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Charles Pinckney Biography

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PINCKNEY, Charles Cotesworth (1746-1825). An American soldier and statesman, born at Charleston, S..C., son of Charles Pinckney, Chief Justice of South Carolina. He was educated in England, at Oxford and the Middle Temple. After studying for a time at the Royal Military Academy at Caen, France, he returned to America in 1769 and began the practice of the law at Charleston. He served in the first Provincial Congress of South Carolina in 1775, was elected captain of a provincial regiment in the same year, and became colonel in September, 1776. He was afterward one of Washington's aids-de-camp, participated in the battles of Brandywine and Germantown, and, returning to the South in 1778, joined the expedition to Florida. In 1783 he was promoted to be brigadier general, but, the war being over, he returned to his practice at Charleston. He was a distinguished member of the United States Constitutional Convention in 1787, of the State Convention which ratified the Federal Constitution, and of the convention which in 1790 framed a constitution for South Carolina. Sent to France in 1796 as United States Minister, his reception was refused, and he was threatened with arrest by the Directory, which forced him to leave the country the year following; nor on his return to France as a joint commissioner with Elbridge Gerry and John Marshall was his reception more favorable. (See X. Y. Z. CORRESPONDENCE.) Talleyrand assured the commissioners that a gift of money was a necessary preliminary to the negotiations and that a refusal might bring on war. Pinckney is said to have answered: "War be it, then; millions for defense, Sir, but not one cent for tribute!" On his return to the United States a wax with France seemed imminent, and he was appointed a major general. He was the Federalist candidate for Vice President in 1800 and for President in 1804 and 1808 and was the third president general of the Society of the Cincinnati.