William Henry Drayton: Planter, Patriot, Populist

William Henry Drayton (1742-1779) of South Carolina was one of the more controversial figures of the American Revolutionary era. He was born to wealth and privilege at Drayton Hall, a large Neo-Palladian mansion his father John had built from the profits of enslaved labor. 

Drayton Hall was the "Big House" of the family's rice plantation on the Ashley River, about 15 miles upstream from Charleston, South Carolina. [Image: Drayton Hall]

When he was 10, Drayton's parents sent him to England to be educated. Like many Carolina planters' sons, he attended Westminster School in London. He furthered his studies at Balliol College, Oxford. 

After returning home at his father's request in 1764, he was admitted to the South Carolina Bar. He married Dorothy Golightly, a wealthy heiress, the same year. [Images: William Henry Drayton X2]

When colonial opposition to British taxation strengthened in the 1760s, Drayton initially defended the British government. Elected to the colonial assembly, he supported Parliament's right to pass the Stamp Act in 1765. His stance was unpopular, He was defeated at the next election. Undeterred, in 1769 he wrote an inflammatory article opposing the Non-Importation Agreement, which called for a colonial boycott of British goods. 

Supporters of the Agreement ostracized Drayton socially and economically. He found it difficult to sell his crops. Seeking to improve his financial situation, he went to England in 1770, hoping to secure royal patronage. 

He was appointed to the South Carolina Council but the British government failed to give him what he really wanted: a lucrative royal job in South Carolina. The government gave the jobs he sought to native Britons instead.

Adding insult to injury, Colonel John Stuart, British Superintendent for Indian Affairs, prevented Drayton from concluding a fraudulent land deal with the Catawba Nation. Stuart's job was to protect the Native Americans from rapacious landgrabs and prevent war on the Southern frontier. If Drayton's scheme had been allowed, he would have effectively stolen about 150,000 acres from the Catawba. 

Frustrated by these obstacles to his ambitions, Drayton rearranged his political loyalties. The British government he had praised became his enemy. He joined the Whigs, as the future "Patriots" called themselves. 

In 1774, Drayton published A Letter from Freeman, championing American rights against "tyrannical" royal rule. The acting governor, William Bull, responded by suspending him from the Royal Council in March 1775. His popularity soared. He quickly emerged as a leader of the radical Whigs.

When the Whigs established a provisional government the same spring, Drayton was elected as a delegate to the Provincial Congress. The delegates  appointed him to the Committee of Safety and other key committees. He led extralegal raids on the Post Office, the powder magazines, and the armouries. 

Exploiting his new popularity, he encouraged followers to hound neutrals and supporters of royal government. Many of them left the colony as a result. Among them was John Stuart, whom Drayton and others accused of orchestrating Indian attacks on the colony. Drayton thus avenged the loss of his lucrative land deal with the Catawba.

Drayton and his supporters also fanned fears of British-inspired slave revolts. The hysteria that resulted led to the judicial murder of Thomas Jeremiah, a prosperous free black, in August. 

Using a combination of threats and deception, Drayton negotiated a truce with powerful backcountry Loyalists in September, effectively neutralizing them at a critical moment. 

He was now more popular than ever. In November, he was elected President of the Provincial Congress. He succeeded fellow planter Henry Laurens. Laurens disliked and distrusted Drayton, believing him to be a dangerous demagogue. Laurens resigned his presidency in the hope that Drayton would be moderated or curbed in that position. 

Instead, an emboldened Drayton became more extreme. He embarked on a quest to create a South Carolina navy. Having outfitted some ships, he personally commanded attacks on British naval vessels in Charleston harbor.

In February 1776, he moved that the Provincial Congress declare independence from Great Britain. Most delegates were not yet ready for that and voted against the motion. They did approve a provisional constitution in March. Drayton was elected to the new Assembly, appointed to the state council, and received the highest judicial post: Chief Justice. 

He proved neither just nor merciful. In the summer of 1776, Cherokee bands attacked backcountry settlers illegally encroaching on their traditional hunting lands. They were joined by some white Loyalists, or Tories, as the Whigs called them. 

The Cherokee uprising failed. It cost them dearly. American forces killed hundreds of them, burned more than 50 of their towns, and destroyed their crops. Many who were captured were sold into slavery in the West Indies. 

Drayton urged the most severe reprisals. Every captured Cherokee, he wrote, "should become the property of the taker." The Cherokee nation should be "extirpated" (eradicated) and their lands "become the property of the American public."

The Cherokee managed to survive as a nation, but lost a huge part of their territory in the dictated peace settlement of 1777. In the 1830s, they were forcibly expelled from the rest and removed to Oklahoma in the infamous "Trail of Tears."

It instructive to note what Chief Justice Drayton wrote about the whites who joined the Cherokee. A state court convicted them of treason and sentenced them to hang. Drayton commented that he would have hanged them without trial to save the state money. His successor as President of South Carolina, John Rutledge, pardoned them. 

In a charge to a grand jury around that time, Drayton declared that God had chosen the "American Empire" to replace Great Britain as his tool to advance the cause of liberty. The Lord had once chosen Britain, but the British had violated His intentions by "trying to enslave the American people." Apparently, God -- or Drayton -- had no concept of irony. 

In 1778 Drayton was elected President of the new state of South Carolina. He helped write a state constitution. In the same year he was elected to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. He served on scores of committees, helped forge the first constitution of the United States, the Articles of Confederation, and fervently supported the army. 

He clashed repeatedly and bitterly with other colleagues, including Henry Laurens, then serving as President of the Continental Congress. Drayton opposed attempts to reach a compromise with the British government and fought to protect "southern interests" -- a euphemism for slavery.

Drayton fell ill and died of a fever in Philadelphia in September 1779. His death is usually ascribed to typhus, but it is more likely to have been yellow fever or malaria. 

In modern political terms, Drayton was a populist, that is, someone who aims to appeal to ordinary people who feel that the elites have ignored their concerns. The popularity of his ideas and methods was an unfortunate omen for the new nation. 

Further Reading: 

John Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution 2 vols., Charleston, 1821. Based on documents William Henry Drayton had collected prior to his death.

The Papers of Henry Laurens. 16 vols., Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1972-2003. Volumes dealing with the 1760s and 1770s.

Keith Krawczynski, William Henry Drayton: South Carolina Revolutionary Patriot. LSU Press, 2001.

William Dabney and Marion Dargan, William Henry Drayton and the American Revolution. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1962.

William Wragg: A South Carolina Loyalist Memorialized in Westminster Abbey

In the south choir aisle of Westminster Abbey in London lies a marble memorial to a wealthy South Carolina planter. His name was William Wragg. The inscription on the memorial records his unfortunate fate. He was drowned off the coast of Holland (The Netherlands) in September 1777.

 

The monument, sculpted by Richard Hayward, was erected in 1779 by his "afflicted sister." It is unique in the Abbey. Wragg is the only civilian participant in the American War for Independence to be memorialized there, which holds the remains of many British monarchs, heroes, and cultural icons such as Chaucer, Newton, David Livingstone, Dickens, Darwin, and Stephen Hawking. 

The Abbey contains the remains of two British army officers who participated in the Revolutionary War, Major John Andre, who the Patriots hanged as a spy, and General John Burgoyne, who lost the pivotal Battle of Saratoga in 1777. 

William Wragg was born in Charleston (then Charles Town) in 1714, son of Samuel and Marie (Dubose). Shortly after his birth his merchant father purchased a large plantation, Ashley Barony. 

At the age of four William was subjected to a traumatic experience. He was accompanying his father on a trading voyage in May 1718 when their ship, the Crowley, was captured by pirates blockading Charleston Harbor. 

The pirates were commanded by none other than Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. In battle, he was a frightful figure, famous for putting lighted fuses (slow matches) in his beard, and carrying several loaded pistols during attacks. 

Teach crammed all 80 of the Crowley's passengers and crew into the hold of his flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge. He used them as hostages to demand a ransom. It was an unusual ransom, to say the least: medicines for syphilis, malaria, and wounds. William Wragg's father, Samuel, volunteered to go ashore and procure a medicine chest. 

Teach refused to let Samuel go because his wealth and status made him too valuable a hostage. He chose another hostage for the task. Several days passed. No medicines arrived. Teach threatened to kill Samuel and loot poorly defended Charleston if his demand was not met. 

The Charleston authorities finally sent a large consignment of medicines. Blackbeard put the hostages ashore, but not before stripping them of most of their clothing. They had to walk a long distance through the woods to town. Blackbeard was killed later that year in a naval action along the coast of North Carolina

Having survived his encounter with Blackbeard, young William embarked on another adventure several years later. His parents sent him to England to be educated. He attended Westminster School, Oxford University, and the Middle Temple, where he studied law. He was admitted to the English bar in 1733.  

After practicing law for some years, Wragg returned to South Carolina. His father died in 1750, making him one of the wealthiest men in the colony, with several plantations and more than 250 enslaved laborers. He soon became involved in politics and in 1753 was appointed to the governor's royal council. [Image; William Wragg by Jeremiah Theus]

Wragg proved to be a staunch advocate of the prerogatives of the council and the British Crown against the pretensions of Commons House of Assembly. He was so outspoken that Royal Governor Henry Lyttleton removed him from the council in 1757 to appease the Assembly. Wragg was elected to the Assembly the next year and served until 1768. He resigned, he said, due to the Assembly's increasing opposition to British rule. 

As the disputes between the Crown and the colonies led to more extreme measures on both sides, Wragg remained outspokenly loyal to the British government. Yet he refused offers of royal office, declaring he did not want to profit from his loyalty.  

In 1775 he refused to declare allegiance to the rebel cause by signing a document called The Association. His interrogators, many of them old friends, asked why he would not join them. He replied, 

“I’d despise myself if I subscribed to an opinion contrary to the dictates of my conscience. I have no hostile intentions toward you gentlemen, but I believe the logical outcome of your current measures will be an attempt to separate from the mother country.” 

The gentlemen said he would be left alone if he signed the oath of allegiance to the Patriot cause. Wragg then asked, "What kind of supporter would I be if I signed this document under duress?"  

The de facto Provincial Government of South Carolina ordered Wragg confined to his plantation. Two years later, after he had refused to sign another oath of allegiance, the state government banished him from South Carolina. Leaving his wife and daughters behind, he boarded the ship Commerce for Amsterdam, with only his son Billy and Tom, an enslaved servant, as companions. 

The ship foundered in a storm off the coast of the Netherlands. Wragg drowned trying to save his son. Tom, however, managed to save Billy and himself. The Westminster memorial depicts them clinging to a piece of wreckage, with the sinking vessel behind them. 

Another Loyalist, George Milligen, said of Wragg that "he would have been an ornament to Sparta or Rome in their most virtuous days." 

Next time you are in Westminster Abbey, check out the Wragg memorial! 

Further Reading:

John Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution 2 vols., Charleston, 1821. 

The Papers of Henry Laurens. 16 vols., Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1972-2003. Volumes dealing with the 1760s and 1770s.

William Wragg | Westminster Abbey (westminster-abbey.org)

Wragg, William | South Carolina Encyclopedia (scencyclopedia.org)

Report by George Milligen, Surgeon to the Garrison for His Majesty's Forces in South Carolina, dated 15 September 1775. National Archives, Kew CO_5_396_037.pdf

  

Boycott: The Strange History of a Word

 Most of us are familiar with the word "boycott." We know that it means to shun or ostracize someone or something, refuse to patronise a business or an establishment, to purchase a product, or something of the sort. It is used as a verb or a noun, "to boycott" or "a boycott." [Image: Civil Rights Boycotts in US South, 1950s]

But how many of us know the origins of the word? "Boycott" is actually a fairly recent addition to the English language, first used about 160 years ago. It came from Ireland, then a part of the UK. 

The word comes from an act of protest and punishment against a particular person, Captain Charles Boycott. He was a retired army officer who had become the land agent of an absentee Anglo-Irish landlord, Lord Erne, in County Mayo. [Image: Captain Boycott, as Drawn by Spy (Lesley Ward) in Vanity Fair, 1881]

In 1880, Boycott became the focus of a coordinated protest by activists of the Irish Land League, instigated by the league's founder, Michael Davitt, and its leader, Charles Stuart Parnell, MP. Davitt himself was from County Mayo. [Images: Parnell and Davitt]

Davitt had established the Land League in 1879 to protect tenant farmers against oppressions by large landowners, notably arbitrary evictions and rack renting (raising rents excessively). The League campaigned to secure what it called the Three Fs: Free Sale, Fixity of Tenure, and Fair Rents. 

In pursuit of these goals, and specifically to prevent planned evictions on Lord Erne's estate, League activists urged estate workers, including seasonal crop harvesters, to refuse their labor. The protest quickly evolved into a community-wide movement designed to isolate Boycott, the land agent on the spot. 

Shops and tradesmen in the nearby town of Ballinrobe refused to serve him or do business with him. (The League coerced some of them into participating.) In short, his life became unbearable.

News of Boycott's predicament soon spread to London. The government sent a regiment of Royal Hussars (light cavalry) and over 1000 men of the Royal Irish Constabulary to protect volunteer harvesters, mostly Protestant Orangemen. They managed to harvest about £500 of crops -- at a cost to the British government of about £10,000 (millions in today's money). 

Boycott left Ireland after the harvest and took a job as an estate agent in Suffolk, England. He died in 1897. The Boycott affair was widely followed and reported and people began using the word "boycott" to describe similar protest actions. 

A poster promoting Parnell's pamphlet "Boycotting" shows that it quickly became an eponymous word. Parnell is pictured on the cover.

According to one source, "boycott" was first coined by a local priest, Father John O'Malley, who was helping an activist to find a simple term for the action the local people would understand. He rejected "ostracism," and "social excommunication" as too elitist. and suggested calling it "to boycott him."    

CABAL: The Curious History of a Word

The word "cabal" is likely familiar to online gamers. Google it and "Images" and you will get nothing but ads for the game "Cabal." 

Today's QAnon activists use "cabal" to denote a secret global conspiracy against freedom. (Secret to everyone except QAnon members, of course, who possess information the rest of us are ignorant of.) 

The origins of the word "cabal" lie in the distant past. It most likely derives from "Kaballah," which refers to the mystical interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures. In medieval Christian Europe, "Caballa" or "cabale" came to refer to occult doctrines or secrets. In these contexts it related to mysticism and magic. 

In the 17th century "cabal" developed a wider, mainly political meaning. It came to mean a small group of individuals united in secret to achieve a desired political or economic goal. For many people it became a pejorative term used to denote a devious clique or conspiracy opposed to the general good. 

This usage has survived into modern times. Cabal is often used today to denote a clique, faction, gang, ring, junta, and similar groupings, real or imagined.   

In Britain, "cabal" came into prominent use during the turbulent politics of the late 17th century. Opponents of the "Merry Monarch," King Charles II (1660-1685), accused him of leading a cabal. [Image: Charles II, by Sir Peter Lely]

These accusations are particularly interesting, because at the time (1667-74), the King was governing with the advice of a small band of five ministers, the first letters of whose names could be used to spell out the acronym "CABAL." Opponents of royal policies often referred to them as the "Cabal" or "Cabal Ministry." 

The five members of the Cabal were Sir Thomas Clifford, Lord Arlington, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Ashley, and Lord Lauderdale. They were signatories to the public Treaty of Dover (1670) that created an alliance with the France of Louis XIV against the Dutch. 

The public treaty acted as a screen for a secret treaty in which Charles promised to convert to Roman Catholicism in return for a French pension of £230,000 a year. Louis promised more money if Charles announced his conversion to the British public, which he wisely never did. Most of the CABAL did not sign and were not aware of the secret treaty.

Some historians argue that the present meaning of the word "cabal" derives from the usage of the term to describe this particular political grouping of the late 1660s -- early1670s. That may be true, although claims that the word itself derives from them is likely a myth. 

PS. A prominent member of the CABAL ministry who did not know of the secret treaty eventually turned against Charles II. In the 1670s, Lord Ashley (Anthony Ashley Cooper, later 1st Earl of Shaftesbury) helped found one of the first British political parties, the Whigs. 

The Whigs posed as defenders of Parliament and Protestantism against what they argued was the King's authoritarian and pro-Catholic tendencies. Charles II's supporters coalesced uneasily into what became the pro-royalist Tory Party. (Image: Lord Ashley, later Lord Shaftesbury)

Ashley was the patron of the philosopher John Locke. He was also one of the founders, or Lords Proprietor, of the colony of Carolina. He and Locke wrote the original blueprint for the colony, The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina. The names "Ashley", "Cooper," and "Shaftesbury" are found all over the oldest settlement, Charleston, which of course, was named for Charles II. At that time, Charles and Ashley were still on good terms. 

In 1682, fearing arrest for High Treason, Ashley fled to the Netherlands, where he died of an illness the following year. By then, the CABAL Ministry was history, but the political meaning of the term "cabal" lived on and thrives today, for good or ill.