biography
pronunciation:
[duh wit]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1769–1828)
|
| biography:
| US governor and public official, born in Little Britain, New York, USA. A Columbia University graduate, in 1787 he published a series of letters, signed ‘A Country-man’, in which he protested the federal government's power under the proposed constitution. A lawyer, he learned about politics as private secretary to his uncle, Governor George Clinton (1790–5). He then served in the New York assembly (Democrat-Republican, 1797–8) and senate (1798–1802), where he blatantly dispensed political patronage from the governor's Council of Appointment. Briefly in the US Senate (1802–3), he was three times Mayor of New York (1803–7, 1808–9, 1811–15), organized the city's first public school, helped to found the New York City Hospital, and removed political restrictions on Roman Catholics. As New York's canal commissioner (1810–24), he took the lead in promoting construction of the Erie Canal. In 1812 he ran for president on a coalition ticket of anti-war Democratic-Republicans and Federalists, narrowly losing to James Madison. As governor (1817–23, 1825–8) his terms were marred by intra-party feuding, but completion of the Erie Canal (1825) assured New York's economic dominance. Although he expended much of his talents and energies on partisan politics, he had also made significant contributions to the natural sciences and above all to the advancement of public education. |
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