USA > New York > A short history of New York State > Part 6
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In order to protect the city from contagion, the Common Council en- acted a sanitation and quarantine code, built a pesthouse, and took steps to build a hospital. New York's care of criminals mirrored the harsh
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A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
practices common during the eighteenth century. The city used the base- ment of the City Hall as a jail until the erection of a jail in 1759. Prisoners suffered a great deal from cold, poor food, and callous supervision. Only the help of private societies alleviated some of the suffering.
The presence of soldiers, sailors, slaves, and transported felons compli- cated the problem of keeping the peace. Soldiers often got into brawls, and the populace sometimes resisted the press-gangs seeking sailors for the Royal Navy. The large Negro population presented a special problem because of the fear of conspiracies. New York City had its share of ordi- nary crime and misdemeanors. Gambling, prostitution, and heavy drink- ing were common social evils, and robbery, assault, and murder were commonplace.
The municipality maintained a watch, and theoretically all inhabitants listed by the aldermen were required to serve a turn on night duty. Two men were elected annually in each ward to the unpopular post of con- stable to supervise the watch. For eight years, beginning in 1734, the city created a paid, standing guard of two squads, but in 1742 the corporation returned to a citizens' watch. Every able-bodied man took his turn at standing watch about once a month. The system worked badly, partly because the wealthier inhabitants hired substitutes who were too often of dubious character themselves. In 1762 the Common Council restored the system of a paid standing force. The previous year it established a system of street lighting by oil lamps.
Fire hazards forced the city government to draw up many regulations, but enforcement was sporadic and halfhearted. A serious danger was the storing of highly inflammable materials-hay, straw, naval stores, gun- powder-in the congested area south of Duane Street. Regulations gov- erning the storage of combustibles and the inspection of chimneys were poorly observed. In 1731 the city purchased its first fire engine from Lon- don and gradually acquired engines, buckets, firehouses, hose, and lad- ders for each ward. In 1737 the Common Council authorized an or- ganized force of firemen consisting of five men from each of six wards. Their duties foreshadowed those of the volunteer firemen of today. Closely tied to fire fighting was the question of water supply. At first the city supplemented private wells and springs with public wells paid for by assessments upon residents in the neighborhood. Beginning in 1741 the city ordered pumps for these wells which were under the general super- vision of the alderman and assistant of each ward. The Common Council recognized the need for a better water supply and in the years immedi- ately preceding the Revolution authorized an elaborate system of water- works with a storage reservoir and wooden conduits. The war put a stop to the construction of this system.
Ferry franchises were important not only because of Manhattan's insu-
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THE RISE OF THE ASSEMBLY
lar position but also because they brought in more revenue than any other source. The charter of 1731 gave New York City complete control of ferries across the lower East River. The city fought off attempts by citizens of Brooklyn to break into this monopoly, but the Supreme Court in 1775 ruled that any resident of Brooklyn had the right to maintain a boat on the East River and to land at any point on the Long Island shore. The corporation of New York City leased the ferry rights to individuals, but the operators often failed to pay the rent or to provide good service.
Our survey of provincial and municipal government demonstrates that by 1760 citizens of colonial New York had reached a fair degree of politi- cal maturity and acquired much experience in public affairs. In fact, re- sponsible parliamentary government emerged, facilitating compromise between provincial opinion and royal command. By 1761 New York was a political democracy, cast in the form of a parliamentary monarchy.
Of course, this conclusion as to the democracy of New York requires some qualification. Obviously the large Negro population had few rights, democratic or otherwise. Moreover, the propertyless workers and farm laborers had little influence. Leadership throughout the colonial period came almost entirely from the small group of landlord-merchant aristoc- racy and the legal fraternity. A few score families-the De Lanceys, Livingstons, Schuylers, Philipses, Beekmans, Morrises, Joneses, Scotts, to mention the most prominent-dominated New York as long, if not longer, than any similar group in the history of any other province.
Virtually every power of government-initiation, administration, re- view-was officially or unofficially divided between the governor and the Assembly. But the governors were seldom a match for the shrewd and vigilant leaders of the provincial parties. Able administrators such as Hunter and Hardy could not offset the damage done by scoundrels such as Cornbury and timeservers such as Cosby.
The rise of colonial autonomy paralleled the development of parlia- mentarianism. Gradually the feeling hardened into conviction that both King and Parliament were limited not only by the constitution of England but also by that of New York. By the end of the French and Indian War the government of New York was "almost completely responsible to the expressed will of the electorate."
Chapter 5
Outpost of Empire
[New York] ought to be looked upon as the Capital Province or the Citadel to all the others; for secure but this and you se- cure all the English colonies, not only against the French but also against any insurrections or rebellions against the Crown of England .- RICHARD COOTE, Earl of Bellomont, 1699
NEW YORK was perhaps the most important outpost of the British Empire between 1664 and 1775. Its position athwart the Mohawk and Champlain gateways had made it a key point in the century-long struggle between France and Britain for control of North America. New Yorkers realized their dependence upon the redcoats for the defense of the frontier and also upon the Royal Navy for the protection of commerce. Further- more, the social pattern of New York, with its aristocracy of landlord- merchants and its strong emphasis on trade, created a society more similar to that of England than either the New England or the southern colonies.
The British colonial system exhibited in striking fashion the British genius (or weakness ) for improvisation and "muddling through." Neither King nor Parliament, which was dominant after the Revolution of 1688, developed a consistent and systematic plan of colonial administration. Rather, Parliament attacked the problem in piecemeal fashion through using executive offices such as army, navy, and Privy Council. To consult and to placate local opinion, it authorized assemblies, which gradually demanded control over the purse strings and local affairs. By 1763 the colonies on the American mainland enjoyed a great deal of home rule, but London retained the general powers later exercised by the President, the Congress, and the federal judiciary over the states-the powers to conduct foreign relations, to regulate commerce, to manage the currency, public lands, and post office, to hear appeals from local courts, and to pass on the constitutionality of laws.
The Board of Trade created in 1696 had the general task of supervising
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OUTPOST OF EMPIRE
the imperial administration and of regulating colonial affairs for the bene- fit of the mother country. The members of the board drafted instructions for the royal governors, heard complaints, gave advice to various execu- tive officers, to Parliament, and the Privy Council, and maintained a correspondence with the governors. Several executive departments car- ried out duties in the colonies: the Secretary of State for the Southern Department chose the royal governors; the Admiralty defended the coast and enforced the Navigation Acts; the Treasury tried to collect customs and to check on the expenditures of each colony. The Privy Council some- times set aside the colonial laws that were contrary to the laws of Eng- land, the charter, or the governor's instructions.
Many imperial symbols-temporal and spiritual, military and com- mercial-dotted the New York skyline in 1760. Old Fort George, symbol- izing New York's role as military capital of the British Empire in North America, hugged the lower tip of Manhattan. Throughout the period 1664-1775 children could watch troops on parade in New York. The War Office treated the garrison of four companies with scandalous neglect. The governor remained master of foreign relations and defense and the symbol of imperial authority no matter how successfully the Assembly sought control of the purse strings. A cadre of officials surrounded him, and the social life of the aristocracy circled around the governor.
The squat chapel tower in Fort George, like the spire of Trinity Church farther uptown, was a symbol of empire as well as religion. The governors interpreted the law in such a way as to make the Church of England the established church in the lower countries. The aristocracy gravitated to Trinity Church, where the clergy preached sermons upholding the King and Empire before and during the Revolution. Close by Trinity Church stood the new building of King's College, whose architecture, curriculum, and Anglicanism were patterned after those of Oxford and Cambridge.
The customhouse was a less imposing structure, but it was no less an important sign of imperial power. Here were located the collector, comp- troller, surveyor, and subordinate officials who enforced the Navigation Acts. The objects were fourfold: to force the colonists to buy manufac- tured goods in England; to keep foreign shipping, especially the Dutch, from the colonial sea lanes; to secure valuable raw materials such as tobacco; to prevent colonists from manufacturing goods for export which England produced. The main post office for the northern colonies was established in New York in 1764. This became the western destina- tion for government packets carrying mail to America. Even the City Hall was indirectly an agency for the Crown since the main officials were appointed by the governor.
Albany and the frontier settlements were very much aware of their
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A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
dependence upon the British Empire. The first intercolonial Congress called by the Privy Council met at Albany in 1754. The next year Sir William Johnson was appointed superintendent of Indian affairs for the northern colonies, an imperial post of great influence. From Albany sup- plies went forth to provision the garrisons in the forts guarding the Lake Champlain and the Mohawk gateways.
The desire for control of North American trade and territory was a major cause behind the five wars fought by England and France between 1689 and 1783. No colony was more directly affected than was New York, whose nearness to Canada exposed it to attack. The French realized that British armies operating from Albany could menace their line of com- munications with the posts in the interior and might also launch an over- land attack upon the key centers of Montreal and Quebec. The French therefore erected forts on Lakes Champlain, Ontario, and Erie and car- ried on intrigues with the Indians in order to hem in the English. A struggle for control of the fur trade and of the Iroquois intensified the rivalry between British and French.
The Iroquois, who were becoming more and more the middlemen in the fur business, clashed with the French in the 1680's for the trade of the Illinois tribes. When Governor A. J. L. de La Barre in 1684 seized fifty Indian negotiators and attacked the Senecas, Governor Thomas Dongan offered them aid. In 1687 he formally placed the Iroquois under English protection.
The expulsion of pro-French James II from England in 1688 intensified the bitter feeling between New York and Canada. The next year, the new monarch, William of Orange, formally declared war upon France. The opening of war found both New York and Quebec in confusion. In New York, Jacob Leisler had seized power during the collapse of the Dominion of New England to which New York had been temporarily attached in 1688. His coup paralyzed effective action for a time, since certain groups such as the great landlords and the magistrates refused to recognize his authority.
An Iroquois raid on Montreal in 1689 disrupted Governor Louis Fron- tenac's plan to attack New York, but the resourceful Frenchman soon reorganized his forces, which ravaged the New York and New England frontier. In February 1690 about 150 Frenchmen, paced by two hundred Algonkins and Christian Iroquois, marched through waist-deep snow to Schenectady, whose only sentinels were snowmen. Screams filled the night as the howling invaders broke down doors, scalped their victims, and applied the torch. Three years later the French burned the Mohawk castles south of the Mohawk River, and in 1696 Governor Frontenac led an expedition against the Onondagas. These raids cowed the Iroquois, who never again were a serious threat to Canada.
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The region around Albany suffered so severely that by 1698 fewer than fifteen hundred settlers remained in the county of Albany. Frontiers- men under Peter Schuyler's able leadership had to rely largely upon their own forces, since the assemblymen from the southern counties disap- proved taxes for frontier defense and the British government maintained only four companies of soldiers in the colony. As mayor of Albany, Schuyler rallied the militia and led raiding parties against the French forces.
The Treaty of Ryswick (1697) which concluded King William's War was actually a mere truce, broken by Queen Anne's War (1701-1713). Some leaders of the Five Nations, who felt that the English had not given them enough protection during the war, listened to French agents who promised peace and trade. The pro-French faction got the upper hand by 1701 and asked the French governor for a treaty of friendship. In re- turn for a French promise not to attack them and to permit them to trade freely with Albany, the Iroquois agreed to recognize the French King as their overlord. The founding of Detroit annoyed the Iroquois since it threatened to cut off furs coming down the Great Lakes. Quick to see the advantage of keeping a balance of power between France and England, they ceded to the King of England in 1701 all the beaver grounds of the Confederacy northwest of Lake Ontario and between Lake Huron and Lake Erie.
New York's ruling class split deeply over Indian policy. Governor Bellomont urged the construction of forts and the promotion of settle- ments in the Mohawk country and farther west. Many fur traders in Albany opposed this policy because western posts might intercept the shipments of pelts before they reached their stores. Also, some merchants had built up a thriving trade in Indian supplies with the French traders of Montreal who could buy goods cheaper in Albany than import them from France. In 1701 several Albany traders visited Montreal and pledged a policy of neutrality in the event of war. By this agreement they ex- pected to escape Indian raids, avoid high taxes, and keep open the trade route to Montreal.
During the early years of Queen Anne's War a strange but welcome peace existed on the New York frontier. The Albany traders had little trouble in persuading the Manhattan merchants and large landholders to endorse the policy of neutrality, especially since none of these groups wanted to grant Governor Cornbury additional funds or power. Further- more, the badly mauled Iroquois heeded French warnings against break- ing the peace treaty of 1701. Indeed, they had recognized the advantages of playing off the British against the French.
Meanwhile the French centered their military efforts on the New Eng- land frontier. In 1704 a raiding party struck at Deerfield, killing 53
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A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
people and taking 111 captives. New Englanders criticized the Albany mer- chants for selling arms to the French and the Indians. In 1708 they asked Great Britain to invade Canada and to destroy French power in America. The British government, flushed with successes on the Continent, prom- ised aid for a colonial attack on Canada. This promise caused New Yorkers to raise forces for an expedition in 1709, but the project collapsed when the British failed to send needed support. New York then disbanded its forces. Two years later another expedition got under way from Albany but gave up when the British fleet met defeat in the St. Lawrence River.
The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) awarded to Britain much American territory, such as Newfoundland, Acadia, and Hudson's Bay, and won French recognition of British suzerainty over the Iroquois, which the British had claimed since the 1680's. During the next three decades of peace, officials in Montreal and New York maneuvered to secure strategic posts and to line up Indian allies. The French cemented their hold on the upper lakes and Illinois country and even won over a part of the Senecas through their agent Louis Joncaire. They built a post at Niagara in 1726 and five years later one at Crown Point on Lake Champlain.
Divided counsels prevented New Yorkers from taking decisive counter- steps. Merchants trading with Montreal opposed the erection of posts west of Albany, but other traders and the royal governors argued that a post at Oswego would recapture for New York the trade of the western tribes. Moreover, New York could best pry loose the French hold on these tribes by curbing the flow of cheap British manufactures from Albany to Montreal.
Governor Burnet adopted a vigorous western policy by banning trade with Montreal and by founding Fort Oswego in 1727. His enemies in the Assembly forced him to relax the trade ban, but the fort remained an important outpost. As a result, the quantity of furs reaching Albany mounted rapidly, until by 1750 New York rivaled Pennsylvania as the lead- ing exporter of furs to England.
The War of Austrian Succession, known in America as King George's War (1744-1748), found many New York leaders anxious to avoid open conflict. The Six Nations or Iroquois Confederacy were eager to maintain their neutrality, but former naval officer George Clinton favored a vigor- ous policy toward the French. He used his authority as governor to send cannon and provisions for the successful assault on Louisbourg, Nova Scotia. He tried to stir up the Six Nations against the French by calling a conference with the Indians at Albany in 1745. Clinton's efforts, how- ever, had little chance of success because of his bad relations with the Assembly. James de Lancey and his political allies, including the Indian commissaries at Albany, refused to grant the governor funds to carry on the war. As a result, Clinton broke with the Indian commissaries and
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transferred the control of Indian affairs to William Johnson. The Assem- bly retaliated by refusing to grant funds to Johnson, who had to make advances to the Indians out of his own pocket.
Johnson had come from Ireland in 1738 to administer the lands of his uncle, Admiral Peter Warren, near the modern town of Amsterdam. This energetic Irishman, one of the most fascinating figures in colonial history, became a farmer, trader, soldier, Indian agent, land speculator, states- man, and churchman. After building a house at Warrensburg, Johnson added a store so that he might trade with Mohawk neighbors and with the white traders operating out of Oswego. He earned the respect of both groups by his fair dealing, and he won the affection of the Mohawks by his willingness to treat them as equals. Johnson learned the Mohawk dia- lect, joined the braves in their sports and dances, and made an Indian girl, Molly Brant, mistress of his household. Johnson became the greatest trader with the western Indians, sending tons of goods to Oswego.
Johnson favored a strong imperial policy, partly because of his interest in the fur trade and partly because of his friendship with Governor Clin- ton, who appointed him colonel of the Albany County militia. In 1746 Johnson's eloquence persuaded the Mohawks to take up arms, although this action affronted the Great Council of the Iroquois at Onondaga which was striving to maintain unity of action. After much haggling, the Iroquois agreed to assist the English in an attack on Canada, but the failure of the British fleet to arrive in the St. Lawrence forced Clinton to abandon the expedition. During the last two years of the war the Mohawks actively protected the frontier, but the rest of the Iroquois gave only token aid to the English cause.
The settlement arranged in 1748 at Aix la Chapelle did not drive away the French threat on the New York and Virginia frontiers. French engi- neers built forts on strategic waterways, especially along the upper Ohio River, and French agents tried to win the Iroquois from the British. Conrad Weiser, the Indian agent for Pennsylvania, on his visit to Onon- daga in 1750 found that the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas had "turned Frenchmen." The Iroquois were angry about the land specu- lators of Albany who had cheated them of many tracts, and they resented the insolent attitude of Governor Clinton. Their grievances reached a peak when William Johnson gave up in 1751 his post as Indian agent for New York. Johnson could no longer afford to advance the funds for this position for which the enemies of Governor Clinton would make no pro- vision.
In 1753 the British Board of Trade recognized the critical situation and directed the governor of New York to call a colonial congress at Albany in 1754 in order to re-establish friendly relations with the Iroquois Con- federacy. James de Lancey of New York promised the chiefs of the Six
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A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
Nations that New York would not take away any Indian lands without just payment. The Iroquois returned home half satisfied but rejoicing in their thirty wagonloads of presents.
Benjamin Franklin proposed to the Congress at Albany a plan for colonial union, calling for a grand council chosen triennially by the colonial assemblies and for a president-general appointed by the Crown. The council and president would have charge over Indian relations, would regulate new settlements, and levy necessary taxes. Although the delegates approved the plan, the assemblies in the various colonies re- fused to transfer their power to a new agency. The Board of Trade was fearful that the proposed intercolonial government would take power away from the Crown. Thus the beginnings of a colonial union had to wait for over twenty years, until the Continental Congress met to protest against Parliament's encroachments upon the rights of the colonial legis- latures.
When the French routed George Washington and his Virginia militia from the forks of the Ohio (the site of Pittsburgh) in July of 1754, the colonies and the British government realized that they must take effective countermeasures or lose control of the trans-Appalachian region. Fortu- nately, the tactless Clinton had returned to England, and James de Lancey, acting governor, was able to end the paralyzing feud between the executive and the New York Assembly, and the Assembly voted in August 1754 to aid the hard-pressed Virginians. Also, noting the aggres- sive attitude of the Indians, it decided to strengthen the palisades of Albany.
The British government late in 1754 determined to oust the French from Acadia, Niagara, Crown Point, and the Ohio Valley. They author- ized three campaigns: General Edward Braddock, commander in chief of the British forces in America, was to seize Fort Duquesne (Pitts- burgh); Colonel Robert Monckton was to sail from Boston and take Acadia; and William Johnson was to lead an expedition against Crown Point. Braddock delegated to Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts the task of capturing Fort Niagara.
The defeat of Braddock in July 1755 foreshadowed and contributed to the failure of Shirley's expedition against Niagara and Johnson's attack on Crown Point. Shirley discovered that James de Lancey was jealous of his authority and was quietly obstructing his efforts to raise troops and to collect supplies. Furthermore, a violent feud broke open between Shirley and Johnson. Shirley, who succeeded Braddock as commander-in- chief of British forces, ordered Johnson to divert some of his Indians to Shirley's expedition against Niagara. Johnson, however, felt he needed all his Indian guides and warriors for his own expedition to Crown Point. When Shirley appealed directly to the Iroquois chiefs for recruits, he
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