USA > New York > New York City > History of New York city from the discovery to the present day, V. 2 > Part 35
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"De Lancey changed Love's bridal wreath For laurels from the hand of death."
The son of General De Lancey, Oliver De Lancey, Jr., who succeeded Andre as Adjutant-General of the British army in America, rose through the
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grade of Lieutenant-General to that of General, and died, at the beginning of this century, nearly at the head of the English army-list.
In In 1847 the late Bishop of Western New York (William Heathcote De Lancey) told the writer a curious story of his recovery of some of their old family papers. In the spring of that year, being in New York, a package was handed to the servant at the door by an old gentleman, on opening which the Bishop found an anonymous letter directed to him. The writer stated that, being in England between thirty and forty years before, he found some papers relating to the De Lancey family among some waste paper in the house where he was staying ; that he had preserved them, and, seeing by the newspapers that the Bishop was in the city, he now inclosed them to him. These the Bishop found to be : 1st, the commission of James De Lancey as Lieutenant- Governor of the colony ; 2d, his commission as Chief-Justice of the colony : 34, the freedom of the city of New York, voted to one of the family in 1730 ; 4th, a map of the lands owned by them in West Chester County and on New York island, prepared by the Bishop's grandfather. He advertised in the New York papers, requesting an interview with his unknown correspondent, but there was no response, and he heard no more from him.
Some branches of this family remained in New York, and we cannot point to a more striking evidence of the change wrought by the Revolution, than the fact that, since that event, the name of De Lancey, once so prominent, is never found in the records of the Government. It is in the Church only that it has acquired eminence, in the person of the former distinguished Bishop of Western New York. .
This is the kind of story which might be told of many other loyall -: families. Ruined by confiscations, they faded out of sight, and, being excluded from political office, they were forgotten, and their very names would sound strange in the ears of the present generation of New Yorkers. Many years ago, in the old country house of a relative, the writer amused some days of & summer vacation by bringing down from the dust of a garret, where they had reposed for two generations, the letters of one of these refugees, who, at the beginning of the Revolution, was obliged to seek safety on board a British ship-of-war off New York harbor (from whence he writes his farewell. com- mending his wife and children to the care of the family), and then made his home in England, until, as he hoped, "these calamities be overpast." It was sad to read his speculations, as night after night he attended the debates in Parliament and watched the progress of the war, and, to the last, confidently trusted in the success of the royal arms, which alone could replace him in the position from which he had been driven into exile. When these hopes were ultimately crushed, a high appointment was offered him by Government, but he preferred to return to his own land to share the straitened circumstances of his family, and be buried with his fathers.
The withdrawal of so many of the gentry from the country, and the worldly ruin of so many more, was necessarily detrimental to its social refinement. It was taking away the high-toned dignity of the landed proprietors, and substi- tuting in its place the restless aspirations of men who had to make their fortunes and position, and get forward in life. Society lost, therefore, much of its ease and gracefulness. Mrs. Grant, to whose work we have already alluded, who in her youth had seen New York society as far back as 1760, and lived to
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know what it was after the peace, thus speaks of the change : "Mildness of manners, refinement of mind, and all the softer virtues that spring up in the cultivated paths of social life, nurtured by generous affections, were undoubtedly to be found in the unhappy loyalists. . . Certainly, however necessary the ruling powers might find it to carry their system of exile into execution, it has occasioned to the country an irreparable privation. What the loss of the Huguenots was to commerce and manufactures in France, that of the loyalists was to religion, literature, and amenity in America. The silken threads were drawn out of the mixed web of society, which has ever since been comparatively coarse and homely." *
This is somewhat of an exaggeration. The tone of society was, indeed, impaired, but not lost. There were still enough of the old families remaining to give it dignity, at least for another generation. The community could not suddenly become democratic, or throw off all its old associations and habits of reverence. As a writer on that day says, people were "habituated to take off their hats to gentlemen who were got up regardless of expense, and who rode about in chariots drawn by four horses." It took a long while for the com- munity to learn to act on the maxim that "all men are created equal." Not, indeed, until those were swept away who had lived in the days of the Revolution, did this downward tendency become very evident. Simultaneously, too, with their departure came a set of the nouveaux riches, which the growing facilities of New York for making commercial fortunes brought forward, and thus by degrees, was ushered in-the age of gaudy wealth.
The final blow, indeed, to this stately old society was given by the French Revolution. We know how every thing dignified in society was then swept away in the wild fury of democracy, but the present generation cannot conceive of the intense feeling which that event produced in our own country. France had been our old ally, England our old foe. We must side with the former in her struggles against tyranny. It became a political test. The Republicans adopted it, and insensibly there seemed to grow up the idea that refinement and courtesy in life were at variance with the true party-spirit. In this way demo- cratic rudeness crept into social life, and took the place of the aristocratic ele- ment of former days. Gradually it went down into the lower strata of society, till all that reverence which once characterized it was gone.
The manners of an individual at last became an evidence of his political views. Goodrich, in his " Recollections," speaking on this very point, gives an ammusing instance of it. A clergyman in Connecticut, who was noted for his wit, riding along one summer day, came to a brook, where he paused to let his horse drink. Just then a stranger rode into the stream from the opposite direction, and, as his horse began to drink also, the two men were brought face 'to face.
"How are you, priest ?" said the stranger
" How are you, democrat ?" inquired the parson.
" How do you know I am a democrat ? " said one.
"How do you know I am a priest ?" said the other.
"I know you to be a priest by your dress," said the stranger
" And I know you to be a democrat by your address," said the parson.
* "American Lady," p. 330.
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Even the dress was made the exponent of party views, as much as it had been by the Cavaliers and Puritans of England. As republican principles gained ground, large wigs and powder, cocked hats, breeches and shoe-buckles, were replaced by short hair, pantaloons, and shoe-strings. It is said that the Marquis de Breze, master of ceremonies at Versailles, nearly died of fright at the first pair of shoes, divested of buckles, which he saw on the feet of a Revo- lutionary minister ascending the stairs to a royal lerce. He rushed over to Dumouriez, then Minister of War. "He is actually entering," exclaimed the Marquis, " with ribbons in his shoes!" Demouriez. himself one of the incen- diaries of the Revolution, solemnly said, " Tout est fini?"-" The game is up ; the monarchy is gone.". And so it was. This was only one of the signs of the times. Buckles and kings were extinguished together.
Such being the feeling of the sans culottes in France, the favorers of Jaco. binism in this country were not slow to imitate them. Jefferson eschewed . breeches and wore pantaloons. He adopted leather strings in his shoes instead of buckles, and his admirers trumpeted it as a proof of democratic simplicity. Washington rode to the capital in a carriage drawn by four cream-colored horses, with servants in livery. All this his successor gave up, and even atml. ished the President's levees, the latter of which were afterward restored by Mrs. Madison. Thus the dress, which had for generations been the sign and symbol of a gentleman, gradually waned away, till society reached that charm- ing state of equality in which it became impossible, by any outward costume, to distinguish masters from servants. John Jay says, in one of his letters, that with small clothes and buckles the high tone of society departed.
In the writer's early day this system of the past was just going out. Wigs and powder and queues, breeches, and buckles, still lingered among the older gentlemen-vestiges of an age which was vanishing away. But the high-toned feeling of the last century was still in the ascendant, and had not yet succumbed to the worship of mammon which characterizes this age. There was still in New York a reverence for the colonial familes, and the prominent political men -- like Duane, Clinton, Colden, Radcliff, Hoffman, and Livingston - were gen- erally gentlemen both by birth and social standing. The time had not yet come when this was to be an objection to an individual in a political caterr. The leaders were meu whose names were historical in the State, and they inth. enced society. The old families still formed an association among themselves. and intermarried one generation after another. Society was, therefore, very restricted. The writer remembers, in his childhood. when he went out with his father for his afternoon drive, he knew every carriage they met on the avenues.
The gentlemen of that day knew each other well, for they had grown up together, and their associations in the past were the same. Yet, what friend. ships for after-life did these associations form! How different this from the intimacy between Mr. Smith and Mr. Thompson, when they know nothing of each other's antecedents, have no subjects in common but the money-mark .:. and never heard of each other until the last year, when some lucky speculation in stocks raised them from their " low estate," and enabled them to purcha -.. houses " up-town," and set up their carriages.
There was, in that day, none of the show and glitter of modern times ; but there was, with many of these families, particularly with those who Lo i
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retained their landed estates, and were still living in their old family-homes, an elegance which has never been rivaled in other parts of the country. In his early days, the writer has been much at the South ; has stayed at Mount Vernon when it was yet held by the Washingtons; with Lord Fairfax's family at Ashgrove and Vancluse ; with the Lees in Virginia ; and with the aristocratic planters of South Carolina ; but he has never elsewhere seen such elegance of living as was formerly exhibited by the old families of New York. .
Gentlemen then were great diners-out. Their associations naturally led to this kind of intimacy, when almost the same set constantly met together. Giv- ing dinners was then a science, and a gentleman took as much pride in the excellence of his wine-cellar as he did in his equipage or his library. This had its evils, it is true, and led to long sittings over the table, and an excess of con- viviality which modern customs have fortunately corrected.
There was a punctiliousness, too, in their intercourse, even among the most intimate, which formed a strange contrast to the familiarity of modern society. Gentlemen were guarded in what they said to each other, for those were duel- ing-days, and a hasty speech had to be atoned for at Hoboken. Stories are still handed down of disputes at the dinner-table which led to hostile meetings, but which, in our day, would not have been remembered next morning. In an obit- uary sketch, one of this set published at his death, twenty-five years ago, when speaking of the high tone which then characterized society, the writer said : " Perhaps the liability, which then existed, of being held personally answera- ble for their words, false as the principle may have been, produced a courtesy not known in these days."
One thing is certain-that there was a high tone prevailing at that time, which is now nowhere seen. The community then looked up to the public men with a degree of reverence which has never been felt for those who suc- ceeded them. They were the last of a race which does not now exist. With them died the stateliness of colonial times. Wealth came in and created a social distinction which took the place of family, and thus society became vulgarized.
Gulian C. Verplanck was, perhaps, the last prominent member of the gen- eration which has gone. Where can we point to any one of those now living, like him, surrounded by the elevating associations of the past, distinguished in public life, and a ripe scholar in literature and theology ? The old historical names of Jay and Duer and Hoffman, and a few more of colonial times, are still upheld among us by their sons, who are showing, in the third generation, the high talents of those who had gone before them; " but what are they among so many !"
"Rari nantes in gurgite vasto."
The influences of the past are fast vanishing away. and our children will look only to the shadowy future. The very rule by which we estimate indi- viduals has been entirely altered. The inquiry once was, " Who is he ?" Men now ask the question, " How much is he worth ?" Have we gained by the ' change ?
Is it strange that the writer answers in himself that description in Horace- "Laudator acti temporis, me puero ?"
As years gather round him, and the shadows deepen in his path, he instinc- tively turns more and more from the "living Present " to commune with the
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" dead Past." Many, however, to whom he has referred in these pages, will be to most of his readers only names, while to him they are realities-living and breathing men ; and, as he thinks of them, he believes there is no delusion in the conviction that, for eloquence and refinement, for all the graces which elevate and ennoble life, they have left no successors. The outward pressure is now too democratic. Most of the prominent men, also, of the present day, want the associations of the past.
As Edward IV. stood on the tower of Warwick Castle, and saw marching through the park below him the mighty host of retainers who, at the summons of the great Earl of Warwick, had gathered round him, and then thought how powerless, in comparison, were the new nobles with whom he had attempted to surround his throne, he is said to have muttered to himself, " After all, you cannot make a great baron out of a new lord !" And so we would say, "You cannot make out of the new millionaire what was exhibited by the gentimen of our old colonial families !"
Commerce, indeed is fast taking the place of the true old chivalry with all its high associations. It is impossible, in this country, for St. Germain to hold its own against the Bourse. Money-getting is the great object of life in this practical age; and, every month, the words which Halleck wrote so many years ago are becoming more true :
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" These are not romantic times So beautiful in Spenser's rhymes. So dazzling to the dreaming boy; Ours are the days of fact, not fabie, Of Knights, but not of the Round Table, Of Baillie Jarvis, not Rob Roy. And noble name and cultured land, Palace and park, and vassal band, Are powerless to notes of hand Of Rothschild or the Barings."
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APPENDIX XVII. ·
VISIT OF GENERAL JACKSON TO THE CITY AS A GUEST OF TAMMANY, IN ' 1819 .*
BY GENERAL PROSPER M. WETMORE.
ONE incident in the history of Tammany caused a good deal of feeling at the time of its occurrence, and has probably not been forgotten by all of those who have survived the last half century. Previous to the year 1820, the war between the Bucktails, or Regular Tammany orgaization, and the Clintonians, a party of more recent date, had begun to wax warm, and it was expected that at the then approaching national election an unusual degree of bitterness, perhaps of violence, would prevail in the contest. Every preparatory effort was there- fore put in force to increase the strength of each of the contending parties.
In the early spring of 1819, an unexpected event awakened the enthusiasm of the people, of every class, to an unusual degree. It was the arrival in New York of General Andrew Jackson, then only known as the hero of New Orleans, and the successful commander who had closed the war with our British antag- onists by the most brilliant victory of the whole contest. The name of Jackson had not at that time become a watchword of party, although there were a few sagacious politicians who regarded him as the " coming man." It will natu- rally be supposed that the active members of the two contending parties would be alive to the importance of securing so valuable an adherent, and a share of the prestige which attached to the person of a victorious general.
Jackson was received with great eclat by the municipal authorities, and with well-deserved honors at the hands of the people. A military review was given him on the Battery, and the freedom of the city in a gold box, in the Park. He was afterward escorted by a regiment of cavalry to visit the vener- able and distinguished General Ebenezer Stevens, then living, at an advanced age, on Long Island, near Hell Gate. Stevens had commanded the American
* Referred to on page 371.
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artillery at the surrender of Burgoyne, at Saratoga, and Jackson had defeated . Packenham and a greatly superior force at New Orleans. More than half a century had elapsed between the two great events, and the visit of the young and popular general was a graceful compliment paid to the warrior of another age.
During the stay of the General in the city, he accepted an invitation to dine at Tammany Hall. He was received with the greatest cordiality by the domi- nant party, who expected great results from so auspicious an event. The enter- tainment was superb, as the phrase was understood in that primitive day, when Stetson was not, and Delmonico undreamed of. Alas! how precarious are all human expectations ! An explosion followed the opening of the intellectual exercises, which speedily put an end to the harmonious hilarity of the occasion. The circumstance which led to this disastrous result cannot be better stated than in the language of one of Halleck's notes to an allusion in The Croaker :
" A grand dinner was given to General Jackson, at Tammany Hall, on the 23d of February, 1819, in honor of his visit to this city. The hall was crowded. and the toast, 'To General Jackson; so long as the Mississippi rolls its waters to the ocean, so long may his great name and glorious deeds be remembered,' was replied to by the General, who proposed, 'De Witt Clinton, Governor of the great and patriotic State of New York,' to the utter confusion of the Buck. tails, who looked upon Clinton as their bitterest foe. General Jackson, per. fectly independent of all parties, had conceived a great admiration for Mr. Clinton, although he was at that time personally unacquainted with him, and hence the toast. The greatest confusion ensued, amid which the General left the room."
The subject was just fitted to call out the brilliant wits of the day. Drake, in the first number of The Croaker, has the following lines
" I'm sick of General Jackson's toast Canals are naught to me; Nor do I care who rules the roast, Clinton or John Targee."
Halleck took his full share of the fun. One of his earliest contributions to the series of The Croaker, entitled, " The Freedom of the City in a Gold Box to a Great General," is in his happiest vein. One stanza from another of his productions on the same topic must suffice. It is entitled, " The Secret Mine Sprung at a Late Supper :"
" The songs were good, for Mead and Hawkins sung 'em, The wine went round, 'twas laughter all and joke, When crack ! the General sprung a mine among 'em, And beat a safe retreat amid the smoke. As fall the sticks of rockets when we fire 'em, So fell the Bucktails at that toast accurst. Looking like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, When the firm earth beneath their footsteps burst."
It may well be supposed that such an opening for jocose allusion was not neglected, and the subject continued to be a sore one to the Bucktails for many a month after the public at large had forgotten the occurrence. Jackson's unpremeditated piece of strategy was not without its effect upon the future policy of parties ; for in after years the Clintonians became the most earnest and influential members of the Jackson party.
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INDEX.
$
ABOLITIONIST RIOT, 460.
·Academy of Design, 588, 589, 609. of Music, 511.
Act of Navigation closes ports in New England, Maryland, and Vir- ginia, 58.
Act of Parliament empowering Govern- ment Officials to receive their salaries independent of the peo- ple, boldly denounced, 238.
Adams, John, first Vice-President of the United States, 194, 293, 303. John Quincy, 232.
Samuel, his circular letter on tax- ation, 216.
Adoption of the Federal Constitution, procession in favor of, 282.
Etna Insurance Company, 476.
Africa, 147.
African Chapel, 463.
African Slaves, 25.
Albany City, 14, 16, 44, 45, 109, 110, 126, 148, 641.
City, Six Nations in Council at, 130.
County of. 114, 211.
County of, divided into three por- tions, 238.
Albion, a ship, 156.
Alderton's Building, 90.
Alexander, James, a prominent lawyer of New York, 134.
Alexis, Russian Duke, reception of, 639. Alleged Robbery of Vouchers from Comp- troller's Office, 627.
Allegiance, Oath of, Traders compelled to reside within city limits, and take, 52.
Allerton Isane, one of the " May Flower" emigrants, 90.
Alliance with France, 28S. Almshouses, 336.
Ambuscado, a ship, 321. America, 14, 15.
America, Bank of, 603. Bank of North, 603.
American Academy of Fine Arts found- ed under Charter, 587.
Academy of Fine Arts, Trum- bull's connection with, 587.
Army of 15,000 men, encamped at Brooklyn, 247.
Civilization, 657.
Coast, 16.
Lawyers, eminent, 341.
Press, The, its History and Prog- ress, 274-280.
Republic, new, a stranger's ex- perience in the, 338.
Americans retreat across East River, to New York, 247.
Ames, Fisher, 292. Amherst, General, 184, 443.
- General, visit to New York, 184. Amsterdam, 10, 14, 56, 63, 85.
Chamber, 18, 35, 43, 63.
Chamber, proclamation relating to settlement in and trade with New Netherland, 35.
Directors, 59, 148.
Fort, 21, 25, 26, 27, 36, 46, 49, 62.
Fort, surrender of, 62 note.
Port, changed to Fort James, 62. Harbor of, 10.
New 22, 24, 26, 28, 29, 34, 35, 37, 39, 40, 50, 51, 52.
New, and Long Island Ferry. 40. New, Population of, 53, 55, 59, 148.
New. Survey and Map made, 58.
New, Col. Nicholls anchors be- fore, 61.
New, surrendered to the British, 61.
New, henceforth known as New York, 62.
New, Literature of, 77.
- New, Sunday in, 77.
New, Mode of Worship in, 78.
AIL 114
INDEX ..
Ancient and Modern New York, com- parison between, 639-658.
André, Major, 154, 266. Andros, Sir Edmund, 68, 106, 109, 113. Sir Edmund, appointed Governor, by Duke of York, 68, 106. Anglo-American manners and customs, 337-340. Anglo-Dutch War carried on by the Na- vies of the two powers, 66.
Ann Street, 90.
Anne, Queen, 124, 138, 155, 647.
Annual grants of supplies only, insisted upon by the Assembly, 143. Anonymous communications to Govern- ment by Sons of Liberty, 204. Appeal to Citizens on the Tammany Frauds question, 624-627.
Appleton & Co., 604. Apple-raising, 69.
Aqueduct, Croton, at Sing Sing, 500, 501. Arcade in Maiden Lane, 419.
Archangel, 14.
Architecture of New York City, 601.
Arding, Rev. Charles, 319.
Armuyden, in Zealand, 95.
Arnold, Benedict, 154.
Arrival of two British regiments at Bos- ton, 216.
Arsenal, State, 457. Asia, a ship, 245.
Aspinwall. William, 41. William H., 376.
Assembly, (Colonial) the people petition for a representative, and are re- fused, 106.
the first, meets in 1683, 113, 114. the, provides for building church, 121.
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the, refuses to grant supplies and is dissolved. 143.
functions of the, annulled by the British Parliament, 213.
elected in 176S, is convened, 215. -remonstrates with Gov. Moore,217. dissolution of the, in 1769, 218. meets ; John Cruger speaker, 221. petitions the Crown for redress of grievances, 245.
123, 129, 136-146, 156-165, 172, 173, 174, 177, 179, 181, 183, 190, 191, 194, 196, 198, 202, 203-241. Astor House, 232, 308. Astor, John Jacob, 38. John Jacob, Anecdote of, 413.
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