Miss Pinckney’s Constitutional Catechism

 

Maria Henrietta Pinckney (1782-1836) of South Carolina was the daughter of General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, an officer in the Continental Army and a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Maria lost her mother at an early age and was educated at home by her famous grandmother, Eliza Lucas Pinckney. In 1830, during the nullification controversy, Miss Pinckney published a widely circulated pamphlet entitled The Quintessence of Long Speeches, Arranged as a Political Catechism. In it she defended state rights and nullification, and argued against the views of Daniel Webster (1782-1852), a nationalistic Whig leader who contended that the Constitution was created by “the whole people” rather than the citizens of the sovereign states. Thomas DiLorenzo described Webster’s view of the creation of the U.S. Constitution as “pure fabrication, invented out of thin air,” and noted that it was “repeated by Lincoln decades later to rationalize waging war on the South and the destruction of the federal system of government created by the founders.” The following are excerpts from Miss Pinckney’s Catechism.

Question—What do we understand by the Federal Union?

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