```'Hail, mighty city! High must be his fame
````Who round thy bounds at sunrise now should walk; *
```Still wert thou lovely, whatsoe'r thy name,
````New Amsterdam, New Orange, or New York;
```Whether in cradle sleep in sea-weed laid,
````Or on thine island throne in queenly power arrayed."
`````Mrs. Sigourney.=
[9792]
ISTORICAL associations of the deepest interest, colonial and
revolutionary, cluster around the city of New York and its immediate
vicinity. Here was planted one of the earliest of the European
settlements in the New World; and during the march of progress for more
than a century and a half, from the advent of the _Half Moon_[[1609]]
before Manhattan, until the departure of the last vestige of foreign
dominion from its shores,[[1783]] the events of its history bear
important relations to the general structure of our republic. Here, when
the colonies lifted the strong arm of resistance against an unnatural
mother, the military power of the latter first raised a permanent
standard. Here was the central point of that power during almost the
entire period of the conflict which ensued; and here it lingered longest
when the conflict was ended. Here the last great act of the drama of the
Revolution was performed, when the first President of the United States
was inaugurated, and the machinery of our Federal government was put in
motion. Liberty in America was born at Plymouth, cradled in Boston,
and baptized in Philadelphia; in New York it was inaugurated _Pontifex
Maximus_, and its Liturgy--the _Constitution_--accepted as the
expression of the common sentiment of a free people.
Volumes have been written concerning the colonial history of New York;
I shall devote only a few pages to the same theme, in addition to that
which has already been given in this work. We have glanced at colonial
and revolutionary events north of the Hudson Highlands; let us now open
the chronicles of the city and vicinity.
A few months after the return of Henry Hudson to Europe, with
intelligence of his discovery of the beautiful island of Manhattan **
and the river bearing his name, some Dutch traders sailed up the bay and
planted their tents near the spot where now flourish the stately trees
of the Battery. Hudson, being in the employment of the Dutch _East
India Company_, the States General of Holland claimed political and
territorial jurisdiction over a vast extent of country more than that
watered by the river discovered by Hudson. Ship followed ship with
adventurers from Holland, and as deep in the wilderness as Albany they
planted trading stations. A Dutch West India Company was formed,[[1621]]
clothed with all the elementary powers of government, and furnished
with a charter giving them territorial dominion over the shores of two
continents, without the least regard to the
* While the Dutch possessed the city, after its recapture in 1673,
it was the duty of the mayor to walk round the city every morning at
sunrise, unlock all the gates, and then give the keys to the commander
of the fort. The walls or palisades extended from the East River, across
Broadway to the corner of Grace and Lumber Streets, along the line of
the present Wall Street. From the most westerly point, they continued
along the brow of the high bank of the Hudson to the fort, near the
present Battery.
** According to Heckewelder, this Indian word signifies _place of
drunkenness_, a name given to the spot fourscore years before, when
Verrazani landed there, and at a council of the natives gave them strong
liquor and made them drunk. The place and the local tribe were afterward
called Manhattan and Manhattan.
[[[The Patroon System.--Government Established.--Trade of the
People.--Governor Stuyvesant.]]]
{783}existing settlements of the English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The
history of this company is instructive, but we must forbear.
A new system was adopted in 1629. _Patroons_ came, * and women and
children were brought to form the basis of a permanent colony. The new
domain was called New Netherlands, and the settlement on Manhattan, the
germ of the present city of New York, was named New Amsterdam. The chief
trade of the people was in the skins of the bear, otter, and raccoon;
and soon the New Englanders complained that Dutch trappers were seen
even as far eastward as Narraganset Bay. Tales of the beauty and
fertility of the New World were poured into the ears of the Dutch and
Germans.
[Illustration: 8793]
Their neighbors, the Swedes, caught the whisper, came over the sea, and
seated themselves upon the banks of the Delaware. Jealousy begat feuds,
and feuds engendered conflicts, and Christian people spilled each others
blood in the sight of the heathen.
When government for the new colony was ordained, Peter Minuits was sent
as director general,[[1625]] and during his administration, and that of
his successors, Van Twiller and Kieft, the settlements increased, yet
trouble with the Swedes and Indians abounded. *** The governors were
weak men, as statesmen, and possessed no military talent. Not so the
successor of Kieft, Petrus Stuyvesant, a military commander of renown;
a man of dignity, honest and true. He conciliated the Indians;****
made honorable treaties respecting boundaries with Necticut, and by
a promptly executed military expedition[[1655]] he crushed the rising
power of the Swedes on the Delaware, (v)
and warned Lord Baltimore not to attempt an extension of his boundary
line too far northward. Yet, with all his virtues, Stuyvesant was an
aristocrat. His education and pursuit made him so; and wherever
the feeble plant of democracy, which now began to spring up in New
Amsterdam, lifted its petals, he planted the heel of arbitrary power the
people of Conupon it. Watered by Van der Donck, and a few Puritans who
had strayed into the Dutch domain, it flourished, nevertheless, and at
length it bore fruit. Two deputies from each village in New Netherlands,
chosen by the people, met in council in New Amsterdam[[November 1653]],
without the governor's permission. This first popular assembly offended
the chief magistrate, and for five years animosity was allowed to fester
in the public mind, while Stuyvesant opposed the manifest will of the
people. They finally resisted taxes, scorned his menaces, and even
expressed a willingness to bear English rule for the sake of enjoying
English liberty.
* See vol. i., p. 391. The chief patroons, or patrons, who first came,
were Killian van Rensselaer, Samuel Godyn, Samuel Bloemart, and Michael
Paw. Godyn and Bloemart purchased lands on the Delaware, Van Rensselaer
at Albany, and Paw in New Jersey, from Hoboken to the Kills. Livingston,
Phillips, Van Cortland, and others, came afterward.
** This year a company of Walloons came from Holland and settled upon
the land around the present Navy Yard at Brooklyn. There, on the seventh
of June, Sarah Rapelle, the first white child born in New Netherlands,
made her advent.
*** Dishonest traders changed friendly Indians to deadly foes. Conflicts
ensued, and, to cap the climax of iniquity, Kieft caused scores of men,
women, and children, who had asked his protection against the Mohawks,
to be murdered at midnight, on the banks of the Hudson, at Hoboken. This
act awakened the fierce ire of the tribes far in the wilderness, and
caused the settlers vast and complicated trouble.
**** Because of his honorable treatment of the natives, and their
attachment to him, the New Englanders charged him with a design to
exterminate the English by Indian instrumentality.
* (v)See vol. i., page 386.
[[[New Netherlands seized by the English.--Disappointment of the
People.--Governor Stuyvesant.--New Jersey.]]]
{784}A crisis approached. Charles the Second, without any pretense to
title, gave the territory of New Netherlands to his brother James, duke
of York.[[March 1664]] The duke sent an English squadron under Richard
Nicolls to secure the gift, and on the third of September, 1664, the red
cross of St. George floated in triumph over the fort, and the name of
New Amsterdam was changed to New York. * It was an easy conquest, for
the people were not unwilling. Stuyvesant began to make concessions
when it was too late, and his real strength, the will of the people, had
departed from him. Although they disliked him as a ruler, they loved him
as a man, and in his retirement upon his Bowerie farm, ** near the city,
he passed the remainder of his days in quiet, honored and respected by
all.
Nicolls, the conqueror, assumed the functions of governor. *** He
changed the _form_ of laws, but the despotic _spirit_ remained. The
people were disappointed, and felt that they had only changed one
tyranny for another. Nicolls filled his pockets from the people's
purses, departed, and was succeeded by Francis Lovelace, who developed
new schemes of taxation, that the people should "have liberty for no
thought," as he expressed it, "but how to discharge them." The people
_did_ think of something else, and were on the verge of open rebellion,
when the clouds of national war overshadowed local difficulties. England
and Holland were at variance, and in July, 1673, a Dutch squadron sailed
up the Bay of New York, and, without firing a shot, took possession of
the fort and town. The easy con-
* The fort was built of Holland brick, and was finished in 1635. It
stood on high ground on the site of the row of brick houses southeast
of the Bowling Green, and was capacious enough to contain the governor's
house, a small church, and to accommodate three hundred soldiers. It was
called Fort Amsterdam. On its surrender to the English, it was called
Fort James; during the Dutch occupation again, in 1673, it was called
Fort William Hendrick; then again Fort James; on the accession of
William and Mary, it was called Fort Orange; and finally, it was named
Fort George, when Anne, who married Prince George of Denmark, ascended
the English throne. It retained that name until it was demolished in
1790-91.
** Governor Stuyvesant retired from active life after the surrender to
the English, and lived in quiet dignity upon his "Bowerie" estate,
a short distance from the eity, during the remainder of his life. *
Stuyvesant was a native of Holland, born in 1602, and was forty-five
years of age when he came to rule New Netherlands. Soon after his
arrival, he married Judith Bayard, daughter of a Huguenot, by whom
he had two sons. After the capture bv the English, he went to Holland
(1665) to report to his superiors, and this was his last ocean voyage.
With his little family he enjoyed the repose of agricultural pursuits,
within sight of the smoke of the city, which curled above the tree-tops
along the "Bowerie Lane." Upon his farm (on the site of the present
Church of St. Mark's), he built a chapel, at his own expense, and
dedicated it to the worship of God according to the rituals of the
Reformed Dutch Church. He lived eighteen years after the change in the
government, and at his death was buried in his vault within the chapel.
Over his remains was placed a slab (which may still be seen in the
eastern wall of St. Mark's), with the following inscription: "In
this vault lies buried Petrus Stuyvesant, late captain general and
commander-in-chief of Amsterdam, in New Netherlands, now called New
York, and the Dutch West India Islands. Died in August, A.D. 1682, aged
eighty years."
*** The dismemberment of the New Netherlands speedily followed the
English Conquest. James sold to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret,
the domains included within the present limits of New Jersey. Many
privileges were offered to settlers, and the new province flourished.
Berkeley finally sold his moiety to a party of Quakers, among whom was
William Penn. The province was divided into East and West Jersey. The
latter was assigned to the Quakers. In 1682, the heirs of Carteret sold
his share to Quakers, among whom, again, was William Penn, and all the
territory became an asylum for the persecuted. The ownership of
the Jerseys proved a bad speculation, and in 1702 the proprietors
surrendered them to the crown. They were united, and for a while
were under the jurisdiction of the governor of New York, yet having a
distinct Legislative Assembly. New Jersey was separated from New York in
1738, and remained a distinct province until she assumed the position of
a sovereign slate in 1776.
[Illustration: 8794]
* Governor Stuyvesant's house was built of small yellow brick, imported
from Holland, and stood near the present St. Mark's church, between
the Second and Third Avenues. I saw his well in 1851, in a vacant lot
between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets, nearly on a line with the rear
of St. Mark's. A fine brick building now (1852) covers the spot. A
pear-tree, imported from Holland in 1647, by Stuyvesant, and planted in
his garden, yet flourishes on the corner of Thirteenth Street and Third
Avenue, the only living relic which preserves the memory of the renowned
Dutch governor. I saw it in May, 1852, white with blossoms, a patriarch
two hundred and five years of age, standing in the midst of strangers,
crowned with the hoary honors of age and clustered with wonderful
associations. An iron railing protects it, and it may survive a century
longer.
[[[Leisler Chief Magistrate.--His Persecution and Death.--Suppression of
Piracy.--Captain Kidd.]]]
{785}quest was the work of treason, yet, as the royal libertine on
the throne of England doubtless shared in the bribe, the traitor went
unpunished. New Jersey and the settlements on the Delaware yielded, and
for a short period (from July, 1673, until November, 1674) New York was
again New Netherlands. *
During the period of twenty-four years from the English Conquest, until
the Revolution, when James was driven from the throne, democratic ideas
rapidly expanded, and democratic principles worked powerfully in New
York. When, early in 1689, the people heard of the overthrow of the
bigot James, and the accession of William and Mary, they appointed a
Committee of Safety, and with almost unanimous voice approved the act of
Jacob Leisler, the commander of the militia, in taking possession of the
fort in the name of the new Protestant sovereigns.
[Illustration: 9795]
Nicholson, the royal governor, departed, and with the consent of the
people Leisler assumed the reigns of local rule until the king should
appoint a successor. This whole movement was the spontaneous act of the
people, in their sovereign capacity of self-governors. The aristocracy
were offended; denounced Leisler as a usurper; and when Governor
Sloughter came, they represented the popular leader as an enemy to the
king and queen. Never was a man more loyal than Jacob Leisler; never was
an accusation more false. His enemies resolved on his destruction, and
succeeded.
Leisler and his son-in-law, Milborne, were arrested, tried under a
charge of treason, and condemned to be hung. Sloughter withheld his
signature to the death-warrants until the leaders of the aristocracy
made him drunk at a dinner party. He then signed the fatal instrument,
and before he was sober, Leisler and Milborne were suspended upon a
gallows[[May 16, 1691]] on the verge of Beekman's Swamp, near the spot
where Tammany Hall now stands. These were the proto-martyrs of popular
liberty in America. **
Governor Sloughter, a man "licentious in his morals, avaricious, and
poor," *** died of _delirium tremens_ two months after the death of
Leisler, and was succeeded by Benjamin Fletcher, another weak,
dissolute man; "a soldier of fortune." Fletcher became the tool of the
aristocracy, and with their aid attempted to establish Episcopacy in
New York, and make it the legal religion of the province. The popular
Assembly was too strong for them, and defeated the scheme. Earl
Bellomont, **** who succeeded Fletcher in 1698, was a better and a wiser
man. Death removed him just as his more liberal policy was about to bear
fruit,[[1701]] and Edward Hyde (afterward Lord Cornbury), a libertine
and a knave, cursed the province with misrule for seven years, when
the people successfully demanded his recall. From that period until
the arrival of William Cosby as governor, in 1732, the royal
representatives, unable to resist the will of the people, expressed by
the popular Assembly, allowed democratic principles to grow and bear
fruit. Rip van Dam, "a man of the people," was acting governor when
Cosby came. They soon quarreled, and two violent parties arose; the
Democratic, who sided with Van Dam, and the Aristocratic, who sup-
* For interesting papers connected with this event, see Documentary
History of New York, iii., 80-99 inclusive; also Valentine's Manual of
the Common Council of New York, 1852, p. 415-435 inclusive.
** Jacoh Leisler was a native of Frankfort, in Germany. He came to
America in 1660, and after a brief residence in Albany, he became a
trader in New York. While on a voyage to Europe, he, with seven others,
was made a prisoner by the Turks, to whom he paid a high price for his
ransom. Governor Dongan appointed him one of the commissioners of the
Court of Admiralty in 1683. In 1689, while exercising the functions of
governor, he purchased New Rochelle for the persecuted Huguenots. His
death, by the violence of his enemies, lighted an intense flame of party
spirit, which burned for many long years. Abraham Gouverneur, Leisler's
secretary, was condemned at the same time, but was pardoned. He
afterward married the widow of Milborne, and became the ancestor of the
large and respectable family of Gouverneurs in this country, and its
collateral branches.
*** Chief Justice Smith.
**** It was during the administration of Bellomont, that efforts were
made to suppress prevailing piracy. The governor, Robert Livingston, and
others, fitted out an expedition for the purpose, intrusted the command
to the famous Captain Kidd, and were to share with him in all the
profits arising from the capture of piratical vessels. Kidd was hung as
a pirate in 1701, apparently the victim of a political conspiracy.
[[[Attempt to Muzzle the Press.--Triumph of Democracy.--The Negro
Plot.--Death of Sir Danvers Osborn.]]]
{786}ported the governor. Each party had a newspaper at command, * and
the war of words raged violently. The governor finally ordered Zenger,
the publisher of the paper opposed to him, to be arrested on a charge of
libel. After an imprisonment of thirty-five weeks, Zenger was tried
and acquitted by a jury. The excitement was intense, and, as on other
occasions, the heat of party zeal stimulated the growth of democratic
ideas. **
The remarkable event in the history of judicial proceedings, known as
_The Negro Plot_, occurred in the city of New York in 1741. The idea
became prevalent that numerous negro slaves in the city had conspired to
burn the town, murder the white people, and set up a government under
a man of their own color. A panic appeared to subvert all reason and
common sense, and before it was allayed, four white people were hanged;
eleven negroes were burned, eighteen were hanged, and fifty were
transported to the West Indies and sold. All the local histories contain
accounts of this affair in detail.
During the administration of George Clinton (of the family of the
Earls of Lincoln), from 1743 till 1753, disputes ran high between the
government and the people. Clinton's haughty demeanor, exactions, and
injudicious assumption of privileges, disgusted the people, and they
treated him with scorn. Clinton menaced them with punishments; they
defied him, and boldly pronounced his conduct "arbitrary, illegal, and a
violation of their rights." Yielding to the democratic pressure, Clinton
left the province, and was succeeded by Sir Danvers Osborn, on whose
goodness and integrity the people relied for quiet and just rule. Four
days after his accession[[Sept. 12, 1753]] to office, he went down into
the suicide's grave, *** and his deputy, Janies Delancey, officiated
as governor. The "Seven Years' War," now kindling in Europe, and its
counterpart in America, the "French and Indian War," absorbed public
attention, and the local politics of New York became, in a measure, a
secondary consideration with the people. **** In that war, the people
of New York, like those of her sister colonies, perceived their true
strength, and learned a lesson of vast importance to them in the
crisis which was now approaching. We have too often, in these volumes,
considered the events which led to this crisis--the open resistance
of the people to the supreme government--to require a repetition here,
except those circumstances of local interest which marked the reception
of the Stamp Act in New York.
When intelligence of the passage of the Stamp Act came over the sea, the
people of New York boldly avowed their opposition. Cadwallader Colden,
(v) a venerable Scotchman of
* The Democratic paper was published by John Peter Zenger, and was
called The New York Weekly Journal; the aristocratic paper was published
by William Bradford, formerly of Philadelphia (see page 258), and was
called The New York Gazette. The latter was established in 1725, and the
former in 1726. Bradford had been in the printing business in New York
since 1693. His was the first newspaper printed in the colony.
** This was the first attempt in New York to muzzle the press. Andrew
Hamilton, of Philadelphia, was Zenger's counsel; and the people, to
express their approbation of the verdict, entertained Hamilton at a
public dinner, and the corporation presented him with the freedom of
the city in a gold box. On his departure, he was honored with salutes of
cannon.
*** The loss of his wife had preyed upon the cheerfulness of Osborn,
and he had become almost a misanthrope. Dismayed by the cares and
perplexities of office which he saw awaited him, he hung himself with a
handkerchief upon the garden fence of his residence.
**** We have already considered, in the first volume, the convention of
colonial delegates at Albany in 1754, and the part which New York took
in the war which ensued, and continued until 1763.
* (v) Colden was one of the most active and useful of the public men of
New York before the Revolution. From a well-written memoir of him, by
the pen of John W. Francis, M.D., of the city of New York, and published
in The American Medical and Philosophical Register (January, 1811,
volume i.), I have gleaned the materials for the following brief sketch:
Cadwallader Colden was the son of a Scotch minister of the Gospel, and
was born at Dunse, in Scotland, on the seventeenth of February, 1688.
He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he completed his
collegiate studies in 1705, at the early age of seventeen years. He then
devoted three years to the study of mathematics and medical science,
when he came to America, and remained here five years, practicing the
profession of a physician. He returned to Great Britain in 1715, and
in London became acquainted with the leading minds of the day; among
others, with Halley the astronomer. He married a young lady in Scotland,
and returned, with her, to America in 1716. They settled in the city of
New York in 1718, and soon afterward Colden abandoned his profession
for employments in public life. He became the surveyor general of the
province, a master in Chancery, and a member of the Governor's Council.
About 1750, he obtained a patent for a large tract of land near
Newburgh, in Orange county, which was called Coldenham, where he resided
with his family a great portion of his time, after 1755. In 1760, he was
appointed lieutenant governor, and held that office until a year before
his death. On account of the absence or death of the governor-in-chief,
Colden often exercised the functions of chief magistrate. Such was his
position when the Stamp Aet excitement prevailed. He was relieved from
office in 1775, when he retired to his seat at Flushing. He died there
on the twenty-eighth of September, 1776, a few days after the great
fire broke out, which consumed a large portion of the city of New York.
Doctor Colden was a close student and keen observer through life, and he
enriched medical and other scientific works by numerous treatises from
his pen. His "History of the Five Nations of Indians" is a work of great
research and observation, and is now much sought after by scholars.
Botany was his delight, and with Linnæus, the great master of the
science, he was a constant and valued correspondent for many years.
Almost all of the eminent scientific men of Europe became his
correspondents, and Franklin and other leading men in America were his
intimate epistolary friends. Doctor Colden paid much attention to the
art of printing, wrote upon the subject, and was a real, if not the
original, inventor of the process called stereotyping. To Doctor Francis
I am indebted for a fine copy of the portrait of Colden, from which the
one here given was made.
[[[Cadwallader Colden.--Sons of Liberty.--Place of Meeting.--Newspapers
in the City.]]]
{787}eighty years was acting governor, and his council were men of the
highest character in the province.
[Illustration: 8797]
Colden was a liberal-minded man, yet duty to his sovereign compelled him
to discountenance the proceedings of the people, and his name appears
in the records as the enemy of civil freedom. The Sons of Liberty, who
organized at this time throughout the colonies, though not numerous at
first in New York, were very active, and gave Colden a great deal of
trouble. Merchants appended their names to resolutions condemnatory.
Correspondence was appointed, **** and measures were adopted regarding
the appointed stamp distributor to resign his commission.
The newspapers spoke out moderately but manly, and there were few
persons who openly advocated the Stamp Act. As the day approached when
the act was to be put in force,[[Nov. 1, 1765]] the tone of the press
and the people became more defiant, ** and it was resolved not to allow
the stamps to be landed. A general meeting of the citizens was held on
the evening of the thirty-first of October. ***
* The association in New York had a correspondent (Nicholas Ray) in
London, to whom they gave regular accounts of their proceedings, and
from whom they as regularly received intelligence of the movements of
the ministry. The most prominent men of the association in the province
of New York were Isaac Sears, John Lamb, Alexander M'Dougal, Marinus
Willett, William Wiley, Edward Laight, Thomas Robinson, Hugh Hughes,
Flores Baneker, Charles Nicoll, Joseph Allicock, and Gershom Mott, of
New York city; Jeremiah van Rensselaer, Myndert Rosenboom, Robert Henry,
Volkert P. Dow, Jelles Fonda, and Thomas Young, of Albany and Tryon
counties; John Sloss Hobart, Gilbert Potter, Thomas Brush, Cornelius
Conklin, and Nathan Williams, of Huntington, Long Island; George
Townsend, Barak Sneething, Benjamin Townsend, George and Michael Weekes,
and Rowland Chambers, of Oyster Bay, Long Island. The house of Richard
Howard, "in the fields" (now the Park), which stood very near the site
of Howard's Irving House, on the corner of Broadway and Chamber Street,
was the usual place of meeting of the Sons of Liberty. They also met
at Bardin's (afterward Abraham Montagne's) which stood on the site of
Francis's bookstore, on Broadway, near Murray Street. To this house a
garden was attached, which extended as far as the present Church Street,
and was a place of public resort.
** There were only three newspapers in the city of New York, then
containing a population of about seventeen thousand. These were The New
York Mercury, published by Hugh Gaine; The New York Weekly Gazette, by
William Weyman; and The New York Gazette (formerly Parker's paper), by
John Holt. The latter commenced the publication of his New York Journal
in 1766.
*** This meeting was held at Burns's "King's Arms," the present house
fronting the "Atlantic Garden," No. 9 Broadway.
**** The following-named persons constituted the committee: Isaac Sears,
John Lamb, Gershom Mott, William Wiley, and Thomas Robinson. There
was also a Committee of Vigilance organized at about the same time,
consisting of fifty-one persons.
[[[Arrival of Stamps.--The People demand them.--Colden burned in
Effigy.--Destruction of James's Property.]]]
{788}The stamps arrived on the twenty-third of October, and M'Evers,
already alarmed by the manifestation of the public feeling, refusing
to receive them, they were placed in the hands of Lieutenant-governor
Colden (who resided within Fort George) for safe keeping.
[Illustration: 0798]
The garrison was strong, and under the command of General Gage, then
chief captain of the British troops in America. In view of impending
troubles, Colden had strengthened the fort and replenished the magazine.
A knowledge of these facts increased the indignation of the people, but
did not alter their resolution. Notwithstanding armed ships were riding
in the harbor, and the guns of the fort were pointed upon the town,
the people assembled in great numbers, appeared before the fort, and
demanded the delivery of the stamps to their appointed leader. A
refusal was answered by defiant shouts, and half an hour afterward the
lieutenant governor was hung in effigy, * in "the fields," near the
spot where Leisler was gibbeted seventy-five years before. Thence they
paraded through the streets, back to the fort, dragged Colden's fine
coach to the open space in front, tore down the wooden fence around the
Bowling Green, and after making a pile, cast the coach ** and effigy
upon it, and set fire to and consumed all together. The mob then
proceeded out of town to the beautiful residence of Major James, of the
royal artillery, where they destroyed his fine library, works of art and
furniture, and desolated his choice garden. *** Isaac Sears and others,
leaders of the Sons of Liberty, who had issued strict orders forbidding
injury to private property, endeavored to restrain the mob, but the
storm they had raised could not be quieted till the appetite for
violence was appeased. After parading the streets, with the Stamp Act
printed upon large sheets, and raised upon poles, headed "England's
Folly and America's Ruin," the populace quietly dispersed to their
homes. ****
* The effigy had a drum upon its back, a label on its breast, and in one
hand a stamped paper. The drum was in allusion to the fact that Colden
was a drummer in the army of the Scotch Pretender in 1715. An effigy
of the devil hung by his side, with a boot in his hand, to indicate the
people's detestation of the Earl of Bute. By the ad vice of Colden, Gage
wisely refrained from firing upon the people while these outrages were
occurring.
** There were only three or four coaches in the city at that time, and
as they belonged to wealthy friends of government, they were considered
by the people evidences of aristocratic pride. Such was the prejudice
against the name of coach, that Robert Murray, a Quaker merchant who
owned one, called his "a leathern conveniency." Mr. Murray owned a
country seat near the intersection of Fourth and Fifth Avenues, and
Thirty-sixth and Fortieth Streets, long known as Murray Hill.
Colden's coach was made in England for Sir Henry Moore, the absent
governor-in-chief at the time. Colden's coach-house and stables were
outside the fort, and easy of access by the populace.
*** James's house stood on an eminence a little east of the present
intersection of Anthony Street and West Broadway, and was called
Ranelagh. I find in the newspapers of the day, the Ranelagh Garden
advertised, a few months after this outrage, by John Jones, as a place
of public resort, where fire-works were exhibited and refreshments
furnished. Vauxhall, the seat of Sir Peter Warren, was at the foot of
Warren Street.
**** During the evening of excitement, the cannons on Capsey battery
(near the present flag-staff, toward the Whitehall end of the Battery),
and also several in the government store-yard near by, were spiked, and
rendered unfit for service.
[[[Stamps delivered to the Mayor.--Quiet.--Repeal of the
Act.--Rejoicings.--Pitt's Statue.]]]
{789}Excitement still prevailed in the city, when Colden, perceiving
further resistance to the will of the people unavailing, ordered the
stamps to be delivered to the Mayor (Cruger) and Common Council, the
former giving a receipt for the same, and the corporation agreeing
to pay for all stamps that should be destroyed or lost. * This was
satisfactory to the people, and quiet was restored.
[8799]
Yet the colonists were no less vigilant, and efforts to enforce a repeal
of the obnoxious act were every where made. Non-importation agreements
were numerously signed; the hum of spinning-wheels and the clatter of
shuttles were heard in almost every household, and rich men and women,
who commonly walked in broadcloths and brocades, now appeared, on all
occasions, in homespun garments.
On Tuesday, the sixth of May,[[1766]] the joyful intelligence of the
repeal of the Stamp Act reached New York. ** The city was filled with
delight. Bells rung a merry peal, cannons roared, and placards every
where appeared, calling a meeting of the citizens at Howard's the
next day to celebrate the event. Hundreds assembled, and marching in
procession to "the fields," they fired a royal salute of twenty-one
guns upon the spot where the City Hall now stands. An immense table
was spread at Howard's, where the Sons of Liberty feasted, and drank
twenty-eight "loyal and constitutional toasts." The city was illuminated
in the evening, and bonfires blazed at every corner. Another celebration
was had on the king's birth-day,[[June 4, 1766]] under the auspices
of Governor Moore. The governor, council, military officers, and the
clergy, dined at the King's Arms (now Atlantic Garden), where General
Gage resided, and great rejoicings were had by the people in "the
fields." *** The Sons of Liberty feasted at Montagne's, and with the
sanction of the governor, they erected a mast (afterward called Liberty
Pole) a little northeast of the present City Hall, in front of Warren
Street. It was inscribed, "_To his most gracious Majesty, George the
Third, Mr. Pitt, and Liberty_." The loyalty of the people, and their
idolatry of Pitt, were boundless, and at a meeting at the Coffee
House,[[June 23]] corner of Dock (now Pearl) and Wall Streets, petition
was numerously signed, praying the Assembly to erect a statue to the
great commoner. The Assembly complied, and on the same day voted an
equestrian statue in honor of the king. These were erected in 1770, but
within six years that of the king was destroyed by the Republicans, and
Pitt's was mutilated by the Royalists soon afterwards. ****
Even while the people were singing alleluiahs, there were some in New
York, who, like Christopher Gadsden of Charleston (see page 748), were
sagacious enough to perceive the tendency of Pitt's Declaratory Act,
which accompanied the Repeal Bill, and were bold enough to warn the
people, even in the midst of the loyal excitement.
The liberal press of England immediately denounced
* Less than a month after this, some stamps, which were brought in a
brig, were disposed of in a more summary way. Ten boxes of them were
seized by some of the citizens, put into a boat, and taken to the
ship-yards at the foot of the present Catharine Street, on the East
river, where they were burned in a tar barrel. Governor Sir Henry Moore
arrived on the third of December, and his conciliatory course tended to
confirm the quiet which Colden had restored to the province.
** The intelligence was brought by Major James, who came passenger in
the Hynde, from Plymouth. She was six weeks on her voyage.
*** An ox was roasted whole; twenty-five barrels of beer and a hogshead
of rum were opened for the populace; twenty-five pieces of cannon,
ranged in a row where the City Hall now stands, thundered a royal
salute; and in the evening twenty-five tar barrels, hoisted upon poles,
were burned, and gorgeous fire-works were exhibited at Bowling Green.
**** The statue of the king was placed in the center of the Bowling
Green, and the iron railing which now incloses the spot was placed there
for its protection. We shall notice it more in detail presently. The
statue of Pitt was pedestrian, and made of marble. It was placed at
the intersection of William and Wall Streets. The figure was in a Roman
habit; in one hand was a scroll partly open, on which was inscribed
Articuli Magna Charta Libertatum. The left hand was extended in
oratorical attitude. On the south side of the pedestal was the following
inscription: "This statue of the Right Honorable William Pitt, earl of
Chatham, was erected as a public testimony of the grateful sense the
colony of New York retains of the many services he rendered to America,
particularly in promoting the repeal of the Stamp Act. Anno Dorn.,
1770." While the British soldiers occupied the city they knocked off the
head and arms of the statue, and other wise defaced it. It was
removed after the war, and for many years laid among rubbish in the
corporation-yard, from which it was conveyed by Mr. Riley, of the Fifth
Ward Hotel, to the corner of his house, within an iron railing, where
it yet (1852) remains. The engraving on the preceding page is a repre
sentation of its present appearance.
[[[Murmuring against the Mutiny Act.--Liberty Pole several times cut
down.--Excitement--Pitt Caricatured.]]]
{790}it, * and Pitt's plea of _expediency_ could hardly save him from
the anathemas of the Americans, when they gravely considered the matter.
However, the Sons of Liberty regarded the repeal of the Stamp Act as
a secession of the ministry from their authoritative position, and
believing that a full redress of grievances complained of would follow,
they dissolved their association, but agreed to meet each year on the
anniversary of the repeal, to celebrate the event.
Before the echoes of repeal rejoicings had died away, the low mutterings
of another storm were heard. When intelligence of the Stamp Act riots
reached England, Parliament passed the _Mutiny Act_, which provided
for the quartering of troops in America, at the partial expense of the
colonists themselves. In June, Governor Moore informed the people of
New York that he hourly expected the arrival of a re-enforcement for the
garrison, and that he desired the Assembly to make immediate provisions
for them, according to the demands of the Mutiny Act. The Sons of
Liberty were aroused, and at a meeting at Montagne's, they solemnly
resolved to resist this new measure of oppression to the uttermost.
The troops came; angry feelings were soon excited between them and the
people, and thirty-six days after the Liberty Pole was erected with so
much harmony and loyalty it was cut down by the insolent soldiery.[[Aug
16, 1766]] The people re-erected it the next evening, in the face of the
armed mercenaries; not, however, without a fracas, in which blood was
shed. ** Little more than a month afterward,[[Sept. 23]] the soldiers
again prostrated the Liberty Pole, and again the people upreared it, and
from its top they flung the British banner to the breeze.[[Sept. 25]]
The autumn and winter passed without serious trouble in the city, but
when the people met to celebrate the anniversary of the repeal,[[March
1767]] and with great rejoicings inaugurated the "mast" as a "Liberty
Pole," the soldiers again interfered, and that night the cherished
emblem of freedom was prostrated for the third time. The people again
erected it, bound it with iron, and placed a guard there. The soldiers
came with loaded muskets,[[March 22]] fired two random shots into
Montagne's house, where the Sons of Liberty were assembled, and
attempted to drive the people from "the fields." Fearful retaliation
would have followed this atrocious act, had not the governor interfered
and ordered the soldiers to refrain from further aggressive movements.
On the king's birth-day,[[June 4]] they made another unsuccessful
attempt to destroy the Liberty
Pole, but it stood in proud defiance until 1770, when armed men came
from the barracks at midnight.[[Jan. 16, 1770]] prostrated it, sawed it
in pieces, and then piled it up in front of Montagne's. The perpetrators
were discovered, the bell of St. George's Chapel, in Beekman Street, was
rung, and early the next morning three thousand people stood around the
stump of the pole, and, by resolutions, declared their rights, and
their determination to maintain them. For three days the most intense
excitement prevailed. In frequent affrays with the citizens, the
soldiers were generally worsted; and in a severe conflict on Golden
[Illustration: 8800]
* A caricature appeared in London, which represented Pitt upon stilts,
his gouty leg resting on the Royal Exchange, in the midst of bubbles
inscribed War, Peace, &c. This stilt was called Popularity. The other
stilt, called Sedition, he stretched over the sea toward New York,
fishing for popularity in the Atlantic. The staff on which he leaned
was called Pension. This caricature was entitled The Colossus, and was
accompanied by five satirical verses in broken English, as if spoken by
a Frenchman.
** No citizen was killed, or very seriously wounded. Isaac Sears and
John Berrien each received a wound.
[[[Soldiers Disarmed.--Fifth Liberty Pole.--Political Coalition.--Public
Sentiment.--John Lamb.]]]
{791}Hill (Cliff Street, between Fulton Street and Maiden Lane), near
Burling Slip, several of the soldiers were disarmed. * Quiet was at
length restored; the people erected another Liberty Pole[[March 24]]
upon private ground purchased for the purpose, upon Broadway, near
Warren Street, and a few days afterward the soldiers departed for
Boston. **
[Illustration: 8801]
This fifth Liberty Pole remained untouched as a rallying-place for the
Whigs until 1776, when it was hewn down by Cunningham, the notorious
provost marshal, who, it is said, had been whipped at its foot.
The Colonial Assembly steadily refused compliance with the demands
of the Mutiny Act, until Parliament, early in 1767, passed an act
"prohibiting the governor, council, and Assembly of New York passing any
legislative act for any purpose whatever," when partial concessions were
made. A new Assembly was convened in 1768.[[Feb 11]] It was composed of
less pliable material than the other, and, notwithstanding the imperial
government made the province feel the weight of its displeasure, and
would not recede from its position of absolute master, the Assembly
refused submission, until May, 1769, when an appropriation was made for
the support of the troops. In the autumn of that year Sir Henry Moore
died,[[Sep. 11]] and the reins of government were again held by Colden.
Soon an unlooked for coalition between Colden and Delancey, the leaders
of opposing parties, appeared. Opposite political elements seemed
to assimilate, and the leaven of aristocracy began its work in the
Assembly. A game for political power, based upon a money scheme, was
commenced, which menaced the liberties of the people. *** The popular
leaders sounded the alarm, and an inflammatory hand-bill appeared,[[Dec.
16,1769]] signed "A Son of Liberty," calling a meeting of the betrayed
inhabitants in the fields."
It denounced the money scheme, the pliancy of the Assembly, and the
unnatural coalition of Colden and Delancey, as omens of danger to the
state. A large concourse of people assembled around the Liberty Pole the
next day. They were harangued by John Lamb, **** one of the most ardent
of the Sons of Liberty, and by
* The late Col. Michael Smith, who died in New York in April, 1846,
at the age of ninety-six years, was then a young man of twenty. He was
engaged in the affray, and was one of those who disarmed the soldiers.
I have seen the musket which he seized at the time, and which, as a
soldier, he bore throughout the war that soon followed. It is a very
heavy Tower gun, and is preserved by his family as a precious heir-loom.
** At this time the true Sons of Liberty were excluded from Montague's
by those who were active with them in 1765, but now leaned toward the
government side. With these Montagne sympathized, and to them he hired
his rooms, when the day approached for celebrating the repeal of
the Stamp Act. The patriots purchased a small house at the corner
of Broadway and the Bowery road (where Barnum's American Museum now
stands), named it Hampden Hall, and that was their place of assemblage
during the four years preceding the bursting forth of the storm of the
Revolution.--See Holt's Journal (supplement), No. 1418.
*** This was the issuing of bills of credit, on the security of the
province, to the amount of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds, to
be loaned to the people, the interest to be applied to defraying the
expenses of the colonial government. It was none other than a Monster
Bank, without checks, and was intended to cheat the people into a
compliance with the requirements of the Mutiny Act, by the indirect
method of applying the profits to that purpose.
**** John Lamb was born in the city of New York, on the first of
January, 1735. In early youth he followed the occupation of his father
(optician and mathematical instrument maker), but in 1760 entered into
the liquor trade. He was a good writer and fluent speaker, both of which
accomplishments he brought into use when the troubles with Great Britain
began. He was active in all the preliminary scenes of the Revolution in
New York, and in 1775 received a captain's commission. He accompanied
Montgomery to Quebec, was active and brave during the siege, and was
wounded and made prisoner at the close. He retired to New York the
ensuing summer, was promoted to mayor, and attached to the regiment
of artillery under Knox. As we have met him at various times in his
military career, we will not stop to repeat the story of his services.
He was elected to a seat in the New York Assembly at the close of
the war, and was active in civil services until the organization of
government under the Federal Constitution, when Washington appointed him
collector of customs for the port of New York. He held this office until
his death, which occurred on the thirty-first of May, 1800. Never was
there a purer patriot or more honest man than John Lamb.
[[[M'Dougal Imprisoned.--Partial Triumph of Toryism.--Arrival of a
Tea-ship.--Destruction of Tea.]]]
{792}a vote unanimously condemned the action of the Assembly. They
communicated their sentiments to that body by a committee, * when the
Assembly adopted measures for the discovery and punishment of the author
of the obnoxious hand-bill. Lamb was cited before the House, but was
soon discharged; and the guilt being fixed upon Alexander M'Dougal (the
Revolutionary general, subsequently) by the printer, he was arrested,
and refusing to make any acknowledgment or to give bail, he was cast
into prison, where he remained about fourteen weeks, until arraigned for
trial. He then pleaded not guilty, gave bail, was arraigned before the
House several months afterward (when he was defended by George Clinton),
and was again put in prison for contempt. He was soon released, and was
never troubled with the matter afterward. These proceedings engendered
dissatisfaction. Popular opinion was with M'Dougal, and men and women
flocked to the prison to sympathize with him. The growth of democratic
principles was promoted by these events.
Gradually the Loyalist party gained ascendency in the Legislature, and
the influence of that body was felt among the people. Non-importation
agreements were disregarded, and only the Hampden Hall Sons of Liberty
maintained the integrity of their principles. Disaffection appeared
among the members of the general committee of One Hundred, and of the
vigilance committee of Fifty-one, recently organized. The Loyalists
rejoiced, and Riv-ington printed in his Gazetteer,=
```"And so my good masters, I find it no joke,
```For York has stepp'd forward and thrown off the yoke
```Of Congress, committees, and even King Sears,
```Who shows you good nature by showing his ears."=
Yet the great mass of the people remained sufficiently democratic to
preserve a spirit of hostility to oppressive government measures.
We need not here repeat the story of Britain's sins and America's
endurance. New York shared in common with the other colonies, and when
Tryon came from North Carolina[[July 3, 1771]] to rule the province, he
found the same loathing for petty tyranny and aristocratic assumptions.
Comparative quiet prevailed, however, until intelligence of Lord North's
Tea Act came. The flame of excitement then burst out in New York as
suddenly and fiercely as in Boston. The Sons of Liberty reorganized; the
Committee of Correspondence resumed its labors; tea commissioners and
stamp distributors were considered co-workers in iniquity, and in front
of the Coffee House in Wall Street, an effigy of Kelly, a New Yorker in
London, who had ridiculed popular indignation here, was burned.[[Nov.
7, 1773]] The fire in Hampden Hall spread among the people, and when
Captain Lockyier, of the _Nancy_, the first tea-ship that came, arrived
at Sandy Hook, he heeded the advice of the pilot, and went up to
the city without his vessel. The "Mohawks" ** were warned to be in
readiness, and the people resolved that no tea should be landed. Captain
Lockvier's conference with the committee satisfied him that he had no
fair alternative but to return to England with his cargo. Even while he
was ashore, a merchant vessel (Captain Chambers) arrived with eighteen
chests of tea hidden among its cargo. The vigilant Sons of Liberty
searched his vessel, cast his tea into the harbor, and advised him to
leave port as soon as possible. He heeded the advice, and left New York
with Lockyier, while the people crowded the wharf at Whitehall, shouted
a farewell, and amid cannon peals hoisted the royal flag upon the
Liberty Pole in token of triumph.
* The committee consisted of Isaac Sears, Caspar Wistar, Alexander
M'Dougal, Jacobus van Zandt, Samuel Broome, Erasmus Williams, and James
van Yarck (Yarick).
** When it was known that tea-ships were on their way, a notice appeared
in Holt's journal, calling the "Mohawks" to action. There appeared to
be the same understanding in New York as in Boston, that tea was to be
destroyed, if necessary, by men disguised as Indians.
[[[New Parties.--Meeting of Provincial Congress.--Arrest of Captain
Sears.--Seizure of Arms.--Post-office.]]]
{793}Loyalty and timidity again developed their fruit in the
Revolutionary committees, and by adroit management moderate men and
royalists gained the ascendency. Afraid openly to oppose the popular
will, they insidiously cast obstacles in the way of efficient
co-operation with other colonies. Soon two distinct parties were formed
among professed Republicans, marked by a line of social distinction--the
_Patricians_ and the _Tribunes_--the merchants and gentry, and the
mechanics. They coalesced, however, in the nomination of delegates to
the Continental Congress, and on the twenty-seventh of July,[[1774]] the
people, by unanimous voice, ratified their choice. * This was an act of
the people alone, for the Assembly, too timid or too loyal, refrained
from any expression of opinion concerning the proposed Congress. **
The _American Association_, adopted by the first Continental Congress,
was popular in New York, and a committee of sixty was immediately
organized to enforce its provisions. Warmly supported by the true
Sons of Liberty, they took the lead in political matters By their
recommendation, the people in the several counties chose representatives
for a Provincial Congress, and on the twenty-second of May, 1775, that
body convened in the Exchange, at the foot of Broad Street, in New York.
*** The General Assembly had adjourned a month previously, and never met
again. ****
The great crisis was now approaching, and the occurrence of many local
circumstances inflamed the minds of the people, and prepared them
for open rebellion. (v) Intelligence of the martyrdom of patriots at
Lexington and Concord came at the moment when Captain Sears, the popular
leader, was in official custody,[[April 24, 1775]] because he had made,
it was alleged, treasonable propositions. (vi) Aroused by that first
clarion-blast of war, the
* Philip Livingston, John Jay, James Duane, John Alsop, and Isaac Low
were chosen. They were adopted as delegates by other districts, and the
name of Henry Wisner was afterward added. The people of Suffolk county
elected William Floyd, and the credentials of all were presented
together.
** Governor Tryon's house was destroyed by fire at midnight on the
twenty-ninth of December, 1773. So rapidly did the flames spread, that
the governor's family had great difficulty in escaping, and Elizabeth
Garret, a servant girl sixteen years of age, perished in the flames.
The governor lost all of his personal effects. The Assembly made him a
present of twenty thousand dollars in consideration of his misfortune.
The great seal of the province was found among the ashes, two days after
the fire, uninjured. Tryon went to England in April, 1774, and on his
departure he was honored with addresses; a public dinner by the Common
Council; a ball by General Haldimand, then in command of the troops;
and King's (now Columbia) College, then under the care of Dr. Cooper,
conferred upon him the degree of LL.D.
*** Peter van Brugh Livingston was chosen president, Volkert P. Douw,
vice-president, and John M'Kisson and Robert Benson, secretaries.
Nathaniel Woodhull, of Suffolk county, was soon afterward called to the
presidential chair. He was appointed a brigadier the following year.
**** Fifteen of the twenty-four members of the Assembly were Loyalists,
and during their last session, efforts to pass resolutions approving the
proceedings of the Continental Congress were fruitless. A motion to that
effect, offered by Nathaniel Woodhull (afterward slain by the British),
was lost by a party vote. Those who voted in the affirmative were George
Clinton, Nathaniel Woodhull, Philip Schuyler, Abraham Tenbroeck, Philip
Livingston, Captain Seaman, and Messrs. Boerum, Thomas, and De Witt.
* (v) On the twentieth of December, the ship Lady Gage, commanded by
Captain Thomas Mesnard, arrived with ten cases and three boxes of arms,
and a barrel of gunpowder, consigned to Walter Franklin. The collector
ordered these to be seized, because, as he alleged, they had been lying
in Franklin's warehouse several days without cockets. While on their way
to the custom-house, a small party of the Sons of Liberty took them from
the officers in charge, but before they could conceal them, they were
retaken and placed on board an armed ship in the harbor. On the same
day a letter for the collector was put in the post-office, * containing
menaces of vengeance, and that night a very inflammatory hand-bill was
left at almost every door in the city. **
* (vi) When General Gage began to fortify Boston Neck, the people
refused him labor and materials; and in the spring of 1775, he sent to
New York for both, in order to erect barracks for the soldiers on Boston
Common. The patriots were informed that a sloop laden with boards was
about to sail for Boston. A meeting was ealled at the Coffee-house, and
it was resolved to seize the vessel. At that meeting, Sears exhorted the
people to arm themselves with muskets and twenty-four ball-cartridges
each. For this he was arrested and taken before the mayor. He refused
to give bail, and was about to be carried to prison when the people
took him from the officers, and bore him in triumph through the town,
preceded by a band of music and a banner. That night Sears addressed
the people in "the fields," and a few days afterward he was elected a
member of the Provincial Congress. The names of Burling, Ivers, Alner,
M'Dougal, Roorbach, and Richard Livingston are preserved as among those
of Sears's friends on that occasion.
* A scheme for the establishment of an independent post-office, proposed
by William Goddard, the publisher of the Maryland Journal, was put into
partial operation in 1775, and on the eleventh of May, John Holt,
the printer, was appointed postmaster. The office was kept at Holt's
printing-house.
** This is supposed to have been written by John Lamb. To avoid being
betrayed, the Sons of Liberty went to Holt's printing-house at night,
and put in type and printed their hand-bills themselves, and then
circulated them through the town.
[[[Arming of the People.--Closing of the Custom house.--Arms seized by
the Sons of Liberty.--Fortifications Ordered.]]]
{794}people took possession of the City Hall, armed themselves, and with
Lamb and Willett at their head, they embargoed all vessels in the harbor
laden with provisions for the British army in Boston. They did more;
Andrew Elliott, the collector, forbade the landing of a cargo of rum
for the patriots. Sears and Lamb ordered the vessel to Cruger's Wharf
(between Coenties * and Old Slips), landed the rum, and carted it to
its destination in the city; then returning to the custom-house, they
demanded and received the keys, dismissed the employees, and closed the
building.[[May 2]] When they had committed this overt act of treason,
they boldly gave notice of the fact to their brethren in other cities.
Persons known to be engaged in sending provisions to the British ships
in the harbor were seized, and general alarm pervaded the Tory ranks.
** A grand Committee of Safety, consisting of one hundred of the most
respectable citizens, was now organized; a military association for
practice in the use of fire-arms was formed, under Samuel Broome; a
pledge (see page 384, volume i.) was circulated, and numerously signed;
six hundred stand of arms were taken from the city arsenals by the
committee, and distributed among the citizens; and when an Irish
battalion (the last remains of the garrison in Fort George), under
Major Moncrief, were on their way to a vessel bound for Boston, with a
quantity of spare arms in boxes upon wagons, Marinus Willett and a small
body of Sons of Liberty, encouraged by a short harangue by John Morin
Scott, boldly confronted the soldiers, seized the arms, and carried them
baek to the now deserted fort.[[Jan 23, 1775]] These arms were afterward
used by Gansevoort's regiment, of which Willett was lieutenant colonel.
When the Provincial Congress assembled,[[May 22]] its complexion
disappointed the people.
Toryism and timidity prevailed in that Assembly, and the elaboration of
schemes for conciliation, instead of measures for defense, occupied
the majority. Hard pressed by public opinion, *** and the influence of
important events daily transpiring, they were obliged to yield. Four
regiments were authorized to be raised; **** fortifications at King's
Bridge (v) were ordered, and measures were taken to fortify the Hudson
passes in the Highlands. In the mean while, the patriots gathered in
force around Boston; the battle of Bunker Hill was fought; a
Continental army was organized, and George Washington appointed the
commander-inchief. (vi) Rumors of the approach of troops from Ireland
came, and the Provincial Congress,
* This is a corruption of Countess's Slip, a name given to it in honor
of the Countess Bellomont, the child-wife of Governor Bellomont. She was
a mother at the age of thirteen.
** Dr. Cooper, the president of King's (now Columbia) College, becoming
alarmed, soon afterward fled to Stuyvesant's house, near the East River,
where he remained concealed, under the impression that the Whigs were
trying to seize him. He finally escaped to the Asia man-of-war. He
had written much in favor of Episcopacy in America, and was a decided
Loyalist; so decided, that, next to Tryon, Colden, and Mayor Hicks, he
was most detested by the Whigs. Dr. Cooper was eminent for his learning.
He succeeded Dr. Johnson as president of the college in 1763. Soon after
his flight he went to England. He died suddenly in Edinburgh, on the
first of May, 1785, at the age of fifty years, and was buried in the
Episcopal chapel there.
*** New York has been unjustly taunted for its adherence to royalty,
when the curtain of the Revolutionary drama was first lifted in 1775.
Family influence was very great in that colony, and through it the
General Assembly and the Provincial Congress were very loyally inclined.
But the masses were chiefly republican in feeling, and when Toryism was
fairly crushed out of the popular Assembly by pressure from without,
no state was more patriotic. With a population of only one hundred
and sixty-four thousand, of whom thirty-two thousand five hundred were
liable to do militia duty, New York furnished seventeen thousand seven
hundred and eighty-one soldiers for the Continental army; over three
thousand more than Congress required.--Judge Campbell's Address before
the New York Historical Society, 1850.
**** These were commanded by colonels M'Dougal, James Clinton, Ritzema,
and Wynkoop. Herman Zedwitz, a Prussian, was M'Dougal's first major.
Ritzema joined the Royal army after the battle at White Plains; and
about the same time Zedwitz was cashiered for attempting a treasonable
correspondence with Tryon.
* (v) King's Bridge spans Spyt den Duyvel Creek, at the northern end
of York Island. The first structure there was of wood, erected at the
expense of the colony in 1691, and was called the King's bridge.
* (vi) For a notice of Washington's arrival in New York, when on his way
to Cambridge, see vol. i., page 564.
[[[Wooster and his Troops at Harlem.--Capture of British Stores.--Turtle
Bay.--Committee of One Hundred.]]]
{795}somewhat purged of its Toryism by intelligence from the East,
invited General Wooster, then in command of eighteen hundred Connecticut
militia at Greenwich, to come to the defense of New York.
[Illustration: 8805]
He encamped at Harlem[[June, 1775]] for several weeks, sent detachments
to beat off marauders, who were carrying away the cattle of Long Island
to the British army in Boston, and by his presence made the New York
patriots bold and active. At midnight[[July 20]] they captured British
stores at Turtle Bay, and sent part to the grand army at Boston and a
part to the troops then collecting on Lake Champlain to invade Canada;
they also seized a tender, with stores, belonging to the _Asia,_ and
took possession of provisions and clothing deposited at Greenwich * by
the government. **
Governor Tryon returned to New York in the _Asia_ on the third of July,
and was received with respect. His course soon indicated his opposition
to the Republicans. The energetic actions of the committee of One
Hundred taught him to be circumspect in public, and his private
intrigues to gain ascendency for Toryism in the Provincial Congress were
abortive. That body, now guided by the popular will, and perceiving a
resort to arms to be inevitable, ordered Lamb, who was then a captain
of artillery, to remove the cannons from the grand battery and the fort,
and take them to a place of security. Assisted by an independent corps
under Colonel Lasher, and a body of citizens guided by _King_ Sears, as
* Greenwich was then a village of a few houses, a mile and a half from
the city. It has long since been merged into the metropolis, and is now
(1852) at about a central point, on the Hudson, between the lower and
upper part of the city.
** These acts were done under the immediate sanction of the committee of
One Hundred, * who, while the Provincial Congress legislated, were busy
in executing according to the known will of the people. The patriots
regarded this committee with more confidence than they did the
Provincial Congress.
[Illustration: 6805]
*** Turtle Bay is a small rock-bound cove of the East River, at the
foot of Forty-seventh Street. The banks are high and precipitous, and
afforded a safe retreat for small vessels. Here the government had made
a magazine of military stores, and these the Sons of Liberty determined
to seize. Under the direction of Lamb, Sears, Willett, and M'Dougal,
a party procured a sloop at Greenwich, came stealthily through the
dangerous vortex of Hell Gate at twilight, and at midnight surprised and
captured the guard, and secured the stores. The old store-house in which
they were deposited is yet standing upon a wharf on the southern side
of the little bay. The above view is from the bank at the foot of
Forty-sixth Street. Beyond the rocky point on the north side of the
bay is seen the lower end of Blackwell's Island, with the shore of Long
Island in the distance. On the left of the old store-house, delineated
in the annexed sketch, is seen the bridge across the mouth of Newtown
Creek, a locality which will be mentioned presently in connection with a
notice of the landing of troops under Sir Henry Clinton.
* The following-named gentlemen composed the committee of One Hundred:
Isaae Low, Chairman; John Jay, Fraud's Lewis, John Alsop, Philip
Livingston, James Duane, E. Duyekman, William Seton, William W. Ludlow,
Cornelius Clopper, Abraham Brinekerhoff, Henry Remsen, Robert Ray, Evert
Bancker, Joseph Totten, Abraham P. Lott, David Beekman, Isaae Roosevelt,
Gabriel II. Ludlow, William Walton, Daniel Phoenix, Frederick Jay,
Samuel Broome, John De Lancey. Augustus van Horne, Abraham Duryee,
Samuel Verplanck, Rudolphus Putzema, John Morton, Joseph Hallett, Robert
Benson, Abraham Brasher, Leonard Lispenard, Nicholas Hoffman, P. V.
Brugh Livingston, Thomas Marsten, Lewis Pintard, John Imlay, Eleazar
Miller, Jr.. John Broome, John B. Moore, Nicholas Bogart, John Anthony,
Victor Bicker, William Goforth, Hercules Mulljin, Alexander M'Dougal,
John Reade, Joseph Ball, George Janeway, John White, Gabriel W. Ludlow,
John Lasher, Theophilus Anthony, Thomas Smith, Richard Liates, Oliver
Templeton, Jacobus van Landby, Jeremiah Platt, Peter S. Curtenius,
Thomas Randall, Lancaster Burling, Benjamin Kissam, Jacoh Lefferts,
Anthony van Dam, Abraham Walton, Hamilton Young, Nicholas Roosevelt,
Cornelius P. Low, Franeis Bassett, James Beekman, Thomas Ivers, William
Dunning, John Berrien, Benjamin Helme, William W. Gilbert, Daniel
Dunscombe, John Lamb, Richard Sharpe, John Morin Seott, Jacob van
Voorhis, Comfort Sands, Edward Flemming, Peter Goelet, Gerrit Kettletas,
Thomas Buchanan, James Desbrosses, Petrus Byvanek, Lott Embree.--See
Dunlap's History of New York, ii., Appendix, ccxvi.
[[[Removal of Cannons from the Battery.--Cannonade from the
Asia.--Newspapers in the City.]]]
{796}the sturdy Son of Liberty was now called, he proceeded to the
battery at nine o'clock on lhe evening of the twenty-third of August.
Captain Vandeput, of the _Asia_, informed of the intended movement, sent
a barge filled with armed men to watch the patriots. When they appeared,
a musket ball was indiscreetly sent among them from the barge. It was
answered by a volley, when the barge hastened to the _Asia_, bearing
several men killed and wounded. That vessel opened her port-holes, and
hurled three balls ashore in quick succession. Lamb ordered the drums
to beat to arms; the church bells were rung, and while all was confusion
and alarm, a broadside came from the _Asia_. Others rapidly followed,
and several houses near the fort and Whitehall were injured by the grape
and round shot. * No life was sacrificed, but terror seized the people.
Believing the rumor that the city was to be sacked and burned, hundreds
of men, women, and children were seen at midnight hurrying with their
light effects to places of safety beyond the doomed town. Yet the
patriots at the battery were firm, and in the face of the cannonade every
gun was deliberately removed. Some of them afterward performed good
service in the American cause. **
Deep feelings of exasperation moved the Sons of Liberty in the city
after this cannonade, and Tryon's fears wisely counseled his flight.
Mayor Hicks and others promised him protection, but he had more
confidence in gunpowder, and on the nineteenth of October[[1775]] he
took refuge on board the British sloop of war Halifax, *** where he
received his council, and, like Dunmore, attempted to exercise civil
authority. **** Aided by Rivington. (v) with
* Among the houses injured at that time was the tavern of Samuel Fraunce
(commonly called Black Sam, because of his dark complexion), on the
corner of Broad and Pearl Streets, where Washington parted with his
officers more than eight years afterward. That house, known as the Broad
Street Hotel, was partly destroyed by fire in June, 1852. Freneau,
in his Petition of Hugh Gaine, makes that time-server allude to the
cannonade of the Asia, and say,
"At first we supposed it was only a sham,
'Till he drove a round ball through the roof of Black Sam."
** There were twenty-one iron eighteen-pounders and some smaller cannon
on the battery. Alexander Hamilton, then a student in King's (now
Columbia) College, was among the citizens on that occasion. He had
organized a corps for artillery discipline among his fellow-students,
and fifteen of them were now with him. Among their trophies were two
six-pounders, which they buried in the earth on the College Green,
despite the menaces of Dr. Cooper, the Tory president. These two cannons
may yet (1852) be seen at the entrance gate of the College Green,
fronting Park Place.
*** The Continental Congress, on the sixth of October, recommended the
several Provincial Congresses and Committees of Safety to seeure every
person believed to be inimical to the Republican cause. No doubt this
recommendation hastened Tryon's flight.
**** The members in attendance were Oliver Delancey, Hugh Wallace,
William Axtell, John Harris Cruger and James Jauncey.
[Illustration: 9806]
* (v) James Rivington was a native of London, well educated, and of
pleasing deportment. He came to America in 1760, established a bookstore
in Philadelphia the same year, and in 1761 opened one near the foot of
Wall Street, in New York, where his Royal Gazetteer * was established
in April, 1773. No man was more thoroughly detested by the Whigs than
Rivington, for he held a keen and unscrupulous pen. His good nature
often pointed his severest thrusts. When, in 1781, he perceived
the improbability of success on the part of the British, he made a
peace-offering to the Americans, by furnishing the commander-in-chief
with important information. By means of books which he published, he
performed his treason without suspicion. He wrote his secret billets
upon thin paper, and bound them in the cover of a book, which he always
managed to sell to those who would carry the article immediately to
Washington. The men employed for this purpose were ignorant of the
nature of their service. While thus playing into the hands of the
Republicans, he unceasingly abused them, and kept Clinton, Robertson,
and Carleton in blissful ignorance of his perfidy. When the Loyalists
fled, and the American army entered the city in the autumn of 1783,
Rivington remained; a fact which has puzzled those acquainted with his
course during the war. Others, not a tithe so obnoxious, were driven
away; in his secret treason lies the explanation. His business declined,
and he lived in comparative poverty until July, 1802, when he died at
the age of seventy-eight years. The portrait here given is from a fine
painting by Stuart, in the possession of Honorable John Hunter, of
Hunter's Island, New Rochelle. The signature is half the size of the
original. Mr. Hunter remembers Rivington as a vivacious, companionable
man, fond of good living, a lover of wine, and a perfect gentleman in
his deportment.
* There were three other newspapers printed in the city when Rivington's
press was destroyed, namely, Gaine's New York Mercury, in Hanover
Square, established in 1752; Holt's New York Journal, in Dock (Pearl)
Street, near Wall, commenced in 1766; and Anderson's Constitutional
Gazette, a very small sheet, published for a few months in 1775. at
Beekman's Slip. Hugh Gaine was a time-server. He was a professed patriot
until the British took possession of New York in 1776, when he returned
to the city after a brief exile at Newark, became a moderate Loyalist,
and, on making an humble petition to the State Legislature at the close
of the war, he was allowed to remain. This petition was the subject of
one of Freneau's best satirical poems. Gaine kept a bookstore under the
sign of the Bible and Crown, at Hanover Square, for forty years. He died
on tin: twenty-fifth of April, 1807, at the age of eighty-one years.
Previous to the meeting of the first Congress, Holt's paper contained
the Snake device (see page 508, volume i.) at its head; in December,
after its session, it bore the annexed significant picture as a
vignette. This is half the size of the original. Upon the body of the
serpent were these words.
"United, now, alive and free,
Firm on this basis Liberty shall stand,
And thus supported ever bless our land,
'Till Time becomes Eternity."
After the destruction of his press, Rivington went to England. When the
British took possession of New York, he was appointed king's printer,
and in October, 1777, he resumed the publication of his paper, under the
original title. On the thirteenth of December, he changed the title to
"The Royal Gazette," and published it semi-weekly. During the occupation
of the city by the British, a paper was issued every day but one; Gaine's
Mercury on Monday; Rivington's Gazette on Wednesday and Saturday;
Robertson's, Mills', and Hicks' Loyal American Gazette on Thursday; and
Lewis's New York Mercury and General Advertiser on Friday. Rivington
alone assumed the title of "printer to the king."--Thomas's History of
Printing, ii., 312.
[[[Destruction of Rivington's Printing Materials.--Capture of
Seabury.--Rivington and Sears.]]]
{797}his _Royal Gazetteer_, his influence was still great, and and in
active propagation.
In total disregard of truth and common fairness, Rivington abused the
Republicans with unsparing severity, and none more bitterly than Captain
Sears. *
[Illustration: 8807]
That patriot, fired by personal insult and political zeal, came from
Connecticut, where he had gone to plan schemes for the future with
ardent Whigs, and at noonday entered the city[[Nov. 23, 1775]] at
the head of seventy-five light-horsemen, proceeded to the printing
establishment of Seabury ** and two other obnoxious Tories, and
managed to keep disaffection alive Rivington, at the foot of Wall
Street, placed a guard with fixed bayonets around it, put all of his
types into bags, destroyed his press and other apparatus, and then in
the same order, amid the shouts of the populace, and to the tune of
Yankee Doodle, left the city. They carried off the types and made
bullets of them. On their way back to Connecticut they disarmed all the
Tories in their route, and at West Chester seized and took with them the
Reverend Samuel in triumph to New Haven.
* Isaac Sears was born at Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1729. His ancestors,
who were among the earliest emigrants to Massachusetts, were from
Colchester, England, and came to Plymouth in 1630. Mr. Sears was a
successful merchant in the city of New York, engaged in the European and
West India trade, when political matters attracted his attention. When
the Stamp Act aroused the colonists, Sears stood forth as the champion
of right, and, as we have seen in preceding pages, was one of the most
active and zealous members of the association of the Sons of Liberty. He
was an active Whig during the whole war, and when it ended, his business
and his fortune had disappeared. Before the war he had commanded a
vessel engaged in the West India trade. In 1785, we find him on the
ocean as supercargo, bound for Canton, with others engaged in the
venture. When they arrived at Canton. Captain Sears was very ill with
fever, and on the twenty-eighth of October, 1785, he died at the age
of nearly fifty-seven years. He was buried upon French Island, and his
fellow-voyagers placed a slab, with a suitable inscription, over his
grave.
** This was Bishop Seabury of a later day, whose grave we have noticed
on page 50. He was born at New London in 1728, graduated at Yale in
1751, took orders in the church, in London, in 1753, and then settled
in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He was at Jamaica, Long Island, for ten
years, and then removed to West Chester, in the county of West Chester.
He took sides with the Loyalists, and was one of those who signed a
protest at White Plains against the measures of the Whigs. Sears and
his party carried him to New Haven, where he was kept for some time, and
then paroled to Long Island. His school at West Chester was broken up,
his church was converted into a hospital, and he went to New York,
and served as chaplain, at one time, in Colonel Fanning's corps of
Loyalists. At the close of the war he settled in his native town. He was
consecrated a bishop (the first in the United States) in 1784, and for
the remainder of his life he presided over the diocese of Connecticut
and Rhode Island. He died on the twenty-fifth of February, 1796.
[[[Disaffection.--Disarming of the Tories.--Troops under Lee in New
York.--His Head-quarters.--Sir Henry Clinton.]]]
{798}During the winter of 1775--6, disaffection to the Republican cause
prevailed extensively throughout the province, and in Queen's county and
vicinity, on Long Island, the people began to arm in favor of the crown.
[Illustration: 8808]
Tryon expected to see the province speedily declare in favor of royalty,
and from the _Duchess of Gordon_ (armed ship), where he made his
headquarters, he kept up an active correspondence with Hicks, Delancey,
and other Loyalists in the city. The Continental Congress promptly
opposed the progress of disaffection, and vigorous measures were adopted
for a general disarming of the Tories throughout the colonies. * Early
in January,[[1776]] Washington, then at Cambridge, was informed that
General Sir Henry Clinton was about to sail on a secret expedition. He
doubted not that New York was his destination, where Tryon was ready
to head the Loyalists in a formal demonstration in favor of the crown.
Fearing that province might be lost to the patriots, Washington readily
acceded to the request of General Charles Lee, then in Connecticut,
to embody volunteers in that colony, and march to New York. Governor
Trumbull lent his aid to the service, and within a fortnight Lee, having
the bold Isaac Sears for his adjutant general, was in rapid march toward
New York with twelve hundred men. His approach produced great alarm, and
many Tories fled, with their families and effects, to Long Island and
New Jersey. The Committee of Safety, yet dozing over the anodyne of
disaffection, were aroused by fear, and protested against Lee's entrance
into the city, because Captain Parker, of the _Asia_, had declared
his intention to cannonade and burn the town if rebel troops should be
allowed to enter it. ** Lee was unmoved alike by Parker's threats and
the committee's protest, and encamping the larger portion of his troops
in "the fields" (the present City Hall Park), he made his head-quarters
at the house of Captain Kennedy, No. 1 Broadway. *** He proclaimed his
mission, and said, "I come to prevent the occupation of Long Island or
the city by the enemies of liberty. If the ships of war are quiet, I
shall be quiet; if they make my presence a pretext for firing on the
town, the first house set in flames by their guns shall be the funeral
pile of some of their best friends." Lee's energy of expression and
action was potential. The Tories shrunk into inactivity; a glow of
patriotism was felt in the Provincial Congress, and measures were
speedily adopted for fortifying the city and the approaches to it, and
garrisoning it with two thousand men.
Sir Henry Clinton arrived at Sandy Hook on the day when Lee entered the
city. He sailed for North Carolina,[[March, 1776]] was followed thither
by Lee, and in June
* Resolutions to this effect were adopted on the second of January,
1776, and on the same day Lord Stirling was directed to "seize and
secure all the ammunition and warlike stores belonging to the enemy''
then or thereafter in New Jersey.--See Journal, ii., 5, 6, 7.
** Parker did not fire a shot because of the "rebel troops" in the city.
His reasons were ludicrous. He said Lee desired the destruction of the
city, and he would not gratify him.--Lee's Letter to Washington.
*** This house (yet standing) was built by Captain Kennedy, of the royal
navy, at about the time of his marriage with the daughter of Colonel
Peter Schuyler, of Newark, New Jersey, in April, 1765. The above
engraving exhibits the locality in the vicinity of the Kennedy House.
On the extreme left is seen the Broadway front of the Kennedy House (No.
1), where Lee, Washington, and afterward Sir Henry Clinton, Robertson,
Carleton, and other British officers, were quartered, and where André
wrote his letter, to Arnold. The building next to it (No. 3) is the one
occupied by Arnold (see page 209) when Champe attempted his capture. The
two high buildings beyond (Nos. 5 and 7) are more modern; the small, low
one (No. 9, Atlantic Garden) was Gage's head-quarters in 1765. On the
right of the picture is part of the Bowling Green, where the statue of
the king stood. The view is taken from the site of the northwest bastion
of Fort George.
[[[Fortifications upon York or Manhattan Island.]]]
{799}they were in conflict in Charleston harbor. The army in New
York was left in charge of Lord Stirling,[[March 7]] and that officer
prosecuted with vigor the labor of fortifying the city, begun by Lee.
* Already the Tories who remained had been compelled to take an oath to
act with the Americans if required, and officers were busy upon Staten
Island, and some parts of Long Island, in disarming them.
Washington hastened to New York after the British evacuated
Boston,[[March 17, 1776]] for he suspected Howe would sail directly to
attack that city. He arrived on the fourteenth of April, and approving
of the course of Lee and Stirling, he pushed forward the defenses of the
city. Fort George was strengthened, and in the course of three months
strong works were erected in the vicinity of the city and in the Hudson
Highlands. ** Toward the
* On the night of the tenth of April, one thousand Continentals went
over to Governors Island and constructed a redoubt upon the west side,
a little southeast of Castle William. On the same night a regiment went
over to Red Hook, the extreme point of land north of Gowanus Bay, over
which South Brooklyn is now spreading, constructed a redoubt for four
eighteen-pounders, and named it Fort Defiance. It was upon a small
island, close to the shore, near the water termination of Conover and
Van Brunt Streets, south of the Atlantic Docks.
[Illustration: 9809]
** Redoubts and batteries were constructed at eligible points along the
East River to Harlem, and along the Hudson to King's Bridge; also upon
Governor's Island, Red Hook, Brooklyn Heights, and Paulus's Hook. * Fort
George with its dependencies, on the site of ancient Fort Amsterdam,
was the principal military work upon the island. It had, when Washington
came into the city, two twelve-pounders and four thirty-two-pounders,
though capable of mounting sixty cannons. Connected with it was the
Grand Battery, with thirteen thirty-two pounders, one twenty-four, three
eighteen's, two two's, and one brass and three iron mortars. This
was enlarged after the British took possession, to a capacity for
ninety-four guns. This work was in the vicinity of the present
flag-staff upon the Battery. A little eastward of it, at the South Ferry
landing, was the Whitehall Battery, with two thirty-two pounders. From
this point to Corlaer's Ilook, along the East River, several works were
constructed. There was a battery of five guns upon Tenyck's Wharf, at
Coenties Slip, and upon Brooklyn Heights opposite, Fort Stirling, a
battery with eight guns, was constructed. It was between the present
Hicks and Clinton Streets, a little northeastward of Pierrepont Street.
At Old Coffee-house, Fly, Burling's, Beekman's, and Peek Slips, and at
the Exchange, foot of Broad Street, breast-works were thrown up. There
was also a barrier with two guns across Broadway, just above the Bowling
Green. At "the ship-yards," on the site of the present Catharine Market,
was an irregular work, called Waterbery's Battery, having seven guns. A
larger work was on Rutgers' first hill (a little eastward of the Jews'
burying-ground), at the intersection of Market and Madison Streets. It
was called Badlam's Battery, and mounted eight guns. Another small work,
of horse-shoe form, was on a high bank near the water, in Pike Street,
between Cherry and Monroe Streets, with a breast work on the water's
edge. Here General Spencer was encamped, and this was called Spencer's
Redoubt. It had two twelve-pounders. On Rutgers' second hill, between
Henry and Madison, Clinton and Monroe Streets, was a star redoubt,
embrasured for twelve guns. This was connected by an irregular line of
works, extending to a strong battery called Crown Point, at Corlaer's
Hook, situated upon the site of the present Allaire Works. Eastward of
this, upon Burnt Mill Point, was a battery, on the site of the Novelty
Iron Works. From Crown Point was a line of intrenchments extending to
a strong redoubt, of circular form, mounting eight heavy pieces, and
called Fort Pitt. It was upon the brow of a hill at the intersection of
Grand and Pitt Streets. From Fort Pin a series of strong works extended
nearly on a line with the present Grand and Broome Streets, to Broadway,
and thence, diverging to the northwest, terminated in a redoubt on
the brow of a hill, on the borders of a marsh near the intersection of
Thompson and Spring Streets, Within this line, upon an eminence called
Bayard's Mount, was the largest of all the works, except Fort George
and the Grand Battery. This was called Independent Battery, and the
Americans named the eminence Bunker Hill. This name was retained
until the Collect or Fresh Water Pond, which covered many acres in the
vicinity of the Halls of Justice, was filled by digging down the hills
around it.
[Illustration: 6809]
** The battery on Bunker Hill was upon the space included within the
intersections of Center, Mott, Mulberry, Grand, and Broome Streets; and
for a long time after the hill was digged down, the brick lining of a
well, constructed within the works, stood up like a huge chimney. This
battery had nine eight-pounders, four three's, and six royal cohorns and
mortars. The first work on the Hudson, after leaving Fort George, was
the Oyster Battery in the rear of No. 1 Broadway. It had two thirty-two
pounders and three twelve's. Southwest of Trinity Independent Batteky.
church, on the high river bank, was a Battery of four guns.
West of Greenwich Street ("Greenwich road"), near the water, between
Reade and Duane Streets, was the Jersey Battery, with five guns. Along
the high river bank a breast-work extended almost to the Vauxhall (see
page 788) at the corner of Warren and Greenwich Streets. On Greenwich,
between Franklin and North Moore Streets, was the "Air-furnace"
and "Brew-house." The former was fortified, and from it a line of
intrenchments extended northeast, to the north part of the present
St. John's Park, overlooking Lispenard's Meadows. On the river bank, in
front of the "Brew-house," was a circular work called the Grenadier's
Battery, with three twelve pounders and two mortars From it a line of
breast-works extended along the river to Hubert Street. From that
point, close along the west side of Greenwich Street, was a line of
breast-works, extending to Desbrosses Street. Where Watt Street crosses
Greenwich was another small breastwork; at the foot of King Street was
another; and from the foot of Clarkson to Barrow was another. Upon the
high ground known until within a few years as Richmond Hill, there was
quite an extensive line of fortifications, which commanded the river,
and the Greenwich and Broadway roads. This line commenced near the
junction of Spring and M'Dougal Streets, and, sweeping around near
Houston and Hammersley, ended at Variek, near King Street. On the west
side of Broadway, near Houston Street, was an eminence on which works
were erected; and directly east of them, between Broadway and the
Bowery, were four small breast-works, a few rods apart. East of the
Bowery, at the intersection of Forsyth and Delancey Streets, was a small
circular battery. On the west side of Broadway, near Walker, was an
irregular work; and the Hospital on Broadway, fronting Pearl Street),
a strong stone building, was fortified. There was also a line of
breast-works extending along the East River from the present Dry Dock
to Stuyvesant Square; and at Horn's Hook, at the foot of Eighty-ninth
Street, was a work ealled Thompson's Battery, with nine guns. I was
informed by the venerable Judge Woodhull, of Franklinville, Long Island
(now ninety-eight years of age), that when the lines across the island,
from the East River toward the Hudson, were constructed, the merchants
and other citizens were, pressed into service. It must be remembered
that most of the streets here mentioned were not then in existence.
Chambers Street up Broadway, Hester Street up the Bowery, and Catharine
Street up the East River, were the extreme points to which streets
were laid out at the time of the Revolution. Now (1852) the streets and
avenues are all opened to Fortieth Street, and some beyond and almost
a solid mass of edifices cover the island from river to river below
Thirty-second Street. Then the Hospital was quite in the fields, and
Greenwich was a country village.
[[[Washington's Conference with Congress.--Preparation for the Defense
of New York.--Landing of British Troops.]]]
{800}close of May,[[May 23]] he left the troops in command of General
Putnam, while he hastened to Philadelphia to confer with Congress
respecting the general defense of the colonies.
[Illustration: 8810]
The wicked bargain of Great Britain with the German princes for their
men was now known, and it was believed that New York was the point where
the mercenary vultures would probably strike their first blow. To that
point the eyes of all America were now turned. Congress authorized a
re-enforcement of thirteen thousand eight hundred militia, to be drawn
from New England, New York, * and New Jersey, and provided for the
establishment of a flying camp of ten thousand men, to be formed of
militia from Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. The latter were to
rendezvous at Amboy, and the accomplished General Mercer was appointed
to the command. General Greene took post at Brooklyn, and Superintended
the preparation of defenses there. On his return,[[June 7]]Washington
went to the upper end of the island, and personally aided in the surveys
and the arrangement of the plan of Fort Washington and its outworks.
General Howe, who went to Halifax from Boston, arrived at Sandy Hook on
the twenty-ninth of June,[[1776]] with ships and transports bearing his
recruited army, where he was visited by Governor Tryon.
[Illustration: 6810]
On the eighth of July he landed nine thousand men upon Staten Island,
*** and there awaited the arrival of his brother, Admiral Howe, with
English
* John Morin Scott was appointed to the command of the New York troops,
with the commission of a brigadier.
** I was informed by the venerable Anna van Antwerp, * about a fortnight
before her death, in the autumn of 1851, that Washington made his
head-quarters, on first entering the city, at the spacious house (half
of which is yet standing at 180 Pearl Street, opposite Cedar Street),
delineated in the engraving. The large window, with an arch, toward the
right, indicates the center of the original building. It is of brick,
stuccoed, and roofed with tiles. There Washington remained until
summoned to visit Congress at Philadelphia, toward the last of May.
On his return, he went to the Kennedy House, No. 1 Broadway, where he
remained until the evacuation in September.
*** The main body of Howe's troops landed near the present quarantine
ground, and encamped upon the hills in the vicinity. The fleet had
anchored off Vanderventer's point (the telegraph station at the
Narrows), and three ships of war and some transports brought the English
troops within the Narrows, to the landing-place.--(Howe's Dispatch to
Lord George Germaine.) Howe made his head-quarters at the Rose and Crown
Tavern, upon the road leading from Stapleton to Richmond, near New
Dorp. The house is near the forks of the Richmond and Amboy roads, and
overlooks the beautiful level country between it and the sea, two miles
distant. It is now (1852) the property of Mr. Leonard Parkinson, of Old
Town, Staten Island. The house was built by a Huguenot, one of the first
settlers upon that part of the island. When Howe landed, the great body
of the people on the island formed a corps of Loyalists, under Tryon,
and some of them were in the battle near Brooklyn.
* Mrs. Van Antwerp left the city with her parents when the British took
possession, and retired to Tappan, where she was married. They returned
to the city after the war, and her husband purchased the lot No. 38
Maiden Lane, where she resided from that time until her death, a period
of almost seventy years. Her style of living was that of the Revolution,
and all the persuasions of her wealthy children could not lure her from
that simplicity and the home of her early years of married life. She
arose one morning, sat down by her table, leaned her head upon it, and
expired like a waning ember, at the age of ninety-five years. Almost all
of the few who knew her half a century ago, had forgotten her.
[[[Plot to destroy Washington.--Declaration of Independence read to the
Army.--Destruction of the King's Statue.]]]
{801}regulars and Hessian hirelings. These arrived in the course of a
few days, and on the eleventh, Clinton and Parker, with their broken
forces, joined them. Another debarkation took place on the twelfth, and
there, upon the wooded heights of Staten Island, above Stapleton and
Clifton, and upon the English transports, almost thirty thousand men
stood ready to fall upon the republicans. * Already the Declaration of
Independence had gone abroad; ** the statue of the king in New York
had been pulled down, *** and brave men, pledged to the support of the
Continental Congress and its measures, were piling fortifications upon
every eligible point around the devoted city.
* A plot, originated by Tryon, to murder the American general officers
on the arrival of the British, or at best to capture Washington and
deliver him to Sir William Howe, was discovered at this time. It was
arranged to blow up the magazine, secure the passes to the city, and at
one blow deprive the Republicans of their leaders, and by massacre
or capture annihilate the "rebel army." Mayor Hicks was one of the
conspirators; and from his secure place on board the Duchess of Gordon,
Tryon sent money freely to bribe Americans. Two of Washington's Guard
were seduced, but the patriotism of a third was proof against their
temptations, and he exposed the plot. Hicks, Gilbert Forbes (a gunsmith
on Broadway), and about a dozen others, were immediately arrested,
and sent prisoners to Connecticut. It was ascertained that about five
hundred persons were concerned in the conspiracy. Thomas Hickey, one of
the Guard, was hanged on the twenty-seventh of June, 1776. This was
the first military execution In New York.--See Spark's Writings of
Washington, iii., 438; Force's American Archives, vi., 1064; lb., i.
(second series), 117; Game's New York Mercury.
** Washington received the Declaration of Independence on the ninth
of July, with instructions to have it read to the army. He immediately
issued an order for the several brigades, then in and near the city,
to be drawn up at six o'clock that evening, to hear it read by their
several commanders or their aids. The brigades were formed in hollow
squares on their respective parades. The venerable Zachariah Greene
(commonly known as "Parson Greene," the father-in-law of Mr. Thompson,
historian of Long Island), yet (1852) living at Hempstead, at the age
of ninety-three years, informed me that he belonged to the brigade, then
encamped on the "Common," where the City Hall now stands. The hollow
square was formed at about the spot where the Park Fountain now is.
He says Washington was within the square, on horseback, and that the
Declaration was read In a clear voice by one of his aids. When it was
concluded, three hearty cheers were given. Holt's Journal for July 11,
1776, says, "In pursuance of the Declaration of Independence, a general
jail delivery took place with respect to debtors." Ten days afterward,
the people assembled at the City Hall, at the head of Broad Street, to
hear the Declaration read. They then took the British arms from over
the seat of justice in the court-room, also the arms wrought in stone
in front of the building, and the picture of the king in the council
chamber, and destroyed them, by fire, in the street. They also ordered
the British arms in all the churches in the city to be destroyed. This
order seems not to have been obeyed. Those in Trinity church were taken
down and carried to New Brunswick by the Reverend Charles Inglis, at the
close of the war, and now hang upon the walls of a Protestant Episcopal
church in St. John's.
*** The statue of George the Third was equestrian, made of lead, and
gilded. It was the workmanship of Wilton, then a celebrated statuary of
London, and was the first equestrian effigy of his majesty yet erected.
It was placed upon its pedestal, in the center of the Bowling Green,
on the twenty-first of August, 1770. On the same evening when the
Declaration of Independence was read to the troops in New York, a large
concourse of people assembled, pulled down the statue, broke it in
pieces, and sent it to be made into bullets. Ebenezer Hazard, in a
letter to Gates, referring to the destruction of the king's statue,
said, "His troops will probably have melted majesty fired at them." Some
of the soldiers appear to have been engaged in the matter, for on the
following morning Washington issued an order for them to desist from
such riotous acts in future. * The greater portion of the statue was
sent to Litchfield, in Connecticut, and there converted into bullets by
two daughters and a son of Governor Wolcott, a Mrs. and Miss Marvin,
and a Mrs. Beach. According to an account current of the cartridges made
from this statue, found among the papers of Governor Wolcott, it appears
that it furnished materials for forty-two thousand bullets.
* In a coarse Tory drama, entitled "The Battle of Brooklyn; a farce
in two acts, as it was performed on Long Island on Tuesday, the
twenty-seventh day of August, 1776, by the representatives of the
Tyrants of America assembled, at Philadelphia," published by Rivington,
the destruction of the statue is attributed to Washington. A servant
girl of Lady Gates is made to say, concerning the chief, "And more, my
lady, did he not order the king's statue to be pulled down, and the head
cut oft'." Mr. Greene described the statue to me as of the natural size,
both horse and man. The horse was poised upon his hinder legs. The king
had a crown upon his head; his right hand held the bridle-reins, the
left rested upon the handle of a sword. The artist omitted stirrups, and
the soldiers often said, in allusion to the fact, "the tyrant ought to
ride a hard-trotting horse, without stirrups." Stephens, in his Travels
in Greece, &e. (ii., 33), says, that in the house of a Russian major, at
Chioff he saw a picture representing the destruction of this statue.
The major pledged him in the toast, "Success to Liberty throughout the
world."
[[[Effect of the Declaration.--Howe's Letter to Washington.--Commission
of the Brothers.--Preparations for Battle.]]]
{802}On the arrival of General Howe at Sandy Hook, the Provincial
Congress of New York adjourned to White Plains, and there, on the ninth
of July, they reassembled, approved of the Declaration of Independence,
and changed the title of the Assembly to _Convention of the
Representatives of the State of New York._ The Declaration, however,
offended many influential men, who, though warmly attached to their
country, and yearning for a redress of grievances, shuddered at the
thought of separation from Great Britain. Some closed their mouths in
silence and folded their arms in inaction, while others, like Beverly
Robinson, the Delancey's, and men of that character, actively espoused
the cause of the king. The patriot army in New York was surrounded by
domestic enemies, more to be dreaded than open adversaries, and this
fact seemed favorable to the hopes of Howe, that the olive branch would
be accepted by the Americans when offered. * He soon perceived that much
of loyalty was the child of timidity, and when his proclamations
were sent abroad, offering peace only on condition of submission, the
missiles proved powerless. Although doubtless desiring peace, he was
obliged to draw the sword and sever the leashes of the blood-hounds of
war.
On the twelfth of July, the Rose and Phonix ships of war, with their
decks guarded by sand-bags, sailed up the bay, and passing the American
batteries without serious injury, proceeded up the Hudson to Haverstraw
Bay, for the double purpose of keeping open a communication with
Carleton, who was endeavoring to make his way southward by Lake
Champlain, ** and for furnishing arms to the Tories of West Chester.
The vigilant Whigs would not allow their boats to land, and there they
remained inactive for three weeks. In the mean while, the belligerent
forces were preparing for the inevitable battle. Hulks of vessels were
sunk in the channel between Governor's Island *** and the Battery, and
_chevaux de frise_ were formed there under the direction of General
Putnam, to prevent the passage of the British vessels up the East River.
A large body of troops were concentrated at Brooklyn, under General
Greene; Sullivan and his little army hastened from the North; two
battalions from Pennsylvania and Maryland, under Smallwood, arrived, and
the New York and New England militia flocked to the city by hundreds.
On the first of August the American army in and around New York numbered
about twenty-seven thousand men,
* General Howe, ami his brother, the admiral, were appointed by
Parliament commissioners to treat for peace with the Americans. They
were authorized to extend a free pardon to all who should return to
their allegiance; to declare penitent towns or colonies exempt from the
penalties of non-intercourse; and to offer rewards to those who should
render meritorious services in restoring tranquillity. Howe sent
proclamations to this effect ashore at Amboy, addressed to the colonial
governors, and designed for general circulation among the people. The
General Congress denounced it as a scheme to "amuse and disarm the
people," and exhorted them to perceive "that the valor alone of their
country was to save its liberties." Journal, ii., 260. At about the same
time, Colonel Paterson, the British adjutant general, went to New York
with a flag, bearing a letter from General Howe, addressed to "George
Washington, Esq." this was so addressed because the Briton was unwilling
to acknowledge the official character of the "rebel chief." It was
a silly movement; Washington penetrated the design, and refused any
communication, unless addressed to General Washington. Paterson urged
Washington not to be punctilious, pleading the necessity of waving all
ceremony, for Howe came to cause the sheathing of swords, it possible.
Washington was inflexible, and said, in reference to the commissioners,
that they seemed empowered only to grant pardons; that those who had
committed no fault needed no pardon, and that the Americans were only
defending their rights as British subjects. Paterson returned, and Howe
made no further attempts to correspond with "George Washington, Esq."
Congress, by resolution, expressed its approval of the course of the
commander-in-chief in this matter.
** The chief plan of the campaign of 1776 was for Howe to attack New
York and ascend the Hudson, while Carleton should come from Canada and
form a junction. This would effectually cut off the Eastern States from
the rest of the confederacy. Clinton, in the mean while, was to make
war in the Southern States, and the American forces being thus divided,
might be easily conquered. Their designs miscarried. Clinton was
repulsed at Charleston, Carleton was kept at bay, and Howe did not pass
the Highlands.
*** The original name of this island was Nutten. The rents of the land
being a perquisite of the colonial governors, it was called Governor's
Island. It was held as such perquisite until the close of Governor
Clinton's administration. General Johnson, of Brooklyn, informed me
that Clinton rented it to Dr. Price, who built a house of entertainment
there, and laid out a race-course. Owing to the difficulty of taking
race-horses to the island, it was abandoned after two or three years,
and the course at Harlem was established.
[[[Disposition of American Detachments.--Kip's Bay.--The Kip Family.]]]
{803}but at least one fourth of them were unfitted by sickness for
active duty. Bilious fever prostrated Greene about the middle of August,
and Sullivan was placed in command at Brooklyn. A small detachment was
ordered to Governor's Island; another was posted at Paulus' Hook, where
Jersey City now stands, and General George Clinton, with a body of New
York militia, was ordered to West Chester county to oppose the landing
of the British on the shores of the Sound, or, in the event of their
landing, to prevent their taking possession of the strong post at King's
Bridge. Parson's brigade took post at Kip's Bay, * on the East River to
watch British vessels if they should enter those waters. Such was the
position of the two armies immediately antecedent to the battle near
Brooklyn, at the close of August, 1776.
* The family mansion of the Kips, a strong house built of brick
imported from Holland, remained near the corner of Second Avenue and
Thirty-fourth Street, until July, 1850, when it was taken down. A
pear-tree near, planted in 1700, bore fruit the present season. The
house was built in 1641 by Samuel Kip, who was secretary of the council
of New Netherlands, and at the time of its destruction was probably the
oldest edifice in the State of New York. The sketch here given is from a
painting in possession of the Reverend W. Ingraham Kip, D.D., of Albany,
and gives its appearance at the time of the Revolution. The Kip family
are among the oldest in this state. Ruloff de Kype (anglicized to Kip
after the English took possession of New Netherlands) was the first of
the name found in history. He was a native of Bretagne, and was a warm
partisan of the Guises in the civil wars between Protestants and Papists
in the sixteenth century. On the defeat of his party, he fled to the Low
Countries. He afterward joined the army of the Duke of Anjou, and
fell in battle near Jarnac. He was buried in a church there, where an
altar-tomb was erected to his memory bearing his coat of arms. * His
son Ruloff became a Protestant, and settled in Amsterdam. His grandson,
Henry, (born in 1576) became an active member of the "Company of Foreign
Countries," whieh was organized in 1588 for the purpose of exploring
a northeast passage to the Indies. In 1635 he eame to America with his
family, but soon returned to Holland. His sons remained, bought large
tracts of land, and were active in publie affairs. One of them (Henry)
was a member of the first popular Assembly in New Netherlands (see page
783), and married a daughter of De Sille, the attorney general. His
brother Jacob bought the land at Kip's Bay, and a third son, Isaac,
owned the property which is now the City Hall Park. Nassau Street was
called Kip Street. In 1686 one of the family purchased the tract where
the village of Rhinebeck, Dutchess county, now stands. It was called
"the manor of Kipsburg." A part of this was sold to Henry Beekman, by
whose grand-daughter, the mother of Chancellor Livingston, it passed
into the Livingston family. At the opening of the Revolution, the Kip
family were divided in polities; some held royal commissions, others
were stanch Whigs. The proprietors of the Kip's Bay property were strong
Whigs, but one of them, Samuel, was induced by Colonel Delancey to take
the loyal side. He raised a company of cavalry, principally from his own
tenants, joined Delancey, and was active in West Chester county, where,
in a skirmish in 1781, he was severely wounded. He lived several years
after the war, and suffered great loss of property by confiscation. For
several years after the British took possession of York Island, Kip's
house was used as head-quarters by officers. There Colonel Williams, of
the 80th regiment, was quartered in 1780, and on the day when Andre left
the city to meet Arnold, Williams gave a dinner to Sir Henry Clinton and
his staff. André was there and shared in the socialities of the hour.
It was his last dinner in New York. Such is well authenticated
tradition.--See Holgate's American Genealogies, page 109.
* The device was a shield. On one side, occupying a moiety, was a
cross. The other moiety was quartered by a strip of gold; above were
two griffins, and below an open mailed hand. There were two crests, a
game-cock, and a demi-griffin holding a cross: the legend, "Vestigia
nulla retrorsum."
[[[Landing of the British.--General De Heister.]]]
{804}