Background

William Leggett descended from Gabriel Leggett, an emigrant from Essex, England, who settled in Westchester County, New York, about 1675. William was born in New York City, son of Abraham Leggett, an officer in the Revolution, and his second wife, Catherine Wylie of New Rochelle.

Education

He attended Georgetown College for a time, but did not graduate.

Career

In 1819 Leggett went with his parents to Illinois, where he lived a pioneer's life until his appointment as midshipman in the navy, December 4, 1822. In May following, assigned to the Cyane, he sailed for the Mediterranean, but in 1825 he was court-martialed for a dueling affair with another midshipman at Port Mahon, was sent home, and on April 17, 1826, threw up his commission. His faults were chiefly hot temper and a witty, unruly tongue--one offense was quoting passages of Shakespeare "of highly inflammatory, rancorous, and threatening import" against his captain, John Orde Creighton. His defense is an able, entertaining document.

He had published some youthful verse, Leisure Hours at Sea (1825), and now took up journalistic writing in New York. He published a second volume of poems, Journals of the Ocean, in 1826, and Tales and Sketches, by a Country Schoolmaster in 1829; contributed "The Blockhouse" to Tales of Glauber Spa in 1832; and wrote constantly for the New-York Mirror and other periodicals.

In 1828 he established a weekly, the Critic, most of which he wrote himself and which lasted only ten months. In 1829 he became part owner and assistant editor, under William Cullen Bryant, of the Evening Post. Whittier's poem, "To a Poetical Trio in New York", was an appeal to Bryant, Leggett, and James Lawson, another New York editor, to give up vain political debates and devote themselves to the anti-slavery cause. From June 1834 to October 1835, during Bryant's absence abroad Leggett was chief editor. He was more fluent and more of a theorist than Bryant.

Though at first he had disclaimed interest in politics, he now entered warmly into political issues, adopting strong Jacksonian principles. From opposing the United States Bank he advanced to denunciation of the state banks as the worst examples of chartered monopolies and special privilege. He advocated broad suffrage and free trade. Soon he had become the oracle of the radical Democrats whose extreme wing seceded to form the Equal Rights or Locofoco party in 1835. In that year, though not yet a thoroughgoing abolitionist, he hotly attacked the administration for excluding anti-slavery propaganda from the mails, and denounced the mobs that broke up abolitionist meetings in New York. His chief characteristics as a writer were energy and absolute independence; his chief defect was violence. Combative from his backwoods and naval antecedents, he was responsible for Bryant's attempt to horsewhip Sands, editor of the Commercial, and later challenged Sands to a duel. This was not fought, but he had a duel with an Englishman named Banks, treasurer of the Park Theatre. Convivial in tastes, he was prominent in New York social and literary life.

His severe illness in the winter of 1835-1836 hastened Bryant's return from Europe, and about October 1836, he left the Evening Post. From December of that year to September 1837, he edited the Plaindealer, in which, free from the restrictions imposed by his more conservative chief on the Post, he continued to attack political and economic abuses and to advocate free trade, direct taxation, and the right of workingmen to organize. He also advanced from the defense of the abolitionists' right of free speech to support of their attacks on slavery. The journal was influential in shaping Democratic policies, and was fairly successful till the failure of its publishers.

During part of this time Leggett also edited a daily, the Examiner. "How he finds time to write so much, " remarked Bryant, "I know not. " In 1838 he nearly secured a Democratic nomination for Congress, but, having declared himself an abolitionist and refusing to modify his declaration, he was rejected for a less radical candidate. The next year Van Buren appointed him diplomatic agent to Guatemala, his friends hoping the climate might benefit his health, but he died before sailing for the post. Though Tammany, during his attacks on the administration in 1835, had abjured Leggett and disclaimed the Post as a party organ, the Tammany Young Men's General Committee erected the monument over his grave in Trinity (Episcopal) Church Cemetery, New Rochelle. Whittier refers to this episode in his poem, "Leggett's Monument. " Theodore Sedgwick, Jr. , his friend, published in two volumes A Collection of the Political Writings of William Leggett (1840), remarked upon at the time as the first American attempt to establish the standing of a writer on the basis of journalistic work.

Achievements

• William Leggett has been listed as a noteworthy journalist by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Naval Stories (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Naval Stories The crew were disposed in var...)

  • A Collection of the Political Writings of William Leggett: Selected and Arranged with a Preface by Theodore Sedgwick, Jr, Volumes 1-2

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Tales and Sketches (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Tales and Sketches His wife seemed six or s...)

  • Democratick Editorials (Essays in Jacksonian Political Economy)

    ( William Leggett (1801–1839) was the intellectual leader...)

  • Leisure Hours at Sea: Being a Few Miscellaneous Poems

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • The Atlantic Souvenir For 1830 (1830)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

Connections

In 1828 Leggett married Almira, daughter of John Waring of New Rochelle.

Father:

Abraham Leggett

officer

Mother:

Catherine Wylie

Spouse:

Almira Waring