In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

In order to view this proof accurately, the Overprint Preview Option must be checked in Acrobat Professional or Adobe Reader. Please contact your Customer Service Representative if you have questions about ἀnding the option. Job Name: -- /351334t 4 SLAVE CITY IN A FREE REPUBLIC • Although South Carolina's capital city had a spacious harbor, it was not an easy one for an eighteenth-century master to enter. A sand bank, with only a few breaks in it, extended almost from shore to shore across the mouth of the bay. Ships could enter by one or the other of the openings where the water even at low tide was about twelve feet deep. But the channels were not easily distinguished, and the passage at night was especially difficult. Moreover, the anchorage ground outside the bank was only usable when the sea was calm.1 The sand barrier and the twelve-foot low water depth at the Charleston bar did not, however, prevent big ships of the time from entering the port. Vessels sailing between Charleston and Europe in colonial times ranged up to 500 tons burden. The great majority of vessels engaged in the Charleston trade carried from 1,000 to 1,200 barrels of rice, which meant that their capacity was from 250 to 300 tons. Ships drawing about eleven feet and of less than 200 tons burden could easily pass the Charleston bar even at low water.2 While the sloops, schooners, and brigantines which Captain Vesey commanded during the colonial period were in the fifty-ton class, the vessel which he commanded at the close of the war was in a class with the big ships in the Charleston trade. When he headed for Charleston again after the war, the Bermuda captain was an experienced veteran in maritime commerce, both in terms of the variety of craft he had commanded and the number of voyages he had made. As he sailed by Sullivan's Island into the harbor mouth and caught sight of the oaks and lofty pines along the shore, the scene was In order to view this proof accurately, the Overprint Preview Option must be checked in Acrobat Professional or Adobe Reader. Please contact your Customer Service Representative if you have questions about ἀnding the option. Job Name: -- /351334t SLAVE CITY IN A FREE REPUBLIC 27 one that had become familiar to him in visits of the previous decade. This same view had greeted Captain Vesey many times during the 1770's as he sailed into the bay from St. Kitts, Dominica, or some other Caribbean port. But in 1783 the captain's perspective changed from that of a visitor to that of a settler. He would no longer have to worry about negotiating the bar or be prepared for such things as the disciplinary roar of a cannon shot aimed at an absent-minded or disobedient captain. "Vessels," warned a Charleston newspaper of 1783, "which shall attempt to pass the battery, without paying regard to the instructions, will pay Two Dollars for the first charge and Four Dollars for every other charge which should be fired at them."3 As the voyager sailed inward, the outline of the town rose out of the fertile fields and wooded country on either side of the Ashley and Cooper rivers. The Carolina coast was one more different landfall for the young Negro aboard, now, at sixteen, a veteran sailor. Charleston's skyline was flat except for a few protuberances such as St. Michael's whose 192-foot steeple was often visible from vessels before they made any land. Located at the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers about five miles above the point at which they flow into the Atlantic, the city was well placed as a center of inland plantation and transoceanic trade. Canoes, small boats, and pettygues plied the rivers, bringing down plantation produce and returning with necessities for the planters. Pettygues were the work boats of the river and coastal trade. They were decked vessels forty or more feet long, ordinarily propelled by oars but sometimes having sails mounted on two removable masts. These and other boats were likely to be competing with ships for space along the crowded waterfront. Most of the wharves were located along the Cooper River, which was the busiest of the two streams. The Cooper on the north side of the city could accommodate ships for twenty miles of its course and smaller vessels for forty miles. The Ashley...

Share