“P” is for Pinckney, Maria Henrietta (d. 1836). Writer. Pinckney is notable for writing a defense of nullification entitled The Quintessence of Long Speeches, Arranged as a Political Catechism. She published the “National Catechism” in Charleston in 1830. The declaration asserted that the states had the right to nullify “unconstitutional, unequal, and oppressive” laws enacted by the federal government, in particular the 1828 “Tariff of Abominations.” In her tract Pinckney posed a series of thirty-four questions and answers designed to summarize the southern case for nullification, which she defined as “the Veto of a Sovereign State on an unconstitutional law of Congress.” Nullification was not rebellion, she argued. In its “hour of peril,” Maria Henrietta Pinckney called on South Carolinians to follow the example of “the patriot band who achieved the Revolution of 1776 and their descendants.
“P” is for Pinckney, Maria Henrietta (d. 1836)
