10 Facts
Charles Cotesworth PinckneyCharles Cotesworth Pinckney is one of South Carolina’s most significant and historic figures. Born into a prominent family, Pinckney served the Patriot cause as a legislator and military officer. After the war, Pinckney shaped the US Constitution and became one of our nation’s Founding Fathers.
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was born into one of the most prominent families.
The Pinckneys—Charles, his brother Thomas and Cousin Charles Pinckney represent one of the most important families of the founding period. No other founding family contributed three, such significant leaders, active in so many different areas of nation-building.
He received an excellent and varied education in Europe and America.
Pinckney joined the 1st Regiment of South Carolina Militia before the Revolutionary War.
Pinckney served the Patriot cause as both a legislator and military officer during the Revolutionary War.
In 1776, Colonel Pinckney volunteered for military service as a full-time regular officer in the Continental Army. Pinckney set out to join Washington near Philadelphia. He arrived in 1777, just in time to participate in the important military operations centered around Brandywine and Germantown. Pinckney’s sojourn on Washington’s staff was especially significant to his development as a national leader after the war. It allowed him to associate with key officers of the Continental Army, men like Alexander Hamilton and James McHenry, who, beginning as military comrades, would become important political allies in the later fight for a strong national government.
In 1778 Pinckney returned to South Carolina to resume command of his own regiment just as the state experienced a new threat from the British. Major General Benjamin Lincoln, commander of the Southern Department, placed Pinckney in command of one of his Continental brigades. Pinckney participated in the unsuccessful assault on Savannah by the Americans and their French allies in October 1779, and then in a gallant but equally unsuccessful defense of Charleston in 1780.
Charles Cotesworth Pickney became a prisoner of war in May 1780.
Pinckney was one of the ranking officers in a prison camp established at Shell Hall, a home owned by his cousin Charles Pinckney on Haddrell’s Point in Charleston Harbor. There he played a key role in frustrating British efforts to subvert the loyalty of the captured troops, who suffered terribly from disease and privation. Pinckney was exchanged in Philadelphia in 1782.
Pinckney faced many personal and economic challenges after the war.
Once again he became active in the state militia, rising to the rank of major general. During these years he also endured personal tragedy: his wife Sarah died in 1784, and he was wounded the following year in a duel with Daniel Huger, an event that would later lead him to advocate laws against dueling.
Pinckney played a central role in shaping the United States Constitution.
He defended the interests of southern slaveholding planters and argued for the retention of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. He exerted influence in such matters as the power of the Senate to ratify treaties. He joined the other Southern delegates and voted for the Constitution only after a compromise that protected the institution of slavery was inserted into the document. Returning home, he worked diligently to secure South Carolina’s ratification of the new Constitution. In 1790 he participated in a convention that drafted a new South Carolina Constitution.
Pinckney saw the irony between the pursuit of American freedom and the practice of slavery, but continued to own slaves himself.
Pinckney also commented on the irony and duality of American freedom and American slavery when he said, “Bills of rights generally begin with declaring that all men are by nature born free. 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.”
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.
Pinckney was the US Minister to France during the period leading to the Quasi-War.
The next year, President John Adams appointed Pinckney to a commission to negotiate a treaty with the French government. The French Revolutionary government demanded a bribe before agreeing to open negotiations about French interference with American shipping. Pinckney refused, broke off all discussion and returned home. This episode of Franco-American hostility, became known as the XYZ Affair and led to the Quasi-War with France.
Pinckney remained active in public affairs until his death in 1825.
For the rest of his life, Pinckney engaged in legal practice, served at times in the legislature, and engaged in civic and philanthropic activities in Charleston. From 1805 until his death in 1825, Pinckney was president-general of the Society of the Cincinnati, an organization of former officers of the War for Independence. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1789 and a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1813. Pinckney died on August 16, 1825, and was buried in St. Michael’s churchyard in Charleston, South Carolina.
His tomb bears an inscription that captures the essence of his loyalty to the highest national aspirations and standards of his period: “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.