William Beach Lawrence

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William Beach Lawrence

William Beach Lawrence (born October 23, 1800 in New York City , † March 26, 1881 ibid) was an American lawyer , politician and author of legal textbooks.

Youth and education

William was the son of Isaac and Cornelia (Beach) Lawrence. Mr. Isaac Lawrence was a well-known and wealthy New York merchant and president of the New York branch of the Bank of the United States since 1816. When his father died on July 12, 1841, he left his seven children a considerable fortune. William was the only son out of 6 sisters.

William Beach Lawrence spent his early childhood with his maternal grandfather, Rev. Dr. Beach, in Raritan, New Jersey . He also attended the Reverend Edmund Drinan Barry's school, and at the age of 12 he was sent to Queen's College . He stayed for two years in the school that had prepared him for Columbia College , New York. He graduated from Columbia in 1818 with top marks. Among his classmates were Henry J. Anderson and James Lenox . After leaving college, he became a student in the office of William Slosson, New York's premier commercial lawyer, and then attended the famous law school of Justices Tapping Reeves and James Gould in Litchfield, Connecticut. For recreation he spent the winter months in South Carolina and Georgia , where he was warmly received by the old-established families Rutledge, Middleton, Huger, Lowndes and others.

In 1821 he married Hetty, daughter of Archibald Gracie, Esq. in New York. Since Williams' father had been one of President James Monroe's electors , he received letters of recommendation for his son from him without further ado, as well as others from his predecessor James Madison and Thomas Jefferson to the various diplomats such as B. Richard Rush , Minister at the Court of London and Albert Gallatin in Paris. Equipped in this way, he traveled with his wife to Europe, where they spent a total of two years and visited England, France and Italy. They spent one winter in Paris, which he used to listen to Jean Baptiste Say's lecture on political economy and also to attend the Sorbonne's law school .

Lawyer - Diplomat - Writer

In 1823 he was admitted to the New York Supreme Court. During this time, James Kent , former Chancellor of Columbia University, gave and Lawrence never missed any of his lectures on American law. He was particularly interested in the "Law of Nations" - today everything is comprehensively called international law. Kent later published a multi-volume work with commentaries. From 1824 to 1826 he wrote several articles for "Atlantic Magazine", which later became the "New York Review". His articles dealt with the restrictions on the banking system and fiscal policy in the United States. He was a strong advocate of free trade.

In 1826 President John Quincy Adams appointed Albert Gallatin , on a special mission to succeed Rufus King , who was troubled by his health, as minister to England. Gallatin asked Lawrence to accompany him to London as secretary of the embassy . Lord Canning died in August 1827 and Lord Goodrich succeeded him as Prime Minister. In October, Mr. Gallatin resigned, leaving Mr. Lawrence in charge of the negotiations. He had previously assured the Secretary of State, Henry Clay , that his secretary would be able to run the business alone. The American President William Lawrence immediately appointed "Charge d'Affaires", in that capacity, endowed with far-reaching powers, completed several contracts concluded by Mr. Gallatin, and was also responsible for selecting arbitrators for the United States to deal with the disputed issues to determine the limits.

During his tenure in London he was a member of the Political Economy Club , which included John Ramsay McCulloch , Sir John Bowring and the liberal-minded banker and historian on Greece, George Grote . He also associated with Jeremy Bentham and Joseph Hume privately. Also followed the discussions in the British Parliament as well as the proceedings in the courts. Charles Abbott was Chief Justice of the King's Bench at the time, and the two brothers Scott, Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell, were Presidents of the Courts of Chancery and Civil Law, respectively. He was also fortunate to be present when Henry Brougham delivered his famous speech calling for legal reform.

With the election of Andrew Jackson as American President, his office ended and he visited Paris again in 1828, where he translated François Barbé-Marbois ' Histoire de la Louisiane into English (Philadelphia 1830) without mentioning his name as a translator.

In the summer of 1830 he visited Henry Clay (1777-1852) at his home in Kentucky . This informed him that Henry Wheaton had concluded with Denmark on March 28, 1830 about claims for damages, Wheaton had adhered closely to Clay's specifications. He was also interested in this contract and the resulting compensation for his family. Mr. Rives also negotiated a war damage treaty with France on July 4, 1831.

In 1832 he returned to New York and ran his law firm with Hamilton Fish as a partner.

During this time he gave a series of lectures on economics for the senior classes at Columbia College . After repeating them to the Mercantile Library Association of the City of New York on December 23 and 30, 1831, they were printed in 1832. These lectures were intended to support the Ricardian theory of commerce and the teachings of free trade, of which he was a consistent advocate. Before the Historical Society of New York he gave the lecture “The Origin and Nature of the Representative and Federative Institutions of the United States” in 1832, the aim of which was to maintain the system of government as it existed before the last civil war, namely full autonomy the states in their internal affairs and the national government in handling foreign affairs. From 1829 to 1834 he wrote important articles on various European countries for the volumes of the "American Annual Register".

For the magazine "New York Review" in 1841 he wrote the history of the negotiations on the eastern and northeastern borders of the United States ("History of the Negotiations in Reference to the Eastern and North-Eastern Boundaries of the United States"), a Subject that he was very familiar with from his time as a diplomat in London.

In 1843 he published an obituary for his former boss Albert Gallatin in the "Democratic Review". That same year he was asked to give a talk to young people in New Brunswick on the Colonization and History of New Jersey.

Following an urgent request from Henry Wheaton , he prepared a review for his book "History of the Law of Nations" for the "North American Review" (1845,).

Lawrence was very interested in the public improvements in his hometown. So he was involved in the planning of the Erie Railroad and was also one of the first directors of this railway business. With some other far-sighted New Yorkers, he supported the construction of the High Bridge (elevated railway) as well as consistently maintaining the navigability of the Harlem River .

Moved to Rhode Island

“Orchester Point” villa by William Beach Lawrence in Newport RI

Lawrence was probably Newport RI's first millionaire , buying almost all of the land for $ 14,000 in 1844. On this site he built his summer residence, which he called Ocher Point and to which he moved his retirement home in 1850. After a few years, an acre of his property sold to a friend. Bad then he regretted this sale and loss of his privacy, so he built a high stone wall over the "Cliff Walk". He was amazed when Newport residents protested and demolished the wall. An indignant Lauwrence commissioned an even higher wall with broken glass to close it off. The residents of Newport relied on an ancient law that allowed fishermen to use the cliff walk and ledges to anchor their boats. They took their lawsuit to the US Supreme Court. The judges ruled in favor of the local residents. Since then, the Cliff Walk, one of the most beautiful walks in Rhode Island , has been open to all walkers.

In 1851, Lawrence was elected lieutenant governor of the state; at times he also served as acting governor when he had to represent incumbent Philip Allen . In his state's politics, he worked long and hard to see the abolition of the barbaric practice of imprisonment for debt, and during the Maine Liquor Law flurry, Lawrence enforced the prohibition on the manufacture of alcohol for sale as a drink. (To what extent he promoted the illegal distillery is not known.) As a consistent democrat, he was always against the restriction of civil rights. According to the constitution of Rhode Island, only landowners were entitled to vote, which clearly showed the injustice of this constitution and had led to uprisings under Thomas Wilson Dorr (1805–54) earlier. The result had already been shown in 1829: 60% of the free white men were not eligible to vote. But even his efforts in this direction were unsuccessful.

In 1852 he was not re-elected as governor, he resigned from office, whereupon he mainly worked as an author of legal textbooks.

Governor Lawrence's friend and mentor, Henry Wheaton, died in March 1848, leaving his family in poor circumstances, so they asked him to publish another edition of his Elements of International Law, which was printed in 1855. The edition was preceded by an homage to Wheaton's life, which took up more than 2/3 of the book. Lawrence paid him an honor. The proceeds from the sale of this edition as well as those of the subsequent edition in 1863 and the "French Commentaire" gave Lawrence to the Wheaton family.

After the death of his wife in 1858, Lawrence returned to Europe after 30 years of absence. He stayed there until 1860 and made the acquaintance of all the prominent authors who had written on the law of nations. In Rome, he and William Bradford Reed , who had just returned from China, received a private audience with the Pope. In Paris he wrote pamphlets in French with the title: "L'Industrie Francais et l'Esclavage des Nigres aux Etats Unis", which received a great deal of attention, and translated under the title "French Commerce and Manufactures and Negro Slavery in the United States" published in the London Morning Chronicle. It explained the connection between the European manufacturers and that of the Negro labor force in the southern states.

In 1868 the first volume was published by FA Brockhaus-Verlag in Leipzig in French by Lawrence magnum opus on international law, and the fourth appeared in autumn 1880. The fifth and sixth volumes were only available in manuscript at his death. It can be said with certainty that this work, written and edited in French, is the most complete and valuable contribution to international law that has not yet appeared in either Europe or America and that was sufficient for the literary fame of William Beach Lawrence. He did not publish anything else afterwards.

He has made small contributions to international law in the following journals: London Law Magazine, La Revue de Droit International, Transactions of the British Social Science Association, and the Albany Law Journal.

In the fall of 1868, Lawrence visited Europe a fourth time and stayed until the spring of 1870. In October 1869, he attended the Social Science Congress in Bristol, England, where he renewed his acquaintance with Sir John Bowring . The British Social Science Association had appointed Lawrence three years earlier as a member of a commission to prepare a codex on international law. He spent the winter of 1869–70 in Paris, working on the third volume of his Commentaires. Upon his return, he began preparing a brochure on The Disabilities of American Women Married Abroad.

Later he turned to social and international issues. Among other things, he wrote:

  • Disabilities of American Women married abroad (1871)
  • Administration of equity jurisprudence (Boston 1874)

Governor Lawrence received a lot of professional attention when he appeared before the British and American International Tribunal (Joint High Commission) in Washington in 1873 in the famous case of the SS "Circassian", which involved compensation payments of more than half a million dollars . He won the lawsuit for his client by dismissing the United States Supreme Court decision . His argument was published under the title "Belligerent and Sovereign Rights as Regards Neutrals During the War of Secession" . For successfully representing the plaintiffs, he received the sum of $ 40,000 in gold.

He owned one of the largest and most valuable private libraries in the country. A substantial portion of its 10,000 volumes in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, related to international law and political economy. Orchester Point was a center of social life for a quarter of a century and few people in the legal, literary, political, or academic worlds visited Newport without dropping by.

His last article appeared in the North American Review for November 1880 on The Monarchical Principle in our Constitution .

Honors

  • In 1826 he was honored by Yale College with an honorary degree of AM;
  • 1869 Brown University the degree of LL. D.;
  • 1873, the Regents of the University of the State of New York , the first degree of DCL ever granted in the United States.
  • 1869 Honorary Vice-President for the State of Rhode Island

Honorary positions

family

On May 19, 1821, ESTHER ROGERS GRACIE, known as "Hettie", daughter of the merchant Archibald Gracie, married in Grace Church, New York City. The following children were born from the marriage:

  • William Isaac Lawrence, lawyer, * 1829 † 1870
  • Isaac, ran for the Democrats for governor of Rhode Island in 1878
  • Esther Gracie Lawrence * 1832, ⚭ married Dr. WL Wheeler, former United States Navy general.
  • Gratia Lawrence * 1834
  • General Albert Gallatin Lawrence * 1836 (became Brigadier General and Minister in Costa Rica). ⚭ 1865, Eva, youngest daughter of Gen. JP Taylor, USA, and niece of President Taylor. Had 1 daughter: Esther.
  • Cornelia Beach Lawrence * 1839 ⚭ Baron Von Klenck of Hanover. Had two daughters Marie Bertha and Frederica.
  • James GK Lawrence * 1844 ⚭ Catherine Augusta Le Roy. Had 1 son, William Beach Lawrence, born in 1881.

Within two years of her father's death, the heirs parceled out and sold the 60 acres of Newport land. Around half of the new land was bought by women. Everyone built houses on it. Catharine Lorillard Wolfe bought the property with Lawrence's house in 1882.

Funeral service

William Beach Lawrence died in New York on March 26, 1881. A New York newspaper describes the funeral:

Many celebrities appeared at old St. Mark's Church on the corner of Second Avenue and Stuyvesant Place yesterday afternoon to attend the funeral of William Beach Lawrence. Rev. Dr. Beach Carter, of Grace Chapel and a cousin of the late lawyer, held the service. The pallbearers were: Hon. Hamilton Fish , Hon. Charles O'Conor , Hon. Samuel B. Ruggles, David Dudley Field , General George W. Cullum , Dr. JC Welling from Washington, Hm James W. Gerard , JS O'Sullivan, and Dr. William A. Watson. Also in attendance were Ex-Governor John T. Hoffman , General Grant Wilson , Judges Charles A. Peabody , Edward V. De Lancey , George Peabody Wetmore , Hon. John Jay, Mason Jones, Hon. Edwin W. Stoughton, Augustus Schell , Pierre and Louis Lorillard, and Gunning S. Bedford . The remains were buried in a grave in the churchyard. You will be transferred to the Lawrence family cemetery near Newtown, Long Island.

  • - New York paper, March 29, 1881.

Other works

Individual evidence

Source: A discourse commemorative of the life and services of the late William Beach Lawrence . By Charles Henry Hart. Reprinted from "The Penn Monthly" for June 1881. Publisher: Press of E. Stern & co. Philadelphia, 1881

  1. ↑ 1799 Flight from Ireland to America
  2. ↑ A History of the Litchfield Law School ( Memento of the original dated February 18, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org
  3. ^ After his retirement James Kent was again (1824-26) professor of law at Columbia
  4. ^ Stowell, William Scott, Baron in: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 25
  5. ^ The life and times of Henry, Lord Brougham. Written by himself. In three volumes. Vol. I. Second edition. Publisher: William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh, London, Published 1871
  6. ^ The History of Louisiana: Particularly of the Cession of that Colony to the United States of America . Publisher Carey & Lea, Philadelphia, 1830
  7. ^ University of Iowa Studies in the Social Science. Volume VIII, No. 2. “ Danish-American diplomacy, 1776-1920 ” Chapter III: The Negotiation of Treaties and Settlement of Claims 1815-1853., Page 47 ff. By Soren Jacob Marius Peterson Fogdall. Publisher: The University Iowa City, Published 1922
  8. ^ The Alvan Stewart Papers . The Diary, Paris, July 9 - July 14, 1831
  9. ↑ "The Origin and Nature of the Representative and Federative Institutions of the United States"
  10. ^ The Cliff Walk along the eastern shore of Newport, RI
  11. ^ The City of Newport Comprehensive Harbor Management Plan 2001-2005
  12. ^ Alcohol - The Maine Encyclopedia
  13. ↑ Maine Liquor Law- Speech of Lieutenant governor Lawrence, in the senate of Rhode-Island, February 10, 1852, on "An act to prevent the manufacture of intoxicating liquors, and the sale thereof as a beverage."
  14. ^ Arthur May Mowry: The Dorr war: or, The constitutional struggle in Rhode Island Publisher: Preston & Rounds co. Providence, RI Published 1901
  15. ^ Elements of international law. 6th edition. With the last corrections by the author. Additional Notes and introductory Remarks, Containing a Notice of Mr. Wheaton's Diplomatic Career and of the Antecedents of his Life. By William Beach Lawrence. Publisher: Little, Brown and company, Boston, 1855
  16. ^ Industrie française et l'esclavage des nègres aux États-Unis . PUBLISHER: E. Dentu, Paris, 1860 - "Translated for the London Morning Chronicle."
  17. ^ Disabilities of American Women Married Abroad
  18. ↑ United States District Court, Southern District of New York. The Steamship Circassian. - The Steamship “Circassian” is an article from The American Law Register (1852-1891), Volume 21 Published May 1, 1873
  19. ^ The Monarchical Principle in Our Constitution. An article from The North American Review, Volume 131. Published November 1, 1880
  20. ^ History of the College of Physicians and Surgeons
  21. ↑ The club decided to move from its Fifth Avenue & 51st Street location in 1927 in its fifth move and this clubhouse, designed by Delano & Aldrich, opened in 1933
  22. ^ Census of New Port, Rhode Island 1850
  23. ^ Catherine W. Zipf: Alice Vanderbilt's Newport neighbors

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Lawrence, William Beach
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer and politician
DATE OF BIRTH October 23, 1800
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH March 26, 1881
Place of death New York City