Jonathan Dayton
Jonathan Dayton was a merchant’s son in Elizabethtown New Jersey (today’s Elizabeth) where he was schooled locally, with one of his classmate’s being a young Alexander Hamilton. Dayton was attending the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) at the age of fifteen when he learned of the formation of the Continental Army outside of Boston. His father, Elias Dayton, recruited a regiment known as the 3rd New Jersey and Dayton joined his father’s command, commissioned as an Ensign, the lowest rank for a commissioned officer. The New Jersey regiment saw extensive action in the early years of the war and by 1777 Dayton was promoted to lieutenant.
Dayton’s regiment served with the main body of the Continental Army under Washington, and fought in the New York campaign of 1776 which ended with the long retreat across New Jersey. During the Philadelphia campaign the following year the regiment was engaged at the defeats at Brandywine Creek and Germantown. Following the winter at Valley Forge Dayton was present at the battle of Monmouth Court House, the last major engagement in the northern theatre of the Revolutionary War. By the time Dayton was 19 he was a captain and transferred to the Second New Jersey Regiment, during which he served as an aide to General John Sullivan during the punitive campaign against the New York and Pennsylvania tribes.
Dayton was at Yorktown during the siege and surrender. After the war he was highly regarded by many of the men with whom he had served. He returned to New Jersey to study law. He also speculated in western land, in the Great Miami Valley in Ohio. The speculation and his successful law practice made him wealthy. As a prominent attorney he was selected to represent New Jersey at the Constitutional Convention, and he was the youngest man to sign the Constitution when he did so at the age of 26. Dayton quickly aligned himself with the Federalists, and was elected to the House of Representatives in 1789 and 1791.
In 1799 he was offered the rank of Major General in the Provisional Army of the United States, which he declined. In 1795 he was elected Speaker of the House, an office which he retained through the Fifth Congress which convened two years later. He was vocal and effective in support of Federalist policies and although Jefferson was a Democratic-Republican Dayton supported his purchase of Louisiana, which most Federalists decried as illegal. After becoming friendly with Aaron Burr, in 1805 the wealthy Dayton loaned the former Vice President money to help finance a trip through the Ohio River Valley to the Mississippi and thence to New Orleans.
When Burr was later indicted for treason in connection to his actions on the trip, suspicion of Dayton’s complicity arose. The subsequent investigation led to Dayton’s complete exoneration, but the extent of the scandal surrounding Burr had already destroyed Dayton’s reputation and political career on the national stage. As an effective Speaker of the House he had been considered a possible Presidential candidate. Instead he returned to local politics and the practice of law in New Jersey, dying there in 1824. The city of Dayton, Ohio was named for him, built on the lands he had once owned, but which he never visited.