Volume 2, Chapter 24, The Land Question in South Carolina
The leading conflict within the new royal colony centered on the land question.
Since the proprietors had closed their land office, no grants of land had been made by
the Crown.
But during the interim period of the 1720s, vague claims were revived to large tracts
In the early days of the proprietary, these land patents were revived because the Crown insisted on raising the quit rent from 1 shilling to 4 shillings per 100 acres.
But since proprietary grants reserved only one shilling per hundred acres for quit rents, this royal decision spurred many recipients of large land baronies from 12,000 to 40,000 acres in size to revive their old claims.
By the end of the 1720s, almost 800,000 acres of valuable coastal land were appropriated
under these old speculative claims.
In 1731, the assembly passed a law giving a blanket validation to all the huge land
grants under the proprietary.
Robert Johnson, the royal governor, defended the law as absolutely necessary for the peace
and Peace and Tranquility of the Province. But James St. John, Surveyor General and Comptroller of the Quit Rents and Benjamin Whitaker, the Attorney General, pointed out that a 24,000 acre land grant inherited by Johnson himself was at stake in the outcome. St. John also denounced the grantees for engrossing all the best lands and thus keeping legitimate settlers from migrating to the colony.
Advocated Throwing Open the Vast Land Tracks to Legitimate Settlers, but although the
Board of Trade recommended disavowal of the Act, the Privy Council did not do so, and
the mass validation of the land engrossments thus remained in force.
In the struggle that ensued between Governor Johnson and the land monopolist on the one
in Hand, and St. John and Whitaker on the other. The land and grocers controlled the
Council and the Assembly in South Carolina. The Governor denounced the two critics and
the Council urged the dismissal of St. John. The gravest blow against land reform was struck
by the government in the case of Thomas Cooper. Cooper, an assistant judge, was arrested by
by the landed oligarchy for challenging the validity of their speculative land titles.
Instead of arguing the case in court, the great landlords prevailed on the assembly
in 1733 to imprison Cooper and two of his assistants for five weeks.
Cooper sued for several writs of habeas corpus, but the despotic assembly refused to obey.
The unfortunate Cooper sent petitions for his release from arbitrary arrest to the Governor.
Not only were the petitions ignored, but the two merchants who caused the petitions to
be sent to Governor Johnson were summarily arrested for their pains.
Johnson agreed to release them only after they were forced to pay heavy fines and to
beg the Governor's pardon.
The same brutal treatment was meted out to several other merchants and lawyers carrying
and Coopers Petitions to Members of the Assembly. Chief Justice Robert Wright now moved courageously
to reassert the claims of legal rights over arbitrary despotism. He particularly denounced
the executive and the assembly's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, one of the chief
guarantees of English liberty. The assembly and council then passed a bill in 1733 declaring
The question of the hour was whether or not the Crown would disallow the tyrannical law.
Happily, the Board of Trade recommended rejection, and the Crown promptly disallowed the Act.
The infuriated Assembly cut off Wright's salary, and the Crown had to place the salary
under the Royal Quit-Rent Fund, thus putting it out of control by the Assembly.
The vengeful Assembly proceeded to another arbitrary rest of James St. John himself,
Thomas Cooper was, in turn, dismissed from his judgeship by Governor Johnson. Moreover,
When Cooper and St. John were elected to the assembly, the controlling oligarchs refused
to seat them.
The upshot of the controversy, which continued for years afterward, was, in a sense, a stalemate.
The suspension of the habeas corpus was disallowed, but the original large grants to land speculators
were allowed to stand.
The tightness of oligarchic control over the South Carolina government in this era may
be seen in the fact that every one of the colony's governors from 1725 to 1756 was a
member of a clique of six wealthy, heavily intermarried, landed families. These were
were the planter families of Blake, Bull, Drayton, Fenwick, Izzard and Middleton. Governor Johnson
was related by marriage to the Blakes. Furthermore, of the 37 counselors of South Carolina during
this period, no less than 17 were members of this clan. The second big power group in
the colony were leading Charleston merchants, generally natives of England with English
Business Connections and Influential at the Board of Trade. This group supplied eight
counselors and the very wealthy Henry Lawrence was also a member of the group.
By the 1750s, the council had accumulated a great deal of independent power in South
Carolina. But after 1756, its power and prestige rapidly dwindled as the governor and the crown
dismissed recalcitrance and began to appoint largely royal bureaucrats completely dependent on the crown.
The assembly then became the center of power and leadership among the colonists and hence of resistance to exactions of the crown.