Abstract
This story may be familiar. In the wake of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, concerned residents of Williamsburg District, South Carolina, met at Boggy Swamp to expel two northerners, W. J. Dodd and R. A. P. Hamilton, who had been working as teachers in their neighborhood. “Nothing definite is known of their abolition or insurrectionary sentiments,” the local paper, the Kingstree Star, admitted, “but being from the North, and therefore necessarily imbued with doctrines hostile to our institutions, their presence in this section has been obnoxious, and, at any rate, very suspicious.” A committee of twelve was