| 1 | Name: | Ralph Izard | |
| Year Elected: | |||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1/23/1742 | ||
| Death Date: | 5/30/1804 | ||
Ralph Izard (23 January 1741–30 May 1804) was a planter, diplomat, slaveholder, and politician, and a member of the American Philosophical Society via his 1768 election to the American Society. Born into the wealthy planter class of South Carolina, Izard boarded in England and then matriculated at Trinity Hall in Cambridge University, returning in 1764. His tastes were of the European aristocracy, his politics of the thrifty republican, and he nurtured both through multi-year tours in the early 1770s. His presence in London in 1774 and 1775 and his attempts to lobby Whigs into pulling Parliament’s reins yielded little, but after his move to Paris in 1776 he took a role in the United Colonies’ diplomatic efforts as the American correspondent to Tuscany (which would not receive colonial agents leaving Izard to appeal from Paris). When the French commissioners arrived, Izard and Franklin were at odds from the start; their mutual disdain grew so much so that Congress did not reappoint Izard and effectively censured the whole of the diplomatic corps for their backbiting. Izard found his South Carolina plantation in shambles on his return and determined to withdraw from political life to rehabilitate it. His retirement was short-lived, however: Izard hardly sat a month in the South Carolina House before they elected him to the Continental Congress (1782–83); after the peace voters returned him to the General Assembly and Privy Council until 1790. Elected to the new Federal government as a Senator (1789–95), he elaborated the Federalist positions he developed in the Ratification debates. Izard was a tireless defender of slavery and seemed entirely unconcerned with the manifest contradictions between human bondage and the new order for the ages, even as he pursued interests in more scientific agriculture. He died in Charleston in 1804. His son George Izard was an active APS member. (PI, ANB) | |||