There are none more bitter than those who see their peers or relatives do better than they, especially when those successes are rooted in something they cannot or will not do. In South Carolina, the spirit of innovation and trained observation were not universal and the willingness to work was discouraged.
The constant possibility of failure in the face of uncontrollable conditions makes people superstitious. When repetition doesn’t lead to success, the answer is often symbolic repetition. Agricultural peoples are among the most susceptible when their crops are subject to the vagaries of weather and plagues. When religion and reason preclude superstitious rituals, other more secular outlets are found to assert control over fate.
Growing rice was always risky. When the crop failed there was no income but prices were high for those who managed to harvest something. When the crop flourished, prices fell from surpluses and no one made much profit. The good years, when both the crop and price were good, were rare.
People who first succeed because they could think innovatively are sometimes able to adapt to changes more quickly than those who struggled to succeed or who always copy others and face failure by repetition with minor variations hoping to correct what they had done wrong.
None knew better than Nathaniel Heyward the need to keep changing. He had always preferred newly imported slaves. When Congress banned the importation of new slaves beginning the first of January, 1808, he and others had to confront the changed supply and cost of labor.
Peter Colclanis shows that rice planters did, indeed, adapt by improving per capita yields. The number of slaves in the low country dropped .5% between 1820 and 1830, but the production per individual increased from 241.85 pounds in 1820 to 377.53 in 1830.
When new slaves with usable skills were no longer available, planters turned to technology. Robert Allston found patents for hulling rice appeared sporadically from 1809 and increased in the 1820's, while new applications for threshers began in 1828 and culminated in a workable machine in 1830.
Unfortunately, Colclanis also shows that prices fell after the end of the Napoleonic wars in Europe. Exports from Charleston in 1818 had been worth 11 million dollars but fell to 8 million in 1819, and stayed between 7 and 8 million for most of the decade. They only rose to 11 million again in 1825, then hit that value again in the 1830's before falling to the 7-8 million range in the 1840's.
South Carolina responded to the labor and market crises by forbidding the manumission of slaves in 1820. Although the enforcement of the law varied, the population of freedmen in the low country dropped .9% in the 1820's. While there’s no clear evidence the General Assembly granted freedom to Philip Noisette’s wife and children when he died in 1835, they seem to have been left alone.
Similarly, when Plowden Weston, a merchant who had immigrated in 1757, died in 1827 he requested two of his slaves, Lydia and Anthony, be treated as freemen. The later was a millwright, who had improved the yield of a threshing machine by 1,000 bushels a day. Although his freedom wasn’t acknowledged by the state, Weston’s executors followed his wishes and let Anthony control his time.
Even so, the suspicion of freedmen grew after 1820 and culminated in the trial of Denmark Vesey in 1822. James Hamilton was intendant of Charleston when John Prioleau and John Lyde Wilson reported rumors of a slave insurrection. Hamilton appointed two judges and five jurors, including Nathaniel Heyward and William Drayton, to investigate.
After 34 men had been hung, the governor, who owned three of the executed, argued the deliberations violated the law. The attorney general, Robert Young Hayne, disagreed. Wilson, Hayne, Drayton and Hamilton all exploited their enhanced reputations for political gain, culminating in the nullification crisis of 1832.
In a small society like the Carolina low country, it was inevitable the planters would become more related with each generation. What’s interesting is that, unlike the ones who ordered mills from Jonathan Lucas who had led lives that showed they could adapt to changing circumstances, the ones who supported Hamilton were the children of the siblings who had not pioneered introducing technology into the rice fields.
Of the grandchildren of William Allston and Esther LaBruce, one, William Alston ordered a mill from Lucas, and two married men who worked with Lucas, John Bowman and Andrew Johnston. The daughters of their other son married Wilson and Hayne and did not order mills.
Among the Mottes, only Jacob’s wife, Rebecca Brewton raised daughters who were willing to invest in untried technology. Jacob’s sisters married more conventionally: Sarah was the
grandmother of Hamilton’s uncle, Thomas Lynch; Hannah was Hamilton’s grandmother, and Sarah was the mother of Hamilton’s law partner, William Drayton. Sarah’s daughter, Hannah, married Heyward’s brother William, and their daughter married the younger Drayton; they may be the ones who ridiculed Heyward when he was a young man visiting Charleston.
When faced with the problem of a more expensive labor supply, some, like Weston, responded creatively by finding ways to use their workers more effectively, and others, like Hamilton, attacked those who criticized slavery in any way. Still others, like Nathaniel Heyward, tried both.
The governor, Thomas Bennett, was not the only political opponent to have his slaves investigated. One of the banished men, Charles Drayton, was the property of William’s second cousin, John Drayton. The former governor was the son of William Henry Drayton who had rebelled against his William Bull grandfather during the revolution, while William’s father had followed the Bulls to England after the fall of Charleston.
Two slaves belonging to Jonathan Lucas’ son, Bram Lucas and Richard Lucas, were held before they were acquitted. The younger Jonathan Lucas left the country later that year, and began building mills for England, thereby hastening the loss of Carolina rice’s hegemony in world markets, a loss already foreshadowed by the lower prices.
Notes: See postings on James Hamilton and Denmark Vesey from 10 January 2010 through 7 March 2010.
Allston, William and Esther La Bruce
++ Esther marry Archibald Johnston
Andrew Johnston marry Sarah Eliot McKewn
++ Elizabeth marry Thomas Lynch
Sabina marry John Bowman
++ Joseph marry Charlotte Rothmahler
William marry Mary Brewton Motte
++ William marry Mary Young
Charlotte marry John Lyde Wilson
Rebecca marry Robert Young Hayne
Motte, Jacob and Elizabeth Martin
++ Sarah marry Thomas Shubrick
Elizabeth Shubrick marry Thomas Lynch Jr
++ Hannah marry Thomas Lynch
Elizabeth Lynch marry James Hamilton
James Hamilton marry Elizabeth Heyward
++ Jacob marry Rebecca Brewton
++ Mary marry William Drayton
William Drayton marry Maria Miles Heyward
Drayton, Thomas
++ Thomas - Elizabeth Bull
William - Mary Motte
William - Maria Miles Heyward (above)
++ John Drayton - Charlotte Bull
William Henry
John, the governor
Allston, Robert. A Memoir of the Introduction and Planting of Rice in South Carolina, 1843, reprinted in several other publications, including James Dunwoody, The Industrial Resources, Etc., of the Southern and Western States, volume 2, 1852.
Coclanis, Peter A. The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Low Country, 1670-1920, 1989, rice production statistics.
Dusinberre William. Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps, 2000.
Egerton, Douglas R. He Shall Go out Free: the Lives of Denmark Vesey, 1999, list slaves arrested during the investigation and their owners.
Larry Koger. "Black Masters: The Misunderstood Slaveowners," Southern Quarterly 43:52–73:2006, on Plowden Weston.
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