The Evolution of White Supremacy in Carolina

It may seem strange to write of the evolution of White supremacy in a colony founded by Barbadian planters who held strong racial views and hailed from a plantation society which served as the mother colony for the British Greater Caribbean. Add to this the fact that the Barbadian and other British West Indian colonists who settled Carolina had a marked preference for African labor. And the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina gave the White planter “absolute power and authority over his negro slaves.”

Nevertheless, there was an organic process at work in which the racial realities of this mainland outpost of the Caribbean gave birth to legislation and social norms that over time came to define White supremacy in Carolina.

Dr. Peter Wood in his book Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (1974) writes:

[I]t was not until 1717 that racial anxieties reached a level sufficient for legislative action. An act passed in that year “for the better governing and regulating white servants” made clear that “any white woman, whether free or a servant, that shall suffer herself to be got with child by a negro or other slave or free negro,… shall become a servant for … seven years.” If the woman was a servant, she had seven years added to her term, and if the begetter was a free Negro, he was made a servant for seven years. Moreover, according to the act, “the issues or children of such unnatural and inordinate copulation shall be servants until they arrive at the age of the male twenty one years and the females eighteen years.”

Though African slavery is more associated with early South Carolina than the early Chesapeake, it too used a mixed labor system in the beginning of White, Indian and Black workers. In those early years as the Proprietors and leading planters sought out a cash crop upon which to base the colony farming and raising cattle were leading industries. Servants and slaves of different races frequently worked beside or near each other in these pursuits. Thus, concern was first directed to discourage racial-mixing among these lowest classes.

As rice cultivation slowly came to dominate the South Carolina Lowcountry the Black population grew and by around 1708 Blacks were the majority in the colony. Slowly they displaced White servants and Indian slaves as the Barbadian-dominated planter class settled upon a cash crop which became as important to South Carolina as sugar was to Barbados.

We will continue to explore in future posts how White supremacy developed organically in the region during this time.

Click here for part II

About Palmetto Patriot 242 Articles
South Carolinian. Southern Nationalist. Anglican.

22 Comments

    • Youre right. Everyone who signals that they’re not racist publicly has never experienced the enriching and strengthening qualities of diversity. I finally understood the negro when I had to live with him in military barracks.

  1. ” the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina ”

    Today’s public schools focus on the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut and on the Mayflower Compact; as if the Middle Atlantic and Southern Colonies didn’t even exist, much less create forms of government.

    • It’s to maintain the idea that every Southerner is a snaggle-toothed, ass-scratching idiot who dropped out of middle school. The South has such a rich history. And maybe it’s biased, but I believe the South produced the best men this federation has ever known.

      • The South did this because of Homeschooling, almost all Southern Aristocratic politicians were homeschooled by tutors, often English tutors in the classics.

        All of the Virginia Presidents, save Zachary Taylor were at least self educated or were college graduates. William Henry Harrison was very highly educated, he was a graduate of Hampden Sydney College. The last PREWAR Southern President to have a good education was James K Polk.

        Southern Unionists tended to have very poor educations. Andrew Jackson had a poor education, Zachary Taylor was almost illiterate some said, Abraham Lincoln was entirely self educated and Andrew Johnson was taught how to read by his wife Eliza.

        The Virginia/South Carolina Aristocrats were the intellectual leaders of the CSA because of their education. John C Calhoun was a graduate of Yale and how many Southern military leaders had West Point or equivilent educations? Many.

        The destruction of the Aristocracy after the war COMBINED with the upward mobility of the Poor Whites changed the Southern political landscape. However it should be noted this was good in some ways as the Aristocrats tended to be more liberal than the Populists.

    • Thomas Jefferson designed the Public School system as to why as a Virginian where they didn’t have a Public school system until 1870 regarded the New England system so highly, I believe its because Jefferson had this idea of EXPANDING DEMOCRACY.
      This was why in the Public Land Survey system Jefferson designed townships. In his mind, the Townships would oversee their own schools and voting. Problems in the township would be forwarded to the county and eventually to the state. He believed that the Fourth level, the Federal Level should solely be concerned with going to war and providing the money supply.

      The Jeffersonian Virginians were very STUPID in this regard, because what they didn’t seem to notice was that in 1787 when Jefferson’s system began to first be applied that almost all book publishing in the United States was done in Boston and the rest in New York and Philadelphia. As Jefferson didn’t believe in state sponsored anything, he didn’t realize that it would be in the best interest of Virginia to begin a book publishing industry in say Richmond to countermand the problem. He took this for granted, as did most Southrons until it was far too late. Had someone approached Jefferson with the idea that Virginia planters should subsidize a Southern book publishing industry, he would have said thats government overreach, let the market decide.

      William Holmes McGuffey the father of the McGuffey Reader was a Pennsylvanian who lived first in Ohio and then moved to Charlottesville VA in 1845 and became the Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. He lived there and from all accounts was a Proud Confederate, He is buried there today.

  2. Article 110 of the Constitutions stated that; “Every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his negro slaves, of what opinion or religion soever”.

    I’m surprised Wikipedia would even allow this, being that, like so many things, it’s New England centric.

  3. Early South Carolina, like Barbados, relied quite a bit on White slaves and on Native slaves as well. The above statement about if a White woman bore a child with a Negro the child would have an indenture shows the reason why Interracial liasons had to be restricted so hard. Under Partus Sequitur Ventrem (Law of the Womb) only a Negro woman could bear nothing but slaves. Thus if a Negro male had children with a white or native woman, it would become a free person of color. The Free People of Color population almost always was the progeny of Negro Male/White or Native female in the early days. That population began interbreeding with one another and in places like Charleston, became the source of slave revolts.

      • Yes there were White Slaves, they were called Convict Slaves and Political Prisoners and they were slaves for life. Barbados was a White Slave colony in its early days. I already posted the information on it

        They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America MICHAEL HOFFMAN

        • That’s a lie. Whites who worked in the Barbados, even political prisoners, were indentured servants. The idea that whites, particularly Irish, were ever slaves in the new world is a stormfront meme created to make the weak, cuckish arguement that “we wuz slaves 2!”. It was also an extension of the Jewish “Eternal Anglo” meme.

          • ETERNAL ANGLO MEME? The London Jews sold countless White Children to slavers to the New World as slaves as they also did Political Prisoners and those remained slaves for life, if they were convicted of being enemies of the state. Oliver Cromwell was an Ally of the Jews, he let them back into England officially in 1655 although theyd always been there unoffically. The use of White Slaves ended after the War of the Spanish Succession when Spain’s stranglehold on the Slave Coast in Africa ended and Britain won their own access to Africa. Before the war, Britain had to buy slaves from the Spanish or Portugese often via Amsterdam Sephardic Jews.

            The British Aristocracy has been in bed with the Jews for so long its hard telling when they werent in bed with them. The fact that they enslaved poor Celts during the uprisings in Wales Scotland and Ireland is historical fact. Why anyone would wish to deny that I have no idea.

          • And all of that was a bunch of bullshit with no sources, evidence, or facts to back it up. Good day.

  4. I’m sorry, Mr. Cushman, but, it’s not clear to me what you intend with this article. As I doubt it is merely a history lesson, it then begs the question : what are you suggesting?

    Though it is not my response, I can hear it in my ears, from the many normal folks in The Carolinas, who, if they read this, would say : ‘as we are no longer that way, what does it matter?’

    Whatever your answer is, I think would be very important, if it is your intent to recommend something to us that, at present, we do not have.

    Thank you.

        • We build this platform, for one. That is why I am writing here on OD now exclusively. We need a huge site that can reach hundreds of thousands or millions of Southerners. OD can become that.

          We need lots of conferences and little groups around the South. We are starting to see that but have lots more work to do.

          We need lots of really popular podcasts. We now have several.

          Things like this are how we start.

          • That sounds like a good route, Mr. Cushman.

            I have duly expressed my polite pique at leading members of The League for not having more propaganda, put out at a daily pace.

            I have long believed that the only way to get out of being brainwasht is to regularly hose ourselves down with the truth.

            I will, however, level one well meant criticism at you and Mr. Griffin (seeing as how both of you are clearly in charge of this effort), and that is :
            there is no conversion propaganda for beginners, advancet beginners, and non-intellectuals.

            What you, Mr. Griffin, and Mr. Crews write is for highly erudite and intellectually precocious people.

            That means that y’all will never reach your average small-town and rural Southerner – the very ones you must reconvert into a militant Confederate camp.

            Your average 15 year good-ole-boy is ripe to be reacht, but, y’all ain’t doin’ it. What y’all need is a sassy Southron-speakin’ lady, who is bright and willing to make daily 60-120 second videos, that are cool and easily absorbed. You know – like Renee Griffin under a cowboy hat and made up to keep eyes on her.

            Put this person at YouTube, and provide her with a daily text, and all the possible links to her, at other sites, that y’all can provide.

            As to my part, on that score, I take what I learn from the three of y’all, and. blending it in to larger points, I ferment it into plain-spoken language and discuss with practically everyone I meet, in Northeastern North Carolina.

            This process of evangelicizing rural Southerners, stoned silly on decades of government-media dope, is quite complex and tedious, yet, I can report to you that, though there are plenty of those, in my area, who disregard what I have to say, there are a growing number of those who do not – and it is a priceless treasure to see them reawaken in front of my eyes.

            I remind you that it was 5 years ago – 5 years after I had decided that the union was an abject failure that I saw you have a brief interview with Dr. Hill, in a gymnasium, and that clickt on all the lights for me.

            Since then, I have never once doubted that there are two futures – one Southern Nationalism, and the other shame and death, and I will not choose the latter.

            By the way, I had a vision, a few months back, and that was of the SPLC gradually becoming irrelevant because it was being buried under our own media.

            In conclusion, I thank you, remind you that I put your stuff to use in
            the field, and, as well, that there is a critical lack of beginner’s
            conversion propaganda, designed for the unintellectual mind.

            We need Southern soldiers, not just professors and priests.

            When you need organizational volunteers for North Carolina, let me know.

            God bless you!

          • That is true. We need lots more people making content that will appeal to different segments of the public and Southerners of all classes and levels of education. One man or even three or four men can only do so much. I am maxed out writing articles and doing occassional podcasts. With my busy life it is all I can do. But others can step forward and help fill in the holes. I know there is a lot of talent out there.

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