"Drawing extensively upon Gadsden's writings and letters, Christopher Gadsden and the American Revolution ... recreates the ... life of South Carolina's foremost patriot during the American Revolution and illuminates further that major episode in American history. The book contains all the known details of Gadsden's personal life as well as a thorough analysis of his political and military careers"--Jacket.
A study of the lives of Christopher Gadsden (1724-1805) and Henry Laurens (1724-1792) is much more than a look at the contributions of two important, though largely neglected, heroes of the Revolution. Indeed, in these two lives, one can trace the development of the Revolution in South Carolina. Either Gadsden or Laurens, sometimes both, figured prominently in every major development in South Carolina between 1760 and 1783.
“Dennis shows, lucidly and vividly, how white South Carolinians and Natives struggled with each other through the Revolutionary era . . . a sparkling read.” —Walter Nugent, author of Habits of Empire Patriots and Indians examines relationships between elite South Carolinians and Native Americans through the colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods. Eighteenth-century South Carolinians interacted with Indians in business and diplomatic affairs—as enemies and allies during times of war and less frequently in matters of scientific, religious, or sexual interest. Jeff W. Dennis elaborates on these connections and their seminal effects on the American Revolution and the establishment of the state of South Carolina. Dennis illuminates how southern Indians and South Carolinians contributed to and gained from the intercultural relationship, which subsequently influenced the careers, politics, and perspectives of leading South Carolina patriots and informed Indian policy during the Revolution and early republic. In eighteenth-century South Carolina, what it meant to be a person of European American, Native American, or African American heritage changed dramatically. People lived in transition; they were required to find solutions to an expanding array of sociocultural, economic, and political challenges. Ultimately their creative adaptations transformed how they viewed themselves and others. “In this meticulously researched volume, Jeff Dennis focuses on the Cherokee and South Carolinians to explore the complex relations between Indians and colonists in the Revolutionary era. Dennis provides a valuable new perspective on America’s founders, identifying a clear link between Revolutionary radicalism and animosity toward Indians that shaped national policy long after the Revolution.” —James Piecuch, author of Three Peoples, One King
In what is probably the fullest and most vivid extant account of the American Colonial frontier, The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution gives shape to the daily life, thoughts, hopes, and fears of the frontier people. It is set forth by one of the most extraordinary men who ever sought out the wilderness--Charles Woodmason, an Anglican minister whose moral earnestness and savage indignation, combined with a vehement style, make him worthy of comparison with Swift. The book consists of his journal, selections from the sermons he preached to his Backcountry congregations, and the letters he wrote to influential people in Charleston and England describing life on the frontier and arguing the cause of the frontier people. Woodmason's pleas are fervent and moving; his narrative and descriptive style is colorful to a degree attained by few writers in Colonial America.
This social history of post-Revolutionary South Carolina examines the successful reconciliation of Patriots and Loyalists. The American Revolution was a vicious civil war fought between families and neighbors. Nowhere was this truer than in South Carolina. Yet, after the Revolution, South Carolina’s victorious Patriots offered vanquished Loyalists a prompt and generous legal and social reintegration. From Revolution to Reunion investigates the way in which South Carolinians, Patriot and Loyalist, managed to reconcile their bitter differences and reunite to heal South Carolina and create a stable foundation for the new United States. Rebecca Brannon considers rituals and emotions, as well as historical memory, to produce a complex and nuanced interpretation of the reconciliation process in post-Revolutionary South Carolina, detailing how Loyalists and Patriots worked together to heal their society. She frames the process in a larger historical context by comparing South Carolina’s experience with that of other states. Brannon highlights how Loyalists apologized but also became vital contributors to the new experiment in self-government and liberty. In return, the state government reinstated almost all the Loyalists by 1784. South Carolinians succeeded in creating a generous and lasting reconciliation between former enemies, but in the process they downplayed the dangers of civil war—which may have made it easier for South Carolinians to choose that path a second time.
John Rutledge (1739-1800) was a wealthy planter and successful lawyer, a leader in South Carolina's colonial Commons House of Assembly, and a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses. As chief executive of the state during most of the War for Independence, he was instrumental in its defense and recovery after the British conquest of 1780. One of the leading delegates to the United States constitutional convention in 1787, he served as chief justice of South Carolina, and briefly as associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
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On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was read aloud to a crowd gathered outside the Pennsylvania State House. It was engrossed on vellum later in the month, and delegates began signing the finely penned document in early August. The man who read the Declaration and later embossed it--the man with perhaps the most famous penmanship in American history--was Timothy Matlack, a Philadelphia beer bottler who strongly believed in the American cause. A disowned Quaker and the grandson of an indentured servant, he rose from obscurity to become a delegate to Congress. He led a militia battalion at Princeton during the Revolutionary War; his unflagging dedication earned him the admiration of men like Thomas Jefferson and Richard Henry Lee. Also in 1776 Matlack and his radical allies drafted the Pennsylvania Constitution, which has been described as the most democratic in America. This biography is a full account of an American patriot.
