Gulian Crommelin Verplanck was born in New York City on 6 August 1786. Of Flemish and Dutch origins, his family had come to New Amsterdam shortly after 1630, and its members had early distinguished themselves in American business, politics, and education. The fact that his grandparents had deeply divided loyalties during the period of the American Revolution appears to have given him a lifelong tendency to listen to all sides of a dispute, to give credit to those with whom he disagreed, and, especially during his political career, to strike out independently according to his principles despite pressures to adhere loyally to party platforms.

Verplanck himself was a man of wide interests. He was an active critic of literature, art, and architecture, the author of a number of tales, sketches, and poems, a politician with a long and varied career of service, and a humanitarian of the first order. At the...