Twilight on the South Carolina Rice Fields

Peter A. Coclanis

Description

A firsthand account of the Civil War and Reconstruction in the Old South rice kingdom from one of South Carolina's founding families

The Civil War and Reconstruction eras decimated the rice-planting enterprise of the South, and no family experienced the effects of this economic upheaval quite as dramatically as the Heywards of South Carolina, a family synonymous with the wealth of the old rice kingdom in the Palmetto State. Twilight on the South Carolina Rice Fields collects the revealing wartime and postbellum letters and documents of Edward Barnwell "Barney" Heyward (1826–1871), a native of Beaufort District and grandson of Nathaniel Heyward, one of the most successful rice planters and largest slaveholders in the South. Barney Heyward was also the father of South Carolina governor Duncan Clinch Heyward, author of Seed from Madagascar, the definitive account of the rice kingdom's final stand a generation later.

Edited by Margaret Belser Hollis and Allen H. Stokes, the Heyward family correspondence from this transformational period reveals the challenges faced by a once-successful industry and a once-opulent society in the throes of monumental change. During the war Barney Heyward served as a lieutenant in the engineering division of the Confederate army but devoted much of his time to managing affairs at his plantations near Columbia and Beaufort. His letters chronicle the challenges of preserving his lands and maintaining control over the enslaved labor force essential to his livelihood and his family's fortune. The wartime letters also provide a penetrating view of the Confederate defense of coastal South Carolina against the Union forces who occupied Beaufort District. In the aftermath of the conflict, Heyward worked with only limited success to revive planting operations. In addition to what these documents reveal about rice cultivation during tumultuous times, they also convey the drama, affections, and turmoil of life in the Heyward family, from Barney's increasingly difficult relations with his father, Charles Heyward, to his heartfelt devotion to his wife, the former Catherine "Tat" Maria Clinch, and their children.

Twilight of the South Carolina Rice Fields also features an introduction by noted economic historian Peter A. Coclanis that places these letters and the legacy of the Heyward family into a broader historical context.

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Superiority (short story)
• Totaled
• Cotton factor
• Battle of Honey Hill
• Furlough
• God Knows (novel)
• Union blockade
• South Carolina Lowcountry
• University of South Carolina
• Desertion
• Marooning
• State
• Savannah River
• Miscarriage
• South
• Drought
• Slavery
• History of the Americas
• Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands
• Sulky
• United States
• Université de Caroline du Sud
• FL
• Local
• Rice
• KY
• LA
• TN
• MS
• SC
• NC
• AR
• William Tecumseh Sherman
• VA
• GA

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 07 décembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611172300
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Twilight on the South Carolina Rice Fields
Letters of the Heyward Family 1862–1871

Edited by Margaret Belser Hollis and Allen H. Stokes
With the Assistance of Shirley Bright Cook, Janet Hudson, and Nicholas G. Meriwether
Introduction by Peter A. Coclanis
                          The University of South Carolina Press
Published in Cooperation with the South Caroliniana Library with the Assistance of the Caroline McKissick Dial Publication Fund
© 2010 University of South Carolina
Cloth edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 2010 Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press, 2013
www.sc.edu/uscpress
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition as follows:
Heyward, Edward Barnwell, 1826–1871.
  Twilight on the South Carolina rice fields : letters of the Heyward family, 1862–1871 / edited by Margaret Belser Hollis and Allen H. Stokes; with the assistance of Shirley Bright Cook, Janet Hudson, and Nicholas G. Meriwether ; introduction by Peter A. Coclanis.       p. cm.   “Published in cooperation with the South Caroliniana Library with the assistance of the Caroline McKissick Dial Publication Fund.”   Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN 978-1-57003-894-5 (cloth : alk. paper)   1. Heyward, Edward Barnwell, 1826-1871—Correspondence. 2. Hayward family—Correspondence. 3. Rice farmers—South Carolina—Correspondence. 4. Plantation owners—South Carolina—Correspondence. 5. Aristocracy (Social class)—South Carolina—Correspondence. 6. Rice—South Carolina—History—19th century—Sources. 7. Plantation life—South Carolina—History—19th century—Sources. 8. South Carolina—History—19th century—Sources. 9. South Carolina—Social life and customs—19th century—Sources. 10. South Carolina—Biography. I. Hollis, Margaret Belser. II. Stokes, Allen H. III. Cook, Shirley Bright. IV. Hudson, Janet G., 1959– V. Meriwether, Nicholas G. VI. South Caroliniana Library. VII. Title.   F273.H49T86 2010   975.7'03—dc22                                                                                  2009046446
ISBN 978-1-61117-230-0 (ebook)
To the Heyward family of South Carolina
Contents
List of Illustrations
Editorial Method
Clinch and Heyward Family Members
Introduction     Peter A. Coclanis
Heyward Family Letters
1862
1863
1864
1865
1866
1867
1868
1869
1870
1871
Index
Illustrations
Colonel Daniel Heyward (1720–1777)
Edward Barnwell “Barney” Heyward
Catherine Maria Clinch Heyward
“Miss Mary taking Clinch to ‘La Mont,’ when it is hot”
Pocotaligo Depot in winter 1865
Line of defense between the Ashepoo and Combahee rivers, November 4, 1863
“Richmond Post Office”
Position of Boyd's Neck, Honey Hill, and Devaux's Neck, December 1864
Sherman's XV Corps crossing the South Edisto River
Green Pond Drive station, near the Combahee River
Rose Hill plantation
Editorial Method
This project is the fruit of a long collaboration between Margaret Belser Hollis, a Heyward family descendant, and the South Caroliniana Library of the University of South Carolina. As part of an agreement between Hollis and the library, she convinced her relatives to donate a considerable number of Heyward family papers to the South Caroliniana Library's existing collection of Heyward materials, and as part of its ongoing program of publishing documentary editions of its major collections, the library assembled an editing team to select, transcribe, annotate, and manage the publication of this one-volume edition of the Heyward family papers. Hollis is chief editor. Shirley Bright Cook, retired associate editor of The Papers of John C. Calhoun , transcribed the majority of letters and supervised that work on the remainder. Adopting the editorial method that she and others had employed for more than thirty years at the Calhoun Papers project, Cook verified all transcriptions and established the text of the current volume. Professor Janet Hudson of the University of South Carolina history department worked on annotations along with Allen H. Stokes, director of the South Caroliniana Library who also transcribed documents and verified the complete text. Nicholas Meriwether assisted with the editing and annotations.
The Calhoun Papers' editorial method aimed at verbatim et literatem transcription of complete documents. Emendations were handled through interpolations within the text, set apart in brackets with descriptions of each specific emendation. Accurate identifications of persons and places mentioned in the letters were more often made using interpolations than with annotations or footnotes. The varied placements and forms of datelines, salutations, complimentary closes, and postscripts to letters were regularized, and each document was given a heading that identified the writer and recipient. In these respects, the editorial method employed in Twilight on the Rice Fields may be considered one that concentrates more upon an accurate, intelligible presentation of the documents as bearers of information than upon them as artifacts, the appearances of which are sought to be reproduced in type.
Clinch and Heyward Family Members
E LIZA B AYARD C LINCH A NDERSON (1821–1905), oldest child of Duncan Lamont and Eliza Bayard McIntosh Clinch, married Robert Anderson, U.S. Army officer who remained loyal to the Union and defended Fort Sumter against the April 1861 Confederate attack that began the Civil War.
D UNCAN L AMONT C LINCH (1787–1849), son of Joseph and Mary Lamont Clinch, married Eliza Bayard McIntosh, who bore their five sons and three daughters. Eliza died in April 1835 of scarlet fever. Clinch, a career military officer in the U.S. Army from 1808 to 1836, served in the War of 1812 and the Seminole Wars in the Florida territory. After retiring from the military, Clinch became a rice planter and politician, managing his extensive plantations on the coast of southern Georgia and northern Florida. From 1844 to 1845, he represented Georgia in the U.S. Congress and ran unsuccessfully as the Whig candidate for governor in 1847.
D UNCAN L AMONT C LINCH J R. (1826–?), second-oldest son of Duncan Lamont and Eliza Bayard McIntosh Clinch, married Susan Hopkins and operated Incochee, a Georgia rice plantation. A 1908 graduate of the University of North Carolina, he began his military career in the Mexican War. He attained the rank of colonel in the Confederate army, commanding the Fourth Regiment, Georgia Cavalry, and was severely wounded in February 1864 during the Battle of Olustee in Florida.
H ENRY A. C LINCH (1830–1895), son of Duncan Lamont and Eliza Bayard McIntosh Clinch, was a 1849 graduate of South Carolina College. He served in the First Regiment, Louisiana Heavy Artillery, and eventually reached the rank of lieutenant colonel.
J OHN H OUSTOUN M C I NTOSH C LINCH (1823–1905), oldest son of Duncan Lamont Clinch and Eliza Bayard McIntosh, was a graduate of the University of North Carolina. Houstoun operated Refuge, the Camden County rice plantation on the southern Georgia coast that his father had inherited from John Houstoun McIntosh, Houstoun's maternal grandfather and Duncan's father-in-law.
N ICHOLAS B AYARD C LINCH (1832–1888), seventh child of Duncan Lamont and Eliza Bayard McIntosh Clinch, was a 1849 graduate of South Carolina College, served the Confederacy in the Fourth Regiment, Georgia Cavalry, the unit his brother Duncan commanded.
M ARY L AMONT C LINCH , daughter of Duncan Lamont Clinch and Eliza Bayard McIntosh, never married. She lived and traveled with her stepmother Sophia Gibbs Couper Clinch, both of whom visited Catherine Maria Clinch Heyward during and after the Civil War.
S OPHIA G IBBS C OUPER C LINCH (1812–1903) was the widow of John Couper, Saint Simon Island rice planter. Sophie (her preferred name) was living with her Gibbs relatives on Fort George Island near Jacksonville, Florida, when she met Duncan Lamont Clinch. Twenty-five years his junior, she became Clinch's third wife in February 1846. To honor his new bride, Clinch built Lamont, a summer home near Clarksville in mountainous northern Georgia. Sophie lived half a century after Clinch's death. Sophie and Mary, Clinch's unmarried daughter, lived at Lamont during most of the early correspondence but also visited Savannah, Georgia; New York City; and Greenville, South Carolina, after the Civil War. After Edward Barnwe