Edward Livingston - Later Career

Later Career

Livingston served as a U.S. Representative from Louisiana from 1823 to 1829, a U.S. Senator from 1829 to 1831, and for two years (1831–1833) United States Secretary of State under President Jackson. In this last position he was one of Jackson's most trusted advisers. Livingston prepared a number of state papers for President Jackson, the most important being the famous anti-nullification proclamation of the 10th of December 1832.

From 1833 to 1835, Livingston was minister plenipotentiary to France, charged with procuring the fulfilment by the French government of the treaty negotiated by W. C. Rives in 1831, by which France had bound herself to pay an indemnity of twenty-five millions of francs for French spoliations of American shipping chiefly under the Berlin and Milan decrees, and the United States in turn agreed to pay to France 1,500,000 francs in satisfaction of French claims. Livingston's negotiations were conducted with excellent judgment, but the French Chamber of Deputies refused to make an appropriation to pay the first instalment due under the treaty in 1833, relations between the two governments became strained, and Livingston was finally instructed to close the legation and return to America.

Livingston died at Montgomery Place, Rhinebeck, Dutchess County, New York, an estate left him by his sister, to which he had removed in 1831. He was twice married. His first wife, Mary McEvers, whom he married on the 10 April 1788, died on the 13 March 1801. In June 1805 he married Madame Louise Moreau de Lassy or D'Avezac, a widow 19 years of age, whose maiden name was Davezac de Castera, and who was a refugee in New Orleans from the revolution in Santo Domingo. She was a woman of extraordinary beauty and intellect, and is said to have greatly influenced her husband's public career.