Dr. David Ramsay: Patriot, Revolutionary Historian, and Gun Victim

Dr. David Ramsay of Charleston was an active participant in and major early historian of the American Revolution. He also has the distinction of being the first of many American politicians to be assassinated. 

Ramsay was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1749, the son of Scottish or Scotch-Irish emigrants. He graduated from The College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1765. In 1773, he became one of the first recipients of the MD degree from the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania) in 1773. [Image: A young David Ramsay, by Charles Wilson Peale]

Ramsay moved to Charleston, South Carolina the following year, upon the recommendation of his mentor, Dr. Benjamin Rush. The city and its environs was then one of the unhealthiest and wealthiest regions of British North America, and a magnet for medical men. After a slow start, Ramsay built a lucrative medical practice. 

He soon became involved in politics. When he arrived in Charleston, conflicts between the thirteen colonies and the British government were escalating towards war. Ramsay joined with the Whigs, or Patriots, as they later called themselves. He served in the state legislature during the War for Independence.

During the British siege of Charleston in the spring of 1780, he served as an army surgeon. After the British captured the city, they sent Ramsay and other Patriot leaders to St. Augustine, Florida. He remained there nearly a year, until he was released in a prisoner exchange. 

He went to Philadelphia, where he became a member of the Continental Congress. He served in that body until 1786, after which he returned to South Carolina. During the 1790s he served several times in the state senate. His hope of becoming a United States senator was dashed when his opponent accused him of being insufficiently supportive of slavery. 

Ramsay had opposed slavery when he first came to South Carolina, but he gradually modified his views on the issue. Without specifically endorsing slavery, he helped to justify it. 

In 1780, he wrote his mentor Rush that he had concluded that God had designed blacks for labor in hot, humid, and sickly South Carolina: "Providence intended this for a Negro settlement. Their constitution is undoubtedly better suited to the climate, and all planters tell us that their lands cannot be cultivated by white men...." 

In later years Ramsay blamed the enslaved themselves for their poor health rather than their living and working conditions. They carelessly exposed themselves to dangerous miasmas, knowing that an illness would gain them some time off from work and the attentions of a medical man. Why they would look forward to time off at the price of being ill, bled, and purged, he did not say. 

Ramsay's change of views on slavery was no doubt influenced by his social, familial, and political environment. As a physician active in revolutionary politics, he became acquainted with many local planters. 

In 1787 he married Martha Laurens, daughter of slave trader, planter, and politician Henry Laurens. She was Ramsay's third wife. The first two, Sabina Ellis (1775) and Frances Witherspoon (1783), had died within a year of their weddings. It may seem that Ramsay was a bit careless with his wives, but there is no clear evidence of that. 

His marriage to Martha Laurens lasted until her death in 1811 and produced at least eleven children. Through his marriage to Martha he became related to some of the wealthiest and most powerful families in South Carolina, families with names like Rutledge, Pinckney, Middleton, and Izard. Each of them, like his father in law, owed their wealth to the labor of hundreds enslaved Africans. [Image: Henry Laurens, c.1782, painted when he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, by Lemuel Francis Abbott]

After the Declaration of Independence Laurens penned a letter to his son John then in London, later published, in which he declared his dislike of slavery and his intention to work for its abolition. But he did no such thing, and only freed one of his slaves in his will. John Laurens, however, took his fathers' words seriously and remained committed to abolition until his death in one of the last skirmishes of the War for Independence in 1782. 

After the Revolution, Ramsay wrote several medical works. They remain useful to the historian of medicine and disease, but his medical ideas were highly derivative. He became an advocate of Benjamin Rush's heroic medicine, which recommended drastic bleeding and purging for most ailments. This medical regime sent many an unfortunate to an early grave. 

On the positive side, Ramsay was an early advocate of Jenner's vaccination for smallpox, and began vaccinating early as 1802. He predicted that a general use of the technique could eliminate the dreaded scourge from the earth. He was right, although the goal was not achieved until the late 1970s. 

It is for his historical works, not his political or medical contributions, that Ramsay is best known today. He wrote some of the earliest histories of the American Revolution. In 1785 he published a detailed History of the Revolution of South Carolina. It describes many events he was witness to or a participant in.  

He followed with History of the American Revolution (1789) and History of South Carolina (1809). A History of the United States appeared in 1816-1817, shortly after his unexpected and unusual death. In these works he took an increasingly nationalist position. [Image: David Ramsay in mid-life, by Rembrandt Peale]

In 1815, Charleston's legal authorities asked Ramsay to examine William Linnen, a tailor who had tried to murder his lawyer. Ramsay reported that Linnen was deranged and dangerous, but not guilty of a crime due to his mental condition. In making this claim, Ramsay was aligning himself with medical and legal ideas that were as yet not widely accepted. 

When Linnen appeared to have regained his sanity, the authorities released him. Linnen threatened Ramsay for calling him a madman, but Ramsay did not take the threat seriously. On May 6, 1815,  Linnen approached Ramsay on Broad Street, pulled out a pistol and shot him twice.

Onlookers carried Ramsay to his home, where he died two days later, insisting to the last that Linnen was "a lunatic free from guilt." Ramsay was buried in the Charleston's Circular Congregational Church. 

Ramsay was the first American politician to be assassinated, but many more would face the same fate, as America pursued its love affair with the gun. 

Further Reading:

Arthur Shaffer, To Be an American: David Ramsay and the Making of the America Consciousness, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991. 

Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2011, 2014. 

   

Arthur Middleton: Flawed Founding Father

South Carolina's Arthur Middleton (1742-1787) is probably best known as a signer the American Declaration of Independence. Visitors to Middleton Place near Charleston may recall that he owned the rice plantation there, erected by his father Henry and famed for its landscaped gardens. 

In the 1750s, his parents sent him to England to be educated, a privilege largely restricted to the sons of wealthy planters. He did his preparatory education at two of England's most prestigious "public" schools, Harrow and Westminster. He then attended university at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and the Middle Temple in London, where he studied law. 

He returned to South Carolina in the early 1760s, and married the daughter of another wealthy planter family, Mary Izard. In 1764, Arthur's father gave him Middleton Place and moved to The Oaks, a plantation near Goose Creek where he had been born.    

In 1768, Arthur and Mary went to England and did not return until 1771. Shortly before their return, the American artist Benjamin West, who had settled in Britain, painted a family portrait of Middleton with his wife Mary Izard Middleton and their infant son Henry. Ironically, West would soon become the court painter to George III, soon to be Middleton's nemesis. [Image: Arthur Middleton, and the full family portrait]

Upon his return, Arthur emerged as one of the the most radical opponents of British colonial policies. he joined the American Whig Party, who later dubbed themselves the "Patriots." He allied with his friend and neighbor, William Henry Drayton of Drayton Hall, who had swung from being a firm supporter of the Crown to one of its most vocal opponents. 

Both men served on many of the committees the extralegal Provincial Congress of South Carolina established in 1775. They used the committees to effectively run the colony and render the royal government virtually helpless, violating many laws and personal liberties in the process. 

Through the Secret Committee, they used the Sons of Liberty to harass those believed to be loyal to the Crown or neutral. Their methods of persuasion included intimidation, illegal house searches, and for the most vocal, tarring and feathering, sometimes followed by banishment from the colony. 

In early 1776, the Provincial Congress gradually turned in favor of complete independence. By this time open war between colonists and Britain had begun in New England. The Congress elected Middleton as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. He replaced his father Henry, who was much less radical than he was. Their differences led to a serious rift in the family. 

As noted above, Arthur was among those who signed the Declaration of Independence.  A few days before that event, Patriot forces in South Carolina had repulsed a British attack on Charleston at the Battle of Sullivan's Island. It was the first major victory of the war for the Americans. 

During the next three years, the war hardly touched South Carolina. But in the late 1770s, the British adopted what they called the Southern Strategy. They captured Savannah in December 1778 and set their eyes on Charleston, then the wealthiest city in America. The city surrendered to a British and Loyalist force in May 1780. It was the worst Patriot defeat of the war, as the entire Southern Army was captured. [See The British Seize Charleston]

The surrender was also a disaster for Middleton. After landing on the Charleston peninsula, British soldiers ransacked Middleton Place, beheading many of its statues. 

Worse followed. The British arrested Middleton and about twenty others they thought were plotting further resistance. The prisoners, who included Christopher Gadsden and Edward Rutledge, were shipped to the British stronghold at St. Augustine. 

They remained in Florida until July 1781, when the British paroled them and sent them to Philadelphia. By then, the war was nearing its close. Lord Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington and a French force at Yorktown in October. 

Middleton returned to South Carolina at war's end. He died of a fever, probably malaria, at Middleton Place in January 1787 and was buried there in a tomb. [Image: Middleton's tomb at Middleton Place]

His legacy was mixed. A fervent Patriot he surely was. Yet some of the measures he supported as a member of the Secret Committee violated the very notions of liberty he espoused and he lived a life made possible by the enslavement of hundreds of his fellow beings. 

Side note: Middleton's descendants include Charles Middleton, who starred as the evil Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon films of the 1930s. I remember Ming well. I used to sit and watch the films on TV on Saturday mornings in the 1950s, absolutely fascinated!   

Further Reading:

John Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution 2 vols., Charleston, 1821. Based on documents John's father William Henry Drayton had collected prior to his death.

The Papers of Henry Laurens. 16 vols., Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1972-2003. Volumes dealing with the 1760s and 1770s.

   

William Henry Drayton: Planter, Patriot, Populist

William Henry Drayton (1742-1779) of South Carolina was one of the more controversial figures of the American Revolutionary era. He was born to wealth and privilege at Drayton Hall, a large Neo-Palladian mansion his father John had built from the profits of enslaved labor. 

Drayton Hall was the "Big House" of the family's rice plantation on the Ashley River, about 15 miles upstream from Charleston, South Carolina. [Image: Drayton Hall]

When he was 10, Drayton's parents sent him to England to be educated. Like many Carolina planters' sons, he attended Westminster School in London. He furthered his studies at Balliol College, Oxford. 

After returning home at his father's request in 1764, he was admitted to the South Carolina Bar. He married Dorothy Golightly, a wealthy heiress, the same year. [Images: William Henry Drayton X2]

When colonial opposition to British taxation strengthened in the 1760s, Drayton initially defended the British government. Elected to the colonial assembly, he supported Parliament's right to pass the Stamp Act in 1765. His stance was unpopular, He was defeated at the next election. Undeterred, in 1769 he wrote an inflammatory article opposing the Non-Importation Agreement, which called for a colonial boycott of British goods. 

Supporters of the Agreement ostracized Drayton socially and economically. He found it difficult to sell his crops. Seeking to improve his financial situation, he went to England in 1770, hoping to secure royal patronage. 

He was appointed to the South Carolina Council but the British government failed to give him what he really wanted: a lucrative royal job in South Carolina. The government gave the jobs he sought to native Britons instead.

Adding insult to injury, Colonel John Stuart, British Superintendent for Indian Affairs, prevented Drayton from concluding a fraudulent land deal with the Catawba Nation. Stuart's job was to protect the Native Americans from rapacious landgrabs and prevent war on the Southern frontier. If Drayton's scheme had been allowed, he would have effectively stolen about 150,000 acres from the Catawba. 

Frustrated by these obstacles to his ambitions, Drayton rearranged his political loyalties. The British government he had praised became his enemy. He joined the Whigs, as the future "Patriots" called themselves. 

In 1774, Drayton published A Letter from Freeman, championing American rights against "tyrannical" royal rule. The acting governor, his uncle William Bull, responded by suspending him from the Royal Council in March 1775. His popularity soared. He quickly emerged as a leader of the radical Whigs.

When the Whigs established a provisional government the same spring, Drayton was elected as a delegate to the Provincial Congress. The delegates  appointed him to the Committee of Safety and other key committees. He led extralegal raids on the Post Office, the powder magazines, and the armouries. 

Exploiting his new popularity, he encouraged followers to hound neutrals and supporters of royal government. Many of them left the colony as a result. Among them was John Stuart, whom Drayton and others accused falsely of orchestrating Indian attacks on the colony. Drayton thus avenged the loss of his lucrative land deal with the Catawba.

Drayton and his supporters also fanned fears of British-inspired slave revolts. The hysteria that followed led to the judicial murder of Thomas Jeremiah, a prosperous free black, in August. 

Using a combination of threats and deception, Drayton negotiated a truce with powerful backcountry Loyalists in September, effectively neutralizing them at a critical moment. 

He was now more popular than ever. In November, he was elected President of the Provincial Congress. He succeeded fellow planter Henry Laurens. Laurens disliked and distrusted Drayton, believing him to be a dangerous demagogue. Laurens resigned his presidency in the hope that Drayton would be moderated or curbed in that position. 

Instead, an emboldened Drayton became more extreme. He embarked on a quest to create a South Carolina navy. Having outfitted some ships, he personally commanded attacks on British naval vessels in Charleston harbor.

In February 1776, he moved that the Provincial Congress declare independence from Great Britain. Most delegates were not yet ready for that and voted against the motion. They did approve a provisional constitution in March. Drayton was elected to the new Assembly, appointed to the state council, and received the highest judicial post: Chief Justice. 

He proved neither just nor merciful. In the summer of 1776, Cherokee bands attacked backcountry settlers illegally encroaching on their traditional hunting lands. They were joined by some white Loyalists, or Tories, as the Whigs called them. 

The Cherokee uprising failed. It cost them dearly. American forces killed hundreds of them, burned more than 50 of their towns, and destroyed their crops. Many who were captured were sold into slavery in the West Indies. 

Drayton urged the most severe reprisals. Every captured Cherokee, he wrote, "should become the property of the taker." The Cherokee nation should be "extirpated" (eradicated) and their lands "become the property of the American public."

The Cherokee managed to survive as a nation, but lost a huge part of their territory in the dictated peace settlement of 1777. In the 1830s, they were forcibly expelled from the rest and removed to Oklahoma in the infamous "Trail of Tears."

It instructive to note what Chief Justice Drayton wrote about the whites who joined the Cherokee. A state court convicted them of treason and sentenced them to hang. Drayton commented that he would have hanged them without trial to save the state money. His successor as President of South Carolina, John Rutledge, pardoned them. 

In a charge to a grand jury around that time, Drayton declared that God had chosen the "American Empire" to replace Great Britain as his tool to advance the cause of liberty. The Lord had once chosen Britain, but the British had violated His intentions by "trying to enslave the American people." Apparently, God -- or Drayton -- had no concept of irony. 

In 1778 Drayton was elected President of South Carolina. He helped write a state constitution. In the same year he was elected to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. He served on scores of committees, helped forge the first constitution of the United States, the Articles of Confederation, and fervently supported the army. 

He clashed repeatedly and bitterly with other colleagues, including Henry Laurens, then serving as President of the Continental Congress. Drayton opposed attempts to reach a compromise with the British government and fought to protect "southern interests" -- a euphemism for slavery.

Drayton fell ill and died of a fever in Philadelphia in September 1779. His death is usually ascribed to typhus, but it is more likely to have been yellow fever or malaria. 

In modern political terms, Drayton was a populist like Donald Trump, that is, someone who aims to appeal to ordinary people who feel that the elites have ignored their concerns. But he was also a member of that elite, and contemptuous of the "rabble." The popularity of his ideas and methods was an unfortunate omen for the new nation. 

Further Reading: 

John Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution 2 vols., Charleston, 1821. Based on documents William Henry Drayton had collected prior to his death.

The Papers of Henry Laurens. 16 vols., Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1972-2003. Volumes dealing with the 1760s and 1770s.

Keith Krawczynski, William Henry Drayton: South Carolina Revolutionary Patriot. LSU Press, 2001.

William Dabney and Marion Dargan, William Henry Drayton and the American Revolution. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1962.

The Tower of London's Only American Prisoner: Henry Laurens

The Tower of London, originally a royal castle-palace, later a royal prison, has housed many famous prisoners in its thousand year history, including the Little Princes, Anne Boleyn and Sir Thomas More. But only one was an American: Henry Laurens, during the American War for Independence. [Image: Henry Laurens, Boston Magazine, 1784]

Laurens, who had made a fortune in the slave trade in his native Charleston, South Carolina, and owned several plantations, became a leading Patriot during the conflict between colonists and mother country. He served as President of the Continental Congress in 1777-78. Congress then named him minister to the Netherlands. He made a successful voyage there in the spring of 1780, gaining some financial assistance from the Dutch. On a second voyage that autumn, a Royal Navy frigate captured his ship at sea, along with a draft of a treaty with the Netherlands, a document that led the British government to declare war on that country. 

The British government lodged Laurens in the Tower on suspicion of treason. Laurens recorded that the guards of the Tower serenaded him with a rendition of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" when he arrived to take up residence, passing through Traitors Gate on the Thames. (below)

Laurens remained in the Tower for more than a year. During that time two artists painted his portrait, an indication that his treatment was not especially harsh. The portraits are by Lemuel Francis Abbott and John Singleton Copley.

The mildness of Laurens' treatment owed something to important British friends, notably the enormously rich Richard Oswald, a former slave trading partner. Laurens had been Charleston agent for the slave factory at Bunce (AKA, Bance) Island, Sierra Leone, in which Oswald was heavily invested. [Image: 18th century drawing of Bunce Island]

Oswald secured Laurens' release from the Tower on bail in December 1781. Not long after, the British government exchanged Laurens for Lord Cornwallis, the British general who surrendered to Washington at Yorktown in October 1781. Oswald later became chief British negotiator at the peace talks in Paris. 

After Laurens' release, the US government ordered him to join the American peace delegation of John Adams, John Jay, and Benjamin Franklin. [Image: Benjamin West, American Peace Delegation, Paris, 1782, unfinished. Laurens is in the red coat, Franklin, Adams, and Jay to his right.]

Laurens put off going to Paris for months, pleading ill health. He did not arrive until late November, the day before the preliminary treaty was to be signed. He insisted on an addition to the treaty: that the British government return all runaway slaves to their American masters. Thousands had run away to British lines. Despite the fact that the British government had promised the runaways freedom, Oswald agreed to Laurens' addition, and the clause went into the final document. 

The runaway clause proved largely unenforceable. Sir Guy Carleton, the new British Commander in America, refused to hand over thousands of them under his protection in New York. Before evacuating the city, Carleton shipped them to Nova Scotia. Some of them later went to Sierra Leone, where they established a freedmen's colony and the current capital, Freetown. [Image: Early Freetown]

After the preliminary treaty was signed, Laurens returned to Britain and served briefly as US minster to the former mother country. In 1784, he returned to South Carolina. He spent his remaining years restoring his fortune and estates. He avoided politics, dying at his favorite plantation, Mepkin in 1792, surrounded by his slaves. His body was cremated, allegedly one of the first cremations in the United States. Today, Mepkin is a Trappist monastery, Mepkin Abbey.

[Images of Mepkin, by Charles A. Fraser, early 19th century]