Modjeska Simkins Summer School 2015

A brief People’s History of South Carolina Part One: Native People (1500’s) through the Civil War (1865)

Required reading for class A brief People’s History of South Carolina Part one: Native People (1500’s) through the Civil War (1865)

Required reading for class

These short items are all taken from the South Carolina Encyclopedia published in 2006 by the University of South Car- olina Press. They are not meant to an exhaustive account, but a chronological sampler about the people and events that make our state unique. During the long history of South Carolina, there have always been brave people who resisted injustice. These are people we need to know and draw inspiration from as we continue their struggle.

Required and supplemental readings, videos and other links are posted on the School’s web site.

INDEX

Native people Cofitachiqui Catawbas Cherokees Barbados Yamassee War Revolution of 1719 Township Plan Stono Rebellion Regulators Revolutionary War Denmark Vesey Nullification Grimke Sisters Free Persons of Color Secession Gov. Benjamin Franklin Perry James Louis Petigru Port Royal Experiment Penn Center Robert Smalls First South Carolina Regiment Cofitachiqui Catawbas

Cofitachiqui is the name of a sixteenth- and Catawba legend relates that the tribe arrived in seven­teenth-century Native American chiefdom as well South Carolina, near present-day Fort Mill, from the as one of the prin­cipal towns of that chiefdom. The north a few hundred years before European contact. The towns of Cofitachiqui and neighboring Talimeco were first recorded contact with these people was by Her- located on a bank of the Wateree River below the fall line nando deSoto in 1540. There is no known ori­gin for the near Camden. In 1540 Hernando DeSoto visited both name Catawba, as the members called themselves “Ye towns, and between 1566 and 1568 Juan Pardo led expe- Iswa,” meaning “the people of the river,” but the name ditions to the province from the Spanish town of Santa was in com­mon usage by the beginning of the eight- Elena. eenth century. On arriving at Cofitachiqui, De Soto was mer by The Catawbas were ferocious warriors feared not a young woman the Spanish called the “Lady of Cofit- only by neighboring tribes but also by Indian nations achiqui.” According to her, the province had suffered a to the north. For years the Catawbas and the nations of great pestilence, and she ruled following the death of a the Iroquois Confederation had travelled back and forth male relative. Her realm included the central portion of along the Appalachian trails to raid each other’s towns. present­ day South Carolina and may have extended to However, when the British arrived, the Catawbas be- the coast and as far northwest as the Appalachian Moun- friended their new neighbors, and a strong trade alliance tains. Narratives describe Talimeco with approximately began. That alliance led the Catawbas to fight alongside 500 houses and as the princi­pal town of the province, the British in the French and Indian War and the Chero- but it had been abandoned after the epi­demic. kee War. Despite this history of alliance with the British, In this vacant town was a mound surmounted by however, the Catawbas supported the patriot cause dur- a large temple covered with woven matting and contain- ing the Revolutionary War. In return for their alliance ing carved wooden statues, the bones of past leaders, in the French and Indian War, King George III in the and a large number of pearls. At Talimeco the explorers 1763 Treaty of Augusta ceded the Catawba tribe of South also found Spanish artifacts believed to have come from Carolina a tract of land “fifteen miles square” comprising the ill-fated 1526 colony of Lucas Vazquez de Aylyn. The approximately 144,000 acres. English explorer Henry Woodward visited Cofitachiqui European settlers began moving onto the Cataw- in 1670, and the last known reference to the town is the ba reservation sometime before the Revolutionary War. name “Cotuchike” on the circa 1685 map drawn by Joel One of the first European settlers among the Catawbas Gascoyne and based on a survey by Maurice Mathews. was Thomas “Kanawha” Spratt II, who settled on the Scholars differ on the language and ethnic iden- land near present-day Fort Mill about 1761. Though tity of the chiefdom. According to these arguments, the Spratt got along well with his Catawba neighbors, he people of the Cofitachiqui spoke either a Muskhogean or soon began selling parcels of land that he had leased a Siouan language. If they spoke Muskhogean, they were from the Catawbas. Within a few years, almost all of the likely related to the Creek Indians of Georgia and Ala- bama. and they probably migrated westward in the late seventeenth century. If, however, they spoke a Siouan language, then the Catawba and related tribes are prob- ably descendants of the chiefdom.

CHESTER B. DEPRATTER Baker, Steven G. “Cofitachiqui: Fair Province of Carolina”, USC Mas- ter’s thesis, 1974. DePratter, Chesrer B. “Cofitachiqui; Ethnohistorical and Archaoological Evidence.” In Studies in SC Archaelo, edited by Alben C. Goodyear III and Glen T. Hanson. Columbia: South Caro- lina lnstiture of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, 1989.

A Catawba family at the turn of the last century. Courtesy, CCPP Archives, Catawba Cultural Center most fertile tracts within the reservation had been leased the “Old Reservation.” South Carolina and the United to English colonists. In 1782 the Catawbas peti­tioned States continued to try to rid themselves of the “Cat- Congress to secure their land so that it would not be “In- awba problem.” Congress appropriated money in 1848 truded into by force, nor alienated even with their own and again in 1854 in an effort to remove the Catawbas consent.” Not wanting to deal with the tribe, Congress west of the Mississippi. Conflict between South Carolina the following year passed a resolution stating that the and the tribe over the provisions of the Treaty of Nation British title over the Catawba Nation had passed into the Ford con­tinued until 1905, when the Catawbas launched hands of South Carolina. Congress rec­ommended that a legal battle to recover their lands. South Carolina “take such measures for the satis­faction The Catawba tribe, unlike many eastern bands, and security of the said tribe as the said legislature shall, was able to maintain its internal cohesiveness and social in their wisdom, think fit.” Thus, the Catawba Nation be- identity throughout the nineteenth century despite the came the beneficiary of a trust relationship with the state lack of federal or state protec­tion. In 1911 Charles Davis of South Carolina rather than with the United States. of the Bureau of Indian Affairs reported that, in his Settlers continued to invade Catawba lands. By opinion, the four leading factors in maintain­ing tribal the early 1800s virtually all of their remaining land had identity were size, tribal organization, religion, and been leased out. The non­ Indian leaseholders worried char­acter. about the permanence of their leases, so in 1838 Gov- The tribe was small at that time, consisting of ernor Patrick Noble authorized commissioners to enter only 97 individuals recognized by South Carolina as liv- into negotiations with the Catawbas for the sale of their ing on or near the Catawba reservation. Since the tribe land. The Catawbas were willing to part with full tide if had not intermar­ried much with their white neighbors the state provided enough money for land acquisition and virtually not at all with their black neighbors, ac- near the Cherokees in North Carolina. cording to one observer, “[t]he large major­ity are so In 1840 the Catawba Nation and the state of nearly full blood as to retain the Indian characteristics, South Carolina entered into the Treaty of Nation Ford, and by reason thereof they have retained their tribal life which provided that the Catawbas would cede the land and organiza­tion.” granted to them under the Treaty of Augusta in 1763 in During the twentieth century there was more return for a tract of land of approxi­mately 300 acres in intermarriage with non-Indians, which affected the North Carolina; if no such tract could be procured to physical characteristics of the tribal members but not their satisfaction, they were to be given $5,000 by the their Indian status. Because the Catawba membership state. The commissioners further promised that the state rolls have been based on “descendancy’’ rather than would pay the Catawbas $2,500 at or immediately after “blood quantum,” as found among the western tribes, the time of their removal and $1,500 each year thereafter intermarriage with non-Indians did not affect the legally for the space of nine years. recognized Indian status of the Catawba children. Unfortunately, in its haste to remove the Cataw- Religion also affected internal cohesion. Most bas, South Carolina had neglected to secure North Caro- members of the Catawba tribe converted to the Mor- lina’s permission to have the Catawbas moved to the mon religion in the 1880s, and as late as the 1950s the Cherokee reservation. When the permission was belat- majority of the tribe still affiliated with the Mormon edly requested, North Carolina refused. Some Catawbas Church. The double minority status of tribal members journeyed to the Cherokee reservation and did reside (race and religion) tended to bind them together against there for a time; however, old tribal jealousies and the the outside world. In the bipolar racial world of South stress suffered by the remaining Cherokees as a result of Carolina during the era of segregation, Catawba Indians the Trail of Tears tragedy prevented them from making a felt themselves ostracized, not considering themselves permanent home with the Cherokees. “black’’ but not being accepted as “white” (South Caro- Eventually most of the Catawbas found them- lina census takers in the early twentieth century listed selves back on their former soil but without land or Catawba Indians as “black” because they had no cat- money. The settlement of $2,500 and the annual pay- egory for Indian). As Mormons among a population of ment of $1,500 promised them under the 1840 treaty Baptists, Methodists, and Episcopalians, the Catawbas were withheld by the state because the Catawbas had re- were further marginalized. Ironi­cally, it was this isola- turned to the ceded land. The plight of the Catawbas led tion and marginalization that helped to insure the tribal the South Carolina Indian agent Joseph White in 1843 identity of the Catawbas. Banned from attending the to secure for them a tract of 630 acres near the center of white schools and refusing to attend the black schools, the Catawbas erected, with the help of the Mormon South Carolina but also against an estimated 61,000 Church, a school on the reser­vation, another factor that landowners. At this point Congressman John Spratt (a helped retain their community. descendant of Thomas “Kanawha’’ Spratt), Governor In 1934 the South Carolina General Assembly Carroll Campbell, and Secretary of the Interior Manuel passed a resolu­tion recommending that the care and Lujan expressed their interest in a negotiated settle- maintenance of the Catawba Indians should be trans- ment. Negotiations began again in 1990. In Congress on ferred to the United States government. However, it was January 5, 1993, Spratt introduced the Catawba Indian not until 1943 that a Memorandum of Un­derstanding Tribe of South Carolina Land Claims Settlement Act of was signed between the tribe, the state, and the U.S. De- 1993. Congress passed the act that summer, and the final partment of the Interior. South Carolina acquired 3,434 agreement was signed by Governor Campbell on No- acres of farmland for a federal reservation and conveyed vember 29, 1994, at the Catawba reservation. (The tribe it to the department secretary. The tribe adopted a con- had already voted on February 20, 1993, by a margin of stitution under the Indian Reorganization Act, and the 289 to 42 to accept the settlement.) federal government assumed its trust responsibility over The settlement provided that the Catawbas tribal affairs. would once again become a federally recognized tribe. Federal recognition of the Catawbas was short- An amount of $50 million would be put into trust funds lived. In keeping with the federal government’s overall for land acquisition, economic devel­opment, educa- termination philosophy insti­tuted in 1953, both federal tion, social services, and elderly assistance. The tribe and state authorities approached the Catawbas in 1958 was given ten years to expand the existing reservation to with a proposal for termination. The Bureau of Indian 3,600 acres. Tribal jurisdiction was recognized over basic Affairs assured the Catawbas that their long-standing governmental powers, including zoning, misdemean- land claim against the state of South Carolina based on ors, business regulation, taxation, and membership, but the Treaty of Augusta and the Treaty of Nation Ford South Carolina reserved the right to continue to exercise (which still had not been resolved) would be unaffected criminal jurisdiction on the reservation. by the termination. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the Cat- In 1962 the federal trust relationship between the awba Nation continued to be a strong and forceful voice United States and the Catawba tribe was terminated, and for the rights of Native Americans. The noble heritage of the 3,434-acre federal reservation was divided up and this ancient people is being reinvigorated through cul- distributed to tribal members. South Carolina continued tural awareness, particularly relating to pottery making, to hold the 640-acre tract from the 1840 treaty in trust and through the education of the children in the tradi- for the tribe. At the time of termination there were 631 tional language and customs of the people. enrolled tribal members. The activism of the American Indian Movement ANNE M. MCCULLOCH (AIM) in the early 1970s served to reignite the determi- Brown, Douglas Summers. The Catawba Indians: The People of the River. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1966. Merrell, nation of the Catawbas­ — and many other tribes — to James H. The Indians’ New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors reinstitute their land claim. The tribe contacted the Na- from European Contact through the Era of Removal. Chapel Hill: tive American Rights Fund (NARF), and in 1976 papers University of North Carolina Press, 1989. Wilkins, David, and Anne were filed with the Department of the Interior to recover M. McCulloch. ‘”Constructing’ Nations within States: The Quest for the land recognized under the 1763 Treaty of Augusta. Federal Recognition by the Catawba and Lumbee Tribes.” American Indian Quarterly 19 (fall1995): 361-88. Negotiations were proceeding between the tribe, the state, and the federal gov­ernment until protests to those negotiations came from non-Indian landowners and nonresident tribal members who wanted to join in the action in hopes of securing land, benefits, or both. Negotiations stalled, and an impasse continued until 1980 when the Catawbas filed suit in federal district court to recover possession of the 1763 treaty reserva- tion. After a decade in the courts, the Fourth Circuit Court found in 1989 that there was still some stand- ing for the claim. That ruling made it possible for the Catawba tribe to institute land claims, not only against Cherokees Charleston settlers. Some Cherokees came to the Caro- The Cherokees were one of the largest southeastern linians’ aid, but others did not feel that the Carolinians Native American nations with which Carolina colonists fulfilled their treaty obli­gations. After the Yamassee War, had contact. Modern descendants are in three federally Carolina-Cherokee trade became easier. Although, like recognized groups, including the Eastern Band Chero- most southern tribes, the Cherokees supplied Charles- kee of western North Carolina. When combined, the ton merchants with deerskins, the finely crafted baskets Cherokees constitute one of the largest Indian nations in made by Cherokee women commanded the highest the United States. exchange rates. In the spring of 1730 Sir Alexander Cuming took a small dele­gation of Cherokees to London to cement a recent allegiance to King George II. Presented at court on June 18, 1730, they were described as being “naked, except an Apron about their middles, and a Horse’s Tail hung down behind; ther Faces, shoulders were painted and spotted with red, blue, and green etc.” By midcentury the international rivalry among Spain, France, and England was intensifying, and the Cherokees felt the impact of that struggle. When Chero- kee leaders notified Governor James Glen in the fall of 1746 that outlying Cherokees near the Mississippi River A Cherokee Indian embassy to England,1730. Courtesy South were being influenced by the French and their Indian al- Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina. lies, Glen recommended that the English build a chain of forts through the territory of their Indian allies. Eventu- Cherokee tradition holds that the Creator placed ally the Carolina govern­ment constructed Fort Prince the Cherokees in the southeastern mountains. Archaeo- George and Fort Loudoun, located in modern Pickens, logical and linguistic evi­dence indicates that the Chero- South Carolina, and Loudon, Tennessee, respec­tively. kees were at one time a people living in and around the Fort Prince George became a source of confrontation in Great Lakes region of North America. The Cherokees 1759, after soldiers at the fort abused Cherokees in the arrived in the southeastern United States around 1400, area and Cherokees retaliated against settlers.Tenuous leaving the Great Lakes after conflicts with the Iroquois peace came with a Cherokee sur­render in 1761, but the and Delawares. At the time of European contact, their Revolutionary War sparked additional bor­der conflict. sphere of influ­ence encompassed most of northwest- During the Revolutionary War, British and ern South Carolina and stretched north and west to the patriot agents vied for Cherokee trade and support. Ohio River to include most of Kentucky and Tennessee Despite overtures from both groups, most Cherokees as well as parts of West Virginia, Virginia, North Caro- sided with the British in the Revolution. When colonists lina, Georgia, and Alabama. By the mid-seventeenth settled on Cherokee lands in the Holston River Valley of century, Cherokee settlements in South Carolina includ- northeastern Tennessee, Cherokee forces attacked their ed Seneca, Keowee, Toxaway, and Jocassee. set­tlements. As a result, patriot leaders throughout the Stable villages were possible because of the Cher- Southeast called for their destruction. A multicolony okees’ reliance on agriculture, especially corn. Agricul- assembled in 1776 to attack Cherokee towns and food ture was the domain of Cherokee women, and women scores. At one Cherokee town in South Carolina, the retained important positions in Cherokee decision-mak- army destroyed 6,000 bushels of corn and the South Car- ing and politics.Men focused their attention on hunt- olina government paid this army a bounty for Cherokee ing and trade. The Cherokee towns scattered through scalps. This full-scale assault effectively ended Cherokee the Appalachians, although politically autonomous, participation in the Revolutionary War, and in 1777 the comprised an extensive trade network thanks in part to Cherokees ceded most of their South Carolina land. The numerous rivers navigable by canoes. Cherokees acknowl­edged the United States in the Treaty European traders moved into Cherokee country of Hopewell in 1785, signed near present-day Seneca. soon after they established permanent settlements on the On March 22, 1816, the Cherokees ceded their last strip South Carolina coast. There they acted as both business- of land in South Carolina. men and diplomats, often working for the governors of MICHAEL P.MORRIS Hatley, M. Thomas: The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolina. During the Yamassee War, the trader Eleazar Carolinians through the Era of Revolution. Wiggan urged the Cherokees to fight in support of the Barbados 1766, the South Carolina Commons House of Assem- South Carolina’s origins are so closely tied to the bly appropriated £785 to help those who had lost their British West Indian colony of Barbados that it has been homes in the great Bridgetown fire. called a “Colony of a Colony.” The historian Jack Greene Proprietary South Carolina’s powerful Goose has called Barbados the “cul­ture hearth” of the southeast- Creek political fac­tion contained Barbadians. Their ef- ern, slavery-dominated plantation econ­omy. Surprisingly forts to circumvent the propri­etors’ prohibitions against little is yet known of the origins of South Carolina’s early selling Native Americans into slavery and dealing with leaders. Although the Barbadian influence has prob­ably pirates plagued the colony’s owners for years. Sir John been overstated and South Carolina’s plantation own- Yeamans, who abandoned the earlier failed Barbadian ers never became absentee landlords to the degree of the settlement at Cape Fear and arranged the murder of his West Indian sugar planters, South Carolina did come to paramour’s husband so that he could marry her, has more closely resemble the West Indies than did any of the been cited by the historian Robert Weir as “in many other English mainland colonies. ways the archetype of the aggressive Barbadians” and “a Initially settled by the English in 1627, Barbados pirate ashore.” While serving as South Carolina’s third had become an exceedingly wealthy, sugar-dominated governor from 1672 to 1674, he infuriated Lord Shaft- economy by the time of South Carolina’s settlement in esbury by making prof­its selling to Barbados provisions 1670. Sir John Colleton, who proba­bly led the effort to that were desperately needed in Carolina. Proprietary gain the Carolina charter for eight English noblemen, had South Carolina had two other Barbadian gov­ernors: become a Barbadian planter after the defeat of the royalist James Colleton, a brother of the man who then held cause in the Puritan Revolution. Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Colleton family share in the enterprise, and Robert later the first earl of Shaftesbury and the leading proprie- Gibbes, who bribed his way into the governor’s office in tor in the settling of South Carolina, had also owned a 1710. Barbados plantation. First Shaftesbury, who had other Rice became as important in South Carolina strong Caribbean interests, and then the Colleton family as sugar was in Barbados, but Carolinians never relied provided the leadership for the settlement’s owners until on a single crop to the same degree that their island almost the end of the seventeenth century. counterparts did. South Carolina’s slave code, modeled Initially the Lords Proprietors hoped to populate on that of Barbados, was the harshest on the conti­nent. their colony with settlers from Barbados and other New Whatever the proportion of Barbadian influence, South World colonies rather than from England. A group of Carolina’s small white elite faction became exceedingly “Barbadian Adventurers” sent an exploratory expedition wealthy. The ties between the two colonies were closer in 1663, obtained concessions from the pro­prietors, and than those between some other parts of the Atlantic attempted to establish a settlement at Cape Fear. Al- world, but by the mid-eighteenth century Charleston though the Barbadian settlement at Cape Fear was aban- had become South Carolina’s cultural center. doned in 1667, the subsequent successful 1669 settling expedition from England picked up some Barbadians on CHARLES H. LESSER its way to Carolina. Much of the shipping from England Lesser, Charles H. South Carolina Begins: The Records of in the early years came via Barbados, and substantial a Proprietary Colony,1663- 1721. History, 1995. numbers of Barbadians, both white and black, immigrat- ed to the Carolina lowcountry. Barbados has a total of only 166 square miles of land, and by 1670 most of it was tied up in increasingly A map of seven- fewer and larger sugar “factories.” South Carolina offered both opportunities for younger sons and smaller farmers teenth-century and the prospect of provisions to feed the Barbadians. Al- Barbados; nine though the emigration of freemen, indentured ser­vants, of the eleven and slaves from Barbados was large only in South Caroli- parish names na’s early years (and has been inflated by misidentification would later be of persons only passing through the West Indies on their used in South way to Carolina), the ties between the colonies remained Carolina. strong. Lowcountry parishes with slave populations of VincentT. Harlow, A History of Bar- more than eighty percent and appalling mortality rates bados, 1625-1685, even shared the names of parishes in Barbados. As late as p. 335

Yamassee War (1715-1718) ranging rebellion from the Savannah River to Charles- ton. Just as Nairne was put to death, other ally tribes, The Yamassee War was a major eighteenth- such as the Creeks, Choctaws, Apalachees, Saraws, century conflict between the colony of Carolina and its Santees, and Waccamaws, also executed their traders, trade partners the Yamassees. Based along the Savannah 90 percent of whom were killed by June 1715. Initial River, this tribe had established strong trade ties with Yamassee attacks along plan­ rations near Port Royal Carolina, at first exchanging deerskins for trade items. killed 100 colonists. Some 300 lucky planter families As commercial hunters, how­ever, the Yamassees and boarded a ship seized for smuggling and made their es- other tribes heavily depleted their deer sup­plies. Con- cape while the Yamassees attacked their farms and killed sequently, the Yamassees began raiding Florida tribes, their livestock. such as the Apalachees, and trading those they kid- White inhabitants fled the countryside for the napped as slaves to Carolina merchants. relative safety of Charleston. There colonists struggled to achieve a defense perimeter around the city. Charles Craven, the governor, utilized all white males and even armed black slaves for the colony’s defense. Sur­rounding southern colonies sent little or no assistance, although Massachusetts did send weapons to South Carolina. Rumors swirled around the city that either the Spanish or the French had encour­aged the uprising. The turning point in the conflict came at the bat- tles of Port Royal and Salkehatchie, where the Yamassees were defeated and driven south of the Savannah River. The Yamassee allies, however, remained a potent force. One historian described this alliance as the greatest in colonial American history because it could have de- stroyed the Carolinas and Virginia.The alliance contin- ued to attack Caro­lina settlements until 1716, when the Gov. Charles Craven and the Yamasee War. The gruesome attack Carolinians managed to con­vince the Lower Cherokees of the Indians on the English in Carollna, West Indies, on April 19, to side with them against the Creeks, launching a deadly 1715, and some days after, in which action the Barbarians gruesome- war between these two groups that continued for the ly tortured many human beings.” Peter Schenlr., Amsterdam,1716. Courtesy,South Caroliniana Library next 40 years. The worst of the War was over by April 1716, and Unscrupulous traders overextended credit South Carolina officials finally brought the conflict to a to tribes such as the Yamassees, hoping to force land close by 1718. Damage inflicted by the war was tremen- concessions from them when they could not pay their dous. The former prosperity of the trade in deerskins trade bills. In 1707 the South Carolina govern­ment was not reached again until 1722. Carolina farmers had created the Board of Indian Commissioners to regu- been driven from half the cultivated land in the colony. late trade and enforce fair trade practices. The board, About 400 settlers had been killed, and property damage however, and its Indian agent Thomas Nairne had little stood at £236,000 sterling. Military costs to defend the success in reining in the traders. The Yamassee trade colony rested at £116,000 sterling, more than three times debt continued to increase and eventually required at the combined value of all exports. No English colony least two years’ labor from every adult male Yamassee. came as close to eradication by a native population as The Yamassees were further angered by the intrusion of South Caro­lina did during the Yarnassee War. white settlers onto their lands. As a result of this trade-based war, South Caro- In spring 1715 Charleston heard rumors of an lina government assumed a direct monopoly over the uprising by the Yamassees. On April 14, 1715, William Indian trade in 1716, replacing private Indian traders Bray, Samuel Warner, and Nairne met at Pocotaligo with government agents charged with obeying stringent Town, southwest of modern Charleston, in an attempt new trade guidelines. A company of rangers was cre- to defuse the violence. Having exhausted their deer and ated to patrol the backcountry, and scout boats regularly slave supplies, the Yamassees decided to resolve their sailed along the southern coastline of South Carolina. trade debt by killing their creditors and attacking white The failure of the Lords Pro­prietors to assist the colony settlements along Caro­lina’s southern frontier on Good in this time of crisis further added to the dissatisfaction Friday, April 15, 1715. Intending to kill not only their with them and helped to hasten the demise of the pro- traders and creditors but most Euro-Americans in their prietary regime in 1719. area, they immediately killed Bray and Warner. Nairne died after several days of ritual torture. The Yamassees MICHAEL P. MORRIS Crane, Verner. The Southern Frontier. then struck against plantations near the coast. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1928. Revolution of 1719 Township plan A popular, almost bloodless coup led by Ar- For three decades following the founding thur Middleton and a host of prominent colonists, the of Charleston in 1670, population growth in South Revolu­tion of 1719 ended proprietary rule in South Carolina was painfuJiy slow. Settlement remained Carolina. Proprietary governor Robert Johnson was de- concentrated close to the capi­tal along the Ashley, posed on December 21 and James Moore, Jr., a respected Cooper, and Edisto Rivers. As late as 1715, probably landowner and war hero, was proclaimed provisional 90 percent of South Carolina’s population lived within governor, setting the stage for South Carolina’s transfor­ 30 miles of Charleston. With the development of rice mation into a British royal colony. as a staple crop early in the eighteenth century, the The Lords Proprietors of Carolina intended importation of African slaves increased rapidly, giving their colony to be a money-making proposition from South Carolina a black majority pop­ulation by 1710. By the outset. With the bottom line as their top priority, 1730, African slaves outnumbered whites by two to one. they governed Carolina erratically and ineffectively, For colonial officials and the minority white population, and always with economic expediency in mind. Initially slave insurrections were a perpetual threat, as were the propri­etors resisted representative government and attacks from the Spanish at St.Augustine and Indians on incited bitter factional­ism in the colony. When they the frontier. In an attempt to rectify South Carolina’s racial failed to see any return on their investment after several imbalance with mass white immigration and to provide decades, their overbearing leadership turned to outright a front line of defense against the Spanish and the neglect. The failure of the proprietors to assist South Indians, Governor Robert Johnson sug­gested a “Scheem Car­olina during and after the devastating Yamassee for Settling Townships” in 1731. The plan involved the War (1715-1718) and against pirates establishment of 11 townships 60 or more miles north (1718-1719) provided colonists with and west of Charleston but south and east of the fall line. galling evidence that the men in These townships were to be located on key South London had placed personal profit Carolina water­ ways and were to receive an initial grant above the public welfare. Interference of 20 thousand acres each, with all land six miles or less in land-settlement policies and the from the town reserved for future colonists. Each family vetoing of key legislation, seemingly of settlers was to be given 50 acres per fam­ily member guaranteed by Archdale’s Law (1696), and a town lot. Three hundred acres in each town were brought the province to confronta- reserved for a commons, with additional acreage set tion with the proprietors. The Com- aside for schools, churches, and public buildings. To mons House of Assembly, representing the colonists, finance the plan, which included equipment, seed, and responded by appointing officials, raising new taxes, and provisions, the governor was author­ized to make use of revising the quitrent law in open defiance of proprietary the colony’s sinking fund that was earmarked to retire authority. In November 1719 Johnson was informed by paper money. the legisla­ture that they were “unanimously of Opinion that they would have no Proprietors’ Government.” Johnson, who had tried to moderate the escalat- ing quarrel, was forced to dissolve the assembly. When a new assembly convened in December 1719, assembly members ignored Johnson’s authority and deemed them- selves a “Convention of the People.” As such, they elected Moore governor and petitioned the British crown to be made a royal colony. Even though the first royal gov- ernor, Francis Nicholson, was not sent for a year and a half, the provisional gov­ernment maintained the reins of power, blocked two attempts by Johnson to overthrow them, and maintained a sound economy. LOUIS P. TOWLES Moore, John Alexander. “Royalizing South Carolina: The Revolution of 1719 and the Evolution of Early South Carolina Government.” Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 1991. Sirmans, M. Eugene. Colonial South Carolina: A Political History, 1663-1763. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966. Townships, 1731-1765. Source. Kovacik and Winberry, 1987. Backed by imperial authorities in England, in sion requiring all white men to carry firearms to Sunday 1732 Gov. Johnson began laying out the Townships. church services was to go into effect. In addition, several Settlement, however, was slow. Many township sites of the insurgents originated from the heavily Catholic were poorly laid out. Only Orangeburg and Williams- Kongo, and their religious beliefs influenced the timing burg survived the Revolu­tionary War. Still, the project of the uprising. was considered a success. The town­ ship plan attracted Whatever the slaves’ reasoning, the revolt began between 10 and 15 thousand settlers from Europe or early on Sunday when the conspirators met at the Stono Virginia to South Carolina, where they became perma­ River. From there, they moved to Stono Bridge, broke nent assets and helped to populate both the Midlands into a store, equipped themselves with guns and powder, and the upcountry. and killed two men. Guns in hand, they burned a house, LOUIS P.TOWLES killed three people, and then turned southward, reach- Meriwether, Robert L The Expansion of South CarolinA, 1729-1765. ing a tavern before sunup. Kings­port, Tenn.: Southern Publishers, 1940. There the insurgents discriminated, sparing the innkeeper because they considered him “a good man Stono Rebellion (September 1739) and kind to his slaves.” The innkeeper’s neighbors were less fortunate; the rebels burned four of their houses, The Stono Rebellion was a violent albeit failed ransacked another, and killed all the whites they found. attempt by as many as 100 slaves to reach St. Augustine Other slaves joined the rebellion, and some sources sug- and claim freedom in Spanish-controlled Florida. The gest that at this point the insurgents used drums, raised uprising was South Carolina’s largest and bloodiest slave a flag or banner, and shouted “Liberty!” during their insurrection. While not a direct challenge to the author- march southward. ity of the state, the rebellion nevertheless alerted white At about 11 o’clock, Lieutenant Governor Wil- authorities to the dangers of slave revolt, caused a good liam Bull encountered the insurgents on his way to deal of angst among planters, and resulted in legisla- Charleston. Bull and his four companions “escaped & tion designed to control slaves and lessen the chances of raised the Countrey.” As the rebels proceeded south- insurrection by the colony’s black majority population. ward, their ranks increased from 60 to as many as 100 The revolt began on Sunday, September 9, 1739, participants. According to a contemporary account, they on a branch of the Stono River in St. Paul’s Parish, near then “halted in a field and set to dancing, Singing and Charleston. Several factors influenced slaves’ timing of beating Drums to draw more Negroes to them.” the rebellion, including a suspicious visit to Charleston By late afternoon the original insurgents had by a priest who contemporaries thought was “employed covered 10 miles. Some were undoubtedly tired, and by the Spaniards to procure a general Insurrection of others were likely drunk on stolen liquor. Confident the Negroes,” a yellow fever epidemic that swept the area in their numbers and Kongolese military training, the in August and September, and rumors of war between rebels paused in an open field near the Jacksonborough Spain and England. ferry in broad daylight. To rest and also to draw more It is also probable that the Stono rebels timed slaves to their ranks, they decided to delay crossing the their revolt to take place before Sept. 29, when a provi- Edisto River. By 4 o’clock between 20 and 100 armed planters and militiamen, possibly alerted to the revolt by Bull’s party, con­fronted the rebels in what was thereafter known as “the battlefield.” The rebels distinguished themselves as courageous, even in the eyes of their enemies, but white firepower won the day. Some slaves who had been forced to join the rebellion were released, others were shot, and some were decapitated Stono Rebellion (1739) Library of Congress and their heads set on posts. Thirty members of the rebel force escaped, many of Regulators whom were hunted down the following week. The Regulators were backcountry settlers who Whites perceived the Stono insurrection to have banded together in 1767 in response to a wave of crime continued at least until the following Sunday, when that swept their region in the aftermath of a disrup- militiamen encountered the largest group of disbanded tive war with the Cherokee Indians (1759-1761). Ban- rebels another 30 miles south. A sec­ond battle ensued, dit gangs, including women as well as escaped slaves, this one effectively ending the insurrection. Yet white roamed the country with little fear of capture. Lacking fears echoed for months. Militia companies in the area local sheriffs, courts, or jails and frustrated by the dis- remained on guard, and some planters deserted the tance and leniency of the colony’s judicial system, Regu- Stono region in November “for their better Security and lators took the law into their own hands. They punished Defence against those Negroes which were concerned in suspected bandits by whipping them, carry­ing them to that Insurrection who were not yet taken.” Some of the the Charleston jail, or escorting them out of the colony. rebels were rounded up in the spring of 1740, and one Gradually they expanded their activities to include the leader was not captured until 1742. regulation of household order. They whipped unruly The rebellion resulted in efforts to curtail the women and forced the idle to work. Regulators also activities of slaves and free blacks. The 1740 Negro Act struggled to control the wandering hunters whose activi- made the manumission of slaves dependent on a spe- ties threatened farmers. From a backcountry population cial act of the assembly and mandated patrol service for that included about 35,000 settlers in the mid-1760s, it is every militiaman. The colony also imposed a pro­hibitive likely that between 3,000 and 6,000 men participated in duty on the importation of new slaves in 1741 in an the Regulator uprising. effort to stem the growth of South Carolina’s majority Protection of lives and property was the primary black population. impetus behind Regulator activities, but the movement About 40 whites and probably as many blacks also grew out of tensions between frontier settlers and were killed dur­ing the Stono insurrection. The willing- ness of slaves to strike out for freedom with such force the colonial administration. South Caro­lina’s backcoun- heightened anxieties among whites over internal secu- try, which included the entire area beyond the coastal rity in the South Carolina slaveholding society for years parishes, did not have any organized local government to come. apart from justices of the peace whose judicial authority was minimal. On the eve of the uprising, the region had MARK M. SMITH only two representatives in the Commons House of As- Pearson, Edward A. “’A Countryside Full of Flames’: sembly from the single backcountry parish of St. Mark’s. A Reconsideration of the Stano Rebellion and Slave In 1767, men who identified themselves as Reg­ Rebelliousness in the Early Eighteenth­ Century South ulators presented a remonstrance to the assembly in Carolina Lowcountry.” SkJvery and Abolition 17 (August which they enumerated­ long-standing regional grievanc- 1996): 22-50. Smith, Mark M. Stono: Documenting and es. They demanded local courts, jails, and other mecha- Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt. USC Press, 2005. nisms for suppressing crime. They also requested local mechanisms for processing land warrants and in­ creased representation in the assembly. Regulators took steps to win influence in the government and to dramatize their political griev­ances. During the election of 1768, hundreds of Regulators marched to three lowcountry polling places, where they claimed the right to vote. The following year Patrick Calhoun (the father of John C. Calhoun) traveled to the polls at Prince William’s Parish with a group of armed men, who elected him to the as- sembly. It is likely that Calhoun was a Regulator. On the basis of the 118 clearly identifiable Regulators, certain generalizations can be made about the social composition of the movement. Regulators were farmers and small-scale planters. At least 31 known Regulators eventually acquired slaves, and at least 17 eventually owned 10 slaves or more. At least two lead­ ing Regulators were surveyors—a position that offered significant commercial advantages—and five operated Class in the South Carolina Backcountry, 1760-1808. Chapel Hill: ferries. Five Regulators later participated in the state University of North Carolina Press, 1990. Woodmason, Charles. The convention that ratified the United States Constitution. Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant. Although the wealthiest and most prominent men in the Edited by Richard J. Hooker. Chapel Hill: University of backcountry were not Regulators, they did sympathize North Carolina Press, 1953. with the movement. In sum, Regulators were ambitious yeomen and aspiring planters who sought to make their region safe for planting, slavery, and commercial activi- ties. The Regulation provoked a sympathetic and restrained response from Charleston authorities. In November 1767, within a week of receiving the re- monstrance, the assembly effectively legalized Regu­ lator activities by establishing two backcountry ranger companies consisting of men who were already active in the uprising. During the same session, legislators began work on circuit court and vagrancy acts. Tensions mounted in early 1768 when several victims of Regula­tor violence sued the perpetrators in the Charleston court. It was only when colonial officials attempted to deliver court processes that they became embroiled in several violent clashes with the insurgents. Martha Bratton of York District courted death by refusing to The angriest response to the Regulators came reveal the whereabouts of her husband’s band of partisans. from within the backcountry. Early in 1769 a group of Courtesy, Historical Center of York County men who called themselves “Moderators” organized themselves in opposition to the uprising. Like their ri- Revolutionary War (1775-1782) vals, leading Moderators were prosperous, commercially oriented settlers. They were not adverse to demands laid The decision of South Carolini­ans to leave the out in the remonstrance, but they resented the Regula- British Empire was as much the result of local griev­ances tors’ increasingly precip­itous use of violence. A truce be- as it was of changes in imperial policy that occurred tween Moderators and Regulators, negotiated by leading after the French and Indian War. At the beginning of the 1770s, the Com­mons House of Assembly was embroiled backcountry men on March 25, 1769, sig­naled the end in the latest in a series of fierce power struggles with of the Regulator movement. royal officials, known as the Wilkes Fund Controversy. By that time Regulators had achieved significant Coupled with new imperial initiatives, these clashes con- victories. The Circuit Court Act, passed in March 1769, vinced the colony’s elite that if it wanted to control the established a system of courts, jails, and sheriffs in four politi­cal destiny of South Carolina, then separation was new judicial districts. Had it not been for a protracted the only answer. dispute with Parliament, the act would have passed ear- While the Wilkes Fund Controversy was still lier. Backcountry men had elected representatives to the boiling, news arrived of the Tea Act granting a mo- assembly, and the colonial government had placed new nopoly to the British East India Company. In late 1773 restrictions on hunters. In 1771 Governor Lord Charles the arrival of a ship with a cargo of tea led to the call for Montagu issued general Regulator pardons. The Regula- a “Mass Meeting” of the populace on December 3. At tor uprising signaled regional ten­sions that would divide the meeting, all present agreed to boycott the tea and to South Carolina for years to come, but it also initiated establish a committee to enforce the boycott. processes of integration that would accelerate with the The Mass Meeting laid the groundwork for an cot­ton boom and culminate with the reform of the state independent gov­ernment in South Carolina. At sub- constitution in 1808. sequent gatherings, the Mass Meeting established a General Committee to enforce its resolutions and the RACHEL N. KLEIN nonimportation association. When word arrived of the Brown, Richard Maxwell. The South Carolina Regulators. Cambridge: Intolerable Acts—Parliament’s response to the Boston Belk­nap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963. Klein, Rachel N. Unification of a Slave State: The Rise of the Planter Tea Party­—South Carolina had in place an organization that could react. When the Boston town meeting asked for assis- of more than 4,000 patriot militiamen to subdue back- tance and the New York General Assembly suggested an country Loyalists. In what became known as the “Snow intercolonial congress, the General Committee issued a Campaign,” he defeated the Loyalist militia and tracked call for a “General Meeting” of del­egates from all corners down and captured those who had fled. of the province. The General Meeting, in Charleston on The new year began with the Provincial Congress July 6, 1774, adopted a series of resolutions, elected five in control of all of South Carolina. The backcountry was delegates to the First Continental Congress, and cre- quiet, and British war­ ships had left Charleston harbor. ated a Com­mittee of 99 to act on behalf of the General In March 1776 South Carolina became the first southern Meeting. This commit­tee quickly became the de facto colony and the second of the 13 to draft a state constitu- government of South Carolina as lowcountry residents tion. The Provincial Congress declared itself to be the responded to the Committee of 99 — not the king’s new General Assembly of South Carolina and elected appointees. The Commons House fully supported the John Rutledge as president of the state. actions of the General Meeting and appropriated funds South Carolina’s new government was concerned for the congres­sional delegation. with the defense of the state — and with good reason. In November 1774 the General Meeting called There were incessant rumors that the British intended to for the election of a Provincial Congress, which con- attack Charleston and to incite the Cherokees to invade vened in Charleston in January 1775. Over the next the frontier settlements. On June 28 a British invasion nine months, the Provincial Congress and its commit- force launched a combined naval and amphibious assault tees consolidated their hold on the colony. It authorized against revolutionary forces on Sullivan’s Island. Led by the seizure of arms and ammunition from royal pow- William Moultrie and William Thomson, the revolu- der magazines and the Statehouse, the issuing of paper tionaries repulsed a British landing force and the sand currency to support its opera­tions, the raising of three and palmetto-log fort rendered the naval bombardment regiments to defend the colony, and the creation of a ineffective. At the end of the day American casualties Council of Safety with unlimited authority. were light, and the British withdrew in disarray. The Although a majority of congress approved these Battle of Sullivan’s Island gave a tremendous boost to the actions, it was a slim one. Not everyone was ready to revo­lutionary cause and the upper hand to those who make the break with the empire in the summer of 1775; favored a more resolute course of action. however, the new revolutionary government was in no The British fleet remained off Charleston until mood to tolerate dissent. Those who disagreed with con­- August. Its presence, and the urging of northern Indian gress were dealt with harshly. nations, spurred the Cherokees and some Tories to The backcountry was a real concern. Nearly two- launch a series of raids in July. The response was imme- thirds of the colony’s white population resided there, and diate and brutal. Andrew Williamson led backcountry backcountry residents had more of a beef with the pro- militia units against the Native Americans, destroyed vincial government in Charleston than they did with the most of their towns east of the mountains, and then British. After backcountry Loyalists ambushed a revolu- joined with the North Carolina militia to do the same in tionary raiding party, congress sent William Henry that state and Georgia. For the remainder of the war, the Drayton and a delegation to the interior settlements, and Cherokees were not a factor. they achieved an uneasy truce. While the backcountry was subduing the Chero- While Drayton and his team were in the back- kees, news arrived on August 2 of the Declaration of country, Lord William Campbell, the last royal governor, lndependence. That, how­ever, may have been the high arrived. He refused to recognize the Provincial Congress tide of revolutionary fervor for a while. After the twin as a legitimate body, and a meet­ing with the Commons threats of invasion and Indian war had been defeated, House accomplished nothing. In September 1775 Camp- the state entered a two-year period of calm that bordered bell officially dissolved the assembly and fled for his life on apathy. to a British warship in Charleston harbor. There was After independence, the state needed a new no one now to challenge the authority of the Provincial constitution, and a new one was adopted without fanfare Congress, and it moved swiftly to suppress any opposi- in March 1778. Maintaining zeal for the revolution was tion. difficult. So many legislators absented themselves that it Renewed tensions in the backcountry led to the was difficult for the General Assembly to meet a quo- mobilization of both Loyalist and patriot militia units. In rum. Enlistments declined, and in order to fill its quotas November 1775, at Ninety Six, there was a skirmish and for the Continental army, the legislature offered land and the first blood of the Revolu­tion in the state was shed. In cash bonuses to volunteers. In 1778 the militia law was retaliation, Colonel Richard Richard­son raised a force revised so that one-third of the militia could be slaves (only in support roles). Some black Car­olinians, howev- ton dispatched units to occupy Ninety Six and Camden. er, were more than engineers or sailors. There were black He then left South Carolina for New York, placing Lord soldiers in Francis Marion’s partisan band and in militia Charles Cornwallis in command. units at King’s Mountain and Cowpens. Cornwal­lis ordered his men to “take the most The lull in the war in the South ended in autumn vigorous measures to extinguish the rebellion.” As they 1778 when the British captured Savannah. With a base moved into the interior, British troops fol­lowed his of operations, they could now execute their “southern orders. They executed individuals almost at whim and strategy’’ to roll up the southern colonies one by one. harassed and maltreated virtually everyone. One com- Throughout 1779 the British made a series of probing mander declared occupy Ninety Six and Camden. He attacks against South Carolina almost to the walls of then left South Carolina for New York, placing Lord Charleston. In September a French fleet arrived, and the Charles Cornwallis in command. next month the allies launched an unsuccessful attack on Cornwal­lis ordered his men to “take the most Savannah. After the battle the French sailed away, leav- vigorous measures to extinguish the rebellion.” As they ing the Americans to fend for themselves. moved into the interior, British troops fol­lowed his The new year did not bode well for the American orders. They executed individuals almost at whim and cause in the South. The already thin ranks of the Conti- harassed and maltreated virtually everyone. One com- nentals had been further depleted at Savannah. Benja- mander declared that Presbyterian meetinghouses were min Lincoln, the commander of Amer­ican forces, under “sedition shops” and burned those he encountered. pressure from South Carolina politicians, let him­self Rather than cowing the populace, these wanton acts of be convinced that he should move his army behind the cruelty roused them. walls of Charleston. In less than three months, the British and their Sir Henry Clinton, commander of British forces, Tory allies turned what appeared to be a brilliant tri- brought a large, well-supplied army and a powerful umph into a dicey situation. In the northern districts fleet to South Carolina in Feb­ruary 1780. By the end of along the North Carolina border, hundreds of Scots- March, the British army had begun a siege of Charleston Irish settlers flocked to join partisan bands headed by and the Royal Navy a blockade by sea. Lincoln’s army Thomas Sumter, William Hill, and others. On July 12, was trapped. 1780, at Williamson’s Plantation, partisans defeated ele- On April13 Governor John Rutledge and several ments of the hated British Legion. members of his council slipped out of the city so that Over the next 90 days there were 16 engagements state government could con­tinue. Two months earlier in the northern districts. With the exception of defeats he had been granted extraordinary powers by the Gen- at Camden and Fishing Creek, the remainder were all eral Assembly to prosecute the war. On May 12, 1780, partisan victories culminating in the smashing victory Lincoln surrendered his army of more than 5,500 men. at King’s Mountain. Losing more than one thousand When word of the capitulation reached interior garri- soldiers killed, wounded, or captured so unnerved the sons, they too surrendered. British that Cornwallis delayed a planned invasion of The capture of Charleston was celebrated North Carolina. throughout the British Empire. But within weeks, blun- The situation deteriorated throughout the re- ders by Clinton and his subordinates­ led to the undo- mainder of the year as partisans attacked isolated out- ing of his victory. Under the terms of surren­der, which posts and supply trains. Francis Mar­ion operated at applied to civilians as well as military personnel, all adult will in the northeastern portion of the state. Andrew males were paroled. They agreed that they would not Pickens led forces in the Savannah River Valley, and take up arms against the British, and in turn they would William Harden did the same in the lowcountry south of not be molested. That suited many Carolinians who Charleston. Thomas Sumter continued his operations in simply wanted to go back to their farms and families. the central and northern districts. However, on June 3 Clinton abrogated the parole of most In December, Nathanael Greene appeared with a Carolinians and issued a proclamation that they must new Continen­tal army. It was a turning point in the war. take a new oath of allegiance that would require them to Unlike most regular military­ men who disliked and dis- take up arms against their fellow Carolinians, something missed partisans, Greene coordinated their efforts with most were loath to do. He then announced the confisca- his own and kept the British continually off bal­ance. By tion of the estates of leading revolutionaries and looked trading space for time, he planned a war of attrition that the other way as his army plundered the lowcountry. would eventually defeat a superior enemy force. Encouraged, Tories launched a campaign of Shortly after his arrival in South Carolina, he di- retribution. To solidify his hold on the province, Clin- vided his com­mand, sending a large detachment under Daniel Morgan toward Ninety Six. As he had hoped, ed an unsuccessful siege from May 22 to June 19, but Cornwallis divided his army. On Jan­uary 17, 1781, Mor- the British abandoned the fort in June. At Eutaw Springs gan made a stand on the Broad River in Spartan District on September 8, in what was the bloodiest battle of the at Hiram Sanders’s Cowpens. For the first time in the southern cam­paign, Greene initially held the field, but Revo­lution, a regular British force broke and ran. Nearly the British counterattacked and, at the end of the day, 1,000 of the enemy were killed or captured along with drove the Americans back. There were other battles after most of their supplies. The successful partisan opera- Eutaw Springs, but none of any strategic signifi­cance. On tions, coupled with the victories at King’s Mountain and November 14, 1782, the last of the 137 battles fought in Cowpens, had turned the tide in South Carolina in the South Carolina and the last battle of the American Revo- Americans’ favor. But the war had not yet been won. lution occurred on Johns Island. Because the British still occupied Charleston in January 1782, the General Assembly met in Jackson- borough. Under the protection of Greene’s army, the legislature elected a new governor and passed two acts identifying and punishing Loyalists. The state was able to reassert its authority everywhere except for James Island and the Charleston peninsula. In September 1782 a British fleet sailed into Charleston harbor to transport the remaining troops and the 4,200 Loyalists who wished to leave the state. On December 14, 1782, the last of the occupying troops withdrew block by block, and the city was turned over to Greene’s army. At 3pm Greene escorted Governor John Mathewes and other officials into the city. For South Carolina, the war was over.

A nineteenth-century engraving of the Battle of Eutaw Springs, the last major engagement of the Revolution in South Carolina. Courtesy, South Carolina Historical Society.

After Cowpens, Morgan moved swiftly into North Carolina to rejoin Greene’s main army with Cornwallis right behind him. Even­tually, after racing to the Dan River, Greene doubled back to Guil­ford Court- house, where he engaged the British. When the fighting ended, the British held the field, but they had suffered heavy casu­alties. Cornwallis withdrew his tattered army to Wilmington and from there marched north to Vir- On December 14, 1782, Gen. Nathanael Greene led patriot forces into ginia. Charleston, ending a brutal British occupation of thirty-one months. Greene headed back to South Carolina. Fac- Courtesy, South Carolina Historical Society ing him was a com­bined regular-Loyalist force of about After thirty months of bloody fighting and 8,000 stationed in Charleston and at outposts from brutal occupation, South Carolinians were once again in Georgetown to Ninety Six. The British may have con- control of their own affairs­ thanks to Nathanael Greene trolled the strong points, but the countryside belonged and local partisan leaders. The war may have begun and to the partisans. With Greene’s army to keep the main ended in Charleston, but it was won in the forests and British forces occupied, the partisans picked off the en- swamps of the backcountry. emy garrisons one by one. From Ninety Six to Charleston the countryside During the spring and summer of 1781 there was in ruins. Dwellings, farm buildings, and mills had were three major battles in the state. On April 25 at Hob- been burned. Fields had been abandoned and had be- kirk’s Hill, the British won the battle but withdrew their come overgrown. Livestock had been taken by one side garrison from Camden. At Ninety Six, Greene conduct- or the other. There were 30,000 fewer slaves in the state name into Telrnack and then into Denmark, after the than there had been in 1775. The state’s economy was in Danish-owned island of his birth. shambles. In the late spring of 1783 Joseph Vesey estab- Not only were the means of production damaged lished himself in Charleston as a ship chandler. Den- or destroyed, but individuals and the state faced huge mark evidently lived with the Vesey family on 281 King debts. South Carolina, with a white population of less Street. For the next 17 years the lit­erate and multilingual than 100,000, had spent $5.4 million on the war effort. Denmark was responsible for helping to receive im- In spite of the difficulties facing it, the state had reg­ularly ported goods from incoming ships, cataloging items in met its financial obligations to the Continental Con- Captain Vesey’s East Bay Street office, and even conduct- gress. In 1783 it was the only state to pay its requisition ing minor transactions in his master’s absence. At some in full. The financial losses were nothing compared to point during this time Denmark married an enslaved the personal ones. In 1783 a visi­tor noted the large num- woman named Beck, who gave birth to at least three of ber of widows in Charleston, but there were far more in his children: Sandy, Polydore, and Robert. But Denmark the backcountry. In Ninety Six District it was estimated and Beck never lived in the same home, and their rela­ that there were at least 1,200 widows. tionship was further strained in 1796 when Joseph Ve- The American Revolution in South Carolina was sey, now a wid­ower, moved his household to the Grove, an Ashley River plantation. a bloody, des­perate struggle — America’s first civil war. Denmark’s luck changed on November 9, 1799, Because of the nature of the conflict, it is impossible to when he won $1,500 in the “East-Bay Lottery.” The know exactly how many Carolinians perished. However, captain and his wealthy mis­tress—who by then was of the total number of American casualties for the entire Denmark’s legal owner—agreed to let him purchase his war, 18 percent of those killed and 31 per­ cent of those freedom for $600. On December 31, 1799, Denmark wounded fell in South Carolina during the last two years handed over a portion of his winnings in exchange of fighting. Given the material and human losses, it is for his freedom papers. Because he intended to stay in no small wonder that the American historian George Charleston and learn carpen­try, he adopted the sur- Bancroft would write: “Left mainly to her own resources, name of Vesey, which was well known among the white it was through the depths of wretchedness that her sons businessmen who would be his main clients as the city were to bring her back to her place in the republic… expanded north up the peninsula. having suffered more, and dared more, and achieved Vesey rented a modest home at 20 Bull Street. more than the men of any other state.” Thomas Bennett, a merchant and politician, constructed his lumber mill at the west end of the avenue on the WALTER EDGAR Ashley River, which made the street a nat­ural home Buchanan, John. The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas. New York: Wiley, 1997. Edgar, Walter. for men who earned their livelihoods in construction. Partisam and Redcoats: The Southern Conflict That Turned the Tide There, following the collapse of his relationship with of the American Revolution. New York: Morrow, 2001. McCrady, Beck, Vesey married the much younger Susan, who was Edward. The History of South Carolina in the Revolution. 2 vols. born a slave around 1795 but gained her freedom early New York: Macmillan, 1901-1902. in the nineteenth century. Despite modern allegations that Vesey practiced polygamy, no evi­dence exists to Vesey, Denmark (ca. 1767-1822) support the theory. As the only woman to bear Den­ Slave, artisan, abolitionist. Denmark Vesey was mark’s adopted surname, Susan Vesey may have married probably born on the Danish Caribbean sugar island of her husband in one of the city’s churches. To help sup- St. Thomas around 1767; the names and nationality of plement the family’s meager income, she took in laun- his parents are unknown. In 1781 he was purchased by dry and ironing from her white neigh­bors. Despite later Captain Joseph Vesey, a slave trader, who trained him as assertions that Vesey died a wealthy man worth more a cabin boy during the short voyage to the French colony than $7,000, there is no evidence that he ever owned of Saint Domingue. Captain Vesey sold the boy as one property. of 390 slaves in the city of Cap Francois but was forced Vesey may have had his marriage to Susan sol- to purchase him back on April 23, 1782, because the emnized in the Sec­ond Presbyterian Church, which he child had dis­played “epileptic fits.” These were perhaps attended as late as April 1817. But perhaps infuriated feigned, for they ceased once the boy reboarded Captain by the proslavery brand of Christianity heard within Vesey’s vessel. This time Joseph Vesey kept him and re- that church’s walls, Vesey became an early member (and named him Telemaque, after the mythical son of Odys- lay preacher) in the city’s African Methodist Episcopal seus. Over time fellow slaves corrupted or punned the Church on Anson Street, commonly dubbed the ‘’Af- rican Church.” Although the Reverend Morris Brown’s and 37, including Vesey’s daughter Sandy, transported Sunday sermons included a creative melding of Afri- to Spanish Cuba. Twenty-three were acquitted, 2 more canand Christian elements, Vesey’s nightly Bible les­sons died while in custody, 3 were found not guilty but were turned to “the stern and Nemesis-like God of the Old whipped, and one free black was released on condition Testa­ment.” Embittered by the continuing bondage of that he leave the state. City author­ities exiled the Rever- Beck and his children, Vesey turned his back on the New end Morris Brown of the AME Church to Philadelphia Testament and what he regarded as its false promise of and razed the building. Vesey’s son Robert rebuilt it in universal brotherhood. October 1865 at the end of the Civil War. Recognizing the dangers that the African Church posed to white control, city authorities briefly closed its DOUGLAS R. EGERTON doors in 1818 and then again in late 1820 and in Janu- Egerton, Douglas R. He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesory. Madi- son, WIS.: Madison House, 1999. Paquette, Robert L., ary 1821. In response, Vesey began to consider a plan and Douglas R. Egerton. “Of Facts and Fables: New Light on the Den- by which he might lead his children and disciples into mark Vesey Affair.” South Carolina Historical Magazine 105 Oanuary freedom in Haiti. What made his conspiracy unique 2004): 8-48. Powers, Bernard E. Black Charlestonians: A Social His- was not merely the advanced age of its leader (54 years), tory, 1822-1885. Fay­etteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1994. but that Vesey planned a mass exodus of families out of Charleston. The plot called for urban slaves and bondmen Nullification across the Ashley and Cooper Rivers to slay their mas- During the nullification crisis of 1828 to 1834, ters on the morning of Sunday, July 14, 1822, and fight South Carolina planter politicians formulated a new their way toward the city docks. Although Vesey em- brand of slav­ery-based politics that would culminate in ployed several enslaved blacksmiths to forge weapons, the formation of the southern confederacy. The crisis, the leading conspirators wisely decided not to stockpile which began as a dispute over fed­eral tariff laws, became weapons nor to recruit thousands of soldiers before mid- intertwined with the politics of slavery and sectionalism. July. “Let us assemble a sufficient number to commence Led by John C. Calhoun, a majority of South Carolina the work with spirit,” Vesey remarked, “and we’ll not slaveholders claimed that a state had the right to nullify want men, [as] they’ll fall in behind fast enough.” or veto fed­eral laws and secede from the Union. Nul- lification and secession, according to Calhoun, were the On May 22, William Paul, one of Vesey’s chief reserved rights of the states and therefore constitutional. recruiters, made a fatal mistake. While at the Market Calhoun’s constitutional theories and the overtly pro- Wharf, he spoke of the plan to Peter, a mulatto cook, slavery discourse of the nullifiers laid the political and who passed the alarm to his master Colonel John C. ideological foundation for southern nationalism. Prioleau. At about the same time another mulatto slave, The passage of the federal tariff law of 1828 sig- George Wilson, gave information about the plan to his naled the rise of the nullification controversy in South master, who hurried with the news to Intendant (Mayor) Carolina. In his famous South Carolina Exposition, James Hamilton and Governor Thomas Bennett. which was voted down by the General Assem­bly, Cal- Exactly one month later, on June 22, Vesey was houn claimed that federal import duties were actually arrested at the “house of one of his wives,” probably a tax on the nation’s main exporters, southern planters. Beck. Four days after his capture, the aged carpenter was Unlike free traders, who opposed the tariff or protec- brought before two magistrates and five freeholders in tive duties in the interest of all consumers, nullifiers the city workhouse. The tri­bunal found Vesey guilty and claimed that the tariff hurt the South in particular. And sentenced him to hang “on Tuesday next, the 2d July, they linked their opposition to the tariff to a proslav­ery between six and eight in the morning.” On that morn- position by arguing that northerners intended to inter- ing Warden John Gordon loaded Vesey and five other fere with the institution of slavery by impoverishing the aboli­tionists into a “cart” for the two-mile ride north to South. Blake’s Lands. Before “immense crowds of whites and Calhoun argued that nullification or state inter- blacks,” the six men hobbled up the gallows stairs. Ac- position would establish a constitutional precedent that cording to Intendant Hamilton, they col­lectively “met would safeguard the interests of the slaveholding minor- their fate with the fortitude of Martyrs.” ity in a democratic republic. His theory of nullification In all, related to Vesey’s plan, the Charleston inno­vatively combined the antidemocratic sensibility of courts arrested 131 slaves and free blacks. Thirty were the Federalists with the states’ rights legacy of the Jeffer- released without trial. Of the 101 men who appeared sonians. Calhoun’s justifica­tion of nullification and seces- before the tribunals, the magistrates ordered 35 hanged sion as constitutional rights of the state also went beyond traditional states’ rights doctrine as they were based on which gave him powers to implement federal tariff laws an unprecedented notion of absolute state sovereignty. in South Carolina. Most southern states remained loyal Most old states’ righters, including James Madison, to the party of Jackson, but some prominent members condemned nul­lification as an extra-constitutional and of the slaveholding chivalry—especially in Georgia and unrepublican theory, as it was not mentioned in the U.S. Virginia—sympathized with the nullifiers and were Constitution and because it subverted the cardinal prin- wary of Jackson’s new nationalism. In the end, Cal- ciple of republican government, majority rule. houn cooperated with Clay to secure the passage of the Calhoun’s lieutenants in South Carolina, James compro­mise tariff law of 1833 in Congress. Hamilton, Robert Hayne, and George McDuffie, formed The state convention rescinded its ordinance of the States Rights and Free Trade Party to implement nul- nullification but issued another ordinance nullifying the lification after Calhoun’s break with President Andrew Wilkins Act, which nullifiers referred to as the Force Jackson became final. Most of the Cal­hounites had been Bill. The controversy continued in the state, however, as nationalists in state politics prior to the tariff controver- Unionists opposed the new oaths of allegiance enacted sy. Like Calhoun, their politics somersaulted from one of by nullifiers. Unionist argued that “test oaths” were qualified nationalism to unqualified sectionalism. unrepublican, as they would stymie freedom of opinion Older states’ rights leaders such as William and political dissent in the state. Smith, John Taylor, and David Roger ­son Williams The state court of appeals also declared the oaths helped to form the opposition Union Parry, which also unconstitu­tional, leading some nullifiers to advocate the contained Jacksonian Democrats such as Joel Poin- abolition of the court, which they succeeded in doing in sett and Benjamin Perry, and staunch unionists such 1835. A compromise reached between leading nullifiers as James L. Petigru. While the nullifiers gained many and Unionists, stating that an oath of alle­giance to the adherents in the state’s large black belt that encompassed state was consistent with the loyalty to the U.S. Con­ the lowcountry and the lower Piedmont, the base of stitution, finally brought the crisis to an end in South the Union Party lay in the nonplantation northwestern districts of the state. In order to call a state convention to Carolina in 1834. The aftermath of nullification proved nullify the federal tariff laws of 1828 and 1832, nullifiers fatal to the Unionists, and Calhoun’s political machine launched a campaign that empha­sized sectionalism, the in South Carolina dominated state politics until his defense of slavery, and opposition to major­ iry rule. death. Unionists, on the other hand, appealed to loyalty Nullification crystallized South Carolina’s early to the Union and the American experiment in republi- ideological com­mitment to slavery and southern nation- can government. They also criticized the undemocratic alism. The politics of slavery and separatism inaugurated stranglehold of the lowcoun­ try elite on state govern- by nullifiers checked democratic reform and prevented ment. The nullifiers gained the upper hand as they had the growth of a two-party system in the state, mak­ing the support of a majority of the slaveholding planter South Carolina exceptional even in the context of south- class that dominated the state’s government. ern pol­itics. The Carolina doctrine presented an alterna- Unionists lost the closely contested state legis- tive to Jacksonian democracy and party system in the lature elections of 1832. The nullifiers’ victory allowed South and finally triumphed when most of the southern them to dominate the malapportioned General Assem- states seceded from the Union in 1860-1861. bly. Having gained a two-thirds majority in the legisla- ture, nullifiers proceeded to call a convention and enact MANISHA SINHA an ordinance of nullification and oaths of allegiance to Bancroft, Frederic. Calhoun and the South Carolina Nullification Movement. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1928. Boucher, Chauncey the state in order to imple­ment nullification in defiance Samuel. The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina. Chicago: of federal law. University of Chicago Press, 1916. Ellis, Richard E. The Union at Risk: Upon nullification, however, South Carolina jacksonian Democracy, States’ Rights and the Nullification Crisis. found itself politi­cally isolated in the nation. Even most New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Ford, Lacy K., Jr. Origim southern states refused to fol­low her lead. In a proclama- of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcoun­try, 1800-1860. tion against nullification, President Jackson endorsed the New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Freehling, William W: Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in vision of a perpetual and democratic Union and chal- South Carolina, 1816-1836. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. lenged the constitutionality of nullification and seces- Houston, David Franklin. A Critical Study of Nullification in South sion, creating an important precedent for Lincoln. Like Carolina. New York: Longmans, Green, 1896. Sinha, Manisha. The his proto-Whig rivals Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum Jackson condemned nullifi­cation as disunionist. The South Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina president also secured the passage of the Wilkins Act, Press, 2000. Grimke Sisters (1805-1879) woman to speak to a legislative body when she ad- Abolitionists. Sarah Moore Grimke, born on No- dressed a committee of the Massachusetts legisla­ture vember 26, 1792, and her sister Angelina Emily Grimke, in February 1838 asking for a stronger stance against born on February 20, 1805, were the daughters of jurist slavery. She proclaimed herself a “repentant slaveholder” and cotton planter John Faucheraud Grimke and Mary and said, “I stand before you as a southerner, exiled from Smith. With familial ties to many of the lowcountry the land of my birth by the sound of the lash and the elite, the Grimke family was among the upper echelon piteous cry of the slave.” Angelina believed, “It is sin- of antebellum Charleston society. However, Sarah and ful in any human being to resign his or her con­science Angelina rejected a privileged lifestyle rooted in a slave and free agency to any society or individual.” Thus, she econo­my and became nationally known abolitionists no rejected not only slavery but also society’s restrictions on longer welcome in South Carolina. women. They first became involved in the public sphere Sarah and Angelina had cut themselves off from through charity work in Charleston. Their mother was their family and community in the South, but they were the superin­tendent of the Ladies Benevolent Society in not alone in the North. Their intimate circle of friends, the late 1820s, and both sisters were members. Serving which included Harriet Beecher Stowe, was supplement- on the society’s visiting committees, they entered the ed by new family members. On May 14, 1838, Angelina homes of the poor white and free black women of the married Theodore Weld, minister, abolitionist, and city. They later described the conditions in which the temperance speaker. They had two sons and a daughter. poor lived in speeches and letters. Sarah also worked as a Her role as mother did not lessen Angelina’s commit- Sunday school teacher for blacks at St. Philip’s Episcopal ment to abolition and, later, women’s rights. Church. In this capacity, she ques­tioned why African After emancipation, the Grimke sisters discov­ Americans could not be taught to read the Bible instead ered that they had nephews living in the North who of relying on oral instruction. Both sisters began to were the sons of their younger brother Henry and a challenge the contradictions between the teachings of slave mistress. The Charleston Grimkes had refused Christian faith and the laws and practices of slavehold- to acknowledge their biracial relatives, but Sarah and ing society. Angelina cultivated a friendly relationship with them—a Sarah began spending time in Philadelphia with relationship that further distanced them from Charles- Quaker friends while Angelina befriended a Charleston ton’s white society. The Grimke sisters remained public minister from the North in 1823. Angelina soon em- figures, supporting women’s suffrage until their deaths. braced egalitarianism and attended the inti­mate Quaker Sarah died on December 23, 1873, and Angelina on Oc- services available in Charleston, leading to quarrels with tober 26, 1879. her other siblings and suspicion from the community. In KELLY OBERNUEFEMANN November 1829, Angelina left Charleston for Philadel- Birney, Catherine H. The Grimke Sisters: Sarah and Angelina Grimke, phia as Sarah had done years earlier. The First American Womm Advocates of Abolition and Women’s The sisters found acceptance in the North. They Rights. 1885. Reprint, New York:Haskell House, 1970. Lerner, Gerda. joined the American Antislavery Society in 1835 and Grimkl Sisters from South Carolina: Pionem for WOmms Rights became the first female antislavery agents, speaking out and Abolition. Rev. ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina against racial preju­dice and using their firsthand experi- Press, 2004. ences in South Carolina as examples. State and local gov- ernments in the South responded to the published letters Free persons of color and speeches of abolitionists by banning all antislavery Also known as free blacks, free persons of color messages through censorship of local newspapers and occupied an anomalous position in the race-based slave incoming mail. soci­ ety of antebellum South Carolina. Several factors In Charleston a mob broke into the post office in contributed to their expansion. For personal reasons, July 1835 and burned the antislavery literature. Follow- especially during the colonial era and early nineteenth ing the Charleston riot, Angelina wrote a letter to aboli- century, slaveowners manumitted (freed) slaves by last tionist William Lloyd Garrison that declared emancipa- will and testament. Slaves who accumulated money tion a cause worth dying for, which Garrison published through trading or by hiring their time were sometimes in his antislavery newspaper, The Libera­tor. Other news- allowed to purchase their freedom. Meritorious service papers reprinted the letter, bringing the Grimke sis­ters to society could warrant freedom. An act of 1702 freed notoriety, and they became pariahs no longer welcome slave militiamen who killed or cap­tured an invading in their native state. After a speaking tour throughout enemy. When the slaves Caesar and Sampson invented New England, Angelina became the first American cures for rattlesnake bite in the 1750s, the legislature emancipated them. Free blacks sometimes descended two slaves were legally emancipated in the state in 1850, from Native Americans, while others migrated to South leaving the future expansion of the free black population Carolina from other states and foreign countries. to depend primarily on natural increase. Free blacks never exceeded two percent of the Most free blacks resided in the countryside and state’s antebellum black population, which was consist- worked as gen­eral laborers or as farm labor. A smaller ent with its lower-South neigh­bors but starkly contrasted number were artisans, ten­ant farmers, or acquired their with states in the upper South. This dis­parity occurred own land. Reflecting national trends, a disproportion- because the egalitarianism of the American Revolution ate number resided in cities. In 1860 three percent of the and the natural rights doctrine that stimulated manu­ state’s slave population resided in Charleston, but one- missions in the upper South were less influential in the third of its free blacks lived there. Charleston’s economic lower South. Also, upper-South economic changes fa- opportunities attracted free blacks, and by 1850 more cilitated emancipation, while the lower South’s emerging than 80 percent of the men worked in skilled or semi- Cotton Kingdom increased its dependence on slavery. skilled occupations as, for example, carpenters, tailors, As early as 1800, almost six percent and six­teen percent bricklayers, or wagon drivers. Women frequently worked of the black populations of Virginia and Maryland re- as domestics or in needlecraft trades. By 1860, 299 spectively were free. The disparities with South Carolina Charleston free blacks owned real estate valued at became greater by 1860, when Virginia and Maryland’s $759,870; half this amount was owned by 14 percent of percentages in­creased to 11 and 49 percent respectively. all free black prop­erty holders. Anthony Weston be- Free persons of color were disproportionately longed to this propertied elite and used his millwright female because slave owners had fewer apprehensions skills to accumulate an estate worth $40,000 by 1860. about manumitting women. Also, since miscegenation Jehu Jones accumulated a similar estate through real was legal in South Carolina before the Civil War, white estate speculation and his famous hotel in downtown men frequently had sexual relationships with black Charleston. In 1860, 171 free persons of color owned 766 women, sometimes marrying and emancipating them slaves. Frequently these were family members who had with their mulatto children. Philippe Stanislaus Noisette, been purchased but could not legally be emancipated. a famous French horticulturist who migrated to Charles- Other free blacks held slaves for their labor. In 1860 ton in 1794, had several chil­dren by his slave Celestine Daria Thomas, a planter in Union District, used many of and went through extraordinary legal means to manu- his 21 slaves on his cotton farm. Likewise, William El- mit her and their progeny. In 1860 mulattoes com­prised lison, Sr., of Sumter District used 63 slaves on his planta- five percent of the state’s slave population but 72 per- tion and in his cotton gin man­ufacturing business. cent of the free blacks. The term “free persons of color” By the early antebellum years, Charleston was the referred to the mixed ancestry of free blacks in the lower center of a propertied, light-complexioned group of free South. Before the Civil War, race was not defined in blacks who enjoyed a well-developed institutional life. South Carolina law, leaving race to be determined by The Brown Fellowship Society was established in 1790 reputation and phenotype. Because of this, some free for charitable and social purposes, and mem­bership was persons of color passed for white. limited to light-complexioned free blacks. Complexional The state’s compelling interest in the slave system differences often divided the community, and in 1843 led it to regu­late private manumissions. A 1722 law re- equally elite and “respectable Free Dark Men” established quired removal of freed slaves unless legislative approval the Humane Brotherhood. Elite free persons of color was granted, suggesting that free persons of color were established private schools, and their children sometimes considered unfit for citizenship. An 1800 act required continued their educations in the North or abroad. Wil- court approval of manumissions in order to prevent liam Rollin, a successful entrepreneur, sent his daughter elderly or “depraved” slaves from being foisted on so- Frances to the renowned Institute for Colored Youth in ciety. The antislavery movement, the bitter debate over Philadelphia, while Francis Cardow attended universities Missouri’s admission as a slave state, and the 1810-1820 in En­gland and Scotland. Such opportunities were rare expansion of South Carolina’s free black population by but expanded the differences between the elite and most 50 percent led to a new act in 1820. To curtail free black free blacks who experienced material conditions not un- population growth, the act vested the right of manumis- like their enslaved brethren. sion solely in the General Assembly, prohibited immi- All free blacks led somewhat tenuous lives be- gration of free blacks to the state, and restricted their cause of their legal disabilities. The presumption was egress and ingress. The final loopholes were closed by an that all blacks were slaves, and free persons of color had 1841 act to “Prevent the Emancipation of Slaves.” Only to demonstrate on demand that they were legit­imately free, making travel to communities where they were life. In the “Revolution of 1719,” the colonists mounted unknown dangerous. In 1792 free blacks were subject to the only successful colonial rebellion when they over- a special capitation tax. When accused of crimes, they threw the regime of the Lords Proprietors. were tried before slave courts. They could not testify When Carolinians rebelled in the 1770s, they in regular courts for or against whites. Their lives were hearkened back to the events of 1719. Similarly, when increasingly circumscribed, especially during times South Carolina’s leaders promoted seces­ sion in 1860, of social instability. New laws following the Denmark they considered themselves the political heirs of the men Vesey slave conspiracy established fines and enslavement of 1776. for those leaving the state and attempting to return. Although South Carolinians played a major role Free blacks over age 15 were also required to have white in the creation of the new federal Constitution, there guardians. were those in the state who feared the power of a strong As the nation edged toward civil war, the plight central government. These men, including Aedanus of free blacks became more precarious. Reflecting a Burke, Wade Hampton I, and Rawlins Lown­des, ques- regional trend, in 1859-1860 South Carolina’s legislature tioned whether slave-state interests could possibly gain consid­ered bills to expel or enslave free blacks. These support from the more populous northern free states measures were not passed, but their discussion terri- who would control the new government. fied free persons of color, many of whom fled the state By the 1820’s South Carolina had become, for the North. Most, however, remained until the end to through the use of slave labor, the largest and wealthiest slavery ended their unique social position. cotton-producing and export­ing state. But the desire of northern states for tariff protection for its manufactur- BERNARD E. POWERS, JR. ers threatened South Carolina’s and other slave states’ Berlin, Ira. Slaves without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South. New York: Pantheon, 1974. dependence on a free market for the exportation of Burton, Orville Vernon. In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: cotton. Vice President John C. Calhoun took the covert, Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina. Chapel Hill: and later overt, lead in the antitariff struggle. His 1832 University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Drago, Edmund L. Initia- nullification doctrine of state inter­position of the federal tive, Paternalism, and Race Relations: Charleston’s Avery Normal tariff delivered the state’s first threat of seces­sion from Institute. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990. Johnson, Michael, the Union. and James L. Roark. Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old During the nullification crisis of 1832-1833, South. New York: Norton, 1984. Koger, Larry. Black Slaveowners: Free South Carolina failed to persuade other slave states Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860. 1985. Reprint, of the graveness of the situation, and its leaders were Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. divided over how to defend the state’s interests without Powers, Bernard E. Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822- support from the rest of the South. The crisis subsided 1885. Fay­etteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1994. Wikrarna- shortly thereafter, but tensions over the need to protect nayake, Marina. A World in Shadow: The Free Black in Antebellum slavery did not end. During the 1840s state leaders such South Carolina. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1973. as Governor James Henry Hammond and Robert Barn- well Rhett, with his organ the radical Charleston Mercu- Secession ry, once again advocated the secession of South Caro- December 20, 1860, the day in Charleston on lina. Rhett’s secessionist so-called Bluffton Movement of which delegates at the South Carolina state convention 1844 failed to convince either South Carolinians or other voted unanimously to secede from the Union, is argu- southern states of the dangers to their way of life. ably the decisive moment in the state’s history. On that During the 1848-1852 sectional crisis over creat- day the representatives of the people of South Carolina ing new slave and free states, another secessionist move- committed themselves to leading other slave states out of ment began in South Car­olina. Once again Calhoun the federal Union. It was not the first time South Caro- eloquently called for southern unity and threatened linians had contemplated secession. secession to ward off the threat posed by northern states To understand those momentous events of to slave society. Calhoun’s famous March 4, 1850, speech December 1860, as well as the people and their ideals, in Congress has been regarded as a major defense of requires a foray into the state’s past, into developments the right of secession to pro­tect the interests of a politi- surrounding the making of that perilous dissent from cal minority. With Calhoun’s death later that year, the the Union. South Carolinians, from the first decades of mantle of sectionalist leadership passed to Rhett and settlement, had displayed a willingness to rebel against Ham­mond. They attempted to arouse other slave states outside forces they viewed as dangerous to their way of to the northern threat to their way of life. Once again they failed, as moderate Union­ ists in the state and in felt that the federal government threatened the rights of the South, such as James L. Orr and Benjamin E Perry, those who believed in the authority of local government succeeded in quelling the secession fervor. Hammond, in a republic. When material interests and political and tem­pering his rhetoric, attended a southern convention cultural values united with fear of slave insurrection, in 1850 held in Nashville, Tennessee. There he asked the few leaders and citizens ques­tioned the need for South other slave states to unite with South Carolina to resist Carolina to leave the Union. what he called northern aggression against their “pecu- When the General Assembly met in November liar institution.” But the Nashville convention failed to to vote for pres­idential electors, it remained in Colum- unite either other slave states or all South Carolinians. bia until the results of the election were known. Upon South Carolina’s secession movement appeared receiving the news of Lincoln’s victory, the legislators dormant in the late 1850s, although some state leaders voted to hold an election for delegates to a special state continued to talk to allies in other slave states about the convention. At about the same time the state’s con- necessity of secession. The fledgling Republican Party, gressional delegation resigned. In addition, Governor founded in 1854, was anathema to virtually all white William Gist and his successor Francis W Pickens had Carolinians. Early in 1860 the moderate South Carolin- been in touch with governors of Alabama, Mississippi, ian Christopher G. Memminger traveled to Virginia Florida, and Georgia, all of whom had prom­ised that to persuade its leg­islature of the Republican danger to their legislatures would call for conventions to consider the interests of all of the slave states. Though Mem- a response to Lincoln’s election. minger seemingly failed in his task, his speech before On December 6 the state’s citizens voted for the Virginia legislature stands alongside Calhoun’s as an representatives to the South Carolina convention. The elo­quent statement of the right of secession. Printed in del­egates, made up largely of planters committed to pamphlet form and circulated throughout South Caro- secession, met in Columbia on December 17, 1860. An lina and the other slave states, Memminger’s justification outbreak of smallpox caused the convention to relo- of secession called for the unity of all slave states. When cate to Charleston, and on December 20, 1860, the 169 the national Democratic convention, held in Charleston delegates present voted unanimously to secede from the in April 1860, failed to nominate a presidential candi­ federal Union. The city erupted in a wild celebration date, Memminger and others held out hope for a south- with bon­fires, parades, and the pealing of church bells. ern Demo­cratic candidate who would unite the slave states. It was not to be. With the Democrats hopelessly divided, it appeared almost certain that the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, would be elected president in November. In September a group calling itself the “1860 As- sociation” came into being. It represented South Caro- linians of all political persua­sions, but the bulk of its membership came from longtime coopera­tionists—men who believed in secession if the other southern states would follow suit. The 1860 Association, foreseeing Lin- coln’s elec­tion, determined that secession was the only way for white Caro­linians to preserve their way of life. The group was also determined that they, and not radi- cals such as Rhett, would lead the state out of the Union and into a new nation. While not totally of one mind, South Carolina was the least divided of all slave states. Years of fear propaganda preached from pulpit and political platform, published in newspapers and journals, and presented in fiction and poetry left little room for dialogue over how the state should defend itsel. In addition, the state’s wealth resided in the slave economy and related enter- prises. The depend­ence of the economy on slave labor In Institute Hall on Meeting Street in Charleston, South Carolina and of the political system on slavery united slaveholder voted to secede from the Union. Courtesy, South Caroliniana Library, and yeoman farmer alike in defense of their interests. All University of South Carolina Just as their forebears had justified their rebel- and the Greenville MaleAcademy in 1823. Perry began lions in 1719 and 1776, so too the men of 1860 left a his legal studies in Greenville, which was to remain his rationale for their actions. The Secession Convention lifelong resi­dence, with the prominent state attorney delegates named Rhett and Memminger to write up the Baylis J. Earle in March 1824. He was admitted to the bar reasons for secession. Rhett wrote “The Address to the on January 10, 1827. On April 27, 1837, Perry married Slave-Holding States,” and his central argument was the Elizabeth Frances McCall of Charleston. They had seven right to self-government. He wrote of the history of the children. North’s desire to control the South and thus focused on Perry’s public career began with his editorship the struggles for a free government. His political argu- from 1830 to 1833 of the Greenville Mountaineer, an or- ment was also laced with a dis­cussion of how the North gan of the state’s Union­ists.Throughout his career Perry and the South had become two peoples. Memminger, in asserted that his political ideology rested on the princi- his “Declaration of the Causes of Secession,” took a more ples of the Federalist Papers and Washington’s Farewell direct approach to the defense of slavery. He listed the Address. north­ern states’ violation of the fugitive slave law, their As a newspaper editor and political partisan, personal liberty laws claiming that slavery was unjust, Perry frequently found himself embroiled in controversy. and the election of an antislav­ery Republican president On August 16, 1832, he mortally wounded the pronullifi- as the reasons why South Carolina seceded, and he cation newspaper editor Turner Bynum in a duel arising stated that the rest of the slave states should follow suit. over a slanderous article. Elected to the 1832 nullification Values, ideals, needs, and fear all came together convention, Perry voted against the ordinance. He was in South Car­olinians’ defense of their way of life. There an unsuccessful congressional candidate of the Union- was no choice, said a united white South Carolina, but ist Democrats in 1834, 1835, and 1848. Perry served 11 to leave the Union they had once embraced and helped terms in the state House of Representatives (1836-1841, to create. 1848-1859, and 1862-1864), as well as two terms in the JON L. WAKELYN state Senate (1844-1847). Boucher, Chauncey S. “The Annexation of Texas and the Bluffton In the General Assembly he advocated upcountry Move­ment in South Carolina.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review economic inter­ests, democratization of state government, 6 June 1919): 3-33. and legal and judiciary reform. Returning to journalism, Channing, Steven A. Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina. from 1851 to 1858 he edited the Southern Patriot, and its New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970. successor the Patriot and Mountaineer, the only Union- Ford, Lacy K, Jr. Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina ist newspaper in the state at that time. A delegate to the Upcoun­try 1800-1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. 1860 national Democratic convention held in Charles- Freehling, William W. Prelude to Civil War, 1816-1836. New York: ton, Perry refused to join the state’s delegation in its Harper & Row, 1965. Hamer, Philip M. The Secession Movement in walkout from the conven­tion, believing that the salvation South Carolina, 1847-1852. 1918. Reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1971. of the Union and the South was inextricably bound to Schultz, Harold S. Nationalism and Sectionalism in South Carolina, the survival of a united Democratic Party. 1852-1860: A Study of the Movement for Southern Independence. While decrying secession as “madness and folly,” Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1950. Sinha, Manisha. The Perry remained loyal to the state and the Confederacy, Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in stating, “You are all now going to the devil and I will go Antebellum South Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Caro- with you.” During the Civil War, Perry held the positions lina Press, 2000. Wakelyn, Jon L., ed. Southern Pamphlets on Seces- of district attorney (1862), assessment com­missioner sion, November 1860-April 1861. Chapel Hill: University of North of impressed produce (1863), and district judge (1865) Carolina Press, 1996. under the Confederate government. In 1863 Perry was commissioned a second lieutenant of the Greenville Mounted Riflemen, one of two companies he was instm- Perry, Benjamin Franklin (1805-1886) mental in organizing for home defense. Journalist, governor. One of antebellum South Perry’s political career culminated with his ap- Carolina’s preeminent Unionist political lead­ers, Perry pointment as pro­visional governor of South Carolina was born on November 20, 1805, in Pendleton District by President Andrew Johnson. Serving from June 30 (now Oconee County), the son of Benjamin Perry and to December 21, 1865, Perry was an energetic and able Anna Foster. Alternating farmwork with school, Perry chief executive, whose ultimate success was oftentimes was given complete man­agement of the family farm hampered by his legalist approach and misreading of by the age of 14. He attended one term, respectively, northern pub­lic opinion and political objectives. He at the Asheville Academy in North Carolina in 1822 restored to office all state officials who occupied them when the Confederacy collapsed, per­mitted organization Petigru, James Louis (1789-1863) of volunteer militia companies, negotiated the abolition of trial by military tribunal for whites and, to alleviate Lawyer, politician. James Petigru was born near public distress, refused to levy taxes. He recommended Abbeville on May 10, 1789, the eldest child of Wil- passage of the controversial Black Codes, which severely liam Pettigrew, a farmer, and his wife, Louise Gibert, a restricted the rights of freed slaves, and ratification of well-educated Huguenot. He attended Moses Waddel’s the Thirteenth Amendment. Willington Academy, grad­uated from South Carolina Perry’s greatest achievement was the creation of a College in 1809, and taught at Beaufort College while new state constitution, which embodied such long-cher- he read law. Admitted to the bar in 1812 shortly after ished personal goals as popular elec­tion of governor and changing the spelling of his name, he served as Beau- presidential electors, more equitable represen­tation in fort District’s solicitor ftom 1816 to 1822. In 1816 he the Senate, and the abolition of property qualifications married Jane Amelia Postell, with whom he had four for members of the legislature. On October 30, 1865, children: Alfred, Caroline, Daniel, and Susan. Perry was elected to the U.S. Senate, but he was denied his seat by the Republican Congress. An ardent oppo- nent of Reconstruction, Perry opposed black suffrage, ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the call- James L. Petigru, ing of the 1868 constitutional convention. Defeated for Courtesy South election to Congress in 1872, Perry enthusiastically sup- Carolina Histori- ported the candidacy ofWade Hampton III for governor cal Society in 1876. Called by his admirers “the Old Roman” for his integrity and stoic adher- ence to principle, Perry had a reserved demeanor In 1819 Petigru moved to Charleston, where he and brusque manner that became James Hamilton’s law partner. Appointed South masked a sensitive and Carolina attorney general in 1822, he prosecuted all emotional temperament. Charleston District civil and criminal cases, represented A pas­sionate reader and the state in appeals courts and federal courts, and prolific writer, in 1883 he advised the legislature. Upholding state authority, even published Reminiscences as he strove to curtail the excesses of public officials, he of Public Men. An irony also appealed to federal over state law when defending of Perry’s career was that an army officer on slave-related charges. In addition, while a devoted Union- after a federal judge refused to rule on the state law that Benjamin Franklin Perry. ist, he disliked the North, required free black sailors aboard vessels in Charleston Courtesy, south Caroliniana Library,USC loathed abolitionists, and har­bor to be jailed, Petigru made no effort to enforce it. after the Civil War became In 1830 Petigru, a leader of the Unionist fac- a champion of states’ rights when he judged them being tion, resigned as attorney general and was elected to the usurped by extra-constitutional federal authority. Perry state House of Representa­tives. Despite defeat in 1832, died on December 3, 1886, at his country estate Sans he remained a major spokesmen for his party until the Souci and was buried in Greenville’s Christ Episcopal repeal of nullification in 1833. In 1834, arguing for the Church Cemetary. plaintiff in McCready v. Hunt, he won a state appeals court decision that the nullifier-imposed test oath for PAUL R.BEGLEY all state officials vio­ lated South Carolina’s constitu- Bleser, Carol K. “The Perrys of Greenville:A Nineteenth-Century Mar- tional ban on such oaths. Months later he framed the riage.” In The web of Southern Social Relations: Women, Family, and legislative compromise subordinating state to national Education, edited by Walter J. Fraser, Jr., R. Frank Saunders, and Jon allegiance. Despite a second term (1836-1837) in the L. Wakelyn. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985. leg­islature, Petigru’s political career was destroyed by Kibler, Lillian Adt:le. Benjamin F. Perry: South Carolina Unionist. his loyalty to the checks and balances in the United Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1946. States Constitution that restrained legislative power by Meats,Stephen, and Edwin T. Arnold, eds. The Writings of&njamin F. judicial power and state government by federal govern- Perry. 3 vols. Spartanburg, S.C.:Reprint Company, 1980. ment. It was his preeminence as a lawyer that made and its requirement that lawyers, like other citizens, Petigru a public man after 1840. Although he believed inform against such owners. Although he scorned the that common law must change in response to new social Richmond government­ and deplored war-time civil- and economic conditions, his state’s limited industri- ian dislocation, Petigru mourned Southern battlefield alization restricted his contribution to such change to disasters, especially those injuring or killing his young a few transportation and banking cases. In Pell v. Ball kinsmen. (1845), however, he argued successfully that plantation He died in Charleston on March 9, 1863. In property did not differ from other forms and must be an impressive tribute, city and state officials as well as distributed among heirs by the same principles. Charleston’s Confederate officer corps followed his cof- In the 1850s Petigru’s most distinctive equity fin to St. Michael’s ceme­tery. practice relied heavily on arbitration and mediation to avoid erratic decisions from judges he considered inept. WILLIAM H. PEASE AND JANE H. PEASE In court he appeared twice as often for the defendant as Carson, James Petigru, ed. Life, Letters and Speeches of fames Louis for the plaintiff. In cases involving abusive hus­bands, he Petigru, the Union Man of South Carolina. Washington, D.C.: served both rich and poor women, but his most vis- W H. Lowdermilk, 1920. ible representation of the legally disadvantaged served Ford, Lacy K, Jr. “James Louis Petigru: The Last South Carolina free people of color. As adviser to the British consul’s Federalist.” In Intellectual Life in Antebellum Charleston, edited by campaign to thwart the incarceration of black seamen Michael O’Brien and David Molrke-Hansen. Knoxville: University of and when he rescued the free children of George Broad Tennessee Press, 1986. Pease, William H., and Jane H. Pease. fames from slavery, he acted both behind the scenes and in Louis Petigru: Southern Comer­ vative, Southern Dissenter. 1995. court. And though he never challenged the institution Reprint, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002. of slavery, he defied public opinion when he successfully represented Reuben Smalle, an itinerant Yankee believed Port Royal Experiment to be an abolitionist. The Port Royal Experiment, also called the Sea In recog­nition of his legal expertise rather than Island Experiment, was an early humanitarian effort political conformity, in 1859 the legislature appointed to pre­pare the former slaves of the South Carolina Sea Petigru to codify South Carolina civil law, a task he Islands for inclu­sion as free citizens in American public finished in 1862. His code, whose only significant sub­ life. The Port Royal Experiment was made possible by stantive changes benefited free blacks, was not adopted the U.S. Navy’s conquest of the Sea Islands of Beaufort until 1872, and then only in a reorganized form. Torn District after the naval victory at the Battle of Port Royal between conflicting alle­giances to federal constitu- on November 7, 1861. The islands remained in Union tion and to southern culture, Petigru had an unchang- hands until the end of the war. ing commitment to justice and order through law. His The conquest was so swift that Beau­fort Dis- loyalty to a constitutionally defined balance of power trict planters abandoned most of their property and never wavered, whether it was defending minority rights hur­riedly evacuated inland. Most importantly, nearly from majority incursions, checking legislative excess by 10,000 slaves were abandoned on island plantations. judicial action, or contending that knowl­edgeable judges Still not legally con­sidered free, the abandoned slaves shape juries’ findings within the confines of the law. were declared “contraband of war” and placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of the Treas- “South Carolina is too small ury. Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase sent his friend Edward L. Pierce of Boston to Port Royal to recommend for a republic and too large measures to the federal government for dealing with the Sea Island “contra­bands.” Reverend Mansfield French for an insane asylum.” was dispatched to Port Royal at the same time as agent of the New York-based American Mission­ ary Asso- Petigru in 1860 ciation to ascertain what help was needed for the Sea upon the secession of SC Island blacks. Both men arrived at Port Royal in January 1862. Never backtracking in his condemnation of The combination of federal efforts to assist and South Carolina’s April 1861 attack on Fort Sumter for employ the Sea Island blacks and the efforts of several having set “a blazing torch to the temple of constitu- philanthropic and missionary organizations to pre- tional liberty,” Petigru went to court to block the Con- pare the “contrabands” for emancipation led to the federacy’s confiscation of absentee Carolinians’ property Port Royal Experiment. While the federal government concen­trated on employing the “contrabands” to harvest purchased on favorable terms by the freedmen. Much and process the valuable Sea Island cotton, philanthropi- of Beaufort County retained the character of small corganizations and religious missionaries assumed the blacklandhold­ing into the twenty-first century. task of providing education, which the Sea Island blacks On March 3, 1865, the federal government es- eagerly sought. Both the government and private char­ tablished the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Aban- ities provided food, clothing, and medical assistance. doned Lands within the War Department to deal with In February 1862 Pierce returned to Boston and helped the humanitarian problems across the South at the close organize the Educa­ tional Commission and to seek vol- of the Civil War. Better known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, unteers for this “experiment” in the Sea Islands. At the it was responsible for food, clothing, and medical relief same time, the National Freedmen’s Relief Association in as well as educational services for the freedmen. The first New York was collecting donations and enlisting vol­ Freedmen’s Bureau office in South Carolina was opened unteers to assist as well. in Beaufort in 1865, and many volunteers of the Port In March 1862 the steamer Atlantic brought the Royal Experiment became leaders of the agency. General first contingent of these Boston and New York volunteers Rufus Saxton, the military governor of the Sea Islands and philanthropists to Port Royal. Dubbed “Gideonites” and a major supporter of the Port Royal Experiment, by contemptuous Union soldiers, the volunteers were a was the Freedman’s Bureau director for South Carolina, mixed group of missionaries intent on teach­ing, organ- Georgia, and Florida. The Freed­ man’s Bureau was the izing, evangelizing, or doing whatever good they could first humanitarian, or “welfare,” agency estab­lished by at Port Royal. Although diverse in their makeup, they the U.S. government. The Freedman’s Bureau was of- were united by their fervent opposition to slavery and ficially disbanded in 1872, but the lingering influence of determination to help guide the liberated slaves of the the Port Royal Experiment survived in Beaufort Coun- Sea Islands. In April 1862 a second con­tingent of “Gide- ty’s unique landownership pat­ terns and educational onites” arrived from Philadelphia, sponsored by that institutions. city’s Port Royal Relief Committee. Prominent among this contingent was Laura Towne, who would found the LAWRENCE 5. ROWLAND Penn School on St. Helena Island. These groups were the Abbott, Manin. The Freedmen’s Bureau in South Carolina, 1865- vanguard of scores of missionaries who came to the Sea 1872. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967. Forten, Islands of Beaufort District during the Civil War. Charlotte L. The journal of Charlotte Fortm: A Free Negro in the Slave The partnership between the federal government Era. 1953. Reprint, New York: Norton, 1981. Holland, Rupert Sargent, and various phil­anthropic agencies to carry out humani- ed. Letters and Diary of Laura Towne: Written ftom the Sea Islands of tarian enterprises among the Sea Island blacks continued South Carolina, 1862-1884. 1912. Reprint, New York: Negro Universi- throughout the war. Notable among their achievements ties Press, 1969. Pearson, Elizabeth Ware, ed. Letters ftom Port RoyaL· was the establishment of private freedmen’s schools Written at the Time of the Civil “War. 1906. that continued a century and a half after the Port Royal Experiment ended. The Mather School on Port Royal Penn Center Island survived until the 1960s, and the Penn School on Located on St. Helena Island in Beaufort Coun- St. Helena Island continued into the twenty-first century ty, Penn Center, Inc., originated as the Penn Normal as the Penn Community Center. School. The school was established in 1862 on St. Helena On January 1, 1863, Lincoln’s Emancipation Island by the northern missionaries Laura Towne and Proclamation went into effect for the ‘’contrabands” of Ellen Murray. It was one of approximately­ 30 schools the Sea Islands. Thereafter they were “freedmen” and en- built on St. Helena as part of the Port Royal Experiment, titled to many rights and responsibilities as citizens. This an effort by northern missionaries to educate formerly was the pinnacle of the Port Royal Experiment and a day enslaved Africans and prepare them for life after slavery. of jubilation for Sea Island blacks. The leaders of the Port Royal Experiment were philan- Following emancipation, another effort of the thropists, abolitionists, and Quaker missionaries from Port Royal Exper­ iment was the redistribution of aban- doned plantation lands to the former slaves. Under the South authority of the U.S. Direct Tax Act of 1862, most of the Carolina Sea Island plantations in Beaufort District were Progressive seized for nonpayment of taxes. Leaders of the Port Network at Royal Experi ­ment lobbied the federal government to Penn Center, distribute this land in small parcels to the freedmen. Of 2002 the 101,930 acres seized, approximately one-third was Penn Center, Inc.’s programs and educational partnerships included the History and Culture Program, the Program for Acade­ mic and Cultural Enrichment (PACE}, the Land Use and Environ­ mental Education Program, and the Early Childhood I At-Risk Families Initiative. In 1974 the United States Department of the Interior designated the Penn Center’s buildings and grounds a National Historic Landmark District. Exhibi- tions that focus on the history of Penn School and its connections to the native Gullah I Geechee culture of Penn School a the turn of the 20th century. Courtesy, the Sea Islands are housed in the York W. Bailey Mu- South Caroliniana Library USC seum. [The SC Progressive Network held its found- Pennsylvania who came to the Beau­fort County area ing convention at Penn in 1995, and continues to have during the Civil War. They named the school in honor retreats at the historic facility.] of their home state and for the Quaker activist William Penn. Smalls, Robert (1839-1915) Laura Towne arrived on St. Helena Island in April 1862 and was joined by Ellen Murray in June of Legislator, congressman. Smalls was born in the same year. The two began educating­ blacks in a Beaufort on April 5, 1839, the son of Lydia Smalls, a one-room schoolhouse on the Oaks Plantation. As the house slave, and possibly her master, John McKee. In number of students outgrew this space, they moved to 1851 Smalls was inherited by Henry McKee, who hired the Brick Baptist Church. They remained there until him out as a laborer in Charleston. Smalls worked as a 1864, when a prefabri­cated building was sent down waiter, a lamplighter, a stevedore, and eventually a ship from Pennsylvania. A fifty-acre tract of land was pur- rigger and sailor on coastal vessels. On Decem­ber 24, chased from a freedman named Hastings Gantt so that 1858, Smalls married Hannah Jones, a slave woman 14 the building could be erected. years his senior. The couple had at least three children. In 1901 the school was chartered as the Penn After the 1883 death of his first wife, Smalls married An- Normal, Industrial, and Agricultural School. The nie Elizabeth Wigg on April 9, 1890. They had one child. Tuskegee Curriculum, developed by Booker T. Washing- At the start of the Civil War, Smalls was em- ton, was slowly incorporated into the Penn cur­riculum. ployed as a pilot on the cotton steamer Planter, which So, in addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic, Penn was pressed into Confederate service as an armed couri- started teaching classes in carpentry, basket making, er. Early on the morning of May 13, 1862, in the absence harness making, cobbling, shoe lasting, midwifery, of the vessel’s white officers, Smalls led the takeover teacher training, and mechanics. of the Planter by its slave crew, sailed past the harbor’s In 1948 the Penn School board decided that it formidable defenses, and surrendered the vessel to the was no longer economically feasible to keep the Penn Federal blockading force. The daring act made Smalls School open as a private boarding school since public famous, and the information he pro­vided on Confeder- schools were now being brought onto St. Helena Island. ate defenses was valuable in planning Union operations. As a result, the Penn School class of 1953 was the last Congress voted prize money to the crew for their deed, one to graduate. with Smalls receiving $1,500. After becoming Penn Community Center in 1953, the institu­tion began to focus on social issues af- fecting the well-being of the native islanders.This ex- panded to African Americans as a whole in the 1960s, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Southern Christ­ ian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Non- violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) the Southern Robert Smalls. Courtesy, South Caroliniana Library, USC Student Organizing Committee (SSOC)and other civil rights organiza­tions began coming to the island to have meetings at the Frissell Community House, one of sev- eral buildings that students and community members had built on the campus. As Smalls was a knowledgeable pilot, his services chise African Americans. In 1889 President Benjamin were in demand. On December 1, 1863, he was piloting Harrison appointed Smalls as collector of customs for the Planter near Secessionville when severe enemy fire the port of Beaufort, an office he held, except during caused the white captain to abandon his post. Smalls President Grover Cleveland’s second term, until June brought the vessel out of danger and was awarded with 1913, when he was forced out by South Carolina’s sena- an army contract as captain of the Planter. He was the tors. Smalls died on February 22, 1915, at his home in first black man to command a ship in U.S. service and Beaufort. He was buried in Tabernacle Baptist Church- remained cap­tain of the Planter until it was sold in 1866. yard. By his own count, Smalls was involved in 17 military engagements during the war: EDWARD A. MILLER, JR. After the war Smalls settled in his native Beau- Miller, Edward A., Jr. Gullah Statesman: Robm Smallr from Slavery fort, where he pur­ chased the house of his former mas- to Con­ gress, 1839-1915. Columbia: University of South Carolina ter. Smalls’ war-time accom­plishments made him a po- Press, 1995. Uya, Okon Edet. From Slavery to Public Service: Robm litical force in the Sea Islands, with its overwhelmingly Smallr, 1839-1915. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. black population. In 1867 Smalls was one of the found- ers of the Republican Party in South Carolina, an organi- First South Carolina Regiment zation to which he remained loyal all his life. In 1868 Elements of what became the First South Caro- he was a delegate to the state constitutional convention lina Infantry Regiment (later designated the Thirty­-third and won election to the state House of Representatives, United States Colored Troops) were organized in 1862, where he represented Beaufort County until 1870. That giving it the distinction of being the first African Ameri- same year Beaufort voters sent Smalls to the state Senate, can United States Army unit in the Civil War. and in 1873 he was promoted to major general in the The driving force behind the establishment of mili­tia. In the Senate, Smalls was made chairman of the the regiment was Major General David Hunter. A grad- printing com­mittee, an assignment with the potential for uate of the United States Mil­ itary Academy, he was a ca- graft. In 1877 he was tried and convicted of accepting a reer officer in the U.S. Army and was also an abolitionist bribe and was sentenced to three years, but he was and friend of President Abraham Lincoln. Promoted to pardoned in an amnesty that also quashed pro­ceedings major general early in the war, Hunter commanded the against Democrats for election irregularities. Even Depart­ment of the South in May 1862 and issued an Smalls’s enemies at the time said that the case against order that declared all slaves in South Carolina, Georgia, him was not strong, and it was likely part of the cam- and Florida free. Soon after­ward he began recruiting a paign to remove African Americans from public office. military unit composed of black men who lived in the In 1874 Smalls was elected to the U.S. House United States-occupied area around Port Royal or who of Representatives. He was reelected to the following had escaped to Union lines from Confederate-controlled Congress and served intermit­tently until 1886. With the areas of South Carolina and Georgia. After few re- return of Democratic rule in South Car­olina after 1876, sponded, Hunter ordered that all the able-bodied “ne- Smalls had increasing difficulty winning reelection. He groes” between 18 and 45 years of age “capable of bear- lost to George D. Tillman in 1878 and 1880 but success- ing arms” be sent to his headquarters. Soon there were fully contested the results of the latter election and took enough present to organize a 500-man unit commanded Tillman’s seat in July 1882. Two years later Smalls failed by white officers. to secure renomination, los­ing to Edmund W M. Mack- In Washington, President Lincoln was not ey, who died soon after taking office. Smalls was elected ready for emancipa­tion or the enlistment of black men to fill the vacancy and returned to Washington in March into the U.S. Army and required Hunter to rescind the 1884, but he lost a bid for another term in 1886. While proclamation. However, Lincoln did not directly order in Congress, Smalls earned a reputation as an effective that the regiment be disbanded. Hunter hoped that the speaker. He secured appropriations for harbor improve- regiment would eventually be accepted and continued ments at Port Royal and was a vocal opponent of the to drill and train the men, who were uniformed in red removal of federal troops from the South. pants, blue coats, and broad-brimmed hats. But Hunter After returning to South Carolina, Smalls suc- received no support from the gov­ernment and in August cessfully lobbied his old congressional colleagues for a 1862 disbanded all but one company. veteran’s pension and more compensation for the Plant- Finally, the U.S. War Department permitted the er. His last major political role was as one of six black organization of black units, and in October the company members of the 1895 state constitutional convention, became Company A, First South Carolina Volunteer where he unsuccessfully opposed efforts to disenfran- Infantry Regiment. Other companies were soon organ- ized, and on January 31, 1863, the First South Car­olina was officially mustered into United States service. The regiment spent most of the war participating in various expeditions, skirmishing, or serving on garrison duty along the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Flor- ida. In February 1864 the unit’s designation was changed to the Thirty-third United States Colored Troops. In the sum- mer and fall of 1864 the regiment par­ticipated in the opera- tions against Charleston, serving on James, Folly, and Morris Islands and other locations along the South Car­olina coast. With the fall of Charleston in February 1865, the Thirty-third United States Colored Troops served as part of the city’s Union gar­rison. This was followed by service in the District of Savannah, Georgia; at Augusta, Georgia; and then at other locations in the Department of the South until the regiment was mustered out of service in January 1866.

RICHARDW. HATCHER Ill Dyer, Frederick H. A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, 1908. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. Army Life in a Black Regiment. 1870. Re- print, New York: Norton, 1984. Miller, Edward A, Jr. Lincoln’s Abolitionist General, The Biography of David Hunter. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997. Taylor, Susie King. A Black Woman’s Civil War Memoirs: Reminiscences of my Life in Camp with the 33rd U.S. Colored Troops. 1902. Reprint, New York: M. Wiener, 1988. ­­­­

Members of Company A of the First South Carolina Volunteers, taking the oath of allegiance at Beaufort. Courtesy, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture