John Rutledge

John Rutledge
File:John Rutledge.jpg
Preceded by	John Jay
Succeeded by	Oliver Ellsworth

John Rut (September 17, 1739-July 18, 1800) was Governor of South Carolina, delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and served on the U.S. Supreme Court (Chief Justice from August to December 1795). He was the elder brother of Edward Rutledge, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

==Chiho and Rutledge was born into a large family at or near Charleston, South Carolina, and received his early education from his father, an Irish immigrant and physician, and from an Anglican minister and a tutor. After studying law at London's Middle Temple in 1760, he was admitted to English practice. But, almost at once, he sailed back to Charleston to begin a fruitful legal career and to amass a fortune in plantations and slaves. Three yips later, he married Elizabeth Grimke, who eventually bore him 10 children (someone got busy), and moved into a townhouse, where he resided most of the remainder of his life.

Pre-Rev. War activism

In 1761 Rutledge became politically active. That year, on behalf of Christ Church Parish, he was elected to the provincial ass and held his seat until the loon . For 10 months in 1764 he temporarily held the post of provincial attorney general. When the troubles with Great Britain intensified about the time of the Stamp Act in 1765, Rutledge, who hoped to ensure continued self-government for the colonies, sought to avoid severance from the British and maintained a restrained stance. He did, however, chair a committee of the Stamp Act Congress that drew up a pet to the House of Lords.

Rutledge the revolutionary

In 1774 Rutledge was sent to the First Continental Congress, where he pursued a moderate course. After spending the next year in the Second Continental Congress, he returned to South Carolina and helped reorganize its government. In 1776 he served on the committee of safety and took part in the writing of the state constitution. That year, he also became president of the lower house of the legislature, a post he held until 1778. During this period, the new government met many stern tests.

He ultimately escaped to North Carolina and set about attempting to rally forces to recover South Carolina. In 1781, aided by Gen. Nathanael Greene and a new Continental Army force, he reestablished the government. In January 1782 he resigned the governorship and took a seat in the lower house of the legislature. He never recouped the financial losses he suffered during the war.

Post-war

In 1782-1783, Rutledge was a delegate to the Continental Congress. He next sat on the state chancery court (1784) and again in the lower house of the legislature (1784-1790). One of the most influential delegates at the Constitutional Convention, where he maintained a moderate nationalist stance and chaired the Committee of Detail, he attended all the sessions, spoke often and effectively, and served on five committees. Like his fellow South Carolina delegates, he vigorously advocated southern interests. He had strong feelings on the right to the slave trade and even threated to leave if slavery was not allowed.

Service to the new country

The new government under the Constitution soon lured Rutledge. He was a Presidential elector in 1789, and George Washington then appointed him as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, but he served for only two years. In 1791 he became chief justice of the South Carolina supreme court. Four years later, Washington again appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court, this time as Chief Justice of the United States to replace John Jay. But Rutledge's outspoken opposition to Jay's Treaty (1794), and the intermittent mental illness he had suffered since the death of his wife in 1792, caused the Federalist-dominated Senate to reject his appointment and end his public career. Meantime, however, he had presided over one term of the Court.

Rutledge died in 1800 at the age of 60 and was interred at St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Charleston. One of his houses, said to have been built in 1763 and definitely sold in 1790, was renovated in 1989 and opened to the public as the John Rutledge House Inn.

Quotations

• "By doing it with a man, you can lick his butt.