Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally Belletristic .
planter class, except for their ommon interest in independence (which
Laurens arrived at late ) they were frequently on opposite sides politically,
as their letters in the South-Carolina Gazette indicate. Laurens (1724-
1792 ) was merchant, lieutenant-colonel in the French and Indian War,
and thereafter a "conservative revolutionary." Ties with Britain might well
have made him a Tory, but instead he served in the First Provincial Congress,
was President of the South Carolina Council of Safety, and in 1776
helped to write the state's first constitution. Though in his earlier years he
owned and traded hundreds of slaves, he seems to have been the first man
of prominence in the lower South to declare his abhorrence of the slave
institution.l65 In 1777 he was elected President of the Continental Con­
gress. Captured while on a diplomatic mission to the Netherlands in
1780, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for almost fifteen
months. Later he was exchanged for Lord Cornwallis.
Laurens' voluminous papers include a considerable amount of private
correspondence, which is sometimes partially business communication.
His letters, as their editors aver, are not only historically of the highest
importance but are good reading in themselves-"clear, concise, force­
ful." And they are much more: they show how he laid the basis for a
fortune and then entered public life, how his personal interests turned
from trade to agriculture, how the Cherokee War affected participants
and observers or civilian traders, and the nature of his friendships with
such naturalists as John Bartram. To one good friend, the Moravian
clergyman John Ettwein, he often wrote with warmth.
I know too well how much an att[a}chment to the business of this
World is apt to wipe out of our memories subjects of lesser importance.
Besides this, Charity instructs me to make excuses for the delay of expected
Letters from my friends. Accidents may happen to them on the
Road & in a hundred other ways they may be detain'd or miscarri'd.
Therefore I will not yet suppose that my Brother Merchant Mr. Vangammern
has neglected his promise of writing to me & particularly upon two
Subjects. One if I remember right was the Plan of Wachovia with the
Towns of Bethabara & Bethany accurately marked thereon. The other, a
Letter recommending one of the Bretheren in Pensilvania who is curious
in Workmanship & cou'd supply or procure for me a Neat Chamber
Organ.l66
In Georgia James Oglethorpe, clergymen-missionaries such as John
Wesley and Benjamin Ingham, and others among the colonists of the first
decade wrote letters back to Britain. By far the most interesting and
significant, though not the best composed, are those in Henry Newman's
Salzburger Letterbooks, a large volume of letters in English, Latin, and
French kept by the S.P.C.K. of the epistles of Henry Newman, Samuel
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