Background Revolutionary fervor gripped South Carolina's capital by the beginning of 1775. From 1765, the
British Parliament had implemented a series of taxes and punitive legislation on the colonies which met with more and more resistance from the North American colonies. Royal governance in the
Province of South Carolina was increasingly sinking into dysfunction as the
Commons House of Assembly was repeatedly dissolved by
royal governors. Extralegal committees and assemblies were formed to enforce resistance to British actions. In response to the British
shutting down Boston Harbor and passing the
Intolerable Acts, the extralegal
General Committee called a
General Meeting for 6 July 1774. The General Meeting chose delegates to the
First Continental Congress of most of Britain's colonies in North America. That Congress met in
Philadelphia from 5 September to 26 October 1774, with two of South Carolina's delegates,
Christopher Gadsden and
Thomas Lynch, playing "especially conspicuous roles" with their belligerent attitudes toward the British. In South Carolina, the General Meeting selected a
corporate-based
Committee of 99 which became a
de facto government for the colony. The
de jure royal Commons House of Assembly supported and funded these activities. In late 1774, the General Meeting called elections for a new
Provincial Congress. That Congress, most of whose members were also representatives in the royal Commons House of Assembly, first met on 11 January 1775. The Congress and the committees it created moved to consolidate control of the province. In April, a Secret Committee seized armaments from
gunpowder magazines and the State House, and in May in response to battles at Lexington and Concord, the Congress voted to print £1 million (equivalent to $12.5 million) in currency, raise an armed defense force and establish a
Council of Safety with
Henry Laurens as its president. The new Council held nearly unlimited power in the province. In May and June 1775, Charlestonians feared the twin threats of invasion by British and instigation of
slave insurrections. The Secret Committee had seized official British mail in April 1775 which reportedly included plans to incite
Cherokee attacks on colonists and slave rebellions. A
committee of five appointed by the Provincial Congress and headed by
Thomas Bee was tasked with investigating slave insurrection. On 14 June 1775, the committee submitted a report that implicated among others "Jerry the pilot". Jeremiah's skills as a pilot were a perceived as a threat by the committee as he could pilot British ships over Charles Town Bar and into
Charles Town Harbor. The somewhat contradictory testimony of two slaves, Jemmy and Sambo, was used to implicate Jeremiah. In a letter to his son
John, Henry Laurens wrote that the committee was disinclined to apply any punishment beyond having "one or two Negroes... severely flogged & banished". Henry Laurens stepped in and pressured the committee to either release the accused if innocent or to apply the death penalty if not. A new royal governor,
William Campbell, arrived in the capital on 18 June 1775. (His predecessor
Montagu had returned to London in 1773 and William Bull had been acting governor in the interim.) However, even the vestiges of royal power were gone. In one of its last acts, the
de jure Commons House approved of the Provincial Congress' issuance of currency and then "simply faded out of existence".
Trial and execution Under South Carolina's
Negro Act of 1740, neither slaves nor free Negroes could receive a jury trial. Passed in the wake of the
Stono Rebellion, the act stipulated that incitement to insurrection was punishable by death. In such capital cases, the act called for a court of two
justices of the peace and three to five property owners. On 11 August 1775, such a court was convened to try Jeremiah of the general charge of attempting to raise an insurrection as well as specific charges of plotting to pilot British ships over
Charles Town Bar and planning to set fire to Charles Town. Again the testimony of Jemmy and Sambo was used to implicate Jeremiah. In Laurens' account of the trial, Jeremiah originally denied being acquainted with Jemmy, but it was determined that Jemmy was Jeremiah's wife's brother (this being the only evidence that Jeremiah was married). J. William Harris posits that Jemmy's testimony could have stemmed for his own desire for a pardon. The court unanimously found him guilty and sentenced him to
death by hanging, with his body to be burned. Following the sentencing, the case became a proxy battle between opposing sides in South Carolina's conflict with the personages of Congress president
Henry Laurens and royal Governor
William Campbell. The recently arrived Campbell intervened on Jeremiah's behalf and carried on an exchange of letters with Laurens attempting to persuade the latter of the injustice of the pending execution. Jeremiah maintained his innocence until the end. Nonetheless, on the morning of 18 August 1775, he was taken from the Workhouse on
Magazine Street and hanged on the workhouse
green. After he expired, his body was burned on a woodpile.
Aftermath Following rumors of violence against him, Jeremiah's champion Governor Campbell dissolved the defunct Commons House and decamped to
HMS Tamar, a warship in Charles Town harbor, never to return to the city. All vestiges of royal control had evaporated. In November, the first shots in South Carolina's revolution were fired at a three-day skirmish between
loyalist and
patriot militias at
Ninety-Six in the
Upcountry. By the end of the year, the Provincial Congress was in control of the entirety of South Carolina. Yet, as 1776 dawned, there were still few of Charles Town's elite who contemplated independence. A legislatively enacted constitution referred to South Carolina as a colony. However, following an attempted British invasion near Charles Town in June, the cause of revolution was boosted.
Analysis Due to the dearth of information and the distance of time, modern writers generally refrain from speculating as to whether Jeremiah was actually guilty of the crime for which he hanged. Historian Robert M. Weir notes that Loyalists saw Jeremiah as "the victim of a Machiavellian policy having a twofold purpose": to intimidate harbor pilots who might aid the British and to whip up
anti-British sentiment to further military preparedness. He also credits another possibility: white anxiety was increasing with the pre-Revolutionary turmoil and whites sought solidarity by victimizing largely helpless blacks. Historian Walter J. Fraser Jr., bluntly remarks that while Jeremiah might have been taking advantage of domestic turmoil to plot a slave revolt, he may have also been "the scapegoat of a scheme developed by the political elite who hoped to divert the attention of the laboring classes by playing on their deepest fears". On the other hand, Fraser also acknowledges that Jeremiah simply could have been the "victim of white paranoia, sacrificed as an example to other blacks". J. William Harris argues that whether he was guilty or innocent, "Thomas Jeremiah did not need to gather arms or preach revolution to undermine slavery, because his whole life was a refutation of whites' basic [racial] justification for slavery". ==Legacy==