The Evolution of White Supremacy in Carolina (part II)

We have already seen how the government of Carolina began legally discourging race-mixing among the lowest class in the colony in the early 1700s. This arose as a response by colonial elites to social conditions created by the mixed labor system employed by masters before rice cultivation and Black slavery became entirely dominant in the Lowcountry.

Dr. Peter Wood in his book Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (1974) writes that four years after the above law was passed the government acted to discourage free Blacks from living in the colony where they might mix with Whites or complicate and begin to break down the racial system:

Beyond the terms of manumission arranged between individual masters and servants, the government gradually imposed constraints of its own. Colonies which relied increasingly upon black slaves looked with growing disfavor upon free Negroes. In 1723 Virginia deprived them of the right to vote or possess firearms and imposed a discriminatory tax. Likewise, in South Carolina, where free Negroes had occasionally voted, directions for electing representatives to the Assembly made it explicit in 1721 that only “free White men” meeting the age and property qualifications could participate. The Negro Act passed the following year required that any freed slaves must leave the province within twelve months of receiving manumission or else forfeit their freedom, and a similar statute in 1735 added the provision that slaves manumitted “for any particular merit or service” who should return to the colony within seven years would also lose their freedom. The major Negro Act passed in 1740 after the Stono Rebellion relegated all criminal cases against free Negroes to the same second-class judicial process designed for slaves. It also made clear that any further manumissions were to depend upon a special act of the Assembly. Although this policy may not have been perfectly observed, individual grants of freedom remained scarce until the Revolutionary era, so that Negroes of free status do not appear ever to have exceeded 1 per cent of the black population during the half century when South Carolina was a royal colony. (During the 1760s, for example, there were never as many as two hundred free Negroes registered in the entire region.) Under the proprietorship before 1720 the few legally free blacks may have represented a slightly larger proportion of the Negro population, but their daily existence in the frontier colony could not have been dramatically different in many ways from that of their slave brothers.

This measure was greatly successful then. Miscegenation and the practice of masters freeing their favorite slaves would have created a large racially-mixed caste in the long-run as it did in the Caribbean and Brazil. It would have likely diluted the Whiteness of the average South Carolinian and created conditions favorable to revolution or the eventual breakdown of the racial system, endangering the colony.

What we see in studying the history of rhe evolution of White supremacy in Carolina is that the elites became increasingly aware of their White identity (as opposed to simply their national identity) and took steps to preserve it among all classes and strengthen the racial caste system which was developing. As the plantation system became dominant in the early to mid 1700s, race and identity became inseperable in Carolina.

NOTE: Here is a video I made back in 2013 of the Butler Island Plantation in Darien, Georgia. It was one of the largest rice plantations in Dixie and is now a beautiful park to visit.

Coastal Georgia was flooded by Carolinians after the dying colony gave up on liberalism and embraced slavery and the plantation system – which quickly made it wealthy like its neighbor.

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

28 Comments

  1. The biggest problem with the antebellum slavery model was the freed slaves and the miscegenation. If we ever have slavery again, we need to nip these two problems in the bud.

    • Slavery would seem to be the norm in human society, not some kind of cruel aberration. In fact the institution of slavery is often less cruel than the de facto slavery of subsistence wages and sweatshop labor. Good point about the lack of planning on what to do with all the emancipated nigras after Mr. Lincoln’s War.

      • They didn’t care about negroes, they cared about crushing their political enemies in the South. Abolition was about abolishing the South, not slavery. However, the New England radicals didn’t get their way, and the South was reduced to the status of a colonial possession.

        • The true RACIAL EQUALITY Nuts were gone by 1875. The election of 1874 saw the Democrats take the house. In fact when Grant was asked by Governor Adlebert Ames the next year to save his Reconstruction Government, he refused because he knew that the next Republican Candidate would be an Ohioan and he had to have Ohio stay Republican. The Ohio Democratic Party used the Reconstruction issue as a campaign issue, but when Grant backed down, the issue went away. The next year OH Gov. Rutherford B Hayes ran for President and brought forth the Compromise of 1877

    • In an independent South, there won’t be any negroes to enslave. Negroes are a political liability as long as the North is ruled by the New England Moral Political Paradigm. And they’re just plain trouble all on their own.

      • In North Carolina I doubt that, Mr. Owen.

        In a sovereign North Carolina many would leave because of the end of the welfare state, but, just as many would not, because they are deeply deeply attacht to this area.

        To remove them would require something which the vast majority of White Tarheels would not support, but, would oppose, now, as 100 years ago and 100 years from now.

        North Carolinians don’t not believe in mass deportations or reprisals, unless it is to lynch someone who has gotten out of hand.

        That said, I won’t speak for the rest of the would-be Confederacy, or for East Texas, whence you hail.

        • It’s the same here in the Piney Woods. However, I guess that they would self deport. At least the younger ones would.

          • The young ones already self-deport from Northeastern, Mr. Owen – all those, that is, who are not involved in the drug trade, but, then they, soon enough, get deported to jail.

            In fact, White youth self-deport from here, too, they morbidly afraid of the real work that the agricultural life does demand.

        • It’s the same kind of mentality that the Boers/Afrikaners have. Even if they came back to power in South Africa they would not want to get rid of their darkies, because they like having them around as servants and farm laborers.

          • Perhaps it’s close, Mr. Delarge, though, perhaps it’s a little different, as Negroes no longer serve Whites in Northeastern North Carolina, but, work with them – the half, that is, which wishes to work…

          • It depends on what you mean be naive, Armadillo.

            Tarheels define our gentility and civility by how we limit ourselves in pursuit of how aims.

            We don’t just target someone we don’t like and haul off on them.

            There’s got to be a damn good reason and it has to fit into Christian thinking.

            If that is naive, Armadillo, then we’ll take that as a compliment, even if it warn’t so intended.

          • Believing that you can or should attempt to peacefully coexist with a violent, foreign, and hostile people who have no intrest in returning the favour and are living on your lands rather than expell the ever-present threat, then I would describe that as naive. Defending your people is a God-given right.

          • I respect your view, Armadillo and agree with you in theory.

            However, your description of ‘a foreign and hostile people’ is not how most White Tarheels would describe most Black Tarheels.

            To be sure, there are some who agree entirely with that, though they are a minority.

            It’s complex because there can be no doubt that Tarheel Negroes are, as a body, always siding with the Jew England government, but, there is more to regarding someone than just politicks, there is, also, the fact that there are many sincere, deep, and abiding friendships between Black and White Tarheels, even in areas that maintain an informal Jim Crow.

            That is, in 2017, the reality of my state, for better or worse.

          • And when conflict inevitably breaks out, will those friendships remain? Will those friendships matter once we’re outbred?

          • Dear Armadillo – if we are outbred, it will be because Whites refuse to have children.

            More like we will be out immigrated, unless we secede and close immigration to all non-Southerners.

            As to friendships in a civil war, I have no idea. Time will tell.

    • In the South race mixing was much more rampant in the very early days ie 1607-1700 than it was later, but after 1700 it became a thing of concubinage. This was most common in Louisiana, where French Morals and Southern Morals collided. The white Creoles in New Orleans fathered a tremendous number of mixed-race Creoles and this was considered fine. Placage, or the idea of Frenchmen having mulatto second wives was a considerable problem there. Elsewhere it wasn’t the problem it was in Louisiana, but Louisiana has always been a problem area for the South because it was a combination of Southern White Culture and French Culture and the two often didn’t agree on certain issues. In the Antebellum Era, the New Orleans bunch had alot more power, than they did after Redemption.

        • Louisiana belonged to Spain from 1763-1803 it belonged to France from 1682-1763 and briefly from 1802-03 when France seized it from Spain. Then Napoleon sold it to us. The Spanish did send many Spanish families there are many New Orleanians with Spanish names and the French Quarter has Spanish Architecture but the French culture and language was predominant

  2. Mr.. Cushman, unless memory fails, In North Carolina, around 1800, free Negroes were quite common – upwards of 10% of the entire Negro populace.

    Many of them were quite successful in commerce and especially in the artesan fields. One such man, Thomas Hart Day, was a much loved high-yeller who employed, indifferently, Whites and blacks at his shoppe, in Milton NC., the furniture made there still, even today, regarded as the very best to come from this state..

    On a little footnote, Milton is a little hamlet near the Virginia line, and is, as it was in 1868, the home of The Tarheel KKK.

    History is oh, so, complex.

    • The Lumbee Population also took them in and they could be very problematic. In the 1950s the North Carolina Klan and the Lumbee had a nasty dust up. The Klan was basically a terrorist group, they weren’t a military unit and as a result they were disgraced at the Battle of Hayes Pond. It wasn’t until men like Sam Bowers realized the Klan’s old methods were outdated and began to change them. Had the Klan got rid of the ceremonies and formed up as a real military unit, things would have been different.

      • Well stated, as always, Mr. Jenkins.

        As to units, there are signs that they are in the offing, in North Carolina.

        • Louis Beam began with the Military training in the 1970s said that the old ways had to die. Sam Bowers began doing it in the 1960s. The problem the Klan had was the old men who ran it were too entrenched to change with the times. In war, you always start out fighting the new war with the tactics of the old war. Then when shown outmoded you change tactics. The Northern Army in 1861 and 62 fought according to Napoleonic Tactics which had won in Mexico, the South adapted modern tactics of Blitzkrieg style fighting using rail transport and quick marches by 1862 and the North didn’t have a real answer to it. The only answer Grant had was throw thousands of men into the Blitzkrieg and eventually enough will win the fight.

          • Very true, Mr. Jenkins, and don’t forget that W.T. Sherman figured out the other part of modern warfare, which was rescucitating that aspect from the old.

          • Stonewall and Sherman had alot in common on that front both saw war EXACTLY THE SAME. Unfortunately Jeff Davis and Genl Lee wouldn’t allow Stonewall his March to Lake Erie, but Grant and Meade allowed Sherman his march through Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.

    • SC was more hardcore. It had to be. In some parts of the Lowcountry Whites were just 10% of the population. And the Lowcountry had far more power than the Upcountry, which was much Whiter. NC was much Whiter and had a large mountain area which was politically different from the low lying agricultural areas – which tended to be more hard core Right-wing.

      • This is very true, Mr. Cushman – and, even today, in Nowheresville Northeastern North Carolina, things are still hard core right-wing.

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