The Palatka news and advertiser., 1915-09-10

of Carolina life for all future time.
And yet the slaves imported into
Charleston were largely for and from
the New England trade. From tie
years .1804-1807, the years during
which Charleston harbor was open to
the slave trade, there were imported
by merchants and planters of Charles
ton, 2,006; there were imported by
dealers of Rhode Island, 1928. DIR.
ing those years slaves were sent to
consignees, natives of Charleston, 10;
natives of Rhode Island, SS; natives of
Britain, 81; natives of France, 10.
When the negroes were found to be
unsuited to New England they were
sold into the South, with the results
that are so fatally familiar.
The work for these slaves was
ready at hand. In 1894 vessel from
Madagascar put into the -harbor of
Charleston and the master gave to
Landgrave Smith bag of rice. The
landgrave experimental in his city
garden and the experiment was sue
cess, and in twenty-five years rice be-
came the chief source of wealth of
! the province; 1,700 barrels were eX.
ported in 1924. Miss Eliza Lucas, a
young lady Of the gentry, with prac
tical turn, writing to her father, the
governor Of Antigua, tells of her eX-
periments in indigo and cotton, and
soon rice had a formidable rival as g
source of wealth.
Towards the close of the Colonial
era Charleston was second to no city
in America in prosperity and social
comfort. No less a person than Mr..
Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts, visi-
ted it in those days and sets down
in the journal of his travels:
"Charleston makes most beautiful
appearance as you come up to it. In
grandeur, splendor of buildings, deco
ration, equippages, commerce, ship
ping and indeed in almost everything
it far surpasses all | ever saw or eX-
/ pected to see in America. State and
magnificence, the natural attendant
on great riches, are conspicuous
among this people"
Mr.. Quincy tells of concert at The
st. Cecilia Society. Mr.. David Deas,
he says, "had given him a ticket, on
presenting which he was passed from
servant to servant, and finally uShered
in. The music was grand, especially
the bass viol and the French horns
This same society, the oldest social
organization in America, and now the
most famous in Charleston life, is
still the acme of social elegance, and
membership in it is the criterion Of
social position, the test being still
birth and breeding and not wealth.
Mr., Quincy also visited the Charles
town Library, "a handsome, square,
spacious room, containing a very val
liable collection of books and prints, "
he says-for Charleston was not only
socially gay but cultured. And this
gentleman from Boston, Massachu-
sets, tells of all his impressions with
a curious aloofness, a sense of differ
ence from the life he was familiar
with at home, as though he was des-
cribing a strange people. This atti-
tude is suggestive and ominous for
the future-as the future proved,
when Boston and Charleston could no
longer understand each other and
their aims and ends became hostile.
But the difference, though social, had
not yet grown political, and soon
Charleston was taking up the quarrel
of Boston with the mother country.
though she herself had suffered no in,
jury at the hand of England, and was
sending ships laden with provisions to
feed her beleaguered sister port.
Soon the difference between the col
onies and Great Britain widened and
the Revolution came, and the first
government of any of the American
colonies was formed in Charleston,
March, 1776. South Carolina had
boldly led the way to general indie
pendence by asserting her own under
John Rutledge as presidents; Henry
Laurens, vice-president, and VIM.
Henry Drayton, chief justice. An az
my and navy was created. Privy
council and assembly was elected, and
the first republic of the new world