Rawlins Lowndes was one of the most significant and yet least remembered figures of the American founding era, a South Carolina lawyer, planter, jurist, and governor who became his state’s most forceful opponent of the U.S. Constitution during the ratification debates of 1788. He is best remembered for his prophetic warning that if the Constitution were adopted, “the sun, of the Southern States would set, never to rise again.”
Lowndes was born in 1721 on the island of St. Kitts in the British West Indies, the son of merchant Charles Lowndes and Ruth Rawlins. His father moved the family to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1730, but committed suicide in May 1736, distraught over failed investments, leaving young Rawlins as a ward of the colony’s provost marshal, Robert Hall. Under Hall’s tutelage, Lowndes mastered South Carolina’s legal system and, upon reaching the age of 21, was appointed Provost Marshal of South Carolina in 1742, following Hall’s death. He served in that office until 1754. His success as a lawyer and through profitable marriages allowed him to acquire large plantations in Colleton County and on the Ashley, Combahee, and Santee Rivers.
Elected to the Commons House of Assembly in 1749, Lowndes rose to become its Speaker in September 1763, vigorously defending the assembly’s prerogatives against royal encroachment. In 1766, he was appointed an assistant justice to the Court of Common Pleas. In one of his most celebrated acts, he declared the British Stamp Act unlawful and unenforceable, effectively voiding it in South Carolina.
Lowndes was, throughout his career, what historians call a “reluctant revolutionary.” He strongly opposed armed rebellion against Britain and preferred accommodation between the colonies and the Crown. Yet he was deeply committed to defending colonial constitutional rights through legal and legislative means, serving in South Carolina’s Provincial Congresses and its Councils of Safety alongside figures including Henry Laurens.
In March 1778, John Rutledge resigned as President of South Carolina to protest the proposed new state constitution, and the South Carolina General Assembly elected Lowndes as his successor on March 7. Among the constitutional revisions Lowndes approved on March 19, 1778 were: converting the executive title from “president” to “governor,” removing the governor’s veto power, creating a senate elected by popular vote, and disestablishing the Church of England in South Carolina. His governorship proved frustrating as he was reluctant to fully cooperate with Continental Army generals in defending the lower South, preferring to keep state resources under local control. After British forces occupied South Carolina and raided his plantations, Lowndes retired from active service in 1779.
Lowndes’s last and most historically significant public act came in January 1788, when he delivered major speeches in the South Carolina House of Representatives against ratification of the U.S. Constitution, becoming arguably the most prolific and passionate Anti-Federalist opponent in the entire South.
Lowndes zeroed in on Article VI, the Supremacy Clause, as a fatal defect. He asked: “Now, in the history of the known world, was there an instance of the rulers of a republic being allowed to go so far? Even the most arbitrary kings possessed nothing like it.” He warned that governments never remain confined to their original stated powers, citing Henry VIII’s unconstitutional proclamation powers as a cautionary historical precedent.
He attacked Congress’s power to regulate commerce “ad infinitum,” warning that once states surrendered this authority, they would be reduced to the status of corporations, paying taxes and excise, but told when they complained, “Go: you are totally incapable of managing for yourselves — mind your business.” He considered the Articles of Confederation, by contrast, “a most excellent constitution, one that had stood the test of time, and carried us through difficulties generally supposed to be insurmountable.”
The broader Anti-Federalist tradition he embodied held that free government requires strict enumeration of powers, representative accountability through short terms and rotation in office, and a Bill of Rights as a declaration of popular sovereignty. Their warnings anticipated what they saw as the dangers of a powerful Supreme Court, an executive legislating by order, and a Congress insulated from the people.
Several aspects of Lowndes’s career attracted criticism across different eras. His 1780 petition to be restored as a British subject after the British occupation destroyed his plantations was seen by contemporaries as a betrayal, particularly striking given his earlier role in revolutionary government. Despite participating in the revolutionary cause, Lowndes was a declared opponent of armed rebellion and independence from Britain throughout the 1770s. Having spent three days delivering four speeches against the Constitution in the legislature, Lowndes declined to stand for election as a delegate to the actual May 1788 ratifying convention, effectively abandoning the fight at the decisive moment, and later served as mayor of Charleston under the very Constitution he had denounced.
Lowndes died in Charleston on August 24, 1800, having lived long enough to see the Constitution he opposed become firmly established. His most direct political legacy was dynastic. His son Thomas Lowndes served in the U.S. Congress from 1801 to 1805 as a Federalist representing South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District. His son William Jones Lowndes became one of South Carolina’s most respected statesmen, serving in Congress from 1811 until his resignation in May 1822 due to failing health, having been nominated by the South Carolina legislature in 1821 as a presidential candidate for the 1824 election.
More broadly, Lowndes belongs to the Anti-Federalist tradition that, though defeated at ratification, shaped the trajectory of American constitutional thought in profound ways. Anti-Federalist pressure, including the concerns Lowndes’s ally James Lincoln raised in the South Carolina debate, helped force the Federalists to promise a Bill of Rights as a condition of ratification in several key states. The Anti-Federalist faction regrouped as the Democratic-Republican Party under Jefferson and Madison, winning in 1800 and bringing many of their localist, limited-government principles into governing practice. The compact theory of the union—the idea that states retained the sovereign right to judge constitutional violations—was the direct intellectual heir of Anti-Federalist thought, articulated by Jefferson and Madison in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.
Lowndes’s legacy is one of Anti-Federalist contrarianism that has proven prescient during a time when the federal government has grown to unprecedented heights. His warnings about unlimited commerce regulation, treaty power superseding domestic law, and executive overreach read less like 18th century polemics and more like descriptions of contemporary governance. The states he sought to protect have indeed been reduced to something like the corporations he feared, dependent on federal funding, bound by federal mandates, and largely powerless to resist consolidation. Lowndes would come in wisely in these trying times, a voice from the founding generation reminding Americans that the dangers of centralized power he identified were not hypothetical but inevitable when one looks at the Leviathan residing in Washington.
The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
Thanks for highlighting lesser-known Rawlins Lowndes. “His warnings about unlimited commerce regulation, treaty power superseding domestic law, and executive overreach read less like 18th century polemics and more like descriptions of contemporary governance. ” Amen!
Regarding “The Anti-Federalist faction regrouped as the Democratic-Republican Party under Jefferson and Madison…” They called themselves Republicans or whigs. The term “Democratic-Republican Party” was never used except for a short period after 1824 & only by newspaper writers, using it to distinguish the Jacksonian faction from the Henry Clay faction. No party ever called itself that officially. In 1828, Jacksonians Republicans officially adopted the name Democrat, and the Clay faction became National Republicans (ironically and illogically called Whigs in time).
I believe it was inevitable from the moment the last states ratified the Constitution. Even Patrick Henry shrugged.
Light-Horse Harry Lee was later a firm Federalist, but as early as 1790, wary of Hamilton’s nationalist financial schemes, he wrote his friend ,James Madison:
“How can America flourish under a system calculated only for commercial society? I had rather myself submit to all hazards of war & risk the loss of everything dear to me in life, than to live under the rule of a fixed insolent northern majority. … . Is your love for the Constitution so ardent, as to induce you to adhere to it tho it should produce ruin to your naive country [Virginia]?”
I’m not aware if Harry’s youngest son ever read those words but RE Lee may well have said them.
Speaking of secession – if the Constitution means anything it’s for what says. It says a lot. It says much about member states’s rights and obligations. It says nothing about states’s membership status, one way or the other.
This article makes you think!
A valuable summary of an important patriot’s contributions…thank you.
Wonderful essay, especially for those of us who have not deeply studied US history. I appreciate learning about Rawlins Lowndes, thank you. That said, instead of “[t]he compact theory of the union—the idea that states retained the sovereign right to judge constitutional violations,” I prefer Brion McClanahan’s characterization: “the compact fact.”
Thank you for this. Am presently reading through a Boldin and Maharry text: “Were the Anti-Federalists Right?” George Mason’s , Luther Martin’s, Cato’s and other’s views present disturbing images of what has happened to our centralized government in this day. Tenche Coxe’s works appear to be very pro-protection of the sovereignty of the states but somehow he misses the fallibility of humankind denying the weakness of what the Anti-Federalists saw.
So much of what they said and wrote was really prescient. And it displayed their depth of thinking and understanding of the fragility of individual freedom before the natural inclination of government to corruption.
Brutus in particular nailed the flawed Supreme Court for life mistake. He said the Supreme Ct could mold the country into any shape they chose. And indeed, they have ruled much of the Constitution unconstitutional. And we sheep have been trained to think they have the last word on the subject.