James Duane was an American jurist, sat in the Continental Congress, serving on a large number and great variety of committees. His chief services were in connection with financial and Indian affairs and he assisted in making the final draft of the Articles of Confederation, was appointed mayor of New York.
Background
James Duane was born on February 6, 1733 in New York City, New York, United States. He was the son of Anthony Duane, a prosperous New York merchant of Irish birth who came to New York soon after 1700, and of Althea Kettletas, his second wife, daughter of Abraham Kettletas, of Dutch descent, also a well-to-do merchant.
Education
James Duane probably received his early education from the Rev. Richard Charlton, a classical tutor, catechist of Trinity Church and later rector of St. Andrews, Staten Island.
Without college or university training, he studied law in the office of James Alexander, presumably from 1747 till his admission to the bar, in August 1754.
Career
His private practise grew with astonishing rapidity and embraced a wide variety of cases in all the courts of the province. In the famous case of Forsey vs. Cunningham (1763), originally an assault and battery case with the enormous damages of £1, 500, he successfully maintained that no appeal from the provincial supreme court, in civil cases, lay to the governor in council—long a moot question. Prerevolutionary activities in New York found Duane definitely on the conservative side.
In November 1766 he was “busily employed in a new remonstrance to the Parliament respecting our trade”.
In 1768 he successfully defended the Tory candidate for the Assembly, James Jauncey, from accusations of corruption brought by his radical rival, John Morin Scott.
On May 16, 1774, he was appointed to the Committee of Correspondence (Committee of Fifty-one), which on July 4 nominated him one of five delegates to the forthcoming Continental Congress, to which he was subsequently elected after much radical opposition.
At the Congress he was a member of the committee which drew up the statement of the rights of the colonists, being largely responsible for the mildness of its tone, and on September 28 he seconded Galloway’s plan of union, defending his reactionary stand by stating his belief that the right of regulating trade lay with Parliament because of the “local circumstances of the colonies, and their disconnection with each other”. He did, however, sign the “Association” or non-importation agreement on October 20, 1774, though he considered that it went too far.
He sat in the New York Provincial Convention and was by it elected to the Second Continental Congress; was a member of the New York Committee of Sixty to carry out the “Association” and of the subsequent Committee of One Hundred.
He sat in the Continental Congress almost continuously till 1783, serving on a large number and great variety of committees. His chief services were in connection with financial and Indian affairs and he assisted in making the final draft of the Articles of Confederation.
During May and June 1781, violent attacks on his patriotism and accusations of loyalism appeared in the Philadelphia Freeman’s Journal, but after statements were offered on his behalf by several of his colleagues, including John Jay, Alexander McDougall, William Floyd, and Philip Livingston, the New York Assembly and Senate passed votes of confidence in him.
He entered New York City on its evacuation by the British, November 25, 1783, with Washington and Governor Clinton, as a member of the Council of the latter.
On February 4, 1784, he was appointed mayor of New York, serving till September 1789, during which time his chief duties, both as mayor and as ex officio presiding officer of the mayor’s court, were in connection with the rehabilitation of the city after the ravages of the British.
He served in the Poughkeepsie Convention of 1788, where he was an ardent advocate of ratification of the Constitution, and sat in the New York Senate almost continuously from 1782 till his resignation, January 27, 1790, to become a federal judge.
One of his most intensive interests throughout a long period was in connection with the Vermont-New Hampshire boundary difficulties, in the course of which he represented the “Yorkers” in many private suits, and was their constant advocate before Congress.
Achievements
Connections
On October 21, 1759 James Duane married Mary, daughter of Robert Livingston, Jr. , “third lord” of Livingston manor, by whom he had ten children. Five of these grew to maturity and survived him.