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William Henry Drayton: South Carolina Revolutionary Patriot. By Keith Krawczynski. Southern Biography Series. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001. Pp. [xviii], 358. $49.95, ISBN 0-8071-2261-6.)
Interpreting William Henry Drayton has never been easy. A loyalist in the late 1760s, Drayton would become one of South Carolina's most fervent revolutionaries. During his service in the Continental Congress, he exhibited apparently mixed impulses, attempting to protect state sovereignty and South Carolina interests even as he worked to establish a strong federal government. His early death in 1779 and the scarcity of extant personal papers compound the problem of interpretation. Nevertheless, in this first fully analytical biography of Drayton, Keith Krawczynski offers an insightful overview of Drayton's life that supersedes earlier studies, which portrayed Drayton as motivated mainly by a desire to secure his own position and that of the South Carolina elite against threats from both lower social elements and imperial rulers.