In South Carolina. 27 



nierce. The bill, however, was promptly rejected, and 

 he forthwith prorogued the Assembly. A new one 

 was called in the autumn of 1701, and though the right 

 of electing was in the freeholders only, he influenced 

 the sheriff to return the votes of strangers, servants, 

 aliens, and even mulattoes and negroes. Having by 

 this means obtained an Assembly composed of men 

 " of no sense and credit," who would vote as he would 

 have them, he procured the passage of an act for fit- 

 ting out an expedition against St. Augustine, the ob- 

 ject of which was " no other than catching and making 

 slaves of Indians for private advantage." The expe- 

 dition, however, was involved in disaster, and entailed 

 a debt of six thousand pounds sterling upon the col- 

 ony. The Assembly, which during his absence had 

 been prorogued, was again called together on his re- 

 turn, and, taking into consideration the questions of 

 the public debt and irregularity in the elections, great 

 debates and divisions arose, which, like a flame, grew 

 greater and greater, and at length terminated in a riot 

 in which divers members of the body, and others who 

 sympathized with them, were assaulted and had their 

 lives put in peril. At this juncture Sir Nathaniel 

 Johnson was appointed Governor (1703), and "by 

 chemical wit, zeal, and art, he transmuted and turned 

 this civil difference into a religious controversy; and 

 so, setting up a standard for those called High-church, 

 ventured to exclude all the Dissenters out of the As- 

 sembly as being those principally that were for a strict 

 examination into the grounds and causes of the mis- 

 carriage of the St. Augustine expedition." When the 

 time of a new election came "the conspirators" re- 

 solved to procure an Assembly of the same complexion 

 as that of Governor Moore's time; and all his illegal 



