pinckney

Charles Pinckney (October 26, 1757 - October 29, 1824). Pinckney was raised and educated in a prosperous, prominent family in Charles Town (Charleston), South Carolina. When the Revolution came, he joined the state militia, and saw action against the British. Captured, imprisoned, and later paroled, he emerged after the war as a wealthy, slaveowning planter. He served in the South Carolina legislature, and was sent to the post-war Continental Congress, where he opposed plans t bargain away American rights to navigate the Mississippi River.

Pinckney's concern that the new United States could not negotiate vigorously over commercial matters with foreign powers made him a supporter of plans to strengthen the Articles of Confederation. Pinckney helped draft plans to revise the Articles (by giving the Confederation government power to regulate commerce, raise revenues, and adjudicate court cases concerning national issues), but when the Constitutional Convention was called, Pinckney went as one of the strongest supporters of creating a more powerful national government.. Pinckney submitted an extended plan for revisions of the Articles (similar to Madison's suggestions, but whereas Madison's became the "Virginia Resolutions" and the starting point for debate at Philadelphia, Pinckney's plan was not debated on the floor of the convention and no text of the plan now exists). Pinckney spoke frequently during the Convention. He favored a "high-toned" or aristocratic government (such as existed in South Carolina) as well as one in which the central government had power to control the separate states (a position he shared with Madison). At the same time, he was a vigorous defender of slavery, and believed that slaves should be fully counted in the basis for representation in any legislative bodies in which the number of delegates assigned a state depended on population. In South Carolina, Pinckney championed ratification.

In the new republic, Pinckney served four times as governor of South Carolina, and as a member of the United States House of Representatives. Initially a supporter of the Washington administration, he moved toward the Jeffersonian opposition. In 1820, during the debate over the admission of Missouri as a slave state, Pinckney again gained national attention as one of two members of Congress who had been at the Constitutional Convention and who could apparently speak authoritatively about the original intent of the framers in regard to slavery.

Sources: there is no full-length biography of Pinckney. The best introduction to his role in the convention is chapter 7 (pp. 64-74) of Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier, The Constitutional Convention of 1787 (N.Y., 1986).