War’s hard on farmers. Invading armies take what they need to eat and destroy what’s left to starve their enemies.
During the American revolution, the British in South Carolina sold the rice and slaves they couldn’t use, destroyed the crops they couldn’t sell and encouraged the remaining slaves to flee. Battles, occupation and neglect damaged plantation reservoirs.
During the civil war, Sherman arrived at Savannah with orders to march towards Richmond. After months of battle, his men were angry at South Carolina for precipitating the war and remaining isolated by geography from the consequences. Abolitionists demanded he handle the freedmen who flocked to his army for protection.
Sherman couldn’t pursue the war effort without dealing with the more immediate problems. On January 16, 1865, he signed Special Field Order 15 which turned the coastal land the army controlled from "the islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns river, Florida" over to freemen to farm. Andrew Johnson rescinded the order in the fall after Appomattox and returned confiscated lands to the antebellum owners.
Sherman allowed his men to rampage as he moved north towards Columbia from Savannah. From there, he restored military discipline and primarily destroyed strategic targets as he moved toward Virginia. Newly freed slaves raided abandoned plantations where they’d once been forced to work.
Rice planters recovered from the revolution; they did not from the civil war. Many reasons are given: the loss of slave labor, the lack of credit, the death of so many able young men. What’s rarely mentioned is that after the revolution, there was, to quote Henry Laurens, a spirit to recover "their former State of happiness and Prosperity" that led men to cover "as fast as they can the marks of British cruelty, by new Buildings, Inclosures, and other Improvements."
After the civil war, planters had to confront the problem their ancestors hadn’t been able to solve in Barbados: how to motivate men with free will to work for them. Earlier, they’d abandoned the effort with indentured servants and hired help for slaves. After the civil war, planters turned sharecropping into debt peonage to serve the same purpose, maintain a cheap, subdued, available labor supply.
Slaves, like the white overseer in Charles Gilmore Simms’ Woodcraft, only accepted the need to plant and harvest crops, the steps necessary to feed themselves. They refused to help maintain or rebuild the dykes. In one case described by Robert Preston Brooks, the army intervened to force freedmen to do off-season work.
In the west the railroads used immigrants, including ones from China, to do the kind of hard manual labor freed slaves were refusing in South Carolina. For whatever reason - a surplus of hungry men, a lack of capital, a lack of willingness - the south didn’t recruit immigrants. Instead, the rice plantations south of Charleston reverted to swamps, while those untouched by the army to the north limped along.
When planters after the revolution realized they had more work than their labor could do, they turned to machinery. While Cyrus McCormick was revolutionizing farming in the west after the civil war, nothing was marketed for the south. The earth movers and levelers used today to build roads are a fairly recent invention, developed only when immigrant labor was no longer available to dig ditches and haul dirt.
Notes:
Brooks, Robert Preston. An Elementary History of Georgia, 1918.
Edgar, Walter. South Carolina: A History, 1998; includes quotation from Henry Laurens, letter to Edward Bridgen, 23 September 1784.
Showing posts with label 30 South Carolina (31-35). Show all posts
Showing posts with label 30 South Carolina (31-35). Show all posts
Sunday, January 02, 2011
Sunday, December 26, 2010
South Carolina - William Gilmore Simms
The 1850's repeated the crises of the 1820's and 30's, but in a compressed time span and with more deadly consequences.
The post-Revolutionary generation in South Carolina faced the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that limited slavery in the west, the Denmark Vesey trial of 1822, and James Hamilton’s nullification threat of 1832.
The next generation had the Compromise of 1850 that included the Fugitive Slave Act and led to talk of nullification. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 left the question of slavery in the territories to the settlers, and led to guerilla war in Kansas.
In this atmosphere, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin and William Gilmore Simms serialized The Sword and the Distaff in the Southern Literary Gazette in 1852 . The one criticizes the inhumanity of slavery; the other anticipates the need for guerilla warfare and recalls the aftermath of the American revolution in South Carolina when, Simms said, "peace is only a name for civil war."
Simms’ intent, based on his title, had been to use a character based on Hezekiah Maham to describe the difficulties of reestablishing plantations after the war. However, as a writer, he was better at describing action than romance. The middle section that describes his hero’s courtship of a wealthy widow drags, while the opening description of highway robbery would excite the imagination of any adolescent boy. When the work was issued as a book, he renamed it Woodcraft.
Like any work of popular fiction of the time, the reader’s interest lay in events that crowded each installment. The characters were recognizable stereotypes. There was the hard-hearted widow who’d played both sides in the war; the Scots merchant villain who’d fenced stolen slaves; his agent, a double dealing squatter; an upright Christian youth who marries after the war but is willing to fight when called upon; the hero’s faithful slaves who hid in the swamp from the British and willingly returned to the fields under the orders of a man not much better than Simon Legree; and the innocent daughter of the squatter who marries the nice, but naive son of the widow.
Maham is changed into Porgy, an insouciant scion who has mortgaged his property "which had been transmitted to him through three or more careful generations" to support a life of alcoholic leisure. When the sheriff finally forecloses on the property, Porgy makes the deputy eat the paperwork. He’s saved through the intervention of Charles Coatesworth Pickney and the squatter’s deathbed confession.
While Porgy is recognizable as a type all too common in South Carolina at the time, he bears almost no resemblance to Maham. All the virtues of the latter have disappeared, and his negative traits exaggerated.
In reality, Maham was a self-made man who worked as an overseer before gaining his own land, not an indulged son like James Hamilton who was criticized in 1850 for supporting the congressional compromise because it might redeem some of his Texas debts and save him from ruin.
When Maham returned to his land he found new seed rice. Porgy’s plantation is taken over by Millhouse, a underling sergeant eager to reestablish traditional ways. He tells him "You was always a-thinking to do something better than other people, and you wouldn’t let nater [nature] alone."
At a time when tidal cultivation was being introduced by the more innovative planters, Millhouse adds "Now I’m a-thinking that the true way is to put the ground in order, and at the right time plant the seed, and then jest lie by, and look on, and see what the warm sun and rain’s guine to do for it."
He concludes his anti-innovation critique with "It ain’t reasonable to think that a man kin find new wisdom about everything"
During the war, Maham had perfected a tower for siege warfare.
The war had dwindled to the final evacuation by the British in Simms’ novel, and most of his allusions are to Francis Marion’s units in general. Maham’s bravery at Quinby Bridge is transferred to the incident of banditry that opens the novel when an outlaw shoots his horse. The incident when Maham started from sleep and believed he was under attack is turned into a joke on Millhouse who attacks a ghost.
The only specific recollections of military encounters are ones that advance Simms’ view of war as a series of harassments bordering on torture. One of Porgy’s slaves, Pomp, recalls a scrimmage with Fraser at Parker’s Ferry where the "cappin mounted a British officer," then ‘cut him clean through his skull to his chin." Porgy himself remembers "old Echars, the Dutchman, whom we dressed in tar and feathers at Moncks’ Corner, for stealing cattle."
According to Patrick O’Kelley, Marion left Maham in charge of unmounted men at Parker’s Ferry while he took other troops to attack. While the British were retreating, unmounted men surrounded Thomas Fraser’s troop of South Carolina loyalists and opened fire at 40 yards. After the battle, Marion returned with his prisoners to where he’d left Maham.
Monck’s Corner is more obscure, mentioned by only one man who wrote Maham "took upwards of eighty prisoners" in October of 1782, months after Maham had been paroled and two months before the defeated British evacuated Charles Town.
In Woodcraft, Porgy is a middle-aged bachelor who’s spent his life in the salons of Charleston, but has to no idea how to court a woman. Maham had been married twice and fathered two daughters. His wife died after he’d returned home from battle, but before he confronted the sheriff’s deputy.
Maham only appears in histories as an actor in events, not as a person important enough to have a portrait painted and passed through generations or one who appears in diaries and journals of society life. His physical appearance and habits are unknown.
Simms makes Porgy so fat he can’t dismount his horse, and worries his trousers will split in company. He’s a heavy drinker who surrounds himself with the detritis of war, the one-armed Millhouse, and the most degenerate forms of the Enlightenment’s arts and sciences, the fraudulent Doctor Oakenburg and George Dennison, "poet of the partisans."
What we know of Hezekiah Maham comes from histories by Frederick Porcher and Joseph Johnson, both born after Mahan died. Parson Weems’ account of Francis Marion’s war effort was based on notes by Maham’s rival, Peter Horry, and never mentions Maham; Marion is given credit for the tower.
It could well be the widowed survivor of war did become the man described by Simms. His great-nephew, Joshua John Ward, however, heard through the family, he had been much more.
Unfortunately, his virtues were held in contempt by the generation going into the civil war, who only praised the most atrocious actions as necessary in war and condemned anyone else as decadent as Porgy.
Notes:
Johnson, Joseph. Traditions and Reminiscences, Chiefly of the American Revolution in the South, 1851.
O’Kelley, Patrick. Nothing but Blood and Slaughter: The Revolutionary War in the Carolinas, 4 volumes, 2004-2005.
Porcher, Frederick A. Historical and Social Sketch of Craven County, no date.
Simms, William Gilmore. Woodcraft, 1852, republished 1961 with an introduction by Richmond Croom Beatty.
The post-Revolutionary generation in South Carolina faced the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that limited slavery in the west, the Denmark Vesey trial of 1822, and James Hamilton’s nullification threat of 1832.
The next generation had the Compromise of 1850 that included the Fugitive Slave Act and led to talk of nullification. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 left the question of slavery in the territories to the settlers, and led to guerilla war in Kansas.
In this atmosphere, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin and William Gilmore Simms serialized The Sword and the Distaff in the Southern Literary Gazette in 1852 . The one criticizes the inhumanity of slavery; the other anticipates the need for guerilla warfare and recalls the aftermath of the American revolution in South Carolina when, Simms said, "peace is only a name for civil war."
Simms’ intent, based on his title, had been to use a character based on Hezekiah Maham to describe the difficulties of reestablishing plantations after the war. However, as a writer, he was better at describing action than romance. The middle section that describes his hero’s courtship of a wealthy widow drags, while the opening description of highway robbery would excite the imagination of any adolescent boy. When the work was issued as a book, he renamed it Woodcraft.
Like any work of popular fiction of the time, the reader’s interest lay in events that crowded each installment. The characters were recognizable stereotypes. There was the hard-hearted widow who’d played both sides in the war; the Scots merchant villain who’d fenced stolen slaves; his agent, a double dealing squatter; an upright Christian youth who marries after the war but is willing to fight when called upon; the hero’s faithful slaves who hid in the swamp from the British and willingly returned to the fields under the orders of a man not much better than Simon Legree; and the innocent daughter of the squatter who marries the nice, but naive son of the widow.
Maham is changed into Porgy, an insouciant scion who has mortgaged his property "which had been transmitted to him through three or more careful generations" to support a life of alcoholic leisure. When the sheriff finally forecloses on the property, Porgy makes the deputy eat the paperwork. He’s saved through the intervention of Charles Coatesworth Pickney and the squatter’s deathbed confession.
While Porgy is recognizable as a type all too common in South Carolina at the time, he bears almost no resemblance to Maham. All the virtues of the latter have disappeared, and his negative traits exaggerated.
In reality, Maham was a self-made man who worked as an overseer before gaining his own land, not an indulged son like James Hamilton who was criticized in 1850 for supporting the congressional compromise because it might redeem some of his Texas debts and save him from ruin.
When Maham returned to his land he found new seed rice. Porgy’s plantation is taken over by Millhouse, a underling sergeant eager to reestablish traditional ways. He tells him "You was always a-thinking to do something better than other people, and you wouldn’t let nater [nature] alone."
At a time when tidal cultivation was being introduced by the more innovative planters, Millhouse adds "Now I’m a-thinking that the true way is to put the ground in order, and at the right time plant the seed, and then jest lie by, and look on, and see what the warm sun and rain’s guine to do for it."
He concludes his anti-innovation critique with "It ain’t reasonable to think that a man kin find new wisdom about everything"
During the war, Maham had perfected a tower for siege warfare.
The war had dwindled to the final evacuation by the British in Simms’ novel, and most of his allusions are to Francis Marion’s units in general. Maham’s bravery at Quinby Bridge is transferred to the incident of banditry that opens the novel when an outlaw shoots his horse. The incident when Maham started from sleep and believed he was under attack is turned into a joke on Millhouse who attacks a ghost.
The only specific recollections of military encounters are ones that advance Simms’ view of war as a series of harassments bordering on torture. One of Porgy’s slaves, Pomp, recalls a scrimmage with Fraser at Parker’s Ferry where the "cappin mounted a British officer," then ‘cut him clean through his skull to his chin." Porgy himself remembers "old Echars, the Dutchman, whom we dressed in tar and feathers at Moncks’ Corner, for stealing cattle."
According to Patrick O’Kelley, Marion left Maham in charge of unmounted men at Parker’s Ferry while he took other troops to attack. While the British were retreating, unmounted men surrounded Thomas Fraser’s troop of South Carolina loyalists and opened fire at 40 yards. After the battle, Marion returned with his prisoners to where he’d left Maham.
Monck’s Corner is more obscure, mentioned by only one man who wrote Maham "took upwards of eighty prisoners" in October of 1782, months after Maham had been paroled and two months before the defeated British evacuated Charles Town.
In Woodcraft, Porgy is a middle-aged bachelor who’s spent his life in the salons of Charleston, but has to no idea how to court a woman. Maham had been married twice and fathered two daughters. His wife died after he’d returned home from battle, but before he confronted the sheriff’s deputy.
Maham only appears in histories as an actor in events, not as a person important enough to have a portrait painted and passed through generations or one who appears in diaries and journals of society life. His physical appearance and habits are unknown.
Simms makes Porgy so fat he can’t dismount his horse, and worries his trousers will split in company. He’s a heavy drinker who surrounds himself with the detritis of war, the one-armed Millhouse, and the most degenerate forms of the Enlightenment’s arts and sciences, the fraudulent Doctor Oakenburg and George Dennison, "poet of the partisans."
What we know of Hezekiah Maham comes from histories by Frederick Porcher and Joseph Johnson, both born after Mahan died. Parson Weems’ account of Francis Marion’s war effort was based on notes by Maham’s rival, Peter Horry, and never mentions Maham; Marion is given credit for the tower.
It could well be the widowed survivor of war did become the man described by Simms. His great-nephew, Joshua John Ward, however, heard through the family, he had been much more.
Unfortunately, his virtues were held in contempt by the generation going into the civil war, who only praised the most atrocious actions as necessary in war and condemned anyone else as decadent as Porgy.
Notes:
Johnson, Joseph. Traditions and Reminiscences, Chiefly of the American Revolution in the South, 1851.
O’Kelley, Patrick. Nothing but Blood and Slaughter: The Revolutionary War in the Carolinas, 4 volumes, 2004-2005.
Porcher, Frederick A. Historical and Social Sketch of Craven County, no date.
Simms, William Gilmore. Woodcraft, 1852, republished 1961 with an introduction by Richmond Croom Beatty.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Attacks on the Rational
Sometimes I think the defense of slavery has been as pernicious as slavery itself, if for no other reason than it discourages logical thinking.
Charleston in the years after the revolution included plantation owners willing to experiment with new technology. By the time of the nullification crisis around 1830 innovators still existed, but they weren’t respected for their efforts. Slaves, not machines, were the only answer for economic challenges.
Scientific thinking posits the sanctity of facts, and assumes scientists will change their theories when those theories no longer can explain observed reality. Thomas Kuhn showed men don’t always live up to that ideal, that when they’re confronted with anomalies they propose more and more absurd solutions to sustain their basic beliefs. However, he also showed that over time, the value of experience does alter theory, the underlying value holds.
One cannot support scientific thinking if one is so wedded to a practice like slavery that no contrary facts can be admitted. Once facts cannot be recognized, then they must be explained away, turned into something that supports the overarching theory. Bending reality becomes acceptable.
Today, we have people who deny the observed realities of climate change because the proposed explanation threatens some part of their world view. For some, it’s the idea that nature isn’t as rigid as suggested by Genesis. For others, it’s the concept of human responsibility and the consequences for accountability for one’s actions that’s troubling. And, of course, there are those who see an economic threat.
The result is an attack on science itself.
Recently, Mary Beard reviewed a book by Donald Kagan which she saw as attacking Thucydides for praising the behavior of Pericles in the Peloponnesian war which Kagan thinks is like that of those who wouldn’t put more resources into winning the war in Viet Nam. Since Kagan believes those actions led to unnecessary defeat, so Pericles must be redefined as leading his country to disaster.
The result is an attack on the academy itself which tries to sift evidence to develop explanations. When certain conclusions are forbidden, reality must be subverted.
Since the protests against the Vietnam war, discrimination against Blacks and abortion in the late 1960's, we have seen a growing number of people who cannot accept the validity of criticism of any kind. If schools needed to change to fit social ideals, then education must be rejected. And so, a generation developed who rejected the very tools they needed to survive in the changing economy.
Now the economy is in crisis and those who’ve been left behind are the most vehement in protesting any policy that might prevent further or repeated problems, simply because the people who propose those solutions are associated with other ideas that are unacceptable. The basic thinking seems to be, if you have the wrong idea about abortion, then you can’t be trusted with the money supply.
The final result has been an attack on the constitution itself, which distributes power among groups in the population. Since those left behind cannot change, then the constitution must be reinterpreted. The tools that come to hand are those developed by men in the south who defended slavery - nullification and the primacy of minority rights.
Elections are no longer legitimate if the wrong man wins.
Notes:
Beard, Mary. "Which Thucydides Can You Trust?," The New York Review of Books, 30 September 2010, on Donald Kagan’s Thucydides: The Reinvention of History.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962.
Charleston in the years after the revolution included plantation owners willing to experiment with new technology. By the time of the nullification crisis around 1830 innovators still existed, but they weren’t respected for their efforts. Slaves, not machines, were the only answer for economic challenges.
Scientific thinking posits the sanctity of facts, and assumes scientists will change their theories when those theories no longer can explain observed reality. Thomas Kuhn showed men don’t always live up to that ideal, that when they’re confronted with anomalies they propose more and more absurd solutions to sustain their basic beliefs. However, he also showed that over time, the value of experience does alter theory, the underlying value holds.
One cannot support scientific thinking if one is so wedded to a practice like slavery that no contrary facts can be admitted. Once facts cannot be recognized, then they must be explained away, turned into something that supports the overarching theory. Bending reality becomes acceptable.
Today, we have people who deny the observed realities of climate change because the proposed explanation threatens some part of their world view. For some, it’s the idea that nature isn’t as rigid as suggested by Genesis. For others, it’s the concept of human responsibility and the consequences for accountability for one’s actions that’s troubling. And, of course, there are those who see an economic threat.
The result is an attack on science itself.
Recently, Mary Beard reviewed a book by Donald Kagan which she saw as attacking Thucydides for praising the behavior of Pericles in the Peloponnesian war which Kagan thinks is like that of those who wouldn’t put more resources into winning the war in Viet Nam. Since Kagan believes those actions led to unnecessary defeat, so Pericles must be redefined as leading his country to disaster.
The result is an attack on the academy itself which tries to sift evidence to develop explanations. When certain conclusions are forbidden, reality must be subverted.
Since the protests against the Vietnam war, discrimination against Blacks and abortion in the late 1960's, we have seen a growing number of people who cannot accept the validity of criticism of any kind. If schools needed to change to fit social ideals, then education must be rejected. And so, a generation developed who rejected the very tools they needed to survive in the changing economy.
Now the economy is in crisis and those who’ve been left behind are the most vehement in protesting any policy that might prevent further or repeated problems, simply because the people who propose those solutions are associated with other ideas that are unacceptable. The basic thinking seems to be, if you have the wrong idea about abortion, then you can’t be trusted with the money supply.
The final result has been an attack on the constitution itself, which distributes power among groups in the population. Since those left behind cannot change, then the constitution must be reinterpreted. The tools that come to hand are those developed by men in the south who defended slavery - nullification and the primacy of minority rights.
Elections are no longer legitimate if the wrong man wins.
Notes:
Beard, Mary. "Which Thucydides Can You Trust?," The New York Review of Books, 30 September 2010, on Donald Kagan’s Thucydides: The Reinvention of History.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
South Carolina - Innovation's Losers
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.
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.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
South Carolina - Spirt of Innovation
Once an innovation is accepted, an aura of inevitability develops around it, so one can’t imagine things having been any other way.
However, the atmosphere of innovation among South Carolina rice planters could not have been predicted: it was the fragile result of immigrants bringing in new ideas from Philadelphia and Edinburgh, and from people’s individual experiences during the war. There was nothing to say it would be perpetuated.
Ulrich B. Phillips describes Nathaniel Heyward as a man who was "was venturesome in large things, conservative in small." He had built a pounding mill, but was slow to convert it to steam. He was slower to use mechanical threshers because he wanted to keep his slaves busy in winter. And, it was his strong preference that those slaves be freshly imported from Africa.
Similarly, John Bowman was willing to gamble on an unknown millwright in 1787, but the next year actively campaigned against ratification of the constitution, even though his wife’s brother, Thomas Lynch, had signed the Declaration of Independence.
The mixture of conservative and progressive impulses, found in most of us, was perhaps more extreme in Charleston where the social ideal of the elite was still defined by the landed gentry in southwestern England who had supported the royalists in their civil war and not by the merchant entrepreneurs of London who backed parliament.
Indeed, Phillips, a post-Reconstruction southern historian believes investments in land and slaves were the "large things" and interest in labor-saving, productivity enhancing technology the "small." He believes Heyward remained active in running his many plantations, and that the "assistance rendered by his sons kept the scattered establishments in an efficient routine."
William Dusinberre has quite a different view of Heyward, that humiliated by his first entry into Charleston society, he spoiled his sons and that only one, Charles, had any interest in business.
He notes that Nathaniel’s father had been an innovator when he moved to Beaufort, but that he gave his older sons a classical education. The eldest Thomas, son of his first wife Mary Miles, signed the Declaration of Independence and was sent to Saint Augustine by the British in 1780.
The older son of Heyward’s second marriage to Jane Elizabeth Gignilliat, James, had the same European education but married an actress, Susan Cole, and died soon after. She remarried, and Nathaniel spent years discrediting her and salvaging the rice lands he’d developed.
Thomas’s son Daniel was more like his uncle James. He married a French speaking tailor, Ann Sarah Trezevant, and soon died. When she remarried, Nathaniel took over the rice lands and fought her rights in court, a battle that continued when her daughter Elizabeth married James Hamilton.
A similar pattern is found in the family of Bowman’s in-laws. His wife’s father, Thomas Lynch, was the son of Thomas Lynch, who pioneered rice on the Santee, and was raised to be a gentleman. Like Heyward, Lynch read law in England, toured the continent, and later became involved in colonial politics.
His sister Elizabeth married James Hamilton and spent more time in Newport, where she raised her son James, than Charleston. By the time the younger James married Heyward’s niece’s daughter, Elizabeth, neither had spent much time on a rice plantation and saw their patrimony as an asset to be sold not managed.
The inland rice pioneers like Daniel Heyward and Thomas Lynch raised oldest sons who were drawn into the great political fight with Great Britain, but had no interest in the source of their wealth. Daniel’s younger son, Nathaniel, pioneered tidal cultivation, but he too didn’t perpetuate his interest in his children, and saw the results of innovation and hard work frittered away by actresses and tailors.
The planters who were the first to adopt the innovations of others were a bit more successful. Walter Edgar says that in 1850, a dozen men each harvested more than 100,000 pounds of rice in Georgetown County, and they included the grandson of Plowden Weston, the grandson of Mary Izard Middleton and the stepson of Rebecca Brewton Motte’s daughter Mary.
However, the wealthy planters were better known for the way they lived their lives rather than the way they financed them. Plowden Charles Jennet Weston was a judge described as a "gentleman of most excellent education and rare ability" who published a history of the state. John Izard Middleton was Secretary of the American legation to Russia in the 1820's, before become active in the nullification crises of 1832. William Algernon Alston married his cousin Mary, the sister of the painter Washington Allston. Like any large planter, he served in the South Carolina house and owned more than one house in Charleston.
Still, according to George Rogers, those descendants who were still growing rice in Georgetown County in the 1850's, never fully relied on their overseers and never completely left the area during the growing season. They were more likely to escape malaria at inland resorts like that near Hezekiah Maham’s Pineville than go north as the Hamiltons had done. The time they spent in Charleston was the winter.
The spirit of innovation lasted two generations at most, those leading the revolution and their parents. It was difficult, though not impossible, for a family to maintain the spirit of specialized knowledge and a work ethic into the third generation in a culture of luxury.
Notes: The other signers of the Declaration of Independence were Arthur Middleton, husband of Mary Izard, and Edward Rutledge, a land speculator.
Behan, William A. A Short History of Callawassie Island, South Carolina, 2004, on Elizabeth Matthews Heyward.
Dusinberre William. Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps, 2000.
Edgar, Walter. South Carolina, 1998; he doesn’t name all 12 men; his source was George Rogers
Miller Kerby A. Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan: Letters and Memoirs from Colonial and Revolutionary America, 1675-1815, 2003, on Bowman.
Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell. American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime, 1918.
Rogers, George. The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina, 1970, reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society.
Smith, Henry A. M. "The Baronies of South Carolina," The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, April 1913; unattributed description of Weston.
However, the atmosphere of innovation among South Carolina rice planters could not have been predicted: it was the fragile result of immigrants bringing in new ideas from Philadelphia and Edinburgh, and from people’s individual experiences during the war. There was nothing to say it would be perpetuated.
Ulrich B. Phillips describes Nathaniel Heyward as a man who was "was venturesome in large things, conservative in small." He had built a pounding mill, but was slow to convert it to steam. He was slower to use mechanical threshers because he wanted to keep his slaves busy in winter. And, it was his strong preference that those slaves be freshly imported from Africa.
Similarly, John Bowman was willing to gamble on an unknown millwright in 1787, but the next year actively campaigned against ratification of the constitution, even though his wife’s brother, Thomas Lynch, had signed the Declaration of Independence.
The mixture of conservative and progressive impulses, found in most of us, was perhaps more extreme in Charleston where the social ideal of the elite was still defined by the landed gentry in southwestern England who had supported the royalists in their civil war and not by the merchant entrepreneurs of London who backed parliament.
Indeed, Phillips, a post-Reconstruction southern historian believes investments in land and slaves were the "large things" and interest in labor-saving, productivity enhancing technology the "small." He believes Heyward remained active in running his many plantations, and that the "assistance rendered by his sons kept the scattered establishments in an efficient routine."
William Dusinberre has quite a different view of Heyward, that humiliated by his first entry into Charleston society, he spoiled his sons and that only one, Charles, had any interest in business.
He notes that Nathaniel’s father had been an innovator when he moved to Beaufort, but that he gave his older sons a classical education. The eldest Thomas, son of his first wife Mary Miles, signed the Declaration of Independence and was sent to Saint Augustine by the British in 1780.
The older son of Heyward’s second marriage to Jane Elizabeth Gignilliat, James, had the same European education but married an actress, Susan Cole, and died soon after. She remarried, and Nathaniel spent years discrediting her and salvaging the rice lands he’d developed.
Thomas’s son Daniel was more like his uncle James. He married a French speaking tailor, Ann Sarah Trezevant, and soon died. When she remarried, Nathaniel took over the rice lands and fought her rights in court, a battle that continued when her daughter Elizabeth married James Hamilton.
A similar pattern is found in the family of Bowman’s in-laws. His wife’s father, Thomas Lynch, was the son of Thomas Lynch, who pioneered rice on the Santee, and was raised to be a gentleman. Like Heyward, Lynch read law in England, toured the continent, and later became involved in colonial politics.
His sister Elizabeth married James Hamilton and spent more time in Newport, where she raised her son James, than Charleston. By the time the younger James married Heyward’s niece’s daughter, Elizabeth, neither had spent much time on a rice plantation and saw their patrimony as an asset to be sold not managed.
The inland rice pioneers like Daniel Heyward and Thomas Lynch raised oldest sons who were drawn into the great political fight with Great Britain, but had no interest in the source of their wealth. Daniel’s younger son, Nathaniel, pioneered tidal cultivation, but he too didn’t perpetuate his interest in his children, and saw the results of innovation and hard work frittered away by actresses and tailors.
The planters who were the first to adopt the innovations of others were a bit more successful. Walter Edgar says that in 1850, a dozen men each harvested more than 100,000 pounds of rice in Georgetown County, and they included the grandson of Plowden Weston, the grandson of Mary Izard Middleton and the stepson of Rebecca Brewton Motte’s daughter Mary.
However, the wealthy planters were better known for the way they lived their lives rather than the way they financed them. Plowden Charles Jennet Weston was a judge described as a "gentleman of most excellent education and rare ability" who published a history of the state. John Izard Middleton was Secretary of the American legation to Russia in the 1820's, before become active in the nullification crises of 1832. William Algernon Alston married his cousin Mary, the sister of the painter Washington Allston. Like any large planter, he served in the South Carolina house and owned more than one house in Charleston.
Still, according to George Rogers, those descendants who were still growing rice in Georgetown County in the 1850's, never fully relied on their overseers and never completely left the area during the growing season. They were more likely to escape malaria at inland resorts like that near Hezekiah Maham’s Pineville than go north as the Hamiltons had done. The time they spent in Charleston was the winter.
The spirit of innovation lasted two generations at most, those leading the revolution and their parents. It was difficult, though not impossible, for a family to maintain the spirit of specialized knowledge and a work ethic into the third generation in a culture of luxury.
Notes: The other signers of the Declaration of Independence were Arthur Middleton, husband of Mary Izard, and Edward Rutledge, a land speculator.
Behan, William A. A Short History of Callawassie Island, South Carolina, 2004, on Elizabeth Matthews Heyward.
Dusinberre William. Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps, 2000.
Edgar, Walter. South Carolina, 1998; he doesn’t name all 12 men; his source was George Rogers
Miller Kerby A. Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan: Letters and Memoirs from Colonial and Revolutionary America, 1675-1815, 2003, on Bowman.
Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell. American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime, 1918.
Rogers, George. The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina, 1970, reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society.
Smith, Henry A. M. "The Baronies of South Carolina," The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, April 1913; unattributed description of Weston.
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