WEBVTT NOTE 24. The Land Question in South Carolina 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.440 Volume 2, Chapter 24, The Land Question in South Carolina 2 00:00:06.440 --> 00:00:12.560 The leading conflict within the new royal colony centered on the land question. 3 00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:17.860 Since the proprietors had closed their land office, no grants of land had been made by 4 00:00:17.860 --> 00:00:19.600 the Crown. 5 00:00:19.600 --> 00:00:26.520 But during the interim period of the 1720s, vague claims were revived to large tracts 6 00:00:26.520 --> 00:00:41.520 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. 7 00:00:41.520 --> 00:01:00.520 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. 8 00:01:00.520 --> 00:01:09.400 By the end of the 1720s, almost 800,000 acres of valuable coastal land were appropriated 9 00:01:09.400 --> 00:01:12.880 under these old speculative claims. 10 00:01:12.880 --> 00:01:20.040 In 1731, the assembly passed a law giving a blanket validation to all the huge land 11 00:01:20.040 --> 00:01:23.320 grants under the proprietary. 12 00:01:23.320 --> 00:01:29.360 Robert Johnson, the royal governor, defended the law as absolutely necessary for the peace 13 00:01:29.360 --> 00:01:59.360 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. 14 00:01:59.360 --> 00:02:04.920 Advocated Throwing Open the Vast Land Tracks to Legitimate Settlers, but although the 15 00:02:04.920 --> 00:02:11.240 Board of Trade recommended disavowal of the Act, the Privy Council did not do so, and 16 00:02:11.240 --> 00:02:17.640 the mass validation of the land engrossments thus remained in force. 17 00:02:17.640 --> 00:02:23.080 In the struggle that ensued between Governor Johnson and the land monopolist on the one 18 00:02:23.080 --> 00:02:29.800 in Hand, and St. John and Whitaker on the other. The land and grocers controlled the 19 00:02:29.800 --> 00:02:35.800 Council and the Assembly in South Carolina. The Governor denounced the two critics and 20 00:02:35.800 --> 00:02:42.160 the Council urged the dismissal of St. John. The gravest blow against land reform was struck 21 00:02:42.160 --> 00:02:49.520 by the government in the case of Thomas Cooper. Cooper, an assistant judge, was arrested by 22 00:02:49.520 --> 00:02:56.200 by the landed oligarchy for challenging the validity of their speculative land titles. 23 00:02:56.200 --> 00:03:01.400 Instead of arguing the case in court, the great landlords prevailed on the assembly 24 00:03:01.400 --> 00:03:09.520 in 1733 to imprison Cooper and two of his assistants for five weeks. 25 00:03:09.520 --> 00:03:16.240 Cooper sued for several writs of habeas corpus, but the despotic assembly refused to obey. 26 00:03:16.240 --> 00:03:22.400 The unfortunate Cooper sent petitions for his release from arbitrary arrest to the Governor. 27 00:03:22.400 --> 00:03:27.160 Not only were the petitions ignored, but the two merchants who caused the petitions to 28 00:03:27.160 --> 00:03:33.000 be sent to Governor Johnson were summarily arrested for their pains. 29 00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:38.520 Johnson agreed to release them only after they were forced to pay heavy fines and to 30 00:03:38.520 --> 00:03:40.640 beg the Governor's pardon. 31 00:03:40.640 --> 00:03:45.240 The same brutal treatment was meted out to several other merchants and lawyers carrying 32 00:03:45.240 --> 00:03:52.100 and Coopers Petitions to Members of the Assembly. Chief Justice Robert Wright now moved courageously 33 00:03:52.100 --> 00:03:59.100 to reassert the claims of legal rights over arbitrary despotism. He particularly denounced 34 00:03:59.100 --> 00:04:05.180 the executive and the assembly's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, one of the chief 35 00:04:05.180 --> 00:04:13.820 guarantees of English liberty. The assembly and council then passed a bill in 1733 declaring 36 00:04:13.820 --> 00:04:40.820 The question of the hour was whether or not the Crown would disallow the tyrannical law. 37 00:04:40.820 --> 00:04:48.640 Happily, the Board of Trade recommended rejection, and the Crown promptly disallowed the Act. 38 00:04:48.640 --> 00:04:54.980 The infuriated Assembly cut off Wright's salary, and the Crown had to place the salary 39 00:04:54.980 --> 00:05:02.160 under the Royal Quit-Rent Fund, thus putting it out of control by the Assembly. 40 00:05:02.160 --> 00:05:10.140 The vengeful Assembly proceeded to another arbitrary rest of James St. John himself, 41 00:05:10.140 --> 00:05:34.460 Thomas Cooper was, in turn, dismissed from his judgeship by Governor Johnson. Moreover, 42 00:05:34.460 --> 00:05:39.620 When Cooper and St. John were elected to the assembly, the controlling oligarchs refused 43 00:05:39.620 --> 00:05:41.660 to seat them. 44 00:05:41.660 --> 00:05:49.460 The upshot of the controversy, which continued for years afterward, was, in a sense, a stalemate. 45 00:05:49.460 --> 00:05:57.120 The suspension of the habeas corpus was disallowed, but the original large grants to land speculators 46 00:05:57.120 --> 00:05:59.900 were allowed to stand. 47 00:05:59.900 --> 00:06:05.300 The tightness of oligarchic control over the South Carolina government in this era may 48 00:06:05.300 --> 00:06:15.380 be seen in the fact that every one of the colony's governors from 1725 to 1756 was a 49 00:06:15.380 --> 00:06:23.140 member of a clique of six wealthy, heavily intermarried, landed families. These were 50 00:06:23.140 --> 00:06:32.480 were the planter families of Blake, Bull, Drayton, Fenwick, Izzard and Middleton. Governor Johnson 51 00:06:32.480 --> 00:06:39.580 was related by marriage to the Blakes. Furthermore, of the 37 counselors of South Carolina during 52 00:06:39.580 --> 00:06:47.060 this period, no less than 17 were members of this clan. The second big power group in 53 00:06:47.060 --> 00:06:52.060 the colony were leading Charleston merchants, generally natives of England with English 54 00:06:52.060 --> 00:06:58.020 Business Connections and Influential at the Board of Trade. This group supplied eight 55 00:06:58.020 --> 00:07:04.700 counselors and the very wealthy Henry Lawrence was also a member of the group. 56 00:07:04.700 --> 00:07:10.500 By the 1750s, the council had accumulated a great deal of independent power in South 57 00:07:10.500 --> 00:07:19.500 Carolina. But after 1756, its power and prestige rapidly dwindled as the governor and the crown 58 00:07:19.500 --> 00:07:27.500 dismissed recalcitrance and began to appoint largely royal bureaucrats completely dependent on the crown. 59 00:07:27.500 --> 00:07:37.500 The assembly then became the center of power and leadership among the colonists and hence of resistance to exactions of the crown.