USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina under the proprietary government, 1670-1719, V.1 > Part 4
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The Governor was addressed as "His Excellency "; the Lieutenant Governor. even though administering the gov- ernment, was but " His Honor."
This error of the author touches upon a material point . in the Colonial history of South Carolina. It was one of the grievances of the colonists that none of them could ever hope to receive the highest appointments in the province. These were reserved for placemen from England. Broughton and the Bulls, however well they might administer the government in the absence of a Governor, could never aspire to be more than Lieutenant Governors ; Charles Pinckney, however learned as a lawyer, could hold the office of Chief Justice only until it suited the convenience of the Royal Government to bestow it upon some disappointed favorite at Westmin- ster. The colonists resisted the ignoring of Pinckney's appointment by the local government as Chief Justice in the place of Graeme. deceased, and the sending out Mr. Peter Leigh, a discredited English barrister, instead. They were especially urgent that William Bull, the younger, should receive the appointment of Royal Governor to suc- ceed Lord Montague, and the appointment of Lord William Campbell instead was perhaps one of the influences which turned the scales of the Revolution in South Carolina.
Among the contributions to Educational History, edi- ted by Herbert B. Adams and published by the bureau of education of the United States, is a very able mono- graph, in 1889, entitled " History of Higher Education in South Carolina, with a Sketch of the Free School Sys- tem," by Colyer Meriwether, A.B .. Johns Hopkins Uni- versity. In this sketch is traced the development of the free or public school system of the State. The earliest educational efforts are described and iustances are given illustrating the interest of South Carolina, when yet a colony, in providing the means for the intellectual
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improvement of her sons. To this volume is added as an appendix a republication of a paper read before the Historical Society of South Carolina, August 6, 1888. by Edward MeCrady. Jr., entitled " Colonial Education in South Carolina "-a refutation of the charge made by : Mr. McMaster, in his History of the People of the United States, of the neglect of education in South. Carolina prior to and during the Revolution.
The present volume will be restricted to the history of South Carolina during the Proprietary Government, i.e. from the settlement of the colony under the Roval charter to the overthrow of the Proprietors' rule, in 1719. a period of fifty years. A very brief review will be taken of the first explorations of the coast and the attempted Huguenot colony under Ribault. We shall more critically examine the exegesis of the charters under which the colony was founded, and the famous Funda- mental Constitutions of Locke, which the Proprietors so persistently attempted to impose. We shall trace the progress of the colony from the arrival of the first adven- turers and their settlement at Old Town on the Ashley; its removal to Oyster Point, the present site of the city of Charleston. and its gradual extension: the peopling of the province from different sources, and the peculiar influences upon its development of the Barbadian and Huguenot elements of the population. We shall tell of the struggle between the Proprietors to enforce the extraordinary system devised by Locke, and the success- ful resistance of the people under the lex scripta of the charters. Then we shall follow the contest over the Church Acts involving the naturalization of the Hugue- nots, resisted by the dissenters because of the affiliations of those people with the churchmen. These commotions we shall see to have had their origin in the mother
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country, and to have been intimately connected with the purposes of political parties there. The devolution of the titles of the Proprietary shares in the province by deaths and assignments we shall observe materially affecting the affairs of the colony.
We shall tell of the contests of the colonists with the Spaniards. the French, the Indians, and the pirates - how well they maintained the outpost so necessary to the claim of England's dominion on the American Continent, and how firmly and bravely they met the pirates, consti- tuting, at the time, a power which defied the distant governments of Europe, and preyed upon the colonial commerce -how vigorously and sternly they brought those enemies of the human race to judgment and inflicted upon them the extreme penalties of the law.
Despite political turmoil, hurricane, pestilence, and fire, the tomahawk of the Indian, and the sword of the French and Spaniard. we shall find the colony gradually devel- oping from an emigrants' camp to social order and settled government, and carrying on successfully at their ex- treme end of the line of English colonies the experiment of representative government. We shall find them lay- ing the foundation of great fortunes, building churches, quarrelling over religion, but withal strenuously maintain- ing it, and curiously mixing Puritan fanatieism with High Church dogma, founding schools and libraries, and laying so broad and deep the foundations of jurisprudence that that structure has continued to this day to rest upon the code of laws adopted in 1712.
Then we shall have to tell of the revolution encour- aged, if not indeed instigated, by the Royal Government in England. by which the Proprietary Government was overthrown. and the province of South Carolina taken under the immediate government of his Majesty, King George the First.
CHAPTER I
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS accepting the theory of the ro- tundity of the earth, in 1492 sailed westward. assured that unless he discovered some new country in the yet unex- plored seas he must reach the Indies, the easternmost limits of the known world. Upon his discovery of the islands which he supposed to be the Indies, he returned to Spain with the great tidings, and Pope Alexander VI generously bestowed the new countries upon the King- doms of Leon and Castile. on the condition that they should labor to extirpate idolatries and plant the holy faith in the New World. In his second voyage, in 1493. Columbus discovered more islands and coasted along a part of South America. In his first voyage his course had been diverted by the flight of birds to the southwest -- and never, it has been said, had a flight of birds such important consequences. This southerly direction Colum- bus and his followers continued to pursue, and so it was that the northern continent escaped their knowledge.
Had the course of Columbus not thus been deflected. he would have entered the warm current of the Gulf Stream, have reached Florida, and thence perhaps been carried to the coast of Carolina or Virginia. The result would prob- ably have been, as it has been observed, that the territory of the present United States would have been given a Roman Catholic Spanish population instead of a Protes- tant English one -a circumstance of immeasurable im-
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portance.1 As it happened, the only foothold the Spaniards obtained in this territory was in Florida, and the only English colonists with whom they came in contact and collision were those in Carolina. In the year 1496 John Cabot, a Venetian then in England, perceiving by the globe, as he thought, that the islands found by Columbus stood thmost in the same latitude with England, and much nearer thereto than to Portugal and Castile, obtained from King Henry VII two ships and three hundred men. with which he embarked upon a voyage of discovery of his own. He sailed westwardly, discovered Newfoundland, and coasted along the shores of North America. Salvano says, till he came to 38 degrees towards the equinoctial line -that is, somewhere off the coast of Virginia, and from thence returned to England. " There be others." he adds. " which say that he went as far as the Cape of Florida which standeth in 25 degrees."2 Columbus was diverted to the south by the flight of birds. Sebastian Cabot. upon the death of his father. like Columbus, seeking a way to India. ascended Hudson's Bay, and pressed on among ice- bergs until the mutiny of her crew compelled him to turn back. Thus it was that the first discoverers of America, seeking a way to India, turned aside from the great Con- tinent, the one to the tropics, and the other to the Arctic regions.
In 1495 the Spaniards had established themselves upon the Island of Hayti or Hispaniola, which became the seat of their great power in the Western Hemisphere. It was not, however, until seventeen years later that they became aware of the Continent so near them on the north. In 1512 Juan Ponce de Leon discovered the mainland of Florida on Easter, Pascha Floridum, the supposed deri-
1 John Nichol, LL.D., Encyclopedia Britannica, " America."
2 Hakluyt's Voyages, Supplement, 17, 18.
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vation of the name. He landed, it is said, at a place called the Bay of the Cross, a few miles north of the site of St. Augustine, took possession, and erected a stone cross in sign of the jurisdiction of Spain. This was to be the place of the first European settlement on the Continent of America, and was to be the source of numerous woes to the English colonists of Carolina.
The first Europeans who trod the soil of Carolina were Spaniards who sailed in 1520 from Hispaniola, seeking in the Lucayos or Bahama Islands a supply of Indians to take back with them to work as slaves in their gold mines. a third part of the nation of Hispaniola having perished within three years after the Spaniards took possession of the island. Two vessels fitted out by Lucas Vasquez de Allyon for this purpose, driven by tempest, more by chance than with any design of discovery, reached the coast about the latitude of 32 degrees. The adventurers entered a bay. a cape of which they named St. Helena, and a river in its vicinity they called the Jordan.1 Though the Spaniards had now been at St. Augustine for eight years, the natives of the region do not appear to have known of their presence. When, therefore, the Spanish vessels made to the shore, the natives, aston- ished as at a miracle, thought some monster had come among them -they never before having seen a vessel. They fled upon the approach of the vessels. but two swift and nimble young Spaniards overtook a man and woman and brought them to the ship. Clothing and loading these with presents and sending them back, the Spaniards gained
1 Rivers, after a close examination of the accounts of early voyages, old maps, and charts, is not prepared to admit that the . Jordan " is the Combahee, as most writers assert, but concludes that the "Jordan " could not have been far from the Savannah. Hist. Sketches of So. Ca. ( Rivers), 15.
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the confidence of the Indians, and were kindly treated by them. After some stay on the coast and a partial exami- nation of the country, the Spaniards enticed the Indians, whose confidence they had gained, on board their vessels, and when their decks were crowded they suddenly drew up their anchor and unfurled their sails, carrying off to a wretched fate the guests they had received with all the appearances of friendship. One of the vessels on its re- turn foundered at sea, and all on board perished. Many of the captives on the remaining vessel, pining with grief, refused to take food and died before the end of the voyage. Of those who survived. most languished in their bondage and sank under their sufferings. The rest became too feeble for the mines and were distributed among the people of Hispaniola as domestic servants or in the lighter tasks of husbandry.
The countries around the bay into which the ships of Vasquez had entered on the one side were called Duharhe or Gualdape, and on the other Chicora.1 Vasquez. who was a citizen of Toledo, a licentiate. professor of judi- cature, one of the senators of Hispaniola, returning to Spain to procure leave to plant a colony, took with him as a servant one of the Chicoranes. whom he had baptized, giving to him the Christian name Francis and the sur- name of Chicora. Peter Martyr in his history of the New World says that he sometimes had both Vasquez the mas- ter and Chicora his servant as his guests, and retails the most extraordinary stories which they told concerning the inhabitants of Chicora and Duharhe, especially of the lat- ter country, whose inhabitants they said were white. and had a king of giant-like stature and height, called Datha.
1 Rivers calls attention to the mistake made by several authors in giving the name of Chicora to the whole of this country, and not merely to a part of it, as in the text.
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and that the queen his wife was not much shorter than himself. Martyr was not. however, inclined to accept these wonderful tales told by Vasquez, "nor did Francis the Chicorane, who was present." he observes, "free us from that controversie."1 Indeed. as Rivers observes, the captive seems to have acquiesced in any story his master made.2
In the year 1524 Vasquez made another voyage to the coast of Carolina : but the true events of the expedition are not certainly known.3 It is believed that he reached in safety the place which he had before visited, that one of his vessels was stranded. and that a number of his men whom he sent ashore perished by the hands of the natives - a just retaliation for his treacherous conduct in the previous expedition.
The failure of this expedition and the equally disastrous fate of Narvaez and of De Soto and their companions disheartened the Spaniards, and their abandonment of the country for forty years left it open to exploration and occupancy by adventurers from other European states.
In January. 1524. Giovanni Verrazzano set out on a voyage of discovery in behalf of Francis I of France .* He reached the Continent 34 degrees north latitude, and searching for a harbor landed probably in the neighbor- hood of Cape Fear. He returned to France in July of the same year. Upon this discovery and those made in Canada, the French claimed the greater part of North America under the title of New France; but civil and religious wars at home distracted at the time their attention from
1 Hakluyt's Voyages. Supplement. 620, 621.
º Hist. Sketches of So. Co. (Rivers). 16.
3 Haklove's Voyages. Supplement, 93 ; Hist. Sketches of So. Ca. ( Rivers). 17.
* Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. III, 205 ; Hist. Sketches of So. Ca. (Rivers), 18.
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the New World. Thirty odd years after, Coligny, admiral of France and leader of the Huguenot party. obtained per- mission from Charles IX to establish a colony of Prot- estants in New France. Jean Ribault was sent out in command of two of the King's ships and a company of veterans, together with many gentlemen who joined the expedition, to discover a suitable place for the colony.1
The course of navigation from Europe to America had continued to follow the direction given to it by Columbus, by way of the Spanish Islands in the West Indies, but Ri- bault ventured directly across the Atlantic, and on the 30th of April. 1562, reached the Continent in 30 degrees north latitude. He landed at a river he called May, because he discovered it on the first of the month of that name, but it is now known as the St. John's River in Florida. From this point Ribault sailed along the coast towards the north, looking for the River "Jordan," which the Spaniards had visited forty years before ; and on the 27th of May he cast anchor in a depth of ten fathoms. at the opening of a spacious bay, which from cape to cape was three leagues wide and formed the entrance to a noble river, which he named Port Royal.
Charmed with the magnificent forests, the stately cedars. the wide-spreading oaks, and fragrant shrubs, they explored the adjacent country ; they sailed up the Broad River. and passed probably through Whale Branch uniting with the Coosaws.2 The Indians fled at first upon the approach of the French, but their timidity was soon over- come by the sight of various articles of merchandise. and they were encouraged by friendly gestures : in their turn they brought presents of deerskins, and baskets made of palm leaves, and a few pearls. They built an arbor of
1 Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. III, 308-319.
: Hist. Sketches ( Rivers), 22.
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boughs to shelter their visitors from the heat of the sun and sought with manifest good will to induce Ribault and his party to remain with them. This kindness of the natives Ribault returned by an attempt to capture some of them for the purpose of carrying one or two to France, in accordance with the command of the Queen. as Verrazzano and Vasquez and Columbus had done before. For this purpose he had induced two to accompany him to his ships. but when they perceived that they were to be carried away they escaped. leaving all the gifts they had received.
Ribault then proceeded to take possession of these regions in the name of his king and of his country, and erected a stone pillar engraved with French armorials upon a hillock on an island which is believed to be that now known as Lemon Island, about three leagues up Broad River.1 Leaving twenty-six of his followers, who volunteered to remain under Captain Albert de la Pierria, whom he appointed to command them. Ribault returned to France to report to Admiral Coligny what he had accomplished and to procure further aid in establishing a permanent settlement.
On the 11th of June, 1562. Ribault and his companions took leave of his garrison and fired a salute to Fort Charles, as they had named the fort they had built, and from whose battlements the flag of France first waved in North Amer- ica. Ribault arrived in France on the 20th of July, after an absence of five months. He entertained no fear of danger to the small garrison he had left at Fort Charles ; but the civil war breaking out in France, his return was delaved.
The natives in the neighborhood of Port Royal were disposed to be very friendly to the French. and the garri-
1 Hist. Sketches (Rivers), 24.
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son maintained their friendship by presents of knives, hatchets, clothing, toys and trinkets, and the still more effi- cacious influence of the Indian dread of their firearms and superior deadly weapons. But the Indians were im- provident, planting no more corn than would serve for one season. The safety of the garrison depended, therefore, on their own tilling of the fertile lands adjacent to the fort and laying in a supply of food, for which they had ample time, but with the unthrifty habits of soldiers they were as improvident as the Indians. When, however, their pro- visions first began to run short they were abundantly sup- plied by a powerful Indian chief named Ovade, whose friendship they had won; but through their carelessness the provisions thus obtained were accidentally burned. Ovade again came to their assistance, and assured them that as long as he could aid them they should not want. He gave them also some pearls. and silver ore which he said could be found among the mountains toward the north at a distance of ten days' travel. The wealth of the mountains of Northwestern South Carolina and Western North Carolina, which is just now being opened, thus ap- pears to have been known to the Indians at that time.
But the greatest troubles of the garrison left by Ribault were at hand. Captain Albert was a man of imperious temper and rigid in the discipline which he attempted to enforce, while, on the other hand. the privations to which the soldiers were reduced rendered them less subordinate. Albert grew more stern and harsh. A drummer was exe- cuted. and another of the garrison banished to an island three leagues from the fort. Upon this the garrison broke into open mutiny, murdered Albert, and bestowed the com- mand upon Nicholas Barre.
Despairing of the return of Ribault, the garrison began to seek the means of venturing upon the ocean in an
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attempt to return to France. They had carpenters among them, and a forge and iron and tools. What they needed most were sails and cordage. Resin they procured from the pine, and moss from the oak, with which they calked their vessel. They turned their shirts and sheets into sails. and their Indian friends taught them to make cord- age from the inner bark of trees. Unfortunately while taking their artillery, forge, and munitions of war in this weak vessel they took but a small supply of food, though they had an abundance on hand.
Sailing with a favorable wind, they had gone only about one-third of the distance across the Atlantic, when calms befell them. Their provisions were soon so diminished that the daily allowance to each man was but twelve grains of millet. They were soon compelled to eat their shoes and leathern jackets and to drink the water of the sea. Some died of hunger. The boat leaked on all sides and required constant bailing. A storm arose and injured their frail vessel so much that in their despair they ceased their exertions and laid them down to die, Then, inspired with hopes by one more courageous than the rest, they agreed that one should die that the rest might live. Lots were cast, and it fell to Lachere, the man Captain Albert had banished and whose life his comrades had saved, now to die for them. He willingly gave back this boon to his starving friends. Soon after this they met an English vessel and were carried to England.
As soon as peace was partially restored in France, the Calvinists having secured the freedom of worship in the towns they held. Coligny revived his project of coloniza- tion, and Laudoniere was dispatched in command of three ships, and reached America in June. 1564. He must have received information of the abandonment of Fort Charles, for he did not visit it again, but proceeded to Florida.
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where he built a fort on the May River, which he named Fort Caroline.
This fort was afterwards, while under the command of Ribault. who had returned and superseded Laudoniere. destroyed by the Spaniards from St. Augustine, under Menendez. and the garrison massacred. The story is told that beneath the tree on whose branches Menendez hung his French prisoners was placed an inscription, " I do not this as to Frenehmen ; but as to hereties." This was avenged by the Chevalier de Gourges. who sailed from France with an expedition raised at his own expense for the purpose. and hanging the Spaniards to the same trees. altered the inscription to read, "I did not do this as to Spaniards nor as to infidels ; but as to traitors, thieves, and murderers."
Thus ended the first attempt to establish a colony of Huguenots in what is now Carolina ; but these simple yet heroic people were again to come and to impress their gentle manners, their gallantry. their frugality, and above all their religious tone upon those with whom they were to form the people of South Carolina.
The attempted settlement at Port Royal forms an epi- sode in the history of the territory. It gave to the whole region the name of Carolina in honor of Charles IX of France. and to the river on which it was planted, that of Port Royal. These names are all that remain of Ribault's enterprise. And except these names, and per- haps some tradition which may still have existed among the Indians when the English colonists arrived in the century after, and which may have influenced their conduct to the new adventurers for good or evil, it left no impression whatever upon the history which follows.
No other settlement was effected in Carolina for more than a hundred years after the abandonment of the French
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colony at Port Royal. In the meanwhile Sir Walter Raleigh's attempted colonies on the Roanoke in 1585 and 1587 had likewise ended disastrously; but later English colonies had been successfully planted in Virginia in 1607; in Massachusetts in 1620; the New Netherland Com- pany had been formally established on the Hudson in 1614, another settlement by the Dutch at Bergen opposite New York in 1617, permanent settlements in Connecticut by the same people in 1633, and on the Delaware in 1639; Lord Baltimore's emigrants had settled at St. Mary's in 1634. Companies from Massachusetts had spread them- selves into Connecticut in 1634-36, and into Rhode Island in 1636-39.
Attention has recently been called to the historical fact that as early as the 10th of February, 1629. French Prot- estant refugees in England were in communication with Charles I for planting a colony in what is now South Carolina ; and that the patent issued to Sir Robert Heath as sole proprietor of this extensive region grew out of the proposals of Soubise, Duc de Fontenay, representing French refugees in England, and of _Antoine de Ridonet, Baron de Sancè, his secretary ; and that in 1630 a colony of French Protestants actually sailed for Carolina in the ship Mayflower. Could it have been, it is asked, the same vessel that carried the Puritans to Plymouth Rock ? From some unexplained cause these Huguenots were landed in Virginia, for which miscarriage the owners of the vessel were made to pay $600 damages.1
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