the fever, during which the people gave many proofs of their attachment to him. On his recovery he found his private affairs in some confusion, and he was at the same time deeply indebted to the government for public funds which had been lost through the mismanagement or dishonesty of a confidential clerk, and for which he was responsible as district-attorney. He at once surrendered all his property, resigned his two offices in 1803, and removed early in 1804 to Louisiana. He soon acquired a large law practice in New Orleans, and in 1826 repaid the government in full, including the interest, which at that time amounted to more than the original principal.
Almost immediately upon his arrival in Louisiana, where the legal system had previously been based on Roman, French and Spanish law, and where trial by jury and other peculiarities of English common law were now first introduced, he was appointed by the legislature to prepare a provisional code of judicial procedure, which (in the form of an act passed in April 1805) was continued in force from 1805 to 1825. In 1807, after conducting a successful suit on behalf of a client’s title to a part of the batture or alluvial land near New Orleans, Livingston attempted to improve part of this land (which he had received as his fee) in the Batture, Ste Marie. Great popular excitement was aroused against him; his workmen were mobbed; and Governor Claiborne, when appealed to for protection, referred the question to the Federal government. Livingston’s case was damaged by President Jefferson, who believed that Livingston had favoured Burr in the presidential election of 1800, and that he had afterwards been a party to Burr’s schemes. Jefferson made it impossible for Livingston to secure his title, and in 1812 published a pamphlet “for the use of counsel” in the case against Livingston, to which Livingston published a crushing reply. Livingston’s final victory in the courts brought him little financial profit because of the heavy expenses of the litigation. During the war with England from 1812 to 1815 Livingston was active in rousing the mixed population of New Orleans to resistance. He used his influence to secure amnesty for Lafitte and his followers upon their offer to fight for the city, and in 1814–1815 acted as adviser and volunteer aide-de-camp to General Jackson, who was his personal friend. In 1821, by appointment of the legislature, of which he had become a member in the preceding year, Livingston began the preparation of a new code of criminal law and procedure, afterwards known in Europe and America as the “Livingston Code.” It was prepared in both French and English, as was required by the necessities of practice in Louisiana, and actually consisted of four codes—crimes and punishments, procedure, evidence in criminal cases, reform and prison discipline. Though substantially completed in 1824, when it was accidentally burned, and again in 1826, it was not printed entire until 1833. It was never adopted by the state. It was at once reprinted in England, France and Germany, attracting wide praise by its remarkable simplicity and vigour, and especially by reason of its philanthropic provisions in the code of reform and prison discipline, which noticeably influenced the penal legislation of various countries. In referring to this code, Sir Henry Maine spoke of Livingston as “the first legal genius of modern times” (Cambridge Essays, 1856, p. 17). The spirit of Livingston’s code was remedial rather than vindictive; it provided for the abolition of capital punishment and the making of penitentiary labour not a punishment forced on the prisoner, but a matter of his choice and a reward for good behaviour, bringing with it better accommodations. His Code of Reform and Prison Discipline was adopted by Guatemala. Livingston was the leading member of a commission appointed to prepare a new civil code,[1] which for the most part the legislature adopted in 1825, and the most important chapters of which, including all those on contract, were prepared by Livingston alone.
Livingston was again a representative in Congress during 1823–1829, a senator in 1829–1831, and for two years (1831–1833) secretary of state under President Jackson. In this last position he was one of the most trusted advisers of the president, for whom he prepared a number of state papers, the most important being the famous anti-nullification proclamation of the 10th of December 1832. From 1833 to 1835 Livingston was minister plenipotentiary to France, charged with procuring the fulfilment by the French government of the treaty negotiated by W. C. Rives in 1831, by which France had bound herself to pay an indemnity of twenty-five millions of francs for French spoliations of American shipping chiefly under the Berlin and Milan decrees, and the United States in turn agreed to pay to France 1,500,000 francs in satisfaction of French claims. Livingston’s negotiations were conducted with excellent judgment, but the French Chamber of Deputies refused to make an appropriation to pay the first instalment due under the treaty in 1833, relations between the two governments became strained, and Livingston was finally instructed to close the legation and return to America. He died on the 23rd of May 1836 at Montgomery Place, Dutchess county, New York, an estate left him by his sister, to which he had removed in 1831. Livingston was twice married. His first wife, Mary McEvers, whom he married on the 10th of April 1788, died on the 13th of March 1801. In June 1805 he married Madame Louise Moreau de Lassy (d. 1860), a widow nineteen years of age, whose maiden name was Davezac de Castera, and who was a refugee in New Orleans from the revolution in Santo Domingo. She was a woman of extraordinary beauty and intellect, and is said to have greatly influenced her husband’s public career.
See C. H. Hunt, Life of Edward Livingston (New York, 1864); Livingston’s Works (2 vols., New York, 1873); and Louise Livingston Hunt, Memoir of Mrs Edward Livingston (New York, 1886).
LIVINGSTON, ROBERT R. (1746–1813), American statesman, son of Robert R. Livingston (1718–1775) a justice of the New York supreme court after 1763) and brother of Edward Livingston (see above), was born in New York City, on the 27th of November 1746. He graduated at King’s College, New York (now Columbia University), in 1765, was admitted to the bar in 1773, and for a short time was a law partner of John Jay. In 1773 he became recorder of New York City, but soon identified himself with the Whig or Patriot element there, and was forced to give up this position in 1775. He was a member of the second, third and fourth Provincial Congresses of New York (1775–1777), was a delegate from New York to the Continental Congress in 1775–1777 and again in 1779–1780, and was a member of the committee which drafted the Declaration of Independence. He was prevented from signing that document by his absence at the time to attend a meeting of the fourth New York Provincial Congress, which on the 10th of July became the Convention of the Representatives of the state of New York, and by which at Kingston in 1777 the first state constitution was adopted, Livingston having been a member of the committee that drafted this instrument. He was the first chancellor of the state, from 1777 to February 1801, and is best known as “Chancellor” Livingston. In this capacity he administered the oath of office to Washington at his first inauguration to the presidency, in New York, on the 30th of April 1789. Previously, from October 1781 to June 1783, he had been the first secretary of foreign affairs under the Confederation, and his European correspondence, especially with Franklin, was of the utmost value in accomplishing peace with Great Britain. In 1788 he had been a member of the New York Convention, which ratified for that state the Federal Constitution. He became an anti-Federalist and in 1798 unsuccessfully opposed John Jay in the New York gubernatorial campaign. In 1801, having refused an appointment as secretary of the navy, he became minister to France on President Jefferson’s appointment. He had refused this post when Washington offered it to him in 1794. He arrived in France in November 1801, and in 1803, in association with James Monroe, effected on behalf of his government the purchase from France of what was then known as “Louisiana,” the credit for this purchase being largely his (see Louisiana Purchase). In 1804 Livingston withdrew from public life, and after a year
- ↑ Preliminary work in the preparation of a new civil code had been done by James Brown and Moreau Lislet, who in 1808 reported a “Digest of the Civil Laws now in force in the Territory of Orleans with Alterations and Amendments adapted to the present Form of Government.”
