Hi everybody, I've finally finished the next update. The next update will finally deal with the West, and the problems going on there. But for now, here's what is going on with the South.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?"
—Patrick Henry
The Clark-Pinckey-Griffin Act, despite having been rejected by the Confederation Congress, still had some potential to be revived. Despite the Act having received support from Northern Congressional delegates, Southern Delegates fears that this as a plan to establish a Northern-led tyranny in the style of the Commonwealth of England kept progress from being made. Unbeknownst to the anti-Act Southerners, a crisis was brewing in their states as well.
As the secessionists’ revolt burned in Massachusetts, embers of rebellion spread through the whole of the American nation. One ember ignited in the heart of a free black preacher, Abram. Born Robert Meriday, he was a slave who was freed upon the death of his former master and became a farmer possessing a small plot of land in Northwestern Virginia. Sometime in October 1774, he reportedly saw a vision from God, where he was told to “Save his people.” Taking the name Abram, he began to travel the American south trying to free the souls of the slaves. Few records of him exist in this time period, however it is known that sometime in 1780 Abram was in Massachusetts where he met Clark Hopswood. The two would write letters between each other, the contents of which remain unknown. Abram would serve as the model for “Free Nigger Bob,” a recurring character in Hopswood’s anti-slavery writings. Although it is unknown exactly when sometime in 1781 Abram came to South Carolina. Eventually, through a mixture of Hopswood’s letters and news of the events in Massachusetts, Abram began to prepare to liberate the worldly bodies, rather than the souls of America’s slaves.
Although exact records are lacking, it is believed that by the end of 1786 Abram was able to recruit nearly five thousand slaves into the plot of rebellion. The beginning of the rebellion proper occurred entirely by mistake. On March 12th a slave, whose name history has regrettably forgotten, beat to death a white overseer following a beating. Following this, approximately eighty slaves stormed the plantation manor and whipped their former master, the plantation’s white workers, and the master’s family to death. Two days later Governor Thomas Pinckney heard the news of the event, he called out the local militia to deal with them declaring: “We shall make short work of them.”
Over the next two weeks, slaves began rising up throughout South Carolina particularly in the area around Charleston. On the 29th of March, Governor Pinckney’s militia was defeated in the Battle of North Charleston. This defeat spurred on the slave revolt and by the end of March, twenty thousand slaves or roughly one-fifth of the slave population of South Carolina were rebelling against the slavery. On April 2nd, Pinckney fled Charleston in light of an approaching black army, which arrived in the city the next day. The Battle of Charleston was barely worthy of the title, far more resembling a massacre rather than a battle. Only six thousand of the nearly seventeen thousand civilians of Charleston were alive the following morning.
As news of the slave revolt spread, nervousness began to set in throughout the Southern leadership. Slave revolts were a perpetual threat and the current revolt was of a larger scale than any other. In other slave states crackdowns began to occur with 24 slaves being hanged in Delaware alone. The largest change however, was in the attitude of the southern states towards the idea of establishing an emergency government. Although they had rejected in the Confederation Congress the establishment of an emergency army, the southern states began to approve of the idea despite the fact that Governor Pinckney himself had stated that the action was “a step from tyranny.” However, the threat of the slave revolt spreading to other states swayed their opinions. On April 18th, Virginia became the last state to ratify the Clark-Pinckney-Griffin Act and the emergency army (officially the United States Army of Internal Defense) came into existence. The office of the emergency executive was granted the title Dictator, drawing inspiration from the early Roman Republic.
The question of who should become Dictator saw little debate. George Washington was the first choice for receiving the office with the news of the passing of the act reaching him on April 23rd, departing for New York the following morning. Washington was noted by many to be very reluctant to take the office, with many believing he would turn it down entirely. Despite his reluctance, Washington took the office on May 1st, 1787 and immediately set out to end the growing number of crises stood in his way. The militias in the north were losing ground to the Massachusetts Republic, slaves across the southern states were in revolt, Natives were attacking settlers in the west, and the central government was barely able to summon the quorum needed to function. Despite all of this, Washington vowed to save the union.
“My Country has called upon me, in its darkest hour, to once more fight for the Liberties and Freedoms which we had, so few years before, fought and died for. Heaven has ordained upon us the sacred duty to defend the Fires of Liberty, and the Republican form of Government. It is for the security of the Nation, the favour of the American people, and the progenity of all Free people of this Earth that the Union must hold.”
-George Washington.