ABSTRACT
The diary of Edward Hooker was no doubt one of many kept by young men moving around the new republic to find their fortune. Hooker kept a diary during his two-year sojourn in Columbia before heading back to a teaching post at Yale in 1807. His manuscript diary is in the South Caroliniana Library, and extracts from it have been published just once, in 1897, by the Historical Manuscripts Commission. Hooker’s diary is not only an invaluable insight into life in South Carolina in the early nineteenth century, but it also contains numerous observations on slavery in the only state where enslaved Africans outnumbered whites. His reports on the debates in the South Carolina legislature during 1805 on whether to end the slave trade early, recording the deep divisions amongst legislators. The most remarkable incident described by Hooker was the reaction amongst Columbia residents of a rumoured slave insurrection.
