Charles Cotesworth Pinckney

Charles Cotesworth (C.C.) Pinckney (February 5, 1746 – August 16, 1825), was an early American statesman and a signer of the U.S. Constitution.

Early life and career

Pinckney was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the son of Charles Pinckney (and second cousin to Governor Charles Pinckney by his second wife, the celebrated planter, Eliza Lucas). When a child he was sent to England, like his brother Thomas after him, to be educated. Both of them were at Westminster and Oxford and were called to the bar, and for a time they studied in France at the Royal Military College at Caen.

South Carolina

Returning to America in 1769, C. C. Pinckney began the practice of law at Charleston, and soon became deputy attorney general of the province. He was a member of the first South Carolina provincial congress in 1775, served as colonel in the South Carolina militia in 1776–1777, was chosen president of the South Carolina Senate in 1779, took part in the Georgia expedition and the attack on Savannah in the same year, was captured at the fall of Charleston in 1780 and was kept in close confinement until 1782, when he was exchanged. In 1783, he was commissioned a brevet Brigadier General in the Continental Army.

After the War

After the war, Pinckney resumed his legal practice and the management of estates in the Charleston area but found time to continue his public service, which during the war had included tours in the lower house of the state legislature (1778 and 1782) and the senate (1779) (taken from the National Archives).

The Constitutional Convention

He was an influential member of the constitutional convention of 1787, advocating the counting of all slaves as a basis of representation and opposing the abolition of the slave trade, he also advocated a strong national government to replace the current weak one. He opposed as impracticable the election of representatives by popular vote, and also opposed the payment of senators, who, he thought, should be men of wealth. Subsequently, Pinckney bore a prominent part in securing the ratification of the Federal constitution in the South Carolina convention called for that purpose in 1788 and in framing the South Carolina State Constitution in the convention of 1790.

XYZ Affair

Main article: XYZ Affair

After the organization of the Federal government, President Washington offered him at different times appointments as associate justice of the Supreme Court (1791), Secretary of War (1795) and Secretary of State (1795), each of which he declined; but in 1796 he succeeded James Monroe as minister to France. The Directory refused to receive him, and he retired to the Netherlands, but in the next year, Elbridge Gerry and John Marshall having been appointed to act with him, he again repaired to Paris, where he is said to have made the famous reply to a veiled demand for a loan (in reality for a gift), "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute" Another version is, "No, not a sixpence." The mission accomplished nothing, and Pinckney and Marshall left France in disgust, Gerry remaining. When the correspondence of the commissioners was sent to the United States Congress the letters X, Y and Z, were inserted in place of the names of the French agents with whom the commission treated; hence the X Y Z Correspondence, famous in American history.

Presidential politics

In 1800, he was the Federalist candidate for vice-president, and for president in 1804 and again in 1808, receiving 14 electoral votes in the former and 47 in the later year. From 1805 until his death, he was president-general of the Society of the Cincinnati. Pinckney died on August 16, 1825 and was buried in St. Michael's Churchyard in Charleston, S.C.

Memorialization

Castle Pinckney, a fort in Charleston Harbor, was completed in 1797 and named for Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.
Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge, a national wildlife refuge on the site of the Pinckney family's plantation is named after Charles Cotesworth Pinckney .

References

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