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South Carolina's Part in
the Adoption of the Federal Constitution.
The condition of South Carolina in the years
following the Revolution was distressing. The ravages of the British had
been terrible. On many plantations every slave had been stolen, every
building burned, by the British, and frequently the utmost exertions of
the master were necessary to prevent his remaining servants from starving.
Credit, left by the war in the most precarious condition, was struck
absolutely dead by the state legislature's stay and tender laws, and as a
consequence trade sunk to the same stagnation as agriculture. It was hard
for any but the dishonest debtor to prosper. The reaction of sentiment in
favor of a strong government and business-like administration soon began
to assert itself among the more conservative representatives of the old
planter and merchant classes; and here were laid the foundations of the
talented Federalist party in South Carolina, which did not lose its
control of the state until the prosperity of Federalist rule and the
Democratic revolution of 1800 had placed the country in entirely new
conditions. It has
happened often that a constitution not defensible on abstract principles
of justice has, in a particular crisis, done much to atone for its general
inequity. Such was the case in South Carolina in 1788. A small minority in
the extreme low country, controlled by the wealthy merchant and planter
classes, held, by majorities in both houses of the legislature, absolute
control of the politics of the state. It was this minority, Federalist in
all its sympathies and interests, that entered heartily into the scheme
for a new national constitution, and in 1788 forced it upon an
overwhelming majority of their individualistic, anti-Federal, Democratic
fellow-citizens of the back country.
South Carolina was represented in the Federal
convention of 1787 by four very talented men: John Rutledge, the
Revolutionary president and governor, chief justice of South Carolina and
of the United States; Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, general in the
Revolution and the War of 1812, minister to France and Federalist
vice-presidential candidate in 1800, and presidential candidate in 1804
and 1808; Charles Pinckney (second cousin of C. C. Pinckney), minister to
Spain and four times governor of South Carolina; and Pierce Butler.
Charles Pinckney later became a devoted
Jeffersonian Democrat; but at this time he showed no symptoms of such a
change. The position and influence of the entire South Carolina delegation
may be summed up as in favor of a strong government, a strong, one-man
executive, and the guardianship of the interests of the slave-owners of
the lower south. Whatsoever the glory or the shame, the profit or the
loss, South Carolina stood as the most persistent and influential champion
of this last. In a word, her delegates were typical wealthy, aristocratic
southern Federalists.
John Rutledge was said to be the most eloquent
man upon the floor; and the opinions of both C. C. Pinckney and Pierce
Butler carried weight. But notwithstanding his youth, Charles Pinckney,
aged twenty-nine, the youngest member of this convention, is now
recognized to have exercised one of the strongest influences of any person
in the formation of the constitution. This was fully established by Prof.
J. Franklin Jameson in 1903 in a brilliant piece of constructive
criticism. On May 29,
1787, immediately after Gov. Edmund Randolph, backed by the immense
prestige of Washington, Madison and the entire Virginia delegation, had
presented the Virginia plan, Charles Pinckney presented his outline for a
constitution. The
"Pinckney plan," written out in 1818 by Charles Pinckney and long
generally accepted, was many years ago proved to be nothing better than an
old man's confused recollections. In the reaction which followed, Pinckney
lost much of the credit which is now proved to be justly his due. But
Pinckney's strongest influence was exerted through the "committee on
detail," which worked his ideas extensively into their report, which was
adopted by the convention.
The united labors of the friends of the
constitution in South Carolina overcame the opposition of the party of
alarmed private interests and jealous state rights, led by Rawlins
Lowndes. Of the 149 in favor of the constitution, eleven were from the
up-country; of the seventy-three against, seventeen were from the
low-country.
Distribution of Population.
The population of South Carolina has grown
from 1670 to 1900 as follows : 1670, 150; 1701, 7,000; 1724, 32,000; 1734,
30,000; 1763, 105,000; 1765, 123,000; 1790, 249,073; 1800, 345,591; 1810,
415,115; 1820, 502,741; 1830, 581,185; 1840, 594,398; 1850, 668,507; 1860,
703,708; 1870, 705,606; 1880, 995,577; 1890, 1,151,149; 1900, 1,340,316;
the figures before 1790 being estimated.
Until after the War of Secession the
population was almost entirely rural. County seats to-day containing from
10,000 to 20,000 inhabitants, consisted in 1820 merely, as with Sumter, of
a rude courthouse and jail and twelve or thirteen residences, two churches
and two or three stores; or, as with Greenville, of 500 people; or with
Spartanburg, of 800 people ; or with Newberry, of twenty or thirty
dwellings. The oldest inland town in the state, Camden, a centre of back
country trade, held 2,000 people ; Columbia claimed 4,000; Charleston
24,780. As late as 1854 the name of the now flourishing city of Rock Hill
did not appear upon the map.
A study of the distribution of population
between the sections of low country and up country reveals much that is
interesting in the social, political and industrial history of the state.
To perceive their meaning we must divide the figures into black and white.
It is necessary also to define the terms up and low country. In 1790 the
low country was considered to consist of the old districts of Georgetown,
Charles Town and Beaufort, and the up country of Cheraw, Camden,
Ninety-Six and Orangeburg. On the map of to-day the old line of division
may be followed along the northwestern edge of Marion (cutting straight on
across Florence), Williamsburg, Berkeley, Dorchester, Colleton and
Hampton. Wealth, culture and the control of politics resided in the lower
section; poverty, ignorance, native intelligence and energy, right well
interspersed with moderate prosperity and education, in the upper. As time
went on topographical and economic conditions, supplemented by the
influence natural to wealth and culture, assimilated the tier of counties
immediately to the northwest to the ideals and civilization of the low
country; so that we may say, that since about 1815 the line, almost
coinciding with the geological division, between the up and low country,
has been the northwestern edge of Marlboro, Darlington, Lee, Sumter,
Richland, Calhoun, Orangeburg and Barnwell. I shall refer to the original
and enlarged low country as the old and new low country, and, muto
mutandis, to the old and new up country. The spread of cotton culture and
industrial development have constantly tended to distribute the elements
of the population more evenly, as it is shown by the following table of
the new up and low country:
* Probably about 3,000 whites and 1,000
negroes in 1790 ought to be transferred from low country to up country, on
account of Orangeburg, as then reported in the census, including Lexington
and part of Aiken, which is counted as up country. A transfer of the same
kind, in which white first predominates and finally negro, be ginning with
about 3,000 in 1790, and reaching about 14,000 in 1870, should strictly be
made for each census before 1880, because part of Aiken, counted as up
country, was, until that county's creating in 1871, included in counties
counted as low country.
t The following counties are counted as up
country: Abbeville, Aiken, Anderson, Cherokee, Chester, Chesterfield,
Edgefield, Fairfield, Greenville, Greenwood, Kershaw, Lancaster, Laurens,
Lexington. Newberry, Oconee, Pendleton, Pickens, Saluda, Spartanburg,
Union, York. The following are counted as low country: Bamberg,
Darlington, Dorchester, Florence, Georgetown, Hampton, Hurry, Marion,
Marlboro, Orangeburg, Richland, Sumter, Williamsburg. At no one time were
all the above-named counties in existence.
Many facts of the first
importance lie back of these figures and have made them what they are. The
movement of the negro population up the country marks the progress of
cotton culture. This industry entirely transformed the state above the
line of the old low country. It found the old up country inhabited by a
rather aggressive, typical white American population, known to the old low
country as "a manufacturing people;" it left the entire state, save the
extreme upper edge of the Piedmont escarpment, transformed in industry,
politics and civilization, and under the domination of an oligarchy which,
by their ability and boldness, turned the destinies of the state and
nation in a degree altogether disproportionate to their numerical
strength. If space
allowed the insertion of the complete table on which the condensed one
given is based, it would exhibit one of the most pathetic features in
South Carolina history, the retreat of the free white farmer before the
oncoming planter with his bands of slaves. Chester, for instance, in 1860,
had lost 47 per cent. of its white population of 1820, while it had gained
in negroes 141 per cent.; and in 1900 even had not again risen to as large
an absolute white population as it had had eighty years before. Newberry,
sinking from 10,177 whites in 1820, to 7,000 in 1860, had barely in 1900
risen, with 10,351 whites, to the figures of 1820. With Fairfield the
white and negro populations have run as follows: In 1820, 9,378 whites and
7,796 negroes; in 1840, 7,587 whites and 12,578 negroes; in 1860, 6,373
whites and 15,738 negroes; in 1900, 7,050 whites and 22,375 negroes.
The causes of the rapid increase of negro
slaves and decrease of free white men were two: the encroach of the large
slave-worked cotton plantation, and the lure of cheap fertile western
lands. South Carolina has always been a prolific nest for peopling the
great West, and particularly the Southwest. Complaints of the migration of
thousands to Mississippi and Alabama were loud in 1820. The stream never
ceased. In 1860, of
the white persons in the United States born in South Carolina, 276,868 (59
per cent.) were living in the state and 193,389 (41 per cent.) in other
states. It is a fair presumption that the vast stream of South Carolinians
that flowed to Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, etc., greatly
promoted the spread of South Carolina ideas of nullification of secession.
Slavery, 1790 to 1860.
The rapid increase of slaves from 1790 to 1820
is evidence of large importations. The state had reopened the traffic with
Africa in 1804; and in the next three years and a little over, 39,075
slaves were imported. The masters were, for some decades, a small
proportion of the white population. In the old low country in 1790 the
census list of heads of families shows almost every family to have been
possessed of slaves, the largest number in one hand being about 500. In
the up country in 1790 slaves were rare, sometimes over a hundred families
being passed without a slave, though with the introduction of cotton
culture, which followed the invention of the gin in 1793, almost the whole
state was gradually sprinkled with a planter class holding many slaves and
surrounded by numerous small owners in town and country. In 1860 there
were 26,701 slaveholders in the state, representing doubtless about
130,000 people, or 45 per cent. of the white population. In 1850 only
9,629 owners held ten or more slaves, out of a white population of
274,563, and the proportion of large owners was much greater than in other
states. Slaves had no
standing in court, and no person of color could testify in cases affecting
a white person. Special laws of greater severity than those for whites
governed the negro population, slave and free. For instance, an attempt to
rape a white woman was a capital crime in a negro. Slaves were also
protected by certain special laws. The South Carolina slave code was by no
means inhumane, though it would be absurd to deny that cruel masters did
many brutal things that went unpunished, just as cruel masters still do in
New York, Chicago and London.
Slaves and free negroes were tried by a court
consisting of a magistrate and two freeholders, or two magistrates and
three freeholders, who were practically governed by no rules, except that
power over life and limb was limited to specified serious crimes, and from
whom there was no appeal. The interests of the master and the sense of
class responsibility secured substantial justice to the negro. The state
compensated the master for an executed slave.
In the earlier days, for peculiarly heinous
crimes, as murdering the master, slaves were burned alive (North as well
as South); but this was very rare indeed after the early years of the
Nineteenth century. I have met a case in 1820 and have heard of one on dim
recollection in about 1835.
On the other hand, in 1854, two young white
men, one of wealthy family, were hanged for the murder of a runaway slave
on whom they set their dogs, every exertion of their attorneys proving
unavailing. The
liberal sentiments inspired by the Revolution led to numerous
manumissions, and there appeared a number of pronounced abolitionists.
Henry Laurens reluctantly found the emancipation of his $100,000 worth of
slaves too much opposed by his environment; but the emancipation sentiment
never died in his family. One branch of the Grimke family went North and
became extreme abolitionists. Many lesser folk left the state, even far
toward the mid-century, on account of their detestation of slavery, 5,000
Quakers, it is stated, going, in a short time.
Before the spread of cotton culture the up
country had little interest in slavery. Timothy Ford, stating in 1794 the
reasons the low country planter could not consent to proportional
representation for the up country, says that we cannot submit slavery to
the control of these free labor strangers. "Our very existence as a people
depends upon the perpetual observance of certain fundamental institutions,
and we cannot submit to any people on earth the power of abrogating or
altering them. * * * We must cease to be altogether the instant we cease
to be just what we are." So early had slavery become the master of the
masters. Before 1800
manumission was unrestricted, and frequently heartless masters forced
freedom upon decrepit slaves to avoid supporting them in their declining
years. This led to the law of 1800, intended to protect both the slave and
the public, by requiring the approval of a magistrate and five
freeholders, who should determine whether the slave was self-supporting
and would be a safe freeman. The sharp check given to the increase of free
negroes is proof of the extent of the evil at which the law had been
aimed. The increase from 1790 to 1800 was 77 per cent.; from 1800 to 1810
only 43 per cent. But 43 per cent. is itself very large, and the fact that
in the next decade it rose to 50 per cent. shows that the principle of
emancipation was widely entertained. It is also true that racial
antagonism had almost entirely disappeared and that the slaves were
treated with extraordinary leniency.
This period of liberalism was unhappily ended
by three events: that "firebell in the night," the Missouri debates in
1819 and 1820; the abolitionist movement taking shape in the early
twenties; and the horrible Vezey plot in 1822.
Denmark Vezey, a freed
negro of considerable intelligence, had organized a conspiracy extending
its connections as far north as Santee River, officered by a corps of
lieutenants, and embracing, it was estimated, 5,000 slaves. He told the
negroes, alluding to the Missouri debate, that Congress had freed them and
that their masters now held them illegally in servitude. Seizing the vast
wealth around them, murder, arson, rape, and escape to San Domingo,
constituted the motives by which Vezey fired the imagination of his
followers. As St. Michael's clock tolled midnight on June 16, the massacre
was to begin. A faithful slave revealed the plot; the arrest of apparently
every leader followed. Their trials were conducted with fairness and
deliberation, each negro having a lawyer appointed in his defence.
Thirty-five negroes were hanged; death was commuted to a lighter
punishment in the case of twelve others ; twenty-two were transported ;
fifty-two were acquitted.
As Vezey was a "free man of color," the alarm
of the community was much aroused against this class, and a movement was
begun for their expulsion. In alarm, as the preamble states, at the great
increase of freedmen, a law had been passed, Dec. 20, 1820, forbidding
emancipation except with the permission of the legislature, and forbidding
any free negro to enter the state, unless he had previously lived in it
within the past two years. In 1823 even these were forbidden to return.
In 1835, in reaction against the abolition
movement, it was enacted that a free negro who returned after having been
once expelled should be sold as a slave, and severe penalties were
denounced against his white accomplices. All persons were forbidden to
bring into South Carolina any slave who had been north of Washington city
or to other free countries, and the sheriff was ordered to imprison during
the stay of vessels in a South Carolina port any free negro sailor,
passenger or employee. This last clause embroiled South Carolina, in 1844,
in a hot dispute with Massachusetts, whose commissioner, Judge Hoar, was
compelled by the citizens of Charleston to leave the state, even before
the law, which the legislature had promptly passed making a mission such
as his a crime, could be enforced.
In 1841 persons were forbidden to emancipate
their slaves by will or deed or to send them to a free state or foreign
country, or even to provide for their virtual freedom under ownership.
Anger and fear had completely destroyed the spirit existing before 1820.
Space forbids more than a passing reference to
that interesting and pathetic class, the "F. M. C." -free man of color. Of
these there were in South Carolina in 1790, 1,801; in 1820, 6,826; in
1840, 8,276; in 1860, 9,914. In 1.860, of the large number in Charleston,
360 were assessed for taxation, their property being placed at
$724,570-doubtless little more than half its market value-and 130 of them
owned 390 slaves.
Manufactures. As
already indicated, the immense profits of raising cotton with slave labor
spread that industry over the state almost to the destruction and
exclusion of . everything else. In 181.4, 3,267,141 yards of cloth were
woven in the state, on 14,938 looms, all but 126,463 yards in the free
labor up country. These goods were valued at $1,678,223. In 1840 the value
of the state's manufactures of cloth reached only $362,450. In 1860 the
same items reached $792,950, still less than half the figures for 1820.
The total value of manufactured products in
South Carolina in 1810 is given as $2,216,212; in 1820 as $168,666; [I am
tempted to think that household manufactures must have been omitted in
1820 and included in other years. They are included in the figures I quote
for 1814, and evidently in those for 1810. In fact almost the entire cloth
manufacture in South Carolina was then in the household. Doubtless the
larger part of the European manufacture was then done by Silas Marners at
home.] in 1840, $5,638,823; in 1860, $8,619,195.
The variety of manufactures was always great, though all but the textile
industries were small: e.g. there was in 1840 a mill in Greenville
producing annually $20,000 worth of paper. The manufacture of cotton
cloth, however, has always been so much the most important as to demand
special notice.
Governor Glenn reports in 1748 or 1749 that a little cloth was being woven
in Williamsburg. As early as 1768 cotton cloth was manufactured and
offered for sale in the Darlington section. In 1777 one planter had thirty
negroes producing 120 yards of mixed woolen and cotton cloth a week, spun
and woven under the instruction of a white man and woman. In 1790 the
first "Arkwright mill in America" was operating in South Carolina.
The first considerable attempt at production of cloth for commerce was
made in 1808 by the "South Carolina Homespun Company" of Charleston, under
the presidency of Dr. J. L. E. W. Shecut. The original capital of $30,000
was afterwards supplemented.
In 1812 plans which appear to have materialized were on foot for a mill in
Greenville county, to be run by water and make 250 yards of cloth a day.
David R. Williams (governor, 1814-16) took advantage of the high prices
caused by the commercial restrictions during the period of the War of 1812
and started a yarn and coarse cloth mill near Society Hill, operated by
his own slaves. It was still in operation in 1847.
Soon after these promising beginnings, however, Calhoun, Cheves and other
leaders threw their influence against manufacturing, and its development
was left largely to a number of New England settlers who came, about 1816,
to upper South Carolina and, as Kohn so justly says, "laid the foundation
for" more than two million spindles that now "hum in the Piedmont belt."
These Yankee Hills and Weavers started their enterprises about 1818, so
nearly contemporaneously that priority is still in dispute. After this the
regular commercial manufacture, by natives and New Englanders, never
ceased. At one time and another throughout the period several factories
successfully worked slaves, under white overseers.
In 1847 William Gregg, one of the notable
figures in Southern industrial history, began operations at Graniteville
on the largest and best considered plans up to that time attempted in the
state. Gregg, a Virginian, came to South Carolina on foot. He was a
skilled jeweler and watchmaker. Moving, with a growing trade, from
Columbia to Charleston, he began in about 1840 a vigorous campaign for the
extensive building of mills. Governor Hammond (governor 1842-4) estimated
that in 1850 50,000 out of the 275,000 white population were not able to
procure a decent living. "Most of them," he says, "now follow agricultural
pursuits in feeble yet injurious competition with slave labor." Gregg
states that he saw hundreds of white women in Charleston in wretched
poverty for lack of occupation, and that thousands of South Carolinians
never passed a month, from birth to death, without being "stinted for
meat," and he scoffed at the idea of needing more negroes from Africa to
supply labor. Gregg proposed to abolish such conditions. His writings and
acts show him not only a captain of industry, but a statesman.
In 1850 Gregg's factory, Graniteville, in
Aiken county, had a main building of granite 350 feet long and was
surrounded by a village of 1,000 inhabitants, provided with "ornamental
cottages" with gardens, a school, a library, and a savings bank. No liquor
selling was allowed. The products of the mill took the premium at an
exposition in Philadelphia.
In 1847 there were ten cotton mills in
operation in South Carolina, and "an extensive establishment" in erection.
In 1860 there were seventeen, with a capital of $801,825.
Constitutional and Political Development.
The constitution under which South Carolina
continued until 1865 was adopted by convention in 1790, and, by the
practice then all but universal, put in force without popular vote. The
government was one of great centralization, and the legislature was well
nigh supreme. Constitutional limitations upon its authority were scanty;
for years it elected every official, from governor and presidential
electors down. In addition to being elected by the legislature, the
governor was also without veto power; so that though many governors
exercised much influence, it was by reason of their personal strength. In
general, the governorship was a much less important office than now. For
governor and legislators a moderately high property qualification was
required, ten slaves being included for representatives, thus effectually
securing a certain species of property and civilization.
Representation was apportioned without system,
and the one-fifth of the white people residing in the old low country had
a majority in each house. The struggle for representation by white
population, lost in the convention of 1790, was renewed out of doors, with
Wade Hampton, Robert G. Harper, John Kershaw, and, possibly most valuable
of all, Joseph Alston of Georgetown, as leaders. The fight was not won
till 1808, and then by compromise. From that time till after the war
representation was apportioned in the lower house according to wealth and
white population equally, each district having one representative for each
one sixty-second part of the wealth or white population of the state. The
senators were redistributed with more equity than before. This left the
Senate in control of the low country and the House in control of the up
country, so that the wealthy planter could not force injurious measures
upon the up country farmer, nor the numerous and impecunious up countryman
endanger the vested interest of the wealthy coast region. This was not
without its value, when, on one occasion in the era of subsidizing
railroads, a representative from Charleston rebuked one from Spartanburg
for proposing to spend the state's money to build a line through his
county, whose taxes actually had to be supplemented by the state treasury
in order to pay the expense of administering the courts. This arrangement
later became Calhoun's ideal of a government by interests, to which he
wished to assimilate the northern and southern representation in the two
houses of Congress, leaving the control of one in the hands of each
section. One of the
earliest results of the reform of representation was that for the first
time the legislature began to elect governors from above the old low
country line. The sectional division was also recognized in allowing the
governor to reside where he pleased, except during legislative sessions,
in requiring the supreme court to meet both in Charleston and Columbia, in
providing one treasurer for the up country and one for the low country,
and in requiring the secretary of state and several other officials to
keep offices both in Charleston and Columbia.
In 1810 every white man was made a voter; but
land owners continued to enjoy the privilege of voting for representatives
in any one county in which they held property, and for county officers in
all. This amendment to the constitution was framed by John S. Richardson.
Vermont, in 1786, is the only state that
antedated South Carolina in manhood suffrage.
Before many decades a number of the county
(called "district" from 1798 to 1868) and other officials were made
elective by the people. Twice at least, about 1838 and 1847-56, there
arose restiveness against the absorption of authority by the legislature
at the expense of the people. In 1838 it was an attempt to have the
governor, and in 1847-56 to have the presidential electors, chosen by the
people; but in both cases Calhoun used his influence to crush the
movement, for the reason that it would reveal the weakness of divided
parties and lessen the state's influence in Congress.
South Carolina before 1860 never merged
herself in any party, though, except in 1832 and 183G, she always voted
with the Democrats, beginning with 1800. But she never sent a delegation
to any national party convention until that in Charleston in 1860, and
then not without hesitation. William C. Preston and Waddy Thompson,
restive at Calhoun's dictatorship, attempted in the later thirties, to
organize a Whig party; but the movement was almost negligible and was
fiercely crushed. In 1844 the Whigs cast only about 6,000 out of about
58,000 votes. Nevertheless a small number with broad construction views
continued to vote Whig to the last.
An interesting phase of constitutional history
occurred in connection with the development of the power of courts to
decide unconstitutional acts of the legislature. A decision of this kind
in South Carolina in 1792 was the sixth or seventh in the United States.
In 1798 Gov. Charles Pinckney protested vigorously, and sought to have
this new power abolished.
Internal Improvements.
The transportation problem in South Carolina
was to get the cotton crop to market. The system of poor roads maintained
by local authorities proved utterly inadequate and lead to an ambitious
scheme of public works at state expense. This was supplemented by private
canals and toll roads. The introduction of railways marked another era.
The earliest and most notable of the canal enterprises was the Santee
Canal. This was one of the first canals of its length in the United
States. It was one expression of the energetic efforts to develop
transportation which led to the internal improvement policy of Gallatin
and Clay, the Erie Canal, and, eventually, the vast railway system of
to-day. The Santee Canal Company was chartered in 1786 and begun
construction in 1793. The canal was open in July, 1800. The stock was
divided into 720 shares, at $1,000 each, assessed as need arose. Most of
this was consumed in the construction, which cost $650,667. [This figure
is from Porcher. Phillips says about $750,000.] The engineer was Col. John
Christian Sent a Hessian, who was captured with Burgoyne, embraced the
American cause and was sent to South Carolina. [This statement, contrary
to the traditional statement, is derived from a high class contemporary
MS. recently discovered by the writer.] He was a skilful engineer, but a
very jealous man, and deliberately chose an expensive and difficult route
rather than the one dictated by the topography and water courses that had
previously been suggested by Mouzon. The canal is now in ruins, though
some of the locks, built of brick and originally capped with marble, are
standing. As though it were yet a reality, it still appears on the map,
where it can be seen much more plainly than upon its crumbled banks. The
canal left Santee River about seven miles east of Eutaw Springs and ran,
as though in la belle France itself, through old St. Stephens and St.
John's Berkeley among the homesteads of Mazycks, Porchers, Du Boses,
Ravenals, Gourdins, Gaillards, Bonneaus, Pontoux and Mottes,
south-southeast to the northern branch of Cooper River, just east of
Monk's Corner. The rapids on the Congaree Broad, Saluda and Wateree rivers
were circumvented by canals, and thus more than half the counties of the
state were enabled to send their produce to Charleston by inland water
transportation. Soon freight began to arrive in the narrow, shallow boats
from within thirty-five miles of the Blue Ridge.
The canal was twenty-two miles long, twenty
feet wide at the bottom and thirty-five at the surface of the water, which
stood four feet deep. The highest level was thirty-four feet above Santee
River and sixty-nine feet above the Cooper. The locks were 60 by 10 feet,
and admitted boats of twenty-two tons burden. All the rough work was done
by slave labor. The skilled hired white mechanics died off pitifully among
the swamps and canal traverses. For a mile and a half, in fact, it was a
wooden trough carried above the ground.
The canal was a disastrous venture for its
stockholders, as its annual profits at the highest, were hardly 3 per
cent. A toll of $21 per boat was charged each way. The greatest amount of
business appears to have been in about 1830, when the tolls reached
$20,000. The value of the canal to Charleston is indicated by the fact
that for the year ending Sept. 30, 1827, it brought all but 59,000 of the
200,000 320-pound bales of cotton that entered the city.
Three years of drought, 1817-19, so severe as
to deprive the upper levels of the canal, in its badly chosen situation,
of water, led the legislature to build turnpikes from the coast to the up
country. Steam engines were used to pump water into the canal. But its
doom was sealed by a more formidable enemy than turnpikes and droughts. In
1842 a branch of the railroad from Charleston to Hamburg, opposite
Augusta, was completed to Columbia. In 1848 another branch reached Camden.
The canal, in rapid decline since 1848, was abandoned in 1858.
The passion for "internal improvements" took
possession of South Carolina in 1817. In 1818 the legislature appropriated
one million dollars to be expended during four years for road and canal
building and river clearing. In the ten years 1816-25 the state government
expended for these ends $1,712,662, and for several years after about
$100,000 annually; but the fever subsided for a time after 1828, to be
renewed later in favor of railroads. The old "State road" from Charleston
through Holly Hill and St. Matthews to Columbia and an extension through
Newberry and Greenville to Saluda Gap on the North Carolina line were
built during this period. But the turnpike and toll system was a failure,
as the people did not consider the advantages worth the cost in tolls. The
turnpikes were allowed to fall into absolute neglect.
The turnpikes, says Phillips, to whose account
I am chiefly indebted, had been during this period the main reliance of
Charleston in the plucky fight she waged for a century to draw export
trade to her port. The invention of railroads caused the abandonment of
the unsatisfactory and languishing system. The Charleston of 1825-40 was
one of the most alert and progressive business communities in America. She
was the mainspring in half of the larger railroad enterprises in
ante-bellum South Carolina, and one of the heaviest financial burdens upon
her city government to-day is paying the interest on the subsidies she
advanced in these enterprises. The old city looked to the upland cotton
belt and continually beyond as far as the Mississippi River for the
substance of a vast commerce to pass over her railways and through her
harbor to the outside world. It is a story full of high endeavor and
heroic effort; but ports further to the west and north, favored by
accessibility to the fields and mines, have passed her in the race. In
1774, even with the great stagnation in trade produced by non-importation,
etc., South Carolina's exports and imports equalled $3,624,035; in 1821,
$10,207,624; in 1856 for Charleston, $19,228,803; in 1890, $14,353,395; in
1908, $5,886,962. The
first railroad in South Carolina was chartered in 1827, construction was
begun in 1831, and the road was finished in 1833. This road, 136 miles
long, was the Charleston & Hamburg, with termini at Charleston and
Hamburg. By 1853 thirteen different roads, aggregating 1,044 miles in
length (not including side tracks), had been chartered, and all of them
had been completed by 1860. Of the total mileage, however, seventy-seven
miles were in North Carolina and twelve miles in Georgia. There were thus
955 miles of railway, not including sidings, in South Carolina in 1861; on
June 30, 1907, there were 3,208.
The ante-bellum railroads were extremely
frail. In 1840 they were commonly built with ties from three to five feet
apart, traversed by a longitudinal beam along which, for rail, was nailed
an iron strap one inch thick and two and a half inches wide, or smaller,
which sometimes turned up at the end and skewered the coach or any unhappy
passenger in the path. In South Carolina the gauge at first was five feet.
When the Charleston and Hamburg Railroad
completed its 136 miles of track in 1833, it was the longest railroad in
the world. Much executive ability was displayed in mastering the new
problems in its construction and operation.
December, 1859, the state government owned
$2,652,300 of railroad stock, besides having guaranteed four and a quarter
million dollars' worth of bonds, much of which it had to pay.
Banking.
South Carolina's banking history is very
honorable. Before 1860 persons from neighboring states going to a distance
would provide themselves with South Carolina bank notes, as these were as
good as gold everywhere, even circulating, says Williams, in England and
Europe. Every South Carolina bank was specie paying. Previous to the war
of secession there was not a bank failure. There were a few banks of very
large capital, which extended their operations to distant sections of the
state. It was a day of a few great emporiums; the bank and cotton market
at every respectable village are very modern. The oldest was the Bank of
South Carolina, chartered in 1792, with $1,000,000 capital.
In 1812 the legislature chartered the State
Bank, in which the state was the sole stockholder. It enjoyed one of the
most notable careers in American banking history, earning high dividends
with a cash capital rising finally to about $1,200,000, and a circulation
of about $1,500,000. It was closed by the "carpet baggers" in 1870. Says
Horace White : "Its history is exceptional in the fact that for nearly
sixty consecutive years it was conducted with prudence, honesty and
pecuniary profit without the spur of private interest. It must have been
in the charge of good bankers all the time."
The capital, surplus and circulation of the
twenty banks in South Carolina in 1861 equalled $21,041,522, or $28.48 per
capita, being almost twice as much in absolute quantity and more than
three times as much per capita as in September, 1903. The deposits,
however, were small as compared with to-day, being $3,334,037; the loans
and discounts were $22,230,759, and the specie $1,628,336.
Education.
The outburst of energy and enthusiasm upon the
establishment of a stable government in 1789 showed itself also in
education. The College of Charleston, only a high school until about 1825,
was chartered in 1785, with an endowment of $60,000 subscribed by its
friends. By 1800 sixteen or more high schools were chartered, in some
instances with fair endowments. In 1801 the legislature founded the South
Carolina College, in order to place higher education near her people and
to diminish the sectional antagonism, then so fierce, by enabling young
men of both sections of the state to learn each other. The classical
"Willington" of Dr. Moses Waddell, founded in 1804, was one of the notable
preparatory schools in the country. There John C. Calhoun rose at dawn to
study under the forest trees, as was the custom, and thence went well
prepared into the junior class at Yale.
In 1811 a "free school" system open to all was
organized, and $37,000 was voted by the state for operation. Eventually
the plan was adopted of the state's paying the tuition of poor children at
any private or local school. Not being very desirous of education and
resenting being distinguished as charity patrons, the poor, to a great
extent, kept their children at home. The wealthy resorted largely to
private tutors. For the twenty-seven years, 1812-38, the state
appropriation averaged $35,000. After 1852 the state annually appropriated
$74,000. The total expenditure for schools and colleges in the state in
1860 was $690,412, mainly from tuition fees. Endowments equalled
$1,910,788. The expenditures per capita of white population in South
Carolina equalled $2.36; in Massachusetts, $1.82; the adult white
illiteracy in South Carolina, 5.07 per cent.; in Massachusetts, 3.79 per
cent. In 1860 there existed in South Carolina eleven colleges for men,
five colleges for young women and a number of high-grade preparatory
schools. Barhamville, for women, dated back to about 1830. Of the sixteen
colleges, two were under the control of the state, three of private
parties, ten of religious denominations and one of the city of Charleston.
Three were schools of theology and one a school of medicine.
In standards of scholarship, the ante-bellum
colleges were much more nearly abreast of their northern contemporaries
than is now the case. Indeed, in the classics the standards have not yet
recovered the position lost as the consequence of the events of 1861-76.
The same may be unhappily said regarding student standards of personal
honor. A sincere friend of democracy must admit that this is due, in part,
to the introduction into college halls of thousands who would have never
dreamed of such opportunity in the olden time. It is one of the unpleasant
incidents of democracy in the making which serves to show how badly
democracy had been needed.
The Work of South Carolina's Ante-Bellum
Statesmen, at Home and Abroad.
South Carolina statesmen distinguished
themselves in diplomacy in the early years of the constitution. Later
their attention was mainly absorbed by domestic politics.
In 1795 Thomas Pinckney, minister to England,
1792-4, and to Spain, 1794-6, negotiated with the latter the most
brilliant treaty the country had gained since the signing of the peace. In
1797 Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, his brother, taught France to respect
our country by his defiance of the demands of the corrupt Directory in his
answer, "No; no ; not a sixpence!" popularized into `Millions for defense,
but not one cent for tribute." Waddy Thompson served with distinction as
minister to Mexico from 1842 to 1844. Calhoun, as secretary of state in
1844-5, conducted the delicate negotiations with _Mexico and England with
a skill that promoted the advantageous outcome of both disputes, though he
bitterly opposed forcing war upon Mexico. Charles Pinckney, though bold to
the point of indiscretion in Spain, 1801-5, was proved by events to have
been wiser than his government, which would have saved us unmeasured
humiliation and loss if it had sustained his positive policy. Henry
Middleton was minister to Russia from 1820 to 1830, and F. W. Pickens from
1858 to 1860.
The influence of South Carolina statesmen in
national councils from about 1832 to 1860 was doubtless greater in
proportion to their constituency than that of the representatives of any
other state. This disproportionate influence of, so small a state is
accounted for by a number of reasons. Several of her representatives
happened to be men of unusual talent ; her people sacrificed everything in
state politics to presenting a united front in Washington; her system and
ideals were such as to bring the ablest men into public life, and the
South Carolinians had supreme faith in themselves and their state and a
reckless courage. They were in deadly earnest; for they verily believed
that to lose in their fight for state sovereignty, the only shield of
slavery, would be to reduce their homes to a howling wilderness of African
savagery. Therefore they dared and fought as men fighting for their lives
and the honor of their wives and daughters. Thus, being ready at all times
to go to any extreme, they were able for several decades to force
submission upon the North, not willing to risk the huge stakes of
secession and war in the contest. It was a bold game in which success
meant the misfortune of their own state, most South Carolinians of to-day
would doubtless admit, and in which failure meant ruin to the ante-bellum
Southern system; but it was a game played by the ruling class with skill
and daring. The task
of South Carolina statesmen after the abolitionist and protectionist
movements took shape was thus concerned with domestic politics. This
demanded the control of Congress. Accordingly, we find that from the 21st
to the 36th Congress (1829 - 1861), nine of the sixteen were presided over
by Southern men, generally of the most decided type. In the Senate, of
twenty-six presidents pro tempore elected during the period, only six were
Northern, and of these two were from Maryland. Of the nine presidents,
four were Southern, and of the other five three were effective tools in
the hands of the Southern party. Though foreign affairs were secondary,
Southern men held from 1830 to 1860 29 1/2 per cent. of the appointments
to the five leading European courts.
Until about 1830 Virginia had been the
representative Southern state. After issues became more desperate and
parties more violent, Virginia was found too moderate for the lower,
cotton-raising South, and leadership passed gradually to South Carolina
under the powerful influence of Calhoun, seconded by Hayne, McDuffie and
other brilliant lieutenants.
Intellectually, Calhoun was decidedly in
advance of his following. He comprehended the situation more fully, saw
further into the future, and exercised a more statesmanlike union of
boldness and self-restraint than he was able at all times to impose upon
them. But it was not
until the crisis of 1848, incident to disposing of the territory acquired
from Mexico, that Calhoun succeeded in his long labor of forming a united
Southern party, in disregard of all old party lines. At his death in 1850
he left to his successor, Jefferson Davis, a firmly united Southern party,
well indoctrinated with the principles and prepared to go any length in
carrying out the theories of their departed master.
Calhoun died a broken-hearted man. His life is
the tragedy of a mighty mind and noble character, constrained by the
circumstances of his residence and his time into the service of a cause
against which civilization and the forces of history set with resistless
power. He sincerely believed that the abolition of slavery would mean to
Africanize his native land, and that state sovereignty was the sole
bulwark against this hideous ruin. So believing, he would have been a
craven and a traitor to have done otherwise than as he did. He never
sought disunion, but was driven to advocate it only in case it should be
impossible, by any other means, to save the South. His recommending that
there be two Presidents, a Southern to veto measures endangering the
South, and a Northern to veto measures against the North, is alone, as Van
Holst points out, proof of his love for the Union; for nothing but deep
affection could so blind such an intellect to the impracticability of such
a scheme. Federal
and Interstate Relations.
With the exception of the dispute with
Massachusetts culminating in 1844, already alluded to, and of negotiations
looking towards cooperation for secession, to be described later, the
political relations of South Carolina with other states were of little
interest. Boundary disputes with Georgia and North Carolina dragged
through many years, and the question as to whether Andrew Jackson was born
to the east or the west of that portion of the North Carolino-South
Carolina line near Charlotte, running north and south, still excites
debate. The sudden northward elevation of the western half of South
Carolina's northern line is accounted for by the fact that in colonial
times the surveyors, after running northwest from the coast, started due
west too far south. At a later date their error was compensated by running
the western half of the line an equivalent distance north. The saddle-like
hump near Charlotte was occasioned by running around the old Catawba
Indian reservation, a square whose northern corner is seen pointing to the
northward near the 81st degree of longitude.
The Federal relations of South Carolina from
1798 to 1860 are of the utmost importance. Hamilton's funding measures
assumed a greater Revolutionary debt for South Carolina than for any other
state - $3,999,651 - Massachusetts being a close second and Virginia, the
third, falling more than a million below this figure. South Carolina was
at this time, due to the preponderance of power enjoyed by the low
country, staunchly Federalist. A Charleston pamphleteer in 1794 says that
the dissatisfaction of the up-country with the South Carolina constitution
is as unreasonable as it would be for one state to propose to withdraw
from the Union, because it thought the national constitution deprived it
of too much of its power. But the keynote of the doctrine which South
Carolina never surrendered, deeper than this temporary nationalism, is
struck by this same writer when he bases the extraordinary privileges of
the low country against which the up country was protesting upon the
principle that the majority have no right to infringe the social compact.
There was an abundance of national patriotism
in South Carolina until it became apparent that the new protectionist
policy was working her injury. Calhoun voted for the tariff of 1816 and
favored the liberal exercise of implied powers. But before long he
entirely changed. We may place his conversion to strict construction
doctrines at about 1819. Calhoun did not, however, originate the strict
construction party in South Carolina. Judge William Smith, of York county,
while in the United States Senate in 1817 opposed the bonus bill Calhoun
originated in the house. Defeated at the end of his first term in 1823,
Smith returned to South Carolina and, with the aid of President Thomas
Cooper, of the South Carolina College, educated the state in the school of
strict construction, thus earning the title of "the father of
nullification." In 1825 he succeeded in formally committing the
legislature to his views and was endorsed by a second election to the
United States Senate. But the movement he had organized outstripped him;
in 1830 he was defeated because he opposed nullification. The leadership
had passed to Calhoun, who in his "South Carolina Exposition," written in
1828 for a legislative committee as their report, had expounded
nullification of the 1798 Kentucky kind.
The hardship with which the tariff upon
manufactures bore upon the Southern planter is indicated by the exports.
In 1835 the exports from New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania equalled
$54,127,000; those from Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and
Louisiana, $70,176,000. South Carolina was exceeded only by Louisiana, the
highest, and New York, the next highest.
The tariff of 1828 prepared South Carolina for
action; that of 1832 precipitated the crisis. Calhoun advised that a
convention should be called and the tariff nullified. The advice of the
leader who was now implicitly trusted was immediately followed by governor
and legislature. After an election of unprecedented excitement and
bitterness, the convention met, Nov. 19-24, 1832. The "Unionist" vote for
the legislature in 1832 was about 17,000; the nullifiers, 23,000; but as
the former carried few districts their representatives were a small
minority. The same was true of the convention, elected a few weeks later.
"Of the 162 delegates actually in attendance," says Houston, "136 were
nullifiers." The Unionist strength lay mainly in the extreme northwestern
section of the state. In the village of Spartanburg a small party burned
Calhoun in effigy. But the most influential Unionist leaders, William
Drayton, James Pettigru, B. F. Perry, J. B. O'Neal, Daniel E. Huger and J.
S. Richardson, wore all, except Perry, from the middle and lower country,
and so generally failed of obtaining seats. The bulk of the political
leadership was with the nullifiers, represented by Calhoun, James
Hamilton, R. Y. Hayne, S. D. Miller, William Harper, George McDuffie, F.
H. Elmore, William C. Preston, R. W. Barnwell and Robert J. Turnbull.
It must not be supposed that the "Unionists,"
or anti-nullifiers, were any more in favor of a protective tariff than
their opponents. Their antagonism arose entirely over the method of
resistance.
The theory of nullification
is that the constitution is merely an elaborate treaty between sovereign
nations, the states, and that there can be no common superior to judge and
compel these sovereigns. The United States government is simply the agent
of the associated sovereigns, and though competent to decide all suits of
law and equity, cannot, in the nature of the relations existing, judge its
creators and masters in their sovereign capacity. The constitutionality of
a tariff designedly for protection (an object not mentioned by the
constitution in the enumerated powers), would be a point in a case of law
between individuals, and thus subject, so far as that case went, to the
jurisdiction of the court. It was an entirely different matter, however,
for a sovereign nation (or state) to declare a certain act of the agent,
Congress, acting under the treaty of union, the constitution, to be beyond
the powers granted by that sovereign, and so null and void within her
bounds. Accordingly, by the ordinance of nullification, all officers were
forbidden, after Feb. 1, 1833, to enforce, and all citizens to obey,
within South Carolina, the tariff laws of 1828 and 1832. Jurors were
required to take an oath practically to decide in favor of the state in
its interpretation of the constitution, and so was every civil and
military official. This "iron-clad" or "test" oath, by which 23,000
citizens sought to compel 17,000 to swear away their own convictions,
further embittered the already bitter struggle. Both sides armed for civil
war, and whatever the constitutionality of nullification, its
impracticability as an instrument of constitutional government was
demonstrated on its first trial.
The so-called "compromise tariff," under the
leadership of Clay, is familiar history. The duties above 20 per cent.
were gradually reduced during the next ten years to that level. An
informal meeting of prominent citizens, while the debate was in progress,
with great common sense, but absolutely no warrant under any theory of the
constitution, declared the ordinance of nullification suspended. The
convention reassembled, March 11, 1833, and on the 15th rescinded the
ordinance. On the 18th the "force bill" was nullified, and the convention
adjourned. In one
sense the tariff of 1833 was a compromise; but in another it was a
capitulation of the United States government. The essential issue was not
a high or a low schedule of duties, but whether the general government
could interpret its constitution and enforce its own laws. Congress, by
passing a bad and unjust tariff, in the interest of special classes in
certain localities, had deprived itself of moral strength, and so could
not do justice without the appearance of cringing.
Hugh S. Legare writes that the acceptance of
the compromise by South Carolina was largely due to the strong Unionist
party at home, from whom trouble might as surely have been expected in an
extremity as from the military power of the national government.
An instructive side light on the nullification
movement is the case of McCready against Hunt. McCready (the father of the
historian McCrady) was elected a militia officer in Charleston. He applied
to Colonel Hunt for his commission. Colonel Hunt required the "test" oath,
in addition to the previous oath prescribed by the state constitution. The
case reached the highest court of the state, the Court of Appeals, which,
by a vote of two to one, sustained McCready and declared the oath
unconstitutional. The legislature punished this attempt of a creature to
nullify an act of the sovereign by abolishing the court with such a
severity of resentment that from this date, 1835, it did not reestablish a
separate supreme court until 1859, but depended upon the circuit judges
sitting en bane. But it was a matter of principle, not of personality. The
three appeal judges were given seats in the chancery or law courts by the
same act that destroyed their former offices. The public men of South
Carolina in the olden days were sometimes violent, but they were
highminded. The
antagonisms engendered in 1832-3 long rankled in the politics of the
state. J. H. Hammond, governor from 1842 to 1844, writes Calhoun in 1840:
"The Union and nullification parties bear relations to each other that
have not existed between any two parties in our country since the
Revolution. They have stood opposed in arms, and prepared to shed each
others blood, the one for, the other against, their native state, in a
struggle for all she held dear, nay, for her very existence. The Union men
carried the matter to the very last and blackest die of treason. They
invited a foreign enemy to our shore and received arms and commissions at
their hands. These things can never be forgotten. The mass of these two
parties can never exist together except as the conquered and the
conquerors." But nevertheless in the contest that was the subject of the
letter, J. P. Richardson defeated Hammond for governor, the legislature
thus in 1840 for the first time since 183`2 giving a high office to a
member of the Unionist party.
Dissatisfaction grew after the tariff of 1842
and the progress of abolitionism. There was talk of nullification in 1842.
But even Hammond admitted that this dangerous weapon would lead to "unjust
and unconstitutional rebellion everywhere." Calhoun was deeply moved, but
did not see fit to repeat the program of 1832. A more extreme and more
logical remedy was growing in favor-secession. As early as July 31, 1844,
at a dinner at Bluffton, R. B. Rhett launched a movement for independent
secession of South Carolina. But separate state action never commanded a
majority, and the "Bluffton movement," says Prof. J. F. Jameson, was
"headed off by a subsequent meeting at Charleston, August 19." Calhoun
wrote (October 7) that public sentiment, after being considerably excited
had settled down against it; but that if Clay should be elected or Polk
fail to fulfill expectations, the feelings of South Carolina "will burst
forth into action."
Calhoun foresaw that the Mexican war would raise questions whose solution
would endanger the very existence of the Union, and consequently advocated
stopping with the peaceful acquisition of Texas. Not until after the
Wilmot Proviso (1846) was he able to rally around him a united Southern
party. He announced to his followers the policy of immediate secession if
the slaveholder was not allowed an equal chance in occupying with his
laborers the Mexican cession. The compromise measures of 1850 barely
succeeded in postponing the crisis for ten years. But the events of
1846-50 had brought the leaders to look on secession no longer as a
dreadful alternative to which South Carolina feared she would be driven,
but as the means by which she should, as soon as practicable, be freed
from a union no longer of affection. The only question remaining was of
acting separately or in concert with other Southern states. In 1850 the
South Carolina legislature passed a law providing for a general election
of delegates to a convention of the Southern states to arrest Northern
aggression or concert united secession and for a state convention to
effect the secession of the state. Measures for military defense were
enacted. In May, 1851, a convention in Charleston of the South Carolina
Southern Rights Association favored separate state action if others would
not cooperate. Twenty-seven of thirty newspapers [Another statement says
thirty out of thirty-two.] favored secession; the governor sought to
arrange for joint action with Mississippi. Secession within a few months
was confidently expected; but in the test election in October, 1851, the
party of immediate, separate action was decisively defeated. The same
result had occurred the previous year in Mississippi; Georgia condemned
the movement and Virginia strongly dissented.
But excitment was not allowed to sleep. Soon
followed the fateful drama of Kansas, in the debates upon which the
bitterness of feeling was faithfully symbolized in the beating given by
Representative Preston S. Brooks, of South Carolina, to Senator Sumner, of
Massachusetts. Brooks resigned and was practically unanimously reelected.
The dilemma forced by Lincoln upon Douglas
gave the cue for the dilemma which, in the convention of 1860, the men of
the lower South forced upon the Democratic party. They required that the
platform should commit the party to the use of the power of the Federal
government to secure to the slaveholder the rights which the Dred Scott
decision had declared him to possess, namely, of taking his slaves into
every territory as freely and safely as the non-slaveholder did his horse.
The convention feared to lose its Northern support and declined to go so
far. The delegates from South Carolina, among others, revolted. Republican
success followed, on a platform promising to forbid what the lower South
made its condition for remaining in the Union.
The legislature of South Carolina, after
choosing presidential electors instructed to vote for Breckinridge and
Lane, remained in session, awaiting the result throughout the country. On
learning of the election of Lincoln, they ordered an election for a
convention to meet December 17. Probably in no political action have a
people ever been more nearly unanimous than the people of South Carolina
in electing secession delegates to this convention. The wealthy planter
considered that his property was endangered; the poor man believed that
the success of the Republican party looked towards the destruction of the
independence and racial purity of the white population, and both felt with
the intensest conviction that the North was guilty of a long series of
violations of the Federal compact for her own sectional advantage, and
that she intended to use her growing power to subvert the constitution as
far as her interests might dictate, with absolute disregard of the rights
and interests of the South therein solemnly guaranteed.
The convention met on Dec. 17, 1860, in the
First Baptist church in Columbia, the state house being uncompleted. An
epidemic of smallpox drove them to Charleston, where the sessions were
continued in St. Andrew's Hall. This convention and that of 1832 were the
two ablest assemblies that have ever represented South Carolina.
Recognizing the gravity of the crisis, the electors had chosen the best
that the state afforded in experience, wisdom and patriotism. The
membership included five ex-governors, a number of judges and chancellors,
presidents of banks and railroads, and distinguished educators and
ministers. Observers, says Rhodes, were struck with the large number of
gray-haired men ; and we may feel assured that, whatever the ultimate
verdict of history may be as to the wisdom of the convention's action,
there will be no question as to its sincere conviction of the
righteousness and constitutional justification of its course.
On the 20th the brief ordinance declaring the
union between South Carolina and the other states dissolved was reported
by the aged Chancellor Inglis. Immediately there burst forth and continued
for days the greatest demonstration of enthusiasm that South Carolina has
ever known. At the sound of the chiming bells, James L. Petigru enquired,
"Where's the fire?" When informed that there was no fire, but that South
Carolina was now an independent nation, he replied, "I tell you there is a
fire ! They have this day set a blazing torch to the temple of
constitutional liberty, and, please God, we shall have no more peace
forever." [This anecdote is on the authority of the late Prof. Joseph
Daniel Pope, who was the person addressed by Petigru.] Benjamin F. Perry
in Greenville and a few others entertained similar views, but they were
few, very few.
At 6:30 in the evening in Institute Hall, the very hall from which in the
spring the South Carolina delegates had seceded from the Democratic
convention, a vast audience witnessed the signing of the ordinance with
impressive ceremony.
On December 24 the convention adopted an address to the people of the
slaveholding states and a declaration of the causes of South Carolina's
secession. These were stated to be, that thirteen Northern states had, in
violation of the constitution, sought by "personal liberty laws" to
deprive the South of the benefits of the fugitive slave law, a vital item
in the measures which, in 1850, had led South Carolina to consent to
remain in the Union; that the anti-slavery agitation rendered property in
slaves insecure contrary to the entire spirit of the constitution; that a
party with purposes hostile to slavery had elected their president; and
that the South was oppressed by the protective tariff policy of the North.
[This tact item was carried by R. B. Rhett, against some opposition; for
since 1846 the tariff had been on a revenue basis. Both Senators and all
the Representatives of South Carolina voted for the tariff of 1857; the
Confederate Congress re-enacted the act, and South Carolina made no
protest. Rhett urged with other reasons, that this clause would tend to
secure the sympathy of England, France, and Germany. Rhett had been one of
the fiercest anti-tariff men since the nullification period.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY. - Elliot's Debates; Houston: Nullification; Ingle: Southern
Side Lights (Appendix); Kohn: South Carolina Cotton Mills; Mill:
Statistics of South Carolina; Meriweather: History of Higher Education in
South Carolina; Phillips: Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt;
Rhodes: United States Since 1860; Schaper: Sectionalism and Representation
in South Carolina; Von Holst: Constitutional History of the United States;
Watson: Handbook of South Carolina; Williams: History of Banking in South
Carolina, 1712-1900 (Pamphlet); News and Courier (Centennial number, April
20, 1904); United States Censuses; South Carolina (published by State
Board of Agriculture, 1883); American Historical Association Reports
(1899, Vol. 11., Calhoun's Private Correspondence).
DAVID DUNCAN WALLACE,
Professor of History and Economics, Wofford College.
James Henry
Hammond 1807-1864
By Elizabeth Merritt (1921) (pdf) |
