Book Review

Daniel J. McDonough's examination of Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laurens is a welcome addition to the growing list of recent biographies of South Carolina revolutionary leaders such as John and Edward Rutledge, William Henry Drayton, and John Laurens. By analyzing two patriot leaders with divergent personalities, motivations, and ideas concerning the course of the American Revolution, McDonough's book graphically depicts the factional nature and complexity of South Carolina's rebellion.

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Gadsden's and Laurens's contrasting personalities and attitudes toward the mother country contributed to their separate paths to rebellion. Laurens, a level-headed low-country planter and merchant, was raised in a stable family that instilled subordination to authority. In contrast, Gadsden, an impetuous and suspicious Charleston factor, was forced to be self-reliant from an early age and therefore held a stronger attachment to his natural rights than to the mother country. Such sentiments led him to mobilize local resistance against Parliament's offensive measures imposed on the colonies from 1764 to 1775, action that earned Gadsden appointment to both the Stamp Act and the First Continental congresses. Laurens, on the other hand, was a reluctant revolutionary who became more aware of English tyranny after suffering a bitter dispute with local British customs officials in the late 1760s. Still, Laurens sought a peaceful imperial settlement and did much to thwart Gadsden's more militant measures.

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