George Clinton

George Clinton.

George Clinton (1739 - 1812) was the second Governor-General of the Northern Confederation under the Britannic Design, succeeding John Dickinson to the office.

Clinton was born on 26 July 1739 in Little Britain, New York Province, the son of Presbyterian nonconformists who had left Ireland ten years before to escape the control of the Anglican Church of Ireland. His father, Colonel Charles Clinton, was a farmer, surveyor, and land speculator who served in the colonial assembly.

During the French and Indian War George Clinton served on a privateer operating in the Caribbean before joining the New York colonial militia. He and his father both participated in the seizure of Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario by Lt. Col. John Bradstreet in August 1758. After the war he read the law and began to practice in 1764. In 1768 he was elected to the New York General Assembly, where he joined the anti-British faction.

Clinton supported the embargo adopted by the First Continental Congress in 1774 and was chosen as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in April 1775. By December the revolutionary government of New York had appointed him brigadier general in the revolutionary militia. While leading the revolutionary militia he built two forts along the Hudson River and stretched a chain across the river to keep British ships from sailing up from New York City. Clinton's militia duties interfered with his service in the Congress, and he resigned in July 1776. Although he did not sign the Declaration of Independence, he did support it.

In March 1777 Clinton was commissioned as a brigadier general in the Continental Army and elected Governor of New York's revolutionary government. During the Hudson campaign he was defeated by British General Sir Henry Clinton in October 1777 as the latter marched north to relieve General John Burgoyne's army. Clinton surrendered to Burgoyne after the Congress agreed to an armistice and return to British rule in June 1778. Burgoyne was able to shield Clinton from the vengeance of the Loyalists, and Clinton became a prominent supporter of Burgoyne during the era of the Four Viceroys.

After the adoption of the Britannic Design in 1781 Burgoyne was able to use his influence with the government of Lord North to gain Clinton's appointment as Royal Governor of New York. When Sir John Dickinson was appointed to replace Burgoyne as Viceroy of the Confederation of North America, Clinton was appointed to succeed Dickinson as Governor-General of the Northern Confederation.

Clinton's tenure as executive of the N.C. was a troubled one. An ongoing rebellion in the Green Mountain region of New Hampshire proved impossible to quell, and a dispute with the Confederation of Quebec over the northern boundary of the District of Maine in Massachusetts nearly resulted in war. Clinton also clashed several times with Theodorick Bland, the Royal Governor of Virginia, with Bland citing Clinton's service in the Continental Army as proof of his disloyalty to the Crown. "Here we are" said Clinton, situated between brothers in Quebec and the Southern Confederation, and both prepared to dismember us at the slightest provocation.

Despite the threats of war and rebellion, Clinton was able to guide the N.C. through the dangerous years of the Dickinson Era while laying the foundations of the confederation's future as a center of manufacturing. Clintin's leadership saw the establishment of a native cloth-weaving industry in Massachusetts using steam-driven power looms imported from Great Britain. At the same time, Malcolm McGregor, a Scottish immigrant, established his Society for Industry in Chester County, Pennsylvania, a conglomeration of iron foundries, mines, and mercantile establishments that came to dominate the economy of the province's southeastern area and make McGregor the most powerful man in the province.

In 1790, Clinton remarked, "We may thank Providence the Rebellion did not succeed. Cast adrift on a sea of international intrigue, we would have foundered and been destroyed. Our present prosperity can be ascribed to our harmonious relations with other parts of the Empire, and the protection of the Royal Navy. Together we control a continent, perhaps the world. Singly, we would perish before those envious of our wealth."

Although Sobel does not specifically say so, Clinton presumably continued to serve as Governor-General of the N.C. until his death in 1812.

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Sobel's sources for the political career of George Clinton are Joseph Clinton's The Life of George Clinton and the Clinton Family of the Northern Confederation (New York, 1882); Percy Harcourt's The Vipers in Their Bosoms: Clinton and Bland in 1788 (London, 1956); and Robert Duffy's George Clinton: The New York Magician (New York, 1968).