biography
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1739–1800)
|
| biography:
| US governor, born in Charleston, South Carolina, USA, the brother of Edward Rutledge. Educated in London, he returned to Charleston to become a brilliant lawyer. He was delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses (1774–5), returning home to join the Council of Safety, to serve as the first president of South Carolina (1776–8), and to fight in the American Revolution. As South Carolina's governor (1779–82), he re-established civil government in a state that had been torn apart by war. A defender of wealth and privilege, and of the slave trade, he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and tried to halt the adoption of direct popular election of the president and Congress. He was one of the first associate justices on the new US Supreme Court (1789–91), but stepped down to become South Carolina's chief justice (1791–5). Nominated in 1795 as chief justice of the US Supreme Court, he was rejected by the Senate because of his attacks on the recent Jay Treaty. |
|
|
