A blue-blooded rebel and scion of a powerful Hudson River clan, Livingston had spurned an easy life to write romantic poetry, crank out polemical essays, and plunge into controversial causes. Tall and lanky, nicknamed “the whipping post,” the voluble Livingston tilted lances with royal authorities with such self-righteous glee that one Tory newspaper anointed him “the Don Quixote of the Jerseys.”
