| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

John Laurens and the American Revolution. By Gregory D. Massey. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000. xxii, 327 pp. $34.95, ISBN 1-57003-330-7.)

Remembered essentially for his plan to recruit slaves into the Continental army in exchange for their freedom, John Laurens has long deserved a full-length analytical biography. Since documentation for such a study rests largely on the massive writings of his father, Henry Laurens, Gregory D. Massey has contrived an ingenious life-and-times approach to his subject that leaves Henry Laurens as virtual co-subject of this volume. 1

The author depended heavily on psychological studies of suicide to shed light on John Laurens's recklessness in battle, which he dubbed "indirect self-destructive behavior." The marquis de Lafayette remarked of John Laurens after the battle of Brandywine, "It was not his fault that he was not killed or wounded . . . he did every thing that was necessary to procure one or t'other." Eventually Laurens was killed (August 27, 1782) leading a charge against three times his number in what Nathanael Greene regretfully called "a paltry little skirmish." . . .

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