Representative Philip Van Cortlandt

Philip Van Cortlandt (September 1, 1749 – November 5, 1831) was an American surveyor, civil engineer, landowner, military officer, and politician from Westchester County, New York. Born in New York City in the Province of New York, he first saw the light in the Van Cortlandt ancestral home on Stone Street near the Battery. He was the eldest son of Pierre Van Cortlandt, later the first lieutenant governor of New York, and Joanna Livingston, daughter of Gilbert Livingston and granddaughter of Robert Livingston, thus uniting two of the colony’s most prominent families. His great-grandfather was Stephanus Van Cortlandt, the first native-born mayor of New York City, and the family were patroons of Van Cortlandt Manor on the Hudson River. Van Cortlandt never married and owned slaves, reflecting both his status as a major landholder and the social and economic practices of his class and era.

Van Cortlandt received his education at Coldenham Academy in the Province of New York. As a young man he assisted in the management of the extensive Van Cortlandt estate, exercising manorial rights and overseeing farming and manufacturing activities at Van Cortlandt Manor. Trained as a civil engineer, he undertook surveying and engineering work that would later prove valuable in his military service. Before the American Revolution he was active in New York’s pre-Revolutionary loyalist militia, holding the rank of major. With the onset of the Revolution, however, he resigned his militia commission and aligned himself with the patriot cause, entering public life as a founding member of the New York Provincial Congress in 1775.

During the American Revolutionary War, Van Cortlandt served continuously in the Continental Army and rose to prominence as a field officer. He initially commanded the 4th Battalion of the New York Continental Infantry and later the 2nd New York Regiment, and at one stage served on the staff of General George Washington. He took part in the Saratoga campaign of 1777, where his regiment held a position on the left flank and played a significant role in the fighting on September 19 and again at the Battle of Bemis Heights on October 7, actions that led to the surrender of British General John Burgoyne on October 17. In his later memoir, Van Cortlandt described a night operation on September 17 in which, while attempting to capture a British gunboat on the Hudson River, he and his men stumbled upon an advance guard of Burgoyne’s forces at a place he called “Blind Mores.” Realizing that a main enemy encampment was nearby, he dispatched urgent messages to Continental commanders Benedict Arnold, Enoch Poor, and Daniel Morgan, warning that the enemy was advancing so that American forces could immediately prepare to check their movement.

After Burgoyne’s surrender, Van Cortlandt’s regiment moved to Kingston, New York, which had just been burned by British forces under Sir Henry Clinton. He then joined Washington at White Marsh and went into winter quarters at Valley Forge, sharing in the hardships of that encampment. Subsequently he commanded the post at Radnor Friends Meetinghouse in Pennsylvania. His regiment pursued the British during their withdrawal from Philadelphia and took part in the Battle of Monmouth on June 28, 1778. He later rejoined his regiment at Poughkeepsie and resumed command during the winter of 1778 in the cantonments at New Windsor, New York. In 1779 his regiment participated in Major General John Sullivan’s expedition against British-allied Iroquois and Loyalist forces on the New York and Pennsylvania frontier. Van Cortlandt’s immediate task was to clear and construct a road from Easton through the Wyoming Territory, a distance of about sixty-five miles, which he completed in thirty days. General Sullivan formally thanked Van Cortlandt and Colonel Oliver Spencer of the 5th New Jersey Regiment for their “unparalleled exertions in clearing and repairing the road to Wyoming.” During this campaign Van Cortlandt came to respect the abilities of the Mohawk war leader Joseph Brant, whose portrait he later displayed at Van Cortlandt Manor.

Van Cortlandt’s Revolutionary service also brought him into repeated contact with Benedict Arnold. In 1779 and 1780 he sat on the court-martial convened to consider charges of improper conduct against Arnold for his administration of Philadelphia. According to Van Cortlandt’s later correspondence and memoirs, he believed Arnold guilty of war profiteering and other misconduct, and he recalled that a minority of the court, including himself, favored cashiering Arnold from the army. Instead, Arnold received only a reprimand from Washington. Van Cortlandt also recounted earlier episodes in Montreal in which he claimed Arnold and his brigade major had improperly obtained goods from merchants for personal benefit, and he lamented that, had Arnold been dismissed when first suspected, he would never have been placed in command at West Point. In the fall of 1780, Van Cortlandt’s regiment served as the rear guard of the Continental Army as it marched south to Virginia. At the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 he commanded the New York Brigade in the trenches until the surrender of British General Charles Cornwallis. After the capitulation, he was placed in charge of escorting British prisoners on their march to Fredericksburg, Virginia, and then went into winter quarters at Pompton, New Jersey. He was commended for gallantry at Yorktown and was mustered out of service at the end of the war with the rank of brigadier general.

Following the Revolution, Van Cortlandt resumed his role as a leading figure in Westchester County and in New York State politics. He served in several local offices, including town supervisor of Cortlandt, member of the town school board, and town road commissioner, while continuing to manage and improve Van Cortlandt Manor and its surrounding lands. In 1783 he was one of thirty-five officers who founded the Society of the Cincinnati, an organization of Continental Army and Navy officers formed to preserve the ideals and fellowship of the Revolutionary generation. He was an organizer of the New York Society of the Cincinnati, served on the committee that drafted its bylaws, and was treasurer of the New York branch from 1783 to 1788. At the Society’s first formal meeting in New York, held on July 4, 1786, at the City Tavern Club—formerly the home of his brother-in-law Stephen Delancey—Van Cortlandt was one of the masters of ceremony for the presentation of the gold eagle insignia and diplomas to new members.

Van Cortlandt’s state-level political career began in the critical years of constitutional formation. In 1788 he was a member of the New York State convention that met to consider ratification of the United States Constitution, and he worked in favor of its approval. He represented Westchester County in the New York State Assembly from 1788 to 1790 and then served in the New York State Senate from 1791 to 1793, representing the Southern District, which then comprised Kings, New York, Queens, Richmond, Suffolk, and Westchester counties. In these roles he participated in organizing the new state government under the federal Constitution and in shaping legislation for a rapidly changing postwar society.

In January 1793, Van Cortlandt was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic-Republican (often called Republican) Party, representing New York. He served eight consecutive terms in Congress, from March 4, 1793, to March 3, 1809, during the 3rd through the 10th Congresses. His long tenure in the House coincided with the administrations of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the early years of James Madison, a period marked by the rise of the first party system, debates over federal fiscal policy, foreign affairs, and the scope of federal power. As a Democratic-Republican, he contributed to the legislative process and participated in the democratic governance of the new republic, representing the interests of his New York constituents during a formative era in American political development.

In his later years, Van Cortlandt continued to reside at Van Cortlandt Manor in what is now Croton-on-Hudson, New York, remaining a respected elder of the Revolutionary generation. A wartime portrait of him, copied from a miniature painted near the close of the Revolution, was noted for its striking resemblance to the Marquis de Lafayette. When Lafayette made his celebrated tour of the United States in 1824, Van Cortlandt accompanied him on part of the journey. On at least one occasion at a large reception, when Lafayette became fatigued from greeting well-wishers, he withdrew and allowed Van Cortlandt, whose likeness to him was considerable, to stand in his place; the guests, unaware of the substitution, departed believing they had shaken hands with Lafayette himself. Van Cortlandt died unmarried at Van Cortlandt Manor on November 5, 1831. He was buried in Hillside Cemetery in what is now Cortlandt Manor, New York. Having had no children, he was attended in his final years by his sister Catharine Van Wyck, who lived with him after the death of her husband.