USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina under the proprietary government, 1670-1719, V.1 > Part 15
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(i.e. about $25 of present currency) per acre, though pillaged of all its valuable timber ; cleared land fitted for planting and fenced was let for ten shillings per annum the acre, though twenty miles distant from the town. Six men could in six weeks' time fell, clear, fence in. and fit for planting six acres of land. He states that at this town in November, 1680, there rode at one time sixteen sail of vessels, some of which were upwards of 200 tons and came from divers parts of the King's kingdom to trade there, which great concourse of shipping would un- doubtedly in a short time make it a considerable town.1
Wilson was the secretary for the Lords Proprietors, and so his account may be regarded somewhat as an advertisement colored to induce immigration, but the clerk on the Richmond gave an equally pleasing account of the progress of the colony. "At our being there," he writes, "there was judged in the country a 1000 or 1200 souls, but the great number of families from England, Ire- land, Barbadoes Jamaica and the Caribbee Islands which daily transport themselves thither, have more than doubled that number. " 2
These accounts agree as to the healthiness of the coun- try. Wilson states that the inhabitants of Carolina are no more liable to agues than those of England ; that those in England who seat themselves near great marshes are subject to such attacks and do suffer as those who do like- wise in Carolina ; that elsewhere the country is exceed- ingly healthy ; and cites an instance of a family consisting of never less than twelve persons, in which there had been no deaths since their arrival in nine years. Nor, he adds, is there one of the masters of families that went over in the first vessel dead of sickness in Carolina except one, who was seventy and five years of age before he came
I Carroll's Coll., vol. II, 23, 24.
2 Ibid., 82.
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there.1 T- A --- asserts that the Indians prolong their days to the extremity of old age, and that the Eng- lish hitherto have found no distempers, either epidemical or mortal, but such as have their rise from excess or in- temperance. He admits that in July and August they have sometimes touches of agues and fevers, but not vio- lent. of short duration, and never fatal. English children born there are commonly strong and lusty, of sound con- stitutions, and fresh, ruddy complexions.2 The whole set- tlement at this time was upon the rivers and the coast, extending no farther than thirty miles from the town - the region which has since been affected with the deadly, high, bilious. congestive fever. It is clear, therefore. that the country fever. since prevalent in the summer in the low country, was not then known.
Wilson describes the summer as not so hot as in Vir- ginia and the more northern colonies, which he attributes to the sea-breezes which almost constantly arise about eight or nine o'clock within the tropics and blow from the east until about four in the afternoon. and to a north wind which arises a little after, blowing all night, keeping it fresh and cool. Thomas Ash only commits himself to the fact that the summers are not so torrid, hot, and burn- ing as that of their southern, nor the winters so sharp and cold as that of their northern, neighborhood.
The soil was found to be generally very fertile. There were some sandy tracts, but even this land produced good corn. Wheat, rye, barley, oats, and peas thrive exceed- ingly, and the ground yields in greater abundance than in England ; but the chief produce of the field was Indian corn. of which there were two plentiful harvests. Whole- some bread and good biscuits were made of this. and it
I Carroll's Coll .. vol. 1, 26. This allusion is no doubt to Governor Saye, who was, in fact, eighty years of age. 2 Ibid., 62.
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was dressed with milk in various ways, furnishing a strong. sound, and nourishing diet. Of the juice of the corn when green, the Spaniards, with chocolate aromatized with spices, made a rare drink of excellent delicacy. The English among the Caribbees roasted the green ear on the coals, and ate it with great pleasure.
The Indians in Carolina, when on a journey, parch the ripe corn, then pound it into a powder, and put it in a leather bag. To use it. they take a little quantity of the powder in the palms of their hands, and mixing it with water, sup it up. With this they will travel several days. It was described, in short, as a grain of general use to man and beast. The Carolinian had already found a way of making with it good, sound beer, but rather strong and heady, and by maceration, when duly fermented, a strong spirit-like brandy. Tobacco was found to grow very well, but the great trouble in the planting and cure of it, and the great quantities which Virginia and other of his Majesty's plantations produced, did not encourage its planting. Tar of the resinous juice of the pine was made in great quantities ; several tons were transported yearly to Barbadoes, Jamaica, and the Caribbee Islands. Indigo had been tried with success, but had been abandoned, for what reason it could not be learned.
The great increase in cattle, it was said, was more to be admired than believed. In 1674 the Proprietors had refused to send out any live-stock, and the country was destitute of cows, hogs. or sheep. In seven years after. there were many thousands in the province. Individual planters had already 700 or 800 head. They were not subject to any disease, and the little winter did not pinch them so as to be perceived. The planters were thus saved the care of providing fodder for them in the winter. Caro- lina would thus be able to supply the northern colonies
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with salted beef cheaper than they themselves could raise ; for, considering that all the woods in Carolina offered good pasturage, and the small rent that was paid the Proprie- tors for land, an ox was raised at almost as little expense in Carolina as a hen is in England. So, too, hogs increased abundantly, and in a manner without any charge or trouble to the planter. Ewes also did well, but required a shepherd to drive them to feed, and to bring them home at night to preserve them from wolves. The colonists had begun to breed horses, which bred well. The colts were finer limbed and headed than their dams or sires, which gave great hopes of an excellent breed. Negroes throve by reason of the mildness of the winter much better than they did in the more northern colonies, and required less clothes, which was a great charge saved.
Living was very cheap in the colony. Indian corn sup- plied the bread ; the rivers abounded with every kind of fish, near the sea with very good oysters, and the woods with hares, squirrels, raccoons, opossums, and deer. An Indian hunter would kill nine fallow deer in a day. All the considerable planters had an Indian hunter, who sup- plied them with game. For 20 shillings a year, i.e. from 820 to $25. one hunter would find a family of thirty per- sons with as much venison and game as they could well eat. Deer were in such infinite herds that the whole country seemed but one continued park. T- A- states, upon the authority of Captain Mathews, that one hunting Indian had yearly killed and brought to his plan- tation more than 100, sometimes 200, head of deer. Bears were in great numbers. From the fat of these, the Indians made oil which was of great value in making the hair to grow. The Indians had a way of dressing the skins of wild animals rather softer, though not so durable, as that used in England.
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The settlers in Carolina were thriving not, as yet, so much as planters as traders. Their trade was princi- pally with Barbadoes and the other West Indies. They exported to England skins and furs, and Indian pelfry and cedar : to Barbadoes, Jamaica, and the Caribbee Islands provisions, pitch. tar, and clapboards. for which they obtained in exchange sugar, rum, molasses, and gin- ger. Their trade was, unhappily, not restricted to these legitimate articles of commerce. In the Temporary Laws sent out to Sayle it was expressly provided that no Indian. upon any occasion or pretence whatsoever, was to be made a slave or without his own consent be carried out of the country; 1 but this humane provision was disregarded by the Proprietors themselves, and disobeyed by the colonists. It was the Proprietors who first " gave the privilege," to use their own language. of selling Indian captives from Carolina to the West India Islands as the cheapest means of " encouraging the soldiers " of the infant colony.2 However shocking this may appear to the sentiment of the present age, in judging the con- duct of the Proprietors, we must recollect that by the rules of war. at that time, prisoners and captives were regarded as the absolute property of the conquerors, who might take their lives or sell them into bondage, - a rule which was cited and relied upon as international law a hundred years afterwards by the British authorities in Carolina as their justification of the treatment of Ameri- cans taken as prisoners of war.3 The title of the Pro- prietors rested upon the claims of England to a conquest of this territory,+ and hence the slavery and exportation
1 Hist. Sketches of So. Ca. (Rivers), Appendix, 353. 2 Ibid., 132. 3 Rogal Gurette (No. 103), February 20. 1782, Charlestown, South Carolina. + So says Blackstone. See ante. p. 51. But from whom conquered, - from the Spaniards or the Indians ? If from the Indians, as we shall have occasion to ask. why did the Proprietors attempt to secure title by purchase from them ?
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of Indians was a matter merely of expediency, and not of moral wrong under the political tenets of the age. And so it was that now Governor West was to be removed because of the displeasure of the Proprietors at the sell- ing of Indian slaves purchased by the planters from the neighboring Indian tribes. This trade the Proprietors regarded as one of the perquisites of their grant and were very jealous of any interference with it by the colonists. Indian slaves were shipped and sold to the West Indies, and African slaves were bought there and brought in return to Carolina.
Wilson, for the Proprietors. offered to those who would go out to the province, - to each master or mistress of a family, 50 acres; to every able son or man-servant they should carry 50 acres more, and the like to each marriage- able daughter or woman-servant; and for each child, man or woman servant under sixteen years of age, 40 acres ; to each servant when his time of service was out, 50 acres. This land was to be to them and their heirs forever, with the reservation of a penny an acre quit-rent to the Lords Proprietors. To those who preferred not to be encum- bered with paying a rent, and also to secure to themselves tracts of land without being forced to bring servants to put upon them, the Proprietors offered to sell at the rate of £50 per 1000 acres, reserving a peppercorn per annum rent when demanded. This was certainly not very cheap if we assume that the pound at that time was equal in value to four at the present; for the price of those wild lands would have been equal to about one dollar an acre of the present currency, a price at which large tracts of the same can be purchased to-day.
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CHAPTER IX
1682-85
THE immigration to Carolina had hitherto been that simply of adventurers uninfluenced by any religious or political motives. Governor Savle, it is true, was a Puri- tan, but it was not on that account that he had been made Governor; it was rather because of his availability to Yea- mans when he determined not to come himself. So. too, West was a man of piety, but not on that account had he been appointed, but only because that he was "the fittest man for the trust " the Proprietors could find when Sir John again failed them. The breaking out of the Popish Terror in England in 1678, and the religious ex- citement which ensued, in view of the succession of James to the throne in case of his brother's death, in which commotion Shaftesbury, one of the Proprietors, was much involved, now caused an emigration from England to Carolina of a class generally superior in character and morals to any that had yet come, excepting only the Bar- badian planters and the French Protestants who had come out with Grinard and Petit.
The Proprietors, on the 10th of May, 1682, announced that they had been prevailed upon at the request of sey- eral eminent persons who had a mind to become settlers in the province to review their Fundamental Constitutions and to make some additions and alterations thereto. The first two of these changes related only to the matter of
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precedence between themselves, and were of no concern to the colonists. The third was the very small concession that the Grand Council " Wa is the Senate of Carolina," they said, were allowed to propose to the Parliament such things as they might upon mature consideration think fit- ting for the good of the people, without first submitting the same to the negative of the Palatine Court in Eng- land. The fourth then went a small step further and provided that in case the Grand Council should forget their duty, and not take sufficient care to remedy in- conveniences by proposing fitting laws to be passed by Parliament, the grand jury of the county might present anything necessary to be passed into law; and if the Grand Council did not then in convenient time propose it to the Parliament, that it might be acted upon without their consent. The only other considerable alteration was that made in compliance with the desire of several eminent wealthy men, who proposed to become settlers in Carolina, and of some who were already there. who were unwilling to be encumbered with the payment of rent for their lands; for these the Proprietors agreed that rent might be re- mitted by special instruments under their hands and seals.
These modifications were made to meet the views of in- fluential nonconformists, who were turning their eyes to the new country, in apprehension of persecution at home. In a letter accompanying these modifications their Lord- ships disavowed power thereafter to alter anything in the Fundamental Constitutions without the people's consent, but at the same time ordered that no person should be chosen a member of the Council or have land allotted before he subscribed submission to these laws in their amended form. The colonists, remembering the oaths that had been extorted from them to the first set, and still deny- ing the right of the Proprietors under the charter to make
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any law without the assent and approbation of the people assembled for this purpose, declined again to recognize these Constitutions even in their modified form. It was just as well that they did so. for a short time after -and that before it could have been known in England that they had refused to accept the Constitutions of May. 1682- there came out still another set bearing date the seventeenth day of August, to which the Council and the people were again solemuly required to subscribe. No other reasons for the sudden alteration were given than that it was done at the request of certain Scots and other considerable persons. This last set was likewise rejected by the colonists.1
An order contemporaneous with the modifications of the Constitutions of the 10th of May, 1682, divided the province into three counties. Berkeley, embracing Charles Town, extended from Sewee on the north to Stono Creek on the south : beyond to the northward was Craven County, and to the southward Colleton County. all extending within land to a distance of thirty-five miles from the sea-coast. A County court was ordered to be established at Charles Town for all the inhabitants. Craven County was sparsely settled until the Huguenots occupied the banks of the San- tee, so that practically there were but two counties at this period.2
Oldmixon, the author of the work entitled The British Empire in America, writes : --
"'Twas about this time that the Persecution rais'd by the Popish Faction and their adherents in England against the Protestant Dissenters was at the height; and no Part of the Kingdom suffer'd more by it than Somersetshire. The Author of this History liv'd at that time with Mr. Blake, brother of the famous General by that name, being educated by his Son-in-law. who taught School in Bridgewater; and remembers 'the' then very young, the reasons
1 Hist. Sketches of So. Ca. (Rivers), Appendix, 421. 2 Ibid., 134-135. 0
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old Mr. Blake us'd to give us for leaving England. One of which was. that the miseries they endur'd, meaning the Dissenters, then were nothing to what he foresaw would attend the Reign of a Popish suc- cessor: wherefore he resolved to remove to Carolina. And he had so great an interest among Persous of his principles (I mean Dissenters) that many honest substantial Persons engaged to go over with bim." 1
Benjamin Blake.2 Daniel Axtell. and Joseph Morton.3 who afterwards married Blake's daughter, were the leaders of this movement. Several other families fol- lowed the fortunes of Blake: and through the encour- agement of Axtell and Morton, five hundred persons arrived in Carolina in less than a month. so that, as we have seen, the population of the colony was doubled during the period from 1680 to 1682. In reward for this great service, Morton and Axtell. with Thomas Colleton. who had been the Proprietors' agent in Barbadoes, and who had also contributed much to the increase of the colony. were made Landgraves in 1681: and Governor West was now required to give place to Joseph Morton, who was commissioned Governor on the 18th of May, 1682.+ To find an excuse for his removal, the ever-ready and convenient charge was made against West. - that of dealing in Indian slaves, and opposing the Proprietors' policy in the colony. The real reason was doubtless to encourage immigration from this new and important source.
1 British Empire in Am., vol. I, 400 ; Oldmixon, Carolina. Carroll's Coll., vol. II. 407.
2 Beniamin Blake was a brother of the famous English Admiral of the Commonwealth. The family were of Bridgewater in Somersetshire.
3 The Mortons were an ancient English family. Prominent among the members of it who came to America, besides Joseph Morton, were Thomas Morton, one of the most interesting historical characters of early New England; Rev. Charles Morton. Vice President of Harvard and author of a number of treatises: George Morton, the ancestor of Vice President Levi P. Morton. Morton Memoranda , Leach), 1994.
Coll. Hist. Soc. of So. Ca., vol. I. 10.
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A still more important movement was inaugurated about the same time, which was destined, however, to end disastrously. On the 21st of November, 1682, the Lords Proprietors inform Governor Morton that they had entered into an agreement with Sir John Cockram, of Ochiltree and Sir George Campbell. in behalf of them- selves and other Scots, for the settlement of a county in Carolina. This new colony was conducted to Carolina by Henry Lord Cardross. His Lordship was descended from the Lords Erskine and the Earls of Mar, and Lady Cardross was the daughter of Sir James Stuart. Lord Cardross had been in many ways a sufferer for resistance to oppression. and determined to seek freedom of con- science in America. Nor was he alone in this. A com- pany of noblemen entered into bonds with each other for making a settlement in the province. The subscribers were thirty-six in number. Among them were some who bore the names of Callender. Cardross. Yester, Hume of Polwart. Cockburn. Douglass. Lockhart. Gilman, etc. They had obtained from the Proprietors the grant of a county consisting of thirty plats of 12,000 acres each in the neighborhood of Port Royal, the title for which the Proprietors undertook to secure by treaty and pur- chase from the Indians: and for this purpose the Proprie- tors authorized Governor Morton and Maurice Mathews to receive and take possession of all lands sold by the Indians. The Scots selected Port Royal on account of the fame of its harbor and the excellence of its situation, which had been so greatly extolled: and doubtless sup- posing that as the titles to the lands were to be obtained by purchase from the Indians. no danger was to be ap- prehended from that source. Unfortunately, they did not take into consideration the proximity of the location to the Spaniards at St. Augustine.
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This colony was to be independent of that at Charles Town, and Cardross understood himself to have coordinate jurisdiction with the Governor there. He landed in 1683. and founded Stuart's Town, probably so called in honor of the family of Lady Cardross. Rivers states that Lord Cardross was accompanied by about ten families. among whose names were those of Hamilton, Montgomerie, and Dunlop; but Howe quotes Wodrow, a most exact histo- rian, to the effect that there were many others.1 It had, indeed. been expected that some 10,000 emigrants would have been obtained from Scotland to this colony, for the persecution consequent upon the rising in the West country was then raging fearfully ; and, while many were fleeing before it in anticipation, many others were invol- untarily banished and sent to America, condemned to servitude.
As an instance of the cruelty with which these un- fortunate people were treated, and illustrating the gen- eral insecurity of life and liberty, of the times, Dr. Howe relates the following incidents: A considerable number of Scotch rebels were sentenced to transpor- tation in a ship belonging to William Gibson, a merchant in Glasgow. and commanded by his brother, Captain James Gibson. On the voyage these poor people were disturbed when at worship, and the hatches closed upon them whenever they began to sing. They were stinted in their food, and water was unnecessarily denied them. One is supposed to have died from thirst. The sick were not cared for. One of the voluntary exiles, failing to pay all of his passage-money, was forced into the country as a servant. Two, attempting to escape, were barbarously used, beaten eight times a day, and, it
1 Hist. Sketches ( Rivers). 12 : Hist. Presh. Ch., 80 ; Wodrow's Hist. of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland.
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is said, condemned to perpetual servitude, but to whom and in what way is not stated. Captain Gibson did not restrict himself to the prisoners delivered to him. He seized one Elizabeth Lining, who had gone aboard the vessel when lying in the Clyde, to visit the prisoners, and brought her off in captivity. She was set at liberty as a free woman by the Grand Council at Charles Town, on the 17th of October, 1684, upon her petition; but we are not told that she was restored to her native land. Most of these prisoners died in Carolina.
Governor Morton's administration was but of short du- ration. He was a man of a sober and religious temper of mind, with some share of wisdom; and from his family alliance it was hoped that the hands of the government would be strengthened ; but his instructions from England were so opposed to the views and interests of the people as greatly to hamper him in the execution of the duties of his office. His Council was composed of John Boone, Maurice Mathews, John Godfrey. Andrew Percival, Arthur Middleton. and James Moore. Some of these differed widely from him in opinion with respect to public meas- ures, and claimed greater indulgences for the people than he had authority to grant. This strengthened the differ- ences between the two parties already forming in the colony, -one in support of the prerogative and authority of the Proprietors, the other in defence of the liberties of the people ; the one party relying upon the Fundamental Constitutions and the Governor's instructions, and the other resting their rights under the Royal charter. A singular illustration of the potent influence of individual interest over political theories and principles was here pre- sented. We find West, a dissenter. and Morton, who had just left his own country for religious freedom and politi- cal liberty. Roundhead commoners, both accepting the
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bauble title of Landgrave, and upholding the arbitrary prerogative of the Proprietors, while the churchmen from England and Barbadoes were, for the present, insisting upon the chartered rights of the people under the Royal grants.
The election for the twenty members of Parliament had hitherto been held at Charles Town, the centre of the small population, but now that the people were increasing, and in a measure spreading themselves, and that the new counties had been laid out, the Proprietors, doubtless in- fluenced by Morton and his party, who had settled on the Edisto, directed that Berkeley and Colleton counties should be equally represented by the election from each of ten members ; and that the two elections should be held on the same day, respectively, at Charles Town and at London (afterwards called Wilton) in Colleton. It is not known whether Governor Morton had received these instructions at the time he convened a Parliament in September. 1683. On the 3d of that month the Proprie- tors wrote to him reiterating their instructions, and add- ing that. as they were uncertain that their orders had arrived in time, they directed that if the Parliament had been chosen by election only in Charles Town, that it be dissolved and a new Parliament called, to be chosen as then directed.
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