American statesman, born at Drayton Hall, on Ashley River, SC, in September 1742. He was educated in England, at Westminster School and Balliol College, Oxford, and, after his return to the United States, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and became an active writer on political topics. He opposed the patriotic associations in the colonies, and in 1771 received from the king the appointment of privy councilor for the province of South Carolina. As the revolutionary crisis approached, however, his sentiments changed, and he was suspended from his offices under the crown. In 1775 he became a member of the Council of Safety, of which he was soon after made president; was president of the Provisional Congress in 1775; privy councilor and chief justice of the state; and in 1778 was elected a delegate to the Continental Congress, of which he continued to be a member till his death. He left a record of the events of the Revolution, which was published in 1821, under the title of Memoirs of the American Revolution. He died in Philadelphia on the 3rd of September 1779.
