American littérateur, born in New York City on the 6th of August 1786; graduated at Columbia College in 1801; practiced law a short time; traveled in Europe, and on returning to New York City became the center of a coterie of authors, and divided his labors between literature and politics. He was elected a member of the New York legislature in 1820; professor of the evidences of Christianity in the General Protestant Episcopal Seminary, New York, from 1829 until the year of his death. He was a Democratic member of Congress (1825–33), and for some years from 1846 was president of the Board of Emigration Commissioners. He published Evidences of Revealed Religion (1824); Doctrine of Contrasts (1825); Shakespeare’s Plays, with his Life, with Critical Introduction and Notes (1847), and other brochures, lectures and addresses. He died on the 18th of March 1870. See also Election Returns at Tammany Hall, 1819.
