Spite of the shortcomings of the settlement as regarded the Grand Model, Governor Yeamans was created landgrave, and Albemarle being dead, Lord Berkeley had become palatine. Yeamans introduced negro slavery, bringing with him a cargo of slaves from Barbadoes. The heat of the climate rendered labour difficult to the whites, and from its first settlement, South Carolina was a slave state; besides which, these settlers seem to have been somewhat an improvident and shiftless set of people, deriving their supplies for several years from the proprietaries, for which, though obtained as purchases, they appear never to have paid; complaining bitterly when the proprietaries, objecting naturally enough to supply them on these terms, declared that “they would no longer continue to feed and to clothe them.” To such men it would soon become an object to possess negro slaves, without which, it was early said, “a planter can never do any great matter.” The climate of South Carolina was not only congenial to the negro, but, as we have seen, the temper of the people made them willingly avail themselves of slave-labour, and very soon the slave population far outnumbered the whites.
The management of Sir John, or Landgrave Yeamans not being by any means satisfactory to the proprietaries, nor yet to the colony, he was recalled in 1674, and Joseph West, whose conduct had been perfectly so to all parties, was appointed governor and created landgrave, and to him the proprietaries made over as salary their outstanding claims against the colony—the surest means of trying his popularity. Nevertheless, we find, at the end of ten years, that “he received the whole product of his traffic, as the reward of his services, without any impeachment of his morals.”
The proprietaries, seeing the character of the emigrants they had sent over, encouraged settlers from the New England and the northern colonies; and with a desire to promote the advantage of the industrious, sent over further supplies, informing the colony, however, that they must be paid, being determined “to make no more desperate debts.”
The fame of the beautiful land of South Carolina, “the region where every month had its succession of flowers,” soon led to the attempt to introduce and cultivate the olive, the orange, the mulberry for the production of the silk-worm, and vines for the production of wine. Charles II. himself sent over to the colony two small vessels with these plants, and Protestants from the South of France for their cultivation; he also exempted the province from the payment of duties on these commodities for a limited time, which caused dissatisfaction at home, and the remonstrance against “encouraging people to remove to the plantations, as too many go thither already to the unpeopling and ruin of the kingdom.” Emigrants continued to come over from England, and these of various classes, not only impoverished cavaliers and discontented churchmen, but the soundest element for colonisation, sturdy dissenters, to whom their native land no longer afforded a secure abode. Among other companies of emigrants, were a considerable number from Somersetshire, who accompanied Joseph Blake, the brother of the celebrated admiral, now dead. Blake was himself no longer young, but unable to endure the present oppressions of England, and dreading still worse from a popish successor to the crown, devoted the whole of the vast fortune he had inherited from his brother to the purposes of emigration. A colony of Irish went over, under Ferguson, and soon amalgamated with the population. Lord Cardross also took over a company of brave Scotch exiles, who had suffered grievously at home for their religion—men who had been thumb-screwed and tortured for conscience-sake, but they, having established themselves at Port Royal, fell victims to the animosity of the Spaniards, who claimed that portion of the district as appertaining to St. Augustine, and consequently destroyed their settlement. Many returned to Scotland; the rest, like the Irish, became blended with the original colonists.
From France also came great numbers of the best and noblest of her people, men and women of whom she was not worthy, forced from their country by the severity of laws which placed truth, sincerity and uprightness before God and man, on a par with treason and murder. Louis XIV., an old debauchee, sought to atone for a life of profligacy by converting the Huguenots to the Catholic faith, even at the point of the sword; their native land was made intolerable to them, and they sought for peace by flight and voluntary exile. But flight and exile were no longer permitted to them; to leave their native land was made felony. Tyranny however, is powerless against the human will based on the rights of conscience; and spite of the prohibitions of law, the persecuted Calvinists fled in thousands to that happy land beyond the Atlantic, the noblest privilege of which has ever been, that it furnished a safe asylum to the truehearted and the conscientious of every European land, and where men might worship their Maker according to the dictates of their own souls. These refugees were warmly welcomed to New England and New York, but the mild congenial climate of South Carolina was more attractive to the exiles of France.
At the risk of prolonging somewhat this portion of our history, we must be permitted to give an extract from the narrative of Judith Manigault, the young wife of one of the exiles. It was felony, it must be remembered, to leave their native land; therefore, says she, “we quitted home by night, leaving the soldiers in their beds, and abandoning the house with its furniture. We contrived to hide ourselves for ten days at Romans, in Dauphiny, while a search was made for us, but our faithful hostess would not betray us.” They reached the shore by a circuitous journey through Germany and Holland, and thence to England, in the depth of winter. “Embarking at London,” says the narrative, “we were sadly off.” The spotted fever appeared on board the vessel, and many died of the disease, among the rest our aged mother. We touched at Bermuda, where the vessel was seized. Our money was all spent; with great difficulty we procured a passage in another vessel. After our arrival in Carolina, we suffered every kind of evil. In eighteen months our eldest brother, unaccustomed to the hard labour which we were obliged to undergo, died of a fever. Since leaving France we have experienced every kind of affliction—disease, pestilence, famine, poverty, hard labour—and have been six months without tasting bread, working the ground like slaves; indeed, I myself have passed three or four years without having it when I wanted it. “Yet,” adds she, in a noble spirit of resignation, “God has done great things in enabling us to bear up under so many trials.”
This family of Manigault was but one of many who escaped to Carolina, and all had the same sad story, or even worse, to tell. Hither came these fugitives from the most beautiful and fertile regions of France,—“men,” says Bancroft eloquently, “who had all the virtues of the English Puritans without their bigotry, to the land to which the tolerant benevolence of Shaftesbury had invited the believers of every creed. From a land, which had suffered its king to drive half a million of its best citizens into exile, they came to the land which was the hospitable refuge of the oppressed; where superstition and fanaticism, infidelity and faith, cold speculation and animated zeal, were alike admitted without question.” In this chosen home of their exile, lands were assigned to them, on the banks of the Cooper River, and there they soon established their homes. Their church was in Charleston, and “thither,” says the same historian, who so keenly feels every beautiful trait of humanity, “on the Lord’s-day, gathered from their plantations on the banks of the river, and taking advantage of the ebb and flow of tide, they might regularly be seen, parents with their children, whom no bigot could wrest from them, making their way along the river, through scenes so tranquil that the silence was broken only by the rippling of the oars, and the hum of the flourishing villages that gemmed the confluence of the rivers. Other Huguenot emigrants established themselves on the south bank of the Santee.” Thus was the original scheme of the Huguenot colonisation on this very soil, as entertained by Coligny, at length accomplished, although a century later.
Liberal as was the Grand Model constitution as regarded religious toleration, the spirit of the settlers was not equal to it in this respect. The Huguenot colonists were not cordially received by them; persecution was impossible, but hospitality was withheld; and though they formed the most industrious, useful and sterling portion of the population, it was many years before they were allowed the rights of fellow-citizenship. As a striking instance out of many showing the noble character of these emigrants, we may mention that, “when the great struggle for American independence took place, the son of this Judith Manigault intrusted the large fortune he had then acquired to the service of the country which had received his exiled family.”
The province of South Carolina was divided, in 1683, into three counties: Colleton, including the district around Port Royal; Berkeley, embracing Charleston and its vicinity; and Craven; the district formerly Clarendon, towards Cape Fear, the earliest settlement of the whole. But Berkeley only as yet was sufficiently populous to afford a county-court.
West, who governed to the contentment of the settlers, failed to give satisfaction to the proprietaries, and was superseded, in 1683, by Moreton, a relative of Blake, and who was also created landgrave; the next year, however, West was re-elected; a new governor was then sent from England, but he died, and West remained in office; a second governor came over, but he was soon deposed by the proprietaries, in consequence of favouring the buccaneers, and Moreton again resumed office. In six years the head of the government was changed five times.