Abstract
The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, a copy of which accompanied the “first fleet,” constituted the centerpiece of the proprietary plan to encourage settlement after 1669—from England or wherever in the empire—and to address concerns over English society in the aftermath of the Civil Wars.83 More formal than the 1665 Articles of Agreement with the Barbados Adventurers, these written Constitutions set forth in some detail the powers and responsibilities of the Lords and of their colonists. Moreover, recognizing the problems presented by distance as well as by the distractions posed by metropolitan affairs, the Lords specifically and formally delegated most of their authority to the leaders of the settlement. The “fundamentals” represents the most formal attempt to provide a governmental and social framework in the history of Anglo-American colonization.84
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Notes
John Milton, “John Locke and the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina,” Locke Newsletter, 21 (1990), 111–33, provides the latest and clearest examination of the degree of Locke’s involvement in the original production of the Constitutions.
Vicki Hseuh, “Giving Orders: Theory and Practice in the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 63 (2002), 425–46, although riddled with errors, notes this at 425–29. Cf. Weir, Colonial South Carolina, pp. 71–2; Sirmans, Colonial South Carolina, pp. 7–9;
David Wootton, ed., Political Writings of John Locke (New York: Penguin, 1993), p. 42;
Wesley Frank Craven, The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, 1607–1689 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univeristy Press, 1949), p. 340.
Aside from giving too much credit to Locke in the drafting of the constitutions, Barbara Arneil, John Locke and America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 118–31, mistakenly characterizes the document as a reflection of a proprietary “objective of ensuring the rights of the individual citizens particularly in terms of their religious freedom,” at 128.
In 1669, the notion of a written constitution was naturally associated with the Levellers (The Agreement of the People (1647), The Instrument of Government (1653), The fundamental lawes and liberties of England claimed (1653)) and Harringtonians (A model of a democraticall government (1659), one of the possible authors of which was Ashley’s associate, Major John Wildman), Perez Zagorin, A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954), pp. 132–45, 155–63;
S.R. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962 [1906]), pp. lii–lx, 405–17.
In terms of “Harringtonian” effects on the Fundamental Constitutions, there can be no question that Ashley regarded hereditary aristocracy as the keystone of constitutional government and codified that belief in the Fundamental Constitutions, D. McNally, “Locke, Leveller and Liberty: property and democracy in the thought of the first Whigs,” History of Political Thought, 10 (1989), 17–40.
M.E.E. Parker, North Carolina Charters and Constitutions, 1578–1698 (Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1963), p. 212.
Cf. Steve Pincus, “Neither Machiavellian Moment nor Possessive Individualism: Commerical Society and the Defenders of the English Commonwealth,” American Historical Review, 103 (1998), 705–36.
Shaftesbury’s co-proprietors, Lord Berkeley and Carteret, had codified religious toleration in their other province of New Jersey in 1665, John E. Pomfret, Colonial New Jersey: A History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), pp. 22–23.
H.R. Merrens and G.D. Terry, “Dying in Paradise: Malaria, Mortality, and the Perceptual Environment in Colonial South Carolina” in Journal of Southern History, 50 (1984), 533–50 at 534; A.J. Schmidt, ed., “Hyrne Family Letters,” SCHM, 63 (1962), 150–57;
Timothy J. Silver, A New Face on the Countryside: Indians, Colonists, and Slaves in South Atlantic Forests, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 156–57.
Cf. Alison Games, “Migration” in David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (Baskingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 31–50; Bailyn, Voyagers to the West; Horn, Adapting to a New World; Jon Kukla, “Order and Chaos in Early America: Political and Social Stability in pre-Restoration Virginia,” American Historical Review, 90 (1985), 275–98.
David Ramsay, The History of South-Carolina, From the First Settlement in 1670, to the Year 1808, 2 vols. (Charleston, 1809), II, pp. 413–15. The Lowcountry tourist of today may visit Middleton Place, Boone Hall, and the Manigualt House in Charleston and drive past plantations in private hands, all testimony to the importance of “estate” in past, yet relatively recent, times.
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© 2004 L.H. Roper
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Roper, L.H. (2004). Blueprint. In: Conceiving Carolina. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403973474_4
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