Coercion, Cooperation, and Conflict Along the Charleston Waterfront, 1739-1785: Navigating the Social Waters of an Atlantic Port City
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Coercion, Cooperation, and Conflict along the Charleston Waterfront, 1739-1785: Navigating the Social Waters of an Atlantic Port City by Craig Thomas Marin BA, Carleton College, 1993 MA, University of Pittsburgh, 1998 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2007 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Craig Thomas Marin It was defended on December 4, 2007 and approved by Dr. Seymour Drescher, University Professor, Department of History Dr. Van Beck Hall, Associate Professor, Department of History Dr. John Markoff, Professor, Department of Sociology Dissertation Director: Dr. Marcus Rediker, Professor, Department of History ii Copyright © by Craig Thomas Marin 2007 iii Coercion, Cooperation, and Conflict along the Charleston Waterfront, 1739-1785: Navigating the Social Waters of an Atlantic Port City Craig Thomas Marin, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2007 This dissertation argues that the economic demands of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world made Charleston, South Carolina, a center of significant sailor, slave, and servant resistance, allowing the working people of the city’s waterfront to permanently alter both the plantation slave system and the export economy of South Carolina. It explores the meanings and effects of resistance within the context of the waterfront, the South Carolina plantation economy, and the wider Atlantic World. Focusing on the period that began with the major slave rebellion along the Stono River in 1739 and culminated with the 1785 incorporation of Charleston, this dissertation relies on newspapers, legislative journals, court records, and the private correspondence and business papers of merchants and planters to reveal the daily activities of waterfront workers as they interacted with each other, and with their employers and masters. During these decades, while masters and employers dominated the plantation fields and urban households of South Carolina, the waterfront of Charleston and the waterways of South Carolina were the reserve of maritime workers. These environs muted the power of the white elite and greatly expanded the autonomy of workers. Due to their near-constant mobility and daily interactions with others who were mobile, maritime workers created an environment that allowed them to challenge and reset the boundaries of acceptable behavior in and out of the work environment. iv While the story of planter and merchant domination in South Carolina is well documented and understood, any story of slave, servant and free worker subversion of the plantation regime from within is incomplete without a consideration of the important role that maritime laborers played in this process. By highlighting the central role that maritime laborers played in challenging and reshaping local and regional social and economic systems in the eighteenth century, this work expands our understanding of Southern, African American, Atlantic, and maritime history. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................... viii INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: THE WORK OF THE PORT OF CHARLESTON ................................. 20 CHAPTER TWO: RUNAWAYS, RENEGADES AND REBELS ALONG THE CHARLESTON WATERFRONT IN THE 1740S .................................................................. 62 CHAPTER THREE: SECURING THE WORKERS’ WATERFRONT .............................. 94 CHAPTER FOUR: THE FURTHER ENTRENCHMENT OF MARITIME WORKERS’ CULTURE ................................................................................................................................. 124 CHAPTER FIVE: THE BATTLE OVER CHARLESTON IN REVOLUTION AND WAR ..................................................................................................................................................... 175 CHAPTER SIX: THE CONTINUED BATTLE OVER CHARLESTON .......................... 215 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................... 248 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 256 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Pettiauger drawing from Von Reck’s Voyage (The Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark). ..................................................................................................................................... 22 Figure 2: “Prospect of Charleston” before 1739, engraving by B. Roberts (New York Public Library Digital Collection). .......................................................................................................... 25 Figure 3: Edmund Petrie, Ichnography of Charleston, South-Carolina, 1788 (Library of Congress). ..................................................................................................................................... 26 Figure 4: Charleston’s Rising Volume of Trade, 1738-1785 ...................................................... 44 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to many people for their contributions to this project over the years. Professor Marcus Rediker provided invaluable guidance and inspiration, from my days as a student in his graduate seminars to my work on this project. The members of my dissertation committee, Professors Seymour Drescher, Van Beck Hall, and John Markoff, through their seminars and in reading and commenting upon this dissertation, have shaped my thinking and approach immensely. In addition, Professor Joe Trotter must be credited with guiding and encouraging me in the pursuit of this project that combined my developing interests in the ramifications of the mobility of maritime laborers with the history of slavery in South Carolina. Several generous awards from institutions aided immensely in the completion of this project. The C.Y. Hsu Summer Research Fellowship and the Samuel Hays Summer Research Grant from the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the Albert J. Beveridge Grant from the American Historical Association all provided necessary funds for travel and research over the course of three summers. The Carolyn Chambers Memorial Fellowship, awarded by the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh, provided funding for an entire semester of research and writing. I would like to thank the archivists and librarians of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History and the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina, both in Columbia, for their guidance and cheerful assistance with their collections. Special viii thanks go to Dr. Charles Lesser at SCDAH for his willingness to share his immense knowledge of South Carolina archival materials and for his enthusiasm for my project. In Charleston, I was lucky to find friendly and knowledgeable staff at the South Carolina Historical Society, The College of Charleston Special Collections, and the Charleston County Library. I would like to thank all of them for their help. And finally, I would like to thank the staff, particularly Eugene Sawa, at my home-away-from-home, the microfilms department at the Hillman Library of the University of Pittsburgh. Eugene S and his staff, through their knowledgeable assistance, welcoming approach, and good humor, kept me sane through my years of work there. Thanks also to Grace Tomcho and Molly Dennis-Estes as graduate secretaries in the History Department at the University of Pittsburgh. I have depended a great deal on their knowledge, warmth, friendship, and generosity throughout my graduate student career at the University of Pittsburgh. My thanks go to Kathy Gibson, Patty Landon, Judy Macey, and Faye Schneider, department staff, past and present, whose efforts and assistance have meant so much over the years. Friends and family have been the consistent and often sacrificing contributors to both the intellectual trajectory of this dissertation and my ability to see this project through to its completion. I want to thank my parents, Roger and Laurie, to whom I owe a great debt for encouraging me to develop and tenaciously pursue my academic interests regardless of any hurdles or setbacks. Thanks to Dan and Barb Goldberg who have been enormously generous in their support and encouragement throughout my graduate school years and in the completion of this project. Endless thanks to Jess Goldberg—editor, intellectual sounding board, and tireless ally, particularly in the latter stages of writing. She is my hero. Finally, I want to thank all of my past and present graduate student colleagues for their friendship and for their contribution to ix a collegial and productive environment in and out of seminars. Additional and special thanks go to my friends Tania Boster, Scott Giltner, Andrew Haley, Eric Kimble, Dave Recht, and Ellie Walsh for their direct and invaluable role in making this project possible. Finally, I come to Laura, Anna, and Nick. Thank you is not enough for all of their love, support, and patience. Nothing has been more important to me, and they are truly amazing. I only wish this project could have revealed more about the unruly goats. x INTRODUCTION In November of 1764, under the cover of darkness, a small schooner pulled up to an anchored pilot boat in Port