charles c. pinckney
minister to france
biography
Charles C. Pinckney was born on February 25, 1746 in Charleston South Carolina, and educated at the University of Oxford. He became prominent as an advocate of American independence and participated in several battles of the American Revolution, rising to the rank of brigadier general in the Continental army. In 1787, he was a delegate to the Federal Constitutional Convention, and in 1788, he was influential in securing ratification of the U.S. Constitution in South Carolina. He was appointed minister to France in 1796, and the French government refused to see him officially, so he left.
Pinckney held high office in the provincial congress. As an aide to General Washington hin the war, he was present at the battles of Brandywine and Germantown, commanding a regiment in the Florida campaign and at the siege of Savannah. He was taken prisoner in the fall of Charleston and was held in confinement for two years, exchanged in 1872, and made a brevet brigadier general in 1783.
Pinckney was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and took prominent part in its deliberations; he opposed any religious test for holding office, insisted that senators should serve without pay, and urged that slaves be counted equally with whites in determining representation. As a member of the state convention which ratified the Constitution, he was influential in bringing about acceptance of the new form of government.
Declining offers of high position, Pinckney was finally persuaded by George Washington to accept the appointment of minister plenipotentiary to France in 1796. When the Directory refused to recognize his official status, and threatened to arrest him as a spy, he left France.
Pinckney returned the following year with the American statesmen Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts and John Marshall of Virginia. They were approached by three French emissaries, who offered to begin negotiations between France and the United States in return for a loan to their government. Interpreting this as a demand for a bribe, the Americans refused and in their report to Congress, compromising the correspondence that had passed between them and the French envoys, the commissioners substituted the letters "X", "Y", and "Z" for the names of the Frenchmen, and hence it became known as the XYZ affair.
He was later an unsuccessful Federalist candidate for vice-president in 1800 and for president in 1804 and 1808. Charles Pinckney died in Charleston on August 16, 1825
