Coronation! British Monarchs Who Ended Badly, Part 12: George III

In 1760, the death of George II brought his grandson, an awkward nineteen year old, to the British throne. George III had the longest reign of any British monarch up to that time, sixty years. He was the last king of the colonies that became the United States. 

Every July 4th, Americans celebrate the overthrow of tyrant King George. He is also known as the Mad King, and in some minds, a mad tyrant.  [George III soon after he became king,  by Allan Ramsay, 1762]

He was the third Hanoverian monarch. Unlike the first two Georges,  however, he was born in Britain. He considered himself fully British and cared little for Hanover. At his coronation, he declared "I glory in the name of Britain." He never went to Hanover, or even left England, during his long reign.  

George III considered himself a constitutional or limited monarch. He took his job seriously, maybe too seriously. He venerated the (unwritten) British constitution. His father, Frederick, Prince of Wales, ensured he had a solid education in a wide array of subjects, including  politics and constitutional law. 

At the age of eight George could discuss current politics in speech and writing, in both English and German. He also learned French and Latin. He was also the first British monarch to be thoroughly educated in the science of the day. 

As king, he was a strong supporter of the sciences and arts. He gave a large portion of his income to charity. He amassed a library of more than 65,000 volumes, and opened the collection to renowned scholars such as Samuel Johnson and Joseph Priestley. The collection is now part of the British Library.

Frederick, who died before his father George II, prepared his son George to be a "Patriot King," ruling in the interests of his country and people. Frederick believed rightly that the Hanoverian dynasty needed to improve its image, and he passed that belief on to his son. [Image: George as Prince of Wales, by Jean Etienne Liotard, 1754]

At first, George III had little to do with the actions that angered the American colonists. Most of them were devised by his ministers to help pay the enormous costs of the recent war with France and Spain, the Seven Years War, or French and Indian War in North America. 

They were devised by his ministers and approved by Parliament. The king opposed some of them, notably the Stamp Act of 1765. Part of that was personal. He detested the architect of the Stamp Act, George Grenville. 

In 1766, George was able to push Grenville out. His successor, Lord Rockingham, repealed the Stamp Act with the help of the king and the popular William Pitt the Elder, now Lord Chatham. The king's efforts were applauded in the colonies. New York City erected a statue in his honor. 

In the following year, Parliament re-asserted its right to tax the American colonies. The new taxes, the Townshend Duties, aroused a furor in the colonies. In response, Parliament repealed all the taxes except a tiny tax on tea. Leaving the tea tax in place was intended to maintain the principle that Parliament could levy taxes on the colonies. [Image: George III by Johan Zoffany, 1771]

The king supported Parliament's right to tax the colonies. But it was Parliament's right, not his. After the Civil War of the 1640s, British monarchs could not levy taxes. That was Parliament's prerogative. 

The Declaration of Independence essentially blames George III rather than Parliament for the conflict that followed. It was simpler than explaining the intricacies of the British political system. 

The Declaration listed 27 grievances against the British government. Most of them began with "He has...", personalizing the conflict into one of the people versus a tyrannical king. 

George III was no warmonger. One of his first actions as king had been to bring an end to the Seven Years' War with France and Spain at a time when Britain was winning victories everywhere. He was concerned that if Britain seized too much, it would multiply its enemies. 

If we seek the true causes of the American Revolution, we must admit that it was in large part due to British success in the Seven Years War. One of its effects was to remove France as a threat to the colonies and their expansion west. 

Before the war, France had controlled Canada (Quebec) to the north and claimed the lands between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. In the peace treaty of 1763, the French ceded those territories to Britain. 

Prior to this, the colonists had relied on British soldiers to protect them against attacks by the French and their Indian allies. Now, they felt more secure. They looked forward to settling the trans- Appalachian country. 

They became furious when the British government tried to restrict colonists' movement into what they deemed Indian lands. The view in London was that settler expansion would lead to Indian wars and colonial demands for British protection. The government wanted to reduce expenditure, not increase it. 

It is true that once the American War for Independence began, King George was determined that it end in British victory. He obstinately continued to support the war even after the disastrous British defeat at Yorktown in October 1781, when most of his ministers urged him to give up. A few months later, he agreed and authorized the start of peace negotiations.

Once independence was conceded, he became resigned to the new relationship with the former colonies. In 1785 he told John Adams, the first American ambassador to Britain, "I was the last consent to the separation; but the separation having been made ... I have always said, as I say now, I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power." 

British rule in the colonies was often insensitive and infuriating. The frustrations were increased by the immense distance between Britain and America. But no colonies of the time were as loosely governed by an imperial country as the thirteen who declared independence in 1776. 

The true tranny in the American colonies was the enslavement of a large part of the population. British politicians had helped make that possible. But the power of Parliament over the colonies meant they could also end slavery. One reason many southern leaders supported the revolution was the fear that Parliament might do exactly that, especially after Chief Justice Mansfield ruled slavery in England illegal in 1772. 

George III is often referred to as “Mad King George.” But he did not show any clear signs of mental illness until 1788, 28 years into his reign. This is the event portrayed in Alan Bennett’s play The Madness of George III and the film based upon it, The Madness of King George. 

That episode lasted a few months and produced what historians call the Regency Crisis. It threatened to bring down the government, led by William Pitt the Younger. Many opposition MPs were demanding that the Prince of Wales be installed as regent to rule in his father’s name. 

The contemporary cartoon below shows Tory and Whig leaders "pulling for a King." George III is restrained in a chair in the rear, a pawn in the struggle for power.

Prince George favoured the opposition Whigs, who believed he would help them gain power. George III's recovery ended that prospect. [Image: George, Prince of Wales, later George IV, c. 1789, by Mather Byles Brown]

George suffered more attacks of his illness in 1800 and 1804, but recovered quickly. In 1810, the disease returned and on this occasion he agreed to a regency. by now the Prince of Wales had become disillusioned with the Whigs, some of whom had shown a tendency towards radicalism. The Tories remained in power until 1830.

The king's malady proceeded to dementia, blindness, deafness. He was in great pain from rheumatism. He had become Shelley’s “old, mad, blind, and dying king.” [Image: George III in his last years, sketched by Henry Meyer]

George III clung to life for another ten years, dying at age 82 in 1820. Upon his death, The Prince Regent became king as George IV (1820-1830). His twenty years as Regent and King are still referred to as the Regency Period. 

Biographers and Historians of Psychiatry have long debated the nature of George III’s illness. In the late 1960s, psychiatrists Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter argued that George suffered from a genetic metabolic disorder called porphyria, which among other things, can cause one’s urine to turn dark red or purple. Bennet’s play and film highlights the king’s dark urine and the bumbling doctors who think it unimportant. 

Other researchers have questioned the porphyria diagnosis. They argue that the king showed symptoms of psychoses such as dementia, mania, and manic-depressive or bipolar disorder. A study of his hair in 2005 revealed that he had consumed large amounts of medicines or cosmetics containing arsenic, a poison that might have precipitated his disease.  

Interestingly, George III was attacked on several occasions by people later declared insane. In 1786, a woman named Margaret Nicholson tried to stab him with a small dessert knife. The king easily fended of the blow and told his attendants to treat her kindly. “The poor creature is mad. Do not hurt her. She has not hurt me.” (Image: Contemporary print showing Nicholson's attack on the king)

In 1790 he reacted with similar sympathy when John Frith, who believed he was St. Paul, threw a rock at the king’s coach. A third assailant, James Hadfield, tried and failed to shoot the king in 1800 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The king seems to have been unfazed by the incident. He fell asleep during the interval. 

All three assailants were sent to Bethlem Hospital for the Insane, Hadfield after being declared not guilty due to insanity during his precedent-setting trial for treason. [Image: Contemporary print showing the "Horrid" Hadfield's attempt to shoot the king].

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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)

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, his uncle 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 falsely 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 followed 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 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 like Donald Trump, that is, someone who aims to appeal to ordinary people who feel that the elites have ignored their concerns. But he was also a member of that elite, and contemptuous of the "rabble." 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.