Reviewed by Rebecca Starr, University of Gloucestershire | The William and Mary Quarterly, 60.1

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Reviewed by Rebecca Starr, University of Gloucestershire | The William and Mary Quarterly, 60.1 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

William Henry Drayton: South Carolina Revolutionary Patriot. By KEITH KRAWCZYNSKI . (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001. Pp. xii, 358. $49.95.)

Reviewed by Rebecca Starr, University of Gloucestershire

Keith Krawczynski's carefully researched biography of the radical whig patriot William Henry Drayton gives us a fresh look at this most puzzling revolutionary leader from South Carolina, itself a puzzle for being the most reluctant of all the rebelling states. In Krawczynski's hands, Drayton's story adds to our understanding of South Carolina's early political culture. Scholars agree that South Carolina experienced a conservative revolution whose pace and outcome was controlled largely by such cool heads as Henry Laurens and the Rutledge brothers, John and Edward. Yet it also counted among its leaders men like Drayton and Christopher Gadsden, both ardent for independence long before some of the most fervent (and more famous) patriot leaders from the other colonies took a stand. Drayton's place in a political culture that extolled political conservatism needs explaining.

But there is more, for Drayton, unlike the consistently radical Gadsden, changed from extreme tory to ultra whig in a little more than a year (about 1773–1774). What could have motivated such a swift and dramatic shift? With this biography, Krawczynski hopes to solve the Drayton enigma that has exercised revolutionary specialists for so long. Was he just an opportunist or perhaps a maverick, possessed of an idiosyncratic temperament? Was he rebelling against his tyrannical father? Any of these traditional explanations, possibly correct as far as they go, can tell us little about the larger forces that edged conservative South Carolina whigs, so happy in the British empire for so long, toward revolution. Krawczynski's thesis is that Drayton shared the prevailing political assumptions of his fellows. Hence, rather than take a merely biographical approach, Krawczynski sets Drayton firmly in context with the state's other whig leaders. This approach allows us to see, as we have not before been able to do, the full range of the revolutionary movement's leadership in South Carolina. By carrying his study through Drayton's service in the Continental Congress, Krawczynski tells us something about the variety of radical thought at the national level as well.

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