Laurens, Henry (1724-1792)

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Henry Laurens (1724-1792)

Merchant, planter, and statesman

Early Career. Henry Laurens’s forebears were Huguenots, Protestants who fled France after the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685. Henry’s grandfather Andre Laurens left earlier, in 1682, and eventually made his way to America, settling first in New York City and then Charleston, South Carolina. Andre’s son John married Hester (or Esther) Grasset, also a Huguenot refugee. Henry was their third child and eldest son. John Laurens became a saddler, and his business eventually grew to be the largest of its kind in the colonies. In 1744 he sent Henry to London to augment the young man’s business training. John Laurens died in 1747, bequeathing twenty-three-year-old Henry a considerable estate. In July 1750 Henry married Eleanor Ball; they eventually had at least a dozen children, but only four survived into adulthood. Laurens became a partner of Charleston merchant George Austin and for the next several decades developed a reputation for scrupulous honesty, industry, and business sagacity. Most of his firm’s trade was with England, but it also dealt with firms in Glasgow, Rotterdam, Oporto, Lisbon, Madrid, and the West Indies. The firm’s most common—and most profitable—transaction was exchanging rice for slaves. Because the slave trade was considered risky, it paid a 10 percent commission versus only 5 percent for other goods. Laurens later lamented that abandoning the trade cost him “many Thousands of pounds.” In 1762 he continued the firm alone, and it was among Charleston’s leading establishments when Laurens withdrew from active participation in 1764.

Planter and Politician. Planters were the most respected men in the Southern social hierarchy. Like many of his cohorts, Laurens aspired to owning plantations rather than simply being a merchant. After 1764 he began acquiring and managing a collection of rice and indigo plantations. These eventually included a three-thousand-acre estate near Charleston called Mepkin, two others called Mt. Tacitus and Wambaw, and several plantations on the Georgia coast. In total, Laurens acquired some twenty thousand acres. At the outbreak of the Revolution his plantations were becoming profitable, and he was one of the province’s wealthiest men. Laurens was reputed to be a humane creditor and slaveholder. In 1757 he was elected to the South Carolina assembly and was regularly reelected to that post until the Revolution.

Revolutionary Statesman. Laurens participated in the events of the Revolution from an early date. He generally took a middle course, fearing the colonial mob element but also resenting the new regulations imposed by what he regarded as a corrupt British administration. In 1764 he refused a seat in the provincial council as a protest against the inclusion of royal placemen. Laurens supported South Carolina’s nonimportation agreements of 1769 and published several pamphlets decrying parliamentary measures. Extremely sensitive to slights, he became involved in several duels, once even challenging a vice-admiralty court judge when Laurens’s ships were seized on suspicion of smuggling. His wife, Eleanor, died in 1770, and the following year Laurens went to London to supervise the education of their sons, John and Henry. He became so disturbed by the corruption of the English ruling classes that he transferred his sons to schools in Geneva, Switzerland. While in England he joined a group of thirty-eight Americans who petitioned Parliament not to pass the Boston Port Bill, a measure designed to punish the town by closing its harbor following the Boston Tea Party. Various business opportunities were offered to him in England, but Laurens opted to return to America, stating that although he was “resolved still to labor for peace,” he was “determined in the last event to stand or fall with my country.” Shortly after returning to Charleston in December 1774, Laurens was elected to the new Congress of South Carolina. He became president of that body and of the Council of Safety. In February 1776 Laurens helped draft South Carolina’s temporary constitution. In January 1777 he was elected to the Continental Congress and participated in several committees, becoming president of Congress when John Hancock resigned later that year. Laurens was intolerant of what he considered the corrupt practices of some congressional delegates. In December 1778 he resigned in protest and was succeeded by John Jay. Laurens remained in Congress through most of 1779, when he called for an investigation of Robert Morris, the acting banker and financier of Congress.

Diplomatic Missions. In 1779 Congress sent Laurens to negotiate a treaty with the Dutch. He left Philadelphia in August 1780 and was captured by the British off of Newfoundland. Laurens threw his papers overboard, but the British succeeded in fishing out a draft of the treaty. They charged Laurens with high treason and took him to England, where he was confined in the Tower of London from October 1780 until December 1781. Although the fiftysix-year-old Laurens was ill, the English officials gave him no medical attention. They charged him for all of his upkeep at the tower, even including the salaries of his warders (a common practice at the time). Laurens was placed in solitary confinement and was not allowed writing materials. Even so, he frequently managed to smuggle out letters to the American press. Laurens resisted the efforts of his British friends to bring him to their side, but at the same time he felt neglected by Congress. While in the tower he wrote two petitions to the English authorities that were considered too submissive by some Americans back home, including James Madison, who called for an annulment of Laurens’s diplomatic commission. Benjamin Franklin and the British statesman Edmund Burke fought to secure his release, and in December 1781 Laurens was freed in exchange for Gen. Charles Cornwallis, who had surrendered to George Washington at York-town, Virginia. In November 1782 Laurens received instructions from Congress to join Franklin, Jay, and John Adams in Paris to negotiate a peace treaty with the British. Laurens was also acting as an unofficial minister to England, so he was not present when the final peace treaty was signed on 3 September 1783.

Later Years. Henry Laurens arrived back in New York in 1784, four years after leaving the United States. He reached Charleston in early 1785 and retired to his plantation Mepkin for the remaining seven years of his life. The war had cost him dearly: he estimated his losses at around 40,000 guineas. His time in the Tower of London ruined his health, and he remained a semi-invalid the rest of his life. Ill and saddened by the death of his son John, who was killed in action in August 1782, Laurens refused all political posts offered to him. He was elected a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 but declined to go. In his will he stipulated that his body be cremated, an unusual practice at the time. His wishes were carried out upon his death in 1792.