The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America

by Carol Anderson

South Carolina’s legislative assembly knew what it had to do as it considered Laurens’s proposal. It could either swallow its “alarm” and “horror” over arming the enslaved to drive the British back into the sea, or it could refuse and risk the national independence that so many had already died for. The choice was actually quite simple. The United States could be sacrificed. The majority, in fact, questioned whether “this union was worth fighting for at all.” They were appalled and “disgusted” that Congress would even recommend something so abhorrent as arming the enslaved. “Not even imminent occupation could induce them to contemplate black enlistment.” Instead of staying in the fight and using every weapon and resource that the colony could muster, they recommended that South Carolina surrender to the British, declare its neutrality in this war, and take its chances with the king.72 In South Carolina’s estimation, armed Blacks were infinitely more dangerous and frightening than the might of the British military and the wrath of a king dealing with American traitors.