We must now leave for the present the States of New England, austere alike in character and clime, and turn to those summer realms of the South which excited the cupidity of the early French and Spanish adventurers. We must become more intimately acquainted with the region where De Soto wandered in search of the land of gold; where the good Coligny planted his settlements of persecuted Huguenots; where catholic bigotry dyed the soil with their blood; and where, also, the brave Raleigh planned magnificent schemes of colonisation, and reaped only the fruits of disappointment and sorrow.

The vast territory of North America was, for half a century after the English began to colonise it, divided into two districts, called North and South Virginia; “all lands lying towards the river St. Lawrence, from the northern boundaries of the province now called Virginia, belonged to the northern, and all those to the southward, as far as the Gulf of Florida, to the southern district.”

The French colonists first gave the name of Carolina to the country which is still so designated, in honour of their worthless monarch, Charles IX. In 1630, Charles I. of England granted a tract of land south of Chesapeake Bay to Sir Robert Heath, his attorney-general, under the name of Carolana; but owing to the political agitations in England, the projected colonisation of this country was never carried out. With the Restoration, the English reasserted their claim to that portion of America which had been known under the designation of South Virginia, and the fertility and desirableness of which was now an established fact. Somewhat before the time, therefore, when the restored monarch made a grant to his brother of the Dutch possessions of New Netherlands, he conferred the vast territory comprised between Albemarle Sound, southward to the river St. John, under the name of Carolina, upon eight proprietors, among whom were some of his principal courtiers; that is to say, Clarendon, the prime minister; General Monk, now Duke of Albemarle; Lord Craven, the supposed husband of the Queen of Bohemia; Lord Ashley Cooper, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury; Sir John Colleton, Lord John Berkeley, his brother, Sir William, governor of Virginia, and Sir George Carteret. The grant made to these proprietaries constituted them absolute sovereigns of the country. Their right, however, was immediately disputed both by the Spaniards—whose fort of St. Augustine was considered to establish actual possession—and by the assigns of Sir Robert Heath; but neither claimants could stand before the new and more powerful patentees. Besides these, other parties of a much more sturdy and unmanageable character had already established themselves on its coasts. New England, which possessed within itself not only an expansive principle, but one which took deep root on any soil which it touched, had planted not only a little settlement on Cape Fear, which had been fostered in its distresses by the mother-colony, but had sown the seeds of democratic liberty, from which, in part, must be traced the resolute spirit which distinguished the colony of North Carolina in the long struggle through which it had to pass.

Virginia, too, was “the mother of colonies;” and in 1622, “the adventurous Porey, then secretary of Virginia, travelled overland to the banks of the Chowan, or South River, reporting on his return most favourably of the kindness of the natives, the fertility of the country, and the happy climate, which yielded two harvests in the year.” During the succeeding forty years, his explorations were followed up, and when religious persecution took place in Virginia, dissenters emigrated largely. The country around Albemarle Sound was established by Nonconformists, who had purchased a right to their lands from the aborigines. These settlements were claimed by the new proprietaries of Carolina, and Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia and one of the joint proprietors, was ordered by his colleagues to assume jurisdiction over them in their name.

Berkeley, however, who knew too well the character of these pioneer-settlers, did not venture to enforce his orders too strictly. Instead of this, he appointed William Drummond, one of the settlers, “a man of prudence and popularity,” to be the governor; and instituting a simple form of government, a council of six members, and an easy tenure of land, left the colony to take care of itself, to enjoy liberty of conscience and the management of its own affairs. “Such,” says Bancroft, “was the origin of fixed settlements in North Carolina. The child of ecclesiastical oppression was swathed in independence.”

Besides these settlements of New England and Virginia, several planters of Barbadoes had purchased from the Indians a tract of land thirty-two miles square on Cape Fear River, where the New Englanders had first settled themselves, and now applied to the new proprietaries for a confirmation of their purchase and a charter of government. All their wishes were not granted, but Sir John Yeamans, a cavalier and the head of these Barbadoes planters, was appointed governor, with a jurisdiction extending from Cape Fear to the St. Matheo, the country being called Clarendon. This settlement absorbed that of the New Englanders, who, however, were so far respected that Yeamans was instructed to be “very tender” towards them, to “make things easy to the people of New England, that others might be attracted there.” The colony immediately applied itself to the preparation of boards, shingles and staves, to be shipped to the West Indies, and the same continues to this day to be the staple of that region of pine forests and sterile plains.

The proprietaries in the meantime having ascertained the character of their territory, and become better acquainted with its geography, obtained, in 1665, a second charter, in total disregard of all other claims, and this time their grant was extended half a degree further north, so as to include the settlements on the Chowan, and a degree and a half further south, including the Spanish colony of St. Augustine and part of Florida, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. This vast grant in fact comprised all the present territory of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, a considerable portion of Florida and Missouri, nearly all Texas and a large part of Mexico. Nor was this all; an additional grant shortly afterwards added the group of the Bahama Isles, then famous as the resort of buccaneers, to the vast realms which their charter already included.

The infant settlement of Albemarle continued to receive accessions from Virginia and New England; and from Bermuda, already famous for the building of fast-sailing ships, came a colony of ship-builders. In 1669, the first laws were enacted by an assembly composed of the governor Stevens, who had succeeded Drummond, a council of six, and twelve delegates chosen by the people. According to the laws of Virginia, land was offered to all new-comers, and immigrant debtors were protected for five years, against any suit for debt contracted beyond the colony. The governor and court constituted a court of justice, and were entitled to a fee of thirty pounds of tobacco on every suit; and the colony, being without any minister of religion, marriage became a civil rite. Three years afterwards the proprietaries solemnly confirmed the settlers in possession of their lands, and granted to them the right of nominating six councillors in addition to the six nominated by the patentees. The right of self-government was thus established on the soil of North Carolina.

In the meantime the ambition of the proprietaries, extending with the extent of their charter, a magnificent scheme of sovereignty was conceived, which was intended not only to give them the wealth of empires but the fame of legislators. All that philosophic intellect and worldly sagacity could do to frame a model government was now done. The Earl of Shaftesbury was deputed by his fellow-proprietaries to frame for this infant empire a constitution commensurate with its intended greatness; and he employed his friend and protégé John Locke, afterwards so well known for his philosophical writings, as his agent for this purpose.

Locke commenced his labours on the principle that “compact is the true basis of government, and the protection of property its great end.” Cold and calculating, with no generous enthusiasm of soul, no sympathetic and aspiring impulses, guided alone by intellect and conventionality, it is no wonder that the “Grand Model,” as the constitution of Carolina was called, failed of practical application, and was, finally, after the vain attempt of many years to enforce it, abandoned as totally inapplicable to its purpose.

It has been well remarked that “the formation of political institutions in the United States was not effected by giant minds or nobles after the flesh. Their truly great legislators became as little children.”

But, futile as was this Grand Model constitution, we must give some idea of it to our readers, to show how little intellect merely and political wisdom can comprehend the principles of successful government or the basis of a prosperous and happy social state.

“The interests of the proprietaries, a government most agreeable to monarchy, and a careful avoidance of a numerous democracy,” are the avowed threefold objects of the Carolina constitution. The proprietaries, eight in number, were never to be increased or diminished; their dignity was hereditary. The vast extent of territory was to be divided into counties, each containing about seven hundred and fifty square miles; to each county appertained two orders of nobility, a landgrave or earl, and two caciques or barons; the land was to be divided into five equal parts, one of which became the inalienable right of the proprietaries, another equally inalienably the property of the nobility, and the remaining three-fifths were reserved for the people, and might be held by lords of manors who were not hereditary legislators, but, like the nobility, exercised judicial powers in their baronial courts. The number of three nobles for each county was to remain unalterable; after the current century no transfer of lands could take place. Each county being divided into twenty-four parts, called colonies, were to be cultivated by a race of hereditary leetmen, or tenants, attached to the soil, each holding ten acres of land at a fixed rent; these tenants not being possessed of any political franchise, but being “adscripts of the soil under the jurisdiction of their lord, without any appeal;” and it was added that “all the children of leetmen shall be leetmen, and so to all generations.”

The political rights of the great body of the people being thus disposed of, and a legislative barrier placed, as it were, against progressive popular improvement and enlightenment, a very complicated system of government was framed for the benefit of the privileged classes. “Besides the Court of Proprietors, invested with supreme executive authority, the president of which was the oldest proprietor, with the title of Palatine, there were seven other courts, presided over by the remaining seven proprietors, with the titles respectively of Admiral, Chamberlain, Chancellor, Chief Justice, High Steward, and Treasurer; besides the president, each of these courts had six councillors appointed for life, two-thirds, at least, of whom must be nobles.” There is something almost childish and ludicrous in the business of some of these supreme and pompous dignitaries of an infant settlement, the inhabitants of which lived in log cabins scattered through the wilderness. The Court of the Admiral had cognisance of shipping and trade; the Chamberlain’s, of pedigrees, festivals, sports, and ceremonies; the Chancellor’s, of state affairs and license of printing; the Constable’s, of war; the Chief Justice’s, of ordinary judicial questions; the High Steward’s, of public works; the Treasurer’s, of finance.

“All these courts united,” says the excellent historian Hildreth, “were to compose a grand council of fifty members, in whom was vested exclusively the right of proposing laws, which required, however, the approval of a parliament of four estates, proprietors, landgraves, caciques, and commoners, to render them valid.

“The four estates composing the parliament were to sit in one chamber, each landgrave and cacique being entitled to a seat, but the proprietors, if they chose, to sit by deputy. Four commoners for each county were the representatives of the commons; the possession of five hundred acres being, however, requisite to qualify for a seat, and fifty acres of land to give an elective vote. The proprietaries in their separate courts had a veto on all acts.”

The people had thus no share whatever in the executive, judicial, or legislative authority.

“The four-and-twenty colonies of each county were divided into four precincts, each precinct having a local court, whence appeals were to lie to the court of Chief Justice. Juries were to decide by majority.” To plead for money or reward in any court was denounced as “base and vile,” an enactment little in accordance with the interests of the lawyer.

“None could be freemen who did not acknowledge God and the obligation of public worship. The Church of England—against the wishes of Locke, who wished to put all sects on the same footing—was to be supported by the state. Any seven freemen might, however, form a church or religious society, provided its members admitted the rightfulness of oaths—which clause at once excluded the Quakers. By another provision, every freeman of Carolina, of whatsoever opinion or religion, possessed absolute power and authority over his negro slaves.”

This “Grand Model Constitution,” which was extravagantly praised in England, was signed in March, 1670, and Monk, Duke of Albemarle, as the oldest of the proprietaries, was appointed Palatine.

Whilst this pompous scheme of legislature was occupying the wisest heads in England, three vessels conveyed out emigrants, at the expense of £12,000 to the proprietaries, under the command of William Sayle, who established themselves on the old site of Port Royal.

The grand aristocratical constitution was sent over in due form to Carolina, but neither was it found more suitable at Albemarle, in the north, than by Sayle’s colony in the south. The character of the people of Albemarle rendered its introduction impossible; “those sturdy dwellers in scattered log cabins of the wilderness could not be noblemen, and would not be serfs.” This unfortunate constitution, which made John Locke a landgrave, and the noble proprietaries in succession palatines, led to a long and fruitless struggle of its founders to force upon the settlers a form of government incompatible with their circumstances, and from which they had nothing to gain, but everything to lose. The contest continued for three-and-twenty years, when the Grand Model, baseless as a fabric of mist, was formally abrogated.

About the time when the new constitution was first exciting the derision and abhorrence of the sturdy Nonconformists of Albemarle, distinguished ministers among the Quakers travelled from Virginia into North Carolina, and were received “tenderly” by a people naturally religious, but among whom, at that time, was no minister of Christ. Unlike the Puritans of Massachusetts, they warmly welcomed these later apostles of religious and civil liberty; and whilst they sturdily rejected a form of government which was at variance with all their principles of social and political life, received gladly “the authority of truth,” and so the “Society of Friends” were the first to organise a religious government in this portion of America.

In the autumn of 1672, George Fox himself visited Carolina, travelling across “the great bogs” of the Dismal Swamp, “commonly, as he relates, wet to the knees, and lying abroad at nights in the woods by a fire, until reaching a house where the woman had the sense of God upon her, he was indulged in the luxury of a mat to lie upon by the fireside.”

Carolina, like Rhode Island, was a place of refuge for schismatics of all kinds, who now “lived lonely in the woods, with great dogs to guard their houses;” men and women of thoughtful minds “open to the conviction of truth,” and who received the preachings and teachings of George Fox and his brethren with great joy; and not only they of the poorer sort, but the richer and more influential inhabitants of the province, heard him gladly and received him as an honoured guest to their houses.

The plantations of that day, we are told, lay along the bay and the rivers that flow into it, and these and the inlets were the highways of Carolina; therefore we find George Fox and his friends taken, on one occasion, in a boat lent them by a kind-hearted man, a captain of the country, to the house of the governor, who, with his wife, received them very lovingly, and the next morning accompanied them courteously two miles through the woods to the water’s edge, and so on to the house of Joseph Scot, one of the representatives of the county, where they had “a sound and precious meeting, and the people were very tender.” Again, he was at the house of the secretary, to arrive at which, however, they had “much ado, for the water was shallow and the boat could not come ashore, but the secretary’s wife, he being from home, seeing their strait, put out in her little canoe and brought them to land.” These little touches of life and character are worth pages of laboured description; they show the spirit of the people; they show the joy with which Fox and his friends were welcomed, when the wife of the chief secretary herself paddled her little canoe to bring them safely on shore. It is a genuine picture of simple primeval life. And not alone did George Fox preach to the white settlers of “the light of the Spirit of God which is in every one,” but to the natives of the wilderness also, who approved of what he said, and “received the truth lovingly; the Indian priests themselves sitting soberly among the people listening to the words that were spoken.”

Willing disciples of George Fox, as the people of North Carolina proved themselves to be, were sure to protest against and oppose a constitution like that of Shaftesbury and Locke. The introduction of it was not only difficult, but was soon rendered impossible, by the accession of dissenters from England, and so-called “runaways, rogues, and rebels” from Virginia, who, on the suppression of an insurrection there, of which we shall speak anon, fled daily to Carolina as their common place of refuge. Another cause of dissatisfaction with the English government, and of constant irritation, was the enforcement of the Navigation Laws. The population of the whole state as yet, in 1677, amounted to little more than 4,000; “a few fat cattle, a little maize, and 800 hogsheads of tobacco, formed all their exports,” and the few foreign articles which they required were brought to them by the traders of Boston. Yet, small as this traffic was, it was envied by the English merchants; the Navigation Law was ordered to be strictly enforced, the New England trader was driven from their harbour by unreasonable duties, and the Carolinians themselves had no other free market for their few exports than England. Miller, a man who had already become extremely unpopular, returned from England to Carolina, as chief magistrate and collector of the royal customs, empowered to levy one penny on every pound weight of tobacco exported to New England. But spite of this, and spite of attempts to excite ill-feeling between the two colonies, Carolina continued to trade with Boston, and the traffic grew in defiance of imposts, which only served to render both colonies more determined and more averse to the parent state.

The attempts at enforcing the Navigation Laws hastened an insurrection, which was fostered by the refugees from Virginia and the men of New England, and which justified itself by the publication of the first American manifesto. The threefold grievances of the colony were stated herein to be—excessive taxation; the abridgment of political liberty by the altered form of government, with the denial of a free election of an assembly; and the unwise interruption of the natural channels of commerce. The head of this insurrection was John Culpepper, a man stigmatised by the English party as one “who deserved hanging, for endeavouring to set the poor to plunder the rich.” The whole body of the settlers was insurgent; Miller, the chief object of their hatred, and seven proprietary deputies, were arrested and imprisoned, courts of justice established and a parliament called. With a popular government, anarchy was at an end; though, when the new governor Eastchurch arrived, none would acknowledge his authority. The following year, Culpepper and another were sent to England, to negotiate a compromise with the proprietaries and to obtain the recal of Miller.

Miller, however, and his companions having escaped from prison, met the deputies in England, and as the supporters of the Navigation Laws were sustained by a powerful interest there, Culpepper when about to embark for America was arrested in his turn on the charge of interrupting the collection of duties and their embezzlement. He demanded his trial in Carolina, where the act was committed. “Let no favour be shown,” cried the adverse party; and he was brought to trial. Shaftesbury, however, then in the zenith of his popularity, appeared on his behalf, declaring, “that there never had been a regular government in Albermarle; that its disorders were only feuds among the planters, which could not amount to treason,”—and he was acquitted.

On the acquittal of Culpepper, the proprietaries found themselves in a difficult position. After looking at the question in every point of view, excepting that which was simple and straightforward, “they resolved,” says Chalmers, in his “Political Annals of Carolina,” “to govern in future according to that portion of obedience which the insurgents should be disposed to yield.” The wise exclaiming, in the language of prediction, that a government actuated by such principles cannot possibly be of long continuance.

Means were now employed to heal former disorders; and upon members of the insurgent party high offices in the state were conferred. The proprietaries bade them “settle order among themselves,” and they did so, by establishing “a wise moderation in government,” though some charge, it is true, stands against them, of a persecuting spirit towards their political opponents.

Mild as had appeared the temper of the proprietaries, it seemed, however, as if they had determined severely to punish the offending colony, when in 1683 they sent over Seth Sothel as governor. Sothel, like Cranfield in New Hampshire, was an adventurer, whose aim being the acquisition of wealth, he had no conscience as to the means by which it was acquired. He appears, by the report of all parties, to have been of that scoundrel class by which human nature is degraded. He was himself one of the eight proprietaries, and he accepted office merely for sordid purposes. “The annals of delegated authority,” says Chalmers, “have not recorded a name so deserving of infamy as that of Sothel. Bribery, extortion, injustice, rapacity, with breach of trust and disobedience of orders, are the crimes of which he was accused during the five years that he misruled this unhappy colony. Driven almost to despair, the inhabitants at length seized his person, in 1688, in order to send him to England to answer their complaints.” On his entreaties, however, with a moderation which is highly creditable to their Christian power of forbearance, he was permitted to meet their accusations at the next assembly. Sothel fled, fearing less to face the men whom he had injured, than they whose interests he had betrayed. The assembly gave judgment against him in all the above particulars, and compelled him to abjure the country for twelve months and the government for ever. The proprietaries, though they heard with indignation of the sufferings which Sothel had inflicted on the colony, were yet displeased that the colony through its assembly had assumed supreme power, which act was regarded as “prejudicial to the prerogative of the crown, and to the honour of the proprietaries.”

Well, however, was it for North Carolina that she thus took the law into her own hands; tranquillity was restored. Mighty changes were in the meantime taking place in England; the Revolution of 1688 was overturning not only political parties, but the very constitution itself. But neither the strife of parties; nor the removal of the crown from one royal head to another, mattered in North Carolina; where, at length, peace and prosperity were established. “The settlers of North Carolina,” we are told, “began now to enjoy to their hearts’ content liberty of conscience and personal independence, the freedom of the forest and the river. The country of itself was of the most agreeable character. From almost every plantation they enjoyed the noble prospect of spacious rivers, of pleasant meadows, of primeval forests, where the loftiest branches of the tulip-tree or magnolia were wreathed with jessamines and honeysuckles. For them the wild bee stored its honey in hollow trees; for them, unnumbered swine fattened on the fruits of the forest, or the heaps of peaches; for them, spite of their careless lives and imperfect husbandry, cattle multiplied on the pleasant savannahs; and they desired no greater happiness than they enjoyed. North Carolina was settled by the freest of the free; they were not so much caged in the woods as scattered in lonely granges. There was neither city nor township; there was hardly even a hamlet, or one house within sight of another; nor were there roads, except as the paths from house to house were distinguished by notches on the trees. The settlers were gentle in their tempers, of serene minds, enemies to violence and bloodshed. Not all the successive revolutions had kindled vindictive feelings; the charities of life were scattered at their feet like the flowers on their meadows; and the spirit of humanity maintained its influence in the Arcadia, as royalist writers will have it, of rogues and rebels in the paradise of Quakers.”^[6]

We have already related how, in 1670, the year in which the Grand Model Constitution was signed, a company of emigrants were sent out, at the expense of £12,000 to the proprietaries, under the command of William Sayle, a military officer and Presbyterian, who, twenty years before, had attempted to plant a colony in the Bahama Isles, under the somewhat unintelligible title of an Eleutheria, and who, mere latterly, had been employed by the proprietaries in exploring the coasts of their province. These emigrants were accompanied by Joseph West, as commercial agent of the proprietaries, authorised to supply the settlers with provisions, cattle, implements and all other necessaries; a trade being commenced for this purpose with Virginia, Bermuda and Barbadoes.

The vessels containing the infant colony, which was intended to be constituted according to the Grand Model, entered the harbour of Port Royal, on the shores of which, a century before, the Huguenots had erected their fort—the early Carolina—and of which even yet, some traces remained. The country around Port Royal, like that occupied by the early New England settlers, was in a great measure depopulated of natives, partly by an epidemic, and partly by sanguinary wars among themselves; therefore but little apprehension was entertained from this quarter; besides which, the good will of the neighbouring tribes was secured by presents. Each settler was to receive 150 acres of land, and the district thus taken possession of was called Carteret County.

It was soon discovered, as was to be expected, that the Grand Model was far too complex a system of government even for this settlement sent out by the proprietaries themselves; “yet, desiring to come as nigh to it as possible,” says Chalmers, “five persons were immediately elected by the freeholders, and five others chosen by the proprietaries, who were to form a grand council, and these, with the governor and twenty delegates elected by the people, composed a parliament which was invested with legislative power. Such was the government which South Carolina chose for herself, coming as nigh to the prescribed rules laid down for her as she saw convenient and fitting.”

Scarcely had Sayle thus far fulfilled his office, when he fell a victim to the effects of the climate, and died. Sir John Yeamans succeeded him, and Clarendon county, in consequence, was annexed to Carteret. The same year, 1671, the settlement removed from Port Royal to the banks of the Ashley River, “for the convenience of pasturage and tillage,” and upon the neck of the peninsula then called Oyster Point, between that river and the Cooper—both thus called in honour of Shaftesbury—the foundation of Charleston, destined to be the capital of the Southern States, was laid by the settlement there of a few graziers’ cabins. The situation thus chosen, though full of natural beauty—the primeval forest, as we are told, sweeping down to the river’s edge, laden with yellow jessamine, the perfume of which filled the air—was not salubrious. The place for many years indeed was considered so unhealthy during the hot months of the year, that people fled from it at that time as from the pestilence. But the clearing away of the woods, probably, and the draining of the soil, so far altered its character in this respect, that it is now rather singularly healthy than otherwise.

Spite of the shortcomings of the settlement as regarded the Grand Model, Governor Yeamans was created landgrave, and Albemarle being dead, Lord Berkeley had become palatine. Yeamans introduced negro slavery, bringing with him a cargo of slaves from Barbadoes. The heat of the climate rendered labour difficult to the whites, and from its first settlement, South Carolina was a slave state; besides which, these settlers seem to have been somewhat an improvident and shiftless set of people, deriving their supplies for several years from the proprietaries, for which, though obtained as purchases, they appear never to have paid; complaining bitterly when the proprietaries, objecting naturally enough to supply them on these terms, declared that “they would no longer continue to feed and to clothe them.” To such men it would soon become an object to possess negro slaves, without which, it was early said, “a planter can never do any great matter.” The climate of South Carolina was not only congenial to the negro, but, as we have seen, the temper of the people made them willingly avail themselves of slave-labour, and very soon the slave population far outnumbered the whites.

The management of Sir John, or Landgrave Yeamans not being by any means satisfactory to the proprietaries, nor yet to the colony, he was recalled in 1674, and Joseph West, whose conduct had been perfectly so to all parties, was appointed governor and created landgrave, and to him the proprietaries made over as salary their outstanding claims against the colony—the surest means of trying his popularity. Nevertheless, we find, at the end of ten years, that “he received the whole product of his traffic, as the reward of his services, without any impeachment of his morals.”

The proprietaries, seeing the character of the emigrants they had sent over, encouraged settlers from the New England and the northern colonies; and with a desire to promote the advantage of the industrious, sent over further supplies, informing the colony, however, that they must be paid, being determined “to make no more desperate debts.”

The fame of the beautiful land of South Carolina, “the region where every month had its succession of flowers,” soon led to the attempt to introduce and cultivate the olive, the orange, the mulberry for the production of the silk-worm, and vines for the production of wine. Charles II. himself sent over to the colony two small vessels with these plants, and Protestants from the South of France for their cultivation; he also exempted the province from the payment of duties on these commodities for a limited time, which caused dissatisfaction at home, and the remonstrance against “encouraging people to remove to the plantations, as too many go thither already to the unpeopling and ruin of the kingdom.” Emigrants continued to come over from England, and these of various classes, not only impoverished cavaliers and discontented churchmen, but the soundest element for colonisation, sturdy dissenters, to whom their native land no longer afforded a secure abode. Among other companies of emigrants, were a considerable number from Somersetshire, who accompanied Joseph Blake, the brother of the celebrated admiral, now dead. Blake was himself no longer young, but unable to endure the present oppressions of England, and dreading still worse from a popish successor to the crown, devoted the whole of the vast fortune he had inherited from his brother to the purposes of emigration. A colony of Irish went over, under Ferguson, and soon amalgamated with the population. Lord Cardross also took over a company of brave Scotch exiles, who had suffered grievously at home for their religion—men who had been thumb-screwed and tortured for conscience-sake, but they, having established themselves at Port Royal, fell victims to the animosity of the Spaniards, who claimed that portion of the district as appertaining to St. Augustine, and consequently destroyed their settlement. Many returned to Scotland; the rest, like the Irish, became blended with the original colonists.

From France also came great numbers of the best and noblest of her people, men and women of whom she was not worthy, forced from their country by the severity of laws which placed truth, sincerity and uprightness before God and man, on a par with treason and murder. Louis XIV., an old debauchee, sought to atone for a life of profligacy by converting the Huguenots to the Catholic faith, even at the point of the sword; their native land was made intolerable to them, and they sought for peace by flight and voluntary exile. But flight and exile were no longer permitted to them; to leave their native land was made felony. Tyranny however, is powerless against the human will based on the rights of conscience; and spite of the prohibitions of law, the persecuted Calvinists fled in thousands to that happy land beyond the Atlantic, the noblest privilege of which has ever been, that it furnished a safe asylum to the truehearted and the conscientious of every European land, and where men might worship their Maker according to the dictates of their own souls. These refugees were warmly welcomed to New England and New York, but the mild congenial climate of South Carolina was more attractive to the exiles of France.

At the risk of prolonging somewhat this portion of our history, we must be permitted to give an extract from the narrative of Judith Manigault, the young wife of one of the exiles. It was felony, it must be remembered, to leave their native land; therefore, says she, “we quitted home by night, leaving the soldiers in their beds, and abandoning the house with its furniture. We contrived to hide ourselves for ten days at Romans, in Dauphiny, while a search was made for us, but our faithful hostess would not betray us.” They reached the shore by a circuitous journey through Germany and Holland, and thence to England, in the depth of winter. “Embarking at London,” says the narrative, “we were sadly off.” The spotted fever appeared on board the vessel, and many died of the disease, among the rest our aged mother. We touched at Bermuda, where the vessel was seized. Our money was all spent; with great difficulty we procured a passage in another vessel. After our arrival in Carolina, we suffered every kind of evil. In eighteen months our eldest brother, unaccustomed to the hard labour which we were obliged to undergo, died of a fever. Since leaving France we have experienced every kind of affliction—disease, pestilence, famine, poverty, hard labour—and have been six months without tasting bread, working the ground like slaves; indeed, I myself have passed three or four years without having it when I wanted it. “Yet,” adds she, in a noble spirit of resignation, “God has done great things in enabling us to bear up under so many trials.”

This family of Manigault was but one of many who escaped to Carolina, and all had the same sad story, or even worse, to tell. Hither came these fugitives from the most beautiful and fertile regions of France,—“men,” says Bancroft eloquently, “who had all the virtues of the English Puritans without their bigotry, to the land to which the tolerant benevolence of Shaftesbury had invited the believers of every creed. From a land, which had suffered its king to drive half a million of its best citizens into exile, they came to the land which was the hospitable refuge of the oppressed; where superstition and fanaticism, infidelity and faith, cold speculation and animated zeal, were alike admitted without question.” In this chosen home of their exile, lands were assigned to them, on the banks of the Cooper River, and there they soon established their homes. Their church was in Charleston, and “thither,” says the same historian, who so keenly feels every beautiful trait of humanity, “on the Lord’s-day, gathered from their plantations on the banks of the river, and taking advantage of the ebb and flow of tide, they might regularly be seen, parents with their children, whom no bigot could wrest from them, making their way along the river, through scenes so tranquil that the silence was broken only by the rippling of the oars, and the hum of the flourishing villages that gemmed the confluence of the rivers. Other Huguenot emigrants established themselves on the south bank of the Santee.” Thus was the original scheme of the Huguenot colonisation on this very soil, as entertained by Coligny, at length accomplished, although a century later.

Liberal as was the Grand Model constitution as regarded religious toleration, the spirit of the settlers was not equal to it in this respect. The Huguenot colonists were not cordially received by them; persecution was impossible, but hospitality was withheld; and though they formed the most industrious, useful and sterling portion of the population, it was many years before they were allowed the rights of fellow-citizenship. As a striking instance out of many showing the noble character of these emigrants, we may mention that, “when the great struggle for American independence took place, the son of this Judith Manigault intrusted the large fortune he had then acquired to the service of the country which had received his exiled family.”

The province of South Carolina was divided, in 1683, into three counties: Colleton, including the district around Port Royal; Berkeley, embracing Charleston and its vicinity; and Craven; the district formerly Clarendon, towards Cape Fear, the earliest settlement of the whole. But Berkeley only as yet was sufficiently populous to afford a county-court.

West, who governed to the contentment of the settlers, failed to give satisfaction to the proprietaries, and was superseded, in 1683, by Moreton, a relative of Blake, and who was also created landgrave; the next year, however, West was re-elected; a new governor was then sent from England, but he died, and West remained in office; a second governor came over, but he was soon deposed by the proprietaries, in consequence of favouring the buccaneers, and Moreton again resumed office. In six years the head of the government was changed five times.

The relationship between the colonists and the proprietaries increased in difficulty every succeeding year. There was little that was straightforward on either side, and where either apparently wished to do right, they were counteracted by the other. For instance, the proprietaries opposed and remonstrated against the practice of the settlers, to carry on partisan war with the neighbouring Indians for the purpose of kidnapping and selling them as slaves in the West Indies; but the settlers persisted in it; nay, even Governor West himself was accused of connivance at this barbarous practice. The payment of debts which had been contracted out of the province could not be enforced; nor would the more populous districts of Charleston, where the members of assembly were elected, allow to the other provinces the same privilege, when population extended, which they themselves enjoyed. There was a lamentable want of high moral principle among these earlier settlers of South Carolina.

Another serious charge against them is, the favour which they showed to the buccaneers. “These remarkable freebooters,” says Hildreth, “a mixture of French, English and Dutch, consisted originally of adventurers in the West India seas, whose establishments the Spaniards had broken up. Some fifty or sixty years before, contemporaneously with the English and French settlements on the Caribbee Islands, they had commenced as occasional cruisers on a small scale against the Spaniards, in the intervals of the planting season. During the long war between France and Spain, from 1635 to 1660, they had obtained commissions to cruise against Spanish commerce, principally from the governors of the French West India Islands. Almost anything, indeed, in the shape of a commission was enough to serve their purpose. As an offset to that Spanish arrogance which had claimed to exclude all other nations from these West Indian seas, the Spanish commerce in those seas was regarded by all other nations as fair plunder. The means and number of the buccaneers gradually increased. The unquiet spirits of all countries resorted to them. Issuing from their strongholds, the island of Tortugo, on the west coast of St. Domingo, and Port Royal in Jamaica, they committed such audacious and successful robberies on the Spanish American cities, as to win almost the honours of legitimate heroes. They were countenanced for a time by France and England; one of their leaders was appointed governor of Jamaica, and another was knighted by Charles II.”

Charles, spite of the favour he had shown to the buccaneer chief, was compelled however, by treaties with his allies and by the complaints of his own subjects, whose commerce was injured by these illegal traders, to use his most strenuous endeavours to put an end to them; and his successor was even still more in earnest. In 1684, a law was passed against pirates, which was confirmed by the proprietaries of South Carolina, and their commands issued, that it should be rigorously enforced within their jurisdiction. But this was not an easy matter. The colonists not only favoured the bold buccaneer, who brought abundance of Spanish gold and silver into their country, but they were irritated against the Spaniards, who, justly perhaps, incensed by the English encroachments on their borders, had destroyed the Scotch settlement at Port Royal, and were glad of any means to make reprisals. Little attention therefore was paid by the English to the suppression of piracy. “The pirates,” says Hewitt, in his history of South Carolina, “had already by their money, their gallant manners, and their freedom of intercourse with the people, so ingratiated themselves into the public favour, that it would have been no easy matter to bring them to trial, and dangerous even to have punished them as they deserved. When brought to trial, the courts of law became scenes of altercation, discord and confusion. Bold and seditious speeches were made from the bar in contempt of the proprietaries and their government. Since no pardons could be obtained, but such as they authorised the governor to grant, the assembly violently proposed a bill of indemnity, and when the governor refused his assent to this measure, they made a law empowering magistrates and judges to put in force the habeas corpus act of England. Hence it happened that several of those pirates escaped, purchased lands from the colonists, and took up their residence in the country. While money flowed into the colony by this channel, the authority of government was too feeble a barrier to stem the tide and prevent such illegal practices.” The very proprietaries themselves at length, to gratify the people, granted an indemnity to all the pirates, excepting in one case, where the plunder had been from the dominions of the Great Mogul. Very justly does this historian remark, “that the gentleness of government towards these public robbers, and the civility and friendship with which they were treated by the people, were evidences of the licentious spirit which prevailed in the colony.” And not only an evidence of this, but of the enmity which existed towards the Spaniards; so great indeed was this enmity, that but for the earnest remonstrances of the proprietaries, which in this case were regarded, they would have invaded Florida to drive the Spaniards thence, and that even while the two nations were at peace.

Affairs became still more and more difficult; and in 1685, James II. meditated a revocation of the charter itself. The Palatine Court, wishful not to offend the king at this critical moment, and to satisfy the English merchants who were jealous of the trade of South Carolina, ordered the governor and council to use their diligence in collecting the duty on tobacco transported to other colonies, and to seize all ships that presumed to trade contrary to the acts of navigation. But vain were these orders, which they had no power to enforce. The colonists resisted every attempt of this kind, disregarding the dictates of the proprietaries, and holding themselves independent almost of the English monarch.

At a loss how to manage in these perplexed circumstances, and imagining that the fault existed in the governor as well as in the people, the proprietaries resolved to remedy one error at least, by sending out James Colleton, brother of the proprietary, who, to sustain his dignity of governor-landgrave, should be endowed with 48,000 acres of land. This was like the reasoning of the founders of the Grand Model, with whom “the aristocracy was the rock of English principles,” and “the object of law the preservation of property.” Colleton arrived, armed with all the dignity that could be conferred upon his office, intending to awe the people into submission; and his first act was to come into direct collision with the colonial parliament. A majority of the members refused to obey the Grand Model constitution, and these men were excluded by him from the house, as “sapping the very foundations of government.” All returned to their several homes, spreading discontent and disaffection wherever they came. A new parliament was called, and only such members were elected to it as “would oppose every measure of the governor.” He next attempted to collect the quit-rents due to the proprietaries; but here again direct opposition met him: the people, in a state of insurrection, seized upon the public records and imprisoned the secretary of the province. Colleton not knowing how to deal with such refractory elements, pretended danger from the Indians or Spaniards; and calling out the militia, declared the province under martial law. A more unwise step could not have been taken: for men of their temper were just as likely to use their arms against a ruler whom they at once despised and disliked, as against the general enemy. Any further step in folly was saved him. The English Revolution took place; William and Mary were proclaimed, and, as if in imitation of the mother-country, Colleton was impeached by the assembly and banished the province.

Political convulsions, however, were not wholly at an end; for in the midst of the ferment, the infamous Seth Sothel, whom we have seen banished from North Carolina, suddenly made his appearance in Charleston, and thinking, probably, that this was a people kindred to himself, seized the reins of government, and for some little time found actually a faction to support him. But he was too bad even for South Carolina. After two years’ rule, he was not only deposed by the people, but censured severely and recalled by the proprietaries, who, though he was still a member of their own body, treated him as “a usurper of office.”

A new governor, Philip Ludwell, was appointed, with orders to “inquire into the grievances complained of and to inform them what was best to be done;” and in this respect they had at last discovered the true dignity of the governor. A general pardon was granted, and in April, 1693, “the Grand Model constitution” was abrogated, the proprietaries wisely conceding, “that as the people have declared they would rather be governed by the powers granted by the charter, without regard to the fundamental constitutions, it will be for their quiet, and the protection of the well-disposed, to grant their request.”

The remark of Chalmers is just, that “the Carolinian annals show all projectors the vanity of attempting to make laws for a people whose voice, proceeding from their principles, must be for ever the supreme law;” adding further, “it was not till the Carolinas, North and South, were blessed with a simple form of government, that they began to prosper; when the one acquired the manufacture of naval stores, the other the production of rice and indigo, which have made both, in modern times, populous, wealthy and great.”