William Pinkney

“ I nominate James Monroe, now minister plenipotentiary of the United States at the Court of London, and William Pinkney, of Maryland, to be commissioners plenipotentiary and extraordinary for settling all matters of difference between the United States and the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland relative to wrongs committed between the parties on the high seas or other waters, and for establishing the principles of navigation and commerce between them. ”

“ By 1805, however, the jealousy of British shipowners had been aroused and the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, applied to American vessels what was known as the “Rule of 1756.” This prevented a neutral from enjoying, in time of war, trading privileges not allowed in time of peace. British men-of-war, therefore, began to seize American ships, and the old impressment abuses were increased. Meanwhile, Jay’s Treaty expired, and a new treaty, signed by Monroe and William Pinkney, a brilliant Maryland lawyer and orator, was not honorable to us and was not even laid before the Senate. ”

“ Nearly forty years later a similar reply to a challenge was sent by a later Senator from Massachusetts, Henry Wilson, and in both cases the resolute character of the men was so well known that no one dared to taunt the writer with cowardice.
While upon the subject of physical courage I am tempted to transcribe from Mr. Harvey’s interesting volume an anecdote in which the famous lawyer, William Pinkney, is prominently mentioned. In answer to the question whether he ever carried pistols, Mr. Webster answered:
“No, I never did. I always trusted to my strong arm, and I do not believe in pistols. ”

“ Madison. I ought to apologize for leading you into error. I still do believe that you were originally intended for London. A good Federalist is to succeed Monroe, and has been privately written to by the President without the knowledge of any of his Cabinet; they appeared astonished when he mentioned what he had done." The good Federalist thus put over Smith's head was William Pinkney, a prominent lawyer of Smith's city of Baltimore. ”

“ PINKNEY, WILLIAM (1764–1822) , American lawyer- and statesman, was born in Annapolis, Maryland, on the 17th of March 1764. He was admitted to the bar in 1786, and in 1788–1792 practised in Harford county. In 1788 he was a member of the state convention which ratified the Federal constitution for Maryland, in 1788–1792 and in 1795 of the House of Delegates (where in 1788 and 1789 he defended the right of slave-owners to manumit their slaves) , and in 1792–1795 of the state executive council. ”

“ Pinckney, C. C., his treaty with Spain, 38; candidate for President, ii. 285. Pinkney, William, author of the Baltimore “Memorial,” i. 144; appointed to aid Monroe in London, 152, 165, 169; ii. 354; arrives in London, i. 400; sole minister in London, ii. 162; remonstrates against the tax on American cotton, 322; his reply to Canning, 338; publication of Canning’s personal letter to, 419. Pitt, William, Prime Minister of England, his measures in 1804 and 1805 for restricting American commerce, i. 44, 45; his coalition with Austria and Russia, 73; Burr expects support from, 235, 238 ”

“ Pinkney is indeed a wonderful man, and one of those beings whom the lover of human nature feels a delight in contemplating. His mind is of the very first order; quick, expanded, fervid, and powerful. The hearer is at a loss which most to admire, the vigour of his judgment, the fertility of his invention, the strength of his memory, or the power of his imagination. ”

“ On the driest, most abstract, and uninteresting questions of law, when no mind can anticipate such an occurrence, he occasionally blazes forth in all the enchanting exuberance of a chastened, but rich [360] and vivid imagination, and paints in a manner as classical as it is splendid, and as polished as it is brilliant. In the higher grades of eloquence, where the passions and feelings of our nature are roused to action, or lulled to tranquillity, Mr. Pinkney is still the great magician, whose power is resistless, and whose touch is fascination. ”

“ I never saw a man run faster. Returning, I saw Joshua Gorsuch coming, and Pinckney behind him. I reminded him that he would like "to take hold of a nigger," told him that now was his "chance," and struck him a blow on the side of the head, which stopped him. Pinckney came up behind, and gave him a blow which brought him to the ground; as the others passed, they gave him a kick or jumped upon him, until the blood oozed out at his ears.
Nicholas Hutchings, and Nathan Nelson of Baltimore County, Maryland, could outrun any men I ever saw. They and Kline were not brave, like the Gorsuches. ”

“ Pinkney was told that the Regent was desirous of cultivating a good understanding with the United States; that he had given a proof of it in the appointment of a minister as soon as his acceptance of the Regency enabled him to appoint one; that the Orders in Council would have been repealed, but that his Royal Highness never could or would surrender the maritime rights of his country. Mr. Pinkney then made some profession of his personal sentiments, to which he was answered: ‘Sir, I cannot look into men’s minds; I can only judge of men’s motives by their conduct.’ And then the audience ended. ”

“ Pinkney’s abilities were great. In the skirmish of words in which Canning delighted, Pinkney excelled; and in his later career at the bar, of which [Pg 338] he was the most brilliant leader, and in the Senate, where he was heard with bated breath, he showed more than once a readiness to overbear opposition by methods too nearly resembling those of Canning; but as a diplomatist he contented himself with preserving the decorous courtesy which Canning lacked. He answered the explanatory letter of September 23 with so much skill and force that Canning was obliged to rejoin ”

“ When they camped, that night, Pinky loved him like a brother, and was considering not stopping at Blewett Pass, to see his gold-mine and Dolores the lady-wife, but going clear on to Seattle with his playmate.
The drafted host lay awake, and when Pinky awoke and delivered a few well-chosen words on the subject of bird-song at dawn, Milt burst out:
"Pinky, I don't like to do it, but—— I've never refused a fellow a lift, but I'm afraid you'll have to hike on by yourself, the rest of the way."
Pinky sat up in his blankets. "Afraid of me, eh? You better be! I'm a bad actor. ”

“ The whites, at this time, were coming from all quarters, and Kline was enrolling them as fast as they came. Their numbers alarmed Pinckney, and I told him to go and sit down; but he said, "No, I will go down stairs."
I told him, if he attempted it, I should be compelled to blow out his brains. "Don't believe that any living man can take you," I said. "Don't give up to any slaveholder."
To Abraham Johnson, who was near me, I then turned. He declared he was not afraid. "I will fight till I die," he said. ”

“ In 1787 while Pinckney was in the full possession of his youthful power and fortune and all those things which give a man a prestige above his fellows, fate seems to have leaned forward and touched the instrument which was the supreme work of his life, the Draught of the Constitution of the United States—and to have set a seal upon the lips of every man who could testify as to its contents. ”

“ Pinckney had been a Senator of the United States, Governor of South Carolina, Minister to Spain and had just been elected to the important Congress which was to grapple with the National questions involved in the Missouri Compromise. He may have been a vain man as Madison thought him— (most men of great ability and prominence are egotistical; it is egotism ordinarily which impels them to the front) but no one has intimated that Pinckney could have been guilty of an act which from moral and historical points of view was little better than a crime. ”

“ Thomas Pinckney, then, is to be distinguished from others of the name as the founder of the family in America.
The eldest son of Thomas, that grew to man's estate, was Charles Pinckney, who embraced the legal profession, and rose to be Chief Justice of the Province of South Carolina, and hence he is usually spoken of and distinguished from the rest of the family as "Chief Justice Pinckney." He was educated in England, and was married there. Returning to Charleston, he acquired a large fortune by the practice of his profession. ”

“ Pinkney's person, the author is not yet exhausted, but lavishes more upon his intellect. "The physical powers of Mr. Pinkney," he says, "are to my notion, strictly correspondent with his intellectual ones; both arc solid, strong and substantial, but without grace, dignity or loftiness." Loftiness! the same man who has such "prodigious elevation and amplitude of mind," "and both have a dash of fat English dandyism." I confess myself wholly at a loss to comprehend what the fat dandyism of the intellectual powers is. A man's mind might, by a forced metaphor, be said to be dandyish, perhaps ”

“ Besides being a great lawyer, Pinkney was also a notable personality, as George Ticknor’s sketch of him as he appeared before the Supreme Court in 1815 goes to prove:
You must imagine, if you can, a man formed on nature’s most liberal scale, who at the age of 50 is possessed with the ambition of being a pretty fellow, wears corsets to diminish his bulk, uses cosmetics, as he told Mrs. Gore, to smooth and soften a skin growing somewhat wrinkled and rigid with age, dresses in a style which would be thought foppish in a much younger man. ”

“ America never sent an abler representative to the Court of London.
Pinkney sailed from England a few weeks afterward, leaving in charge of the legation John Spear Smith, a son of Senator Samuel Smith, who had been for a time attached to the Legation at St. Petersburg; had thence travelled to Vienna and Paris, where he received Pinkney’s summons to London,—the most difficult and important diplomatic post in the world. Simultaneously, Lord Wellesley hurried Foster to the United States. The new British minister was personally acceptable. ”

“ Tall and slender, he had a strange face, a face with a young man's beauty; his white hair gave a charm to the rare smile, like new snow to the spring, and the slight stoop with which he walked was but a grace the more. In short, Pinckney was interesting. Women raved about him; young men fell in love with him; and if he was selfish, the fault lay between him and his Maker, not visible to other men. There are three things that make a man interesting in his old age: the first, being heroism, we may put aside ”

“ His conduct was noticed and understood, as he meant it should be; and as his audience [19] still remains the only occasion when an American minister at London has broken relations in a hostile manner, with resulting war, it has an interest peculiar to itself. Several accounts were preserved of what passed at the interview. Pinkney’s official report recorded the words used by him: [20] —
“I stated to the Prince Regent the grounds upon which it had become my duty to take my leave and to commit the business of the legation to a chargé d’affaires ”

“ PINCKNEY, CHARLES COTESWORTH (1746–1825) , American statesman, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on the 25th of February 1746, the son of Charles Pinckney (d. 1758) , [1] 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. ”

“ Ward and Pinkney informed him simultaneously that it was a propaganda weekly, Mrs. Ward with a coquettish shake of her finger and a somewhat more pronounced appearance of her double chin.
“Captain Hamilton has just been initiated,” explained Pinkney apologetically. “Mrs. Ward, here, is the brains of the Tribe.”
She laughed.
“Here it is,” she said, handing the magazine to Robert. “Aren’t men the flatterers? There’s a corker in this week about the Catholics. You wanna read it. Didja see last week’s Jew article, Mr. Pinkney? Griffith wrote ’em. There’s some swell stuff about the Inquisition. ”

“ My slowly formed conclusion is that if wise and judicious forethought, and much patient work well done, and a breadth of view commensurate with the greatness of the subject, and the production at a critical moment of a paper which all other men in or out of the Convention had neglected to prepare, entitle a man to the lasting recognition of his countrymen, there is no framer of the Constitution more entitled to be commemorated in bronze or marble than Charles Pinckney of South Carolina. ”

“ Pinckney fearing that the part which he had played in the Convention would never be known, that his great contribution to the Constitution might never receive so much as the notice of men, impelled by his boyish egoism and by what Madison called with reference to another contemporaneous publication, "his appetite for expected praise," improperly laid them before the world—and they have done more than any other one thing to smirch his good name and bury in oblivion the great work of his life. ”

“ Madison to the Plan of Charles Pinckney" would be published; the letters of Sparks to himself might never see the light. Indeed I can give this tribute to his adroitness—that this book was written in the belief that Madison, never knew of Pinckney's letter to the Secretary of State, and that his weakened mind had overlooked the draught of the Committee of Detail ”