From Revolution to Reunion: The Reintegration of the South Carolina Loyalists by Rebecca Brannon (review)

In this thoroughly researched and elegantly written book, From Revolution to Reunion: The Reintegration of the South Carolina Loyalists, Rebecca Brannon, an associate professor of history at James Madison University, provides a richly informative account of South Carolina white Loyalists who embraced the British empire during the Revolutionary period but integrated themselves into the new state after the war. Building on the works of Robert M. Calhoon, James Piecuch, P. H. Smith, and Maya Jasanoff, among others, Brannon not only analyzes how white Patriots offered their former enemies peaceful reconciliation, but also discusses how descendants of both sides produced a shared memory of the American Revolution that ensured the stability of their society for a few decades.

Brannon chiefly considers how white Loyalists persuaded their former enemies to accept them as trustworthy friends in post-Revolutionary South Carolina. The American Revolutionary War, Brannon asserts, was a "true civil war" for both Loyalists and Patriots who "experienced the extreme vicissitudes of guerrilla warfare" (pp. 13, 22). After the war, while few Patriots claimed they should punish Loyalists harshly, the majority of the "victorious Patriots" preferred to treat their former neighbors generously so that they could recover from the war's ravage (p. 2). In this situation, Loyalists looked for "ways to apologize and reconcile" with Patriots (p. 2). For example, Elias Ball of Comingtee, a Loyalist whose property was confiscated by the Patriots during the war, asked his uncle Henry Laurens, a prominent Patriot, for help. Laurens offered his nephew an overseer position on his Georgia plantations. By doing so, Laurens hoped that "the time is coming when I shall take [him] again into my arms as a friend" (p. 2). Through such focused studies, Brannon discusses how white Loyalists served white Patriots and became "citizens of the new republic" (p. 95).

Brannon pays particular attention to how historical memories of the American Revolution produced a "long-term reconciliation between Loyalists and Patriots" in the first half of the nineteenth century (p. 7). Following historians such as David W. Blight, David Waldstreicher, and Sarah J. Purcell, among others, Brannon examines how both sides created "a useable past" in which former Loyalists and their families became "inseparable from their fellow citizens" (p. 141). The reconciliation efforts were so successful that children and grandchildren of the Loyalists, according to Brannon, "felt not only confident in asserting themselves in their society but also empowered to pursue the making of a shared societal historical memory themselves" (p. 168). As descendants of both Patriots and Loyalists kept their silence on the subject of Revolutionary loyalism, they intentionally forgot political conflicts between their ancestors. When the American Civil War was approaching, South Carolinians "finally found themselves all on the same side" (p. 168).

From Revolution to Reunion, of course, is not without its flaws. It only deals with white Loyalists, completely ignoring Native Americans in South Carolina's backcountry. Moreover, it fails to consider how enslaved Africans supported the Loyalist cause during the Revolutionary period and reconciled with Patriots in the post-Revolutionary era. None of this, however, should take away from Brannon's achievement. With meticulous investigations into very scanty records, she convincingly demonstrates the common experience that white Loyalists shared, as well as their community-building efforts that contributed to the formation of their citizenship. Anyone interested in how Loyalists obtained their citizenship in the early republic will profit from carefully studying this book.