The attempts at enforcing the Navigation Laws hastened an insurrection, which was fostered by the refugees from Virginia and the men of New England, and which justified itself by the publication of the first American manifesto. The threefold grievances of the colony were stated herein to be—excessive taxation; the abridgment of political liberty by the altered form of government, with the denial of a free election of an assembly; and the unwise interruption of the natural channels of commerce. The head of this insurrection was John Culpepper, a man stigmatised by the English party as one “who deserved hanging, for endeavouring to set the poor to plunder the rich.” The whole body of the settlers was insurgent; Miller, the chief object of their hatred, and seven proprietary deputies, were arrested and imprisoned, courts of justice established and a parliament called. With a popular government, anarchy was at an end; though, when the new governor Eastchurch arrived, none would acknowledge his authority. The following year, Culpepper and another were sent to England, to negotiate a compromise with the proprietaries and to obtain the recal of Miller.
Miller, however, and his companions having escaped from prison, met the deputies in England, and as the supporters of the Navigation Laws were sustained by a powerful interest there, Culpepper when about to embark for America was arrested in his turn on the charge of interrupting the collection of duties and their embezzlement. He demanded his trial in Carolina, where the act was committed. “Let no favour be shown,” cried the adverse party; and he was brought to trial. Shaftesbury, however, then in the zenith of his popularity, appeared on his behalf, declaring, “that there never had been a regular government in Albermarle; that its disorders were only feuds among the planters, which could not amount to treason,”—and he was acquitted.
On the acquittal of Culpepper, the proprietaries found themselves in a difficult position. After looking at the question in every point of view, excepting that which was simple and straightforward, “they resolved,” says Chalmers, in his “Political Annals of Carolina,” “to govern in future according to that portion of obedience which the insurgents should be disposed to yield.” The wise exclaiming, in the language of prediction, that a government actuated by such principles cannot possibly be of long continuance.
Means were now employed to heal former disorders; and upon members of the insurgent party high offices in the state were conferred. The proprietaries bade them “settle order among themselves,” and they did so, by establishing “a wise moderation in government,” though some charge, it is true, stands against them, of a persecuting spirit towards their political opponents.
Mild as had appeared the temper of the proprietaries, it seemed, however, as if they had determined severely to punish the offending colony, when in 1683 they sent over Seth Sothel as governor. Sothel, like Cranfield in New Hampshire, was an adventurer, whose aim being the acquisition of wealth, he had no conscience as to the means by which it was acquired. He appears, by the report of all parties, to have been of that scoundrel class by which human nature is degraded. He was himself one of the eight proprietaries, and he accepted office merely for sordid purposes. “The annals of delegated authority,” says Chalmers, “have not recorded a name so deserving of infamy as that of Sothel. Bribery, extortion, injustice, rapacity, with breach of trust and disobedience of orders, are the crimes of which he was accused during the five years that he misruled this unhappy colony. Driven almost to despair, the inhabitants at length seized his person, in 1688, in order to send him to England to answer their complaints.” On his entreaties, however, with a moderation which is highly creditable to their Christian power of forbearance, he was permitted to meet their accusations at the next assembly. Sothel fled, fearing less to face the men whom he had injured, than they whose interests he had betrayed. The assembly gave judgment against him in all the above particulars, and compelled him to abjure the country for twelve months and the government for ever. The proprietaries, though they heard with indignation of the sufferings which Sothel had inflicted on the colony, were yet displeased that the colony through its assembly had assumed supreme power, which act was regarded as “prejudicial to the prerogative of the crown, and to the honour of the proprietaries.”
Well, however, was it for North Carolina that she thus took the law into her own hands; tranquillity was restored. Mighty changes were in the meantime taking place in England; the Revolution of 1688 was overturning not only political parties, but the very constitution itself. But neither the strife of parties; nor the removal of the crown from one royal head to another, mattered in North Carolina; where, at length, peace and prosperity were established. “The settlers of North Carolina,” we are told, “began now to enjoy to their hearts’ content liberty of conscience and personal independence, the freedom of the forest and the river. The country of itself was of the most agreeable character. From almost every plantation they enjoyed the noble prospect of spacious rivers, of pleasant meadows, of primeval forests, where the loftiest branches of the tulip-tree or magnolia were wreathed with jessamines and honeysuckles. For them the wild bee stored its honey in hollow trees; for them, unnumbered swine fattened on the fruits of the forest, or the heaps of peaches; for them, spite of their careless lives and imperfect husbandry, cattle multiplied on the pleasant savannahs; and they desired no greater happiness than they enjoyed. North Carolina was settled by the freest of the free; they were not so much caged in the woods as scattered in lonely granges. There was neither city nor township; there was hardly even a hamlet, or one house within sight of another; nor were there roads, except as the paths from house to house were distinguished by notches on the trees. The settlers were gentle in their tempers, of serene minds, enemies to violence and bloodshed. Not all the successive revolutions had kindled vindictive feelings; the charities of life were scattered at their feet like the flowers on their meadows; and the spirit of humanity maintained its influence in the Arcadia, as royalist writers will have it, of rogues and rebels in the paradise of Quakers.”[[6]]
We have already related how, in 1670, the year in which the Grand Model Constitution was signed, a company of emigrants were sent out, at the expense of £12,000 to the proprietaries, under the command of William Sayle, a military officer and Presbyterian, who, twenty years before, had attempted to plant a colony in the Bahama Isles, under the somewhat unintelligible title of an Eleutheria, and who, mere latterly, had been employed by the proprietaries in exploring the coasts of their province. These emigrants were accompanied by Joseph West, as commercial agent of the proprietaries, authorised to supply the settlers with provisions, cattle, implements and all other necessaries; a trade being commenced for this purpose with Virginia, Bermuda and Barbadoes.
The vessels containing the infant colony, which was intended to be constituted according to the Grand Model, entered the harbour of Port Royal, on the shores of which, a century before, the Huguenots had erected their fort—the early Carolina—and of which even yet, some traces remained. The country around Port Royal, like that occupied by the early New England settlers, was in a great measure depopulated of natives, partly by an epidemic, and partly by sanguinary wars among themselves; therefore but little apprehension was entertained from this quarter; besides which, the good will of the neighbouring tribes was secured by presents. Each settler was to receive 150 acres of land, and the district thus taken possession of was called Carteret County.
It was soon discovered, as was to be expected, that the Grand Model was far too complex a system of government even for this settlement sent out by the proprietaries themselves; “yet, desiring to come as nigh to it as possible,” says Chalmers, “five persons were immediately elected by the freeholders, and five others chosen by the proprietaries, who were to form a grand council, and these, with the governor and twenty delegates elected by the people, composed a parliament which was invested with legislative power. Such was the government which South Carolina chose for herself, coming as nigh to the prescribed rules laid down for her as she saw convenient and fitting.”
Scarcely had Sayle thus far fulfilled his office, when he fell a victim to the effects of the climate, and died. Sir John Yeamans succeeded him, and Clarendon county, in consequence, was annexed to Carteret. The same year, 1671, the settlement removed from Port Royal to the banks of the Ashley River, “for the convenience of pasturage and tillage,” and upon the neck of the peninsula then called Oyster Point, between that river and the Cooper—both thus called in honour of Shaftesbury—the foundation of Charleston, destined to be the capital of the Southern States, was laid by the settlement there of a few graziers’ cabins. The situation thus chosen, though full of natural beauty—the primeval forest, as we are told, sweeping down to the river’s edge, laden with yellow jessamine, the perfume of which filled the air—was not salubrious. The place for many years indeed was considered so unhealthy during the hot months of the year, that people fled from it at that time as from the pestilence. But the clearing away of the woods, probably, and the draining of the soil, so far altered its character in this respect, that it is now rather singularly healthy than otherwise.