Pinckney chaired a committee of the South Carolina House of Representatives appointed to consider the portion of Gov. Henry Middleton’s annual message relating to foreign relations. The enclosed report stated that “they could not avoid being deeply impressed with a sense of the injuries and humiliations inflicted on our beloved country, by the unprecedented and violent conduct of the belligerents of Europe” and hoped “that such a stand will be taken by the general government, at the present session of its legislature, as will effectually tend to secure the free enjoyment of the rights we are entitled to by the laws of nations.” It added that, “France having withdrawn her obnoxious decrees, its now to be expected that Great Britain will follow her example … if she does not, a vigorous and decisive resort will be had to those means of defence, with which a bountiful providence has so amply supplied us, and which, in the opinion of your committee, are the only alternatives for the consideration of a government, worthy of conducting the destinies of the republic.” The report also included a similarly patriotic address to President James Madison (printed broadside in DNA: RG 59, MLR, filed at 18 Dec. 1811).

Pinckney sent similar letters to Madison and to James Monroe on 18 Dec. 1811, and the South Carolina House of Representatives unanimously approved the address the same day and sent it to Madison on 22 Dec. 1811 (Madison, Papers description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, John C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, 1962– , 29 vols.: Congress. Ser., 17 vols.; Pres. Ser., 5 vols.; Sec. of State Ser., 7 vols description ends , Pres. Ser., 4:75–6, 83–7; letter to Monroe in DNA: RG 59, MLR).