Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
Charles Cotesworth (C.C.) Pinckney (
February 5,
1746-
August 16,
1825), was an American
statesman born in
Charleston, South Carolina, the son of
Charles Pinckney (and second cousin to
Governor Charles Pinckney who was also active in politics), by his second wife, the celebrated girl 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.
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. 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 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.
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
Holland, 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 defence, 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.
In 1800 he was the
Federalist candidate for vice-president, and in
1804 and again in
1808 for president, receiving 14 electoral votes in the former and 47 in the latter year. From
1805 until his death he was president-general of the
Society of the Cincinnati.
Adapted from 1911 encyclopedia