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Observations Suggested by the Late Occurrences in Charleston, by a Member of the Board of Public Works, of the State of South-Carolina. 1822 In 1820 Nicholas Herbemont was appointed to the South Carolina Board of Public Works. In 1821 he presided over the body in a period when it actively engaged in a host of projects: road building, the creation of a state map, the construction of a canal that would permit waterborne commerce from the coast to Columbia, and the erection of a water system for the capital. In the spirit of this activism, Herbemont, speaking in the persona of a public official , advanced the idea that the state consider the renovation of its agricultural system. The immediate occasion of this tract was the discovery, in late spring of 1822, of the conspiracy of a group of slaves led by freeman Denmark Vesey and Gullah Jack to revolt and seize ships for the liberation of African slaves around Charleston. Herbemont, who had first come to public notice in South Carolina for his translation of the life of black liberationist Toussaint Louverture in 1801, did not doubt the threat of slave insurrection or the capacity of Africans and African Americans to succeed. He indicated that the only sure way to avoid this danger was the abolition of slavery and the exportation from the state of all liberated freemen. Failing that, he argued for the transformation of the state’s agriculture by the importation of European farmers into the Midlands to cultivate olive trees and grape vines, herd sheep for wool, and grow mulberry trees to feed silkworms for silk manufacture. He imagined several benefits: the entire revaluation of the land of the Carolina sand hills and pine barrens, increasing state revenues and productions while diversifying agriculture ; the increase in the white population diminishing the likelihood of black rebellion; and the creation of an agrarian economy that could compete with the newly opened lands of the West that were tempting ambitious Carolinians to leave the state. This first summary vision of a future economy for the South announced themes that would be echoed for the remainder of his life. He published the tract at his own expense, contracting the printer of the State Gazette newspaper to set type. He distributed the pamphlet gratis to persons Agrarian Essays 252 throughout the United States, including Thomas Jefferson,1 who wrote back commending the cultivation of olive trees particularly.2 The tract, however, reached a broad readership when republished in the pages of the American Farmer. Published in Columbia by the State Gazette Office, 1822. Preface. The following remarks on the capability of the State of South-Carolina to support a much greater population than it now does, and the adequateness of a considerable portion of its soil to the productions recommended in this little Tract, are not, properly speaking, the suggestions of the late occurrences in Charleston; but have long been the object of the writer’s studies and consideration. This was thought a fit moment, however, for producing and offering them to the public, leaving it to more able persons to digest a suitable plan for effecting the objects proposed, if they are found worthy of approbation. Observations, &c. It has frequently been asserted, and probably with truth, that slavery is an obstacle to improvements and to the increase of the white population. The late distressing events in Charleston prove that it certainly is attended with considerable danger. Very few persons in the Southern, as well as in the Northern states look upon it in any other light than as a great evil entailed upon us by our ancestors, and, like hereditary diseases of the human body, the cure is extremely difficult, and all that can be done with comparative facility is to administer palliatives. Some means at this time seem necessary to be adopted to check the growing evil, whether it is intended ever to suppress slavery totally, or merely to modify it so as to correct in a great degree the worst effects of it and prevent, if possible, the recurrence of the late disturbances. It is not intended here to discuss the subject of slavery; but, taking the present situation of things as we find them, the question is, what is best to be done consistently with humanity towards our slaves, and our duty to ourselves and posterity? In order to answer this question, it will be necessary to take a brief view of the present state of things, considering...

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