CHAPTER II. FEATURES OF THE CIVILIZATION AMIDST WHICH HE "I AM I DEVELOPED. A SOUTH CAROLINIAN, YOU KNOW."-THE DISTINGUISHING FEATURES OF SOUTH CAROLINA CIVIL LIFE AND GOVERNMENT.-THEIR BELT OF INFLUENCE.-THEIR SOURCE THE LOW COUNTRY.-THIS THE REGION IN WHICH YOUNG PALMER GREW UP. THIS REGION Described GEOGRAPHICALLY AND HISTORICALLY.-THE PEOPLE OF THIS REGION. THEIR LIFE ON THE PLANTATIONS AND IN THE SUMMER SETTLEMENTS. THEIR EDUCATION, LIBRARIES, AND GENERAL CULTURE. THEIR SPORTS AND RECREATIONS.-THEIR POLITICS.-THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TONE OF THE COMMUNITY. AM a South Carolinian, you know." Benjamin Morgan Palmer, in his mature years, was wont to make this statement from time to time, in explanation of views which he held and courses of action which he pursued. He thus evinced his consciousness of having adopted, and made his own, not a little from the distinguishing features of South Carolina civilization. And it is not unsafe to say that, in his political views, in his social ideals, in his manners, in a certain quality of heroic daring, and in the persistent maintenance of his views against all comers, he soon became, and ever remained, a noble exponent of much that was the best and highest in South Carolina civilization. Nor is there anything strange in this. His whole life, two or three years excepted, was spent within the sphere in which South Carolina ideals were dominant. The South Carolina type of civilization was a noble and impressive one; particularly impressive to one of ardent and imaginative temper, and the strong sense of justice, and absolute fearlessness in its defence, by which he was characterized. That type of civilization had produced the finest fruits, he knew: men of the first water, men of thought and action, of knightly spirit, and of bearing heroic to the point of sublimity. However much alike the types of civilization in the several States of these United States may seem to the superficial foreign observer, the close student amongst the home born knows that every State has had its own individual type of civilization, a type "as distinct and persistent as that of the leading Greek cities." He knows, too, that amongst these States, three have possessed civilizations of marked and dominating individualities, viz.: Massachusetts, Virginia and South Carolina; and that, amongst these three, the South Carolina type stands out with especial distinctness, "with dauntless and defiant spirit, fiery temper, and venturesome chivalry." The distinctive South Carolina features of civil life and government were a sentiment of independence in regard to the other states, "the centripetal character" of her government, the struggle between the aristocratic and democratic tendencies in the body itself, and the inviolability of the family relation.1 Her sentiment of independence in regard to the other states had been bred of her history. The colony of South Carolina was from her planting, in 1670, to 1733, when Oglethorpe established his colony of Georgia, the lonely and remote outpost between the other English colonies, and, on the one hand, the Spaniards at St. Augustine, and on the other, the French toward the Mississippi. Planted to assert the dominion of Great Britain against that of Spain in disputed territory, the immigrants had not yet settled on the Ashley when the Spaniards appeared and gave notice that the colony must fight for its existence. "France, also, advancing her claims to the territory eastward of the Mississippi and northward of Mobile, was disputing the westward limits of Carolina. The Indian tribes, with whom the Spaniards and French alike coalesced with greater facility than did the English colonists, presented the ready means of continual though unavowed hostility, and circumscribed the advance of the colony not only by open warfare, but by the dread of the hireling savage." For safety against Spanish, French and Indians, coming singly or in combination, the colony of South Carolina had to depend on itself, for the most part. In the Great Indian War of 1715, North Carolina and Virginia gave indeed, little and feeble assistance. South Carolina down to the Revolutionary War, continued to fight her battles with relatively little outside help. The first 1 These characteristics are ably illustrated by McCrady in his great work on South Carolina colonial history. * McCrady, History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, pp. 683, 684. British soldiers seen in the province of South Carolina, with the exception of Oglethorpe's regiment which had been raised by him for special service in Georgia, were those under Colonel Archibald Montgomery, sent in 1760 to aid in the war against the Cherokees. She had swept her coasts of pirates also, largely by the strategy and tactics, the daring and valor of her own men. During the Revolutionary struggle, her chief, and at times, only succorers were her own people, who developed an ability to endure and a skill and persistence in partisan warfare which has rarely been equalled in the annals of any people, and which unnerved and wore away the armies of her invaders. During this period she often feared that she had been utterly abandoned by the States to the north. Not without considerable assistance indeed, but largely by her own exertions, she achieved her own sovereign independence; and in the process of doing so had given vast encouragement and help to her sister States in their struggles. So circumstanced. throughout most of her history as to be under the stern necessity of taking care of herself, she had responded to the necessity and had in doing so wrought into the very fiber of her being the sentiment of independence with reference to all other political bodies. In like manner this sentiment had been impressed by the conflict with the Proprietary Government which had ended in successful revolutions on the part of the colonists and their overthrow of that government; and by the unceasing conflict thereafter with the royal government in behalf "of those natural rights that we all feel and know as men and as descendants of Englishmen." Not unnaturally, the provocations being great, about the time young Palmer wakes into vigorous mental life, we shall find Nullification running high in South Carolina. Not unnaturally, the provocations being great, about the time he reaches his early prime, we shall find Secession an accomplished fact; and that he himself is an outspoken and determined secessionist. Both facts are the outcome of the history of earlier South Carolina. The centripetal character of the government is another distinguishing mark of South Carolina civilization. It also was induced by the treatment of the colony by the mother country, and by her isolation and exposure to invasion from all sides. In Virginia the colonial growth was by rural communities. There was no city, or town, life. In New England the colo nists separated early into different towns, but in South Carolina the ever-impending danger of invasion by Spaniards, Indians, and French, "restricted the colonists for many years to distances within reach of Charlestown." "When this danger was overcome by the increase of the population, and the founding and building up of the colony of Georgia, the unhealthfulness of the country along the river, increased, if not caused by the disturbance of the soil and the stagnant water of rice planting in the inland swamps, compelled the planters to reside in the summer in the town or in some high resinous pine land settlement apart, as they thought, from malaria. Thus, until the immigration of the Scotch-Irish and Virginians into the upper country by way of the mountains, from 1750 to 1760, the development of the colony was from one point, the circle enlarging as the population increased, but always with reference to the one central point,-the town-Charles Town. "The development of Carolina thus presented the anomaly that, though it was a planters' colony, it was developed by way of city, or town, life. Boston was the largest town in Massachusetts, but there was organization and administration outside of it. For many years Charles Town practically embodied all of Carolina. Beaufort, the next town to be settled, was not attempted for more than forty years after the planting of the colony and Georgetown not until some years later. Until 1716 elections were generally held in the town for all the province, and representation outside of it-that by parishes-was not practically established until the overthrow of the proprietary government in 1719. No court of general jurisdiction was held outside of it until 1773, over a hundred years after the establishment of the colony. There was only one government for the province, the town and the church. The same General Assembly passed laws for the province, laid out streets, regulated the police for the town, and governed the church. Even after the colony had grown, and the upper country had been peopled from another source, every magistrate in the province was appointed in Charles Town until the Revolution of 1776, and after that, upon the adoption of the Constitution of 1790 and the change of the seat of government to Columbia, at that place. There was thus from the inception of the colony in 1665 to the overthrow of the State in 1865, for two hundred years only one government in South Carolina. There was no such thing as a county or township government of any kind."" In the facts, that the controlling element of the original South Carolina settlers was from Barbadoes, and that under 'McCrady, History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, p. 7. Yeamans, it brought with it a colonial system which had at its basis the institution of African slavery, and that upon this social order an attempt was made to engraft "a legally recognized aristocracy of Landgraves and Caciques, proposed by Locke and adopted by the Proprietors under the influence of Shaftsbury," we have the occasions of the emergence of another marked trait of South Carolina civilization,- "a strongly aristocratic tone with a party for sustaining prerogative,' and on the other hand from the very outset "a party of the people who based their rights upon the dogma of a strict construction of chartered or constitutional provisions." We shall find that Palmer, like the dominant party of his state, was a strict constructionist. Again, the hostility of the Spaniards, the French and the Indians, "necessitated, from the beginning, a military organization of the people." This was made the more necessary by the increasing number of negro slaves,-savages, a source of weakness in time of danger, for a long period, till the institution became thoroughly settled, a constant source "of care and anxiety." The colonists were long afraid of a negro rising on occasion of a war with the Spanish, French, or Indians. Under these spurs a military police organization of the whole people was effected, and "continued from 1704 until the emancipation of the negroes as the result of the war of secession." "Under this system the province, and afterwards the state, was divided into military districts, the chief of each of which was a colonel, and these again into other districts, or beats, under captains. The captain was the police officer of his district, or beat, and was charged with the patrol and police of his beat and the enforcement of the regulations in regard to slaves. The regimental and company military precincts were thus coincident with the police districts and the two formed one system. .. This system gave a military organization to the people which was much more effective and exacting than ordinary militia enrollment and muster. So imbued was the system of government brought from Barbadoes with a military spirit that the high sheriff of the province retained the military title of 'provost-marshal' for a hundred years-indeed, until the American Revolution. To this source may be traced the prevalence of military titles in the South, as that of 'judge,' or 'squire' in other communities, indicating persons of local consequence." 'McCrady, History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, p. 10. |