PUBLISHED UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF THE TRUS- COLLECTED AND EDITED BY WILLIAM L. SAUNDERS SECRETARY OF STATE VOL. II-1713 TO 1728 RALEIGH P. M. HALE, PRINTER TO THE STATE 1886 LIBRARY UNIVERSITY Copyright, 1886, by WILLIAM L. SAUNDERS, Secretary of State, PRESSES OF E. M. UZZELL, PREFATORY NOTES TO SECOND VOLUME. The second volume begins with the year 1713 and closes with the end of the Proprietary Government in 1728. But is 1728 the true date? The facts seem to be that on or about the 11th July, 1728, the Crown concluded negotiations with the Proprietors by an agreement for the surrender of their charters; that the colonists were notified thereof on or before the 12th December, 1728; that from and after that date official papers from the colony were sent, not to the Proprietors as hitherto had been the custom, but to the representatives of the Crown; that the Proprietors thought their authority was at an end; that the Judge of the Court of Admiralty, the Secretary, the Council and the Governor of the Province, also, thought the transfer had actually taken place; that upon further reflection an act of Parliament was considered by the Crown authorities necessary to the legal surrender of the government; that the Lords Proprietors expressed great surprise thereat and asked that the surrender be accepted at once, or that they be restored to their rights under the charters; that some time before the 1st June, 1729, an act of Parliament was passed "establishing an agreement with seven of the Lords Proprietors for the surrender of their title," &c.; that in pursuance of this act a further formal deed of surrender was made by the aforesaid seven Proprietors to the Crown on the 25th July, 1729; that the first Royal Governor did not enter upon the discharge of his duties until February, 1731; that in the interim Governor Everard and the other appointees of the Proprietors continued in office; that the Legislature met and passed laws, using the customary enacting clause, and that it was not until after the arrival of the Royal Governor that there was any requirement that statutes should run in the name of the Governor, Council and Assembly instead of the Palatine and Proprietors. Upon this statement of facts it is submitted that the government of the Lords Proprietors came to an end practically in North Carolina in 1728, and not in 1729, as is commonly stated. In 1712, Colonel Barnwell having been rendered unfit for further service by his wounds, returned to South Carolina, and Colonel James Moore with a second force of Indians came to the help of the colonists in North Carolina. On the 26th March, 1713, Colonel Moore captured the Indian fort on Contentnea creek and thereby virtually ended the war with the Tuscaroras. A treaty was made in which twenty of the ringleaders in the massacre of 1711 were agreed to be surrendered to the colonists for punishment, and King Tom Blunt, as he was called, was recognized as King of all the Tuscaroras who remained. The others are said to have gone to New York, where they became the sixth of the tribes called the "Six Nations." Blunt seems ever afterward to have been a faithful ally. But the Indian troubles did not end with the Tuscarora war, for as late as 1718 the colonists were still putting troops into the field to "catch or kill Enemy Indians." As might be expected, the condition of the colony for several years was a deplorable one, the people being "exceeding poor and distressed" because of the war, whereby they were not only decreased greatly in numbers but suffered very much by destruction of cattle, houses and plantations. The war was a cruel one. Every Indian who was captured was either killed or made a slave. The right to make slaves of captive Indians seems not to have been questioned, and the opportunity to exercise this right was the great inducement offered to the South Carolina Indians to come to North Carolina under Colonel Moore and fight against the Tuscaroras. In 1713 Colonel Pollock, then acting as Governor, bought from the Council eight Indian captives at £10 per head for shipment to the West Indies. War was then, as now, an expensive undertaking, and this war saddled upon the colony a debt that could be met only by the emission of paper obligations. The first was in 1712 for £4,000, and the next for £8,000. These were the first paper certificates of public indebtedness ever issued in North Carolina. Up to this time taxation had been levied only upon the poll, but to meet the present emergency it was also levied upon real estate. In the course of a few years the colonists found it necessary to resort to still other issues of paper money. In 1714 £24,000 were issued for future needs and to redeem the currency already out. In 1717 the amount then out was supposed to be about £16,000. In 1722 £12,000 were issued, that being supposed to be sufficient to redeem the whole issue then out, less the defaced and lost bills. In the year 1729 also, bills of currency to the amount of £40,000 were issued, rated at 500 per cent. exchange, £10,000 to be applied to the redemption of former bills and the remaining £30,000 to be lent out at 6 per cent. interest on land security, the same to be paid in fifteen years in equal payments. The value of the bills being uncertain, the Assembly reserved to itself the right to declare at their first meeting annually at what exchange the bills should pass. In this great crisis in the affairs of the colony, brought about by the war, the Lords Proprietors, instead of extending a helping hand to save their property from destruction by the Indians, were avaricious enough to demand their rents in silver, a requirement that the people of the colony in the best of times were unable to meet. Indeed, owing to the great scarcity of coin in the country, the colonists had years before been compelled to make the ordinary articles of traffic a legal tender at certain fixed rates established by law, and suits were brought for so many pounds of tobacco for example, instead of for so much money in pounds, shillings and pence. In 1713, the Proprietors having forbid further hostilities toward Cary and his adherents, and Governor Hyde having died, Colonel Pollock became Governor as President of the Council, and peace and better order obtained in the government. Pollock admits in one of his letters that the Quakers, under his administration, were good citizens, a fact doubtless due in great degree to the cessation of hostilities against them. In 1715, North Carolina had an opportunity to repay South Carolina in kind for her prompt and generous assistance after the massacre in 1711, for in 1715 the Yemassee Indians made war on the whites in South Carolina, |