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He was born on March 17, 1764 at Annapolis, Maryland, United States, one of four children of Jonathan Pinkney, an English immigrant, and Ann Rind, his second wife. The latter, a native of Annapolis, was a sister of Margaret Rind, Jonathan's first wife, by whom he had one child. His father's property was confiscated by reason of Loyalist sentiment in the Revolution.
Poverty of his family necessitated his withdrawal from the King William School of Annapolis, at the age of thirteen. In overcoming the handicap of deficient education, Pinkney devoted a lifetime to intense study.
According to tradition, he favored Maryland's cause in the war and would often elude the paternal vigilance to mount guard with the Continental soldiers. Sometime later, while he was receiving instruction in medicine from a Baltimore physician, a fortuitous occurrence changed the course of his life.
Samuel Chase heard him debate in a society of medical students and, perceiving his aptitude for the law, offered the use of his library if he would undertake its study. Pinkney accepted; and in February 1783 entered Chase's office to master the obscurities of pleading and tenures from the black-letter learning of the day.
He was called to the bar in 1786 and removed to Harford County to practise. His first efforts attracted public attention and resulted in his election to the state convention that ratified the Federal Constitution, in April 1788, although Pinkney, under the influence of Chase, voted against its ratification; a circumstance worthy of note in view of his later preeminence as a constitutional lawyer.
He was a member of the legislature continuously from October 1788 until his retirement in 1792. At the session in 1789 he delivered a florid speech advocating the abolition of slavery which, twenty years later, was published and distributed in Congress by the Quakers to challenge the consistency of his position on the Missouri question.
He was appointed a member of the state executive council in 1792 and was chairman of the council board when he resigned in 1795. Meanwhile his rise at the bar had been sensational and, in 1796, Washington selected him as joint commissioner with Christopher Gore, under the seventh article of the Jay Treaty, to adjust American claims for maritime losses. Eight strenuous years in London followed, significant years in his development. Speeches heard in Parliament and in the courts were the models of his later efforts. Accordingly, he was tutored in Latin and Greek, read widely in law and literature, declaimed in private, and began a diligent study of dictionaries and lexicons that was never thereafter relaxed.
From the work of the commission he also found time successfully to terminate a chancery suit instituted more than a decade before by Samuel Chase, recovering for the State of Maryland a large quantity of stock in the Bank of England.
His prestige was great when he returned to practice in Baltimore in 1804, and on December 1, 1805, he became attorney-general of Maryland. He relinquished this office, however, after six months' service. Following Pinkney's return, British Admiralty courts began to justify the condemnation of American shipping by reviving the so-called "Rule of the War of 1756. "
In January 1806 a memorial attacking this "Rule" was drafted by Pinkney for the merchants of Baltimore and forwarded to Congress. It induced Jefferson to appoint him, in the following April, as joint commissioner with James Monroe, then minister resident in London, to treat with the British cabinet on the subjects of reparations and impressments. Wholly abandoning the three conditions that by their instructions were to form the foundation of the agreement, they signed a treaty remarkable for its failure even to bind the British government. Jefferson angrily repudiated it without consulting the Senate, yet when Monroe left England in October 1807, Pinkney was retained as minister. Immediately affairs became further complicated by the attack of the Leopard on the Chesapeake and the issuance of the British Orders in Council. T
On his return he was appointed attorney-general in Madison's cabinet, December 11, 1811, and in this office assumed undisputed leadership of the American bar, a leadership he maintained until his death. Owing to the introduction of a bill in Congress, requiring the residence of the attorney-general at the seat of government, he resigned abruptly, February 10, 1814, before the bill was even reported out of committee.
As a major of Maryland militia he commanded a battalion of riflemen in the battle of Bladensburg, August 24, 1814, being severely wounded in the arm. At the February term of the Supreme Court in 1815, he delivered a speech in the celebrated case of The Nereide. He served in the Fourteenth Congress from March 4, 1815, until April 18, 1816, when he resigned to accept appointment as minister to Russia with a special mission to Naples en route. His impatience to return to the bar had been daily increasing and in February 1818, he left Russia. It was while serving in the United States Senate from December 21, 1819, until his death that, as an interpreter of the Constitution, Pinkney performed his greatest work.
Much criticism to him resulted from insults offered in court to Thomas Addis Emmet (1764 - 1827) and William Wirt, and a duel with the latter was narrowly averted. For frequent discourtesies to Daniel Webster, the latter boasted of having extorted an apology under threat of a beating.
He died at Washington and was buried there in the Congressional Cemetery.
William Pinkney was the most talented, versatile advocate of his time there can be little doubt. His most distinguished labors were in the Supreme Court, where his arguments in McCulloch vs. Maryland and in Cohens vs. Virginia were his crowning achievements. He was appointed the seventh U. S. Attorney General by President James Madison, later was endowed a special mission to the Kingdom of Naples.
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He vigorously supported the War of 1812.
In the Senate debates on the Missouri question, he became the champion of the slave-holding states and his speeches in opposition to Rufus King were an important factor in bringing about the Compromise.
Quotations: He wrote Monroe, "My desire is to be a mere lawyer".
Conspicuous in Pinkney's physical appearance were his square shoulders, erect carriage, and intense blue eyes, but most conspicuous were the deep furrows in his face and the heavy circles under his eyes, and to conceal them he used cosmetics. He wore corsets to diminish his bulk. Despite apparent robust health, he was a hypochondriac. In society he was haughty and reserved. He had little sense of humor.
His foppish dress, his affected, flamboyant manner of delivery, and his extravagant rhetoric made him a vivid, picturesque figure. Women crowded to hear him and Pinkney, excessively vain, sought their approval as much as the Court's. He literally lived for applause. Though he desired to excel in everything, his ruling ambition was to excel at the bar, and to sustain his reputation there he toiled incessantly, feverishly; yet, oddly enough, sought to create the impression that his knowledge resulted from hasty incursions and that his precise citations of cases, made in an offhand manner, were but chance recollections. Toward those who challenged his supremacy his conduct was insolent and ungenerous.
Quotes from others about the person
Henry Adams declares, however, that "America never sent an abler representative to the Court of London as Pinkney".
Justice Story wrote about Pinkney's Cohens vs. Virginia speech: "I never, in my whole life, heard a greater speech; it was worth a trip from Salem to hear it his eloquence was overwhelming".
Chief Justice Marshall proclaimed him "the greatest man I ever saw in a Court of justice".
Chief Justice Taney wrote thirty years after his death: "I have heard almost all the great advocates of the United States, both of the past and present generation, but I have seen none equal to Pinkney" .
On March 16, 1789, he was married at Havre de Grace to Ann Maria Rodgers, sister of Commodore John Rodgers of the United States Navy; ten children - one of them being Edward Coote Pinkney - were born of this union, all of whom survived him.
