Charles Pinckney

Charles Pinckney (1746-1825), American statesman. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was born 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. The French government refused to receive him officially, and he left. He 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 for settling the main differences 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. In their report to Congress, comprising the correspondence that had passed between them and the French envoys, the three American commissioners substituted the letters “X,””Y,” and “Z” for the names of the Frenchmen. The incident later became famous as the XYZ affair. Pinckney was the unsuccessful Federalist candidate for vice president in 1800 and for president in 1804 and 1808. He died in Charleston on August 16, 1825.