The History of the Thirteen Colonies of North America 1497-1763 Part 3

[57] _Calendar of State Papers_, Colonial, 1669-1674, p. 530.

[58] _Strange News from Virginia_ (1677), p. 8.

[59] _Calendar of State Papers_, Colonial, 1677-1680, p. 64.

[60] _Ibid._, p. 67.

[61] _Ibid._, p. iv.

[62] Fortescue, _Introduction to Calendar_, 1677-1680, p. v.

[63] _Calendar of State Papers_, Colonial, 1677-1680, p. 589.

[64] See p. 93.

[65] _Calendar of State Papers_, Colonial, 1697, p. 642.

[66] _Itinerant Observations_, p. 62.

CHAPTER III

THE COLONISATION OF MARYLAND AND THE CAROLINAS

"Maryland is a province not commonly knowne in England, because the name of Virginia includes or clouds it, it is a Country wholy belonging to that honorable Gentleman the Lord Baltamore."[67] Such is the description of the colony that now comes before us, and at the time it was penned John Hammond, the writer, told the truth. The colony had arisen under rather peculiar circ.u.mstances, which neither resembled the foundation of Virginia nor the settlement of the Pilgrim Fathers. In 1632 Charles I. granted to George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, an ill-defined tract of territory to the north of Virginia. Baltimore was an old hand at colonisation, for he had some years previous attempted to form a settlement in Newfoundland which had not been successful. David Kirke, who took over the Baltimore lands there, said that Newfoundland agreed with all G.o.d's creatures except Jesuits and schismatics, and that a great mortality among the former tribe had driven Baltimore away.

Whether this was the true reason, or whether, as it has been proposed, Baltimore was practically driven out by the Presbyterians, it is hard to decide. His next trial as a colony founder was made in the more southern lands of Virginia, but here his Roman Catholicism was sternly opposed by the English Church party. Under these circ.u.mstances his Maryland colony seemed likely to flourish, for there were neither schismatics nor churchmen, nor Presbyterians, but only Indians to contend against. Before the first Lord Baltimore could accomplish anything he died, but the grant was transferred to his son Cecil. The charter is an important one, for by it the Proprietors gained both territorial and political rights; the freemen or representative a.s.sembly were to be consulted, and with their advice the Proprietor could enact laws. All places of worship were to be consecrated according to the Church of England, and so the Roman Catholic faith had only a subordinate position in a colony which owed its foundation to a true upholder of that belief. From the very first Maryland was better off than several of the other colonies, as the Crown divested itself of the right of levying taxes within the province; but in other respects the const.i.tution was normal, consisting of a governor and two chambers, the proprietor possessing the privilege of creating councillors.

Leonard Calvert, brother of the second Lord Baltimore, sailed to take possession in 1633, accompanied by two Jesuit priests and three hundred emigrants. These colonists were neither gaol-birds nor religious fanatics; they had been selected with great care and were well provided.

One of the Jesuits, Father White, has left on record his _Impressions_ in which he says that the colony was founded with a definite religious and educational purpose. "We had not come thither for the purpose of war, but for the sake of benevolence, that we might imbue a rude race with the precepts of civilisation, and open up a way to heaven, as well as impart to them the advantages of remote regions."[68] When the settlers came to the place of landing they "beheld the natives armed.

That night fires were kindled through the whole region, and since so large a ship had never been seen by them messengers were sent everywhere to announce 'that a canoe as large as an island had brought as many men as there was trees in the woods.'"[69] From this moment and onwards the relations with the natives were always friendly. The small independent landowners being free from this danger, at first, lived happy and contented lives, but they were gradually crushed out of existence by large estate-holders working with gangs of indentured labourers.

The people of Virginia looked with some scorn upon their modern neighbours, and it was not long before a quarrel took place. The Isle of Kent lay in such a position off the coast that under Baltimore's patent it ought to have been included in the province of Maryland. But in 1625 the Virginians had settled there for trading purposes, and were determined not to be brought under the yoke of Baltimore's proprietorship. Two years after the establishment of Maryland, the Isle of Kent was under the rule of William Clayborne, a strong Protestant, a contentious man, who was described by his enemies as "a pestilent enemie to the wel-faire of that province and the Lord Proprietor."[70]

Calvert, anxious to establish the rights of his brother, sent two ships to the Isle of Kent, and these were attacked by the crew of a pinnace belonging to Clayborne, lives being lost on both sides. The quarrel continued with so much fervour that it became merged in the greater struggle of the Civil War. Calvert was granted by the King letters of marque for privateering purposes, and he took good care to prey upon his enemy, Clayborne, whose friend Ingle had been furnished with similar letters from Parliament. Thus having placed the quarrel which was really personal under the banners of King and Parliament, the two rivals contended with each other.

The Parliamentary forces were, at first, successful; Ingle and Clayborne invaded Maryland, seized St Mary's, and Calvert was obliged to fly. But with a.s.sistance from Governor Berkeley of Virginia, he returned and drove out the Clayborne faction which had disgusted the people by its incapacity and greed. The quarrel ceased for a short time, owing to Calvert's death; but it was not long before it was renewed. Lord Baltimore appointed as his deputy William Stone, an ardent nonconformist and Parliamentarian, who repaid the Proprietor's generosity by leaguing with the people of the Isle of Kent. Traitor though he was, it is to be remembered that during his period of rule one good act was pa.s.sed.

Maryland was already celebrated for its toleration, but in 1649 it was still further enacted that a Christian was not to be "in any ways molested or discountenanced for or in respect of his or her religion, nor in the free exercise thereof."[71]

For the peace of their minds and the preservation of their property Stone and the settlers acknowledged the Parliamentary commissioners, including Clayborne, who landed in 1652. They first displaced Stone, but realising that he was popular, and thinking that it would be advantageous for them, reinstated him. Stone, however, once more proved a trimmer, and sided with the Proprietor; his late followers deserted him and turned to Clayborne. On the establishment of the Protectorate in 1654 Lord Baltimore a.s.serted his rights, claiming that he now held from the Protector Cromwell, and declaring that the commissioners' privileges had ceased. Clayborne and his companions were not the men to take such a rebuff as this. "It was not religion, it was not punctilios they stood upon, it was that sweete, that rich, that large country they aimed at."[72] With this desire, according to a contemporary, Clayborne a.s.serted his authority by disfranchising the Roman Catholics and forbidding the oath of loyalty to the Proprietor. William Stone, stung to resistance and filled with importance as the representative of Lord Baltimore, took up arms and was defeated by the Protestant party at Providence in 1655. Many of Stone's followers were executed, and their property confiscated; Stone himself was sentenced to death, but was reprieved. Clayborne's party now seemed triumphant, but the home authorities refused to bestow upon him the Isle of Kent, and within two years the Protector restored to Baltimore his proprietorship of Maryland. Trouble still continued, and in 1659 Josias Fendall, the Proprietor's Governor, so worked upon the members of a.s.sembly that they claimed full legislative rights and complete independence of the Baltimore family.

At the Restoration the quarrel came to an end, and Lord Baltimore re-established his rights with nothing more than a mere show of force.

Philip Carteret was appointed Governor, and during his term of office a mint was set up in the colony. He was succeeded in 1662 by Charles Calvert to the alarm of the Protestant inhabitants, who sent an extraordinary doc.u.ment to the Lord Mayor and London merchants ent.i.tled, "_Complaint from heaven with a hue and cry and a pet.i.tion out of Virginia and Maryland, to the King and his Parliament against the Barklian and Baltimore parties. The platform is Pope Jesuit determined to overthrow England with fire and sword and destructions, and the Maryland Papists to drive us Protestants to purgatory._"[73] These, however, were purely imaginary troubles, and a more real one fell upon both Virginia and Maryland on August 27, 1667, when a terrific gale destroyed in two hours four-fifths of their tobacco and corn, and blew down 15,000 houses. On the whole Virginia suffered perhaps more than Maryland, but neither colony was really subject to such perils; and both, during the first fifteen years of Charles II.'s reign, enriched themselves as well as the Proprietor or the Crown by the fertility of their soil. This period of prosperity, however, gave way to one of unrest.

By the death of Cecil, Lord Baltimore in 1675, Charles Calvert, the late Governor, succeeded as heir to the family t.i.tles, estates and proprietorship of Maryland, the latter being placed under his deputy, Thomas Notley. The Proprietor was not at first upon the best of terms with the home government. He was severely reprimanded by the Privy Council for the imprisonment and a.s.sa.s.sination of a collector of customs. It is not hinted that Baltimore had any actual hand in this crime, but it is thought that he connived "at least _ex post facto_ in his murder." No sooner had the Proprietor got over this difficulty, than he fell out with the settlers, who were caused much uneasiness in 1681 by the limitation of the franchise to those freeholders of 50 acres or those owners of other property of the value of 40. A spirit of unrest was therefore abroad, and there were not wanting those who were ready to s.n.a.t.c.h the opportunity and pose as patriots against the aggression of the Proprietor. Josias Fendall, who had already tried to deprive the Baltimore family of their rights, and who had now become an unworthy demagogue, leagued with John Coode, a clergyman, and revolted. The insurrection, as such, was short-lived. But exciting events were taking place in England, and Coode again seized his chance when news of the Revolution of 1688 drifted across the Atlantic. He placed himself at the head of the a.s.sociation for the Defence of the Protestant Religion, and in 1689, pretending that he was serving William III., seized in the King's name the government of Maryland. The King bestowed some signs of favour upon this clever rebel, but his designs were soon discovered, and the government of Maryland was radically changed. In 1691 the colony was placed under the direct control of the Crown; the political rights of the Proprietor were annulled; the Church of England was established, and the Roman Catholics were persecuted.

The first royal Governor was Francis Nicholson, who had served elsewhere successfully, but was regarded with suspicion and dislike by many of the inhabitants of Maryland. Gerald Slye's accusations against Nicholson, in May 1698, give some idea of this dislike, and are of some interest as an indication of the means used by an ignorant colonist to discredit the Governor in England. A few of the accusations will show how utterly foolish these complaints were. Slye began by a.s.serting that "all thinking men are amazed that such a man should have twisted himself into any post in the government, for besides his incapacity and illiteracy, he is a man who first in New York, then in Virginia, and at last in Maryland, has always professed himself an enemy to the present King and government." The next charge was that the Governor "makes his chaplain walk bareheaded before him from home to church." This is further extended by the fact that he "usually makes his chaplain wait ten or twelve hours for service so that often morning prayer is said in the evening." But there are more charges concerning Nicholson's treatment of his chaplain, for he, "a pious and good gentleman, the credit of the clergy in this province, happening one day by the Governor's means [to be] a little disguised in drink"[74] was suddenly summoned to conduct Divine Service. And so charge after charge of the same absurd character were brought against Nicholson not so much because of his ill-doing, but because he had the misfortune to be Governor.

The people of Maryland were not content until in 1715 the fourth Lord Baltimore became a Protestant, and by his conversion it was held that his full rights had revived. Fourteen years later the Proprietor's t.i.tle obtained an everlasting memorial in the foundation of the city of Baltimore as a port for the planters. The restoration of the Calverts to their former rights was by no means advantageous to the religious life of the colony. The fourth lord was a hanger-on of Frederick, Prince of Wales, while the fifth to hold the t.i.tle was a notorious profligate.

These men insisted on exercising their right of clerical patronage without any regard to the welfare of the Church. Thus George Whitefield, who visited the colony in 1739, failed to arouse religious fervour. His preaching in Maryland was far less successful than it had been in Virginia. The former colony he found in "a dead sleep," and to use his own words, he "spoke home to some ladies concerning the vanity of their false politeness, but, alas! they are wedded to their quadrille and ombre."[75]

If the Marylanders were conspicuous for their irreligion, they were equally noticeable for their industry. A large number of German emigrants had come to the colony, and had started a continuous movement of extension towards the West. To these Germans is entirely due the improved state of the country, and the better means of communication even beyond the mountains. But the rolling westward of the Maryland population brought the colony into close touch with the power of France; and like the other colonies it was destined, about the middle of the eighteenth century, to contend against the policy of the French King, by which, if it had been successful, the seaboard colonies would have been deprived of the possibility of further expansion towards the Pacific.

The history of the Carolinas only resembles that of Maryland in the fact that they were both proprietary colonies. The swampy and low-lying coast to the south of Virginia had, in the early years of colonisation, offered little temptation to settlers, and long remained uninhabited by Englishmen or Spaniards. Certainly in 1564, Laudonniere, a Huguenot gentleman and naval officer, attempted a plantation at Port Royal in South Carolina, and named his fortress Caroline, "in honour of our Prince, King Charles";[76] but it was an absolute failure, and the history of the fate of these Huguenots at the hands of the brutal Spaniard, Menendez, is as well-known as the tremendous retribution which followed his barbarous cruelty. Captains Amidas and Barlow, in 1584, at the charge and direction of Sir Walter Raleigh, visited this portion of the North American continent, but nothing came of it, and "Caroline" was left strictly alone as if a curse were upon the land. Adventurers from Virginia at last broke down the old prejudices, and by the year 1625 landseekers and discoverers had penetrated as far south as the Chowan.

By a strange chance the country named by Laudonniere was destined in 1629 to receive much the same name from an Englishman for much the same reason. In that year Sir Robert Heath obtained from Charles I. a grant of land to the south of Virginia, which was called after the King "the province of Carolina." No practical result, however, came from this grant, and Carolina, as it may now be called, still remained uninhabited except for the natives.

The first real charter to the Lords Proprietor of Carolina was dated the 24th March 1663, but owing to the previous grant of Charles I. numerous legal steps had to be taken before matters were satisfactorily arranged.

The land between Virginia and Florida was now granted to eight patentees, amongst whom were the Duke of Albemarle, the Earl of Clarendon, Sir William Berkeley, but above all the Earl of Shaftesbury.

These Proprietors had political and territorial authority, but there was also to be an a.s.sembly of freeholders with legislative powers. Twenty thousand acres of land were reserved for the original Proprietors, but at the same time a notice was issued inviting planters to settle in the colony, promising one hundred acres to each settler within five years, together with the privilege of residing in a land blest with the doctrine of freedom of conscience. This notice was published not only in England, but also in Barbadoes, the Bermudas, Virginia and New England, so that the colonisation of the Carolinas was not only, nor even mainly, undertaken by adventurers from the home country. On Albemarle River a settlement was made from Virginia, which formed the nucleus of North Carolina. Near Cape Fear the New Englanders also had a little colony which was absorbed by a more prosperous settlement from Virginia.

Settlers soon came from Barbadoes, for there the news had been welcomed, and hundreds of experienced planters showed themselves willing to accept the offer of the Proprietors, and expressed a desire to come with their negroes and servants. They had, no doubt, been tempted by the extra inducements published in August 1663, when the Carolinas were advertised as wonderfully healthy and a land capable of bearing commodities not yet produced in other plantations as wine, oil, currants, raisins, silks, etc. Most of the Barbadoes planters were afterwards absorbed in the colony sent out from England forming the nucleus of South Carolina.

The history of the first year in the Carolinas is practically unknown, except that in September the province was divided into two, and the northern section seems to have been already settled. The growth of the colony must have been steady, for in June 1665, Thomas Woodward, surveyor for the Proprietors in Albemarle county, shows that the population has increased, and that "the bounds of the county of Albemarle, fortie miles square, will not comprehend the inhabitants there already seated."[77] He continues to give the Proprietors excellent advice, and recommends that they should show generosity if they wish to encourage settlers; "so if your Lordships please to give large Incouragement for some time till the country be more fully Peopled your Honore may contract for the future upon what condition you please.

But for the present, To thenke that any men will remove from Virginia upon harder Conditione then they can live there will prove (I feare) a vaine Imagination, It bein Land only that they come for."[78] There were however, others who continued to praise the colony, and one writer in 1670 says of Ashley River, "it is like a bowling alley, full of dainty brooks and rivers of running water; full of large and stately timber."[79] The reader can hardly refrain from wondering where the resemblance to a bowling alley is to be found. Again the panegyrist says in a somewhat peculiar sentence, "as of the land of Canaan, it may be said it is a land flowing with milk and honey, and it lies in the same lat.i.tude."[80] The Proprietors were very anxious to preserve this lovely land for the "better folk," and in December 1671 Lord Ashley wrote to Captain Holstead not to invite the poorer sort to Carolina, "for we find ourselves mightily mistaken in endeavouring to get a great number of poor people there, it being substantial men and their families that must make the plantation which will stock the country with negroes, cattle, and other necessaries, whereas others rely and eat upon us."[81]

Carolina's presiding genius and champion was Lord Shaftesbury's medical adviser, secretary, and personal friend, John Locke. He is supposed in 1667 to have drawn up the Fundamental Const.i.tutions which contained an elaborate scheme of feudal government. Whether he did produce this astounding doc.u.ment has never been conclusively proved, nor is it of much value, since the principles contained in it were never enforced as a working system, for they were neither adapted to the times nor the conditions of a colony of freemen. By the year 1670 the elective a.s.sembly possessed the definite powers of appointing officers, establishing law courts, and superintending the military defences of the colony. These privileges did not prevent them committing a great blunder by which the colony was converted into a paradise for the bankrupt and the pauper, but a h.e.l.l for the honest and willing settler. It was now enacted that no colonist for the first five years after the true foundation of the colony should be liable for any exterior debts; that no newcomer need pay any taxes for his first year; and that marriage should be regarded as valid if mutual consent should be declared before the governor.

The northern section of the colony suffered most, and for fifty years this part of Carolina was wearied by ever recurring disputes and insurrections. "The colony indeed seems to have reached that chronic state of anarchy when the imprisonment and deposition of a governor is a pa.s.sing incident which hardly influences the life of the community."[82]

Thus during the government of Thomas Eastchurch, who was sent out by the Proprietors to Albemarle in 1677, there was much trouble. Eastchurch appointed as his deputy the immoral Thomas Miller of the King's Customs.

"Now Miller had a failing, not as the Proprietors point out, the common one of religious bigotry which had bred such dissension in New England, but a weakness for strong liquor."[83] On his arrival he undertook to model the Parliament, "no doubt with alcoholic readiness and a.s.surance, which proceeding we learn without surprise gave the people occasion to oppose and imprison him."[84] Thereupon certain unscrupulous men took Miller's place and began at once to collect the Customs and so defrauded the Crown. For some short time angry words pa.s.sed between the home Government and the colony, but the storm was calmed by the restoration of the King's duties. Eastchurch was succeeded by Culpeper, who controlled affairs until Seth Sothel came out as governor in 1683. The new ruler's rapacity and arbitrary conduct caused the a.s.sembly to depose and banish him, paying no attention to the feeble remonstrance of the Proprietors.

Meanwhile the southern portion of Carolina, particularly the settlements of Yeamans at Cape Fear and Sayle at Charleston, proved themselves more orderly and promising than the anarchic Albemarle; and probably for this reason the Proprietors displayed towards them more consideration. The const.i.tution which was granted to Charleston in 1670 was most liberal in character, for not only were the freemen allowed to elect the members of the House of Representatives, but they also possessed the privilege of nominating ten out of the twenty councillors. As so many of the settlers had come from Antiqua, "weary of the hurricane,"[85] or from Barbadoes, they naturally reproduced their old methods of life, and having been accustomed to slaves, they tried to force the Indians into servility; but they found the Red Indian very different from the African negro, for he was possessed of a proud spirit and remarkable cunning that saved him from serfdom. The community of the South was one of wealthy traders who generally lived in the capital, partly because of the fine harbour and the insalubrious swamps inland, and partly because of the scheme of the Proprietors by which every freeholder had a town lot one-twentieth the extent of his whole domain.

The first governor was William Sayle, of Barbadoes, described in 1670 as "a man of no great sufficiency."[86] It is very difficult at this distance of time to deduce the character of this governor, for Henry Brayne wrote, "Sayle is one of the unfittest men in the world for his place"; and he then proceeded to call him "crazy."[87] On the other hand, when Sayle died in 1671, being at least eighty years of age, he is called "the good aged governor";[88] and the Council of Ashley River, on March 4, 1671, recorded that he was "very much lamented by our people, whose life was as dear to them as the hopes of their prosperity."[89]

Sayle's chief work during his short period of office was an attempt to inculcate G.o.dly ways amongst the somewhat unG.o.dly colonists. He urged the Proprietors to send out an orthodox minister, and proposed the man "which I and many others have lived under as the greatest of our mercies."[90] He knew very well that some special inducement would have to be held out to the Proprietors, and so uses the scriptural words, "for where the Ark of G.o.d is, there is peace and tranquillity."[91]

Sayle was succeeded by Joseph West as governor in 1671, but his appointment was only temporary, as Lord Shaftesbury in the autumn of that year sent a commission to Sir John Yeamans. His unpopularity, however, caused his deposition; and Joseph West was again nominated as governor in 1674, a post which he filled with conspicuous satisfaction and success for eleven years. While West was still in office, the Lords Proprietor issued an order in December 1679 for the proper establishment of Charlestown. "Wherefore we think fit to let you know that the Oyster Point is the place we do appoint for the port-town, of which you are to take notice and call it Charlestown, and order the meetings of the Council to be there held, and the Secretary's, Registrar's, and Surveyor's offices to be kept within that town. And you are to take care to lay out the streets broad and in straight lines, and that in your grant of town-lots you do bound everyone's land towards the streets in an even line, and suffer no one to encroach with his buildings upon the streets, whereby to make them narrower than they were first designed."[92] Such was the town to which West welcomed the Huguenots who were excluded from the colonies of their own country. The Proprietors, too, appreciating the wisdom of their governor, afforded the unhappy French means of cultivating their native produce of wine, oil, and silk, so that they soon established new homes for their distressed brethren, "who return daily into Babylon for want of such a haven."[93] By the end of West's administration the Clarendon settlements centering round Charlestown had become extremely well-to-do, and the town government, which was of excellent character, administered the affairs of about three thousand people. But the southern territory fell into the evil ways of North Carolina; and after West's retirement, which finally took place in 1685, a series of unsatisfactory governors caused a continual bickering, ill-feeling, and well nigh insurrection.

Sothel, whose bad government in Albemarle was already known in the south, was appointed governor in 1690; but after a year the southern settlers, taking example from their northern brethren, drove him out.

The Proprietors at last found that they had had enough of this disgusting incompetence and anarchy. The Locke Const.i.tutions had failed in every way; a change must be made; and it appeared that an amalgamation of North and South under one governor might have the effect desired. Their first choice of an administrator was most unsuccessful; Philip Ludwell of Virginia found he had a hard task before him in restoring peace out of chaos and anarchy. The task was too much for him, and having proved himself incapable was succeeded by a Carolina planter, Thomas Smith, in 1692. Bickering and quarrels continued; Indian attacks were occasionally met and dealt with; but the southern Spaniards were an ever present danger that made Smith's rule no sinecure. After three years Joseph Archdale, a quaker, and one of the Proprietors, came out as governor, but after a few months in the colony he was succeeded by his nephew, Joseph Blake. The benign rule of both these governors gave at last to the Carolinas a peace which they had not known for twenty years.

The Huguenots were once again welcomed by Blake, and although they had been steadily settling in the Carolinas, particularly since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, yet they now obtained a more hearty welcome and complete toleration. So much had Blake's government done for the Carolinas that the royal special agent in 1699 records, "if this place were duly encouraged, it would be the most useful to the Crown of all the Plantations upon the continent of America."

There were, however, two external dangers to which the Carolinas were exposed at the very moment they seemed to have obtained internal peace.

The first was the new French settlement on the Mississippi; the second was the fear of Spanish aggression from Florida. The French danger was never really very extreme, and the Carolinas escaped many of the horrors of New England history. But the Spanish peril was true enough, for as early as 1680 a party of Scotch Presbyterians were routed from their little settlement at Port Royal, and this was regarded by the Carolina settlers as a just cause of complaint and an insult to his Majesty King Charles. To their great disappointment in 1699, when Edward Randolph was sent out to make investigations concerning Spanish intrusions, he brought with him no troops for their protection. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, therefore, it appeared best to the settlers that for their own defence they should take offensive action.

The war of the Spanish Succession, or, as it was called in the colonies, Queen Anne's war, had broken out, and rumours had reached the settlers of a coming Spanish onslaught. To meet this, James Moore, a political adventurer, but a very brave and capable man, led 500 English and 800 Indian allies into Spanish territory and took the unprotected town of St Augustine; but the fort, which was used as a last stronghold, resisted him for three months, and as he was unprovided with siege guns, he was obliged to retire on the appearance of a Spanish man-of-war. Nothing daunted, but rather elated with their previous success, a larger raid was made in 1704. Sir Nathaniel Johnstone was now governor, and he commissioned Colonel Moore to attack Apalachee, eighty miles to the west of St Augustine. In this action Moore was again successful, as Colonel Brewton records that "by this conquest of Apalachee the Province was freed from any danger from that part during the whole war."[94] The Spaniards, however, did not remain idle, and in 1706, in alliance with the French from Martinique, with a fleet of ten sail and a force of 800 men attacked Charlestown. The inhabitants were terrified, and their anguish was intensified by the horror of a severe outbreak of yellow fever. Many of them, therefore, fled from the town, but Sir Nathaniel Johnstone routed the combined forces of France and Spain and captured no fewer than 230 prisoners.

Factious quarrels within the Province itself now threatened the safety of the settlers. Since 1691 North and South Carolina had been united under one governor, but the custom had been established that the northern portion of the colony was always under the administration of a deputy. In 1711 Thomas Cary disputed with Edward Hyde as to which held the office; it was decided in favour of the latter. The purely personal quarrel drove Cary to forget his feelings of patriotism, and flying from Carolina he stirred up the Tuscarora Indians, who, with fiendish delight, attacked a small settlement of Germans from the Palatinate.

South Carolina, where the supreme governor dwelt, immediately dispatched an army to the a.s.sistance of the North, with the effect that apparent peace was gained and the army was no longer required. Immediately upon its withdrawal, however, the Tuscaroras again fell upon the helpless people; this was too much, vengeance must be taken; and this fierce Indian tribe was practically decimated and forced to migrate north.

Although the Treaty of Utrecht was signed in 1713, and the Spanish War of Succession came to an end, yet there was little hope of peace in the West as long as either side allied with the Indians. The fate of the Tuscaroras may have stimulated the Yama.s.see Indians to revenge in 1716.

In April, headed by Spaniards, they ma.s.sacred about eighty inhabitants of Granville County, South Carolina. Charles Craven, the governor, proved himself a man of vigour, activity, and stern resolve, and by his efforts within a few months the colony was a.s.sured of safety, and there was apparent peace between the settlers of Carolina and the Spaniards of Florida.

In the winter of 1719 that perpetual love of dissension, and dislike of any federal action, was once more manifested by the a.s.sembly of South Carolina. The governor was a son of Sir Nathaniel Johnstone, and he had done his best for the Proprietors, but unlike the northern portions the South now disowned all proprietary rule and elected a governor under the Crown. The home authorities immediately sent out Francis Nicholson, a capable colonial official who had already had experience in New York, Virginia, and Maryland. Ten years later the Proprietors accepted the inevitable, and being compensated financially, handed over the Carolinas to the Crown. They probably never regretted the bargain, as in 1739 the war against Spain once more jeopardised the existence of the English settlements in the south, the inhabitants of which were in chronic fear of murder and rapine. The chief Spanish attack was made in 1742, when an army of 5000 landed at St Simon's, owing to the failure of Captain Hardy to intercept the enemy's fleet. The expedition was unsuccessful; the colonists held their own; eighty prisoners were brought into Charlestown; and the Spaniards retired.

The share taken by the two Carolinas in American history during the next few years was far less than that of other colonies, but will be dealt with in another chapter. The great interest of the early history of the Carolinas is that the colony won for itself against very considerable odds the rights of local government and freedom from the shackles of the Proprietors. The settlers exhibited from first to last that full determination which is peculiarly a.s.sociated with those of English stock to control their own destiny without the leading-strings of a few, perhaps benevolent, but generally misguided, human beings, whose powers have been conferred upon them by chance. The settlers of the Carolinas were a dogged type of men who faced external dangers with courage and good sense, distinctly contradictory of their pig-headed, factious, anarchic spirit in all internal affairs.

FOOTNOTES: