Commentary
Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: John Rutledge owned slaves. Moreover, during the Constitutional Convention, he informed his fellow delegates that the three southernmost states would not join the Union if the Constitution immediately abolished the slave trade.
Discerning people, however, judge whether a historical figure is great, not by the faults that figure shared with others in his generation, but by how far he or she rose above his or her peers in other ways. By that measure, John Rutledge was a great man.
Rutledge was born in or near Charles Town (now Charleston), South Carolina, in September 1739. Neither the place nor the date is certain. He was about seven years younger than George Washington and John Dickinson and 12 years older than James Madison….