A Founding Family the Pinckneys of South Carolina Book Reviews

Marty D. Matthews. Forgotten Founder: The Life and Times of Charles Pinckney. Columbia: University of Southward Carolina Press, 2004. 19 + 186 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-57003-547-0.

Reviewed by Jennifer L. Goloboy (Contained Scholar)
Published on H-SC (April, 2007)

Evolution of a Republican

South Carolina historian Mark Kaplanoff wrote that it would exist incommunicable to write a biography of Charles Pinckney, because in that location were too few sources surviving (p. 19). Given the few personal documents available, Marty D. Matthews has done an beauteous job of fleshing out Pinckney's career, political opinions, and personality. His biography is a welcome addition to the political history of Southward Carolina in the post-Revolutionary era. It could be paired with George Rogers's classic biography of William Loughton Smith, equally The Evolution of a Republican.

Charles Pinckney's resume is then striking that the lack of a previous biography is surprising. A member of the state legislature in colonial South Carolina when he was only twenty-i, Pinckney went on to serve in the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. Dorsum in South Carolina, he was the president of the land constitutional convention, and was elected governor for multiple terms. He served equally a U.S. senator from South Carolina and minister to Spain. After a term in the state legislature, he concluded his political career equally a U.South. Representative.

In an era when the blatant pursuit of political ability was anathema, Pinckney was generally seen as pushy, self-centered, and dangerously ambitious. Matthews argues that this was an unfair characterization, traceable to James Madison. Withal, Pinckney accumulated enemies wherever he went, including well-nigh of his political contacts, the Charles Cotesworth Pinckney side of his family, and the human being who managed his estate while he served as ambassador to Espana. Despite his political successes, few men were willing to speak well of him publicly. Every bit we know from Jack Greene'due south cursory biography of Landon Carter, a homo does not take to have been pleasant visitor to be a worthwhile subject of biography; I frequently felt that if Matthews had been less eager to defend his subject, it would have improved his book.

Matthews too fails to demonstrate that Pinckney was a major contributor to the political idea of his day. Though Pinckney ofttimes articulated useful and important ideas, Matthews is unable to demonstrate that anyone adopted his proposals. Neither does Pinckney seem to accept been an original political thinker.

Charles Pinckney'due south primary gifts lay in an area that the early on republic figures idea it did non need--he was a talented political organizer. An ardent Republican, he was able to help evangelize S Carolina for Jefferson, even though most people believed that native son and Charles Pinckney cousin Charles Cotesworth Pinckney would undoubtedly carry the state. Equally he told Jefferson with characteristic modesty, "Nearly of our friends … believe that my exertions and influence attributable to the data of federal [i.e., Federalist] affairs I gave them, has in not bad measure contributed to the decision and [been] indispensable to your success" (p. 104). His relatives never forgave him for working for a Republican victory, just Jefferson rewarded him with the ministry to Spain. Unfortunately, Pinckney retained his skill at annoying his colleagues. Pinckney's secretarial assistant soon complained that Pinckney had abased him, without paying his salary, to take a recreational trip to Italy.

Why was this unlikable human being then proficient at getting out the vote? One reason was that Pinckney understood how to appeal to the yeoman farmer. As Matthews writes, "In 1790, different almost any other politician in South Carolina, Pinckney foresaw what the adjacent few years would bring in the land and on the national scene. Unlike his lowcountry family and friends, he recognized the economic and political potential that existed in the backcountry" (p. 70). Pinckney supported the needs of backcountry farmers, such equally trade and education, early recognizing that the ability center of South Carolina was drifting westward.

A 2d reason was that Pinckney skillfully used the power of the press. He was close to many newspaper publishers and editors. In his later years, Pinckney regularly met with Peter Freneau, printer of the Urban center Gazette, and Ebenezer Thomas, who was the editor of the paper (p. 125). His son, Henry Laurens Pinckney, became editor of the pro-slavery Charleston Mercury (p. 129). Pinckney recognized, and historian Jeffrey Pasley has demonstrated, that the press was primal to political power in the Early Republic. During the election of 1800, Pinckney wrote, collected, and distributed pamphlets to local and national Republican figures. Matthews's biography is thus an intriguing window into an understudied political world, showing how politics operated on the footing in post-Revolutionary South Carolina.

Matthews's biography is also valuable because Pinckney was involved in South Carolina'south response to the Haitian Revolution, and especially in the suppression of a supposed "French-instigated invasion of the state by blackness troops from the West Indies" in 1798. (p. 92) Pinckney responded equally if invasion was imminent, by investing money in the defense of the state (including ?two,000 for powder), and by forming alliances with the governors of N Carolina and Georgia, which garnered approving comments in the City Gazette (p. 93). As far as I know, this incident has gone well-nigh completely unnoticed in South Carolina history. Given the contempo fence over the true character of the Kingdom of denmark Vesey rebellion, attention to this earlier racially charged incident seems very worthwhile.

Despite Mark Kaplanoff's fears, Marty Matthews has admirably succeeded in reconstructing the life of the forgotten founder, Charles Pinckney. Matthews'south biography is most interesting as a history of the rise of Republicanism. His volume is worth reading for people interested in the political history of S Carolina in the early commonwealth.

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Citation: Jennifer L. Goloboy. Review of Matthews, Marty D., Forgotten Founder: The Life and Times of Charles Pinckney. H-SC, H-Internet Reviews. April, 2007.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13079

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