Patriot of Unambiguous Morality

When I was writing the latest Yankee Doodle Spies novel, The South Spy, I wondered how to handle this edition’s subject. To me, John Laurens is such a heroic figure that I was tempted to make him a major historical character. I decided against it because someone so substantive would require more than I could present in a work like this. Others, such as the legendary Francis Marion, also fell into this category. Face it, the South has plenty of colorful people in its history. So here is my humble attempt to give this impressive First Patriot his due.

John Laurens

A Charleston Heir Answers the Call  

Born October 28, 1754, into one of South Carolina’s wealthiest planter families, John Laurens grew up amid rice fields and the Atlantic slave trade that enriched his father, fellow patriot and future President of the Continental Congress, Henry Laurens. His family traced its roots to French Protestant (Huguenot) refugees who fled religious persecution in France. 

His great-grandfather, André (or Andre) Laurens, left France in the late 17th century (around the time of, or just before, the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes), settled first in New York, and later moved to Charleston, South Carolina. The family intermarried with other Huguenot refugees (such as the Grassets), and by the time of John’s father, Henry Laurens, they were well established in South Carolina society. 

Educated in Geneva and London, the younger Laurens embraced Enlightenment ideals of liberty even as revolution erupted at home. In 1776, John married Martha Manning in London while she was pregnant with their daughter, Frances. He left England in December 1776 to return to America, never to see his wife again or to meet his daughter. 

Henry Laurens

In August 1777, Laurens joined George Washington’s staff as an unpaid volunteer aide-de-camp, where he became close friends with fellow- intellect, Alexander Hamilton. In the following year of campaigning, young Laurens earned a reputation for reckless courage at Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth.

A Radical Vision for Southern Arms  

When the British turned their full weight southward, Laurens returned to defend his native state. Before leaving Philadelphia, he proposed a bold solution to the Continental Army’s manpower crisis: raise battalions of enslaved men, promise them freedom for faithful service, and strike at both the enemy and slavery. 

Rhode Island Black Continental Infantry

In response to this “Black Battalion Proposal,” Congress passed a resolution in March 1779 that encouraged South Carolina and Georgia to raise 3,000 enslaved men, promising freedom in exchange for service. Congress appointed Laurens lieutenant colonel to lead the effort, but the South Carolina legislature rejected the proposal in 1779 and again at Jacksonborough in early 1782. 

Undeterred, Laurens took to the battlefield—suffering a wound at Coosawhatchie and leading infantry in the bloodbath at Savannah—while continuing to demand freedom for Black soldiers.

Charleston Falls, a Patriot Captured  

By spring 1780, the conflict in the South had reached a crisis. British troops under Sir Henry Clinton trapped the American garrison during the Siege of Charleston. Laurens fought stubbornly alongside the defenders until the city surrendered on May 12, 1780. The British Southern Strategy was at its apogee. Captured in the war's largest American defeat, he was paroled to Pennsylvania. Rather than breaking his spirit, the fall of his hometown hardened his resolve. Upon his official exchange as a prisoner in November 1780, he immediately sought new ways to strike back. He soon found one.

Charleston Under Siege

Diplomat Across the Atlantic  

Recognizing his intellect and fiery passion, Congress appointed the 26-year-old officer as special minister to France in December 1780. Arriving in Paris in March 1781, Laurens bypassed tedious court etiquette to appeal directly to King Louis XVI and French ministers such as Comte de Vergennes. His relentless diplomacy secured vital loans, military hardware, and a critical French naval commitment. These resources made possible the strategic trap at Yorktown later that year. Mission accomplished, Laurens immediately set sail back across the Atlantic, determined not to miss the coming showdown.

French Minister Comte de Vergennes

Glory at Yorktown, Then South Again  

At the Siege of Yorktown in October 1781, Laurens charged alongside Hamilton in the dramatic nighttime bayonet assault on Redoubt Number 10. After the victory, Washington appointed Laurens to negotiate the British surrender terms—a poetic moment of justice for an officer who had endured the indignity of capture at Charleston. Yet even as the northern theater was secured, Laurens refused to rest. He raced back to South Carolina to join General Nathanael Greene, taking command of light infantry units and directing crucial intelligence operations.

Storming Redoubt Number 10

Eyes and Ears in the Lowcountry  

Throughout late 1781 and early 1782, Laurens ran a clandestine spy network in British-occupied Charleston, funneling reports on enemy troop movements, supply raids, and evacuation preparations to Greene’s headquarters. He balanced these dangerous covert duties with a final, desperate attempt to persuade the South Carolina legislature at Jacksonborough to approve his Black regiments—only to be rejected again. Though thwarted in this attempt to secure justice, Laurens remained a formidable field commander in the Lowcountry’s grinding guerrilla war.

Laurens's Scouts in South Carolina

Final Charge on the Combahee  

On August 27, 1782, while bedridden with a severe fever, Laurens learned that a British foraging force had landed along the Combahee River. Rising from his sickbed, he rode hard to join Brigadier General Mordecai Gist and volunteered to lead a small detachment to block the enemy's retreat at Tar Bluff. Marching into a British ambush, Laurens refused to retreat or wait for support. He ordered a charge and was mortally wounded, making him one of the last high-ranking casualties of the Revolutionary War. 

Mordecai Gist

Legacy of Unambiguous Morality

Though cut down before he could see the nation he fought to build reach full dawn, John Laurens left an enduring legacy as one of the American Revolution’s most fearless and uncompromising visionaries. His relentless pursuit of liberty—not just from British rule but from the bonds of human slavery—marked him as a patriot whose moral conviction matched his legendary courage. General George Washington said it best when he later lamented that Laurens’s only fault was "an intrepidity bordering on rashness," driven by the purest motives of duty and freedom.

Hero's Grave Site

Founding Fathers Part Two  - Another Palmetto Duo

Father:  Slave Trader and Political Leader

Henry Laurens was one of the wealthiest and influential of the South Carolina planter class.  Laurens became a political leader during the Revolutionary War. He also happened to be the largest slave trader in the colonies too.  In the 1750s alone, his Charleston firm oversaw the sale of more than 8,000 African slaves. When Laurens succeeded John Hancock as President of the Congress he became an important political ally of George Washington and the two maintained close correspondence throughout some of the darkest days of the war. The elder Laurens was someone who Washington could trust would work the sometimes feckless and indecisive Congress.  His support for the Indispensable Man is a little-noted but critical sidebar that led to Washington's continued leadership of a Cause often thought lost but never forsaken.

                                                                               

                                                                         Henry Laurens
                                                                

An Idealistic Son

His son John Laurens was born in Charleston on October 28, 1754. The younger Laurens traveled to London in 1771 for schooling before moving to Geneva, Switzerland, in May 1772. Laurens returned to London to study law in the Middle Temple at the Inns of Court. He returned to an America at war with its motherland and was appointed to the staff of George Washington. Laurens was perhaps the most idealistic and forward-thinking of the First Patriots. While on Washington’s staff he became very close friends with Alexander Hamilton and (along with his father in Congress) played a key role in countering a movement against the commander in chief, which included his winning a duel with one of Washington’s adversaries. He showed reckless courage at the battles of Brandywine, Germantown in which he was wounded, and Monmouth, where his horse was shot out from under him. Lafayette praised his courage and marveled that he had not fallen in the battle. Laurens was an idealist who believed that the republican principals the Americans were fighting for were hypocritical if they continued to utilize slave labor. Strongly influenced by the growing abolitionist literature that circulated in England while he was studying, Laurens encouraged those around him, including Washington, to consider freeing their slaves. The responses that Laurens received were mixed. Some, such as the Marquis de Lafayette, eventually came to the same conclusion. Others, such as Washington, remained hesitant, fearing the economic and social upheaval such a measure would cause.

                                                                                
                                                                      John Laurens

After the British shifted military operations to the South, Laurens proposed that South Carolina arm slaves and grant them freedom in return for their military service. In March 1779 Congress approved his idea and commissioned him a lieutenant colonel. Elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives, Laurens introduced his black regiment plan but met overwhelming defeat. His belief that blacks shared a similar nature with whites and could aspire to freedom in a republican society would set Laurens apart from most prominent southerners in the Revolutionary period. When the British threatened Charleston in May 1779, Laurens opposed Governor John Rutledge’s plan to surrender the city. Later that year he commanded an infantry column in the failed assault on Savannah. Laurens was captured when Charleston finally surrendered to the British in May 1780 but was soon exchanged.

Siege of Charleston

A Youthful Diplomat

Because of his integrity and devotion to duty (and his French fluency), Congress appointed Laurens special minister to France. He arrived in France in March 1781 and quickly obtained a loan from the Netherlands to buy more military supplies and French assurances of active military support. Laurens served once more under Washington at Yorktown where the young prodigy represented the American army in negotiating the British surrender.

Clandestine Warfare and an Untimely Death

Returning south (and losing a final plea for a black regiment) Laurens served under General Nathaniel Greene in the always vicious southern theater. He operated a local spy network that gathered intelligence on British activities around Charleston. To the everlasting loss of his country and his state, Laurens was killed on August 27, 1782, during a meaningless skirmish on the Combahee River.