers, and the results of this seem to have been embodied in what is considered a second and expanded edition of their original proposals, which was now published in London, in 1666,—a mere tract of twelve pages, called A brief description of the Province of Carolina, on the coasts of Floreda; and more perticularly of a New Plantation begun by the English at Cape Feare on that river now by them called Charles-River, the 29th of May, 1664. Together with a most accurate map of the whole province.[780]

A SKETCH OF THE 1666 MAP.

As indicative of the changes in the North Carolina coast since it was first explored, Mr. Wm. L. Welsh (Bulletin Essex Institute, xvii. nos. 1, 2, and 3, and separately Salem, 1885), in a paper called An Account of the cutting through of Hatteras Inlet, Sept. 7, 1846, says that the present inlet of that name was made by the storm of that date, and that the explorers of 1584 entered through Caffey inlet, since disappeared, and that all the inlets of that day are closed, except the little-used Ocracoke inlet.

It was under the incentive of Sandford’s explorations and this districting of the country that the Proprietors entered upon the expedition which reached the Ashley River in 1670, for whose guidance Locke had prepared his plan of government. The more common knowledge of the geography of the Carolina coast at this time is seen in the map of North Carolina in Ogilby’s America (1671), which is reproduced in Hawks’ North Carolina (ii. p. 53).

In 1671 Sir Peter Colleton wrote to Locke that Ogilby was printing a “Relation of the West Indies,” and desired a map of Carolina, and asked Locke to get the drafts of Cape Fear and Albemarle from “my lord,” and suggest to him also “to draw up a discourse to be added to this map, in the nature of a description such as might invite people without seeming to come from us, as would very much conduce to the speedy settlement.” There remains, in Locke’s handwriting, a list of books to be consulted for this task, but otherwise he does not seem to have done anything to produce such a description.

Meanwhile another explorer had approached this region from the north, entering a country which no European had visited since the incursions of Lane’s company in the preceding century. We have record of this expedition in a tract of the following title: The discoveries of John Lederer in three several marches from Virginia to the west of Carolina, March, 1669-Sept., 1670. Collected out of the latine from his discourse and writings by Sir William Talbot. London, 1672.[781]

LEDERER’S MAP (1669-1670).

Fac-simile of the original in the Harvard College library copy. There is a sketch of it in Hawks’ North Carolina, ii. 52.

Lederer was a German, and was sent out by Governor Berkeley, of Virginia. He seems to have penetrated westward “to the top of the Apalatœan mountains.” He announced his disbelief in the views of such as held the distance from the Atlantic to the Pacific to be but eight or ten days’ journey, as shown in the “Mapp of Virginia discovered to the Hills,”[782] but was nevertheless inclined to believe that the Indian ocean may indeed stretch an arm into the continent as far as the Appalachian range.

It was on the second of Lederer’s expeditions, going west and southwest from the falls of the James, that he extended his course into North Carolina, and Hawks has endeavored to trace his track. Following him by his names of places, as Ogilby adopted them in his map of 1671, Lederer would appear to have traversed the breadth of South Carolina. “We cannot believe this,” says Dr. Hawks. “The time occupied would not have been sufficient for it. Lederer’s itinerary presents difficulties which we confess we cannot satisfactorily solve.” It seems at least certain that Lederer did not penetrate far enough to encounter the new-comers who were about founding the commonwealth of Locke.

The earliest account which we have of the English settlers at Port Royal, before their removal to the west bank of the Ashley River, is in Thomas Ash’s Carolina, or a description of the present state of that country. London, 1682. The author was clerk on board his majesty’s ship “Richmond,” which was on the coast 1680-82, “with instructions to enquire into the state of the country.”[783]

During the next few years several brief accounts of the new settlements were printed which deserve to be named: Samuel Wilson’s anonymous Account of the Province of Carolina in America; together with an abstract of the Patent and several other necessary and useful particulars, to such as have thoughts of transporting themselves thither. London, 1682 (text, 26 pp.).[784] John Crafford’s anonymous New and most exact Account of the fertile and famous Colony of Carolina.... The whole being a compendious account of a voyage made by an ingenious person, begun Oct., 1682, and finished 1683. Dublin, 1683.[785] Crafford is called supercargo of the ship “James of Erwin.”

Carolina described more fully than heretofore ... from the several relations, ... from divers letters from the Irish settled there and relations of those who have been there several years. Dublin, 1684.[786]

The first edition of Blome’s Present state of his majesty’s isles and territories in America, London, 1687,[787] gave “A new map of Carolina by Robert Morden” (p. 150), and through translations it became a popular book throughout Europe, and did something to bring the new colony to their attention.

Courtenay, in the Charleston Year Book, 1883, p. 377, gives a fac-simile of a map (with a corner map of Charlestown and vicinity) which marks the lots of settlers, and is thought by him to be earlier than 1700.

For the next fifteen years there is little in print about the history of Carolina; but not long after 1700, the attempt of the High-Church party, led by Nicholas Trott, the chief justice, and James Moore, to enforce conformity produced a controversy not without results.

MORDEN’S CAROLINA (1687.)

Cf. “A Generall Mapp of Carolina describeing its Sea Coast and Rivers. London, printed for Ric. Blome,” which appeared in Blome’s Description of the Island of Jamaica, with the other Isles and Territories in America, to which the English are related. London, 1678.

The establishment of the “Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,” which had been chartered June 16, 1701, had given a certain impulse to the movement; and the society had its historiographer in David Humphreys, who in 1730 published at London his Historical Account[788] of it. This and the abstracts of the early reports of the society, published with their anniversary sermons, afford data of its work in the colonies.

The first Episcopal church had been built in Charlestown about 1681-2, and its history and that of those later founded in the province, as well as of the movement at this time in progress, can be followed in Frederick D. Dalcho’s Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina, from the First Settlement of the Province to the War of the Revolution; with Notices of the Present State of the Church in each Parish, and some Account of the Early Civil History of Carolina never before published. (Charleston, 1820.)[789]

The early years of the century were distinguished by the sharp retaliatory attacks of the Carolinians and the neighboring Spanish. The letter which Colonel Moore sent to the governor respecting his plundering incursion into Florida is fortunately printed in the Boston News-Letter, May 1, 1704, whence Carroll copied it for his Hist. Collections (ii. 573). Of this and of later attacks, we can add something from the Report of the committee of the South Carolina Assembly, in 1740, on Oglethorpe’s subsequent failure, and from the narratives of Archdale and Oldmixon, later to be mentioned. Of the French and Spanish naval attack on Charlestown in 1706,[790] Mr. Doyle, in his English in America, says that the MS. reports preserved in the Colonial Papers confirm the contemporary account (Sept. 13, 1706) printed in the Boston News-Letter, and the statements in the Report of 1740 on Oglethorpe’s later defeat at St. Augustine. The News-Letter account was reprinted in the Carolina Gazette, at a later day.

PLAN OF CHARLESTOWN, 1704. (Survey of Edward Crisp.)

The Key: A, Granville bastion. B, Craven bastion. C, Carteret bastion. D, Colleton bastion. E, Ashley bastion. F, Blake’s bastion. G, Half-moon. H, Draw-bridge. I, Johnson’s covered half-moon. K, Draw-bridge. L, Palisades. M, Lieut.-Col. Rhett’s bridge. N. Smith’s bridge. O, Minister’s house. P, English Church. Q, French Church. R, Independent Church. S, Anabaptist Church. T, Quaker meeting-house. V, Court of guard. W, First rice patch in Carolina.—Owners of houses as follows: 1, Pasquero and Garret. 2, Landsack. 3, Jno. Crosskeys. 4, Chevelier. 5, Geo. Logan. 6, Poinsett. 7, Elicott. 8, Starling. 9, M. Boone. 10, Tradds. 11, Nat. Law. 12, Landgrave Smith. 13, Col. Rhett. 14, Ben. Skenking. 15, Sindery.

This same map is one of the three side maps given in H. Moll’s Map of the Dominions of the King of Great Britain in America, 1715. It is repeated in Ramsay’s South Carolina, vol. ii., and in Cassell’s United States, i. 432.]

Rivers points out that Ramsay (i. 135) adds a few details, perhaps from tradition. Professor Rivers had earlier contributed to Russell’s Mag. (Charleston, Aug., 1859, p. 458) a paper from the London State Paper Office, entitled “An impartial narrative of y^e late invasion of So. Carolina by y^e French and Spanish in the month of August, 1706.” Governor John Archdale printed at London, in 1707, A new Description of that fertile and pleasant province of Carolina, with a brief account of its discovery, settling, and the government thereof (pp. 32).[791]

The next year (1708) we have an account of the condition of the colony in a letter signed by Sir Nathaniel Johnson, and dated September 17. It is quoted in large part by Rivers in his Sketches.[792] The name of John Oldmixon (died in England in 1742) is signed to the dedication of the British Empire in America, London, 1708, and it passes under his name. A second corrected and amended edition appeared in 1741.[793] Herman Moll made the maps which it contains, including one of Carolina, and some have supposed that he wrote the text. Dr. Hawks says of the book that it contains almost as many errors as pages, and unsupported is not to be trusted (ii. p. 481).

In 1708 John Stevens began in London to issue in numbers a work, which when completed in 1710 and 1711 (copies have both dates) was called A new Collection of Voyages and Travels into several parts of the world, none of which ever before printed in English. The second of this series, “printed in the year 1709,” was A new Voyage to Carolina, containing the exact description and natural history of that country, together with the present state thereof and a Journal of a thousand miles travel’d thro’ several nations of Indians, giving a particular account of their customs, manners, etc., by John Lawson, Gent., Surveyor-General of North Carolina. Other issues of the same sheets, with new title-pages, are dated 1714 and 1718.[794]

Lawson was a young Englishman, who arrived in Charleston in September, 1700. After a few months’ tarry in that settlement, he started with five white men and four Indians, and went by canoe to the Santee, where he turned inland afoot, and as he journeyed put down what he saw and experienced. In North Carolina he was made Surveyor-General, and this appointment kept him roaming over the country, during which he came much in contact with the Indians, and made, as Field says,[795] acute and trustworthy observations of them. With this life he practised a literary craft, and wrote out his experiences in a book which was taken to London to be printed,—an “uncommonly strong and sprightly book,” as Professor Tyler calls it.[796] His vocation of land-surveyor was not one calculated to endear him to the natives, who saw that the compass and the chain always harbingered new claims upon their lands. Three years after his book had been printed he was on a journey (1712) through the wilds with the Baron de Graffenreid, when the two were seized by the Tuscaroras, who suffered the German to agree for his release. The Englishman, however, was burned with pine splinters stuck in his flesh, as is generally believed, though Colonel Byrd, in his History of the dividing line between Virginia and Carolina, says he was waylaid and his throat cut.[797]

WAR MAP, 1711-1715.

Of about this time we also find a number of tracts, incentives to and records of German and Swiss emigration.[798] For the Carey rebellion and the Indian war of 1711,[799] Hawks used a transcript from an early copy of Governor Spotswood’s letter-book, which had been in his family and was placed by him in the State Department of North Carolina, where it had apparently originally belonged. In 1882, the Virginia Historical Society published the first volume of the Spotswood letters, and the student finds this material easily accessible now.[800]

In 1715 the General Assembly of North Carolina revised and reënacted the body of statute law then in force,[801] and twelve MS. copies were made, one for each precinct court. About a quarter of a century ago, says Mr. Swain, the State Historical Agent, in his Report of 1857, two of these copies, moth-eaten and mutilated, were discovered, and about 1854 a third copy, likewise imperfect, was found. From these three copies the body of laws was reconstructed for the State Library.

The authorities for the Yamassee war of 1715-16, so far as printed, are the account in the Boston News-Letter (June 13, 1715), reprinted in Carroll (ii. 569), where (ii. 141) as well as in Force’s Tracts (vol. ii.) is one of the chief authorities for this and for that other struggle which shook off the rule of the Proprietors, published in London in 1726, under the title of A narrative of the Proceedings of the People of South Carolina in the year 1719, and of the true causes and motives that induced them to renounce their obedience to the Lords Proprietors, as their governors, and to put themselves under the immediate government of the Crown.[802] Yonge, who professes to write in this tract from original papers, is thus made of importance as an authority, since in 1719 the records of South Carolina seem to have been embezzled, as Rivers infers from an act of February, 1719-20, whose purpose was to recover them “from such as now have the custody thereof,” and they are not known to exist. We get the passions of the period in The liberty and property of British subjects asserted: in a letter from an assembly-man in Carolina to his friend in London. London, 1726.[803] It is signed N., and is dated at Charleston, January 15, 1725, and sustains the discontents, in their criticism of the Proprietary government. The preface, written in London, gives a history of the colony.

In 1729 all of the Proprietors, except Lord Granville, surrendered their title in the soil to the Crown;[804] and in 1744 his eighth part was set off to him,[805] being a region sixty-six miles from north to south, adjoining the southern line of Virginia and running from sea to sea. Lord Granville retained this title down to the Revolution, and after that event he endeavored to reëstablish his claim in the Circuit and Supreme Courts, till his death, during the continuance of the war of 1812, closed proceedings.

Meanwhile some sustained efforts were making to induce a Swiss immigration to South Carolina. Jean Pierre Purry, a leader among them, printed in London in 1724 a tract, which is very rare: Mémoire presenté à sa Gr. Mylord Duc de Newcastle sur l’état présent de la Caroline et sur les moyens de l’ameliorer. Londres, 1724.[806] In 1880 Colonel C. C. Jones, Jr., privately printed an English version of it at Augusta, Georgia, as a Memorial ... upon the present condition of Carolina and the means of its amelioration by Jean Pierre Purry of Neufchâtel, Switzerland.

The Gentleman’s Magazine of August, September, and October, 1732, contained an English rendering of a description of Carolina, drawn up by Purry and others, at Charlestown in September, 1731. This last paper has been included by Carroll in his Historical Collections (vol. ii.), and by Force in his Tracts (vol. ii.).[807] Purry’s tracts were in the interest of immigration, and his and their influence seem to have induced a considerable number of Swiss to proceed to Carolina, where they formed a settlement called Purrysburg on the east side of the Savannah River. Hardships, malaria, and unwonted conditions of life discouraged them, and their settlement was not long continued.[808]

Bernheim, German Settlements in Carolina (p. 99), points out how the busy distribution of the rose-colored reports of Purry doubtless also led to the German and Swiss settlement at Orangeburg, S. C., in 1735, the history of which he derives from the journals of the council of the province in the state archives, and from those church record-books, which are preserved. It is to Bernheim we must look for the best accounts of the other German settlements in different parts of the province.

In 1851 the Lutheran synod of South Carolina put the Rev. G. D. Bernheim in charge of its records, and in 1858 he began to collect the minutes of the synod of North Carolina, and to interest himself generally in the history of the German settlements of both States. From 1861 to 1864 he printed much of the material which he had gathered in the Southern Lutheran. He found that the writers in English of the histories of the Carolinas had largely neglected this part of the story, perhaps from unacquaintance with the tongue in which the records of the early German settlers are written. The settlements of these people at Newbern and Salem had not indeed been overlooked; but their plantations in the central and western parts of the State, comprising more than three fourths of the German population, had been neglected. In the histories of South Carolina the settlements of Purrysburg and Hard Labor Creek had alone been traced with attention. In 1872 Mr. Bernheim recast his material into a History of the German settlements and of the Lutheran church in North and South Carolina, from the earliest period [to 1850], and published it at Philadelphia. It may be supplemented by a little volume, The Moravians in North Carolina, by Rev. Levin T. Reichell, Salem, N. C. 1857.[809]

We find some assistance in fixing for this period the extent of the domination of the English Church in a map which accompanies David Humphreys’ Historical Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, London, 1730, which is called “Map of the Province of Carolina, divided into its parishes, according to the latest accounts, 1730, by H. Moll, geographer.” It has a corner “map of the most improved parts of [South] Carolina,” which shows the parish churches and the English and Indian settlements. A fac-simile of this lesser map is annexed. George Howe’s History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, from 1685 to 1800, Columbia, S. C., 1870, is another local monograph of interest in the religious development of the province.[810]

INDIAN MAP, 1730.

In the Kohl collection (no. 220). The original is in the British Museum, describing the situation of the Indian tribes in the northwest parts of South Carolina, and drawn by an Indian chief on a deer-skin, and presented to Gov. Nicholson.

The Huguenot element in Carolina became an important one, and as early as 1737 these French founded in Charleston the “South Carolina Society,” a benevolent organization, which in 1837 celebrated its centennial, the memory of which is preserved in a descriptive pamphlet published at Charleston in that year, containing an oration by J. W. Toomer, and an appendix of historical documents. There is no considerable account yet published of these Carolina Huguenots, and the student must content himself with the scant narrative by Charles Weiss, as given in the translation of his book by H. W. Herbert, History of the French Protestant Refugees (New York, 1854), which has, in addition to the narrative in Book iv. on refugees in America, an appendix on American Huguenots, not, however, very skilfully arranged. There is a similar appendix by G. P. Disosway[811] at the close of Samuel Smiles’ Huguenots (New York, 1868); and briefer accounts in Mrs. H. F. S. Lee’s Huguenots in France and America (Cambridge, 1843, vol. ii. ch. 29), and in Reginald Lane Poole’s History of the Huguenots of the Dispersion (London, 1880).[812]

Professor Rivers contributed to Russell’s Magazine (Charleston, Sept., 1859) a paper on “The Carolina regiment in the expedition against St. Augustine in 1740.”

The natural aspects of the country, as they became better known, we get from Mark Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, etc., which was published in London, from 1732 to 1748, and again in 1754;[813] and a German translation appeared at Nuremberg in 1755. The English text was revised in the second edition by Edwards, and again printed at London in 1771.

The files of the early newspapers of the Carolinas afford needful, if scant, material. Thomas, in his History of Printing, records all there was. The South Carolina Gazette, beginning in January, 1731-2, was published for little more than a year as a weekly; but this title was resuscitated in new hands in February, 1734, when the new journal of this name continued its weekly issues up to the Revolutionary period. No other paper was begun in that province till 1758, when a new weekly, the South Carolina and American General Gazette, was started. Three years before this, the first paper had been established at Newbern, The North Carolina Gazette, which lived for about six years.

To Governor Glen is attributed A description of South Carolina, which was printed in London in 1761,[814] and is reprinted in Carroll’s Historical Collections, vol. ii. It gives the civil, natural, and commercial history of the colony. It is the completest survey which had up to this time been printed.

In the war with the Cherokees some imputations were put upon the South Carolina rangers, under Henry Middleton, by Grant, the commander of the expeditions against those Indians; and this charge did not pass unchallenged, as would seem from a tract published in 1762 at Charleston, entitled Some Observations on the two Campaigns against the Cherokee Indians in 1760 and 1761.[815]

For the geography of this period we have two maps in the New and complete History of the British Empire in America, an anonymous publication which was issued in parts in London, beginning in 1757. One is a map of Virginia and North Carolina, the other of South Carolina and Georgia, both stretching their western limits beyond the Mississippi.

THE SOUTH CAROLINA COAST.

Cf. the Carolina of Moll in his New Survey, no. 26 (1729), and a reproduction of Moll in Cassell’s United States, i. 439. A map of Carolina and Charlestown harbor (1742) is in the English Pilot, no. 19.

At the very end of the period of which we are now writing the MS. description of South Carolina by the engineer William De Brahm, which is preserved in the library of Harvard University, becomes of importance for its topographical account, and its plans and maps, executed with much care. It is included in a volume, containing also similar descriptions of Georgia and Florida, which portions are noticed in the following chapter. There are transcripts of this document which have an early date,[816] and some at least have a title different from the Harvard one, and are called A Philosophico-historico-Hydrography of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida. From such a one, which is without the drawings, that portion relating to South Carolina was printed in London in 1856, by Mr. Plowden Charles Jennett Weston, in a volume of Documents connected with the History of South Carolina. An engraved map by De Brahm, Map of South Carolina and a part of Georgia, composed from surveys taken by Hon. Wm. Bull, Capt. Gascoigne, Hugh Bryan, and William De Brahm, published in four sheets by Jefferys, also appeared in the General Topography of North America and the West Indies, London, 1768. The map itself is dated Oct. 20, 1757, and gives tables of names of proprietors of land in Georgia and Carolina.[817]

The earliest account of the history of South Carolina cast in a sustained retrospective spirit is the anonymous Historical Account of the rise and progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia (London, 1779), which is known to have been prepared by Dr. Alexander Hewatt,—as his signature seems to fix the spelling of his name, though in the bibliographical records it appears under various forms.[818] Carroll, in reprinting the book in the first volume of his Historical Collections, added many emendatory notes.[819] The next year (1780) produced a far more important book, in respect to authority, in George Chalmers’ Political Annals of the Present United Colonies, from their Settlement to the Peace of 1763 (London), the first volume of which, however, was the only one published.[820] Chalmers, who was born in 1742, had practised law in Maryland, but he could not sympathize with the revolution, and at the outbreak returned to England, where in time (August, 1786) he became the clerk of the Board of Trade and died in office, May 31, 1825, at the age of eighty-two.

When Williamson was engaged on his History of North Carolina (i. p. 9), he applied for assistance to Chalmers, whose Political Annals shows that he had access to papers not otherwise known at that time, but was refused. Grahame, in his Colonial History of the United States (i. p. xii.), says he got ready access to Chalmers’ papers, but as he disclosed in his text little new, it was conjectured that before Grahame’s opportunity much had passed out of Chalmers’ hands. Sparks, in a letter (1856) to Mr. Swain, the historical agent of North Carolina, says of Chalmers that “he undoubtedly procured nearly the whole of his materials from the archives of the Board of Trade. His papers, after having been bound in volumes, were sold by his nephew a few years ago (1843) in London. I purchased six volumes of them, relating mostly to New England. They are not important, being memoranda, references, and extracts, used in writing his Annals.”[821] Two large volumes of Chalmers’ notes and transcripts also came into the hands of George Bancroft, and were entrusted by him to the care of Dr. Hawks and Mr. Rivers, when they were at work upon their histories of North and South Carolina. Bancroft, from his own use of them, and of Chalmers’ printed Annals, and speaking particularly of the Culpepper revolution (1678), in the original edition (ii. p. 162) of his United States, says: “Chalmers’ account in all cases of the kind must be received with great hesitancy. The coloring is always wrong; the facts usually perverted. He writes like a lawyer and disappointed politician, not like a calm inquirer. His statements are copied by Grahame,[822] obscured by Martin, and, strange to say, exaggerated by Williamson.” Dr. William Smyth, in his Lectures on Modern History, calls the work of Chalmers an “immense, heavy, tedious book, to explain the legal history of the different colonies; it should be consulted in all such points, but it is impossible to read it.”[823]

Near the close of the Revolutionary War Chalmers began the printing of another work, a succinct sketch of the history of the colonies. A very few copies exist of the first volume, which is without title or preliminary matter, and in the copy before us a blank leaf contains a manuscript title in Chalmers’ own handwriting as follows: An Introduction to the History of the Colonies, giving from the State Papers a comprehensive view of the origin of their Revolt. By George Chalmers, Vol. I. Printed in 1782, But suppressed. This volume, beginning with the reign of James I. and ending with that of George I., was the only one printed. The present copy[824] is marked as being the one from which Mr. Sparks printed an edition published in Boston in 1845,[825] in which the preface says that the original issue was suppressed, “owing to the separation of the colonies, which happened just at the season for publication, December, 1782, or the prior cause in April precedent, the dismission of a tory administration.”[826]

When Chalmers’ papers were sold, a manuscript continuation of this Introduction in the handwriting of the author was found, completely revised and prepared for the press. When Sparks reprinted the single volume already referred to, he added this second part to complete the work, and it was carefully carried through the press by John Langdon Sibley. Sparks in his introductory statements speaks of the book as “deduced for the most part from the State Papers in the British offices, or to speak with more precision, from the confidential correspondence of the governors and other officers of the Crown in the colonies.” In regard to its suppression he adds that “no political ends could now be answered by its publication, and it is probable that he thought it more politic to sacrifice the pride and fame of authorship than to run the hazard of offending the ministers.”[827]

Of the later histories it is most convenient to treat each province separately, as will be done in the annexed note.

NOTE.

The Later Histories of the Carolinas.

I. North Carolina.—The first published of the general accounts of this State was the History of North Carolina, by Hugh Williamson,[828] at Philadelphia, in 1812, in two volumes. Dr. Hawks, the later historian, says (ii. p. 540) that North Carolinians do not recognize Williamson’s work as a history of their State. It is inaccurate in a great many particulars, and sometimes when there is proof that the original record was lying before him. Sparks calls it “meagre and unsatisfactory,” and adds that it contains but few facts, and these apparently the most unimportant of such as had fallen in his way.[829] More care and discrimination, though but little literary interest, characterized another writer. François Xavier Martin had a singular career. He was born in Marseilles, became a bankrupt in Martinique, went friendless to Newbern, in North Carolina, and rose to distinction as a jurist, after beginning his career in the State as a translator and vendor of French stories. He had removed to Louisiana, when he published at New Orleans his History of North Carolina, in 1829 (two volumes), and in that State he rose to be chief justice, and published a history of it, as we have seen. Martin’s accumulation of facts carries no advantage by any sort of correlation except that of dates. A painstaking search, as far as his opportunities permitted, and a perspicuous way of writing stand for the work’s chief merits. He stops at the Declaration of Independence. Up to Martin’s time Bancroft[830] might well speak of the carelessness with which the history of North Carolina had been written.

Next came John H. Wheeler’s Historical Sketches of North Carolina from 1584 to 1851, compiled from original records, official documents, and traditional statements, with biographical sketches of her distinguished Statesmen, Jurists, Lawyers, Soldiers, etc., Philadelphia, 1851. It is not unfairly characterized by Mr. C. K. Adams, in his Manual of Historical Reference (p. 559), as “a jumble of ill-digested material, rather a collection of tables, lists, and facts than a history.”

David L. Swain,[831] who had been governor of the State, had done much to collect transcripts of documents from the archives of the other States and from England, and in 1857, as historical agent of the State, he made a report, which was printed at Raleigh, in which, speaking of the statutes at large, which Virginia and South Carolina had published, he referred to “both of these collections, especially the former, the earlier and better work, as deeply interesting in connection with North Carolina history.”

Of the History of North Carolina, by Francis Lister Hawks, D. D., LL. D., the second volume, published at Fayetteville in 1858, covers the period of the Proprietary government from 1663 to 1729, the first volume being given to the Raleigh period, etc. He availed himself of the fullest permission by state and local authorities to profit by the records within his own State; and he had earlier himself procured in London many copies of documents there. The author claims that more than three fourths of this volume has been prepared from original authorities, existing in manuscript. He tells at greater length than others the story of the law and its administration, of the industrial and agricultural arts, navigation and trade, religion and learning.

The latest local treatment is that of Mr. John W. Moore’s History of North Carolina from the earliest discoveries to the present time, Raleigh, 1880, in two volumes. There is not much attempt at original research, and he does not reprint documentary material, as Hawks did, in too great profusion to make a popular book. Mr. Moore aims to give a better literary form to the story; but his style somewhat overlays his facts.

II. South Carolina.—To turn to the more southern province,—Dr. David Ramsay, who was a respectable physician from Pennsylvania, domiciled and married in Charleston, gained some reputation in his day as a practised writer, and as an historical scholar of zeal and judgment. He published first, in 1796, a Sketch of the Soil, Climate, etc., of South Carolina; and later, in 1809, at Charleston, a History of South Carolina, 1670-1808, in which he made good use of Hewatt, as far as he was available.

In 1836 Carroll republished many of the early printed tracts upon South Carolina history in his two volumes of Historical Collections. Referring to this publication, a writer in the Southern Quarterly Review, Jan., 1852, p. 185, says: “But for a timely appropriation by the legislature of two thousand dollars for his relief, Carroll would have been seriously the sufferer by his experiment on public taste and sectional patriotism.”

Grahame in 1836 had published the first edition of his Colonial History of the United States, including the early history of the Carolinas, and Bancroft, in 1837, published the second volume of his History of the Colonization of the United States, and in chapter xiii. he discussed how Shaftesbury and Locke legislated for South Carolina,—a chapter considerably changed in his last edition (1883).

The South Carolina novelist, William G. Simms, first published a small history of the State in 1840, which served for school use. This he revised in 1860 as a History of South Carolina, which was published in New York. It was spirited, but too scant of detail for scholarly service.[832]

The South Carolina Historical Society was formed in 1855, Mr. Rivers, the writer of the preceding chapter, being one of the originators. The first volume of their Collections, published in 1857, contained, beside an opening address by Professor F. A. Porcher, the beginning of a list and abstracts of papers in the State Paper Office, London, relating to South Carolina. This enumeration was continued in the second and third volumes.[833] There are also in the second volume, beside Petigru’s oration, a paper on the French Protestants of the Abbeville district, an oration by J. B. Cohen, and O. M. Lieber’s vocabulary of the Catawba language. In vol. iii. we find an oration by W. H. Trescott. No further volumes have been printed.

Mr. Rivers’ Sketch of the History of South Carolina to the Close of the Proprietary Government by the Revolution of 1719, published in Charleston in 1856, was continued by him in A Chapter in the Early History of South Carolina, published at Charleston in 1874, which largely consists of explanatory original documents. This section of a second volume of his careful history was all that the author had accomplished towards completing the work, when the civil war of 1861 “rendered him unable to continue its preparation.” Mr. Rivers says, in a note in this supplementary chapter, that an examination of the records at Columbia has shown him that, to perfect this additional task, it would be necessary to make examination among the records of the State-Paper Office in London.

Of these latter records Mr. Fox Bourne, in his Life of John Locke (London, 1876), says: “Locke’s connection with the affairs of the colony lasted only through its earliest infancy. Down to the autumn of 1672 he continued his informal office of secretary to the Proprietors. Nearly every letter received from the colony is docketed by him; and of a great number that have disappeared there exist careful epitomes in his handwriting. We have also drafts, entered by him, of numerous letters sent out from England, and his hand is plainly shown in other letters. Out of this material it would be easy to construct almost the entire history of the colony during the first years of its existence.”

It was some time before the period of Mr. Fox Bourne’s writing that the Earl of Shaftesbury deposited with the deputy keeper of the Public Records the collection of documents known as the Shaftesbury Papers, the accumulation which had been formed in the hands of his ancestor, and which yield so much material for the early history of the Carolina government.[834]

The latest use made of these and other papers of the State-Paper Office is found in The English in America, Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas (London, 1882), written by Mr. John A. Doyle, librarian of All Souls, Oxford. In a note to his chapter on the “Two Carolinas,” Doyle says (p. 427), respecting the material for Carolinian history in the English archives: “To make up for the deficiency of printed authorities, the English archives are unusually rich in papers referring to Carolina. There are letters and instructions from the Proprietors, individually and collectively, and reports sent to them by successive governors and other colonial officials. It is remarkable, however, that while we have such abundant material of this kind, there is a great lack of records of the actual proceedings of the local legislatures in North and South Carolina. In North Carolina we have no formal record of legislative proceedings during the seventeenth century. In South Carolina they are but few and scanty till after the overthrow of the Proprietary government.[835] Moreover, the early archives of Carolina, though abundant, are necessarily somewhat confused. The northern and southern colonies, while practically distinct, were under the government of a single corporation, and thus the documents relating to each are most inextricably mixed up. Again, while the Proprietors were the governing body, the colonies in some measure came under the supervision of the Lords of Trade and Plantations, and at a later day of the Board of Trade. Thus much which concerns the colony is to be found in the entry books of the latter body, while the Proprietary documents themselves are to be found partly among the colonial papers,[836] partly in a special department containing the Shaftesbury Papers.”

In the Fifth Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission there is a calendar of the Shelburne Papers, belonging to the Marquis of Lansdowne, which shows a considerable number of documents of interest in the history of Carolina: as, for instance (p. 215), Governor Barrington’s account of the State of North Carolina, January 1, 1732-33; Governor Glen’s answers with respect to inquiries about South Carolina; an offer (p. 218) of a treaty for the sale of Lord Granville’s district in North Carolina to the Crown, signed by the second Lord Granville; and (p. 228, etc.) various reports of law officers of the Crown on questions arising in the government of the colonies.

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