Arthur Middleton

Arthur Middleton was born in 1742 near Charleston, educated in England, and inherited Middleton Place, a great plantation on the Ashley River. He was a determined patriot in the provincial congress, sat in the Continental Congress, and signed the Declaration of Independence. In 1780, after the fall of Charleston, he was captured and imprisoned at St. Augustine with Edward Rutledge and Thomas Heyward Jr. His plantation suffered during the war. After his exchange he served in the state legislature. Middleton was a major slaveholder, and the wealth that gave him leisure for politics was built on enslaved labor. He died in 1787, at forty-four. The three South Carolina signers who went to St. Augustine shared a common cost; they also shared a common stake in a social order that the Declaration's language would, in time, call into question.

See also: Signers of the Declaration · Edward Rutledge · Thomas Heyward Jr. · Thomas Lynch Jr.