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.
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.
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.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
