CHAP. IX. THE CAROLINAS. 285 royalists who were filling the prisons of England with men like John Bunyan, composed of non-conformists as rigid as these, and republicans as staunch as Sidney. And they were left to grow into an independent state with very little hindrance. Two years later some English emigrants came from Barbadoes, purchased from the Indians a tract of land on the Cape Fear River, thirty-two miles square, including the domain abandoned by the New Englanders, and near the site of Wilmington founded a settlement. They treated the few New Englanders who had remained very kindly, and harmony prevailed. This settlement was soon organized into a political community under the title of the Clarendon County Colony, in honor of the historian. Sir John Yeamans, an impoverished baronet who had settled in Barbadoes to improve his fortune, was appointed governor of the new colony, with a jurisdiction. extending from Cape Fear to the St. John's River. The poverty of the soil prevented a rapid growth of the settlement, yet the industry of the inhabitants made them prosperous. Finding themselves in the bosom of a vast pine forest, the settlers turned their labor into the manufacture of boards, shingles and staves, and the gathering of turpentine, for all of which they found a ready and profitable sale in the West Indies. The settlement became permanent; and so, with the organization of the two colonies, the foundation of the commonwealth of North Carolina was laid. The avaricious courtiers now sought the acquisition of more territory, and in June, 1665, they readily obtained from the king another charter which confirmed the former one, and gave renewed assurance and commendation of the “pious and noble purpose" under which these men thought it decent to cloak their ambition and rapacity. It granted to them the territory from the now southern boundary of Virginia to the peninsula of Florida, and westward to the Pacific Ocean, comprising all of our States excepting the lower part of Florida south of the thirty-sixth degree, and a part of Mexico, the whole under the name of Carolina. The terms of the charter give evidence that the founding of a great empire was contemplated. Provision was made for the appointment of legislators and magistrates; for levying troops and erecting fortifications; waging war by sea and land; erecting cities; establishing manors and baronies, and creating titles; levying impost duties; and other features coincident with those of the existing British government. "Every favor was extended to the proprietors," says an eminent historian; "nothing was neglected but the interests of the English sovereign and the rights of the colonists." It was the duty of Clarendon, as Prime Minister of the realm, to affix the great seal of the kingdom to this charter that conferred such extraordinary privileges upon himself and his seven associates. In the year 1670, the proprietors sent three ships with emigrants to settle the more southern portions of Carolina. These were under the directions of William Sayle and Joseph West. Sayle had already explored the coasts; and twenty years before, he had endeavored to plant in the Bahama Isles a Puritan colony from Virginia, and to establish an "Eleutheria"-a place dedicated to liberty-among the islands near the coast of Florida. The three ships entered Port Royal harbor, and the emigrants landed at Beaufort Island, near the place where the Huguenots built Fort Carolina a hundred years before. There Sayle died early in the following year, and was buried under a broad live-oak tree draped with Spanish moss. The emigrants abandoned Beaufort soon afterward, and sailing northward entered Charleston harbor. On the banks of a stream a few miles above the site of Charleston, they landed, built houses and cultivated the soil. There they planted the first seeds of the colony of South Carolina at a spot known as Old Town. The settlers found the Indians unfriendly, for tradition had taught them to believe that the white man was a cruel robber. The planters were compelled to labor in the fields and on the waters, well-armed, yet they pros CHAP. IX. EMIGRATION TO SOUTH CAROLINA. 287 pered; and they soon conquered the savages by kindness. West exercised the authority of magistrate until the arrival of Sir John Yeamans from Barbadoes with the commission of governor late in 1661. He brought with him fifty families and many negro slaves. This was the introduction of slave-labor into South Carolina, which has always been pre-eminently a planting state. The settlement at Old Town was organized under the title of the Carteret County Colony, and representative government was established there in 1672. So was founded the commonwealth of South Carolina. It was known as a place where freedom was enjoyed, and emigrants flocked to it from England, Holland, and New York. They spread over the peninsula between the Ashley and another stream which they called the Cooper River, both so named in honor of Ashley Cooper, one of the proprietors. At Oyster Point, at the junction of three streams, on the verge of a fine harbor and in sight of the sea, they laid the foundations of a capital city for the province eight or ten years later, and named it Charles Town (Charleston) in compliment to the king. Old Town was abandoned, and the new village flourished. Very soon thriving settlements were seen along the Santee and Edisto Rivers; and the region between the Ashley and Cooper-the Ke-awah and E-ti-wan of the Indians-became quite populous with industrious inhabitants. We have observed that it was designed to establish a great empire in the region of the Carolinas. It was deemed proper to devise a scheme of government commensurate with that grand idea. To Sir Ashley Cooper, and the philosopher John Locke, was entrusted the task of framing a constitution. Cooper was then about forty-seven years of age, and in the full maturity of his genius and power. He was of an old and wealthy family, and was connected with some of the most distinguished members of the English aristocracy. He was now a royalist of the strictest pattern. A few years later (1672), he was elevated to the peerage as Earl of Shaftesbury, and made Lord High Chancellor of England. Locke was much younger-only thirtyfour-but was a more profound thinker than Cooper, and was already famous as a philosopher. He was a tutor of Cooper's son. His views of government were consonant with those of his friend, the statesman and courtier. Neither of these men was fitted for the task of framing an acceptable constitution for the government of a free people, and the magnificent scheme which they prepared, with the title of "Fundamental Constitutions,” was entirely inconsistent with the condition and circumstances of the American colonists. It was the production chiefly of the brain and hand of Locke, it is believed, and was perfected in 1669. For purposes of settlement, the proposed constitution provided for dividing the vast domain into counties, each to contain four hundred and eighty thousand acres. These lands were to be distributed in five equal parts, onefifth to remain the inalienable property of the proprietors; another fifth the inalienable property of two orders of nobility, namely, landgraves or earls, and caciques or barons, one of the former and two of the latter belonging to each county; and the remaining three-fifths to belong to "the peoples," that is to say, farmers and lords of manors, the latter having no prescriptive legislative powers, but exercising judicial functions on their respective domains, in baronial courts. The number of the nobility was not to be increased nor diminished, the places of those who should not leave heirs, to be supplied by election. It gave to every freeman of Carolina absolute power over his negro slaves; and tenants, cultivating small quantities of land, were not only to be denied political franchises of any kind, but were serfs of the soil, and under the jurisdiction of their lord, without appeal; and all their children were to endure the same social degradation "to all generations." When that elaborate constitution, which provided for titles, and classes, and aristocratic distinctions in America, was submitted to the people of the Carolinas, they rejected it as absurd in its details. They had made judicious laws for their own government, were satisfied with their workings, and resolved to have nothing to do with the scheme of the proprietors. Under their own laws they built up flourishing colonies, inseparable in interests and aims, and so they remained over sixty years, when they were dismembered and formed the separate colonies of North and South Carolina. CHAPTER X. THE ENGLISH AND SPANIARDS-SLAVES IN SOUTH CAROLINA~~PRISONERS FOR DEBT IN ENGLAND ~~REVELATIONS OF THE PRISONS-MEASURES FOR THE RELIEF OF THE PRISONERS-CHARTER FOR GEORGIA GRANTED~ GENERAL OGLETHORPE ACCOMPANIES EMIGRANTS TO THE SAVANNAH RIVER--JOY OF THE CAROLINIANS-FRIENDSHIP OF THE INDIANS--TO-MO-CHI-CHI-A TREATY --INDIANS ACCOMPANY OGLETHORPE TO ENGLAND-THEIR RECEPTION THERE~~OGLETHORPE RETURNS TO GEORGIA WITH THE WESLEYS~~AN UNWISE CODE FOR GEORGIA. S ELFISHNESS and philanthropy went hand in hand in promoting There seemed to be an unconquerable antagonism between the Spaniards and the English, in both hemispheres. The Spaniards viewed with jealousy the rapid increase of English settlements in America, especially in the region bordering on Florida, which the Castilians held by right of undoubted first discovery. They saw the English rapidly gaining the monopoly of the trade with the Indians and exercising a wide influence over the native inhabitants in the Gulf region, who had been taught by past sad experience to look upon the Spaniards as their abiding enemies. Therefore the Castilians in Florida were disposed to cast obstacles in the way of an extension of the English colonies southward. Early in the eighteenth century, South Carolina was well stocked with slaves from Africa, especially in the rice-planting districts, where negroes performed nearly all of the manual labor. They had become essential to the prosperity of the colony. The Spaniards believed that the most effectual way to discourage the English planters and to prevent their making settlements below the Savannah River, would be to entice away their slaves by promises of the freedom and the privileges of the Spanish subjects. This measure was successfully employed. A complete regiment was formed at St. Augustine of runaway slaves from South Carolina; and they were taught to hate the English as their enemies. This was an alarming state of things for the South Carolinians, and they anxiously sought a remedy for the evil. Between the Savannah and Alatamaha rivers, there was a region wholly unoccupied by white inhabitants at the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The South Carolinians proposed to erect a barrier |