South Carolina in The American Revolution - The Constitution

The Constitution

In 1787, John Rutledge, Charles Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Pierce Butler went to Philadelphia where the Constitutional Convention was piecing together the Constitution. Thirty years old, Charles Pinckney had long been a critic of the weak Articles of Confederation. Although he was wealthy by birth and quite the epicurean, Pinckney became the leader of democracy in the state. On May 29, 1787, he presented the Convention with a detailed outline for the United States constitution, and John Rutledge provided valuable input. Pierce Butler, a major slaveholder who lost numerous slaves during the war who escaped to the British, included a constitutional clause for the return of fugitive slaves.

The federal, and Federalist-leaning, Constitution was ratified by the state in 1787. The new state constitution was ratified in 1790 without the support of the Upcountry. The Lowcountry elite, who had only a quarter of the state's white inhabitants, still ruled the state as they controlled three-quarters of South Carolina's wealth, much of it in enslaved African Americans.

During the 1780s, Charleston physician David Ramsay published two of the first histories of the American Revolution: The History of the Revolution of South-Carolina (1785) and The History of the American Revolution (1789).