The South “Rises Again” in the Republican Party

 

The revocation of segregation of Plessy v. Fergusen in 1896 with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 signaled an ominous threat to social conservatives that fated year. Even more ominous, Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Act ten years later gave African-Americans finally equal voting status as citizens in the United States. Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed this act while also telling his aides that they just lost the South for a generation – ostensibly to the Republicans. It lasted for far more than a generation! For the next half-century and more, Republicans legislated consistently against FDR’s New Deal and essentially acted toward stopping the changing demographics that threatened their majority. These angry Southern Democrats saw no choice but to predictably side with Republican President Richard Millhouse Nixon when he made history for his party in 1968 with the success of the “Southern Strategy.” The traditional Southerner and American racist had taken many hits on their old socially-conservative White Supremacy and developed a vicious hatred for the Democratic Party – now seen as the “Negro Party.” Some Southerners hoped to arrest “Negro Rule” development by forming the Dixiecrat Party, but it was short-lived and ineffective. They soon recognized that their brand of conservatism – ideologically in line with fascist oligarchs who tried to overthrow FDR in 1933 – could best survive within the Republican Party. Nixon made it happen – the old Confederacy, still angry and unyielding, found great power once again. Almost overnight, socially conservative Southern Democrats – some, members of the Ku Klux Klan – had switched to the GOP. This led to an ominous future: as more and more Republicans took on the old Southern policies of religiously-focused, anti-government “states’-rights.” The South truly “Rose Again” and joined with Republican fascists, once exposed by the Business Plot of 1933! It’s hard to ignore when twenty-eight of the fifty-three current Republican senators (2019) are from traditionally Southern states of the old Confederacy and all others but one are from western rural states – ideologically in lock-step with Southern conservatives.

Republicans slowly morphed into an even more criminal party than they were already! Richard Nixon’s impeachment in 1974 was for actual crimes committed – violations of the U.S. Constitution – firing of investigators and attempting to cover up a break-in of the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate Hotel! Nixon was the first to invite Southern White Supremacists into his Republican Party; and, he was the first Republican president ever brought up on criminal charges and tried for impeachment. Coincidence? Probably not. It should be remembered that Southern conservatives have never respected anything about United States’ federalism, democracy, or laws. They especially despised the U.S. Constitution which restricted their ancestors’ brutal taste for slave-driven capitalism. Arguably, these West-Indian descendants preferred only one constitution – the Confederate States Constitution with “God” used in place of “creator.” This conclusion is derived from complex political machinations since 1968 and can only be treated properly in a book or volumes of books. Furthermore, any of the plethora of books written about the highly criminal Trump Administration of today would surely suffice!

Crimes of the Republican Party did not stop with Nixon’s impeachment – they got worse. Under the conservative “unitary executive theory,” the office of president controlled increasingly more power until it reached near dictatorship! Vice President Dick Cheney’s Halliburton during the Iraq War made over $39.5 billion, reflecting actions of the earlier rampant capitalist abuses of oligarchs of whom Gen. Smedley Butler wrote in War is a Racket; this was the “military-industrial complex” later warned about by Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower – in a betrayal of his Republican Party’s policies, by the way. Later, in a serious conflict of interest, it was revealed that Halliburton “gave [Cheney] a $34 million signing bonus to become vice president of the United States."[1] The Bush Administration then was found to have faked evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) by Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, to start a war with that country – again, making profit for Dick Cheney’s Halliburton and others. We nearly revisited this same “Wag the Dog” scenario with Iran when Donald J. Trump assassinated – without clear cause – their very important Major General Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Dick Cheney was also instrumental in pushing forward the policy of a “unitary executive” or making the president a virtual dictator! Brutal Southern ex-slavers made an ideal companion for fascist oligarchs – profit flowed like Spanish doubloons into their coffers and overflowed into their overseas bank accounts! War is, indeed, a racket, Gen. Butler – when conducted by these racist megacorporate criminals and politicians – land pirates extraordinaire!

Most of us generally regard piracy in the past as an undesirable thing. Still, why do we place eighteenth-century piracy in a “Golden Age;” why do we covet a time of greed and excess? Why do we still allow Wall Street the legal latitude, corporate taxpayer subsidies, the ability to outsource jobs, and store massive profits in offshore accounts to avoid taxation – especially while other countries are jailing bankers and other capitalists for similar abuses across the world? Why don’t the people recognize this as corruption? It’s because we grew up in it – our very culture is criminal!

We are allowed to ignore our brutal piratical ancestry because, as one scholar put it, “Progressive Era reformers and twenty-first-century economists think about corruption in a way that is, in one critical dimension, 180 degrees removed from the concept  of  corruption  that  prevailed  until  the mid-nineteenth century.”[2] Still, venturing from the concept of venal (money focus or “treasure-seeking”) to systematic corruption (broader political focus), as economic historian John Joseph Wallis puts it, is when America gets to a point similar to that of eighteenth-century liberally-oppressive Stuart conservative status. In his view, “The survival of a systematically corrupt government depends on limiting access to markets and resources in order to create rents that bind the interests of the ruling coalition [or oligarchy] together.”[3] He explained:

 

In polities plagued with systematic corruption [like piratical hegemony], a group of politicians deliberately create rents by limiting entry into valuable economic activities, through grants of monopoly, restrictive corporate charters, tariffs, quotas, regulations, and the like. These rents bind the interests of the recipients to the politicians who create them. The purpose is to build a coalition that can dominate the government. Manipulating the economy for political ends is systematic corruption… In contrast, venal corruption [for example, manipulating Virginia’s politics for Alexander Spotswood’s own private interests against Blackbeard or Donald J. Trump’s extortion of Ukraine for his campaign needs] denotes the pursuit of private economic interests through the political process.[4]

 

The best example today of systemic v. venal corruption would be the piratical rise of the highly corrupt Republican Party (systemic) to extreme levels – that of the greedy, immoral, and dishonest Donald J. Trump (venal) and the use of his office to enrich himself and his sycophants. Trump exposed the criminality of the Republican Party simply because he turned corruption back into a personal (venal) political tool. Still, the systemic corruption of the modern Republican Party, taking Russian campaign money and from other dictatorial regimes, allowed for Trump’s own rise to “unitarian” power, threatening the “separation of powers” of the U.S. Constitution and our very Democracy itself!

Republicans today behave as if they’re pirating our national ship to later cut us loose in a torn and crippled vessel! Then again, they see little choice, for the changing demographics are forcing the dominant white male from politics! As a result, they completely ignore any semblance of patriotic duty or traditional mores – even siding with and taking money from America’s greatest enemy of the Cold War – Russia! White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, by way of an openly venal example, promoted radical and draconian immigration policies on the Southern border. With seeming little concern for consequence, he later leaves his public office and joins the board of a corporation that benefits from that same policy![5] It appears that Republican government is now so openly diseased that politicians simply grab what spoils they can before America finally succumbs to the contagion or Russian control.

In 2015, former Democratic President Jimmy Carter reflected upon the rising systemic corruption of the GOP (although he tactfully did not point fingers) and that America had become an “oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery.”[6] He made reference to the results of white-supremacist conservative resurgence following the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As far as today’s racist GOP sees it, a nation that allowed “Negro Rule” – as with Barack Obama from 2009-2016 – deserves to die anyway. Southern-infected Republican politicians are giving up on their nation because of the ancient diseases of racism and greed – and, if you remember the founding Routledges of South Carolina, Southerners have never been that committed to it from the start!

Since Civil Rights, America had been dominated by racially-tinged Republican anti-liberal policy. Their customary adherence to Constitutionality only when it suited their politically corrupt agenda is clearly telling. The usual oath of office means little when securing corrupt control over the federal government. Essentially, the era of FDR’s New Deal that followed the Great Depression of 1929 was a short progressive blip on America’s overwhelmingly conservative and greedy political radar – the results of being founded originally as a “Commonwealth of Pyrates!” Even FDR’s solitary progressive itinerary was nearly arrested by a fascist attempt of corporate leaders to overthrow democracy in 1933 in the “Business Plot” – yes, by the ancestors of President Carter’s reputed modern corporate oligarchs![1] America’s wealthy have never truly respected the all-encompassing and immigrant-welcoming notion of our original “E Pluribus Unum” or “from the many, one” – essentially, a perfect definition of democracy. “Negro Rule” again reared its ugly head in 1898, again in 1964, and again in 2016. America quickly returned to its formerly oligarchic conservative – but, also white-supremacist – control. The final leg of that racist trend, President Barack Obama’s terms from 2009-2016 initiated yet another wholly corrupt Republican coup over “E Pluribus Unum.” Perhaps some reflection may be warranted upon the 1950s replacement of “In God We Trust” over the more democratic original motto. Thanks to Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, Civil Rights of 1964, and their “Southern Strategy” of 1968, Republicans have fully embraced the “god of the slavemaster” and gave up completely on the secular “E Pluribus Unum,” as endowed by their ethereal “Creator.”

Do American elections – when trusted – still provide a choice between “lesser of two evils” or is this merely the impression politically provided by Republican anti-liberal – especially in the Trump Era: anti-socialist – rhetoric? Quite ironically, it almost always seems that liberals are rhetoricized as “radicals,” “socialists” (here conservatives actually imply “communists”), or the enemies of the American people even though FDR gave us the most popular social program ever and saved America from the ravages of the conservatives who actually started the problem by crashing the economy! This is essentially the same fascist method employed in Adolf Hitler’s propaganda in 1930s Germany, or Donald Trump’s usual rhetoric in hour-long diatribes before the cameras, or that of the Family’s Samuel A’Court Ashe against Blackbeard or pirates in general – to accuse your enemies of exactly that which you yourself are guilty! Google “Joseph Goebbels.”  

“We the People” do not resist merely to allow control by another wealthy or corporate “Great Man” (most certainly white male) like those of old historical and traditional narrative. Like Edward Moseley or Maurice Moore, they achieved their greatness and immense wealth by any method necessary, no matter how corrupt – even if they must murder a business associate like Edward Thache. Compare this with almost any of Donald Trump’s policies – directly with the assassination of Iran’s Soleimani. More especially contrast this with Trump’s taking of children from their mothers and put in cages, only to be sold and farmed out to rich slave owners. Compare this to allowing an American journalist to be killed and chopped up by Saudi Arabians, Trump’s favoritism of Russian president Vladimir Putin, his betrayal of Kurd allies in Syria, or encouraging his followers to seek and destroy the whistleblowers exposing these crimes! This is the epitome of fascism and corruption!

Still, these criminals impress our conservatives – perhaps like Al Capone, Vlad the Impaler, or Genghis Khan. We grew up hearing of past Republicans’ great exploits and endeavors since the Civil War, their trials and tribulations, their successes and their many bankruptcies – destroying our economy with their greed, inevitably resulting in yet another frequent economic recession. They spew rhetoric from two sides of their mouths, Janus-faced - they are our “Heroick and Active Spirits,” our worshiped champions of industry – these oligarchs – these pirates – they are our modern Drakes! Some of us still dream of being like them one day. We have been weaned on capitalistic dreams of fishing treasure from the water, taking it away from other entrepreneurs, and picking them clean to leave them destitute and in fear of their lives in the gutters. “Nothing personal – it’s just business!”

Again, this is unnatural. It is not human nature. It is merely criminal and it must stop!

Today, progressives fight against great odds – against such piratical forces of corporate oligarchy and privatization who would continue to pick us clean – without “trickling-down” of riches to the people. You may have heard that pirates tend not to share. They prey upon not only other merchants and those of darker skin: ex-slaves, and Native Americans, but against everyone – the poor or lower-middle class mainstream – the 97% or so of citizens who only recently received the franchise without having to purchase property for the right to vote. They resent that all of the 97% now have the vote. Remember Jamaicans in the early eighteenth century who ousted their governor – the “landed” gentlemen who once preyed upon the “landless,” unpropertied, or poor common people?

In this corporate-dominated corrupt environment, justice – even democracy itself – become merely commodities to be traded or sold at market – like slaves – in exchange for more dominance and political control. Money can buy almost anything and corporate capitalists prefer systemically-corrupt oligarchy – a government truly of their own – not to live under constraint of democratic rules and regulations. They prefer to call the shots alone – like Donald Trump’s making unilateral dictatorial decisions without consult – without the consent of the people. But, then, Republicans wished to lord over the people as in Carnegie’s seemingly beneficent and parental Gospel of Wealth or “Trickle-down” ideology, as if they might better care for the people than their own democratically-elected government! Edward Thache, however, was a different man from these Republicans of today. He most certainly would not have made the same decisions as Donald Trump. He would not have assassinated anyone or bribed someone for political advantage. He would not have withdrawn troops formerly aiding American-allied Kurdish rebels; a monstrous decision that led to Turkish and Russian forces driving them to their slaughter and taking their land. Even Blackbeard would have seen this as simply another betrayal. The man Republicans favor most was Stede Bonnet – the man Edward “Blackbeard” Thache rejected!

The wealthy have always misunderstood human nature – because they behaved so not like humans. Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth abused the people personally by wrongly accusing them of being completely self-interested – innately selfish – a “pirate” from birth. Capitalists wrongly assure the people that in order to keep everyone from being abused by their neighbors that we should all be as greedy and selfish as them; but, this is not a scientific fact – rather a capitalist myth – humans are not inherently greedy. As the lords of wealth prophesize, money provides and it can taketh away! Our American lords assure us that they need fewer rules or regulations in order to grab the wealth. But, deregulation engenders systemic corruption, abuse, inequality, and trade monopolies. De-regulation – when government is seen as the “problem” rather than the solution – when individual self-interest is elevated above the good of society as a whole – when political favors are exchanged for money and power – when “absolute freedom” of that ruling class becomes the freedom of absolute rulers and dictators, like Saddam Hussein, Moamar Gaddafi, and now, Donald Trump – selfishly maximizing profit and profit alone without care for the people.

America’s first president, George Washington believed that party politics or divisions might serve immediate ends, but they inevitably lead to corruption. He could easily envision systemic corruption or oligarchy that plagues America today because of British monarchial corruption of his day – he saw it personally. Abuse leads to more abuse. Unchecked venal builds to systemic corruption. Piracy leads to crony capitalism. The past progresses to the present and the present can degrade back into the past – history can indeed repeat itself, echo, burp – whatever you’d like to call it. Despite our narrative of progress, the excessive greed of today’s politics, systemic corruption in government, is certainly much worse than the venal – or the simple stealing of resources for your own or for your associates’ use – like piracy of the Golden Age. The actions of anti-immigrant Donald J. Trump today reflect the actions of wealthy gentleman pirate and Barbadian sugar plantation owner, Major Stede Bonnet – not so much Royal Navy veteran Edward Thache of St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica. Still, Thache generally left enough food and water for his victims to return home – even the hated Catholics of France and Spain – Qasam Soleimani wasn’t so lucky!

The Republican Party of today that clearly supports President Trump’s corruption without hesitation – and Trump has given them significant reason to hesitate – is best understood as a body engaged in a broader, systemic corruption to pirate American government. Fox News as the state media mouthpiece for Trump’s MAGA or “Make America Great Again” rhetoric is the same as the Raleigh News and Observer newspaper serving as the mouthpiece for the racist conservative retrenchment in North Carolina of 1898. Fox News merely needed the “Fairness Doctrine” eliminated to begin the temporal regression backwards. MAGA with its dependence on “alternate facts” and rejection of the so-called “fake news” mainstream media is so little different than “Capt. Charles Johnson” or Nathaniel Mist’s counterfactual literary invention in A General History of 1724! They both rely on lies and misdirection portrayed as reality. Thache may even have liked Trump – for a short while – but he would have soon taught the pedantic Trump a lesson in manners! After all, Thache had done the same to the privileged and pedantic Stede Bonnet!

The lessons we have learned from history are enormously valuable – if we pay attention to them. These lessons of the past, from the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, are meaningful today; they show us that the old Stuart ways are way overdue for cancellation – there is little social unity without democratic government. It is meaningless to even propose a “union” without unity. Channeling George Washington, Thomas Jefferson also warned us of the greediness that threatened our nascent union – largely unrealized today. Jefferson wrote in 1825 to William Branch Giles of a "vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of ’76 now look to a single and splendid government of an Aristocracy, founded on banking institutions and monied in corporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry."[2] Our democracy was shanghaied by these monied corporations nearly from the start. And, they’re still attempting to hold control over the nation!

The only difference between a rebellion and a revolution is who wins in the end. “History is written by the winners.” And yet another comparison may be that the difference between a privateer and a pirate is who profits from the theft and how. In America, “beyond the line,” profit transcended national loyalty, making capitalism into an issue of personal freedom – at most, the piracies of Edward Thache and even Donald J. Trump were the “venal” lesser of the systemic corruption of the Republican Party since 1964. At least Edward Thache expressed some loyalty to his “country” of Jamaica – similar to Jefferson’s love of his country – Virginia!

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[1] Jules Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 1973).

[2] Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, December 26, 1825.

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[1][1] Louis Jacobson, “Chris Matthews says Cheney got $34 million payday from Halliburton” (May 24, 2010), Politifact.

[2] John Joseph Wallis, “The Concept of Systematic Corruption in American History,” Corruption and Reform: Lessons from America's

Economic History (University of Chicago Press, 2006), 24.

[3]Ibid.

[4]Ibid., 25.

[5] "John Kelly Cashes in on Child Separation Policy He Pushed," Crew (9 May 2019).

[6] Jon Schwarz, “Jimmy Carter: The U.S. Is an “Oligarchy With Unlimited Political Bribery,”The Intercept, 30 Jul 2015, https://theintercept.com/2015/07/30/jimmy-carter-u-s-oligarchy-unlimited-political-bribery/ (accessed 28 Feb 2017).

American Crime Before the Revolution

        Eight years after Edward Thache’s murder, his pecuniary and politically-motivated assassins – likely Edward Moseley, Maurice Moore, Jeremiah Vail, with John Porter, the Swanns, Davises, Drys, Allens, Lillingtons, and other wealthy and well-connected families of the organized cabal known as the Family – attempted to steal the Lords Proprietors’ land in the Lower Cape Fear of North Carolina. We have to understand that – to these Englishmen originally from a crowded island nation – there existed few more valuable treasures than land. According to South Carolina’s Rev. Francis Le Jau, these land-hungry men attempted “A New Settlement bounding on this and on North Carolina, but under neither, nor any Government.”[1] The Family tried to carve out their own feudal slave-driven agricultural domain in the Lower Cape Fear. Surely, this was yet another act of treason, as seen in eighteenth-century context! Criminality in America was alive and well long after Blackbeard and is still here today! Still, the robbery did not take place at sea, so it was not technically “piracy” – as my historian colleagues will say – simply “theft.” Again, the only difference is in the “getaway” vehicle used. It could be said that the Family perhaps stole land better than they dealt with pirate competition – as their previous interrupted business association with the pirate-merchant Edward Thache showed.

Another record from South Carolina shows further criminal behavior about the same time – not unlike that of the smuggler John Hancock and other founders of the future “Pirate Nation” of America! This incident involved the crime of smuggling – a ubiquitous and consistent maritime crime – just after Francis Nicholson became their governor. It also involved the future Admiralty Judge of North Carolina, Edmond Porter. Porter was an Albemarle resident who had recently lived in the Bahamas where he wed Elizabeth Peterson, the daughter of wealthy Bahamian planter Richard Peterson.  Porter and his wife had many dealings with and even resided part time in South Carolina. Edmond Porter appeared much more progressive than his younger brother John, malcontent Family member from that “nest of pirates” in the still private and fractured colony of North Carolina. Both men were sons of the Quaker political dissenter John Porter who died in British exile in 1712.

Nicholson seemed to rely on Edmond Porter to keep abreast of happenings in his northern Carolina neighbor, then a veritable cesspool of rampant corruption – owing in no small part to the Family. Porter sailed in his 35-ton Moll to visit his brother in North Carolina with another merchant of Sussex, England, who had come to the Bahamas when Woodes Rogers supposedly de-pirated the island in 1718. One could say that he simply took over their business. Also sailing from there for four years as master of sloops Hardtimes and Bonetta was another recent Bahamian settler, James Wimble. Wimble, a future founder of the Family’s Brunswick Town business rival, the port of Wilmington, North Carolina, and certainly no friend of the Family, first purchased land along the southern shores of the Albemarle Sound that same year – part of that land from Edmond’s brother John Porter:

 

[In 1723], He applied for and obtained a grant for 640 acres on the “Scuppernong” River, in Tyrrell County, near present-day Columbia. He purchased another 640 acres from Dep. Gov. Thomas Harvey that same year, obtained another grant of 530 acres in 1728, and 500 acres from John Porter in 1731.[2]

 

Edmond Porter and James Wimble had known each other, since their days sailing from the Bahama Islands. Porter was responsible for bringing Wimble into North Carolina, who, in only seven years, began disrupting the Family’s business affairs at Brunswick Town. Porter and Wimble together were sent to inquire about a shipment of tobacco that had arrived in Charles Town without papers showing clearance. It came on a ship owned by Family in-law William Rhett, Jr., son of Col. William Rhett, who had recently hunted and captured Stede Bonnet in Cape Fear River.[3] Yes, North and South Carolinians, as well as Barbadians and Jamaicans, etc. had many important gentlemanly connections – both familial and business. Porter and Wimble had been alerted because the vessel landed in Charles Town in March 1720 on Rhett’s sloop Mary, John Palmer, master, from Port Roanoke in the Albemarle. The investigation turned up details of possible smuggling – again, like John Hancock at Boston – and the anti-corruption reformer Nicholson had Col. William Rhett and his son arrested. Porter returned to Charles Town by February 6, 1723 to make his report. The crime of smuggling was essentially maritime tax evasion, but generally more significant considering the time period and that nearly all merchandise was then carried by ship.

Later that April, Edmond Porter testified to Nicholson that he inquired as to the North Carolina record books of Port Roanoke and Port Currituck Collecter William Reed, who was collector in March 1720, but had died before Porter arrived and was replaced by Deputy Collector John Lovick. Porter said that, on the 4^th of February, when he asked Mr. Alexander Cockburne about the former collector’s books, Cockburne told Porter that they were locked up in a scritore (lockbox for papers) and that he did not have the key. Porter then crossed the Albemarle River to Naval Officer and Deputy Collector – and recent co-conspirator with Gov. Charles Eden in the Blackbeard affair – John Lovick’s, “who I knew to be an Artfull Sly Gent, therefore was the more exact in my business.”[4] Porter sought the entry made by Reed for this tobacco. The Deputy Collector John Lovick, and recent Secretary for Gov. Charles Eden, stalled Porter’s inquiry – like the Trump Administration today – by refusing to make a copy of either the duty or clearance books for Porter in his own hand. It’s not entirely clear why Lovick stalled this inquiry – perhaps he had inherited the profits from Reed’s official business. Lovick’s interference with the investigation made Porter suspicious. “I was Induced to tell [Lovick],” he said. “I thought it was the Duty of every Officer to help in sorting out the Truth in things that appeared in the least design of fraud in the King’s Customes.”[5] As Porter concluded, his efforts proved ineffectual against such arrogant and deceitful men. Like today, however, such arrogance only created a temporary protection from criminal liability.

Porter went back to Cockburne, who must have feared being caught up in Lovick’s crimes. He finally seemed to be in a most helpful mood – a “whistleblower,” of a sort. Cockburne, without a key, busted the lock and copied the entries himself, with an added letter to corroborate. Porter wanted to speak to the ascribed witness, Samuel Swann the younger, Edward Moseley’s nephew and soon to be collector at Port Brunswick in Cape Fear, but he was away in Virginia at the time. Neither was the President of the Council, William Reed – one of many William Reeds of North Carolina – who had taken the office of Thomas Pollock (d. 1722), available to apply the colony’s seals, as he was in Core Sound and not available. Porter returned and offered the evidence, which showed no entry or duty paid on any tobacco and submitted them as Exhibits “A” and “B.” They read:

 

11 March 1720: Scooner Mary of South Carolina Jos. Palmer, Square Sterd., 15 tons, South Carolina Built, 1715, Registered at So. Carolina August 17^th, 1719 [one year after Col. Rhett’s hunt for pirates Vane and Bonnet in Cape Fear River], Wm. Rhett Junr. Owner, her Cargo on Board viz: 872 bushls Indian Corn, 13 Barrels Pork and two Barrls of Soape bound for South Carolina.[6]

 

The clearance book, Exhibit “B,” showed precisely the same entry as Exhibit “A” and a letter from the current Collector Alexander Cockburne assured Gov. Nicholson that Palmer must have hidden the tobacco from them – no doubt to Palmer and Rhett’s mutual profit. Porter said that “I found myself in a Sea of Difficulty” and he had heard of the death of the father Col. William Rhett (1723), whom “I apprehended was the person your Excly. Distrusted had a principle part in Covering the fraud of the said tobacco.”[7] Thus, Porter hit another wall in the future “pirate nation.” Presumably, there was a vocal remonstrance at best – the king’s revenue had still been smuggled as a result of a criminal conspiracy! Could Palmer have made a deal with Reed and Lovick, the naval officer whom Porter referred to as the “Artfull Sly Gent” to validate their false claims on the North Carolina books? Investigating the affair like Congressman Adam Schiff, serving as Chairman of the U. S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Porter probably thought as much.

Concerning John Lovick’s character, interim governor of North Carolina Richard Everard, about the same age as Edward Thache and born in Langley, Much Waltham, England, commented in a letter to the Bishop of London on April 14, 1729, just before the admiralty investigation, that Lovick represented something of the character of many a modern profiteering politician today, deceptively using Andrew Carnegie’s prescription in The Gospel of Wealth (1889) to fool the people and pad his wallet:

 

I was, in Order to the laying the Foundation chose Church warden as one Mr. [Edward] Moseley we had Several meetings to consult about building it but could not agree being always hindred by our Secretary one Mr. Jo. Lovick a man of no Religion Fears nor God nor man believes neither seldom seen at any place of devine worship his mony is his God ridicules all Goodness whilst such a man is in Power no good can be expected.[8]

 

Still, the delinquency of North Carolina cannot be wholly blamed on John Lovick, as the new interim governor Everard quickly suggested. William Byrd II’s Secret History of the Dividing Line (between North Carolina and Virginia) gives a much more graphic representation of Lovick’s acquaintance Christopher Gale, both of whom came to North Carolina in Gov. Edward Hyde’s extravagant, gilt-covered voyage on HMS Kinsdale.[9] In passing, Byrd said that the supposedly respectable Gale was a “brother to the late Dean of York, and if his Honour had not formerly been a Pirate himself, he seem’d intimately acquainted with many of them.”[10] Byrd may have referred to Gale’s late appointment as Chief Justice of the Bahamas by Woodes Rogers and his residing amongst ex-pirates. Still, Byrd consistently demonstrated much contempt for anyone having to do with his reviled “Lubberland,” or North Carolina.

Lovick, whom Byrd referred to sarcastically as “Shoebrush,” owing to his alleged capacity as valet for Gov. Hyde, spent a great deal of time, while supposedly surveying the dividing line with Virginia, searching for houses that “promised good Cheer,” as Byrd phrased it. “Good cheer” apparently referred to women like Robin Hix and Mary Izzard and, of course, to alcohol. Byrd seemed to regard Gale and Lovick as irresponsible and delaying the expedition with their childish antics. As a Virginian, he was certainly biased against North Carolinians and this may have tainted his account somewhat. He said “Surely, there is no place in the World where the inhabitants live with less Labour, than in N. Carolina. It approaches nearer to the Description of Lubberland than any other.”[11]

Sounding very much like the alleged “grabbing women by the privates” depravity related by today’s Republican President Donald J. Trump to Billy Bush in 2016 and his long-term multiple sexual harassment allegations – even alleged rape and pedophilia – an incident that deserves attention here was the affair of the “Tallow-faced wench” on the night of March 12, 1728 in the home of one Mr. Balance in Currituck Precinct. This involved a woman – likely the daughter or wife of Mr. Balance – who had sprained her wrist, quit her labors, and sat down to drink with the surveyors and commissioners on the expedition. She became expecially intoxicated and the men “examined all her hidden Charms, and play’d a great many gay Pranks.” One commissioner “pick’d off” of the woman “several Scabs as big as Nipples, [allegedly] the Consequence of eating too much Pork.”[12] Apparently, “One of the representatives from North Carolina,” left the house with the woman at about midnight.[13] The narrative does not say whether this man was Lovick or Gale, but apparently they both had a turn in “handling” the perhaps injured and apparently infected young woman (most likely, pork did not cause her scabs). They came to the surveyors’ camp and “were so very clamorous” that they had awoken Byrd, who wished Lovick’s “Nose as flat as any of his Porcivorous [or pig-like] Countrymen [again, North Carolinians, in Byrd’s words].”[14]

As commissioners were drawing the dividing line with William Byrd II in 1728, the Crown appointed Edmond Porter Admiralty Judge for North Carolina. George Stevenson, biographer for Gale, writes:

 

[Chief Justice Christopher Gale's] General Court became first a political tool in the hands of Gale and his faction, then an object of contempt in the province. Similarly, the Court of Vice-Admiralty in the hands of Edmond Porter (who had been one of the attorneys for Eden's heirs-at-law) became a tool of political opposition against Gale's faction. The responsibility for the jurisdictional fight that broke out between the two courts must be shared in large part by Gale.[15]

 

Note that Stevenson regarded Porter as a “political tool” being used against “Gale’s faction,” as though they were seen by North Carolina historians as equals – not viewed as an inveterate British patriot versus an American criminal.

A little more than a year into Edmond Porter’s term as judge and owing most likely to the Albemarle political cabal of Gale, Lovick, Little, Reed, and who knows how many others, someone literally took a shot at the new Admiralty Judge! Perhaps Gale – like Donald Trump at a rally of his fans – let it be known that he would curry favor to anyone who had committed violence to Judge Porter. Trump had casually alluded to the usual punishment – being death – for traitors, hoping that the “Whistleblower” against him – whom he styled a “traitor” – in the 2019 Ukraine Affair might be the victim of such an obedient and violently-inclined fan of Trump’s.

The details are indistinct, but Judge Edmond Porter received word that there would be such an attempt – on January 7, 1730 – and he prepared for the worst. An hour before three o’clock, when court was scheduled to meet, Porter put a mock judge and jury in the courthouse. Armed men on horseback had, indeed, appeared. They rode past the courthouse, shooting through the windows, hoping to hit Judge Porter. No one, however, was hurt.[16]

Judge Porter suspected confederates of Lovick, Reed, Little, and Chief Justice Gale, but he could not prove anything. That summer, Porter presided over the July 1730 case which exposed Lovick’s crimes during the previous decade, in the case titled The King v. John Lovick. These crimes, however, did not include punching Gov. Richard Everard, which Lovick had done two years earlier. One of Porter’s first acts as Admiralty Judge was to prosecute John Lovick for his abuse of office and cover-up of crimes, his coup de grace over the “Artfull Sly Gent.”

Collector William Reed, one time President of the Council and Acting Governor of North Carolina, since deceased in 1721, and John Lovick, then promoted as Collector of Port Beaufort were both investigated in 1730 (immediately after Crown resumption of North Carolina’s private charter in 1729). Porter also then looked into the “unjust practices” of “a very wicked, but awkward, Rake” who also accompanied Gale, Lovick, Swann, Moseley, Byrd and others in 1728 to survey the North Carolina-Virginia line – and also married Gale’s daughter - the Attorney General and Receiver General William Little. In the July 1730 case of The King v. John Lovick, they were accused of theft regarding impounded ships and their cargoes from eight-ten years earlier, just prior and adding to Porter’s investigation of 1723, during the administration of Gov. Eden and possibly interim-governor Thomas Pollock, who lived only a few months after Eden. Porter found Lovick guilty and immediately fired him, replacing him with Ebenezer Harker. The ships were condemned and sold along with their cargoes, including Barbados rum and sugar from one, in Vice-Admiralty courts held in Edenton, the capital of the colony, named for the recently deceased governor and supposed ally of the pirate Edward Thache.[17] Nicholson and Porter’s efforts in America did not stop criminals – they only slowed them down a bit. For North Carolina in particular, John Lovick’s amorous “wing man” from 1728, Christopher Gale, his highly-placed family, and other officers of the colony, including an acting governor, continued to oppose reform in the new royal colony for decades following its final resumption in 1729.

Perhaps notable in the Trump-Lovick-Gale comparison, John Lovick had married Penelope, the wealthy daughter of Gov. Charles Eden and cheated on her repeatedly, while also corruptly filling his coffers. Penelope Eden Lovick was the heir to the family fortune. It must have been large, for her mother – also named Penelope – had been married three times – a common way for colonial “gentlemen” to build their fortunes. First she married a “Mr. Golland,” who lived on the Bertie County side of the Chowan River – possible on recently vacated Tuscarora land. Then, around 1710, she married Gov. Charles Eden, who died in 1722. Most recently, she had survived her third husband, William Maule, a Scot mariner and surveyor living on his plantation of “Caledonia,” also in Bertie. He died in 1726. Lovick had inherited these properties due to some manipulations of the will which, consequently, disinherited Eden’s grandchildren and enriched Lovick. This property included “Eden House,” the former home of the governor. Legal action ensued, based upon the admiralty issues, which generated the records now found in the archives in Raleigh.[18]

Part of the immediate admiralty case for abuse of office against Lovick involved three separate vessels: one large sloop of the West Indies trade amounting to “near £500,” the Hopewell of Virginia, Joseph Jones, master, and the William & John, John Vere, master, valued at £600, with “produce and Manufacture of Europe.”[19] These vessels were impounded and their cargoes of manufactured goods, pork, skins, sugar, cocoa, molasses, rum, and tobacco were sold by Lovick.

The worst of Lovick’s crimes stemmed from similar use of the “tenths of Whale Oyl & Bone” collected by his wife’s former husband Gov. Charles Eden, who also profited from his appointment, like Donald Trump today.[20] Again, the king did not see his 1/10^th portion, Lovick having “applyed & Converted [the money] to his own use.”[21] Gov. Eden collected this tax for over ten years from “Capt. John Ricords, Capt. Thomas & Others” without distributing it to the king, having “applyed the same to his own Proper use until the Day of his Death,” in 1722.[22] Eden left over £2,000 of this money in his will to “Vice-Admiral[ty Judge]” Lovick along with the benefits of £4,000 value sterling in estates, supposedly to be distributed to his heirs. There was no trust among thieves, however. In the eight years preceding this accusation, Lovick had not “So much as paid or Accounted for the Legacies left to the Relations of the said Eden, But Intending to Defraud not only them but His Majesty likewise.”[23]

 

Figure 1: Union Jack modification for colonial privateers – use of the standard Union Jack was a violation of recent legislation that required the use of different flags to distiunguish colonial merchants and privateers from the Royal Navy. Unauthorized use of a Union Jack, especially for non-military ships, showed disrespect for government authority, much like firing a salute on the Pretender’s birthday as a sign of Jacobite disaffection. This, however, was a direct affront to the king’s authority that did not necessarily arise from Jacobite concerns. Source: The 89^th instruction given by the Crown to Francis Nicholson on assuming the governorship of South Carolina in 1721, "South Carolina Probate Records, Bound Volumes, 1671-1977," images, FamilySearch.org : 21 May 2014), Charleston > Miscellaneous record, 1696-1729 > image 141 of 301; citing Department of Archives and History, Columbia.

 

Another criminal who likely gave Edmond Porter an ulcer was Miles Gale, son of Christopher Gale, in particular, a young merchant who, as owner and occasional master of the sloop Two Brothers, made regular runs from North Carolina to Boston – and a frequent defendant in the Admiralty Judge’s court. Several months following the assassination attempt on Judge Porter, in October 1730, another altercation between Miles Gale’s ship master, James Chamberlain, and officers of the Admiralty, including Thomas Snowden’s son, Samuel, occurred in Edenton Harbor. These events began over a perceived insult from the new royal government – North Carolina had, of course, undergone resumption in 1729. Similar to the vengeful South’s use of the Confederate flag to warn that they intended to “rise again,” or perhaps Richard Tookerman in Port Royal Harbor, Miles Gale used a flag to protest his discontent with the new government rule.

On October 4, 1730, the sloop Two Brothers had recently offended acting governor Richard Everard when Gale’s vessel "lately at Several times in a very insulting manner, wore the Union Jack; pendant in the Harbour and Port of Edenton; has also in a Dareing Manner fired Guns and Hoisted up an Union Jack or Flag at Mast Head at three Several times (vizt) first on or about the last of August, and on the 18th and 19th of September last in the Harbour aforesd."[24] The governor told Judge Porter that Miles Gale had been cautioned about this insult to the "Jurisdiction of the Admiralty," but continued it nevertheless.

Gov. Everard explained the alleged breach: Gale's actions, he said were also "contrary to the holsom Orders and Ordinances of the Treaty of Union [1 May 1707] and the Queens [Anne] Proclamation in pursuance thereof our Merchant Ships or Vessels, wearing Flaggs, Jacks, or any Pendants whatsoever, without particular warrant from the Lord High Admiral or the Lords Comrs. of the Admiralty." Everard, "conceiving the Offense to be attended with ill consequence" demanded on October 4th a citation be issued for Miles Gale to appear in Vice-Admiralty Court.[25]

Soon after, Samuel Snowden, Marshall of the Admiralty and son of Thomas Snowden who had recently passed away (1728), went with his deputy in a small boat one afternoon to the sloop, laying at anchor just off Edenton. Snowden carried the citation for Miles Gale, sole owner of the vessel Two Brothers from Judge Porter. Miles Gale's crew again insulted the authority of Porter’s admiralty officers.

As Snowden and his deputy approached Two Brothers from astern, crossing the calm cool waters of Albemarle Sound before the docks of Edenton. James Chamberlain, then master of Two Brothers and another man saw their approach, ducked into the cabin, and brought out muskets. Chamberlain told Snowden that if "he came one foot farther, he was a dead man." Before Snowden could negotiate, Chamberlain fumbled eagerly for a match to fire the cannon, forcing Snowden to retreat back to the shore.[26] Capt. Joseph Kidder, whose vessel Mary Anne was anchored nearby when Snowden and deputy approached Two Brothers, confirmed Marshall Snowden's testimony and added that Chamberlain at first presented a small arm that he had on his person before ordering the muskets to be brought up.[27]

Samuel Snowden testified shortly afterward, on October 16, 1730, Gale, Chamberlain, and three of their men came on shore, armed with pistols and cutlasses. They swore that "they valued the Govr. no more than they did the Judge of Admty." Gale claimed that Porter had no authority over him, that admiralty jurisdiction, he claimed, was "His Father's business." And, he added that "no man else had any thing to do wth such things or things of that nature but his Father [Christopher Gale]."[28] Since most all business in the eighteenth century involved maritime traffic, it was as if Miles Gale saw his father as virtual dictator over North Carolina!

Edmond Porter ordered Gale and his men to appear in court on the 24th to answer these further charges. The records, however, surprisingly end on this note. Porter and Gale both survived this encounter, which, like most of Richard Tookerman’s protests, fell into the category of vengeful political discontent. Like the protests of the pirate Tookerman, the discontent of the local population of North Carolina against British progressive reform - designed to reduce corruption “beyond the line” in America, or the South against the Union in 1861, easily compare to those against Jacobitism or against a rogue modern American president! Like Francis Nicholson in multiple colonies and Edmond Porter in Carolina, all their efforts at reform and justice seldom received mention in American history – same as the actual true history of Edward Thache. Furthermore, in only two years’ time, the great reformer and protégé of Nicholson, Edmond Porter was replaced as Admiralty Judge by Christopher Gale’s West-Indian merchant brother Edmund Gale! Apparently it was a bit of privileged corruption in the name of nepotism – again, like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and his sons or U. S. President Donald Trump’s filling his White House with family: daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and faking security clearances to allow such indulgences![29]

Admiralty cases extend throughout the colonial period, demonstrating significant levels of corruption on the part of Admiralty officers and even judges. One collector in Port Brunswick, Edward Moseley’s nephew Samuel Swann, impounded a ship and allowed his friends to use it for a year before the judge in faraway Edenton demanded that he hold its trial! Swann never showed at court and was eventually fined for contempt and removed. Still, the man who replaced him, John Elliot committed precisely the same illegalities. This was certainly the reason for King William III’s proclamation of 1689-90: “An Act to punish Governors of Plantations in this Kingdom for Crimes by them committed…”

 

Crimes and Offences committed out of this His Majesties Realme of England whereof divers Governors Lieutenant Governors Deputy Governors or Commanders in Chiefe of Plantations and Colonies within His Majesties Dominions beyond the Seas have taken Advantage and have not been deterred from oppressing His Majesties Subjects within their respective Governments and Commands nor from committing severall other great Crimes and Offences not deeming themselves punishable for the same here [in England] nor accountable for such their Crimes and Offences to any Person within their respective Governments….[30]

 

All colonies operated corruptly. Still, corrupt private colonies like the two Carolinas and their sister colony of the Bahamas continued to operate as virtual criminal states during the Golden Age of Piracy – many long after resumption into the Crown – extending well into the United States of America following the American Revolution. North Carolina was little different than South Carolina before its resumption to the Crown in 1719. This is probably why Family land thief Maurice Moore and his kinfolk decided to move to the remote Lower Cape Fear in North Carolina in the next few years, where they could continue to conduct their business affairs “as usual” – under lax proprietary rule. These colonial conservatives essentially had few liberal counterparts in America – unless you count the unenfranchised majority toiling in the fields and slopping hogs. The Family and their ilk ideologically backed further away from British authority with each reform measure. About Family and other North Carolina conservatives in particular, historian Paul D. Escott asserts that North Carolinians are still subjects of these hierarchical forces of inequality that “belied the seeming equality of a poor state.”[31] The domination of Stuart conservative Tories took strong hold of and blended easily into American conservatism of first, the Democratic Party until the Civil War, and second, the Republican Party after Reconstruction in the Industrial Age. The glistening of treasure is usually hard to ignore for one whose family had long been pirates and criminals. They dominated American politics throughout our history – changing identity when necessary to maintain power!

As the criminal actions of the wealthy Lovick, Gale, and the Family indicate, the king’s own officials in these proprietaries could not be trusted. Their many crimes began with embezzling or smuggling of cargo to avoid duties to land theft from the proprietors and the king himself – they continuously robbed him blind! Modern bigotry and misogyny accompanied a male-dominated feudal rise of plantation economy. And, let’s not forget the slavery! Again, the general populace might be blamed for the bigotry, but these poorer sort cannot be blamed for the massive land theft, wholly attributable to upper class citizens: officials and wealthy merchants, like Vice Admiralty Judge John Warner in Port Royal, ex-slaver Col. William Rhett in Charles Town, or Edward Moseley and Maurice Moore and their Family in the Lower Cape Fear of North Carolina. The majority of colonial residents, those that usually composed pirate crews or grew corn and raised hogs, just went along, hoping for what scraps trickled down to them in this colonial version of Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth of 1889 or its descendent, “Trickle-Down” Reaganomics in the 1980s.

As Mark Hanna and Douglas Burgess have suggested, all American colonies experienced wholesale corruption and developed essentially criminal methods couched in the rhetoric of “unregulated individual freedom” with few rules. Calling these criminal behaviors “piracy” of the Golden Age, as we do today, does nothing to change their inherent “genetic” makeup. “Crimes” in the modern sense at this time were essential to the capture and domination of Spanish property. Crimes, including piracy, were by no means discouraged in America for generations until after Britain enforced their anti-pirate decrees – and, these were only temporarily effective. Britain may not have seen these early colonial methods as legal, but they were certainly allowed “beyond the lines of amity” or in the “Commonwealth of Pyrates!”

Carolina and its Southern brethren, long after the supposedly “notorious” Edward Thache’s demise in Ocracoke Inlet, and even after the legislative reforms instituted by Gov. Francis Nicholson and other British progressives, particularly excelled at such blatantly corrupt “criminal freedom,” or smuggling, bribery, and extortion. In less than a century, these unrestrained violent feudal ideologies of the South would result in a Civil War against their surprisingly liberalizing abolitionist cousins to the north, a reflection of the old battle against Stuart conservatives. Until that bellicose future time, a few Carolina men, like Admiralty Judge Edmond Porter, remained as dutiful to the king as Col. Robert Quarry or Francis Nicholson. And, as the admiralty records show, the British Eden himself was certainly no saint. Col. William Rhett of Charles Town and Lt. Gov. Alexander Spotswood of Virginia were little better, as was the opportunistic, but much maligned, Lord Archibald Hamilton of Jamaica – who never forgot the wealthy “landed” voters – many of whom were pirates – who ousted him from his governorship.

---

[1] Brooks, Brunswick Town and Wilmington, 10.

[2] Baylus C. Brooks, Captain James Wimble of Hastings, Sussex County, England: American Merchant, Founder, and Privateer (Greenville: Baylus C. Brooks, 2015), 8; Wilmington was aided by Wimble, for Gov. Burrington and in direct opposition to the Family’s Brunswick Town.

[3] William Rhett, Jr.’s sisters had married Family members from the Lower Cape Fear: Eleazer Allen and Roger Moore – both originally from Goose Creek, South Carolina.

[4] "South Carolina Probate Records, Bound Volumes, 1671-1977," image 159 of 301, pages 94-95 in old book; Lovick was secretary of the colony and it was his home that Edward Moseley and Maurice Moore broke into for evidence against Gov. Charles Eden’s trading with Blackbeard.

[5]Ibid.

[6]Ibid., image 160 of 301.

[7]Ibid.; Note that Col. William Rhett died facing these charges and an active investigation by Gov. Nicholson and his investigator Edmond Porter, looking into Rhett and his son’s smuggling and other illegal activities - Rhett today is considered a great hero by Americans, despite his obvious corruption.

[8] Cain, ed., Church of England Records, 317; "Wealth", more commonly known as "The Gospel of Wealth", is an article written by Andrew Carnegie in June of 1889. It details the responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class of self-made rich, the progenitor of the failed modern "Trickle-Down" Economic Theory. Like Ronald Reagan and many Republicans since, Carnegie proposed that the best way of dealing with the new phenomenon of wealth inequality was for the wealthy to utilize their surplus means in a responsible and thoughtful manner – the wealthy would essentially govern the people’s lives, completely negating the responsibility of government. The greed of the wealthy, however, seldom allowed for this. Although charged with supplying wealth to the lower classes, re: Trickle Down Economics, Carnegie’s wealthy colleagues probably desired rather to swindle the people. Carnegie’s even proposing such a ridiculous idea seemed suspicious in and of itself.

[9] Herbert R. Paschal, Jr., “Hyde, Edward” (1988), NCPedia, http://ncpedia.org/biography/hyde-edward (accessed 21 June 2013).

[10] Kevin Joel Berland, ed., The Dividing Line Histories of William Byrd II of Westover (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 359.

[11] Ibid., 105.

[12] Ibid., 365; scabs did not come from eating pork – likely, it was Smallpox, Impetigo (staff infection), or Herpes

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.; “Transcript: Donald Trump’s Taped Comments About Women,” New York Times (8 Oct 2016), https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/donald-trump-tape-transcript.html; “I did try and fuck her. She was married… I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look… You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything… Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

[15] George Stevenson, “Christopher Gale” (1986), NCPedia, http://ncpedia.org/biography/gale-christopher (accessed July 30, 2016).

[16] “Edenton Mob - Mock Jury” (7 Jan 1730), Vice-Admiralty Papers, Vol. I.

[17] “Richard Everard to Edmond Porter” (2 Jul 1730), North Carolina State Archives, Vice-Admiralty Papers, Vol. I: 1697-1738, CCR-142.

[18] Marshall Delancey Haywood, “Governor Charles Eden,” North Carolina Booklet, Vol. 3 No. 8 (Dec. 1903), 5-24; the “legal trouble” is given by Haywood, who defended Lovick’s actions: “Yet at a meeting of the Provincial Council of North Carolina during the administration of Governor Burrington, on July 31, 1724, a petition was presented on behalf of Roderick Lloyd and Anne, his wife, together with Margaret Pugh (daughter of Mrs. Lloyd by a former marriage), averring that Mrs. Lloyd was "only sister and heir" of Governor Eden; that John Lovick, "by pretext of a pretended will made by the said Governor," had fraudulently possessed himself of the Eden estate as executor; that the will had been procured in an unlawful and indirect manner, and was not signed and witnessed, as the law required. Mr. Lovick, as executor, made due answer to this petition; and, while not denying that Mrs. Lloyd was next of kin, proceeded to show that Governor Eden had made and signed his will in due form and that it was also attested by the number of witnesses necessary; that said will had been duly proven in open court, and afterwards recorded, as the law required.”

[19] “Richard Everard to Edmond Porter” (23 Jul 1730), Vice-Admiralty Papers of North Carolina, Vol. I.

[20]Ibid.

[21]Ibid.

[22]Ibid.

[23]Ibid.; concerning King v. Little.

[24]“Richard Everard to Edmond Porter” (4 Oct 1730), Vice-Admiralty Papers of North Carolina, Vol. I.

[25]Ibid.

[26] “Deposition of Capt. Joseph Kidder, master of Mary Anne” (20 Oct 1730), Vice-Admiralty Papers of North Carolina, Vol. I.

[27]Ibid.

[28] “Deposition of Samuel Snowden, Marshall of Admiralty” (17 Oct 1730), Vice-Admiralty Papers of North Carolina, Vol. I.

[29] Would it be a surprise to find that part of Kushner’s personal empire included a building at 666 Fifth Avenue? Christopher and Edmund were the sons of Anglican minister Miles Gale - as Blackbeard was the grandson of Anglican minister Thomas Thache, both highly-educated and wealthy men.

[30] "William III, 1698-9: An Act to punish Governors of Plantations in this Kingdom for Crimes by them committed in the Plantations. [Chapter XII. Rot. Parl. 11 Gul. III. p. 3. n. 11. 3.]," in Statutes of the Realm: Volume 7, 1695-1701, ed. John Raithby (s.l: Great Britain Record Commission, 1820), 600; “Order by Edmund Gale, V.A. Judge to take Samuel Swann of Cape Fear into custody” (7 Jul 1732), Vice-Admiralty Papers of North Carolina, Vol. I.

[31] Paul D. Escott, Many Excellent People: Power and Privilege in North Carolina, 1850-1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 2; Baylus C. Brooks, Dethroning the Kings of Cape Fear: Consequences of Edward Moseley’s Surveys (Greenville: Baylus C. Brooks, 2010).