The northern section of the colony suffered most, and for fifty years this part of Carolina was wearied by ever recurring disputes and insurrections. "The colony indeed seems to have reached that chronic state of anarchy when the imprisonment and deposition of a governor is a passing incident which hardly influences the life of the community."[82] Thus during the government of Thomas Eastchurch, who was sent out by the Proprietors to Albemarle in 1677, there was much trouble. Eastchurch appointed as his deputy the immoral Thomas Miller of the King's Customs. "Now Miller had a failing, not as the Proprietors point out, the common one of religious bigotry which had bred such dissension in New England, but a weakness for strong liquor."[83] On his arrival he undertook to model the Parliament, "no doubt with alcoholic readiness and assurance, which proceeding we learn without surprise gave the people occasion to oppose and imprison him."[84] Thereupon certain unscrupulous men took Miller's place and began at once to collect the Customs and so defrauded the Crown. For some short time angry words passed between the home Government and the colony, but the storm was calmed by the restoration of the King's duties. Eastchurch was succeeded by Culpeper, who controlled affairs until Seth Sothel came out as governor in 1683. The new ruler's rapacity and arbitrary conduct caused the Assembly to depose and banish him, paying no attention to the feeble remonstrance of the Proprietors.
Meanwhile the southern portion of Carolina, particularly the settlements of Yeamans at Cape Fear and Sayle at Charleston, proved themselves more orderly and promising than the anarchic Albemarle; and probably for this reason the Proprietors displayed towards them more consideration. The constitution which was granted to Charleston in 1670 was most liberal in character, for not only were the freemen allowed to elect the members of the House of Representatives, but they also possessed the privilege of nominating ten out of the twenty councillors. As so many of the settlers had come from Antiqua, "weary of the hurricane,"[85] or from Barbadoes, they naturally reproduced their old methods of life, and having been accustomed to slaves, they tried to force the Indians into servility; but they found the Red Indian very different from the African negro, for he was possessed of a proud spirit and remarkable cunning that saved him from serfdom. The community of the South was one of wealthy traders who generally lived in the capital, partly because of the fine harbour and the insalubrious swamps inland, and partly because of the scheme of the Proprietors by which every freeholder had a town lot one-twentieth the extent of his whole domain.
The first governor was William Sayle, of Barbadoes, described in 1670 as "a man of no great sufficiency."[86] It is very difficult at this distance of time to deduce the character of this governor, for Henry Brayne wrote, "Sayle is one of the unfittest men in the world for his place"; and he then proceeded to call him "crazy."[87] On the other hand, when Sayle died in 1671, being at least eighty years of age, he is called "the good aged governor";[88] and the Council of Ashley River, on March 4, 1671, recorded that he was "very much lamented by our people, whose life was as dear to them as the hopes of their prosperity."[89] Sayle's chief work during his short period of office was an attempt to inculcate godly ways amongst the somewhat ungodly colonists. He urged the Proprietors to send out an orthodox minister, and proposed the man "which I and many others have lived under as the greatest of our mercies."[90] He knew very well that some special inducement would have to be held out to the Proprietors, and so uses the scriptural words, "for where the Ark of God is, there is peace and tranquillity."[91]
Sayle was succeeded by Joseph West as governor in 1671, but his appointment was only temporary, as Lord Shaftesbury in the autumn of that year sent a commission to Sir John Yeamans. His unpopularity, however, caused his deposition; and Joseph West was again nominated as governor in 1674, a post which he filled with conspicuous satisfaction and success for eleven years. While West was still in office, the Lords Proprietor issued an order in December 1679 for the proper establishment of Charlestown. "Wherefore we think fit to let you know that the Oyster Point is the place we do appoint for the port-town, of which you are to take notice and call it Charlestown, and order the meetings of the Council to be there held, and the Secretary's, Registrar's, and Surveyor's offices to be kept within that town. And you are to take care to lay out the streets broad and in straight lines, and that in your grant of town-lots you do bound everyone's land towards the streets in an even line, and suffer no one to encroach with his buildings upon the streets, whereby to make them narrower than they were first designed."[92] Such was the town to which West welcomed the Huguenots who were excluded from the colonies of their own country. The Proprietors, too, appreciating the wisdom of their governor, afforded the unhappy French means of cultivating their native produce of wine, oil, and silk, so that they soon established new homes for their distressed brethren, "who return daily into Babylon for want of such a haven."[93] By the end of West's administration the Clarendon settlements centering round Charlestown had become extremely well-to-do, and the town government, which was of excellent character, administered the affairs of about three thousand people. But the southern territory fell into the evil ways of North Carolina; and after West's retirement, which finally took place in 1685, a series of unsatisfactory governors caused a continual bickering, ill-feeling, and well nigh insurrection. Sothel, whose bad government in Albemarle was already known in the south, was appointed governor in 1690; but after a year the southern settlers, taking example from their northern brethren, drove him out.
The Proprietors at last found that they had had enough of this disgusting incompetence and anarchy. The Locke Constitutions had failed in every way; a change must be made; and it appeared that an amalgamation of North and South under one governor might have the effect desired. Their first choice of an administrator was most unsuccessful; Philip Ludwell of Virginia found he had a hard task before him in restoring peace out of chaos and anarchy. The task was too much for him, and having proved himself incapable was succeeded by a Carolina planter, Thomas Smith, in 1692. Bickering and quarrels continued; Indian attacks were occasionally met and dealt with; but the southern Spaniards were an ever present danger that made Smith's rule no sinecure. After three years Joseph Archdale, a quaker, and one of the Proprietors, came out as governor, but after a few months in the colony he was succeeded by his nephew, Joseph Blake. The benign rule of both these governors gave at last to the Carolinas a peace which they had not known for twenty years. The Huguenots were once again welcomed by Blake, and although they had been steadily settling in the Carolinas, particularly since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, yet they now obtained a more hearty welcome and complete toleration. So much had Blake's government done for the Carolinas that the royal special agent in 1699 records, "if this place were duly encouraged, it would be the most useful to the Crown of all the Plantations upon the continent of America."
There were, however, two external dangers to which the Carolinas were exposed at the very moment they seemed to have obtained internal peace. The first was the new French settlement on the Mississippi; the second was the fear of Spanish aggression from Florida. The French danger was never really very extreme, and the Carolinas escaped many of the horrors of New England history. But the Spanish peril was true enough, for as early as 1680 a party of Scotch Presbyterians were routed from their little settlement at Port Royal, and this was regarded by the Carolina settlers as a just cause of complaint and an insult to his Majesty King Charles. To their great disappointment in 1699, when Edward Randolph was sent out to make investigations concerning Spanish intrusions, he brought with him no troops for their protection. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, therefore, it appeared best to the settlers that for their own defence they should take offensive action.
The war of the Spanish Succession, or, as it was called in the colonies, Queen Anne's war, had broken out, and rumours had reached the settlers of a coming Spanish onslaught. To meet this, James Moore, a political adventurer, but a very brave and capable man, led 500 English and 800 Indian allies into Spanish territory and took the unprotected town of St Augustine; but the fort, which was used as a last stronghold, resisted him for three months, and as he was unprovided with siege guns, he was obliged to retire on the appearance of a Spanish man-of-war. Nothing daunted, but rather elated with their previous success, a larger raid was made in 1704. Sir Nathaniel Johnstone was now governor, and he commissioned Colonel Moore to attack Apalachee, eighty miles to the west of St Augustine. In this action Moore was again successful, as Colonel Brewton records that "by this conquest of Apalachee the Province was freed from any danger from that part during the whole war."[94] The Spaniards, however, did not remain idle, and in 1706, in alliance with the French from Martinique, with a fleet of ten sail and a force of 800 men attacked Charlestown. The inhabitants were terrified, and their anguish was intensified by the horror of a severe outbreak of yellow fever. Many of them, therefore, fled from the town, but Sir Nathaniel Johnstone routed the combined forces of France and Spain and captured no fewer than 230 prisoners.
Factious quarrels within the Province itself now threatened the safety of the settlers. Since 1691 North and South Carolina had been united under one governor, but the custom had been established that the northern portion of the colony was always under the administration of a deputy. In 1711 Thomas Cary disputed with Edward Hyde as to which held the office; it was decided in favour of the latter. The purely personal quarrel drove Cary to forget his feelings of patriotism, and flying from Carolina he stirred up the Tuscarora Indians, who, with fiendish delight, attacked a small settlement of Germans from the Palatinate. South Carolina, where the supreme governor dwelt, immediately dispatched an army to the assistance of the North, with the effect that apparent peace was gained and the army was no longer required. Immediately upon its withdrawal, however, the Tuscaroras again fell upon the helpless people; this was too much, vengeance must be taken; and this fierce Indian tribe was practically decimated and forced to migrate north.
Although the Treaty of Utrecht was signed in 1713, and the Spanish War of Succession came to an end, yet there was little hope of peace in the West as long as either side allied with the Indians. The fate of the Tuscaroras may have stimulated the Yamassee Indians to revenge in 1716. In April, headed by Spaniards, they massacred about eighty inhabitants of Granville County, South Carolina. Charles Craven, the governor, proved himself a man of vigour, activity, and stern resolve, and by his efforts within a few months the colony was assured of safety, and there was apparent peace between the settlers of Carolina and the Spaniards of Florida.
In the winter of 1719 that perpetual love of dissension, and dislike of any federal action, was once more manifested by the Assembly of South Carolina. The governor was a son of Sir Nathaniel Johnstone, and he had done his best for the Proprietors, but unlike the northern portions the South now disowned all proprietary rule and elected a governor under the Crown. The home authorities immediately sent out Francis Nicholson, a capable colonial official who had already had experience in New York, Virginia, and Maryland. Ten years later the Proprietors accepted the inevitable, and being compensated financially, handed over the Carolinas to the Crown. They probably never regretted the bargain, as in 1739 the war against Spain once more jeopardised the existence of the English settlements in the south, the inhabitants of which were in chronic fear of murder and rapine. The chief Spanish attack was made in 1742, when an army of 5000 landed at St Simon's, owing to the failure of Captain Hardy to intercept the enemy's fleet. The expedition was unsuccessful; the colonists held their own; eighty prisoners were brought into Charlestown; and the Spaniards retired.