James Duane

Duane represented Trinity Church in the very protracted legal action brought by heirs of Anneke Jans, who claimed that they, and not the church, were the lawful owners of much of lower Manhattan, a tract which had been given to the church by the British crown.[9]

By the early 1770s, his practice earned him 1,400 pounds annually.[2] At the height of his success, Duane had a house in Manhattan, one in the country, and an estate near Schenectady, New York, of 36,000 acres (15,000 ha) and 253 tenants.[2] He was a vestryman of Trinity Church, was appointed one of the church's nine trustees during a post-war crisis about the church's Tory leanings,[10] and was also a trustee of Kings College, the precursor to Columbia University.[7]

In 1761, Duane acquired from Gerardus Stuyvesant a farm known as Krom Mesje ("little crooked knife") in reference to a small brook that flowed into the East River. He named it "Gramercy Seat". In addition to the farm, Duane also had a house on King Street (later changed to Pine Street).[11] In 1765, he was granted a patent for land in Schenectady County, which became the township of Duanesburg.

With his boyhood friend James De Lancey, Duane was one of the Socialborough Proprietors, holding an area obtained by grant in 1771 and located on both sides of Otter Creek in the present towns of Pittsford and Rutland, Vermont.[12]

Duane was politically conservative.[2] Until his marriage to Mary Livingston, he had been a member of James De Lancey's political faction,[7] which opposed to the Crown's policies but did not endorse the use of mob violence to protest British measures. His efforts to support resistance in New York led to his being chosen with others to represent the Province of New York at the Congressional meetings in Philadelphia. He remained active in both capacities.

Duane was a delegate to the First Continental Congress held in Philadelphia during the autumn of 1774 in reaction to the British Navy's blockade of Boston Harbor and the passage of the Intolerable Acts by Parliament in response to the December 1773 Boston Tea Party. He was one of the many who were most disposed to reconciliation with Britain and supported the Galloway Plan of Union, which was rejected by the majority of the delegates. Upon his return to New York, he was named to the Committee of Sixty, a committee of inspection formed in the City and County of New York (Manhattan, New York City) in 1775, to enforce the Continental Association, a boycott of British goods enacted by the First Continental Congress.[13]

He was a delegate to the Provincial Convention held in New York City on April 20, 1775, where delegates were elected to the Second Continental Congress. It included the delegates to the First Congress as well as five new members. The scope of the Provincial Convention did not extend beyond electing delegates, who dispersed on April 22, the day before news of the Battles of Lexington and Concord arrived. The Second Continental Congress convened its first session on May 10. Duane served as a delegate from 1775 to 1781. Alexander Hamilton, an aide to General George Washington, wrote Duane to ask him to get Congress to expedite supplies.[14]

The Committee of Sixty was replaced by a more representative Committee of One Hundred on May 1, 1775. The Committee still considered itself loyal to the British Crown but was opposed to the laws of the Parliament of Great Britain, which it considered unconstitutional because the colonies had no representation in it. The Committee of One Hundred was officially replaced by the New York Provincial Congress which first convened on May 23, 1775. Despite initial reservations regarding independence, he later supported the Declaration of Independence. Because of his service with the Provincial Congress, Duane was not in Philadelphia to sign the Declaration.[11]

When the British occupied New York in late summer 1776, he withdrew his wife and family to the relative safety of her father's home at Livingston Manor. He was a member of the New York Constitutional Convention which assembled at White Plains, New York, on Sunday evening, July 10, 1776, for the purpose of drafting a constitution to replace the colonial charter.

In July 1778 he signed the Articles of Confederation in Philadelphia.[5] Duane was a member of the Congress of the Confederation from 1781 to 1783. He remained active as a political leader throughout the war and returned home to Gramercy Seat in 1783. He commented that his home looked "as if they had been inhabited by wild beasts".[15]

He was Mayor of New York City from 1784 to 1789,[6] appointed by the Council of Appointment.[16] As mayor, one of Duane's first acts was to donate to the poor the money usually spent on entertainment for his inauguration, about 20 guineas.[16] During his time in office, he strove to help the city revive itself after the damage done by the war and the British occupation, but he was unable to maintain the city's status as the capital of the United States.[7] As head of the Mayor's Court, he heard the landmark case of Rutgers v. Waddington, handing down a Solomonic decision that pleased neither party. After he was called before the State Assembly to explain his thinking, he was censured by that body.[17]

He was a member of the New York State Senate from 1782 to 1785, and from 1788 to 1790. In 1785, Duane was one of 32 prominent New Yorkers who met to create the New York Manumission Society, which was intended to put pressure on the state of New York to abolish slavery, as every state in the north had done except New York and New Jersey.[18]

He was chosen a member of the Annapolis Convention in 1786 but did not attend.

Duane was nominated by President George Washington on September 25, 1789, to the United States District Court for the District of New York, to a new seat authorized by 1 Stat. 73.[6] He was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 25, 1789, and received his commission on September 26, 1789.[6] He resigned on March 17, 1794, because of ill health.[6]