In 1778 he was elected president of Congress. In 1779 he was sent as Minister to Spain, and from thence, in 1780, went to Pans as Commissioner to assist in the negotiation of a treaty of peace with Great Britain. He returned to New York in 1784, after an absence of five years, and was received with tokens of esteem and admiration. December 21, 1784, he was appointed by Congress, secretary for foreign affairs, and held the office for five years. He was one of the contributors to The Federalist. In 1789 he was appointed chief justice of the United States, -- an office which he was the first to fill. In 1794 he was sent as special Minister to London, upon a delicate and most important mission, relating to difficulties growing out of unsettled boundaries and certain commercial complications.
He discharged this duty with great ability, and upon his return to America, in 1795, was elected by a large majority Governor of the State of New York. At the end of three years he was reelected, and at the expiration of a second term was solicited to become a candidate for election a third time. But he had determined to renounce public life, and though nominated again in 1800, to the ofiice of chief justice of the United States, declined the honor, and retired to his paternal estate, at Bedford ; a property -- part of the Van Cortlandt estate -- which his father had acquired by marriage with Mary, a daughter of Jacobus Van Cortlandt. There he lived tor twenty-eight years a peaceful and honored life.
In 1827 he was seized with severe illness, and after two years of weakness and suflering, was