Public Manumission: A Reward for Remarkable Service

On multiple occasions between 1708 and 1822, the South Carolina General Assembly voted to spend public funds to secure the freedom of enslaved people who had performed remarkable acts of public service. These public manumissions, as we might call them, or government-sponsored emancipations, stand as curious and noteworthy anomalies enacted during the long era in which the laws of this state condoned, regulated, and defended the practice of slavery. Public manumissions were not simply altruistic expressions of compassion and gratitude, however. They represent calculated efforts on the part of nervous white lawmakers to cultivate feelings of loyalty within the enslaved majority population.

Rather than focus on the political and philosophical contradictions inherent in this phenomenon, I’d like to direct your attention to the stories of the people whose lives were radically transformed by these rare instances of public manumission. To my knowledge, I don’t think anyone has attempted to create a comprehensive list of all the individuals emancipated by the early government of South Carolina. In my own research, plowing through the manuscript legislative journals held at the state’s Department of Archives and History in Columbia, however, I’ve identified just seven occasions concerning ten individuals. There might be a few additional cases lurking in the obscure corners of our public records, but I’ll leave that question to an enterprising future student working on his or her dissertation.[1]

For a variety of reasons couched within a number of contrasting circumstances, the government of South Carolina purchased the freedom of a man named Jack in 1708, July in 1740, Arrah in 1747, Caesar in 1750, Abraham in 1760, Antigua and his wife and child in 1783, and, finally, two men named Peter and George in 1822. Each of these cases includes a dramatic and complicated story that could potentially fill a book or screenplay, so my efforts here today will be brief. My goal in highlighting this material is to raise awareness of this curious part of South Carolina’s past and to shed some light on the historical context associated with each of the aforementioned cases.

Our story commences in late 1703, during a time of a great anxiety about the very real possibility of a Spanish or French invasion. In December of that year, the South Carolina General Assembly ratified an act to prepare the colony for just such an emergency. The bulk of this law’s text concerns the proposed construction of various defensive works, such as batteries, bastions, and redans around urban Charleston, but the concluding clauses address the very important issue of defensive manpower. South Carolina was at that time home a relatively small population of adult white men capable of shouldering a weapon, while enslaved people of African descent had very nearly achieved a majority status. In order to mount a successful defense in case of an emergency, therefore, the legislature voted to pursue a radical solution: The government empowered South Carolina’s white population to arm a portion of the enslaved population. To encourage trustworthy armed slaves to risk their lives defending their white masters against foreign invaders, the provincial government offered the very tantalizing reward of freedom from slavery. Here’s the text of the twenty-third paragraph of that 1703 law:

“Whereas, it is necessary for the safety of this Collony, in case of actuall invasion, to have the assistance of our trusty slaves to assist us against our enemies, and it being reasonable that the said slaves should be rewarded for the good service they may do us, Be it therefore enacted . . . that if any slave shall, in actuall invasion, kill or take one or more of our enemies, and the same shall prove by any white person to be done by him, shall, for his reward, at the charge of the publick, have and enjoy his freedom for such his takeing or killing as aforesaid; and the master or owner of such slave shall be paid and satisfied by the publick, att such rates and prices as three freeholders of the neighborhood, who well know the said slave, being nominated and appointed by the Right Honorable the Governor, shall award, on their oaths.”

If any such “trusty slave” should be wounded, maimed, or otherwise disabled in the course of his or her heroic service during an invasion by a foreign enemy, this 1703 act also declared that the enslaved persons “so disabled shall be sett free at the charge of the publick” in the same manner, and “shall also be maintained” (that is, cared for thereafter) using public funds administered by the government of South Carolina.[2]

South Carolina’s law empowering slave owners to arm a trusted portion of the enslaved population—but only during times of actual invasion—continued in force from late 1703 until the middle of the American Revolution. (That topic alone merits a detailed discussion, but we’ll defer that matter to another occasion.) The government’s reward of freedom in return for service in battle did not last so long, however. The 1703 paragraphs relating to freedom were repeated by the text of a new law ratified in the spring of 1708, appropriately titled “An Act for enlisting such trusty slaves as shall be thought serviceable to this province in time of alarms.” The South Carolina General Assembly twice extended the life of that law through the end of England’s ongoing war with France and Spain, commonly called Queen Anne’s War, in late 1713.[3] The outbreak of another Anglo-Spanish war in late 1718 (the War of the Quadruple Alliance) inspired the creation of a similar law in 1720, but without the same rewards. Rather than offering freedom, the legislature provided only a reward of £10 to any enslaved soldier who might kill or capture an enemy during an actual invasion.[4]

South Carolina’s offer to manumit enslaved combatants was still on the table when the colony’s population achieved a black majority in the early years of the eighteenth century. That potential path to freedom turned out to be a red herring of sorts, however, because there were so few opportunities for any South Carolinians to engage in armed combat with invading enemies at that time. A combined force of French, Spanish, and Native American soldiers did attack Charleston harbor in the late summer of 1706, but I know of no surviving records that mention the manumission of any enslaved combatants in the aftermath of that failed invasion. Despite that archival silence, the earliest known instance of public manumission, which dates from 1708, is probably related to that 1706 event. 

Late in the year 1708, South Carolina’s Commons House of Assembly, sitting in Charleston, was reviewing a number of line-item accounts of expenditures. Among the items under consideration were several requests for public assistance submitted by white men who had recently been held as prisoners of war by the Spanish government at St. Augustine, Florida. Some sort of prisoner exchange between the two colonies must have taken place recently, and English men were returning to Charleston in a state of poverty. On December 16th, 1708, the speaker of the Commons House, Colonel James Risbee, offered the following motion: “That a negro man named Jack, formerly belonging to John Milner, pilott, and [who was] taken away by the French and Spaniards, may come and enjoy his freedom in this Province; the publick having [already] paid his former master for him.” The House apparently voted to approve this motion, after which the clerk of the House then recorded two further instructions: “Ordered[,] that Mr. Speaker send for the said negro, and promise him his freedom. Resolved: That the said Negro be free at his arrival in this province.”[5]

Beyond the three aforementioned sentences transcribed in 1708, I haven’t been able to find further record of the enslaved man named Jack or any explanation of what he did to inspire the government of South Carolina to purchase his freedom. I can’t find any earlier mention of Jack in the same legislative journal that contains this offer of freedom, nor can I find any paper trail of a financial payment made to his former owner. We may never know the full details of Jack’s path to freedom, but we can extract four useful clues from the surviving text.

First, we know that Jack belonged to a harbor pilot named John Milner. That fact suggests that Jack himself might have worked as a pilot or pilot’s assistant, either guiding ships and other large sailing vessels over the sand bar at the entrance of Charleston harbor or guiding smaller vessels along the inland waterways of the South Carolina coastline. These navigational skills would have rendered him extremely useful to an invading force unfamiliar with the local topography and hydrography.

Second, we know that Jack was “taken away by the French and Spaniards.” That phrase harkens back to the combined French and Spanish invasion of 1706, in which a small fleet of six enemy vessels had sailed from St. Augustine into Charleston harbor (see Episode No. 1 for the full story). After several days of combat on land, the invaders retreated to their ships and sailed back to St. Augustine in great haste. I strongly suspect that Jack was captured along the southern coastline of South Carolina or in Charleston harbor during that 1706 episode and taken to Florida.

Third, the legislative instructions of 1708 ordered someone to “send for” Jack, who was apparently residing somewhere outside of South Carolina, and to invite him to “come and enjoy his freedom in this province.” These phrases suggest that Jack might have been among a group of other South Carolinians recently released from captivity in St. Augustine who were now drifting home in a state of distress. Perhaps Jack was reluctant to return to state of slavery in Charleston.

Fourth, the Commons House journal of December 1708 states that the provincial government had already used public funds to pay Jack’s “former master,” John Milner, for Jack’s freedom. That is to say, the members of the South Carolina General Assembly knew the story of Jack’s deeds (whatever they were), they knew he had been captured by the enemy and now released, they had purchased his freedom in anticipation of his return to South Carolina, and they desired him to return here to enjoy a life of freedom.

Based on these clues, I believe that Jack was an enslaved pilot who possessed valuable knowledge of the waterways and coastline of South Carolina, and that the invading French and Spanish forces captured him with a plan to use his skills to their advantage. In some unknown manner, however, Jack thwarted the enemies’ plans. Perhaps he provided purposefully inaccurate information to the invading forces to frustrate their progress. Perhaps he steadfastly refused to assist the small fleet of enemy ships, for which refusal he suffered physical torture. Perhaps Jack had been maimed or somehow disabled as a result of his fidelity to the English, and was now physically unable to spring back to his former career as an enslaved pilot.

Whatever the details of his story, we can deduce that Jack’s actions contributed in some measure to the failure of French and Spanish plots against South Carolina, and thus to the preservation of the young English colony. The record of his manumission in 1708, though woefully incomplete, represents the earliest known example of a remarkable phenomenon: Our government, created and controlled by the colony’s white minority, acknowledged in a very public manner that people of African descent were capable of rendering valuable, even extraordinary service to the public welfare of South Carolina. This act was but a small step on the long road to equality and civil rights for all, to be sure, but it was an important step nonetheless.

Another example of public manumission appears in the minutes of the South Carolina General Assembly in the aftermath of the Stono Rebellion of September 1739. Two months after the white militia had suppressed that bloody uprising, in which dozens of enslaved people had used violence to gain their freedom, the acting governor of South Carolina recommended that the provincial government should consider rewarding some enslaved men and women for their recent fidelity to their white masters. On November 24th, 1739, Lieutenant Governor William Bull Sr. (1683–1755) sent the following message to his colleagues in the Commons House of Assembly:

“I have thought on the conduct of some of our Negroes at the late Insurrection at Stono, who on that occasion shewed so much integrity and fidelity, that it was at that time a service to the province, as well as to their masters’ families, and saved them from the fate of several of their unfortunate neighbours; and bravely withstood that barbarous attempt at the hazard of their own lives. But more particularly a Negro of Mr. Thomas Elliott’s, who sate [sic] the first example as soon as he saw the occasion. When services of this nature are distinguished, and a suitable reward bestowed in a public manner, it may have that good effect, as to encourage many others to follow such examples.”[6]

The Commons House immediately appointed a committee to consider the lieutenant governor’s recommendation, and a few days later that committee presented its report to the House. “Upon inquiry,” they stated, “your committee find, that a Negro man named July belonging to Mr. Thomas Elliott was very early and chiefly instrumental in saving his master and his family from being destroyed by the rebellious Negroes.” The committee discovered that July “had at several times bravely fought against the rebels, and killed one of them.” As a reward for his “faithful services, and for an encouragement to other slaves to follow his example in cases of the like nature,” the committee recommended that the enslaved man July “shall have his freedom, and a present of a suit of clothes, shirt, hat, a pair of stockings, and a pair of shoes.” Following a brief discussion of July’s case, and other similar instances of fidelity, the Commons House voted to approve July’s manumission, and to reward at least thirty other enslaved people and nineteen free Indians with similar presents of clothing and cash.[7]

In early December of 1739, the Commons House sent a letter to Thomas Elliott asking him to bring the enslaved man named July to Charleston, where his monetary value could be appraised by several of the colony’s leading planters. In February of 1740, those planters reported to Lieutenant Governor Bull that they estimated July’s value at the large sum of £1,000 South Carolina currency (approximately £143 sterling). The Commons House of Assembly approved this figure and inserted a payment of £1,000 to Thomas Elliott into the annual tax bill to pay the expenses of the provincial government. By the spring of 1740, the brave man named July was one of a handful of free people of color living in South Carolina.[8]

The next example of public manumission followed a path similar to that pioneered by Jack and July. In June 1747, the South Carolina General Assembly manumitted an enslaved man named Arrah for his fidelity and loyalty to the English-speaking white hegemony of South Carolina. Arrah was a coastal pilot who was captured at sea by a squadron of French and Spanish privateers in April 1745, during a period of international warfare commonly called the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739–1748). When he refused to accept his freedom in return for sharing his knowledge of the South Carolina coastline with his captors, Arrah was imprisoned in a dungeon in Puerto Rico and re-sold into slavery in San Juan. He later escaped to the nearby island of St. Thomas (now part of the U.S. Virgin Islands), where the Danish governor pronounced him to be a free man. For reasons known only to himself, however, Arrah chose to return to South Carolina rather than live in freedom at St. Thomas. When he reappeared in Charleston in late 1746, his master, Hugh Cartwright, chose to reward his fidelity with freedom. Cartwright and Arrah appealed to the provincial legislature for assistance, and in June 1747 the South Carolina General Assembly ratified an act to spend public money to purchase Arrah’s emancipation from slavery.[9]

Arrah’s path from slavery to freedom is briefly described in the 1747 act confirming his freedom, but the real story is much more dramatic and complicated. So interesting and complicated, in fact, that I’m working on a book about Arrah’s odyssey that I hope to finish sometime soon. For the present purposes, however, it’s important to note that the law confirming Arrah’s freedom included a clause granting freedom to any other enslaved person who might be similarly captured by one of South Carolina’s enemies, taken away, and then voluntarily escape and return to this colony. As with Jack, July, and Arrah, the provincial government sought to encourage other enslaved people to resist the temptations of freedom offered by the enemies of Great Britain, and to remain faithful servants of the English-speaking colony of South Carolina.

In the wake of Arrah’s law in the summer of 1747, an unknown number of enslaved people gained their freedom in South Carolina by fleeing captivity in Spanish Florida. Among the Miscellaneous Records of the Secretary of State, now held at our state archive in Columbia, I’ve seen a number of affidavits created between the summer of 1747 and the autumn of 1748 confirming the freedom of at least ten individuals who had been enslaved in South Carolina, then sold by their masters to individuals in St. Augustine, and then escaped from captivity in Florida and returned voluntarily to their former homes in South Carolina. The legislature did not take notice of their return because the 1747 act to confirm Arrah’s freedom had already provided for such cases. Simply by virtue of their escape from the enemy (into whose hands they had been sold illegally by greedy South Carolinians), they were considered free on their return here. The convoluted nature of that murky business merits closer attention, but I’ll leave that for others to explore. When Britain, France, and Spain signed a treaty to end that long war in late 1748, however, that curious path from slavery to freedom closed permanently.[10]

In contrast to the active, even dramatic stories of Jack, July, and Arrah, the public manumission of an older enslaved man named Caesar in 1750 followed a quieter path. As a wise man over the age of sixty, Caesar used his knowledge of medicinal roots and herbs to formulate a secret potion said to negate the effects of a rattlesnake’s bite. His master, John Norman, proudly took this information to South Carolina’s provincial government, stating that Caesar might be inclined to divulge his secret cure in return for a “reasonable reward.” The legislature appointed a committee to interview the enslaved man and witnesses to his various cures. After a period of scrutiny, the General Assembly purchased Caesar’s freedom for £500 and awarded him with an annual stipend of £100 for the remainder of his life. “The Negro Caesar’s Cure for Poison” appeared on the front page of the South Carolina Gazette in the spring of 1750 and, due to popular demand, again in 1751. We’ll return to this story and study the ingredients of Caesar’s medicinal potion in a future episode.[11]

Ten years after Caesar gained his freedom, the government of South Carolina acknowledged the freedom of an enslaved man named Abraham who had provided remarkable services to the colony during a war against the Cherokee Indians. Last year I profiled him in a series called Abraham the Unstoppable, and I’m now working to transform his story into a book. You can refer back to those eight episodes for the details of Abraham’s story, so I’ll simply add a few notes about its context. Abraham wasn’t captured by the enemy, like Jack in 1706 and Arrah in 1745, but like July in 1739 he risked his life to protect himself and to preserve the status quo of South Carolina’s white minority government. For Abraham’s bravery and fidelity, Lieutenant Governor William Bull Jr. (1710–1791) proclaimed him to be free in 1760, and the legislature paid his former master £500 in the summer of 1761. Abraham’s path to freedom was indeed remarkable and dramatic, but it was made smoother by the precedents established by other earlier generations of brave individuals.

Another remarkable story of public manumission in early South Carolina is rooted in the American War of Independence. When the British Army had captured Charleston in 1780, Governor John Rutledge fled northward into North Carolina with a military escort that included Major John Harleston. Harleston brought along an enslaved man named Antigua, who aided the American cause by infiltrating British camps and collecting valuable intelligence. Following Major Harleston’s death in Virginia in the spring of 1781, Governor Rutledge personally manumitted or freed Antigua on behalf of the state as a reward for his work as an American spy. Then the governor asked Antigua to undertake another dangerous mission—to infiltrate occupied Charleston and pass information to the American forces outside the city. The spy asked for a further reward, and Governor Rutledge promised to free Antigua’s wife and child at a later date. Antigua tried to sneak into British-held Charleston, but was captured and detained. At the end of the war, in early 1783, former governor John Rutledge asked the current governor and the state legislature to honor his promise to Antigua. Accordingly, on March 12th, 1783, the South Carolina General Assembly ratified an ordinance to manumit a “Negro woman” named Hagar and her child, as a “reward for the services which [her husband, Antigua,] has performed for the State.”[12]

The story of Antigua and his mostly-undocumented spying for the American army during the Revolutionary War is the sort of intriguing historical material that would make a good novel or screenplay, and I’m slowly chipping away at that project for a future series of episodes here on the Time Machine. It’s a difficult task, however, because the paper trail of evidence is frustratingly sparse and spread over a number of years. A handful of recent historians have taken note of Antigua and the public manumission of Hagar in 1783, but the diffuse nature of the documentary evidence has engendered a few misinterpretations of their story. Give me a few more years, and I’ll try to reconstruct it in a more robust manner.[13]  

The final case or cases of public manumission in South Carolina that I’ve found stem from the summer of 1822 and events we might describe as the Demark Vesey Affair. As most of you know, Denmark Vesey was a free person of color who was executed in Charleston that summer for allegedly conspiring to incite a violent uprising against the city’s white population in an effort to liberate the enslaved population. Vesey and thirty-five other men were arrested, tried, and hanged before any action took place, however, and the white authorities expressed great relief that they had managed to discover the “plot” in time to prevent the loss of any white lives.

The fortuitous discovery of the plot—or, to be more precise, the communication of the alleged plot from the enslaved population to the white population—was attributed to two enslaved men, named Peter and George, who independently informed their respective masters that a secret plan for a violent uprising was circulating through the city. Peter’s owner, John Cordes Prioleau, and George’s master, John Wilson, immediately alerted the mayor of Charleston, who then set in motion a series of state-level investigations, arrests, trials, and executions. As a reward for their fidelity to the white population, the South Carolina General Assembly ratified an act to purchase the freedom of both Peter and George, and to pay each of them fifty dollars a year for the rest of their lives. Peter, who adopted the name Peter Desverney (ca. 1787–1860), and George Wilson (died 1848) continued to live and work in Charleston, but they did not survive to witness the death of slavery in 1865. [14]

As we can see in the several cases of Jack, July, Arrah, Abraham, Antigua, and Peter and George, the government of early South Carolina used public manumission as a reward for extraordinary actions that were not simply brave or heroic, but more specifically demonstrated a strong sense of fidelity or loyalty to the dominant white minority. These somewhat contradictory facts complicate the stories of men like Jack and July, and might render their actions less admirable in the estimation of some observers. We don’t know, for example, whether July’s enslaved contemporaries viewed his vigorous physical defense of his white master with admiration or contempt. After all, July had used force to subdue and kill a fellow slave who was fighting to be free, and the actions of Peter and George sent men to the gallows for expressing a similar violent wish. The white community praised such actions, but what did their enslaved brothers and sisters think of their great rewards? How did these recipients of freedom rationalize their own decisions to act in defense of a regime that regularly abridged their most basic civil rights?

Each of the cases I’ve mentioned in today’s program has received some degree of scholarly attention, but in general the practice of public manumission as a serial phenomenon in early South Carolina hasn’t garnered much notice. It’s difficult to connect the dots between such cases spread across more than a century of obscure paperwork, of course, and I’ve probably missed a few examples in my own survey of the surviving records. Nevertheless, I hope you’ll agree with me that it’s a fascinating subject. Whether you view men like July, Antigua, and Peter as heroes or anti-heroes, we cannot escape the fact that each of these men did something that elicited the highest praise from the contemporary government of South Carolina. Their individual stories are complicated and incomplete, but collectively they offer valuable insight into our community’s distant, painful past.