Land and Allegiance in Revolutionary Georgia.

By Leslie Hall. (Athens, Ga., and London: University of Georgia Press, c. 2001. Pp. xvi, 231. $45.00, ISBN 0-8203-2262-8.)

Before Leslie Hall's new book, the last comprehensive scholarly look at the American Revolution in Georgia came out over two generations ago (Kenneth Coleman, The American Revolution in Georgia, 1763-1789 [Athens, Ga., 1958]). Hall's work, however, does not just replay events in Georgia during the Revolutionary era but explains them specifically in the contexts of "land and allegiance" between 1775 and 1783. As Hall points out in the introduction, "Georgia alone of all the colonies in rebellion had British civil government reestablished during the war," creating "unique pressures" regarding questions of allegiance and landholding during the period (p. xi).

Because Georgia had multiple civilian governments competing, often simultaneously, to establish their supremacy in Georgia during the war, both sides, royal and revolutionary, adopted a kind of carrot-and-stick approach in their efforts to gain the loyalty of the civilian population. Both sides used requirements for loyalty oaths and threats of property confiscation to secure citizen loyalty, but because no civil government ever held absolute sway in Georgia in the period, such acts and requirements had limited usefulness. Colonial governor James Wright, who had fled Georgia in 1776, returned in 1779 to formalize the return of royal government and brought with him money and organization to attract supporters, but the rebels had a kind of trump card that they were willing and able to play that Wright did not: land bounties to those who pledged their loyalty to the new government. Even those who had wavered in their support for the Revolutionary cause could gain amnesty and retain their land by joining the rebel militia. Hall suggests that had Governor Wright been able to match the colonial offers, many more settlers might have sided with the Crown. In the most important paragraph in the book, Hall explains that with so much uncertainty afoot in Georgia between 1775 and 1783, traditional loyalty oaths that signified a "formal bond" between ruler and ruled gave way to the practical needs of competing governments to secure the support of the people at almost any cost, and of the people to secure their property, again at almost any cost (p. 127). According to Hall, such practical considerations, not ideological or fealty concerns, dictated the actions of both those governing and governed in Georgia during the Revolution.

Hall's effort is an excellent contribution to the historiography both of Georgia and the Revolution, and the thesis of the book fits with the longer story of Georgia's first century. Georgia was and would be for several more decades a frontier colony/state. As such, land issues dominated its politics well into the 1830s, and loyalties were slow to form and quick to change. Hall neatly combines a reasonable thesis with a wide array of primary and secondary sources to produce a highly readable and enlightening work on arguably the least revolutionary colony of the original thirteen.

JOHN THOMAS SCOTT
Mercer University