Many years ago I wrote a book about Robert R. Livingston in the American Revolution as you can tell by the title. When I submitted it for publication not only was it rejected but I was told by one of the reviewers “This author should stop writing.” That stifled my writing for several years.
I recently found a copy of the book on a thumb drive and I have decided to put it out to the world. Its rougher and less polished than my current writing but there’s always a desire to go back and fix what you wrote. So here it is:
If this book was written in the nineteenth century it would no doubt be filled with pronouncements about how Robert R. Livingston was a man of destiny, fated for a life of grandeur and great deeds. It is not the nineteenth century and a man’s destiny comes down to what he makes of the opportunities presented to him throughout his life. Robert R. Livingston was a rich, educated man who came of age in interesting times and who worked tirelessly to shape them to meet his own interests, seizing opportunities as they were presented to him.
Livingston was born into the kind of wealth that few people have ever known. In the extremely stratified world of the eighteenth century, he was unlikely to ever meet anyone to whom he would have to bow and scrape. Livingston could have easily had an apathetic career as a lawyer, which he could have easily drooped as soon inherited the huge estate belonging to his parents and grandparents. He then could have retired to live the comfortable life of the country gentry, living well off the rents of his tenants. However Robert R. Livingston was never a man who could rest easy. With the coming of the Stamp Act he was given the choice of siding with the colonists or the British government at a very young age. Like his father and grandfather Livingston chose to side of those fighting for the rights of the colonies but firmly was against mob actions and the anarchy they could create. This was what led Livingston to become directly involved in the struggle for independence. It was important to Livingston and many of other landed and wealthy men like him that the fight against taxation and eventually the fight for independence were conducted in a way that did not upset the social order of the colonies and endanger the Livingston family’s position in it.
Robert R. Livingston joined and fought the Revolution on his terms. He fought against anarchy in the colonies as much as he fought against the British. His goal became to create a country where his situation would not be to dissimilar to what he had experienced under the British, but with a bit more prestige for himself and fewer red coated soldiers. Livingston was in favor of a kind of controlled radicalism, often interpreted by more radical radicals as a lack of attachment to the cause. Not only was Livingston deeply committed to the cause, as evidenced by his constant service to his state and country throughout the war, but he believed that war in America was setting the stage for change across the world. In 1780 he wrote to his father in law; “You will find that America has effectualy fought the battles of Ireland, so that we shall have the honor of establishing the freedom of other nations while we are throwing off our own yoke.”[i] Livingston thought that there was a chance that the revolution he was leading could end the British Empire. He envisioned the complete dismemberment of the British Empire and perhaps the end of the colonial system as a whole.
To accomplish this Livingston held both state and continental offices for the duration of the war, from before the first shots of the conflict were fired at Lexington and Concord to after the surrender at Yorktown and the major fighting was over. By maintaining positions inside the cause he ensured that he would have a say in how the war was fought and how the new government would take shape. Livingston was a factor in military strategy, financial matters and foreign affairs at the continental level. On the state level he was involved in the military, relations with other states, judicial affairs and the formation of the government among a sundry of other duties.
Why then has Livingston been relegated to the foot notes of most history books of the era; someone who is often seen as bumbling and blustering his way through history, showing up for no particular reason at important historic events? To put it simply Robert R. Livingston never fit neatly into the popular interpretations of the period. Even during the revolution and in the immediate aftermath, Livingston had enough enemies and detractors that his importance was often downplayed. His occasional blatantly open desire for credit and glory was anathema to other gentlemen of the period, who all sought the same things Livingston did, but were careful to be more discreet about it.
After the main players of the Revolution had died, Livingston became a victim of historical trends. In the early histories of the war, and in the colonial revivalism movement that followed in the early twentieth century, Robert R. Livingston was something of an enigma. He obviously did not fit into the American hero model of the rugged but intrepid frontier farmer who dropped the plow to pick up his squirrel gun and fight off the marauding British Army. Although later in life Livingston would have been flattered with the farmer appellation, his service to the country was simply too cerebral to easily fit into that stereotype. Rather than being a hero of the battlefield he was a warrior of the committee room and the debate floor, not necessarily the most romantic or inspirational image.
Later in the nineteenth century and amongst the more socialist histories of the twentieth century Livingston’s wealth and land holdings were held against him. In the mid-eighteenth century the Livingston family along with other rich land holder’s became the villains in the tenants’ fight to receive free land for no reason. When the tenants were finally able to wrest control of the land from the landlords, the Livingston family and the others became vanquished monsters. The left-leaning historians preferred to focus on agitation between the Livingston family and their tenants during the revolution, rather than on the accomplishments of the family and of Robert R. Livingston. Forgotten or ignored completely was the fact that much of the agitation was started by British agents who sought out loyalists or those more concerned with their personal situations than with the larger concerns of the colony to foment dissent in an effort to weaken the Continental Army and injure the cause. These writers also tended to cast the Livingstons and other landlords as the mustache twirling villainous landlords of early movies who liked nothing better than to oppress their tenants and evict them for the slightest cause rather than as the source of land and credit for new immigrant farmers who otherwise would not have had the opportunity or the means to start out in the new world.
Correspondence from Robert R Livingston can be found amongst the papers of nearly all of the fathers who turned to him for assistance or advice. The echoes of his words can be found in notes on debates and in records of the various bodies he belonged to. It is these words, his words where possible, that should be used to tell his story for once. Allowing him to have his history told in the same way he fought against the British and shaped the nation, on his own terms.
[i] Robert R. Livingston to John Stevens February 29, 1780 LDC Volume 14 p 451.
Geoff Benton 