Bloody Flag of Anarchy: Unionism in South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis by Brian C. Neuman (review)

Reviewed by: Bloody Flag of Anarchy: Unionism in South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis by Brian C. Neuman William K. Bolt (bio) Keywords Nullification, South Carolina, Unionism, Benjamin Perry, James L. Petigru, Henry Pinckney, Joel Roberts Poinsett Bloody Flag of Anarchy: Unionism in South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis. By Brian C. Neuman. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022. Pp. 224. Cloth, $45.00.) The actions of John C. Calhoun, George McDuffie, Robert Y. Hayne, James Hamilton, James Hammond, and other Nullifiers during the Nullification Crisis of the late 1820s and early 1830s have been analyzed on numerous occasions. The movements of their counterparts, the Union-ists, have been ignored. In Bloody Flag of Anarchy: Unionism in South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis, Brian C. Neuman shines a light on this forgotten group. He reveals how the Unionists, which included Benjamin Perry, James L. Petigru, Henry Pinckney, and Joel Roberts [End Page 132] Poinsett, viewed themselves as the guardians of constitutional liberty. They worried that nullification, if consummated, would unleash the terrors of the French and Haitian Revolutions on the people of South Carolina. If nullification prevailed in South Carolina, then republican forms of government would crumble across the globe, the Unionists maintained. Neuman notes that 40 percent of eligible voters opposed nullification in the state of South Carolina. As the country approached the precipice of disunion at the end of 1832 and into the beginning of 1833, 9,000 Union-ists, clustered in and around Charleston and in the upstate areas of Greenville and Spartanburg, vowed to fight against their fellow South Carolinians to defend the union. The Unionists, according to the author, had various motivations for their willingness to use violence against their fellow South Carolinians. In addition to preserving the Union and protecting the state from a radical social revolution, the Unionists affirmed their manliness by putting their lives on the line. Neuman devotes an entire chapter to gender and manhood. Both the Unionists and Nullifiers believed their actions allowed them to defend their manhood, which they had all inherited from their forefathers who risked their lives during the American Revolution. If a man remained inactive during this crisis, he would forsake a great legacy bequeathed to him. Political violence had been a part of the daily lives of the people in South Carolina since the Nullification Crisis began in 1828. It accelerated in both speed and scale as the people prepared to go to the polls in 1832. Like most accounts of the Nullification Crisis, Neuman starts in the early 1820s. He shows how the Nullifiers and Unionists tried to curry favor with voters across the state of South Carolina after John C. Calhoun articulated the theory of state interposition or nullification in 1828. After four years of incessant campaigning and agitation, the Nullifiers bested the Unionists in elections held in 1832 and quickly nullified the tariffs of 1828 and 1832. Neuman writes, "Nullifiers succeeded, in large part, because they organized more effectively and outflanked their opponents in the war of words and symbols" (66). The worst fears of the Unionists came to fruition when the Nullifiers vowed to secede if President Andrew Jackson used force against the sovereign state of South Carolina. Neuman carries the story past the Compromise of 1833, which allowed both the Nullifiers and the Unionists to claim a victory. After the resolution of the Nullification Crisis, Neuman argues that many Unionists [End Page 133] retired from politics at the state level to let cooler heads prevail and to bring the people of the state back together. Most Unionists decided not to challenge Nullifiers for statewide offices in 1833 and 1834. The Nullifiers, however, did not accept this olive branch and continued to stoke political passions within the Palmetto State. The Test Oath controversy of 1833 to 1835 continued to divide the people of South Carolina as most Unionists refused to take an oath, which they viewed as sanctioning nullification. The oath requirement disfranchised many Unionists and prevented them from holding elective office or serving in the state militia. With the Test Oath in place, Unionists worried that there would be no check on the Nullifiers and that the Nullifiers could...