Lemuel Benton

Lemuel Benton (1754 – May 18, 1818) was an 18th-century American slaveholder, planter, military officer, and politician from what is now Darlington County, South Carolina. He was born in Granville County, North Carolina, in 1754. In his youth, he moved south into the Pee Dee region of South Carolina, settling in the area that would later become Darlington County. There he engaged as a planter, acquired substantial landholdings, and became a prominent local landowner in a slave-based agricultural economy.

Benton’s public career began in the context of the American Revolutionary War. He served as a major of the Cheraw Regiment in 1777, participating in the Patriot military effort in the backcountry of South Carolina. Over the course of the conflict he advanced in responsibility and was promoted to the rank of colonel in 1781. He continued his service in the militia following the war and ultimately resigned his commission in 1794, after nearly two decades associated with the Cheraw Regiment.

Following independence, Benton emerged as an important figure in South Carolina’s local and state government. He served as a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1782 to 1788, representing the interests of his district in the formative years of the state’s post-Revolutionary political life. In 1785 and again in 1791, he held judicial responsibilities as a county court justice of Darlington County. He also occupied several key administrative posts in the Cheraw District, which at that time encompassed what are now Chesterfield, Darlington, and Marlboro Counties. In 1787 he was appointed escheator of Cheraw District, responsible for managing escheated properties, and he served as sheriff of the district in 1789 and 1791, reflecting his prominence and trust within the local community.

Benton played a direct role in the constitutional development of both the United States and South Carolina. In 1788 he was a delegate to the South Carolina state convention at Charleston that ratified the Federal Constitution, thereby participating in the decision to join the new federal union. Two years later, in 1790, he served as a delegate to the South Carolina constitutional convention at Columbia, which framed the state’s own fundamental law under the new federal system. These roles placed him among the generation of state leaders who helped shape the early constitutional order in the South.

At the national level, Benton represented South Carolina in the United States House of Representatives for three consecutive terms. He was elected as an Anti-Administration candidate to the Third Congress and then reelected as a Republican to the Fourth and Fifth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1793, to March 3, 1799. During this period, he sat in Congress as the young republic confronted issues of federal power, foreign policy, and party formation, aligning himself with the emerging Jeffersonian Republican opposition to the Federalist administration. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection to the Sixth Congress in 1798, which ended his formal federal legislative career.

After leaving Congress, Benton returned to private life in Darlington County, where he resumed his agricultural pursuits as a planter and continued to manage his estate. He remained identified with the planter class and the slaveholding society that dominated the region’s economy and politics in the early national period. He died in Darlington, Darlington County, South Carolina, on May 18, 1818. His interment took place on his estate, known as “Stony Hill,” near Darlington, where he was buried on his own land.