Robert R. Livingston and the Brothels of New York

Last month, as part of a series of articles on members of Congress and slavery, the Washington Post published Gillian Brockell’s survey of artwork in the U.S. Capitol.

One passage that caught my eye was about the two sculptures New York has chosen to display:

One is Declaration of Independence co-writer Robert R. Livingston, who came from a prominent slave-trading family and personally enslaved 15 people in 1790. He also owned brothels that housed Black women who may have been enslaved.

Livingston (1746–1813, shown here) was on the committee of five Continental Congress delegates appointed to write the Declaration in May 1776. He participated in committee discussions but didn’t contribute memorably to the text, abstained from voting for independence along with the other New York delegates, and left the Congress before the formal signing.

But of course that wasn’t the detail that caught my eye—the reference to brothels did. That included a link to this article at the Gotham Center’s webpage about the Robert Livingston Papers, which says:

Along with members of his family, Livingston was also a slaveowner. According to the first federal census of 1790, he owned at least fifteen enslaved people. . . . By 1810 he owned at least five slaves. In addition, the Chancellor owned several brothels in lower Manhattan, which made have been homes for Black servants, or prostitutes.

That looks like an authoritative source. The Gotham Center says it “was founded in 2000 by Mike Wallace, after his landmark work Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, co-authored with Edwin Burrows, won the Pulitzer.”

But here’s where the trail gets twisted. Page 484 of Gotham said:

One of the most enterprising de facto whoremasters was John R. Livingston, brother of the Chancellor (and steamboat financier) Robert Livingston. By 1828 he controlled at least five brothels near Paradise Square and a score more elsewhere in the city, with a tenant roster that included some of the best-known madams in New York. His involvement was well known, and when irate neighbors complained, he simply reshuffled the offending women to another of his buildings.

Going back further in that book’s sources, Timothy J. Gilfoyle’s City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920 (1992) laid out many details about John R. Livingston’s brothels. But Robert R. Livingston appears in that study only as John’s brother. Neither book states that Robert owned any brothels, even as part of a family concern.

Students at Columbia University used city records and newspaper reports to study the university’s connections to slavery. One section of that digital presentation is titled “Livingston Brothels: Columbia and Profits from Black Bodies.” That includes a “Timeline of Livingston Brothel Ownership” which states:

From 1820 - 1829 the Livingston family owned an astonishing number of properties on Anthony St; 26, 28, 30, 143, 147, 149, 154 Anthony St, and briefly 24, 30, 45, 140, 141, 142, 153, 155, and 157 Anthony St. John R Livingston owned the majority of these brothels, however, Robert R Livingston, one of Columbia’s most important founders, owned 154 Anthony St through this decade.

I’m not sure what “one of Columbia’s most important founders” means here. Columbia was founded as King’s College in 1754, and Robert R. Livingston attended as an adolescent, graduating in 1765. He’s thus a Founder associated with Columbia, but he didn’t found Columbia. (His older cousin and successor in the Congress, Philip Livingston, was involved in setting up the college.) 

As for owning 154 Anthony Street in the 1820s, or 152 Anthony Street in the 1830s as a later panel says, Chancellor Livingston died in 1813. Perhaps this property was part of an unsettled estate, or there was another member of the family with a similar name (John had a son named Robert M. Livingston). But the Robert R. Livingston of the Continental Congress wasn’t around in the 1820s and 1830s when those properties were documented brothels.

Once again, Gilfoyle’s City of Eros and Wallace and Burrows’s Gotham don’t link Robert R. Livingston to buildings where prostitutes worked—they just say he was the older brother of John R. Livingston. There’s clear evidence that John owned and managed those properties, but that evidence dates from after Robert’s death. Furthermore, according to Gilfoyle, Robert tried to dissuade John from trading with Britain during the Revolutionary War, and John did it anyway, so we can hardly conclude the brothers always acted in concert. I welcome news of more recent findings that would change this picture, but I didn’t come across any.

Robert R. Livingston was undeniably a slaveholder. But as for him owning brothels, that idea appears to be a mistake. Robert’s historical celebrity seems to have drawn a couple of authoritative sources into blaming him for his younger brother’s activities. 

“The Indiscretion of a very few Persons of the lowest Class”

The burning of effigies in New York City on 14 Nov 1768 prompted a strong response from the royal governor of that colony, Sir Henry Moore.

It came in the form of a message to the colony’s legislature one week later, delivered by a deputy secretary named (wait for it) Goldsbrow Banyer:

Some Intimations having been given to the Mayor and Magistrates of this City, in the Course of the Week before last, of a Design to disturb the public Peace, by a Riot; the Zeal shew’d by them on this Occasion, together with the laudable Declaration of the Inhabitants, of their Willingness to assist and support them, in maintaining the Tranquility of the City, gave me Hopes, that nothing of so illegal and dangerous a Tendency, would be attempted: A few ill-disposed Persons have, nevertheless, eluded the Vigilance of the Magistrates, and ventured to execute their Purpose, by exciting a Riot last Monday Evening.

As these turbulent Proceedings, at a Juncture so peculiarly critical, may occasion Imputations injurious to the Colony, I have requested the Magistrates to exert themselves for the Discovery of the Rioters, and with the unanimous Advice of his Majesty’s Council, issued a Proclamation, offering a Reward of Fifty Pounds, to be paid upon the Conviction of the Contrivers, and chief Promoters of this Outrage. And as I have no Doubt of your Readiness to prevent the Mischiefs of a Measure, daring and insolent in itself, previously disavow’d by the Inhabitants, and seemingly calculated to insult the several Branches of the Legislature now sitting; I flatter myself, you will concur with me, in the necessary Steps to prevent the Colony from suffering any Detriment, and by making a proper Provision, enable me to fulfil the Engagements I have entered into for this Service.

In other words, Moore had promised a reward of £50 and was now asking the assembly for £50.

The Massachusetts General Court would have laughed at such a request. But the New York legislature was dominated by large landowners who had worked well with Gov. Moore. The next morning the assembly voted to grant the £50 and respond to the governor’s address with one of its own.

To head the committee writing that address, the assembly chose rookie lawmaker Philip Schuyler (shown above). He returned with the document, and on 23 November the legislators voted on it. The Livingstons and their many allies supported it, so of course their rivals the DeLanceys and three supporters voted against it. Probably the DeLanceys opposed the Whiggish protest that Schuyler’s committee slipped into what otherwise reads like slavish assent:

We his Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal Subjects, the General Assembly of the Colony of New-York, having taken your Excellency’s Message of Yesterday, in our most serious Consideration, beg Leave to assure your Excellency, that, tho’ we feel in common with the Rest of the Colonies, the Distresses occasioned by the new Duties imposed by the Parliament of Great-Britain, and the ill-policed State of the American Commerce; yet, we are far from conceiving, that violent and tumultuous Proceedings will have any Tendency to promote suitable Redress. . . .

It is with Pleasure that we can assure your Excellency, that these disorderly Proceedings, are, as appears to us, disapproved by the Inhabitants in general; and are imputable only to the Indiscretion of a very few Persons of the lowest Class. . . .

Speaker Philip Livingston signed that address on behalf of the assembly. The following afternoon, Gov. Moore told the legislators that “your readiness to support the dignity and authority of government, cannot fail of being attended with the most favorable consequences to the colony, and render abortive any future attempt to disturb the public tranquility.” So everyone was in agreement.

The assembly went back to their chamber, made itself a committee of the whole (so they didn’t have to keep such detailed records), and discussed “proper and constitutional resolves, asserting the rights of his Majesty’s subjects within this colony, which they conceive have been greatly abridged and infringed, by several acts passed by the last parliament of Great Britain.” In sum, most New Yorkers were just as opposed to the Townshend Acts as the Massachusetts Whigs. They just didn’t like riots. Especially riots about some local issue in Boston.

TOMORROW: The reaction back in Boston.

“An Officer carried a manuscript to Henry Knox”

I step away from The Saga of the Brazen Head at a moment of calamity to consider a passage in merchant John Andrews’s letter to a Philadelphia relative on 15 Jan 1775:

A few days since an Officer carried a manuscript to Henry Knox for him to publish; being an answer, as he said, to General [Charles] Lee’s pamphlet (which you sent me). He told him he did not mean to confute every part, as the principal of it was unanswerable.

Knox perus’d a few pages of it and found it to be rather a weak performance, and therefore declin’d undertaking the publishment—excusing himself as its being out of his way.

In November 1774, the New York printer James Rivington published A Friendly Address to All Reasonable Americans by Thomas Bradbury Chandler (1726–1790), a Yale graduate who had become an Anglican minister. That pamphlet argued for conciliation with the Crown. The Mills and Hicks print shop issued a Boston edition. Replies came quickly from John Adams (apparently never published), Philip Livingston, and, most successfully, Charles Lee.

Lee’s Strictures upon a “Friendly Address to All Reasonable Americans” was first published in Philadelphia and then reprinted in New York, Newport, New London, and twice in Boston. It was one of the most widely read pamphlets of the year. Among other points, Lee argued that the British army was not really that formidable; the 17 Jan 1775 Essex Gazette suggested that he had erased New Englanders’ fear of the redcoats. We can therefore understand this officer’s wish to respond to Lee.

More interesting is what this story tells us about Henry Knox (shown here). As far as I can tell, no biography of Knox has discussed this incident. Authors have generally echoed Charles Savage, writing in 1856, in portraying Knox as an active Whig before the war: “he discovered an uncommon zeal in the cause of liberty.” But there’s actually little evidence of political activism by Knox.

In fact, this anecdote shows that a British military man expected Knox to support the royalist perspective by publishing and selling his pamphlet. That belief was no doubt due to Knox’s recent marriage to Lucy Flucker, daughter of the province’s royal secretary, Thomas Flucker. Why would a poor man with ambition marry into such a family and not be or become a Loyalist?

I think this is part of a pattern of evidence showing that in the crucial months of late 1774 and early 1775, Knox let Loyalists believe he was one of them. That made him privy to their gossip, which could be useful to the Patriots.

This anecdote also shows Knox concealing his true assessment of the pamphlet (“rather a weak performance”) by giving the author a different reason for not publishing (“its being out of his way”). But that was just being polite.

TOMORROW: The author.