Martyr of the American Revolution: The Execution of Isaac Hayne, South Carolinian by C. L. Bragg

I was born and currently live in the southeastern U.S., I have visited Charleston, S.C. several times and I am not unfamiliar with U.S. history, and yet, I can’t recall ever having heard of the execution of Isaac Hanye - which is a large part of the point author C. L. Bragg wants to make.

Isaac Hayne was a Colonel in one of the South Carolina patriot militias during the Revolutionary War. I won’t go into details (that’s what the book is for), but Hayne was executed by the British for treason under incredibly dubious circumstances. His guilt was arguably in question, but the real issue was the lack of due process or reasonable trial.

Hayne’s execution by hanging caused a furor at the time; the Continental Congress actually approved the retaliatory execution of a British officer, but this was, fortunately, never carried out.

Hayne himself, his family, his supporters and his long walk to the gallows were, for a time, part of American popular culture. Poems and songs were written and performed and novels were based on or alluded to the tragedy. But Hayne did not linger in popular memory as Nathan Hale, who confessed his guilt and was executed as a spy, did. Bragg suggests several reasons for this. First, there was a belief evident from almost as soon as the war ended that the northern part of the breakaway nation had been militarily more important to the Revolution than the South, and I agree historiography backs that up. Second, after the Civil War, Northern historians were unlikely to sing the praises of any Southern hero and Southern historians were too busy eulogizing their recent dead to remember Hayne.

Published by the University of South Carolina Press, Martyr of the American Revolution has an academic tone, although I was occasionally surprised by an enthusiastic turn of phrase and use of punctuation. It’s not scintillating reading, but it does shed light on a largely forgotten bit of American history. It’s all the more impressive that the author, C. L. Bragg, is not a historian by trade, but an anesthesiologist.