USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 1584 1783, Volume I > Part 21
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Johnston took the oath of office at Brunswick, November 2, 1734. He was a Scotchman of good birth and education.
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He had studied at the University of St. Andrews in which he had afterwards lectured as professor of oriental languages. Early in life, abandoning literature for politics, he went to London to seek his fortunes as a political writer. There he attracted the attention of Spencer Compton, Earl of Wil- mington, and Lord President of the Privy Council, who ex- ten led his patronage to him. It was through Compton's in- fluence that Johnston was appointed governor of North Caro- lina. In learning, culture and character, lie was superior to any of his predecessors. His learning, however, as Chalmers observes, "degenerated a little into cunning." No breath of scandal attaches to his personal conduct. He had not the itch- ing palm like Everard, nor was he given to profanity, vio- lence and drunkenness like Burrington. Indeed, so little did he seek to advance his own personal fortune that at his death his salary was thirteen years in arrears. But as governor, "he was exceedingly arbitrary, not to say unscrupulous, in his methods," and the ethics of some of his official acts were not above criticism. His experiences in British politics seem to have given him a predilection for sharp practices, or, as he termed it, "management," in political affairs. To secure the passage through the Assembly of a bill in which he was interested, for instance, he "prevailed" upon some of the "most troublesome" members to absent themselves; and at another time, with a similar object in view, he purposely convened the General Assembly when and where he knew his opponents could not attend. On the whole, he showed less consideration for the Assembly and a greater regard for the king's prerogative than Burrington, and was even bolder and more determined in carrying out his instructions.
Johnston not only maintained all the positions taken by Burrington in the quit rents controversy, but also insisted that the king had a right to fix upon the places at which the rents must be paid. The Assembly, on the contrary, held that rents were payable on the land, and in support of their position appealed to "the Ancient Laws and usage" of the province. The governor's reply to their appeal injected into the con- troversy a new and startling issue. While in England seek- ing the removal of Burrington, Chief Justice Smith had dis- covered the order of the Lords Proprietors requiring that all acts of the General Assembly be submitted to them for con- firmation; otherwise they should expire at the end of two years. His investigations also revealed the fact that so little had this order been heeded, that of all the laws then in force
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in North Carolina, six only, and those of minor importance, had been thus confirmed. . Bristling with importance at his discovery, he hastened to submit to the legal advisers of the Crown the question whether all the unconfirmed laws were not null and void. These officials had not rendered their de- cision when Smith returned to North Carolina, but he felt so certain that they would confirm his opinion, that he persuaded Governor Johnston and the majority of the Council to adopt it. Accordingly, when the Assembly appealed to the " Ancient Laws" of the province, Johnston and his Council replied that they could not pay "any regard" to them because liaving never been confirmed by the Lords Proprietors, they were all null and void. This reply brought forth a storm of angry protests. Passions ran high. In the heat of debate, Moseley and Chief Justice Smith came to blows. But the stanch old Scotch governor was undaunted by the tempest which raged about him. He boldly told the Assembly that the king was not dependent upon their consent for power to collect his rents, and "in order to convince the people that his Majesties just revenue did not depend upon any Acts of their Assem- bly," he issued a proclamation directing that quit rents be paid at specified places, and "in gold and silver," or in bills current at a rate of exchange for sterling to be fixed by the Council. To show his determination to carry out his policy, he erected a court of exchequer to collect rents by distress if necessary, appointed Eleazer Allen receiver-general for North Carolina, although that office for both Carolinas was already held by John Hammerton of South Carolina, and put the militia under the command of officers upon whose obedience and loyalty to him he could rely. At first the very boldness of his course resulted in "a general submission" to his orders, and he was able to report that in the autumn of 1735, the col- lections amounted to £1,200 sterling, at the same time pre- dicting that the spring collections would be double that amount.
But Johnston's optimistic predictions failed to be realized. "General murmurs" of opposition soon began to be heard. John Hammerton, indignant at the governor's action, has- tened into North Carolina, publicly denounced the appoint- ment of Eleazer Allen as illegal, and "had the impudence" to issue a proclamation forbidding the payment of rents to him. Still more potent was the influence of Edward Moseley, who not only refused to pay his own quit rents, but urged the people to follow his example. To him Eleazer Allen attrib-
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uted "all the difficultys and obstructions which had attended the several collections of the quit rents." The murmurs quickly grew into loud protests and threats of violence. At a report, fortunately false, that a man had been imprisoned at Edenton for refusing to pay his rents, 500 men in Bertie and Edgecombe rose in arms and set out to rescue him by force, "cursing his Majesty and uttering a great many rebel- lions speeches." Complaints poured into the General As- sembly that the collectors were exacting payments in cur- rency at rates of seven and eight for one of sterling, to which, when resorting to distress, they added "extravagant charges." Against these "illegal proceedings," the Assem- bly protested, but in vain. Thereupon, catching something of the governor's spirit, they answered his bold challenge with a challenge even more daring,-they ordered the collectors of the king's revenue into the custody of their officers !
It was in just such an emergency that Johnston revealed his superiority to Burrington in statecraft. Burrington would have met it with bluster accompanied by a volley of oaths and a torrent of curses; Johnston, on the contrary, re- sorted to what he euphemistically called "management." One of the questions on which he had taken issue with the As- sembly was the validity of blank patents, i. e., patents for land in which the date, the name of the patentee, the loca- tion of the land, the number of acres, and the amount of the purchase money were all or in part left blank. Many such patents had been issued after the Lords Proprietors had closed their Carolina land office, and as Johnston said, were "hawked about the country" in large numbers, the pur- chasers locating their lands and filling in the blanks as they pleased. Johnston held such patents invalid and as thou- sands of acres, estimated at nearly half a million, were held under them, his contention aroused intense opposition. Find- ing himself checkmated in his efforts to collect quit rents, he proposed to yield his position on blank patents if the Assem- bly would recede from their position on quit rents. A bargain was promptly struck. The governor agreed to confirm titles held under blank patents; the Assembly consented to pre- pare a rent roll and to limit the number of places at which quit rents should be payable. Both sides yielded somewhat on the medium in which rents should be paid, the governor con- senting to accept certain rated commodities, or their value in provincial currency, the Assembly consenting that the value of provincial currency should be fixed by a commission
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consisting of the governor and representatives from the Council and the House of Commons. In 1739, a bill embody- ing these provisions passed both houses of Assembly, was promptly signed by the governor, and both governor and As- sembly congratulated themselves and each other that the long dispute was at an end.
But their congratulations were premature. The Crown vetoed the act on the ground that vesting the power to regu- late the value of money "in any person whatsoever, might be of dangerous consequence, and highly prejudicial to the trade of the nation." At the same time Johnston suffered another defeat for the law officers of the Crown decided against him in all of his contentions relative to the Great Deed, how and where quit rents were payable, and the validity of the provincial laws which had not been confirmed by the Lords Proprietors. With his position greatly weakened by these defeats, he again took up the controversy with the As- sembly. In 1741 he called the session, as he wrote, "in the most southern part of the Province on purpose to keep at home the northern members who were the most numerous and from whom the greatest opposition was expected," but to no purpose. Similar failures met him in 1744, 1745, and 1746. Finally, in 1748, he secured the passage of an act which satisfied him.
By this time questions concerning the king's quit rents had lost much of their interest and importance by the crea- tion of the Granville District which transferred half the land in the province and more than half the revenues arising from the land, from the king to a private proprietor. It will be remembered that when the Lords Proprietors surrendered their charter to the king in 1728, John Lord Carteret, after- wards Earl of Granville, decided to retain his interest in the soil. No steps however were taken to lay off his share until 1742. Acting then upon the advice of the Board of Trade the king decided that Granville was entitled to one-eighth of the original grant which embraced nearly all the region be- tween the northern boundary of North Carolina and the south- ern boundary of Georgia as far west as the South Sea. In 1742, therefore, he directed that five commissioners represent- ing the Crown and five representing Granville be appointed with full authority to locate and set out Granville's claim.
In their work the commissioners seemed to consider Lord Granville's interests paramount to those of either king or colony. It was manifestly fair that the burdens incident to
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the creation of this immense private estate should be shared on some just basis by all of the three colonies, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, which had been erected out of the original proprietary; nevertheless in order that Lord Granville might enjoy the advantages of having his estate in a solid tract the commissioners decided to cut the whole of it out of North Carolina. An important consideration with them in making this decision was the fact that by adopting the North Carolina-Virginia boundary line as the northern line of the Granville District, they would have to run the southern line only. Beginning, therefore, on Hatteras Island at 35° 34' north latitude, they carried the line in 1744 as far west as Bath. In 1746 it was carried to Haw River, thence twenty years later to Rocky River, and finally, in 1774, to the Blue Ridge Mountains. It ran through the site of the present town of Snow Hill, followed what is now the southern boundary of Chatham, Randolph, Davidson, Rowan, and Iredell counties, and fell just below the southern line of Catawba and Burke counties. Between it and Virginia lay an immense region, sixty miles in width, embracing about 26,000 square miles of territory, one-half the present state of North Carolina, and containing in 1744 more than two-thirds of the inhabitants. and an even larger percentage of the wealth of the province.
Throughout this vast region, Lord Granville, though pos- sessing no political authority, was virtually the irresponsible ruler over the property rights of the people for the territorial system which he set up was beyond the control of either Crown or Assembly. For the administration of his estate he main- tained a land office at Edenton with a large organization includ- ing agents, surveyors, entry takers, and numerous subordinate officials. The inefficiency and corruption of these officials, un- restrained by any watchful authority, soon became a public scandal. Granville himself was a victim of their frauds and abuses, but the chief victims were his tenants. They suffered from the exaction of excessive fees, the collection of illegal quit rents, and the issuance of fraudulent grants. In 1755 the Assembly's committee on propositions and grievances re- ported such practices of Granville's agents as grievances which "do retard the Settlement of that part of the Govern- ment of which his Lordship is proprietor." During the next few years the abuses grew with such rapidity that in 1758 Granville's tenants petitioned the Assembly for relief. The Assembly appointed a committee to investigate the charges and this committee after a thorough investigation made a
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report which attests not only the dishonesty but also the re- sourcefulness of the agents in devising schemes to defraud the settlers. Some of their practices were the issuing of grants for the same tract by the same agent to more than one person ; the issuing of grants for the same tract by different agents to different persons; the bribing of officials to change the names of grantees in the entry-book and to issue to other parties deeds for land for which the original grantee had already paid the entry fees; the issuing of grants improperly signed, and therefore void, so that later they might issue the same grants to other persons, of course collecting fees from all of them; and, finally, the collection of excessive fees and quit rents. The fees in the Granville District, according to Governor Dobbs, were double, and sometimes treble, the fees of the Crown in the rest of the province, and while the king's fees were paid in paper currency, Granville's agents would accept no payments except in gold and silver. In spite of these un- doubted frauds and abuses the Assembly was powerless to grant the relief sought and could do nothing more than send a remonstrance to Lord Granville.
It must not be supposed that Granville was privy to these practices or indifferent to the complaints of his tenants. In 1756 he wrote to his agent, Francis Corbin: "Great and fre- quent complaints are transmitted to me of those persons you employ to receive entries and make surveys in the back coun- ties. It is their extortions and not the regular fees of office which is the cause of clamor from my tenants. Insinuations are made, too, as if those extortions were connived at by my agents ; for otherwise, it is said they could not be committed so repeatedly or so barefacedly." Of course none of the excess fees found their way into his coffers; indeed, he would have been fortunate if he had received those to which he was legally entitled. It was said that one of his agents on going out of office advised his successor to remember the proverb of the new broom, and not to remit too much to the earl at first as equal remittances would be expected in the future; besides, what was more to the point, such a mistaken policy might lead to investi- gations that would prove awkward to former agents. The trouble was not with Lord Granville; it was with the system which enabled a private individual to exercise so much control over the fortunes and happiness of people with whom he had no sort of sympathetic connection.
Finding the Assembly powerless and despairing of relief from Lord Granville, the people finally took matters in their
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own hands. One result of their complaints had been an order from Granville to Corbin to publish his table of fees which re- vealed abundant evidence of systematic abuses and frauds and led to demands upon the agents to disgorge their illegal gains. In the winter of 1759 an armed mob surrounded Corbin's house in Edenton, aroused him in the dead of night, compelled him to go with them to Enfield, seventy miles distant, and there exacted of him a bond in the sum of £8,000 that he would within three weeks' time exhibit his books for inspection and refund all excess fees. But after his release, instead of complying with his agreement Corbin inspired prosecutions against four of his assailants and upon their refusing to give bail had them thrown into prison at Enfield. This act was the signal for an explosion. From all the surrounding country armed settlers rode into Enfield, broke open the jail, overpowered the jailer, released the prisoners, and inaugurated a reign of law- lessness throughout a large part of the Granville District. Corbin abandoning his prosecutions fled in terror. Some of the sheriffs were openly in sympathy with the mob and the attorney-general, Robin Jones, was so thoroughly intimidated that he refused to prosecute the rioters and appealed to the governor to take action. The Assembly urgently supported his appeal, but the governor refused to move and in his turn became a target for the Assembly's denunciation. In defend- ing himself to the Board of Trade against the strictures of the Assembly, Dobbs denounced the dishonesty of Granville's agents, expressed his sympathy with the people, and declared that their conduct had been grossly misrepresented and exag- gerated. The riot, therefore, was never suppressed by legal procedure, the rioters went scot free, and conditions in the Granville District continued volcanic until the proprietorship was abolished.
Throughout its history the Granville District was a source of discord, weakness and division in the colony. For many of the most important affairs of its inhabitants, it was almost a province within the province. Its existence was the cause of numerous controversies over the location and boundaries of the grants of other large landowners, and even of grants issued by the Crown. With that indifference to former grants so characteristic of colonial officials, the commissioners had in- cluded within the Granville District nearly 500,000 acres of the McCulloh grant, and while Granville and McCulloh them- selves had little difficulty in adjusting their conflicting claims, their agreement did not prevent constant friction between
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their agents and surveyors. There were clashes too between the agents of Granville and those of the Crown. The former charged Governor Dobbs with issuing grants for land within the Granville District while Dobbs retorted that Granville's line encroached for a depth of at least nine miles upon the king's land. These disputes and conflicts kept the frontier in a state of continual disorder and tended to discourage the immigration of substantial settlers. Many less desirable im- migrants, taking advantage of the situation, squatted on lands along the border between the king's district and that of Lord Granville without taking out grants and without paying quit rents. Under such conditions it was impossible to instill into them that respect for law which is the foundation of free gov- ernment. The colony also suffered from the utter indifference of the second Lord Granville, who succeeded to the title in 1763, to his Carolina estate. He allowed his land office at Edenton to remain closed for several years, thus depriving North Caro- lina of many excellent settlers who would have taken out grants within his district.
Financially, too, the Granville District was a great draw- back to the colony. Quit rents derived from the land in this immense region went not into the public treasury but into the pockets of a private individual, or of his corrupt agents. Thus a large part of the revenues from the richest and most populous half of the colony were used for other purposes than support of the government. Consequently the burden fell so much more heavily upon the poorer half. This fact had no little to do with the stubbornness of the Assembly in holding out against the king's instructions relative to a permanent civil list.
The dual territorial and fiscal system made necessary by the existence of the Granville District was a source of division and weakness in North Carolina. The province was neither an economic nor a political unit. A northern and a southern treasurer were necessary. There was a northern and a south- ern party. To these divisions of interests primarily may be traced the controversy over representation which wrecked Governor Johnston's administration. These different inter- ests continued throughout the colonial period. As late as 1773, on the very eve of the Revolution, Governor Martin com- plained that the Granville District created a division in the colony which for many years had "fatally embarrassed its Politics." Considering the whole history of the Granville District, therefore, Martin was fully justified in declaring
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that it was "not only profitless to the Proprietor, but a nui- sanee to this Colony."
Governors, Assembly, and people were all agreed not only as to its baneful effects, but also as to the proper remedy for its evils. The remedy was purchase by the Crown. In 1767 Governor Tryon declared that its purchase by the Crown "would more than treble the value of the quit rents:" that it was "an objeet so extremely eoveted, to a man, by the inhabi- tants settled there" that it would no doubt result in the pas- sage of "any law his Majesty would propose for the better and more easy collecting his quit rents." "If it eould be pur- chased for sixty thousand pounds sterling," he added, "it would be eheap; it is certainly the most rising interest on the continent of America." To like effeet wrote Governor Martin who in 1771 said, "It seems here an universally acknowledged principle that this Country will never enjoy perfeet peaee until that proprietary which ereets a kind of separate inter- est in its bowels is vested in the Crown." The Assembly too was of the same mind. In 1773 the House of Commons ap- pointed a committee, composed of its strongest leaders, "to take into consideration Lord Granville's Territory in this Province, with respect to the settlement of the same, and to propose some plan to quiet the Inhabitants in their posses- sion." The plan proposed and agreed to by the Assembly ivas to request the king to "be graciously pleased to purehase the same, that the said Lands may be held of him as other Lands are held of his Majesty in his District in this Colony." But nothing eame of these suggestions; the Revolution came on, independenee was deelared, and Lord Granville being then an alien enemy, the Assembly in 1782 solved the problem of the Granville District by the short and effective method of confiscation.
The ereation of the Granville Distriet in 1744 was an im- portant element in enabling Governor Johnston to secure the passage of the quit rent law of 1748, but a more important element still was the representation quarrel inaugurated by the Assembly of November, 1746, whieli threw the quit rent controversy completely in the shade. The most determined opposition to the governor in the quit rents controversy had come from the inhabitants of the old county of Albemarle who claimed to hold their land under the Great Deed of Grant. The Great Deed gave them better terms than the Crown was disposed to allow and they were determined not to surrender their advantage. Another advantage which they enjoyed en-
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abled them to sustain their position. This was the right which each precinct in Albemarle had of sending to the General As- sembly five representatives, whereas the other precincts sent but two each. This privilege originated early in the propri- etary period when Albemarle was the only county in Carolina, and was not extended to the precincts which were subsequently erected in Bath County.
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As these new precincts grew in wealth and population they came to look upon this inequality as a discrimination against them, while the expansion of the colony southward toward the Cape Fear gave rise to sectional interests different from the interests of Albemarle, which served to emphasize it. The commercial interests of the Cape Fear settlers, who enjoyed the advantage of direct trade with the mother country, often conflicted with those of Albemarle, whose trade necessarily went through Virginia and the other colonies, and legislation in the interests of one section was frequently considered ruin- ous by the other. Personal ambitions and sectional rivalries also increased the dissatisfaction of the southern precincts. New Bern was ambitious to displace Edenton as the seat of government, and her pretensions were supported by the pre- cincts south of Albemarle Sound. The people in the southern precincts, especially those along the Cape Fear, complained that it was a hardship to compel them to go to Edenton, in the extreme northeastern corner of the province, across two wide sounds, in order to consult the public records in the secretary's office, to transact business in the General Court, and to attend sessions of the General Assembly. But all their efforts to move the capital to a more central place were defeated .be- cause the counties north of Albemarle Sound had a majority in the Assembly. The controversy came to a head in June, 1746, when the proposal to make New Bern the capital was again defeated, and the session closed with a sectional quarrel that split the popular party in two. In this division, the shrewd politician at the head of the government saw his op- portunity and hastened to make the most of it.
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