page_title: Peter Manigault
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Peter Manigault / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: "Mr. Peter Manigault and Friends." Folk art depicting Peter Manigault and his friends drinking around Manigault's table.
context_page_description: Peter Manigault was a Charleston, South Carolina attorney, plantation owner, slave owner and colonial legislator. He was the wealthiest man in the British North American colonies at the time of his death and owned hundreds of slaves. He was the son-in-law of Joseph Wragg, the largest slave trader of North America in the 1730s.
context_section_description: He returned to South Carolina in 1754, where he practiced law, became a successful merchant and banker, and managed his family's extensive plantation holdings, that included hundreds of slaves. By 1774 Manigault was the wealthiest person in the British North American colonies, with his net worth of approximately £33,000 in 1770 equal to approximately $4 million in 2016.
  Manigault served in the South Carolina House of Commons in 1755, and again from 1766 to 1773.  From 1765 to 1772 he was Speaker of the House.  He actively opposed the British Stamp Act of 1765, and was identified with what became known as the Patriot cause.
caption: Mr. Peter Manigault and Friends. Folk art depicting Manigault and his friends drinking around his table, c. 1760.
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