USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina under the proprietary government, 1670-1719, V.1 > Part 24
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To the latter they write: -
" Sir : wee are sorry you have not met with the encouragement and assistance wee designed you should have had and which for the future will be given to you ; but can't omitt to tell you that you likewise have been to blame and have done things imprudently and irregularly. Wee rather that you calmely considering of what is past. should find them out, than wee be forced to tell you of them. Wee have given orders to the govenor and councill in this matter, and wee expect that you should show them all respect. Wee would recommend to you not to shew too great a love for money which is not beautifull in any man much worse becoming a judge. Take no more than your dues and if they at present be of the least consider time will mend them: and if that don't there may be meanes found to doe it. The way to compass that is not by complaint or passion. When you have convinced every- body by your actions of your justice and especially if you act with prudence and temper you will gaine their love, and they will be studyng to make such a man easy. Sir your very affectionate friend," etc.
On the 19th of October their Lordships address two more letters, one to Governor Blake, the other to Attorney General Trott. To the Governor they write: -
"Wee are troubled to see you have not given encouragement to our judge as you ought to have done, but have on the other hand, to vex him. been exalting the admiralty jurisdiction 'Tis so surprising to us that we can't tell what to think of you or the councill or the people for whose sake wee were at the charge to send and maintaine a judge The people of New York have addressed the governor that judges and councillors may be sent from England, and promise to encourage chem themselves . . . There is nothing contributes more to the peopling of a country than an impartiall administration of justice: nothing encourages trade more; for it is hardly to be im- agined that men will labour and run great hazards to get an estate
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if they have not some assurance of being protected by the lawes . . . We must desire you to be very cautious for the future in giving your assent to acts which hinder men from coming at their just rights. Sir," etc.
Trott appears in this instance to have acted as a peace- maker. The Proprietors write to him : --
"Wee are well pleased with your prudent management of the affaires of Judge Bohun and returne you our thankes. Wee.are sensible that he likewise has in some things not been so prudent as he should have been. Wee have directed your governor and councill to accomo- date that affayr and to countenance our judge, in which we expect great assistance from your knowledge and prudence. Sir," etc.
This reference to the action of the colonists of New York was needless ; the colonists of Carolina had made the same appeal. Twenty-nine years before O'Sullivan had written, requesting that an able counsellor should be sent to end controversies, and put them in the right way to manage the colony : 1 but the preposterous provision of the Funda- mental Constitutions in regard to lawyers and to lawmak- ing had deterred any from coming ; and now the Proprietors, while sending them a lawyer as Attorney General. were sending them a laymen for Chief Justice. In the letter of October 19, the cause of the present trouble is hinted at. It was that the Governor and Council were vexing Bohun, their Chief Justice, by retaining his Majesty's Judge of Admiralty. In other words, the Governor and Council were paying more deference to the Royal authority than to that of the Proprietors. In another letter they charged that Mr. Randolph's " blustering has occasioned much of this embroilment."2 But pestilence and death came to put a speedy end to the career of the Chief Justice and Receiver General.
The two last years of the century were full of disasters
1 Ante, p. 137. Coll. Hist. Soc. of So. Ca., vol. I, 148.
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to the colonists. In the midst of all the political turmoil, fire, pestilence. storm, and earthquake visited the planta- tion. A letter from the Governor aud Council to the Lords Proprietors. dated March 12, 1697-98 states : " We have had the small pox amongst us nine or ten months which hath been very infectious and mortal. We have lost by the distemper 200 or 300 persons. And on the 24 February a fire broke out in the night in Charles Town which hath burnt the dwellings stores and out- houses of at least fifty families and hath consumed (it is generally believed ) in houses and goods the value of £30,000 sterling." In a subsequent letter. dated April 23. 1698, they state that the smallpox still continued, but was not so fatal as in the cold weather, and that a great num- ber of Indians fell victims to the disease.1 A letter of Mrs. Affra Coming to her sister in England of the same time, March 6. 1698-99, gives a still more gloomy account. She writes :2_
"I am sorry that I should be the messenger of so sad tidings as to desire you not to come to me till you can hear better times than here is now, for the whole country is full of trouble & sickness, 'tis the Small pox which has been mortal to all sorts of the inhabitants & especially the Indians who tis said to have swept away a whole neighboring nation, all to 5 or 6 which ran away and left their dead unburied, lying upon the ground for the vultures to devouer; beside the want of shipping this fall winter & the spring is the cause of another trouble, & has been followed by an earthquake & burning of the town or one third of it which they say was of equal value with what remains, besides the great loss of cattle which I know by what has been found dead of mine and being over stocked, what all these things put together makes the place look with a terrible aspect & none knows what will be the end of it." etc.
The next year. 1600, a malignant disease. with little doubt yellow fever, was brought in from the West Indies
1 Dalcho's Ch. Hist., 32, note. 2 MISS. letters in possession of Mr. Isaac Ball
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and raged in the town. In a letter from the Governor and Council dated Charles Town in South Carolina January 17. 1699-1700,1 they state that they had nothing to communicate but that
"a most infectious pestilential and mortal distemper (the same which hath always been in one or more of his Majestys American planta- tions for eight or nine years last past) which from Barbados or Providence was brought in among us into Charles Town about the 28th or 29th of Aug. last past, and the decay of trade and muta- tions of your Lordships public officers occasioned thereby. This distemper from the time of its beginning aforesaid to the first day of November killed in Charles Town at least 160 persons. Among whom were Mr Ely Receiver General; Mr Amory Receiver for the Public Treasury: Edward Rawlins Marshall; Edmund Bohun Chief Justice. Amongst a great many other good and capital Merchants and Housekeepers in Charles Town. the Rev Mr Marshall our Minister was taken away by the said distemper. Besides those that have died in Charles Town 10 or 11 have died in the country, all of which got the distemper and were infected in Charles Town went home to their families and died; and what is notable not one of their families was infected by them."
Another letter states that "150 persons had died in Charles Town in a few days"; that " the survivors fled into the country " and "that the town was thinned to a very few people." 2
It is noticeable that Chief Justice Bohun. the Rev. Samuel Marshall, the Receiver General Ely, and Edward Rawlins, all newly arrived, fell victims to the disease. But the old settlers were not exempt. Half of the mem- bers of the Assembly died. Nicholas Trott, the Attorney General, though a new arrival, escaped. Dr. Ramsay, who wrote in 1809, observes this disease was generally called the plague by the inhabitants. but that from tradi- tion and the circumstances, particularly the contempora- neous existence of the yellow fever in Philadelphia, there
1 Dalcho's Ch. Hist., 35, 36. 2 Ibid.
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is reason to believe that the malady was the yellow fever, and if so, it was the first appearance of that disorder in Charles Town and took place in the nineteenth or twen- tieth year after it began to be built. He considers that its reappearance in 1703 makes it still more probable that. it was the yellow fever.1 Dr. Dalcho, a physician whom tra- dition asserts was surgeon of a privateer before his entry into the ministry, and who was probably familiar with the disease in the West Indies, regards it also as probable that it was the same yellow fever of the time in which he wrote, i.e. the same as that of the present day. Indeed, we may safely assume that it was. He also calls attention to the fact that at that time, before our extensive swamps were cleared of their timber and their surface exposed to the direct rays of the sun, persons could reside in the low country in the summer and autumn without danger. and when unusual sickness prevailed in the town the country was resorted to as a place of health.2 This continued for many years after. In 1738, we shall see, the General Assembly called and assembled at Ashley Ferry in Sep- tember to legislate in regard to the spread of smallpox, then raging in the town.
During the autumn of 1699 a dreadful hurricane, as it was then called. happened at Charles Town, which did great damage and threatened the total destruction of the town. The swelling sea rushed in with amazing impetuosity and obliged the inhabitants to retreat for safety to the second stories of their houses. Happily, few lives were lost in the town, but a vessel, one crowded with the remnants of the disastrous Darien colony. happening to be off the bar at the time, was totally destroyed. This vessel, the Rising Sun, commanded by James Gibson, was one of seven in
1 Ramsay's Hist of So. Ca., vol. II. 82, 83.
2 Dalcho's Ch. Hist , 36, note.
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which the survivors of the Scotch colony had embarked upon their attempted return to their native land. But one only reached home. Many of those who had em- barked in the Rising Sun died of fever and fluxes. To complete the chapter of disasters, the vessel encountered a gale off the coast of Florida which brought them into great distress. They made for the port of Charles Town under a jury-mast. and while lying off the bar waiting to lighten the vessel that she might get into port, the storm arose in which she went to pieces, and nearly every per- son on board perished.1 From this vessel one was saved, however. almost miraculously, who was to be in a great measure the founder of the Presbyterian Church in Caro- lina. The Rev. Mr. Archibald Stobo had been waited upon by a deputation from the Congregational Church in the town and invited to preach, and, agreeing to do so, had gone up, taking with him his wife, Lieutenant Graham and several others also accompanied him. These thus escaped; and, going the next day in search of their unfortunate countrymen, found the corpses of the greater part of them washed ashore on James Island, where they spent a whole day burying them. Captain Gibson, the commander of the vessel, was among those who were lost ; and this was regarded by many in Scotland as the retribu- tion of Heaven upon his cruel conduct towards the poor prisoners whom he transported to Carolina in 1684. " In the very same place," it was said. " it pleased the Sover- eign Lord of heaven and earth to call him in so terrible a manner to his account." 2
One other event of the closing year of the century must be mentioned. which. it is to be hoped, had given some satisfaction to Mr. Randolph, though he has left uo report
1 Hewatt's Hist. of So. Ca., vol. 1, 142.
2 Howe's Hist. Presb. Ch., 141, 142.
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of it to the Lords of Trade. In some alleviation of the disasters of the year the planters had made a great rice crop. They had raised more than they could find vessels to export, but the number which the crop employed had attracted the pirates, who hovered about the bar. Forty- five persons from different nations, Englishmen, French- men, Portuguese, and Indians, had manned a ship at Havana and entered on a cruise of piracy, Several ships belonging to Charles Town were taken and the crews sent ashore. But quarrelling among themselves about the division of the spoil, the Englishmen, proving the weaker party, were turned adrift in a long-boat. They landed at Sewee Bay and travelled overland to Charles Town, giving out that they had been shipwrecked. but had, fortunately, escaped to shore in their boat. To their sad disappointment and surprise, no less than three masters of ships happened to be at Charles Town at the time, who had been taken by them and knew them; upon their testimony the pirates were instantly taken up, tried, and condemned, and seven out of nine suffered death.1
This account is taken from Hewatt. We can find no allusion to the incident in correspondence of the time ; nor are we informed whether this swift judgment was the first- fruits of the newly established Court of Admiralty, or was inflicted by the " lynch law " of the people.
Never, says Hewatt, had the colony been visited with such general distress and mortality. Few families escaped a share of the public calamities. Almost all were lament- ing the loss, either of their habitations by the devouring flames, or of friends or relations by infectious and loathsome maladies. Discouragement and despair sat on every coun- tenance. Many of the survivors could think of nothing but abandoning a country in which the judgments of
I Hewatt's Hist. of So. Ca., vol. I, 141.
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Heaven seemed to fall so heavily and in which there was so little prospect of success, health, or happiness. They had heard of Pennsylvania and how pleasant and flourish- ing a province it was described to be. and therefore were determined to embrace the first opportunity that offered of retiring to it with the remainder of their families.1
As it happened. however, yellow fever was at the time raging in Philadelphia as well as in Charles Town, and those who had come from the West Indies regarded that dread disease only as one of the evils to which life was ordinarily exposed. Smallpox was all over the world. It was common at this time in England. From the dangers of fire there was no exemption in any country.
And notwithstanding all the political difficulties; not- withstanding the impotent yet harassing control of the Board of Proprietors in England, the jarring elements of different and differing people from various lands thrown together in a new country under a feeble government ; notwithstanding the national animosities, the religious antagonisms, the strife and turmoil of a new society, in its struggles to adjust itself; notwithstanding hurricane, fire, and pestilence, - the province was improving and the colonists were growing in numbers and acquiring some wealth.
1 Hewatt's Hist. of So. Ca., vol. I, 143.
CHAPTER XIV
1700
THIRTY years had now elapsed since the planting of the colony on the Ashley, - thirty years during which the only serious efforts of the Proprietors had been devoted to the imposition of the absurd Constitutions of Locke, and an immediate return from the sales and quit-rents of lands and the profits of the Indian trade. Since the minute in- structions to West for an experimental farm, they had paid no attention whatever to the development of agricult- ure in the province, nor to the defence of the colony from the French or Spaniards. Whatever had been accomplished in the material development of the colony had been by the efforts of the colonists themselves without the assistance of their Lordships in England. " The great improvement made in this Province," wrote Randolph, "is wholly owing to the industry and labor of the inhabitants."1 The Lords Proprietors took, however, the credit to themselves ; they wrote to Archdale, when on his way out, that Carolina was looked upon as a place of refuge and safe retreat from arbitrary government and the inconveniences of other places ; 2 and Archdale. nowise loath to claim the honor due his administration, announces that the fame thereof quickly spread itself to all the American plantations and caused immigration to the province.3
1 Hist. Sketches ( Rivers), Appendix, 445.
2 Coll. Hist. Soc. of So. Co., vol. I, 138.
3 Carroll's Coll., vol. II, 107.
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But to whatever causes attributable, and they were many, the province was indeed improving and the inhabi- tants multiplying. In 1680 the population was estimated to be 1000 or 1200 souls ; but the great number of families who had soon after come in from England, Ireland, Barba- does. Jamaica, and the Caribbee Islands, it was estimated, had more than doubled that number, so that in 1682 the white population was probably 2500.1 In 1699 Randolph wrote: " Their militia is not above 1500 soldiers, white men, but have through the province generally + negroes to 1 white man and not over 1100 families English and French."2 Estimating the fighting men at one-fifth of the population 3 would make the number at this time 7500. It could scarcely, however, have reached that figure, espe- cially since the number of families was but 1100. Sup- posing that the families averaged five members each, which is a large estimate. particularly in a new country, it would give but 5500. This may have been near the actual num- ber. Hewatt states, but without giving his authority, that about this time the number of the inhabitants in the colony amounted to between 5000 and 6000.4
Archdale, as we have before seen, is very severe upon the character of the first settlers, describing them as "des- perate fortunes " who "first ventured over to break the ice ... generally the ill-livers of the pretended church- men";5 but Archdale was much prejudiced against church-
1 T. A. Carroll's Coll., vol. II, 82.
@ Hist. Sketches ( Rivers), Appendix, 443.
3 " It is a popular estimate that one-fifth of the population are fight- ing men. If this is intended to designate the natural militia, that is, the male population over eighteen and under forty-five years of age, it will almost always be an overestimate, except in a population receiving large accessions of adult inmigrants or among savage tribes. " - Ham- mond's South Carolina Resources and Population, etc., 395 (1883).
+ Hlewatt's Ilist. of So. Co., vol. 1, 147.
5 Carroll's Coll., vol. I, 100.
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men sincere or " pretended." Yet the term " adventurers" --- not in the technical sense of the contracts under which some sailed,1 but as applied to those willing to incur risks, because having little to lose - described the character of many who first came to Carolina. Hewatt applies the same descriptive term to those who immediately followed. From this period. i.e. that of Sir John Yeamans's administra- tion, he says, every year brought new adventurers to Caro- lina. The friends of the Proprietors were invited to it by the flattering prospects of obtaining landed estates at an easy rate. Others took refuge there from the frowns of fortune and the rigor of unmerciful creditors. Youth re- duced to misery by giddy passions and excess embarked for the new settlement, where they found leisure to reform, and where necessity taught them the unknown virtues of prudence and temperance. Restless spirits, fond of roving abroad, found also the means of gratifying their humors, and abundance of scope for enterprise and adventure.2 It was, perhaps, among this class that Mr. Amy's " great ser- vices" were rendered in meeting and treating people at the Carolina Coffee House, and inducing them to go out to the colony.
The immigrants who came into Carolina made a medley of different nations and principles. From England, says Ramsay, the colony received both Roundheads and Cava- liers, the friends of Parliament and adherents of the Royal family.3 If all adherents to the Royal family are classed
1 Dalcho's Ch. Hist., 14.
2 Hewatt's Hist. of So. Ca., vol. I, 56. See this passage, also, in Ramsay's Hist. of So. Cu., vol. I. 3-4. A similar description is given of the first settlers in Virginia : " poore gentlemen, tradesmen, serving men, libertines . . . unruly gallants packed thither by their friends to escape ill destinies." - Anderson's Ilist. of the Church of England in the Colonies. vol. I, 203, quoting Smith's Virginia, 88-90.
3 Ramsay's Hist. of So. Ca., vol. 1, 3.
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as Cavaliers, the statement is no doubt correct. But in the sense in which the word is generally. understood, the records scarcely bear out the designation of the Cava- liers, whom Macaulay describes as those opulent and well- descended gentlemen to whom nothing was wanting of nobility but the name, there were none among the earlier settlers, and but few came afterwards.1
Until the time we are now considering. there had been but two persons in the colony having a title -Sir John Yeamans, the Landgrave and Governor, and Sir Nathaniel Johnson, who was also to be honored with that provincial title.2 Sir John had been knighted because of his father's sacrifices in the Royal cause, and for his own services in Barbadoes. Sir Nathaniel had won his title by his sword in the service of the Stuarts. As has been observed. any tradition that connects to any extent the provincial aris- tocracies of the Southern States with the Old World patri- cian origin is pure sentimental fiction: that is. not only contrary to common sense and to all evidence that can be collected, but is in defiance of colonial history itself. The social order of South Carolina has been the outgrowth of her peculiar circumstances.
1 See Hist. Sketch of So. Ca., by Edward MeCrady ; Preface to Cyclo- pedia of Eminent and Representative Men of the Carolinas, etc. (Madison, Wisconsin, Brant & Fuller, 1892).
2 The wife of Landgrave Axtell and the wife of Landgrave Blake are mentioned as " Lady Axtell " and " Lady Blake " in grants and statutes ; but this. it is supposed, was merely a local honorary designation of the wife of a Landgrave. It cannot be found that they were entitled to the appellation by any connection with the peerage in England. Louisa Carolina. wife of Rear Admiral Richard Graves, a descendant of Sir John Colleton, in a little book published by her in 1521. entitled, Desultory Thoughts on Various Subjects, styles herself " Baroness of Fairlawn and Landgravine of Colleton." This lady was descended from the three Pro- prietors, - Sir John and the two Sir Peter Colletons. She was not, how- ever, descended from either of the Landgraves Thomas or James Colleton.
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But though socially not patricians, and in the main con- sisting of those whose circumstances led them to seek better fortunes in the New World than the Old afforded, and of others of a lower order and more reckless char- acter, there is still manifest a strong religions sentiment even among the first-comers, and a recognition of the Church of England as the established religion of the colony. Sayle. dissenter and Puritan though he was, had scarcely landed before he applied for a clergyman of the church to be sent out. - an appeal which was immediately seconded by O'Sullivan. Bull, West, Scrivener, Marshal Paul Smith, and Dalton, all the leaders of the colony. The very first act passed is one to enforce the observance of the Sabbath. It is, nevertheless, doubtless true that the dissenters who came with Blake. Morton. and Axtell, and the French refugees flying for conscience' sake, were, as a class, men of higher, of sterner character than those who came from motives of personal advancement only.
It cannot be deemed wonderful, observes Hewatt, if many of these new settlers were disappointed, especially such as emigrated with sanguine expectations. The gayety, luxury, and vices of the city were but poor qualifications for rural industry, and rendered some utterly unfit for the frugal simplicity and laborious task of the first state of cultivation. Nor could the Puritans promise themselves much greater success than their neighbors; though more rigid and austere in their manners, and more religiously disposed, their scrupulosity about trifles and ceremonies, and their violent religious dispositions, created trouble all around them, and disturbed the general harmony so neces- sary to the welfare and prosperity of the young settlement. From the various principles which actnated the populace of England, and the different seets who composed the first settlers of Carolina, nothing less could have been expected
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than that the seeds of division should be imported into the new country with its earliest inhabitants.1
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