The Antebellum Courthouse as Creditors' Domain: Trial-Court Activity in South Carolina and The Concomitance of Lending and Litigation

Abstract

Charleston cotton merchants Ker Boyce and George Henry cut a thick lock of hair from the head of the corpse of William Kincaid, whom a fever had taken on the morning of 20 November 1834. Kincaid, a wealthy slaveholder and cotton planter from South Carolina's Fairfield District, had gone to Charleston for business. He died under the watchful care of Boyce and Henry, his cotton factors. The morning of the death, Boyce penned a hasty note in which he informed Kincaid's wife of her widowhood. That evening, perhaps fearful of Kincaid's disease, the factors oversaw Kincaid's burial in Charleston's First Presbyterian Church. The next day, Henry described Kincaid's final earthly moments in a longer letter to Mrs. Kincaid, but he forgot to enclose the hair in that letter. Just over two weeks later, Boyce enclosed the clump of black hair in a consolatory letter that he sent to the Kincaid's oldest daughter, 23-year-old Elizabeth.1 After her husband's death, Elizabeth Calmese Kincaid assumed a greater role in his worldly affairs, which had included the management of slaves, land, and agricultural production. For legal matters concerning the family wealth, Kincaid had the counsel of one of Fairfield District's leading lawyers, David McDowell. McDowell taught Mrs. Kincaid how to be a creditor. Most importantly, McDowell instructed Kincaid how to put herself in a more secure position when she made loans. He explained that she could obtain judgments against her debtors at the same time that she lent them money, that is, she could combine litigation with lending. She