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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 06799 8218
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A Short History of New York State
THIS BOOK HAS BEEN GRANTED A DIXON RYAN FOX MEMORIAL AWARD by the New York State Historical Association
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019
https://archive.org/details/shorthistoryofne00elli
Portrait of James Fenimore Cooper by John Wesley Jarvis, now owned by Dr. Henry S. F. Cooper.
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE Niagara University Library
David M. Ellis HAMILTON COLLEGE
James A. Frost STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK TEACHERS COLLEGE AT ONEONTA
Harold C. Syrett
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Harry J. Carman COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
PUBLISHED IN CO-OPERATION WITH THE New York State Historical Association by CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA, NEW YORK
c 1957 by Cornell University CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
First published 1957
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, NEW YORK
Dedicated to the memory of DIXON RYAN FOX
Foreword
HERE in your hands is the story of the Empire State, or as much of it as four able scholars could fit into one volume. The very nature of their task has set limits to their accomplishment: indeed, history can never do more than show the peaks of a people's experience. Ours has been a long road, beginning with narrow Indian trails, coming at last to the Thruway and airways.
From the beginning we in New York were many peoples. After the Leni- Lenape came the Iroquois, a confederation of conquerors and conquered. On the heels of the first Dutch settlers, men sailed in from across the face of Europe; four decades after Hudson's voyage eighteen languages could be heard on the streets of New Amsterdam and more were being spoken all the time. When the English raised their flag and changed the name to New York, the flow of strangers did not stop. From Africa and France, from the little duchies along the Rhine and the cities of the Italian peninsula, from the ghettos of Portugal they came to find a corner for themselves in the New World. The English tongue borrowed from other tongues and British ways absorbed other ways.
These men and women coming on the four winds brought with them the limitless hopes and gnawing fears of all mankind. For some the hopes eroded away on stony farms or in fetid sweatshops, and the fears became realities, but for others and their children the hopes and fears gave strength to action, to protest, to law and change, and their dreams came to life in the land.
If the people were various, so too was the land to which they came: the sandy stretch of Long Island pointed a remembering finger to the sea they had traveled, and the valley of the Hudson, with its proud Highlands, its purple-cloaked Catskills, its gaunt Adirondack crests, formed the first highway. Many other rivers were here waiting: the Mohawk was found early, and later the Genesee with its great falls, and the knotted, moody Susquehanna that married us forever to Pennsylvania, the Salmon and
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FOREWORD
Black, the Unadilla and Sacandaga, and, on the far border, the Niagara plummeting four inland seas into a fifth, and, finally, the river of the North Country, the St. Lawrence. Rolling hills and lush valleys cried out for a plow that they might give forth corn and apples, wheat and flax; forbidding swamps were found which even in much later times are left to the wild fowl who relish only solitude. Forests abounded-and they still do-millions of acres of evergreens and hemlocks, oaks and elms, and, most gratefully discovered, the maple, the tree that sweetened the pioneer's porridge and gave him his first crop in a resisting wilderness.
If the rivers were roadways, the lakesides were refuges and oases of serenity. The winters were tempered on their shores, and the summer breezes whistled through the young corn. There were fish there and laughter for boys swimming white and glistening in the brightness. There were lakes no bigger than a banker's parlor and lakes ninety and a hundred miles from source to outlet, lakes inland lying like the fingers of a giant's hand, and others bordering Canada and stubborn Vermont.
This is the state with a slow start; it did poorly under kings and royal governors. The bungling rulers in Whitehall and St. James made de- cisions for New York on foggy days, while here a rich few held the fertile earth and the powerful streams tight in their jeweled hands. Only under the surface did the yeast of freedom work silently, with now and then a bubble bursting the surface calm-Leisler's seizure of the government, Zenger's attacks in his press, the rebellion of the men of Flushing, and black slaves rising in terrible anger. As the second century moved toward its great drama, the yeast worked more actively-Sons of Liberty, Prender- gast and his down-rent farmers, the tea party in Manhattan-but by and large the people were docile, touched with lethargy, their fears tugging ever at the coatsleeves of their hopes.
War came and much of it was fought over our fields and in our woods. There were defeats here-Brooklyn Heights, White Plains, the lost battle for the soul of Benedict Arnold, and the burned villages of Springfield, Unadilla, German Flats, and Cherry Valley; there were hard-won vic- tories at Oriskany and, the most far-reaching of the war, at Saratoga.
Following the peace, a new spirit moved across the valleys. The veterans with their brides trod on the heels of speculators who dealt in thousands of acres. The sweet song of the ax and the soft tread of oxen transformed a forest into cornfields, and soon the retted flax, broken and hatcheled through the magic of strong young fingers, grew to thread, then on the loom to homespun for britches and diapers, always diapers for the big young crop that would clear more land and harvest more grain and go still farther west.
Ships by the thousand found the snug harbor at New York, and the tills
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FOREWORD
were full of money from the West Indies, from Spain and London and tortured France. Roads unwound in place of trails, and talk grew of canals -Mr. Washington himself had recommended one. Men quarreled about the constitution and balanced in their hearts the dangers of a federal union against the greater dangers of loose confederation. The spirits of men stood straighter, and the Revolution, which had sometimes seemed so meaningless, became a turning point, a bold release of human spirit.
All the pent energies burst into flower. New Englanders, pouring across the disputed borders, over the Hudson, through the valleys, brought changes and in turn were changed. The freer air of New York released them too, and the towns they built were raised with a difference, subtle but unmistakable. Their daughters chose German names for their chil- dren, and their sons found good the blue-eyed Irish girls, and a new nation of born Americans went to schools for which all the people paid, and they read the books and papers cascading from the ever-growing number of hand presses. They had opinions, strongly held. In the ebb and flow of politics, of change and skulduggery and reform, they inched their way forward. More and more men went to the polls, and fifty years after Saratoga the last slave in New York was free.
The women too moved up, noisily sometimes, gently at others, stand- ing ever closer and surer by their men. Here Iroquois women had once ruled their tribes and spoken to be listened to in council-perhaps some- thing of this clung to our earth and infected our air. We have come to fancy this breed of women with their blunt truths and their speaking out in meeting; confident men are not abashed by confident women.
In that half century after the Revolution the Empire State came into its own, and the capstone of its progress was Clinton's Ditch, dug by hand from Waterford to Buffalo. Where crossroad villages had sprawled lazily, suddenly cities sprang up and then factories and all the good and evil of great towns. Amsterdam, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo- the mules plodding on the towpath brought the wide world to their gates and they flourished. People going west and wheat coming east -the bloodstream of a nation flowing ever faster. Back in the hills, too far to the south or north to benefit, other towns of promise with- ered on the vine as coal replaced the great mill wheels. Then the rail- roads once more altered the pattern and still another growth set in, with wide-funneled puffers speeding up life, changing the pace, adding new towns, new ways, newcomers. More tongues to be filtered into English, more ways to mold with ours, more young muscles to be party to the building and the growth.
Yesterday, like today, was not all bathed in sunlight. There are shame- ful passages and dark stains on the wide pages, the cheap crooks, the character assassins, pullers of strings, the calloused in high places and
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FOREWORD
low. But we have been lucky in the long run of years, for we have raised up in every generation leaders who shone through the worst murkiness of their day, the Clintons, the Livingstons, Jedediah Peck, Grover Cleve- land, William Seward, the Roosevelts, and Al Smith with his rough speech and his greathearted vision. And there are others, to the end of a long folio, men and women who could not be bought, or tamed, or forced back into their places. Blessed be their names, including all those long forgotten or never known beyond the village caucus.
The latter portions of this book come down to our day, and once again we sense how difficult it is to see ourselves in any true perspective, indeed to see the last half century, when life has so altered and so accelerated with each year. It is when we read of our own stage that we become aware of how little any history book can tell, how many chapters shyly slip away from capture and will not be secured.
History forgets much that happens to men, but the scholars who wrote this book have recorded as much as could be told in this space, selecting, paring, trimming, but giving finally a comprehensive picture of the Empire State and the Empire people. Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since Alexander Flick's ten-volume history appeared, and historians have learned much and reassessed more since that day. That set, like this volume, was sponsored by the New York State Historical Association, and we are proud to place this new telling of the story of our people in your hands.
In a book which has more authors than one the reader has a right to know how the work was distributed. Book I was written by Professor Ellis and Dean Frost, Professor Ellis being responsible for Chapters 1-8, 13-17, and 20-26. Dean Frost was responsible for Chapters 9-12 and Chapters 18 and 19. In Book II Professor Syrett wrote Chapters 27-33 and Chapter 41, while Dean Carman wrote Chapters 34-39. Dean Carman and Professor Syrett wrote Chapter 40 together, and Dean Carman and Robert Martin Adams collaborated on Chapter 42. Mr. Frank Devecis drew most of the maps and charts.
This is also an appropriate place to point out that during the decade while this book has been in the making Miss Mary E. Cunningham, Associate Director of the New York State Historical Association, has acted as editorial adviser, guide, consultant, and friend to the authors. I think that they will all agree with me that without her devoted and tireless service the volume could not have come to fruition.
LOUIS C. JONES, Director
New York State Historical Association
Cooperstown, New York March 31, 1957
Contents
Foreword, by Louis C. Jones vii
BOOK I. 1609-1865
Part One. Colonial New York
1. Algonkians and Iroquois 9
2. The Dutch in New York . 18
3. Revolt against Autocracy, 1664-1708 29
4. The Rise of the Assembly, 1708-1763 39
5. Outpost of Empire 50
6. Colonial Society and Culture 60
7. Landlords and Farmers in Colonial New York 71
8. Traders and Artisans 80
9. Severing the Ties of Empire . 89
Part Two. Rise of the Empire State
10. New York in the Revolutionary War 105
11. The Age of George Clinton 119
12 The Rise of the Democratic Commonwealth 134
13. Heyday of the Land Speculator 150
14. Farm and Forest . 163
15. Founding the Business Empire . 173
16. The Yankee Invasion of New York 187
17. Social and Cultural Life 194
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xii
CONTENTS
Part Three. New York in the National Period
18. Politics, 1825-1846 211
19. New York Supports the Union 225
20. Building the Transportation Network 244
21. The Businessman 256
22. The Rise of the Dairy State . 271
23. Immigration and Labor 280
24. Religion and Reform . 299
25. Education and the Arts 317
26. New York and the Civil War 335
Illustrations appear between pages 338 and 339.
BOOK II. 1865-1956
Part Four. Politics from the Gilded Age to the Present
27. Boss Rule 351
28. Democratic Ascendency 361
29. From Platt to Progressivism 376
30. Al Smith and Reform 393
31. Toward a New Deal . 407
32. The Little New Deal . 420
33. Republican Rule in War and Peace 432
Part Five. Economic Development of the Empire State
34. Our Changing Population 449
35 Agriculture in the Empire State . 472
36. A Century of Industrial Enterprise 494
37. Changing Status of Labor 524
38. From Towpath to Airway 542
39. Market Place of the World 568
Part Six. Culture in an Industrial Age
40. The Expanding Classroom 589
41. The Cultural Ascendency of the Metropolis 602
42. Changing Cultural Horizons . 619
Bibliographical Essay 655
Index 691
Maps and Charts
Maps
1. Rivers, mountains, and lakes of New York State 4
2. Indians of New York State 10
3. Land pattern of colonial New York . 72
4. George Washington's retreat from the Battle of Long Island, 1776 107
5. The British campaign of 1777 and the Sullivan-Clinton cam- paign of 1779 110
6. Frontier map of New York 152
7. Western New York land pattern, 1790-1812 153
8. Northern New York land pattern, 1790-1815 157
9. Railroads and canals, 1859 246
10. Concentration of population in valley belt of New York State, 1950 459
11. New York State counties and cities over 10,000 population . 461
12. Economic areas of New York State . 502
13. Main railroad lines of New York State today 543
14. Electric railways in New York, 1910 . 550
15. Main highways of New York State today . . 554
16. The New York State Barge Canal system . 561
Charts
1. The rate of population growth in New York State, 1900-1950 450
2. Country of origin of largest foreign-born and second-generation groups in New York State, 1950 . 452
3. Distribution of urban and rural population in 1950 458
4. Percentage of the nation's imports and exports passing through New York, 1921-1955 . . 577
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BOOK I 1609-1865
Introduction
THE history of New York is the story of millions of people from all parts of the world who have tried to live together with good will. In fact, one may justly claim that New York and Pennsylvania anticipated other parts of the nation in developing those traits loosely labeled the "American way of life": a heterogeneous population; a diversified economy marked by a strong business spirit; a high degree of urbanism; the creation of a plural- istic culture tolerating significant differences in social institutions, national backgrounds, and economic status; and a dynamic society cherishing tra- ditional values but responsive to popular will.
Colonial New York was slow in developing. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775 it was in many ways the most backward of all the thirteen colonies, for only a fringe of land along the Hudson River and the coast of Long Island was settled. Two factors were largely re- sponsible for this tardy development: the French and Indian attacks on the frontier settlements and the land system, which was encumbered by speculation, monopoly, and the tenancy system of landholding. New Yorkers made some progress toward offsetting these handicaps by the beginning of the Revolution. Members of the New York Assembly, after decades of skirmishing with the British authorities in London and the royal governors, had secured effective control over finance and adminis- tration and responsible parliamentary government.
The new culture growing up in New York was a curious mixture of various European traditions modified by the harsh features of the Ameri- can environment. Immigrants from England, France, the German Palati- nate, Ireland, and Africa soon outnumbered the original Dutch stock and created a variegated cultural and religious pattern.
No state suffered more severely or benefited more handsomely from the Revolutionary War than New York. The exodus of from thirty to forty thousand Loyalists, roughly more than one-tenth of the pre-Revolutionary population, transformed the social structure, disorganized the economy,
3
4
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
and embittered political life. Fully one-fourth of the dwellings on Man- hattan Island went up in flames in the great fires of 1776 and 1778, and over half of the population, including a high percentage of the profes- sional and business leaders, had left the metropolis. Upstate, conditions were hardly better. In 1784, when George Washington journeyed to Fort Ticonderoga and Fort Stanwix, he saw many farms and villages in black- ened ruins. But his sharp eyes also saw the commercial possibilities as well as the strategic importance of the magnificent network of inland waterways. His descriptive phrase "seat of Empire" may have inspired the unknown enthusiast who happily called New York "the Empire State."
CE
50
75
100
MILES
Malone
River
Y
Plattsburg
CANADA
ST.
Lawrence
A
quette
Lake
Champlain
Y
St.
ADIRONDACK
Watertown
Mr. Marcy!
5344'
MOUNTAINS
TUG
HILL
Lake George
LAKE
ONTARIO
PLATEAU
R.
Oneida
Niagara Falls
Rochester
P
Rome
H
A
Syracuse
Utica
Buffalo
K.
VALLEY
T
FINGER LAKES
R.
Albany
L.
R
N
Ithaca
E
H
G
Binghamton
AM-T S.
Kingston
Slide Mi.
4204*
R.
PENNSYLVANIA
Susquehanna
HUDSON
I Newburgh
PHYSICAL MAP OF NEW YORK STATE
R.
Peekskill
N
w
P
ERSEYA
New York City
0
VALLEY
ERIE
A
Genesee
PLATE
Chenango
Susquehanna
ATSKIL
TACONIC
MA
R.
Delaware
--
A
Jamestown
Conistèo
Cohocion& R.
S
E
W
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M
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RIVER
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Map 1. Rivers, mountains, and lakes of New York State. (By Harold K. Faye from Exploring New York by Wainger, Furman, and Oagley, @ 1956 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.)
Black
Lake
LAWREN
LLE
5
INTRODUCTION, 1609-1865
His optimism was fully warranted, for by 1825 New York had earned first place in population, commerce, transportation, and agriculture. The Continental armies had destroyed the power of the Iroquois, and the peace treaty of 1783 gave upstate farmers a feeling of peace and security. Fertile land by the millions of acres and at reasonable prices awaited settlement. Most important of all, Yankees by the tens of thousands were ready to stream across the border and make their fortunes behind the plow, the work bench, and the store counter. Paralleling the growth in population and wealth were the strides made toward political democracy, culminating in the Constitution of 1822, which established manhood suf- frage for white males. In this period, the state government under the dynamic leadership of De Witt Clinton constructed the Erie Canal, the most successful venture by any state during the early part of the nine- teenth century.
The era between 1825 and 1865 was the heyday of the merchants, who developed new trade, amassed great fortunes, and helped promote pio- neer industrialization. Perhaps the most startling development was the achievement of the Manhattan merchants in capturing control of well over half of the nation's imports and over one-third of its exports. To express it another way, the businessmen of New York City acted as mid- dlemen for the wheat and cotton growers of the United States and for the textile and steel manufacturers of Great Britain.
The introduction of power turbines, the construction of railroads ( espe- cially those to the coal fields of Pennsylvania), and the immigration of skilled workers were some of the factors spurring industrial and factory growth. New York benefited immensely from the construction of canals and railroads, which not only encouraged foreign and domestic trade but also stimulated manufacturing and commercial agriculture. Dairy farm- ing developed into a major industry and set the pace in the production of milk, cheese, and butter.
CONN.
IN
TLANTIC
Urban development paralleled the expansion of the R. I. transportation system and the rise of industry. By 1865 over a third of the citizens of New York lived in cities of ten thousand or more. Immigration became a tor- rent in the 1840's, bearing on its crest hundreds of thousands of Irish, Germans, and English, who formed almost one-half of the population of Buffalo, Roches- ter, and New York City in 1860. The cosmopolitan OCEAN population accentuated the religious and cultural di- versity so noticeable in colonial New York. Roman Catholicism rose to first place among the various Christian branches, a development which alarmed many New Yorkers. Evangelical Protestant- ism also made impressive gains, and the seeds of excitement stemming
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A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
from the Finney revivals of 1825 sometimes flowered into exotic cults. Far more important as an offshoot of the religious ardor of the period were the humanitarian movements for temperance, abolition of slavery, and the extension of women's rights. Equally important was the progress made toward giving each child free schooling on the elementary level.
New Yorkers led the nation in journalism, music, drama, and the crea- tive arts. Even in belles lettres they were keen rivals of the giants of Boston-Cambridge. But the cultural arbiters of New York continued, though less slavishly, to look to England and the continent for literary models and intellectual fashions.
The diversity in economic interests and population elements expressed itself in politics. Factionalism riddled the major parties and led to the creation of new ones. Such issues as state aid for internal improvements, the granting of bank charters, and the extension of slavery split both the Democratic and Whig parties. Some New Yorkers held political beliefs so intensely that they created several new parties, such as the Anti-Mason, Know-Nothing, Working Men's, Free Soil, Antirent, and Republican. Poli- tics attracted an unusually large group of able leaders. Certainly the Whig party in no other state could match the triumvirate of Thurlow Weed, Horace Greeley, and William Seward, who later joined the Repub- lican camp. The list of Democratic statesmen was equally distinguished: Silas Wright, Martin Van Buren, Horatio Seymour, and William Marcy.
The Civil War left many scars on the political, economic, and social life of New York. The Empire State provided the greatest number of soldiers and the largest amount of supplies and money. New chapters were written in the annals of valor and sacrifice.
New York set the pace for the nation in practically all phases of the economy, in cultural activities, and in urban living. Like most pioneers, the citizens of New York experienced the heartaches and disappointments of pathfinders, but they also reaped the rich harvest of those who plant in virgin soil.
PART ONE
Colonial New York
Chapter 1
Algonkians and Iroquois
Were they savages who had fixed habitations; who cultivated rich fields; who built castles, (for so they called their not incommodious wooden houses, surrounded with palisadoes;) who planted maize and beans, and showed considerable in- genuity in constructing and adorning their canoes, arms, and clothing ?- MRS. ANNE GRANT, c. 1770
LESS than two centuries ago "the fire that never dies" burned brightly near Syracuse. This fire was the symbol of unity for the Iroquois con- federation, which held the balance of power between Britain and France for over a century. Certainly no other group of New Yorkers has swung so much weight, man for man, as the two-thousand-odd warriors of the League of the Five Nations. Tribes living as far south as the Carolinas, as far west as the Illinois region and the Lake Superior country, and as far north as the mouth of the St. Lawrence taught their children to dread the tomahawks of the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and the Mohawks of central and western New York. Dutch, French, and British emissaries, respectful of Iroquois power and anxious to curry favor at the great Council of the Five Nations, learned well every turn in the Am- bassador's Road, the name given to the trail extending from the lower Mohawk River to the Genesee country.
Men have lived in New York for well over five thousand years. Legends, confirmed and supplemented by excavations, tell of waves of migrating people pushing their way across mountains, plains, and forests in a southeasterly direction from the Bering Sea over which their ancestors had made their way between ten to twenty thousand years ago. The first bands to settle in New York usually selected sites along the banks of rivers. All around them was the dense forest which shaped their customs and way of life.
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