Sanctifying Slavery And Politics In South Carolina

A vivid portrait of a Scottish religious leader and the South Carolina colony he helped shape When Alexander Garden, a Scottish minister of the Church of England, arrived in South Carolina in 1720, he found a colony smoldering from the devastation of the Yamasee War and still suffering from economic upheaval, political factionalism, and rampant disease. It was also a colony turning enthusiastically toward plantation agriculture, made possible by African slave labor. In Sanctifying Slavery and Politics in South Carolina, the first published biography of Garden, Fred E. Witzig paints a vivid portrait of the religious leader and the South Carolina colony he helped shape. Shortly after his arrival, Garden, a representative of the bishop of London, became the rector of St. Philip's Church in Charleston, the first Anglican parish in the colony. The ambitious clergyman quickly married into a Charleston slave-trading family and allied himself with the political and social elite. From the pulpit Garden reinforced the social norms and economic demands of the southern planters and merchants, and he disciplined recalcitrant missionaries who dared challenge the prevailing social order. As a way of defending the morality of southern slaveholders, he found himself having to establish the first large-scale school for slaves in Charles Town in the 1740s. Garden also led a spirited—and largely successful—resistance to the Great Awakening evangelical movement championed by the revivalist minister George Whitefield, whose message of personal salvation and a more democratic Christianity was anathema to the social fabric of the slaveholding South, which continually feared a slave rebellion. As a minister Garden helped make slavery morally defensible in the eyes of his peers, giving the appearance that the spiritual obligations of his slaveholding and slave-trading friends were met as they all became extraordinarily wealthy. Witzig's lively cultural history—bolstered by numerous primary sources, maps, and illustrations—helps illuminate both the roots of the Old South and the Church of England's role in sanctifying slavery in South Carolina.

In this comprehensive analysis of politics and ideology in antebellum South Carolina, Manisha Sinha offers a provocative new look at the roots of southern separatism and the causes of the Civil War. Challenging works that portray secession as a fight for white liberty, she argues instead that it was a conservative, antidemocratic movement to protect and perpetuate racial slavery. Sinha discusses some of the major sectional crises of the antebellum era--including nullification, the conflict over the expansion of slavery into western territories, and secession--and offers an important reevaluation of the movement to reopen the African slave trade in the 1850s. In the process she reveals the central role played by South Carolina planter politicians in developing proslavery ideology and the use of states' rights and constitutional theory for the defense of slavery. Sinha's work underscores the necessity of integrating the history of slavery with the traditional narrative of southern politics. Only by taking into account the political importance of slavery, she insists, can we arrive at a complete understanding of southern politics and the enormity of the issues confronting both northerners and southerners on the eve of the Civil War.

How is the state produced? In what ways did enslaved African Americans shape modern governing practices? Ryan A. Quintana provocatively answers these questions by focusing on the everyday production of South Carolina's state space—its roads and canals, borders and boundaries, public buildings and military fortifications. Beginning in the early eighteenth century and moving through the post–War of 1812 internal improvements boom, Quintana highlights the surprising ways enslaved men and women sat at the center of South Carolina's earliest political development, materially producing the state's infrastructure and early governing practices, while also challenging and reshaping both through their day-to-day movements, from the mundane to the rebellious. Focusing on slaves' lives and labors, Quintana illuminates how black South Carolinians not only created the early state but also established their own extralegal economic sites, social and cultural havens, and independent communities along South Carolina's roads, rivers, and canals. Combining social history, the study of American politics, and critical geography, Quintana reframes our ideas of early American political development, illuminates the material production of space, and reveals the central role of slaves' daily movements (for their owners and themselves) to the development of the modern state.

"Beginning in the early eighteenth century and moving through the post-War of 1812 internal improvements boom, Quintana highlights the surprising ways enslaved men and women sat at the center of South Carolina's earliest political development, materially producing the state's infrastructure and early governing practices, while also challenging and reshaping both through their day-to-day movements, from the mundane to the rebellious. Focusing on slaves' lives and labors, Quintana illuminates how black South Carolinians not only created the early state, but also established their own extralegal economic sites, social and cultural havens, and independent communities along South Carolina's roads, rivers, and canals"--

This call to arms, prepared by Robert Barnwell Rhett, is, accoding to Harwell, the earliest Confederate imprint. It chronicles the "discontent and contention" between North and South "for the last thirty-five years," caused by "the aggressions and unconstitutional wrongs, perpetrated by the people of the North on the people of the South." Today the United States government, once a "government of confderated republics," is now "a Despotism." Rhett argues that the "Southern States, now stand exactly in the same position towards the Northern State, that the Colonies did towards Great Britain." Rhett urges like-minded southerners to join with South Carolina by seceding from the Union. "It cannot be believed, that our ancestors would have assented to any Union whatever with the people of the North, if the feelings and opinons now exisiting amongst them, had existed when the Constitution was framed. There was then, no Tariff -- no fanaticism concerning negroes." He argues them "to be one of a great Slaveholding Confederacy..."

Trieste Publishing has a massive catalogue of classic book titles. Our aim is to provide readers with the highest quality reproductions of fiction and non-fiction literature that has stood the test of time. The many thousands of books in our collection have been sourced from libraries and private collections around the world.The titles that Trieste Publishing has chosen to be part of the collection have been scanned to simulate the original. Our readers see the books the same way that their first readers did decades or a hundred or more years ago. Books from that period are often spoiled by imperfections that did not exist in the original. Imperfections could be in the form of blurred text, photographs, or missing pages. It is highly unlikely that this would occur with one of our books. Our extensive quality control ensures that the readers of Trieste Publishing's books will be delighted with their purchase. Our staff has thoroughly reviewed every page of all the books in the collection, repairing, or if necessary, rejecting titles that are not of the highest quality. This process ensures that the reader of one of Trieste Publishing's titles receives a volume that faithfully reproduces the original, and to the maximum degree possible, gives them the experience of owning the original work.We pride ourselves on not only creating a pathway to an extensive reservoir of books of the finest quality, but also providing value to every one of our readers. Generally, Trieste books are purchased singly - on demand, however they may also be purchased in bulk. Readers interested in bulk purchases are invited to contact us directly to enquire about our tailored bulk rates.

In South Carolina, in the aftermath of the Civil War, a group of ex-slaves joined the Democratic "Red Shirts," white paramilitary clubs dedicated to restoring antebellum values. Drawing on primary sources, Drago examines the relationship between black initiative and southern paternalism.