USA > New York > A short history of New York State > Part 7
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enraged Johnson, who claimed exclusive control over Indian relations because of his office of Superintendent of Indian Affairs north of the Ohio River.
Neither Shirley nor Johnson captured their objectives in 1755 or 1756. Shirley led his men up the watercourses to Oswego, but the stormy waters of Lake Ontario, controlled by the strong French garrisons at Forts Niagara and Frontenac (Kingston, Ontario), made an attack on Niagara too hazardous for the small British force. In October 1755 Shirley pulled back part of his expedition to Albany. Meanwhile, Jackson, driving him- self to exhaustion, took his forces up the Hudson on bateaux and over a wilderness road to the southern tip of Lake George. There he constructed an earth fort which he named William Henry. The French under Baron Ludwig August Dieskau advanced southward from Crown Point and estab- lished a strong fort at Ticonderoga. Hoping to surprise Johnson's forces, Dieskau with a picked force attacked Johnson's encampment. The French broke off after heavy fighting and retreated northward to their strong posi- tions at Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Johnson was unable or unwilling to pursue the French and resigned his command in the fall of 1755.
During 1756 and 1757 the French seized the initiative and inflicted several serious defeats upon the British. In August of 1756 General Louis Joseph de Montcalm, recognizing the importance of Oswego in influ- encing the Six Nations, captured the fort. He also wished to prevent the British from cutting the French line of communication to the Ohio country. At this time, the British were suffering from the confusion caused by a change of command. De Lancey, Johnson, and others had intrigued against Shirley in London, and the Board of Trade dismissed the able governor in 1756. The new commander, the Earl of Loudoun, was a master of procrastination and permitted Montcalm to select his targets at will. Loudoun wasted the summer of 1757 in a fruitless expedi- tion against Louisburg. Meanwhile, Montcalm and white-uniformed French regulars, equipped with siege guns and accompanied by thou- sands of habitants and befeathered Indians, rowed down Lake George. Their cannon blasted to pieces the bastions of Fort William Henry. De- spite Montcalm's orders his Indians butchered scores of prisoners.
In 1758 the British government reorganized its armed services and rushed reinforcements to America. The great war leader, William Pitt, selected Louisburg as the main goal, with Ticonderoga and Fort Duquesne as secondary objectives. The British fleet recovered control of the seas in a series of engagements and prevented the French from send- ing supplies to their garrisons in North America.
In contrast with the brilliant assault on Louisburg, the campaign against Ticonderoga was a fiasco. Pitt removed Loudoun just at the time when he was beginning to show enough spirit to carry through his sound
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strategy. The new commander, James Abercromby, committed many errors in both strategy and tactics. Most disastrous of all was his order to storm the breastworks of Ticonderoga before he had softened up the defenses with his artillery.
Colonel John Bradstreet redeemed British prestige by sweeping up the Mohawk Valley and by making a lightning raid on Fort Frontenac, the key point to French control of the interior. The French lost their com- mand of Lake Ontario and their communications with the interior. The raid destroyed vast stores needed for the defense of Fort Duquesne, which fell to the British soon after. The Iroquois, impressed by these victories, veered to the British side. The western Indians also began to waver in their allegiance to the French.
The British won a succession of great victories in 1759. General James Wolfe made a brilliant and decisive assault on Quebec, and Lord Jeffrey Amherst, who had taken over the New York command, methodically moved his forces northward toward his ultimate target, Montreal. His siege of Ticonderoga, which forced the French to blow up their fortress, was followed by his capture of Crown Point. There he set his carpenters to construct lake craft, and his new navy captured the French boats and gave him command of Lake Champlain. Winter set in before he could push north to Montreal and forced him to withdraw most of his forces to Albany.
In the summer of 1759, Amherst sent out General John Prideaux to attack Niagara. After Prideaux lost his life in the siege of Fort Niagara, Johnson took over the command and received the surrender.
The settlers of German Flats were overjoyed in 1760 to see General Amherst's army of ten thousand men passing up the Mohawk River in their bateaux. The army was traveling up the Mohawk and down the Oswego River to Lake Ontario, where hundreds of boats awaited to carry it down the St. Lawrence to Montreal. Arriving at the outskirts of the great French stronghold, Amherst met General William Haviland, who had pried the French out of their last strongholds on Lake Champlain. The capital of New France surrendered on September 8, 1760.
The victories of Amherst marked the end of French rule in North America. For New Yorkers they promised peace and security. Not only was French power eliminated, but the Iroquois were also cowed and weakened. Within a few years the various tribes ceded large tracts to the province. The New York frontier expanded rapidly after 1763 as thou- sands of settlers poured into the territory north of Albany and west of Schenectady.
Paradoxically, the war deepened the colonists' loyalty to the Cross of St. George at the same time it stimulated their spirit of self-confidence. No citizens of the British Empire toasted Lord Amherst more sincerely
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than those of New York in 1760. Both frontier farmers and the Manhattan merchants regarded the redcoats and the royal fleet as their defenders. Thousands identified their self-interest with that of the Empire which protected their property and permitted a good measure of self- government. How deep this loyalty ran was amply demonstrated during the Revolution, when New York furnished more Loyalists than any other colony.
The colonial wars hastened the growth of political maturity. The mem- bers of the Assembly took advantage of war-harassed governors and browbeat them into surrendering control over the purse. Moreover, New Yorkers became increasingly proud and confident of their own military abilities as they joined the British regulars in various campaigns. After all, it was Sir William Johnson, a Mohawk Valley man, who had won two resounding victories over the lilies of France.
One ironical result of the war was the diversion of the fur trade to Montreal. Merchants in Albany and New York protested that the furs of the western tribes were no longer reaching their stores, but in 1774 the British government encouraged the shift by granting the Ohio country to the province of Quebec.
Victory forced Britain to reorganize her imperial policies because the war had revealed serious weaknesses. New York merchants, like those of New England, had carried on trade with the French during the war. The colonial legislatures failed to vote adequate funds for defense, and they tried to escape debts by issuing paper money. In addition to these prob- lems were those created by victory itself. Would the Board of Trade or would the colonial legislatures determine Indian policy, regulate the fur trade, and distribute land? Would colonies such as New York have to support the imperial army defending the frontier? Would British mer- chants and planters in the West Indies cripple the northern colonies by securing a strict enforcement of the Navigation Acts? Throughout the next decade the changing British ministries were to seek answers to these problems, and their policies antagonized many New Yorkers of almost every class and region.
Chapter 6
Colonial Society and Culture
The City is so conveniently Situated for Trade and the Genius of the people are so inclined to merchandise that they gener- ally seek no other Education for their children than writing and Arithmetick.
-JOHN SHARPE, chaplain of the King's forces, 1713
PERHAPS the most remarkable features of New York province were its slow growth and the cosmopolitan character of its population. In 1775, after over a century and a half of colonization, New York had fewer than 200,000 inhabitants. Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut all had larger populations. The English had acquired fewer than ten thousand subjects in their conquest of 1664. This popula- tion doubled by the turn of the century and rose to approximately seventy-five thousand by the middle of the eighteenth century. There- after, population increased rapidly until the losses of the Revolution caused a temporary interruption in New York's growth.
Most New Yorkers lived in the southeast corner of the province, and practically all lived within a few miles of the Hudson River, Long Island Sound, or the Atlantic Ocean. The counties along the lower Hudson were becoming well-settled communities by 1763, as was the western tip of Long Island, where many Dutch farmers had settled in the neighborhood of Brooklyn. Beyond Hempstead on Long Island the distance between farms and villages lengthened and large portions of the island were uninhabited. The population of New York City ranged from 10 to 20 per cent of the province's total, a higher urban proportion than in any other colony except Rhode Island. The rest of the population was dispersed along the Hudson River and its tributaries. During the decade after 1700, a few hundred Palatine Germans moved beyond the tiny Dutch settle- ment at Schenectady and settled along the Schoharie and later the Mohawk. William Johnson in the late 1730's and George Clarke in the following decade "seated" some Scotch-Irish families in the Cherry Valley
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region, but in general the hill country-Catskill, Adirondack, or Taconic -remained unbroken wilderness at the time of the Revolution.
The potpourri of nationalities which has always characterized New York was established in 1624 with the first shipload of settlers. On board were many French-speaking Walloons as well as Dutch. The latter even- tually assimilated the Walloons and most of the Huguenots in settlements such as New Paltz. But the Dutch in turn were gradually absorbed by the English stock, especially in the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, al- though they were outnumbered by at least four to one in 1775, the Dutch still dominated Albany and were numerous among the farming population of the Hudson Valley.
About one-half of the white population in 1775 was of English origin, although no great waves of immigrants had come from the mother country. Rather, a steady trickle of soldiers, officials, craftsmen, and servants flowed to New York. As important as England itself as a source of Anglo-Saxon blood were the big families of New England. Connecticut men brought the hallmarks of their civilization to Long Island and to a few towns on the eastern bank of the Hudson.
Representatives of practically every nationality settled in New York, although the Dutch and English were dominant in numbers and influence. The French came in small numbers, but the Huguenot contingent con- tributed several outstanding families, notably the De Lanceys, De Peysters, and the Jays. The Scotch-Irish were another minor element, but they were strong in Ulster and Orange counties. In addition, there were a considerable number of Germans, a good-sized Negro group, and a few Swedes and Jews.
The vanguard of the Palatine Germans, who formed the largest mass migration during the colonial period, reached London in 1708, seeking refuge from the armies of Louis XIV and the exactions of petty princes. The British government welcomed the Protestant refugees and made plans to disperse them through the empire. It sent a small band to New York and gave it land to lay out the town of Newburgh.
Governor Robert Hunter tried to colonize some twenty-five hundred Palatine Germans in New York. The Germans were to reimburse the government for the cost of passage and their maintenance by producing naval stores-tar, pitch, and tall masts-needed by Queen Anne's navy.
Robert Livingston willingly sold a part of his manor to the province for the site of this experiment and secured the contracts to supply the Palatines with flour, beer, salt pork, and tools. The undertaking ran into severe difficulties from the outset, partly because the supervising officials knew nothing about extracting pitch from virgin pine, partly because they tried to run the camps under military discipline. In 1712 Governor Hunter abandoned the project in disgust.
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The disillusioned Germans scattered along the Hudson, but the largest number, in 1713, trekked through the snows to the Schoharie Valley, which they believed had been promised to them by the English. The settlers laid out seven villages, fashioned their crude farm tools, and began to plant wheat. But Albany speculators holding title to land in that region demanded that the Palatines sign leases. After seven years of controversy, the Palatine settlers gave up their resistance. Some re- mained in the Schoharie Valley; others took advantage of Hunter's offer of free land in the Mohawk Valley near the towns of Stone Arabia and Palatine Bridge; a group founded Herkimer (near Utica) in 1723. A considerable number, including the famous Indian agent, Conrad Weiser, migrated to Pennsylvania, which subsequently attracted most of the Ger- mans arriving in America during the eighteenth century.
The Negro minority was large for a northern colony, fluctuating from 12 to 24 per cent of the total population at various times. Negroes were found in every county, although most of them lived in or around New York City. Most of the slaves came from the West Indies, although both the Dutch and English traders sometimes brought back slaves from the African coast.
Slavery was primarily a labor system, but it was also a method of race control. Citizens lived in fear and sometimes panic of their enslaved neighbors or servants, who were often sullen and defiant. The Negroes created a subterranean society of their own, securing rum in unlicensed taverns in trade for stolen goods. In the 1680's the Common Council of New York began to pass ordinances prohibiting the sale of liquor to slaves and forbidding any transaction of business with them. In 1702 the Assem- bly passed a comprehensive slave code which forbade trading with slaves and prohibited them from carrying weapons and assembling without authorization. Harsh treatment caused a group of slaves to revolt in 1712, but soldiers quickly hunted them down. After the uprising the city and provincial codes were made more severe. In 1741 white citizens became terrified at the rumor that slaves were planning to take over the city and kill the whites. Carried away by hysteria, the judges sentenced eighteen Negroes to hanging, thirteen to burning, and seventy to exile.
During the second half of the century, relations between whites and blacks improved, largely because of the arrival of many new white im- migrants. Proportionately reduced in number, the blacks seemed less menacing. Furthermore, the slaves became less defiant as they adjusted to white customs through their contacts as house servants and farm laborers. Humanitarian impulses generated by the Quakers resulted in better treatment and education for the slave. A few bold spirits began to advocate emancipation, and by 1777 one-third of the legislators were willing to free the slaves. Opposition was strong, however, among con-
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servatives, property holders, and white laborers, and local emancipation was not to come for another half century.
The English conquest deprived the Dutch Reformed church of its privileged status, but the terms of surrender guaranteed that "the Dutch here shall enjoy the liberty of their consciences in divine worship and church discipline." The Duke's Laws of 1665 (extended in 1674 to the whole province) allowed certain communities to select a Protestant clergyman and to pay his salary from taxes. Since the Dutch were the majority in most settlements, this meant a limited re-establishment of the Dutch Reformed church. As the governors were loath to press non- Dutch to pay taxes for the Dutch Reformed church, each congregation had to rely more and more upon free will offerings.
The Reformed church grew in numbers but declined in importance. Several factors more than offset its head start. The shift to English rule not only deprived the Reformed church of financial support from the Dutch West India Company but also cut off immigration from the Netherlands. The Dutch congregations therefore had to rely upon natural increase for membership except in a few communities where the Dutch absorbed smaller pockets of Walloons, Huguenots, and Germans. Scarcely had the adjustment been made to English rule when Leisler's rebellion in 1689 disrupted church congregations. The dominies (as the Dutch Reformed clergy were called), by aligning themselves with their wealthy parishioners (Van Cortlandts, Bayards, and the like), caused many people from the lower classes to drop out of the Dutch churches. Most damaging of all was the stubbornness of the clergy and the elders in clinging to the Dutch language in the church services, thus losing many of the young people. Peter Kalm noted in 1749 that the youths
begin however by degrees to change their manners and opinions chiefly in- deed in the town and in its neighborhood; for the most of the young people now speak principally English, and go only to the English church; and would even take it amiss if they were called Dutchmen and not English.
The more enlightened members recognized the necessity of using English in the services and of training ministers fluent in English as well as Dutch. In 1747 the younger element demanded a provincial church assembly (coetus) in order to free themselves from the Classis (governing body) of the Reformed church at Amsterdam. Seven years later this organization assumed the powers of a classis. Meanwhile the conservatives drew together in another group protesting that God could be properly worshiped in the Dutch tongue alone. The younger leaders won an important victory in 1764, when the Dutch Church on Nassau Street in New York adopted English for its services. For a time the other
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Dutch congregations held out, but by 1805 all the Dutch churches in New York City had given up the use of the old tongue. The progressive group in New York and New Jersey also demanded a college in America to train young men for the ministry. In 1770 they secured the charter for Queens (Rutgers College). The old guard agreed in 1771 to a plan of union with their rivals which John H. Livingston had worked out with the tacit approval of the Classis in Amsterdam. The long struggle over the language question and bickering over theological issues diverted the attention of the Dutch Reformed leaders from the many opportunities to convert the heathens (Indian and white) on the frontier and to win adherents among the immigrants.
Anglicanism followed in the train of English officials sent out to govern the colony. As late as 1687 Governor Dongan ( himself a Roman Catholic ) noted that the Church of England had only one chaplain in the province. After New York became a royal colony, the British government took steps to set up an establishment of the Church of England. The Dutch in control of the new Assembly resisted the move but reluctantly agreed in 1693 to an act "to settle and to maintain" a ministry in the city of New York and in the counties of Richmond, Westchester, and Queens. This law made no mention of either the Church of England or the Book of Common Prayer, but the governors interpreted it as establishing the Church of England in the four lower counties. In 1697 Trinity Parish, the mother church for the Episcopal communion in New York, received its charter. On its board of vestrymen was Colonel Caleb Heathcote, a merchant, member of the governor's Council, and first lord of Scarsdale Manor. Heathcote was a vigorous leader and helped to set up congre- gations at Westchester, Rye, New Rochelle, Eastchester, and Yonkers. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which was founded in 1701 in England, assisted the expansion of the Church of England in New York and other colonies. Between 1702 and 1783 the Society sent fifty-eight men to labor in New York. Sir William Johnson, who sought to Christianize the Mohawks, was an ardent supporter of this society.
Despite official favor and social prestige, the Anglican church remained largely a "class church" of officials, rich merchants, and large landholders. At no time did it enroll as much as a tenth of the population. The Church of England began to display more life and activity after 1750. In 1754 its leaders sponsored the establishment of King's College (later Columbia University ) and agitated for an American episcopate so that their young men would not have to go to England for ordination. These proposals, however, stirred up much opposition among the other de- nominations. The turmoil of the Revolutionary War struck a body blow at the Church of England, which naturally suffered from its close con-
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nections with the British Crown. During the Revolutionary period, in fact, the Loyalists were sometimes referred to as the Episcopal party.
The Presbyterians were the most vigorous rivals of the Anglicans and outnumbered them throughout the colonial period. The Puritans of Connecticut brought their Calvinist traditions with them when they settled on Long Island after 1640 and established towns in Westchester and Dutchess counties in the late seventeenth century. These Yankees were drifting toward a more centralized form of church government and usually organized Presbyterian churches in the new communities. Pres- byterianism was strengthened not only by the steady influx of New Englanders but also by the immigration of Scots and Ulster Irish. Dutch, and later English, officials looked askance at the newcomers because of their dissenting opinions and rebellious history both in America and England.
Formalism and bickering stultified much religious activity. In addition, the shortage of clergymen made it difficult for the various denominations to reach either the artisan on Manhattan or the pioneer on the Mohawk. During the second quarter of the eighteenth century the tremendous re- ligious movement known in Germany as "Pietism" and in England as the "Methodist Revival" erupted in America as the "Great Awakening." New York was not the center for this phenomenon, but its Calvinist churches could not help but be stirred by the exhortations of the Tennents and Theodore Freylinghuysen of New Jersey and the revivals begun by Jonathan Edwards in western Massachusetts. George Whitefield also made hundreds of converts in New York on his triumphal visits in 1740 and 1763.
These evangelists pitched the appeal of their message to the humble folk and stressed an individualistic and emotional religion. Although the revival created some divisions, it had many beneficial results for both individuals and the colonies as a whole. Some of the effects of the Great Awakening were far reaching. It deepened the spiritual life of thousands, stimulated the growth of intercolonial feeling and humanitarianism, broke down some of the barriers separating nationality groups, united the dis- senting groups in opposition to the privileges of the Church of England, and encouraged a more democratic spirit.
The religious revivals attending the evangelistic Great Awakening in the middle of the eighteenth century stimulated but disrupted the Pres- byterian church as well as the Dutch Reformed and other denominations. The "New Lights," as the evangelistic wing was called, were more in- terested in saving souls than in observing the niceties of Presbyterian polity. In 1743 they organized the Synod of New York and three years later set up the College of New Jersey (now Princeton). The conservative clergy opposed the emotional evangelism of the New Lights as leading
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to heresy and as destructive to church discipline. After a decade and a half of bickering the two wings of the Presbyterian church were re- united.
Relations between Anglicans and Presbyterians were often strained during the colonial period. The governors often used their powers to obstruct the activities of Presbyterians. In 1706 Governor Cornbury arrested Presbyterian minister Francis Makemie on the ground that he had failed to secure a license to preach in the province. Makemie's lawyers claimed that the instructions to the governor allowed liberty of conscience to all except Roman Catholics. Makemie's acquittal by a jury was a notable victory in the fight for religious liberty in the colonies. Several governors turned down Presbyterian requests for a church charter in New York City. Presbyterian congregations in turn refused to accept Anglican priests imposed on them by the governors. This sectarian bickering spilled over into political life. The Anglicans, along with most of the Dutch, lined up in the governor's party, especially during the period when the De Lancey family was in power. The Presbyterians rallied to their side many of the middle class, the farmers on Long Island, and the Scotch-Irish of Orange and Ulster counties. They followed the banner of the Livingston clan.
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