“Two Barbers to shave our Congress long did try. 
  One shaves with froth; the other shaves dry.”

Of the Senate Mr. Pinkney was the great orator.  His speech upon this most exciting question has ever been considered the most finished for eloquence and power, ever delivered in the United States Senate.  The effect upon the Senate, and the audience assembled in the galleries and lobbies of the Senate, was thrilling.  Mr. King was old, but retained in their vigor his faculties, was more tame perhaps than in his younger years; still the clearness and brilliancy of his powerful mind manifested itself in his every effort.  Mr. Pinkney had all the advantages which a fine manly person and clear, musical voice gives to an orator.  He spoke but rarely and never without great preparation.  He was by no means a ready debater, and prized too much his reputation to hazard anything in an impromptu, extemporaneous address.  He listened, for weeks, to King, Otis, and others who debated the question, and came at last prepared in one great effort to answer and demolish the arguments of these men.  Those who listened to that wonderful effort of forensic power will never forget his reply to King, when he charged him with uttering sentiments in debate calculated to incite a servile war.  The picture he drew of such a war:  the massacring by infuriated black savages of delicate women and children; the burning and destroying of cities; the desolating by fire and sword the country, was so thrilling and descriptively perfect, that you smelt the blood, saw the flames, and heard the shrieks of perishing victims.  Mr. King shuddered as he looked on the orator, and listened to his impassioned declamation.  But when Pinkney turned from the President of the Senate and, flashing his eye upon King, continued in words hissing in whispers, full of pathos as of biting indignation, Mr. King folded his arms and rested his head upon them, concealing his features and emotion from the speaker and the Senate.  For two hours the Senate and galleries were chained as it were to their seats.  At times so intense was the feeling, that a pause of the speaker made audible the hard and excited breathing of the audience, catching their breath as though respiration had been painfully suspended and relief had come in this pause.  When he had finished and resumed his seat, there was profound silence for many seconds, when a Senator in seeming trepidation rose and moved an adjournment.

Mr. Pinkney was in every respect a most finished gentleman, highly bred, only associating with the first men and minds of the country; courteous and polished in his manners, and scrupulously neat in his dress, which was always in the height of fashion and always of the finest and most costly materials.  He never came to the Senate but in full dress, and would have been mortified to find a mite of lint upon his coat, or a dash of dust upon his boots.