Daniel Gordon and the Cherokee War 1758-1761 - A Slave's View from Charleston, S.C.

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Daniel Gordon was leaving aside the things of his childhood. Boys on the Charles Town streets would tie cocks together and throw stones at them. Ordinances were passed against children firing muskets or throwing down squibs on the road because people were getting hurt; and the children were probably black. Filth piled up at 'every bye corner and vacant lot.' Dead dogs bloated in the spring sun 'ready to burst.' A bevy of cleaners was drafted to regularly remove garbage. The streets were now overcrowded. Charles Town's 8,000 residents were flooded out by impoverished Acadians returned from the interior, the French prisoners-of-war, drafts of regular militia and the 1,000 Scots Highlanders who had initially been stationed at the race course out of town, the first fruits in the south of the Seven Years' War. Poor accommodation and bad weather brought on illness, probably yellow fever, among the troops, and death. Blacks out on their usual nocturnal partying, which Daniel now joined, passed military guards mounted every night fearful of the distressed Acadians rising or a sudden attack from Spanish Florida. Barracks were built for the troops because the locals thought them no better than the blacks, and resented quartering them. Ramparts were built between the batteries and bastions along the Ashley River, four feet above the 1754 highwater mark, using an ingenious emplacement of cedar posts in the marshy ground. 
If, by now, Daniel's apprenticeship as a tailor was over, he would have been set to working long hours, probably in a very poor light, to judge from the later condition of his left eye, but the high wages were worth it because he was probably working partly for his master and, in his own time for himself. He would have had enough money of his own to gamble it away on the Colt's Plate and the Sweepstakes begun that year at Newmarket. Charles Town was an uncomfortable place to live for slaves with its 'little narrow, dirty and irregular alleys', in one of which he may have set up an independent workshop. Used to 'the most stinking and nasty streets in the world', it was no wonder he and his fellow blacks often drank heavily. Sometimes occasion demanded it. In October 1758 the whole city drank and feasted the British/New England victory over Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, adjacent Nova Scotia, to the firing of musket, cannon and drums.²

Daniel cannot have helped but notice the peculiar behaviour of the Reverend Richard Clarke from St. Philip's Church early the following year. Clarke became a well-recognised figure even to those outside the Anglican communion when he 'let his hair' and beard grow, emulating an Old Testament prophet. Running about the streets of Charles Town, he demanded the city 'repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.' The world, he proclaimed, would end in September that year. By March Clarke had resigned and was bundled off back to England. Clarke's prophecy was taken up beyond Charles Town by a free black, Philip Johns, who claimed the whites would be overthrown. His jeremiad coincided with the colony facing the threat of a Cherokee war. Charles Town's blacks soon heard the new preacher had been whipped and branded for his visions, and some, though not Daniel, became believers. Johns did not stop preaching. He was quickly re-arrested, tried and hung, a message to all blacks, slave and free, who might contemplate rebellion.³

Cherokee raids in the Carolina back country and news of preparations for a wider Cherokee/Shawnee uprising were linked to the Johns plot. Recently appointed Governor William Henry Lyttleton determined to nip any such trouble in the bud, but before he had organised his volunteer forces a Cherokee peace delegation from the Lower and Upper Cherokee of fifty-five men and women, including prominent headmen came to Charles Town to apologise for the raid. The sudden arrival of so many Cherokee perhaps caused especial consternation among the black community since, as one white observer put it, 'a natural antipathy subsisted between Indians and Negroes.' Daniel and his fellow-slaves need not have worried. Governor Lyttleton had no time for peace. He took the entire delegation hostage forcing them to accompany him when he finally set out with his expeditionary force in late October. Shortly after his departure Charles Town received the news from New France that 'QUEBEC is in English hands.'⁴

Lyttleton reached Fort Prince George in December where he quickly secured a treaty with the Cherokee, who had been too weakened by smallpox to fight. On their return in the new year his troops brought the smallpox back to Charles Town Lyttleton was greeted 'with great laurels.' Daniel was probably among the cheering crowd lining Broad street, relieved that the danger from the Cherokee was ostensibly over. Less than a fortnight later the smallpox surfaced in one house, which was immediately quarantined. The press reassured its public that 'every other precaution necessary' was being taken to stop the spread of the disease, but within weeks the smallpox was spreading. With no serious outbreak for over twenty years, and a much expanded population, the community had lost its immunity. There was a panicked demand for inoculation. 'The doctors had no choice but top meet [that] demand. [T]he people would not be said nay.' One doctor thought 3,500 people were inoculated between January and June, when the epidemic ran its course. One of those inoculated was Daniel Gordon; that inoculation saved him from not only the Charles Town epidemic but also a later one in New South Wales in 1789, the dreaded gal-gal-la which wiped out half the Eora around Port Jackson. In Charles Town Daniel would not have felt so protected. Even among the inoculated at least ninety-two people died, perhaps nearly one-and-a-half times that number. He had an uneasy wait ahead of him, uncertain if he would live or die as he lay weakened and alone for a milder version of the disease to pass. In Charles Town itself was 'almost a stop to all business.' Meanwhile despite Lyttleton's treaty, reports continued to come in of Cherokees massacreing settlers in the back country.⁵

Every Saturday and Wednesday morning Daniel heard the cannon-fire as the Charles Town Artillery Company turned out for training at eight in the morning, impressive in their blue crimson-trimmed coats, crimson jackets, gold-laced hats and white stockings. Four days before Lyttleton departed to take up his new governorship in Jamaica, Colonel Archibald Montgomery arrived with orders to bring the Cherokee to book. Lieutenant-Governor William Bull declared a 'DAY OF FASTING, HUMILIATION AND PRAYER TO ALMIGHTY GOD' for 'averting … a pestilential and contagious distemper … but likewise a war.' Blacks, presumably were dragged off to church by their owners. Montgomery encamped his Highlanders outside the town. Charles Town plunged further into isolation as the wealthy fled to their plantations. Complaints echoed through the city that blacks were being buried in shallow mass graves; 'the very cows by their pawing had laid one coffin bare.' Young inoculated men like Daniel were the grave-diggers.⁶

There was a shortage of bread and beef. Prior to departure fifty blacks were enlisted to do the hard labour with Montgomery's 1,650 whites despite the perennial fears of a black uprising. Daniel Gordon's wealthier customers ordered 'fine, silken' military fashions. He may have prospered but Charles Town's lower orders, black and white, suffered considerably because of the city was deserted and because prices continued to soar. The economic recovery would not come till the end of the year. Little news came from Montgomery out in the Middle Cherokee towns. In mid-August he returned after being ambushed and defeated in the battle of Eckaw. Charlestonians feared his Highlanders would be ordered to 'suddenly embark for the northward.' Whites wondered if the Cherokee were destroyed, would South Carolina's blacks take refuge in former Cherokee lands of the Blue Ridge in the Appalachians. There, they 'might be more troublesome and more difficult to reduce than the Negroes in the mountains of Jamaica,' that hot-bed of rebellious slaves.⁷

As feared, Montgomery was recalled north. New regiments of volunteers were formed to fight against the Cherokee. For Charles Town's tailors, including Daniel Gordon, there was much work to be done, measuring and making new 'deep green' uniforms. Even more work came in November when news reached the colony of the death of George II, with a sudden city-wide demand for mourning apparel. In the latter part of 1760, Daniel was probably called out as part of the fire brigade for a fire in King Street, west of Meeting street, this time not so quickly brought under control 'for lack of public wells and pumps in that part of town.' At the new King George III's birthday celebrations in November he might have been called on again, this time to help rescue the injured in the collapse of a wooden balcony opposite Lytlleton's Battery, when the populace gathered to watch the obligatory fireworks.⁸

Montgomery was succeeded by Lieutenant-Colonel James Grant who arrived in Charles Town with about 1,200 regulars in January 1761. Many of these fell ill almost immediately after taking up their winter quarters because they drank 'brackish water.' Charles Town's white population took the sick into their houses and nursed them until better. For slaves like Daniel Morgan, however, the British soldiers were noticed because they replaced the ineffectual town watch and were more capable of intimidation. To cheering crowds Grant departed for his starting point in the forested Congaree flood plain in March, supported by the Charles Town provincials in their dark green uniforms, but again, other things pre-occupied the black tailor. Early that month he probably witnessed the hanging of a group of back-country Germans who had slaughtered some of their compatriots while in the grip of a religious mania. That message that the white English-speaking majority were prepared to move against any fractious minority would not have passed unnoticed.⁹

There was little time for Daniel to ponder such truths.About three p.m. on 4 May, as Charlestonians 'sat down to dinner' 'they were alarmed with an uncommon sound, like the continual roaring of distant thunder or the noise made by a stormy sea breaking upon the shore.' Rushing outside they saw in terror to the west of the town 'a large column of smoke' resembling 'clouds rolling over one another in violent tumult … at one time dark, at another a bright flaming colour.' The whirlwind tore down the Ashley river, narrowly missing the town, exposing the shallow river's bottom. The ships in the river 'sat down in the mud and were covered by the waves, the sailors saving themselves by running up into the shrouds. Slave and free alike watched in awe as the whirlwind dropped 'floods of water', within a few minutes reaching Rebellion Road 'about four miles below' the city. Five ships were 'sunk in an instant' with all lost on board. Twelve others including a Royal Navy man-of-war, were dismasted. According to one observer, when the wind ceased before four 'branches and leaves which had been hurried along with it began to fall' darkening the sky 'in their descent, after which the sky turned a brilliant blue.¹⁰

Grant's war with the Cherokee, meanwhile, against an enemy weakened by a harsh winter, was swift and deadly. After the burning of fifteen towns and 1,400 acres of corn in the lower and middle settlements, the Cherokee sued for peace. Negotiations took place two miles outside Charles Town because the city had cases of smallpox and was in the grip of a yellow fever epidemic. Fear of infection once more emptied the town. Commissioners were appointed to stop the throwing of excrement and 'filth' into the city's defensive moat. Blacks employed as cleaners were upbraided ass lackadaisical and more closely supervised. The exodus of the rich left tradespeople like Daniel struggling to pay the high price of the wood. Four merchants had combined to create 'an artificial dearth' in its supply. For the poor and the blacks the coming winter promised to be a hard one. News of peace finally arrived at with the Cherokee in December. Later that month the arrival of the new governor, Sir Thomas Boone, was greeted by the whites with hope, a military parade, a fanfare of trumpets and a salute of cannons. For Daniel Gordon his slave's life went on as before.¹¹

1Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, pp.31, 35, 60; Olwell, Masters, Slaves and Subjects,p.19; McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry, pp.56, 73; Rogers, Charleston in the Age of the Pinckneys, pp.58-59.

2Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, p.185; Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, pp.148, 167; Book of Negroes,http://www.blackloyalist/info.sourceimagesdisplaypage/transcript. pp.15; McCandless, Slavery, Disease and Suffering in the Southern Low Country, p.238; Rodgers, Charleston in the Age of the Pinckneys, p.37.

3Peter H. Wood, ' “Liberty is Sweet”: …', p.155; Harris, The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah, pp.75-76; Michael Mullin, Africa in America. Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean 1736-1831,Urbana, 1994, p.189.

4Tom Hatley, The Dividing Paths. Cherokees and South Carolinians through the Revolutionary Era, New York, 1995, pp.111, 114-115; E Stanley Godbold Jr. and Robert H. Woody, Christopher Gadsden and the American Revolution, Knoxville, 1982, p.26; Hewatt, Historical Account of The Rise and Progress of The Colonies …, p.298; Rogers, Charleston in the Age of the Pinckneys, p.37.

5Rogers, Charleston in the Age of the Pinckneys, p.36; McCandless, Slavery, Disease and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry, pp.211-214; Godbold and Woody, Christopher Gadsden and the American Revolution, p.27; McDonough, Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laurens, p.26; Peter Turbet, The First Frontier. The Occupation of the Sydney Region, 1788 to 1816, Dural, 2011, pp.40-42; Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana. The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-1782, New York, 2001, pp.34-35; Hatley, The Dividing Paths, pp.126-127.

6Godbold and Woody, Christopher Gadsden and the American Revolution, pp.25, 27; Hatley, The Dividing Paths, p.129, 125; McCandless, Slavery, Disease and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry, pp.192-193, 212-213.

7Hatley, The Dividing Paths,pp.72, 125-126, 130, 132, 134, 136-137.

8Hatley, The Dividing Paths, p.135; Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, pp.106, 78; Jeremy Black, George III, America's Last King, New Haven, 2006, p.43.

9John Shy, Toward Lexington. The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution, Princeton, 1965, p.104; Morgan, 'Black Life in Eighteenth Century Charleston', p.218; Hewatt, An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, Vol. 2, pp.244-247; Godbold and Woody, Christopher Gadsden and the American Revolution, pp.28-29; Hatley, The Dividing Paths, p.137.

10Hewatt, An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, Vol. 2, pp.256-257; Ramsay, History of South Carolina from its beginnings … Vol. II,pp.172-173.

11Jerome J. Nadelhaft, The Disorders of War. The Revolution in South Carolina, Orono, 1981, p.14; Godbold and Woody, Christopher Gadsden and the American Revolution, pp.29-31, 35; Rogers, Charleston in the Age of the Pinckneys, pp.36-37; Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, pp.234-235, 240; McCandless, Slavery, Disease and Suffering in the Southern Low Country, pp.74-75.