One of the richest men in all of America signed the Declaration of Independence knowing it could cost him everything. Then he left home to serve, died far away in a borrowed town, and never came back. Meet Philip Livingston.
This guy was not a scrappy underdog. Just the opposite. He was born in 1716 into the Livingston family, one of the wealthiest, most powerful dynasties in colonial New York. Manor lands, a Yale education, and a shipping empire he built into one of the biggest merchant fortunes in New York City. He had everything the British system was designed to reward.
And he spent that fortune building things that still exist. He helped found King's College, which you know today as Columbia University. He helped start the New York Society Library. He helped create the New York Chamber of Commerce. The man was basically constructing the civic backbone of New York with his own money and time.
Here's the thing though. He was not some hothead revolutionary. He actually feared independence. He worried it would bring chaos and disorder, and he was cautious about the whole idea for a long time. This wasn't a man itching to burn it all down.
But when New York finally gave its delegates the go-ahead, Livingston signed. He put the name of one of the great fortunes in America onto a document the crown treated as treason. A rich man betting his wealth against the empire that made him rich.
And the war came straight for him. When the British took New York, they seized and used his properties. He started selling off his holdings to help fund the fight, watching the empire he'd defied pick apart the life he'd built.
Then comes the ending that gets me. His health was failing, and he knew it. Congress had been driven out of Philadelphia and was meeting in the small town of York, Pennsylvania. Livingston could have gone home to rest. Instead he told his family he probably wouldn't see them again, and he went to York to keep serving anyway.
He died there in June 1778, in the middle of a session of Congress, far from home. He's buried in York, Pennsylvania to this day. He never made it back to the New York he spent his whole life building.
A man who had every reason to stay comfortable and loyal, who gave his fortune and his final months to a country he wasn't even sure would work.
Philip Livingston. He died at his post, a long way from home.
It might be worth a few minutes if your time to consider your humanity, self guidance, ambition and resolve and perhaps refocus on what’s really important. It might be worth a few minutes of your time to consider how lucky you are to live and prosper under a system designed by men that decided to be traitors to their homeland so that we could exist in the system we have today.
I don’t think there’s a leader today in Congress or in leadership of this country today that seeks to emulate the character and resolve of our founding fathers perhaps because they haven’t yet experienced (or don’t care to experience) the dark side of tyrannical rule.
Not enough Americans are students of history and sacrifice or understand how many civilizations perished or were weakened by something other than democracy.
Everyone’s busy. Everyone’s selfishly predisposed. But in no time at all you’ll be old and you’ll die. Let’s be honest. With what time you have - do something and contribute to the greater good of this model, and pass this gift that we have along to others.
