A noted lawyer, essayist, and political polemicist from New York, William Livingston was also elected the first Governor of New Jersey. Livingston also served as a New Jersey delegate to both the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, and one term as a member of the General Assembly of the Colony of New York from 1759 to 1761. Livingston commanded the New Jersey militia from 1776 until 1783, which required regular correspondence with General George Washington.
Early Life
Born in Albany, New York, Livingston was a scion of one of the colony's most wealthy and influential families. After graduating from Yale College in 1741, he became a successful lawyer in New York City. While in New York Livingston became engaged in the colony’s acrimonious provincial politics, to which he made his largest contribution as a writer of polemical pamphlets and newspaper essays.
In 1752, Livingston began co-writing and publishing the colony's first periodical, The Independent Reflector, a weekly journal dedicated to political and cultural criticism. In the mid-1750s, he became embroiled in a struggle with the Anglican hierarchy over the character and establishment of the colony's first college, King's College (now Columbia University). As a part of his efforts to improve the city’s cultural life, in 1754 he co-founded the New-York Society Library, the city’s first public subscription library.
Involvement in the American Revolution
During the 1760s, Livingston was a forceful opponent of British policies, writing a series of newspaper essays criticizing the Stamp Act, entitled "An American Whig." Toward the end of the decade, he staunchly opposed plans to establish an Anglican bishopric in the colonies. In 1772, Livingston retired from New York politics and the law and moved to his new home, "Liberty Hall," in Elizabethtown, New Jersey.
His fellow New Jerseyans quickly drafted Livingston, whose political and literary reputation was known throughout the colonies, into the resistance movement. He led the colony’s Committee of Correspondence and its militia, and served as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress.
Following separation from Britain in 1776, Livingston was elected the first Governor of New Jersey and re-elected each year until his death in 1790. He also was appointed Brigadier General of the state militia. Due to these roles, and New Jersey’s centrality to much of the war effort, Livingston corresponded often with General George Washington about matters such as military engagements, supplies, transportation, recruitment, and desertion. Washington desired a strong relationship between the Continental Army and the state government of New Jersey, writing Livingston, "I assure you, Sir, I shall ever consider myself much obliged by your information of any grievances or abuses respecting the Army, and shall never suppose you step out of your proper line in doing it. we are all equally engaged in the present Important Struggle & In the cause of Humanity, and are equally concerned in promoting them."1
Livingston supported Washington throughout the war, even when others were campaigning for his dismissal following defeats at Brandywine and Germantown in the fall of 1777. In the spring of 1778, Livingston published a poem in tribute to Washington under the pseudonym, "Hortensius," in the New Jersey Gazette. In it, Livingston likened Washington to such republican heroes as Brutus, John Hampden, and Algernon Sidney, and implored the General to not be "dismay'd/At foreign myriads, or domestic foes."2
Political Life After the American Revolution
Following the war, Livingston served as a New Jersey delegate to the Constitutional Convention and was one of the signers of the Constitution. Despite their frequent correspondence and mutual respect, Livingston and Washington do not appear to have had any significant relationship beyond that which developed in their official capacities.
Michael D. Hattem Knox College
Notes:
1. “From George Washington to William Livingston, 31 December 1777,” Founders Online, National Archives.
2. William Livingston, “To His Excellency General Washington: A Song of Victory and Prophecy,” published in the New Jersey Gazette, 1 April 1778 in William C. Armstrong, ed. Patriotic Poems of New Jersey, New Jersey Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, 1906.
Bibliography:
Klein, Milton M. The American Whig: William Livingston of New York. Rev. ed. New York: Garland, 1993.
Levine, Michael L. "The Transformation of a Radical Whig under Republican Government: William Livingston, Governor of New Jersey, 1776-1790," PhD diss., Rutgers University, 1975.
The Papers of William Livingston, 5 vols., ed. Carl E. Prince (Trenton: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1979-1988).
