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.It was an unrelenting assault led by one of the paternalist movement’s severest crit-ics, Whitemarsh Seabrook, the wealthy Edisto Island cotton planter and foundingmember of the radical South Carolina Association.Seabrook had emerged by as not only a fervent critic of northern “interference” with slavery but also a staunchcritic of what he perceived as the southern refusal to meet antislavery criticism withample fi rmness.The Seabrook-led assault on Christian eff orts to bring religiousinstruction to the slaves, and on paternalism more generally, continued in the legis-lature over the course of at least four years.58At the  session of the legislature, Seabrook and other Palmetto critics ofpaternalism joined legislators who were simply alarmed by the recent Turner insur-rection to propose an aggressive set of new regulations concerning slaves and freeblacks.The proposed bill would have banned the teaching of slaves to read and write,prohibited the use of black preachers or exhorters under any circumstances, tightened464T H E L O W E R S O U T H R E S P O N D Senforcement of existing laws restricting the conditions under which blacks couldlegally assemble for religious (or any other) purposes, prohibited the employment ofslaves as clerks, made it illegal to teach free blacks to read or write, and prohibitedblacks, slave or free, from serving as peddlers or hawkers.The Senate Judiciary Com-mittee, chaired by Senator James Gregg of Richland, one of the petitioning districts,recommended the “passage of a Law declaring all assemblies of persons of colourunder the pretense of Public worship, even in the daytime unlawful unless six slave-holders were present” and imposing a prohibitive $ license fee on all “hawkersand peddlers.” The bill, which included stringent new measures limiting educationaland religious opportunities for slaves, passed two readings in the state senate withease before being sent to the state house of representatives for consideration.Initially, the house referred the bill to its judiciary committee for review, andfi nally on December , , the house took action on the senate proposal.Underthe leadership of Henry Laurens Pinckney, an arch-nullifi er, the house informed thesenate that it would accept the bill if and only if the senate agreed to strike the provi-sions that banned free blacks from being taught to read or write or being employedas clerks and the ban on slave preachers and exhorters.Strikingly, the senate quicklyagreed to the remove the portions of the law that the house found objectionable,without further negotiation.Thus South Carolina’s  statute relating to slavesfocused almost entirely on banning slaves and free blacks from producing, selling,or sharing intoxicating liquor with anyone, slave or free.In addition, the legislatureappropriated money to support a one-hundred-person cavalry unit, known as theCharleston Horse Guard, to protect against Turner-like uprisings in the port city,and approved a few other measures to improve patrols and enhance white security.Thus, after bold beginnings, the  South Carolina legislature did little to increasethe state’s regulation of slaves or free blacks.The house’s seemingly easy gutting of the original senate bill’s potent attack onpaternalism, with its strict measures to limit slave literacy and tighten state regu-lation of slave religious activity, and the senate’s even more surprising acceptanceof the house’s demands likely refl ect the legislative leadership’s preoccupation witha looming matter of larger concern: fashioning the two-thirds majority needed tocall a convention for the nullifi cation of federal tariff laws.The nullifi ers had held amajority in the legislature since the  elections but did not enjoy the two-thirdsmajority that Calhoun and other leading nullifi ers deemed necessary for the callingof a sovereign convention.Speaker Pinckney and senate president Henry Deas wereboth close allies of the state’s pro-nullifi cation governor, James Hamilton.The attackon slave literacy and the religious instruction of slaves remained inherently contro-versial, attracting the opposition of a strong minority of legislators, and they werealso issues that divided both the nullifi er and Unionist camps.These measures werealso much less popular in the Upcountry, where the battle over nullifi cation was hotlycontested in several districts, than in the Lowcountry.Moreover, Pinckney, while anardent nullifi er, was also a member of Benjamin Palmer’s Circular CongregationalR E A C T I O N I N T H E L O W E R S O U T H465Church.Palmer was an avid defender of the religious instruction of slaves in generaland of teaching slaves to read in particular.On these issues, Palmer’s sympathies layfar more in favor of paternalism than did those of his congregation, but throughhis connection with Palmer, Pinckney was no doubt well aware of intensity of thestate’s religious community’s opposition to the proposed restrictions.59 Thus the sud-den weakening of the original bill likely owed much to the need of the nullifi ers tobuild a consensus behind their cause and to the prominent role Pinckney played inmanaging the legislation [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]