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).
Read more about this topic: South Carolina In The American Revolution
Famous quotes containing the word constitution:
“If you complain of neglect of education in sons, what shall I say with regard to daughters, who every day experience the want of it? With regard to the education of my own children, I find myself soon out of my depth, destitute and deficient in every part of education. I most sincerely wish ... that our new Constitution may be distinguished for encouraging learning and virtue. If we mean to have heroes, statesmen, and philosophers, we should have learned women.”
—Abigail Adams (1744–1818)
“What we learn for the sake of knowing, we hold; what we learn for the sake of accomplishing some ulterior end, we forget as soon as that end has been gained. This, too, is automatic action in the constitution of the mind itself, and it is fortunate and merciful that it is so, for otherwise our minds would be soon only rubbish-rooms.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)