Pinckney

Charles Pinckney (October 26, 1757 – October 29, 1824) was an American politician who was a signer of the United States Constitution, the 37th Governor of South Carolina, a Senator and a member of the House of Representatives. He was first cousin once removed of fellow signer Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.

Pinckney was an ancestor of seven future South Carolina governors, a few of which have prominent South Carolinian names, including the Maybank and Rhett families.

Contents

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• 1Early life and education
• 2Marriage and family
• 3Career
• 4Legacy and honors
• 5See also
• 6References
• 7External links

Early life and education[edit]

Pinckney was born and educated in Charleston, South Carolina. His father, Colonel Charles Pinckney, was a rich lawyer and planter. On his death in 1782, he bequeathed Snee Farm, a plantation outside the city, and his numerous slaves to his eldest son Charles.

Marriage and family[edit]

Busy with the war and his political career, Pinckney did not marry until 1787. He married Mary Eleanor Laurens, daughter of Henry Laurens, the wealthy and politically powerful South Carolina merchant and slave trader. They had at least three children.

Among his in-laws were Colonel John Laurens and U.S. Representative David Ramsay; another brother-in-law married the daughter of South Carolina Governor John Rutledge

Career[edit]

Pinckney was elected to the Continental Congress (1777–78). He started to practice law in Charleston in 1779 at the age of 21. About that time, well after the War for Independence had begun, young Pinckney enlisted in the militia (though his father demonstrated ambivalence about the Revolution). He became a lieutenant, and served at the siege of Savannah (September–October 1779). When Charleston fell to the British the next year, the young Pinckney was captured and held as a prisoner until June 1781.

He was elected again to the Continental Congress following the war, serving 1784–87. He was elected to the state legislature for several terms (1779–80, 1786–89, and 1792–96). As a nationalist, he worked hard in Congress trying to ensure that the United States would receive navigation rights from Spain to the Mississippi River and to strengthen congressional power.

Pinckney's role in the Constitutional Convention is controversial. Although one of the youngest delegates, he later claimed to have been the most influential one and contended he had submitted a draft, known as the Pinckney Plan, that was the basis of the final Constitution. This was strongly disputed by James Madison and some of the other Framers.^[1] He submitted an elaborate form of the Virginia Plan, submitted by Edmund Randolph, but it was disregarded by the other delegates. Historians assess him as an important contributing delegate.^[2] Pinckney boasted that he was 24, allowing him to claim distinction as the youngest delegate, but he was 30 years old that year.^[3] He attended full-time, spoke often and effectively, and contributed immensely to the final draft and to the resolution of problems that arose during the debates. He also worked for ratification in South Carolina (1788).

At the Convention, Pierce Butler and Pinckney, both from South Carolina, introduced the Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section II, Clause III). James Wilson of Pennsylvania objected, saying that it was special protection for slaveholders, requiring all state governments to enforce it at taxpayers' expense, in places where no one or most residents did not own slaves. Butler withdrew the clause. But, the next day, a southerner reinstated the clause and the Convention adopted it without further objection. This clause was added to the clause that provided extradition for fugitives from justice.^[4]

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

This clause was first applied to fugitive slaves and required that they be extradited upon the claims of their masters. This practice was not eliminated until the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. In 1864, during the Civil War, an effort to repeal this clause of the Constitution failed.^[5]

He was also responsible for another important clause to the Constitution that later was used, along with the 1st and 14th amendments, to vacate several state constitutions' clauses requiring oaths of office holders to affirm a deity. South Carolina had established Protestantism as the state religion, so it was interesting that he introduced a clause into the Constitution article VI in opposition to an established state religion. His "no religious test" clause read as follows:

no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States

Once the inclusion of the phrase was brought to a vote it passed with little opposition and so for the first time in history an official of a national government was not required to have a religion.^[6][7] Interesting also was that the final blow to states requiring office holders to swear to God was fought in his home state of South Carolina, that had originally had an established state religion, in the 1997 South Carolina Supreme Court case of Silverman v. Campbell.

Subsequent to his importance and influence as a delegate, Pinckney's political career blossomed. From 1789 to 1792, the state legislature elected him as governor of South Carolina, and in 1790 he chaired the state constitutional convention. During this period, he became associated with the Federalist Party, in which he and his cousin Charles Cotesworth Pinckney were leaders. But, with the passage of time, the former's views began to change.

In 1795 he attacked the Federalist-backed Jay's Treaty. He increasingly began to cast his lot with Carolina back-country Democratic-Republicans against his own eastern aristocracy. The population in the western part of the state was increasing, but apportionment favored the Low Country planters. In 1796 Pinckney was elected governor again by the state legislature. In 1798 his Democratic-Republican supporters in the legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate.

He strongly opposed actions by his former party, and in the presidential election of 1800, served as Thomas Jefferson's campaign manager in South Carolina. The victorious Jefferson appointed Pinckney as Minister to Spain (1801–05). He tried but did not succeed in gaining cession by Spain of the Floridas to the United States. He facilitated Spanish acquiescence in the transfer of Louisiana from France to the United States in 1803 by the Louisiana Purchase.

In 1821, with his health beginning to fail, Pinckney retired for the last time from politics. He died in 1824, three days after his 67th birthday. He was laid to rest at St. Philip's Episcopal Churchyard in Charleston.^[8]Pinckney returned from Spain to Charleston and to leadership of the state Democratic-Republican Party. He sat in the legislature in 1805–06 and was again elected as governor (1806–08). In this position, he favored legislative reapportionment, giving better representation to back-country districts, and advocated universal white manhood suffrage. He served again in the legislature from 1810 to 1814, and then temporarily withdrew from politics. In 1818 he won election to the United States House of Representatives, where he fought against the Missouri Compromise as he was interested in having slavery be expanded to new territories and states.

Legacy and honors[edit]

• Pinckney's Snee Farm plantation is maintained as Charles Pinckney National Historic Site.
• His son, Henry L. Pinckney (September 24, 1794 – February 3, 1863) was a U.S. Representative from South Carolina, and mayor of Charleston. His daughter married Robert Young Hayne, U.S. Representative, mayor of Charleston, and governor of South Carolina.

See also[edit]

• U.S. Constitution, slavery debate in Convention

References[edit]

• United States. National Park Service. (1976), *Signers of the Constitution: historic places commemorating the signing of the Constitution (The National survey of historic sites and buildings, v. 19)*, retrieved 2007-11-03
• Marty D. Mathews, Forgotten Founder: The Life and Times of Charles Pinckney (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004).

1. Jump up^ James Madison on the Pinckney Plan, Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention, http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/farrand-the-records-of-the-federal-convention-of-1787-vol-3#lf0544-03_head_424.
2. Jump up^ MacDonald Forrest,E Pluribus Anum: The Formation of the American Republic 1776–1790(Houghton Mifflin Company:Library of Congress Catalog Card: 65-111322) 1965 pp. 166–167.
3. Jump up^ Yates Publishing. U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560–1900 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, US: The Generations Network, Inc., 2004.
4. Jump up^ Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson, p. 82, 2nd Edition, 2001.
5. Jump up^ The vote in the House was 69 for repeal and 38 against, which was short of the two-to-one vote required to amend the Constitution. See the *Congressional Globe*, 38th Cong., 1st Sess., 1325 (1864)
6. Jump up^ Drawn from original source: Charles C. Haynes (1991). "overview: history of religious liberty in America". *A Framework for Civic Education*. Council for the Advancement of Citizenship and the Center for Civic Education.
7. Jump up^ Drawn from original source: "The Individual Liberties within the Body of the Constitution: A Symposium: The No Religious Test Clause and the Constitution of Religious Liberty: A Machine That Has Gone of Itself." Case Western Reserve Law Review 37: 674–747. Dreisbach, Daniel L. 1999. "The Bill of Rights: Almost an Afterthought?". ABC-CLIO. 2011.
8. Jump up^ Charles Pinckney at Find a Grave

External links[edit]

• United States Congress. "Charles Pinckney (id: P000354)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• SCIway Biography of Charles Pinckney
• NGA Biography of Charles Pinckney
• The Plan of Charles Pinckney – Submitted as an alternative to the Virginia Plan

Categories: 

• 1757 births
• 1824 deaths
• Signers of the United States Constitution
• Governors of South Carolina
• University of South Carolina trustees
• United States Senators from South Carolina
• Members of the United States House of Representatives from South Carolina
• Ambassadors of the United States to Spain
• Pinckney family
• American proslavery activists
• Continental Congressmen from South Carolina
• 18th-century American politicians
• South Carolina militiamen in the American Revolution
• American Revolutionary War prisoners of war held by Great Britain
• South Carolina Federalists
• South Carolina Democratic-Republicans
• Democratic-Republican Party United States Senators
• Members of the Middle Temple
• 19th-century American diplomats
• Democratic-Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives
• Federalist Party state governors of the United States
• Democratic-Republican Party state governors of the United States

Charles Cotesworth "C. C." Pinckney (February 25, 1746 – August 16, 1825) was an early American statesman of South Carolina, Revolutionary War veteran, and delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He was twice nominated by the Federalist Party as its presidential candidate in 1804 and 1808, losing both elections.

• 1Early life and family
• 2Early political career
• 3Revolutionary War
• 4Constitutional Convention
• 5XYZ Affair
• 6Slavery
• 7Later political career
• 8Death and burial
• 9Memorialization
• 10References
• 11External links

Early life and family[edit]

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was born into the Pinckney family of aristocratic planters in Charleston, South Carolina, on February 25, 1746. He was the son of Charles Pinckney, who would later serve as the chief justice of the Province of South Carolina, and the celebrated planter and agriculturalist, Eliza Lucas.^[1] [indigo dye,blue jeans]He was the elder brother of Thomas Pinckney, who served as Governor of South Carolina, as a U.S. Representative, and as a George Washington administration diplomat. His first cousin once removed, Charles Pinckney, served as Governor of South Carolina, as a U.S. Senator, and as a diplomat in the administration of Thomas Jefferson.

In 1753, Pinckney's father moved the family to London, England, where he served as the colony's agent (essentially as a lobbyist to protect South Carolina's commercial and political interests). Both Charles and his brother Thomas were enrolled in the Westminster School, where they remained after the rest of the family returned to South Carolina in 1758. Both brothers also studied at Oxford University. Pinckney matriculated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1764, and left to study law at the Middle Temple in 1766. Pinckney was called to the bar in 1769, but he continued his education in France for another year, studying botany and chemistry. He also had a brief stint at the Royal Military College at Caen.

In 1773, Pinckney married Sarah Middleton, whose father Henry Middleton served as the second President of the Continental Congress and whose brother Arthur Middleton signed the Declaration of Independence. Sarah died in 1784. In 1786, he remarried to Mary Stead, who came from a wealthy family of planters in Georgia. Pinckney had three daughters.

Early political career[edit]

After returning to South Carolina from Europe, Pinckney began to practice law in Charleston. He was first elected to a seat in the colonial legislature in 1770. In 1773 he served as a regional attorney general. When war erupted between the thirteen American colonies and Great Britain in 1775, Pinckney stood with the American Patriots; in that year he was a member of the first South Carolina provincial congress, which helped South Carolina transition from being a British colony to being an independent state.^[1] During the American Revolutionary War he would serve in the lower house of the state legislature and as a member of the South Carolina Senate in addition to his military service.

Revolutionary War[edit]

After this, the British Army shifted its focus to the Northern and Mid-Atlantic states. Pinckney led his regiment north to join General Washington's troops near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Pinckney and his regiment then participated in the Battle of Brandywine and the Battle of Germantown. Around this time he first met fellow officers and future Federalist statesmen Alexander Hamilton and James McHenry.In 1775, after the American Revolutionary War had broken out, Pinckney volunteered for military service as a full-time regular officer in George Washington's Continental Army. As a senior company commander with the rank of captain, Pinckney raised and led the elite Grenadiers of the 1st South Carolina Regiment. He participated in the successful defense of Charleston in the Battle of Sullivan's Island in June 1776, when British forces under General Sir Henry Clinton staged an amphibious attack on the state capital. Later in 1776 Pinckney took command of the regiment, with the rank of colonel, a position he retained to the end of the war.

In 1778, Pinckney and his regiment, returning to the South, took part in a failed American expedition attempting to seize British East Florida. The expedition ended due to severe logistical difficulties and a British victory in the Battle of Alligator Bridge. Later that year, the British Army shifted its focus to the Southern theater, capturing Savannah, Georgia, that December. In October 1779, the Southern army of Major General Benjamin Lincoln, with Pinckney leading one of its brigades, attempted to re-take Savannah in the Siege of Savannah. This attack was disaster for the Americans, who suffered numerous casualties.

Pinckney then participated in 1780 defense of Charleston against British siege. Major General Lincoln surrendered his 5,000 men to the British on May 12, 1780, whereupon Pinckney became a prisoner of war. As a prisoner of war, he played a major role in maintaining the troops' loyalty to the Patriots' cause. During this time, he famously said, "If I had a vein that did not beat with the love of my Country, I myself would open it. If I had a drop of blood that could flow dishonorable, I myself would let it out." He was kept in close confinement until his release in 1782. In November 1783, he was commissioned a brevet Brigadier General in the Continental Army shortly before the southern regiments were disbanded.^[1] He was promoted to Major General during his subsequent service in the South Carolina militia.^[2]

Constitutional Convention[edit]

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Major_General_Charles_Cotesworth_Pinckney_%28NYPL_NYPG94-F43-419838%29.jpg)

Major General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (NYPL NYPG94-F43-419838)

Pinckney, who had returned to the lower house of the state legislature, represented South Carolina at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Pinckney advocated that African American slaves be counted as a basis of representation. According to a book review in the New York Times in January 2015:

The Northwest Ordinance of July 1787 held that slaves 'may be lawfully reclaimed' from free states and territories, and soon after, a fugitive slave clause – Article IV, Section 2 – was woven into the Constitution at the insistence of the Southern delegates, leading South Carolina’s Charles C. Pinckney to boast, 'We have obtained a right to recover our slaves in whatever part of America they may take refuge, which is a right we had not before.'^[3]

Pinckney advocated for a strong national government (albeit one with a system of checks and balances) to replace the weak one of the time. He opposed as impractical the election of representatives by popular vote. He also opposed paying senators, who, he thought, should be men of independent wealth. Pinckney played a key role in requiring treaties to be ratified by the Senate and in the compromise that resulted in the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. He also opposed placing a limitation on the size of a federal standing army.^[4]

Pinckney played a prominent role in securing the ratification of the Federal constitution in the South Carolina convention of 1788, and in framing the South Carolina Constitution in the convention of 1790. At the ratification convention, Pinckney distinguished three types of government and said republics were where "the people at large, either collectively or by representation, form the legislature". After this, he announced his retirement from politics.

XYZ Affair[edit]

Main article: XYZ Affair

In 1789, President George Washington offered Pinckney his choice of the State Department or the War Department; Pinckney declined both. When Washington offered Pinckney the role of Ambassador to France in 1796, Pinckney accepted. Relations with the French First Republic was then at a low ebb: the Jay Treaty between the US and Great Britain had angered members of the ruling French Directory, and they had ordered the French Navy to step up seizures of American merchant vessels found to be trading with Britain, with whom France was at war. When Pinckney presented his credentials in November 1796, they were refused, with the Directory stating that no ambassador could be accepted until the outstanding crisis was resolved. Pinckney was outraged by the offense.

After Pinckney reported this to the recently inaugurated President John Adams in 1797, a commission composed of Pinckney, John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry was established to treat with the French. Gerry and Marshall joined Pinckney at The Hague, and traveled to Paris in October 1797. After a cursory preliminary meeting with the new French Foreign Minister Talleyrand, the commissioners were approached informally by a series of intermediaries who spelled out French demands. These included a large loan to France, which the commissioners had been instructed to refuse, and substantial bribes for Talleyrand and members of the Directory, which the commissioners found offensive. These exchanges became the basis for what became known as the "XYZ Affair" when documents concerning them were published in 1798.

Talleyrand, who was aware of political differences in the commission (Pinckney and Marshall were Federalists who favored Britain, and Gerry wavered politically between moderate Federalism ideas and the Jeffersonian Republicans, who favored France and were strongly hostile to Britain), exploited this division in the informal discussions. Pinckney and Marshall left France in April 1798; Gerry remained behind in an unofficial capacity, seeking to moderate French demands. The breakdown of negotiations led to what became known as the undeclared Quasi-War (1798–1800), pitting the two nation's navies against each other. In July 1798 he was commissioned as a Major General in the US Army, and served until the end of the crisis between the two countries.

Slavery[edit]

According to the state library of South Carolina,

Pinckney owned slaves throughout his life and believed that slavery was necessary to the economy of South Carolina. At the Constitutional Convention, he agreed to abolish the slave trade in 1808, but opposed emancipation. In 1801, Pinckney owned about 250 slaves. When his daughter Eliza married, Pinckney gave her fifty slaves. On his death, he bequeathed his remaining slaves to his daughters and nephews.^[5]

In the South Carolina House of Representatives, on January 18, 1788, Pinckney offered several defenses for the lack of a bill of rights in the proposed U. S. Constitution. One was that bills of rights generally begin by declaring that all men are by nature born free. The reporter’s summary of his observation concluded, “Now, we should make that declaration with a very bad grace, when a large part of our property consists in men who are actually born slaves.” ^[6]

Later political career[edit]

In the 1800 presidential election, Pinckney was the Federalist candidate for vice-president, running with the incumbent president, John Adams. They were defeated by the Democratic-Republicans Thomas Jefferson (who became president) and Aaron Burr (who became vice president).

In 1804, the Federalist Party nominated Pinckney to run for the presidency against Jefferson. Jefferson, who was very popular due to the Louisiana Purchase and booming trade, defeated Pinckney in a landslide. Pinckney won 27% of the popular vote and carried only two states, Delaware and Connecticut.

In 1808 he was again the Federalist nominee for president, running against Jefferson's Secretary of State, James Madison. Pinckney did not fare much better against Madison, carrying only five states and winning 32% of the popular vote.

From 1805 until his death in 1825, Pinckney was president-general of the Society of the Cincinnati.

Pinckney was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1813.^[7]

Death and burial[edit]

Pinckney died on August 16, 1825 and was buried in St. Michael's Churchyard in Charleston, South Carolina. His tombstone reads, "One of the founders of the American Republic. In war he was a companion in arms and friend of Washington. In peace he enjoyed his unchanging confidence."^[2]

Memorialization[edit]

• Castle Pinckney in Charleston Harbor, completed about 1810, and an earlier fort on the same site, were named for Charles C. Pinckney.
• Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge, a national wildlife refuge on the site of the Pinckney family's plantation, was named for Charles C. Pinckney.
• Pinckney Elementary School in Lawrence, Kansas, is named for Charles C. Pinckney.
• A school in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, is called C. C. Pinckney Elementary.
• In 1942, during World War II, a 422-foot liberty ship was built in Wilmington, North Carolina, and named SS *Charles C. Pinckney* in his honor.
• Pinckney Street on Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts was named in his honor.
• Pinckney Street in Madison, Wisconsin, was named in his honor.
• Pinckneyville, Illinois, was named after him.
• Pinckney Highway (SC 9) in Chester, South Carolina, was named in his honor.