Timothy Pickering (
July 17 1745 –
January 29 1829) was the third
United States Secretary of State, serving in that office from 1795 to 1800 under Presidents
George Washington and
John Adams. Also known as
Thomas Pickering, he was one of the founders of the
Newburgh Plan to the
Continental Congress. His ideas formed the
Northwest Ordinance. His grandson was the naturalist
Charles Pickering. Pickering Hall at
Ohio University is named after him.
Pickering was born in
Salem, Massachusetts to Deacon Timothy and Mary Wingate Pickering. He was one of nine children and the younger brother of John Pickering. He attended grammar school in Salem and graduated from
Harvard University in
1763. Salem minister
William Bentley noted on Pickering: "From his youth his townsmen proclaim him assuming, turbulent, & headstrong."
After graduating from Harvard, Pickering returned to Salem where he began working for John Higginson, the town clerk and
Essex County, Massachusetts register of deeds. Pickering was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1768 and, in 1774, he succeeded Higginson as register of deeds. Soon after, he was elected to represent Salem in the
Massachusetts General Court and served as a justice in the Essex County Court of Common Pleas. On April 8, 1776, he married Rebecca White of Salem.
In January 1766, Pickering was commissioned a lieutenant in the Essex County militia. He was promoted to captain three years later. In 1769, he published his ideas on the drilling soldiers in the Essex Gazette. These were published in 1775 as "An Easy Plan for a Militia."
Pickering initially opposed the
patriot cause, although once the war began, he sided with the Americans. In December 1776, he led a regiment of the Essex County militia to New York where his leadership captured the attention of General
George Washington. In 1777, Washington offered Pickering the position of
adjutant general of the
Continental Army. He was widely praised for his work in supplying the troops during the remainder of the conflict. In August 1780, the
Continental Congress elected Pickering
Quartermaster General. After the end of the American Revolution, Pickering made several failed attempts at financial success. In 1783, he embarked on a mercantile partnership with Samuel Hodgdon that failed two years later. In 1786, he moved to the
Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania where he assumed a series of offices at the head of
Luzerne County. When he attempted to evict Connecticut settlers living in the area, Pickering was captured and held hostage for nineteen days. In 1787, he was part of the Pennsylvania convention held to consider ratification of the
United States Constitution.
After the first of Pickering's two failed attempts to make money speculating in
Pennsylvania frontier land, now-President Washington appointed him commissioner to the
Iroquois Indians; and Pickering represented the United States in the negotiation of the
Treaty of Canandaigua with the Iroquois in 1794.
Washington also brought Pickering into his cabinet, as
Postmaster General in 1791. He remained in the cabinet for nine years, serving as postmaster general until 1795,
Secretary of War for a brief time in 1795, then
Secretary of State from 1795 to 1800.
After a quarrel with President
John Adams over Adams's plan to make peace with
France, Pickering was dismissed from office in May 1800. In 1802 Pickering and a band of Federalists, agitated at the lack of support for Federalists, attempted to gain support for the secession of New England from the Jeffersonian United States. The irony of a Federalist moving against the national government was not lost among his dissenters. He was named to the
United States Senate as a senator from
Massachusetts in 1803 as a member of the
Federalist Party, during which time he was a strong supporter of the
Manley Act. He lost his senate seat in 1811, and was elected to the
United States House of Representatives in
U.S. House election, 1812, where he remained until 1817. His congressional career is best remembered for his leadership of the
New England secession movement (see
Essex Junto and the
Hartford Convention).Later years and afterwards
After Pickering was denied re-election in 1816, he retired to
Salem, where he lived as a farmer until his death in 1829, aged 84. In 1942, a
United States Liberty ship named the
SS Timothy Pickering was launched. She was lost off
Sicily in 1945. Unitl the 1990s, Pickering's ancestral home, the circa 1651
Pickering House, was the oldest house in the United States to be owned by the same family continually.
;Citations and notes
;General information
*
*Clarfield, Gerard H. "Postscript to the Jay Treaty: Timothy Pickering and Anglo-American Relations, 1795-1797," William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser., 23, 1 (1966): 106-20.
*Clarfield, Gerard H. Timothy Pickering and American Diplomacy, 1795-1800. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1969.
*Clarfield, Gerard. Timothy Pickering and the American Republic. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980.
*Clarfield, Gerard H. "Timothy Pickering and French Diplomacy, 1795-1796." Essex Institute Historical Collections 104, 1 (1965): 58-74.
*Clarfield, Gerard H. "Victory in the West: A Study of the Role of Timothy Pickering in the Successful Consummation of Pinckney‘s Treaty," Essex Institute Historical Collections 101, 4 (1965): 333-53.
*Garraty, John A. and Mark C. Carnes. American National Biography, vol. 17, "Pickering, Timothy". New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
*Guidorizzi, Richard Peter. "Timothy Pickering: Opposition Politics in the Early Years of the Republic" Ph.D. diss, St. John’s University, 1968.
*Hickey, Donald R. "Timothy Pickering and the Haitian Slave Revolt: A Letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1806," Essex Institute Historical Collections 120, 3 (1984): 149-63.
*McCurdy, John Gilbert. "'Your Affectionate Brother': Complementary Manhoods in the Letters of John and Timothy Pickering." Early American Studies 4, 2 (Fall 2006): 512-545.
*McLean, David. Timothy Pickering and the Age of the American Revolution. New York: Arno Press, 1982.
*Pickering, Octavius, and Charles W. Upham. The Life of Timothy Pickering. 4 vols. Boston: Little Brown, 1867-73.
*Phillips, Edward Hake. "The Public Career of Timothy Pickering, Federalist, 1745-1802." Ph.D. diss, Harvard University, 1952.
*Phillips, Edward Hake. "Salem, Timothy Pickering, and the American Revolution." Essex Institute Historical Collections 111, 1 (1975): 65-78.
*Phillips, Edward Hake. "Timothy Pickering at His Best: Indian Commissioner, 1790-1794." Essex Institute Historical Collections 102, 3 (1966): 163-202.
*Prentiss, Harvey Pittman. Timothy Pickering as the Leader of New England Federalism, 1800-1815. New York: DaCapo Press, 1972.
*Wilbur, William Allan. "Crisis in Leadership: Alexander Hamilton, Timothy Pickering and the Politics of Federalism, 1795-1804." Ph.D. diss, Syracuse University, 1969.
*Wilbur, W. Allan. "Timothy Pickering: Federalist, Politician, An Historical Perspective," Historian 34, 2 (1972): 278-92.
*Wilentz, Sean "The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln" W.W. Norton. New York. 2005.
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