Tag: Egerton Leigh

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The Tragedy of Henry Laurens

It wasn’t really their fault, they said. Slavery, men of the founding generation liked to argue, was brought to the colonies by Britain. It came via Barbados and the other sugar islands of the Caribbean. Thomas Jefferson and Henry Laurens both blamed Britain and wished the colonies could free themselves of the practice. It was […]

by Gabriel Neville
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“The Man Unmasked”:  Henry Laurens, Egerton Leigh, and the Making of a Revolutionary

Henry Laurens, one of colonial South Carolina’s wealthiest and most politically powerful planter-merchants, was a conservative by nature.[1]  When the imperial crisis began to drive Britain and its colonies apart, Laurens moved cautiously even when he disliked British policy.  When Laurens refused to join the Sons of Liberty in protest of the Stamp Act, a […]

by Aaron J. Palmer