Background
John Laurens was born at Charleston, South Carolina, the son of Henry Laurens and Eleanor Ball.
John Laurens was born at Charleston, South Carolina, the son of Henry Laurens and Eleanor Ball.
He studied under several tutors in Charleston and under the Rev. Richard Clarke, of Islington, London, then attended school at Geneva, Switzerland.
On September 16, 1772, he was admitted to the Middle Temple (London), where he began the study of law. Desiring to take part in the Revolution, Laurens returned to America in 1777 and joined Washington's staff as a volunteer aide. Congress later commissioned him lieutenant-colonel. He fought at Brandywine and Monmouth and was wounded at Germantown. In addition to active service Washington frequently detached him for secret missions.
At Valley Forge he kept his father, then president of Congress, informed of the movements of the conspirators involved in the Conway Cabal. He helped to soothe D'Estaing in 1778 when the latter was piqued by Maj. -Gen. John Sullivan. Angered by the "constant personal abuse" of Washington by Maj. -Gen. Charles Lee, he challenged and wounded Lee in a duel fought December 23, 1778.
He was elected to the South Carolina Assembly (1779) but withdrew to resume soldiering when Prevost invaded the state, first under Brig. -Gen. William Moultrie, then under Maj. -Gen. Benjamin Lincoln. With the capitulation of Charleston (1780) he became a prisoner. Paroled and exchanged, he was commissioned by Congress envoy extraordinary to France (December 1780) at the age of twenty-six. He was not intended to supersede Benjamin Franklin, minister to France, but it was thought that a soldier "could speak knowingly of the State of the Army" and obtain much-needed money and supplies from the French government.
Arriving in Paris in March 1781, he at once began negotiating with the Comte de Vergennes, minister of foreign affairs. Making no headway, he presented a memorial to Louis XVI at a reception and was soon able to forward to America four transports, three of which arrived safely, loaded with money and military supplies. He then left France, as Franklin wrote, "thoroughly possess'd of my Esteem, " though the good doctor added, with justice, that Laurens "brusqu'd the Ministers too much".
In Philadelphia Laurens reported to Congress, then rejoined the army. He stormed a British redoubt at Yorktown, and with Viscount de Noailles, negotiated the terms of capitulation, a pleasant duty inasmuch as Cornwallis was constable of the Tower of London, where the elder Laurens lay confined. Turning homeward, he sat in the Jacksonborough legislature of January 1782, but his "intrepidity bordering upon rashness, " which Washington noted, soon manifested itself, and he recklessly engaged in the irregular warfare that still persisted in South Carolina. There he fell, on a field so unimportant and nameless that Maj. -Gen. Nathanael Greene wrote mournfully: "The love of military glory made him seek it upon occasions unworthy of his rank".
In October 1776 Laurens married Martha, daughter of William Manning of London, a friend of his father. She died at Lille, France, in 1781.