page_title: Charles Pinckney (governor)
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Pinckney (governor) / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: The grave of Charles Pinckney in St. Philip's Episcopal Church Cemetery in Charleston, South Carolina.
context_page_description: Charles Pinckney was an American planter and politician who was a signer of the United States Constitution. He was elected and served as the 37th Governor of South Carolina, later serving two more non-consecutive terms. He also served as a US Senator and a member of the House of Representatives. He was first cousin once removed of fellow signer Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.
  Pinckney's descendants included seven future South Carolina governors, including men related to the Maybank and Rhett families.
context_section_description: He was elected as a delegate to the Third Continental Congress (1777–78).  He started to practice law in Charleston in 1779 at the age of 21.  About that time, well after the War for Independence had begun, young Pinckney enlisted in the militia.  He became a lieutenant, and served at the siege of Savannah (September–October 1779). When Charleston fell to the British the next year, the young Pinckney was captured; he was held as a prisoner until June 1781 and sent north for a potential exchange. He did not return to Charleston until 1783.  
  (His father was also captured. Along with more than 160 men, Colonel Pinckney agreed to sign an oath of allegiance to the British, in order to avoid having his property confiscated and destroyed. After the war, Pinckney was fined 12% on his property for having sworn a Loyalist allegiance.) 
  Pinckney was elected again to the Continental Congress following the war, serving 1784–87.  He was elected to the state legislature for several terms (1779–80, 1786–1789, and 1792–1796). As a nationalist, he worked hard in Congress trying to ensure that the United States would receive navigation rights from Spain to the Mississippi River and to strengthen congressional power.
  Pinckney eventually owned several plantations and a townhouse in Charleston in addition to Snee Farm: Frankville and Hopton, situated on both sides of the Congaree River, five miles from Columbia; a plantation in Georgetown consisting of 560 acres of tidal swamp and 600 acres of high land; a tract of 1200 acres called Lynches Creek; Fee Farm on the Ashepoo River; Shell Hall, a house with four acres of land at Haddrell's Point in Christ Church Parish; a house and garden lot on Meeting Street, Charleston; Wright's Savannah plantation on the Carolina side of the Savannah River; and a tract of land on the Santee River above the canal, including a ferry, called Mount Tacitus. After Pinckney married Eleanor Laurens in 1788, the elegant three-storied brick home at 16 Meeting Street in Charleston presumably became his principal residence. In the 1790 federal census, he is recorded as holding "14 
  slaves in St. Philip's and St. Michael's Parish, 52 slaves in St. Bartholomew, and 45 slaves in the Orangeburg District", all in addition to Snee Farm, where his father's probate record had listed 40 slaves in 1787.
  Pinckney's role in the Constitutional Convention is controversial. Although one of the youngest delegates, he later claimed to have been the most influential one and contended he had submitted a draft, known as the Pinckney Plan, that was the basis of the final Constitution. This was strongly disputed by James Madison and some of the other framers. 
  Pinckney submitted an elaborate form of the Virginia Plan, proposed first by Edmund Randolph, but it was disregarded by the other delegates. Historians assess him as an important contributing delegate. Pinckney boasted that he was 24, allowing him to claim distinction as the youngest delegate, but he was 29 years old at the time of the convention.  He attended full-time, spoke often and effectively, and contributed to the final draft and to resolution of problems that arose during the debates.  He also worked for ratification of the constitution in South Carolina (1788).
  At the Convention, Pierce Butler and Pinckney, both from South Carolina, introduced the Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section II, Clause III).  James Wilson of Pennsylvania objected, saying that it was special protection for slaveholders, requiring all state governments to enforce it at taxpayers' expense, in places where no one or most residents did not own slaves. Butler withdrew the clause.  But, the next day, a southerner reinstated the clause and the Convention adopted it without further objection.  This clause was added to the clause that provided extradition for fugitives from justice.
  No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on 
caption: Pinckney's grave at St. Philip's in Charleston
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