Edward Rutledge (23 November 1749 – 23 January 1800) was Governor of South Carolina from 18 December 1798 to 23 January 1800, succeeding Charles Pinckney and preceding John Drayton. He was the youngest signatory of the US Declaration of Independence in 1776.
Biography[]
Edward Rutledge was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1749, the brother of Governor John Rutledge. In 1772, he was admitted to the English bar and returned to Charleston to practice law, and he had a successful law practice with his partner, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. During the American Revolutionary War, the Rutledge brothers were appointed as South Carolina's delegates to the Continental Congress, and, at age 26, Edward Rutledge was the youngest signatory of the US Declaration of Independence in 1776. He returned home in November 1776 to take a seat in the General Assembly, and he served as an artillery captain in the South Carolina militia. In 1780, he was captured at the Siege of Charleston, but he was released during a prisoner exchange in July 1781. He served in the General Assembly until 1796, and he advocated for the confiscation of loyalist property, and, although he was a member of the Federalist Party, he opposed its pro-British stance. Rutledge was soon alienated by both the Anglophilia of the Federalists and the Francophilia of the Democratic-Republican Party, and he died of apoplexy in 1800 before he could finish his term, and his death was rumored to be caused by his hearing the news of George Washington's death.