of all the elements of character except caution needed to engage an enemy; Major-general Spencer, a Connecticut officer of sixty-two, with experience in the French war; Brigadier-general Mifflin, age thirty-four, full of activity and apparently of fire, but too much of a bustler, harassing his soldiers. unnecessarily; Brigadier-general McDougall, a master spirit among the Sons of Liberty, and a man of forty-five; Brigadier-general Parsons, the Lyme lawyer, not yet forty, but with unmistakable military genius; Brigadier-general Wadsworth, who divided with Parsons the honor of commanding the flower of the Connecticut soldiery; Brigadier-general John Fel

[From a pencil sketch from memory by Mr. Henry E. Pierrepont.]

lows, an officer who had seen service in the French War, and Brigadier-genral John Morin Scott, who commanded an effective brigade of New Yorkers, and more valorous than discreet was intent upon defending the capital to the last drop of his blood. In the official report of this Council of War, afterward transmitted to Congress, were given in full eight separate reasons why it was esteemed sound military policy to retreat. General Scott wrote to John Jay, at White Plains, under date of September 6, 1776: "I was summoned to a Council of War at Mr. Philip Livingston's house, on Thursday (August) 29th, never having had reason to expect a proposition for retreat, till it was mentioned. As it was suddenly proposed I as sud

denly objected to it, from an aversion to giving the enemy a single inch of ground; but was soon convinced by the unanswerable reasons for it."

Livingston was absent at this crisis, a member of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia. After the famous retreat of the Americans from Long Island, one of the most remarkable military events in history, the British took possession of the old mansion-house and turned it into a naval hospital. The surgeons and physicians made themselves comfortable in its well-appointed apartments, and built sheds and huts in the grounds for the sick. The handsome garden soon went to decay, and when the war ended but little remained of it. Mr. Livingston owned a brewery at the foot of what is now Joralemon Street, which the British used to good advantage in the manufacture of spruce beer. Dr. Henry R. Stiles, the historian of Brooklyn, says the hospitals consumed at the rate of twenty barrels a day for their sick, and that tradition said "it was the best beer ever tasted."

During Philip Livingston's occupancy of his attractive Brooklyn home he was not only attending to large and prosperous mercantile interests in New York, but was constantly in active public service which required his presence in the city nearly every day. He kept open and some of his family were nearly always to be found at his substantial town house, built of stone, on Duke Street. Daniel McCormick, the notable New York merchant (born in 1740, died in 1834), who bought Livingston's "distillery property" in 1785, related many anecdotes of the venerable signer. He said Philip Livingston had a ferry to New York of his own, and was in the habit of swimming his horses daily across the channel from the rear of his little ferryboat. On one occasion (and a well-known and eminent Brooklyn gentleman remembers having heard McCormick tell the story), a pair of beautiful black horses, accustomed to the trip, strayed away from the coachman and swam the whole distance alone, very demurely finding their way through the streets to the town stable after reaching the landing at Manhattan. The accompanying map illustrates the relative distances, and will furnish the reader with a tolerably correct view of the size of the metropolis in 1788.

Philip Livingston was sixty years of age when he signed the Declaration of Independence. Born in 1716, the fourth son of Philip Livingston, second proprietor of Livingston Manor, he was a fine specimen of the native New Yorker of that period. His grandfather, Robert Livingston, was an Englishman, but his grandmother, Alida Schuyler, and his mother, Catharine Van Brugh, were Dutch. He married a Dutch lady, Christina, daughter of Mayor Ten Broeck, of Albany, and he had nine children, five sons and four daughters. He was seven years the senior of his brother William, the

famous war governor of New Jersey, but younger than either of the three brothers-Robert, who inherited the manor property; Peter Van Brugh, President of the New York Congress, whose wife was Mary Alexander, sister of Lord Stirling; and John, who married Catharine, daughter of Treasurer Abraham De Peyster. They were all educated men. Peter Van Brugh Livingston was graduated from Yale in 1731, John Livingston in 1733, Philip (the signer) in 1737, and William in 1741. Their three sisters

[Fac-simile of original letter from De Witt Clinton, in possession of Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet.] were brilliant and accomplished women; Sarah was the wife of Lord Stirling; Alida married Henry Hawson, and after his death Martin Hoffman; and Catharine married John L. Lawrence. These numerous families were all wealthy, and all residents of the city.

Philip Livingston began his public career as an alderman in 1754, holding the position some eight years. He was about the same time one of the founders of the New York Society Library, and aided materially in the establishment of Columbia College. He was one of the founders and incorporators of the Chamber of Commerce in 1770, and one of the first governors of the New York Hospital. In 1759 he was elected to the New

York Assembly, and held the post by successive re-elections until 1769. Governor Sir Charles Hardy said of him: "Among the considerable merchants in this city, no one is more esteemed for energy, promptness, honesty and public spirit than Philip Livingston." His wholesome influence was particularly marked during the agitations that preceded the passage of the Stamp Act. In September, 1764, he drafted a remarkably spirited address to Lieutenant-Governor Colden, in which he made use of the boldest language in expressing the hopes of the colonists for freedom from taxation. He was one of the committee to correspond with Edmund Burke, the agent of the colony in England, and no man could write more forcibly on the vexed subjects of the hour.

His beautiful daughter Catharine married the youthful Albany patroon, Stephen van Rensselaer, in 1763. She did not remove from New York, however, as the great manor-house was in process of erection, until after the birth of her son Stephen (the following year, 1764), who became the fifth patroon in the direct line, and was known as the general. His education was obtained in the midst of the commotions of the Revolutionary War. Philip Livingston was very fond of this grandson, and looked after his welfare with the closest scrutiny, changing his schools and instructors as the fortunes of war drove people from one point to another. It is an interesting fact that this same grandson erected the handsome monument in the York Cemetery to the memory of Philip Livingston, which the reader will find illustrated on another page.

Philip Livingston was one of the prominent New York delegates to the Stamp Act Congress, which met in the old City Hall in Wall Street, in 1765, and organized itself with measured precision, in the very face of the king's officers, and deliberated for three successive weeks, unmolested, on affairs of the utmost consequence to the future of the whole continent. This Congress was an institution then unknown to the laws, was pronounced by the authorities of the province unconstitutional and treasonable, and was the first experiment in organized opposition to the established government. Its purpose was to demand the repeal of all parliamentary acts levying duties on trade, as well as the Stamp Act. Its results were three petitions, or memorials; one to the King, one to the House of Lords, and one to the House of Commons. That to the House of Lords was from the pen of Philip Livingston, and it conveyed an element of decision to the British mind that was as unexpected as startling. As speaker of the Assembly he signed, December, 31, 1768, another remarkable document, containing the following bold declaration: "This colony lawfully and constitutionally has, and enjoys an internal Legislature of its own,