The history of South Carolina. From its first European discovery to its erection into a republic

Front matter

Qass.

Book.

THE HISTORY

Preface

The volume here submitted to the reader, is an attempt to supply what seemed to the writer a popular desideratum. It was written fifteen years ago, and is now revised, with copious additions. It M^as originally conceived with the view to the instruction of an only daughter in the history of her birthplace. This could not be done with the existing histories. He found it no easy matter to place before her the materials necessary to /convey the desired information. He had, it is true, all the several works already devoted to this subject. The various histories of Hewatt, Drayton, Ramsay, Moultrie, etc., were all in his collection ; but volumes so cumbrous, and so loaded as they are with prolix disquisition, and unnecessary if not irrelevant detail, he felt convinced were in no respect suited to the unprepared understanding and the ardent temper of the young. These authors wrote, generally, at a period when the doctrines of popular representation, of suffrage, self-government, and many other principles, regarded as essential to the preservation of social liberty, were either of novel suggestion or very imperfectly understood. It seemed necessary, and was, therefore, proper, in that early day, that they should be discussed at length. These discussions, however, overloaded the narrations

Z PREFACE.

of the historian and impaired their interest. They were cumbered with opinions now regarded as truisms, which too greatly trespassed on the dominions of simple truth. So soon as the public mind had decided these questions, the discussions upon them necessarily sunk out of sight, and involved in their own oblivion the histories upon which they had been grafted. The latter, accordingly, ceased to be sought after, either for amusement or instruction ; and, finally, and by a natural transition, were thrust away into that general lumber-house of

" Things that on earth were lost or were abused,"

a sort of Astolfo's mansion of the moon,

" Which safely treasures up Whate'er is wasted in our earthly state — "

the upper shelves of the library — where, frowning in immemorial dust and dignity, they enjoy the time-honored epithets of "books of reference" — a classification for which their venerable writers never stipulated, and which would have very imperfectly rewarded the severe toils of elaborate authorship. - Valuable in this point of view, they are scarcely of present value in any other. To the great portion of the reading community they are entirely useless. For this reason, though long since out of print, a republication of them is considered unnecessary, and would, probably, involve in serious pecuniary loss the most cautious publisher. The late reprint of Hewatt, Archdale, and others, in the historical collections of Mr. Carroll, offers no exception to the general justice of this remark. A reluctant subscription failed to pay the expenses of printing, and but for the liberal appropriation of the state legislature, after the risk had been incurred, that enterprising young citizen might have had reason to repent the rashness of his patriotism. He certainly would have gained nothing from his publication beyond the applause which is due to his public spirit.

The cumbrousness of the works, of South Carolina history, already existing, suggests another serious obstacle to their circulation as popular volumes. They are necessarily expensive. Books for schools and for the popular reader — the two objects for which the present history is designed — must be cheap as well as compact. Strange as the fact may appear, this truth seems to have been of recent discovery. It is only 'of late days that it has been thought advisable to recognise the poor among the other classes of book-readers. A few years back, our authors labored under the ambition of bringing forth big books — corpulent quartos, if possible, but octavos at all events ; and with this ambition they seldom stopped short at a single volume. It would seem that they regarded the size of the work as no imperfect token of the writer's merit. It followed, from this ambition — an ambition which, in most cases, effectually defeated its own object — that the quantity of the material furnished but a very uncertain rule in the construction of the volume. Its dimensions being arbitrary, what was wanting in fact was supplied by conjecture, and when conjecture halted, and grew irresolute or blind, opinion came in to her relief; and, between discussion and declamation, she hobbled on through the requisite number of pages to the end of the chapter. The present age, if less ambitious, and no wiser, is certainly more economical in this respect. Small volumes, neat abridgments, and the judicious separation of subjects, not necessarily connected, into their proper classes, realizes all the natural energies of a free press, and places the learning and the wisdom of the past and the present within the reach of the humblest and the poorest of mankind.

Cheap literature to the poor is of scarcely less importance, indeed, than was the discovery of the art of printing to mankind at laro^e. The chief importance of this grand discovery, resting entirely on its power for diffusing knowledge rapidly throughout the world, it necessarily follows that the author who makes his book costly through its cumbrousness, adops a mode of publication which, to a great extent, must defeat the objects of the press. The time occupied in printing, and the expense of the work when printed, lessen greatly the infinite superiority which the modern printer possesses over the ancient scribe. We may instance the valuable work of Johnson, the life of Greene, as incurring, from its plan, some of these objections and disadvantages. That work abounds in materials which, properly classified, would have made a dozen popular volumes. In its present state, the toil of the reader is continual and great to separate the narrative from the discussion, which equally precedes and follows it — which wraps it as in a cloud, and makes it difficult for the memory to compass and retain the several remote but relevant incidents which are necessary to a true comprehension of the subject. The result is, that a work which abounds in copious details and much spirited writing, and which relates to periods of the most exciting interest in our national and domestic history, is seldom read, and almost as unfrequently referred to. And yet no work of American biography, could the author have descended to the humbler task of making an abridgment, would have more amply compensated both publisher and reader, than the same work stripped of its controversial additaments and contracted to the moderate compass of a single duodecimo.

To this work of Johnson, we acknowledge our large indebtedness. We have relied upon it in preference to all others, during that long period, crowded with fluctuating events, which followed the disastrous defeat of Gates at Camden to the close of the Revolutionary war ; and though studiously avoiding the expression of any opinion upon the vexed questions — some of them of very small importance to the result — which the venerable author was, perhaps, only too fond of discussing, we freely avow our full confidence in the general fidelity of his statements, and in his habitual desire to discover and to declare the truth.

For the account of the early settlements of the Huguenots, in and about Carolina, as contained in this volume, the simple and affecting narrative of Laudonniere in Hakluyt has been chiefly relied on. The work of Hewatt, the narrations of Archdale, Glenn, and others, contained in the " Historical Collections," and the highly useful and comprehensive sketch of South Carolina, from the first settlement to the Revolution of 1719, which we owe to the patriotism and painstaking of Professor Kives, have furnished the authorities next ensuing, down to the conflict of the colonies with parliament and the repeal of the stamp act. To Moultrie, Ramsay, Drayton, and Johnson, we owe what follows to the close of the Revolution, and the erection of South Carolina, from a rebelling colony, into an independent and republican state. These have been our chief sources of information ; though, in our progress, we have found it advisable to consult Holmes, Bancroft, Grahame, Tarleton, and several other writers.

The pretensions of the present volume are exceedingly moderate. The aim of the writer, as already expressed, has been to provide a volume for the popular reader and for the use of schools ; to supply the rising generation with such a history of the country as will enable them to satisfy their own curiosity and the inquiries of others. It is lamentable to perceive the degree of ignorance in which our people live with regard to those events which made iheir ancestors famous, and which have given them equal station and security. To say that the great majority of our young people know little or nothing of the history of the state, is to do them no injustice. We may equally charge this deficiency upon the old. This ignorance was inevitable, from the unwieldy cumbrousness and heavy cost of the volumes in which our history was locked up. To steer clear of the great errors of my predecessors, my first aim was condensation. My work, however, is much more than an abridgment. It is in ijiany respects original, especially in the suggestion of clues ; and it embodies much material which has escaped other historians, and this very material is of a kind which seems to me absolutely essential to a proper understanding of many details the import of which was confessedly obscure. Though seeking rather to be useful and sufficient than original, I have felt it a duty sometimes to be excursive, and occasionally to introduce a conjecture of my own, wherever the subjectmatter would seem to provoke a doubt or to require discussion. Circumstances, of late days, also seemed to demand that a frequent survey should be made of the general condition of the country, in order that the reader should be able, of himself, to decide upon the resources, and so properly to appreciate the responsibilities, of the state and people. All the clues to argument upon doubtful or disputed points have been indicated ; and though I have forborne unnecessary details, avoiding all prolixity, I believe that nothing has been omitted which is essential, not only to a knowledge of the history in general, but to the argument, in the elucidation of particular topics which, improperly understood, might tend to the disparagement of the chief actors, or the people of the state at large.

In the course of the narrative I have not scrupled to make occasional use of the very language of my authority, v/herever it seemed particularly comprehensive or felicitous. To place the facts in a simple form, in a just order ; to give them an expressive and energetic character ; to couple events closely, so that no irrelevant or unnecessary matter should interpose itself between the legitimate relation of cause and effect; and to be careful that the regular stream of the narrative should flow on without interruption to the end of its course, have been with me primary objects.

To the mind of the youthful reader, the advantages of such a mode of condensation appear to me of obvious importance. The unbroken progress of connected events enchains the attention and beguiles while it informs the thought, until reading ceases to be study, and instruction persuades to industry through the medium of amusement. To say how far I have been successful in this design, must be the business of the reader. To the youthful student — to the children of this growing time — I commend it as a fond, and perhaps a last, tribute from the pen of one who has rarely overlooked their claims to a loving consideration, in everything that he has written.

w. a. s.

Woodlands, S. C, November, 1859.

THE

Chapter I. Fort Charles

The Carolinas, North and South, forming twin provinces under the British dominion in America, were anciently a part of that extensive territory, known to the European world under the several names of Virginia, Florida, and New France. Still more anciently, according to tradition and old chronicles of the Northmen, the region was occupied by a race, or races, of white men, to whom, if these traditions are well-founded, we are to ascribe the tumuli, earthworks, and numerous remains of fortified places in which the whole country abounds, rather than to the nomadi red men who occupied the territory at the time of the discovery, by Columbus and other voyagers, within the modern and historical period. The province thus covered by the two Carolinas, extended northwardly along the coast, until it reached the confines of Virginia ; southwardly as far as the bay of Mexico, and stretched away, for many hundred miles, into the dense forests of the interior. Three great nations contended on grounds

1. By Avhat names were the territories of the Carolinas first known to tlie European world? 2. What was the tradition of the Northmen, as to tlie inhabitants of this region? 3. To what races are we to ascribe the ancient remains in the country? k How far on every hand did the territories of the Carolinas extend ?

1* of nearly equal justice, for tlie right to, if not the possession of the soil.

England laid claim to it, according to one class of writers, by virtue of a grant from the Roman Pontiff; by others, her right was founded upon a supposed discovery of its shores in 1497-8, by John Cabot, an Italian, and his son, Sebastian — both in the service of Henry the Seventh. The Cabots approached the continent of North America, and penetrated some of its bays and rivers, nearly fourteen months before it was beheld by Columbus ; but made no attempt at occupancy.

The pretensions of Spain were based upon similar and equally worthless grounds. Juan Ponce de Leon, under her commission, discovered and traversed a neighboring territory, to which he gave the name of Florida (1512) — a name which, in her ancient spirit of arrogant assumption, was made to cover a region of measureless extent, which she could not compass, and vainly sought to conquer. Ponce was beaten by the natives, and driven from the country in disgrace. He fled to Cuba, where he died of a wound received in his fruitless expedition.

To him succeeded one Velasquez de Ayllon, who sailed from St. Domingo with two ships (1520). He made the shores of South Carolina, at the mouth of a river, to which he gave the name of the Jordan. This river is now known by the Indian name of Combahee. Here he was received by the natives with a shy timidity at first, the natural result of their wonder at the strange ships, and strangely habited visitors. Their timidity soon subsided into kindness, and they treated the Spaniards with good nature and hospitality. The country they called Chiquola, or, as it has since been corrupted, Checora — the latter word being in most frequent use, but the former being the correct one. The red men of the South knew nothing of the letter R. This name was probably conferred upon the region by some wandering tribe, and was not of permanent recognition, since we hear of it no more from subsequent voyagers. An interchange of

5. How many nations of Europe claimed its sovereignty, and upon what grounds? 6. Forwhat power did the Cabots discover? 7. Who discovered for Spain ? 8. What were her claims? 9. What of Ponce de Leon? 10. What were his fortunes? 11. Who was Velasquez de Ayllon, and what nation did he represent? 12. What river in South Cnrolinn did he penetrate? 1?.. How was he received by the natives?

FORT CHARLES. 11

friendly offices soon took place between the red men and tlieir visitors, and the former were easily persuaded to visit the ships in numbers. Watching the moment when their decks were most crowded, the perfidious Spaniards suddenly made sail, carrying nearly two. hundred of this innocent aud confiding people into captivity.

Velasquez, insensible to all feelings but those of mercenary exultation at the success of his criminal scheme, pursued his way to St. Domingo, where a slave market had been already estabhshed, by the policy of Las Casas, who proposed to supply, with a hardier population, the place and numbers of the feeble natives, who were perishing fast under the unmeasured cruelties of their iron-handed masters.

But his triumph was not entirely without its qualifications. One of his vessels foundered before he reached his port, and captors and captives alike were swallowed up in the seas together. His own vessel survived, but many of his captives sickened and died ; and he himself was reserved, for the time, only to sufier a more terrible form of punishment.

Though he had lost more than half of the ill-gotten fruits of his expedition, the profits which remained were still such as to encourage him to a renewal of his enterprise. To this he devoted his whole fortune, and with three large vessels and many hundred men, he once more descended upon the coast of Carolina (1524). '

As if the retributive Providence had been watchful of the place, no less than the hour of justice, it so happened that, at the mouth of the very river where his crime had been committed, he was destined to meet his punishment. His largest vessel was stranded ere he reached the point he aimed at, and the infuriate natives, availing themselves of the event, set upon the struggling Spaniards in the sea. Two hundred of them were massacred, and, according to one account, though this has been denied, Velasquez himself, with others of his company, fell victims to the cannibal propensities of the savages. Whatever may be the

14. How did he trftat the red men ? 15. Did he make a second voyage to the same percinct? 16. V^hat fortune awaited hira ? 17. What is supposed to have been his fate?

doubts cast upon this latter statement, it is surely not improbable. Nothing is positively known of him after this event, and what we have of conjecture, describes him as living a life of ignominy, and dying miserably at last.

The claim of France to the possession of the Carolina?, rested upon the discoveries of one John Verazzano, a Florentine, "who was sent out in 1523, by Francis the First. He reached the coast, somewhere, as is supposed, in the latitude of Wilmington, North Carolina (1524). Here he found the country full of beauty to the eye. The forests were noble, and the various perfumes which reached the seamen from the shore, intoxicated them with a thousand oriental fancies. The yellow sands gave ample promise of gold, which was the prime motive for most of the adventures of the time ; and the hospitality of the Indians suffered no obstacle to prevent the free examination of their country by the strangers.

Verazzano describes the natives as " gentle and courteous in their manners ; of sweet and pleasant countenance, and comely to behold." Their population, according to the imperfect account which he has given us, was " numerous ; well formed m limb ; having black and great eyes, with a cheerful and steady look ; not strong of body, yet sharp-witted ; nimble, and exceeding great runners." The women are described as handsome, and of " comely forms ;" and, which seems to have been not unusual among the North American savages, the government of the tribe was in the hands of a woman.

The red men of this region seem to have possessed a more decided civilization than was apparent among the northern tribes. They dwelt in log-houses, so covered with matting as to be impervious to rain and cold ; they had boats wrought by flint and fire from mighty trees, some of which were twenty feet in length ; and, a better evidence yet in their favor, they treated the European strangers with an urbanity, grace, and kindness, which remind us of the patriarchal virtues enumerated in bible history. One of the crew of Verazzano, attempting to

18. What Avere the claims of France ? 19. Who was Yerazzano? 20. In what latitude did he first gain the coast of the Carolinas? 21. How did he describe the country? 22. How the natives? 28. What was the degree of civilization which they enjoyed V

PORT CHARLES. 13

swim ashore, was so much injured in passing through the surf, that he lay senseless on the beach. They ran to his relief, rescued him from the waves, rubbed his limbs, gave him refreshment, and returned him in safety to the vessel.

Thus far, it appears that these three great nations, through their agents, did little more than look upon the country to which they asserted claims, which they strove afterwards to maintain by a resort to every violence and crime. Subsequently, two armies of Spain entered Florida ; the first, under Narvaez (1527), well known as an unsuccessful adventurer in Mexico, and destined to be as little prosperous in Florida. He failed, was driven from the country, and perished in his flight, at sea.

He was followed, a few years after, by an abler, if not a braver man. This was Ferdinand de Soto, a gentleman of good birth and fortune, who signalized himself in Peru, under the lead of Pizarro, and was considered one of the most eminent Spanish captains of the time. He projected the invasion of Florida, and, at his own expense, provided a noble armament of seven ships and a thousand men for this object.

The Spaniards reached the bay of Espiritu Santo early in 1539, and had scarcely landed and pitched their tents for the night, when they w^ere attacked, with partial success, by a large body of the natives. This was but a foretaste of what was yet in reserve for them.

Undiscouraged by this reception, they boldly advanced into the country, upon that miserable march, w^hich has been most erroneously styled " a conquest of Florida," Never was human adventure so unhappily misnamed. So far from De Soto conquering Florida, the Floridians conquered him. Harassed at every footstep — yielding bloody tribute at every stream that lay in their path, every thicket that could harbor an enemy or mask an ambush — the Spaniards fought their way onward, entirely hopeless of return. The path before them alone lay

24. How did they display their humanity? 25. Which nation first attempted the conquest of the country? 26. Who led the first invasion of the Spanish ? 27. What was the fate of Narvaez? 28. Who was Ferdinand de Soto? 29. WHiat armament did he lead in the invasion of the country? 80. Where did he first land? and when ? 81. "What was his reception from Uie red men ? 32. What is said of his cotiqucst of Florida?

open but not free. It was filled with foes no less resolute than those thej had left — as determined as they were strong, and as audacious as they were adroit. Nothing could exceed their audacity — their froward valor — their sleepless and persevering hate. De Soto reached the Mississippi, and was buried beneath its waters, a broken-hearted man ; having discovered, in the significant language of one of our own historians, nothing in all his progress " so remarkable as his burial-place." In his march he crossed the present state of Georgia, penetrated South Carolina at Silver Bluff, on the Savannah ; skirted the gold regions of both states, and is supposed to have worked the mines in both ; but he preferred conquest of great cities to obscure labor in the mountains, and we know his career only by weary wandering marches, which his followers traced out with their blood. The wretched remnant of his army, reduced to half their number, escaped, after a tedious period of sufliering, to the shores of the gulf, w^hence they made their way to the river Panuco.

Nearly thirty years elapsed, after the miscarriage of this enterprise, before either of the three great claimants of the soil renewed the attempt to occupy it. The strifes of empire at home, and, perhaps, the melancholy results of all previous attempts, served to discourage the rival monarchs, no less than their subjects, from prosecuting adventures which had hitherto been attended by nothing but disaster.

At length, in 1561, the eye of the celebrated Huguenot leader, Cohgny, admiral of France, was turned upon the shores of the new world, as a place of refuge to which the Protestants might fly and be secure from those persecutions which they suffered at home, and from the w^orse evils which he saw awaited them. With this object in view, he succeeded in obtaining from Charles the Ninth, permission to plant a colony on the borders of Florida.

33. "What great river did he reach ? 34. What was his fate, and where was he buried ? 35. Through what States did he march ? 86. Where did he enter South Carolina? 37. Wliat is conjectured of his occupations while in Georgia and Carolina? 8S. What became of his vsurviving followers? 39. How long after Soto's death did the country which he had invaded remain unknown by Europeans? 40. W^hat kept the European monfirchs from invasion during this period? 41. Who was Ooligny ? 42. Why did he desire to colonize in Florida ? 43. From whom did he get permission ?

FORT CHARLES. 15

This expedition was inlrustecl to the command of John Ribault, of Dieppe, an experienced seaman, a brave soldier, and a staunch Protestant. He was attended by some few .of the young nobihty of France, and his troops were mostly veterans. These were all, most probably, voluntary adventurers. Charles was too bigoted a Catholic to contribute to the prosperity of a colony which he did not protect, and refused to aveng-e. His commission to the colonists, Avhich was sufRciently ample, was simply intended to rid himself of a portion of his subjects, who had shown themselves as stubborn as they were intelligent, and for whom he subsequently devised a more summary mode of removal, on the dreadful day of St. Bartholomew.

With two ship>; E-ibault set sail from France on the 18th of February, 1562. His aim was to reach the jiver Combahee, called *' the Jordan," to a knowledge of which the French had been already introduced by the discovery and disaster of Velasquez.

Sailing too far to the south, he first made land in the latitude of St. Augustine, where he discovered the river St. John's, to which he gave the name of May river. Thence he pursued a northerly course along the coast, stiil in search of the Jordan, and naming the various streams which he discovered as he proceeded, after well known rivers of France. The St. Mary's, for the time, became the Seine ; The Satilla, the Somme ; the Altamaha, the Loire ; the Ogechee, the Garonne; and the Isundiga, or Savannah, the Gironde.

The names which he conferred upon the rivers of South Carolina, they still partially retain. The Belle is now the " May," and the Grande, the " Broad." While he proceeded in his search for the " Jordan," his two vessels were separated by a storm, in which one of them was supposed, for a time, to be lost; but she had anchored in a bay which seemed the outlet of some magjnificent river. To this bay, '-because of the fair-

44. V.'Iiy di<:l Charles the Ninth grant permission ? 45. Who led the expedition? 46. AVhcn did Eibault set sail from France? 47. Where- did he first make land in America ? 48. What names did he give to the rivers of Florida? 49. What n.ames lo the rivers of Carolina?

nesse and largenesse thereof," Ribault gave the name of Port Royale.

*■ Here," says the narrative, " wee stroke our sailes, and cast anker at ten fathom of water; for the depth is such when the sea beginneth to flow, that the greatest shippes of France, yea, the arguzies of Venice, may enter in there."

The dehghted Huguenots landed upon the northern bank of the entrance of Port Poyal, which they beheved to be one of the mouths of the Jordan, and gave themselves up for a time to the contemplation of the aspects of the new world, which seemed to them no less beautiful than strange. The mighty oaks, and the " infinite store of cedars," enforced their wonder, and as they passed through the woods, they saw " turkey cocks flying in the forests, partridges, gray and red, little different from our's but chiefly in bigness ;" they " heard within the woods the voices of stags, of bears, of hyenas, of leopards, and divers other sorts of beasts, unknown unto us." " Being delighted with the place," they set themselves to fishing with nets, and caught such a number of fish that it was wonderful."

Having refreshed themselves with the fruits, the flesh, and the fish of this prolific region, with a curiosity stimulated by what they had already seen, the Huguenots ascended the river about fifteen leagues, in their pinnaces, when they beheld a group of red men, who, at their approach, " fled into the woods, leaving behind them a young lucerne [opossum], which they were turning upon a spit ; for which cause the place was called Cape Lucerne."

Proceeding farther, Ribault came to an arm of the river, which he entered, leaving the main stream. "A little while after, they began to espy divers other Indians, both men and women, half hidden within the woods ;" these " were dismayed at first, but soon after emboldened, for the captain caused stores of merchandize to be showed them openly, whereby they knew that we meant nothing but well unto them, and then they made a sign that we should come on land, which we would not refuse."