Adventures of a Black Loyalist: Scipio Handley

 

At the beginning of the American Revolution, Scipio Handley was a free black fisherman who plied his trade in Charleston Harbor. We know very little else about him. We do know he was involved in a number of events during the revolutionary era, and after the war applied for compensation to the Loyalist Claims Commission in London. The memorial he submitted to the Claims Commission provides the little we know about Handley. It is part of thousands of pages of documentation, memorials and testimony, that now survives in the UK National Archives at Kew.

After the last royal governor, Lord William Campbell, fled Charleston in September 1775, Handley used his boat to carry supplies to the Tamar and its crew. When Lady William (Sarah Izard) decided to flee to her husband’s side, Handley took her. He was taking a great risk. The Committee of Safety prohibited any boats from town going to the British ships without a pass. Handley avoided Patriot patrols by going at night when the moon was down or when it was cloudy. But one night a patrol intercepted him ferrying supplies. They arrested him. According to Henry Laurens, Arthur Middleton wanted to hang Handley, and most of the council agreed. Laurens agreed that he should be hanged if guilty, but only after a “proper” trial. Exactly what would have constituted a proper trial in the wake of the Thomas Jeremiah incident is worth pondering. We will never know. Handley escaped from captivity one night shortly before Christmas and disappeared. That same night, a Patriot force numbering around 200 and disguised as “Indian warriors” attacked a camp of runaways and Loyalists on Sullivan’s Island. The “Indians” killed about two dozen runaways and captured others, including a few Loyalists. The rest managed to escape to the British ships anchored nearby or to Morris Island on the other side of the harbor mouth. The victors destroyed the pest house on Sullivan’s Island, which the runaways had used as a shelter. It is likely that many of them had resided there once before, on their arrival from West Africa, to perform quarantine.  In the aftermath of the Patriot attack, Lord William sailed off to St. Augustine. He took some of the runaways and Loyalists with him.

Was Scipio Handley one of them? Had he fled to the island the night he escaped, just before the Patriot attack? We don’t know, but we do know that somehow, Handley made his way to Florida, along with other Blacks and Loyalists. Or so he said in his memorial. He claimed that in escaping he had to jump from a second story window, that he landed badly, and suffered a rupture. In severe pain, he made his way to the British in St. Augustine. From there, he went on to Barbados. He took up fishing again and remained there for the next three years. Whether the British offered him a position as an auxiliary during that time he did not say.  When the British captured Savannah in the last days of 1778, they recruited him to work for their army as a Black Pioneer. He learned to make munitions, a dangerous and noisome job. He was at Savannah in the autumn of 1779 when a combined Patriot and French force attacked the city with disastrous results. He claimed that the “Negroes” did everything they could to repel the attack. They knew that “the rebels” would show no mercy to them if the British had to surrender. Handley was wounded during the battle. He was carrying grapeshot to the artillery when a musket ball hit him in the leg. It took months for the wound to heal so that he could walk. He would have taken part in the British siege of Charleston the following spring, he declared, if he had not been wounded. At the time he submitted his memorial, he stated that he remained unable to walk properly and that the pain was so bad that at times he could not work. He requested compensation from the Claims Commission in the amount of £97 for the loss of his possessions, livelihood, fishing boat, seven hogs, and furniture. The total claim would be about $25,000 in today’s money. That may seem substantial but many white planters and merchants claimed thousands of pounds, literally millions today. When the commission interviewed him  he brought along a white widow from Charleston as a testimonial witness. Mrs. Eleanor Lister. She had made and sold pies for her living, which she sometimes traded for fish from Mr. Handley. Lister testified that she believed Scipio was free and that he had possessed at least some of what he claimed. When one of the commissioners asked what kind of  furniture Handley possessed she answered tellingly: “Good enough for Negroes.” She asked the commission to give him “something” because he had “risked his life to serve His Majesty.” The commission dismissed her and asked Handley why he did not return to South Carolina to recover his property. “They’d hang me if I went back,” he replied. “During the war, Governor Rutledge ordered that all slaves who helped the British be executed.” The records of the Loyalist Claims Commission record the amounts awarded to the claimants, at least some of them. It does not contain any information about what Scipio Handley received, if any. Other Black Loyalists did receive varying amounts of compensation, although not a great deal.  The commission took about six years to make its final report on the awards. It may be that by then, Scipio Handley had died. Perhaps we will never know that either.

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Arthur Middleton: Flawed Founding Father

South Carolina's Arthur Middleton (1742-1787) is probably best known as a signer the American Declaration of Independence. Visitors to Middleton Place near Charleston may recall that he owned the rice plantation there, erected by his father Henry and famed for its landscaped gardens. 

In the 1750s, his parents sent him to England to be educated, a privilege largely restricted to the sons of wealthy planters. He did his preparatory education at two of England's most prestigious "public" schools, Harrow and Westminster. He then attended university at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and the Middle Temple in London, where he studied law. 

He returned to South Carolina in the early 1760s, and married the daughter of another wealthy planter family, Mary Izard. In 1764, Arthur's father gave him Middleton Place and moved to The Oaks, a plantation near Goose Creek where he had been born.    

In 1768, Arthur and Mary went to England and did not return until 1771. Shortly before their return, the American artist Benjamin West, who had settled in Britain, painted a family portrait of Middleton with his wife Mary Izard Middleton and their infant son Henry. Ironically, West would soon become the court painter to George III, soon to be Middleton's nemesis. [Image: Arthur Middleton, and the full family portrait]

Upon his return, Arthur emerged as one of the the most radical opponents of British colonial policies. he joined the American Whig Party, who later dubbed themselves the "Patriots." He allied with his friend and neighbor, William Henry Drayton of Drayton Hall, who had swung from being a firm supporter of the Crown to one of its most vocal opponents. 

Both men served on many of the committees the extralegal Provincial Congress of South Carolina established in 1775. They used the committees to effectively run the colony and render the royal government virtually helpless, violating many laws and personal liberties in the process. 

Through the Secret Committee, they used the Sons of Liberty to harass those believed to be loyal to the Crown or neutral. Their methods of persuasion included intimidation, illegal house searches, and for the most vocal, tarring and feathering, sometimes followed by banishment from the colony. 

In early 1776, the Provincial Congress gradually turned in favor of complete independence. By this time open war between colonists and Britain had begun in New England. The Congress elected Middleton as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. He replaced his father Henry, who was much less radical than he was. Their differences led to a serious rift in the family. 

As noted above, Arthur was among those who signed the Declaration of Independence.  A few days before that event, Patriot forces in South Carolina had repulsed a British attack on Charleston at the Battle of Sullivan's Island. It was the first major victory of the war for the Americans. 

During the next three years, the war hardly touched South Carolina. But in the late 1770s, the British adopted what they called the Southern Strategy. They captured Savannah in December 1778 and set their eyes on Charleston, then the wealthiest city in America. The city surrendered to a British and Loyalist force in May 1780. It was the worst Patriot defeat of the war, as the entire Southern Army was captured. [See The British Seize Charleston]

The surrender was also a disaster for Middleton. After landing on the Charleston peninsula, British soldiers ransacked Middleton Place, beheading many of its statues. 

Worse followed. The British arrested Middleton and about twenty others they thought were plotting further resistance. The prisoners, who included Christopher Gadsden and Edward Rutledge, were shipped to the British stronghold at St. Augustine. 

They remained in Florida until July 1781, when the British paroled them and sent them to Philadelphia. By then, the war was nearing its close. Lord Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington and a French force at Yorktown in October. 

Middleton returned to South Carolina at war's end. He died of a fever, probably malaria, at Middleton Place in January 1787 and was buried there in a tomb. [Image: Middleton's tomb at Middleton Place]

His legacy was mixed. A fervent Patriot he surely was. Yet some of the measures he supported as a member of the Secret Committee violated the very notions of liberty he espoused and he lived a life made possible by the enslavement of hundreds of his fellow beings. 

Side note: Middleton's descendants include Charles Middleton, who starred as the evil Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon films of the 1930s. I remember Ming well. I used to sit and watch the films on TV on Saturday mornings in the 1950s, absolutely fascinated!   

Further Reading:

John Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution 2 vols., Charleston, 1821. Based on documents John's father William Henry Drayton had collected prior to his death.

The Papers of Henry Laurens. 16 vols., Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1972-2003. Volumes dealing with the 1760s and 1770s.