South Carolina's Last Royal Governor: Lord William Campbell

The last royal governor of South Carolina, Lord William Campbell, arrived in Charleston (Charlestown) in June 1775. It was an inauspicious time. The previous royal governor, Charles Montagu, had been greeted with the ringing of church bells, large cheering crowds, saluting cannonades, and a sumptuous dinner at Dillon’s Tavern. Now there were no crowds and no cheers. No welcoming dinner, either. 

The waterfront was eerily quiet as his ship, HMS Scorpion, glided up to the wharf near The Exchange. A detachment of blue-coated soldiers stood ready to escort Lord William, whether as dignitary or prisoner was not clear. None of the leading gentlemen of the town had come out to welcome him.

Lord William had been to Charleston before, during the French and Indian War. In 1762 the Royal Navy assigned him to serve there as captain of a Royal Navy frigate, HMS Nightingale. 

On that occasion the citizens had treated him as a hero. He fell in love with and married the daughter of a wealthy local family, Sarah Izard. Their wedding in 1763 was a great event. After all, he was a son of the Duke of Argyll, the most powerful man in Scotland. [Image:  Sarah Izard Campbell, by Charles Fraser, said to be a copy of painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds] 

After the wedding, the couple returned to Britain. Lord William served in Parliament, then as royal governor of Nova Scotia. In that position he had earned a reputation for fair and honest governance. 

A couple of months before he arrived, in April 1775, the simmering conflict between the colonies and the mother country had boiled over into open rebellion in Massachusetts. Other colonies, including South Carolina, had established provisional governments, and begun to prepare for war.

Lord William had another disadvantage as royal governor. He was a Scot. Soon after George III had come to the British throne in 1760, his political opponents concocted a story that liberty hating Scots were conspiring to gain control of the government, and intent on reducing English liberty. English Whigs accused the king’s former tutor, Lord Bute, of being the chief plotter. 

Initially a favorite of the young king, Bute had become Prime Minister in 1762. In order to pay the enormous expenses of the recent war with France, he proposed to levy new taxes in Britain and its colonies. The attacks on Bute caught on in America, and lasted for years after Bute lost all influence over government policy. 

In 1772, another Scot, Lord Mansfield, gave the conspiracy theory more life. As Chief Justice of the King’s Bench Court in London, he ruled that slavery had no basis in English law. The Somerset ruling sent shock waves through the American colonies.

The shock was especially severe true in the southern colonies, heavily dependent as they were on enslaved African labor for their wealth. Southern planters feared that Parliament could extend the Mansfield ruling to the empire. The solution they embraced was to deny Parliament’s power to legislate for the colonies, which led to rebellion.

The Scottish conspiracy theory was bogus, but the Crown had appointed many Scots to colonial offices after the accession of George III, posts that some colonial leaders, like William Henry Drayton, had sought. 

Another colonial leader, Christopher Gadsden, threatened to use "imported Scotchmen" as a foundation for the wharf he was building in Charleston. Gadsden resented having to compete with newly arrived Scottish merchants.  

Soon after landing in Charleston, Lord William learned that he was virtually powerless. Most local leaders refused to cooperate with him or treat him as anything but suspicious. Some of the more extreme  Carolina “Whigs” (later “Patriots”) had even considered preventing him from landing in the first place.

Charleston was awash with rumors of Indian attacks and slave rebellions allegedly fomented by the British government. Colonel John Stuart, the British Superintendent for Indian Affairs in the Southern Region, had already been forced to flee to Florida, pursued by a liberty mob and false charges that he was organizing Native American risings in the backcountry. 

Shortly after Lord William arrived, local authorities arrested several blacks on suspicion of plotting a slave rebellion. They charged one of them, Thomas Jeremiah, and tried him in a slave court, although he was a free man. The court found him guilty on flimsy evidence and sentenced him to be hanged and burned.

Lord William intervened, calling the trial a farce. He tried to have Jeremiah pardoned but discovered his complete lack of authority. Worse, “Liberty Boy” rioters accused him of being involved in the plot. They threatened him and attacked other royal officials, some of whom left the colony.

Convinced of the danger, he fled his residence at 34 Meeting Street in the dead of a September night. He took refuge on HMS Tamar, a British naval sloop stationed in the harbor. His wife Sarah joined him there later after being harassed herself. [Image: 34 Meeting Street, Charleston, where Lord William Campbell lived during his brief governorship]

 

 

Lord William remained close to the city for a couple of months, commanding a flotilla of three small naval vessels. In November they fought an inconclusive engagement with a rebel ship commanded by William Henry Drayton near Hog Island.

Meanwhile, Lord William landed some of his men on Sullivan’s Island at the entrance to the harbor. Enslaved black runaways soon joined them and together, they conducted raids on plantations in Christ Church Parish (now Mt. Pleasant) to secure food and supplies.

Just before Christmas 1775, Patriot leaders decided to end this threat before the island became the center of a slave rebellion. They sent a force of two hundred Whig Rangers to clear the enemy off the island. Disguised as "Indians," they attacked shortly before dawn. They achieved complete surprise, killed dozens of runaways and captured others, including a few whites. Some of those in the camp escaped to the British ships or to Morris Island across the harbor.

After the attack, Lord William sailed off to the British stronghold at St. Augustine in Florida. From there he returned to Britain. In reports, he referred to the execution of Jeremiah as a “judicial murder” and called those responsible “barbarians.”

Lord William was not yet through with South Carolina. In June 1776, he was present when a British fleet attacked the rebels hastily built palmetto log fort on Sullivan’s Island. The Battle of Sullivan’s Island ended in disaster for the British, and for Lord William. He was wounded in the leg by a flying splinter of wood. The wound never healed properly, and he died, probably of infection, in 1778. He was 48. [Image: The Battle of Sullivan's Island, by John Blake White]

Lord Williams' wife Sarah remained in England, where she died in 1784, aged 39. Her brother, Ralph Izard, became a prominent Patriot. 

[The portrait of Lord William Campbell in his naval uniform is by Thomas Gainsborough]

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)

Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992)

John Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution 2 vols., (Charleston, 1821) 

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A South Carolina Loyalist's Voyage into Exile, 1778: Louisa Wells Aikman

One of the most interesting narratives produced during the War for American Independence was by a woman, Louisa Susannah (Wells) Aikman. She left a detailed record of her voyage from Charleston, South Carolina to London in 1778. It was a voyage into exile because she was a Loyalist from a family of Loyalists. 

[Image: Louisa Wells Aikman, from a miniature painted c. 1815.]

Louisa was born in Charleston in 1755. Her parents, Robert Wells and Mary Rowand, married in 1750. Three years later they emigrated to Charleston. They moved there in part because members of her mother's family in Scotland had been implicated in the failed Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, on behalf of "Bonnie Prince Charlie." 

Mary's family had been forced to change their name, from Ruthven to Rowand. The Ruthven name, like the tartan, had been outlawed after the rebellion. 

Robert Wells soon established a successful printing and bookselling business in Charleston. He also published Charleston's second newspaper, The South Carolina and American General Gazette. It competed with the older South Carolina Gazette, owned by Peter Timothy. The two became bitter rivals. 

Wells amassed considerable property, including a house at 71 Tradd Street that survives. In 1775, he claimed to have the largest stock of books of any bookseller in the North American colonies. [Image: Wells' house on Tradd and East Bay]

Ironically, Wells' newspaper was the first in South Carolina to publish the Declaration of Independence, in August 1776. Ironically, because Wells was a Loyalist who staunchly defended the British government in his editorials. 

Wells had left Charleston for London the previous year, declaring that he could not live under the rebel government of South Carolina. His younger son, William Charles Wells, soon followed him, determined to pursue a medical degree at Edinburgh. William was then an apprentice to Dr. Alexander Garden, the naturalist for whom the gardenia is named. His wife Mary and daughters Priscilla and Helena went to England after William. 

Robert placed the management of his business in the hands of his eldest son John, assisted by Louisa, his eldest daughter. John had apparently shared his father's political views, but as the inevitability of independence and war approached, he joined the Patriot side. It was John who published the Declaration of Independence, enthusiastically, he claimed. 

John's sincerity may be doubted. He switched sides again in 1780 when the British captured Charleston, and then again when they evacuated it in 1782. He became the black sheep of the family before dying in poverty in the West Indies in 1799. 

Louisa remained committed to the British cause, and like many other Loyalists, was banished from South Carolina in 1778 for refusing to sign an Oath of Allegiance to the state. 

A major fire in Charleston that January had destroyed much of the family property. The Patriot government confiscated the rest. Louisa no longer felt bound by the promise she had made to stay in Charleston and preserve the family property "as long as one stone stood upon another." 

In late June, Louisa, her uncle Robert Rowand, his son, and other Loyalists boarded the ship Providence, bound for Rotterdam. From there, they hoped to get passage to England. Louisa's maid Bella came with her. 

Was Bella enslaved? Louisa does not say. If she was, she would have been legally free once she landed in Britain. Chief Justice Mansfield's decision in the Somerset Case (1772) had declared slavery illegal in England.

As the ship began to leave Charleston harbor, many boats were busy bringing palmetto trees into town to celebrate the second anniversary of the "ever inglorious 28th of June 1776." [Image: Charleston Harbor, c. 1773, Library of Congress]

She was referring to the Battle of Sullivan's Island, the first major defeat the colonists had inflicted on the British. As they passed Fort Moultrie at the entrance to the harbor, she noted that they could see British cannon balls "lodged in the [palmetto] logs as in a sponge." 

The ship was stuck at the harbor entrance for a few days by adverse winds. On July 1, they went bumpily but safely "over the bar," guided by a "Black Pilot" named Bluff. The passengers paid him $100 in addition to the ship master's fee. 

Louisa remarks on Bluff's skill and pointedly mentions that the passengers had chosen a black pilot in preference to a white man. Many of Charleston's most respected harbor pilots at the time were of African origin.  

Once upon the open ocean, they celebrated their deliverance from "the dominion of Congress." As they sailed away on a brisk Southwest wind, the last bit of Charleston to disappear from sight was the black steeple of St. Michael's. Originally white, as it is today, the revolutionary government had ordered it painted black so that it would be harder for British ships to see. (It wasn't, except perhaps in the dark.) 

Many hair-raising adventures lay ahead. On the 4th of July (how ironic!) their ship was captured by a British navy vessel, The Rose. Its captain, James Reid, first thought Providence was French. It had been built in France. He then decided the passengers were American rebels. Despite their protests he ordered Providence taken to New York as a prize, hoping to claim its cargo.

A few days later, nearing the British stronghold of New York, they were pursued by a French fleet under the Comte d'Estaing. They managed to reach safety in the harbor. 

At first it seemed they were in danger of being treated as rebels in New York, but influential Loyalist friends intervened to ensure they weren't. While waiting for a judgment on the disposal of the ship's cargo, Louisa spent several weeks in Flushing with old friends, Colonel Archibald Hamilton and his "Lady," granddaughter of Cadwallader Colden, long-time Lt. Governor of New York.

A Vice Admiralty court ruled in favor of the Providence. Louisa and the other passengers recovered their property and were allowed to leave. In mid-October they embarked on the Mary and Charlotte, bound for England, accompanied by a convoy of naval and mercantile ships. After having survived storms and avoided French and American privateers, they became lost in dense fog for eight days off the south English coast, unsure of their location. 

When the fog cleared they found themselves off the rocky coast of Cornwall. That night another ferocious storm struck. Five of the six ships in their group were lost. 

Louisa's ship survived, and they anchored near Dover on November 27. Contrary winds prevented their landing, but she and other passengers were able to disembark a few miles down the coast at Deal. Observing the stone walls of Deal Castle, she remarked that the British should build forts of palmetto logs!

She described her emotions when finally stepping onto "British soil": "I could have kissed the gravel on the salt beach! It was my home: the country which I had so long and so earnestly wished to see. The Isle of Liberty and Peace." 

It seems a rather ironic statement from a woman born in South Carolina of Scottish parents as she arrived on the South coast of England! Especially as her mother's family had supported the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 against the Hanoverian monarchs. 

From Deal Louisa and her uncle took a coach across the Chalk Downs (hills) and passed through Canterbury, Rochester and Greenwich to London. Along the way, she remarked how remarkably green the countryside was compared to America in late November.

She ended her journey at the home of her parents at 47 Salisbury Court, just off Fleet Street. The street was then known colloquially as the printers' street because it was home to so many printing establishments. It was a natural place for Robert Wells to settle, and he had built a successful printing business there. 

Louisa fell ill of a fever shortly after she arrived. Her parents sent her to Bath Spa to recover. The journey must have been unpleasant because she claimed that she would rather have made a voyage to the West Indies. 

Ironically, that is where she soon went. In 1782 she married Alexander Aikman, Printer to the House of Assembly and King's Printer, in Jamaica, and a member of the Assembly. 

The couple had known each other in Charleston. For four years they had worked together in her father's business. On her way to Jamaica to marry Aikman, Louisa's ship was seized by a French naval vessel. She was interned in France for several months before being allowed to resume her journey. 

The couple had 10 children, only four of whom survived to adulthood. Such appalling child mortality was typical of malarial Jamaica and also of Louisa's native South Carolina. It was in part a consequence of an economy based on enslaved African labor.

Around 1820 Louisa moved to Cowes on the Isle of Wight, perhaps for health reasons or to be with her daughter Susannah. Louisa died in Cowes in 1831, aged 76. 

A few months after her arrival in London in November 1778, Louisa wrote the work from which most of this information comes, The Journal of a Voyage from Charlestown, S.C., to London (1779). The journal is an important primary source for social life during the Revolutionary Era generally. 

Due to the loss of his Charleston property, ill-advised lending, and a paltry pension from the British government, Robert Wells fell into debt in the 1780s, leaving the family in comparative poverty. He suffered a paralyzing stroke in 1791 and died three years later. Mary Wells survived him, dying at Camberwell in 1805. 

Louisa's brother William became senior physician at St. Thomas' Hospital in London. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of London, the most prestigious scientific society in Britain. His written works include one in which he articulated the theory of natural selection, more than 40 years before Charles Darwin. William Charles Wells died of a heart condition in 1817. 

Louisa's sister Helena married and authored two novels. She died in 1824. We know little of her other sister, Priscilla, except that she never married. She died in 1843, outliving her siblings. 

Louisa played an important role in the preservation of popular musical scores. Along with a large load of books, Robert Wells had brought hundreds of song sheets from the British Isles to Charleston in 1753. Many of them have survived because Louisa created a personal songbook of about 110 sheets of the music. 

In 1992, the Music Division of the Library of Congress purchased the book. Individual sheets are available for viewing at the Library online. https://www.loc.gov/notated-music/?all=true&q=Louisa+Susannah+Wells&sp=1

Further Reading: 

Louisa's journal was published in 1906 by the New York Historical Society. A copy can be accessed online at the Internet Archive:

The journal of a voyage from Charlestown, S. C., to London, undertaken during the American revolution by a daughter of an eminent American loyalist : Aikman, Louisa Susannah Wells, 1755?-1831 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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

Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992)

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

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. 

   

Abortion Rights and Mill's "Subjection of Women"

"All that was most striking and profound in what was written by me belongs to my wife." John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

In 1869, the British philosopher John Stuart Mill published an influential pro-feminist essay called The Subjection of Women. It remains highly relevant today, especially with the recent threat to abortion rights in the United States. [Image: Mill, 1873, by Frederic Watts]

Mill did not address the issue of abortion in The Subjection of Women. But he would almost surely have favored what today is called "reproductive freedom." In an earlier work, On Liberty (1859), he had declared the principle of bodily sovereignty: "Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." Twentieth century feminists translated that into "Our Bodies, Ourselves."

It is significant that Mill acknowledged the influence on his ideas of his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill, and also his stepdaughter, Helen Taylor. He was not lecturing women, but learning from them, and his message was directed at men more than women. [Images: Harriet Taylor Mill, unknown painter, National Portrait Gallery, and photo of Helen Taylor with Mill. Harriet died in 1858.]

In 1867 Mill presented a petition to Parliament calling for women's suffrage. He did so at the request of two women, Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Emily Davies. The first draft of the petition was written by his stepdaughter, Helen. It failed but got the issue into the political discussion at the highest level.  

What was Mill's message in The Subjection of Women? It was the then outrageous claim that women were very likely the equals of men in most spheres of life, and superior in some. And the world would be a happier place if women had equal rights to men. 

Mill rejected the traditional view that it was women's nature to be limited to the role of wives, mothers, and housekeepers, obedient to their male superiors. In fact, he denied that anyone could justify such limitations on the grounds of something as nebulous as women's natural constitution. What society considered "natural" was only what was "customary;" that is, what they were accustomed to.

Women had always been kept in an "unnatural state" of subjection to men, preventing their free development. Their "nature" had been "distorted and disguised." No one could predict what women's nature would be if they were "left to choose its direction as freely as men's." What society calls the nature of women is an "eminently artificial thing -- the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others." 

If "artificial" restrictions on female development were removed, it might be found that there would be no "material difference" in their "character and capacities" compared to men. The only way to find out would be to remove the restrictions, to let women choose their own way, and see what happens. 

Such an "experiment" was not a mere intellectual exercise. It would materially affect the future of humanity. The subjection of women suppressed the talents of one-half of the human race. Who could tell what women, freed of traditional restraints, might do to improve the world? No one could find out what anyone was capable of except by letting them try.

The existing relationship between men and women was one of power. Men had it, women were subject to it. Fathers, brothers, uncles, husbands -- all had the power to control the women in their lives. 

Mill likened marriage to the master-slave relationship. Chattel slavery had been abolished, but the law left married women in bondage to their husbands. He admitted that wives were generally treated better than slaves, but argued that their legal position was, if anything, worse than that of a slave. Wives had virtually no protection for their property, their aspirations, or their bodies. The law treated them as children, or worse, imbeciles. [Image: Suffragette Poster, c. 1910]

Defenders of the status quo objected that good men did not abuse their power over women. Mill conceded the point but insisted that laws and institutions needed to be designed for men who were not good.

Women had no power and no legal protection from abusive husbands. The law in effect, left "the victim still in the power of the executioner." It was "contrary to reason and experience" to expect that women in such a position would be safe from "brutality."

Mill did not spell out what he meant by brutality, but it is not hard to imagine the possibilities, given our current experience of spousal abuse, both physical and psychological. 

Mill's arguments in The Subjection of Women are rooted in utilitarianism, a philosophy he had learned as a child from its founder, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and his own father, James Mill. 

Bentham had famously argued that human laws and institutions should be judged according to the principle of utility. They should be favored or rejected according to the extent to which they promoted "the greatest happiness of the greatest number."  

Mill rejected parts of Bentham's philosophy and made it more human. Bentham had tried to develop a calculus of happiness ("the felicific calculus"), to determine mathematically what would contribute to the greatest happiness. It did not work, but it did lead one of Bentham's disciples, Charles Babbage, to develop the principle of the computer.

Mill centered happiness in the mind of the individual. It was not possible for anyone to decide what was best for others. There was "no means by which anyone else can discover for them what it is for their happiness to do or leave undone."

In On Liberty, Mill argued that society has no right to limit individual freedom except to prevent harm to others (The Harm Principle). Would Mill have argued that abortion should be prohibited because of the harm to the fetus, or allowed because forcing a woman to carry a baby to term violates the principle of bodily sovereignty, and may harm the woman? 

Because he never directly addressed this issue, we can never know. But I'm confident he would have been on the side of pro-choice. 

Further reading: 

J.S. Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869) and On Liberty (1859). See also his Utilitarianism (1863), for a full discussion of his philosophical outlook. 

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Canaletto Does London, 1746-1755

Giovanni Antonio Canal, or Canaletto, the handle he painted under, is renowned for his lavish portrayals of Venice, where he was born and spent most of his life. Even his name evokes the watery avenues of his native city. 

Canaletto is far less known for his "English Period." He spent nine years in London, arriving in 1746, and painted more than 50 London scenes. Many of them, like his Venetian paintings, focus on water, in this case the mighty Thames. 

He painted several scenes of the river from the terrace of Old Somerset House, the palace of the Somerset dukes. Here are three views from the house. The first two look east towards the City of London and St. Paul's Cathedral. The third looks west towards the seat of government at Westminster and its famous abbey. 

 

 

Another Thames vantage point Canaletto painted from was the first Westminster Bridge, which was under construction when he arrived in England. The bucket hanging from the arch provides a nice touch.

He also pained the whole bridge when it was completed in 1750. The painting here features the grand opening celebration, with the barges of the dignitaries. 

To the East of London, he did several paintings of Christopher Wren's Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich, constructed between 1696 and 1712. The buildings later served as the Royal Naval College, and are now part of the University of Greenwich. The Painted Hall has recently been restored and is a must see. James Thornhill's masterpiece, it took nineteen years to complete.  

Canaletto did more than water scenes. Here is his stunning painting of Westminster Abbey, highlighting a procession of the knights of the Order of the Bath.

He left us a fine view of a former great aristocratic residence, Northumberland House, along with the equestrian statue of the ill-fated Charles I to its right. The statue remains where it was, but the house was demolished in the 19th century. The view here is looking up the Strand, the main thoroughfare connecting the City of London and Westminster. 

Another long-gone building he painted was the rotunda at Ranelagh Gardens, a great Georgian pleasure palace. The huge fireplace is at the centre. An orchestra plays at the right, while aristocrats and other wealthy folk promenade.

Canaletto painted several scenes of the famous Horse Guards. The first one here is the Old Horse Guards from St. James's Park, followed by the New Horse Guards that was constructed while he was in London and is still there.  

Below is a view of Whitehall, the seat of government, and the Privy Guards from Richmond House. 

Canaletto returned to Venice in 1755. He left behind a marvellous collection of scenes of Georgian London, then the largest city in the world. Of course, he completely ignored the world of the less fortunate, the crime, slums, and brutality that was the lot of many Londoners. His London is wealthy, even opulent, and the sky is always blue. 

Canaletto died in 1768 in his native city. Below is an engraving of the artist. 

Putin, Progress, and The End of History

The German philosopher GWF Hegel once wrote that "the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history." Perhaps it was just a throwaway line, because Hegel made an exception for himself. 

In his lectures on the philosophy of history, Hegel argued that history developed according to a discernible pattern, and that it would have a desirable end: the triumph of absolute freedom, vague as that is.

Karl Marx, influenced by Hegel, put some flesh on those bones. The end of history, he wrote, would be the triumph of the ideal society in which everyone would be free to develop their full humanity: communism. 

Marx also wrote, in what seems a contradiction, that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. That was perhaps a throwaway line as well, but one could erect a plausible theory of history on it: tragedy, farce, tragedy, farce, tragedy, farce. (Image: The End of Marx. His grave, Highgate Cemetery, London)

After the fall of less than ideal Soviet communism, political scientist Francis Fukuyama claimed that the end of history was the triumph of Western liberal democracy. In 1992 it was possible to indulge in such a fantasy, I suppose. But it overlooked what was hiding under the cloak of liberal democracy: deregulated vulture capitalism, AKA neoliberalism, neoconservatism, Reaganomics and other Orwellian names. 

It also overlooked the continuing existence of a particular type or subspecies of human, which for want of a better term, we will call "Putin Man." 

Perhaps it is unfair to name a whole slice of humanity after the current president of Russia. There many other possibilities: Hitler Man and Stalin Man naturally leap to mind. Trump Man might do, but he is currently busy playing golf at Mar a Lago. 

Mr. Putin is very much in the news for invading Ukraine, so we'll go with Putin Man for now. What are the characteristics of Putin Man? Narcissism, megalomania, paranoia, lack of empathy or ethics, inhumanity, barbarism, just to name a few. 

It is impossible to know how many members of homo sapiens harbour these characteristics, but history tells us that they are sufficiently numerous to create a living hell for humanity periodically. They can't do it all by themselves, of course. They need support from those with similar characteristics. Those who just shrug, say I don't do politics, and look away are a big help as well.

History tells me Putin Man may be defeated for a time, but he will return. In Albert Camus's novel The Plague people of different, even clashing, perspectives work together to vanquish a deadly epidemic. But at the end, the narrator issues a warning: the plague will always be with us. It will resurge again when our guard is lowered. He could have been talking about Covid -- or Putin Man. 

History has no end, unless it be the destruction of humanity itself. That is currently a work in progress. I wish I could be more cheery, but as Louis Namier wrote, "History is not a visit of condolence."

 

Further Reading: 

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (1992). 

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), and other works.

G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1837).

Albert Camus, The Plague (1947).

 

 

  

"Don't Tread on Me": Christopher Gadsden and His Flag

Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina is best known today as the designer of the iconic "Gadsden Flag." The flag features a rattlesnake on a bright yellow background, with the words "DONT TREAD ON ME" at the bottom. The snake is coiled to strike. 

The flag's message was directed towards the British government: Step on the liberties of the American people at your peril. The snake has thirteen rattles, symbolizing the thirteen colonies that were soon to declare their independence. [Image: Gadsden Flag]

Gadsden displayed the flag at a meeting of the South Carolina Provincial Congress in February 1776 to great acclaim. It became a popular symbol of Patriot resistance. In recent years it has been appropriated by far right groups to show their defiance of ... whatever they are currently defying, usually the federal government and other conspirators against "freedom."  It featured prominently in the January 6 insurrection that led to the storming of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC. [Image: January 6, 2021]

There is much more to Gadsden's story than his flag, however. First, a little background. Gadsden was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1724. His father, Thomas Gadsden, was a former British naval officer who had been appointed as customs collector for the port of Charleston. 

Thomas sent young Christopher to Bristol, England to be educated. Returning to America in 1740, he worked briefly as an apprentice in a Philadelphia counting house. He inherited a sizeable fortune when his parents died in 1741. During King George's War (1744-1748) he served as a purser on a British naval vessel. Afterwards, he became a merchant and planter. 

In 1767 he built a large wharf in Charleston. Gadsden's Wharf became a major receiving point for enslaved Africans. More than 100,000 were landed there between 1767 and 1808, when the legal slave trade ended. 

During the construction of the wharf, Gadsden quipped that he was going to "fill the foundation with imported Scotchmen, who are fit for nothing better." It was a joke, but it reflected his dislike of Scots, in particular Scottish merchants, who he viewed as undeserving beneficiaries of British trade policies. His dislike of Scots may also have derived from his service in the Cherokee War of 1760, when he clashed with Highland Scots officers. 

In the years leading up to the Revolution, many colonials accused Scots of conspiring to undermine their freedom. [Image: Scots Lord Bute and Chief Justice Lord Mansfield (in center) conspiring against American liberty, 1775. In fact, neither had any influence over British colonial policy at the time] 

  

In 1757 Gadsden was elected to the South Carolina Commons House of Assembly. He soon began to clash openly with the royal governors over British trade and taxation policies. In 1766, the assembly appointed him to represent South Carolina at the Stamp Act Congress in New York City. He was one of the most radical delegates at the Congress and formed an alliance and friendship with the equally radical Sam Adams of Boston, leader of the Sons of Liberty in Boston. Gadsden has often been called the "Sam Adams of the South."

Gadsden became a leader of the Charleston Sons of Liberty, who terrorized the town looking for stamps and other evidence of pro-British leanings. Among the houses they raided was that of planter and slave trader Henry Laurens. According to Laurens, they frightened his sick wife Eleanor half to death. He threw them his cellar keys and told them to help themselves to wine. They found no stamps, apologized and left. Laurens subsequently supported Gadsden and the Liberty Boys, but with some hesitation. 

In 1771, future Patriot William Henry Drayton called Gadsden a madman who ought to be in Bedlam. But Drayton was then defending the British Crown. After he abruptly switched sides in the early 1770s, the two became allies in the Patriot cause. 

As the conflict with Britain escalated, Gadsden was elected to the First and Second Continental Congresses in Philadelphia. In early 1776, he left Congress to assume command of the newly formed 1st South Carolina Regiment and serve in the South Carolina Provincial Congress. It was then that he first displayed his famous flag. He also brought a pamphlet written by a recent immigrant from England, calling for American independence, Common Sense by Thomas Paine. It was less well received. 

The interim President of South Carolina, John Rutledge, appointed Gadsden brigadier and commander of the state's military forces. In 1778 Gadsden helped draft a new state constitution under which he became lieutenant governor.  

When the British besieged Charleston in the spring of 1780, Rutledge left for the backcountry to rally resistance. Gadsden remained to help coordinate the defense of the city. 

By the middle of April, however, the British had nearly encircled Charleston. Benjamin Lincoln, the commander of the Southern Continental Army, decided that his only option besides surrender was to flee with his army while escape remained possible. 

Word got out to Gadsden. He and several of his councillors stormed into Lincoln's headquarters as he was discussing his proposals with his officers. Gadsden accused Lincoln of cowardice. Lincoln agreed to stay.  

In early May, the British unleashed a ferocious bombardment of the city. Gadsden led another delegation to see General Lincoln. This time, he demanded that Lincoln surrender to save the property and lives of the citizens. On May 12, Lincoln surrendered. It was the worst defeat for the Patriot forces in the war. The entire army, more than 5000 men, was made prisoner. 

The militia and many civilian leaders were initially given parole; that is, allowed to go free, as long as they did not continue to oppose the Crown. A few weeks after the surrender, however, the British arrested Gadsden and about twenty other rebel leaders on the grounds that they were plotting further resistance. 

Shipped to the British stronghold in St. Augustine, Florida, they remained prisoners until the following summer. The commander in St. Augustine offered them parole and the freedom of the town. Gadsden alone refused it. The British, he argued, had already violated their original promise of parole. 

In July 1781, the British released the prisoners on parole and sent them to Philadelphia. Gadsden returned to South Carolina in time to serve in the Jacksonborough Assembly in early 1782. At the time,  Charleston was still under British occupation. The Assembly elected him as governor, but he declined the office due to poor health. 

One of the most contentious items on the Assembly's agenda was drawing up a list of Loyalists to be punished after the war, which was nearing its end. Proposed punishments ranged from banishment and confiscation of property to amercements or fines. 

Gadsden shocked the assembly by urging leniency towards Loyalists. His words had little effect on the majority of delegates, who shouted him down. They demanded severe punishments. Some accused Gadsden of trying to protect Loyalists in his family. 

Thousands of Loyalists left South Carolina with the British or shortly thereafter. (Some were later able to get their punishments reduced and returned.)

Gadsden lived for another 23 years. He sat in the state convention of 1788 that ratified the United States Constitution. After 1798 he lived in Charleston at the house he built at 329 East Bay Street. He died in 1805 after falling from a horse. [Image: Gadsden House and Gadsden in old age]

 

 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.

Stanly Godbold, Jr., and Robert Woody, Christopher Gadsden and the American Revolution (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983).

Daniel McDonough, Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laurens: The Parallel Lives of Two American Patriots (Susquehanna University Press, 2000).

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