Clinton Roosevelt
Member of the New York State Assembly for New York County
In office
January 1, 1837 – December 31, 1837
Personal details
Born(1804-11-03)November 3, 1804
New York City, United States
DiedAugust 8, 1898(1898-08-08) (aged 93)
Fisher's Island, New York, United States
RelationsSee Roosevelt family
Peter T. Curtenius (grandfather)
Parent(s)Elbert Roosevelt
Jane Curtenius Roosevelt

Clinton Roosevelt (November 3, 1804 – August 8, 1898) was an American politician, lawyer, and inventor from New York. He was a member of the prominent Roosevelt family.

Early life

Roosevelt was born in New York City on November 3, 1804 and raised in Pelham, New York, where he attended common school.[1] He was a son of Elbert Roosevelt (1767–1857) and Jane (née Curtenius) Roosevelt (1770–1846). He had seven siblings, five of which were brothers: Peter Curtenius (1795-1891), Elbert Jones (1797-1885), Henry (1800-1848), the Rev. Washington (1802-), and Isaac (1812-1856).[2] His sisters were Jane Eliza (1807-1892) and Mary (1810-1822).[2] The site of the house he was born in was later occupied by the Standard Oil building in New York.[3]

He later attended law school in New York and became prominent at the bar.[3]

Family

A member of the Roosevelt family, he was a great-grandson of Johannes Roosevelt, making him a distant cousin of U.S. Presidents Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt.[2] His grandfather, Peter Roosevelt, was a Major in the Revolutionary Army.[3]

He is also related to Presidents John Quincy Adams and Martin Van Buren.[4] Through his maternal grandmother, Catharine Goelet Curtenius, wife of New York State Auditor Peter Theobaldus Curtenius, he was additionally a member of the Goelet family. His grandfather was partners in business with his grandmother's brother Peter Goelet.

Career

Politics

Roosevelt was a founding member of the Locofocos, or Equal Rights Party, a radical faction of the Democratic Party.[1][5] In 1836, he was elected to the New York State Assembly, 60th New York State Legislature, and served from 1837 to 1840.[6] Roosevelt was an opponent of the monopoly banking system and cited bank paper currency as the cause of economic problems. After the Panic of 1837, when New York's economy worsened and the working population suffered, he changed his views, calling for a communist economic system with greater government involvement.[7] At one point he served as Commissioner of Pensions.[1]

On October 1, 1845, he delivered a speech to the World's Convention at Clinton Hall in New York, organized by Robert Owen.[8]

Roosevelt was in Russia at the outbreak of the Crimean War (1853 to 1856) and was employed as a "diplomatic agent of the governments concerned,"[1] acting as the "herald who carried the official dispatches between St. Petersburg, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin."[3]

In 1884, Roosevelt gave a "rambling talk" at the People's Hall about "bulls and bears, the Stock Exchange, national banks, over-speculation, specie and paper currency, and financial depression."[9] He gave his last political speeches in the Tilden campaign.[1]

In his middle age, Roosevelt retired from public life and devoted his efforts to the study of geology, economics, and other sciences. He later went on to write several books of his own.[3]

Law

In 1885, Roosevelt filed a petition to the state legislature for the dissolution of the Trinity Church corporation on the grounds that its charter has been violated. He based his petition on the apparent fact that the property was no longer used for church purposes, that the Trinity pastors no longer preach orthodox Episcopalianism, and that the organization has become a "political society."[10]

Invention

Roosevelt was also an inventor and an advocate of patent reform.

In the 1850s, he invented a warship design. He envisioned the building of a vessel sharp at both ends, "plating them with polished iron armor, with high bulwarks, and a sharp roof plated in like manner, with the design of glancing the balls. The means of defence are a torpedo, made to lower on nearing an enemy, and driven by a mortar into the enemy's side under water, where, by a fusee, it will explode."[11]

Neither the United States nor Russia were interested. Charles Morris described the design as "a useless waste of labor," and "absurd," although admits "the torpedo idea, suggested by Roosevelt, has won its way remarkably since that date."[11]

Roosevelt later proposed trade unions to increase the profits of inventors.[12] In 1872 he was granted a patent for an "Improvement of Splice Pieces for Railway Rails."[13]

Publishing

Roosevelt is the author and publisher of a wide variety of written works. He served as editor of the Locofoco paper, Democrat, when it began to appear in 1836.[14]

Of his writings, Roosevelt is most well known for his 1841 book, The Science of Government, Founded on Natural Law. Only two copies of the original printing of this text are known to survive: one in the Library of Congress, Washington D.C. and another in the Harvard University Library.[15]

Joshua Greenberg describes the reception of the book as "less than enthusiastic."[16] Edgar Allan Poe wrote a severely critical review of the work for Graham's Magazine, objecting in particular to what he described as Roosevelt's "pompous" tone and writing.[16][17] William T. Still described the book as being "the Luciferian doctrine in its purest form."[18]

Controversy

Roosevelt has long been the center of speculation and conspiracy theory. Salem Kirban is often cited as the source for the claim that Clinton was a member of the "Colombian Lodge of the Order of the Illuminati," described as having been "established in New York City" in 1795.[19] Kirban provides no source or substantiation.[19]

Personal life

Roosevelt had an office in New York City at 52 Exchange Place[12] and lived at 411 West 23rd Street until his death.[3]

He was a member of the Geographical Society, the New York Biographical Society, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[1]

Roosevelt never married. He died on August 8, 1898, at his summer home on Fisher's Island, New York.[3] His funeral was held at Christ Church in Pelham Manor, New York, and he was subsequently buried in Beechwoods Cemetery in New Rochelle, New York.[20]

At his death, the New York Times described him as "the oldest member of the Pelham Manor branch of the family,"[3] and the New-York Observer recognized him as "the last of the older generation of the family of that name."[1]

Publications

Books

  • The Mode of Protecting Domestic Industry, Consistently with the Desires Both of the North and the South, by Operating on the Currency. New York: McElrath and Bangs (1833); New York: B.H. Tyrrel (1889). 48 p. OCLC 940223422.
  • The Science of Government, Founded on Natural Law. New York: Dean & Trevett (1841). 113 p. OCLC 1119062829.

Articles

Pamphlets

Collected works

Patents

Further reading

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Staff writer (August 18, 1898). "Clinton Roosevelt" (obituary). New-York Observer, vol. 76, no. 33, p. 211.
  2. 1 2 3 Whittelsey, Charles B. (1902). The Roosevelt Genealogy, 1649–1902. Hartford, CN: J.B. Burr & Company. pp. 41-42. OCLC 1084549041.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Staff writer (August 10, 1898). "Death List of a Day" (obituary). New York Times. p. 7. Retrieved September 4, 2019.
  4. ↑ Sutton, Antony C. (1975). "Prelude to the New Deal: Assemblyman Clinton Roosevelt's NRA—1981" (Chapter 6). Wall Street and FDR. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House. p. 85. ISBN 0870003283.
  5. ↑ Byrdsall, Fitzwilliam (1842). The History of the Loco-foco, or Equal Rights Party. New York: Clement & Packard. OCLC 4327172.
  6. ↑ "Roosevelt, Theodore." In: The Encyclopædia Britannica. 11th ed. vol. 23. Cambridge: Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911), p. 707. "[...] in the state Assembly were James Roosevelt (1796-97), Cornelius C. Roosevelt (1803), James I. Roosevelt, jun. (1835-40), and Clinton Roosevelt (1837-40)."
  7. ↑ Greenberg, Joshua R. (October 12, 2007). The Panic of 1837 as an Opportunity for Radical Economic Ideas. Bridgewater State College. Archived from the original.
  8. ↑ Pease, Erasmus Darwin, and Viola Cooke (January 23, 1909). "Recollections of Poe." New York Times Saturday Review of Books. p. BR49. "The only other speaker of much account was Clinton Roosevelt, a well-known reformer and philanthropist though not a Rough Rider like his distant relative who now occupies the White House."
  9. ↑ Staff writer (April 26, 1884). "It Was Not That Roosevelt." New York Times. Retrieved September 4, 2019.
  10. ↑ Staff writer (March 14, 1885). "New Attack on Old Trinity." Lima News [Lima, Ohio]. p. 1.
  11. 1 2 Morris, Charles (1898). Our Nation's Navy: Our Ships and Their Achievements. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company. p. 125.
  12. 1 2 Staff writer (March 31, 1893). "To Secure Inventors' Rights; Mr. Clinton Roosevelt Calls for a Conference." New York Times.
  13. ↑ "The Hart Steel Company and Guildord S. Wood, vs. The Railroad Supply Company." Records and Briefs of the United States Supreme Court, vol. 1: Transcript of Record (1832), pp. 736-737.
  14. ↑ Degler, Carl N. (August 3, 1956). "The Locofocos: Urban 'Agrarians.'" Journal of Economic History, vol. 16, no. 3. pp. 322–333. JSTOR 2114593. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association.
  15. ↑ Sutton, Antony C. (1995). "Roosevelt's Socialist Manifesto" (Chapter 4). The Federal Reserve Conspiracy. Boring, OR: CPA Book Publisher. pp. 25-32. ISBN 978-0944379080.
  16. 1 2 Greenberg, Joshua R. (2003). Advocating 'the Man': Masculinity, Organized Labor, and the Market Revolution in New York, 1800–1840. Washington, D.C.: American University. p. 251. ProQuest 305336695.
  17. ↑ Poe, Edgar Allan (August 1841). "Review of New Books." Review of The Science of Government Founded on Natural Law by Clinton Roosevelt.Graham's Magazine. p. 93. Archived from the original. "Ah! — we begin to breathe freely once more. We had thought that the world and all in it (this hot weather) were going to the dogs, — 'proceeding to the canines,' as Bilberry has it — but here is Mr. Roosevelt, and we feel more assured. We entrench ourselves in security behind his little book."
  18. ↑ Still, William T. (1990). New World Order: The Ancient Plan of Secret Societies. Lafayette, LA: Huntington House Publishers. pp. 92-93. ISBN 978-0910311649. "True to the teachings of Weishaupt, Clinton Roosevelt wrote a book entitled Science of Government, Founded on Natural Law, wherein he explained his philosophy: 'There is no God of justice to order things aright on earth; if there be a God, he is a malicious and revengeful being who created us for misery." This is the Luciferian doctrine in its purest form."
  19. 1 2 Kirban, Salem (1980). Satan's Angels Exposed. Huntington Valley, PA: Salem Kirban, Inc. p. 151. ISBN 0912582324.
  20. ↑ Staff writer (August 11, 1898). "Died" (obituary). New York Times. p. 7.
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