In the early 18th century there was sometimes very little difference between legal piracy--the licensing of "privateers" to seize merchant ships of an enemy during a time of war--and illegal piracy on the high seas. The West Indies and the North Carolina inlets both provided protective harbors for the latter.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
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The Pirate Stede Bonnet is one of the more colorful characters in South Carolina history. In the early 18th century there was sometimes very little difference between legal piracy--the licensing of...
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Blackbeard (Edward Thatch, Teach, or Tench) was one of the best known of the pirates whose activities expanded in the period 1716-1718 when the end of the war against Spain threw great numbers of...
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The availability of "real" money, in the form of coins made of gold and silver, was a constant problem in all of the English colonies. Their need to purchase manufactured goods from Europe meant that...
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During the 1730s, to protect against Native American attack and slave uprising, the government made plans to establish eight townships in a semicircle about one hundred miles around Charles Town (see...
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The city of Charleston in 1742 was a bustling port town of 6,800, the fourth largest city in British North America. Half of its population were African-American slaves. They were the labor on which...
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The town house of Charles Pinckney (1757-1824, see Charles Pinckney) on Meeting Street in Charleston, painted from memory by Mrs. Colden Tracy after it had been destroyed in the 1861 Charleston fire...
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"Mulberry House and Street," painted by Thomas Coram around 1800, shows a typical mid-18th century South Carolina plantation. The "great House," while elegant, was not necessarily the enormous...
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A plat from the "Writs of Partition" files, in the case of "Brewton v. Izard," dated April 17, 1760. (A plat is a map drawn by a surveyor following the legal definition of a piece of property, and...
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"Peter Manigault and His Friends" gather to dine, drink, and enjoy each other's company in the convivial society of Charleston in 1760. Manigault (at left, holding a flask of wine in his hand) was a...
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"A Map of the American Indian Nations," from James Adair, "History of the American Indians," published in London in 1775. As the backcountry of South Carolina filled up, confrontation between the...