John Laurance

Download or read book John Laurance written by Kerith Marshall Jones III and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This long overdue biography of English-born N.Y. lawyer John Laurance (1760-1810) restores an important missing piece to the founding narrative of the U.S. It describes the middling Cornish emigre’s against-all-odds passage to Federalist America’s governing inner circle. Laurance spent 5 wartime years as Gen. Washington’s “courtroom Baron von Steuben” and was battlefield father of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate Corps. Never defeated for electoral office, Col. Laurance spoke as N.Y.C.’s post-war pro-mercantile voice in the Confederation Congress, state legislature, and both houses of the fledgling federal Congress. This biography casts fresh light on the rise and fall of America’s first political Party, the Federalists. Illus.