Retrospect of Western Travel, Volume 1 (of 2)

by Harriet Martineau

We visited the arsenal twice; the second time with Mr. Calhoun and Governor Hayne, when we saw the arms and ammunition, which were not visible the first time, because "the key was not on the premises;" a token that no invasion was immediately expected. There were two bombs brought in by Governor Hayne, and all the warlike apparatus which was made ready during the nullification struggle. It is difficult to believe that Mr. Calhoun seriously meant to go to war with such means as his impoverished state could furnish; but there is no doubt that he did intend it. The ladies were very animated in their accounts of their State Rights Ball, held in the area of the arsenal, and of their subscriptions of jewels to the war fund. They were certainly in earnest.

The soldiers were paraded in our presence, some eleven or twelve recruits, I believe; and then Mr. Calhoun first, and Governor Hayne afterward, uncovered and addressed them with as much gravity and effusion of patriotic sentiment as if we had been standing on the verge of a battle-field. Some of our party were of Union politics, and they looked exceedingly arch during the speechifying. It will be too sad if this child's play should be turned into bloodshed after all, for the gratification of any man's restless ambition, or in the guilty hope of protracting slavery under the reprobation of the whole of society except a small band of mercenaries.

My chief interest in these expeditions was in the personages who accompanied me. Governor Hayne's name is well known in England from his having furnished the provocation to Webster's renowned speech, exhibiting the constitutional argument against nullification; and from his being afterward the leader of the struggle in South Carolina, while Mr. Calhoun fulfilled the same function in Congress. He is descended from the Haynes whose cruel sufferings in the Revolutionary War are notorious, to the disgrace of the British; one of the two brothers having perished through the miseries of a British prison-ship, and the other having been hanged by Lord Rawdon and Colonel Balfour, under circumstances which, I believe, justify the horror and reprobation with which the act is viewed by all who have heard the story. It is one of the most dreadful tales of the Revolutionary War, and the English have not been behind the Americans in their feeling with regard to the case. The circumstances are briefly these: —

Colonel Isaac Hayne was a peaceful planter at the time of the breaking out of the war. He lived upon his estate all the year round, and was remarkably quiet and domestic in his temper and habits. He served in the American army during the siege of Charleston; and, on the fall of the city, returned to his plantation, under the guarantee of security to person and property shared by all who had capitulated at Charleston. The smallpox broke out in his family; all his children had it; one was dead, and his wife dying, when Colonel Hayne received peremptory orders to repair to the British standard, to take up arms as a British subject, or to surrender himself prisoner at Charleston. He declared that no force should separate him from his dying wife and children, and asserted his inviolability under the capitulation of Charleston. The British officer, Colonel Bellingall, who brought the order, assured him of his immediate return home if he would repair to Charleston, to give an assurance that he would "demean himself as a British subject while the country should be covered with a British army." Colonel Hayne went, with the written agreement of Colonel Bellingall in his hand. He was, however, detained, and offered the alternative of lasting imprisonment or of signing an unconditional promise to obey orders as a British subject. He declared that he never would bear arms against his country, and was assured that this act would never be required of him. There were several witnesses to his having signed under this protest and assurance. He returned to his family, finding another of his children dead, and his wife just expiring.

He observed the strictest neutrality while the promise under which he signed was kept. His house was alternately occupied by English and American troops, when the prospects of the republicans began to improve; and he is known to have refused to let his horses be used by friends in the American force; in short, to have kept his engagement like a man of honour. His position was, however, considered too perilous a one, and he was summoned to join the British standard. He considered that this was such a violation of a promise on the part of the British officers as set him free. He joined his countrymen, fought, and was captured. He was imprisoned at Charleston for some weeks till Lord Rawdon came to town, and then, after two days' notice, brought before a court of inquiry, consisting of four general officers and five captains. Having no idea that this was anything more than a preliminary measure, and finding that the members of the court were not sworn, nor the witnesses examined on oath, Colonel Hayne called no witnesses, and the proceedings closed without his being aware that he had gone through an affair of life or death. He was wholly taken by surprise, therefore, at the news conveyed to him by letter that he was to die on the gibbet the next day but one. He was respited for forty-eight hours, in order that he might see his children, and in consideration of the "humane treatment shown by him to the British prisoners who fell into his hands," and he spent the interval in the discharge of business and affectionate intercourse with his friends. His chief regret was, that this act would probably provoke retaliation, and so lead to the shedding of much innocent blood. He required his eldest son, a boy of thirteen, to be present at his execution, in order to receive his body, and see that it was laid in the family burial-place. The boy, frantic with grief, declared that he should not long survive him; and it is not surprising that he shortly became insane and died. Colonel Hayne met his fate with a tranquillity which convinced his enemies that (to use their own words), "though he did not die in a good cause, he must, at least, have acted from a persuasion of its being so."

Such stories are very painful, but they ought not to be forgotten. The horrors of colonial war may not be over; and it is well that the conflicts of duty and affection which can take place only in wars of this character should be remembered, while Great Britain has colonies which she may oppress, and noble subjects, like Colonel Hayne, whom she may be even now alienating, and whose contrariety of affections she may be yet again driven or tempted to solve in blood.

The present representative of the family was made speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives at the age of twenty-seven. He was afterward attorney-general of the state, a senator in Congress, and governor of the state. During the preparations for war in 1832, he was the soul of every movement. He is now considered to be deeply involved in the Southern transactions relating to the acquisition of Texas, whatever these may in reality be, and to have linked his fortunes with the slavery question. When I saw him he was forty-four years of age, with a robust, active frame, a lively, pleasant countenance, and very engaging manners, with much of the eagerness of the schoolboy mixed with the ease of the gentleman. He can do everything better than reason, as appeared in the senatorial conflict, in which he was ground to powder by the tremendous weight and force of Webster's constitutional argument and sound declamation. Governor Hayne can state clearly, enforce ardently, illustrate gracefully, and boast magnificently, but he cannot reason. His best friends are probably the most anxious to admit this; for there is such want of reason in his present course of opposition to the first principles on which society is founded, and in his attachment to wornout feudal institutions, that the observer, however friendly, finds himself reduced to the alternative of supposing this busy mind perverted by unholy passions or by an unbalanced imagination.

Governor Hamilton is less known at a distance, but he is, perhaps, a yet more perfect representative of the Southern gentleman. He is handsome, and his manners have all the grace without much of the arrogance of the bearing of his class. I was much struck, too, with his generous appreciation of the powers and virtues of the great men of every party at Washington; a moral grace which I should have been glad to see shared in a greater degree by some of his neighbours. Governor Hamilton has done what he could to impair the favourable impressions he makes upon all who know him by the atrocious report he issued in 1835, as chairman of a committee of the South Carolina Legislature appointed to consider what steps should be taken in defence of "the peculiar domestic institutions of the South." This report is unconstitutional in its requisitions, and savage in its spirit towards the abolitionists.

With these gentlemen, their friends, and the ladies of their families, we saw many sights and passed many pleasant hours; and with gentlemen and ladies of the opposite party we spent other portions of our leisure. I was told much of the Poorhouse, rather in a tone of boasting; and I was anxious to see what a poorhouse could be in a region where all labourers were private property, and where pauperism would therefore seem to be obviated. Infirmity, vice, and orphanhood keep up a small amount of pauperism even here, reducing capitalists to a state of dependance. There were about one hundred and twenty inmates when I visited the institution, and the number was soon to be reduced by the periodical clearance made by sending the children to the Orphan-house, and the insane to the State asylum at Columbia. The intemperate and vagrants were employed in coffin-making and stone-breaking. By a slight stretch of the law, persons found drunk are sent here and locked up for a month. We saw two respectable-looking men who had been brought in intoxicated the day before, and who looked duly ashamed of their situation.

The Orphan-house has been established about forty years, and it contained, at the time of my visit, two hundred children. As none but whites are admitted, it is found to be no encouragement to vice to admit all destitute children, whether orphans or not; for the licentiousness of the South takes the women of colour for its victims. The children in this establishment are taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the girls sewing; but the prejudice against work appears as much here as anywhere. No active labour goes on; the boys do not even garden. No employment is attempted which bears any resemblance to what is done by slaves. The boys are apprenticed out to trades at fourteen, and the girls to mantuamaking, almost the only employment in which a white Southern woman can earn a subsistence. The children are taken in from the age of two years, but they generally enter at the ages of four, five, or six. I was rather surprised to see them badged, an anti-republican practice which had better be abolished; but I wondered the less when I observed the statue of Pitt still standing in the courtyard, with the right arm shot off in the war, however. There is a good-sized church connected with this establishment, which was well filled on the afternoon when I went with the family of a friend, who was taking his turn with his brother clergy to preach.