Edward Livingston - Louisiana

Louisiana

Almost immediately upon his arrival in Louisiana, where the legal system had previously been based on Roman, French and Spanish law, and where trial by jury and other particularities of English common law were now first introduced, he was appointed by the legislature to prepare a provisional code of judicial procedure, which (in the form of an act passed in April 1805) was continued in force from 1805 to 1825. In 1807, after conducting a successful suit on behalf of a client’s title to a part of the batture or alluvial land near New Orleans, Livingston attempted to improve part of this land (which he had received as his fee) in the Batture Ste. Marie. Great popular excitement was aroused against him; his workmen were mobbed; and Governor William C. C. Claiborne, when appealed to for protection, referred the question to the Federal government.

It has been alleged that Livingston’s case was damaged by then-President Thomas Jefferson, who believed that Livingston had favored Aaron Burr in the presidential election of 1800, and that he had afterwards been a party to Burr’s schemes. Jefferson made it impossible for Livingston to secure his title since by asserting the claim that such battures were the property of the Federal government, Livingston's title obtained from the Territorial Court notwithstanding. In response, Livingston filed a civil lawsuit against Jefferson in 1810. After the case was dismissed on 5 December 1811 by Chief Justice John Marshall due to lack of jurisdiction, Jefferson nonetheless in 1812 completed and published a pamphlet originally intended “for the use of counsel” in the case against Livingston, to which Livingston published a reply. During the war with England from 1812 to 1815, Livingston was active in rousing the mixed population of New Orleans to resistance. He used his influence to secure amnesty for Jean Lafitte and his followers upon their offer to fight for the city, and in 1814—1815 acted as adviser and volunteer aide-de-camp to General Andrew Jackson, who was his personal friend.