Keitt, Laurence M.

Born: 1824-10-04 South Carolina

Died: 1864-06-04 Hanover County, Virginia

Laurence M. Keitt was an attorney, Democrat, state representative, congressman, and Confederate military officer. Born in the Orangeburg District of South Carolina, he studied classics and graduated from South Carolina College in Columbia, South Carolina in 1843. Afterwards he studied law, gaining admission to the bar in 1845. He practiced law in Orangeburg until he won election to the South Carolina General Assembly, where he served from 1848 to 1853. By 1850, he owned $2,500 in real property. In the 1852 Federal Election, voters elected him to the U.S. House of Representatives. He served in the Thirty-Third and Thirty-Fourth Congresses, from March 4, 1853 until his resignation on July 16, 1856, which he submitted for his role in the May 1856 assault upon Senator Charles Sumner. When South Carolina held a special election to fill the vacancy Keitt created with his resignation, voters reelected him to the U.S. House. He served in the Thirty-Fifth and Thirty-Six Congresses, August 6, 1856 until he retired in December 1860. He served as a delegate to South Carolina's secession convention and was a member of the Provisional Congress of the Confederacy in Montgomery, Alabama, in February 1861 and in Richmond, Virginia, in July 1861. He also raised the Twentieth South Carolina Regiment of Volunteers and was commissioned colonel of the regiment January 11, 1862. He later received promotion to brigadier general. While serving with his regiment, he was wounded in the Battle of Cold Harbor near Richmond. He died from his wounds the next day and was eventually interred in his family's cemetery near St. Matthews, South Carolina.

Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996 (Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 149, 153, 158, 161, 1317; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Orangeburg District, SC, 371; Gravestone, West End Cemetery, Saint Matthews, SC.