A History of the city of Newark, New Jersey : embracing practically two and a half centuries, 1666-1913, Volume I, Part 21

Author: Urquhart, Frank J. (Frank John), 1865- 4n; Lewis Historical Publishing Company. 4n
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: New York, N.Y. ; Chicago, Ill. : The Lewis Historical Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1186


USA > New Jersey > Essex County > Newark > A History of the city of Newark, New Jersey : embracing practically two and a half centuries, 1666-1913, Volume I > Part 21


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The resolutions were manifestly framed with great care, and one reads between the lines readily enough that their framers were anxious not to offend the home government unduly. The thinking people were still hoping against hope that some way out of the burning difficulties would be found. It is interesting to note that


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among the members of the committee named in the sixth section of the resolutions is William Livingston, New Jersey's first governor under the new republic who was a resident of Essex County, and who no doubt came from his home in Elizabethtown to attend the momentous meeting in Newark. It is probable that he had something to do with the actual framing of the above reso- lutions since he was one of the master minds of the Province at the time.


In response to the appeal to the other counties, just given in full, the remaining twelve (as the Province was then constituted) followed the example of Essex and held similar meetings at which committees were appointed to attend a convention, which was held on Thursday, July 21, 1774, at New Brunswick, and continued in session until the following Saturday. To Essex county fell the honor of having one of its representatives as chairman of this convention, Stephen Crane. Seventy-two attended and selected five delegates to the first Continental Congress, two of these being William Livingston and Stephen Crane.


The Congress met in September of that year, 1774, and, obedient to one of the measures that it adopted, the Essex county committee (comprising the men who had been sent to the con- vention at New Brunswick), recommended that committees be appointed for each of the three precincts of the county, of not less than fifteen for the first two precincts, Elizabethtown and Newark, and of not less than ten for the third, Acquackanonck. It was to be the business of these committees to hold up to popular indignation and scorn all who should prove unfriendly to the Congress and its works. Such committees were appointed in December, 1774.


NEWARK FORMALLY DECLARES HERSELF.


In May 4, of the following year, at a town meeting held in the First Church, adjoining the court house on Broad street, in Newark, a patriotic meeting was held, and the following record of the proceedings is the best possible description of it:


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"At a meeting of the Freeholders and Inhabitants of the Township of Newark, in New Jersey, on Thursday, the 4th day of May, A. D. 1775, Dr. William Burnet in the chair.


"An Association having been entered into and subscribed by the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of said Town, a motion was made and agreed to, that the same be read. The same was read and is as follows:


"We, the Freeholders and Inhabitants of the Township of Newark, having deliberately considered the openly avowed design of the Ministry of Great Britain to raise a revenue in America, being affected with horrour at the bloody scene now acting in the Massachusetts Bay for carrying that arbitrary design into Execu- tion; firmly convinced that the very existence of the rights and liberties of America can, under God, subsist on no other basis than the most animated and perfect union of its inhabitants: and being sensible of the necessity of the present exigency of preserving good order and a due regulation in all public measures; with hearts perfectly abhorrent of slavery, do solemnly under all the sacred ties of religion, honor and love to our country, associate and resolve that we will personally, and as far as our influence can extend, endeavor to support and carry into execution whatever measures may be recommended by the Continental Congress or agreed upon by the proposed convention of Deputies of this Province, for the purpose of preserving and fixing our constitution on a permanent basis and opposing the execution of the several despotick and oppressive Acts of British Parliament, until the wished for recon- ciliation between Great Britain and America on constitutional principles can be obtained.


"That a General Committee be chosen by this Town for the purposes aforesaid, and that we will be directed by, and support, them in all things respecting the 'common cause, the preservation of peace, good order, the safety of individuals and private property.'


"Voted, That Isaac Ogden, esquire; Philip Van Cortlandt, Bethuel Pierson and Caleb Camp be the deputies to represent said Township in the Provincial Congress referred to in the said association.


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"The General Committee also mentioned in the said association then chosen, consisting of forty-four.


"Agreed, That the powers delegated to the Deputies and General Committees continue until the expiration of five weeks after the rising of the next Provincial Congress and no longer.


"Agreed, That the General Committee have power to appoint one or more sub-committees, to act on any emergency.


"Isaac Longworth, "Town Clerk.


"The General Committee immediately convened and elected Lewis Ogden, esquire; Dr. William Burnet, Elisha Boudinot, esquire; Isaac Ogden, esquire, and Mr. Isaac Longworth, to be a Committee of Correspondence for said Town.


"Elisha Boudinot," "Clerk to Committee."


A FEARLESS GRAND JURY.


Essex county was now one of the chief centres of political activity in the whole Province. A few days before the above resolutions were adopted an added impetus had been given the rapidly rising sentiment of defiance. Chief Justice Frederick Smyth, in his charge to the grand jury of Essex in the old court house, in Newark, had cautioned the jurors to guard against tyranny within their own borders and not brood over "imaginary tyranny" three thousand miles distant. Members of this jury were also connected with the Committee of Correspondence and they gave a fearless reply to the effect that those who imposed taxation without representation and who refused trial by jury were flesh and blood tyrants. Nor was there anything imaginary about the British land and sea forces then gathered about Boston.7


The call for the first meeting in Essex County at which the circular letter to the other counties was drafted, the resolutions drawn at that meeting and the document just reproduced, are taken from the minutes of the first Provincial Congress and the Council of Safety of New Jersey, as given In Dr. Stephen Wickes' History of the Oranges.


" Lee's New Jersey as a Colony and as a State. Vol. ii, pp. 50-51.


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APEX AND ENTABLATURE, ESSEX COUNTY COURT HOUSE


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THE LANDING OF CARTERET From mural decoration in Essex County Court House


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FOREMAN OF THE GRAND JURY BEBUKING CHIEF JUSTICE From mural decoration in Essex County Court House


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These later proceedings prepared the people of Essex county for the organization of the first Provincial Congress. The tone of independence is much more marked than in the first circular addressed from Newark to the other counties calling for the first convention, which was held at New Brunswick, as already described. The people now began to see that they were about to engage in a momentous struggle for their rights. Governor William Franklin was first asked to call the Assembly in special session to select delegates to the first Continental Congress, but he had refused. So the people of Essex had taken the initiative. In opening the last session of the Provincial Assembly but one, in January, 1775, the Governor urged the delegates to maintain their loyalty to the home government, and to refrain from further co-operation with those of the other colonies who he held to be inciting sedition, concluded his address as follows:


GOVERNOR FRANKLIN'S WARNING IGNORED.


"You have now pointed out to you, gentlemen, two roads- one evidently leading to peace, happiness and a restoration of the public tranquility-the other inevitably conducting you to anarchy and misery, and all the horrors of a civil war. Your wisdom, your prudence, your regard for the true interests of the people will be best known when you have shown to which road you give the preference. If to the former, you will probably afford satisfaction to the moderate, the sober and the discreet part of your constitu- ents. If to the latter, you will perhaps give pleasure. to the warm, the rash and inconsiderate among them, who, I would willingly hope, violent, as is the temper of the present times, are not even now the majority. But, it may be well for you to remember, should any calamity hereafter befall them from your compliance with their inclinations, instead of pursuing, as you ought, the dictates of your own judgment, that the consequences of their returning to a proper sense of their conduct, may prove deservedly fatal to yourselves."


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Governor Franklin's solemn warning had no effect. The Assembly unanimously approved the proceedings of the first Conti- nental Congress held the previous September and re-elected the delegates to Congress chosen at the New Brunswick convention. A petition to the king, reciting the grievances of the Province of New Jersey was drawn up and sent, as suggested by Franklin in his address. The ministry in response offered full and complete pardon to any province if its Assembly would provide for the maintenance of civil government and the administration of justice within its borders, and promised that if this were done the home government would not tax that province. The New Jersey dele- gates to Assembly, in common with those of the other provinces, readily understood that this was simply a clever scheme to wreck the growing solidarity of the union of the colonies, and answered that they could do nothing at that time, since the Continental Congress had the matter of civil government under consideration.


THE FIRST CALL FOR MILITIA, AUGUST, 1775.


On May 2, 1775, the New Jersey Committee of Correspondence, in session at New Brunswick, selected the twenty-third day of the same month for the second Provincial convention, to be held in Trenton. This body organized as the "Provincial Congress" and assumed the powers of government in New Jersey, ignoring the Governor, and taking preliminary steps to defend the colony from invasion. A session was held in August of the same year, when it was decided to organize fifty-four companies of minute men, of sixty-four men each, in the colony. Another.session was held late in January, 1776, to consider several communications from the Continental Congress and to make further plans for the defence of the Province. Governor Franklin called the Legislature together on November 16, 1775, but no business of importance was trans- acted. On December 6, the Assembly was prorogued by Franklin to meet on January 3, 1776. But it never re-assembled; and thus ended the Provincial Assembly of New Jersey.


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THE ARREST OF GOVERNOR FRANKLIN.


On May 30, 1776, Franklin directed that the Legislature convene, in the name of the king, on June 20. Immediately the Provincial Congress, by a vote of thirty-eight to eleven, voted that the proclamation of the "late Governor ought not to be obeyed"; and a few days later decided that his proclamation had placed Franklin "in direct contempt, and violation, of the resolve of the Continental Congress," that he had "discovered himself to be an enemy to the liberties of the country; and that measures should be immediately taken to secure his person." $


He was arrested on June 17, 1776, at Perth Amboy, and a guard of sixty militiamen was maintained around his house near that town (as he refused to sign a parole) until removed to Burling- ton, by order of Congress four or five days later. He was there examined by the Provincial Congress, at the instance of Congress in Philadelphia, to determine whether he should be kept in con- finement. Franklin refused to answer any and all questions, claiming that the Convention had usurped the king's government in the province. At the close of the month he was sent to Con- necticut, under guard, to Governor Trumbull. There he soon became active in furthering the cause of the home government, helping the king's commissioners to induce the people to sign allegiance papers to the Crown and by so doing receive pardons. For this he was put in close confinement and not allowed the use of pen, ink or paper.


THE LAST OF THE ROYAL GOVERNORS.


In 1777 Franklin sought his parole from New Jersey, and Washington forwarded his application, intimating that he was inclined to favor it being granted, largely because of Mrs. Frank- lin's poor health. The Provincial Congress refused to grant the parole, being satisfied from certain of Franklin's letters, which had been intercepted, that he would continue a dangerous enemy to the


" Gordon's History of New Jersey, p. 191.


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cause of liberty. Mrs. Franklin died early in 1778 in New York City, and in March of that year Franklin was exchanged after being imprisoned for two years and four months. He lived in New York for four years and was one of the leading spirits among the loyalists there. He removed to England in August, 1782, no doubt convinced that the cause which he had so persistently upheld was lost. The British government gave him £1,800 to compensate him for the losses he had sustained and granted him a pension of £800 a year for the rest of his life. He died in 1813, at the age of eighty-eight.


Thus passed the last of the royal governors of New Jersey, who in steady succession had directed the affairs of the Province for three-quarters of a century, from the time the original rulers, the Lords Proprietors, were forced to relinquish it. Franklin was born in Philadelphia and in his youth was closely associated with his illustrious father in the latter's scientific experiments. The youth saw active service during the French and Indian war, and later was sent to England. He was given an honorary degree, that of master of arts, by Oxford University. He was appointed Governor of the Province of New Jersey, in 1762, through the influence of Lord Bute, and it is said on excellent authority that Benjamin Franklin, his father, had nothing whatever to do with this preferment being shown his son.


Governor Franklin was a man of broad culture, and deeply interested in promoting the welfare of his Province. He encour- aged the cultivation of hemp, flax and the introduction of mulberry trees in order to foster the silk industry. "And had not this simple branch of industry been prostrated by the war, silk would soon have become a staple commodity of the country." " At the close of a conference with the northern Indians, the Six Nations, acknowl- edged New Jersey's fairness in adjusting boundaries, by conferring upon Franklin the title of "Sagorighwiyogstha," Grand Arbiter or doer of Justice. Franklin had laid his plans to have a census


" Gordon's History of New Jersey, p. 152.


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of the Province taken, as well as a statistical account of it, when the chaos immediately preceding the war put a stop to everything of the sort. It is also said of him that he had the largest and best library in all New Jersey.


The last of New Jersey's royal governors was plainly a man of parts, and endowed with much of his father's resourcefulness. Had he been permitted a decade or so of administration, untroubled by forces from without, he would have accomplished vast good for the Province, beyond the shadow of a doubt. There are few pages in New Jersey's history more interesting than those which cover the activities of the last of the Crown's representatives. Franklin was, above everything else, loyal to the party that had given him preferment. Although born in Pennsylvania, and inti- mate with his remarkable father through several of the formative years of his youth, he was diametrically opposed to him when the great questions that resulted in the Declaration of Independence were concerned. Strange to say, in this instance, the father was the radical and the son the conservative. Upon his returning from England, in 1775, Benjamin Franklin visited his son, at Perth Amboy, at his estate at Rancocus. It is on record that the father then labored to convince the son that he was on the wrong side, and it is said that the debates between them were animated. From that time on they were estranged. "Nothing," wrote Benjamin Franklin in a letter, in 1784, "has ever hurt me so much and affected me with keen sensations, as to find myself deserted in my old age by my only son, and not only deserted, but to find him taking up arms against me in a cause wherein my good fame, fortune and life were all at stake."


4 It is a most interesting fact that both the Provincial Con- vention and the Provincial Assembly under Franklin continued to do business for more than a year, and with no seriously con- flicting action. More than half of the members of the Convention of 1775, were members of the Provincial Assembly of that year. The trend of the times, however, is significantly shown from the fact that in the next Assembly, that of 1776, and the last under


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the Colonial form of government, but seven of its members were delegates to the Provincial Convention. "Still," says Whitehead. in his History of Perth Amboy, "I have failed to discover any documents that indicate a probability that the Governor could have moulded that body to any sinister views that it might have entertained."


THE STATE'S FIRST CONSTITUTION.


The Provincial Congress, of 1775, (as well as the Assembly) was faithful in its expressions of loyalty to the authority of the Crown. When 1776 opened, the Congress had, however, practically obtained control of the affairs of the Province, and upon assembling at Burlington, early in June, preparations were made to draft a new constitution. On July 2, 1776, two days before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, this constitution was adopted. New Jersey was not, even at this late juncture, fully satisfied to cut herself loose altogether from the mother country. The last article in the constitution, therefore, provided that the new con- stitution should become void if the king should adjust the griev- ances of the Province and agree to conduct its affairs in accordance with the British constitution and in keeping with the rights of all British subjects. On July 3, 1776, the Provincial Congress gave up the word "provincial" altogether and forever, and took the title of "The Convention of the State of New Jersey," declaring the State to be independent of royal authority.10


NEW JERSEY'S "DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE." .


In response to the Declaration of Independence, adopted July 4, 1776, the Provincial Congress of New Jersey passed the following resolution: "Whereas, the honourable Continental Congress have declared the United Colonies free and independent States, We, the deputies of New Jersey, in Provincial Congress assembled, do resolve and declare, That we will support the freedom and inde- pendence of said States, with our lives and fortunes, and with the whole force of New Jersey."


" Elmer's Reminiscences, pp. 30-31.


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CHAPTER XIII. THE NEW JERSEY CONTINENTAL LINE-MINUTE-MEN- THE MILITIA ORGANIZATION-STATE TROOPS.


CHAPTER XIII.


THE NEW JERSEY CONTINENTAL LINE-MINUTE-MEN-THE MILITIA ORGANIZATION-STATE TROOPS.


N "EWARK did not bring itself to espouse the cause of liberty without a long and bitter struggle. The town was divided against itself. When Colonel Josiah Ogden walked out into his hayfield near what are now Park place and Centre street, that epoch-making Sunday over forty years before the War for Independence, the separation of the community into two irrecon- cilable factions was virtually accomplished. As the sentiment of protest against the oppressions of the British ministry arose soon after the close of the French and Indian wars, it gradually crystal- ized, so far as Newark was concerned, around the First Presby- terian Church. Its sturdy pastor, the Rev. Alexander Macwhorter, one of the early students of Princeton when it was located in Newark, was a stout defender of the rights of the people. It is lamentable indeed that the church and town records of the period embracing the years immediately preceding the war were destroyed by the British soldiers during one or another of their forays after the war was well in progress, or at the time of Cornwallis's stay late in 1776.


THE FIGHTING PARSONS.


Dr. Macwhorter was one of the "fighting parsons" of New Jersey and his sermons and other public utterances must have breathed the very spirit of defiance to injustice on the part of the country's rulers. His name only occasionally appears in the existing annals of the time, but, knowing the temper of the hour, and remembering that in those days the pulpit was little short of dominant over the minds of the congregation when an alert, fear- less and high-minded pastor pronounced from it, without fear or favor, the law of God and man as he felt it, we grow into a con- viction that Dominie Macwhorter was a mighty force in stiffening


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the militant patriots of all the region to meet the emergency with but one thought-the uplifting of mankind through the preserva- tion of the sacred and deathless cause of freedom. We shall learn a little later the stuff of which brave Dominie Macwhorter wns made. "Black coats" (the cloth) were more dreaded by the British in those days than were the red coats by the patriots. Macwhorter was for a time chaplain of General Knox's division.


The Rev. Jedidiah Chapman, pastor of the "Mountain Society," now the First Presbyterian Church of Orange, was likewise a stal- wart patriot, who, when the war began, left his pulpit and joined many of his congregation in the field as army chaplain. Then there was Parson Caldwell of Elizabethtown, chaplain of Dayton's Essex battalion, whose wife was killed by a British soldier at Springfield and who was himself murdered near the close of the war by a British or Tory soldier at Elizabethtown. Nearly all the residents of Essex who were of Calvinistic training espoused the cause of the people against the Crown. Most of those who attended the Episcopal church held stubbornly to the ancient and established government of England. This was quite true throughout the Province, as well as here in Newark.


NEWARK AT WAR WITH ITSELF.


The First Church stands as a monument to one faction and Trinity for the other. Around Trinity were grouped many of the most substantial and prosperous citizens, men of affairs of most estimable character. They had resented the tyrannies of the short-sighted British ministry in common with their fellow towns- men. But to them rebellion was unjustifiable treason. Loyalty to the king was part of their religion.


The First Church group drew to itself large numbers of farmers, small merchants, indentured servants, redemptioners, as well as a large proportion of the brightest and most aggressive young men, who not infrequently departed from the traditions and teachings of their own families to give their services to the cause of liberty.


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Between the two groups were, at the opening of the war, a third that did not identify itself openly with either side, many of whose members, however, declared their allegiance to the Crown in the trying period late in 1776 and in 1777. There were time servers on both sides, and not a few who changed their colors. Many a man who helped frame the early declarations against tyranny or noisily endorsed them before the conflict had been brought into New Jersey, disappeared from the counsels of the patriots when the days of real trial came. Human nature was then precisely what it is to-day and we shall find this fact more and more graphically illustrated as we proceed. There is no use in attempting to conceal the fact, that nearly half of the people of Essex County, when the real trial of their mettle came, either openly avowed their devotion to England or remained inactive. Selfish personal interest played the same monotonous but ever- potent part in influencing the actions of men at that time as now. For the Newarkers who bravely, and from principle, and honorably maintained their allegiance to the Crown, we of to-day can enter- tain no feelings but respect for their devotion to what they believed to be right, and sympathy for them in the misery and destitution which came to many.


To those intrepid men of Newark who roused themselves and their neighbors to fight for their homes and who, once they took up the work, never abandoned it, the most profound gratitude of the Newark of to-day is due. Theirs was the same gallant spirit that inspired the founders of Newark-and, indeed, a large majority of the Newark patriots of 1776 were descended from that stern company that came out of Connecticut in 1666. Their's was by far the braver and clearer vision; they saw into the future as their Tory neighbors could not see.


WASHINGTON IN NEWARK, JUNE 25, 1775.




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