South Carolina in the early American republic: Lowcountry planters’ international republicanism and the French Revolution, 1789-1801

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Leridon, Benoit Joseph (2024). South Carolina in the early American republic: Lowcountry planters’ international republicanism and the French Revolution, 1789-1801. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

The thesis explores the reasons and chronology of the South Carolina elite’s ideological support for Revolutionary France in the 1790s. Historians depict South Carolina as an anti-French Revolution conservative and Federalist state, contrasting to the other Southern States they deem more Jeffersonian. They also argue that the elite’s supposedly adverse reaction to French revolutionary developments originated from their social and political conservativeness and their anxiety over how the examples of the French and Haitian Revolutions might endanger the state’s plantation and political system. Furthermore, they contend that, by mid-1794, the little elite support that the French Revolution had first enjoyed was defunct. The thesis challenges this historiography. It argues that pro-French elite support, Jeffersonian and moderate Federalist alike, was prompted by the state’s historical background and by its international republican ideology toward France; it also reveals that despite or partly because of planter anxiety over control over the plantation system and strong disquietude over French abolitionism and the Haitian Revolution, support for France occurred much more extensively and for a significantly longer time than hitherto advanced. From 1789 to 1795, this support for Revolutionary France was very prevalent in all state institutions: the government, the Society of the Cincinnati, Charleston’s municipality and democratic-republican society, and local federal officials, largely consisted of and were controlled by elite supporters of the French Revolution. A significant political Francophilia remained significant even during and after the Hamiltonian hiatus of 1795-1797. The thesis also resolves the historiographical contradiction that portrays South Carolina in the 790s as an archconservative, anti-French Revolution, and Federalist state that, suddenly, and for no apparent reason, shifted in an incredibly short time to democratic-republicanism from 1799 onwards, elected Jefferson as President in 1800, altered the constitution to give universal suffrage to white men, in 1810, and became America’s fiercest democratic-republican state until the Nullification Debates of the early 1830s, and beyond.

The thesis utilizes an extensive and varied range of primary sources, including many that historians of South Carolina never discussed. They comprise private and public correspondence, orations and pamphlets, administrative records, gazettes, and memoirs. The thesis explores the characteristics of South Carolina’s pro-French elite Lowcountry culture and planters’ reactions to national and international events connected to the French Revolution. Chapter One analyzes how colonial and revolutionary South Carolina developed a fertile ground for French support between its founding. in 1670, and 1789. Chapter Two examines pro-French support in the context of consensual politics in the United States and France after the 1791-1793 radicalization of American and French politics. Chapter Three explores elite reactions to the Neutrality Proclamation. Chapter Four investigates the elite’s control of Charleston’s democratic-republican society. Chapter Five studies responses to the Jay Treaty, Franco-American relations collapse, France’s republicanism recantation, and the Haitian Revolution. In conclusion, the thesis finds that the South Carolina Lowcountry elite of the 1790s displayed significant and long-lasting pro-French Revolution sentiment.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):