USA > New York > New York in the nineteenth century. A discourse delivered before the New York Historical Society, on its sixty-second anniversary, November 20, 1866 > Part 1
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
3 1833 01150 2967
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/newyorkinninetee00osgo_0
NEW YORK IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
A DISCOURSE
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY,"
ON ITS SIXTY-SECOND ANNIVERSARY,
NOVEMBER 20, 1866.
BY
REV. SAMUEL OSGOOD, D.D.
PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.
NEW YORK: PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY. MOCCULXVII.
599
1753304
aferry Banjow
Officers of the Society, 1867.
PRESIDENT, HAMILTON FISH, LL. D.
FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT, THOMAS DE WITT, D. D.
SECOND VICE-PRESIDENT, BENJAMIN ROBERT WINTHROP.
FOREIGN CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, GEORGE BANCROFT, LL. D.
DOMESTIC CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, JOHN ROMEYN BRODHEAD, LL. D.
RECORDING SECRETARY, ANDREW WARNER.
TREASURER, BENJAMIN H. FIELD.
LIBRARIAN. GEORGE HENRY MOORE.
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.
FIRST CLASS-FOR ONE YEAR.
AUGUSTUS SCHELL, ERASTUS C. BENEDICT, BENJAMIN W. BONNEY.
SECOND CLASS-FOR TWO YEARS. SAMUEL OSGOOD, WILLIAM CHAUNCEY, CHARLES P. KIRKLAND.
THIRD CLASS-FOR THREE YEARS. GEORGE FOLSOM, WILLIAM T. BLODGETT, JOHN ADRIANCE.
AUGUSTUS SCHELL, Chairman. GEORGE MOORE, Secretary.
[The officers of the Society are members, ex officio, of the Executive Committee.]
COMMITTEE ON THE FINE ARTS.
ABRAHAM M. COZZENS, WILLIAM J. HOPPIN,
JONATHAN STURGES, THOMAS J. BRYAN,
ANDREW WARNER, EDWARD SATTERLEE.
ABRAHAM M. COZZENS, Chairman. ANDREW WARNER, Secretary.
[The President, Librarian, and Chairman of the Executive Com- mittee are members, ex officio, of the Committee on the Fine Arts.]
DISCOURSE.
MR. PRESIDENT AND BRETHREN OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY, AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, OUR HON- ORED GUESTS TO-NIGHT:
In accepting the honor of your invitation to speak at this Anniversary, I find myself at once re- lieved and oppressed by the subject that forces itself upon me-relieved from all trouble in its choice, and oppressed by the utter impossibility of its adequate treatment. What topic can compare in importance and interest to this great city-our native or adopted home; and who shall presume to treat it adequately in all its vastness, variety, and constant evolution ? As we gaze, the wonder grows ! and not even our daily familiarity with its streets and manners and business and people can hide from us the truth that it is one of the striking facts of the nineteenth cen- tury-one of the marvels of the age, if not one of the wonders of the world.
The whole subject, of course, cannot be treated with any justness or fidelity in a single discourse ; and to attempt to do it would be like trying to empty our great harbor with a single pump, or to condense a cyclopedia into an hour's reading. It will not be a presuming or thankless task to try to lay before you some thoughts and studies upon "New York
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in the Nineteenth Century," if only as the unambi- tious outline of a chapter of Universal History. I must be content with two points of view : the first, from the beginning of the century ; the second, now.
Not a little motive for the effort is given, let me say, by the strange and broad gulf between our present population and the old New Yorkers, and the almost entire absence of historical landmarks from our city, now under the sweeping tide of busi- ness and enterprise. Only a few of the ancient buildings remain, and almost all that we see before us is new. This imperial city, with its palaces and churches, rises before most of its people like Mel- chisedec, king of Salem, without father, without mother; and they must confess hris magnificence, who cannot tell his pedigree.
The nineteenth century may be defined as the age of liberty organizing itself, or as the period whose distinctive problem it is to construct or reconstruct society on the basis of freedom. The previous cen- turies have been the providential preparation for this task. It is probably safe to say, that the modern time, as a whole, since the invention of printing. the discovery of America, the inductive study of Nature, and the Protestant Reformation, has been most marked by the spirit of liberty ; and its history is the record of the evolution of freedom, as the thousand years before, since Constantine gave the Cross the support of his sceptre, and made Chris- tianity the law of the empire, was the age of au- thority, and its history is the record of obedience. Perhaps the four modern centuries may be desig-
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nated thus, according to their part in the history of liberty : The sixteenth century was marked by the rise of religious liberty in protest against the Roman hierarchy, in connection with the revival of letters, and the awakening of industrial and com. mercial enterprise. The seventeenth century gene- rally breathed a calmer spirit, and strove to settle the Protestant Church and State upon the new basis of Biblical doctrine or Reformed discipline. The eighteenth century, in great part, bolted from all Biblical doctrine and church discipline, and pro- claimed radical or social and philosophical liberty in the face of priest and king, and was the jubilee of social and philosophical illuminism. The nine- teenth century, the favored, and yet perplexed heir of such ancestors, has been trying to settle its great estate, and construct society and government upon the basis of the new liberty gained, and with all the lights of knowledge, experience, and faith. It has fallen to the lot of this city to have a conspicu- ous part in this great work of reconstruction, and the end is not yet. She has had the burden of the age upon her shoulders, and also her full share of the lessons and examples of the previous modern centuries to help her out. New York, in the begin- ning, was richly endowed in being the daughter and heir of one of the noblest nations of Europe; and when Henry Hudson first parted the waters of our noble bay and river, his signal, the Crescent or Half Moon, well and justly symbolized the predestined civilization of this New World. He opened here the pages of that history of liberty, that is not yet finished;
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and under that star of empire that shone above his ship, it did not need any marvellous divination to see the forms of the ruling spirits of the modern ages in his company. There were Columbus and Gutenberg and Luther and Bacon, with the com- pass and printing-press and open Bible and new organon of science signalling to him the new country and the new age coming, and his name marks still the river whose beauty and wealth and promise ask no borrowed honors from the fame of the Rhine or Danube, the Tiber or the Thames.
The Dutch who founded New Amsterdam on this island of Manhattan, not only brought their own individual characters and personal property hither, but also their national life with its historical traditions, institutions, and powers. They brought with them much of the old feudal age in their muni- cipal laws and social traditions, that were in many respects so conservative, and all the fire of the New Reform in their thorough-going Calvinism, with its doctrines of justification by faith and direct election from God in the face of what they regarded as the Romish doctrine of salvation by merit and sub- jection to priests. Having passed through the ter- rible war for national life, they felt, at the time of the colonizing of New Amsterdam, the desire for stability so characteristic of the stormy century after the Reformation, the 17th, and they had all the conservatism of the old Catholicism on the new base of their reformed creed and discipline. They came here, indeed, for trade, yet their religion was none the less marked, because it did not send them
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hither, but simply came with them because they came, and lived with them as part of themselves. They were hospitable and tolerant; yet they never set forth any ideal standard of toleration, such as is the distinctive trait of Rhode Island. They did not affirm intellectual tolerance or intolerance here ; but like practical merchants and kindly neighbors, they were disposed to welcome all settlers who would not interfere with their business, without troubling themselves much with their opinions. Their faith had nothing of the subjective turn of the New England Puritans, who were always looking into their own minds, and willing to do the same thing for their neighbors. The Dutch were not an introversial, but an objective, practical people, never or rarely moved to intolerance unless pushed by the fear of having their liberties or institutions inter- fered with ; and it was probably from apprehended danger to the national life, rather than for mere opinion's sake, that the great acts of intolerance were perpetrated in Holland, such as the execution of Barneveldt and the exile of Grotius, and the perse- cution of the Baptists. The Dutch of New Amster- dam, though not wholly free from the charge of intol. erance, were in advance of their mother country in charity, and in advance of their Puritan neighbors; and their temper and legislation here gave their colony a good place in the record of American liberty.
Their conservative temper had something in com- mon with the spirit which the English rule brought with it in 1664; for then England, after Cromwell
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and the commonwealth, sought spiritual peace under the restored Stuarts, and afterwards, in 16SS, she sought not to destroy, but to deepen that peace under the tolerant sceptre of William of Orange, who tried to bring Puritans as well as churchmen to truce, and who carried with him much of the mod- erate yet determined Dutch temper to the throne. The city, of course, was to be largely shaped by the English power; for in 1664 its future was not wholly with the existing population of fifteen hun- dred souls.
How far New York shared in the storm of radi- cal opinion and passion that marked the eighteenth century, it is not easy to say. Theologically there was little latitudinarianism in the churches here, although there is ample proof that alike among lead- ing men and the restless populace, there was a great deal of acquaintance and sympathy with the illu- minism of France and Germany, though far more acceptance of its free spirit than of its destructive motions. Zenger, forty years before the Declaration of Independence, led on the Sons of Liberty in much of the temper of the destroyers of the Bastile, and Freneau had much of the French revolutionist in his pen, whilst such stormy radicals as Paine, Elihu Palmer, and John Foster, denounced the Bible and the Church in the spirit of Helvetius, Volney, Voltaire, and D'Holbach. Of these latter agitators, Paine and Palmer, and I think Foster also, were not natives, nor in any historical sense representatives of the old New York mind. The Revolution itself is proof of the power of radical, political ideas of
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the better class, and the very slowness of the leaders to join in the Declaration of Independence shows that the English Toryism that held the high places here during the British rule, was more than matched by the liberalism of the people and their favorite champions. The delay in adopting the federal Con- stitution-a delay that prevented New York from casting her first electoral vote for Washington, and from being represented in the first American Senate -- was not from Tory leanings towards the old colonial times, but from jealousy of centralized power, and it called for all the sagacity and eloquence and per- sonal influence of Hamilton, Jay, Madison, and the great Federalist leaders, to overcome the strong State feeling, and bring New York into that constitutional Union which she has never ceased to defend. It is interesting to read the names of the delegates from this city to the convention at Poughkeepsie in 1788, that met to act upon the National Constitu- tion. New York, West Chester, Kings and Rich- mond Counties, chose federalists; the Counties of Albany, Montgomery, Washington, Columbia, Dutch ess, Ulster, and Orange, chose anti-federalists, whilst the delegates from Suffolk and Queens Counties were divided. The New York delegates were John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, Chancellor Livingston, Richard Morris, then Chief Justice, and James Duane, Mayor of the city. Surely, we have not greatly im- proved on the year 1788, in the delegations of this. year 1866. That delegation gave this city a great name in the history of liberty; for it undoubtedly overcame the majority of the delegates to the Con-
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vention who were opposed to the Constitution, and it brought New York into the Constitutional Union.
But we must not linger longer upon this prelimi- nary view of the relation of this city to the three previous modern centuries. We take our stand now at the opening of the nineteenth century, the year 1801-a most memorable year alike in Europe and America, and memorable too in its bearing on the organization of liberty. In France, liberty, after hav- ing battled down the Bastile and Throne and nobles, had turned organizer, and taught conservatism in the person of the First Consul, who was now proud to join the name of pacificator to that of conqueror, and boasted of bringing tranquillity to Europe by the peace of Luneville in 1801. Here in America, Democracy, or, as it was then called, Republicanism, took something of the same position, and, after over- throwing Federalism, it lifted its idol, Thomas Jeffer- son, to the pedestal of national union under the Con- stitution which it had so vehemently assailed. Be- fore, New York had been generally a federalist city, although all the power and influence of its great men were needed to keep it so. But in April, 1800, Aaron Burr and his republican allies put forth all their adroitness to carry the city for the democratic party, and nominated a ticket of memorable compass and attraction. Governor George Clinton, the most popular New Yorker of the day, the great States Rights man of that time, and the idol of the demo- crats, headed the ticket, and held out the banner of his party. Brockholst Livingston represented the wealth of his powerful family, and gave it the force
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of his personal talent. General Horatio Gates gave his name to kindle anew the old revolutionary pas- sion. Samuel Osgood, a good type of a transplanted Massachusetts man, stood for the Cabinet of Wash- ington, whose honored associate he had been, and was rewarded by being chosen Speaker of the Legis- lature, which, in November, 1800, virtually gave the electoral vote to Thomas Jefferson. So Federalism was defeated, yet not destroyed. Its characteristic idea lived and was vindicated by its nominal foes. Probably no men in America have done so much to carry out the cardinal principle of the American Union in the face of pressing dangers as the great democratic leaders, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Whatever they have meant to do, is less obvious than what God meant to do by them-the God of our liberty and our Union, who has deter- mined that the wrath of man should praise Him, and that the popular passion for freedom shall secure the life and law of the nation. The old Federalists deserved honor, for they spoke out the calm wisdom of time, and were the historical states- men of their day. So too they deserved rebuke, for they did not see, nor fully appreciate, the mind of the new age, and their distrust of the people with their own personal feuds had much to do with their downfall. We in our day have built their grandest monument in cementing their Union; yet we have a more cheerful philosophy than theirs, and see more of God in the people, " the plain peo. ple," than they saw. We can join the names of the old Democrats, Chancellor Livingston and George
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Clinton, to those of their great federal antagonists, Hamilton and Jay, in our record of the architects of liberty in New York city.
It is amusing to look over the newspapers at the opening of the century, observe the items of news, and note the doleful tone of the leading con- servatives as to the dark prospects of the age. The Commercial Advertiser, one of the seven daily papers issued here in 1801, and the only one, with the exception of the Evening Post, that has survived, begins the new year with the first of a series of articles by that noted and excellent man, Lindley Murray, on the nineteenth century, which are writ- ten in a spirit of croaking run mad, in a panic at the very name of liberty, especially the liberty of the press, and far more in the temper of the Pope's Encyclical Letter than of our modern thought ; in fact, so gloomy and reactionary, that they would be laughed at now by moderate conservatives, in the old world and the new. There had been a green Christmas, and it was then a mild Winter; but to many like Murray, the political sky was dark and cold.
The leading editorial in the Commercial Adver. tiser of New Year's Day, 1801, begins thus :
At the close of the eighteenth century, and near the close of the third Presidency in the American Administration, events have taken place that have excited no small surprise among men who are consid- ered as possessing great political discernment. Men wonder and speculate ! They are surprised at the issue of the elections, and look about them for the causes that have defeated their calculations.
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The article thus continues towards the close :
We have no grounds to felicitate ourselves on advancing a single step in the theory or practice of government within two thousand years. The opinion that we have advanced, is derived from our pride, founded on our ignorance-an opinion that is a burlesk on our educa- tion, our pretended science, and our vanity.
In the Commercial Advertiser of January 18, 1801, we have this notice from President Adams, which is proof that he did not mean to see Thomas Jefferson inaugurated, and that our Presidents have mended the manners, if they have not outgrown the irritability, of the old times :
The President of the United States requests the several printers who have sent him their newspapers, to send in their accounts and receive their payments. He also requests that they would send him no more after the 3d of March next.
WASHINGTON, January 13, 1801.
A newspaper brings the past very near to us, and as we handle this old copy of the Advertiser, it re- calls sixty-six years ago, and the New Year's Day when it was issued, and the New York of that day. It was then, as Irving said, a " handy city," where every. body knew everybody, and good neighborhood had not become a mere tradition. The city had about 60,000 inhabitants, 10,000 less than Philadelphia had, and was a little larger than the city of Provi- dence now is, and considerably smaller than Newark is. Population had pushed up as far as Anthony Street, now Worth Street, a little above the present City Hospital, and a line of farm-houses seemed on their way to Stuyvesant's Bowery, our present place
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of meeting, and that St. Mark's Church, our near neighbor now, which had been lately erected with- out its present steeple. There was, of course, no gas. light, and but little coal, and not any of our Croton water. Great was the fame of the Tea Water Pump in Chatham Street, and bad was the name of the new reservoir on the east side of Broadway, between Pearl and White Streets, on the two-acre lot bought of the Van Cortlandts for 1,200 pounds; and great was the hope of the New Manhattan Water Works in Chambers Street near Centre-a hope quite vain. The city was healthy, as it always is to all who take care of themselves, and its death-rate was about half that of last year, which was thirty-five in one thousand.
Taxes were light, about one half of one per cent., and in 1796 the whole tax raised was 7,968 pounds, and the whole valuation of property was 1,261,585 pounds-estimates that were probably about half the real value, so that the tax was only about one fourth of one per cent. A man worth $50,000 was thought rich, and some fortunes reached $250,000. Mechanics had a dollar a day for wages, and a gen- teel house rented for $350 a year, and $750 addi- tional would meet the ordinary expenses of living for a genteel family-such as now spends from $6,000 to $10,000, we have good reason to believe, from such authority as Mr. D. T. Valentine, Clerk of the Common Council. A good house could be bought for $3,000 or $4,000, and flour was four and five dollars a barrel, and beef ten cents a pound.
There were great entertainments, and men ate
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and drank freely-more freely, apparently, than now -- but nothing of present luxury prevailed in the high classes; and how rare the indulgence was, is proved by the common saying, " that the Livingstons give champagne," which marked their case as exceptional. Now, surely, a great many families in New York besides the Livingstons give champagne, and not always wisely for their own economy or their guests' sobriety.
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These homely items give a familiar idea of old New York in 1801. We must remember that it was then a provincial city, and had nothing of its present back-country connection with the West, being the virtual capital of the Hudson River Val- ley rather than of the great Empire State. Buffalo, Syracuse, Utica, and the noted cities of Western New York, were but names then, and Albany was of so little business note, that the main communica. tion with it was by dilatory sloops, such as Irving describes after his slow voyage in the craft that be long waited for, and which gave him ample time to study the picturesque on the Hudson, with such food for his humor as the Captain's talk in Dutch to his crew of negro slaves. What a contrast with a trip now in the St. John or the Dean Richmond- marine palaces that float you as in a dream by night through the charmed passes of the Hudson, to Albany! Irving's name does much to bring before us the living picture of New York in 1801, and we can fancy somewhat what the city then was, by look- ing in upon him-then a youth of seventeen, at 128 William Street-and going the rounds of society and
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sight-seeing on that New Year's Day. A few hours with him in his love of fun, and a few more with young Gulian C. Verplanck-who was then in the senior class at Columbia College and a little wild, according to the squibs of some of his political ene- mies, and whose social tastes were, of course, more mature, and in the line of all charming company- would tell more of those scenes and times than vol- umes of antiquarian research. We cannot paint the picture, nor try to describe the large diversity of nationalities, tastes, and characters, that even then made this city so universal in its affinities, and gave promise of its future comprehensiveness. Our task is rather in the sphere of general history, than of local and personal narrative; and perhaps enough has been said by Dr. Francis of the special features of old New York. Kindly thought of him here to- night ; for, surely, if spirits ever walk the earth, the stout old Doctor's ghost is with us now, in this his loved and familiar haunt.
The historian seeks for universal laws, and is bound to search out the ideas and characteristics that connect a community with the nation and the race. It is not easy to say exactly wherein old New York represented the spirit of the nineteenth century. In some respects it seemed to ignore the nineteenth century, and surely, it was not conspicu- ous for science, art, philosophy, or poetry. Philadel- phia and Boston, probably even Charleston, S. C., were in advance of it in literary spirit; and when Dr. Samuel Miller gave, on New Year's Day, 1801, in his Wall Street pulpit, his memorable retrospect
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of the eighteenth century -- which he afterwards ex- panded into two volumes, published in 1803-he was far more complimentary to his remote than to his near neighbors in his portraiture of American science and literature. The title-page that styles him corresponding member of the Historical Society of Massachusetts, proves what he regarded as the representative of American history then, and is a sign that this Society of ours was needed and was to come the year after. His account of New York, in his chapter on " Nations Lately Become Literary," is very brief, and deals mainly with the founding of Columbia College, the Society Library, and the Medical School; and he has no higher name to record in science than that of Dr. Mitchill among the New Yorkers, who could claim such peerless statesmen and political writers. Dr. Miller, in speak- ing of the want of literary culture in America, men- tions the causes, and naming among them defective collegiate instruction, want of books, want of leisure, and want of encouragement to learning, he per- haps tells the main reason when he says, "Besides, the spirit of our people is commercial. It has been said, and perhaps with some justice, that the love of gain prouliarly characterizes the inhabitants of the United States." This remark applied peculiarly to New York, which had been, from the first, espe- cially a business city, and it has always been so. It is precisely in this direction that we are to look for its higher developments, and its rightful place in universal history, rather than to pure science or ideal philosophy or letters. It is business that has given
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