9-19-2025 10:50pm

CONSTITUTION CHARLIE

Beth Callahan Editor

Charles Pinckney in Gilbert Stuart Portrait circa 1786 via https://www.nps.gov/

September 17-23 is Constitution Week, every year. This year marks the 237th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution in June, 1788. Story courtesy of Louise Hunt, Regent Turtle Creek Chapter, NSDAR

WARREN COUNTY, OH -- Charles Pinckney was a plantation owner, lawyer, military leader and statesman. He was a principal author and signer of the United States Constitution. A native of South Carolina, Charles Pinckney fought in the Revolutionary War and was captured while defending Charleston. Handsome, vain, and ambitious, Pinckney lied about his age to fellow delegates at the Constitutional Convention; anxious to be the youngest delegate, the thirty-year-old Pinckney said that he was twenty-four.

Pinckney included Article 6 in the Constitution, which established the separation of church and state. As a South Carolina delegate to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia, he submitted a detailed plan of government, which contained several provisions that were incorporated into the new Constitution. He believed in a strong central government. Pinckney possibly had as large a share in determining the style, form and content of the document as any other individual. In fact, his nickname was “Constitution Charlie.” Pinckney went on to become a political leader in South Carolina for over 40 years, serving three terms as governor.

Charles Pinckney was a plantation owner with 250 slaves, and he believed that slavery was necessary for the Union. Reflecting his southern background, he bitterly assailed the proposed restrictions on slavery contained in the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Pinckney began his political career as a Federalist but transferred his allegiance to the Jeffersonian Republican Party in 1791. His fidelity to his party was rewarded by appointment as U.S. Minister to Spain (1801-1805). He won Spain’s reluctant consent to Napoleon’s sale of Louisiana to the United States.

In 1788, he represented Christ Church Parish as a member of the state’s convention to ratify the Constitution. That same year, on April 27, he married Mary Eleanor Laurens, daughter of Henry and Eleanor Ball Laurens. Henry Laurens, who had served as president of the Second Continental Congress, was a wealthy Charleston merchant and one of South Carolina’s leading citizens. Like his older cousins, General C.C. Pinckney and Thomas Pinckney, Charles had married into a family of wealth, position and influence. Mary’s wealth, combined with his own fortune, aided Pinckney’s public service career, and lifestyle.