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SETTLEMENT OF THE CAROLINAS.

35

covering that some valuable lands were not included in their grant, obtained, two years later, a second charter for the lands lying between thirty-six and a half degrees and the twenty-ninth parallel, to which they gave the name of Carolina, and which comprehended the two States of that name and Georgia. The territory thus granted was not only included by the Spaniards within the limits of Florida, but a part of it was within the grant that had been made by Charles the First in 1630 to Sir Robert Heath. The grant to Heath, having never been carried into execution, had been adjudged to be forfeited; and it was only the grants by Charles the Second which had permanent vitality.

There had been two settlements of French Huguenots in South Carolina, a century before; the first of which had been abandoned by the settlers in despair, after they had given to a fort there erected the name of Caroline, in honor of their sovereign Charles the Ninth; and the second, having provoked the jealous bigotry of the Spaniards, its settlers were savagely butchered by them, without regard to age or sex.

Early in the succeeding century two settlements had been made in what is now North Carolina, one on the Chowan near Albemarle Sound, under the auspices of Virginia, and the other by adventurers from New England to the south of Cape Fear River- both of which were in existence at the time of the Restoration."

Witchcraft being then fully credited in America as it was in Europe, afforded to the Puritans of New England frequent occasions of persecution. The first trials for

1

Drayton's South Carolina, page 5. This writer considers it uncertain whether the name of his State was derived from Charles the Ninth of France, or Charles the Second of England.

2 III. Grahame.

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SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA.

witchcraft were in Massachusetts, in 1645, when four persons were put to death. The delusion was at its height in 1692. It seems to have been arrested by William's negative of the colonial act against witchcraft.

The proprietaries, soon after their first grant, adopted measures to make their transatlantic territory profitable. They contributed money to encourage immigration, and they undertook the government of the volunteer settlements on Chowan and Cape Fear, which were about two hundred miles apart, and separated yet more by an impenetrable wilderness of forest and morass than by distance. But the proprietors wisely made the first yoke of authority light. The settlers were left to their own brief and simple code, suited to their circumstances, and were required to pay a quit-rent of but a half-penny an acre. Of all the Anglo-American colonies, it is probable that the restraints of law and authority were never so little felt as by the first settlers of North Carolina.

The Virginia settlement-the oldest and most numerous—was called Albemarle, after one of the proprietors. Sir William Berkeley appointed William Drummond its Governor, who carried out the liberal policy of his employers. A legislative assembly was then established, the first in either Carolina, but there is no record of its acts since 1669. Drummond having returned to Virginia, was succeeded in 1667 by Samuel Stevens.

The Cape Fear settlement, though reinforced by emigrants from Barbadoes, under Yeamans, then made a baronet, did not thrive, and seems to have merged in the more successful colony of South Carolina.

In no long time a better knowledge of this portion of

1 ' II. Hildreth.

2 Even this petty charge, on a complaint from the Albemarle settlers, was given up. II. Grahame, 74.

IMPRACTICAL SCHEME OF GOVERNMENT.

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their province stimulated the cupidity and enlarged the views of the proprietors. To this end Shaftesbury applied to the celebrated John Locke for a plan of government. He accordingly prepared one which gave satisfaction to his employers, and was lauded by the public under the influence of Locke's reputation, but which proved utterly distasteful, and ill suited to those for whom it was made. The outlandish names of its functionaries-palatine, landgrave, and cacique sounded strangely in their ears, and at once excited a prejudice against it. When examined more closely, it was found to have postponed the rights and interests of the people to its main purpose of strengthening and perpetuating the oligarchical rule of the eight proprietors.

Locke has always been held responsible for the failure of this political experiment, and it is likely enough that a mind however endowed with the powers of speculation, if also unversed in the practical business of life, and inexperienced in state affairs, would not be competent to frame a wise plan of government; yet the plan which he devised, being in accordance both with the sentiments and interests of Shaftesbury, was probably as much the work of that scheming, gifted, and versatile statesman as of Locke. It was unhesitatingly rejected by the settlers of Albemarle, who preferred the simpler and freer constitution that had been first provided for them; nor could the proprietary Governor ever prevail on them to adopt it. In this disagreement between the proprietors and the people, much confusion ensued, and political changes, including a popular insurrection, followed in rapid succession, until 1688, when, wearied out by the misrule of Lothiel the Governor, they seized him, and being about to send him to England to take his trial, he consented to be tried by the Assembly. He was accordingly thus

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TREATMENT OF THE ABORIGINES.

tried; was found guilty on every charge; and deprived of his authority.

The new constitution was carried into operation in the Southern settlements, so far as the circumstances of the colony would permit. William Sayle, a colonel in the army, first formed a settlement at Port Royal, but it was soon afterwards removed to a site on the south side of Ashley River, which they called Charlestown, and which was for some years the capital of the Southern settlements in Carolina; but in 1679, a more eligible site was selected at the junction of Ashley and Cooper Rivers, which received the same name, since changed to Charleston, the present emporium of South Carolina commerce.'

The Southern settlement continued to advance, fostered as it was by the Huguenots whom Charles sent over in 1679, for the purpose of making wine, oil, and silk, but dissensions arising between the proprietors and the people, Locke's constitution was formally abrogated in 1693.2

In these royal grants of land no regard was had to the rights of the aborigines, their legitimate owners and actual possessors, so far as hunting tribes can be possessed of land. Neither their previous consent nor subsequent ratification was asked. But it must not therefore be inferred that they were unconscious of their rights, or insensible of the dangers which threatened their race from the superior power of the foreign intruders. Far from it. Though disposed at first to wel

1

Drayton notices the mistake into which historians have commonly fallen in consequence of these early settlements having the same name. The first, which is distinguished as "Old Charlestown," is now part of a private plantation. - Drayton's So. Carol. 199.

8

Fair summaries of this notable failure of speculative philosophy are given by Grahame, Hildreth, and Bancroft.

INDIAN WARS AND MASSACRES.

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come the white man as a friend, they soon saw that the extension of that race among them was inconsistent with their own safety, or even with their means of subsistence; and more than once, in the infancy of the colonies, they aimed to exterminate the whites by a general massacre. One instance in 1622 has been already mentioned. A similar attempt was made in the same colony about twenty years later, when more than three hundred whites were suddenly cut off. In the wars which followed these massacres, the Indians were reduced to unconditional submission.

After the increased number of the colonists made these schemes of extermination equally hazardous and hopeless, the Indians would still occasionally venture on war, with every prospect of defeat; consoling themselves with the expectation that if they could not obtain redress for their wrongs, they could at least partially avenge them. Their vengeance, too, always carried terror to the colonist, however brave, since it was aimed at the lives of his wife and children as much as his own.

Besides the two wars in Virginia which had severally followed the massacres in that colony, the Indians had made war against the settlement in Connecticut in 1637; and in 1675 and 1676 king Philip's war was of much wider extent and longer duration. The colonists of Maryland also were, for a short season, in open hostilities with the Indians, about the year 1642.

The course taken by Massachusetts after the Restoration was very different from that pursued by Connecticut and Rhode Island, and was followed by very different results. The news of that event was received by Rhode Island with the liveliest demonstrations of joy, that were probably, in the main, sincere, from her unfriendly feelings towards Massachusetts, which had so warmly

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