Charles Pinckney

Biographical Information

Ancestry:

Charles Pinckney's ancestors arrived to America from England in 1692. Pinckney's great-grandfather, a wealthy English gentleman, quickly established an enduring base of political and economic power.

Parents:

Pinckney's father, Colonel Charles Pinckney was a rich planter and lawyer. He was a prominent South Carolina politician. He married Frances Brewton, the sister of Miles Brewton, a wealthy Charleston merchant and slave trader. During the United States Revolutionary War, Colonel Pinckney fled Charleston with South Carolina Governor John Rutledge, before the surrender of the city to the British. Rutledge intended to carry on a state government in exile in North Carolina. Colonel Pinckney however returned to Charleston and swore loyalty to the British authority, which allowed him to keep his property. This was unpopular among the revolutionary forces, and in February 1782, the South Carolina legislature voted a 12% amercement of Colonel Pinckney's property to punish his switch of allegiance. On his death in 1782, he left his Snee Farm and other property to Charles Pinckney, his oldest surviving son.

Education:

Unlike his famous cousins-and fellow Patriots-Charles Cotesworth and Thomas Pinckney, Charles Pinckney was not educated abroad. Instead, his parents arranged for his private tutoring under the direction of a noted South Carolina scholar and author, Dr. David Oliphant. Oliphant was among those Enlightenment scholars who were successfully teaching their students a political philosophy that viewed government as a solemn social contract between the people and their sovereign, with each possessing certain inalienable rights that government was obliged to protect. If government failed to fulfill the contract, the people had a right to form a new government.

Career:

At the age of twenty-seven, Mr. Pinckney was elected a member of the State legislature, which place he held until the year 1787, when he was unanimously elected by that body one of the delegates to the federal convention which met at Philadelphia to frame the present constitution. When the British Army was attacking the colonies in 1778, Charles Pinckney wasted no time and joined the military. In 1779 he accepted election as a lieutenant in the Charleston Regiment of South Carolina's militia and quickly learned the responsibilities that went with serving as a citizen-soldier. After the war, he became a representative for the state of South Carolina in 1784, which he remained for three years. After the constitution, Charles Pinckney became the governor of South Carolina. In 1801, he resigned his current position, and became an ambassador to Spain, where he helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase. In 1806, he came back and became the governor of South Carolina for a fourth term.

Marriage:

He married Mary Eleanor Laurens in 1788, daughter of a wealthy and politically powerful South Carolina merchant.

Religion:

Charles Pinckney was a Catholic Christian.

Death:

In 1821, Pinckney's health beginning to fail, he retired for the last time from politics. He died in 1824, just 3 days after his 67th birthday. He was laid to rest in Charleston at St. Philip's Episcopal Churchyard.

Controversy:

Charles Pinckney was considered brash, arrogant, and vain. He had all the characteristics that a person such as Madison would dislike. When Pinckney submitted his plan to the Convention, Madison's notes on his speech are uncharacteristically brief. Pinckney ensured that copies of his proposed plan were published decades after the Convention, but after Pinckney's death, Madison disparaged Pinckney's version of events, tainting his name. Pinckney himself made things worse, when it was discovered that his version of events, purported to have been written at the time of the Convention, were actually written just before publication. It seemed as though Pinckney was taking credit for work not his own.

Pinckney was saved, though, in the early 1900's, when the papers of fellow delegate James Wilson were examined and found to contain notes from Pinckney's Plan. Upon examination, it was clear that a great deal of what Pinckney proposed eventually appeared in some form or another in the final Constitution.

Constitutional