Benjamin Lincoln surrendered the city to the British on May 12, 1780. When the British laid siege to Charleston in 1780, Pinckney urged the defense of the city, a strategy that proved disastrous for the Southern Department of the Continental Army when Maj. In the fall of 1779, Pinckney served as a liason between Franco-American forces at the failed siege of Savannah. During a lull in the fighting, he married Elizabeth Motte on July 22, 1779. When the British invaded South Carolina in May 1779, from their base in Savannah, Georgia, they burned Pinckney's plantation on the Ashepoo River. Pinckney even wrote his sister Harriott that she need not worry "for you may depend upon their being no fighting wherever I am." This prediction would prove incorrect when the British turned their attention to the American South, beginning in 1778. The bulk of his early military service featured garrison duty in Charleston harbor. He traveled to North Carolina and Virginia on recruiting missions and to supervise the construction of fortifications. Despite his long stay in England, Pinckney and his family members supported the Patriot cause.Īt the outbreak of war in 1775, Pinckney became a captain in the First South Carolina Regiment and was later promoted to major. His return to Charleston in December 1774 coincided with rising tensions between the colonists and the mother country. He also briefly studied military science at the Royal Military Academy in Caen, France. Thomas Pinckney received a liberal education at Westminster School and Christ College, Oxford, and later studied law at the Middle Temple in the Inns of Court. His parents sailed back to South Carolina in 1758 while Thomas and his brother stayed behind in England. His father, Charles Pinckney, and mother, Elizabeth "Eliza" Lucas, sailed with their two sons, Thomas and his older brother, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, to England in 1753 in pursuit of educational opportunities. For the rest of his life, he remained deeply interested in agriculture, publishing articles and importing improved breeds of cattle.Thomas Pinckney was born into a wealthy, influential family in Charleston, South Carolina on October 23, 1750. During the War of 1812 he was commissioned major general of a Southern district. He was an unsuccessful candidate of the Federalist party for vice-president in 1796, and served as a congressman from 1797 to 1801. Just as well, he acted as a special commissioner to Spain in 1795 to 1795 and he negotiated a treaty with Spain that settled Mississippi River navigation rights and the southern United States boundary line with Spanish territories in North America. In 1788 he was president of the state convention which ratified the Consitution.įrom 1792 to 1794, he served as an active United States minister to Great Britain. He particularly tried to improve the unhappy condition of the Loyalists. He also served on Horatio Gates’ staff and was founded and captured at the battle of Camden.įrom 1787 to 1789, Pinckney served as the governor of South Carolina, and within his powers, he did much to restore order in the state after the war. He organized and trained new detachments of men during the Rebolutionary War and participated in the Florida campaign. Pinckney was educated in England, studying at Oxford University and the Middle Temple, and military science at the royal military academy at Caen, France. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, and brother of the American statesman Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Thomas Pinckney was educated at the University of Oxford, admitted in 1774 into both the British bar and the American bar in South Carolina.
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