The Robert R. Livingston Papers

Robert R. Livingston Jr. (1746–1813) is among the most significant but neglected political and judicial figures of the American Revolutionary and Early Republic periods. Livingston is best known for his nearly twenty-four-year tenure as the inaugural chancellor of New York State. Elected to the most senior judicial position during the New York constitutional convention of 1777, he sat on the Council of Revision—a small group of officials empowered to veto legislation—and was chief judge of the state’s court of equity. Equally significant, after Thomas Jefferson’s presidential election in 1801, Livingston agreed to succeed Gouverneur Morris as minister to France. Livingston, then known simply as “The Chancellor,” was instructed to secure trading rights in New Orleans or gain possession of another port on the Mississippi River. But during his negotiations he saw an opportunity to secure the United States’ position among the powers of the earth. Creative and thoughtful with Napoleon, then first consul of France, and Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, French minister of foreign affairs, and going beyond his instructions, he proposed France cede Louisiana to the United States. The French agreed, selling the territory for $15 million and doubling the size of the US. “We have lived a long time,” Livingston wrote of the Louisiana Purchase, “and this is the noblest work of our lives. The treaty we have just signed has not been obtained by guile or dictated by force; equally beneficial to both contracting parties, it will change vast solitudes into flourishing countries.” “Today,” he went on, “the United States take their place among the powers of first rank.”

            But Livingston’s involvement in the founding of the United States was ubiquitous. After graduating from King’s College (Columbia) and practicing law with John Jay, Livingston served as the recorder of New York City for two years. He was removed, however, after he signed the First Continental Congress’ Articles of Association. Then, in 1775, he was elected to the New York Provincial Congress for Dutchess Co. and was later elected as a delegate for New York to the Second Continental Congress. During his time in Congress, Livingston established himself as the leader and spokesperson for the New York delegation. He drafted “The Twelve United Colonies, by their Delegates in Congress, to the Inhabitants of Great Britain,” a draft of which was recently discovered and attributed to Livingston, shedding new light on his role in shifting the Continental Congress toward independence. In June 1776, he was appointed to the Committee of Five, tasked with drafting what became the Declaration of Independence. He also served on his state’s Committee of Safety and in state constitutional convention, working closely with Jay to draft the new constitution. Between August 1781 and August 1783, he served as the secretary of foreign affairs, then as a member of the Temporary Council that governed New York City after the British evacuation and, in 1788, as a representative for New York Co. at the convention that formed to debate the ratification of the federal constitution. Again, he established himself as a leading figure, cementing a prominent state and national reputation. On 4 July 1786 he was elected as an honorary member of the New York Society of the Cincinnati, and on 30 April 1789, Livingston administered the oath of office to President George Washington. Aligning himself with the Democratic-Republicans, Livingston was overlooked for multiple federal positions, including chief justice and secretary of the treasury, and was a public sympathizer with the French Revolution. He distanced himself with his old friend and colleague John Jay, opposing the Jay Treaty in the New York Argus in 1795. Washington, eventually, offered Livingston a post—French minister—but he refused, noting his political differences with the Federalist administration would make it impossible to complete his duties.

            Outside of public service, Livingston was active in agriculture and the arts. In fact, writing in 1809, Livingston considered his diplomatic work in France as complementary to his agricultural endeavors: “The hope of acquiring such useful information in agriculture and the arts as would be useful to my fellow citizens, was not one of my smallest motive for accepting a foreign mission.” In the early 1790s, he cofounded the New York Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Manufactures, and the Useful Arts (now Albany Institute of History and Art) and as the founding president of the Academy of Fine Arts (later part of the National Academy of Design). Between the late 1790s and early 1800s, Livingston pursued steam navigation. In 1802 he partnered with Robert Fulton, whom he met in Paris, and in 1807 they launched the first steamboat, named the North River, revolutionizing water transportation, travel, and commerce. Later, Fulton and Livingston served on the Commission to Explore a Route for a Canal to Lake Erie and Report. In addition, Livingston became a leading promoter of fine-wooled Merino sheep and published Essay on Sheep (New York: T. and J. Swords, 1809).

            Livingston was also a substantial landowner. After his father died in 1775, Livingston inherited Clermont, a large Hudson Valley estate, and 500,000 acres in the Hardenburgh Patent in the Catskills, becoming the leader of the Clermont branch of the Livingston family. Soon thereafter, he acquired around 250,000 acres in Dutchess Co. Much of Livingston’s land was tenanted. His Clermont tenants held roughly 70 acres and the average rent was 25 bushels of winter wheat, four hens, and a day’s riding. Leases, generally, lasted three lives. During the Revolutionary War, the British Army burned Clermont and Livingston’s residence, Belvedere.

            Along with members of his family, Livingston was also a slaveowner. According to the first federal census of 1790, he owned at least fifteen enslaved people. But Livingston’s attitudes toward race and slavery were complex. When he served on New York’s Council of Revision, he helped veto legislation that provided for the gradual abolition of slavery but prohibited Blacks from holding public office and voting. Of emancipated slaves, Livingston wrote they could not “be deprived of those essential rights without shocking the principle of equal liberty,” adding, “Rendering power permanent and hereditary in the hands of persons who deduce their origins from white ancestors only” would establish a “malignant … aristocracy.” Despite this somewhat enlightened statement, Livingston used enslaved labor at Clermont. In his September 1796 will he stipulated that all slaves over thirty years old would be freed and those who were younger could be freed under certain circumstances. By 1810 he owned at least five slaves. In addition, the Chancellor’s family owned several brothels in lower Manhattan, which could have been homes for Black servants, or prostitutes.

            Since Livingston’s death, only one full-length biography has been published, George Dangerfield’s Chancellor Robert R. Livingston (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1960), even though he generally figures in articles, monographs, and text books on the Revolutionary and Early Republic periods, as well as in books on agriculture, steam engines, diplomacy, landholding, and, recently, slavery and higher education. He also occupies a prominent role on secondary histories of New York City and New York State and legal histories of the United States. But much of what is written about Livingston is simplistic and does not engage deeply with the extant Livingston manuscripts that are in repositories in the United States and abroad. Though there are exceptions to this rule, scholars have infrequently consulted and worked with Livingston’s manuscripts for almost all aspects of his life.

            For many, Livingston’s manuscripts have been overlooked because interest in the history of New York during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has waned. Others may view his manuscripts as inaccessible. Scholars can gain access to the main corpus of his materials at the New-York Historical Society, but a finding aid is not publicly available and the sheer bulk of materials has meant that any scholar attempting to use those documents must spend considerable time at the Society to gain any sense of familiarity with the materials.

            In the American Historical Review of July 1961, Aubrey C. Land noted: “Livingston cannot be consigned to passing mention or footnote treatment,” adding, “His papers … pointedly suggest him as a subject” (p. 1057). In the New York Times, Carl Bridenbaugh described Livingston as “Affable, genuinely humane … and cultivated.” “Livingston was far more than an individual; he was an institution” (27 Nov. 1960). Broadus Mitchell described him as “subtler, less solemn than Monroe,” “less pretentious … than Jefferson,” and “more brilliant than Madison” ( Journal of American History, June 1961, p. 103). Benjamin Franklin once labeled Livingston the “Cicero of America.” In the nineteenth century, William Raymond noted in his Biographical Sketches (1851) that Livingston was “a benefactor of the human race” (p. 43); Lockwood L. Doty wrote in A History of Livingston County (1876) that he was “that best product of the human race, a patriot statesman of the Revolutionary period” (p. 348). 

The historiographical neglect that has surrounded New York and Livingston can no longer be sustained. His papers are exceptionally rich for all aspects of his life and align neatly with the founding and establishment of the United States, allowing scholars a unique insight into the political, legal, economic, diplomatic, and agricultural development of New York and the United States from before the American Revolution until the War of 1812. Often simply described as the man who inaugurated Washington, his manuscripts need to be made more accessible to the public and to scholars.

            To that end, The Gotham Center for New York City History at The Graduate Center, CUNY, with institutional support and sponsorship from the New-York Historical Society, is pursuing the establishment of a documentary editing project to publish a digital edition and letterpress edition befitting the significance of Livingston’s papers.