1737. Culture. Scandal

It was not unusual for husbands to place notices in the Gazette announcing their wayward wives, as a means of shaming them to society. However, Issac Simmons placed the following announcement in the Gazette about his wife, lured by the theater life:

This is to give notice to all people in Charles-town or elsewhere, not to credit harbor nor entertain Mary Simmons, the wife of Issac Simmons, which has made an elopement from her said husband especially to be employed in the Playhouse in Charles-Town, it being entirely against the said Mr. Simmons’ request. 

1751. Slavery

The Assembly received a petition of Thomas Miles for reimbursement for his slaves Venus and Kitt who “were tryed for Poisoning and condemned to be executed pursuant to the directions of the ‘Act for the better ordering and governing of Negroes and other Slaves in this Province.’” Kitt was executed but Venus was “pardoned, and was afterwards sent off the Province.” 

The most profitable commodity in the lowcountry was African slaves  – to work the rice fields, construct casks and barrels and build and maintain the boats that transported the rice down river from plantation to port.  Two skilled slaves represented a substantial financial investment for a planter. In present-day economics, their value would approximately be $15,000 – $20,000. The Carolina planters’ appetite for new slaves was so strong that one merchant wrote that “Negroes are the proper bait for Catching a Carolina Planter, as certain as Beef to catch a Shark.”

Lt. Governor Bull estimated there were 57,253 Negroes in South Carolina, about 15,000 adult males. He also noted that with only about 6000 white males this “must raise in our midst many melancholy reflections.”

1775 – American Revolution. Slavery.  

The South Carolina General Gazette reported that:

the Company of Foot Rangers…made a descent on that Island [Sullivan’s] burnt the House in which the Banditti were often lodged brought off four Negroes killed three or four & also took White prisoners four Men three Women & three Children destroyed many things which had been useful to those wretches.

1797 – Slavery.

Two slaves – Jean Louis and Figaro – and a free black were hanged, accused of planning “to set fire to the city as they had formerly done in St. Domingo.” They were “led to the place of execution at the bottom of Tradd Street facing the Lower Market between the Hours of Twelve and One o’Clock and hanged by the Neck.”

1860, December 18. Delegates Arrive.

In the late morning hours, the exhausted, red-eyed delegates arrived at the Charleston rail depot, greeted by the sound of drums, and a fifteen-gun salute from the Washington Light Infantry. They were led down Meeting Street into town by a military escort. Crowds lined the street, “ladies wore white cotton ‘secession bonnets’ with streamers decorated by … palmetto trees and a lone gold star.” The Palmetto Flag flew from almost every house and business. They marched past the Secession Pole in front of the Charleston Hotel. A “Secession Gun” had already been erected on East Bay, “to be fired on ratification of the ordinance. The gunpowder had been stored by a Charleston lady since the nullification crisis three decades before.”

Word passed through the city that the convention would reconvene at 4:00 p.m at Institute Hall, now being called by the locals as “Secession Hall.”

South Carolina Institute Hall, street view, (Harper’s Weekly)

With this festive atmosphere as the background, Rhett, Jr. paid a call to the British consul Robert Bunch to discuss how the English government would treat a Southern Confederacy. Bunch wondered if the confederacy would reopen the African slave trade which, he claimed, the English government “views with horror.” Rhett, Jr., filled with the powerful excitement of the moment, replied:

No Southern State or Confederacy will ever be brought to negotiate upon such a subject. To prohibit the Slave Trade would be virtually to admit the institution of slavery is an evil and a wrong, instead of, as the South believes, a blessing of the African Race and a system of labor appointed by God.

At 4:00 p.m., Rev. Richard Furman re-opened the convention with a prayer. The only business conducted that afternoon was a motion by Barnwell Rhett that “a committee be formed to prepare an address to the people of the Southern States.” The delegates, however, felt the hall was “too commodious … to debate intelligently.” The presence of several thousand rowdy spectators obviously changed the atmosphere of the hall from solemnity to celebratory. They decided to meet the next morning, delegates only, at St. Andrews Hall on Broad Street.