The powder train for the explosion had been laid during the previous
decade in the form of a savage feud between two of the most powerful
families in New York—the Morrises and the Delanceys, led by the
patriarchs Lewis Morris and Stephen Delancey. Fundamentally, the
conflict was the primordial one between landed gentry and business
tycoons, and the occasion produced two perfect representatives to act as
leaders.
Lewis Morris—territorial aristocrat, councillor, assemblyman, chief
justice of the Supreme Court—was the model of the wealthy, influential,
proud, and ambitious colonial magnate. He made his family great, and
handed on the tradition to his more famous grandsons, Gouverneur Morris
and the Lewis Morris who signed the Declaration of Independence. He was
a commanding figure in the politics of both New York and New Jersey,
headstrong in defense of himself, his family, and his class, and a power
for any governor to reckon with.
Stephen Delancey stood for the ever-increasing authority of money. He
was New York’s leading merchant prince, a self-made man who accumulated
a fortune in trade with Canada. French by birth, he was a Huguenot by
religion, with all the tenacious acquisitiveness and flinty Puritan
morality of his sect. In the Assembly he spoke for the powerful
mercantile clique, and that alone would have made him—hardly less than
Lewis Morris—a dangerous man to cross.
Now Morris crossed Delancey, and did it in two peculiarly galling ways.
First of all, from the floor of the Assembly he led an attack on the
trade in which the entrepreneur had made his money. Under this
commercial system, New York businessmen sent their wares directly to the
French in Canada, who used the manufactured articles they received to
carry on their fur trade with the Indians. The system was a very
profitable one for many New Yorkers, but Governor William Burnet was
anxious to end it because it strengthened the hand of the French with
the Indians, making the latter reliant on Quebec instead of Albany.
Morris acted as his manager in the Assembly during the furious
controversy that followed, while Stephen Delancey naturally commanded
the opposition. The struggle developed into a fierce personal rivalry
that continued to move with its own momentum long after Delancey had
triumphed over Morris in this case of the Canada trade.
Secondly, Morris seems to have instigated Governor Burnet to question
Delancey’s right to sit in the Assembly on the ground that he was a
foreigner, a purely personal attack of so little validity that the
Governor had to back down and apologize to the Chamber for usurping one
of its prerogatives, after which it put its seal of approval on Stephen
Delancey.
There is no need to explain at length how the old plutocrat reacted to
these insults. We simply note that the perspicacious Cadwallader Colden
terms Delancey “a man of strong and lasting resentments” and adds that
the Morris-Delancey clash gave rise to “violent party struggles.” Before
long New York was disturbed by hostile groups known from their chiefs as
the “Morris Interest” and the “Delancey Interest.” This is the
background to the Zenger case. Party alignment was obviously dictated in
many cases by motives other than personal allegiance—by political,
social, and economic factors—but for our purposes the fundamental thing
is the Morris-Delancey antithesis. During Burnet’s administration
(1720-28) these embittered Interests were engaged in a constant struggle
for power, with the Morrisites strong because they had the ear of the
Governor, and the Delanceyites because the Assembly swung over to their
side.
With the regime of Governor John Montgomerie (1728-31), the Delancey
Interest definitely became paramount in New York because this executive
made it the cornerstone of his policy to stay on good terms with the
Assembly. Montgomerie maintained an uneasy peace (partly because he was
himself a rather feckless individual), but the atmosphere in New York
did not thereby cease to be explosive, for the Morris Interest, although
temporarily checked, was still powerful, still ambitious, still hopeful,
and still watching for the pendulum to swing its way.
Thus the scene was set for a violent climax whenever a sufficient cause
should appear. It appeared on Montgomerie’s death in the person of the
new governor, Colonel William Cosby.