Lansing, John

Lansing, John, 1754–1829?, American political leader and jurist, b. Albany, N.Y. He served as military secretary to Gen. Philip J. Schuyler in the American Revolution and later became a prominent lawyer. He was a member of the New York assembly (1780–88) and of the Continental Congress (1784–85) and was mayor of Albany (1786–90). In 1787 he was a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention but withdrew when that body began to draft a new constitution instead of revising the Articles of Confederation as it had been empowered to do. He was one of the leaders of the opposition in New York to the Constitution. He was a state supreme court justice (1790–1801), being appointed chief justice in 1798, and from 1801 to 1814 served as chancellor of New York. In 1829 he disappeared and was never found. His notes on the U.S. Constitutional Convention were edited by J. R. Strayer in Delegate from New York (1939, repr. 1967).