South Carolina Loyalists

South Carolina Loyalists (dissertation)

60-75

Woodmason, the Backcountry and the Regulator Movement

. . . Woodmason’s interest in backcountry life went beyond the social and religious customs he observed, for he became aware of the frustrations felt by some of the more substantial residents of the area, frustrations caused by their inability to interest the General Assembly or offi cials in Charlestown in their problems. Th e most serious problem was the lack of law enforcement in the backcountry where, following the Cherokee War, bands of outlaws preyed on the persons and property of settlers. Virtually unrepresented in the parish-based General Assembly, a number of backcountry leaders appealed for the establishment of courts and sheriff s in the interior, and representation in the legislature for the recently settled areas. Th e General Assembly was not unsympathetic to their problems, passing a bill to organize courts in the interior and authorizing two companies of rangers to help in law enforcement. But the court bill was disallowed in England, and the attention of lowcountry leaders was distracted during these years by the growing struggle with the imperial and local administration over American rights; further appeals from the backcountry for help went unheeded.

As the lawlessness in the backcountry became more flagrant, local leaders turned increasingly to their own resources. Organizing their neighbors, they invaded outlaw hideouts and administered their own justice against their tormenters, the storekeepers whom they suspected of dealing with the outlaws, and the more shiftless elements in the population who gave aid and comfort to them. Styling themselves Regulators, these leaders, usually small planters and justices of the peace and militia officers who had the respect of their communities, increasingly took the law into their own hands; in so doing, they sometimes acted against innocent people, who complained to authorities in Charlestown. Th e deputies sent by the provost marshal to serve warrants against certain Regulators for debt met armed resistance, and in one confrontation near Marr’s Bluff on the Pee Dee River, the lawmen suffered casualties and were driven off by friends of the Regulators.

Th e Marr’s Bluff incident and complaints by a magistrate in the Broad-Saluda fork that he had been whipped by Regulators led Governor Lord Charles Montagu to order a bench warrant served on the perpetrators of these acts. Th e man authorized to make the arrests was one Joseph Coff ell, who already had a bad reputation in the backcountry; true to form, Coff ell deputized men suspected by Regulators of having committed crimes. As Coff ell’s band moved into the backcountry, it not only arrested Regulators but plundered homes along the Saluda River, and in the process succeeded in arousing the countryside to armed resistance. Before a full-scale civil war broke out, however, certain backcountry leaders convinced Montagu to rescind Coff ell’s authority and an uneasy peace was restored. As a result of the crisis, the General Assembly hastily passed a second court bill that met the objections that offi cials in England had raised to a provision on the tenure of judges in the earlier measure, and Montagu carried it to England where it was soon approved. Lieutenant Governor William Bull, who was much more sympathetic to Regulator grievances than Montagu, soon pardoned most of them and restored their commissions as magistrates and militia offi cers.

The Circuit Court Act of 1769 divided the province into seven judicial districts, and it authorized for each the appointment of a sheriff and the erection of a courthouse and a jail. Although the Regulators would have preferred to have local courts rather than periodic sessions presided over by circuit judges, and the provisions of the law were not fully implemented for three years, a semblance of peace was restored to the backcountry. Th e Regulator movement did, however, put a severe strain on relations among backcountry families and neighborhoods, and the feuds that it engendered may have carried over into the civil war that raged in the backcountry during the Revolution that broke out a few years later.

By 1775 population had spread over most of the province and a few settlers had encroached upon lands beyond the: Indian Line, the western boundary surveyed after the Cherokee War. Th ere are no censuses for the period, but the best contemporary estimates of South Carolina’s population on the eve of the Revolution ranged from 140,000 to 170,000, including perhaps 60,000 to 70,000 whites and 80,000 to 100,000 blacks. Most of the white population was to be found in the interior, while all but a small proportion of the slaves were in the low country parishes.

Th e period from the treaty ending the French and Indian War to 1775 was one of intense political unrest in Britain’s North American colonies. Indeed, recent studies have indicated that considerable stress had begun to develop between the imperial government in England and its provinces in America during the war with France and that the misunderstandings and suspicions that grew up during that conflict provide the foundation for the unrest that followed.

On the surface, South Carolina in the early 1760s had little reason to regret its connection with Great Britain. Th e colony’s prosperity was based on its ability to raise and transport its great staples to British and Continental markets, and in a dangerous world the Royal Navy provided a security that seemed essential to the trade. In a colony founded by Englishmen, South Carolinians, or at least that portion of its free population that dominated the political process, were proud of their heritage and harbored no ideas of questioning their relationship with the home government. In turn, there was every indication that royal offi cials in England considered South Carolina to be a valuable colony that produced useful commodities and was becoming an increasingly large consumer of British goods.

Thomas Boone v. Gadsden

Despite this apparently mutual satisfaction with the imperial connection, through its control of the Commons House of Assembly the lowcountry gentry had developed defenses against royal authority as represented by the governors and the increasingly pliant Royal Council. Based upon its power to tax and to spend, the Commons House had come to think of itself as the sole legislative authority in the province and to be very sensitive to its independence from outside control. In this state of mind, it is no wonder that, when Governor Th omas Boone questioned the right of a member to his seat, the Commons House looked upon his action as an assault upon its prerogatives and reacted accordingly.

The member was the wealthy merchant Christopher Gadsden whose election to a seat from St. Paul ‘s Parish in 1762 was certified by churchwardens who had failed to take the oath required by law before acting. As a result, Boone declared the seat vacant and called for a new election to fill it. In the constitutional quarrel that ensued, the Commons House asserted its right to judge the qualifications of its members, while Boone claimed that such right derived from an election law of 1721 that also required that churchwardens take an oath before embarking on their duties. The Commons House, however, declared that its very existence rested on the natural right of freemen to be represented and demanded an apology from the governor before resuming business. It then appealed to its agent in London to bring the matter before the Board of Trade. The impasse lasted for more than a year before the board removed Boone, an act that further increased the self-esteem of the Commons House. And Christopher Gadsden became a leading figure in the ensuing struggle between Imperial authority and local rights in South Carolina.

Stamp Act

Gadsden was also deeply involved in South Carolina’s resistance to the Stamp Act, a measure passed by Parliament in 1765 to raise a revenue in the colonies. With Th omas Lynch and John Rutledge, he represented the province in the Stamp Act Congress that met in New York that fall to protest against the tax and to recommend measures to force its repeal. In Charlestown the stamp masters appointed to administer the tax were intimidated into resigning by mobs in which the mechanics, calling themselves Sons of Liberty, took an important part. By early 1766, with business in the port at a standstill, the harbor crammed with ships awaiting the clearances for which stamps were required, restless crews in the taverns, and merchants anxious over the losses they were sustaining, Lieutenant Governor William Bull fi nally permitted ships to clear on grounds that the required stamps were not available. Th e tension in the port was relieved, and the arrival in May of news that the Stamp Act had been repealed caused wild rejoicing. Clearly, South Carolina had permitted violence and intimidation in defying the law, tactics that were alarming to men of conservative temper and substantial property like William Wragg and the wealthy merchant Henry Laurens.

Laurens vs the new Customs Officer

But Laurens himself ran afoul of British authority in 1767 when two of his vessels were seized by Daniel Moore, a newly arrived customs collector, on a technical violation of regulations that required all vessels to clear with his offi ce. Egerton Leigh, Laurens’s relative by marriage and judge of the vice admiralty court in Charlestown, attempted a compromise by ruling favorably on the seizure of one vessel to satisfy customs offi cials, and appeasing Laurens by dismissing the case against the other vessel. Laurens, angered by the arbitrary nature of the decision by a judge without jury, responded by suing George Roupell, the offi cer who had seized his ship; a local jury awarded Laurens a judgment for damages so large that Roupell could not pay it. Customs offi cials then apparently connived to seize another Laurens vessel to pressure him into dropping his suit; when Laurens refused, Judge Leigh was caught between his duty to support customs offi cials whom he suspected of conspiracy against Laurens, and upholding the tenet of the law. Leigh’s answer to the dilemma was to dismiss the case against the seized vessel while pointing out the technical violation. Meanwhile, Laurens published documents and affi davits that exposed the abuses of both the customs offi cials and the vice admiralty court in Charlestown. Leigh then printed a defense of his conduct that amounted to a thinly disguised personal attack on Laurens, who replied by publishing further documents on the matter

Th e publicity given to this controversy had repercussions within and beyond the province. Leigh lost his judgeship because of complaints from customs offi cials in South Carolina, and to some degree his tarnished personal reputation further aff ected local attitudes toward placemen. Laurens’s experiences with the customs service tended to change his posture to one of strong criticism of British policies and offi cials. And, combined with revelations about John Hancock’s problems with customs offi cials in Massachusetts in the same period, it brought Britain’s commercial policy into further disrepute in America.

Townshend Acts

Meanwhile, Parliament had resumed its eff orts to raise a revenue in the colonies, placing duties on tea and certain other imported goods. Massachusetts sought to have the other colonies join it in resisting enforcement of these Townshend duties, stating its views in a circular letter to them. In South Carolina, the Commons House unanimously endorsed the Massachusetts views, but citizens were less enthusiastic about resorting to non-importation again as a means of applying pressure for the repeal of the duties. In the name of principle, import merchants would bear the load of such a sacrifi ce, while planters would suff er little in the short run and many mechanics might even prosper from the reduced competition with British products. After much negotiating, a large public meeting forged an agreement not to import a wide range of English goods; and a committee of thirty-nine drawn equally from planters, merchants, and mechanics was chosen to enforce the boycott. Some coercion was used to get most people to sign a non-importation agreement, which worked fairly well. Ultimately, a new ministry in England urged the repeal of the Townshend duties because they had done little to promote British trade, although the tax on tea was retained so that Parliament would not appear to give up its prerogative to raise a revenue in America. But the nonimportation agreements in the colonies collapsed in the face of this apparent concession, and in December 1770 a meeting in Charlestown rescinded the boycott on all imports except tea,

John Wilkes

Perhaps more important to the ultimate breakdown of royal authority in South Carolina was an incident that began rather innocently in 1769 when the Commons House ordered the provincial treasurer to advance £1,500 as its contribution to a fund being raised in England to defend the imprisoned radical John Wilkes.

That a colonial legislative body had contributed to defend a convicted libeler of the king was bad enough; that in this instance the appropriation was made without the consent of the royal governor and his council was a startling indication that the popular branch of the General Assembly was exercising powers far beyond those that authorities in England were prepared to approve.

Instructions came swiftly to Acting Governor Bull that, upon pain of removal from office, no appropriation should be approved that did not specify the purpose for which the revenue was intended, and that treasurers who disbursed funds without the approval of the Royal Council and the governor were to be permanently excluded from office and forfeit triple the sum involved.

The Commons House responded that the practice was of long standing, a view that the royal attorney general refused to countenance. Thus the stage was set in South Carolina for a renewed struggle between the Commons House, which sought by direct means and by subterfuge to raise the revenue to replace the money, borrowed for the gift to the Wilkes Fund, and the governors and the Royal Council who scrutinized all revenue measures to see if they contained the offending appropriation.

All efforts to reach a compromise failed, and for three years no annual tax bill was passed. When the general duty law, which supported the salaries of some officials and the Anglican clergy in the province, was about to expire in 1773, a majority of the Royal Council refused to assent to legislation of any kind until the Commons House would agree to extend it. Two members of the council who dissented from that decision, John and William Henry Drayton, printed a protest in the South Carolina Gazette, whereupon the council had printer Thomas Powell imprisoned for contempt.

The Imprisonment of the Publisher of the Carolina Gazette

Powell, whose counsel argued that the council was not an upper house of the legislation and thus could not punish for contempt, sought and was granted his freedom on a habeas corpus issued by two justices of the peace, both members of the Commons House. The council then began proceedings against those justices, an effort that caused the Commons House to appeal through its agent in London for the removal of the councillors responsible.  Local attention was diverted from the dispute over these constitutional questions by the larger issues raised by the Tea Party in Boston.

In 1774 the Commons House, responding to the threat of an Indian attack on the frontier of the province, issued its own bills of credit to meet outstanding obligations after local merchants and officials, even members of the Royal Council, agreed to receive them until a tax bill could be passed. Th us by resorting to powers it had used occasionally to meet emergencies in the past, the Commons House not only emerged the winner in its long dispute over the Wilkes Fund, but was in position to assume direction of what would ultimately become the Revolutionary movement in South Carolina.

Tea Party

In 1773, in an effort to revive the sagging fortunes of the East India Company, Parliament passed legislation that gave that company an advantage in the colonial market by exempting it from the trade regulations requiring that goods destined for the colonies must first pay duty in England, When in November 1773 a cargo of East India Company tea arrived off Charlestown, the nonimportation machinery that had fallen into disuse after the repeal of the other Townshend duties was revived, and it prevented the tea from being landed and delivered to Zephaniah Kingsley, John McKenzie, and Robert Lindsay, the merchants to whom it was consigned.

Lieutenant Governor Bull avoided a direct challenge to royal authority by impounding the cargo when the duty was not paid within the time prescribed by law. But when Parliament, angered by Boston’s response to the Tea Act, enacted a series of punitive measures against Massachusetts, the Coercive or “Intolerable” Acts of 1774, South Carolina joined with others in support of the sister colony, now beset by what were considered to be tyrannical arracks on private property and individual and institutional liberties in America.2

First, in January 1774, a mass meeting in Charlestown chose a general committee to prepare for future trouble. A call was issued for a meeting to discuss a response to the act of Parliament closing the port of Boston; in July delegates from Charlestown and from other parts of the province met for several days to discuss whether to send delegates to a continental congress called by Massachusetts.

On the issue of employing nonimportation as a response to the most recent acts of Parliament, the interests of planters and mechanics once again clashed with those of the more important merchants as represented by the newly organized Chamber of Commerce. The delegates chosen to attend the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, although men of substantial property, generally were more vigorous advocates of American rights than others the Chamber of Commerce would have preferred.

At Philadelphia, South Carolina’s delegation supported the Continental Association, an agreement banning the importation or consumption of British goods and the exportation of colonial staples to Britain, but only after the delegates had agreed to exempt rice from the latter prohibition.

When the delegates returned to South Carolina in November, the general committee called for elections to a provincial congress to convene in Charlestown in January 1775. That body, after much debate over the terms of the Continental Association, approved the work of the delegates, and reelected them to represent the colony in the Second Continental Congress called for the following May. The congress also created a Council of Safety to act when it was not in session and a network of special and local committees of inspection to enforce the association.

To this point an eff ort has been made to summarize South Carolina’s colonial development: the characteristics of its population, its economy, its political structure and practices, and its society. Further, it has been pointed out that certain issues after 1760 had brought many of the leaders in the lowcountry to question the imperial relationship and many in the backcountry to demand greater recognition within the province. Certain ideas have been identifi ed as fundamental to the struggle for American rights within the empire and certain local men have been cast in roles on both sides of that issue.

But nowhere has it been suggested that there was substantial overt opposition to the ideas expressed by advocates of American rights or that a corps of local leaders existed who were prepared to defend the royal position in the constitutional struggles of the time. Th e underlying assumption on which American rights ideas rested was that the traditional ways of operating within the empire must be preserved. Whether a spokesman for American rights like Christopher Gadsden really had independence in view after the Stamp Act crisis is less important than that he and more conservative advocates of the American position foreswore, in their public utterances at least, any arrangement outside the empire. Th e rights they went to such lengths to defend were, after all, the rights of British Americans.

If that be true, where does one begin to look for the seeds, if not the roots, of the opposition to what will become the American Revolutionary movement in South Carolina. To pose the question is, however, to open the door on the veritable wilderness that is the larger question of allegiance: Why did residents of South Carolina take one side or the other in the American Revolution? It is too early at this point to search out all the factors that might account for such positions on the part of individuals or groups. One thing is clear: the historical record for what will come to be known as the American or rebel side in the Revolution is fuller than it is for the pro-British or loyalist side, and the same is true of the use that subsequent generations, however biased, have made of the record that exists. Proud of having created a nation, the victors and their descendants have preserved both the personal records and the myths related to their great achievement; the losers appear only in surviving British records, the American records that deigned to notice them, usually in a pejorative way, and in an occasional reminiscence brought to light in Canada or in the other British possessions to which loyalists were exiled at the end of the war. Persons who at one time or another took the loyalist side but were permitted to remain in South Carolina after the war have, for obvious reasons, had virtually nothing to say about their experiences or motivation. Th us we are left with little to help us fi nd what the “loyalist” position was before 1775 when virtually all British colonial inhabitants considered themselves to be loyal to England.

Yet it is worth probing the record for what it will reveal of clues to positive loyal acts or expressions before the outbreak of hostilities. In the lowcountry, self-interest would dictate that Crown offi cers, from the very nature of their positions and the sources of their authority and income, should have upheld the British view. Except for William Bull, all the Crown offi cers in the colony after 1760 were placemen, outsiders who, like Egerton Leigh, were caught between the imperatives of offi cial duty and of local interest and support. Leigh, of course, was unusual among placemen because by his marriage he had established local ties that made his offi cial position more diffi cult to maintain. Few others, except perhaps from a natural desire to be liked, would take the chance of alienating patrons or superiors in England by being other than faithful to the Crown in word and deed. From similar motives, men who held minor positions, especially in the customs service, also tended to support royal authority.

Anglican Church officials

 cial church whose appointments and tenure depended to some extent on satisfying their superiors in England. Several did attempt to uphold the British position from the pulpit and were dismissed because a majority of their communicants were not in sympathy with their views. Th e assistant rector of St. Michael’s felt called upon to preach on the “Christian duty of peaceableness” in August 1774, for which he was “through the violent outrage of the people deprived of his appointment” when a majority of the vestry urged his removal; the assistant rector at St. Philip’s left in 1775 after refusing to sign the Continental Association; whereas Robert Cooper, rector of St. Michael’s, by signing the Continental Association did keep his position for the time being, although in 1777 he returned to England. Nevertheless, most of the Anglican clergymen in South Carolina continued to serve their parishioners during the war and remained in the state afterward, an indication that local congregations had more infl uence over their ministers than did distant superiors in the Anglican hierarchy.

Scots

One ethnic group that aroused fear and suspicion among advocates of American rights was the Scots, who continued and even increased their migration to South Carolina in the 1760s, where they took important places in the economic life of Charlestown. Robert Wells, who had established his bookselling and printing business and a newspaper before the Cherokee War, enlarged his activities and his income in the 1760s in several ways: serving as a vendue master selling imported goods at auction to local merchants; from an appointment as marshal of the vice admiralty court for South Carolina; and by later obtaining the position of marshal of the vice admiralty court for the Southern District of North America, established by Parliament in 1767 in an eff ort to crack down on violators of customs regulations. Wells invested the returns from his several enterprises in Charlestown real estate and over 3,000 acres of land in various parts of the province, and by 1770 could advertise that he had money to lend at interest. He was an active Mason and through his newspaper and bookshop a promoter of the economic and cultural elite of the city. During the Stamp Act crisis his General Gazette supported the American position, but as the controversy over British policy and the actions of local offi cials continued. Wells’s defense of the ministerial position became more pronounced. Indeed, as the crisis reached the verge of hostilities, Peter Timothy, editor of the colony’s original newspaper, the South Carolina Gazette:, and a strong exponent of American rights, complained bitterly in its columns of offi cial favoritism toward “Mr. Robert Wells from Glasgow.” But by this time, Wells himself had come to dislike the trend of political events in the province so much that in 1775 he took ship for England, leaving his son, John, in charge of the printing and bookselling enterprises. He never returned to South Carolina.

Another important Scot was John Stuart from Inverness who, after participating in several trading ventures in the 1740s, came to South Carolina as a partner in a merchant house. While that particular venture ultimately failed, Stuart remained to pay off his creditors and assume such responsible positions as captain of militia and member of the Commons House. In the 1750s he became deeply involved in trade and diplomacy with the Cherokees, and in 1761, upon Governor Boone’s recommendation, he was appointed to the new position of superintendent of Indian affairs for the Southern District of North America. Th e salary and perquisites of this position enabled Stuart to become a substantial indigo planter and slaveholder on Lady’s Island near Beaufort and owner of a handsome house in Charlestown. Generally popular in the latter city, Stuart nevertheless made enemies among what his biographer has called the “anti-Scottish party,” the most vocal of whom was Timothy who resented the superintendent’s practice of giving information on Indian affairs exclusively to his good friend Robert Wells.

Th e wealth and influence of Stuart and Wells, and of shipbuilder John Rose, extended through marriages into the next generation. One of Stuart’s daughters married a brother of the royal lieutenant governor of Georgia, and a second became the bride of the younger Edward Fenwick, son of a prominent family in Sr. Bartholomew’s Parish; while Rose’s daughter married the successful Charlestown merchant, John Tunno, another Scot.

Scots were also well represented in two important occupations in and near Charlestown. In addition to John Rose, other shipbuilders who had migrated from Scotland in the 1760s were John Imrie, James and William Begbie, and their partner Daniel Manson. Scots who were practitioners of medicine in this period included John Farquharson, James Fraser (sometimes “Frazier” or “Frazer” in British records), Alexander Garden, Peter Spence, Hugh Rose (John’s son), and “Dr. John” Wells of John’s Island, a brother of Robert Wells. All had lucrative practices as physicians and apothecaries. Garden owned substantial real estate in Charlestown, and Spence had a plantation near Jacksonborough and several tracts of unimproved lads in the interior.

Altogether, the Scottish community numbered some thirty-fi ve families, most of whom were merchants and artisan-shopkeepers in Charlestown. Numbered among them were several who had come out to join the growing bureaucracy in Stuart’s Indian department, a clerk of the Court of Common Pleas, a collector of customs, as well as Alexander Hewatt of the Scots church. Most were members of the St. Andrew’s Society, established in 1729 to celebrate St. Andrew’s Day.

Backcountry Loyalism

Th ere are few specifi c clues to explain individual and group motivation toward loyalism in the interior of the province before 1775. Certainly there was unrest in the backcountry, unrest that stemmed in large measure from dissatisfaction with what local leaders perceived to be indiff erence on the part of Crown offi cials and the General Assembly to the needs of frontier settlers. This dissatisfaction took the form of overt action by local leaders, the Regulators, to punish the criminal elements whose activities so disrupted peaceful development of the frontier. But the Regulator conflict in South Carolina, unlike the movement of the same name in North Carolina, was really a conflict within the backcountry, not an open rebellion against the institutions and leadership of the dominant tidewater gentry.

Richard Maxwell Brown has classified some 150 men who were later pardoned for Regulator activity as “small planters and leading men,” particularly those in the area later known as Camden District, but the identity of many others has been lost. After tracing the activities of pardoned Regulators in the Revolution, he finds that most whose allegiance was known were anti-British, a conclusion generally compatible with the findings of this study. But to know the identity of certain Regulators offers little help in accounting for backcountry Revolutionary allegiance, for the two questions are essentially unrelated. Whether or not one was a Regulator depended on how one’s family and neighbors fared at the hands of the outlaws in the 1760s; but whether or not a backcountry man was a rebel in the Revolution might hinge on a number of factors, but primarily on the person’s perception of the dangers and opportunities to come from renouncing allegiance to the Crown.

Rachel Klein has shown that once judicial and legal reforms were enacted, certain factors—the common concern for protection of property (Regulators returning escaped slaves to lowcountry masters), and the closer ties with Charlestown brought about by increased commercial activity in the backcountry—began to create a greater identity of interests between leaders in the two sections of the province.

A principal reason for undertaking this study is to discern the motives that led many backcountry South Carolinians to espouse the royal cause, a choice that for some led ultimately to loss of property, exile, and even death. We do know that many backcountry men were unsympathetic to the movement for independence in 1775 and after. Many of them were relatively recent immigrants who were immersed in the problems of pioneering and who were not directly involved in the network of commercial relationships that was spreading into the interior. Except under great provocation, they were less likely to look favorably on a movement that was defying the authority from which they had obtained their lands.

As the story progresses over the seven years of conflict, it will be a further purpose to explain how the shifting fortunes of war affected the allegiance of those who will be known as loyalists. At this point, however, it is worthwhile to suggest some prewar factors that may have accounted for the hostility toward the American rights movement that most observers at the time and historians subsequently have commented upon.

First, while there is no perfect correlation between Regulators and rebels, on the one hand, and moderators and loyalists, on the other, the animosities generated between individual families and neighbors in the Regulator struggle very probably carried over into the civil war that raged through the backcountry during the Revolution. Second, resentment by militia officers or justices of the peace who were temporarily deprived of their positions because of Regulator activity may have carried over to the conflict that broke out in I77S. Third, there is the possibility that disagreements, even feuds, originating on other frontiers in Pennsylvania or the valley of Virginia were brought to the Carolina frontier by migrating families. Finally, veterans of British military services in the French wars were scattered among the backcountry population and may, as one contemporary suggested, have been stimulated to spring to the defense of royal authority when it was defied by elements in the backcountry.

To these possibilities must be added the normal frontier disputes over land boundaries and titles, and the theft or ownership of livestock. Depending on their perception of where the American rights side of the controversy placed them in relationship to friends, neighbors, relatives, or those with whom they had feuded in the past, there were many reasons why families and communities might choose to remain loyal to the Crown—at least until other events forced a diff erent choice upon them.

Did the “Scottish connection” carry over into the interior? Although there were relatively few Scots who migrated to that area, several among them held influential positions. For example, Alexander Cameron, a half-pay officer from the French and Indian War and deputy to John Stuart, established Lochaber, a large farm on a branch of Long Cane Creek. His close ties with the Cherokees at a time when the memories of the recent war were still fresh aroused fears of how he would use his influence with the Indians in the event of a possible clash with royal authority. Joseph Currie, another Scot, had established a store in the fork of the Broad and Saluda rivers where, in partnership with William and James Carsan, Scottish merchants of Charlestown, he took country produce and deerskins in trade for necessary items brought from that city.

Currie had aroused the ire of Moses Kirkland and other Regulators who suspected him of dealing in stolen horses and being in complicity with some of the outlaws. Th e partnership with the Carsans was dissolved in 1769, but William Currie took over the operation; in partnership with Evan McLaurin, fresh from Argyle, he continued the business into the Revolutionary period. John Chisholm, a storekeeper at Nelson’s Ferry on the Santee River, was a veteran of the Seventy-seventh Regiment.

Conclusions about the seeds of loyalism in the period before 1775 must be tentative, particularly in the backcountry, because few of the individuals who took part in the Regulator movement of the 1760s, or for the king in 1775, can be identified in the surviving records. Some leaders and participants in those movements have been identified, but whether their characteristics can be applied to the mass of their fellows or not is at best uncertain. In the lowcountry, where there was less natural sympathy for the British position, one can more confidently assess the main causes of loyalism.

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