After long and painful delays, in which his eastern enemies, both in and out of Congress, had full opportunity to search for testimony against him, he was gratified with being able to have his military conduct tested before a court-martial, in October, 1778. He was tried and acquitted "with the highest honor" of every charge preferred against him, notwithstanding congress had eight months previously, appointed "two counsellors, learned in the law, to assist and coöperate with the judge-advocate in conducting the trial." The sentence was of course confirmed by congress, and though it was the desire of his friends, and particularly of General Washington, who, in January, 1779, stated to him that "it was very much his desire that he should resume the command of the northern department." He had too much self-respect and pride of character to be shaken in his purpose. After repeated applications, congress, in April, 1779, accepted his resignation, and SCHUYLER finally withdrew from the army. He continued during the remainder of his life to be eminently useful in the civil departments of government: he was one of the commissioners from New York in 1784, and again in 1787, to settle the boundary line between that state and Massachusetts: the difficulty depended essentially on the variation of the magnetic needle, and the perusal of the correspondence shows that he executed his trust with great industry and skill. He was continued a delegate in congress from New York in 1778 and 1779, and all the authorities and leading patriots of that state, and his fellow-citizens at large, who thoroughly knew his worth and transcendent merits, continued to afford fresh proofs in every way, and on every proper occasion, of their warmest affection, and exalted sense of his talents, activity, and devotion to his country. In 1781, and for several years thereafter, he was a member of the New York senate. He took a zealous part in promoting the adoption of the constitution of the United States, and in 1789 he was elected a member of the first senate under that constitution. His sagacity, and practical skill and zeal for the public interests, led him to give the earliest and most strenuous support to measures for the improvement of internal navigation. He drafted the acts for incorporating the western and northern inland lock navigation companies, and was placed at the head of the direction of both those companies, and he was truly the master spirit which infused life and vigor into the whole undertaking. He had sketched and caused to be executed, the plan of locks at the little falls on the Mohawk, and of connecting the head waters of the Mohawk and Wood Creek. Those feeble beginnings led on step by step to the bolder and glorious consummation of the Erie canal. In 1796 he urged, in his place in the New York senate, and afterwards published in a pamphlet form, his plan for the improvement of the revenue of the state. It contemplated the institution of the office of comptroller, and that branch of the plan was literally adopted by the legislature. He demonstrated that upon the measures he suggested, the surplus fund, beyond all reasonable wants, might at the period of 1826, or thirty years from that time, be made to accumulate to three million five hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But he predicted that under bad management "very little principal would be left, and the people burthened with taxes for the support of government." In 1797 SCHUYLER was unanimously elected once more a senator in congress, and he took a final leave of the senate of his native state, in an affecting address, which to his honor was ordered to be inserted on their journal. General SCHUYLER at that time labored under the pressure of ill health, and he was not able long to continue his seat in congress. He lived for the last few years of his life in dignified retirement, commanding universal veneration and attachment, arising from the known memorials of his illustrious services; his stern integrity; his social virtues; his polished manners; his extensive knowledge; his generous hospitality. When Washington died he clothed himself in mourning. His bodily health was not only broken down by disease, but he was severely visited with domestic afflictions. In 1801 he lost his daughter, Mrs. Van Rensselaer, which dissolved an honorable and highly gratifying family connexion. In 1803 he lost the wife of his youth, and was left at the age of seventy in painful solitude. In July, 1804, he was deprived, under circumstances the most distressing, of his beloved and distinguished son-in-law, General Hamilton. "Consolation," as he afterwards stated in a letter of the 6th of August, was to be sought, where it can only be truly and effectually found, in an humble acquiescence with the Divine will." This great man died on the 18th of November, 1804, at the age of seventy-one, leaving in the history and institutions of his country, durable monuments of his fame. J. K. 16 |