The Papers of Henry Laurens. vol. XVI: September 1, 1782-December 17, 1792.

The Papers of Henry Laurens. Volume XVI: September 1, 1782-December 17, 1792. Edited by David R. Chesnutt and C. James Taylor. (Columbia: Published by the University of South Carolina Press for the South Carolina Historical Society, c. 2003. Pp. xlvi, 927. $49.95, ISBN 1-57003-465-6.)

The sixteenth and final volume of this important series covers the last decade of Henry Laurens's life. It contains 337 documents: 260 letters written by him, 61 letters written to him, and 16 other documents. The materials are heavily weighted toward the five years between 1782 and 1786. Residing abroad for the first two of these years, Laurens coped with the deaths of his son John, who died in military action in America in 1782, and his brother James, in the south of France; served as a peace commissioner for the Treaty of Paris in 1783; and endeavored to recover from ills contracted during his earlier fifteen-month imprisonment in the Tower of London. In the summer of 1784 he returned to America and the following winter made his way back to South Carolina, where he spent the remainder of his years. Just a quarter of the documents pertain to the final seven years of his life when he was out of public life and was concentrating on replacing the economic assets he had lost during the War for Independence. Two appendixes include his will and a catalog of all known documents for this period. The volume is enhanced by an excellent editorial introduction. The editorial team that brought this distinguished project to fruition deserves the hearty congratulations of all students of early America.

The first years covered by this volume were ones of considerable adversity for Laurens. During the two years he remained abroad due to the slow progress of the peace talks, the death of his son, his daughter Martha's brief involvement with a French fortune seeker, his brother's illness, and his own continuing ill health were only the most important problems he had to overcome. Describing himself as "an infirm old Man, laboring under a broken constitution & many other difficulties that can only be performed by health vigor & tranquility," he had little patience for diplomacy and resented loyalist efforts to interfere with treaty negotiations (p. 33). "The World had never seen a more universally loyal People than the Americans who were forc'd by the mad Measures of the Ministry to take up Arms in Defence of their Rights," he complained in articulating a view that he had long held and is now the standard view of historians: "They did it with Reluctance. They were truly Loyalists" (p. 167). Throughout these troubles, he fretted about his "wretched Estates in So Carolina," professed his desire to "submit the government of Kingdoms & States to younger & abler heads," and wearily longed "to get home, to collect my fragments, to look back, to mourn in retirement, & prepare for a longer Journey the Journey from which no mortal ever returns" (pp. 172, 228, 206).

When he finally returned to America in August 1784, he had to cool his heels in New Jersey for several months while waiting for Congress to meet so that he could present his report on his mission. After a tedious overland journey of fifty days, he only got to South Carolina in January 1785. There he found his affairs "still in worse order" than he had feared. "In a word," he complained to a correspondent, "I have been pilfered and wrecked both by the common Enemy and by fellow Citizens, the latter as far as they could made free plunder of every thing the former had left." If the British had battered his "dwelling house in the course of their cannonade," they had at least "left a house capable of Repair," while "the Americans have torn down & carried off all the Sashes, doors, Windows, Chimney Backs, wainscotting & even cutt up [a] great part of the Flooring, and left the house totally irrepairable ... [T]he Damages ... I have sustained from my Country men are exceedingly great, both in Town and Country," he lamented, "& they are the most grievous. I had good ground for expecting friendly attention & Respect protection from those in whose service I had expended large Sums of Money hazarded my life & suffered fifteen Months cruel Imprisonment, and whom I had most effectually served, but so it is and I must submit to these grievances without the smallest prospect of Redress" (p. 536). Of course, he was not alone in these losses. As he "reflect[ed] upon the difficulties which, almost without exception, every Man has to encounter in these ravaged Countries, in the beginning the World anew upon terms infinitely worse than those upon which he first set out in Life," Laurens was grateful that he had no debts and that he had retained all his lands and about "three fourths of my Negroes" and assiduously set about the task of condensing the "Eight fine Plantations [he had] before the War ... [into] one, of two or three settlements" (pp. 558, 565). "[G]reat & extensive as my losses have been," he told a correspondent in 1785, "I count myself comparatively Rich" (p. 565).

Nor did he permit his losses to turn him into a bitter man. He took great pride in the fact that during the Revolution he had "acted with Zeal, & a single Eye to the honor & interest of the United States." He declared that "Personal Sufferings, the Loss of an excellent Constitution, & of no insignificant amount of Estate, when set in Competition, with the Success & Happiness of my Country in General, are in my Estimation, unworthy of one anxious Reflection" and "rejoice[d] in Peace restored, & the Establishment of our Independence ... free from the Domination of [Britain's] "Violent & Distracted Government" (p. 411). Moreover, although he was no American exceptionalist, believing that "America is and will be like other Nations" with "its own troubles and Difficulties," he remained confident that, despite the fact that "[t]he States [were] still young & greatly distressed by the Effects of the War, ... the time will come when they will stand high in the scale of nations" (pp. 196, 689). What concerned him most about the future of the United States was the perpetuation of slavery in the southern states. Though he continued to use slave labor to reestablish his estates, on which the principal crop was rice, he professed that he never broke up slave families and ruminated frequently about the evils of slavery, the desirability of stopping the slave trade and recruiting white laborers, and the need for "an abolition of Slavery by wise and progressive measures" (p. 559).

From the time he returned to South Carolina, Laurens steadfastly refused public office. "Had I been disposed to continue a great Man, my affairs going to destruction in this Quarter would have checked me," he observed (p. 536). He wrote, "I am now what I had not been for nearly thirty preceeding years ... by my own choice ... quite a private Character divested of all public Office," and spending all of his time "collecting the shattered remains of a once very great Estate, contentedly enjoying l/5th of the income of Years antecedent to the War" and becoming accustomed to no title higher than Mr., which he regarded as "an honorable address to a free citizen" (pp. 536, 625). "'[T]is happy for us," he concluded, "when we know where to stop" (p. 536).

JACK P. GREENE

Johns Hopkins University