At around noon on August 18, 1775, the rain in Charles Town finally relented. A crowd converged, and a black man was hanged and set on fire. In a slave society where labor was sometimes extracted by coercion and the fear of capital punishment, spectacles of violence were nothing new. Such displays had been witnessed before and would be seen again in the years leading up to South Carolina's “Second War for Independence.” However, this man was unique. As one of a select group of harbor pilots working the Low Country waters, he was well positioned to help the Royal Navy mount a full‐scale invasio ... More

At around noon on August 18, 1775, the rain in Charles Town finally relented. A crowd converged, and a black man was hanged and set on fire. In a slave society where labor was sometimes extracted by coercion and the fear of capital punishment, spectacles of violence were nothing new. Such displays had been witnessed before and would be seen again in the years leading up to South Carolina's “Second War for Independence.” However, this man was unique. As one of a select group of harbor pilots working the Low Country waters, he was well positioned to help the Royal Navy mount a full‐scale invasion of the richest and most vulnerable seaport in the thirteen colonies. With a personal fortune estimated at 600 to 1,000 pounds sterling, he was perhaps the most prosperous black man in pre‐Revolutionary America. As a free man with resources, slaves, and gunpowder at his disposal, he was ostensibly set to ignite a revolution. The individuals pointing their collective finger at him were also exceptional. As some of the wealthiest men in all of mainland British North America, they were poised to make a monumental and lasting break with the Crown. And while the details of the accused's life are slight and fragmentary, the dramatic circumstances surrounding his death are not. As this book illustrates, they reveal much about the crises faced by South Carolinians as they steeled themselves for the turmoil unfolding between the passage of the Coercive Acts and the Declaration of Independence.