Robert Yates

This article is about the American politician Robert Yates. For the serial killer of the same name, see Robert Yates (serial killer) .

Robert Yates (born January 27, 1738 in Schenectady , New York Province; died September 9, 1801 in Albany , New York ) was an American lawyer and politician. At the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 he emerged as an anti-federalist . From 1777 to 1798 he was a Justice on the Supreme Court of New York State, the last eight years of which he was Chief Justice.

Life

Yates came from a middle-class family in Albany. From 1754 he studied law with William Livingston and was admitted to the bar in 1760. In the following years he practiced in Albany, where he also held city offices. With the radicalization of the American independence movement , he became one of its most prominent actors in New York State. Under the pseudonym The Rough Hewer , he published some patriotic essays during the war that received great attention. 1775-77 he was a member of the Revolutionary Congress of New York and in 1777 one of the 13 members of the constitutional convention of the state. In 1777 he was also appointed judge of the state's Supreme Court, to which he would belong for 21 years.

When the debate about the revision of the articles of confederation sparked after the end of the war and eventually led to the formation of a two-party system, Yates emerged as an advocate of the sovereignty of the individual states against the strong central government envisaged by the federalists . As one of three MPs alongside John Lansing and Alexander Hamilton , he represented New York in the summer of 1787 at the Philadelphia Convention , in which the new federal constitution was drawn up. Together with the anti-federalist Lansing, he overruled the arch-federalist Hamilton at every vote and also wrote a letter to Governor George Clinton in which they declared their opposition to the draft constitution. Before the end of the convention, he left Philadelphia to raise awareness against the ratification of the constitution in New York. It is believed that Yates is the author of a number of articles that appeared in the New York Journal from 1787-88 under the pen name Brutus . To this day, they are frequently printed in anthologies of anti-federalist literature that illustrate the point of focus on Madison's and Hamilton's Federalist Papers . At the ratifying assembly of the state in Poughkeepsie , however, he hardly appeared as a speaker for reasons unknown.

After New York had ratified the constitution against all odds, Yates became active in party politics with changing alliances. In 1789 he stood for the federalists, whom he had recently fought so fiercely, in the New York gubernatorial election . To the federalists, he seemed a promising candidate precisely because he was not related to any of the big landowning families like the Clintons, who dominated New York politics in either political camp, and could therefore appeal to voters who were dissatisfied with this oligarchy. He was supported not only by Alexander Hamilton, the political leader of the federalists in New York and nationwide, but also by anti-federalists like Aaron Burr . He narrowly lost the election to long-time incumbent Clinton. In 1795 he again applied for governorship, this time for the anti-federalist Democratic-Republican Party . This time he lost significantly to John Jay .

literature

• Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Convention Assembled at Philadelphia, in the Year 1787: For the Purpose of Forming the Constitution of the United States of America. From Notes Taken from the late Robert Yates, Esquire ... Wilbur Curtis, Richmond, Va. 1839. ( digitized version )
• Alfred F. Young: The Democratic Republicans of New York. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1967.

Web links

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