Edward Rutledge
Born: November 23, 1749
Died: January 23, 1800
Colony/State: South Carolina
Occupation / Public Role: Lawyer, planter, legislator, military officer, delegate to the Continental Congress, governor
Contribution to the Founding Era: Delegate to the Continental Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, Revolutionary officer and prisoner of war, later governor of South Carolina, and the youngest signer of the Declaration.
Edward Rutledge was born in Charleston, South Carolina, into a prominent family. He studied law in England, was admitted to the English bar in 1772, and returned to South Carolina in 1773 to practice law. His training and family connections placed him quickly into the upper ranks of South Carolina public life.
Before independence, Rutledge entered Revolutionary politics through South Carolina’s Patriot movement. He served in the First Continental Congress and the Second Continental Congress, where he became one of South Carolina’s delegates in Philadelphia. He signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and because he was born in 1749, he was younger than any of the other signers.
Rutledge also served in the war itself. Britannica notes that he fought against the British in South Carolina during the Revolution, and National Park Service material on British captivity in St. Augustine notes that Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., and Arthur Middleton were among the captured rebels held there after the fall of Charleston. That means Rutledge, like several of the South Carolina signers, paid for independence with more than speeches and signatures.
After the war, Rutledge remained an important figure in South Carolina politics. Britannica states that he served in the South Carolina legislature from 1782 to 1798 and then as governor from 1798 to 1800. His public career therefore stretched from the revolutionary break with Britain into the governing life of the new state.
Edward Rutledge died in Charleston in 1800. He is remembered today not only because he signed the Declaration, but because he did so at such a young age and still went on to build a substantial public career afterward. Youngest signer, wartime patriot, prisoner, legislator, governor — that is a stout résumé for a man history often reduces to one trivia fact.
Related Links
- Signers of the Declaration of Independence
- Declaration of Independence
- Thomas Heyward, Jr.
- Thomas Lynch, Jr.
- Arthur Middleton