No individual who had performed a conspicuous part on the political theatre of America, fitted both branches of this description.

All who had openly sustained with zeal and with talents, the measures of the American government, had been marked as the enemies of France, and were on this account to be avoided.
For this critical and important service, the President, after some deliberation, selected General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, of South Carolina, an elder brother of Mr.Thomas Pinckney, the late[46] minister of the United States at London.

No man in America was more perfectly free from exception than this gentleman.

Having engaged with ardour in that war which gave independence to his country, he had, in its progress, sustained from the British army indignities to his person, and injuries to his fortune, which are not easily forgotten.
In the early part of the French revolution, he had felt and expressed all the enthusiasm of his countrymen for the establishment of the republic; but, after the commencement of its contests with the United States, he stood aloof from both those political parties which had divided America.

Restrained by the official situation of his brother during the negotiations which had been carried on with England, he had forborne to express any opinion respecting the treaty in which those negotiations terminated, and had consequently taken no part with those who approved, or with those who condemned that instrument.