Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/218

 parties, and also having displayed a friendly disposition towards the Spaniards in Florida, Archdale appointed Joseph Blake, a nephew of the famous admiral, as governor, and the next year returned to England.

Not long before, a vessel from Madagascar, on her homeward voyage to Britain, happening to touch at Charleston, the captain presented the governor with a bag of seed rice, which he said he had seen growing in eastern countries, where it was deemed excellent food, and yielded a prodigious increase. Cultivated at first more as a curiosity khan with any definite expectation of the result, it soon grew to be esteemed a most important staple. "Hence," says Mr. Bancroft, "the opulence of the colony; hence also, its swarms of negro slaves. The profits of the rice fields tempted the planter to enlarge his domains, and Africa furnished laborers."

Although the majority of the colonists were Dissenters, yet in 1704, by a very small majority, they were disfranchised, and the monopoly of political power bestowed upon the Church of England. Archdale opposed the bill in the court of proprietaries, but through Lord Granville's efforts it was sanctioned : two years later, on application to the queen, the intollerant acts were declared null and void, and in November, 1706, so far as political privileges were concerned, they were repealed by the Colonial Assembly: the Church of England nevertheless was established as the religion of the province. Angry strifes ensued, and turbulence and popular excitements were not uncommon. Still the period was one of prosperity and exemption from the trials to which other colonies were exposed.

A graphic picture is drawn by Mr. Bancroft of the State of North Carolina, "the sanctuary of runaways," where "every one did what was right in his own eyes, paying tribute neither to God nor to Cæsar;" and of the effort made under Robert Daniel, the deputy governor, to establish the Church of England among such a people as this. Of course the effort was abortive; anarchy ensued; the two parties were arrayed one against the other; each party had its governor; each elected its House of Representatives. The Quakers determined to resist the operation of what they deemed injustice; and notwithstanding the governor of Virginia was asked to interfere with a military force, the malcontents were unterrified, and persisted in their attitude of defiance. But the attention of the whole province was soon engrossed by a war with the Tuscarora Indians. These, enraged by what they deemed a trespass on their land, proceeded to revenge themselves in the usual manner of savages. The Quakers in North Carolina refused to bear arms; South Carolina sent some aid; but the yellow fever breaking out, the inhabitants fled in terror and distress from the ravages of disease, and the inroads of the Indians. The next winter—1713—a force of militia and Indians from South Carolina, subdued the Tuscaroras, and some eight hundred prisoners were sold into