William Livingston

State: New Jersey (Born in New York)

Age at Convention: 63

Date of Birth: November 30, 1723

Date of Death: July 25, 1790

Schooling: Yale 1741, Yale Honorary LLD 1788

Occupation: Public Security Interests, Lawyer, Governor of New Jersey

Prior Political Experience: Chairman of the Committee of Assumption of State Debts, Chairman of the Committee of Slave Trade, Economy, Frugality and Manufactures Committee

Committee Assignments: Chairman of the Committee of Assumption of State Debts, Chairman of the Committee of Slave Trade, Economy, Frugality and Manufactures Committee

Convention Contributions: Arrived June 5, was absent from July 5 to July 24, and was present through the signing of the Constitution. James Madison stated that “he did not take an active part in the debates; but he was placed on important Committees, where it may be presumed that he had an agency and a due influence.” William Pierce stated that “Governor Livingston is confessedly a Man of the first rate talent, but he appears to me rather to indulge a sportiveness of wit, than a strength of wit.”

New Government Participation: He approved of the Constitution and of the ratification of it by New Jersey. He did not hold a position in the new Government.

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Biography from the National Archives: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.

Related:

* indicates delegates who did not sign the Constitution

Connecticut

William Samuel Johnson –  Roger Sherman –  Oliver Ellsworth (Elsworth)*

Delaware

George Read –  Gunning Bedford, Jr. –  John Dickinson –  Richard Bassett –  Jacob Broom

Georgia

William Few –  Abraham Baldwin –  William Houstoun*  -  William L. Pierce*

Maryland

James McHenry –  Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer –  Daniel Carroll –  Luther Martin*  -  John F. Mercer*

Massachusetts

Nathaniel Gorham –  Rufus King –  Elbridge Gerry*  -  Caleb Strong*

New Hampshire

John Langdon –  Nicholas Gilman

New Jersey

William Livingston –  David Brearly (Brearley)  -  William Paterson (Patterson)  -  Jonathan Dayton –  William C. Houston*

New York

Alexander Hamilton –  John Lansing, Jr.*  -  Robert Yates*

North Carolina

William Blount –  Richard Dobbs Spaight –  Hugh Williamson –  William R. Davie*  -  Alexander Martin*

Pennsylvania

Benjamin Franklin –  Thomas Mifflin –  Robert Morris –  George Clymer –  Thomas Fitzsimons (FitzSimons; Fitzsimmons)  -  Jared Ingersoll –  James Wilson –  Gouverneur Morris

South Carolina

John Rutledge –  Charles Cotesworth Pinckney –  Charles Pinckney –  Pierce Butler

Rhode Island

Rhode Island did not send delegates to the Convention.

Virginia

John Blair –  James Madison Jr. –  George Washington –  George Mason*  -  James McClurg*  -  Edmund J. Randolph*  -  George Wythe*

Other:

The Founding Fathers: A Brief Overview