Raising the Eleventh Pillar
The Ratification Debate of 1788

You are Robert Livingston, the leader of the Federalist party gathered in Poughkeepsie at the New York State Ratifying Convention. Your single purpose is to ensure New York's ratification of the Constitution drafted in Philadelphia the previous summer.

Born November 27, 1746, you are the first son of Judge Robert Livingston and Margaret Beekman Livingston. You have nine (surviving) siblings.

The Livingstons are among the most powerful and established families in New York, with ancestors tracing back three generations to Robert Livingston the Elder (1654–1728), who arrived in Albany, New York, in 1674; succeeded in business and politics; and, with the assistance of the royal governor, received from King George I a land grant of 160,000 acres in Columbia and Dutchess counties. This grant became the site of Livingston Manor. Robert bequeathed the estate to Philip, his firstborn son, but to his second-born son, Robert, your grandfather, he bequeathed 13,000 acres in southwestern Columbia County. In 1730 your grandfather built there Clermont Manor. This you inherited on your father's death in 1775, and this the British burned down in 1777, as they burned down Belvedere, the nearby home you built for your wife, Mary.

The family fortune derives from land (measured now in square miles, not acres), commerce, moneylending, and retail sales. You have a town house in the city that survived the widespread destruction.

You were educated at King's College (renamed Columbia after the war), graduating in 1765, and you read law under noted attorney William Smith and were admitted to the bar in 1768. Two years later you were a member of the exclusive legal society The Moot. Your first office was recorder of New York City in 1773—a royal post later taken from you because of your patriot sympathies.

About that: Your father was a member of the Stamp Act Congress (1765) and of the committee of correspondence that organized resistance to the hated stamp tax (despite seeking British assistance in putting down a tenant revolt the following year). You were yourself a member of the Provincial Convention that succeeded the colonial assembly and of the Provincial Congress that succeeded the Provincial Convention. You were elected a delegate to the Second Continental Congress and once there elected to the committee of five that drafted the Declaration of Independence (though you made no real contribution and were not on hand to sign the historic document because you were called back to the state; your elder cousin Philip signed on behalf of the family). With John Jay (your law partner briefly) and Gouverneur Morris (your fellow land magnate), you wrote the New York State Constitution in 1777. That same year you became the first chancellor of New York, the state's highest judicial post (court of equity and appeal), and ever since you have been known as "The Chancellor." In late 1779, you replaced Jay in the Continental Congress when he was appointed minister to Spain. Your one great blunder while in Congress was to have proposed General Benedict Arnold for the post of commandant of West Point. His treachery almost cost America the war and cost you your Clermont estate, protected by the fort at West Point. Though you swore never to serve again in Congress, you accepted election to the office of secretary of foreign affairs in October 1781, just days before the victory at Yorktown—an auspicious time to begin as secretary. From afar, you looked on—more than you actually helped—as Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay negotiated the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War. You looked on because in fact the trio generally ignored their instructions from you and the Congress. You resigned as secretary in May 1783, several months before the treaty was signed in September.

Back in New York, you returned to the business of the chancery court and to repairs and improvements to the Clermont estate. You had the reputation of being an amateur scientist, experimenting with new crops and new breeds of stock and inventing sundry gadgets and novelties. Your management of the estate, however, was more feudal than modern, as your tenants were (and are) all leaseholders, not freeholders, paying in annual rent twenty-five bushels of wheat and four "fat hens" from the returns on their, mostly, seventy-acre farms.

In the 1780s political leadership of the Livingston clan passed from its senior branch, located at Livingston Manor, to the Livingstons of Clermont Manor, owing chiefly to your standing in the state. Further proof of that came in 1784, when the Grand Lodge of New York, an association of Freemasons, appointed you its first grand master and when the New York Society of the Cincinnati, a confraternity of former war officers, named you an honorary member.

Also in 1784, you were elected again to the Continental Congress. Service in the Congress and as foreign secretary had made you a nationalist (now called a Federalist), and the weakness of the Confederation and your own state's refusal to strengthen it frightened and appalled you. Unable to pay its debts or finance its operations, Congress tried levying a modest impost tax of 5 percent. New York's long-serving governor, George Clinton, opposed it and effectively killed it.

Because of a recent and unprecedented election law that enfranchised non-freeholding males, you judged it prudent to run on the Federalist ticket in New York City rather than Columbia County where you "reign" as manor lord. Those troublesome leaseholders, casting secret ballots, could not be trusted, you suspected; and, indeed, they returned an entirely Antifederalist slate.

Special role: If the instructor rates the Constitution as Antifederalist in character after all debate, Livingston is directed to threaten the secession of New York, Richmond, Kings, and Westchester counties from the state.

one of your contemporaries has a life story quite like yours. You are Alexander Hamilton, born around 1755 on the island of Nevis in the British West Indies. You grew up on St. Croix, raised by your parents, James Hamilton, a descendant of Scottish and English nobility but himself a good-for-nothing drifter, and Rachel Faucette Lavien, a French runaway from an unhappy marriage. When you were ten, your drifter father drifted off, and when you were thirteen, your mother died of fever. Strangers looked after you, employed you, and then sponsored your education in America. You attended King's College (later renamed Columbia) in New York City (1774). With the approach of war, and while still a youth, you began writing political tracts denouncing British policy and urging your adopted country to strike for independence; and before finishing your studies and taking a degree, you enlisted in the New York militia with a commission of captain from the Provincial Congress. "Little Mars" the soldiers called you, because of your slight frame and penchant for combat.

You fought in the early campaigns in New York and its neighboring states, all of them losing affairs that saw the army chased from Brooklyn to Manhattan to New Jersey to Pennsylvania. But you also experienced triumph when General Washington surprised the Hessians at Trenton and the British at Princeton (Christmas 1776–January 1777). You served as an artillery commander, entirely self-taught. Either your weapons expertise or your political pamphlets came to the notice of Washington, who plucked you from duty on the line and made you his aide-de-camp. With this new assignment came a promotion to lieutenant colonel. For four years you served at Washington's side, as secretary and tactician, though all the while asking for the chance to return to the fighting. That chance finally came when at Yorktown you led a nighttime bayonet charge against Redoubt 10, the taking of which precipitated Cornwallis's surrender.

While still on Washington's staff, you married into New York money and high society (1780). Elizabeth Schuyler was your bride, daughter of General Philip Schuyler, later to be your chief political patron. Over the years, you and Elizabeth have eight children together.

After the war you studied law, passing the New York bar exam and opening a Wall Street legal practice in 1782–83. At or about the same time, you resumed your career as a pamphleteer, writing under the pseudonym "Continentalist." You also served a term in the Continental Congress (1782–83), where you assisted Robert Morris with the Confederation's woeful finances and where you met James Madison. You were lead counsel for the defense in Rutgers v. Waddington (1784), arguing that a New York law (the Trespass Act) was invalid for violating a treaty signed by Congress. Having witnessed firsthand the horrors of slavery while growing up in the Caribbean, you helped found the New York Manumission Society. The Annapolis Convention came to pass largely because of your efforts, as did New York's decision to participate in the Constitutional Convention. You won election to the New York legislature to ensure your election as a delegate to the Convention. Your attempts to do the same for other nationally minded figures failed, however, as your nemesis, Governor George Clinton, managed to saddle you with the arch-Antifederalists John Lansing and Robert Yates. You left the Convention early, as did they, you in frustration, they in eagerness to report back to the governor and help organize the opposition. Your efforts in that vein resulted in The Federalist, written in collaboration with James Madison and John Jay.

You now are a Federalist delegate to the state ratifying convention representing New York City and County. New York is a Federalist stronghold, and only Federalist candidates were elected. You received the third-most votes. In Poughkeepsie you are the party's convention lieutenant, second in command to Chancellor Robert Livingston, the party's head.

You are John Jay, son of Peter Jay and Mary Van Cortlandt Jay, born December 23, 1745, in New York City. Your paternal grandfather, Auguste Jay, brought the family to America from France, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which had provided protection for French Huguenots (Calvinists) since 1598. Despite this inauspicious beginning as a religious refugee, your grandfather, and later your father, became successful merchants, and the Jay family today is one of the city's most prominent.

You were not though raised in the city. Only months after your birth, your parents moved the family to Rye, New York, to escape a smallpox epidemic that had blinded two of their children. There you were homeschooled for most of your youth until going off to King's College (later renamed Columbia) in 1760, earning both bachelor's and master's degrees. Afterward, you read law under Benjamin Kissam and were admitted to the bar in 1768. A law practice of your own followed in 1771.

With the approach of the war, you signed on with the patriot cause, serving as secretary of the New York committee of correspondence, your first public office. Your revolutionary enthusiasm was tempered, however, by a respect for property rights and a fear of mob rule. When sent to represent New York at the First Continental Congress in 1774, you stood with the conservatives who put reconciliation before independence. The outbreak of fighting the next year began your change of mind; British atrocities completed the transition, and by the time of the signing of the Declaration, you were as committed a patriot as any in the colonies. But you were not present for the signing of that historic document, even though again a member of Congress, because other duties kept you back home. These included service in the New York Provincial Congress and the drafting of the New York State Constitution (along with Robert Livingston and Gouverneur Morris) in 1777. When you returned to the Continental Congress in 1778, you were immediately elected president of that body.

Your term in Congress and as president lasted for just one year, because in 1779 you were appointed minister to Spain. While there, you succeeded in securing a much needed loan, though not formal recognition of the American state as hoped for, and you departed Spain in 1782. But only to go to Paris, where negotiations to end the war were under way. Representing America were Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and yourself. Together you produced the Treaty of Paris (1783), which concluded hostilities, granted recognition, and provided your country with generous borders north, west, and south. A diplomatic triumph was this, not likely ever to be repeated!

Shortly after ratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1781, the office of secretary of foreign affairs was created, and beginning in 1783 you served as its second minister (replacing Robert Livingston). Your responsibilities were many, but none so vexing as the critical need for open markets in Europe and open navigation of the Mississippi River. Spain held the key to each and was in no hurry to make a deal. Meanwhile, northerners, who demanded the former, and westerners who demanded the latter, came to distrust and despise you, fearing betrayal of their interest. You are still minister, and still nothing has been resolved.

Diplomacy is so difficult because the world holds America in such low regard, noting its weakness, its indebtedness, and the chaos of its domestic politics. The lesson imparted is that America needs a stronger national government than that provided under the Articles of Confederation. To that end you joined Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in authoring The Federalist, a series of newspaper essays (now a book) that attempts to explain and defend the Constitution and to persuade New York to vote its ratification. And just ahead of the election of delegates, you published An Address to the People of the State of New York under the pseudonym "A Citizen of New York." Written in a clear style, the essay may have been more effective than the grander Federalist in making the case for ratification.

As a Federalist delegate to the state ratifying convention representing New York City and County, you are a staunch ally of Chancellor Robert Livingston (party leader) and Alexander Hamilton (party lieutenant), fully their equal in status.

You are James Duane of New York City, with houses in lower and upper Manhattan, a farm on the East River called Gramercy Seat, landholdings in the Hudson River Valley near Schenectady and in Vermont near Rutland. The Schenectady property is in a township named after you—Duanesburg. Needless to say, you are a successful and prominent person.

As was your father, Anthony Duane, an Irishman who came to New York in 1698 as an officer in the British Royal Navy. He married well and married thrice. You were the product of the second union, to Althea Ketaltas Duane, and were born February 6, 1733. When your father died in 1747, you became the ward of Robert Livingston (not the Chancellor), third lord of Livingston Manor. You finished your early education there, treated as an adopted member of the family.

Your later education was in the law, with admission to the New York bar coming in 1754. You maintained a private practice until 1762, when you became clerk of the chancery court, then acting attorney general, and then boundary commissioner, before returning to your practice in 1774.

New York politics was patronage based and divided between the De Lancey faction and the Livingston faction. The former opposed resistance to British rule and became loyalist; the latter supported resistance, including the street violence of the Sons of Liberty, and became patriot. You first were of the De Lancey faction because of friendship with James De Lancey; you switched to the Livingston faction because of marriage to Mary Livingston and because of past obligations. Allegiances were fluid in the years before the war.

Being a Livingston and a patriot made you eligible for service in the Continental Congress. You were elected to the First and Second Congresses (1774, 1775–) and stayed in office until after the peace treaty in 1783. You were on hand to sign the Articles of Confederation for New York (1778) but not on hand to sign the Declaration of Independence (1776) because of duties back home. These included service on extra-legal committees (the Sixty, the One Hundred), concerned with enforcement of boycotts, and service in their successor government, the Provincial Congress. You also were Indian commissioner, both for New York and for the Continental Congress.

After the war the governor appointed you mayor of New York City (a gubernatorial power), and the wealthy property owners elected you senator of New York State (positions that you still hold today). As mayor you presided over the mayor's court when it heard the landmark case Rutgers v. Waddington (1784). Alexander Hamilton was lead counsel for the defense, arguing that a state law (the Trespass Act) was illegal for violating a treaty signed by Congress. You split the difference, giving Hamilton his win but on narrow grounds that failed to validate his then novel theory of judicial review. No one was satisfied, and the state assembly censured you.

Later you joined Hamilton, John Jay, and twenty-nine other prominent citizens in founding the New York Manumission Society (1785), whose purpose was the abolition of slavery in the state. Actual abolition would be some decades in coming, however.

You were elected a delegate to the Annapolis Convention (1786), but like many others you failed to attend. The Annapolis Convention proved to be the precursor to the Constitutional Convention (1787). You were not though a delegate to that more consequential convention. Your twenty-three votes in the legislature fell three short of the twenty-six for John Lansing, the third and last member of the delegation. Efforts to expand the number to five, as originally proposed, failed. Governor George Clinton, staunch Antifederalist, would not allow a second Federalist (Hamilton the first and only) to represent the state.

Which means that you are, and have long defined yourself as, a Federalist, favoring increased national power and decreased state power. At the New York State Ratifying Convention, you will give hearty support to Chancellor Robert Livingston (party leader) and Alexander Hamilton (party lieutenant) and all others of your party, as they work to secure the state's ratification of the Constitution.

As a former member of the Sons of Liberty, your devotion to the patriot cause was absolute; and as a prominent jurist today, your determination to see the Constitution ratified is no less complete.

You are John Sloss Hobart, born May 6, 1738, to the Reverend Noah Hobart and Ellen Sloss Hobart in Fairfield, Connecticut. Your grandfather was the Reverend Peter Hobart, son of Edmund Hobart, who emigrated from England in 1635, settling in Hingham, Massachusetts. You though are tied mainly to Suffolk County, Long Island, courtesy of an inheritance from your mother's family, the Slosses, specifically Eaton's Neck in the town of Huntington.

You attended Yale College, graduating in 1757. Afterward you studied law and were admitted to the bar, starting your legal practice in New York City. In 1764 you married Mary Greenhill and set about building a home on Eaton's Neck, called Cherry Lawn, where you raised cattle and sheep.

Your political career began about the same time. You were a member of the Stamp Act Congress, which convened in New York in October 1765 to protest Parliament's stamp tax. Later in the prewar years you served on the Suffolk County committee of correspondence (1774), organized to implement assorted boycotts of British trade, and as a member of the Provincial Convention (1775), which selected New York's delegates to the Second Continental Congress. The convention was succeeded by a series of congresses, and you attended all four (1775–77). While there, you were liaison to army units stationed on Long Island (until their defeat at the Battle of Brooklyn). Additionally, you were a member of the first committee of safety, the executive arm of these congresses; a member of the committee that composed the resolution to approve the Declaration of Independence; a member of the committee that reported the new state constitution; and a member of the committee that devised the great seal of the state. When the state government began operations in 1777, you were appointed an associate (puisne) justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature; John Jay was the chief justice. In 1780 you represented Suffolk County at an interstate conference in Hartford, called "to give vigour to the governing powers, equal to the present crisis"—i.e., the war effort, which in 1780 was faring quite badly. But the war in due course was won, and after the withdrawal of British troops (November 1783), and while waiting for the state government to reestablish its control, you served in a temporary government for the southern district, providing law and order to the counties of New York, Richmond, Kings, Queens, Suffolk, and Westchester.

In the years since, you have continued to serve on the bench. Your reputation as a jurist has caused you to be elected this spring a delegate to the New York State Ratifying Convention on the Federalist ticket representing New York City and County. You thus will give hearty support to Chancellor Robert Livingston (party leader) and Alexander Hamilton (party lieutenant), as they, and others of your party, endeavor to ensure that New York votes to ratify the Constitution.

You are the great-great-grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the thirty-second president of the United States. Usually one lives in the shadow of an ancestor; in your case, it is a descendant who shines the brightest.

Your American ancestry traces to Claes Martenzen van Rosenvelt, who in the mid-seventeenth century brought the family from Holland to the colony of New York, though at the time under Dutch control and called New Netherland, its principal town New Amsterdam. He was your paternal great-grandfather (d. 1659). Your paternal grandfather was Nicholas Roosevelt (1658–1742), and your father was Jacobus Roosevelt (1692–1776). You were the seventh of ten children born to Jacobus and Catharina Hardenbroek Roosevelt, and you were born on December 19, 1726.

The family prospered in its American home, primarily through trade and merchandizing. You added sugar refining to its portfolio and constructed a large-scale refinery in the city. You are of the Dutch Reformed Church, and as chairman of the building committee, you laid the cornerstone for the North Dutch Church on Fulton Street (1767). You were an early member of the New York Chamber of Commerce, the first of its kind in the colonies (1768). You helped incorporate the New York Hospital (1770), and you were one of the founders (along with Alexander Hamilton) of the Bank of New York (1784), becoming the bank's second president (succeeding Alexander McDougall) in 1786. Domestically, you and your wife, Cornelia Hoffman Roosevelt (married in 1752), are the parents of ten children, though not all have survived.

Your political career began in 1775 as a member of the Provincial Convention, an extra-legal gathering charged by the Committee of Sixty, likewise extra-legal, with electing delegates to the Second Continental Congress. That work done, the Provincial Convention disbanded, as did the Committee of Sixty, to be replaced by the Committee of One Hundred, of which you also were a member. The One Hundred, reacting to news of fighting in Massachusetts (Lexington and Concord—April 1775), called for the creation of a Provincial Congress to govern in the absence of a royal assembly (its final meeting in April) and a royal governor (away in England). The congress convened four times in 1775–77; you were a delegate to each session.

The British occupied the city in the fall of 1776 (after fierce battles in Brooklyn and Manhattan), and you moved the family to the relative safety of your wife's home in Dutchess County. There you joined as an enlisted man in the local militia. But the congress thought that better uses could be made of your talents (and camp life was not really your thing), so you were tasked with converting British pounds into paper money. The following year you were among the delegates who voted to ratify the New York State Constitution. You then served in the senate of this new government.

After the British vacated New York (November 25, 1783, Evacuation Day), you returned to the city and were gladdened to find that your properties had survived the general destruction. You drew your son James into the sugar business (renamed Roosevelt & Son) and directed your attention to banking, rising, as noted, to the presidency of the Bank of New York.

Your tenure in the senate ran from 1777 to 1786. But this year, 1788, you have resumed your seat, and you have been further honored with election to the New York State Ratifying Convention, convened in Poughkeepsie to ratify the Constitution of the United States. At least that is what the Federalists believe the purpose is—surely not the Antifederalists. You though are a Federalist, and so you will work with Chancellor Robert Livingston (party leader) and Alexander Hamilton (party lieutenant) to ensure that New York votes to ratify.

The Morris family is one of New York's oldest, tracing back to the mid-seventeenth century when your great-grandfather Richard Morris, arriving from Barbados, bought land in the Bronx area of Westchester County. Richard was formerly a soldier in Oliver Cromwell's army; he emigrated from England in the 1660s, after the Stuart monarchy was restored under King Charles II. Richard died in 1672, leaving the land, now an estate grandly named Morrisania, to an infant son christened Lewis. This Lewis, your grandfather, died in 1746, whereupon the estate passed to his son, also Lewis. You are the third son of Lewis Morris Jr. (1698–1762) and his first wife, Katrintje (Catherine) Staats Morris (1697–1731); you were born August 15, 1730.

You spent your formative years at Morrisania before going off to study at Yale College, graduating in 1748. Afterward, you studied law and were admitted to the bar in 1752. Your law practice was quickly successful, and you established a reputation as an up-and-coming solicitor. In 1762, upon the death of your father, who had been a judge on the Court of Vice-Admiralty of New York, the royal governor, Robert Monckton, appointed you to the court, whose cases concerned mainly ship seizures and the laws of capture and prize but also breaches of parliamentary statutes relating to trade and revenues. Your judgeship became a matter of some delicacy when Britain began extracting revenues from its trade with the colonies. By 1775 New Yorkers were being forced to take sides. You chose the patriot side and resigned from the court, refusing Governor Tryon's request that you remain in office and, in consequence, suffering the governor's wrath when your Westchester estate, Mount Fordham, was ordered seized. Your family divided over independence: your eldest brother, Lewis, third lord of the Morrisania Manor, signed the Declaration of Independence, and your much-younger half-brother, Gouverneur Morris, drafted the Constitution of the United States this past summer; on the other hand, your stepmother, Sarah Gouverneur Morris, remained a loyalist living at Morrisania, and your elder brother, Staats Long, became an officer in the British army.

In 1778 you were appointed a senator by the assembly. You resigned in 1779 to assume the position of chief justice of New York, replacing John Jay who had been appointed minister to Spain by the Continental Congress. In that capacity you were part of a council charged with governing the southern parts of the state during the legislature's adjournments.

More recently, you have been elected a delegate to the New York State Ratifying Convention representing New York City and County. There you will join your brother Lewis, representing Westchester County. You and he are Federalists and will give hearty support to Chancellor Robert Livingston (party leader) and Alexander Hamilton (party lieutenant), as they, and others of your party, endeavor to ensure that New York votes to ratify the Constitution.

The Morris family is one of New York's oldest, tracing back to the mid-seventeenth century when your great-grandfather Richard Morris, arriving from Barbados, bought land in the Bronx area of Westchester County. Richard was formerly a soldier in Oliver Cromwell's army; he emigrated from England in the 1660s, after the Stuart monarchy was restored under King Charles II. Richard died in 1672, leaving the land, now an estate grandly named Morrisania, to an infant son christened Lewis. This Lewis, your grandfather, died in 1746, whereupon the estate passed to his son, also Lewis. You, Lewis III, inherited from your father in 1762. You are the third lord of Morrisania Manor.

You were born April 8, 1726, to Lewis Morris II and Katrintje (Catherine) Staats Morris. You are of Dutch ancestry on your mother's side. You have two full siblings, Staats Long and Richard, and four half-siblings from your father's second wife, Sarah, including Gouverneur (twenty-six years your junior), who last year drafted the Constitution of the United States. You and your wife, Mary, have ten children of your own, and your eldest son is named—guess what!

You were educated by private tutors until going off to Yale College, from which you graduated in 1746. Estate management was your primary occupation, but eventually politics intruded, with a seat on the Admiralty Court (1760) and in the New York General Assembly (1769). Despite your great wealth and aristocratic heritage, you early on concluded that the colonies would need to separate from Great Britain. And the policies and practices of the mother country, to say nothing of the violence, settled the matter—you were a patriot and would join the movement for independence.

To that end, you organized your election to the Provincial Convention, successor to the colonial assembly, which in turn elected you to the Second Continental Congress (1775). There you concerned yourself with military and Indian affairs, responsibilities that kept you away from Philadelphia for extended periods, including when the Declaration of Independence was presented to Congress on July 4, 1776. But back were you, on August 2, in time to affix your signature to that historic document. Warned against signing by your half-brother Gouverneur, you replied, "Damn the consequences. Give me the pen!"

You returned home to New York in 1777 (replaced in Congress by Gouverneur) and were appointed county judge and elected to the state senate. You also were a major general in the state militia during the war years. Little action did you see, but three of your sons had distinguished military careers. After the war, the restoration of Morrisania, ransacked by the British, became your overriding passion. You studied and applied all the recent developments in crop rotation, soil improvement, and seed mutation. Likewise, you advocated for better public education and took a seat on the first board of regents of the University of the State of New York (1784). The Society of the Cincinnati, a fraternal organization of former officers of the Continental Army, made you an honorary member (1784).

Your first stint in the state senate ran from 1777 to 1781. This career you resumed in 1784, and you are still a senator today, even as you are a member of the New York State Ratifying Convention. Indeed, over half of the convention members currently have seats in either the senate or the assembly.

Since your half-brother wrote the Constitution, it stands to reason that you support its ratification and are a Federalist. You thus will give hearty support to Chancellor Robert Livingston (party leader) and Alexander Hamilton (party lieutenant), as they, and others of your party, endeavor to secure New York's vote for ratification.

You were born September 1, 1749, in New York City to Pierre Van Cortlandt and Joanna Livingston Van Cortlandt, the eighth of nine children. Your father (b. 1721) was, and is, a prominent man in New York politics: member of the New York General Assembly (1768–75), member of the Provincial Congress and chairman of its committee of safety (1775–76), member of the body that voted the colony's approval of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and lieutenant governor of New York from its inception as a state (1777) to the present. Also notable was your great-grandfather Stephanus Van Cortlandt, first native-born mayor of New York City. The Van Cortlandts are one of the old manorial families of New York.

You were educated at Coldenham Academy in classical studies and worked thereafter as a surveyor and civil engineer. Along with your father, you were a member of the Provincial Congress (1775). When the war began, you served as an officer in the Continental Army, in command of the New York Fourth Battalion and then of the Second Regiment. You fought at the Battle of Saratoga in New York (1777), which ended with the surrender of General Burgoyne; and at the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse in New Jersey (1778), which bloodied the British on their return from Philadelphia to New York. You assisted General John Sullivan in his campaign against the Mohawk war chief Joseph Brant, who was attacking frontier settlements in New York and Pennsylvania (1779); Sullivan commended your efforts. When Benedict Arnold, as commandant of Philadelphia, was court-martialed for war profiteering, you were among the officers who sat in judgment; you thought him guilty and deserving of discharge, but Washington insisted on a reprimand instead—a decision all would come to regret, as Arnold became the war's great traitor. You led the rear guard of continentals marching toward Yorktown, fought gallantly in this decisive battle of the war (1781), and were mustered out of the army with the rank of brigadier general (1783). Quite a career, to be capped off with charter membership in the Society of the Cincinnati, the fraternal organization of former Revolutionary War officers. You served on the committee that created the bylaws for the New York chapter.

In postwar civilian life, you held several local offices of minor import: town supervisor of Cortlandt, member of the school board, and road commissioner. More prominent posts came in 1788, with election to the state assembly and then to the state ratifying convention. You are in Poughkeepsie now, representing Westchester County.

As a Federalist interested in strong national government, you favor ratification of the Constitution and will give hearty support to Chancellor Robert Livingston (party leader) and Alexander Hamilton (party lieutenant), as they, and others of your party, endeavor to ensure that New York votes to ratify.

You belong to one of Brooklyn's most prominent families. You are Peter Lefferts of Flatbush, called Midwout when New York was a Dutch colony. You are of Dutch ancestry. Your great-great grandfather Pieter Janse Hagewout (1621–1661) emigrated from Holland in 1660 with his wife and four children. Before his death the following year, he received deed to land in the Flatbush area by Peter Stuyvesant, director general of New Amsterdam. Hagewout's eldest son—and your great-grandfather—was Leffert Pieterse (1645–1704), who became a successful farmer and landowner, with properties in Kings County, Queens County, Richmond County and New Jersey. For a time he was also the constable of Flatbush and a deacon in the Dutch Reformed Church. It was he who introduced the Leffert name, but it was his son, the long-lived Peter Lefferts (1680–1774), who transposed the names. His son—and your father—was John Lefferts. You are the son of John and Sarah Lefferts, born December 27, 1753.

In April of 1776, on reports of a pending British invasion of New York, you enlisted as a first lieutenant in the Kings County militia. You fought at the Battle of Brooklyn, serving under Colonel Rutger Van Brunt. Outflanked and routed, American forces in retreat destroyed anything of use to the attacking British, including the Lefferts family home.

The next year, even with the British still in Manhattan, you began rebuilding, completing work in 1783. You married Femmetie Hegeman in 1784 and expanded your estate with adjacent lands bought from the Hegeman clan. To farm the land, you purchased African slaves, as did all your neighbors, owning as many as twelve. You now possess 240 acres and are counted among the leading citizens of Flatbush.

Your public career—somewhat slender for a person of your standing—has consisted of a judgeship on the New York Court of Sessions and the Court of Common Pleas (criminal cases and civil suits, respectively).

But apparently that was service enough to secure your election to the New York State Ratifying Convention, now meeting in Poughkeepsie. You are a delegate representing Kings County, where Federalism holds sway. You thus are a Federalist and will give hearty support to Chancellor Robert Livingston (party leader) and Alexander Hamilton (party lieutenant), as they, and others of your party, endeavor to ensure that New York votes to ratify the Constitution.

You are Abraham Bancker, born in 1760 to Adriaan Bancker and Anna Boelen Bancker. You were christened May 15 of that year in the Reformed Dutch Church in New York City.

Little is known of your upbringing, except that your family was of sufficient means to send you to King's College (later renamed Columbia College). You probably arrived just as Alexander Hamilton was leaving, because, like you, his studies were interrupted by the war, and, like you, he took no degree. But his military career was bathed in the bright lights of glory, at Washington's side and in the thick of battle. Yours, by contrast, occurred in the dark shadows of espionage. For despite your youth, you were a Washington spy!

You corresponded with patriot sympathizers ensconced inside British lines who conveyed political intelligence and plans of fortifications useful to the operations of the Continental Army; and under the pseudonym "Amicus Republicae," you relayed like information to Washington's headquarters. You were most active as a spy and most at risk during the campaigns of 1780. After the war, and when apprised of your services, Washington awarded you a ceremonial sword.

Your peacetime offices have included county clerk of Richmond County (1781–84), membership on the board of regents, and election to the state assembly. While sitting as an assemblyman, you were further honored with election to the New York State Ratifying Convention, representing Richmond County.

You were a patriot and are now a Federalist because in the first days of enemy occupation, your uncle was detained on a British warship in New York harbor, while his home was commandeered by General William Howe for use as his own headquarters. During his confinement (imprisonment), your uncle, you wrote, conducted himself with an admirable "degree of virtue and steadfastness in his country's cause."

You wish to do the same on behalf of American nationhood, and so you will give hearty support to Chancellor Robert Livingston (Federalist party leader) and Alexander Hamilton (party lieutenant), as they, and others of your party, endeavor to ensure that New York votes to ratify the Constitution.