Edward Rutledge, South Carolina

1749-1800

Delegate to the Continental Congress from South Carolina, 1774-76, 1779

Born to an aristocratic Family in South Carolina, Edward Rutledge was perhaps destined to a life of Public service. He was educated in law at Oxford and studied for and was admitted to the English Bar. He and his brother John were both engaged in the law, and both attended the congress. They supported each other unabashedly, both on the floor and in committee. Edward attended Congress at the remarkable age of 27, and was no doubt pretty excited to find himself in the company of the most eminent men of the colonies.

He took leave of Congress in November of 1776 to join the defense of his colony. He was a member of the Charleston Battalion of Artillery, engaged in several important battles, and attained the rank of Captain. The colonial legislature sent him back to Congress in 1779 to fill a vacancy. He took his leave again in 1780 when the British conducted a third invasion of South Carolina. He resumed his post as Captain in the defense of Charleston, was captured and held prisoner until July of 1781.

In 1782 he returned to the legislature of his native state, where he served until 1796. He was a very active member, intent on the prosecution of British Loyalists. At times he served on as many nineteen committees. He also served as an elector, in 1788, 1792, and in 1796 when, despite his avowed allegiance to the Federalist party, he voted for Thomas Jefferson. He was then elected to the state Senate, twice, and in 1789 was elected Governor. This would be his last office. His health declining, he was barely able to complete his term as Governor. He died in January of 1800 at the age of 50.

From: US History.org

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Edward Rutledge, at the age of 26, was the youngest of the signers. Despite his youth, he had already made a name for himself in South Carolina as a lawyer-politician and had assumed leadership of his congressional delegation. A moderate, he at first fought against the independence resolution but finally submitted to the majority and voted for it. His later State career, which included combat action in the militia, culminated in the governorship.

The fifth son and youngest child of an Irish immigrant and physician, Rutledge was born in 1749 at or near Charleston, S.C. Like Middleton, Lynch, and Heyward, the other South Carolina signers, as a young man he studied law in England. In 1773, during his first year of practice on his return to Charleston, he won Whig acclaim by obtaining the release of newspaper publisher Thomas Powell, who had been imprisoned by the Crown for printing an article critical of the Loyalist upper house of the colonial legislature. The next year, the grateful Whigs named Rutledge as one of five Delegates to the First Continental Congress; and he married Henrietta Middleton, his colleague's sister. The Rutledges were to have three children.

Rutledge spent his first congressional term in the shadow of the more experienced South Carolina Delegates, among them his older brother, John, and his father-in-law, Henry Middleton. During 1775-76, however, both in Congress and in two South Carolina provincial assemblies, his increasing self-confidence and maturation of judgment brought him the esteem of his associates. In the latter year, two of the senior South Carolina Delegates, Christopher Gadsden and Henry Middleton, retired from Congress and Thomas Lynch, Sr., suffered an incapacitating stroke. Rutledge, his brother absent on State business, found himself the delegation leader.

On June 7, 1776, when Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed national independence, Rutledge led the moderates in securing a delay in the voting. He knew that independence was inevitable. In March his colony, preceded only by New Hampshire, had adopted a constitution. Moreover, that same month the provincial assembly had empowered its Delegates to vote for independence if they so desired. Yet Rutledge firmly believed that the Colonies should first confederate and nurture foreign alliances to strengthen themselves for the perilous step they were about to take. When the vote on independence came up on July 1, he refused to yield and South Carolina balloted negatively. But nine of the Colonies voted affirmatively. Rutledge, realizing that the resolution would probably carry anyway, proposed that the vote be recast the following day. He persuaded the other South Carolina Delegates to submit to the will of the majority for the sake of unanimity, and South Carolina reversed its position.

Rutledge's last important assignment occurred in September, when he accompanied John Adams and Benjamin Franklin on a vain peace mission to Staten Island to negotiate with British Admiral Lord Richard Howe, who in union with his brother, Gen. William Howe, was belatedly and idealistically trying to resolve the differences between the Colonies and the mother country. Two months later, Rutledge departed from Congress in order to resume his law practice in Charleston.

In 1778 Rutledge accepted a seat in the State legislature and the next year won reelection to Congress, though military duties prevented his attendance. As a militia captain, in February 1779 he took part in Gen. William Moultrie's defeat of the British at Port Royal Island, S.C. But in May, 1780, during the siege of Charleston, the redcoats captured Rutledge, as well as Heyward and Middleton, and imprisoned them at St. Augustine, Fla., until July 1781.

From 1782 until 1798 Rutledge sat in the State legislature, which on three occasions designated him as a presidential elector. During this period, his mistrust of unbridled republicanism reinforced his conservatism and brought him into the Federalist Party. In private life he flourished, his wealth increasing through his law practice and investments in plantations. In 1792 his first wife died and he remarried. To crown his achievements, 6 years later the people of South Carolina chose him as Governor. But, his health poor, he died at Charleston early in 1800 at the age of 50, nearly a year before the end of his term. The yard of St. Philip's Episcopal Church is the site of his grave.

From: National Park Service