South Carolina Archives
Series Description

Governors' Messages, 1783-1870

CREATOR: General Assembly.

TITLE: Governors' messages

DATE: 1783-1870

VOLUME: 20.50 cubic ft., 9.00 microfilm reels, and 2.00 volumes

ARRANGEMENT: 1783-1830 reassembled into packets as delivered to the General Assembly and arranged chronologically by arbitrary assigned number; 1830-1870 semi-processed with some chronological arrangement.  In the microfilm of the 1783-1830 messages, the contemporary docketing of the items was filmed where it appeared on the back of the last page of the item.  Some scholars of the Denmark Vesey conspiracy (Message No. 1328) have been confused by this placement and have applied the docketing erroneously to the following items.

RESTRICTIONS ON ACCESS: Microfilm is used for the 1783-1830 messages, which are restricted from general use.

SUMMARY SCOPE NOTE: This series contains the messages sent from the governors of South Carolina to the General Assembly and includes many of the documents that were enclosed with those messages. As chief executive, the governor received many communications from the federal government and from other states and foreign nations. He also handled many in-state matters and forwarded documentation to the General Assembly when it came back into session. Subject matter includes a wide range of national and international political, constitutional, social, and economic affairs as well as more local concerns. The trial transcript from the 1822 Denmark Vesey slave revolt conspiracy or reputed conspiracy is in the series.

The 1783-1830 messages represent a modern reassembling of these documents with all their enclosures as they were submitted to the General Assembly and include some photocopies of missing items from other repositories. These materials had been arranged in a subject file in the early twentieth century. Two cartons of post 1830 materials represent a partial organization and arrangement of materials for a continuation of that reconstruction, but the project has not been completed. Four other unarranged cartons contain mixed materials, many of which are believed to possibly be message enclosures.

INDEX/FINDING AID: 1783-1830 indexed in detail to personal names, geographic locations, and topics in the repository's On-Line Index to Legislative Papers, 1782-1866, and in a fifteen-reel computer output microfilm (COM) Index to Legislative Papers made available by the repository in 1991. The numeric code 0010 006 was used to designate this series in the computer output microfilm index.

The names of businesses, manufacturing firms, and similar incorporations were indexed with the personal names, but the names of churches, educational institutions, benevolent and social organizations, fire companies, and military organizations were indexed with topics. A thesaurus of the controlled topical terms used in the indexing is available in electronic form and is linked from the on-line index. Many messages were indexed as one document packet, but others had some of the enclosures treated as separate indexing units.

ADDITIONAL FORM: 1783-1830 available on microfilm produced by the repository. Some oversized documents were not included on this film but are noted with targets.

HIERARCHICAL NOTE: Forms part of the records of the General Assembly.