Life in the Legion (Paperback)

PREFACE. HAVE been in trusted by the Editors of the New American Cyclopxdia with the task of preparing the notices of Robert R. and Edward Livingston which appeared in that work, I conceived an unexpected interest in the career of the younger of these brothers, and resolved to write a more extended sketch of his life, such as the public and common sources of information would enable me to do. In pursuance of that pIan, a considerable part of the folIowing work was composed, including the chap ters upon the Livingston genealogy, the first congressional career of Edward Livingston, his controversy with Jefferson, and his system of penal law, which were finished in their present form. I was proceeding to fill up other parts of the outline, when an acquaintance which I formed with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas P. Barton, the only survivors of Mr. Liv ingstons immediate family, led to my acquisition of the best materials for the remainder of the work. Besides taking the greatest pains to satisfy aH my particular inquiries, they in the kindest manner, and without reserve or material restriction, placed in my hands the whole mass of papers left by Mr. Living ston at his death, a collection, it needs hardly be said, of great interest and value, as well for more general researches as for that to which my attention was de voted. In the use which has been made of these materials I have followed very strictly my own judgment and method, which was to confine myseIf to the presentation of such matter only as would place in the best and pIainest light the genius and character of a man, an account of whose life, both full and concise, I thought our American biography not rich enough to well afford to dispensewith. I have received valuable hints, pieces of informa tion, or cIews to information, from several other friendly hands. Among these 1 may n ention by name the Iate Honorable Charles J. Ingersoll, the late HonorabIe Henry Carleton, both of whose com munications, though given with true vivacity, were spoken from the very door of the-tomb, Mrs. Joseph Delafield, Mrs, Henry D. Gilpin, Miss Mary Garretson, the Wonorable George M. DalIas, the Hon orable Gulian C. Verplanck, the Honorable George Bancroft, David Codwise, Esquire, Augustus K. Mac donough, Esquire, A. Judson Kneeland, Esquire, W. Coventry H. WaddelI, Esquire, Henry B. Dawson, Esquire, George H. Moore, Esquire, and William Henry Forman, Esquire. The late Honornble Henry D. Gilpin, who was Attorney-General in the cabinet of Mr. Van Buren, and one of the most accomplished among American public men, enjoyed a long political and personal inti nacy with the subject of this volume. He was the author of the sketch of Mr. Livingston which appeared, before the death of the latter, in the National Portrait Gallery. He afterwards read a necrological notice of Livingston before the American Philosophical Society, which has been published. And he intended, and began to write a more ex tended life of his friend, for which purpose he had in his possession the same manuscript materials which I have now employed. But he had not proceeded far in this task when its fulfilment was precluded by his own untimely end...