Chapter V: The Carolinas (4)

The earliest account of the history of South Carolina cast in a sustained retrospective spirit is the anonymous _Historical Account of the rise and progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia_ (London, 1779), which is known to have been prepared by Dr. Alexander Hewatt,—as his signature seems to fix the spelling of his name, though in the bibliographical records it appears under various forms.[818] Carroll, in reprinting the book in the first volume of his _Historical Collections_, added many emendatory notes.[819] The next year (1780) produced a far more important book, in respect to authority, in George Chalmers’ _Political Annals of the Present United Colonies, from their Settlement to the Peace of 1763_ (London), the first volume of which, however, was the only one published.[820] Chalmers, who was born in 1742, had practised law in Maryland, but he could not sympathize with the revolution, and at the outbreak returned to England, where in time (August, 1786) he became the clerk of the Board of Trade and died in office, May 31, 1825, at the age of eighty-two.

When Williamson was engaged on his _History of North Carolina_ (i. p. 9), he applied for assistance to Chalmers, whose _Political Annals_ shows that he had access to papers not otherwise known at that time, but was refused. Grahame, in his _Colonial History of the United States_ (i. p. xii.), says he got ready access to Chalmers’ papers, but as he disclosed in his text little new, it was conjectured that before Grahame’s opportunity much had passed out of Chalmers’ hands. Sparks, in a letter (1856) to Mr. Swain, the historical agent of North Carolina, says of Chalmers that “he undoubtedly procured nearly the whole of his materials from the archives of the Board of Trade. His papers, after having been bound in volumes, were sold by his nephew a few years ago (1843) in London. I purchased six volumes of them, relating mostly to New England. They are not important, being memoranda, references, and extracts, used in writing his _Annals_.”[821] Two large volumes of Chalmers’ notes and transcripts also came into the hands of George Bancroft, and were entrusted by him to the care of Dr. Hawks and Mr. Rivers, when they were at work upon their histories of North and South Carolina. Bancroft, from his own use of them, and of Chalmers’ printed _Annals_, and speaking particularly of the Culpepper revolution (1678), in the original edition (ii. p. 162) of his _United States_, says: “Chalmers’ account in all cases of the kind must be received with great hesitancy. The coloring is always wrong; the facts usually perverted. He writes like a lawyer and disappointed politician, not like a calm inquirer. His statements are copied by Grahame,[822] obscured by Martin, and, strange to say, exaggerated by Williamson.” Dr. William Smyth, in his _Lectures on Modern History_, calls the work of Chalmers an “immense, heavy, tedious book, to explain the legal history of the different colonies; it should be consulted in all such points, but it is impossible to read it.”[823]

Near the close of the Revolutionary War Chalmers began the printing of another work, a succinct sketch of the history of the colonies. A very few copies exist of the first volume, which is without title or preliminary matter, and in the copy before us a blank leaf contains a manuscript title in Chalmers’ own handwriting as follows: _An Introduction to the History of the Colonies, giving from the State Papers a comprehensive view of the origin of their Revolt. By George Chalmers, Vol. I. Printed in 1782, But suppressed_. This volume, beginning with the reign of James I. and ending with that of George I., was the only one printed. The present copy[824] is marked as being the one from which Mr. Sparks printed an edition published in Boston in 1845,[825] in which the preface says that the original issue was suppressed, “owing to the separation of the colonies, which happened just at the season for publication, December, 1782, or the prior cause in April precedent, the dismission of a tory administration.”[826]

When Chalmers’ papers were sold, a manuscript continuation of this _Introduction_ in the handwriting of the author was found, completely revised and prepared for the press. When Sparks reprinted the single volume already referred to, he added this second part to complete the work, and it was carefully carried through the press by John Langdon Sibley. Sparks in his introductory statements speaks of the book as “deduced for the most part from the State Papers in the British offices, or to speak with more precision, from the confidential correspondence of the governors and other officers of the Crown in the colonies.” In regard to its suppression he adds that “no political ends could now be answered by its publication, and it is probable that he thought it more politic to sacrifice the pride and fame of authorship than to run the hazard of offending the ministers.”[827]

Of the later histories it is most convenient to treat each province separately, as will be done in the annexed note.

NOTE.

THE LATER HISTORIES OF THE CAROLINAS.

=I.= NORTH CAROLINA.—The first published of the general accounts of this State was the _History of North Carolina_, by Hugh Williamson,[828] at Philadelphia, in 1812, in two volumes. Dr. Hawks, the later historian, says (ii. p. 540) that North Carolinians do not recognize Williamson’s work as a history of their State. It is inaccurate in a great many particulars, and sometimes when there is proof that the original record was lying before him. Sparks calls it “meagre and unsatisfactory,” and adds that it contains but few facts, and these apparently the most unimportant of such as had fallen in his way.[829] More care and discrimination, though but little literary interest, characterized another writer. François Xavier Martin had a singular career. He was born in Marseilles, became a bankrupt in Martinique, went friendless to Newbern, in North Carolina, and rose to distinction as a jurist, after beginning his career in the State as a translator and vendor of French stories. He had removed to Louisiana, when he published at New Orleans his _History of North Carolina_, in 1829 (two volumes), and in that State he rose to be chief justice, and published a history of it, as we have seen. Martin’s accumulation of facts carries no advantage by any sort of correlation except that of dates. A painstaking search, as far as his opportunities permitted, and a perspicuous way of writing stand for the work’s chief merits. He stops at the Declaration of Independence. Up to Martin’s time Bancroft[830] might well speak of the carelessness with which the history of North Carolina had been written.

Next came John H. Wheeler’s _Historical Sketches of North Carolina from 1584 to 1851, compiled from original records, official documents, and traditional statements, with biographical sketches of her distinguished Statesmen, Jurists, Lawyers, Soldiers, etc._, Philadelphia, 1851. It is not unfairly characterized by Mr. C. K. Adams, in his _Manual of Historical Reference_ (p. 559), as “a jumble of ill-digested material, rather a collection of tables, lists, and facts than a history.”

David L. Swain,[831] who had been governor of the State, had done much to collect transcripts of documents from the archives of the other States and from England, and in 1857, as historical agent of the State, he made a report, which was printed at Raleigh, in which, speaking of the statutes at large, which Virginia and South Carolina had published, he referred to “both of these collections, especially the former, the earlier and better work, as deeply interesting in connection with North Carolina history.”

Of the _History of North Carolina_, by Francis Lister Hawks, D. D., LL. D., the second volume, published at Fayetteville in 1858, covers the period of the Proprietary government from 1663 to 1729, the first volume being given to the Raleigh period, etc. He availed himself of the fullest permission by state and local authorities to profit by the records within his own State; and he had earlier himself procured in London many copies of documents there. The author claims that more than three fourths of this volume has been prepared from original authorities, existing in manuscript. He tells at greater length than others the story of the law and its administration, of the industrial and agricultural arts, navigation and trade, religion and learning.

The latest local treatment is that of Mr. John W. Moore’s _History of North Carolina from the earliest discoveries to the present time_, Raleigh, 1880, in two volumes. There is not much attempt at original research, and he does not reprint documentary material, as Hawks did, in too great profusion to make a popular book. Mr. Moore aims to give a better literary form to the story; but his style somewhat overlays his facts.

=II.= SOUTH CAROLINA.—To turn to the more southern province,—Dr. David Ramsay, who was a respectable physician from Pennsylvania, domiciled and married in Charleston, gained some reputation in his day as a practised writer, and as an historical scholar of zeal and judgment. He published first, in 1796, a _Sketch of the Soil, Climate, etc., of South Carolina_; and later, in 1809, at Charleston, a _History of South Carolina_, 1670-1808, in which he made good use of Hewatt, as far as he was available.

In 1836 Carroll republished many of the early printed tracts upon South Carolina history in his two volumes of _Historical Collections_. Referring to this publication, a writer in the _Southern Quarterly Review_, Jan., 1852, p. 185, says: “But for a timely appropriation by the legislature of two thousand dollars for his relief, Carroll would have been seriously the sufferer by his experiment on public taste and sectional patriotism.”

Grahame in 1836 had published the first edition of his _Colonial History of the United States_, including the early history of the Carolinas, and Bancroft, in 1837, published the second volume of his _History of the Colonization of the United States_, and in chapter xiii. he discussed how Shaftesbury and Locke legislated for South Carolina,—a chapter considerably changed in his last edition (1883).

The South Carolina novelist, William G. Simms, first published a small history of the State in 1840, which served for school use. This he revised in 1860 as a _History of South Carolina_, which was published in New York. It was spirited, but too scant of detail for scholarly service.[832]

The South Carolina Historical Society was formed in 1855, Mr. Rivers, the writer of the preceding chapter, being one of the originators. The first volume of their _Collections_, published in 1857, contained, beside an opening address by Professor F. A. Porcher, the beginning of a list and abstracts of papers in the State Paper Office, London, relating to South Carolina. This enumeration was continued in the second and third volumes.[833] There are also in the second volume, beside Petigru’s oration, a paper on the French Protestants of the Abbeville district, an oration by J. B. Cohen, and O. M. Lieber’s vocabulary of the Catawba language. In vol. iii. we find an oration by W. H. Trescott. No further volumes have been printed.

Mr. Rivers’ _Sketch of the History of South Carolina to the Close of the Proprietary Government by the Revolution of 1719_, published in Charleston in 1856, was continued by him in _A Chapter in the Early History of South Carolina_, published at Charleston in 1874, which largely consists of explanatory original documents. This section of a second volume of his careful history was all that the author had accomplished towards completing the work, when the civil war of 1861 “rendered him unable to continue its preparation.” Mr. Rivers says, in a note in this supplementary chapter, that an examination of the records at Columbia has shown him that, to perfect this additional task, it would be necessary to make examination among the records of the State-Paper Office in London.

Of these latter records Mr. Fox Bourne, in his _Life of John Locke_ (London, 1876), says: “Locke’s connection with the affairs of the colony lasted only through its earliest infancy. Down to the autumn of 1672 he continued his informal office of secretary to the Proprietors. Nearly every letter received from the colony is docketed by him; and of a great number that have disappeared there exist careful epitomes in his handwriting. We have also drafts, entered by him, of numerous letters sent out from England, and his hand is plainly shown in other letters. Out of this material it would be easy to construct almost the entire history of the colony during the first years of its existence.”

It was some time before the period of Mr. Fox Bourne’s writing that the Earl of Shaftesbury deposited with the deputy keeper of the Public Records the collection of documents known as the _Shaftesbury Papers_, the accumulation which had been formed in the hands of his ancestor, and which yield so much material for the early history of the Carolina government.[834]

The latest use made of these and other papers of the State-Paper Office is found in _The English in America, Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas_ (London, 1882), written by Mr. John A. Doyle, librarian of All Souls, Oxford. In a note to his chapter on the “Two Carolinas,” Doyle says (p. 427), respecting the material for Carolinian history in the English archives: “To make up for the deficiency of printed authorities, the English archives are unusually rich in papers referring to Carolina. There are letters and instructions from the Proprietors, individually and collectively, and reports sent to them by successive governors and other colonial officials. It is remarkable, however, that while we have such abundant material of this kind, there is a great lack of records of the actual proceedings of the local legislatures in North and South Carolina. In North Carolina we have no formal record of legislative proceedings during the seventeenth century. In South Carolina they are but few and scanty till after the overthrow of the Proprietary government.[835] Moreover, the early archives of Carolina, though abundant, are necessarily somewhat confused. The northern and southern colonies, while practically distinct, were under the government of a single corporation, and thus the documents relating to each are most inextricably mixed up. Again, while the Proprietors were the governing body, the colonies in some measure came under the supervision of the Lords of Trade and Plantations, and at a later day of the Board of Trade. Thus much which concerns the colony is to be found in the entry books of the latter body, while the Proprietary documents themselves are to be found partly among the colonial papers,[836] partly in a special department containing the Shaftesbury Papers.”

In the _Fifth Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission_ there is a calendar of the Shelburne Papers, belonging to the Marquis of Lansdowne, which shows a considerable number of documents of interest in the history of Carolina: as, for instance (p. 215), Governor Barrington’s account of the State of North Carolina, January 1, 1732-33; Governor Glen’s answers with respect to inquiries about South Carolina; an offer (p. 218) of a treaty for the sale of Lord Granville’s district in North Carolina to the Crown, signed by the second Lord Granville; and (p. 228, etc.) various reports of law officers of the Crown on questions arising in the government of the colonies.