Carolina was broken, and its interior forests became safe places of resort to the emigrant.

Meantime, in August, 1714, the house of Hanover had ascended the English throne - an event doubly grateful to the colonies. The contest of parties is the struggle, not between persons, but between ideas; and the abiding sympathy of nations is never won but by an appeal to the controlling principles of the age. George I. had crossed the sea to become the sovereign of a country of which he understood neither the institutions, the manners, nor the language. And yet, throughout English America, even the clergy heralded his elevation as an omen of happiness; and from the pulpit in Boston it was announced of its people that, in the whole land, "not a dog can wag his tongue to charge them with disloyalty." To the children of the Puritans, the event was the triumph of Protestantism, and the guaranty of Protestant liberties.

The accession of the house of Hanover was, moreover, a pledge of a pacific policy; and the pledge was redeemed. Louis XIV. drew near his end; he had outlived his children and every grandchild, except the new king of Spain, his own glory, the gratitude of those whom he had advanced. "My child," said he, as, in August, 1715, he gave a farewell blessing to his greatgrandson, the boy of five years old, who was to be his successor, you will be a great king; do not imitate me in my passion for war; seek peace with your neighbors, and strive to be, what I have failed to be, a solace to your people." "Sad task," Madame de Maintenon had written, "to amuse a man who is past being amused;" and, quitting his bedside, she left him, after a reign of seventy-two years, to die alone. He had sought to extend his power beyond his life by establishing a council of regency; but the will was cancelled by the parliament, in favor of his nephew, the brave, generous, but abandoned Philip of Orleans.

The personal interest of the absolute regent in France

CONTINUED PEACE BETWEEN FRANCE AND ENGLAND. 223

was opposed to the rigid doctrine of legitimacy, and sought an alliance with England; while the king of Spain, under the guidance of Alberoni, was moved not less by hereditary attachment to legitimacy than by personal ambition, to favor alike the pretensions of the Stuarts to the British throne and of himself to the succession in France. By the influence of Protestant England, the wily, degenerate, avaricious Du Bois was made cardinal, the successor of Fenelon in an archbishopric, and prime minister of France. Under such auspices was a happy peace secured to the colonies of rival nations.

Neither the accession of George II. in 1727, nor the coming of age of Louis XV., changed the dispositions of the governments. The character of Walpole was a pledge of moderation. Ignorant of theories, not familiar with the history or politics of foreign nations, he was profoundly versed in the maxims of worldly wisdom. Of the American colonies he knew little; but they profited by the character of a statesman who ever shunned measures that might lead to an insurrection, who rejected every system of revenue that required the sabre and the bayonet to enforce it.

In his honorable policy, Walpole was favored by the natural moderation of Fleury, who, at the age of seventy-three, was called by Louis XV. to direct the affairs of France. The wise cardinal had a discriminating mind, and an equitable candor, which shunned intrigue and forbade distrust. The preservation of peace was his rule of administration; and he was the chosen mediator between conflicting sovereigns. His clear perceptions anticipated impending revolutions; but he hushed the storm till his judgment sunk under the infirmities of fourscore. Happy period for the colonies! Let England judge as it will of the minister to whom it owes septennial parliaments, America blesses the memory of Walpole and of Fleury, as of statesmen who preferred commerce to conquest, and desired no higher glory than that of guardians of peace. For a quarter of a century, if less forbearance was shown towards

Spain, the controversies of Great Britain and France respecting colonial boundaries, though they might lead to collisions, could not occasion a rupture.

The prospect of continued peace occasioned a rapid extension of the Indian traffic of South Carolina. Favored by the mild climate, its traders had their storehouses among the Chickasas and near the Natchez, and by intimidation, rather than by good will, gained admission even into villages of the Choctas. Still more intimate were their commercial relations with the branches of the Muskhogees in the immediate vicinity of the province, especially with the Yamassees, who, from impatience at the attempts at their conversion to Christianity, had deserted their old abodes in Florida, and planted themselves from Port Royal Island along the north-east bank of the Savannah River. The tribes of Carolina had been regarded as a tame and peaceable people;" they were very largely in debt for the advances which had been made them; and "the traders began to be hard upon them, because they would be paid." The influence of Bienville, of Louisiana, prevailed with the Choctas, and the English were driven from their villages. The whole Indian world from Mobile River to Cape Fear was in commotion. The Yamassees renewed friendly relations with the Spaniards at St. Augustine; they won the alliance of the Catawbas and the Cherokees; and their messenger with "the bloody stick" made his way through flowering groves to the new towns of the Appalachian emigrants on the Savannah, to the ancient villages of the Uchees, to the rivers along which the various tribes of the Muskhogees had their dwellings; and they delayed their rising till the deliberations of the grand council of the Creeks should be finished, and the emblem of war be returned.

In passion-week of 1715, the traders at Pocotaligo observed the madness of revenge kindling among the Yamassees. On Thursday night, unaware of immediate danger, Nairne, the English agent, sent with proposals of peace, slept in the round house, with the civil

WAR OF SOUTH CAROLINA WITH THE YAMASSEES. 225

chiefs and the war captains. On the morning of Good Friday, the indiscriminate massacre of the English began. One boy escaped into the forest, and, after wandering for nine days, reached a garrison. Seaman Burroughs, a strong man and swift runner, broke through the ranks of the Indian band; and, though hotly pursued, and twice wounded, by running ten miles, and swimming one, he reached Port Royal, and alarmed the town. Its inhabitants, some in canoes, and some on board a ship, which chanced to be in the harbor, fled to Charleston. The numerous bands of the enemy, hiding by day in the swamps, and by night attacking the scattered settlements, drove the planters towards the capital. The Yamassees and their confederates advanced even as far as Stono, where they halted, that their prisoners-planters, with their wives and little ones might be tormented and sacrificed at leisure. On the north, a troop of horse, insnared by a false guide in an ambush among large trees, thickly strown by a late hurricane, lost its commander, and retreated. The insurgent Indians carried their ravages even to the parish of Goose Creek; Charleston itself was in peril; the colony seemed near its ruin.

But the impulse of savage passion could not resist the deliberate courage of civilized man. The spirit of the colony was aroused. On the north, the insulated band of invaders received a check, and vanished into the forests; on the south, Charles Craven, the governor of the province, himself promptly led the forces of Colleton district to the desperate conflict with the confederated warriors on the banks of the Salke-hachie.

The

battle was bloody, and often renewed. The air resounded with savage yells; arrows, as well as bullets, were discharged, with fatal aim, from behind trees and coppices. At last, the savages gave way, and were pursued beyond the present limits of Carolina. The Yamassees retired into Florida, and at St. Augustine were welcomed with peals from the bells and a salute of guns, as though allies and friends had returned from victory.

The Uchees left their old settlements below Broad River, and the Appalachians their new cabins near the Savannah, and retired towards Flint River. When Craven returned to Charleston, he was greeted with the applause which his alacrity, courage, and conduct, had merited. The colony had lost about four hundred of its inhabitants.

The war with the Yamassees was followed by a domestic revolution in Carolina. Its soil had been defended by its own people, and they resolved, under the sovereignty of the English monarch, to govern themselves. Scalping parties of Yamassees, from their places of refuge in Florida, continued to hover on the frontiers of a territory which the Spaniards still claimed as their own. The proprietaries took no efficient measures for protecting their colony. Instead of inviting settlers, they monopolized the lands which they had not contributed to defend. The measures adopted for the payment of the colonial debts were negatived, in part because they imposed a duty of ten pounds on the introduction of every negro from abroad. The polls for the election of representatives had hitherto been held for the whole province at Charleston alone; the provincial legislature permitted the votes to be given in each parish. But because this reform increased popular power, this also was negatived. Some of the members of the proprietary council had, by long residence, become attached to the soil and the liberties of their new country; they were supplanted, or their influence destroyed, by an abrupt increase of the number of their associates. In consequence, at the election of assembly, in 1719, though it was chosen at Charleston, the agents of the proprietaries could not succeed in procuring the return of any one whom they desired. The members elect, at private meetings, "resolved to have no more to do with the proprietors;" and the people of the province entered "into an association to stand by their rights and privileges." It was remembered that the lords of trade had formerly declared the charter