SETTLEMENT OF LOUISIANA.—QUEEN ANNE’S WAR.
The Peace of Ryswick restored to France all the places on Hudson’s Bay
of which she had possession at the commencement of the war. With the
exception of the eastern portion of Newfoundland, she retained the whole
line of coast, with the adjacent islands, from Maine to beyond Labrador
and Hudson’s Bay, besides Canada and the valley of the Mississippi; the
boundaries, however, not being defined, remained subjects of dispute.
The boundary between New France and New York was especially difficult of
adjustment, each nation claiming the extensive intervening territory
occupied by the Five Nations.
In the year 1700, the jealousy of the Five Nations having been excited
by the claim of Bellamont to build forts in their territory, they began
to suspect the British intentions towards them; and Callieres, the
successor of Frontenac in Canada, taking advantage of their state of
feeling, offered them either peace with the French, or a war of
extermination. They chose the former, and sent envoys to Montreal, “to
weep,” according to their phraseology, “for the French who had died in
the war.” A grand treaty of peace was formally signed between the French
and their Christianised Indian allies, and these their ancient,
formidable enemies—each nation testifying its solemn assent by its
symbol, that of the Senecas and Onondagas being a spider; the Cayugas a
calumet; the Oneidas a forked stick; the Mohawks a bear; the Hurons a
beaver; the Abenakis a deer; and the Ottawas a hare. Peace was also
established between the French allies and the Sioux, which was to extend
beyond the Mississippi. The hold which the French had upon these nations
being through the Jesuit missionaries, a law was passed the same year in
New York for the “hanging of every Popish priest who should voluntarily
enter the province.”
Peace being established with England, the French, in 1698, renewed their
endeavours, which the war had interrupted, to plant a settlement at the
mouth of the Mississippi; and Lemoine D’Iberville, who had already
signalised himself on the shores of Hudson’s Bay and Newfoundland, was
selected for the enterprise. By birth he was a Canadian, one of the
seven sons of Charles Lemoine, an early emigrant from Normandy; and with
his two brothers, Sauvolle and Bienville, and 200 colonists and a few
women and children, in two frigates and two tenders, D’Iberville sailed
for the mouth of the Mississippi, which, as yet, had never been entered
from the sea.
Unlike the enterprise of La Salle, good fortune attended that of Lemoine
D’Iberville from the commencement. Cordially and honourably received by
the governor of St. Domingo, his expedition was there increased by a
larger vessel, and in January, 1699, he anchored in the Bay of
Pensacola; but his landing was forbidden by a fort erected here by
Spaniards, lately come from Vera Cruz, and under the guns of which lay
two Spanish ships. Spain still claimed the whole range of the Gulf of
Mexico.
Sailing westward, D’Iberville cast anchor south-east of Mobile, and
landed February 2nd on Ship Island, where, the larger vessel having
returned to St. Domingo, the people erected huts while he explored the
opposite shore, the Bay of Biloxi, and the mouth of the river
Pascagoula. On the 27th of the same month, D’Iberville, his brother
Bienville, forty-eight men, and Athanase, a Franciscan, who had been one
of the companions of the unfortunate La Salle, set forth in search of
the mouth of the Mississippi. Floating trees and muddy waters led them
to the obscure outlet of the great Father of Rivers, which they ascended
to a village of the Bayagoulas, a tribe occupying the western bank, just
below Red River, and with whom was found to be faithfully preserved that
letter written by Tonti, and committed to their care in 1684; which
circumstance was the joyful assurance to them that they had found the
Mississippi.[22]
Returning from this point, D’Iberville, quitting the great river by the
Manshac Pass to the eastward, sailed through the Lakes Maurepas and
Pontchartrain, so called from two of the French ministers, and arrived
safely at Ship Island. Preferring the shores of the Bay of Biloxi to the
low lands of the Mississippi, a fort was erected there, the four
bastions and twelve cannon of which were to maintain the French
authority over the territory, extending from about the Rio del Norte to
the confines of Pensacola; after which, D’Iberville set sail for France,
leaving his brothers Sauvolle and Bienville in command of the fort,
around which the huts of the settlers had clustered.
Though the fear of Spanish interference with this first French
settlement in Mississippi was soon removed by the transfer of the
Spanish throne to a branch of the Bourbons, still no great success could
be looked for; the soil was arid sand, and the heat of the burning sun
made the settlers remember with longing the invigorating climate of
Canada. Nevertheless their settlement was not without its agreeable
circumstances, among which were the visits of missionaries from their
stations among remote tribes, and who, floating down the great river in
their birch-bark canoes, came to visit them. “Already,” says Bancroft,
“a line of communication existed between Quebec and the Gulf of Mexico.
The boundless southern region, made a part of the French empire by
lilies carved on the trees and crosses erected on the bluffs, and
occupied by French missionaries and forest rangers, was annexed to the
command of the governor of Biloxi.”
A hundred settlers, with a missionary at their head, had already
established themselves upon that beautiful strait between Lakes Erie and
St. Clair which La Salle, on his first journey, had marked out as an
advantageous post. A fort was built, and Detroit became a flourishing
settlement, as did also Kaskaskia and Cahokia, two missionary stations
on the eastern bank of the Mississippi. The ambition of forming a vast
and powerful French American empire was now becoming stronger even than
the idea of a Jesuit Theocracy.
Whilst the little settlement was establishing itself at Biloxi, a scheme
was formed in London to claim for England the territory granted in 1630,
to Robert Heath, under the name of Carolana. William III. had taken
Father Hennepin into his pay, who now pretended to have been the first
who descended the Mississippi. He had lately published his narrative in
London, and added to his former account that of his pretended voyage. On
the plea, therefore, of this priority of claim, an English expedition
was fitted out under Coxe, a physician of London and a proprietary of
New Jersey, who had bought up the old patent of Carolana, and now, with
two armed English vessels, set out to explore the mouth of the
Mississippi. Bienville, who had been intrusted by his brother
D’Iberville to pursue the exploration of the country, was on his return
to Biloxi, about fifty miles above the mouth of the river, when, to his
great surprise, meeting one of Coxe’s vessels, he resorted to an
expedient which soon removed the intruder. He pretended that this river
was not the Mississippi, and that the country was under the French
supremacy, on which the English captain, instantly turning his ships
about, hastened back. The reach of the river where this occurrence took
place is called the _English Turn_ to this day. Thus ended the English
attempt to establish a claim to the old _Carolana_; and though William
III. declared that he would leap over “twenty stumbling-blocks rather
than not effect it,” England never gained any permanent establishment on
the Mississippi.
Coxe’s vessels had brought out a number of French Huguenot emigrants,
who were landed in Carolina; and these soon after desiring to remove to
Louisiana, where their nationality might be preserved, wrote to Sauvolle
for this purpose. Sauvolle communicated with the French government,
asking merely, on their behalf, liberty of conscience. The reply of the
king was characteristic: “He had not driven Protestants from France to
make a republic of them in America.”
D’Iberville returned towards the end of the year with sixty Canadians,
and early the following, set out to select a situation for a new
settlement. While building a fort about fifty miles above the mouth of
the river, he was visited by the aged Tonti, the former companion of La
Salle, who had come down the Illinois with seven attendants for that
purpose. D’Iberville and his brother Bienville, in company with Tonti,
now ascended the Great River as far as the country occupied by the
Natchez, by whom they were well received; and here, upon a high bluff, a
settlement was marked out under the name of Rosalie, now called Natchez.
In May, D’Iberville again returned to France, and Bienville, pursuing
his explorations, crossed the Red River to Natchitoches. Gold and
mineral wealth were again the great objects of search, but nothing was
met with save swampy forests and dismal solitudes; nor could any report
of gold be obtained from the natives. La Sueur, in pursuit of this
bootless quest, spent the summer and autumn of the same year in
ascending the Mississippi as far as the falls of St. Anthony, and then
entering the St. Peter’s, reached the prairies of Missouri, and spent
the winter among the Towas, that he might in spring take possession of a
copper mine.
The settlers of Biloxi, mere hireling adventurers, were not the men to
weather through the early hardships of a colony. Whilst France was
urging them to search for the precious metals, the fevers incident to
such a soil and climate were sweeping them rapidly away. Sauvolle was an
early victim; and the command then fell upon the young and adventurous
Bienville. When D’Iberville returned from France in 1703, he found but
150 alive, and soon after the colony was removed to the western bank of
the Mobile; and this, the first European settlement in the present state
of Alabama, continued to be the head-quarters of the colony for the next
twenty years. D’Iberville, attacked soon after by yellow fever, escaped
narrowly with his life to France, and died at Havanna in 1706. “When he
left Louisiana, it was little more than a wilderness, containing about
thirty families. The colonists were unwise in their objects. Their
scanty number was scattered on discoveries, or among the Indians in
quest of furs. There was no quiet agricultural industry. The coast of
Biloxi was sandy as the deserts of Lybia; the fort on the delta of the
Mississippi was at the mercy of the rising waters; and the buzzing and
sting of musquitoes, the hissing of the snakes, the croaking of the
frogs, the cries of alligators, seemed to claim the country still as the
inheritance of reptiles; whilst, at Mobile, the sighing of the pines and
the hopeless character of the barrens warned the emigrants to seek homes
more inland.”[23]
As regards the condition of the American provinces belonging to the once
powerful Spain, it will be sufficient to state that they shared in a
great measure the condition of the parent-country. Spain had now no
navy, and “foreigners, by means of loans and mortgages, gained more than
seven-eighths of the wealth from America, and furnished more than
nine-tenths of the merchandise shipped for the colonies. Spanish
commerce and manufactures had almost ceased to exist; and its dynasty
had become extinct.” A Bourbon was on the throne, and the liberties of
the Netherlands being endangered, William III. declared war both against
France and Spain.
In the war which commenced with the eighteenth century, the English
colonists had for enemies, not alone the French of Canada, but the
Spaniards of Florida also. The Spanish settlements in the neighbourhood
of St. Augustine were not very extensive, it is true; and that of
Pensacola was of later date. The tribes of Appalachees, inhabiting what
is now called Middle Florida, and who had received some rudiments of
civilisation from Spanish missionaries, were employed in agriculture,
and as herdsmen. The powerful tribes of the confederated Creek Indians
occupied the territory south and south-west of the Savannah and the
Alleganies, bordering on the English settlements of South Carolina, and
forming now the State of Georgia. The country south-west of the
Alleganies was occupied by the equally formidable Cherokees, who claimed
as their hunting-ground the whole country as far as the Kenhawa and the
Ohio; between these and the English settlements of the two Carolinas,
was the territory of Yamasees, the Catawbas, and the Tuscaroras.
The governor of South Carolina at this time was James Moore, successor
to Joseph Blake, “a needy and ambitious man,” who had enriched himself
by kidnapping Indians and selling them as slaves. The hope of Indian and
Spanish captives induced this man, as soon as the news of the war
reached Carolina, to undertake an expedition against St. Augustine. The
town was very soon taken, but the garrison retired to the fort, which
was strong and well built; and before this could be attacked the
assailants had to send for heavy artillery from Jamaica. In the meantime
an Indian runner was sent with the tidings to Bienville at Mobile, who
communicated the intelligence to the Spanish viceroy at Havanna, and two
Spanish ships of war were immediately despatched to St. Augustine, at
the sight of which Moore abandoned his vessels and fled by land. This
expedition burdened Carolina with debt, and caused the issue of her
first paper money.
Again, at the close of 1705, Moore, at the head of fifty white
volunteers and about 1,000 Indian allies of the Creek nation, marched
through the forests which De Soto had traversed, and surprised the
settlements near St. Mark’s, where, surrounded by their herds of cattle,
the semi-civilised Indians lived in peaceful allegiance to the Spanish.
It was the middle of December, when the unexpected invaders came down
upon the quiet villagers; and though they could not take the fort, they
plundered the villages, burning and robbing the churches. A barefoot
friar, the only white man, came forward to beg for mercy; but about 100
women and children, and fifty warriors were seized as slaves. The fort,
however, could not be taken, and the Indian chief purchased peace with
the plate of his church and ten horse-loads of provisions. Two thousand
of these Indians removed to the banks of the Altamaha, under the
jurisdiction of Carolina, and their country was given up to the Lower
Creek Indians, allies of the English. A century and a quarter
afterwards, when General Jackson expelled the Indians from this
territory, traces were found of these Spanish missionary villages,
overgrown with forest.[24] Thus did the English power extend itself to
the Gulf of Mexico, and obtain a claim to that region which soon after
became the province of Georgia.
The following year Charleston was invaded by a French and Spanish
squadron. But though the town was suffering at the time from yellow
fever, the colonists, aided by the Huguenots, who fought for their old
quarrel, bravely defended the place and repelled the invaders with great
loss. D’Iberville was at Havanna preparing for a new attack on
Charleston, when he died.
The consequences of the European war were terrible in Massachusetts. The
broken eastern tribes settled in two villages, Becancour and St.
Francis, were encouraged by the Jesuits priests to make continual
inroads on the English; and now that peace existed between the Five
Nations and the French, the whole force of Canada was directed against
the New England frontiers.
In vain had a congress of chiefs assured Governor Dudley at Casco, that
“the sun was not further from the earth than were their thoughts from
war with the English;” six weeks afterwards, led on by the French,
war-parties ranged over the whole country, carrying terror and
devastation wherever they came.
It was winter, a season favourable to Indian warfare, and the snow lay
deep on the ground, when Hertelle de Rouville, with 200 French, and 142
Indians, surprised the little town of Deerfield in the dead of night,
being able to pass the palisades which defended the place, owing to the
depth of the snow. Our readers are sufficiently familiar already with
the horrors of Indian warfare; we will not, therefore, go through the
terrible details. The village, with the exception of the church and one
dwelling-house, was set on fire and wholly destroyed; but few of the
inhabitants escaped; forty-seven were killed, and 120 carried into
captivity. Among these latter were the Rev. John Williams, the minister
of the place, his wife and five children, two being among the murdered.
Eunice, the wife, who was in delicate health, carried her Bible with her
and endeavoured to find comfort in its pages for her companions in
affliction; on the second day of their terrible march, however, being
unable to keep up with the party, she was struck dead with the tomahawk.
Her body, left at the foot of a hill, was found by some of the remnant
of Deerfield, and reverently interred in the burial-ground of that
place. Her husband was afterwards laid by her side, and their grave
stones long marked the spot. The youngest daughter, but seven years old
at the time of this domestic tragedy, was adopted into a family of
praying Indians near Montreal, and became so deeply attached to her new
friends that nothing could induce her to leave them. She afterwards
became the wife of a chief, and in later years visited her family and
friends, then restored to Deerfield, in her Indian dress; but though
every inducement was used to prolong her stay, and a fast was held in
the village, with prayer for her deliverance, she returned, after a few
days, to her own wigwam and the love of her own Mohawk children.[25]
Terror and dismay spread through New England; and the veteran Benjamin
Church, roused by these horrors, rode seventy miles to offer his
services to Dudley, governor of Massachusetts, on behalf of his
suffering fellow-citizens. Accordingly, at the head of 500 soldiers, he
ascended the Penobscot and St. Croix rivers, and destroyed several
Indian towns and took many prisoners.
In 1705, Vaudreuil, then governor of Canada, proposed to Dudley a treaty
of neutrality, and an exchange of prisoners took place, at which time
John Williams and his family, with the exception of the one child we
have mentioned, together with the other inhabitants of Deerfield, were
restored.
War, however, soon broke out again. In 1707, Rhode Island and New
Hampshire, having raised the means by the issue of bills of credit,
joined New England in an enterprise against Acadia. A thousand men,
therefore, under Colonel March, entered the river in an English frigate,
and landed before the town of Port Royal. Not being able to take the
fort for want of cannon, they burned the town, killed the cattle, and
destroyed the harvests by cutting the dams in the river and overflowing
the land. From Port Royal they advanced along the coast, committing all
the depredations in their power. The next year, the French retaliated.
Hertelle de Rouville, descending the Merrimac, reached the devoted
village of Haverhill, not far from Boston. We have already related the
sorrows of this place, and the heroism of some of its inhabitants, and
again similar scenes were witnessed. Haverhill stood in the midst of the
primeval forest, near the Merrimac, and a new meeting-house, the pride
of the place, stood in the centre of the village. On the night of the
29th of August, the inhabitants resigned themselves to repose,
unconscious that in the neighbouring forest lay the savage Hertelle de
Rouville and his men, and who, an hour before daybreak, having solemnly
prayed, rushed into the village, bearing with them the terrors and
horrors of Indian warfare. The village was set on fire. Benjamin Rolfe,
the minister, and his wife and children, were cruelly murdered, as well
as about fifty others, while the same number were carried away captive.
Many instances of the heroism of the women are related. Mrs. Swan
defended her house, her husband and family, with an iron spit three
yards long. The wife of John Johnson, who had fled to the garden with
her child in her arms, after the murder of her husband in the house,
contrived, as she fell mortally wounded, to hide the infant, which was
found alive at her breast when the massacre was over. Mary Wainwright,
whose husband was among the first killed, unbarred her house-door,
apparently willingly, at the bidding of the savage enemy, and asking
them civilly what they wanted, and being told money, went out, as she
said, to bring it to them, and gathering up all her children, save one,
succeeded in escaping.[26]
In the midst of the outrage, rapine, and bloodshed, a brave man, named
Davis, was heard shouting, as if to multitudes of people, “Come on! come
on! we will have-them!” And the enemy, believing that a large body of
troops was advancing, made a hasty retreat soon after sunrise, carrying
with them a number of prisoners, several of whom however, were rescued
by Samuel Ayer, a bold village champion, and a few others, who pursued
them, though Ayer himself perished in the enterprise. A mound in the
village grave yard marks to this day the resting-place of the unhappy
victims.
“Such,” says Bancroft, “were the sorrows of that generation.” And the
reader may say, in the words of Peter Schuyler, in his remonstrance to
the Marquis de Vaudreuil: “My heart swells with indignation when I think
that a war between Christian princes, bound to the exactest laws of
honour and generosity, which their noble ancestors have illustrated by
brilliant examples, is degenerating into a savage and boundless
butchery!”
The atrocities of this warfare inspired the English colonists with still
deeper abhorrence of the French missionaries, and led to the design of
exterminating the Indians, which otherwise might not have been
entertained. As it was not possible to carry on regular warfare with the
Indians, who shifted their abodes at the approach of the enemy, a bounty
of ten pounds for every Indian scalp was offered to the regular troops,
and to volunteers the sum was doubled, while as much as fifty pounds per
scalp was promised to parties who should gratuitously scour the forests
for Indians, that the whole land might be cleared of them, as countries
were in the old times cleared of wild beasts.
In the meantime Nicholson led a great force against Port Royal, and
succeeded in taking the place, the garrison being compelled by famine to
surrender. The name was changed to Annapolis, in honour of Queen Anne,
and it has remained in the hands of the English ever since. It was on
the occasion of this victory that the brave Peter Schuyler hastened to
London with his five Iroquois sachems, as we have already related, to
induce the British government to prosecute the war thus fortunately
commenced against Canada. The witty and dissipated St. John, afterwards
Viscount Bolingbroke, entered warmly into this scheme, and a fleet of
fifteen ships of war and forty transports was placed under the command
of Sir Hovenden Walker, while the brother of Mrs. Masham, “honest Jack
Hill,” as he was called by his bottle companions, was placed at the head
of seven veteran regiments of Marlborough’s army and a battalion of
marines.
On June 25, the fleet arrived at Boston, where supplies and colonial
forces were taken on board. An army from Connecticut, New Jersey, and
New York, Palatine emigrants, and about 600 Iroquois, assembled at
Albany, preparatory to an attack on Montreal; whilst in the west, the
English having strengthened themselves by an alliance with the Fox
Indians, sought to expel the French from Detroit, their settlement in
Michigan.[27]
Nor were the French on their part negligent; by means of the Jesuit
missionaries, treaties were renewed with the natives; the fortifications
of Quebec and Montreal were strengthened, and the people were so
resolute and determined, that women even laboured voluntarily for the
common defence. The whole of New France was ready for the enemy many
weeks before he appeared. At length, after unaccountable and inexcusable
delay, the English squadron ascended the St. Lawrence, Sir Hovenden
Walker puzzling his brain the while how his ships were to be secured
during the coming winter, when the rivers would be frozen, and
concluding to “secure them on the dry ground in frames and cradles till
the thaw.” Thus forgetting the present in the future, they slowly
proceeded, and, on a dark and stormy night, through the stupidity of
Admiral Walker, who though warned of danger, would not believe it, eight
transports were wrecked and near 1,000 men drowned.
A council of war the next morning declared it impossible to proceed.
There is something like fatuity in the reasoning of the admiral: “Had
we,” says he, “reached Quebec, 1,000 or 1,200 men must have been left to
perish of cold and hunger; by the loss of a part, Providence has saved
all the rest:” and the fleet, turning about, sailed direct for England,
having sent back the colonial transports. Nor did the admiral wait to
attack the French post in Newfoundland, as his orders required, so great
was his impatience to remove, not only from this inhospitable climate,
but from the colonists whom he had come to serve, and of whom he related
that “their interestedness, ill-nature, sourness, hypocrisy and canting
were insupportable.”
This ignoble retreat caused great disappointment and displeasure at New
York; nor was the expedition against Detroit more successful. This
little fort, “the most beautiful spot in Canada,” was defended by Du
Buisson and only twenty men. Summoning, however, his Indian allies, who
were all strongly attached to their Jesuit teachers, they rallied round
the fort, each nation under its own ensign, and thus, by one spokesman,
addressed the commandant: “Father, behold thy children compass thee
round! We will, if need be, gladly die for our father—only take care of
our wives and our children, and spread a little grass over our bodies to
defend them from the flies!” The English allies of the Fox nation were
now in their turn besieged, and being compelled to surrender, were
either murdered or distributed among the confederates as slaves.
Whilst the northern states were busy with their schemes of Canadian
conquest, and suffering under the horrors of Indian warfare, North
Carolina, which was then broken up into factions, as we have already
related, under a disputed governorship was thrown into a state of
universal alarm, which cast all other considerations into the shade, by
the hostilities of the Tuscaroras, by whom a plot was formed for the
extermination of the whites. Their first outbreak was on the infant
settlements of the already-mentioned German emigrants from the
Palatinate, and to whom lands had been appropriated on the southern bank
of the Roanoke, near the mouth of which was the Swiss settlement of New
Berne, all lying within the country of the Tuscaroras. These Indians,
alarmed and offended at the encroachments of the white man, determined
to take summary vengeance; and accordingly, Graffenburg, the German
superintendent, and Lawson, the colonial surveyor-general, who, with his
chain in his hand, was allotting out the lands to the new-comers, were
seized by sixty armed Indians, and carried up the country to the chief
village of the nation, where the assembled chiefs, after a discussion of
two days, condemned Lawson to be burned at the stake; Graffenburg, who
represented himself as “the chief of another tribe, distinct from the
English, and only recently arrived,” was allowed to return, on condition
that he occupied no more Indian lands. The poor, persecuted German
settlers, with the Huguenots their neighbours, were now exposed to the
cruelties of more pitiless enemies even than their catholic persecutors
of the Old World. For three days and nights the fierce Tuscaroras and
their allies hunted their human prey through the woods, devastating the
country with fire and blood until they paused from weariness.
South Carolina sent a force of 600 militia and 650 Indians, under
Captain Barnwell, for their relief; and though as yet “a vast and
howling wilderness” separated North from South Carolina, they boldly
marched through it, and joining the troops of North Carolina, attacked
the Indians intrenched in a rude fort, killed 300, and took a
considerable number prisoners. The rest fled to the chief town of their
nation, where they hastily constructed means of defence; but being
pursued by Barnwell, were at length compelled to sue for peace. After
the loss of about 1,000 warriors, the Tuscaroras abandoned their country
for ever, and uniting themselves to the Iroquois, became a sixth nation
in that terrible confederacy.
But the Indian war was not yet at an end. In 1715, the Yamasees, who
occupied the country north-east of the Savannah river, secretly
instigated a combination of all the Indians, from Florida to Cape Fear,
against South Carolina. The Creeks, Apalachians, Cherokees, Catawbas and
Yamasees engaged in the enterprise, the whole force of which was
computed to be 6,000 fighting men. The southern tribes fell suddenly on
the traders settled among them, and in a few hours ninety persons were
massacred. The news was conveyed to Charleston, where the utmost alarm
prevailed.
Formidable parties also penetrating the northern frontier approached
Charleston; they were repulsed by the militia, but their route was
marked by devastation. Charles Craven, at that time governor, adopted
the most energetic measures. At the head of 1,200 men he marched towards
the southern frontier, and overtook the strongest body of the enemy, at
a place called Saltcatchers, when an obstinate and bloody battle was
fought. The Indians were totally defeated, and the governor pressing
upon them, drove them from their territory and pursued them over the
Savannah river. Here they were hospitably received by the Spaniards of
Florida, and long afterwards continued to make incursions into Carolina.
Nearly 400 of the Carolinians were slain in this war.
These events in their consequences heightened the dissensions already
existing between the colonists and the proprietaries. The legislature
had applied to the company for aid and protection, which was denied;
large issues of paper money were therefore resorted to as a temporary
relief, the expenses of the war being estimated at £100,000. Directions
were given by the proprietaries to reduce the quantity in circulation.
The next step of the assembly was to appropriate the lands from which
the Indians had been driven; but even this was opposed by the
proprietaries, who refused the necessary sanction. Nor was their request
for the recall of the chief justice Trott and the receiver-general
Rhett, both of whom had made themselves extremely disliked in the
province from their tyrannical measures, attended to; on the contrary,
they were not only retained in office, but thanked for their
services.[28]
It almost seemed as if the proprietary government was doing all in its
power to irritate the mind and alienate the affections of the colony;
accordingly, in 1719, a general combination was formed for its
subversion. The inhabitants bound themselves “to stand by each other for
their rights and privileges, and have nothing more to do with the
proprietaries.” All was done with the utmost secrecy and despatch. A
deputation of the people waited on Robert Johnson, their governor,
begging him “to hold the reins of government for the king.” Johnson,
true to his employers, firmly rejected their offer; on which, choosing
Arthur Middleton as president, they voted themselves “a convention
delegated by the people,” and selected James Moore, a very popular man,
as “the fittest person” for the government of the province.
These summary measures were not found to be displeasing to the English
crown. It was decided in London that the proprietaries had forfeited
their charter, and that both North and South Carolina should be taken
under the royal protection.
“In 1720, Francis Nicholson, known in the history of the northern
provinces, was appointed governor; and early the following year he
arrived at Charleston, where he was received with every demonstration of
joy. Peace being now made between England and Spain, Nicholson was
instructed to cultivate the friendship of the Indians, and also of the
Spaniards of Florida. He accordingly made treaties with the Cherokees
and Creeks, in which boundaries were settled, and other necessary
regulations made. Having thus secured the province from without,
Governor Nicholson, by the encouragement and support which he gave to
literary and religious institutions, soon caused its internal affairs to
assume a new aspect.”[29]
But though South Carolina had thus changed the conditions of its own
government, the change was not recognised in North Carolina till 1729,
when seven-eighths of the proprietaries sold their shares to the crown
for £22,000, Lord Carteret alone retaining his eighth share. At this
period the two Carolinas became separate royal governments, and so
remained till the Revolution.
Before leaving the subject of South Carolina, we must mention that which
Hildreth very justly calls her “bad pre-eminence on the subject of
slave-legislation,” and which remains a distinctive characteristic to
the present time.
At the commencement of the eighteenth century, Carolina received a
remonstrance from Pennsylvania on the subject of the importation of
Indian slaves into that province; and in 1712, Massachusetts enacted
that no further importation of Indian slaves into her province should
take place under pain of forfeiture to the crown. South Carolina had a
vast propensity for dealing in slaves, whether Indian or African; and
the same year that Massachusetts passed her prohibitory law, South
Carolina enacted her first slave-law, which premising that all her
estates and plantations could only be cultivated by the labour of negro
and other slaves, and that all such negroes and slaves “are of such
barbarous, wild, and savage natures, as unfit them to be governed by the
laws, customs, and practices of the province,” other laws shall be
enacted for the good regulation of them, and “the restraining of the
disorders, rapine, and inhumanity to which they are naturally prone and
inclined.”
As a specimen of these enactments, which were instituted for the “good
regulation” of these unhappy negroes, mulattoes, mestizoes, or Indians,
we will give the following:—“Every person,” says Hildreth, “finding a
slave abroad without a pass, was to arrest him and punish him on the
spot ‘by moderate chastisement,’ under a penalty of 20s. for neglecting
it. All negro houses were to be searched once a fortnight for arms and
stolen goods. A slave guilty of petty larceny was, for the first
offence, to be ‘publicly and severely whipped; the second, to have one
of his ears cut off,’ or ‘branded on the forehead with a hot iron, so
that the mark should remain,’ for the third offence, to ‘have his nose
slit;’ for the fourth, to ‘suffer death or other punishment,’ at the
discretion of the court. Any justice of peace, on complaint against any
slave for any crime—from ‘chicken-stealing’ up to insurrection and
murder—was to issue his warrant for the slave’s arrest; and the case was
to be judged by himself, another justice, and three freeholders, whom
they should summon; and if satisfactory evidence of guilt appeared, they
were to sentence the culprit to death or other punishment as the case
might be. If the punishment were death, the ‘kind of death’ was left to
the judgment and discretion of the court; execution to be done forthwith
on their warrant; the crown to be indemnified at the public charge. This
summary form of procedure in the trial of slaves remains in force in
South Carolina to this day; and a very similar form was also adopted,
and still prevails, in North Carolina.”
Death was the punishment of any person who, by “promising freedom in
another country,” induced a slave to leave the province, and the
punishment also of the slave himself if taken. Any slave running away
for twenty days was, for the first offence, “publicly and severely
whipped;” for the second offence, the runaway was to be branded with the
letter R on the right cheek; if the master omitted to do this he was
fined £10. For the third offence, if absent thirty days, to be whipped,
and have one of his ears cut off; the master, for omission, to be fined
£20, and so on, the punishment still increasing in atrocity; whilst any
captain or commander pursuing, apprehending and seizing runaway slaves,
and bringing them back, dead or alive, was entitled to a premium of from
£2 to £4 for each slave, and all persons wounded or disabled in such
service to be compensated by the public; but if the unfortunate slave
“should suffer in life or member, no person whatever shall be liable to
any penalty therefor.” Any person killing his slave out of “wantonness,”
“bloody-mindedness,” or “cruel intention,” to forfeit £50. No master was
to allow his slaves to have their own time, nor “to plant for themselves
any corn, peas, or rice, or to keep any stock of hogs, cattle, or
horses.”
Furthermore, this remarkable act, not contented with outraging humanity
in the person of the slaves, proceeds to insult and blaspheme
Christianity also; and “since charity and the Christian religion we
profess,” says the document, “obliges us to wish well to the souls of
men, and that religion may not be made a pretence to alter any man’s
property and right, and that no person may neglect to baptize their
negroes or slaves for fear that thereby they should be manumitted and
set free, it shall be, and is hereby declared, lawful for any negro, or
Indian slave, or any other slave or slaves whatsoever, to receive and
profess the Christian faith, and to be thereunto baptized; but
notwithstanding such slave or slaves shall receive or possess the
Christian religion and be baptized, he or they shall not thereby be
manumitted or set free.”[30]
“The treaty of Utrecht, 1713,” says the same able author, “happily put
an end to the war between the French and the North American colonies;
and by this treaty, the fur trade of Hudson’s Bay; the whole of
Newfoundland, reserving to the French some share of the fisheries; and
that portion of the island of St. Kitts in the West Indies belonging to
France, together with Acadia according to its ancient limits, were ceded
to the English,” whose sovereignty over the Five Nations was
incidentally acknowledged. But that which the English merchants esteemed
a far more valuable concession was the transfer to the English South Sea
Company of a contract for the annual transportation to Spanish America
of not less than 4,800 negroes, or, in trade language, “Indian pieces,”
originally entered into, shortly after the accession of the Bourbon
dynasty, with a company of French merchants, and known as the Assiento.
It being expected that immense profits would accrue from this trade,
Philip V. of Spain, and Queen Anne of England, each reserved to
themselves one-quarter of the stock of the company. Thus were the
sovereigns of England and Spain the largest slave-merchants in the
world. Harley, however, who had the good sense and the uprightness to
distinguish between a base undertaking and commercial advantage, advised
Queen Anne to assign her stock to the South Sea Company, and it was
done.
“From the period of the Peace of Utrecht, Spain became intimately
connected in her commercial relations with the destinies of the British
American colonies. Like France, she was henceforth their enemy, while
they, as dependencies of Great Britain, tended to strengthen the power
of that kingdom; but from the same motives of policy, like France, she
favoured their independence.”[31]
The territory ceded to the English in the Bay of Fundy was now erected
into a new province; the old name of Nova Scotia being restored, and
which it has ever since retained. Louisiana, of which, however, no
boundaries were decided, remained in the possession of the French, and
they, under that name, comprehended a vast territory comprising the
whole basin of the Mississippi.
In 1710, the post-office system was extended by England to America. “A
chief office,” we are told by Hildreth, “was established at New York, to
which letters were to be conveyed by regular packets across the
Atlantic. The same act regulated the rates of postage in the
plantations. A line of posts was presently established, north to the
Piscataqua, and South to Philadelphia, irregularly extended, a few years
afterwards, to Williamsburg in Virginia; the post leaving Philadelphia
for the south as often as letters enough were lodged to pay the expense.
The postal communication subsequently established with the Carolinas was
still more irregular.”
In 1718, William Penn died in England, leaving his interests in
Pennsylvania and Delaware to his sons, John, Thomas and Richard Penn,
who continued to administer the government by deputies until the time of
the Revolution, when the American Republic purchased their claims for
about £100,000.
At the time of the accession of the House of Hanover to the British
throne, the population of the English colonies is stated to have been as
under, though this statement is considered somewhat below the truth:—
Whites. Negroes. Total.
New Hampshire 9,500 150 9,650
Massachusetts 94,000 2,000 96,000
Rhode Islands 8,500 500 9,000
Connecticut 46,000 1,500 47,500
New York 27,000 4,000 31,000
New Jersey 21,000 1,500 22,500
Pennsylvania and Delaware 43,300 2,500 45,800
Maryland 40,700 9,500 50,200
Virginia 72,000 23,000 95,000
North Carolina 7,500 3,700 11,200
South Carolina 6,250 10,500 16,750
——————— —————— ———————
375,750 58,850 434,600
——————— —————— ———————
The American seas were again, at the close of the war, infested with
pirates, the head-quarters of whom were the Bahama Isles and the
unfrequented creeks of the coast of the Carolinas. In 1717, a celebrated
pirate named Bellamy was wrecked on Cape Cod, where he perished with
about 100 of his men, the five or six who escaped the sea being hung at
Boston. Another, Theach, or Blackbeard as he was called, lurked in
Pamlico Bay, and was supposed to be favoured by Cornbury and other
governors of South Carolina; he, however, was taken by two Virginian
vessels sent out by Spotswood from the Chesapeake in pursuit of him. A
force from England took possession of Providence, the chief harbour of
the Bahamas, fortified the place, and established a regular colony
there, which was the first permanent occupation of this desolate group.
A desperate body of pirates, headed by Steed Bonnet, harboured about
Cape Fear. After an expense of about £10,000 he was taken, and with
forty of his men hung at Charleston; and in 1723, twenty-six others,
natives of Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Virginia, were
executed for the same crime at Newport. These summary measures cleared
the American seas of pirates.