Alexander McDougal, born on the island of Islay, Scotland, in 1731, was brought to New York while still a child, by his father. At first Alexander followed the sea, took part in the French and Indian War as commander of two privateers,—the “Barrington” and the “Tiger,”—and then settling in New York City, became one of her successful merchants. Keenly alive to the aggressive steps taken by the home Government in her dealings with her American dependencies, he drew upon himself censure and imprisonment in 1769, by writing an address entitled, “A Son of Liberty to the Betrayed Inhabitants of the Colony,” in which he rebuked the Assembly for entering upon the favorable consideration of a bill of supplies for troops quartered in the city to overawe the inhabitants, and for rejecting a proposition authorizing the vote by ballot. An incarceration of twenty-three weeks in what is now the registrar’s office, made him the first martyr in the American struggle for independence. When set at liberty, he entered into correspondence with the master-spirits all over the country, presided over the celebrated “meeting in the fields” in 1774, was appointed colonel of the first Revolutionary regiment raised in New York, and was created brigadier-general in the Continental army on the 9th of August, 1776, and immediately went into active service. After the battle of Germantown and upon the recommendation of Washington, he was promoted to be major-general on the 20th of October, 1777. From the beginning of 1778 to the close of 1780, he was in command at various posts along the Hudson, but was summoned in the latter year to represent New York in Congress, and in 1781 was appointed minister of marine. In 1783, when the army went into winter-quarters at Newburg, he was chosen as head of the committee sent to Congress to represent their grievances. At the close of the war he was elected to the Senate of New York, and filled that position until his death on the 8th of June, 1786.