Governor Johnson died 3d May, 1735, and Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Broughton on 22d November, 1737. William Bull, president of the council, succeeded to the administration till the arrival of Governor James Glen (December, 1743).[765] The lieutenant-governor was a prudent ruler. He assisted in the settlement of Savannah and in the war of Georgia upon St. Augustine (sending the Carolina regiment under Colonel Vanderdussen), and managed wisely in every emergency. Governor Glen with greater energy and activity extended the fortification of the province,—visiting every portion of his government, going among the Cherokees, obtaining a surrender of their lands for the erection of forts, and erecting them; as Prince George on the upper part of the Savannah, 170 miles above Fort Moore, and Fort Loudon on the Tennessee among the Upper Cherokees, 500 miles from Charlestown. These forts and those at Frederica and Augusta in Georgia were garrisoned by his majesty’s troops for the protection of both provinces. When Glen, in 1756, was superseded by Governor William Henry Lyttleton, war was declared between England and France. On the termination of hostilities, the Cherokees, who had aided the British troops in the more northern colonies, were returning home through Western Virginia, and committed depredations, appropriating to their use such horses as came in their way, and were set upon and some of them murdered. In retaliation they killed the whites wherever they could, indiscriminately. Among their victims in Carolina were a few of the garrison of Fort Loudon. This was done by roving bands of headstrong young Indians. The troops at Prince George despatched the news to Governor Lyttleton, who instantly began preparations for war. The Cherokees sent thirty-two of their chiefs to settle the difficulty, as the nation at large desired peace and the continuation of their old friendship with the English. Lyttleton kept the chiefs under arrest, and took them with him along with his troops. His ill-usage of them and his folly involved the province in a disastrous war with the whole Cherokee nation. Then, being appointed Governor of Jamaica, he left the calamities he had caused to the management of Lieutenant-Governor Bull. Not till 1761 were hostilities ended by the help of Colonel Grant, of the British army. Dr. Hewatt, who had the advantage of the acquaintance of the last Lieutenant-Governor Bull, and probably his assistance in the compilation of his history, gives a detailed and graphic narrative of this deplorable conflict, carried on in pathless forests, hundreds of miles from Charlestown. So wasted were Colonel Grant’s men “by heat, thirst, watching, danger, and fatigue” that when peace was made “they were utterly unable to march farther.” In the provincial regiment assisting Grant were Middleton, Laurens, Moultrie, Marion, Huger, Pickens, and others who became distinguished in the war of the Revolution.
The Peace of Paris (1763) happily put an end forever to hostilities arising from French possessions in America. The succeeding royal governors of South Carolina were Thomas Boone (1762), Lord Charles Greville Montague (December, 1765), and Lord William Campbell (1773).
The most interesting and continuous thread of events running through all the colonial history of South Carolina is the development of the power of the assembly or representatives of the people. Taking up this subject where we left it at the close of Middleton’s contest with the assembly, we observe that the choice of their clerk was conceded to them by the succeeding governor. In the policy both of the proprietary and royal government, the elective franchise was granted to the people or freeholders only in choosing members of the assembly. We do not find that they balloted for any executive or other officer. The success of the assembly in electing a few administrative officers and holding them accountable to themselves was an important acquisition, and was followed by a further gain of power in the same direction. Governor Glen, addressing the authorities in England (October 10, 1748), said in substance “that a new modelling[766] of their constitution,” in South Carolina, “would add to the happiness of the province and preserve their dependence upon the Crown, any weakening [of the] power of which and deviation from the constitution of the mother country is in his opinion dangerous. Almost all the places of profit or of trust are disposed of by the general assembly.” “Besides the treasurer they appoint also the commissary, the Indian commissioner, the comptroller of the duties upon imports and exports, the powder-receiver, etc. The executive part of the government is lodged in different sets of commissioners,” “of the market, the workhouse, of the pilots, of the fortifications, etc. Not only civil posts, but ecclesiastical preferment, are in the disposal or election of the people, although by the king’s instructions to the governor” this should belong to the king or his representative. The governor is not prayed for, while the assembly is, during its sittings, the only instance in America where it is not done. “The above officers and most of the commissioners are named by the general assembly, and are responsible to them alone; and whatever be their ignorance, neglect, or misconduct, the governor has no power to reprove or displace them. Thus the people have the whole of the administration in their hands, and the governor, and thereby the Crown, is stripped of its power.” In the next place, the assembly claimed, and with success, the sole power of originating tax bills, notwithstanding instructions to the contrary. They refused to the council even the power to amend such bills. In the words of the Journals of the House (no. 21, 1745), they asserted their “sole right of introducing, framing, and amending subsidy bills,”—which they based on the English Constitution as paramount to the royal instructions. It was furthermore intimated that the council had no right to legislative functions at all,—a view soon after ably advocated by Mr. Drayton. It was contended that the council was not a counterpart of the House of Lords, but simply a body advisory to the governor. It was even argued that, similarly with the mother country, colonial usages and precedents were to be regarded as constitutional in South Carolina.
The last development of the power of the assembly tended to check the governor’s prerogative of dissolution and prorogation. In a contest with Governor Boone, beginning in 1762 and continued to May, 1763, dissolution and prorogation failed entirely as a means of controlling the actions or sentiments of the representatives of the people, where the people were of one mind with the assembly. The subject of dispute involved the assembly’s sole right to judge of the validity of the election of its own members, and the argument on the part of the House was conducted chiefly by Rutledge and Gadsden. But about this time came proposals that committees from all the colonial assemblies should meet to consider the British Stamp Act. We conclude this brief narrative with the remark that in the Continental Congress that ensued the leading statesmen of the South Carolina popular assembly stepped as veterans to new battlefields with the dust of recent victories still upon them.[767]
CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.
By the Editor.
IT is claimed that Sir Robert Heath conveyed his rights under the grant of 1630 to the Earl of Arundel, and that these eventually became invested in Dr. Coxe, as presented in a memorial to William III., and assumed in the Carolana of his son, Daniel Coxe.[768] The Heath grant,[769] however, was formally annulled August 12, 1663.[770] De Laet’s map, showing the coast of what was subsequently North Carolina at the period of Heath’s grant, 1630, is given in fac-simile elsewhere.[771]
Dr. Hawks, in his North Carolina, prints from Thurloe’s State Papers (ii. p. 273) a letter dated at Linnehaven, in Virginia, May 8, 1654, from Francis Yardley to John Farrar, giving an account of explorations during the previous year along the seaboard. In 1662 (March) the king granted the first charter, and this was printed the same year, but without date, as The first Charter granted by the King to the Proprietors of Carolina, 24 March.[772] In 1665 (June 30) the second charter extended the limits of the grant. Both charters are found in a volume printed in London, but without date, and called The two Charters granted by King Charles to the Proprietors of Carolina, with the first and last Fundamental Constitutions of that Colony. Issues of this book seem to have been made in 1698, 1705, 1706, 1708, etc.[773]