Edward Langworthy

Background

Edward Langworthy was born in or near Savannah, Georgia. About all that is known of his own early life is that, left an orphan, he was placed in Whitefield's Bethesda Orphan House.

Education

He received his early education at Savannah.

Career

In January 1771 Langworthy was placed in charge of a school "for Academical Learning" just established in connection with the orphanage.

Langworthy's first appearance upon the political stage was as one of the signers of the Loyalist protest against the Savannah resolutions of August 10, 1774 (Georgia Gazette, Sept. 7, 1774). A year later, however, he had so completely reversed his position that he was chosen secretary to the council of safety and served the succeeding Revolutionary bodies, provincial congress, council of safety, and convention, in the same capacity.

In June 1777 he was chosen as a delegate to the Continental Congress and took his seat November 17, following. He was reëlected February 26, 1778. As a member of Congress he played, with one or two exceptions, no conspicuous part. His party affiliations were nevertheless early established. He stood firmly with the friends of Washington, and it was in defense of the commander-in-chief that he obtained his most conspicuous record in the Journals of Congress.

When on the night of April 10, 1778, in order to prevent the adoption of obnoxious passages in a proposed letter to General Washington, Thomas Burke of North Carolina resolved to break the quorum by leaving the floor, Langworthy followed him from the hall. The obdurate Burke refused to obey the order of Congress to return, but Langworthy did obey and offered a limping explanation of his course.

He took his position with the pro-Deane party in Congress, his close association with that group continuing after his retirement, and he stood with the majority of the Southern delegates in opposing the inclusion of the right to the Newfoundland fisheries as an ultimatum in the peace negotiations. His votes on this question in particular roused Henry Laurens, who was in the opposite camp, to point out, in April 1779 that the term for which Langworthy was elected had expired February 26. This event ended his service in Congress.

While he waited in Philadelphia, hoping to receive a new appointment, there appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette articles signed "Americanus" criticizing Congress, or a faction therein, particularly for its course in the matter of the fisheries and the peace ultimata, and Langworthy was pointed to as the possible author of some of them. He probably was, and he may have been the author of other pseudonymous articles of the time.

On January 25, 1785, he joined William Goddard in issuing the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, but severed his connections with the paper at the end of one year. It was at this time that he came into possession of the papers of Gen. Charles Lee, recently deceased, selections of which, with a sketch of Lee's life, he published under the title, Memoirs of the Life of the Late Charles Lee (London, 1792). From 1787 to 1791 he was principal and teacher of classics in the Baltimore Academy. From 1791 to 1794 he resided at Elkton, Maryland, engaged in the preparation of a history of Georgia; but the work was never published, and the manuscript has been lost. After the death of a second wife in 1794, he obtained a clerkship in the customs office in Baltimore which he held until his death.

Achievements

• Langworthy was known as a delegate to the Continental Congress from Georgia. He had also the distinction of being one of the three Georgia delegates who signed the Articles of Confederation.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Life and Memoirs of the Late Major General Lee: Second in Command to General Washington During the American Revolution, to Which Are Added His ... Characters Both in Europe and Am

    (This work has been selected by scholars as being cultural...)

  • Anecdotes of the late Charles Lee, esq. ...: second in command in the service of the United States of America, during the revolution : to which are ... from many distinguished characters in Europ

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

Connections

Langworthy was married to the sister of Ambrose Wright. The couple had four children.