USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775-1780 > Part 8
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Robert Wells was the editor of the South Carolina and American General Gazette, the rival of the South Carolina
1 Memoirs of the Revolution (Drayton), vol. II, 17. This Fenwicke Bull was a recent immigrant from England, and not one of either the Bull or Fenwicke families of the province.
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Gazette, edited by Mr. Timothy, and was opposed to these extreme measures. Is it any wonder that under the treat- ment he should oppose the whole movement? Upon the occupation of Charlestown by the English, he continued the publication of his paper under the name of the Royal Gazette. This brutal conduct in the name of Liberty was 110 doubt confirming many a wavering citizen in deter- mined, if for the present silent, opposition to the Revo- lutionary party. It no doubt added many a name to the addressers of Sir Henry Clinton and to those who pre- ferred British protection to the tender mercies of those who could uphold the outrageous violence and tyranny of a town mob rioting in the name of Freedom.
Lord William Campbell became much alarmed. On the 15th of August, he sent in a message to the Commons House saying that when he declined some time before to comply with their request to adjourn, he saw too plainly the unhappy extremities to which they were hastening, and he had good grounds to apprehend the want of their assistance and advice; but since that time he had the mortification of being a spectator of outrages he had lit- tle expected when seen in this place. He complained that the officers of the Crown had been called upon to give reasons for refusing to sign an Association that was con- trary to every tie of duty and allegiance, and had had in like arbitrary and illegal manner an oath tendered to them equally incompatible with their conscience and their honor. He then alluded to the barbarous outrage com- mitted in the streets of the town on the Saturday before, on a poor, helpless, wretched individual.
"In a word, gentlemen," he continued, " you well know the powers of the government are wrested out of my hands, I can neither pro- tect nor punish. Therefore with the advice of His Majesty's Council I apply to you, and desire that in this dreadful emergency you will
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aid me with all the assistance in your power in enforcing the laws and protecting his Majesty's servants, and all other peaceable and faithful subjects in that quiet possession of their liberty and property which every Englishman boasts it is his birthright to enjoy, or you must candidly acknowledge that all law and government is at an end. Sorry I am to add that some particular insults offered to myself, make it necessary that I should be assured of the safety of my own family, and that its peace is not in danger of being invaded."
There was more reason for his alarm than probably even his Excellency knew, for Drayton, who had now re- turned from his mission in the interior, was then urging the Council of Safety, "that the Governor should be taken into custody." Humiliating, indeed, was his Lord- ship's position : appealing for protection to those who were themselves the authors and instigators of the de- fiance to his authority. The Governor's message was referred to a committee, of which Mr. Brewton, his friend and connection, was chairman. This committee reported a reply which was adopted. It declared that when civil commotions prevail, and a people are threatened both with internal and external dangers, they would be unwise not to entertain a jealousy of intestine foes, and not to take every precaution to guard against their secret machi- nations. For this purpose the inhabitants of the colony had been impelled to adopt certain measures which, although not warranted by any of the written laws, yet in their apprehension were more justifiable and constitu- tional than many acts of the British administration. In times like the present, if individuals would wantonly step forth and openly censure and condemn measures univer- sally received and approved, they must abide the con- sequences. It was not in their power in such cases to prescribe limits to popular fury. Upon inquiry into the circumstances of last Saturday - of which his Excel- lency so pathetically complained - they had been told
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that the populace, enraged by the daring and unprovoked insolence of a person who, though supported by the pub- lic and eating the country's bread, openly and ungrate- fully uttered the most bitter curses and imprecations against the people of the colony and of all America, had seized him, and after a slight corporal punishment, had carted him through the streets.
They confessed this was an outrage; at the same time his Excellency must do them the justice to own that it was not in their power to prevent it ; and they appealed to him if the punishment, which they supposed to be more alarming from its novelty than its severity, was equal in any comparative degree to that which his Excellency knew was frequently inflicted by an English mob upon very petty offenders - surrounded by an active magistracy and even in full view of their Majesty's pal- ace.1 They were sorry that any particular insults should have been offered to his Excellency or that he should have any reason to apprehend that the peace and safety of his family was in danger. They hoped and trusted that his Excellency's wise and prudent conduct would render such apprehensions groundless ; and assured him that on their part every endeavor would be used to pro- mote and inculcate a proper veneration and respect for the character of his Majesty's representative.
This was the most satisfactory answer which his Lord- ship could get from a committee headed by his most inti- mate friend in the colony -the person in whose house
1 This allusion is to the pillory, which consisted of a wooden post or frame, fixed on a platform, raised several feet from the ground, behind which the culprit stood, his head and hands thrust through holes in the frame so as to be exposed in front of it. In this position the poor crea- ture was often pelted with rotten eggs and other missiles by the mob, and otherwise maltreated in the presence of the officers of the law.
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he was entertained upon his arrival. His position was indeed most unhappy.
This message of the Commons House of Assembly was the last communication which that body had with his Excellency Lord William Campbell. It was, too, the last business transacted by the old Colonial Assembly. The only entries after this are the adjournments from day to day for a month more, when the House was finally dis- solved -a dissolution which proved to be not only that of the Commons House of Assembly, but the extinction of the last vestige of the Royal government in the province of South Carolina.
But there was trouble in the councils of the Revolu- tionists, and renewed evidence of the divisions and disaf- fections which existed even in Charlestown, the seat of the movement. The authority of the Congress and Council was not universally accepted even there. The Commons might shield and justify the tarring and feathering of the gunner of Fort Johnson because he had wantonly cen- sured and condemned their measures, which they claimed were universally received and approved, but they could not sustain the authority of the Council even with the militia of the town. There was something very like mutiny in this body in their very presence. In conse- quence of the disturbances in the upper country the Coun- cil of Safety had published a Declaration of Alarm and had placed the Charlestown Regiment of Militia - which was commanded by Colonel Charles Pinckney - himself a member of this Council - under regulations for default of duty as prescribed for times of actual invasion "subject and liable to all the pains, penalties, forfeitures and dis- abilities expressed and set forth in and by any of the mili- tia acts of this colony."
Upon this twelve companies of volunteers in that regi-
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ment, which had enrolled themselves in consequence of the resolution of the Provincial Congress for forming volunteer companies, and which were well clothed and armed and which had diligently attended their military exercises, alarmed at this order subjecting them to actual service and martial law, prepared and presented a remon- strance to the Council of Safety. They stated that upon inquiry they had been informed that this declaration was intended to compel such of the inhabitants of the town as were not enrolled and would do no duty to enlist them- selves immediately. That if this was the intent and meaning of the declaration they remonstrated in the strongest manner against it, as an act which, if carried into execution, would subject them to severe and unmerited punishment and oppression ; and like those of the British Parliament respecting the colonies, would involve in one common punishment the innocent with the guilty. They requested that the declaration should be entirely done away with. The Council of Safety replied, endeavoring to satisfy the volunteers as to the reasons for the order ; but their reasons were not accepted ; and the companies addressed another communication to the General Com- mittee, which the committee answered, but without effect. This discontent of the volunteers gave such anxiety that it was not deemed expedient to issue any orders to them lest they might openly mutiny. At the end of a month, however, the company of Light Infantry led the way to reconciliation by offering their services to the Council of Safety, and this was followed by other companies. It is remarkable that while the Germans in the country were almost universally opposed to the Revolution, the only volunteer company which refused to join in this resistance to the Council of Safety was the German Fusiliers, an organization which, serving with distinction in the Revolu-
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tionary war, especially at the siege of Savannah -and again in the late war between the States - still exists as one of the military companies of South Carolina.
The conduct of the volunteer companies of Charlestown greatly discouraged the Council and induced some of them to send to the delegates in the Continental Congress a gloomy picture of things indicating their anxiety regard- ing public affairs. It equally encouraged the Governor.
His Excellency had in the meantime been endeavoring to maintain a correspondence with the disaffected in the back country. The Council of Safety was aware of this ; but his Excellency had been so cautious and careful as to whom he intrusted his confidences and dispatches, as to baffle their efforts to expose him. It will be recollected, however, that when Mr. Drayton had refused to receive Moses Kirkland's offer to surrender himself, Kirkland
had escaped in disguise to Charlestown. He arrived there on the night of the 11th of September and was received by the Governor at his residence in Meeting Street. A creek then ran up what is now Water Street and then passed the rear end of the lot of the Governor's residence, from which communication by small boats was easily maintained with the vessels of war in the harbor. By this means his Excellency had Kirkland secretly and safely conveyed on board the sloop of war Tamar. But in doing this the Governor had not altogether escaped the vigilance of the General Committee. It was known to them on the 13th, and the committee succeeded in securing the person of one Bailey Chaney, who had come with Kirk- land from the country. The capture of this person dis- closed the part that the Governor had been playing. He had assured the members of the General Committee that though applications had been made to him from the back country, upon his honor he had discouraged them. That
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though the persons who had applied to him had informed him that the party was four thousand strong, he had advised them to be quiet, -to act the part of peaceable good citizens, - and not to raise civil war among them- selves. From Chaney the committee now learned that the Governor had been deceiving them and had held a cor- respondence with his friends in the back country. To secure undoubted intelligence as to his Excellency's move- ments, Chaney was induced by threats and promises to introduce to the Governor Captain Adam McDonald, an officer of the First Regiment of Infantry, disguised as a back countryman, a companion of Chaney's. The decep- tion succeeded. They went to Lord William's residence at ten o'clock on the night of the 13th of September, when Captain McDonald, passing himself off as a sergeant to Cap- tain Kirkland and offering to carry safely any message or letter to Fletchall, Browne, or Cuningham, succeeded in securing from Lord William the intelligence that he had a letter from the King informing him of his Majesty's purpose to carry into execution a scheme for the subjec- tion of the colonies from one end of the continent to the other ; that troops would be sent before the fall, and South Carolina would be a seat of war. He promised Chaney to put him on board the man-of-war the next day, but advised McDonald that he could be no safer anywhere than in Charlestown, as the militia were all in an uproar and were ready to turn the committee soldiers out of the barracks.
Upon the report of the result of this ruse there was great indignation, and Arthur Middleton on the General Committee urged that his Excellency should be taken into custody ; but a strong opposition headed by Mr. Lowndes prevented it. During the discussion Captain McDonald with eight leading and influential members VOL. III. - F
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of the General Committee, who were in favor of Mr. Middleton's proposition, were sent to Lord William with certain propositions, and were directed to demand from him the perusal of his correspondence with the back country and of his dispatches from England, and to require that he should deliver up Moses Kirkland. The committee inet Lord William going to the riverside, and made the demands in pursuance of their instructions ; with which he at once peremptorily refused to comply. Upon this one of the eight members returned to the Gen- eral Committee and reported what had passed. The con- sideration of the matter of taking the Governor into custody was then resumed, contrary as it was claimed to a stipulation that no vote should be taken until all the eight had returned. The moderate party defeated the proposition by twenty-three to sixteen ; had the other seven been present there would still have been but a tie vote.
Affairs, however, had reached a crisis. As the Gen- eral Committee had learned from Lord William that British troops were expected soon to arrive, it was deemed high time to take possession of Fort Johnson command- ing the approach from Charlestown to the sea, and they recommended the measure to the Council of Safety. The Council immediately issued orders to that effect to Colonel William Moultrie, and on the next day, the 15th of September, a detachment of artillery took posts at the bastions in the town, which were ready to receive them.1 As soon as the committee had left Lord William Camp- bell, his Excellency went on board the Tamar, where he remained for some hours and then returned to the town. During the night his Secretary, Mr. Innes, with part of the Tamar's crew, landed at Fort Johnson and dismantled
1 Ramsay's Revolution in So. Car., vol. I, 44, 45.
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the fort by dismounting all the cannon. They left just in time to save themselves from capture by the forces Colonel Moultrie had ordered to take possession of the fort. This body, consisting of Captain Charles Cotes- worth Pinckney's, Barnard Elliott's, and Francis Marion's companies of provincial troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Motte, embarked about eleven o'clock at Gadsden's wharf at the foot of what is now Calhoun Street, on board the Carolina and Georgia packet for the short voyage across the harbor. Information had been received of the landing of Mr. Innes's party at Fort John- son, and supposing that the fort had been garrisoned from the Tamar, every preparation was made to storm it. The troops were divided into the forlorn hope, scaling, and supporting parties. The packet took, however, an hour to sail from Gadsden's wharf to a quarter of a mile
of James Island on which the fort stood. There she cast anchor, as the mud-flat from the shore prevented her getting nearer unless she ran directly to the fort. This the captain would not agree to do, as he feared the ebb tide would drift him under the guns of the fort. The packet had only two small boats, capable of transporting but fifteen men at a time. The result was that the land- ing was only effected by the men wading through the water up to their waists, and the day of the 15th dawned when only Captains Pinckney's and Elliott's companies had got ashore. It was determined, however, not to wait for Captain Marion's company, but to move at once upon the fort. This was done with eagerness, but when the forlorn hope advanced up the glacis the gates were found open and the cannon dismounted. Of the garrison only the gunner Walker and four men were taken prisoners.
Lord William Campbell now realized that his influence and power were entirely gone, and he hastened to take the
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final steps which put a formal end to the Royal govern- ment. On the day of the seizure of Fort Johnson by the provincial troops, he issued a proclamation dissolving the Commons House of Assembly of the province ; and avail- ing himself of the same means of escape- the creek which ran to the back of the lot to his residence -took refuge on board the Tamar, then riding at anchor in Rebellion Road. Following the example of James the Second, who took with him in his flight from his kingdom the great seal of England, Lord William took with him the great seal of the province.
The Governor remaining on the Tamar, on the 29th of September the General Committee sent a deputation from their body with an address inviting his return to Charles- town, in which they assured him that, whilst agreeable to his repeated and solemn declarations, his Excellency should take no active part against the good people of the colony in their struggle for the preservation of their civil liberties, they would, to the utmost of their power, secure him that safety and respect for his person and character which the inhabitants of Carolina ever wished to show to the representative of their sovereign. His Excellency replied, indignantly repudiating the intimation that he could at any time have so forgotten his duty to his sover- eign as to promise he would take no active part in bring- ing the subverters of the Constitution and of the real liberties of the people to a sense of their duty. He declared that he would never return to Charlestown till he could support the King's authority and protect his faithful and loyal subjects. This, as we shall see, he attempted, and in doing so lost his life.
CHAPTER IV
1775
ABOUT the time Fort Johnson was seized his Majesty's sloop of war, the Cherokee, arrived in the harbor and took position in Rebellion Road, where she joined the Tamar. Upon this the Council of Safety reenforced Colonel Motte at Fort Johnson by Captain Thomas Heyward, Jr.'s com- pany of Charlestown Artillery. At dawn of the 17th of September the men-of-war with the packet Swallow sailed up and presented themselves within point-blank range of the fort. An engagement was expected, but the vessels made only a demonstration and returned to their former anchor- age. Fort Johnson was then further reinforced by the companies of Captains Benjamin Cattell, Adam McDonald, and John Barnwell of the First Regiment, and Captains Peter Horry and Francis Huger of the Second. A flag was made for the fort and hoisted by the direction of the Council of Safety. It was of a blue color with a crescent in the dexter corner. This was the first American flag unfurled in South Carolina, and its display caused much uneasiness to those who were still looking with hope for a reconciliation.1
Upon the question of further preparation for hostilities there was great difference of opinion as well in the Gen-
1 Moultrie's Memoirs, vol. I, 91 ; Memoirs of the Revolution (Dray- ton), vol. II, 51, 52. This flag was designed by Colonel Moultrie. The crescent was introduced because the soldiers of the First and Second regiments, detachments of which were in the fort, wore a silver cres- cent on the front of their caps. Their uniform was blue. Ibid., 53.
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eral Committee as in the Council of Safety. Having now possession of Fort Johnson, the Council had prohibited intercourse with his Majesty's ships of war in the harbor, and had limited the supplies for the ships from the town to one day's consumption. This led to some tart corre- spondence between Captain Thornbrough and Mr. Laurens, in which the former expressed his determination " to have the assistance of a pilot and every necessary supply by force, if I cannot obtain them in an amicable way." In consequence of this threat the General Committee pro- posed to the Council to take possession of Sullivan's Island, from which position the ships of war could be reached by guns, and thus be compelled to leave the harbor. The suggestion was formally adopted, but no action was taken upon it. Then a vessel was found, the Prosper, which it was reported was able to bear twelve-pounders on her deck, and it was proposed to fit her out as a vessel of war against the King's ships, but this proposition was rejected. Then the General Committee obtained from the pilots a report upon the width and depth of the channels of the harbor, and that eleven schooners sunk in the ship chan- nel and twenty in the other would sufficiently obstruct them. But the question at once presented itself, how could they accomplish the obstruction of the channels in the face of the British men-of-war? The first step, there- fore, was to get rid of these vessels, and it was proposed that the men-of-war should be "first secured, destroyed, or removed"; but upon the question being put in the Gen- eral Committee, it was first lost by a vote of 23 to 17 ; upon a reconsideration, however, the next day it was carried by a vote of 29 to 21. But when this resolve of the General Committee was laid before the Council of Safety with the request that that body would find the means of carrying it out, a division of opinion was found to exist in that
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body as well, and so equal was it that it became necessary that Henry Laurens, the President of the Council, should give the casting vote. He asked for time to consider, and the next day voted in favor of the measure; in the hope, it was said, that the public impulse should not be checked and cooled, while a better measure might be devised.
The Council of Safety thus committed to the vigorous measures of the General Committee, the next step was to carry out the plan of threatening the King's ships in the rear by batteries on Haddrell's Point and Sullivan's Island ; but the project created great alarm among the citizens, who already saw the town in flames from the fire of the ships. Mr. Thomas Bee, one of the Council of Safety, assisted in the draft of a petition against the movement, and also against the obstruction of the bar, which was soon signed by three hundred and sixty-eight citizens. The petitioners declared the measures "alto- gether impracticable, and if persisted in would bring on the inevitable destruction of this now flourishing town." They humbly requested that a stop might be put to them until the sense of all the inhabitants might be known. This petition of the citizens was a great relief to the Council of Safety, divided as it was, having acquiesced in the plan only by the vote of Mr. Laurens, who was but
half hearted in its adoption. In turn the Council of Safety referred the petition to the General Committee, in which, after a long debate, it was agreed to by a vote of 22 to 11. Thus ended for the time the attempts to rid the harbor of the British men-of-war.1
The matter of driving out the King's ships and obstruct- ing the harbor had been abandoned for a while ; but the party for vigorous action, led by William Henry Drayton 1 Memoirs of the Revolution (Drayton), vol. II, 53, 57.
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with his irrepressible and indomitable energy, were not discouraged, nor were they at all content to leave the military defence of the province to Colonel Moultrie, who, in the absence of Colonel Gadsden, who was attending the Continental Congress, was in command of the colonial force in the harbor. The wildest schemes were proposed and debated, which Moultrie ridiculed. Various bodies of commissioners, of almost all of which Mr. Drayton was a member, and of which he was usually chairman, were appointed to build batteries, to intrench the town, to obstruct the harbor, etc., duties which properly pertained to the military and not to the civil authorities.1
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