SLAVERY IN THE PROVINCE OF SOUTH CAROLINA, 1670-1770. By EDWARD MCCRADY. Sir John Yeamans was the first who introduced African slaves into Carolina. These he brought from Barbados in 1671 to cultivate his plantation on Ashley River. But the institution of slavery in America was contemporaneous with the planting of the colonies; nor was the form of servile labor which was first introduced that which ultimately prevailed. In the early days of Massachusetts, Virginia, and Maryland, as well as in South Carolina, the slave was not a negro, but an Englishman condemned, either penally or by contract, to a limited period of bondage. At the outset this class was supplied from two sources. A few were felons, usually those with whom capital punishment had been commuted to colonial servitude. These, however, were not numerous, and probably had but little effect on the general character of the popu lation. The bulk of the indented servants were laborers who bound themselves for a fixed term of service, with the certainty of becoming small freeholders at the end of that period. Gradually the system changed. The great tobacco plantations of Virginia needed a larger servile population than could be provided by the chance supply of pardoned criminals. As has been observed, there were few ages of English history in which this resource would have insured so constant a supply as in the latter half of the seventeenth century. The field of Dunbar in 1650, Penruddock's attempt against the Commonwealth in 1655, the Scotch rebellion in 1666, the rising in the west under Monmouth in 1686, the Jacobitic insurrection in 1715, each furnished its share of prisoners to the colonies. But the demand was far in excess of such precarious aids, Ramsay, Vol. I, 35; Historical Sketches of South Carolina (Rivers), 104. and, as might have been expected, it soon produced a reg. ular organized supply. It became a trade to furnish the plantations with servile labor drawn from the offscourings of the mother country. By an act of Parliament of 1718, offenders who had escaped the death penalty were handed over to contractors, who engaged to transport them to the American colonies. In the proposals made to all such persons as should undertake to become the first settlers "in the province of Carolina to the southward and westward of Cape Romana," in Hilton's Voyage, 1663, 500 acres of land were offered for every 1,000 pounds of sugar, provided that the person so subscribing should "within five years next ensuing have one person (white or black, young or old) transported at their charge as aforesaid on that or some other parcel of land in the province." Fifty acres of land were offered for every manservant carried or sent. To every manservant who should go with the first adventure, 50 acres; to such as would go with the second adventure, 30 acres; and for all other servants that should go within the first five years, 20 acres, and for every woman servant, 10 acres. To the owner of every negro man or slave brought thither within the first year, 20 acres, and for every woman negro or slave, 10 acres; and all men negroes or slaves after that time and within the first five years, 10 acres; and for every woman negro or slave, 5 acres.2 And so in "A list of all such Masters, free passengers, and servants which are now aboard the Carolina, now ridinge in the Downes, August 10, 1669," sent to Lord Ashley by Joseph West, when setting out on his voyage with the first colonists, we find seventeen masters with sixty-two servants and but thirteen other emigrants with no servants. In an extract from the journal of the grand council we find this adjudication upon the case of one of the servants who came out in this way under the terms of the proposals: June 8, 1672, Mr. Thomas Norris, Anthony Churne, and Samuel Lucas came this day before the Grand Councill and made oath that they were privie to the contract between Richard Deyos and Christopher Edwards, his servant, and that the said Christopher Edwards was to serve the said 1 English Colonies in America (Doyle), 382; Bancroft, Vol. I (ed. 1883), 125. Hilton's Voyage of Discovery. Charleston Yearbook (Courtenay), 1881, pp. 228, 229. The Voyage of the Colonists. Charleston Yearbook (Courtenay), 1886; pp. 246-249. |