Philip Livingston was an American merchant and politician. He was a member of the New York State Senate from 1777-1778.
Background
Philip Livingston was born on January 15, 1716 at Albany, New York, United States, the fifth son of Philip and Catharine (Van Brugh) Livingston. He was reared in the well-nigh princely style affected by his father, the second lord of the manor.
Education
He was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Yale in 1737.
Career
In Albany Livingston served a mercantile apprenticeship with his father. He then settled in New York City. He established himself as an importer there and like his elder brother, Peter Van Brugh Livingston, became closely identified with the commercial progress of the seaport. Understanding the devious ways of trade during the French wars, he realized handsomely upon his ventures, especially his privateering expeditions.
Livingston's subsequent career marked him as unique in his concern over civic affairs. He early deplored the province's lack of a collegiate establishment and was one of the first to advocate the founding of King's College, now Columbia. Though the Episcopalian control of the institution was not to his liking, he contributed to its support. Indeed, for his day there was a remarkable catholicity about his benefactions. Anglicans as well as the Presbyterians with whom he worshipped received his bounty. In 1746 he set aside a sum for the establishment at Yale of a professorship of divinity which still bears his name. He bore a hand in the building of the stone meeting house in John Street which housed the first Methodist society in America. Every sort of public enterprise was apt to arouse his enthusiasm. Recognizing the increased taste for good reading within the province, he helped to organize the New York Society Library in 1754 along the lines outlined by Benjamin Franklin and his colleagues in Philadelphia. About the same time he assumed the presidency (1756 - 1757) of the newly established St. Andrew's Society, the earliest benevolent institution in New York City. With Leonard Lispenard, John Cruger, and others, in 1768 he collaborated in the organization of the New York Chamber of Commerce. When the New York Hospital was incorporated in 1771 he became a member of the first board of governors.
His civic interests gradually led him into politics, his apprenticeship being served in the board of aldermen, where he sat for nine years after 1754 as representative for the East Ward. He served as a member of the provincial house of representatives from 1763 to 1769 and in 1768 served as Speaker. In October 1765 he was a member of the New York delegation which attended the Stamp Act Congress, which produced the first formal protest to the crown as a prelude to the American Revolution. When the governor dissolved the Assembly in January 1769, Livingston hoped to win the support of moderate men in both the De Lancey and Livingston factions. Failing in this conciliatory gesture, he was defeated in New York City. Thereupon his nephew, Peter R. Livingston, withdrew and allowed him to be returned from the manor. The majority in the Assembly, refusing to recognize his right to sit for a "pocket borough" in which he did not reside, declared his seat vacant. Undismayed by this turn of events, he remained active in politics, emerging as one of the forceful but conservative leaders of the opposition to the "Intolerable Acts. "
In 1774 he served on the Committee of Fifty-One which named the New York delegates to the First Continental Congress and he was one of the five selected to attend the sessions at Philadelphia. At the moment he was in a distinctly conservative mood, weighing carefully the cost to colonial merchants of any disruption of normal trade with Great Britain. John Adams found him disinclined to listen to radical proposals.
Livingston became a member of the Committee of Sixty to enforce the terms of the "Association" and was placed on the Committee of One Hundred to carry forward provincial affairs until the meeting of the first provincial congress in 1775. He and his cousin, the second Robert R. Livingston, were members both of the New York congress and the Second Continental Congress. They apparently had an arrangement whereby one would be in New York while the other was attending sessions in Philadelphia. It thus happened that Philip was in New York when the vote on Richard Henry Lee's historic resolution was taken, but he signed the Declaration of Independence in August 1776. He cannot, however, be regarded as one who forced an affirmative answer when the question of independence was raised. Both in New York and in Philadelphia he rendered conscientious service on important committees. For his province he sat upon the committee "for the hearing and trial of disaffected persons of equivocal character. " In the Continental Congress he was in turn a member of the Committee on Indian Affairs, the Treasury Board, the Marine Committee, the Committee on Commerce, and the board of commissioners to inspect the army under the command of Washington.
His duties in Continental affairs were constantly interrupted by the demands of the province. In 1777 he was chosen by the convention of the state of New York as one of the senators from the southern district in the upper house of the new legislature. He attended the first meetings of this body and then, despite ill health and the protests of his family, he returned to the Continental Congress, then sitting at York, Pennsylvania. There he continued in the public service until his death in June 1778.
Philip Livingston's career as philanthropist and statesman was an interesting contrast to that of his acquisitive grandfather, Robert, the founder of the family in America. He gave generously of his private fortune, pledging his personal credit without hope of future profit to maintain confidence in the Continental Congress. Honored by his generation for probity and ability, he was too dignified in bearing to win popularity and too austere in temper to arouse warm personal friendships. His intimate associates found behind his austerity and somewhat foridding manner an affectionate disposition and a kindliness which constantly responded to urgent public appeals.
Achievements
Politics
In the developing struggle between the De Lanceys and the Livingstons, Philip supported the family whose name he bore, but his partisanship was never as intense as that of his younger brother, William. In his view the Whig faction, or popular party, was essentially a protest against the political ascendancy of certain groups whom he did not like and a means of voicing in dignified fashion his belief that the province should enjoy a large measure of local autonomy. His religious nonconformity undoubtedly helped him to see the errors of the Anglican supporters of the De Lanceys. During his service in the lower house he was a determined foe of the financial policy brought forward by Grenville and other imperial administrators. In 1764 he helped phrase the address of the Assembly to Lieutenant-Governor Colden, calling upon him to join in an endeavor to secure that "great badge of English liberty, " the right of His Majesty's subjects everywhere to be taxed only with their own consent. When the Stamp Act became a reality, Livingston frowned upon the rioting of the "Sons of Liberty, " but joined in the more dignified protests of lawyers and merchants.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"Among the considerable merchants in this city no one is more esteemed for energy, promptness and public spirit than Philip Livingston. " - Sir Charles Hardy
"Philip Livingston is a great, rough rapid mortal. There is no holding any conversation with him. He blusters away; says if England should turn us adrift, we should instantly go to civil wars among ourselves" - John Adams
Connections
Livingston married Christina, the daughter of Colonel Dirck Ten Broeck of Albany, on April 14, 1740. He established his family in a comfortable town house on Duke Street and maintained a beautiful country seat on Brooklyn Heights, overlooking the harbor into which his ships brought his increasing wealth.