Slavery

For the colonists, the Blackbeard episode was the final straw. Already disgusted by the lack of support from the Lords Proprietors during the Yemasee War, the humiliation of the pirate blockade was too much to take.

So to almost universal agreement in the colony, the settlers threw off the rule of the Proprietors and lobbied in 1719 to become a crown colony, an effort that came to final fruition in 1729. While this outward-looking and energetic Charleston was originally built on the backs of merchants, with the introduction of the rice and indigo crops in the early 1700s it would increasingly be built on the backs of slaves.

For all the wealth gained through the planting of rice and cotton seeds, another seed was sown by the Lowcountry plantation culture. The area’s total dependence on slave labor would soon lead to a disastrous war, a conflict signaled for decades to those smart enough to read the signs.

By now Charleston [1] and Savannah [2] were firmly established as the key American ports for the importation of African slaves, with about 40 percent of the trade centered in Charleston alone. As a result, the black population of the coast outnumbered the white population by more than three-to-one, and much more than that in some areas. The fear of violent slave uprisings had great influence over not only politics, but day-to-day affairs.

These fears were eventually realized in the great Stono Rebellion. On September 9, 1739, 20 African American slaves led by an Angolan known only as Jemmy met near the Stono River near Charleston. Marching with a banner that read “Liberty,” they seized guns with the plan of marching all the way to Spanish Florida and sanctuary in the wilderness.

On the way they burned seven plantations and killed 20 more whites. A militia eventually caught up with them, killing 44 escaped slaves and losing 20 of their own. The prisoners were decapitated and had their heads spiked on every milepost between the spot of that final battle and Charleston.

Inspired by the rebellion, at least two other uprisings would take place over the next two years in South Carolina and Georgia. The result was not only a 10-year moratorium on slave importation into Charleston, but a severe crackdown on the education of slaves—a move that would have damaging implications for generations to come.