History and Other Stuff

Friday 26 January 2024

Louisa Wells Aikman of Charleston and Premature Burial

Louisa Wells Aikman was born in Charleston in 1755. She was the daughter of Robert Wells and Mary Rowand, who had emigrated from Scotland a couple of years before. Robert was a man of many talents: bookbinder, bookseller, printer of books and Charleston's second newspaper, The American and General Gazette.

Robert's staunch support for the British government in its dispute with the colonies made his life difficult, and he went to London in 1775. Most of the family followed him early in the revolution. Louisa stayed in Charleston to help her brother John run the family business. In 1778, she was banished for her outspoken Loyalism and left for London. A few months after her arrival in London, she wrote a journal of her experiences, The Journal of a Voyage from Charlestown, S. C. to London.

Most of the journal relates the story of her circuitous and adventurous journey from the time she left Charleston to her arrival in London. Along the way, she inserts a curious story. involving an alleged case of premature burial. The alleged victim was George Woodrop of Charleston, who had died in 1770 in his early twenties. The burial had been unusually quick. Woodrop was pronounced dead in the evening and was buried the next morning. His uncle, Andrew Robertson, insisted on dispensing with the traditional practice of "laying out" the body in the house for a a few days before interment.

Louisa's father Robert Wells had been a mourner at the funeral. He had "expressed great uneasiness, and said that the body did not appear like a dead corpse, there seemed to be a bloom on the countenance!" Wells asked Robertson the reason for the hurry in burying Woodrop. Robertson replied, "Mrs. Robertson could not bear to have the deceased in the house as she had so many young children."

Afterwards, a rumor spread that Woodrop had been buried alive. During Louisa's voyage to London, one of her fellow passengers, John Mills, was the sexton of the church where Woodrop was buried. Mills told Louisa and other passengers that the rumors were true. Mills said he had kept silent on the matter until that time because he had promised the Robertsons that he would not speak to anyone about the subject. But now the Robertsons were dead and he felt released form that promise.

One night Mills was preparing a grave for a morning burial, assisted by "two black boys." While they were digging, the shovel hit and broke off part of a coffin. Mills went down into the grave and discovered "the backbone of a human skeleton." The posture of the body seemed unusual. Aided by the boys, Mills "opened the grave, uncovered the lid of the coffin, and found the deceased lying on its side, with the cheekbone in the palm of the hand!" The coffin cover bore the words "George Woodrop died 1770."

We may not be convinced by this evidence, or speculate that Mills was spinning a yarn to entertain his fellow passengers on a long and tedious voyage. Louisa Aikman was convinced that it was a genuine case of premature burial and that it was not the only one. The fear of being buried alive (taphophobia) has existed in western society for many centuries but it increased during the late eighteenth century, partly due to changes in burial practices. Another contemporary fear, of disease-causing miasmas emanating from decomposing bodies, led many doctors to urge quick interment instead of laying bodies out for several days.

One famous Charlestonian who feared premature burial was Henry Laurens. Laurens believed that his infant daughter Martha had narrowly escaped being buried alive. He had heard the rumors about Woodrop because he knew Robert Wells. Laurens stipulated in his will that his body be burned after death. His cremation on a funeral pyre at Mepkin Plantation inn 1792 is reputed to be the first documented case of the practise in the United States.

In an appendix to her narrative, Louisa Aiken wrote that the Woodrop case had affected her mind so much that she "never forsook the apparently dead or dying until interment." During the twenty years she lived in Jamaica (1782-1801) she reckoned that her watchfulness had prevented eighteen people from being "sent to an untimely grave."

She mentioned in particular the case of fourteen year old James Haughton, 1785. He seems to have been suffering from yellow fever -- Louisa mentions "a constant bleeding at the nose." For several hours "Animation was suspended." Two doctors declared him dead. His mother agreed with what Louisa considered a lack of emotion, and went off to dress for his funeral.

Louisa persevered in trying to save him. With the help of "slaves" she applied the method recommended by the Humane Society. She does not say what they did or who did what. The Humane Society of London was founded in 1774 with the object of reviving people seemingly dead from drowning and other causes. The society's initial recommended method involved a combination of mouth to mouth resuscitation, warming and rubbing the body, purgatives, ointments, and tobacco smoke enemas.

The young man regained consciousness. When his "unnatural parent" returned, "curled and powdered" and dressed in a black silk dress, her son was sitting up "eating sago from my hands." James Haughton was still alive fifteen years later when Louisa left Jamaica. He had married twice and had several children. Louisa moved to Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1801 to care for an ailing daughter. She died at Cowes in 1831, aged 76. Hopefully, was dead when she was buried.

[Image: The Wells Residence and Shop at 71 Tradd St, Charleston, SC]

Tuesday 5 December 2023

The Scottish Conspiracy Against American Liberty: The Case of South Carolina

Did a Scottish conspiracy to crush colonial liberty provoke the American Revolution? Nonsense, you will likely say. But evidence from the 1760s and 1770s shows that colonial anger at the actions of the British government was paralleled by a rise of anti-Scottish sentiment. Some colonial leaders, who called themselves Whigs, claimed that Scots dominated the government in London and were conspiring to undermine the people's liberties, to enslave them in fact. Whigs, who later called themselves Patriots, used the term "enslave" freely, despite the fact that many of them were themselves slaveowners. "Liberty or Slavery" was a common Whig motto.

The Scottish conspiracy theory, like so many things political in the colonies, originated in British politics. In the early 1760s, disgruntled English Whig politicians claimed that George III’s former Scottish tutor, John Stuart, Earl of Bute was the gray eminence behind the alleged conspiracy.

George selected Bute as his Prime Minister in 1762, two years after he became king. English Whig politicians concocted the conspiracy theory while Bute was in office. He didn't last long in the job. King George discharged him in 1763. Yet Whigs continued to accuse Bute of plotting behind the scenes to “enslave” the English people. They accused him of influencing policy through an affair with the king's mother.

Bute's critics portrayed him as a boot. The "Boot" became a common and convenient symbol of tyranny in Britain and its empire. American Whigs used it during the Stamp Act Crisis in 1765 and right up to the beginning of the revolution in 1775.

The Scottish conspiracy theory gained additional traction in America in the early 1770s as a result of a judicial decision in London. The judge who made the decision happened to be a Scot, Lord Mansfield. He was educated in England, trained in law, and became one of the top English judges, Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench. In the widely reported Somerset Case in 1772, Mansfield ruled that slavery had no basis in English law, in either precedent or statute.

The Somerset decision sent shock waves through the colonies, especially the southern colonies, where the wealth of the elite relied on enslaved African labor. Nowhere was the Somerset ruling more resented than in South Carolina, where enslaved Africans made up a majority of the population. Many planters feared Parliament might extend Mansfield's ruling to the entire empire. The fear had little basis in reality. Mansfield's ruling was narrow and applied only to England.

Abolition of slavery in the British empire occurred, of course, but not for more than sixty years. In the 1770s, the anti-slavery movement in Britain was still in its infancy. Parliament was filled with MPs and Lords who derived much of their income from the slave trade and colonial plantations. Abolitionism was beginning to have some impact on the British consciousness, but it did not have enough influence on Parliament to achieve abolition of the slave trade, let alone slavery itself. The sugar planters of the West Indies seem to have understood this, because they did not use it as a reason to defy the home government.

Slave owning colonists in the American colonies, especially in South Carolina, did not understand the reality of British politics. Or they pretended not to. They panicked at the news of the Somerset decision. Their fear that it might be applied to the colonies led them to embrace a solution that aligned them with northern activists challenging Parliament’s power to tax the colonies.

The solution had already been articulated by Charleston merchant Christopher Gadsden. Since the late 1750s Gadsden had been arguing that Parliament had no right to legislate for the colonies on any domestic matters. In the northern colonies the rallying cry of those opposing British policies was "No Taxation without Representation.” That cry was adopted in the South as well, but it was not the main issue that united southerners against Britain. The central issue in South Carolina, although never articulated directly, was “No Representation, No Slavery.” The political elite decided that the best way to protect its domestic institutions (read: chattel slavery) was for South Carolina to control its own destiny. That decision was a crucial step in the unification of the thirteen colonies into what became the United States.

By the early 1770s, antislavery views in the northern colonies were gaining adherents. Some of the men who would sign the Declaration of Independence in July 1776 had previously denounced human bondage. But in the interests of colonial unity, northern antislavery figures muted their criticisms and accommodated southern opinion. John Adams and Benjamin Franklin had both condemned slavery, but in 1775 they argued that slavery, like taxation, was a domestic issue for Americans to deal with. The British Parliament had no right to interfere in the internal affairs of the colonies. They must be sovereign, and they must unite to achieve sovereignty. The issue of slavery would have to wait until that was accomplished.

To salve their consciences, many American Whigs predicted that slavery would be abolished after independence was achieved. That was safely in the future. In 1775, colonists north and south proclaimed that the British government was determined to enslave them, while also threatening the institution of slavery. And the architects of this policy were Bute, Mansfield, and other villains, including ones implanted in the heart of the colonies. The cartoon of 1775 below, Virtual Representation, illustrates the colonial Whig view. The man in tartan pants with the gun is Lord Bute. Next to him is Lord Mansfield in his judicial robes. The gun is pointed at colonists. Britannia, at far right is coming to the rescue, but is about to fall into a pit, presumably dug by the Scots. On the far left are two French Canadians, a soldier and a monk, who are supporting Bute and Mansfield. Why? In 1774, Parliament had passed the Quebec Act giving French Canadian Catholics freedom of religion. Many American colonists viewed this with alarm. They believed it was part of the British strategy to subdue the thirteen colonies, in this case by enlisting French Canadians to fight them.

In retrospect the view that Bute, Mansfield, and other Scots in Britain and the colonies were engaged in a conspiracy to eliminate American liberty and abolish American slavery -- a disconnect and an oxymoron -- seems preposterous. To many people in the colonies, however, the Scottish conspiracy theory seemed plausible. It was politically useful to American Whigs and they had the claims of English Whigs to support it.

British Whigs were the political descendants of the parliamentary faction that had opposed royal absolutism in the turbulent seventeenth century. The monarchs in question belonged to the House of Stuart. The Stuarts were a Scottish dynasty. They had ruled Scotland for centuries before James VI & I became king of England on the death of Elizabeth I in 1603.

American colonists claimed to be defending liberties secured by the seventeenth century struggles against the heirs of James I: Charles I, Charles II, and James II. In the wake of the conflicts, many people in Britain and its colonies associated the Scottish name Stuart with authoritarianism. Lord Bute's given name, John Stuart, surely did little to help his chances of political success.

By the time of the American Revolution, Stuart monarchs no longer ruled Britain and had not for sixty years. Their immediate successors, the Hanoverian kings George I and II, had favored Whig politicians during their reigns, from 1714 to1760, a period often called The Whig Supremacy. The rival Tory Party all but disappeared.

Things changed when George III ascended the throne in 1760, aged nineteen. He believed that Whig oligarchs had gained too much power and had corrupted British politics. He was eager to reduce their influence and end the successful but hugely expensive war with France and Spain. His current Whig ministers wanted to continue the war. George removed several of them from his government. Among them was the popular William Pitt, who had led Britain to victory in the Seven Years War (French and Indian War in American history).

Pitt had become a hero in the colonies as well, as the names of numerous towns and streets in the USA attest, from Pittsburgh to Pittsboro to Pittsfield. Charleston, South Carolina named a street after him (I lived on it) and erected a statue of him in gratitude for his efforts to abolish the Stamp Act of 1765. The statue originally stood at the intersection of Broad and Meeting Streets. It is now located in the Charleston County Judicial Center. It is missing his outstretched arm. Ironically, a British cannonball knocked it off during their siege of the city in 1780.

English Whig claims of “Scots tyranny” merged with growing colonial resentment of Scottish influence and economic competition in British America. Ever since the Act of Union, Scots had been free to settle and trade in England and its colonies. Thousands took advantage of the opportunity and migrated to greener pastures. Scottish merchants and traders descended on London and every corner of the empire.

Many people in England resented this invasion by their former enemies. English writers and cartoonists portrayed Scots as lean and hungry, a plague of locusts eager to feast on the land of milk and honey. The poet Charles Churchill described Scotland as a land where half-starved spiders fed on half-starved flies. In his dictionary, lexicographer Samuel Johnson defined oats as a grain which in England is fed to horses and in Scotland is fed to the people. Scots were uncouth, uncivilized, impoverished -- and historically traitorous. The last is a reference to the Jacobite Rebellions which were designed to restore the Catholic Stuart monarchs to the throne of Britain. The rebellions broke out in Scotland, and Highland clans provided most of the Jacobite soldiery. The last of the revolts penetrated into central England before being crushed in 1746. Most adults in England could remember the panic and fear it generated, and they told their children.

[English Anti-Scottish Cartoons: Sawney in the Boghouse and London: A Flight of Scotsman]

In America, Scots flocked to South Carolina and Georgia in particular, lured by the prospect of quick riches. They became merchants, planters, doctors, and shopkeepers. The Crown also appointed Scots to many colonial offices, a trend that accelerated after the defeat of the last Jacobite Rebellion in 1746 and the accession of George III in 1760. From the perspective of the British government improving opportunities for Scots in the empire was a means of keeping them loyal. Americans were not the only ones struggling to achieve unity in the late eighteenth century. We tend to forget that Great Britain was also a new country, not much older than the United States. “British” was a new and fragile national identity.

Many Charleston creoles resented the new Scottish ascendancy in trade and government. They accused Scots of favoring one another and benefiting unfairly from British colonial and trade policies. Merchant Christopher Gadsden was one of the most vocal critics of the Scottish invasion. In 1767 Gadsden built a huge wharf in Charleston, one of the largest in any American port. During its construction of his wharf, Gadsden remarked that he was going to "fill the foundation with imported Scotchmen, who are fit for nothing better." The statement reflected Gadsden’s disdain for Scots, in particular Scottish merchants, who he viewed as the undeserving beneficiaries of British trade policies.

About the same time, Gadsden was developing the area near Boundary Street. He called it Middlesex and named one of the streets after John Wilkes, Whig MP for the county of Middlesex. Gadsden admired Wilkes for his spirited defense of English liberties, which took an anti-Scottish slant. He became famed for his attacks on Lord Bute in his journal The North Briton. Wilkes became a hero to many colonists in the 1760s, despite notoriously rakish behavior and obscenity charges stemming from his satirical poem, An Essay on Woman.

Gadsden’s hostility toward Scots may have initially developed as a result of his service as a militia officer during the Cherokee War of 1760. At the request of South Carolina, the British government sent a Highland regiment to help quell the Cherokee uprising. Gadsden was angered that the government gave command of the campaigns to Scottish officers. Gadsden believed that a South Carolinian should have been in command.

Peter Timothy, printer of the South Carolina Gazette, was another prominent Whig who resented the success of recent Scots arrivals. His animosity was directed in particular against a rival Scottish printer, Robert Wells, who had arrived in the early 1750s. Wells printed and imported books, and established a flourishing bookstore. In the late 1750s, he started a rival newspaper. Timothy resented the competition, and claimed that Wells benefited from an unfair advantage. Interestingly, Wells supported the protests against the Stamp Act in 1765, but later became a staunch defender of the British government. He also became known for his belligerent Scottishness. He used to dress his son William Charles in a tartan jacket and Scottish bonnet to demonstrate his national pride. Poor William suffered harassment from other young boys of the town as a result. Robert was also the object of Whig harassment. In 1775, he left for Britain, declaring he could not live under the "Lilliputian" regime in South Carolina.

When Timothy complained that Wells benefited from an unfair advantage, one of the persons he blamed was another Scot, who like Bute, also happened to to be named John Stuart. He had come to Charleston from Scotland in 1748. After mixed success as a merchant, including some slave trading, he married Sarah Fenwick, daughter of a wealthy planting family. He became a planter and built the house that still bears his name, the Colonel John Stuart House on the western end of Tradd Street.

During the Cherokee War of 1760 Stuart served in the South Carolina militia. He developed a good relationship with some of the people he was fighting, including Cherokee headman Attakullakulla, the Little Carpenter. In 1762, the British government, eager to prevent war, appointed him as Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Southern Department. In that capacity he tried to keep the peace between the backcountry settlers and the southern Indian nations.

It was partly at Stuart's instigation that the British government established the Proclamation Line in 1763, which declared the land of the Appalachians and beyond was to be reserved as Indian land. Stuart argued that shady land speculators and white settlers encroaching on Indian land constituted the main danger to peace. He made powerful enemies trying to prevent fraudulent land deals, including one in which planter William Henry Drayton tried to swindle the Catawba nation out of thousands of acres.

In the spring of 1775, Drayton and his other enemies revenged themselves by charging that Stuart was conspiring with the British government to incite Indian attacks on the colonists. In fact, he was trying to prevent the southern Indian nations from going to war. This fabricated tale enraged many people in the city. Stuart had to flee Charleston with a liberty mob at his heels. He ended up in Florida, where he continued to advise the Indians. In 1776, he tried but failed to prevent a disastrous Cherokee attack on the settlers of the southern backcountry. He died ion Florida in 1779.

Into this hornet's nest sailed another suspicious Scot, the last royal governor of South Carolina. Lord William Campbell was the 4th son of the Duke of Argyll, Scotland's most powerful aristocrat. In 1763, he had been stationed in Charleston as a navy captain, and had married the daughter of a local planter, Sarah Izard. The Campbells arrived in June 1775 aboard the ship Scorpion. Prior to their arrival, a rumor had spread that the ship was carrying 14,000 stand of arms to be distributed to Loyalists, slaves, and Indians.

The rumor was baseless, but people were disposed to believe it. The Whigs "uncovered" another conspiracy around the time Campbell arrived. They arrested some "suspicious" slaves who, after "rigorous interrogation" confessed the existence of a plot for a slave revolt to help the British. The alleged organizer was a wealthy free black, Thomas Jeremiah. After a mockery of a trial, the tribunal of five white men found him guilty. He was hanged and his body burned a few days later. Campbell was appalled by the proceeding and attempted to pardon Jeremiah, only to find he was powerless.

When the Whigs spread the news of Campbell's efforts to save the condemned man, a liberty mob surrounded his house at 34 Meeting Street and threatened to drag him out into the street and force him to hang Jeremiah himself. Campbell fled Charleston to a British navy ship a few weeks later, bringing an official end to British rule in South Carolina. In fact, it had ended months before.

Many Scots in the southern colonies became Loyalists once the revolution began. One of the most interesting and insightful explanations of Scottish loyalism was offered by Charles Webb of St. Paul’s Parish, a few miles southwest of Charleston. Webb was himself a Loyalist, but not a Scot. In July 1775, the parish committee reported him to a justice of the peace for “malicious expressions" against the Whigs, who he said were "greater rebels than ever the Scotch were.” This was an obvious reference to the Jacobite rebellions in Scotland. Webb pointed to a key reason why many Scots in America supported the British government: many of them or their families had suffered severe punishments after the crushing of the rebellions. He was not surprised, he said, that the Scots were “such loyal subjects, for a burnt child would dread the fire.” They had learned from experience the folly of fighting the British monarch. This was true, but Whig attacks on Scots in America also contributed to this result.

Wednesday 8 November 2023

Charleston's Tea Parties, 1773-1774

Everyone has heard of the Boston Tea Party. Well, maybe not everyone, but it is one of the most famous episodes among the many events that led up to the American Revolution and War of Independence. But how many people know that Charleston, South Carolina had three tea parties? The first took place just a few days before the more famous Boston event, and was thus the first tea party in America. It was a more genteel affair, at least on the surface. [Image: Charleston Harbor, c. 1780]

On December 1, 1773, an East Indiaman, the London, arrived in Charleston harbor carrying a large consignment of tea. Christopher Gadsden, a merchant or factor, called a “Mass Meeting” of local Whigs and Liberty Boys to discuss how to prevent the tea being sold. They called in the three merchants who had agreed to receive the tea. After some “threats and flattery” they persuaded the merchants not to receive the tea. The captain of the London and the owner of the wharf where the ship was moored received letters threatening them if they did not move ship out into the harbor. Before that could happen, however, the collector of customs seized the tea and put it in cellar of the Exchange to await the hoped-for resolution of the tax dispute. Threats had been made but no violence occurred. It was a relatively genteel affair compared to that in Boston. Although the tea was not sold, the local firebrands were upset that it was landed in the city at all, especially after they learned what happened in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. In the latter two cities, the tea-bearing ships had been prevented from landing at all. They had to return to Britain with their cargoes.

Charleston's second tea party took place in July 1774. A merchant ship with the ironic name of Magna Carta, unloaded three crates of tea which were registered with customs officials at the Exchange. Since the first "party" the year before, opponents of British policies had established a General Committee to act as a watchdog for violations of the embargo. The General Committee summoned the ship's captain and demanded an explanation. Captain Maitland claimed that he was unaware his ship was carrying the tea. He offered to dump it into the river at his own cost. The customs officials refused to let him pay for and take the tea. The Liberty Boys decided Maitland was being duplicitous and took direct action. They aroused a mob of several hundred angry citizens and set out with tar and feathers to teach him a painful, possibly deadly lesson. Fortunately for Maitland, he learned of their approach and escaped to another British ship in the harbor. The Liberty Boys found the tea on the ship and took it to the Exchange to be stored. [Image: Charleston Harbor, 1773]

The third Charleston tea party was a bit more like the Boston event in that it involved actual dumping of the tea into the harbor. In November 1774 the ship that had rescued Maitland, the Britannia, arrived carrying seven chests of tea. The captain, Samuel Ball, repeated Maitland’s plea, stating that he did not know of the presence of the “mischievous drug” on his ship. Ball was not being truthful, but the General Committee accepted his explanation and blamed the three Charleston merchants who had agreed to accept the consignments of tea. The committee convinced the merchants to dump the tea into the Cooper River at a loss to themselves. The memory of the liberty mob action against Maitland may have helped to persuade them. A large crowd gathered to watch them pour the tea into the water, but there was no violence. Peter Timothy reported the event with some glee in his South Carolina Gazette, calling the tea dumping “an oblation to Neptune.” He reported that the crowd dispersed afterwards as if nothing had happened.

Why is the Boston Tea Party so well known, while Charleston's tea parties were almost forgotten? One reason is the dramatic nature of the Boston event. The partygoers, members of Boston's Sons of Liberty, dressed as Native Americans and attacked the tea-laden merchant ship yelling war whoops and brandishing tomahawks. The image was violent and made a lasting impression, and throughout the war that followed, British cartoonists often portrayed the American rebels as Indians. Another, and even more important reason for the fame of the Boston Tea Party, is the British government's severe reaction. Parliament passed a series of Coercion Acts (1774) designed to punish Boston and Massachusetts for tolerating such a wanton destruction of private property. The acts closed the port of Boston, suspended the colonial charter, and shut down the regular courts. They were to remain in effect until Massachusetts paid for the destroyed tea and the Crown was satisfied that order had been restored. The effect of the acts was to stifle the local economy and put Massachusetts under direct British rule.

The government in London hoped that the Coercion Acts would deter other colonies from supporting resistance to British policies. The "Intolerable" Acts, as they soon became known in the colonies, had the opposite effect. By punishing the entire colony of Massachusetts rather than the individuals involved in dumping the tea, the acts aroused fears in the other colonies of being treated in a similar manner. The acts strengthened the influence of radicals such as Sam Adams in Boston and Christopher Gadsden in South Carolina, who were already demanding independence in practice if not in name.

Further Reading:

Stanly Godbold, Jr., and Robert Woody, Christopher Gadsden and the American Revolution. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983.

Daniel McDonough, Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laurens: The Parallel Lives of Two American Patriots. Susquehanna University Press, 2000.

George C. Rogers, Jr., "The Charleston Tea Party: The Significance of December 3, 1773" The South Carolina Historical Magazine, 75, No.3 (July 1974), pp. 153-168.

Jordan Baker, "The Charleston Tea Parties," The Charleston Tea Parties – Legends of America

Sunday 29 October 2023

The Execution of Isaac Hayne: Charleston South Carolina, August 1781

During the American War for Independence, both sides executed enemy soldiers and civilians. Some were found guilty of spying or treason after a trial, although the “trial” was often pro forma. For many others a trial was dispensed with. After the Battle of King’s Mountain in October 1780, the victorious patriots shot dead many of the defeated loyalists after they had surrendered. King’s Mountain was part of a broader pattern of tit for tat executions that plagued the backcountry of South Carolina, especially during the British occupation of 1780-1782. Patriot Paddy Carr slaughtered every Loyalist he could lay his hands on, refusing quarter to those who surrendered. The Loyalist “Bloody Bill” Cunningham became infamous for butchering patriots and their families. Both sides murdered "enemies" in their beds. Patriots executed without trial Blacks alleged to have aided or joined the British enemy. Governor John Rutledge ordered partisan leaders Thomas Sumter and Francis Marion to hang “renegade Negroes.”

Most of the victims of these war crimes, for that is what they were, were anonymous, or just names. Only a few of them are etched in our historical memory. We remember Nathan Hale, who the British executed as a spy in 1776. Why? Because of his supposed last words: “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country." Powerful stuff, even if not true. Isaac Hayne is not as well-known as Hale, but he was the most famous person to be hanged in the South during the war. A painting of Hayne being led to his execution is displayed in the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon on East Bay Street in Charleston, where he was imprisoned in the summer of 1782.

The British hanged Hayne on a charge of treason, which he vigorously denied. How he got into that situation is convoluted. Hayne had inherited several plantations south of Charleston, mainly near Jacksonborough. He had a reputation as an excellent breeder of horses. He served as a cavalry officer in the patriot militia. After the fall of Charleston in 1780, the British paroled him and others in the militia. He returned home. That summer and autumn smallpox spread across the state. One of his children died of it, and his wife and two other children became infected. He rode to Charleston to seek medical help. He had not wanted to come. The victorious British commander, Sir Henry Clinton, had issued a proclamation requiring the paroled militia to swear allegiance to the Crown. While Hayne was in Charleston, the town commandant, Colonel Paterson, convinced him to take the oath. Paterson assured him, he later claimed, that he would not be required to take up arms against his former comrades. Hayne signed and went home. His other children survived but his wife died from smallpox.

After patriots regained control of most of the state in 1781, Hayne believed, or claimed, that he no longer owed allegiance to the invaders. He joined the partisans. In July 1781 he took part in a partisan raid on the plantation of Andrew Williamson. They kidnaped (or rescued) Williamson, a former patriot general who had defected to the British after the fall of Charleston. A British detachment intercepted the kidnapers and rescued Williamson. Campbell captured Hayne and took him back to Charleston as a prisoner. The commandant of Charleston was no longer Paterson, but Colonel Nisbet Balfour. He ordered Hayne to be imprisoned in the Provost Dungeon, the bottom floor of the Exchange Building. Balfour charged him with treason for having violated his oath of loyalty to the king.

Hayne expected to receive a trial but Balfour and the commanding general in South Carolina Lord Rawdon, declared him guilty and sentenced him to hang. For months, Balfour had been placing warnings in the newspapers that militia who had taken parole and signed the oath of allegiance would be liable to treason charges if they rejoined the patriots. He had hoped it would stem a rising tide of defections to the partisan bands. The warnings failed to bring about the desired result. He and his superior, General Lord Rawdon, decided to make an example of someone to deter others. [Image: Francis, Lord Rawdon]

The British commanders had another likely motive, one all too common in war: revenge. The previous October, patriots in New York had captured Major John Andre. He was returning to British lines after a secret meeting with Benedict Arnold, to arrange Arnold's switch to the British side. Because he was caught wearing civilian clothes, they charged Andre as a spy, which meant he had no right to a trial. They hanged him at Tappan, New York, a few days later, with the approval of George Washington. Andre was a talented and popular officer, and his execution outraged many of his comrades. Nisbet Balfour had been his friend.

Many people in Charleston protested the sentence on Hayne and urged Balfour and Rawdon to reconsider the verdict. Those who pleaded for Hayne’s life included several prominent Loyalists, including William Bull, the former royal lieutenant governor. Women from both sides of the political divide came to beg for mercy. The sister of Hayne’s deceased wife brought his two surviving children to see Rawdon and Balfour. They begged for mercy on their knees. British officers also petitioned for to save Hayne, including the one who had captured him. Rawdon refused to change the sentence. His only concession was to allow Hayne a stay of a few days to visit with his children.

At dawn on August 4 Hayne’s captors led him out of the Provost Dungeon. Several hundred soldiers escorted him to the place of execution at Boundary Street (now Calhoun Street), close to the present-day College of Charleston.

Hayne’s execution made him a martyr to the patriot cause in South Carolina and a figure in Southern folklore, celebrated in story and song. Unlike Nathan Hale, he was largely forgotten in the annals of American history, probably due to the sectional conflict that led to the Civil War. Growing up in Chicago in the 50s and 60s, I heard about Hale but not Hayne.

Almost immediately after the execution, Rawdon returned to Britain. Fear of retaliation for Hayne’s execution may have sped up his departure. He arrived home to find that Hayne’s execution was being criticized even in Britain. The Duke of Richmond, an opponent of the American war, moved to censure Rawdon’s conduct in the House of Lords. Although Richmond's motion lost by a large majority, Rawdon demanded the duke make an apology or meet on the field of honor. A duel was narrowly avoided when Richmond issued an apology. Rawdon went on to become Governor-General of India and racked up several peerages, including Earl of Moira and Marquess of Hastings.

In later years, Rawdon blamed Balfour for Hayne’s death. Both played a role in it, of course, but it seems that Rawdon was the more determined to hang him. During Balfour’s time as commandant of Charleston, Hayne was the only patriot to be executed. Rawdon had ordered many executions under his command in America, mainly of army deserters. Balfour, who remained in Charleston after Rawdon’s departure, bore the brunt of local anger about Hayne’s execution. In March 1782 General Alexander Leslie, who replaced Rawdon as commander in South Carolina, wrote to Sir Henry Clinton that Balfour’s situation in Charleston had become “very unpleasant” since Hayne’s execution. In August 1782 Balfour was transferred to New York. After the war, he went on to become a Major General.

Below are two illustrations purporting to be of executions that took place during the American War for Independence. The first allegedly records the execution of Major John Andre at Tappan, New York in October 1780. The second claims to portray the execution of Colonel Isaac Hayne in Charleston.

The illustrations are almost identical, except for changes in the colors of the uniforms. Even the flags remain the same. It is likely that the artist or artists was not present at either execution. The artist of Hayne's hanging obviously copied the artist of Andre's. They were after all, copycat killings.

David K. Bowden, The Execution of Isaac Hayne Lexington, SC: The Sandlapper Store, 1977.

David Ramsay, The History of the Revolution in South Carolina. Trenton, NJ, 1785.

Wednesday 6 September 2023

Adventures of a Black Loyalist: Scipio Handley

At the beginning of the American Revolution, Scipio Handley was a free black fisherman who plied his trade in Charleston Harbor. We know very little else about him. We do know he was involved in a number of events during the revolutionary era, and after the war applied for compensation to the Loyalist Claims Commission in London. The memorial he submitted to the Claims Commission provides the little we know about Handley. It is part of thousands of pages of documentation, memorials and testimony, that now survives in the UK National Archives at Kew.

After the last royal governor, Lord William Campbell, fled Charleston in September 1775, Handley used his boat to carry supplies to the Tamar and its crew. When Lady William (Sarah Izard) decided to flee to her husband’s side, Handley took her. He was taking a great risk. The Committee of Safety prohibited any boats from town going to the British ships without a pass. Handley avoided Patriot patrols by going at night when the moon was down or when it was cloudy. But one night a patrol intercepted him ferrying supplies. They arrested him. According to Henry Laurens, Arthur Middleton wanted to hang Handley, and most of the council agreed. Laurens agreed that he should be hanged if guilty, but only after a “proper” trial. Exactly what would have constituted a proper trial in the wake of the Thomas Jeremiah incident is worth pondering. We will never know. Handley escaped from captivity one night shortly before Christmas and disappeared. That same night, a Patriot force numbering around 200 and disguised as “Indian warriors” attacked a camp of runaways and Loyalists on Sullivan’s Island. The “Indians” killed about two dozen runaways and captured others, including a few Loyalists. The rest managed to escape to the British ships anchored nearby or to Morris Island on the other side of the harbor mouth. The victors destroyed the pest house on Sullivan’s Island, which the runaways had used as a shelter. It is likely that many of them had resided there once before, on their arrival from West Africa, to perform quarantine. In the aftermath of the Patriot attack, Lord William sailed off to St. Augustine. He took some of the runaways and Loyalists with him.

Was Scipio Handley one of them? Had he fled to the island the night he escaped, just before the Patriot attack? We don’t know, but we do know that somehow, Handley made his way to Florida, along with other Blacks and Loyalists. Or so he said in his memorial. He claimed that in escaping he had to jump from a second story window, that he landed badly, and suffered a rupture. In severe pain, he made his way to the British in St. Augustine. From there, he went on to Barbados. He took up fishing again and remained there for the next three years. Whether the British offered him a position as an auxiliary during that time he did not say. When the British captured Savannah in the last days of 1778, they recruited him to work for their army as a Black Pioneer. He learned to make munitions, a dangerous and noisome job. He was at Savannah in the autumn of 1779 when a combined Patriot and French force attacked the city with disastrous results. He claimed that the “Negroes” did everything they could to repel the attack. They knew that “the rebels” would show no mercy to them if the British had to surrender. Handley was wounded during the battle. He was carrying grapeshot to the artillery when a musket ball hit him in the leg. It took months for the wound to heal so that he could walk. He would have taken part in the British siege of Charleston the following spring, he declared, if he had not been wounded. At the time he submitted his memorial, he stated that he remained unable to walk properly and that the pain was so bad that at times he could not work. He requested compensation from the Claims Commission in the amount of £97 for the loss of his possessions, livelihood, fishing boat, seven hogs, and furniture. The total claim would be about $25,000 in today’s money. That may seem substantial but many white planters and merchants claimed thousands of pounds, literally millions today. When the commission interviewed him he brought along a white widow from Charleston as a testimonial witness. Mrs. Eleanor Lister. She had made and sold pies for her living, which she sometimes traded for fish from Mr. Handley. Lister testified that she believed Scipio was free and that he had possessed at least some of what he claimed. When one of the commissioners asked what kind of furniture Handley possessed she answered tellingly: “Good enough for Negroes.” She asked the commission to give him “something” because he had “risked his life to serve His Majesty.” The commission dismissed her and asked Handley why he did not return to South Carolina to recover his property. “They’d hang me if I went back,” he replied. “During the war, Governor Rutledge ordered that all slaves who helped the British be executed.” The records of the Loyalist Claims Commission record the amounts awarded to the claimants, at least some of them. It does not contain any information about what Scipio Handley received, if any. Other Black Loyalists did receive varying amounts of compensation, although not a great deal. The commission took about six years to make its final report on the awards. It may be that by then, Scipio Handley had died. Perhaps we will never know that either.

Wednesday 26 July 2023

Images of Anti-Slavery in Britain and the US

The UK has the unenviable distinction of having been a global leader in the Atlantic slave trade, second only to Portugal. British ships transported more than three million Africans to the Americas between the 1600s and 1807. The profits of the trade and the labors of the enslaved were huge.

[Image: British Slave Ship, Insurrection on Board a Slave Ship, Carl Wadstrom, An Essay on Colonization, 1795]

By the late 18th century, a movement to end the trade and eventually slavery itself began to gain momentum in Britain. Anti-slavery sentiment arose from both religious and secular sources.

Religious sects like the Quakers had long opposed slavery. After mid-century, they were joined in Britain by members of Dissenting (Non-Anglican but Protestant) sects such as Methodists and by some Anglicans.

The influence of Enlightenment thinkers also played a role. The illustration below, from Voltaire's popular novella Candide, shows Candide and his companion Cacambo encountering a slave who has had his hand destroyed in a mill and a leg cut off for running away. The slave tells them, "This is the price of your eating sugar in Europe."

In the 1780's, the pioneering potter Josiah Wedgwood, Charles Darwin's grandfather, produced the famous medallion below on behalf of the movement to end the slave trade.

The image below, of "tight packing" aboard the slave ship Brookes, was published in Plymouth, England in 1788. It became an icon of the antislavery movement. Mortality onboard such vessels was often enormous. As much as 50% of the "commodity" did not survive the voyage.

In the same year, British artist George Morland exhibited his sentimental genre painting "The Slave Trade," showing Africans being loaded into boats on the West African coast.

The painting below, by JMW Turner, depicts the infamous case of the slave ship Zong . The Zong Incident occurred in 1783, almost sixty years before Turner painted his take on it.

When the Zong overshot its intended destination in Jamaica and ran low on water, the captain ordered more than 100 Africans thrown overboard in order to save the rest. The captain claimed insurance on the "lost cargo." The insurance company refused to pay.

In the court case that followed, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield (pictured below), who had effectively declared slavery illegal under English law in 1772, denied the insurance claim. Many people thought the captain and his henchmen should have been tried for murder.

The Zong "Massacre," as it is often called today, galvanized opponents of the slave trade. In its wake, they mounted a mass popular movement to end it, led by MP William Wilberforce. Parliament finally abolished the slave trade in 1807.

Abolition of slavery itself in the empire followed in 1833, but the institution survived decades longer in many parts of the globe. Turner's painting the Zong Massacre in was done in 1840 for the International Conference on Abolition of Slavery, held in London.

The legal slave trade to the USA ended in 1808, but a clandestine trade and slavery itself lasted until the end of the Civil War. British artist Eyre Crowe produced a famous depiction of a slave sale in Charleston, South Carolina in 1856.

During the Antebellum Era (1820-1860), abolitionists in the USA produced many anti-slavery images. They tended to focus on the brutality and violence of the slave system, in which slaveowners wielded tyrannical power over their human chattels. Below are a few examples.

Today, a new curriculum for US History in the Florida of Governor Ron DeSantis, emphasizes the "benefits" of slavery to the enslaved. He is simultaneously at war with one of Florida's biggest economic powerhouses, Disney, Inc.

There is a certain irony in this. Disney famously produced a film that, inadvertently, perhaps, made slavery look like a Good Barbie land. I refer of course to Song of the South (1946), the movie based on the Uncle Remus Stories of Joel Chandler Harris.

My, oh my, what a wonderful day! Zippity do da! Zippityay, sings Uncle Remus to the nice little white children of his owner. Yes, it was that good.