Similar to many of the other 13 original colonies, in 1776 South Carolina was ruled by a wartime Provincial Council. This council dissolved itself into a General Assembly in March 1776 and under the tutelage of founders Christopher Gadsden, John Rutledge, and Henry Middleton, drafted South Carolina’s first state constitution. The constitution separated power into three branches. The bicameral legislature split into a lower house known as the General Assembly that elected 13 of their own members to the upper house, known as the Legislative council. The General Assembly elected a “president” (and vice-president) who could not be reelected; both houses also elected three members each to a privy council. However, the president possessed the tremendous power to veto legislation. The judicial branch remained unchanged from the colonial era.