CIVIL HISTORY

OF

SOUTH CAROLINA,

From the termination of the revolutionary war in 1783 to the year 1808.

CHAP. XI.

THE unexpected but successful struggle for independence unsettled every thing. To bring order out of confusion was no easy matter. In the course of the revolution many things were done on the principle of sacrificing minor objects to the public safety, which admit of no justification and can only be palliated by the plea of necessity. The prohibition of all exportation from the country was a measure early enjoined by authority, and enforced by sound policy. This brought after it an obstruction of the regular course of justice; for hard would have been the fate of planters to be compelled to pay their debts when their country forbad the sale of their crops. The commencement of hostilities required that troops should be raised, and that impo3 I

VOL. II.

sed a necessity of emitting bills of credit for their maintenance. To support the credit of these bills, they were made a tender in payment of debts. As they were emitted without solid funds for their redemption, they progressively depreciated. Many contracts made at different periods, payable in these bills, were yet to be fulfilled. Many debts contracted prior to the war, were wholly and others partially cancelled by these bills. When the war was ended, and real money introduced, to do justice in every case between debtor and creditor was impossible. It was necessary for the legislature to fix some rule. This occupied their attention at their first meeting after the evacuation of Charlestown. As the least of all possible evils, they agreed on a scale of depreciation which fixed the value of the paper bills at different periods in a relative proportion to the commodities of the country, compared with their prices anterior to the revolution. This scale began in April 1777 at £108 10s for £100, and ended May 10th 1780 at £5,248 for £100, and credits were accordingly to be given for payments on all subsisting contracts. Where the contract no longer subsisted, and the evidence of the debt had been destroyed on the receipt of nominal payment in depreciated bills, no redress could be obtained. This produced great inequality and injustice. No remedy in the power of the legislature could be applied on a general scale without producing greater injustice than it was intended to obviate*. The evils resulting from depreciation,

* An interesting debate on this subject for some time occupied the public mind. It was discussed with great animation

and the best, though partial, rule of the legislature for lessening them, were soon followed by others of greater magnitude. The revolution took place at a time when immense sums were due from the inhabitants of Carolina to the inhabitants of Great-Britain. The non-exportation agreement of the americans, and the restraining acts of the british parliament,

both in the newspapers and in the legislature. By one party it was contended that the scale of depreciation should be applied to all debts, as well those which were cancelled by full payrent as those which being wholly unpaid or only partially paid off still subsisted. The monied and the landed interest took opposite sides, and some were doubtless influenced by private interest. Abstract justice favored the one, and political expedience the other. The moderate and impartial were swayed by the consideration of the impossibility of doing complete justice to all; and that therefore the rule which departed least from it was to be preferred. Legal compulsion to make a second payment of a debt which had been once legally discharged, would be in their opinions often as much ex post facto injustice to the debtor as the first depreciated payment had been to the creditor. The general retrospect was considered as likely to involve an infinity of contention and litigation; and that, instead of promoting universal and equal justice, would operate partially and occasion general distress to the bulk of the inhabitants who were not accurate in the practical art of book-keeping, and be of service only to a few who kept recorded memorandums of all their pecuniary transactions. The legislature therefore decided in favor of those who wished to confine the retrospective operation of the law respecting payments made in depreciated money, to contracts still subsisting. Thus far and no farther they had a clear and certain rule by which the decision of courts might be regulated. There were doubtless many cases in which this rule operated hardly on individuals; but it was conceived that the extension of the retrospect to cancelled as well as to subsisting contracts, would have operated equally hard on a greater number.

both of which took place in the first period of the revolution, made remittances impossible. To this load of old debt was added an immense mass of what was new. When the war ended, the planters found desolate plantations and very few laborers. To repair the one and purchase the other, they were in some degree compelled to contract debts. Urged by speculation, they did not always content themselves with moderate supplies for necessary purposes; but in too many cases embarrassed themselves with pecuniary engagements for the discharge of which the most favorable seasons, largest crops, and highest prices for the same would have been scarcely sufficient. The merchants, knowing the value of the staple commodities of Carolina, were very liberal of credit to the planters; but on terms of enhanced price, as a security against losses and 'protracted payments. Misfortunes love a train. When plentiful crops were necessary to support the credit of the country, a series of unfavorable seasons, and of desolating freshets, impaired its resources. The little of gold and silver that was in circulation soon found its way to Great-Britain.

The people of Carolina had been but a short time in the possession of peace and independence when they were brought under a new species of dependence. So universally were they in debt beyond their ability to pay, that a rigid enforcement of the laws would have deprived them of their possessions and their personal liberty and still left them under incumbrances; for property, when brought to sale under execution, sold at so low a price as frequent

ly ruined the debtor without paying the creditor. A disposition to resist the laws became common. Assemblies were called oftener and earlier than the constitution or laws required. The good and evil of representative government became apparent. The assemblies were a correct representation of the people. They had common feelings, and their situations were in most cases similar. These led to measures which procured temporary relief but at the expense of the permanent and extended interests of the community. Laws were passed in which property of every kind was made a legal tender in the payment of debts though payable according to contract in gold or silver. Other laws installed the debt, so that of sums already due only a third, and afterwards only a fifth, was annually recoverable in the courts of law. Numbers were clamorous for large emissions of paper money armed with the sanction of a legal tender. This old resource in cases of extremity, had been so overdone in the revolutionary war, that many doubted the possibility of attaching credit to any thing in the form of bills of credit. After some time an emission of £ 100,000 sterling secured by a mortgage of land, or a deposit of plate, was risked. The smallness of the sum, and the ample security of the fund on which it was emitted, together with the great want of some circulating medium, and an agreement of the merchants to receive it in payment at its nominal value, gave it credit and circulation.

The effects of these laws, interfering between debtors and creditors, were extensive. They destroyed public credit and confidence between man and man ;