Reconciling the Revolution: Resolving Conflict and Rebuilding Community in the Wake of Civil War in South Carolina, 1775-1860.

Abstract

This dissertation examines a successful example of reconciliation between former enemies after civil war: South Carolina’s reintegration of Loyalists. At the end of a bruising guerilla civil war, South Carolina’s legislature, with the full support of the citizens, passed legislation confiscating the property of many prominent Loyalists and banishing them from the state, and putting an official imprimatur on the extralegal expulsion of others. Yet within two years, the General Assembly pardoned and readmitted the majority of proscribed Loyalists, despite some anti-Loyalist rioting. This dissertation reincorporates Loyalists into the fabric of the new nation as subjects of discussion and historical actors, rather than absent people who posed no problem for the making of a new republic. For both South Carolina legislators and ordinary South Carolinians, discussions of honor, conduct, loyalty, Republicanism, and citizenship did not take place in a conceptual vacuum, but were shaped by discussions about and with former Loyalists who sought to take their places in this new experiment. South Carolinians’ understanding of citizenship and belonging was shaped by both their wartime experience with civil war and their decision to reincorporate many Loyalists into the body politic. What actually makes reconciliation? In South Carolina’s case, it was a combination of official government action through the main branch of government (the legislature), the influential and persuasive voices of a few individuals who could encourage public opinion, and the individual and neighborhood decisions of many hundreds of individuals who decided that reintegrating most, though not all, of the former Loyalists into their communities was more important than pursuing revenge and punishment. South Carolina’s move towards reconciliation worked because there was support from below. South Carolinians continued carefully to manage public discussions of Revolutionary conflict for generations in order to maintain peaceful relations, reintegrating Loyalist descendants into the elite while avoiding any recognition of their heritage. This dissertation depends on extensive legislative records, including Loyalist petitions, as well as executive documents, family letters, church records, and newspapers to recreate the broader context of Loyalist reintegration in the crucial decades after the Revolution.