Arnoldus Vanderhorst (21 March 1748 – 29 January 1815) was the Federalist Governor of South Carolina from 17 December 1794 to 8 December 1796, succeeding William Moultrie and preceding Charles Pinckney.
Biography[]
Arnoldus Vanderhorst was born in Christ Church Parish, South Carolina in 1748, and he became a planter on Kiawah Island in the lowcountry. He served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, in the State House from 1776 to 1780, in the State Senate from 1780 to 1786, as Mayor of Charleston from 1785 to 1786 and 1790 to 1792, and as Governor from 1794 to 1796. He advocated for a revision of the state's brutal penal code, whose punishments were so severe that juries often acquitted defendants out of concern for how they would be punished. He died in 1815.