Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast episode 169.

I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this episode on November 13, 24, in New Orleans.

We are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States from the beginning without intentional presentism.

We're still in Carolina, the southern part.

Last time we talked about how, after a prosperous and hopeful start, the Carolina proprietors had gotten distracted

in the second half of the 1660s, what with war, plague, and fire. The initiative behind

the enterprise had been fundamentally Barbadian, and two expeditions from that island had explored the Cape Fear River

and the coast south of Cape Romaine. After the return of Robert Sanford, the second of those

explorers, in 1666, the enterprise was at risk of a failure of leadership.

Here's how L.H. Roper described it in his book,

Conceiving Carolina, proprietors, planters, and plots, 1662 to 1729.

Quote, at the end of 1668, the outlook for the Carolina proprietorship appeared quite gloomy.

Abelmar and Colton, its original leading lights, had departed the scene, along with Clarendon.

In addition, the stigma of failure now haunted their endeavor.

The Barbadian adventurers cannot have looked back on their experience with fondness. Yet instead of dying off, the proprietary venture received

new vigor under the leadership of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley. Back to me.

Lord Ashley had already risen to sufficient prominence by 1666 that Sanford had named the Southern River at the future peninsula of Charleston after him.

But now he would take the lead.

With his friend in confident John Locke, he would develop a fantastically,

some would say hilariously, detail plan of government for Carolina that would never be put

into effect, but which would inspire and confound historians into our own time, the fundamental

constitutions of Carolina.

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