 Livingston
was born in 1723 at Albany, NY. His maternal grandmother reared him
until he was 14, and he then spent a year with a missionary among
the Mohawk Indians. He attended Yale and graduated in 1741.
Rejecting his family's hope that he would enter
the fur trade at Albany or mercantile pursuits in New York City,
young Livingston chose to pursue a career in law at the latter
place. Before he completed his legal studies, in 1745 he married
Susanna French, daughter of a well-to-do New Jersey landowner. She
was to bear 13 children.
Three years later, Livingston was admitted to
the bar and quickly gained a reputation as the supporter of popular
causes against the more conservative factions in the city.
Associated with the Calvinists in religion, he opposed the dominant
Anglican leaders in the colony and wielded a sharply satirical pen
in verses and broadsides. Livingston attacked the Anglican attempt
to charter and control King's College (later Columbia College and
University) and the dominant De Lancey party for its Anglican
sympathies, and by 1758 rose to the leadership of his faction. For a
decade, it controlled the colonial assembly and fought against
parliamentary interference in the colony's affairs. During this
time, 1759-61, Livingston sat in the assembly.
In 1769 Livingston's supporters, split by the
growing debate as to how to respond to British taxation of the
colonies, lost control of the assembly. Not long thereafter,
Livingston, who had also grown tired of legal practice, moved to the
Elizabethtown (present Elizabeth), NJ, area, where he had purchased
land in 1760. There, in 1772-73, he built the estate, Liberty Hall,
continued to write verse, and planned to live the life of a
gentleman farmer.
The Revolutionary upsurge, however, brought
Livingston out of retirement. He soon became a member of the Essex
County, NJ, committee of correspondence; in 1774 a representative in
the First Continental Congress; and in 1775-76 a delegate to the
Second Continental Congress. In June 1776 he left Congress to
command the New Jersey militia as a brigadier general and held this
post until he was elected later in the year as the first governor of
the state.
Livingston held the position throughout and
beyond the war--in fact, for 14 consecutive years until his death in
1790. During his administration, the government was organized, the
war won, and New Jersey launched on her path as a sovereign state.
Although the pressure of affairs often prevented it, he enjoyed his
estate whenever possible, conducted agricultural experiments, and
became a member of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting
Agriculture. He was also active in the antislavery movement.
In 1787 Livingston was selected as a delegate
to the Constitutional Convention, though his gubernatorial duties
prevented him from attending every session. He did not arrive until
June 5 and missed several weeks in July, but he performed vital
committee work, particularly as chairman of the one that reached a
compromise on the issue of slavery. He also supported the New Jersey
Plan. In addition, he spurred New Jersey's rapid ratification of the
Constitution (1787). The next year, Yale awarded him an honorary
doctor of laws degree.
Livingston died at Liberty Hall in his 67th
year in 1790. He was originally buried at the local Presbyterian
Churchyard, but a year later his remains were moved to a vault his
son owned at Trinity Churchyard in Manhattan and in 1844 were again
relocated, to Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetery. |
