It is not now of importance to recur to the difficulties between the proprietary government and the people: they led to extreme irritation, and in the year 1690, at a meeting of the representatives, a bill was brought in and passed, for disabling James Colleton, then governor of the province, from holding any office, or exercising any authority, civil or military, in the colony, and he was informed that in a limited time he must depart from the colony.
During these public commotions, Seth Sothel, one of the proprietors, who had been driven from North Carolina, appeared suddenly at Charleston, and, aided by a powerful faction, assumed the reins of government. At first the people gladly acknowledged his authority, while the current of their enmity ran against Colleton; especially as he stood forth as an active and leading man in opposition to that governor, and ratified the law for his exclusion and banishment; but they afterwards found him void of every principle of honor, and even of honesty. Such was the insatiable avarice of this man, that every restraint of common justice and equity was trampled upon by him; and oppression, such as usually attends the exaltation of vulgar and ambitious scramblers for power, extended her rod of iron over the distracted colony. The fair traders from Barbadoes and Bermuda were seized as pirates by order of this popular governor, and confined until such fees as he was pleased to exact were paid him; bribes from felons and traitors were accepted to favor their escape from the hands of justice; and plantations were forcibly taken possession of, upon pretences the most frivolous and unjust. At length, the people, weary of his grievous impositions and extortions, agreed to take him by force, and ship him off for England. He then evinced the meanness of spirit generally associated with a disposition to tyranny, and humbly begged liberty to remain in the country, promising to submit his conduct to the trial of the assembly at their first meeting. When the assembly met, thirteen different charges were brought against him, and all supported by the strongest evidence; upon which, being found guilty, they compelled him to abjure the government and country forever.
The next important incident that attracts our attention is the unsuccessful expedition against St. Augustine, planned by governor Moore, in the year 1702, at the time of a rupture in Europe between England and Spain. It failed utterly, and entailed a debt on the colony of six thousand pounds sterling; which led to many severe reflections against the governor, and brought him sadly into disrepute. To redeem his character, the governor resolved upon an expedition against the Apalachian Indians; in consequence of the insults and injuries which they had been instigated by the Spaniards to commit. To make his conquest permanent, he transplanted fourteen hundred of these Indians to the territory now included in Georgia; a measure which seems to have led to the settlement of the English in that part of the country.
The northern colony continued to receive accessions to its strength from several of the European states. In 1707, a company of French Protestants arrived and seated themselves on the river Trent, a branch of the Neuse; and three years afterwards a large number of palatines, fleeing from religious persecution in Germany, sought refuge in the same part of the province. To each of these bodies of emigrants the proprietors granted a hundred acres of land. On their newly acquired possessions they were living in peace, in the enjoyment of liberty of conscience, and in the prospect of competence and ease, when suddenly a terrible calamity fell upon them. The Tuscarora and Coree Indians, smarting under recent aggressions, and dreading total extinction from the encroachment of these strangers, with characteristic secrecy, plotted their entire destruction. Sending their families to one of their fortified towns, twelve hundred bowmen sallied forth, and in the same night attacked, in separate parties, the nearest settlements of the palatines. Men, women, and children were indiscriminately butchered. The savages, with the swiftness and ferocity of wolves, ran from village to village. Before them was the repose of innocence; behind, the sleep of death. A few escaping alarmed the settlements more remote, and hastened to South Carolina for assistance. Governor Craven immediately despatched to the aid of the sister colony nearly a thousand men, under the command of colonel Barnwell. Hideous was the wilderness through which colonel Barnwell had to march, and the utmost expedition was requisite. There was no road through the woods upon which either horses or carriages could pass; and his army had all manner of hardships and dangers to encounter, from the climate, the wilderness, and the enemy.
In spite of every difficulty, however, Barnwell advanced against them, and being much better supplied with arms and ammunition than his enemy, he did great execution among them, killing in the first battle three hundred Indians, and taking about one hundred prisoners. The Tuscaroras then retreated to their town, fortified within a wooden breastwork; but there Barnwell surrounded them, and forced them to sue for peace; and some of his men being wounded, and others having suffered greatly by constant watching, and much hunger and fatigue, the savages the more easily obtained their request. After having killed, wounded, or captured nearly a thousand Tuscaroras, Barnwell returned to South Carolina. The peace was, however, of short duration, and upon the recommencement of hostilities, assistance was again solicited from the southern colony. Colonel James Moore, an active young officer, was immediately despatched, with forty white men and eight hundred friendly Indians. He found the enemy in a fort near Cotechny river; and after a siege, which continued more than a week, the fort was taken, and eight hundred Indians made prisoners. The Tuscaroras, disheartened by this defeat, migrated, in 1713, to the north, and joined the celebrated confederacy, denominated the Five Nations. The others sued for peace, and afterwards continued friendly.
The northern colony had scarcely recovered from the scourge of Indian war, when the southern was exposed to the same calamity. All the tribes from Florida to cape Fear, had been for some time engaged in a conspiracy to extirpate the whites. On the day before the Yamassees began their bloody operations, captain Nairn and some of the traders observing an uncommon gloom on their savage countenances, and apparently great agitationsof spirit, which to them prognosticated approaching mischief, went to their chief men, begging to know the cause of their uneasiness, and promising, if any injury had been done them, to give them satisfaction. The chiefs replied, they had no complaints to make against any one, but intended to go a-hunting early the next morning. Captain Nairn accordingly went to sleep, and the traders retired to their huts, and passed the night in seeming friendship and tranquillity. But next morning at daybreak, the 15th day of April, all were alarmed with the cries of war. The leaders were all out under arms, calling up their followers, and proclaiming aloud designs of vengeance.The young men, burning with fury and passion, flew to their arms, and, in a few hours, massacred above ninety persons in Pocotaligo town and the neighboring plantations; and many more must have fallen a sacrifice on Port Royal island, had they not providentially been warned of their danger. Mr. Burrows, a captain of the militia, after receiving two wounds, by swimming one mile and running ten escaped to Port Royal, and alarmed the town. A vessel happening fortunately to be in the harbor, the inhabitants in great hurry repaired on board, and sailed for Charleston; a few families of planters on that island, not having timely notice, fell into the barbarous hands of the Indians, and of them some were murdered, and others made prisoners of war.
While the Yamassees, with whom the Creeks and Apalachians had joined, were advancing against the southern frontiers, and spreading desolation and slaughter through the province, the colonists on the northern borders also found the Indians among their settlements in formidable parties. The Carolinians had foolishly entertained hopes of the friendship of the Congarees, the Catawbas, and Cherokees; but they soon found that they had also joined in the conspiracy, and declared for war. It was computed that the southern division of the enemy consisted of above six thousand bowmen, and the northern of between six hundred and a thousand. In the muster-roll at Charleston there were no more than one thousand two hundred men fit to bear arms, but as the town had several forts into which the inhabitants might retreat, governor Craven resolved to march with this small force into the woods against the enemy. He proclaimed martial law, and laid an embargo on all ships, to prevent either men or provisions from leaving the country. He obtained an act of assembly, empowering him to impress men, and seize arms, ammunition, and stores, wherever they were to be found, to arm such trusty negroes as might be serviceable at a juncture so critical, and to prosecute the war with the utmost vigor.
Being no stranger to the ferocious temper of his enemies, and their horrid cruelty to prisoners, the governor advanced against them by slow and cautious steps, always keeping the strictest guard round his army. He knew well under what advantages they fought among their native thickets, and the various wiles and stratagems they made use of in conducting their wars; and therefore he was watchful above all things against surprises, which might throw his followers into disorder, and defeat the end of his enterprise. The fate of the whole province depended on the success of his arms, and his men had no other alternative but to conquer or die a painful death. As he advanced, the straggling parties fled before him, until he reached Saltcatchers, where they had pitched their great camp. Here a sharp and bloody battle ensued from behind trees and bushes, theIndians whooping, hallooing, and giving way one while, and then again and again returning with double fury to the charge. But the governor, notwithstanding their superior number, and their terrible shrieks, kept the provincials close at their heels, and drove them before him like a flock of wolves. He expelled them from their settlement at Indian river, pursued them over the Savannah, and entirely freed the province of this formidable tribe of savages. What number of the army was killed does not appear; but in the whole war nearly four hundred unfortunate inhabitants of Carolina fell a prey to Indian cruelty, property of great value was destroyed, and a large debt contracted.
Of this debt the proprietors refused to pay any portion, and by their harsh and arbitrary conduct in regard to this matter and its consequences, a bitter hostility grew up between them and the people. It was resolved to throw off their yoke. A favorable opportunity presented itself at a general review of the militia at Charleston, in 1719; the officers and soldiers binding themselves by a solemn compact to resist the tyranny of the proprietors. The assembly was dissolved by the governor, but it immediately met in convention, and assumed the direction of public affairs. In spite of all opposition they established themselves in the full possession of the government, both in its legislative and executive relations.
The agent for Carolina at length procured a hearing from the lords of the regency and council in England, the king being at that time in Hanover; who gave it as their opinion, that the proprietors had forfeited their charter, and ordered the attorney-general to take out a scire facias against it. In consequence of this decision, in September, 1720, they appointed general Francis Nicholson provisional governor of the province, with a commission from the king. Several years afterwards, seven of the proprietors sold to the king their claim to the soil and rents, and all of them assigned to him their right of jurisdiction. The government of both Carolinas was subsequently administered in each colony by a governor and council appointed by the crown, and by assemblies chosen by the people. They soon attracted general attention, and their population was increased by accessions from several of the states of Europe.