Conceived in Liberty (112 page)

In mid-1740 another major slave plot, this time centering in Charleston, was betrayed in advance by a slave named Peter, so that an uprising of nearly two hundred virtually unarmed slaves was confronted by an armed troop. The
result could only be a rout. Fifty of the recaptured Negroes were hanged in batches of ten a day “to intimidate the other Negroes.” The betrayer Peter was rewarded with clothing and cash. During 1740 and 1741, many fires broke out in Charleston, some of which, at least, were examples of Negro protest. A Charleston grand jury in March 1741 denounced the activities of such white friends of Negro freedom as Hugh Brian, who wrote a monograph warning the government “of the destruction of Charleston and deliverance of the Negroes from their servitude.” Brian’s book was forcibly suppressed by the government. Joining Hugh Brian in a call for Negro liberation were Jonathan Brian, William Gilbert, and Robert Ogle. Reacting to the threat of fire to its privileged position, the Charleston government executed a woman for committing arson; even burned a man to death in August 1741 for setting fire to a house, supposedly “with the evil intent of burning down the remaining part of the town”; and convicted two slaves of setting fire to Charleston’s arsenal.

In addition to brutal repression, South Carolina tried to alleviate the pressure of slave rebellion in other ways. Laws were passed requiring better food and clothing for slaves and magnanimously limiting slave working hours to fifteen a day. Also, the frightened South Carolinians placed a high tariff on importing slaves, and used the revenue to subsidize the immigration of white Protestants in order to redress the growing preponderance of Negroes in the colony. The importation of slaves stopped completely from 1740 to 1744 and opened again only when the slave traders of Bristol, England, vehemently complained. But South Carolina partially succeeded in its efforts, and colonial South Carolina never had quite so heavy a preponderance of Negroes after 1740. In that year, Negroes in South Carolina totaled some thirty thousand and whites approximately fifteen thousand; while the figures for 1750 are about thirty-nine thousand Negroes and twenty-five thousand whites.

South Carolina did not scruple to enlist Indians to crush the Negro slaves. In 1744, the government asked some Indians to apprehend armed runaway slaves who had formed a base in the woods.

Another slave plot was brewing in 1748. It was again uncovered before ripening. In 1751, South Carolina found it necessary to provide the death penalty for slaves even attempting to poison white people, an act which had lately been occurring frequently. A four-pound reward was offered to any Negro informer whose tale led to conviction. In 1759, another major revolt occurred in South Carolina, and in 1761, Negroes returned to systematic poisoning of their white masters. A Negro rebellion broke out in 1765, but was suppressed by the militia. Another anticipated revolt at the end of that year was thwarted by massive precautionary measures, including militia patrols, the importation of a number of Indians to terrorize the Negro slaves, and putting up-country settlers as well as North Carolinians on the alert. A hundred slaves did manage to escape, however, to the swamps of Colleton County.

In 1713, the Yamassees and other South Carolina Indians had helped North Carolina annihilate the Tuscaroras. Yet, only two years later, the Yamassee and Creek Indians launched a general attack on the South Carolina settlements. What had turned erstwhile faithful allies into enemies? Partly, it was the old story of settler encroachment on Indian land. But even more important in the case of the Yamassee war were the abuses against the Indians by the white traders. The traders systematically engaged in theft, fraud, and illegal enslavement of free Indians. They expropriated the Indians’ farm animals and crops and often paid much of the account in violence rather than acceptable commodities. Often they held an entire Indian town collectively liable for a private Indian’s debt.

These accumulating grievances prompted the Yamassees, Creeks, and their allies to launch an attack on the white settlements in South Carolina. Contemporary opinion, quick to scent alleged foreign conspiracy, accused the Spaniards at St. Augustine and the French on the Mississippi of inciting the Indians to attack, but these powers played only the secondary role of selling ammunition to or purchasing plunder from the Indians. The Indian grievances were real and so was their opposition to the regime.

The Yamassee war was launched in the spring of 1715, and might have succeeded in driving the English into the sea. Governor Charles Craven used the occasion to become virtual dictator of the colony—prohibiting emigration, conscripting ships and supplies, drafting Negro slaves into the army along with their masters, and mobilizing the militia. But the Indians would have been successful had not the whites induced the powerful Cherokees to remain aloof, and indeed to aid the English. The Yamassees were ejected from the
colony and thrust into Florida by 1716, and the following year a peace was concluded with the Creeks. The result of the war was to clear the bulk of the Indians from the South Carolina settlements and the land to the south.

The end of the Yamassee war cleared a great deal of land from the Indians and opened it up for white settlement. The South Carolina proprietary promptly removed its prohibition against settlement in the south, between the Combahee and Savannah rivers, which had been preserved for the Yamassees. Furthermore, provincial elections had, until now, always been held exclusively in Charleston, which served to concentrate power in the hands of an oligarchy allied to the proprietary party. The Assembly now provided for elections in each parish, distributed representation proportionately to population in the parishes, and allowed voting by ballot. These provisions brought South Carolina into greater uniformity with other American colonies. Furthermore, the Assembly hit at the proprietary by excluding from the legislature all men holding office or patronage from the proprietors.

The proprietary was becoming increasingly disliked in South Carolina, and this temper was aggravated by the rule over the colony by a small clique headed by two men, apart from the governor: Nicholas Trott, chief justice of the province, and his brother-in-law William Rhett, receiver general of the proprietary revenue and collector of the royal customs. Trott, a high Tory who had been enthusiastic over the reactionary policies of Queen Anne, was perhaps the last American judge to impose a belief in witchcraft in a charge to the jury. Trott was given extraordinary powers by the proprietors in 1714, so that without his presence, the Council of South Carolina could not have a quorum. Trott was also made judge of the admiralty and head of the chancery courts, thus virtually monopolizing the administration of justice in South Carolina. Through collusion with Richard Shelton, secretary of the Board of Proprietors, Trott was virtually able to dictate to the entire province, except for the Assembly. William Rhett was not only receiver general, but also military commander and sometimes Speaker of the Assembly.

The colony was soon struck a grim blow when Trott and Rhett were able to induce the Crown to disallow the electoral reforms of 1716 and to return to the practice of exclusive elections at Charleston.

Thirty-one articles of complaint against Trott’s tyranny were now submitted to the Assembly, charging him with monopolizing justice, acting as counsel and judge in the same case, and extracting exorbitant fees. When the proprietors disallowed the electoral reform, the Assembly denied their right of veto, inasmuch as even the proprietary governor and Council had approved the reforms of 1716. Trott stood fast, however, in defense of the veto by the proprietors.

The Carolina proprietors reacted by backing Trott all the way, reprimanding their disobedient governor, and promptly appointing a new Council packed with their supporters, with the opposition leaders summarily removed.
Moreover, the proprietors ordered that no more private land be granted in the colony; instead, fifteen large baronies were to be laid out near Port Royal in the south for the exclusive use of the proprietors, thus ousting several hundred Ulster Scot immigrants who had just settled on these lands recently evacuated by the Yamassees.

Great Britain had now launched a war against Spain and the colony began to go into the usual American conniptions in fear of a foreign attack, this time supposedly directed from Havana. In consequence, Governor Robert Johnson mobilized the militia, and the popular forces in South Carolina seized the opportunity of being under arms to conduct a revolution against the now hated proprietary. The militia members, led by Alexander Skene—one of the councillors ousted by the proprietary—drew up and virtually unanimously signed articles of association. These articles, signed November 28, 1719, declared the resolve of the members to overthrow the proprietary completely and to declare South Carolina a royal province. The revolutionary leaders then took their case to the populace and signed up nearly every freeman in South Carolina.

In December, the Assembly declared the Council illegal and resolved to ignore it; it also declared the reforms of 1716 still valid and the proprietors forfeit of their rule. The Assembly proceeded to form itself into a revolutionary association, naming Colonel James Moore as governor, and appointing a new Council. The convention then voted itself as a new Assembly, replaced Trott as chief justice, and drew up a statement of its case to put before the Crown. This declaration included a melodramatic wording of the proprietary neglect of the defense of the province against foreign and Indian enemies, an argument that would certainly appeal to the Crown. William Rhett, incidentally, showed no compunction at betraying his brother-in-law and conveniently joined the revolutionary cause. Robert Johnson tried to reassert his claim to the governorship by threatening to have Charleston bombarded by friendly warships, but the people refused to bow and Johnson never carried out his threat.

For once the royal bureaucracy, never enthusiastic for proprietary colonies, approved of a popular revolution against constituted government. From that point on, South Carolina was accepted as a royal province, with a royally appointed governor and Council. The Crown was intelligent enough to oust Trott, to replace him with a leader of the opposition, and to return the popular opposition leaders to the Council. Finally, in 1729, all the rights of the Carolina proprietors were bought out by the Crown. This not only made South Carolina a royal colony, but also meant that the proprietors had lost all their power to annoy and harass the people of South Carolina.

The leading conflict within the new royal colony centered on the land question. Since the proprietors had closed their land office, no grants of land had been made by the Crown. But during the interim period of the 1720s, vague claims were revived to large tracts of coastal land granted in the early days of the proprietary. These land patents were revived because the Crown insisted on raising the quitrent from one shilling to four shillings per one hundred acres.

But since proprietary grants reserved only one shilling per hundred acres for quitrents, this royal decision spurred many recipients of large land baronies, from 12,000 to 40,000 acres in size, to revive their old claims. By the end of the 1720s, almost 800,000 acres of valuable coastal land were appropriated under these old speculative claims. In 1731, the Assembly passed a law giving a blanket validation to all the huge land grants under the proprietary. Robert Johnson, the royal governor, defended the law as “absolutely necessary for the peace and tranquillity of the province,” but James St. John, surveyor general and comptroller of the quitrents, and Benjamin Whittaker, the attorney general, pointed out that a 24,000-acre land grant inherited by Johnson himself was at stake in the outcome. St. John also denounced the grantees for engrossing all the best lands and thus keeping legitimate settlers from migrating to the colony. He advocated throwing open the vast land tracts to legitimate settlers. But, although the Board of Trade recommended disavowal of the act, the Privy Council did not do so, and the mass validation of the land engrossments thus remained in force.

In the struggle that ensued between Governor Johnson and the land monopolists on the one hand, and St. John and Whittaker on the other, the
land engrossers controlled the Council and the Assembly in South Carolina. The governor denounced the two critics and the Council urged the dismissal of St. John. The gravest blow against land reform was struck by the government in the case of Thomas Cooper. Cooper, an assistant judge, was arrested by the landed oligarchy for challenging the validity of their speculative land titles. Instead of arguing the case in court, the great landlords prevailed on the Assembly in 1733 to imprison Cooper and two of his assistants for five weeks. Cooper sued for several writs of habeas corpus but the despotic Assembly refused to obey. The unfortunate Cooper sent petitions for his release from arbitrary arrest to the governor; not only were the petitions ignored, but the two merchants who caused the petitions to be sent to Governor Johnson were summarily arrested for their pains. Johnson agreed to release them only after they were forced to pay heavy fines and to beg the governor’s pardon. The same brutal treatment was meted out to several other merchants and lawyers carrying Cooper’s petitions to members of the Assembly.

Chief Justice Robert Wright now moved courageously to reassert the claims of legal rights over arbitrary despotism. He particularly denounced the executive and the Assembly’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, one of the chief guarantees of English liberty. The Assembly and Council then passed a bill in 1733 declaring that no public officers be subject to penalty for ignoring habeas-corpus writs for people imprisoned by order of the legislature. Chief Justice Wright, as a councillor, vainly opposed the act as infringing necessary protection against arbitrary violence by the government.

The question of the hour was whether or not the Crown would disallow the tyrannical law. Happily, the Board of Trade recommended rejection and the Crown promptly disallowed the act. The infuriated Assembly cut off Wright’s salary and the Crown had to place the salary under the royal quitrent fund, thus putting it out of control by the Assembly. The vengeful Assembly proceeded to another arbitrary arrest: of James St. John himself. Charging him with “insolent” remarks made in private against the Assembly, the Assembly summarily imprisoned him for three months. He was finally released, but only on orders of the Board of Trade, and even then, only after the Assembly had been administered a public reprimand. Thomas Cooper was, in turn, dismissed from his judgeship by Governor Johnson. Moreover, when Cooper and St. John were elected to the Assembly, the controlling oligarchs refused to seat them.