Item: i112964

Authentic Medal of:

United States of America
Bicentennial – Council of the Thirteen Original States – Philip Livingston
1973 Proof Silver Medal 38mm (32.22 grams) Sterling Silver
Reference: Franklin Mint
Philip Livingston facing 1/3 left in government building.
PHILIP LIVINGSTON MERCHANT NEW YORK, Feather pen and ink well, signature below.
Edge Lettering:
OFFICIAL MEDAL OF THE BICENTENNIAL COUNCIL OF THE 13 ORIGINAL STATES 73 P STERLING

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The Thirteen American Colonies formed the United States of America in July 1776. Their groupings were: New England (New Hampshire; Massachusetts; Rhode Island; Connecticut); Middle (New York; New Jersey; Pennsylvania; Delaware); Southern (Maryland; Virginia; North Carolina; South Carolina; and Georgia).

 
Philip Livingston (January 15, 1716 – June 12, 1778) was an American merchant and statesman from New York City. He represented New York at the October 1774 First Continental Congress, where he favored imposing economic sanctions upon Great Britain as a way of pressuring the British Parliament to repeal the Intolerable Acts. He was also a delegate to the Second Continental Congress from 1775 to 1778, and signed the Declaration of Independence, thus becoming one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

Livingston graduated from Yale College in 1737 and returned to Albany to serve a mercantile apprenticeship under his father. Through his father’s influence, he obtained clerkships in Albany’s local government. He then settled in New York City and pursued a career in the import business, trading with the British sugar islands in the West Indies. During King George’s War (1744–1748), Livingston made his fortune provisioning and privateering. He also speculated heavily in real estate and the slave trade. He had a stone townhouse on Duke Street in Manhattan and a forty-acre estate in Brooklyn Heights. He became a merchant and served as an alderman of the East Ward from 1754 through 1762.

Livingston was a promoter of the founding of Kings College (now Columbia University) and helped to organize the New York Public Library in 1754. Livingston founded the first Chamber of Commerce in 1770, and in 1756 he was president and founding member of the St. Andrew’s Society, New York’s first benevolent organization. He was also one of the first governors of New York Hospital.

In 1754, Livingston went as a delegate to the Albany Congress. There, he joined delegates from several other colonies to negotiate with Indigenous nations and discuss common plans for dealing with the French and Indian War. Livingston became an active promoter of efforts to raise and fund troops for the war. According to Cynthia A. Kiemer, he owned shares in six privateers, making him one of the colony’s leading investors.

He served as a member of the provincial house of representatives from 1763 to 1769 and in 1768 served as speaker. In October 1765, he attended the Stamp Act Congress, which produced the first formal protest to the Crown as a prelude to the American Revolution. He joined New York City’s Committee of Correspondence to continue communication with leaders in the other colonies, and New York City’s Committee of Sixty. When New York established the New York Provincial Congress in 1775, he was named its president.

He was selected as one of the delegates to the Continental Congress. His brother William, a prominent lawyer in New Jersey, was also a delegate to the Continental Congress from 1774 to June 1776. In July 1775, Philip signed the Olive Branch Petition, a final attempt to achieve an understanding with the Crown. Like many of the early Patriots, he initially did not advocate a complete break from the mother country but eventually aligned himself with the opposition to the measures the British were imposing on the colonists. When the British occupied New York City, Philip and his family fled to Kingston, New York, where he maintained another residence. After the Battle of Long Island, General George Washington and his officers met at Philip’s residence in Brooklyn Heights and decided to evacuate the island. The British subsequently used Philip’s Duke Street home as a barracks and his Brooklyn Heights residence as a Royal Navy hospital.

After the adoption of the new New York State Constitution, he was appointed to the New York State Senate southern district in 1777, while continuing to sit in the Continental Congress. Livingston suffered from dropsy, and his health deteriorated in 1778.

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles (9.8 million km²), the United States is the world’s third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe’s 3.9 million square miles (10.1 million km²). With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital’s federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries.

Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century. The United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, and the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776. The war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. The United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, and gradually admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848.

During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery. By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, and its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish-American War and World War I confirmed the country’s status as a global military power. The United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The Rights Acts of 1964, 1965 and 1968 outlaws discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U.S. Moon landing. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world’s sole superpower.

The United States is the world’s oldest surviving federation. It is a federal republic and a representative democracy. The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States (OAS), and other international organizations. The United States is a highly developed country, with the world’s largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for approximately a quarter of global GDP. The U.S. economy is largely post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world’s largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U.S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country.

Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank very high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, and worker productivity. The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, and is a leading political, cultural, and scientific force internationally.