Philip Schuyler (20 November 1733-18 November 1804) was Senator from New York from 16 July 1789 to 4 March 1791, preceding Aaron Burr, and again from 4 March 1797 to 3 January 1798, succeeding Burr and preceding John Sloss Hobart. Schuyler was a wealthy New York landowner and a general of the United States during the American Revolutionary War, and he would be the father-in-law of Alexander Hamilton when his daughter Elizabeth Schuyler married him.
Biography[]
Philip Schuyler was born on 20 November 1733 in Albany, New York to a Dutch family that had long been established in the area, settling in New York when it was New Netherland under Dutch rule. Schuyler commanded a company during the French and Indian War and owned an estate of tens of thousands of acres in Saratoga, and from 1768 to 1775 he was a member of the New York state assembly. That year, he was elected to the Continental Congress, and he was appointed a Major-General of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. In 1775, he planned the invasion of Canada, but poor health led to Richard Montgomery taking command of the army. In 1777, Horatio Gates accused him of dereliction of duty and replaced him as the commander of Fort Ticonderoga. On 19 April 1779, he resigned from the army, and in the 1790s he served as a senator from New York before Aaron Burr defeated him in the elections after switching his allegiance to the Democratic-Republican Party. Schuyler died in Albany in 1804.