Elijah Malcomb (second from right) played John Laurens in the 2021 national tour of “Hamilton.” (Photo courtesy of Joan Marcus)
It was great to see John Laurens on the Peace Center stage in Greenville the other day.
For a man who’s been dead for 243 years, he looked terrific.
Laurens, a South Carolina hero of the Revolutionary War, occupies an important place as a character in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s blockbuster musical “Hamilton.”
I’m not sure, however, that the real-life Laurens occupies a prominent place in the hearts of South Carolinians. He’s often been relegated to a “footnote” in the revolution, his biographer says.
And that’s a shame. The man was extraordinary.
Laurens, born in Charleston in 1754, was a lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army and aide-de-camp (a special assistant) to Gen. George Washington.
Washington said of Laurens, “No man possessed more of the amor patria (love of country). In a word, he had not a fault.”
Washington trusted him to the extent that he appointed Laurens as the American commissioner for drafting formal terms of the British surrender following the decisive battle of Yorktown.
Laurens was recklessly brave in battle.
After the Battle of Brandywine, the Marquis de Lafayette quipped about Laurens, “It was not his fault that he was not killed or wounded. He did everything that was necessary to procure one or t’other.”
Fierce abolitionist
Perhaps most impressively, Laurens was also a fierce abolitionist in fiercely slaveholding South Carolina.
In “Hamilton,” Laurens (played by Nathan Haydel, 22), raps on stage: “But we’ll never be truly free/Until those in bondage have the same rights as you and me.”
That closely follows the real-life Laurens’ own words: “We Americans at least in the Southern colonies, cannot contend with a good grace, for liberty, until we shall have enfranchised our slaves.”
Laurens spoke out against slavery 80 years before the Civil War when 60% of the population in South Carolina were enslaved people of color. That jumped to 90% in some parts of the Lowcountry, according to historian Robert Allison.
Lauren’s own father, Henry Laurens, was a slaveholder and a partner in the largest slave-trading establishment in North America.
In 1779, John Laurens gained approval from the Continental Congress for his plan to recruit a brigade of 3,000 South Carolina slaves by promising them freedom in return for fighting. However, South Carolina’s conservative leaders rejected the plan.
Elected to the S.C. House of Representatives, Laurens tried three more times to put his plan into action, but it was overwhelmingly opposed by state leaders.
It took uncommon guts, in other words, for John Laurens to openly advocate for freedom for Blacks rather than merely acquiescing to colonial popular opinion in South Carolina.
What could have been
“John Laurens was the most militant opponent of slavery in this band of brothers (the other revolutionaries),” Miranda said in his book “Hamilton: The Revolution.”
Some argue that Laurens was the most forward-thinking and modern of the revolutionaries and founding fathers — a group, of course, that includes Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Madison and the rest.
“Laurens speaks more clearly to us today than other men of the American Revolution whose names are far more familiar,” his biographer Gregory D. Massey wrote in 2003.
“Laurens believed Blacks shared a similar nature with whites, which included a natural right to liberty. To that extent, at least, his beliefs make him our contemporary, a man worthy of more attention than the footnote he has been in most accounts of the American Revolution.”
A “footnote” indeed: There’s not one statue of Laurens in the entire state of South Carolina.
Laurens merits only a passing reference in Walter Edgar’s authoritative “South Carolina: A History.”
If Laurens is only an asterisk in accounts of the revolution, it’s probably because he had the misfortune to be killed at the age of just 27, before he had the opportunity to obtain the higher office for which he seemed destined, much like his good friend Hamilton.
On Aug. 27, 1782, Laurens was shot from his saddle during the Battle of the Combahee River in South Carolina. He was one of the last casualties of the Revolutionary War.
“To me, his death is the greatest ‘What-If’ in American history,” Miranda wrote. “A voice for emancipation from a surviving Revolutionary War veteran and a favorite of Washington: We’ll never know what could have been.”
I think Miranda decided to include Laurens in his Pulitzer Prize-winning musical for the same reason that he wrote about Hamilton: He believed that Laurens, like Hamilton, had been neglected by history.
Hamilton and Laurens were also the best of friends. Some speculate they were lovers. They wrote affectionate letters to each other at a time when it was not uncommon for men to express such sentiments.
It’s true, of course, that Laurens County and the city of Laurens in the Upstate bear his family’s name. There are streets named after Laurens and his father in Charleston, Greenville, Aiken, and Beaufort.
But I hope that John Laurens will earn a prominent spot in South Carolina’s 2026 celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War. We need to do far more to honor this South Carolina hero.
The musical “Hamilton,” by the way, continues at the Peace Center through Feb. 16.
At a time of chaos and deep division in contemporary Washington, “Hamilton” reaffirms fundamental American values to a throbbing beat of rap and hip-hop.
Spending time with revolutionaries like Hamilton and Laurens offers a gale-force breath of patriotism and inspiration.