The Later Histories of the Carolinas.
I. North Carolina.—The first published of the general accounts of this State was the History of North Carolina, by Hugh Williamson,[828] at Philadelphia, in 1812, in two volumes. Dr. Hawks, the later historian, says (ii. p. 540) that North Carolinians do not recognize Williamson’s work as a history of their State. It is inaccurate in a great many particulars, and sometimes when there is proof that the original record was lying before him. Sparks calls it “meagre and unsatisfactory,” and adds that it contains but few facts, and these apparently the most unimportant of such as had fallen in his way.[829] More care and discrimination, though but little literary interest, characterized another writer. François Xavier Martin had a singular career. He was born in Marseilles, became a bankrupt in Martinique, went friendless to Newbern, in North Carolina, and rose to distinction as a jurist, after beginning his career in the State as a translator and vendor of French stories. He had removed to Louisiana, when he published at New Orleans his History of North Carolina, in 1829 (two volumes), and in that State he rose to be chief justice, and published a history of it, as we have seen. Martin’s accumulation of facts carries no advantage by any sort of correlation except that of dates. A painstaking search, as far as his opportunities permitted, and a perspicuous way of writing stand for the work’s chief merits. He stops at the Declaration of Independence. Up to Martin’s time Bancroft[830] might well speak of the carelessness with which the history of North Carolina had been written.
Next came John H. Wheeler’s Historical Sketches of North Carolina from 1584 to 1851, compiled from original records, official documents, and traditional statements, with biographical sketches of her distinguished Statesmen, Jurists, Lawyers, Soldiers, etc., Philadelphia, 1851. It is not unfairly characterized by Mr. C. K. Adams, in his Manual of Historical Reference (p. 559), as “a jumble of ill-digested material, rather a collection of tables, lists, and facts than a history.”
David L. Swain,[831] who had been governor of the State, had done much to collect transcripts of documents from the archives of the other States and from England, and in 1857, as historical agent of the State, he made a report, which was printed at Raleigh, in which, speaking of the statutes at large, which Virginia and South Carolina had published, he referred to “both of these collections, especially the former, the earlier and better work, as deeply interesting in connection with North Carolina history.”
Of the History of North Carolina, by Francis Lister Hawks, D. D., LL. D., the second volume, published at Fayetteville in 1858, covers the period of the Proprietary government from 1663 to 1729, the first volume being given to the Raleigh period, etc. He availed himself of the fullest permission by state and local authorities to profit by the records within his own State; and he had earlier himself procured in London many copies of documents there. The author claims that more than three fourths of this volume has been prepared from original authorities, existing in manuscript. He tells at greater length than others the story of the law and its administration, of the industrial and agricultural arts, navigation and trade, religion and learning.
The latest local treatment is that of Mr. John W. Moore’s History of North Carolina from the earliest discoveries to the present time, Raleigh, 1880, in two volumes. There is not much attempt at original research, and he does not reprint documentary material, as Hawks did, in too great profusion to make a popular book. Mr. Moore aims to give a better literary form to the story; but his style somewhat overlays his facts.
II. South Carolina.—To turn to the more southern province,—Dr. David Ramsay, who was a respectable physician from Pennsylvania, domiciled and married in Charleston, gained some reputation in his day as a practised writer, and as an historical scholar of zeal and judgment. He published first, in 1796, a Sketch of the Soil, Climate, etc., of South Carolina; and later, in 1809, at Charleston, a History of South Carolina, 1670-1808, in which he made good use of Hewatt, as far as he was available.
In 1836 Carroll republished many of the early printed tracts upon South Carolina history in his two volumes of Historical Collections. Referring to this publication, a writer in the Southern Quarterly Review, Jan., 1852, p. 185, says: “But for a timely appropriation by the legislature of two thousand dollars for his relief, Carroll would have been seriously the sufferer by his experiment on public taste and sectional patriotism.”
Grahame in 1836 had published the first edition of his Colonial History of the United States, including the early history of the Carolinas, and Bancroft, in 1837, published the second volume of his History of the Colonization of the United States, and in chapter xiii. he discussed how Shaftesbury and Locke legislated for South Carolina,—a chapter considerably changed in his last edition (1883).
The South Carolina novelist, William G. Simms, first published a small history of the State in 1840, which served for school use. This he revised in 1860 as a History of South Carolina, which was published in New York. It was spirited, but too scant of detail for scholarly service.[832]