ing parties, and also having displayed a friendly disposition towards the Spaniards in Florida, Archdale appointed Joseph Blake, a nephew of the famous admiral, as governor, and the next year returned to England. Not long before, a vessel from Madagascar, on her homeward voyage to Britain, happening to touch at Charleston, the captain presented the governor with a bag of seed rice, which he said he had seen growing in eastern countries, where it was deemed excellent food, and yielded a prodigious increase. Cultivated at first more as a curiosity than with any definite expectation of the result, it soon grew to be esteemed a most important staple. Hence," says Mr. Bancroft, "the opulence of the colony; hence also, its swarms of negro slaves. The profits of the rice fields tempted the planter to enlarge his domains, and Africa furnished laborers." 1704. 66 Although the majority of the colonists were Dissenters, yet in 1704, by a very small majority, they were disfranchised, and the monopoly of political power bestowed upon the Church of England. Archdale opposed the bill in the court of proprietaries, but through Lord Granville's efforts it was sanctioned: two years later, on application to the queen, the intollerant acts were declared null and void, and in November, 1706, so far as political privileges were concerned, they were repealed by the Colonial Assembly: the Church of England nevertheless was established as the religion of the province. Angry strifes ensued, and turbulence and popular 1706. excitements were not uncommon. Still the period was one of prosperity and exemption from the trials to which other colonies were exposed. A graphic picture is drawn by Mr. Bancroft of the State of North Carolina, "the sanctuary of runaways," where 66 1706 1710. 1712. every one did what was right in his own eyes, paying tribute neither to God nor to Cæsar;" and of the effort made under Robert Daniel, the deputy governor, to establish the Church of England among such a people as 1704. this. Of course the effort was abortive; anarchy ensued; the two parties were arrayed one against the other; each party had its governor; each elected its House of Representatives. The Quakers to determined to resist the operation of what they deemed injustice; and notwithstanding the governor of Virginia was asked to interfere with a military force, the malcontents were unterrified, and persisted in their attitude of defiance. But the attention of the whole province was soon engrossed by a war with the Tuscarora Indians. These, enraged by what they deemed a trespass on their land, proceeded to revenge themselves in the usual manner of savages. The Quakers in North Carolina refused to bear arms; South Carolina sent some aid; but the yellow fever breaking out, the inhabitants fled in terror and distress from the ravages of disease, and the inroads of the Indians. The next winter-1713-a force of militia and Indians from South Carolina, subdued the Tuscaroras, and some eight hundred prisoners were sold into 1713. CH. IV.] EXPEDITION AGAINST ST. AUGUSTINE. slavery. The balance of the tribe escaped, and made their way northward, where they were at last received as a sixth tribe in the confederacy of the Five Nations. 1702. A rupture having taken place in 1702, between England and Spain, the attention of the colony was directed to a different object, which afforded Governor Moore an opportunity of exercising his military talents, and a prospect of enriching himself by Spanish plunder or Indian captives. He proposed to the Assembly, whose cupidity was easily excited, an expedition against the Spanish settlement at St. Augustine. Many applauded the proposal, but men of cool reflection doubted the expediency of the measure. A large majority of the Assembly, however, declared in favor of the expedition, and a sum of £2,000 sterling was voted for the service of the war. Six hundred Indians were engaged, who, being fond of warlike exploits, gladly accepted of arms and ammunition offered them for their aid and assistance. Six hundred provincial militia were raised, and schooners and merchant ships were impressed for transports to carry the forces. Port Royal was fixed upon as the place of general rendezvous, whence the expedition sailed in September. In the plan of operations, it had been agreed that Colonel Daniel, who was an officer of spirit, should go by the inland passage with a party of militia and Indians, and attack the town by land, while the governor should proceed to support him by sea. Daniel was quite successful, having arrived first and plundered 195 the town; but the Spaniards having laid up provisions for four months in the castle, on his approach they retired to it, with all their money and most valuable effects. Upon the arrival of Moore, the place was invested with a force against which the Spaniards could not contend, and they therefore kept themselves shut up in their stronghold. The governor, finding it impossible to dislodge them without additional artillery, sent a sloop to Jamaica for cannon, bombs, and mortars. While he was waiting the return of the vessel, the Spaniards at Havana, having received information of this sudden attack, sent two ships, the one of twenty-two guns and the other of sixteen, which presently appeared off the mouth of the harbor, and struck such a panic into Moore, that he instantly raised the siege, abandoned his ships, and made a precipitate retreat to Carolina by land; by this movement the Spaniards in the garrison were not only relieved, but the ships, provisions, and ammunition, belonging to the Carolinians, fell also into their hands. Daniel, who had command of the vessel sent to Jamaica, on his return found the siege raised, and narrowly escaped falling into the hands of the Spaniards. Moore was sharply censured for his conduct, and a debt of £6,000 sterling was entailed upon the colony in consequence. A bill was passed by the Assembly for stamping bills of credit to answer the public expense, which were to be sunk in three years, by a duty laid upon liquors, skins, and furs. This was the first paper money issued in Carolina, and for some years it remained ever, there were not more than a thousand two hundred men fit to bear arms, but as the town had several forts into which the inhabitants might retreat, Gov. Craven resolved to march with this small force into the woods against the enemy. He proclaimed martial law, and laid an embargo on all ships, to prevent either men or provisions from leaving the country. He obtained an act of Assembly, empowering him to impress men, and seize arms, ammunition, and stores, wherever they were to be found, to arm such trusty negroes as might prove serviceable in this conjuncture, and to prosecute the war with vigor. New York and Virginia sent some military stores, and North Carolina lent such aid as was in her Advancing warily, Craven came upon the Indians at Saltcatchers, where they were encamped. Here a bloody en power. Scarcely had North Carolina recovered from the Indian devastations when South Carolina was exposed to similar calamity. For some time past the Indian tribes had been laying their plans to extirpate the whites, and the combination extended from the tribes in Florida to those in the neighborhood of Cape Fear. The day before the Yemassees began their work of blood, deep gloom was observed to have settled on their faces, and other indications of impending trouble were not wanting. The next morning, April 15th, hostilities broke out. The leaders were all out under arms, calling upon their followers, and pro-gagement took place, in which the claiming aloud designs of vengeance. The young men, burning with fury and passion, flew to their arms, and in a few hours, massacred above ninety persons in Pocotaligo town and the neighboring plantations; and many more must have fallen a sacrifice on Port Royal Island, had they not providentially been warned of their danger. 1715. The Yemassees, spreading desolation and ruin on every side, and driving the planters to take refuge in Charleston, were soon joined by the Catawbas, the Cherokees, and the Creeks, all of them a short time before allies of the Carolinians in the war against the Tuscaroras. The Indians, so far as could be ascertained, were some six or seven thousand strong. In Charleston, how white men were victorious. The Yemassees were driven out and retired to Florida, and a year or so afterwards peace was concluded with the other tribes. Several hundred inhabitants lost their lives in this war, the damages of which were estimated at £100,000, besides a debt, in bills of credit, of about the same amount. The proprietaries, though earnestly solicited, refused to afford any relief, or to pay any portion of the debt. 1716. The Assembly, therefore, determined to remunerate the colony, by disposing of the land from which the Indians had been driven. The terms offered were so favorable, that five hundred Irishmen inmediately came over, and planted themselves on the CH. IV.] 1718. INSURRECTION AGAINST PROPRIETARY AUTHORITY. frontiers. The proprietaries, most unwisely as well as unjustly, refused to sanction the proceedings of the Assembly, and deprived these emigrants of their lands. Reduced to extreme poverty, some perished from want, while others resorted to the northern colonies; and thus a strong barrier between the old settlements and the savages was removed, and the country again exposed to their incursions. The people were exasperated, and longed for a change of masters; and the corrupt and oppressive conduct of Trott, the chief justice, and Rhett, the receivergeneral, increased the discontent. Of the former, the governor and Council complained to the proprietaries, and asked for his removal; but the authorities at home refused. Johnson, the governor, was ordered to dissolve the Assembly, which he did, despite the excited state of the public mind. The newly-chosen representatives, elected in December, declined to act as an Assembly, and assumed the character of a revolutionary convention. Johnson refusing to join them, the members of the Convention selected Colonel James Moore to govern the colony in the king's name, and entered into an association for common defence, as well against the Spaniards as the proprietaries. An agent was sent to England in behalf of the colonists, and after a hearing, legal process was taken for vacating the Carolina charter; pending this process the administration of South Carolina was assumed by the Crown. 1719. 1720. Sir Francis Nicholson came out to South Carolina with a commission as 197 provisional royal governor. Taught 1722. 1729. 1734. North Carolina had not joined in the insurrection against proprietary authority. Some years afterwards, however, the proprietaries of the province made an arrangement by which they sold out their rights to the crown, for about £22,000. Robert Johnson was appointed royal governor of South Carolina; and Burrington, who had been in disgrace previously, was reappointed to the same office in North Carolina. Burrington was succeeded, in 1734, by Gabriel Johnston. The president of the Council, William Bull, succeeded Broughton, in South Carolina, in 1737. In the early part of 1730, Sir Alexander Cumming was sent out to effect an amicable arrangement with the Cherokees for peacable settlement on the lands near the Savannah River. Cumming was successful in his mission, and a treaty was drawn up by which the sovereignty of the king was acknowledged and privileges of settlement in the Indian territories freely accorded. The Cherokees, in consequence of this treaty, for many years remained in a state of perfect friendship and peace with the colonists, who with the colonists, who followed their various employments in the neighborhood of those Indians without the least terror or molestation. The Carolinas now attracted considerable attention, and their population was increased by accessions from several of the states of Europe. Encouraged by the assurances and the arrangements of their countryman, John Peter Pury, a native of Neufchatel, in Switzerland, one hundred and seventy persons emigrated with him to this province, and not long after they were joined by two hundred more. The governor, according to agreement, allotted forty thousand acres of land for the use of the Swiss settlement on the north-east side of the Savannah River; and a town was marked out for their accommodation, which he called Purysburgh, from the name of the principal promoter of the settlement. These settlers, however, felt very severely the change of climate, to which many of their lives fell a sacrifice; and for some years the survivors deeply regretted the voluntary banishment to which they had subjected themselves. In the same year, according to a plan that had been recently adopted in England, for the more speedy population and settlement of Carolina, eleven townships were marked out on the sides of rivers, in square plats, each consisting of twenty thousand acres. Two of these townships were laid out on the Alatamaha; two on the Savannah; two on the Santee; one on the Pedee; one on the Wacamaw; one on the Wateree; and one on Black River. The lands in these townships were divided into shares of fifty acres for each man, woman, and child, who should come over to occupy and improve them. In 1737, multitudes of laborers and husbandmen in Ireland, unable to procure a comfortable subsistence for their families in their native land, embarked for Carolina. The first colony of Irish, receiving a grant of lands near the Santee River, formed a settlement, which was called Williamsburgh. 1737. 1738. 1740. The following year, a party of slaves made an insurrection in South Carolina, which, however, was easily subdued. Jealous of Spanish influence, and coveting the great wealth of Spanish towns and ships, the Carolinas joined in enterprises against the Spaniards; but the one in 1740, against St. Augustine, was unsuccessful. In North Carolina the question of the quit-rents continued to be productive of discord, and the officers of the crown were for years unpaid. The matter was, however, arranged in 1748. Notwithstanding difficulties and trials of various descriptions, the colony increased in population and wealth; and in some cases the younger members of rich families were sent to England to be educated. By and by we shall see the effect of this change brought about by the possession of wealth and leisure. |