 On
January 30, 1754, John Lansing was born in Albany, NY, to Gerrit
Jacob and Jannetje Lansing. At age 21 Lansing had completed his
study of the law and was admitted to practice. In 1781 he married
Cornelia Ray. They had 10 children, 5 of whom died in infancy.
Lansing was quite wealthy; he owned a large estate at Lansingburg
and had a lucrative law practice.
From 1776 to 1777 Lansing acted as military secretary to Gen. Philip
Schuyler. From the military world Lansing turned to the political
and served six terms in the New York Assembly--1780-84, 1786, and
1788. During the last two terms he was speaker of the assembly. In
the 2-year gap between his first four terms in the assembly and the
fifth, Lansing sat in the Confederation Congress. He rounded out his
public service by serving as Albany's mayor between 1786 and 1790.
Lansing went to Philadelphia as part of the New
York delegation to the Constitutional Convention. As the convention
progressed, Lansing became disillusioned because he believed it was
exceeding its instructions. Lansing believed the delegates had
gathered together simply to amend the Articles of Confederation and
was dismayed at the movement to write an entirely new constitution.
After 6 weeks, John Lansing and fellow New York delegate Robert
Yates left the convention and explained their departure in a joint
letter to New York Governor George Clinton. They stated that they
opposed any system that would consolidate the United States into one
government, and they had understood that the convention would not
consider any such consolidation. Furthermore, warned Lansing and
Yates, the kind of government recommended by the convention could
not "afford that security to equal and permanent liberty which we
wished to make an invariable object of our pursuit." In 1788, as a
member of the New York ratifying convention, Lansing again
vigorously opposed the Constitution.
Under the new federal government Lansing
pursued a long judicial career. In 1790 he began an 11-year term on
the supreme court of New York; from 1798 until 1801 he served as its
chief justice. Between 1801 and 1814 Lansing was chancellor of the
state. Retirement from that post did not slow him down; in 1817 he
accepted an appointment as a regent of the University of the State
of New York.
Lansing's death was the most mysterious of all
the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. While on a visit to
New York City in 1829, he left his hotel to post some letters. No
trace of him was ever found, and it was supposed that he had been
murdered. |
