Colonial Unrest, American Revolution, and New Republic (1765-1789)

Brown was among the most notorious Loyalist commanders in the South during the Revolutionary War. In one of David Ramsey’s histories of the war, Brown wrote an impassioned defense of his conduct in reply to charges of cruelty. Brown died on his St. Vincent Island plantation on August 3, 1825.

Bull participated with General William Moultrie in the American victory at Port Royal Island on February 3, 1779. Two months later the lowcountry was overrun by British General Augustine Prevost’s invasion from Georgia, and defeat and desertions decimated Bull’s regiment. After the fall of Charleston in May 1780, Bull went into self-imposed exile in Virginia and Maryland and offered no more service to the patriot cause.

During the 1770s Bull’s political views grew increasingly out of step as South Carolina and other colonies moved toward radical opposition to the crown. Lord William Campbell, the last royal governor, arrived at Charleston on June 18, 1775, and took office, but his term lasted only three months. On September 15 he was forced to flee the city for refuge on a British warship in Charleston harbor. The revolution was under way, and Bull’s position was an impossible one. He resigned from the Royal Council and retired to his Ashley Hall plantation. In 1777 he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the revolutionary government and was banished from the state.

Burke was elected as an anti-Federalist to the First Congress of the United States, commencing service in New York on March 4, 1789. He served on thirty-three committees and was instrumental in crafting bills that led to the judiciary act and the creation of the Library of Congress, the postal system, and the patent system. His congressional service was marked by an incident with Alexander Hamilton, whom Burke felt had slighted southern soldiers when Hamilton eulogized General Nathanael Greene.

Although Butler served in the General Assembly from 1776 to 1789, his most significant political accomplishments came at the national level. In 1787 the legislature elected Butler to both the Confederation Congress and the constitutional convention scheduled to meet later that spring in Philadelphia. In the constitutional debates, Butler generally supported proposals for a strong central government, a single executive, and wealth rather than population as the basis of representation. He also championed South Carolina interests, especially slavery, and vigorously opposed the three-fifths compromise, arguing that slaves represented property wealth and should be counted fully for purposes of representation.

During his career Calhoun evolved from “War Hawk” nationalist to independent nullifier to strategist for a unified regional (southern) defense of slavery.

Located in the Midlands, Camden boasts more than sixty well-preserved buildings in its historic district that attest to a rich past and to a lifestyle respectful of that heritage.

The defeat at Camden was one of the worst losses suffered by the Continental army. British and Loyalist morale soared as a consequence, but Cornwallis still had to deal with bands of marauding partisans before moving into North Carolina.

After Revolutionary leaders discovered Campbell’s clandestine activities, he fled from Charleston on September 15, 1775. The departure of South Carolina’s last royal governor enabled Revolutionary leaders to claim that George III, like King James II during the Glorious Revolution, had “abdicated the government.”

During the latter years of the Revolutionary War in South Carolina, British commanders used African American slaves, freemen, and refugees in a variety of military capacities. Although employed primarily as laborers, black Carolinians occasionally were armed by the British and used in combat.

During the era before home rule, when South Carolina remained primarily rural, managing county farms and chain gangs was an essential function of county government.

Chalmers’s writings did not mark a significant development in medicine, but he was highly regarded in his time by British physicians such as Fothergill, Whytt, and William Cullen of Edinburgh University, one of the most influential teachers of medicine in the late eighteenth century.

The siege of Charleston marked the commencement of major British operations in the South during the Revolutionary War.

The Cherokee Path was one of the most important trade networks of early Carolina, connecting the city of Charleston with the Cherokee Indians of South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

By the fall of 1776 the major campaign of the war had concluded. The Cherokees lost as many as two thousand killed and, despite continued British support, could fight no longer.

Cheves declined an offer to join President James Madison’s cabinet as secretary of the treasury, and he retired from Congress in 1815. In 1819 President James Monroe appointed Cheves president of the Second National Bank of the United States.

With the introduction of rice as a staple crop in the early eighteenth century, Christ Church became a parish of planters and slaves.

The first Church of England, or Anglican, house of worship in South Carolina was built in Charleston about 1681, with the Reverend Atkin Williamson serving as its first priest.

Admitted to the bar in 1783, Colhoun opened a practice in Charleston. On October 8, 1786, Colhoun cemented his ties to the lowcountry elite by marrying Floride Bonneau, heiress to an extensive plantation in St. John’s Berkeley Parish.

Although revised several times until abandoned in 1698, the Fundamental Constitutions framed the colony as a social hierarchy, encouraging new settlement based on landownership and a provision for religious freedom.