Men like Robert R. Livingston were the reason that the American Revolution succeeded in creating a new country without descending into complete and utter anarchy. Livingston and his ilk, while whole heartedly believing in the cause and supporting independence, tempered the more radical elements that would have seen the social order upset as later happened in the French Revolution. Livingston made a conscious decision to find a place in the management of the revolution and achieve the goal of independence from the economic tyranny of Great Britain while ensuring that he, and those like him, would be able to reap the economic benefits that independence would allow.
Time and again, Livingston expressed a desire to see a government run not by those born to it, or by a mob, but by the educated and experienced. Time and again he saw the more radical elements of the revolution attempt to rise up and seize power. When the government of those more radical elements became oppressive in its own way, Livingston, the man, was tempted to give up, but Livingston, the idealist, returned to the fray, fighting, in the way he knew how, to ensure the United States a place on the global stage.
His greatest posthumous honor came in the 1870’s when each state was allowed to choose two citizens to be represented in statuary hall in the Capital building. Livingston was one of the two New Yorkers chosen and his statue still stands in the Capital today. Despite being honored by the men who fought the revolution and the people of the state, most historians cannot find a place for Livingston in the record of the Revolution. Visitors to the Capital find themselves wondering what Livingston did to deserve a statue alongside the luminaries of American history
Robert R. Livingston was a man driven to maintain his way of life. Ironically, in the time he lived in the way to maintain the status quo was to lead a revolution. To preserve his place in the world he was forced to turn the world upside down. Livingston’s drive is perhaps best summed up in a letter to him from his long-time friend Gouverneur Morris;
“You cannot be mediocre and by Heaven if you do not fill the first Rank brilliant comme L’astre du jour…”[i]
[i] Gouverneur Morris to Robert R. Livingston January 21, 1779 LDC Volume 11 p 499
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