Lawrence, Henry

Henry Lawrence was born in 1724 into a family of Huguenots John (d. 1747) and Esther Graciet Lawrence, who emigrated from France to the British colony of South Carolina several years before his birth, fleeing the religious wars that began after the edict of Fontainebleau . Lawrence Sr. worked as a saddler in Charlestown and found his son, through his connections, working in a place called counting house - a modern counterpart to bookkeeping.

In 1744, Henry Lawrence received a similar position in London and used the trip there to increase his knowledge of trading. In 1747, he returned to his homeland after three years of absence and took up the export-import trading business, including trading in slaves. Lawrence made a lot of money from the slave trade and was one of the co-owners of Bunce Island off the coast of Sierra Leone in West Africa, a slave trade center, creating a real slave trading company with an “office” in his native Charleston. When the first ship with the slaves reached Charleston, Lawrence filed a newspaper announcement about this, arranged an auction to sell them and took 10% of each transaction. Lawrence sold slaves mainly to rice plantations, and for the money earned from their sale, in the end, he himself could become a rice planter.

He married on June 25, 1750, Eleanor Bell, who, like him, came from a family of wealthy rice planters. They had 12 children, 8 of whom died in infancy. The remaining four were:

• John Lawrence (1754-1782) - named after his grandfather, died during the War of Independence;
• Marta Lawrence Ramsay, a doctor and historian, married South Carolina MP Donald Ramsay;
• Henry Jr., a member of Congress who married the daughter of John Rutledge Elsa and inherited the estate of Henry Lawrence;
• Mary Lawrence, who married Continental Congressman Charles Pinckney and died after giving birth to the last of their children.

Eleanor died in 1770, because of which he for some time even moved away from public life.

Lawrence took his two sons to the UK to educate them, and encouraged his eldest son, John Lawrence, to practice law. Young Lawrence returned to the United States in 1776 when the War of Independence began.

Lawrence served in the militia, like most able-bodied men at that time. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the campaign against the Cherokee Indians in 1757-1761.

In 1757, he was first elected to the colonial assembly. Lawrence was elected there every year, with the exception of one year, until the revolution replaced the assembly with a state convention as an interim government. The only missed year was 1773 when he was in England to organize the future education of his sons. He was nominated to the Colony Council in 1764 and 1768, but both times refused. In 1772, he joined the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia and actively corresponded with its other members.

When the American revolution was approaching, Lawrence was initially inclined to remain faithful to the British crown. But as soon as living conditions worsened, he came to the full support of the American position. When Carolina began creating her revolutionary government, Lawrence was elected to the provincial congress, which met for the first time on January 9, 1775. He was president of the security committee and chairman of this congress from June 1775 to March 1776. When a completely independent government was formed in South Carolina, he served as vice president of South Carolina from March 1776 to June 27, 1777.

Henry Lawrence first became a delegate to the Continental Congress on January 10, 1777. He worked in Congress from now until 1780. Moreover, he was president of the Continental Congress from November 1, 1777 to December 9, 1778.

In the fall of 1779, Congress appointed Lawrence his ambassador to the Netherlands. At the beginning of 1780, he took this position and held successful negotiations with the Dutch, aimed at supporting the United States in the War of Independence. But during his second voyage to Amsterdam, in the fall, the British fleet intercepted his ship, the Mercury mail ship, off the coast of Newfoundland. Although his documents were thrown into the water, the British still got them, and this opened to them a draft of a possible US-Dutch treaty prepared by William Lee. This forced England to declare war on Holland, known as the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War .

Lawrence was accused of high treason, taken to England and imprisoned in Taeur (he was the only American to visit this tower as a prisoner). His imprisonment triggered massive American protests. During the War of Independence, most of the captured were considered prisoners of war, and although the conditions of their detention were often terrifying, the exchange of prisoners and allowing prisoners to correspond was common practice. During imprisonment, Lawrence was assisted by Richard Oswald, his former business partner and de facto owner of Bunce Island . Oswald on behalf of Lawrence petitioned the British government. Finally, on December 31, 1781, he was released and exchanged for General Lord Cornwallis , after which he completed his journey to Amsterdam. He helped raise funds for fighting Americans.

During one of the last battles in the War of Independence, in 1782, Lawrence's eldest son, John, was killed. He supported the idea of ​​the liberation of slaves and their involvement in hostilities in order to win freedom for themselves with their help. After the war, Henry Lawrence freed all his slaves.

In 1783, Lawrence was sent to Paris as one of the commissioners for peace negotiations, which eventually led to the conclusion of the Paris Peace Treaty. Before he signed the main treaty, he played an important role in reaching agreements on secondary issues related to the Netherlands and Spain. Richard Oswald, Lawrence's former slave trade partner, was Britain's top diplomat during the Paris peace talks.

Lawrence completely left public life in 1784. He was invited to return to the Continental Congress, the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, and to the state assembly, but he refused all these posts. However, he participated in the 1788 Convention, where he voted to ratify the United States Constitution.

The British occupying forces from Charleston burned his house in Mepkin during the war. When Lawrence and his family returned to America in 1784, they lived in the outbuilding, while the house itself was rebuilt. He lived there until the end of his life, working to return the approximately 40,000 pounds that the revolution cost him (this is approximately $ 3.5 million in terms of 2000 prices).

Henry Lawrence died on December 8, 1792 in his estate, Mepkin, and in his will wrote that he wanted to be cremated, and the ashes would be buried in his estate. He was reportedly the first person cremated in the United States. Subsequently, his estate was owned by several different families. Most of its buildings still exist today and are used today as the abbey of the Trappists .