Matthew L. Davis

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Matthew Livingston Davis (born around 1766 in New York ; died June 21, 1850 there ) was an American journalist and close confidante of Aaron Burr , whose official biography he published after Burr's death in 1836.

Life

Davis apparently came from a humble background. In the New York of the early republic he moved in Republican circles and also put his journalistic work in the service of the Republicans. From 1797 he published the short-lived republican newspaper Time-Piece with Philip Freneau . Since then he has been close friends with Aaron Burr, leader of one of the competing camps of the Republican Party in New York and American Vice President under Thomas Jefferson from 1801–05 . Prior to the 1800 election, Davis had been one of the most ardent actors in the Burr election campaign in New York and was to be rewarded for his loyal service with one of the lucrative government posts to be awarded. Burr suggested Davis for the post of port officer, but Jefferson made no move to endorse or sign the appointment and instead , even after Davis had visited him in person in Monticello , left the post vacant until 1803, when he met Samuel Osgood , den DeWitt Clinton's father-in-law , appointed to the position. Jefferson's behavior in this regard is taken as a clear indication that he wanted to consciously weaken his Vice Burr shortly after taking office. Albert Gallatin wrote Jefferson a letter on the occasion of the proceedings, in which he asked him straight out whether the party intended to continue to support Burr, but Jefferson did not answer the letter. Davis was one of the anonymous writer of the short-lived abusive sheet The Corrector , an offshoot of the Morning Chronicle , the Peter Irving 1804, specifically to support Burr's campaign for governor of New York. The fervor with which the Republican and federal printers fought one another shows that Davis is said to have paraded down Wall Street one day, gun in hand , to challenge James Cheetham to a duel. But there were also deep rifts within the Republican Party. In 1803, for example, Davis tried to oust the city's Republican mayor, Edward Livingston , and lead his electorate into Burr's camp when he claimed in a political campaign that Livingston wanted the artisans and workers of the middle and lower classes with the introduction of forced labor in the city's poor houses into wage slavery.

After Burr's duel with Alexander Hamilton in 1804 and the high treason trial in 1807, the Burr faction dissolved. Davis subsequently became a member of Tammany Hall , of which he was chairman (titled Grand Sachem ) and one of the most influential pullers in city politics. In 1826 he and other senior members of Tammany Hall, including Henry Eckford , were accused of conspiracy and multi-million dollar embezzlement in a high-profile lawsuit. In the end, influential political friends of Davis ensured an acquittal. Davis continued his journalistic work and wrote first for Eckfords National Advocate , then under the pseudonym The Spy in Washington ("The Spy in Washington") for the New York Courier and Enquirer on American politics; until 1848 he was also a correspondent for the London Times in the USA, he drew his contributions with the pseudonym Genevese Traveler ("traveler from Geneva").

Livingston was chosen by Burr to be the administrator of his written estate and published in 1836, the year of Burr's death, his "authorized", in many ways partisan biography of Burr with excerpts from his correspondence. Davis apparently destroyed Burr's letters to women in order not to further boost Burr's reputation as a nefarious seducer. Two years later he also published Burr's diaries from the years of his European exile.

Works

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographical information according to JF Waller (ed.): The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography. 1857-63.
  2. ^ For example Henry Adams : History of the United States During the First Administration of Jefferson. Vol. 1. Charles Scribner's Sons , New York 1903. pp. 230-36.
  3. ^ Nancy Isenberg : Fallen Founder. The Life of Aaron Burr. Viking, New York 2007. pp. 229-31.
  4. ^ Sean Wilentz: Chants Democratic. New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class. Oxford University Press, New York 2004. p. 73.
  5. ^ Gustavus Myers: The History of Tammany Hall. Boni & Loveright, New York 1917. pp. 70-71.
  6. ↑ Frederic Hudson: Journalism in the United States, from 1690 to 1872. Harper & Brothers, New York 1873. Vol. 1, pp. 348-49.
  7. ↑ Isenberg, p. 235.
personal data
SURNAME Davis, Matthew L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Davis, Matthew Livingston (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American journalist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH around 1766
PLACE OF BIRTH new York
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1850
Place of death new York