USA > New Jersey > The history of New Jersey, from its discovery by Europeans, to the adoption of the federal Constitution > Part 32
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Under these and like resolutions many persons, among whom were seve-
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ral of large property and great respectability, were brought before Congress. Some were imprisoned, some fined, and others suffered to go at large upon their parole; others were compelled to enter into recognizance with security, conditioned for their good behariour; and others were relegated to such places within the province, as the Congress supposed could give them the least opportunity of evil. *
When the state government was organized, under the constitution, the Legislature enacted a law of like tenor, with the ordinance of the convention, against treason ;- and further declared, that any one owing allegiance to the state, who should by speech, writing, or open deed, maintain the authority of the King and Parliament of Great Britain, should be subject, by the first of- fence, to fine, not exceeding three hundred pounds, and imprisonment, not exceeding one year; and for the second, to the pillory, and the like im- prisonment ;- that reviling, or speaking contemptuously of the government of the state, of the Congress, or United States of America, or of the measures adopted by the Congress, or by the Legislature of the state, or maliciously doing any thing whatever, which would encourage disaffection, or manifestly tend to raise tumults and disorders in the state; or spreading such false rumours, concerning the American forces, or the forces of the enemy, as would tend to alienate the affections of the people from the govern- ment, or to terrify or discourage the good subjects of this state, or to dispose them to favour the pretensions of the enemy, should, also, be punishable in the same manner. By the same act, two justices of the peace were empow- ered to convene by summons or warrant, any person, whom they should suspect to be dangerous or disaffected to the government; and compel him to take the oath of abjuration, and of allegiance, under penalty of being bound with sufficient sureties to his good behaviour, or imprisoned until the meeting of the Quarter Sessions; when, upon refusal, he might be fined or imprisoned, at discretion of the court. This act drew the cords around the discontented much more closely, than they had hitherto been. But it became necessary to strain them still tighter.
An act of June 5th, 1777, declaring. that divers of the subjects of the state, having, by the arts of subtile emissaries from the enemy, been seduced from their allegiance, and prevailed upon by dehuisive promises, to leave their families and friends, and join the army of the King of Great Britain, and had since become sensible of their error, and desirous of returning to their duty ; that many of such fugitives and others, who had been guilty of treasonable practices against the state, secreted themselves to escape the punishment of their crimes-and that, in compassion to their unhappy situation, the Legis-
* We could give a very long list of names of disaffected persons; but we refrain for very obvious reasons. Persons who are curious to revive the remembrance of these scenes, may have recourse to the journals of the convention, and the columns of the newspapers of the period. where they may find many a name which has since been distinguished for good service to the state. We may, however, make the follow- ing extract from the nunutes of the Congress .- " The petition from sundry ladies, from Perth Amboy, was read the second time, and ordered, that a copy of the follow- ing letter, addressed to Mrs. Franklin, one of the subscribers, be signed by the presi- dent and secretary -. Madam: I am ordered, by Congress, to acquaint you, and through yon, the other ladies of Amboy, that their petition, in favour of Dr. John L ---- , has been received and considered. Could any application have promised a greater indulgence to Dr. L --- , you may be assured yours could not have failed of success. But. unhappily, madam, we are placed in such a situation, that, motives of commiseration to individuals, must give place to the safety of the public. As Dr. L-, therefore, has fallen under the suspicion of our generals, we are under the necessity of abiding by the steps which we have taken;' &c. The doctor was trans- ferred to Morristown, on his parole, not to depart thence, more than six miles, without leave of Congress."
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lature was desirous that no means should be left unemployed, to prevent the effusion of blood, and to give those an opportunity of returning to their alle- giance, who should testify their desire to be restored to the inestimable rights of freemen. To tius end the act provided, That, such offender, on or before the first of August, then next ensuing, might appear before a judge or justice of the peace, and take the oaths to the state; and should, thereupon, be pardoned his offence, and restored to the privileges of a citizen ; That, if he were so far lost to every sense of duty to his country, his family, and his posterity, as to decline the clemency so proffered, his personal estate should be forfeited to the state; and all alienations thereof, and of his real estate, subsequent to the act, were declared void; That commissioners should be appointed in the respective counties, to make inventories of such personal estate, to dispose of' perishable parts, or where in danger of falling into the hands of the enemy, of the whole ; to keep the proceeds for the owner claiming the benefit of the act, but paying the same to the treasurer for the use of the state, in case of the non-claim of the proprietor within the prescribed time.
This act was followed by another of 18th April, 1778, directing the com- missioners of the several counties to make return to a justice of the peace, of the name and late place of abode of each person whose personal estate they should seize, and to obtain from the justice a precept for summoning a jury of freeholders, to inquire whether he had, since the date of the act against treason, (4th October, 1776,) and before the 5th June, 1777, joined the army of the King of Great Britain, or otherwise offended against his al- legiance to the state. The jury finding against the accused, their inqui- sition was returned by the justice, to the next court of Common Pleas; where it might be traversed, either at the return, or the succeeding, term, by the party, on entering into recognisance, to prosecute with effect. But in de- fault, judgment of forfeitures was rendered, and the commissioners empower- ed to sell all the personal estate of the fugitive, and to take possession of all his books of account, bonds, mortgages, &c., in whose hands soever they might be; and to collect all debts due to him. Similar provisions were made, relative to persons committing like offences, subsequent to the act of pardon, of the 5th of June, 1777. The commissioners were, also, empowered to take into their possession and management, all the real estate of the offender, and lease the same for a term not exceeding a year, and to hold possession of such estate, before inquisition found, when it had been abandoned by the owner. Tenants in possession, were required to attorn to the commissioners. All sales of real or personal estate, by any person, against whom inquisition was found, made after the offence committed, were declared void.
This severity was carried still further by the act of December 11th, 1778, directing, that all the real estate of offenders at the time of the offence, or thereafter, acquired, in fee or otherwise, against whom inquisition and judg. ment had been, or should be, rendered, should be forfeited to the state; and that, every person, whether an inhabitant of this state, or of any other of the United States, seized or possessed of real or personal estate, who had, since the 19th day of April, 1775, (the day of the battle of Lexington) and before the 4th day of October, 1776, aided and assisted the enemies of the state, or of the United States, by joining their armies within the state, or elsewhere, or had voluntarily gone to, taken refuge or continued with, or on- deavoured to continue with, the enemy, and aid them by council or otherwise, and who had not since returned and become a subjeet in allegiance to the present government, by taking the prescribed oaths or affirmations when re- quired, to be guilty of high treason, and on inquisition and judgment, his whole estate, real and personal, was forfeited to the state; but such proceed. .
78
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ings affected the estate only, not the person of the offender. The real estates so forfeited were sold, and title made therefor, by the commissioners, and no error in the proceedings affected the purchaser, nor did pardon relieve the forfeiture. The forfeited estates were held liable for the debts of the offender, and some efforts, unsuccessful we believe, were made, to render them respon- sible for such damages as the former owners might commit in their predatory excursions.
The same act declared, every inhabitant of the state who had joined the enemy by taking refuge among them, or affording them aid by counsel or otherwise, and who should be convicted of high treason, or otherwise forfeit his estate, pursuant to the act, or should be duly convicted of treason, felony, or misdemeanour, for going to, taking refuge with, or affording any aid and assistance to the enemy, incapable of holding any office of trust or profit, or of exercising the elective franchise, and deprived all persons within the state who had suffered fine or imprisonment for refusing to testify their allegiance, by taking the oaths, of the capacity to exercise any military office.
Under these acts, a large mass of property was brought into the market and sold for the benefit of the state, and also of many of the commissioners. In 1781, the market was probably glutted, and property was very greatly sacrificed; when the act of June 26th, declaring, that the continuance of the sales might prove injurious to the interests of the state, directed their suspension until further order, and the authority of the commissioners to cease. Another act of 1751, (20th December,) substituted a single agent, in the respective counties, for the commissioners; and the act of December 16th, 1783, directed such agents to proceed in the sale of such estates, and to re- ceive in payment any obligation of the state. Subsequently, various provi- sions were made for satisfying the claims of the creditors of the offenders.
During the greater part of the war, the tory refugees from New Jersey were embodied on Staten, Long, and York islands; and when the British were in force in the state, they collected on the eastern and south-eastern border, and occasionally appeared in other districts. Their hostility was more malignant than that of the British soldiery, and being commonly directed by revenge, was more brutally practised, and more keenly felt. Intimately acquainted with the country, they could more suddenly enter it, strike a barbarous stroke and retreat. This spirit was encountered by one almost as fierce and ruthless, in which, however, there was the redeeming quality of patriotism. Many a tale of the romantic daring of the invaders, and of the fearless devotion of the defenders, is yet told, along the eastern shores, and amid the cedar swamps, and pine forests of the state.
The enterprise of the refugee royalists was frequently directed against the persons of the distinguished patriots of the state. Among their first success- ful attempts, was that on Mr. Richard Stockton. On the entrance of the British army into New Jersey, after the capture of Fort Washington, that gentleman withdrew from Congress in order to protect his family and pro- perty, at his seat near Princeton. He removed his wife and younger children into the county of Monmouth. about thirty miles from the supposed route of the British army. On the 30th of November, he was, together with his friend and compatriot John Covenhoven, at whose house he resided, dragged from his bed by night, stripped and plundered, and carried by the way of Amboy to . New York. At Amboy he was exposed to severe cold weather in the common jail, which, together with subsequent barbarity in New York, laid the founda- tion of disease, that terminated his existence in 1781. His release was probably procured by the interference of Congress, in January.
We cannot more fully, nor more truly justify the measures of severity
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adopted against the disaffected, than by the following extract from the speech of Governor Livingston, to the Assembly, on the 29th of May, 1778.
"I have further to lay before you, gentlemen, a resolution of Congress of the 23d of April, recommending it to the Legislatures of the several states, to pass laws, or to the executive authority of each state, if invested with sutti- cient power, to issue proclamations offering pardon, with such exceptions and under such limitations and restrictions as they shall think expedient, to such of their inhabitants or subjects as have levied war against any of these states, or adhered to, aided or abetted the enemy, and shall surrender themselves to any civil or military officer of any of these states, and shall return to the state to which they may belong, before the tenth day of June, next; and recommending it to the good and faithful citizens of these states, to receive such returning penitents with compassion and mercy, and forgive and bury in oblivion their past failings and transgressions.
" Though I think it my duty to submit this resolution to your serious con- sideration, because it is recommended by Congress, I do not think it my duty to recommend it to your approbation, because it appears to me both unequal and impolitic. It may, consistently, with the profoundest veneration for that august Assembly, be presumed, that they are less acquainted with the particular circumstances and internal police of some of the states, than those who have had more favourable opportunities for that purpose. There scems, it is true, something so noble and magnanimous in proclaiming an unmerited amnesty to a number of disappointed criminals, submitting them- selves to the mercy of their country; and there is in reality something so divine and christian in the forgiveness of injuries, that it may appear rather invidious to offer any thing in obstruction of the intended clemency. But as to the benevolent religion to which we are under the highest obligations to conform our conduct, though it forbids at all times and in all cases the indul- gence of personal hatred and malevolence, it prohibits not any treatment of national enemies or municipal offenders, necessary to self preservation, and the general weal of society. And as to humanity, I could never persuade myself that it. consisted in such lenity towards our adversaries, either British or domestic, as was evidently productive of tenfold barbarity on their part, when such barbarity would probably have been prevented by our retaliating upon them the first perpetration ; and consequently our apparent inhumanity in particular instances, has certainly been humane in the final result. Alas, how many lives had been saved, and what a scene of inexpressible misery prevented, had we from the beginning treated our bosom traitors with proper severity, and inflicted the law of retaliation upon an enemy, too savage to be humanized by any other argument. As both political pardon and punish- ment ought to be regulated by political considerations, and must derive their expedience or impropriety from their salutary or pernicious influence upon the community, I cannot conceive what advantages are proposed by inviting to the embraces of their country, a set of beings from which any country, I should imagine, would esteem it a capital part of its felicity to remain for- ever at the remotest distance. It is not probable that those who deserted us to aid the most matchless connoisseurs in the refinements of cruelty, (who have exhausted human ingenuity in their engines of torture,) in introducing arbitrary power, and all the horrors of slavery; and will only return from disappointment, not from remorse, will ever make good subjects to a state founded in liberty, and inflexibly determined against every inroad of lawless dominion. The thirty-one criminals lately convicted of the most flagrant treason, and who, by the gracious interposition of government, were upon very hopeful signs of penitence, generously pardoned, and then with hypo- critical cheerfulness enlisted in our service, have all to a man deserted to the
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enemy, and are again in arms against their native country, with the accu- mulated guilt of its being now not only the country that first gave them life, but which hath, after they had most notoriously forfeited it, mercifully res- cued them from death. Whence it is probable, that a real tory is by any human means absolutely inconvertible, having so entirely extinguished all the primitive virtue and patriotism natural to man, as not to leave a single spark to rekindle the original flame. It is indeed, against all probability, that men arrived at the highest possible pitch of degeneracy, the preferring of tyranny to a free government, should, except by a miracle of omnipotence, be ever capable of one single virtuous impression. They have, by a kind of gigantic effort of villany, astonished the whole world, even that of transcend- ing in the enormities of desolation and bloodshed, a race of murderers before unequalled, and without competitor. Were it not for these miscreants, we should have thought, that for cool deliberate cruelty and unavailing undeci- sive havoc, the sons of Britain were without parallel. But considering the education of the latter, which has familiarised them to the shedding of inno- cent blood from the mere thirst of lucre, they have been excelled in their own peculiar and distinguished excellence by this monstrous birth and offscouring of America, who, in defiance of' nature and of nurture, have not only by a reversed ambition chosen bondage before freedom, but waged an infernal war against their dearest connexions for not making the like abhorred and abo- minable election. By them, have numbers of our most useful and meritorious citizens been ambushed, hunted down, pillaged, unhoused, stolen, or butcher- ed; by them has the present contest on the part of Britain been encouraged, aided and protracted. They are therefore responsible for all the additional blood that has been spilt by the addition of their weight in the scale of the enemy. Multitudes of them have superadded perjury to treason. At the commencement of our opposition, they appeared more sanguine than others, and like the crackling of thorns under a pot, exceeded in blaze and noise, the calm and durable flame of the steady and persevering. They have associ- ated, subscribed, and sworn to assist in repelling the hostile attempts of our bowelless oppressors; they have, with awful solemnity, plighted their faith and honour, to stand with their lives and fortunes by the Congress, and their general, in support of that very liberty, which, upon the first opportunity, they perfidiously armed to oppose, and have since sacrilegiously sworn, utter- ly to exterminate. This worthy citizen has lost a venerable father; that one a beloved brother; and a third, a darling son, either immediately by their hands or by their betraying hin to the enemy, who, from a momentary unin- tentional relapse into humanity, were sometimes inclined to spare, when these - pitiless wretches insisted upon slaughter, or threatened to complain of a re- lenting officer, merely because he was not diabolically cruel."
X. From the actual assumption of political independence, to that of a formal declaration, the interval could not be long. On the very day that Congress adopted the resolution recommending to the colonies a change in their form of government; the convention in Virginia resolved unanimously, that their delegates in Congress should propose to that body, to declare the United Colo- nies free and independent states, absolved from all allegiance to, or dependence on the King and Parliament of Great Britain. The public mind was now fully prepared for this measure. The Assemblies of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York, which had displayed the greatest reluctance and forborne the longest, at length assented to it. The proposition was made in Congress, on the 7th of June, 1776, by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, and seconded by Mr. John Adams of Massachusetts, "that the United. Colonics are, and. of right ought to be, free and independent states, and that all political con- nerion between them and the state of Great Britain, is, and ought to be,
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totally dissolred." This resolution was referred to a committee of the whole Congress, where it was daily debated. In favour of the resolution, Messrs. Lee and Adams were the most distinguished speakers. The latter has been characterized as " the ablest advocate" of independence. Its most formida- ble opponent was Mr. John Dickenson, whose "Farmer's Letters," had sig- nally served to awaken the resistance of the people to British oppression. Mr. Dickenson's views were those of a sincere, but timid patriot. He lived to discover that his fears were groundless, and to give his aid in maturing and perfecting the institutions of independent America. In resisting the declara- tion of independence, he was actuated by no ignoble personal fears; his appre- hension was for his country. For at this period, no man could be more ob- noxious to British statesmen, than the author of the Farmer's Letters, who now, bore a colonel's commission, and was, in the month of July, 1776, upon the lines of New Jersey, and New York. The considerations which weighed upon his mind affected the minds of others; among whom were Wilson of Pen- sylvania, R. R. Livingston, of New York, E. Rutledge, and R. Laurens, of South Carolina, and William Livingston, of New Jersey; who, if they did not doubt of the absolute inexpediency of the measure, believed it premature. . On the first day of July, the resolution declaratory of independence. was approved in committee of the whole, by all the colonies, except Pennsylvania and Delaware. Seven of the delegates from the former were present, four of whom voted against it. Mr. Rodney, one of the delegates from the latter, was absent, and the other two, Thomas M.Kean and Gorge Read, were di- vided in opinion; M'Kean voting for, and Read against, the resolution. On the report of the committee to the House, the further consideration of the subject was postponed until the next day, when the resolution was finally adopted, and entered on the journals .* Pending this memorable discussion, a committee, consisting of Messrs. Jefferson, John Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and R. R. Livingston, was appointed to prepare the delaration of inde- pendence. Messrs. Jefferson and Adams were named a sub-committee, charged especially with that duty; and the original draught of that eloquent manifesto was made by the former. It was adopted by the chief committee without amendment, and reported to Congress on the twenty-eighth of June. On the fourth of July, having received some slight alterations, it was sanc- tioned by the vote of every colony.t
The delegation in Congress, from New Jersey, during part of the time, employed in the consideration of the question of independence, had been elected by the Convention, on the fourteenth of February, 1776. It con- sisted of Messrs. Livingston, De Hart, Richard Smith, John Cooper, and Jonathan Dickenson Sergeant. After the proposition of the fifteenth of May for organizing provincial governments, it would seem that nearly all these gentlemen were reluctant to assume the responsibility of measures which led, eventually, to independence. Richard Smith, alleging indisposition, re- signed his seat on the twelfth, John De Hart on the thirteenth, and Mr. Ser- geant on the twenty-first of June. Mr. Cooper appears to have taken no part in the proceedings of this Congress. His name, with that of Mr. Ser- geant, is regularly on the minutes of the State convention, from the 10th of June, to the 4th of July. Mr. Livingston was withdrawn, on the 5th of June, to assume the duty of brigadier-general of the New Jersey militia. Messrs. Richard Stockton, Abraham Clarke, John Hart, Francis Hopkinson. and Dr. John Witherspoon, were substituted for the previous delegation, on the 21st of June; and were, probably, all present at the time of the final votes upon the resolution, and the declaration of independence. It is certain, that .
* Journals of Congress.
t Ibid.
2 C
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on the 28th of June, Mr. Hopkinson appeared in the continental Congress, and presented instructions empowering him and his colleagues to join in declaring the united colonies independent of Great Britain, entering into a confederation for union and common defence, making treaties with foreign nations, for commerce and assistance, and to take such other measures as might appear necessary for these great ends."*
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