The South Carolina Historical Society was formed in 1855, Mr. Rivers, the writer of the preceding chapter, being one of the originators. The first volume of their Collections, published in 1857, contained, beside an opening address by Professor F. A. Porcher, the beginning of a list and abstracts of papers in the State Paper Office, London, relating to South Carolina. This enumeration was continued in the second and third volumes.[833] There are also in the second volume, beside Petigru’s oration, a paper on the French Protestants of the Abbeville district, an oration by J. B. Cohen, and O. M. Lieber’s vocabulary of the Catawba language. In vol. iii. we find an oration by W. H. Trescott. No further volumes have been printed.
Mr. Rivers’ Sketch of the History of South Carolina to the Close of the Proprietary Government by the Revolution of 1719, published in Charleston in 1856, was continued by him in A Chapter in the Early History of South Carolina, published at Charleston in 1874, which largely consists of explanatory original documents. This section of a second volume of his careful history was all that the author had accomplished towards completing the work, when the civil war of 1861 “rendered him unable to continue its preparation.” Mr. Rivers says, in a note in this supplementary chapter, that an examination of the records at Columbia has shown him that, to perfect this additional task, it would be necessary to make examination among the records of the State-Paper Office in London.
Of these latter records Mr. Fox Bourne, in his Life of John Locke (London, 1876), says: “Locke’s connection with the affairs of the colony lasted only through its earliest infancy. Down to the autumn of 1672 he continued his informal office of secretary to the Proprietors. Nearly every letter received from the colony is docketed by him; and of a great number that have disappeared there exist careful epitomes in his handwriting. We have also drafts, entered by him, of numerous letters sent out from England, and his hand is plainly shown in other letters. Out of this material it would be easy to construct almost the entire history of the colony during the first years of its existence.”
It was some time before the period of Mr. Fox Bourne’s writing that the Earl of Shaftesbury deposited with the deputy keeper of the Public Records the collection of documents known as the Shaftesbury Papers, the accumulation which had been formed in the hands of his ancestor, and which yield so much material for the early history of the Carolina government.[834]
The latest use made of these and other papers of the State-Paper Office is found in The English in America, Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas (London, 1882), written by Mr. John A. Doyle, librarian of All Souls, Oxford. In a note to his chapter on the “Two Carolinas,” Doyle says (p. 427), respecting the material for Carolinian history in the English archives: “To make up for the deficiency of printed authorities, the English archives are unusually rich in papers referring to Carolina. There are letters and instructions from the Proprietors, individually and collectively, and reports sent to them by successive governors and other colonial officials. It is remarkable, however, that while we have such abundant material of this kind, there is a great lack of records of the actual proceedings of the local legislatures in North and South Carolina. In North Carolina we have no formal record of legislative proceedings during the seventeenth century. In South Carolina they are but few and scanty till after the overthrow of the Proprietary government.[835] Moreover, the early archives of Carolina, though abundant, are necessarily somewhat confused. The northern and southern colonies, while practically distinct, were under the government of a single corporation, and thus the documents relating to each are most inextricably mixed up. Again, while the Proprietors were the governing body, the colonies in some measure came under the supervision of the Lords of Trade and Plantations, and at a later day of the Board of Trade. Thus much which concerns the colony is to be found in the entry books of the latter body, while the Proprietary documents themselves are to be found partly among the colonial papers,[836] partly in a special department containing the Shaftesbury Papers.”
In the Fifth Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission there is a calendar of the Shelburne Papers, belonging to the Marquis of Lansdowne, which shows a considerable number of documents of interest in the history of Carolina: as, for instance (p. 215), Governor Barrington’s account of the State of North Carolina, January 1, 1732-33; Governor Glen’s answers with respect to inquiries about South Carolina; an offer (p. 218) of a treaty for the sale of Lord Granville’s district in North Carolina to the Crown, signed by the second Lord Granville; and (p. 228, etc.) various reports of law officers of the Crown on questions arising in the government of the colonies.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ENGLISH COLONIZATION OF GEORGIA.