Philip Livingston
Philip Livingston (15 Jan. 1716-12 June 1778), merchant and political leader, was born in Albany, New York, the son of Philip
Livingston, a merchant and proprietor of "Livingston Manor,"
and Catrina Van Brugh. Livingston enjoyed the benefits of membership
in one of New York's leading families. At a time when most Americans
lacked formal education, four of six surviving Livingston brothers
earned Yale degrees. Upon graduation in 1737, Philip Livingston
returned to Albany to serve a mercantile apprenticeship with
his father. Livingston learned the Albany trade and, through
his father's efforts, obtained potentially valuable clerkships
in Albany's local government. In 1740 he married Christina Ten
Broeck, daughter of Colonel Dirck Ten Broeck, mayor of Albany.
They had nine children, of whom eight survived infancy.
After several years in Albany, Livingston moved downriver to
New York, where he established himself as a general merchant.
He traded mainly with the British sugar islands although, like
many New York merchants, he probably engaged in illicit trade
with the French and Spanish island colonies. During King George's
War (1744-1748), Livingston made his fortune provisioning and
privateering. During the French and Indian War (1754-1763), he
owned shares in six privateers, making him one of the colony's
leading investors. Livingston also speculated heavily in real
estate, accumulating more than 120,000 acres of unimproved land
in New York and lesser holdings in New Jersey and Connecticut.
He owned urban property in Albany and New York City, including
his Manhattan home on Duke Street and a country estate in Brooklyn Heights.
The financially secure Livingston was a leader in the civic
life of his community. In 1746 he endowed a professorship of
divinity at Yale College. In 1754 he was one of six founders
of the New York Society Library. Two years later he was president
and founding member of the St. Andrew's Society, New York's first
enevolent organization. Livingston also participated in efforts
to establish a college in New York and, in 1766, was one of the
original trustees of Queen's College in New Jersey. He helped
organize the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1768 and, in 1771,
was cofounder of the New York Hospital and a member of its first
board of governors. An elder and a deacon of the Dutch Reformed
church, Livingston was also a benefactor of New York's Anglican
King's College and of the city's Presbyterian and Methodist congregations.
By the 1750s Livingston was also increasingly active in politics
at both the local and provincial levels. Between 1754 and 1763
he served as alderman for New York's East Ward. In 1758 New Yorkers
elected him to the provincial assembly, where in 1764 he helped
pen a remonstrance against Parliament's unprecedented attempt
to raise revenue in America. The following year he represented
New York at the Stamp Act Congress.
Livingston's career in colonial politics culminated in 1768
with his election as the assembly's Speaker. By 1769 new factional
alignments pitted an alliance of merchants, Anglicans, and radical
Sons of Liberty against a coalition of landowners, religious
dissenters, and more moderate opponents of British imperial policies.
Livingston followed most of his relatives into the latter party
and did not win reelection. His party remained in opposition
for the rest of the colonial era.
Livingston and his allies were, however, prominent in the extralegal
committees that orchestrated New York's firm but orderly resistance
to British imperial policies. In May 1774 Livingston was one
of the Committee of Fifty-One that nominated candidates--of which
he was one--for the First Continental Congress. In November he
was a member of the Committee of Sixty that enforced the Continental
Association. In May 1775 he served on the Committee of One Hundred,
which was New York's de facto government until the meeting of
the first provincial Congress. That autumn, fearing naval bombardment
of Manhattan, Livingston fled to Kingston in Ulster County. In
1776 he was mentioned as a possible candidate for governor. When
New Yorkers enacted their state constitution in 1777, Livingston
represented the British-occupied city of New York in the new state senate.
Between 1774 and 1778 Livingston was far more active in continental
than provincial politics. He regularly attended the Continental
Congress, where his business experience made him a valued member
of several key committees. In September 1775 he was one of nine
men appointed to the Secret Committee--later known as the Committee
on Commerce--charged with arranging the importation of arms and
gunpowder for the patriot forces. Livingston remained a member
of this committee throughout his time in Congress, and, with
other merchant congressmen, he advanced funds to the government
in the course of filling its military contracts. Livingston also
served on the Marine Committee and the Committee on Provisioning.
In 1777 he was one of three members of Congress chosen to investigate
complaints in the commissary's department.
In 1776 Livingston signed the Declaration of Independence, but
he was absent when Congress debated the independence resolution.
Like many conservative Whigs, Livingston accepted independence
reluctantly, dreading the resulting social upheaval. In his 1774
pamphlet, The Other Side of the Question, Livingston had invoked
both historical precedent and Lockean political theory to defend
colonial opposition to parliamentary taxation, but he deemed
American independence "the most vain, empty, shallow, and ridiculous
project." In 1774 John Adams (1735-1826) confided to his Diary
that Livingston was a "rough, rapid mortal," who "says if England
should turn us adrift, we should go instantly to civil wars among
ourselves." Livingston feared the "levelling spirit" of revolution.
In 1777 he disparaged the abilities of New York's new leaders,
regretting the state's lack of experienced governors.
Livingston was an exemplar of conservative patriotism in revolutionary
America. A conscientious leader, possessed of an aristocrat's
sense of social responsibility, he accepted republicanism without
embracing its democratic implications. He died in York, Pennsylvania,
while attending the Continental Congress. Many of Livingston's papers are in the New York Public Library. Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789 (1976-), contains some of Livingston's wartime papers and is an important source for his career in Congress. Cynthia A. Kierner, Traders and Gentlefolk: The Livingstons of New York, 1675-1790 (1992), examines the economic activities and political ideals of Livingston and his family. Patricia U. Bonomi, A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York (1971), and Carl Lotus Becker, The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760-1776 (1909), are the standard political histories. William H. W. Sabine, ed., Historical Memoirs . . . of William Smith . . . (2 vols., 1956-1958), includes contemporary observations on Livingston's political attitudes and activities. |