Philosophic solitude, or, The choice of a rural life: a poem.
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Title: Philosophic solitude, or, The choice of a rural ...)
Title: Philosophic solitude, or, The choice of a rural life : a poem.
Author: William Livingston
Publisher: Gale, Sabin Americana
Description:
Based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana, Sabin Americana, 1500--1926 contains a collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. Sabin Americana is rich in original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, religious history and more.
Sabin Americana offers an up-close perspective on life in the western hemisphere, encompassing the arrival of the Europeans on the shores of North America in the late 15th century to the first decades of the 20th century. Covering a span of over 400 years in North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, this collection highlights the society, politics, religious beliefs, culture, contemporary opinions and momentous events of the time. It provides access to documents from an assortment of genres, sermons, political tracts, newspapers, books, pamphlets, maps, legislation, literature and more.
Now for the first time, these high-quality digital scans of original works are available via print-on-demand, making them readily accessible to libraries, students, independent scholars, and readers of all ages.
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The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
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SourceLibrary: Huntington Library
DocumentID: SABCP02070500
CollectionID: CTRG96-B3313
PublicationDate: 17470101
SourceBibCitation: Selected Americana from Sabin's Dictionary of books relating to America
Notes: Pages iii-x contain verses "To the ingenious author of the poem, entitled Philosophic solitude," signed N.W. Noah Welles, and "To Mr. L*********, on his Philosophic solitude," signed W.P.S. William Peartree Smith. The authors are identified by Theodore Sedgwick in his Memoir of the life of William Livingston (New York, 1833) p. 62.
Collation: 44 p. ; 19 cm
A Review of the Military Operations in North America: From the Commencement of the French Hostilities on the Frontiers of Virginia in 1753, to the ... With Various Observations, Characters, and A
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A letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, John, Lord Bishop of Landaff; occasioned by some passages in His Lordship's sermon, on the 20th of ... are loaded with great and undeserved reproach
(The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration a...)
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.
The Age of Enlightenment profoundly enriched religious and philosophical understanding and continues to influence present-day thinking. Works collected here include masterpieces by David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as religious sermons and moral debates on the issues of the day, such as the slave trade. The Age of Reason saw conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism transformed into one between faith and logic -- a debate that continues in the twenty-first century.
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The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
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Library of Congress
W019527
Caption title: A letter to the Bishop of Landaff.
Boston : Re-printed and sold by Kneeland and Adams, next to the Treasurer's Office, in Milk-Street, MDCCLXVIII. 1768. 26,2p. ; 8°
William Livingston was an American lawyer and politician.
Background
Livingston, the grandson of Robert and brother of Philip and Peter Van Brugh Livingston, was in many ways the ablest of the sons of Philip and Catharine (Van Brugh) Livingston. He was born in November 1723 at Albany (baptized December 8, 1723), Province of New York, British America (now United States) and spent his childhood there under the indulgent care of his maternal grandmother, Sarah Van Brugh. At the age of fourteen he lived for a year with a missionary among the friendly Mohawks, an experience which his family felt would be valuable if the lad turned his attention later to the fur trade or the possibilities of land speculation on the frontier. The following year he was sent to New Haven to follow the path chosen by his three elder brothers.
Education
Livingston received his early education from local schools and tutors. He graduated from Yale in the class of 1741. In 1788 Yale University awarded him an honorary doctor of laws degree.
Career
While in college Livingston decided that law had a larger claim than mercantile affairs upon his interest. Accordingly, he avoided his brothers' countinghouses in New York City and entered the law office of James Alexander, who had been a vigorous champion of the freedom of the press in connection with the Zenger trial. Under such preceptors as Alexander and William Smith, 1697-1769, both veteran advocates of Whiggish tendencies, Livingston became confirmed in political views distinctly liberal for his generation. His intimate associates among the younger men were John Morin Scott, William Peartree Smith, and William Smith, Jr. , the historian, with whom he prepared a digest of the provincial laws (1752, 1762). Around these three gathered a group of sturdy Calvinists who courageously objected to the dominant position of the Anglican gentry and their allies in provincial politics.
From the day of his admission to the bar in 1748 Livingston was a leader among those of assured position who liked to be known as supporters of the popular cause. Petulant and impatient of restraint, he soon aroused the resentment of the conservatives by his sweeping criticism of established institutions. Always more facile in writing than in speech, he delighted to compose satirical verse and witty broadsides which earned him a greater reputation as a censor than as a satirist. A young lady of his acquaintance, alluding to his tall, slender, and graceless figure, named him the "whipping-post. " In 1751 the controversy over the establishment of a college in the province became a focal point in his developing political philosophy. Although anxious to promote a collegiate foundation, he protested against the plan to place the institution in the hands of a board of trustees dominated by the Episcopalians and refused to serve as a representative of the Presbyterians on the board. To him the proposal appeared as the first step toward establishing the Anglican Church in New York and giving it general supervision of educational matters. His views were ably presented in the Independent Reflector, a weekly which his friends inaugurated in 1752 "to oppose superstition, bigotry, priestcraft, tyranny, servitude, public mismanagement and dishonesty in office" and to teach the "inestimable value of liberty. "
On the question of the college he took the stand that the institution should be non-sectarian and catholic, that it should be established not by royal charter but by act of the Assembly, and that the trustees and faculty should be subject to no religious or political tests. Though he failed to prevent the chartering of King's College by George II, his efforts were responsible for the diversion of half of the "college fund" to the building of a jail and pest house. His contributions to the Independent Reflector and the "Watch Tower" column in the New York Mercury violently attacked the movement to establish an Anglican episcopacy in America and accused the faction, headed by Lieutenant-Governor James De Lancey, of favoring the union of church and state. His appeals on this issue aroused the nonconformists and strengthened the liberal party, which was rapidly becoming a Livingston faction in provincial politics.
The first important victory of the Livingstons at the polls resulted in driving the De Lanceys from their control of the Assembly in 1758. William Livingston was accorded a position of leadership not only in the councils of the party but also in its tactics in the legislative body. He was determined in his opposition to Parliamentary interference in provincial affairs. Convinced of the desirability of provincial home rule, he was equally persuaded of the necessity of the wealthy liberals continuing to rule at home. As the issues raised by Grenville's tax program reached a crisis, the unity of the Livingston forces was seriously threatened, for the patrician elements in the party were troubled by the violent reaction of the plebeian groups to the Stamp Act. Livingston labored hard to reconcile the "Sons of Liberty" and other radicals to the moderate leadership which his family represented, but the masses were dissatisfied with the temporizing Whigs. Even the attack on the Anglicans, which he renewed in his Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, John, Lord Bishop of Landaff (1768), no longer aroused the voters.
In the election of 1769 the De Lanceys won a decisive victory and secured a majority in the Assembly. William Livingston's power was gone for the moment. In disappointment he penned A Soliloquy (1770), purporting to be a meditation of Lieutenant-Governor Colden, which beneath a thin veneer of satire was an unsparing invective against the provincial representatives of British authority. Never entirely happy in his legal work and temporarily dispirited by the turn of his political fortunes, Livingston determined to retire to his country estate near Elizabethtown, New Jersey.
Years earlier, in his Philosophic Solitude (1747), he had ventured to reveal in verse his longing for the quiet of the countryside. In May 1772 he laid out pretentious grounds, planted an extensive orchard, and erected a mansion known as "Liberty Hall. " There he began life anew as a gentleman farmer, but he did not find solitude. The removal to New Jersey was merely a prelude to a career more illustrious than the one just finished in New York politics.
Becoming a member of the Essex County Committee of Correspondence, he quickly rose to a position of leadership and was one of the province's delegates to the First Continental Congress. There he served on the committee with his son-in-law, John Jay, and Richard Henry Lee to draft an address to the people of British America. He was returned as a deputy to the Second Continental Congress, serving until June 5, 1776, when he assumed command of the New Jersey militia. It was a responsibility extremely irksome to him, yet he discharged his duties with his usual conscientiousness until the legislature under the new constitution elected him first governor of the state.
For the next fourteen years he bore the responsibilities of the governorship during the extraordinary conditions of war and reconstruction. The multitudinous duties, civil and military, the threats of the enemy, and the disloyalty of friends harassed his nervous and excitable temper but failed to overcome his spirited support of the patriot cause. Rivington's Royal Gazette dubbed him the "Don Quixote of the Jerseys. " His boundless energy was an incalculable asset during the gloomiest period of the war. When peace came his messages to the legislature dealt discriminatingly and comprehensively with the problems of reconstruction. As authority slipped out of the hands of Congress, he called for a revision of the Articles of Confederation, in which he was privileged to participate at the Federal Convention of 1787.
Though he was not conspicuous in debate, he ably supported the New Jersey plan and worked for a compromise that would mean success.
Two years later, while he was resting at Elizabethtown, his years of public service came to an end. Though his life was spent in the excitement of political strife and affairs of state, he longed for the quieter routine of the farmer. After his removal to New Jersey he managed to devote some time to experiments in gardening. It was his pleasure to show his friends his vegetables at "Liberty Hall. " Livingston died on July 25, 1790 in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Achievements
Livingston was noted for his service as the first Governor of New Jersey from 1776 to 1790 during the American Revolutionary War. He was a signer of the United States Constitution and was largely responsible for the alacrity and unanimity with which the state convention ratified the Constitution. He was also a prolific writer and his poem "Philosophic Solitude" was considered one of the first successful original poems written by an American colonist. Livingston also played a key role in founding the New York Society Library.
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Title: Philosophic solitude, or, The choice of a rural ...)
Religion
Livingston was associated with the Calvinists in religion.
Politics
Livingston was the supporter of popular causes against the more conservative factions in the city. He opposed the dominant Anglican leaders in the colony. He attacked the Anglican attempt to charter and control King's College and the dominant De Lancey party for its Anglican sympathies.
Livingston opposed the cheapening of the currency by unrestricted issues of paper money, counseled moderation in dealing with the Loyalists and their property, and looked forward to the day when the question of slavery would be settled on the basis of gradual emancipation.
Membership
Livingston was an active member of the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Agriculture.
Personality
Among his intimates and in an ever-widening circle of acquaintances Livingston was honored for his high moral courage and his fine sense of social responsibility. The confidential agents of the French government reported to Paris that he was a man who preferred the public good to personal popularity.
Quotes from others about the person
"Governor Livingston is confessedly a man of the first rate talents, but he appears to me rather to indulge a sportiveness of wit than a strength of thinking. He is, however, equal to anything, from the extensiveness of his education and genius. His writings teem with satyr and a neatness of style. But he is no Orator, and seems little acquainted with the guiles of policy. " - William Pierce
Connections
About 1745, before he had completed his legal studies, Livingston married Susanna French, the daughter of a wealthy New Jersey landholder. Henry Brockholst Livingston was their son; their daughter Susanna married John Cleves Symmes, their daughter Sarah became the wife of John Jay.
