Kings Fall Apart: Or, It's Not Always Good to be King, Mr Trump

TRUMP has been trying to make himself the first King of the USA since a revolting people gave George III the boot in 1776. Laying aside the argument that the Donald is a much worse leader than the last king, the King of Orange should think twice about being on a throne, however golden. George III, a Far Better Man Than Trump

The history of monarchy in the British Isles, which I know best, should not inspire a desire to play Macbeth and Don a crown. Few kings or queens have been able to enjoy their reigns, short or long. Only one British king has been called "The Merry Monarch," Charles II, and even he faced a sea of troubles, partly of his own making. 

Charles II did manage to last twenty-five years and die in bed with his crown on his head, a fate denied many other monarchs. The last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold, was killed in battle against the 1066 Norman Invasion led by Duke William of Normandy. Tradition holds that an arrow landed in Harold's eye. He had been king for only a few months. 

William I, Harold's Conqueror, did much better time-wise. But he had to deal with an Anglo-Saxon populace which did not welcome being ruled by a king who rewarded his French-speaking warriors with their lands. He dealt with the opposition by killing lots of peasants and destroying their homes. His corpulent body exploded when he was being forced into a too small tomb, emitting a foul smell and showering those nearby with unmentionables.

William II, the Conqueror's eldest son, had a nasty and short reign, cut short by an arrow again. On this occasion, the archer may have been an assassin hired by his brother Henry, who succeeded as king. Henry I he had a fairly lengthy reign. Legend has it that he died from eating a surfeit of lampreys. It is more probable that  a stroke killed him. Or maybe he died of worry about the succession.

Henry had no male successor, only a daughter, Matilda. He named her as his heir, but when he died, the alpha males among his barons decided they could not stomach being ruled by a woman, and chose his nephew Stephen as king. Those familiar with the US election of 2024, when Americans chose Trump over Kamala Harris, will understand. 

The result was nearly twenty years of fighting between the supporters of Stephen and those of Matilda. The Anarchy, as this period is called, was not a good time for anybody, except for some robber barons. Peasants, as always, paid a heavy price. 

In the end, the two sides reached a deal: Stephen would remain king, but on his death, the throne would pass to Matilda's son Henry of Anjou. When Henry II became king in 1154, he started a line of kings known as the Angevins or Plantagenets. Henry also inherited a large part of France, directly, or through his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine. He was always moving about to keep control his large and diverse territories. He faced many rebellions among his nobles and vassals. The rebels eventually included his sons and Eleanor. 

Two of his sons became king after him. Richard and John, of Ivanhoe and Robin Hood fame. That's all fantasy, but so is Richard's "Lion-Heart" reputation. He is the only king to have a statue outside of Parliament, for some unfathomable reason. Richard spent a mere six months of his ten year reign in England, and like Trump, treated the country like a cash cow. He massacred thousands of Muslims, Jews, and even Christians while Crusading for Christ in the oddly named Holy Land. He also died when struck by an arrow, while besieging a rebel castle. Gangrene set in, and that did for him.

Richard I had no children. Enter his brother John, the only English king of that name. Let's see why. (NB: This is not John)

End of Part I.

 

The Scottish Conspiracy Against American Liberty: The Case of South Carolina

Did a Scottish conspiracy to crush colonial liberty provoke the American Revolution? Nonsense, you will likely say. But evidence from the 1760s and 1770s shows that colonial anger at the actions of the British government was paralleled by a rise of anti-Scottish sentiment. Some colonial leaders, who called themselves Whigs, claimed that Scots dominated the government in London and were conspiring to undermine the people's liberties, to enslave them in fact. Whigs, who later called  themselves Patriots, used the term "enslave" freely, despite the fact that many of them were themselves slaveowners. "Liberty or Slavery" was a common Whig motto.   

The Scottish conspiracy theory, like so many things political in the colonies, originated in British politics. In the early 1760s, disgruntled English Whig politicians claimed that George III’s former Scottish tutor, John  Stuart, Earl of Bute was the gray eminence behind the alleged conspiracy. 

George selected Bute as his Prime Minister in 1762, two years after he became king. English Whig politicians concocted the conspiracy theory while Bute was in office. He didn't last long in the job. King George discharged him in 1763. Yet Whigs continued to accuse Bute of plotting behind the scenes to “enslave” the English people. They accused him of influencing policy through an affair with the king's mother. 

Bute's critics portrayed him as a boot. The "Boot" became a common and convenient symbol of tyranny in Britain and its empire. American Whigs used it during the Stamp Act Crisis in 1765 and right up to the beginning of the revolution in 1775. 

The Scottish conspiracy theory gained additional traction in America in the early 1770s as a result of a judicial decision in London. The judge who made the decision happened to be a Scot, Lord Mansfield. He was educated in England, trained in law, and became one of the top English judges, Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench. In the widely reported Somerset Case in 1772, Mansfield ruled that slavery had no basis in English law, in either precedent or statute. 

The Somerset decision sent shock waves through the colonies, especially the southern colonies, where the wealth of the elite relied on enslaved African labor. Nowhere was the Somerset ruling more resented than in South Carolina, where enslaved Africans made up a majority of the population. Many planters feared Parliament might extend Mansfield's ruling to the entire empire. The fear had little basis in reality. Mansfield's ruling was narrow and applied only to England. 

Abolition of slavery in the British empire occurred, of course, but not for more than sixty years. In the 1770s, the anti-slavery movement in Britain was still in its infancy. Parliament was filled with MPs and Lords who derived much of their income from the slave trade and colonial plantations. Abolitionism was beginning to have some impact on the British  consciousness, but it did not have enough influence on Parliament to achieve abolition of the slave trade, let alone slavery itself. The sugar planters of the West Indies seem to have understood this, because they did not use it as a reason to defy the home government. 

Slave owning colonists in the American colonies, especially in South Carolina, did not understand the reality of British politics. Or they pretended not to. They panicked at the news of the Somerset decision. Their fear that it might be applied to the colonies led them to embrace a solution that aligned them with northern activists challenging Parliament’s power to tax the colonies. 

The solution had already been articulated by Charleston merchant Christopher Gadsden. Since the late 1750s Gadsden had been arguing that Parliament had no right to legislate for the colonies on any domestic matters. In the northern colonies the rallying cry of those opposing British policies was "No Taxation without Representation.” That cry was adopted in the South as well, but it was not the main issue that united southerners against Britain. The central issue in South Carolina, although never articulated directly, was “No Representation, No Slavery.” The political elite decided that the best way to protect its domestic institutions (read: chattel slavery) was for South Carolina to control its own destiny. That decision was a crucial step in the unification of the thirteen colonies into what became the United States. 

By the early 1770s, antislavery views in the northern colonies were gaining adherents. Some of the men who would sign the Declaration of Independence in July 1776 had previously denounced human bondage. But in the interests of colonial unity, northern antislavery figures muted their criticisms and accommodated southern opinion. John Adams and Benjamin Franklin had both condemned slavery, but in 1775 they argued that slavery, like taxation, was a domestic issue for Americans to deal with. The British Parliament had no right to interfere in the internal affairs of the colonies. They must be sovereign, and they must unite to achieve sovereignty. The issue of slavery would have to wait until that was accomplished. 

To salve their consciences, many American Whigs predicted that slavery would be abolished after independence was achieved. That was safely in the future. In 1775, colonists north and south proclaimed that the British government was determined to enslave them, while also threatening the institution of slavery. And the architects of this policy were Bute, Mansfield, and other villains, including ones implanted in the heart of the colonies. The cartoon of 1775 below, Virtual Representation, illustrates the colonial Whig view. The man in tartan pants with the gun is Lord Bute. Next to him is Lord Mansfield in his judicial robes. The gun is pointed at colonists. Britannia, at far right is coming to the rescue, but is about to fall into a pit, presumably dug by the Scots. On the far left are two French Canadians, a soldier and a monk, who are supporting Bute and Mansfield. Why? In 1774, Parliament had passed the Quebec Act giving French Canadian Catholics freedom of religion. Many American colonists viewed this with alarm. They believed it was part of the British strategy to subdue the thirteen colonies, in this case by enlisting French Canadians to fight them. 

In retrospect the view that Bute, Mansfield, and other Scots in Britain and the colonies were engaged in a conspiracy to eliminate American liberty and abolish American slavery -- a disconnect and an oxymoron -- seems preposterous. To many people in the colonies, however, the Scottish conspiracy theory seemed plausible. It was politically useful to American Whigs and they had the claims of English Whigs to support it. 

British Whigs were the political descendants of the parliamentary faction that had opposed royal absolutism in the turbulent seventeenth century. The monarchs in question belonged to the House of Stuart. The Stuarts were a Scottish dynasty. They had ruled Scotland for centuries before James VI & I became king of England on the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. 

American colonists claimed to be defending liberties secured by the seventeenth century struggles against the heirs of James I: Charles I, Charles II, and James II. In the wake of the conflicts, many people in Britain and its colonies associated the Scottish name Stuart with authoritarianism. Lord Bute's given name, John Stuart, surely did little to help his chances of political success.

By the time of the American Revolution, Stuart monarchs no longer ruled Britain and had not for sixty years. Their immediate successors, the Hanoverian kings George I and II, had favored Whig politicians during their reigns, from 1714 to1760, a period often called The Whig Supremacy. The rival Tory Party all but disappeared. 

Things changed when George III ascended the throne in 1760, aged nineteen. He believed that Whig oligarchs had gained too much power and had corrupted British politics. He was eager to reduce their influence and end the successful but hugely expensive war with France and Spain. His current Whig ministers wanted to continue the war. George removed several of them from his government. Among them was the popular William Pitt, who had led Britain to victory in the Seven Years War (French and Indian War in American history). 

Pitt had become a hero in the colonies as well, as the names of numerous towns and streets in the USA attest, from Pittsburgh to Pittsboro to Pittsfield. Charleston, South Carolina named a street after him (I lived on it) and erected a statue of him in gratitude for his efforts to abolish the Stamp Act of 1765. The statue originally stood at the intersection of Broad and Meeting Streets. It is now located in the Charleston County Judicial Center. It is missing his outstretched arm. Ironically, a British cannonball knocked it off during their siege of the city in 1780. 

English Whig claims of “Scots tyranny” merged with growing colonial resentment of Scottish influence and economic competition in British America. Ever since the Act of Union, Scots had been free to settle and trade in England and its colonies. Thousands took advantage of the opportunity and migrated to greener pastures. Scottish merchants and traders descended on London and every corner of the empire. 

Many people in England resented this invasion by their former enemies. English writers and cartoonists portrayed Scots as lean and hungry, a plague of locusts eager to feast on the land of milk and honey. The poet Charles Churchill described Scotland as a land where half-starved spiders fed on half-starved flies. In his dictionary, lexicographer Samuel Johnson defined oats as a grain which in England is fed to horses and in Scotland is fed to the people. Scots were uncouth, uncivilized, impoverished -- and historically traitorous. The last is a reference to the Jacobite Rebellions which were designed to restore the Catholic Stuart monarchs to the throne of Britain. The rebellions broke out in Scotland, and Highland clans provided most of the Jacobite soldiery. The last of the revolts penetrated into central England before being crushed in 1746. Most adults in England could remember the panic and fear it generated, and they told their children.    

[English Anti-Scottish Cartoons: Sawney in the Boghouse and London: A Flight of Scotsman] 

In America, Scots flocked to South Carolina and Georgia in particular, lured by the prospect of quick riches. They became merchants, planters, doctors, and shopkeepers. The Crown also appointed Scots to many colonial offices, a trend that accelerated after the defeat of the last Jacobite Rebellion in 1746 and the accession of George III in 1760. From the perspective of the British government improving opportunities for Scots in the empire was a means of keeping them loyal. Americans were not the only ones struggling to achieve unity in the late eighteenth century. We tend to forget that Great Britain was also a new country, not much older than the United States. “British” was a new and fragile national identity. 

Many Charleston creoles resented the new Scottish ascendancy in trade and government. They accused Scots of favoring one another and benefiting unfairly from British colonial and trade policies. Merchant Christopher Gadsden was one of the most vocal critics of the Scottish invasion. In 1767 Gadsden built a huge wharf in Charleston, one of the largest in any American port. During its construction of his wharf, Gadsden remarked that he was going to "fill the foundation with imported Scotchmen, who are fit for nothing better." The statement reflected Gadsden’s disdain for Scots, in particular Scottish merchants, who he viewed as the undeserving beneficiaries of British trade policies. 

About the same time, Gadsden was developing the area near Boundary Street. He called it Middlesex and named one of the streets after John Wilkes, Whig MP for the county of Middlesex. Gadsden admired Wilkes for his spirited defense of English liberties, which took an anti-Scottish slant. He became famed for his attacks on Lord Bute in his journal The North Briton. Wilkes became a hero to many colonists in the 1760s, despite notoriously rakish behavior and obscenity charges stemming from his satirical poem, An Essay on Woman. 

Gadsden’s hostility toward Scots may have initially developed as a result of his service as a militia officer during the Cherokee War of 1760. At the request of South Carolina, the British government sent a Highland regiment to help quell the Cherokee uprising. Gadsden was angered that the government gave command of the campaigns to Scottish officers. Gadsden believed that a South Carolinian should have been in command. 

Peter Timothy, printer of the South Carolina Gazette, was another prominent Whig who resented the success of recent Scots arrivals. His animosity was directed in particular against a rival Scottish printer, Robert Wells, who had arrived in the early 1750s. Wells printed and imported books, and established a flourishing bookstore. In the late 1750s, he started a rival newspaper. Timothy resented the competition, and claimed that Wells benefited from an unfair advantage. Interestingly, Wells supported the protests against the Stamp Act in 1765, but later became a staunch defender of the British government. He also became known for his belligerent Scottishness. He used to dress his son William Charles in a tartan jacket and Scottish bonnet to demonstrate his national pride. Poor William suffered harassment from other young boys of the town as a result. Robert was also the object of Whig harassment. In 1775, he left for Britain, declaring he could not live under the "Lilliputian" regime in South Carolina. 

When Timothy complained that Wells benefited from an unfair advantage, one of the persons he blamed was another Scot, who like Bute, also happened to to be named John Stuart. He had come to Charleston from Scotland in 1748. After mixed success as a merchant, including some slave trading, he married Sarah Fenwick, daughter of a wealthy planting family. He became a planter and built the house that still bears his name, the Colonel John Stuart House on the western end of Tradd Street. 

During the Cherokee War of 1760 Stuart served in the South Carolina militia. He developed a good relationship with some of the people he was fighting, including Cherokee headman Attakullakulla, the Little Carpenter. In 1762, the British government, eager to prevent war, appointed him as Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Southern Department. In that capacity he tried to keep the peace between the backcountry settlers and the southern Indian nations. 

It was partly at Stuart's instigation that the British government established the Proclamation Line in 1763, which declared the land of the Appalachians and beyond was to be reserved as Indian land. Stuart argued that shady land speculators and white settlers encroaching on Indian land constituted the main danger to peace. He made powerful enemies trying to prevent fraudulent land deals, including one in which planter William Henry Drayton tried to swindle the Catawba nation out of thousands of acres. 

In the spring of 1775, Drayton and his other enemies revenged themselves by charging that Stuart was conspiring with the British government to incite Indian attacks on the colonists. In fact, he was trying to prevent the southern Indian nations from going to war. This fabricated tale enraged many people in the city. Stuart had to flee Charleston with a liberty mob at his heels. He ended up in Florida, where he continued to advise the Indians. In 1776, he tried but failed to prevent a disastrous Cherokee attack on the settlers of the southern backcountry. He died ion Florida in 1779. 

Into this hornet's nest sailed another suspicious Scot, the last royal governor of South Carolina. Lord William Campbell was the 4th son of the Duke of Argyll, Scotland's most powerful aristocrat. In 1763, he had been stationed in Charleston as a navy captain, and had married the daughter of a local planter, Sarah Izard. The Campbells arrived in June 1775 aboard the ship Scorpion. Prior to their arrival, a rumor had spread that the ship was carrying 14,000 stand of arms to be distributed to Loyalists, slaves, and Indians. 

The rumor was baseless, but people were disposed to believe it. The Whigs "uncovered" another conspiracy around the time Campbell arrived. They arrested some "suspicious" slaves who, after "rigorous interrogation" confessed the existence of a plot for a slave revolt to help the British. The alleged organizer was a wealthy free black, Thomas Jeremiah. After a mockery of a trial, the tribunal of five white men found him guilty. He was hanged and his body burned a few days later. Campbell was appalled by the proceeding and attempted to pardon Jeremiah, only to find he was powerless. 

When the Whigs spread the news of Campbell's efforts to save the condemned man, a liberty mob surrounded his  house at 34 Meeting Street and threatened to drag him out into the street and force him to hang Jeremiah himself. Campbell fled Charleston to a British navy ship a few weeks later, bringing an official end to British rule in South Carolina. In fact, it had ended months before. 

Many Scots in the southern colonies became Loyalists once the revolution began. One of the most interesting and insightful explanations of Scottish loyalism was offered by Charles Webb of St. Paul’s Parish, a few miles southwest of Charleston. Webb was himself a Loyalist, but not a Scot. In July 1775, the parish committee reported him to a justice of the peace for “malicious expressions" against the Whigs, who he said were "greater rebels than ever the Scotch were.” This was an obvious reference to the Jacobite rebellions in Scotland. Webb pointed to a key reason why many Scots in America supported the British government: many of them or their families had suffered severe punishments after the crushing of the rebellions. He was not surprised, he said, that the Scots were “such loyal subjects, for a burnt child would dread the fire.” They had learned from experience the folly of fighting the British monarch. This was true, but Whig attacks on Scots in America also contributed to this result. 

Further Reading: 

Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992)

Jim Piecuch, Three Peoples, One King: Loyalists, Indians, and Slaves in the Revolutionary South, 1775-1782. Columbia: University of South Carlina Press, 2008.

Robert G. Parkinson, Thirteen Clocks: How Racism United the Colonies and Made the Declaration of Independence. Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, and the University of North Carolina Pres, Chapel Hill.

Alfred W. Blumrosen and Ruth G. Blumrosen, Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies & Sparked the American Revolution (Naperville, Illinois: Source Books, 2005)

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.

Stanly Godbold, Jr., and Robert Woody, Christopher Gadsden and the American Revolution. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983.

Daniel McDonough, Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laurens: The Parallel Lives of Two American Patriots. Susquehanna University Press, 2000.

Kelcey Eldridge. A Forgotten Founder: The Life and Legacy of Christopher Gadsden (MA thesis). Clemson University, 2018.

Richard Walsh, Charleston's Sons of Liberty: A Study of the Artisans, 1763–1789. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1959. 

Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2011, 2014. 

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The Real War on Christmas was waged by Christians

Ho! Ho! Ho! It's that jolly time of year again! That hilarious time in the USA when FOX News, Republicans, and rightwing Evangelicals profess outrage at the "War on Christmas." A fake outrage, of course, trotted out at years' end for political and cultural reasons, like keeping the poor in their place working for peanuts. Not to mention keeping up donations to TV evangelists with huge mansions. 

Today's War on Christmas is a Phony War. But a real war on Christmas once took place. It was several centuries ago in the UK, with spillovers into Puritan America. And guess what? It was waged by Christians. They were called Presbyterians in Scotland and Puritans in England and New England. 

In England, the Puritans were on the winning side of of the Civil War between Parliament and Charles I in the 1640s. They famously closed the London theaters as dens of immorality. They also abolished the celebration of Christmas as a "pagan celebration." They ordered that it be kept as a day of "fasting and humiliation." No singing, no dancing, no merriment at all. Try that today. 

In New England, transplanted Puritans did the same. They kept the ban in place until the 1850s. The war ended for good after President Ulysses S. Grant declared Christmas a federal holiday in the 1870s.

It may seem odd for Christians to ban Christmas, but the Puritans found no biblical justification for celebrating the birth of Christ. Nobody knew when he was born anyway (we still don't). The Puritans also associated Christmas revels with sinful, ungodly pagan rites and behavior, not to mention Papists (Catholics). 

A wit once defined a Puritan as a person who was angry because somewhere, somebody was having a good time. That is a bit simplistic and unfair to Puritans as a whole, but the accusation fit some of them.

The Scots had preceded the English in the War on Christmas, as in so many aspects of British life. After the Presbyterian Church of Scotland came to dominate Scottish religious life in the late 16th century, they abolished the celebration of Christmas. John Knox, the Calvinist preacher who led the Scottish Reformation, was a dour sort who darkened Scottish culture for centuries. 

Scotland's Christmas ceased to be a holiday of feasting, fun, and folly (if it ever was). It became just another dark, dank, and dreary winter day -- like a Scottish Sunday until recently. 

During the Civil War, Scots Presbyterians allied with like-minded English Puritans. They also made common cause in the war on Christmas. 

[Image: Parliamentary soldiers enforcing the ban on celebrating Christmas, c. 1640s, William Barns Wollen, 1900] 

In England, the Restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II ("The Merry Monarch") in 1660 also led to a restoration of traditional Christmas celebrations. They were still light years away from the materialistic orgies of today. That required the influence of grasping, greedy American capitalism.  

In Scotland, the restoration of Christmas took much longer than in England. Presbyterian leaders continued to stifle enthusiasm for Christmas enjoyment for a couple of centuries. The difference shows in the holiday hierarchy of Scotland, compared to England, and most other civilized countries.

In Scotland, Christmas comes in a distant second to Hogmanay (New Years' Eve) as a real blowout. Think about it. The canny Scots simply transferred their serious celebrating from a sacred day to a secular one. Touché, Puritans! Freud would have understood. 

If you want to witness Scots letting their hair down these days, go to Edinburgh during Hogmanay! Or, just visit any Scots pub on a Saturday night. 

Scotland's elevation of New Year spread to the rest of the globe by the 20th century. For what do we sing at midnight on 1 January? "Auld Lang Syne" by Scotland's national poet, Robert (Rabbie) Burns, of course!

PS. If you go to the USA these days, be careful not to say "Happy Holidays!" or "Seasons Greetings!" And do not write "Merry Xmas" on your cards or gifts either. You may be accused of making war on Christmas, or even of Satanism. Or, even worse, of being a liberal. 

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God Save the King! (Or Queen)

Since the accession of Charles III, we have often heard the phrase "God Save the King!" It seems strange after 70 years of hearing "God Save the Queen!" uttered for Elizabeth II. 

"God Save the King" is the original, of course. It is not known how old the phrase "God Save the King" is. It appears in 16th century translations of the Bible. "God Save the King" is used in reference to King Saul, the first king of Israel. 

As early as 1444, navy seamen were instructed to say "God Save King Henry" as a watchword aboard ship. That was Henry VI, a pious monarch who needed all the saving he could get. He was king when the Wars of the Roses started. The sailors used the phrase as a watchword on board ship. 

"God Save the King" had become a popular rallying cry by the mid-18th century. How much it was used before then is obscure. The Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, which threatened to topple the Hanoverian King George II, gave the cry a boost, and a song of the same name as well.  

The Gentleman's Magazine published a version of the song in 1745. It specifically names King George as the object God should be saving. [Image: George II by Thomas Hudson, 1740s]

It opens: "God save great George our king, long live our noble king." God apparently responded: the Jacobites led by "Bonnie Prince Charlie" met their final defeat at Culloden in 1746. The Catholic Stuarts ceased to be a royal threat. [Image: Charles Edward Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie, by Alan Ramsay, 1745]

Somewhere around that time, the song "God Save the King" had appeared. Historians disagree about who composed it and when. They have suggested dates between the 1680s and 1740s and Henry Purcell, Thomas Arne, Charles Burney as the composer. They all had a hand in it, it seems.

The phrase "God save the King" is used purely by custom and tradition. It has no basis in law. Similarly, the song of that name is not the official national anthem, although it is often treated as if it were.  

It is unlikely that the UK will ever have an official national anthem, even if it doesn't break up. Few of the English like "God Save the King/Queen," and even fewer Scots or Welsh. Most people sing it with all the enthusiasm of the dead. In Northern Ireland, Loyalists or Unionists like the song. Republicans detest it. 

Many in England have suggested for an anthem "Jerusalem," William Blake's evocative poem, rendered to music by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916. "Jerusalem" is often played as an anthem at English rugby and cricket matches. But it is about England, not the UK, so has little following in the so-called "Celtic Fringe." It is often sung as a hymn in churches. 

The same is true of another tune some people have proposed as a national anthem: "Land of Hope and Glory" from the tune by Edward Elgar, with lyrics by A.C. Benson (1901-02). It has imperialistic overtones that offend many people nowadays.

The Scots usually play "Flower of Scotland" as their anthem at sporting events. That isn't going to catch on in England or Wales. 

One rousing song that was highly popular during the imperialist age is "Rule Britannia," music by Thomas Arne, lyrics by James Thomson (1740). It celebrates Britain, not just England. Alas, it is too warlike and racially insensitive to be considered as a national anthem. 

The lines "Rule Britannia! Rule the Waves, Britons never will be slaves" make the song's unfitness for the current world obvious. When it was written Britain was the greatest slave trading nation in the world. And Britannia certainly doesn't rule the waves anymore. Waives the rules, maybe. 

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The Mysterious Dr. Kilpatrick

In 1717, a man calling himself James Kilpatrick (sometimes spelled Killpatrick) arrived in Charleston, South Carolina. His exact date of birth is unknown but was sometime in the 1690s. He joined his uncle, David Kilpatrick, who already lived in the colony. 

James Kilpatrick claimed to be a native of Ireland. He set himself up as a doctor, a profession in demand in the feverish colony. He had studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh but had not completed the MD.  

His lack of a medical degree was not a significant problem in the young colony, which lacked any kind of licensing system. The medical "profession" in Charleston at the time included people with little formal medical training, or none at all.   

Kilpatrick achieved some financial success. St. Philip's Parish vestry appointed him visiting physician to the parish poor. He established a pharmacy in the early 1730s -- something that modern doctors cannot do. 

In 1727 he wed Elizabeth Hepworth, an heiress and the daughter of the secretary of the colony. They were married at St. Philip's Church. A few years later he received a joint grant of more than 200 acres, and presumably engaged in a bit of rice planting. 

During Charleston's smallpox epidemic in 1738 Kilpatrick was one of the first doctors to employ the practise of inoculation. One of his children had died of the disease, and he decided to inoculate the rest of his family. He then inoculated several hundred residents. 

He vigorously defended his use of the procedure in the town's newspaper and in pamphlets. His efforts aroused controversy but enhanced his reputation in the long term. 

Upon the outbreak of war with Spain later that year -- the wonderfully named War of Jenkins' Ear -- he enlisted as ship's surgeon. He accompanied General James Oglethorpe's failed expedition in 1740 against St. Augustine, the Spanish stronghold in Florida. [Image: James Oglethorpe]

Around 1742, Kilpatrick moved to London with his wife and children. He established himself in medical practise and completed an MD from Edinburgh. Mysteriously, he also changed his name from Kilpatrick to Kirkpatrick.  

Why did he change his name? An old argument is that he decided that a name that began with "Kill" was not a good one for a doctor. That may be, but there is a more compelling reason: Kirkpatrick was his real name. 

That raises another question: Why did he change it to Kilpatrick on coming to South Carolina? The answer lies in British politics in the early 18th century. The Kirkpatricks were a Scots family who backed the wrong side in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715.

The aim of the rebellion, and a couple more that followed, was to place the Catholic Stuart claimant "James III" (The Old Pretender) on the British throne, in place of the Hanoverian George I, who had just arrived from Germany.

The rebellion failed. People who had supported it, or were even suspect, were denounced as rebels. Many fled or tried to change their identity. James Kirkpatrick seems to have done both. 

He claimed to have been born in Ireland. Perhaps he was. But his family was Scottish, and he may have been born in Scotland. He attended Edinburgh University shortly before the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion. 

Did he take part in it? Possibly, or perhaps he was assumed to have done so because others in his family did. In any case, the political danger may have made a change of name seem like a good idea. The same goes for his migration to South Carolina. In a frontier colony, it was easier bury one's past and start afresh. The colony's promoters welcomed white men to a place where enslaved Africans already made up a majority of the population.  

When Kilpatrick changed his name back to Kirkpatrick, nearly 30 years had passed since the rebellion in which he may have been involved. Another, and more serious Jacobite rebellion took place in 1745, but no one could argue that he had taken any part in that. In any case, the Jacobite threat ended with the defeat of the army of "Bonnie Prince Charlie" at Culloden in April 1746. It was the last battle fought on British soil. [Image: Culloden]

 

Moreover, while in South Carolina, he had demonstrated his loyalty to the British government by serving as a naval surgeon in the Oglethorpe Expedition to St. Augustine. 

After arriving in London, he published an account of the 1738 smallpox epidemic in Charleston, highlighting the success of inoculation in the epidemic and his own role within it. 

When a smallpox epidemic broke out in London in 1746, Kirkpatrick helped found the innovative Smallpox and Inoculation Hospital, believed to be the first in Europe to specialize in that area. It provided free treatment to the working class. [Image: Smallpox and Inoculation Hospital,  Coldbath Fields, London]

Kirkpatrick collaborated on the hospital project with Isaac Maddox, Bishop of Worcester. Maddox later helped him to publish The Analysis of Inoculation (1754), a treatise on its history, theories, and practise. The book was translated into several languages and gained him a reputation as an expert on the subject. 

In the Analysis, he claimed to have revived inoculation in Britain after it had fallen into disuse. This was exaggeration, but he did help to popularize it, especially in France and the Continent. He inoculated members of the French and British aristocracies. 

Kilpatrick/Kirkpatrick harbored poetic as well as medical ambitions. He used them to celebrate the maritime and naval achievements of the British Empire, in a long poem entitled The Sea-Piece. He had composed it, he said, in South Carolina between 1717 and 1738. He published it in London in 1750. 

He praised the works of Alexander Pope, whom he called the poetic lord of the British empire. He wrote several poems commending and defending Pope and an elegy on Pope after his death in 1744. 

Kirkpatrick died in London in 1770. His son James became a high-ranking officer in the British East India Company. He was known as the "Handsome Colonel." Two of the colonel's sons, William and James Achilles Kirkpatrick, also attained high rank in the Company. 

James married an Indian princess in Hyderabad. The marriage ended in tragedy; a story superbly told by William Dalrymple in White Mughals.  

Further Reading: 

James Kilpatrick, An Essay on the Small-Pox Being Brought Into South Carolina in the Year 1738. (London, 1743)

James Kirkpatrick, The Analysis of Inoculation. (London, 1754). 

Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry. (New York and Cambridge: 2011, 2014)

William Dalrymple, White Mughals. (London, 2002)

David S. Shields, Oracles of Empire: Poetry, Politics, and Commerce in British America, 1690-1750. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,1990)

 

Loyalist and Patriot: George Milligen

George Milligen was one of the staunchest supporters of the British government in South Carolina on the eve of the American Revolution. 

Milligen was born in or near Dumfries, Scotland, probably in the 1720s. After training as a surgeon he joined the British army on 1745. He came to South Carolina in 1753 with the title Surgeon to His Majesty’s Forces in South Carolina and Georgia. 

The title was grander in name than in reality. The number of British soldiers and sailors in the two provinces was usually quite small. He supplemented his government income by medicating civilians as well. Given the prevalence of malarial and other fevers, there was plenty of work for doctors in South Carolina, especially in the late summer and autumn. 

In 1759 Milligen accompanied Governor Lyttleton's disastrous punitive expedition to the Cherokee country. Lyttleton's bungled campaign precipitated the Second Cherokee War and the spread of smallpox across the province. 

In 1763, Milligen published a short but useful book about the local diseases and other aspects of colonial life: A Short Description of the Province of South-Carolina: With an Account of the Air, Weather, and Diseases of Charles-Town. The American Philosophical Society elected Milligen to membership in 1772. 

Up to this point, he seems to have been an accepted member of the Charleston community, active in civic and philanthropic affairs. By the early 1770s, however, the political situation in South Carolina was becoming increasingly polarized, as colonial conflicts with the mother country intensified. 

In January 1775, matters came to a head. Advocates of resistance to British colonial policy, who called themselves Whigs, established a provisional government. The Whigs would later call themselves "Patriots" and those who disagreed with them, "Tories." 

In practical terms, the old Tory Party had ceased to exist in Britain, and the modern one had not yet emerged. Calling someone a Tory in the 1770s was much like calling them a communist. Those who remained loyal to Britain viewed themselves as patriots. They did not generally view themselves as Tories, but Loyalists.  

The Patriot Whigs established a Provincial Assembly and elected Henry Laurens president. They also created a council of safety and other executive committees. The council and committees became a de facto government, rendering the royal administration almost powerless.   

In early June, following the news that British soldiers had opened fire against the Massachusetts militia, delegates to the Provincial Assembly voted to raise two regiments of soldiers. They also approved a document called the Association. It declared that the people of South Carolina would use force if necessary to protect their liberties. 

Whig leaders called on all white inhabitants, including royal officials, to sign the Association. Anyone who refused to sign should be considered "inimical to the Liberty of the Colonies," in other words, as enemies. An amendment requiring that they be imprisoned failed. 

Many citizens refused to sign, including those who held jobs in the royal administration. The council of safety summoned the officials and pressed them to change their minds. They remained defiant. Milligen was one of the most outspoken.

Henry Laurens, the chair of the council, asked Milligen if he agreed that the colonists "possessed the rights and liberties of Englishmen?" It seems an odd question now for a former slave trader to pose, especially to a Scot. Milligen replied without hesitation, "I support the civil and religious rights of mankind." 

It was a riposte worthy of Rousseau. Laurens then asked Milligen if he considered himself a patriot. "I do," Milligen answered. "Then why can't you stand with us?" Laurens continued. Milligen had clearly prepared his answer: 

“For me, patriotism includes support for the king, protector of the rights and liberties of his subjects. For thirty years, I’ve served His Majesty as a soldier and a surgeon, and eaten his bread. Allegiance as a subject, gratitude as a man, honor as a gentleman, and my duty to the king all forbid my joining your Association." 

Laurens dismissed him and asked him to appear before the council again on August 15. Milligen's stance made him a special target of Charleston's radical "Liberty Boys." He had once been friendly with several of their leaders, who, like him, were Freemasons and had helped raise funds for charitable projects. 

The Liberty Boys was an organization modeled on one in Massachusetts. Its members, mostly artisans and shopkeepers, acted as "enforcers" of the policies of the provisional government. They harassed suspected Loyalists (or "Tories") in the streets and even invaded their houses. 

A few days before Milligen appeared before the council of safety, on June 2, the Liberty Boys had inflicted a violent punishment on two Irishmen accused of supporting British plans for subduing the colonists by force. 

James Dealey and Laughlin Martin were accused of publicly cheering news that the British government was shipping guns to the colony to arm blacks, Indians, and Roman Catholics. 

What the pair did not know was that the news, published in the South Carolina Gazette, was fake news. Its purpose was to anger and frighten people into supporting the resistance to the British government. It seems to have accomplished that aim, but also "outed" two treacherous "papists" who appeared ready to help the British. 

Dealey and Martin were both Roman Catholic, although their neighbors may not have known that before. The practise of their faith was not yet legal in South Carolina, and they likely kept it a secret. Most South Carolinians shared British prejudices against the "popish" religion. 

Liberty Boys assembled an illegal citizens' court to hear the "evidence" and pass judgment. They sentenced Dealey and Martin to be dressed in "An American Suit of Clothing." This was a euphemism for tarring and feathering. 

The enforcers came prepared with a barrel of hot tar and a bag of feathers. They removed the upper clothing of the guilty parties, poured hot tar over them, then dropped the feathers on the sticky tar. The procedure was humiliating, painful, and potentially dangerous. 

[Image: A Tarring and Feathering in Boston. Here, the Patriots are pouring tea into the mouth of the "transgressor."]

In early August the Charleston Liberty Boys tarred and feathered a British soldier. His accuser claimed that Sergeant Walker had refused a toast of "damnation to King George" and said he would "drink damnation to rebels instead." A hastily assembled crowd that included newly raised provincial soldiers demanded that Walker be tarred and feathered. 

After the enforcers had suitably "dressed" him, they put him in a donkey cart and dragged him around town. They pelted him with stones and filth along the way. Their route took them to the houses of several alleged Tories. At each house they forced Walker to drink damnation to the residents. 

At one house, Milligen sat on the porch with his mother-in-law. Some in the crowd charged towards him, shouting that he should join Walker in the cart. A melee ensued in which his wife, who had come out to see what the matter was, fainted. He carried her to safety and with the help of a "faithful" black servant, held off the attackers. 

The crowd dispersed soon after. They dumped the battered Walker in the harbor, where he might have drowned. A boat rowed by crew from a British ship rescued him, but he had sustained severe burns and damage to one eye. [Image: Charleston Harbor at the time of the Revolution. The Old Exchange is in center background, flanked by St. Michael's (left) and St. Philip's churches.]

Several of Milligen's friends, including one member of the council of safety, possibly Henry Laurens, urged him to flee the colony before worse happened. He agreed but refused to leave just yet. The council had summoned him for another interview. He told his friends that he felt honor bound to attend. 

Standing before the council in the State House, Milligen remained as defiant as ever. On this occasion Laurens was absent. Charles Pinckney was in the chair. The others present included Arthur Middleton, Thomas Heyward, and Thomas Bee. The first two would later be signatories to the Declaration of Independence. 

The council president, Henry Laurens. had excused himself, pleading indisposition. Perhaps he did not want to be part of what was planned for Milligen. The council asked Milligen sign an oath that he would not do anything to oppose or counteract the actions of the Provincial Congress and its committees. Milligen refused. 

Arthur Middleton asked him if he understood the possible consequences of his refusal. " I do," Milligen replied. "I have observed the justice meted out by liberty mobs," an obvious reference to the tarring and feathering incidents. Middleton protested that those were the justified actions of the people, not a mob. 

The council dismissed Milligen. As he left, Middleton advised him to "be careful of your attire" and remember to take his kilt along. It was a joke, perhaps, but also a threat and an insult. After Milligen left the council room, followed by laughter, Middleton added another joke. The "good doctor," he said, was sure to "gain a high place in Scotland after kissing some Tory behinds."

Milligen left the building and immediately jumped into a waiting carriage. It sped off to a nearby wharf, where a naval skiff waited to take him to safety aboard a British sloop in the harbor, HMS Tamar. His escape had been arranged by the Royal Governor, Lord William Campbell. Campbell himself would flee there a few weeks later. 

Milligen arrived in England around the end of September aboard a mail packet. During the trip he wrote a report on the situation in South Carolina which he delivered to the government. In it, he characterized the rebels as having used lies, threats, and violence to achieve their "wicked" ends. 

Many of the people who signed the Association, he claimed, did so under duress. They were faced with threats of economic ruin and/or physical intimidation. Others were frightened into signing by carefully spread but false rumors of British-inspired slave rebellions and Indian attacks. 

When no uprisings occurred, some people had begun to question the rumors. The rebel leaders responded by arresting several blacks in late June and claiming they had found evidence that a revolt was planned. An illegal tribunal condemned one of them to death, a free black named Thomas Jeremiah. He was hanged and his body burned on August 18. Milligen wrote that the rebels had sacrificed Jeremiah to achieve their goal of frightening the public. 

After returning to Britain, Milligen settled in Dumfries, Scotland, his place of birth. His mother was the last of her family line. In her memory he added her maiden name, Johnston, to his own, becoming Milligen-Johnston. He died in Dumfries in 1799. 

Further Reading: 

George Milligen, A Short Description of the Province of South-Carolina, With an Account of the Air, Water, and Diseases at Charles-Town. [1763]

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

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

The Charleston Tar-and-Feathers Incident of 1775 | Charleston County Public Library (ccpl.org) This thoroughly researched article provides a detailed and insightful analysis of the tarring and feathering incident involving James Dealey and Laughlin Martin.

Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992)

Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2011, 2014. 

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

Reluctant Loyalist: Dr. Alexander Garden of Charleston

People who supported the British government during the American Revolution were a varied lot. Loyalists were rich and poor, white and black, men and women. They included recent immigrants and members of established colonial families. Above all, they were caught in a web of circumstances beyond their control. 

Each had their reasons for choosing the British side, reasons often much more complicated than rooting for a football team or trying to profit in some way. Loyalists usually had friends and family on the other side. 

William Franklin, illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, remained staunchly loyal to the British Crown, which had appointed him Royal Governor of New Jersey. Dr. Alexander Garden of Charlestown (Charleston after 1783) was less staunch in his loyalty, but in the end the victors branded him as a Loyalist. 

Most writing about Garden focuses on his contributions to natural history. My focus here is on Garden's attempts to negotiate the treacherous waters of revolutionary America, a subject that has received much less attention. [Image: Portrait of Alexander Garden.]

Garden was born in Birse, Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1730. His father was minister of the village church. In his teens, Alexander studied medicine at Aberdeen and Edinburgh Universities and received an MD from Edinburgh. 

He served as a surgeon in the British navy for several years, but resigned, he said, because he was always ill at sea. A lung complaint, perhaps tuberculosis, may also have played a part in his decision. The air below decks in the ships of the day was always foul. In later life, he always dreaded ocean voyages.

Garden emigrated to South Carolina in 1752 in hopes of improving his health and his income. In the latter goal, certainly, he succeeded. South Carolina was not only the wealthiest British North American colony, it was also the unhealthiest. He suffered from the local fevers as all newcomers did, but survived what people called "The Seasoning." 

A few years after arriving, he wooed and married a wealthy heiress, Elizabeth Peronneau, whom he called Toby. Three of their children survived to adulthood, a son, Alex, and daughters Harriette and Juliette. He soon developed a flourishing practice, aided by his adoption of inoculation for smallpox, one of the most dreaded scourges of colonial America.

By the early 1770s Garden was one of the richest physician in town. He established a network of close friends among the planter and merchant elite, many of whom used his medical services. Garden developed an especially close friendship with Henry Laurens, former slave trader and merchant/planter. Garden tutored Laurens' eldest son John to prepare him for education in England. 

In his spare time -- he never had enough, he complained -- he pursued his life's passion, natural history. He corresponded with and sent botanical and zoological specimens to leading natural historians in Europe. Among them was Sweden's Linnaeus, who developed the modern system of biological classification. Linnaeus named the gardenia for Garden. 

In 1773, the prestigious Royal Society of London elected Garden to membership for his contributions to science. Benjamin Franklin, then working in London as a colonial agent, nominated him. 

In the same year, Garden bought a plantation in Goose Creek from fellow physician John Moultrie, Jr., who had  been appointed Lt. Governor of British East Florida. Garden renamed it Otranto, perhaps after Horace Walpole's recently published novella, The Castle of Otranto. Garden was also amassing other properties in and near Charleston.

In the early 1770s, all seemed to be going well for Garden. Then history took one of those turns that forces people to make difficult, often agonizing, choices. For some years, tension between Britain and its colonies in North America had been growing. 

The real issue, as so often, was about power. Who should have the preponderance of it, the British government or the colonial legislatures? Interestingly, Garden realized the heart of the issue as early as 1765, during Stamp Act Crisis. The conflict, he wrote to a friend in England, was really about sovereignty. 

In the northern colonies, resistance took the form of a rejection of taxes imposed by the British Parliament. In the southern colonies, that was an issue as well, but another concern drove many wealthy southerners to cooperate with their northern neighbors. 

In 1772, the Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench in London, Lord Mansfield, ruled that slavery was illegal in England; that it had no basis in common law. The Somerset Ruling, as Mansfield's decision is known, aroused panic among many southern slaveholders. They concluded, wrongly,  that the ruling would soon be extended to the colonies. The best way to prevent that possibility, they decided, was to renounce British claims to legislate for the colonies. 

In the spring of 1775, tension gave way to violence and war. Talk of independence was in the air. The issue of armed resistance and independence immediately divided Americans into Whigs or Patriots and Loyalists or Tories.

In South Carolina, the Whigs took control and formed an extra legal Provincial Government. It took over the functions of the royal administration and the old assembly. The new Provincial Congress voted funds to raise an army. and demanded that all (white, male) citizens swear allegiance to the new regime. Holdouts were to be labeled "obnoxious persons". Some legislators demanded they be imprisoned. 

Garden faced a terrible dilemma. Before coming to South Carolina, he had served for several years as a naval surgeon. He had taken an oath to the Crown. As a youth in Scotland, he witnessed the terrible costs of joining a rebellion against the British Crown, in 1745-46. 

His father had remained loyal to the Hanoverian king, George II, but some of his relatives joined the Jacobites, led by the overly romanticized "Bonnie Prince Charlie." A crushing Hanoverian victory, at Culloden in 1746, ended the Jacobite threat. Scots families who had supported the Stuart cause often lost their land, their freedom, and sometimes their lives. They were labeled traitors. 

Similarly, Garden had friends on both sides of the American divide. Like many people in the colonies, perhaps as many as a third, he wanted to remain neutral. Events made that choice increasingly difficult to sustain. Some of the more extreme Patriots harassed him, trying to get him to join them. More moderate Whig friends, including Henry Laurens, tried to protect him but urged him to take the various oaths of allegiance to the new regime. 

Garden eventually found ways to satisfy the oaths without, in his view, compromising his neutrality. With help from Laurens and other Whig friends, he was able to remain free and continue his medical practice for five turbulent years. His doctoring skills protected him as well. People on both sides respected his ability and employed him to treat their diseases and wounds.

The British capture of  Charleston in May 1780 changed everything. Garden refused to take the Oath of Loyalty to the British Crown, which many so-called Patriots rushed to do. He seems to have reasoned that he had already taken such an oath when he joined the Royal Navy, and had done nothing to violate it. He also refused to take a position in the new British administration. It seems he still desired to remain neutral, but felt safer under British rule.

A few months later, Garden made what in retrospect seems a major mistake. In August 1780, General Lord Cornwallis won a crushing victory over a Patriot Army at Camden. It seemed that the American rebellion was doomed, at least in the Lower South. Garden, perhaps thinking that British rule was secure, agreed to sign a memorial of congratulations to Cornwallis. Whether he did so voluntarily or under pressure is not clear.

The congratulations proved premature. Fevers, partisan attacks, and the arrival of another Patriot army under General Nathanael Greene undermined the British control of the Carolinas within a few months. In the Spring of 1781, Cornwallis decided to march his army north to Virginia. He wrote his superiors that he could not subject his men to another deadly summer in feverish South Carolina. His decision led directly to Yorktown and surrender. 

The force Cornwallis left behind was unable to maintain control of the Carolina backcountry. By the early autumn of 1781, partisan forces and Greene's army had occupied most of the state outside of Charleston. The British held on in that enclave for another year. In December 1782, they withdrew, knowing peace would soon be declared. When the British fleet left Charleston, Garden and most of his family were aboard one of the ships. The decision to leave was not his choice. [Image: The Evacuation of Charleston by the British, by Howard Pyle, 1898, Delaware Art Museum]

At the beginning of that year, the South Carolina State Assembly met at Jacksonville, about 30 miles south of Charleston. It was the first legislative session since the British occupation. A major item on the agenda was how to punish Loyalists. Some were merely amerced (fined) but the assembly banished many of them from the state and confiscated their property. 

Garden was among those banished. His sin was to have signed the memorial congratulating Lord Cornwallis. A few delegates, including John Laurens, tried to commute his punishment to an amercement, or fine, but in vain. Vengeance was the order of the day. Henry Laurens was far away in England and unable to help his friend. 

The War for Independence proved disastrous for Garden, not only financially. It also divided his family. During the British occupation of Charleston his daughter Harriette fell in love with and married a British officer, Major George Benson. Benson was particularly disliked by the Patriots as he was in charge of the arrest of a group of active revolutionaries, who included Christopher Gadsden, Arthur Middleton, and Garden's medical friend and colleague, David Ramsay. 

In the summer of 1781, Garden's son Alex returned from education in Britain -- in defiance of his father's wishes. Soon after his arrival, he ran off and joined the Continental Army of General Greene. He became an aide de camp to Greene and rose to the rank of Major. 

Because he had joined the Patriot side, Alex was allowed to keep the Garden plantation at Otranto, despite the suspicions of some Patriots that he had joined the Patriot side to save the family estate. That possibility cannot be ignored. During the Jacobite rebellions in Scotland, many Scottish families had done exactly that. 

Dr. Garden always denied any collusion with Alex. He denounced his son's decision to join Greene's army and never reconciled with him. The South Carolina government later restored some of Dr. Garden's property and rescinded his banishment, but he never returned to Charleston or benefited from the change. One of the reasons seems to have been his fear of another long ocean voyage.

After the war, Alex married Mary Anna Gibbes, daughter of one of his father's old friends. He wrote two books about the Revolution. Alex was not good at managing his affairs, however, and fell into debt. His wife and children predeceased him (as so often happened in the deadly lowcountry). Otranto passed to an adopted nephew, Alester Gibbes, after Alex's death in 1829. [Image: Major Alexander Garden, artist unknown]

In 1783, Dr. Garden, his wife Elizabeth, and younger daughter Juliette settled in London, at a house on Cecil Street, off the Strand. Soon after he settled in, he activated his membership in the Royal Society, and a few years later was elected its vice-president. 

He spent years trying to obtain compensation from the British government for his losses in the war. He finally received some, but it was a fraction of his losses. Shortly after the government awarded it, he died, probably of a lung disorder, in 1791. 

Garden's wife Elizabeth (Toby) survived until 1805. His eldest daughter Harriette prospered. Her husband, George Benson, became a general. She died a wealthy widow in 1847. His younger daughter, Juliette, did not fare as well. She married a British soldier as well, Captain Alexander Fotheringham. They had five children. All five died within one week in an epidemic. She and her husband died within days of one another in 1820.

Further reading:

 

Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley, Alexander Garden of Charles Town (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969)

Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2011, 2014. 

James Edward Smith, A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and Other Naturalists (2 vols., London, 1821)

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

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

Alexander Garden (Major Garden), Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War in America (Charleston, 1822) and Anecdotes of the American Revolution (Charleston, 1828)

Alfred W. Blumrosen and Ruth G. Blumrosen, Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies & Sparked the American Revolution (Naperville, Illinois: Source Books, 2005)

Alexander Garden - History of Early American Landscape Design (nga.gov)