Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T03:18:12.877Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Chastized by Scorpions: Christianity and Culture in Colonial South Carolina, 1669–1740

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2010

Charles H. Lippy
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Early in 1740, actor-turned-revivalist George Whitefield journeyed to Savannah after a preaching tour that had taken him to Philadelphia and New York before heading south to Charleston, where he arrived in January that year. At the time, Charleston was experiencing communal angst. A few months before, in September 1739, an uprising occurred in this colony where African slaves were a majority—perhaps even two-thirds of the population. Around two dozen whites lost their lives, and several plantations were burned. Popular belief held that a Catholic priest inspired the revolt since apparently many involved in the uprising were Catholic Kongo people who hoped to escape to St. Augustine where Spanish Catholic authorities had promised them freedom. The assault came on a Sunday early in September. Later that month new colonial legislation that required white men to be armed at all times—even while attending Sunday worship—would become law. Whites assumed that the timing was intended to assure that the revolt occurred before that provision took effect, since most did not ordinarily carry firearms to church on Sunday.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 79 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 253 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For discussion of the Stono Rebellion, see Smith, Mark M., “Remembering Mary, Shaping Revolt: Reconsidering the Stono Rebellion,” Journal of Southern History 67 (August 2001): 513–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pearson, Edward A., “‘A Countryside Full of Flames’: A Reconsideration of the Stono Rebellion and Slave Rebelliousness in Early Eighteenth Century South Carolina Lowcountry,” Slavery and Abolition 17 (August 1996): 22–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the relevant sections of Wood, Peter, Black Majority: Negroes in South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: Norton, 1975)Google Scholar; and Brinsfield, John W., Religion and Politics in Colonial South Carolina (Easley, S.C.: Southern Historical Press, 1983)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Erskine Clarke for calling my attention to the Whitefield quote that provided the title for this essay and also to Henry and Michele Bowden for reading and offering judicious comments on an earlier draft.

2 Jill Dubisch, “Low Country Fevers: Cultural Adaptations to Malaria in Antebellum South Carolina,” Social Science and Medicine 21, no. 6 (1985): 641–47.

3 Later in 1740, Whitefield returned to Charleston and spoke not only at the Independent and Huguenot churches, but also at First (Scots) Presbyterian and a fledgling Baptists congregation.

4 Whitefield, George, Three Letters from the Reverend Mr. G. Whitefield; viz. Letter I: To a friend in London concerning Archbishop Tillotson; Letter II: To the same, on the same subject; Letter III: To the inhabitants of Maryland, Virginia, North and South-Carolina concerning the negroes (Philadelphia: B. Franklin, 1740), 16Google Scholar.

5 Whitefield, George, Journals, 1737–1741, to which is prefixed his Short account (1746) and Further account (1747), introduction by Davis, W. V. (1905; repr., Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1969), 387Google Scholar.

6 The essays collected in Underwood, James Lowell and Burke, William L., eds., The Dawn of Religious Freedom in South Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006)Google Scholar, represent a move to correct this lack of appreciation of Carolina's religious history.

7 Originally North and South Carolina were a single colony, with a governor based in Charleston. By 1692, however, the later division into two colonies was taking shape. That year, the Lords Proprietors designated a deputy governor for what became North Carolina. In 1712, North Carolina received its own governor. As well, North Carolina had long had its own legislative assembly. But the formal division of Carolina into two provinces, North Carolina and South Carolina, came only in 1729 when proprietary rule ended and both became royal colonies.

8 Hutson, James H., Church and State in America: The First Two Centuries, Cambridge Essential Histories, ed. Critchlow, Donald T. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 30Google Scholar.

9 Richard and Belinda Gergel, “‘A bright era now dawns upon us’: Jewish Economic Opportunities, Religious Freedom, and Political Rights in Colonial and Antebellum South Carolina,” in Underwood and Burke, eds., 109.

10 On authorship of the Fundamental Constitutions and Locke's role, see Armitage, David, “John Locke, Carolina, and the Two Treatises of Government,” Political Theory 32, no. 5 (October 2004): 602–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hsueh, Vicki, “Giving Orders: Theory and Practice in the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina,” Journal of the History of Ideas 63, no. 3 (July 2002): 425–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 “The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, March 1, 1669,” The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/nc05.asp, accessed 6 August 2009.

12 Ibid., Article 109.

13 “The Maryland Toleration Act (1649),” From Revolution to Reconstruction: Documents, www.let.rug.nl/usa/D/1601-1650/maryland/mta.htm, accessed 10 August 2009.

14 “Frame of Government of Pennsylvania. May 5, 1682,” The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/pa04.asp, accessed 10 August 2009.

15 Voltaire (Aronet, François-Marie), Traité de la tolerance (1763), ed. Renwick, John (Oxford.: Voltaire Foundation, 2000), 152Google Scholar. Translation mine.

16 Bolton, S. Charles, Southern Anglicanism: The Church of England in Colonial South Carolina (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1982)Google Scholar, remains the standard study.

17 Several good studies of Huguenots in the colonies, particularly in Carolina, exist. Among them are Butler, Jon, The Huguenots in America: A Refugee People in a New World Society, Harvard University Monographs, vol. 72 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Hirsch, Arthur S., The Huguenots of Colonial South Carolina (1928; repr., Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Ruymbeke, Bertrand Van, From Babylon to New Eden: A History of the Huguenots of Seventeenth-Century France and Colonial South Carolina, 1660–1740 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Ruymbeke, Bertrand Van and Sparks, Randy I., eds., The Huguenots in Francs and the Atlantic Diaspora (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003)Google Scholar; and Alexander Moore, “Public Politics and Private Faith: Huguenot Political Acculturation in South Carolina, 1687–1707,” in Underwood and Burke, eds., 114–25.

18 On the Reformed heritage generally in this period, see Clarke, Erskine, Our Southern Zion: A History of Calvinism in the South Carolina Low Country, 1690–1990 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996), chaps. 2–4Google Scholar. Now quite old, but still helpful, is Howe, George, History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, vol. 1 (Columbia, S.C.: Duffie and Chapman, 1870)Google Scholar. Lilly, Edward G., Beyond the Burning Bush: First (Scots) Presbyterian Church, Charleston, S.C. (Charleston, SC: Garnier, 1971), 52–57Google Scholar, discusses the church's founding, while Edwards, George N., A History of the Independent Church of Charleston, S.C., Commonly Known as the Circular Church (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1947), 1–20Google Scholar, looks at the early days of that congregation.

19 Little, Thomas J., “The Origins of Southern Evangelicalism: Revivalism in South Carolina, 1700–1740,” Church History 75, no. 4 (December 2006): 768–808CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Clarke, Our Southern Zion, 43. See also Newton B. Jones, ed., “Writings of the Reverend William Tennent,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 61 (1960): 196–209.

21 The Shaftesbury Papers (1897; repr., with a preface by Robert M. Weir, Charleston: South Carolina Historical Society, 2000), 464–65.

22 Larson, Rebecca, Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700–1775 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 26, 65, 67Google Scholar.

23 See Greene, Jack P., “Colonial South Carolina and the Caribbean Connection,” in his Imperatives, Behaviors, and Identities: Essays in Early American Cultural History (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992), 68–86Google Scholar, and W. Scott Poole, “‘Your liberty in that province’: South Carolina Quakers and the Rejection of Religious Toleration,” in Underwood and Burke, eds., 168–69.

24 The best study is Jo Anne McCormick, “The Quakers of Colonial South Carolina” (Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 1984); see also Poole, “‘Your liberty in that province,’” 165–83.

25 Carolina Lutheranism awaits a thorough scholarly history. However, see South Carolina Synod, Lutheran Church in America, A History of the Lutheran Church in South Carolina (Columbia, S.C.: R. L. Bryan, 1971)Google Scholar; and Havens, Mary, “The Liturgical Traditions II: Lutherans,” in Lippy, Charles H., ed., Religion in South Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 59–66Google Scholar.

26 See Bernard E. Powers, Jr., “Seeking the Promised Land: Afro-Carolinians and the Quest for Religious Freedom to 1830,” in Underwood and Burke, eds., 126–45; and Wood, Black Majority, passim.

27 Joyner, Charles, Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 171Google Scholar.

28 “An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing [of] Negroes and Other Slaves in this Province,” Acts of the South Carolina General Assembly, 1740, no. 670 (South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, S.C.).

29 The best study is Hagy, James William, This Happy Land: The Jews of Colonial and Antebellum Charleston (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993)Google Scholar. Much older, but still useful, are Elzas, Barnett, The Jews of Colonial South Carolina (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1905)Google Scholar; and Reznikoff, Charles with Engelmann, Uriah, The Jews of Charleston: A History of an American Jewish Community (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1950)Google Scholar. See also Gergel and Gergel, “‘Bright era,’” 95–113.

30 Hutchison, William R., Religious Pluralism in America: The Contentious History of a Founding Ideal (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

31 The only monograph devoted solely to the story of religion and politics in colonial Carolina is the work of Brinsfield, Religion and Politics.

32 Most of the relevant colonial laws are included in Cooper, Thomas and McCord, David J., The Statutes at Large of South Carolina, 10 vols. (Columbia, S.C.: A. S. Johnston, 1836–1841)Google Scholar. Scholars generally use the legal format for citations from these volumes. For the 1697 laws, that would be: Act No. 152 of 1696–1697, 2 S.C. STATUTES AT LARGE 130 (Cooper 1837), and Act No. 154 of 1696–1697, ibid., 131.

33 Act No. 225 of 1704, 2 S.C. STATUTES AT LARGE 236 (Cooper 1837).

34 The full story is told in Sonderlund, Jean R., Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

35 Commons House Journals of the South Carolina General Assembly, 1692–1721, 21 manuscript volumes, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, III: 170, 186–87, 194.

36 See McCormick, “Quakers of Colonial South Carolina,” 40–41.

37 See Poole, “‘Your liberty in that province,’” 171; and Olwell, Robert, Masters, Slaves, and Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 1740–1790 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

38 See n. 32 above.

39 See Brinsfield, Religion and Politics, 14–37.

40 See Defoe, Daniel, The Case of the Protestant Dissenters in Carolina (London: n.p., 1706)Google Scholar.

41 Act. No. 236 of 1706, S.C. STATUTES AT LARGE 282 (Cooper 1837).

42 Hutson, Church and State in America, 63.

43 Salley, Alexander S. Jr., Journals of the Commons House of Assembly of South Carolina for 1702 (Columbia, S.C.: Printed for the Historical Commission of South Carolina, 1932), 52–53Google Scholar.

44 See Madden, Richard C., Catholics in South Carolina: A Record (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985)Google Scholar; Madden, , “Catholics in Colonial South Carolina,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 73 (1962): 10–50Google Scholar; and Randall M. Miller, “Roman Catholicism in South Carolina,” in Lippy, ed., 82–102.

45 See Smith, “Remembering Mary, Shaping Revolt,” 513–34.

46 Brinsfield, Religion and Politics, 47.

47 Hagy, This Happy Land, 33–36; see also Marcus, Jacob Rader, The Colonial American Jew, 1492–1776, 3 vols. (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1970), 1:467–68Google Scholar.

48 Gergel and Gergel, “‘Bright era,’” 109.

49 Ibid.