smiling bandit, do you know of any biographies of Rutledge that you’d recommend?
Ooooh… hard to get. Not, not really for him, specifically.
Another interesting fact is that Rutledge and Adams and Franklin (I think) met with the British to try for a last-minute settlement, an effort which failed.
What I love is how surprised Thomson sounds, even though he was there. And his surprise feels right, even though he was there. I think the film manages to convey the sheer enormity of what these fellows did.
I think that your point on Rutledge is straight on. The DVD release of 1776 restores a substantial amount of Rutledge’s dialogue, thereby adding to his character layers of depth that are sadly missing in the expurgated version. While his first remark on the subject – “In South Carolina black slavery is our peculiar institution and cherished way of life” – seems to paint him as little more than an unenlightened bigot, his subsequent (restored) exchanges with Adams reveal him as an early “states’ rights” proponent. What motivates his initial opposition to the independence debate is a fervent desire to avoid exchanging one tyranny (the Crown of England) for another (the rule of South Carolina by its neighboring “states”). If you listen to the lyrics of Molasses to Rum to Slaves and the dialogue leading up to it, Rutledge’s temper explodes not when slavery itself it criticized, but when Adams and his supporters try to take the moral high ground on the issue. The song doesn’t glorify slavery one iota, in fact Mr. Rutledge is
fully aware of its grim realities and paints an accurate picture of the horrors of the transport industry. It is the self-righteousness of the northerners who benefit financially from slavery but wag their fingers at the southern slave owners that causes Rutledge and his fellow delegates to march out in protest.
Are you sure of that? I’m pretty sure that he co-owned, for some time after the war, along with Charles Pinckney, a 5.720 acre plantation with 230 slaves. And, of course, his brother John owned slaves throughout his life and passed them down to his son.
Co-owned is probably the reason. George Washington freed all the slaves on Mt. Vernon that he owned, but those that belonged to his wife had to be freed by her and she didn’t (in spite of his request for her to do so in his last will and testament) even though many were immediate family members (spouses, parents, children, etc.) of the ones manumitted.
That’s possible. I’m trying to find evidence that Ed. Rutledge did free any slaves, and if so, why. So far, I’m just finding the comment that he did as throwaway lines on the web, without sourcing. Of course, it doesn’t help that he’s overshadowed by his brother, or that his nephew was also named Edward.