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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John Laurens: Liberty and Slavery

John Laurens is remembered today, if at all, for two things. One is his advocacy of freeing enslaved blacks to fight against the British during the War for Independence. The other is his tragic and senseless death in one of the last skirmishes of that war. 

To be sure, he is now remembered for something else. Some historians argue that he had a homosexual relationship with his undoubtedly close friend, Alexander Hamilton. But I'll leave that issue to others, and focus on the first two.

John Laurens (1754-1782) was the eldest son of planter Henry Laurens of Charleston (then Charlestown), South Carolina. [For more on Henry, see my previous post, The Tower of London's Only American Prisoner: Henry Laurens Detail of portrait of Henry by John Singleton Copley, 1782]

In the middle years of the 18th century, Henry Laurens had amassed a huge fortune, first as a slave trader and then as a rice planter. During the disputes with Britain that led to the American War for Independence, he became an important Patriot leader, even serving as president of the Continental Congress.

Following the example of many of South Carolina's elite, Henry had sent John to Europe for education. The War for Independence began while John was finishing legal studies at Lincoln's Inn in London. Against his father's wishes, he returned to America and joined the Continental Army. Also against his father's wishes, he left behind his heavily pregnant wife, Martha Manning, daughter of one of Henry's British business associates. 

John later confessed that he had carelessly gotten Martha pregnant and married her not for love, but out of pity. He never saw Martha again after he left England, nor did he ever see the daughter she gave birth to a few months later. 

Once in the Patriot army, John rose quickly to the rank of colonel -- too quickly in the view of some fellow officers. He fought bravely at Brandywine and other battles, and earned a reputation for courage bordering on recklessness. He became an aide de camp to George Washington and formed close friendships with two other aides, Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette.

In 1779 Laurens returned to South Carolina. The British army had captured Savannah, Georgia and were threatening Charleston. He subsequently fought bravely in several actions in the Southern Campaign. 

His return is best remembered for the shocking proposal he brought before the South Carolina General Assembly. With the blessing of Congress and Washington, Laurens moved that South Carolina, which had a black majority, enlist blacks in the Patriot army in return for their freedom.

He sought the support of his father, who in a letter to John declared his commitment to abolition of slavery. Henry's declaration was  inspired in part by British critics who ridiculed the sincerity of slaveholders proclaiming liberty and equality for all men. 

The letter was subsequently published. It is difficult to see it as anything more than a publicity stunt. But John took it seriously and continued to press his father on the issue. 

Henry also promised to give John forty of his enslaved blacks to form a nucleus of a unit of free black soldiers. When John formally proposed the creation of a black regiment after he returned to South Carolina, however, Henry got cold feet. He tried to convince John that the idea could never win a majority in the state assembly.

Henry proved correct, but he also did nothing to help his son. John moved the proposal before the assembly three times between 1779 and 1782. Much to his distress and disgust, the delegates repeatedly rejected it by large majorities. The most vocal of Laurens' opponents were John and Edward Rutledge and Christopher Gadsden, designer of the famous "Don't Tread on Me" flag. 

(Images: John Rutledge and Christopher Gadsden)

The second rejection took place in early 1780, as the British were advancing on Charleston with a large army and fleet under Sir Henry Clinton. The invaders took the city after a several weeks' siege. It was the worst Patriot defeat of the war to date. 

The entire defending army of more than 5000 men was made prisoner, including a furious John Laurens, who was convinced that the enlistment of black soldiers could have saved Charleston from capture. (Image: The Siege of Charleston, 1780, from the British lines. Artist: Alonzo Chapelle, 1860s)

Laurens was soon exchanged for a British officer, and resumed his crusade against slavery. On one occasion he wrote that if South Carolina could not be cultivated without slaves, "we should flee from it as a hateful country." This remark may hold the key to his ultimate fate.

John was an enthusiastic but impetuous soldier given to grand gestures. He often ignored or disobeyed the commands of superior officers. Sometimes he acted so rashly as to seem as if he was courting martyrdom. 

A few months after the last rejection of his black regiment proposal, in August 1782, he was killed leading his men against a British foraging expedition. He had advanced against orders to await reinforcements. He was only 28.

The Battle of the Combahee, a minor skirmish in fact, was one of the last actions of the war, and it was absolutely meaningless. The British were ready to concede independence. They evacuated Charleston in December 1782. 

One must wonder if John Laurens was seeking death in battle, having despaired that his new country would eliminate the institution that mocked its call for liberty.  

John is buried at his father's favorite plantation, Mepkin, now a Catholic monastery, near Moncks Corner, South Carolina. The epitaph which Henry chose for his son's grave marker, is a famous line from the Roman poet Horace: "Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori." (It is sweet and proper to die for one's country.") 

It was an odd choice, given that Henry had tried to keep John out of the army. It also says nothing about John's attempts to create an army of free blacks, which Henry had never truly supported. After all, what would the neighbors think? 

Was John Laurens sincere in advocating African emancipation? It is impossible to be sure. I think he was, whether out of a sense of guilt or conviction. He first expressed abolitionist views in Britain while being educated. He became friends with British opponents of slavery, including Thomas Day and John Bicknell, who had written an abolitionist poem, "The Dying Negro."

Laurens was influenced as well by British claims that the American demand for liberty was hypocritical, given the large number of African slaves in the colonies. There was loads of hypocrisy on the British side as well, given that Britain was the largest slave trading nation in the world. 

But the fact that the British commanders freed thousands of slaves who came over to their lines put a sting in their claims of American hypocrisy. The new freedmen also helped to swell British manpower. 

When opponents of his proposals claimed that the enslaved blacks were incapable of appreciating and handling liberty, Laurens countered that blacks and whites shared the same humanity, abilities, and desires. It was slavery itself that had debased a people who, under better circumstances, would prove to be excellent citizens of the republic:

"We have sunk the Africans and their descendants below the Standard of Humanity, and almost render'd them incapable of that Blessing [Liberty] which equal Heaven bestowed upon us all." Here John echoed the preamble of the Declaration of Independence.

John had his own blind spots, his own hypocrisies. Like most southern officers he had a black manservant named Strawberry who it seems he did not treat well. 

During the early nineteenth century, southern writers extolled John Laurens as a chivalric model for the region's youth, but ignored or suppressed his views on slavery. Many of those young men went on to die for a cause far less worthy than his.

Further Reading: 

Gregory Massey, John Laurens and the American Revolution. Columbia, South Carolina, University of South Carolina Press, 2000.

The Papers of Henry Laurens. Columbia, South Carolina, University of South Carolina Press. Volumes dealing with the revolutionary years in particular.

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Reluctant Loyalist: Dr. Alexander Garden of Charleston

People who supported the British government during the American Revolution were a varied lot. Loyalists were rich and poor, white and black, men and women. They included recent immigrants and members of established colonial families. Above all, they were caught in a web of circumstances beyond their control. 

Each had their reasons for choosing the British side, reasons often much more complicated than rooting for a football team or trying to profit in some way. Loyalists usually had friends and family on the other side. 

William Franklin, illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, remained staunchly loyal to the British Crown, which had appointed him Royal Governor of New Jersey. Dr. Alexander Garden of Charlestown (Charleston after 1783) was less staunch in his loyalty, but in the end the victors branded him as a Loyalist. 

Most writing about Garden focuses on his contributions to natural history. My focus here is on Garden's attempts to negotiate the treacherous waters of revolutionary America, a subject that has received much less attention. [Image: Portrait of Alexander Garden.]

Garden was born in Birse, Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1730. His father was minister of the village church. In his teens, Alexander studied medicine at Aberdeen and Edinburgh Universities and received an MD from Edinburgh. 

He served as a surgeon in the British navy for several years, but resigned, he said, because he was always ill at sea. A lung complaint, perhaps tuberculosis, may also have played a part in his decision. The air below decks in the ships of the day was always foul. In later life, he always dreaded ocean voyages.

Garden emigrated to South Carolina in 1752 in hopes of improving his health and his income. In the latter goal, certainly, he succeeded. South Carolina was not only the wealthiest British North American colony, it was also the unhealthiest. He suffered from the local fevers as all newcomers did, but survived what people called "The Seasoning." 

A few years after arriving, he wooed and married a wealthy heiress, Elizabeth Peronneau, whom he called Toby. Three of their children survived to adulthood, a son, Alex, and daughters Harriette and Juliette. He soon developed a flourishing practice, aided by his adoption of inoculation for smallpox, one of the most dreaded scourges of colonial America.

By the early 1770s Garden was one of the richest physician in town. He established a network of close friends among the planter and merchant elite, many of whom used his medical services. Garden developed an especially close friendship with Henry Laurens, former slave trader and merchant/planter. Garden tutored Laurens' eldest son John to prepare him for education in England. 

In his spare time -- he never had enough, he complained -- he pursued his life's passion, natural history. He corresponded with and sent botanical and zoological specimens to leading natural historians in Europe. Among them was Sweden's Linnaeus, who developed the modern system of biological classification. Linnaeus named the gardenia for Garden. 

In 1773, the prestigious Royal Society of London elected Garden to membership for his contributions to science. Benjamin Franklin, then working in London as a colonial agent, nominated him. 

In the same year, Garden bought a plantation in Goose Creek from fellow physician John Moultrie, Jr., who had  been appointed Lt. Governor of British East Florida. Garden renamed it Otranto, perhaps after Horace Walpole's recently published novella, The Castle of Otranto. Garden was also amassing other properties in and near Charleston.

In the early 1770s, all seemed to be going well for Garden. Then history took one of those turns that forces people to make difficult, often agonizing, choices. For some years, tension between Britain and its colonies in North America had been growing. 

The real issue, as so often, was about power. Who should have the preponderance of it, the British government or the colonial legislatures? Interestingly, Garden realized the heart of the issue as early as 1765, during Stamp Act Crisis. The conflict, he wrote to a friend in England, was really about sovereignty. 

In the northern colonies, resistance took the form of a rejection of taxes imposed by the British Parliament. In the southern colonies, that was an issue as well, but another concern drove many wealthy southerners to cooperate with their northern neighbors. 

In 1772, the Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench in London, Lord Mansfield, ruled that slavery was illegal in England; that it had no basis in common law. The Somerset Ruling, as Mansfield's decision is known, aroused panic among many southern slaveholders. They concluded, wrongly,  that the ruling would soon be extended to the colonies. The best way to prevent that possibility, they decided, was to renounce British claims to legislate for the colonies. 

In the spring of 1775, tension gave way to violence and war. Talk of independence was in the air. The issue of armed resistance and independence immediately divided Americans into Whigs or Patriots and Loyalists or Tories.

In South Carolina, the Whigs took control and formed an extra legal Provincial Government. It took over the functions of the royal administration and the old assembly. The new Provincial Congress voted funds to raise an army. and demanded that all (white, male) citizens swear allegiance to the new regime. Holdouts were to be labeled "obnoxious persons". Some legislators demanded they be imprisoned. 

Garden faced a terrible dilemma. Before coming to South Carolina, he had served for several years as a naval surgeon. He had taken an oath to the Crown. As a youth in Scotland, he witnessed the terrible costs of joining a rebellion against the British Crown, in 1745-46. 

His father had remained loyal to the Hanoverian king, George II, but some of his relatives joined the Jacobites, led by the overly romanticized "Bonnie Prince Charlie." A crushing Hanoverian victory, at Culloden in 1746, ended the Jacobite threat. Scots families who had supported the Stuart cause often lost their land, their freedom, and sometimes their lives. They were labeled traitors. 

Similarly, Garden had friends on both sides of the American divide. Like many people in the colonies, perhaps as many as a third, he wanted to remain neutral. Events made that choice increasingly difficult to sustain. Some of the more extreme Patriots harassed him, trying to get him to join them. More moderate Whig friends, including Henry Laurens, tried to protect him but urged him to take the various oaths of allegiance to the new regime. 

Garden eventually found ways to satisfy the oaths without, in his view, compromising his neutrality. With help from Laurens and other Whig friends, he was able to remain free and continue his medical practice for five turbulent years. His doctoring skills protected him as well. People on both sides respected his ability and employed him to treat their diseases and wounds.

The British capture of  Charleston in May 1780 changed everything. Garden refused to take the Oath of Loyalty to the British Crown, which many so-called Patriots rushed to do. He seems to have reasoned that he had already taken such an oath when he joined the Royal Navy, and had done nothing to violate it. He also refused to take a position in the new British administration. It seems he still desired to remain neutral, but felt safer under British rule.

A few months later, Garden made what in retrospect seems a major mistake. In August 1780, General Lord Cornwallis won a crushing victory over a Patriot Army at Camden. It seemed that the American rebellion was doomed, at least in the Lower South. Garden, perhaps thinking that British rule was secure, agreed to sign a memorial of congratulations to Cornwallis. Whether he did so voluntarily or under pressure is not clear.

The congratulations proved premature. Fevers, partisan attacks, and the arrival of another Patriot army under General Nathanael Greene undermined the British control of the Carolinas within a few months. In the Spring of 1781, Cornwallis decided to march his army north to Virginia. He wrote his superiors that he could not subject his men to another deadly summer in feverish South Carolina. His decision led directly to Yorktown and surrender. 

The force Cornwallis left behind was unable to maintain control of the Carolina backcountry. By the early autumn of 1781, partisan forces and Greene's army had occupied most of the state outside of Charleston. The British held on in that enclave for another year. In December 1782, they withdrew, knowing peace would soon be declared. When the British fleet left Charleston, Garden and most of his family were aboard one of the ships. The decision to leave was not his choice. [Image: The Evacuation of Charleston by the British, by Howard Pyle, 1898, Delaware Art Museum]

At the beginning of that year, the South Carolina State Assembly met at Jacksonville, about 30 miles south of Charleston. It was the first legislative session since the British occupation. A major item on the agenda was how to punish Loyalists. Some were merely amerced (fined) but the assembly banished many of them from the state and confiscated their property. 

Garden was among those banished. His sin was to have signed the memorial congratulating Lord Cornwallis. A few delegates, including John Laurens, tried to commute his punishment to an amercement, or fine, but in vain. Vengeance was the order of the day. Henry Laurens was far away in England and unable to help his friend. 

The War for Independence proved disastrous for Garden, not only financially. It also divided his family. During the British occupation of Charleston his daughter Harriette fell in love with and married a British officer, Major George Benson. Benson was particularly disliked by the Patriots as he was in charge of the arrest of a group of active revolutionaries, who included Christopher Gadsden, Arthur Middleton, and Garden's medical friend and colleague, David Ramsay. 

In the summer of 1781, Garden's son Alex returned from education in Britain -- in defiance of his father's wishes. Soon after his arrival, he ran off and joined the Continental Army of General Greene. He became an aide de camp to Greene and rose to the rank of Major. 

Because he had joined the Patriot side, Alex was allowed to keep the Garden plantation at Otranto, despite the suspicions of some Patriots that he had joined the Patriot side to save the family estate. That possibility cannot be ignored. During the Jacobite rebellions in Scotland, many Scottish families had done exactly that. 

Dr. Garden always denied any collusion with Alex. He denounced his son's decision to join Greene's army and never reconciled with him. The South Carolina government later restored some of Dr. Garden's property and rescinded his banishment, but he never returned to Charleston or benefited from the change. One of the reasons seems to have been his fear of another long ocean voyage.

After the war, Alex married Mary Anna Gibbes, daughter of one of his father's old friends. He wrote two books about the Revolution. Alex was not good at managing his affairs, however, and fell into debt. His wife and children predeceased him (as so often happened in the deadly lowcountry). Otranto passed to an adopted nephew, Alester Gibbes, after Alex's death in 1829. [Image: Major Alexander Garden, artist unknown]

In 1783, Dr. Garden, his wife Elizabeth, and younger daughter Juliette settled in London, at a house on Cecil Street, off the Strand. Soon after he settled in, he activated his membership in the Royal Society, and a few years later was elected its vice-president. 

He spent years trying to obtain compensation from the British government for his losses in the war. He finally received some, but it was a fraction of his losses. Shortly after the government awarded it, he died, probably of a lung disorder, in 1791. 

Garden's wife Elizabeth (Toby) survived until 1805. His eldest daughter Harriette prospered. Her husband, George Benson, became a general. She died a wealthy widow in 1847. His younger daughter, Juliette, did not fare as well. She married a British soldier as well, Captain Alexander Fotheringham. They had five children. All five died within one week in an epidemic. She and her husband died within days of one another in 1820.

Further reading:

 

Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley, Alexander Garden of Charles Town (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969)

Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2011, 2014. 

James Edward Smith, A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and Other Naturalists (2 vols., London, 1821)

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

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.

Alexander Garden (Major Garden), Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War in America (Charleston, 1822) and Anecdotes of the American Revolution (Charleston, 1828)

Alfred W. Blumrosen and Ruth G. Blumrosen, Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies & Sparked the American Revolution (Naperville, Illinois: Source Books, 2005)

Alexander Garden - History of Early American Landscape Design (nga.gov)

Dr. David Ramsay: Patriot, Revolutionary Historian, and Gun Victim

Dr. David Ramsay of Charleston was an active participant in and major early historian of the American Revolution. He also has the distinction of being the first of many American politicians to be assassinated. 

Ramsay was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1749, the son of Scottish or Scotch-Irish emigrants. He graduated from The College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1765. In 1773, he became one of the first recipients of the MD degree from the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania) in 1773. [Image: A young David Ramsay, by Charles Wilson Peale]

Ramsay moved to Charleston, South Carolina the following year, upon the recommendation of his mentor, Dr. Benjamin Rush. The city and its environs was then one of the unhealthiest and wealthiest regions of British North America, and a magnet for medical men. After a slow start, Ramsay built a lucrative medical practice. 

He soon became involved in politics. When he arrived in Charleston, conflicts between the thirteen colonies and the British government were escalating towards war. Ramsay joined with the Whigs, or Patriots, as they later called themselves. He served in the state legislature during the War for Independence.

During the British siege of Charleston in the spring of 1780, he served as an army surgeon. After the British captured the city, they sent Ramsay and other Patriot leaders to St. Augustine, Florida. He remained there nearly a year, until he was released in a prisoner exchange. 

He went to Philadelphia, where he became a member of the Continental Congress. He served in that body until 1786, after which he returned to South Carolina. During the 1790s he served several times in the state senate. His hope of becoming a United States senator was dashed when his opponent accused him of being insufficiently supportive of slavery. 

Ramsay had opposed slavery when he first came to South Carolina, but he gradually modified his views on the issue. Without specifically endorsing slavery, he helped to justify it. 

In 1780, he wrote his mentor Rush that he had concluded that God had designed blacks for labor in hot, humid, and sickly South Carolina: "Providence intended this for a Negro settlement. Their constitution is undoubtedly better suited to the climate, and all planters tell us that their lands cannot be cultivated by white men...." 

In later years Ramsay blamed the enslaved themselves for their poor health rather than their living and working conditions. They carelessly exposed themselves to dangerous miasmas, knowing that an illness would gain them some time off from work and the attentions of a medical man. Why they would look forward to time off at the price of being ill, bled, and purged, he did not say. 

Ramsay's change of views on slavery was no doubt influenced by his social, familial, and political environment. As a physician active in revolutionary politics, he became acquainted with many local planters. 

In 1787 he married Martha Laurens, daughter of slave trader, planter, and politician Henry Laurens. She was Ramsay's third wife. The first two, Sabina Ellis (1775) and Frances Witherspoon (1783), had died within a year of their weddings. It may seem that Ramsay was a bit careless with his wives, but there is no clear evidence of that. 

His marriage to Martha Laurens lasted until her death in 1811 and produced at least eleven children. Through his marriage to Martha he became related to some of the wealthiest and most powerful families in South Carolina, families with names like Rutledge, Pinckney, Middleton, and Izard. Each of them, like his father in law, owed their wealth to the labor of hundreds enslaved Africans. [Image: Henry Laurens, c.1782, painted when he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, by Lemuel Francis Abbott]

After the Declaration of Independence Laurens penned a letter to his son John then in London, later published, in which he declared his dislike of slavery and his intention to work for its abolition. But he did no such thing, and only freed one of his slaves in his will. John Laurens, however, took his fathers' words seriously and remained committed to abolition until his death in one of the last skirmishes of the War for Independence in 1782. 

After the Revolution, Ramsay wrote several medical works. They remain useful to the historian of medicine and disease, but his medical ideas were highly derivative. He became an advocate of Benjamin Rush's heroic medicine, which recommended drastic bleeding and purging for most ailments. This medical regime sent many an unfortunate to an early grave. 

On the positive side, Ramsay was an early advocate of Jenner's vaccination for smallpox, and began vaccinating early as 1802. He predicted that a general use of the technique could eliminate the dreaded scourge from the earth. He was right, although the goal was not achieved until the late 1970s. 

It is for his historical works, not his political or medical contributions, that Ramsay is best known today. He wrote some of the earliest histories of the American Revolution. In 1785 he published a detailed History of the Revolution of South Carolina. It describes many events he was witness to or a participant in.  

He followed with History of the American Revolution (1789) and History of South Carolina (1809). A History of the United States appeared in 1816-1817, shortly after his unexpected and unusual death. In these works he took an increasingly nationalist position. [Image: David Ramsay in mid-life, by Rembrandt Peale]

In 1815, Charleston's legal authorities asked Ramsay to examine William Linnen, a tailor who had tried to murder his lawyer. Ramsay reported that Linnen was deranged and dangerous, but not guilty of a crime due to his mental condition. In making this claim, Ramsay was aligning himself with medical and legal ideas that were as yet not widely accepted. 

When Linnen appeared to have regained his sanity, the authorities released him. Linnen threatened Ramsay for calling him a madman, but Ramsay did not take the threat seriously. On May 6, 1815,  Linnen approached Ramsay on Broad Street, pulled out a pistol and shot him twice.

Onlookers carried Ramsay to his home, where he died two days later, insisting to the last that Linnen was "a lunatic free from guilt." Ramsay was buried in the Charleston's Circular Congregational Church. 

Ramsay was the first American politician to be assassinated, but many more would face the same fate, as America pursued its love affair with the gun. 

Further Reading:

Arthur Shaffer, To Be an American: David Ramsay and the Making of the America Consciousness, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991. 

Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2011, 2014. 

   

William Henry Drayton: Planter, Patriot, Populist

William Henry Drayton (1742-1779) of South Carolina was one of the more controversial figures of the American Revolutionary era. He was born to wealth and privilege at Drayton Hall, a large Neo-Palladian mansion his father John had built from the profits of enslaved labor. 

Drayton Hall was the "Big House" of the family's rice plantation on the Ashley River, about 15 miles upstream from Charleston, South Carolina. [Image: Drayton Hall]

When he was 10, Drayton's parents sent him to England to be educated. Like many Carolina planters' sons, he attended Westminster School in London. He furthered his studies at Balliol College, Oxford. 

After returning home at his father's request in 1764, he was admitted to the South Carolina Bar. He married Dorothy Golightly, a wealthy heiress, the same year. [Images: William Henry Drayton X2]

When colonial opposition to British taxation strengthened in the 1760s, Drayton initially defended the British government. Elected to the colonial assembly, he supported Parliament's right to pass the Stamp Act in 1765. His stance was unpopular, He was defeated at the next election. Undeterred, in 1769 he wrote an inflammatory article opposing the Non-Importation Agreement, which called for a colonial boycott of British goods. 

Supporters of the Agreement ostracized Drayton socially and economically. He found it difficult to sell his crops. Seeking to improve his financial situation, he went to England in 1770, hoping to secure royal patronage. 

He was appointed to the South Carolina Council but the British government failed to give him what he really wanted: a lucrative royal job in South Carolina. The government gave the jobs he sought to native Britons instead.

Adding insult to injury, Colonel John Stuart, British Superintendent for Indian Affairs, prevented Drayton from concluding a fraudulent land deal with the Catawba Nation. Stuart's job was to protect the Native Americans from rapacious landgrabs and prevent war on the Southern frontier. If Drayton's scheme had been allowed, he would have effectively stolen about 150,000 acres from the Catawba. 

Frustrated by these obstacles to his ambitions, Drayton rearranged his political loyalties. The British government he had praised became his enemy. He joined the Whigs, as the future "Patriots" called themselves. 

In 1774, Drayton published A Letter from Freeman, championing American rights against "tyrannical" royal rule. The acting governor, his uncle William Bull, responded by suspending him from the Royal Council in March 1775. His popularity soared. He quickly emerged as a leader of the radical Whigs.

When the Whigs established a provisional government the same spring, Drayton was elected as a delegate to the Provincial Congress. The delegates  appointed him to the Committee of Safety and other key committees. He led extralegal raids on the Post Office, the powder magazines, and the armouries. 

Exploiting his new popularity, he encouraged followers to hound neutrals and supporters of royal government. Many of them left the colony as a result. Among them was John Stuart, whom Drayton and others accused falsely of orchestrating Indian attacks on the colony. Drayton thus avenged the loss of his lucrative land deal with the Catawba.

Drayton and his supporters also fanned fears of British-inspired slave revolts. The hysteria that followed led to the judicial murder of Thomas Jeremiah, a prosperous free black, in August. 

Using a combination of threats and deception, Drayton negotiated a truce with powerful backcountry Loyalists in September, effectively neutralizing them at a critical moment. 

He was now more popular than ever. In November, he was elected President of the Provincial Congress. He succeeded fellow planter Henry Laurens. Laurens disliked and distrusted Drayton, believing him to be a dangerous demagogue. Laurens resigned his presidency in the hope that Drayton would be moderated or curbed in that position. 

Instead, an emboldened Drayton became more extreme. He embarked on a quest to create a South Carolina navy. Having outfitted some ships, he personally commanded attacks on British naval vessels in Charleston harbor.

In February 1776, he moved that the Provincial Congress declare independence from Great Britain. Most delegates were not yet ready for that and voted against the motion. They did approve a provisional constitution in March. Drayton was elected to the new Assembly, appointed to the state council, and received the highest judicial post: Chief Justice. 

He proved neither just nor merciful. In the summer of 1776, Cherokee bands attacked backcountry settlers illegally encroaching on their traditional hunting lands. They were joined by some white Loyalists, or Tories, as the Whigs called them. 

The Cherokee uprising failed. It cost them dearly. American forces killed hundreds of them, burned more than 50 of their towns, and destroyed their crops. Many who were captured were sold into slavery in the West Indies. 

Drayton urged the most severe reprisals. Every captured Cherokee, he wrote, "should become the property of the taker." The Cherokee nation should be "extirpated" (eradicated) and their lands "become the property of the American public."

The Cherokee managed to survive as a nation, but lost a huge part of their territory in the dictated peace settlement of 1777. In the 1830s, they were forcibly expelled from the rest and removed to Oklahoma in the infamous "Trail of Tears."

It instructive to note what Chief Justice Drayton wrote about the whites who joined the Cherokee. A state court convicted them of treason and sentenced them to hang. Drayton commented that he would have hanged them without trial to save the state money. His successor as President of South Carolina, John Rutledge, pardoned them. 

In a charge to a grand jury around that time, Drayton declared that God had chosen the "American Empire" to replace Great Britain as his tool to advance the cause of liberty. The Lord had once chosen Britain, but the British had violated His intentions by "trying to enslave the American people." Apparently, God -- or Drayton -- had no concept of irony. 

In 1778 Drayton was elected President of South Carolina. He helped write a state constitution. In the same year he was elected to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. He served on scores of committees, helped forge the first constitution of the United States, the Articles of Confederation, and fervently supported the army. 

He clashed repeatedly and bitterly with other colleagues, including Henry Laurens, then serving as President of the Continental Congress. Drayton opposed attempts to reach a compromise with the British government and fought to protect "southern interests" -- a euphemism for slavery.

Drayton fell ill and died of a fever in Philadelphia in September 1779. His death is usually ascribed to typhus, but it is more likely to have been yellow fever or malaria. 

In modern political terms, Drayton was a populist like Donald Trump, that is, someone who aims to appeal to ordinary people who feel that the elites have ignored their concerns. But he was also a member of that elite, and contemptuous of the "rabble." The popularity of his ideas and methods was an unfortunate omen for the new nation. 

Further Reading: 

John Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution 2 vols., Charleston, 1821. Based on documents 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.

Keith Krawczynski, William Henry Drayton: South Carolina Revolutionary Patriot. LSU Press, 2001.

William Dabney and Marion Dargan, William Henry Drayton and the American Revolution. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1962.

Boston King: Black Loyalist, Minister, African Colonial Leader

When the British attacked Charleston (Charlestown), South Carolina in the spring of 1780, thousands of enslaved Africans fled to the British lines. General Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander, offered them freedom as an incentive to leave their rebel masters. Among those who took up the offer was a young man named Boston King. (Image: Charleston, c. 1770)

King was born enslaved on a plantation near Charleston owned by Richard Waring, around 1760. His father, who was literate, had been born in Africa but "stolen away into slavery when he was young." King relates that Waring had been on good terms with his father and his mother, a skilled herbalist, and treated them well. Boston's experience was less fortunate.   

As a boy he trained as a house servant. When he was sixteen, Waring apprenticed him to a carpenter in a nearby settlement. His new master often beat him "without mercy." When the opportunity came, King joined the exodus of the enslaved fleeing to the British lines at Charleston. "I began to feel the happiness, of liberty, of which I knew nothing before " he later wrote. The British welcomed him, but did not always treat him well. (Image: Siege of Charleston, 1780, a somewhat fanciful depiction from 1862)

At the time, smallpox had broken out in and was spreading across South Carolina. The black runaways were highly vulnerable to this deadly, agonizing disease. Few of them had survived smallpox or had been inoculated, the two means of achieving immunity. It spread among them with terrifying rapidity. King became infected.

British authorities removed the infected blacks about a mile away from their camp to prevent their soldiers from being infected. There, most of them lay in the open without adequate food or care. 

King wrote later that he owed his survival to the kindness of a British soldier who had nursed and fed him. He was later able to do the same for his benefactor, when he was wounded in battle. Soon after, he narrowly avoided being sold into slavery by a white Loyalist officer. Captain Lewes was stealing horses from the British army and was about to switch to the rebel side. King escaped from him and alerted his British superior to Lewes' plan.

King went on to serve the British army in Carolina by carrying dispatches through enemy lines. One message he carried while stationed at Nelson's Ferry (Near Eutawville) helped save 250 soldiers from being captured by the Americans. 

He later joined the crew of a British man of war and took part in the capture of a rebel ship in Chesapeake Bay. His ship went to New York City with its prize. King decided to stay and worked at various jobs, including as a crewman on a pilot boat. The boat was captured by an American ship and King was nearly forced back into slavery.  But he escaped once again and returned to New York. 

By that time, the war was coming to a close. Thousands of  black Loyalists had converged on New York City, the last British stronghold in the former thirteen colonies. In New York, King married Violet, an enslaved woman from North Carolina who had also joined the British. But once again the threat of re-enslavement threatened him. 

Article 7 of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War in 1783 stipulated (at the insistence of Henry Laurens of South Carolina) that the British return all American property to its owners, including runaway slaves. The news filled King and his acquaintances with "inexpressible anguish and terror." 

Fortunately, the British Commander in New York, Sir Guy Carleton refused to implement Article 7. He argued that the black Loyalists were no longer property but free persons. Returning them to slavery would violate Clinton's promise. Prior to the British evacuation of New York, Carleton sent them to the British territory of Nova Scotia, where many white Loyalists also took refuge. In all, the British issued certificates of freedom to more than 5000 black Loyalists. 

Boston and Violet embarked for Nova Scotia in July 1783. There they helped to establish a black Loyalist settlement called Birchtown. (King calls it Burch Town in his memoir). The settlement was named for General Samuel Birch, the British commandant in New York City who had issued certificates of freedom and overseen the evacuation of the black Loyalists. In Birchtown, King worked as a carpenter and various other jobs to support himself. (Image: Halifax, Nova Scotia, 18th century)

Methodist missionaries arrived in the area the following year. The Kings were among the first to be converted. Boston became a circuit riding preacher. Life was initially extremely hard, as in all new pioneering settlements The difficulties were increased by poor soil and a harsh climate. Tensions with white neighbors were often high as both communities competed for scarce resources and jobs. 

After a few years conditions began to improve, but in 1792 the Kings accepted an offer from the new Sierra Leone Company to emigrate to a new British colony in West Africa. They helped to recruit hundreds of other black Loyalists in Nova Scotia to join them.

The Company's backers were antislavery leaders in Britain, including Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce, and brothers Thomas and John Clarkson. They established the colony as a refuge for freed slaves, most of them Loyalists living in Canada and Britain. They called it the Province of Freedom. It was later renamed for the nearby Sierra Leone Mountains.  

John Clarkson led about 1100 Nova Scotia settlers, including the Kings, to the new colony. Together, they established the settlement of Freetown, now Sierra Leone's capital. Tragically, Violet died soon after their arrival, probably of yellow fever or malaria. Many other new arrivals, both white and black, also died. Few had immunities to the local fevers. [Images of Freetown, mid-19th century]

The Sierra Leone Company employed King to preach to the indigenous people. He was the first Methodist preacher to do so. That task proved immensely difficult, because he did not understand their language. He proposed to open a school. In 1794, the Company sent King to London to study at a Methodist institution, Kingswood School, near Bristol. 

At Kingswood, King trained as a missionary and teacher, returning to Sierra Leone in 1796. While at Kingswood, he wrote his autobiography, which the Methodist Magazine published in 1798. It is one of few accounts written by a black Loyalist or any Loyalist for that matter.

Meanwhile, King had remarried. He and his second wife Peggy relocated about 100 miles inland to missionize among the Sherbo people. The couple died there in 1802, probably of a fever.

Further Reading: 

Boston King, "Memoirs of the Life of Boston King, A Black Preacher," Methodist Magazine, 21, 1798. 

The Life of Boston King, Black Loyalist, Minister, and Master Carpenter, ed. by Ruth Holmes Whitehead and Carmelita A.M. Robertson, Nimbus Publishing Limited & The Nova Scotia Museum, 2003. 

Peter McCandless, Remarkable Charlestonians in the American Revolution 

The Lynching of Thomas Jeremiah

In the spring of 1775, as South Carolina moved towards rebellion against British rule, frantic rumors swirled through the colony and its capital, Charleston. 

(Image: View of Charlestown in 1768, by Pierre Charles Canot, LOC)

Hysterical Carolinians accused the British government of plotting a rebellion of enslaved Africans against their masters. The hypocrisy of slaveholders demanding freedom from "royal tyranny" was palpable, but is often overlooked even today. 

The enslaved constituted the majority of South Carolina's population, the only American colony where this was the case. Rumors of a slave rebellion always aroused panic. In June Charleston authorities arrested several slaves and a free black, Thomas Jeremiah. At the time, Jeremiah was one of only about five hundred free blacks in the colony. He was also one of the most prominent. Many people called him "Jerry." 

Jeremiah had a successful fishing business and also earned money as a harbor pilot, guiding ships through the treacherous sandbars at its entrance. His net worth of over £1000, more than $200,000 in today's money, meant he was a wealthy man. 

On the basis of the testimony of two slaves he had allegedly tried to recruit, the authorities charged Jeremiah with plotting a slave uprising to benefit the British. He was tried under the Negro Act of 1740, which the colonial assembly had passed after a slave revolt in 1739, the Stono Rebellion.

Under the Negro Act the accused were tried in special slave courts, which denied the accused the judicial rights of the regular courts. There was no jury, only a tribunal of five white men that functioned as prosecution, judge, and jury. In contrast to traditional English courts, the defendant was considered guilty until proven innocent. Lacking defence counsel, the accused was unlikely to prevail. 

The evidence against Jeremiah was exceedingly flimsy. The testimony of the two slaves was highly suspect, probably extracted under threat. One of them, Jemmy, was Jeremiah's brother in law. Jemmy later retracted his testimony before Anglican minister Robert Smith, future Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina.   

By then the court had found Jeremiah guilty and sentenced him to death by hanging and burning. As an act of "humanity" the court allowed that he could be hanged until death before being burnt.

The royal governor, Lord William Campbell, judged the proceedings a farce. He tried to  pardon Jeremiah, but found that he no longer had any authority in the colony. Campbell's life was threatened because he had tried to help Jeremiah. He fled South Carolina a few weeks later, effectively ending British rule. By then, the court's sentence had been carried out. 

(Image: Lord William Campbell, by Thomas Gainsborough)

On August 18, 1775,  Jeremiah was brought to the place of execution, a green across from the Sugar House, the house of correction for "unruly slaves." In front of a large crowd of whites and blacks, he was hanged and his dead body was burned to ashes. 

Jeremiah seems an unlikely person to have led a slave rebellion. He may have owned several slaves himself. His rise to wealth and prominence may have been his undoing. It was a living reproach to the white elite's claims that Africans were fit for nothing but slave labor. He had once been put in the stocks for allegedly insulting a white ship captain. 

His work as a ship pilot also told against him. Fearful whites pointed out that no one knew the harbor as well as he, and worried that he would guide British navy vessels into it. Jeremiah had served the city as a volunteer fireman, but even that hurt his cause. People said he knew so much about putting out fires that he was likely setting them. Among his accusers was a member of the tribunal that tried Jeremiah, the city's fire master, Daniel Cannon.  

One of the people Governor Campbell had appealed to on Jeremiah's behalf was Henry Laurens, then serving as President of the Provincial Congress. Laurens was also one of the richest men in South Carolina. He had made a vast fortune in the slave trade, and used the profits to several plantations and hundreds of slaves. 

(Image: Henry Laurens, painted by John Singleton Copley while Laurens was imprisoned in the Tower of London)

Laurens refused Campbell's appeal, claiming he was helpless to stop Jeremiah's execution. That may have been true at that point, but Laurens' private correspondence shows that he disliked Jeremiah. Laurens wrote that Jerry "is a forward fellow, puffed up by prosperity, ruined by luxury and debauchery and grown to an amazing pitch of vanity and ambition." In more colloquial terms, he was "uppity" and needed to be taught a lesson. 

Laurens denied that as a free man, Jeremiah should be accorded the rights of one and tried by a jury. English law was designed for whites. As an African, Laurens argued, Jerry had no claim to its benefits. The only option was to try him as a slave.

Reflecting on Jeremiah's fate, Campbell described the event as a "judicial murder" and his executioners as "barbarians." After nearly 250 years of similar events, it is difficult to disagree. Thomas Jeremiah may have been given a "trial" but the whole proceeding was in effect, a lynching.

Further Reading: 

J. William Harris, The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah: A Free Black Man's Encounter with Liberty (Yale University Press, 2009)

William R. Ryan, The World of Thomas Jeremiah: Charles Town on the Eve of the American Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2010) 

Peter McCandless, Remarkable Charlestonians in the American Revolution (Arcadia: The History Press, 2025)

"I'm Alive!" Taphophobia: the Fear of Premature Burial

Taphophobia, or the fear of being buried alive, has a long history. Tales of people being buried prematurely have been related for centuries, and at least some are well documented. The fear of such a fate seems to have increased, in Europe and America at least, from the late 18th century. 

Louisa Wells Aikman, in a narrative she wrote in 1779, mentions the case of George Woodrop of Charleston, South Carolina, a young man in his early twenties who had died in 1770. The burial had been unusually quick. Woodrop was pronounced dead in the evening and was buried the next morning at 11:00. His uncle, Andrew Robertson, insisted on dispensing with the traditional practice of "laying out" the body in the house for a time before interment. 

Louisa's father Robert Wells had been a mourner at the funeral. He had "expressed great uneasiness, and said that the body did not appear like a dead corpse, there seemed to be a bloom on the countenance!" Wells asked the reason for the hurry in burying Woodrop. Mr. Robertson replied, "Mrs. Robertson could not bear to have the deceased in the house as she had so many young children."

About two years later, rumors spread around Charleston that Woodrop had been buried alive. During her voyage to London in 1778, the church sexton John Mills, told Louisa and other passengers that the rumors were true. Mills said that he had kept silent on the matter until that time because he had promised the Robertsons that he would not speak to anyone about the subject. But the Robertsons were now dead and he felt released form that promise. 

One night Mills was preparing a grave to bury someone the next morning, assisted by "two black boys." While they were digging, the shovel hit and broke off part of a coffin. Mills went down into the grave and discovered "the backbone of a human skeleton." 

The posture of the body seemed unusual. Aided by the boys, Mills "opened the grave, uncovered the lid of the coffin, and found the deceased lying on its side, with the cheekbone in the palm of the hand!" The coffin cover bore the words "George Woodrop died 1770." We may not be convinced by this evidence, but Louisa Aikman certainly was, and perhaps others as well.

One of them may have been another Charleston resident, Henry Laurens. He stipulated in his will that his head should be severed and his body burned after death. Laurens believed that his infant daughter Martha had narrowly escaped being buried alive. It is possible that he was aware of the Woodrop case as well because he knew the Wells family. In 1792 Laurens' body was burned on a pyre at his plantation, Mepkin. It was the first documented case of cremation in the United States. 

In an appendix to her narrative, Louisa Aiken wrote that the Woodrop case had affected her mind so much that she "never forsook the apparently dead or dying until interment." During the twenty years she lived in Jamaica (1782-1801) she reckoned that her watchfulness had prevented eighteen people from being "sent to an untimely grave." 

She mentioned in particular the case of fourteen year old James Haughton, from 1785. He seems to have been suffering from yellow fever -- Louisa mentions "a constant bleeding at the nose." For several hours "Animation was suspended." Doctors declared him dead.  His mother agreed and with a lack of emotion went off to dress for his funeral. 

Louisa persevered in trying to save him. With the help of "slaves" she applied the method recommended by the Humane Society, and he revived. When his "unnatural parent" returned, "curled and powdered" and dressed in a black silk dress, her son was sitting up "eating sago from my hands." Fifteen years later he was still alive, had married twice and had several children. [Image: Louisa Wells Aikman]

Concerns about premature burial seem to have increased during the Victorian Age. The suffragette and anti-vivisectionist Frances Power Cobbe is one of many people who feared being buried alive. It had nearly happened to her great grandmother, according to family tradition. Her ancestor was believed dead and being prepared for burial when she woke up. She went on to have twenty-two children. (Maybe it would have been better to be buried alive).

Cobbe was particularly worried about the effects of a stroke or seizure which might render her unconscious for enough time for people to think she was dead and bury her. She left behind explicit instructions about the measures she wanted performed to prevent such an outcome. In a note next to her bed she ordered a doctor to sever the arteries and windpipe on her neck, virtually cutting off her head, "to render any revival in the grave absolutely impossible." 

Interestingly, she also ordered that her burial be as natural and inexpensive as possible. She stipulated that her coffin be made of wicker that would decompose quickly, that the coffin would not be carried by six men but taken in her carriage by her coachman, who would deposit it in the grave. She also forbade attendees to wear mourning attire.

The increase in fear of premature burial during the Victorian era was due in part to the massive growth of the urban population. The crowded and unsanitary conditions rapid urbanization created fostered epidemics of cholera, typhoid and other diseases. 

The frequent epidemics helped to change the conditions but also customary burial practices. The tradition in many countries was to lay the body out for several days before burial, at which point it would normally exhibit clear visual and olfactory signs of mortality. 

During deadly epidemics, burials often took place as quickly as possible in hopes of preventing the spread of disease. Rapid burials increased fears that some people were being entombed before death. 

Art and literature also contributed to the growing sense of alarm. During a cholera epidemic in 1854, Belgian artist Antoine Wiertz painted "The Premature Burial." The painting depicts a cholera victim awakening after being placed in a coffin. 

Writers also addressed the subject, notably Edgar Allen Poe in his story of the same name. In the 19th century estimates of the number of people buried prematurely varied from occasional cases to a preposterous one-third of those buried.  

Whatever the reality regarding premature burials, fear of it was common enough to inspire Victorian entrepreneurs to devise means of prevention. They designed "safety" coffins with various escape mechanisms or means by which prematurely buried persons could signal that they were alive.

An early safety coffin, patented in the USA in 1843, contained springs and levers that would open the lid with slightest movement inside, or so the inventor claimed.

Many safety coffins featured a bell on the lid from which a rope was attached. The rope was inserted into a hole in the lid and placed in the hands of the coffin's occupant. If they revived they could pull the rope to announce the fact. The one below, patented in the 1860s, added an escape hatch and a ladder as well. Michael Crichton, in his novel The Great Train Robbery, includes a scene in which one of the robbers is placed in such a coffin to fool railway guards.

Other safety coffins were fitted with glass panes, breathing pipes, and/or flags. J. G. Krichbaum's 1882 model included a periscope-like pipe that supplied air and could be rotated or pushed by the interred person, alerting anyone nearby that they were alive.

All such contraptions, of course, relied on another person being near enough to hear or see the signal. Someone needed to keep a watch on the grave for a few days, just in case. Families sometimes hired people for this task. The watchers could also help prevent the body being carried off by "resurrection men" or body snatchers, for dissection in anatomy schools. 

The inventor of the vault below, from about 1890, found a way to solve that problem, and declared that it rendered premature burial "impossible." Each of the chambers was fitted with an escape hatch, a handwheel on the door. The vault was supplied with air and lined with felt to prevent injury. The body was removed from the coffin before being placed in the chamber.

Alas, despite the claims of inventors, there is no documented evidence that any of these safety features saved anyone from premature burial.

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