John Laurance

The Immigrant Founding Father America Never Knew, Transactions, American Philosophical Society (Vol. 108, Part 2)

Kerith Marshall Jones III, Keith Marshall Jones III

• Publisher: The American Philosophical Society Press
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Law
• eBook ISBN:
  9781606180877
• Subtopic: Law Biographies
• Index: Law

The first substantial study of English-born New York lawyer John Laurance (1760-1810), this publication details his life and his role in the American nation's creation. It describes the middling Cornish émigré's against-all-odds passage to Federalist America's governing inner circle. Laurance spent five wartime years as General Washington's "courtroom Baron von Steuben" and was battlefield father of the United States Army Judge Advocate Corps. Never defeated for electoral office, Colonel Laurance spoke as New York City's post-war pro-mercantile voice in the Confederation Congress, state legislature, and both houses of the fledgling federal Congress. This long overdue illustrated biography restores an important missing piece to the founding narrative of the United States and casts fresh light on the rise and fall of America's first political Party, the Federalists.

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I. From "Cousin Jack"to Colonel Laurance
• ONE: Gotterdamerung
• TWO: Casting Fate to the Wind
• THREE: Crossing the Bar
• FOUR: An Officer of the Revolution
• FIVE: Washington's Courtroom "Von Steuben"
• SIX: Courtrooms as Battlefields
• Part II. The Federal Child of a Thousand Fathers
• SEVEN: "Then all the world would be upside down!"
• EIGHT: New York Lawyer Rising
• NINE: federalist into Federalist
• TEN: The Congress of Firsts
• Part III. Knight in Washington's "Republican Court"
• ELEVEN: Federalist Warhorse
• TWELVE: Philadelphia Story
• THIRTEEN: A Farewell to Innocence
• FOURTEEN: Judicial Safe Harbor
• Part IV. The Federalist Ha wk Who Fled the Nest
• FIFTEEN: The Senator from New York
• SIXTEEN: Quasi-Warrior in the "Reign of Witches"
• SEVENTEEN: Slipping the Party Harness
• EIGHTEEN: The Consolation of Wealth
• EPILOGUE: Why John Laurance Matters
• APPENDIX A: General Courts-Martial in George Washington's Main Army 1775-1778
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX