Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future

Carolina February 26, 2025

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.
Tags: american-revolution, britain, History, slavery, travel
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Unlike the other English colonies in North America the Carolinas were established under the auspices of the Lords Proprietors by West Indian planters.  The Lords Proprietors, 8 extremely rich men were based in London, and they wanted experienced colonists to ensure the success of their financial venture.

Many of the rich planters of the West Indies did not want to divide their land between multiple heirs.  They instead followed a strict enforcement of primogeniture leaving everything to the eldest son.  Daughters were of course married off, but younger sons found it hard to make their way and the Carolinas offered a great opportunity to set them up in great style and add to the family wealth at the same time.

However, there was a potential problem.  Founding a society of great planters on a frontier had its dangers.  The planters were afraid that their slaves would run off into the wilds and perhaps join with the Indians to fight against them.  To avoid this, they devised an ingenious plan to at the least keep the slaves and the Indians apart.  And at best they make them mortal enemies.  To accomplish their purpose, they made treaties with the Indians providing them with weapons and other trade goods for returning run-away slaves.

The Colonists:

Though this was a society designed to be a steep pyramid led by a small group of very rich planters who started at the top and had every intention of staying there the colonists were overall a diverse lot.  There were rich poor and in between.  There were great planters, tradesmen and indentured servants.  They came from the West Indies and from England.  What they had in common was the opportunity to shape a fertile land that seemed vast and open to people accustomed to the confined space of the West Indian islands and the crowded cities of England.  The Lords Proprietors were generous in their grants of land, from the great estates given to the Planters to the relatively large plots given to the indentured servants who survived their years of labor.  Some of these former servants were able to rise to the top ranks of society and this mobility was something that could not be equaled in either England or the West Indies.

The independence and prosperous settlements around the Albemarle Sound, which had been founded by Virginians didn’t like the idea that they were included in the royal grant to the Lord Proprietors and thus a part of Carolina ruled from Charles Town.  This discontent finally led to the split between North and South Carolina in 1712. 

From its founding the Lord Proprietors ruled Carolina as a personal possession.  Yes, they were generous in their grants of land, however since this land really belonged to the Indians and had been granted to the Lord Proprietors by a King who had never seen them, they proved the rule that it is easy to be generous with the belongings of others.  This generosity did not however, extend to actual control of the colony. 

The Coup:

In 1719 the Assembly of South Carolina exhibited independence which would mark its character ever since.  Feeling that the Lords Proprietors far off in London were hopelessly unconnected to the affairs of the colony the Assembly revolted and declared themselves to be the governing authority of the colony authorized by the people to take control of governmental affairs.  Recognizing the reality of the situation, in 1729 the crown purchased all the rights of the Lords Proprietors and converted the Carolinas into royal colonies.  The crown only exercised minimal control, appointing governors and regulating international trade.   This exchange of the Colonial Assembly for the Lords Proprietors consolidated the power of the Great Planters.  It was they who usually filled the Assembly and it was their children and clients who also filled the courts and the bureaucracies. Often it seemed as if the major object of the colonial government was adjudicating the growth of plantations and the maintenance of Carolina’s ridged slave laws.

Carolina’s Unique Indian Policy

While in most colonies it was one of the principal points of policy to prevent weapons, especially firearms and ammunition from falling into the hands of Indians the leaders in Carolina came up with a novel approach.  As mentioned earlier one major concern for the planters was the fear that their large slave population would combine with the indigenous people and overwhelm the greatly outnumbered Caucasians.  To forestall this, they came up with the policy that would live in infamy as the Gun Trade.

Here’s how it worked.  Instead of working rigorously to keep firearms out of the hands of the Indians the colonists chose powerful local tribes and armed them.  Initially this was to be used for enlarging the natives’ ability to obtain furs and skins for trade.  Then as time and relationships progressed the colonists engaged the Indians to catch runaway slaves paying for the slaves with more guns.  Exploiting the Indians tradition of taking members of other tribes as captives the colonists were also willing to purchase Indian captives which they would send to the West Indies to sell as slaves, thereby making money while at the same time reducing the number of Indians they had to contend with.

This policy caused the tribe being armed to vault to the top of the local power pyramid.  Immediately they would begin expanding their territory and raiding as far afield as they could to obtain furs, skins, runaway slaves and captives.  These sparked innumerable wars among the tribes further destabilizing them and making them less able to stand up to the constantly expanding colony. 

Eventually the first armed tribes started to need more weapons, powder and shot than they could pay for, so they went into debt.  When the debt became substantial enough the colonists would arm another tribe and become their allies against the first tribe while at the same time cutting off weapons, repairs and supplies to the first tribe.  Soon tribe number two was bringing tribe number one as captives and now they were on the boat to the West Indies.  In time the process was repeated with tribe number three against number two and four against three until the Indian problem was solved.

This ingenious way of subverting an entire race spread the influence of the Carolina colony through the Piedmont and into the Blue Ridge Mountains, through the southern plain all the way to the Mississippi as tribes using their technical advantage to attack tribes further out seizing furs, skins, hunting lands and captives.  The slaves were intimidated by the ferocious army of armed men waiting for the opportunity to catch and return them if they managed to escape.

The French used an intimate cultural knowledge and the willingness to share the lifestyle of the Native Americans to gain allies and friends.  The Spanish sought to turn the Native Americans into Hispanics seeking to convert them into taxpaying subjects.  The English of the Chesapeake colonies or New England sought to overwhelm and conquer the natives clearing the land through attrition.  Only the colonists of Carolina hit upon the idea of using their economic advantage to pay the Native Americans to destroy themselves.

Economics:

Mercantilism was theory that was dominant in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries.  It held that the wealth of a nation depended on its possession of precious metals.  In practice this meant that the governments of Europe sought to maximize foreign trade surpluses by promoting national commercial interests, building a powerful navy and a large merchant marine.  These were then used to establish colonies which were seen as sources of raw materials and markets for manufactured products.

As with any colony in an empire based upon the economic theory of Mercantilism, Carolina had to find a way to not only provide a place for people to live but also a way to produce exports to add to the wealth of the homeland.  Adapting quickly to the land and its resources the [people of the Carolinas initially became a primary source for the lumber and tar so necessary to ship building and of vital importance to an empire built and sustained by a large and growing navy and merchant marine. 

Next, they excelled in the production of cattle and pigs using the warm marshes and nut rich forests to free range their livestock even though it caused irreparable harm to the open fields of the Indians extensive horticulture-based society.  However, though these early successes proved the worth of the colony and provided much needed capital for expansion they still needed a cash crop.  Virginia had tobacco.  New England had fish.  Carolina found theirs when they tried growing rice in the humid and rich lowlands of the coastal region.  Soon the planters were draining swamps and moving forward to become the rice bowl of the English Empire.

This lucrative enterprise soon afforded the Great Planters a lavish lifestyle rivaling their forefathers in the West Indies and surpassing even what many English Lords were able to sustain.  Their homes, their clothes, furniture and jewels were becoming the stuff of legend.  Conversely the great rice plantations were built on the homelands of Indian tribes seizing their towns, hunting lands and sacred places.  The growth of the rice plantations also caused untold suffering for the tens of thousands of slaves who toiled and died in the disease infested swamps that had been turned into rice paddies.  Caucasians were soon the minority in the colony as the slave population swelled.  The Great Planters through the Assembly they controlled enacted increasingly stringent slave codes to keep their victims enthralled.  While the planters boasted of the liberty they had obtained through their successful coup and their resulting rule by Assembly they kept the majority of the population in abject poverty, ignorance and terror.

Georgia:

No story of the Carolinas can be complete without also sharing the founding of Georgia.

To secure England’s hold on the increasingly prosperous Carolinas, it was decided to establish a colony between the thriving new colony and the Spanish holdings in Florida.  Spain was still a formidable power, and she still claimed the land to the north of her Florida holdings.  In the past Spanish raiding parties had ranged up and down the Atlantic coast looking for the interlopers.

The effort to establish a buffer colony was led by several wealthy philanthropists headed by James Oglethorpe and collectively known as the Georgia Trustees.  It was their intent to accomplish what the Virginia Company had originally said was one of their main goals; provide a place for the rehabilitation and succor of England’s urban poor.  Receiving a charter for twenty-one years the trustees had almost total control until the colony would automatically revert to the crown and become a royal colony.  The Trustees invested their own money, raised charitable donations and received grants from the crown and the parliament to finance their experiment.  James Oglethorpe led the first colonists personally; however, he had no plans to remain in America and after establishing the first few outposts returned to London.

Seeking to maximize the number of small Yeoman farmers and minimize the number of large plantations, the Trustees at first limited people to fifty-acre tracts.  They also hoped this would limit the number of slaves since it would not be economically viable to maintain slaves with only fifty acres.  They also made the importation or owning of slaves illegal.  Another of their innovations was to restrict the growth of rice which required a plantation system and instead encourage the growth of hemp for rope, mulberries for silkworms and silk production, grapes and other crops that didn’t require vast holdings but did require diligent farmers.  The goal was to inspire tightly knit densely populated settlements which would provide the large militias needed to protect a long and exposed frontier surrounded by antagonistic tribes and a hostile Spain.

Conclusion:

As the only English colony to outlaw slavery Georgia was at the forefront of liberation and freedom in America but the experiment was not to last.  Soon planters from Carolina were migrating and establishing outposts in the territory.  Soon to the English colonists wanted to emulate the genteel society and thriving economy of Carolina.  The Trustees tried to keep the lid on things by restricting the consumption of rum, and the avocation of lawyers among other things.  However, the great distance and the lack of understanding of the colonial experience on the part of the trustees opened a wedge between them and their wards that grew greater and greater as time went on.

Eventually the divide escalated into open rebellion as the colonists sought liberty and property rights including the right to own larger holdings and slaves.  Even before the twenty-one years expired the Trustees capitulated to the rising demands and surrendered their rights and so Georgia reverted to the crown becoming a virtual clone of the Carolinas.

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