USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina under the proprietary government, 1670-1719, V.1 > Part 2
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HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
Under this system the province, and afterwards the State, was divided into military districts. the chief of each of which was a colonel, and these again into other districts, or beats, under captains. The captain was the police officer of his district, or beat, and was charged with the patrol and police of his beat and the enforce- ment of the regulations in regard to the slaves. The regimental and company military precincts were thus coincident with the police districts, and the two formed one system. The captain of a beat or militia company thus charged with the maintenance of order in his district was a man in authority for the time, and as the duties were onerous the office was not usually held longer than the term which exempted one from further service. So each young man of position in a neighborhood took his turn of duty, and thus acquiring the title of captain re- tained it unless he became colonel. There were usually, therefore, a considerable number of men in each commun- ity having the title of "captain " or "colonel." and the designation implying a person of some local consequence was sought, and sometimes assumed without actual ser- vice. This system gave a military organization to the people, which was much more effective and exacting than ordinary militia enrolment and muster. So imbued was the system of government brought from Barbadoes with a military spirit that the high sheriff of the province re- tained the military title of " provost-marshal " for a hun- dred years - indeed. until the American Revolution. To this source may be traced the prevalence of military titles in the South, as that of "judge " or "squire " in other communities, indicating persons of local consequence.
Another principle to which the people of South Caro- lina have been as devoted. and have clung with equal consistency as to that of the autonomy of the State. is
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that of the inviolability of the family relation. Nowhere has the family bond -the foundation and germ of all society and government - been more sacredly guarded and effectually preserved. It has been a part of the Constitution of the State -unwritten, it is true, until 1895-but nevertheless fully recognized and enforced - that divorce should never be allowed. There never has been a divorce in South Carolina -province, colony, or State-except during the Reconstruction period after the war between the States, under the government of strangers, adventurers, and negroes, upheld by Federal bayonets. There is but one case of divorce reported in her law books, and that was during that infamous rule. The legislature of the State has persistently refused either itself to grant divorces or to authorize its courts to do so. In conferring powers and jurisdiction upon its courts those of the ecclesiastical tribunals were purposely excluded. " Whether wisely or unwisely," said Chan- cellor Dunkin in a case in which an effort was made to have the court declare marriage void, "the legislature has thought proper to withhold these powers. They have delegated to no court the authority to declare a marriage void. and they have never themselves exercised the authority."1 The Constitution adopted in the last
1 See the cases of Mattison v. Mattison, 1 Strohart Equity Reports, N. C., and Bowers V. Bowers, 10 Richardson's Equity Reports, S. C. The latter a case decided by the Court of Errors consisting of all the law judges and chancellors on equity of the State.
It is sometimes suggested that this prohibition of divorce has been more a matter of form than of substance. as persons desiring divorce had only to go into another State, obtain a decree, and return. This has undoubtedly been attempted, but is countenanced neither by the courts torby society. Ina case Duke v. Fulmer. & Richardson's Equity Reports, 121. involving a question of property. it was attempted to set up such a Ferrer obtained in another State ; but the courts of the State would not permit it. bat hell that a marriage contract once entered into in South
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year (1895) has now made the prohibition of divorce a part of the written organic law of the State. With this inexorable rule in regard to the irrevocability of marriage once entered into the family group has been at once the source of social and political strength. The people of South Carolina have recognized and acted upon the great political truth that in a republican form of government above all others is the family the strength of the State. She has held out to her sons that in establishing their own position upon a political or social eminence they were establishing it for their sons as well. She has been ready to recognize and has bailed with satisfaction and reward the evidence of the worthiness of the sons to succeed the fathers whom she had honored with public trusts. And so it has been that generation after genera- tion finds the same names in her public records. It is no uncommon thing to find the sons to the third and fourth generation sitting together in the councils of the State. This political and social policy has given to the State many long lines of illustrious men.
Most of the elder States, says a recent English writer, preserve throughout American history an individuality quite as distinct and persistent as that of the leading Greek cities or great Roman families. But above all the dauntless and defiant spirit, the fiery temper. the ventur- ous chivalry of South Carolina, continually remind the student of American history of her mixed origin, - the early interfusion of the blood of the English Cavalier with that of the Huguenots, who transmitted to their offspring
Carolina is indissolable, either by consent of the parties or by the judg- ment or statute of any foreign tribunal or legislation. A divorced person in the State of South Carolina is as rare as the Northern gentleman who had been abroad, who. Mr. MeMaster tells us, was pointed out as a curios- ity as late as 1795. Hist. of the United States, vol. I. 51.
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the traditional gallantry and martial spirit of their Gascon ancestry. Nothing in her situation, geographical, political, or industrial. required her to take the foremost place in sectional conflict. But in almost every collision the Pal- metto State comes to the front as the promptest. fiercest, most determined champion of State sovereignty. slavery, and Southern interests.1 Another writer observes that a Virginian of to-day is first a Virginian ; a South Caro- linian is above all things a South Carolinian, but next they are both. Southerners, and lastly Americans. Whether these criticisms are altogether true or not. the people of South Carolina. admired or condemned, have been recog- nized as a people of marked and distinctive characteristics. They have held and maintained determined policies throughout their history, and have impressed them upon other parts of the country. For this the calamities which befell in the war which they challenged have been by some regarded as a just retribution. But whether praised or blamed the fact is certain that they have been recog- nized as in many respects peculiar in their character.2
This, too, is more remarkable when, as every one famil- iar with the local history of the State well knows, there have been always marked and well-defined differences be- tween themselves in almost every respect in which they appear to strangers as one people: It is all the more re- markable, too, since these differences have been, so to speak, organic. having had their origin in the very settle- ment of the State. and have not been evolved from differ- ing circumstances among those who were once the same people.
To some of the first causes of these marked characteris-
1 Hist. of the United States ( Percy Gree), vol. I, 130.
" Preface to Cyclopedia of Eminent Representative Men of the Caro- linas of the Nineteenth Century, by Edward MeCrady.
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tics we have already referred. These and others scarcely less potent will more fully appear as we proceed. We shall attempt in the following work to trace the history and the development of the State of South Carolina so- cially and politically from the inception of the colony to the end of the American Revolution.
A great inducement to this undertaking is the fact that there exists to-day no history of the State which can be bought upon the market. Her history can now be studied only in rare works to be purchased only oc- casionally at high rates in old book stalls.
So much, too, has recently been brought to light from sources inaccessible to former historians that it has be- come necessary to reconsider and recast much that has hitherto been received as authentic. This we have, per- haps rashly. attempted to do.
A brief review of works in regard to South Carolina, now out of print, will show. we think, the occasion for some substitute for them. and will, we trust, justify the attempt we have made to supply this want.
The first publication in regard to Carolina was one in the nature of an advertisement made by the Proprietors to induce emigration to the plantation or settlement at Cape Fear, begun on the 29th of May, 1664. It is en- titled " A Brief Description of the Province of Carolina on the Coasts of Florida." It was printed in London in 1666.1 In 1682 there were two other such publications ; one was by Samuel Wilson, secretary to the Proprietors. which was likewise an advertisement of the advantages of the settlement of Charles Town at Oyster Point. It is entitled " An Account of the Province of Carolina in America. together with an Abstract of the Patent. and several other Necessary and Useful Particulars to such as
1 Carroll's Collections, vol. II, 9.
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have Thoughts of Transporting Themselves thither. Published for their information." The other publi- cation of the year 1682 was made by one who wrote under the designation of " T ----- A --- , Gen't clerk on board her Majesty's ship the Richmond, which was sent out in the year 1680. with particular instruction to inquire into the state of the country by her Majesty's special command, and returned this present year. 1682." The work is en- titled " Carolina or a Description of the Present State of that Country and the Natural Excellence thereof." etc. This publication, by Thomas Ashe, is more reliable than that of Samuel Wilson's, inasmuch as it is in the nature of a disinterested report, rather than an advertisement to induce immigration.
The next work is " A New Description of that Fertile and Pleasant Province of Carolina, with a Brief Account of its Discovery and Settling and the Government thereof to the Time. with several Remarkable Passages of Divine Providence during my Time. By John Archdale. late Governor of the Same. London. Printed in 1707." The description of Carolina in this work is very meagre ; and besides the briefest account of its affairs since the settle- ment of the colony there is little more than a narrative of Archdale's short administration. written apparently to justify his conduct. and to show that he was not respon- sible for the disturbed condition of affairs which occurred soon after he left the province. His style is exceedingly loose and confused, and the work is too egotistical to be of any great value save for the presence of a few original papers.
The next year. 1708, there appeared a work of con- siderable pretension published anonymously in two vol- miues, under the title of ". The British Empire in America. Containing the History of the Discovery, Settlement,
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HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
Progress and State of the Continent and Islands of Amer- ica." The first volume was "an account of the country, soil. climate. product and trade of New Foundland, New England, New Scotland, New York, New Jersey, Penn- sylvania, Maryland. Virginia, Carolina, Georgia and Hud- son's Bay." The second volume contained like accounts of the West India Islands. This work was by John Old- mixon, an author of numerous poems and some historical works. The latter are regarded as dull works, and his bigoted defence of Whig principles and abuse of the Stuarts are not calculated to inspire confidence. Macau- lay. Whig as he was, declares that Oldmixon unsupported by evidence is of no weight whatsoever. He was one of the victims of Pope's satire in the Dunciad. His account of Carolina in this work is nevertheless the first historical account of the province. True to his character and poli- tics, however, his authorities are all on one side of the religious disputes in the colony. These are avowedly Archdale and Boone, the latter of whom was the leader on that side in all the controversies in regard to the naturalization of the Huguenots and the Church Acts. Oldmixon's account of Carolina will be found republished in Carroll's collections. We shall quote from the original work rather than from Carroll's collections, as we shall have occasion to refer to the volume on the West Indies as well as to that in which he writes of Carolina.
The first work designed as a history of South Carolina - a history of South Carolina only - was that prepared by the Rev. Alexander Hewatt. D. D., published in Lon- don in 1759 during the Revolution. It was entitled " An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia." Dr. Hewatt, as is well known. was the pastor of the Scotch, now the First Presbyterian. Church, Charleston, from 1763 to 1776.
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when he left the province because of his opposition to the pending Revolution. His work was compiled, it is said, with the assistance of Lieutenant Governor William Bull.1 than whom no better informed nor safer authority could possibly have been found; for, though like Dr. Hewatt a Royalist, and at the time of the publication a refugee in London in consequence, Governor Bull possessed means of information beyond that probably of any other person in the province, he having himself been continuously in public office since 1740, the son of Lieutenant Governor William Bull, who had likewise been in office for many years, and the grandson of Stephen Ball. who had come out with the first settlers on the Ashley the deputy of a Proprietor, and had held offices in succession from the formation of the colony. When, therefore, Dr. Hewatt speaks from tradition he does so from the very best source of information. Access. however, to the records of the State paper office in London. which have since been pub- lished, the Shaftesbury papers, some of which were ob- tained mainly through the exertions of the Hon. William 1. Courtenay, and some of which he has presented in the City Year Books of his administration as Mayor of Charles- ton, and the manuscript public records now in Columbia. show that he was sometimes mistaken. and justify the regret he expressed in his preface "that he was sometimes obliged to have recourse to very confused materials; that indeed his information in the peculiar circumstances in which he stood was often not so good as he could have desired, and even from these he was excluded before he had finished the collection necessary to complete his plan." Dr. Hewatt's work covers the period of the Proprietary Government and that of the Royal to the repeal of the Stamp et in 1766.
1 Preface to Ramsay's Hist of So. Ca.
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George Chalmers, an antiquarian and political writer of considerable eminence, had visited Maryland in 1763 with a view to settling there ; but espousing the Royalist cause on the breaking out of the American War of Inde- pendence, returned to England. Having become never- theless much interested in the history and establishment of the English colonies in America, and enjoying free access to the State papers and plantation records, he be- came possessed of much important information, and in 1780 published the first volume of a projected work, en- titled " Political Annals of the Present United Colonies from their Settlement to the Peace of 1763," The annals of Carolina are brought down in this volume to the final rejection of the Fundamental Constitutions in 1693. The second volume never appeared. The work as far as it went is the best that was yet written, and contains much valuable and reliable information. This also is repub- lished in Carroll's collections.
Dr. David Ramsay in 1785-two years after the end of the struggle -- published his " History of the Revolution of South Carolina from a British Province to an Independent State, in two volumes," and this work in 1789 he followed with a history of the American Revolution; and in 1809 he published "The History of South Carolina from its First Settlement in 1670 to the year 1808." This last work so far as it relates to the Proprietary and Royal gov- ernments is mostly a reproduction of parts of Hewatt's work. He follows that author line after line, and page after page. He appears to have consulted no original documents in its preparation. His first volume is little more than an abridgment and rearrangement of Hewatt's history; but in the second he has compiled much valuable information in regard to medical, legal, fiscal, agricultural. and commercial affairs, of the arts, of natural history and
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literature, and has appended biographical sketches of great interest. The chief value of his work is contained in the second volume.
Ramsay's history of the revolution in South Carolina is valuable chiefly for the number of original documents it preserves, and is quite full so far as it records the trans- actions of Congress and the movements of the Continen- tal army. but he fails to appreciate the important part acted by the partisan bands in South Carolina during the period in which, after the fall of Charleston and the defeat of Gates at Camden, the State was practically abandoned by Congress as lost. His silence upon the subject is per- haps owing to the fact that during that time he was an exile in St. Augustine, cut off from information of what was passing in the State, and that from the very nature of the important services rendered by those patriots, with- out a government of any kind - State or Continental - to support them, they were without official records and their deeds dependent for historical preservation upon pri- vate memoirs, which had not appeared at the time when Dr. Ramsay compiled his history.
General William Moultrie in 1802 published two vol- umes, entitled “ Memoirs of the American Revolution so far as it related to the States of North and South Carolina and Georgia, compiled from the most authentic materials, the anthor's personal knowledge of the various events, and in- vinding an epistolary correspondence in public affairs with civil and military officers at that period." These volumes are invaluable for the original papers which they contain, surpassing any other history of the times in this respect. The personal letters he gives throw a flood of light upon the state of private opinion of the times. and are scarcely less valuable than the numerous publie papers, orders, re- ports. etc., which are thus preserved. General Moultrie
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was a prisoner from the fall of Charles Town, and so, like Dr. Ramsay, was not a participator in the great achieve- ments of Sumter and Marion. In charge, however, under the British authorities of the American prisoners taken in Charles Town. he gives us an account of their treatment. and occasional glimpses of what was passing in the British lines. which he obtained in such intercourse with the Brit- ish officers as his position allowed or called for. His per- sonal recollections were recorded, however, too long after the events of which he writes to insure accuracy.
In 1812 Colonel Henry Lee, who had commanded the famous legion in the campaigns of 1781 and 1782, pub- lished his history, entitled " Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States.". In this work Colonel Lee displays abilities as a writer scarcely less than those of a military commander, which he had so signally displayed during his service in this State. As his greed for fame, however, had laid him open to the ac- cusation of improper conduct in the field, it led him also as an author to assume, impliedly at least, credit to him- self for deeds performed by others. His jealousy of Sum- ter and Marion was very great, - especially of Sumter, - but it was not confined to them. It extended also to Major Rudulph. his next in command in the legion. To secure for himself the honor of receiving the surrender of Fort Grandby in 1781, he is charged with granting im- proper terms to the British commander in order to hasten the surrender before Sumter, who had hemmed in the Brit- ish garrison before Lee's arrival. could return from a dash upon Orangeburg. The taking of Fort Galpin he leaves to be inferred as having been accomplished by himself. when it was the achievement of Major Rudolph, and at which he was not even present. He describes the battle of Quin- by's Bridge as if fought by him, without mentioning the
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fact that General Sumter was present and in command. Colonel Lee's memoir is nevertheless a most able, impor- tant, and valuable work. It was republished and edited by his distinguished son, General Robert E. Lee, in 1870. under the briefer title of the " Memoirs of the War '76." and is so cited in this work.
In 1816 Mason L. Weems, of Maryland, claiming to be an Episcopal clergyman, his ordination as such. however. being, at least. doubtful, but who did. nevertheless. officiate at Pohick Church, near Mount Vernon. in the time of Gen- eral Washington. wrote a life of General Marion, which he published as the joint work of General Peter Horry and himself. General Horry disclaimed the honor. Weems was a man of no character, but became famous as an author and travelling book agent for Mathew Carey. An Episcopal clergyman, as he claimed to be, he knew no distinction of churches, but preached in every pulpit to which he could gain access, and from each of which he recommended his books. He carried a fiddle on his drumming tours, and when he could find no pulpit from which to cry his books he gathered a crowd by that instru- ment. He nevertheless wrote in a most popular style, and his Life of Washington, published in 1800, went through forty editions. His Life of Marion has probably gone through as many and is still republished. These works. says Bishop Meade, have been probably more read than those of Marshall. Ramsay, Bancroft, and Irving put together. Hence it is that Marion's name is to be found all over the United States in the nomenclature of towns and postoffices. As historical works these books are absolutely valueless and full of ridiculous exaggerations and false statements. The best that can be said of them is to call them historical romances. 1
1 See Of Churches, Ministers, and Families of Virginia, Bishop Meade, 2 vol., 233 ; Allibone's Critical Die. of English Literature. And
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HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
The appearance of Weems's fanciful tale, besides giv- ing fame to Marion which he fully deserved upon better grounds than that of his idle story, had the beneficial effect of calling forth a most admirable and authentic work upon the subject by Major William Dobein James, of Marion's brigade, published in 1821. The only allu- sion, however, which Major James makes to Weems's book is the statement, in his preface, that the original of the correspondence between General Greene and General Marion had been left by General Horry with Weems; " but it appears," James observes, that " he made no use of them."
The two volumes entitled "Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathaniel Greene, etc., by the Hon. William Johnson. Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States," published in 1822, besides a brief but excellent sketch of the settlement of the province, con- tains altogether the best account of the war of the Revo- lution in South Carolina. Unfortunately, however. Mr. Justice Johnson. in his zealous advocacy of the hero of his work, became, we think, misled into attributing to him the credit for the redemption of the State. at the expense of Sumter and Marion, and their heroic followers. To repair this unintentional injustice of both Ramsay and Johnson shall be our earnest effort. if in the publication of this volume we shall find sufficient encouragement to pursue the work and life, and time shall allow. If so, we shall attempt to correct the impression and to show to how great an extent the ultimate results of the whole revolu- tionary struggle in the country was dependent upon the
yet it is such a work as Weems's Life of Marion that is gravely cited as authority upon the subject of Education in South Carolina in the Report of the Commissioners of Education of the United States for the year 1993. See vol. I, 302.
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