Charleston's Version of a Town Crier

From CCPL

The people of Charleston in 1776 were no strangers to the pomp and circumstance surrounding the public proclamation of official government documents. From the earliest days of the colony, Charlestonians had routinely heard government officials read aloud the text of newly-ratified laws and important occasional proclamations. This was an ancient practice inherited from Europe, the vestige of an era in which the vast majority of the population was illiterate and public access to written documents was limited. In Latin, the act of reading or “publishing” documents aloud was called publication by viva voce—literally by “the living voice.” In early modern England, this act was called publication “by beat of drum”—a reference to the fact that a drummer was traditionally used to summon the populace to bend their ears to the publication of important information.

In colonial-era Charleston, the provost marshal of South Carolina (later the sheriff of Charleston District) routinely paraded through the streets of the town with a drummer and stopped at multiple landmarks to read aloud the text of laws and proclamations. If you have in mind a quaint old image of a man walking through the streets ringing a hand bell and shouting “Hear ye, hear ye,” I implore you to banish those thoughts and replace them with the images of a white man and an enslaved drummer parading through the town with a profusion of pomp and a bit of circumstance.

On more important occasions in colonial Charleston, such as the publication of royal declarations of war, the colony’s civil and military leaders assembled on the streets to enact a similar but grander series of public readings. For these “state” occasions, the secretary of the province usually read aloud from the official document, line by line, while the clerk of His Majesty’s Council, standing next to the secretary, repeated each phrase in a much louder voice—probably with the aid of a “speaking trumpet” or megaphone. This was the practice employed in 1740, 1744, 1756, and 1762, for example, when the townsfolk of Charleston gathered to hear the text of the king’s declarations of war against France and Spain. Furthermore, the provost marshal of South Carolina also attended the public readings of these royal declarations, on which occasions he unsheathed the ceremonial sword of state, held it aloft before the assembled multitudes, and brandished it three times to the sound of great cheers from the crowd.

Charleston reacts to Stamp Act

McCrady p. 564

Late in the evening of Friday, the 18th of October, the ship Planter's Adventure, Captain Miles Lawley, from London, came to anchor under the guns of Fort Johnson. It had been reported some time before that a distributor of stamps for this province was coming over in this ship, and from the vessel's not coming up to town it was supposed that there was on board either a stamp officer, stamps, or stamped paper. Early Saturday morning, the 19th, there appeared at the intersection of Broad and Church streets, near Mr. Dillon's tavern, — the most central and public part of the town, — suspended on a gallows twenty feet high, an effigy designed to represent a distributor of stamped paper, to which were affixed labels expressive of the sense of a people unshaken in their loyalty, but tenacious of just liberty. On the gallows, in very conspicuous characters, was written " Liberty and no Stamp Act," and on the back of the principal figure these words, " Whoever shall dare attempt to pull down these effigies had better been born with a millstone about his neck and cast into the sea."

Dec. 17 1765 SC Resolutions per the Stamp Act

From McCrady p.

From the So. Ca. Gazette and Country Journal, December 17, 1765.

"Resolved that his Majesty's subjects in Carolina owe the same allegiance to the Crown of Great Britain that is due from his subjects born there. That his Majesty's liege subjects of this province are entitled to all the inherent rights and liberties of his natural-born subjects within the Kingdom of Great Britain.

That the inhabitants of this province appear also to be confirmed in all the rights aforementioned, not only by their charter, but by an act of Parliament, I }th, George II.

That it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people and the undoubted right of Englishmen that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent.

That the people of this province are not, and from their local circumstances cannot be, represented in the House of Commons in Great Britain ; and, farther, that in the opinion of this House the several powers of legislation in America were constituted in some measure upon the apprehension of this impracticability.

That the only representatives of the people of this province are persons chosen therein by themselves, and that no taxes ever have been or can be constitutionally imposed on them, but by the legislature of this province.

That all supplies to the Crown, being free gifts of the people, it is unreasonable and inconsistent with the principles and spirit of the British constitution for the people of Great Britain to grant to his Majesty the property of the people of this province.

That the act of Parliament, entitled 'An act for granting and applying certain stamp duties and other duties on the British colonies and plantations in America,' etc., by imposing taxes on the inhabitants of this province, and the said act and several other acts, by extending the jurisdiction of the Courts of Admiralty beyond its ancient limits, have a manifest tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of this province.

That the duties imposed by several late acts of Parliament on the people of the province will be extremely burdensome and grievous, and, from the scarcity of gold and silver, the payment of them absolutely impracticable.

That, as the profits of the trade of the people of this province ultimately centre in Great Britain to pay for the manufactures which they are obliged to take from thence, they eventually contribute very largely to all the sup plies granted to the Crown ; and, besides, as every individual in this province is as advantageous at least as if he were in Great Britain, and as they pay their full proportion of taxes for the support of his Majesty's government here (which taxes are equal or more in proportion to our estates than those paid by our fellow-subjects in Great Britain upon theirs), it is unreasonable for them to be called upon to pay any further part of the charges of the government there.

That the assemblies of this province have from time to time, whenever requisitions have been made to them by his Majesty for carrying on military operations, either for defence of themselves or America in general, most cheerfully and liberally contributed their full proportion of men and money for these services.

That though the representatives of the people of this province had equal assurances and reasons with those of the other provinces to expect a proportional reimbursement of those immense charges they had been at for his Majesty's service in the late war, out of the several Parliamentary grants for the use of America; yet they have obtained only their portion of the first of those grants, and the small sum of £285 sterling received since.

That, notwithstanding, whenever his Majesty's service shall for the future require the aid of the inhabitants of this province, and they shall be called upon for this purpose in a constitutional way, it shall be their indispensable duty most cheerfully and liberally to grant to his Majesty their proportion, according to their ability, of men and money for the defence and security and other public services of the British American colonies.

That the restrictions on the trade of the people of this province, together with the late duties and taxes imposed on them by act of Parliament, must necessarily greatly lessen the consumption of British manufactures amongst them.

That the increase, prosperity, and happiness of the people of this province depend on the full and free enjoyment of their rights and liberties and on an affectionate intercourse with Great Britain.

That the readiness of the colonies to comply with his Majesty's requisitions, as well as their inability to bear any additional taxes beyond what is laid on them by their respective legislatures, is apparent from several grants of Parliament to reimburse them part of the heavy expenses they were at in the late war in America.

That it is the right of the British subjects of this province to petition the King or either House of Parliament.

- Ordered, that these votes be printed and made public, that a just sense of the liberty and the firm sentiments of loyalty of the representatives of the people of this province may be known to their constituents, and transmitted to posterity."

Research to do in SC

SC Gazette,

March - May 1760 -- Smallpox

6 June 1760 edition -- Letter of LTC James Grant





Library Book

William Simpson, 1761, published a book titled The Practical Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer, of His Majesty’s Province of South Carolina.

James Haw, John & Edward Rutledge, Univ. of Ga. Press (1997)

Constitutional Crisis of 1735 in SC

Tax Bill Controversy in the SC House of Commons:   If British subjects in England could only be taxed by their immediate representatives in the Commons' House of Parliament without amendment by the House of Lords, could British subjects in America be taxed by a body here corresponding to the House of Lords in England ?

The Constitution and Slavery

Historian's Take -- NRO

. . .  That Wilentz’s book is explicitly an examination of the antislavery politics of Congress, which necessarily involved exploring “debates among white elites,” is never considered. Ultimately, Guyatt claims, Fredrick Douglass and others were “acting not as historians, but as activists” when they expressed an antislavery constitutionalism. “Wilentz, while approaching us as the former,” Guyatt laments, “is as much the latter as any of his subjects.”

British Soldiers in SC and Charleston

CCPL Time Machine Entries General

List of Entries -- CCPL Time Machine

Cato's Letters, Republicanism & Cato, the tragedy

Cato's Letters (John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon)

8th amendment Fines & Forfeitures

Article at the Atlantic

Horses in SC

Currency, Banking, Wealth & The Industrial Revolution

James Adair's History of the American Indians

James Adair, History of the American Indians, 1775