John Laurance

This long overdue biography of English-born New York lawyer John Laurance (1760-1810) restores an important missing piece to the founding narrative. With verve and sweep, Keith Marshall Jones III lays bare the middling Cornish émigré's passage to Federalist America's governing inner circle. Essential to the telling are five wartime years as General George Washington's "courtroom Baron von Steuben" and battlefield father of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate Corps. Laurance spoke as New York City's post-war pro-mercantile voice in the Confederation Congress, state legislature, and both houses of the fledgling federal Congress--