Military officer; born in
Carlisle, Pa., Nov. 25, 1758.
While a student at
Princeton, in 1775, he became a volunteer in
Potter's Pennsylvania regiment, and was soon afterwards made an aide-de-camp to
General Mercer.
He was afterwards placed on the staff of
General Gates, and remained so from the beginning
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of that officer's campaign against
Burgoyne until the end of the war, having the rank of major.
Holding a facile pen, he was employed to write the famous
Newburgh addresses.
They were powerfully and eloquently written.
After the war he was successively
Secretary of State and
Adjutant-General of
Pennsylvania; and in 1784 he conducted operations against the settlers in the
Wyoming Valley.
The Continental Congress in 1787 appointed him one of the judges for the
Northwestern Territory, but he declined.
Two years later he married a sister of
Chancellor Livingston, removed to New York, purchased a farm within the precincts of the old Livingston Manor on the
Hudson, and devoted himself to agriculture.
He was a member of the national Senate from 1800 to 1804, and became
United States minister at the French Court in the latter year, succeeding his brother-in-law,
Chancellor Livingston.
He was commissioned a brigadier-general in July, 1812, and in January, 1813, became
Secretary of War in the cabinet of
President Madison.
His lack of success in the operations against
Canada, and at the attack upon and capture of
Washington in 1814, made him so unpopular that he resigned and retired to private life.
He died at
Red Hook.
N. Y., April 1, 1843.
General Armstrong wrote
Notes on the War of 1812, and
Lives of Generals Montgomery and Wayne for
Sparks's American biography; also a
Review of Wilkinson's memoirs, and treatises on agriculture and gardening.
