TODAY IN HISTORY: November 27 - Today's Stories: Robert R. Livingston, De Lancey and the Zenger Case
Robert R. Livingston
November 27, 1746, marks the birth of Robert R. Livingston, jurist and statesman. Born into a wealthy and influential New York family, Livingston’s great-grandfather had purchased the Native American claims to large tracts of land along the Hudson River, eventually acquiring an estate of some 162,000 acres. Clermont, the family estate, is today a 500-acre historic site.
Livingston graduated from King’s College—now known as Columbia University—in 1765. He next studied law and formed a law partnership with another alumnus, John Jay, future chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1773 he was appointed recorder for New York City and presided over criminal trials but was removed because of his support for independence for the American colonies.
Livingston served in the First (1774) and Second (1775-89) Continental Congresses. In June 1776, Livingston was one of five men—along with Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Roger Sherman—appointed by the Continental Congress to draft the Declaration of Independence. However, his signature is not on the document as he was in New York at the time of its formal signing. Along with John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, Livingston, as chancellor, was instrumental in persuading New York to ratify the federal Constitution.
Livingston was the first chancellor of New York State—from 1777 to 1801—until he was appointed minister to France. After the ratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1781, Livingston was elected and served as secretary of foreign affairs (secretary of state) until 1783. He also administered the first presidential oath of office to George Washington on April 30, 1789.
Livingston served as America’s minister to France under Thomas Jefferson, who instructed him to buy New Orleans and the Floridas from Napoleon. Jefferson subsequently sent James Monroe to Paris with authority to offer the French ten million dollars. When Napoleon unexpectedly offered to sell the entire Louisiana territory for fifteen million dollars, Livingston and Monroe decided that the offer was too good to pass up and signed a treaty, subsequently ratified on October 20, 1803, by the U.S. Senate.
Livingston was one of the founders of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts, and Manufactures, a learned society and the first scientific organization in New York State. Livingston’s scientific interests also extended to agricultural experimentation—particularly farming and merino sheep culture. George Washington, owner of the plantation at Mount Vernon, shared Livingston’s interests in agricultural matters and corresponded frequently with him. On February 10, 1793, he wrote to Livingston, “that the prosperity of our Country is closely connected with our improvement in the useful Arts.” Two years later, on February 16, 1795, Washington again wrote to Livingston stating, “Works of this sort are of the most interesting importance to every country…” and he sent Livingston a pamphlet on the cultivation of potatoes.
The inventor John Stevens was Livingston’s brother-in-law, and they were associates in experiments relating to the development of steam navigation. Livingston also supported Robert Fulton, whose steamer Clermont, named for Livingston’s estate in New York, became the first successful steam-propelled vessel. For many years Livingston and Fulton held a hotly contested monopoly in steam navigation in New York State, still unresolved at the time of Livingston’s death at Clermont in 1813.
Learn More
- Search on Robert Livingston in the George Washington Papers to read correspondence between Washington and Livingston dating from the 1770s through the 1790s.
- Search on Robert Livingston in A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875 to read about Livingston’s work with the Continental Congress as recorded in the Journals of the Continental Congress.
- Livingston and Monroe arranged one of the most important land purchases in U.S. history. To learn more about how that purchase shaped U.S. history, search Today in History on Louisiana Purchase.
- To persuade New Yorkers to support the new Constitution, Livingston’s law partner John Jay along with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote The Federalist Papers, a series of articles originally published under the pen name “Publius.”
- Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774 to 1789 includes items such as extracts of the journals of the Continental Congress, resolutions, proclamations, committee reports, and treaties. There are also links to text versions of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
- Louisiana: European Explorations and the Louisiana Purchase presents 119 items—including maps and newspapers—that document this historic purchase made during Livingston’s tenure as minister to France.
- Search across the collections on the term steamboat for a wide variety of both images and written documents concerning this mode of transportation so commonly used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including John Fitch’s sketch and description of a piston for steamboat propulsion from around 1795.
De Lancey and the Zenger Case
James De Lancey, lawyer, jurist and eventual acting governor of New York, was born in New York City on November 27, 1703. As Chief Justice of New York, De Lancey presided over the landmark 1733 libel suit brought by Royal Governor William Cosby against printer John Peter Zenger. Cosby accused Zenger of printing stories critical of Cosby in his newspaper. Although De Lancey served at the pleasure of Cosby, and was himself biased against Zenger’s cause, the jury at Zenger’s trial still ruled in favor of the printer’s right to publish. The Zenger case is viewed as a milestone in establishing freedom of the press in America.
The eldest son of a French Huguenot merchant and a New York Dutch heiress, James De Lancey was sent to England at age twenty to receive his legal education. In 1728 he married Anne Heathcote of Scarsdale Manor (later Scarsdale, West Chester County) with whom he had six children. The following year he was admitted to the New York bar. With his superior training and family connections, De Lancey rose rapidly in political circles. Prior to his appointment as Chief Justice of New York by Cosby in August, 1733, De Lancey also served on the Governor’s Council and as second justice of the colony’s Supreme Court of Judicature.
The basis of the conflict surrounding Zenger’s newspaper lay in partisan politics, stemming from Cosby’s 1732 arrival as the new Royal Governor. Cosby demanded a pay raise, but also placed a claim on half the money previously paid to the colony’s interim governor, Rip Van Dam, as salary. New York’s provincial council granted the pay increase but opposed the surrender of Van Dam’s earnings. Cosby brought suit through New York’s Supreme Court. When Chief Justice Lewis Morrisrefused to hear the case, Cosby responded by removing Morris from the court—the reason for De Lancey’s quick appointment. The politically powerful Morris and his allies next looked for ways to discredit Cosby and his supporters. Led by lawyer James Alexander, the Morris faction soon started the New York Weekly Journal as an opposition newspaper specifically to criticize Cosby, employing printer John Peter Zenger to represent their cause. As printer, Zenger, a German immigrant, was the public face of the anti-Cosby paper, but he was neither the author nor the editor of its largely anonymous content.
After several legal attempts to stifle the paper and a full year of public attacks against him, Cosby had had enough of the New York Weekly Journal. In November, 1734, he ordered that four of the most offensive issues be publicly burned. Ten days later, Cosby had Zenger arrested on charges of seditious libel. Unable to afford an excessively high bail, Zenger spent more than eight months in prison awaiting trial, while the Weekly Journal continued to appear with the help of Zenger’s wife Anna. Though a grand jury refused to indict him, Zenger was finally brought to trial on August 4, 1735.
A hostile Chief Justice De Lancey presided over the case. De Lancey had disbarred Zenger’s original defense attorneys and replaced them with a pro-Cosby lawyer. On the day of the trial, however, Zenger was defended by the prominent Philadelphia lawyer Andrew Hamilton, by surprise arrangement of the Weekly Journal’s supporters. Hamilton directed his defense to the jury rather than the judge, conceding that Zenger had published articles critical of Cosby but eloquently arguing that because the articles contained truths in the form of verifiable facts, they could not be libelous—an argument that defied the accepted understanding of libel law at that time.
The Zenger jury’s “not guilty” verdict came quickly and was widely celebrated. Zenger soon published a transcript of the trial, while Hamilton was awarded the “Freedom of the City” and an inscribed gold box by the Common Council of New York. Though scholars may disagree about the long-term effects of the Zenger case in law or legislation, it fully captured the public’s attention. The case set an important political precedent for colonial America, fortifying emerging concepts of freedom of the press while earning the trial of John Peter Zenger an enduring place in America’s historical imagination.
For De Lancey, the Zenger affair was only a minor setback in his own rise to power. With Cosby’s death in 1736, De Lancey joined the governor’s council, now exerting great influence on all three branches of New York government. By 1744, he had earned the role of chief justice “in good behavior,” which effectively meant he could hold the position for life. Three years later he became Lieutenant Governor. During the 1750s James De Lancey served twice as acting governor of New York, convening the Albany Congress of 1754 and signing the charter for King’s College (now Columbia University) the following year. He died suddenly of a heart attack in July of 1760.
Learn More
- Search the Library’s digital collections on press or to learn about the diverse topics that have been the object of journalist interest. Search on libel to learn more about issues of truth and slander across American history. View resources about the Alien and Sedition Acts to learn about another formative episode concerning freedom of speech in the United States.
- Search Printed Ephemera: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera on De Lancey to see two official proclamations issued by James De Lancey as Lieutenant Governor of New York.
- Read Today in History entries about Benjamin Franklin and his “Join or Die” cartoon, as well as the first daily newspaper, to learn more about newspapers in early American History. View a presentation on Publishing the Declaration of Independence to learn about the role of newspapers in furthering the cause of American Independence.
- View the exhibit First Among Many: The Bay Psalm Book and Early Moments in American Printing to learn more about the overall history of printing in what is now the United States.
- Browse or search Chronicling America to see newspapers from across America published between 1789 to 1943.
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