USA > New York > New York City > History of New York city from the discovery to the present day, V.1 > Part 17
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It may, therefore, readily be seen, that if the mere intimation that such an odious measure was in contem- plation, produced so much solicitude, the passage of the act itself was not calculated to allay the growing appre- hensions of the people. But it was no sudden ebullition of indignation that first manifested itself. Indeed, so amazed were the colonists at the presumption of Parlia- ment that when the news was first received their feelings / were too deep for utterance. Hutchinson, the Chief-Jus- tice of Massachusetts, mistaking this for submission, has- tened to write to the ministry that " his countrymen were waiting, not to consider if they must submit to a stamp- duty ; but to know when its operation was to commence." He knew not that this calm was but the stillness which preceded the tornado that was to sweep with such deso- lating fury throughout the land! He was shortly unde- . ceived. Mutterings began to be heard in every province, which, in New England and New York, soon grew into acts of violence. On the 14th of August, Andrew Oliver, the brother-in-law of the Chief-Justice, who had received the appointment of stamp-distributer for Massachusetts,
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was, together with Lord Bute, suspended in effigy from a tree in one of the streets of Boston. In reply to the com- mand of the Chief-Justice to take down those figures, the sheriff gave a flat refusal; and the council of the province likewise declined to interfere. That same night, the mob, taking the images down, carried them to the newly- erected Stamp-office, which they immediately razed. Oli- ver's dwelling was next assailed, the windows and furniture demolished, and the effigies burned on Fort Hill. The next day, Oliver resigned ; but he was obliged, the same evening, to make a public recantation at a bonfire which the populace had kindled. But, having once given vent to their long pent-up exasperation, they did not stop here. Urged on by a popular preacher, Jonathan Mayhew by name, who had taken for his text the previous day, "I would they were even cut off which trouble you," they destroyed, on the 26th, the records and files of the Court of Admiralty, and, breaking into the house of Hallowell, the Comptroller of Customs, demolished the furniture, and freely drank of the choice wines in the cellar. To their just anger were now added the fumes of liquor; and proceeding forthwith to the residence of Hutchinson, they tore the paintings from the walls, destroyed the plate, and scattered his large and valuable library of books and manuscripts to the winds; nor did they depart until the interior of the building, even to the partition-walls, was completely demolisher : Happily, Hutchinson and his innocent fam- ily, having received timely notice of their danger, had escaped before the arrival of the rioters-otherwise, the crime of murder might have been added to these violent and disgraceful proceedings.
In Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, the popular indignation showed itself in similar demon- strations, though not of so violent a character. The effect, however, in those provinces was the same; cach of the
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stamp-distributers being forced to resign to save himself from odium, if not from death.
Meantime, the Assembly of Massachusetts resolved, on the 6th of June, that " it was highly expedient there should be a meeting, as soon as might be, of committees from the Houses of Representatives or Burgesses in the several colonies, to consult on the present circumstances of the colonies, and the difficulties to which they were and must be reduced, and to consider of a general congress- to be held at New York the first Tuesday of October." . To this invitation the colonies heartily responded, and in . the convention, held at the time and place designated, they were all represented, except New Hampshire, Vir- ginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. The three latter, however, although prevented by their Governors, by con- tinued adjournments, from sending delegates, signified by letters their willingness to acquiesce in whatever meas- .ures the convention might adopt; so, also, wrote New Hampshire. Lieutenant-Governor Colden, who had from the beginning pronounced the convention unconstitutional and unlawful, likewise endeavored, by successive adjourn- ments, to prevent the Assembly of New York from elect- ing delegates. But an Assembly that had driven Clinton from his chair, and had successfully fought through so many years against a permanent support, was not to be 176 . thus easily foiled; and a committee appointed by them in October, 1764, to correspond with their sis. er colonies upon recent acts of Parliament in relation to trade, now took their seats in the Congress as the rep- resentatives of the people of New York.
Timothy Ruggles, who had been sent by Bernard, the Governor of Massachusetts, to thwart the patriotic efforts of his colleagues, was chosen president of the Congress, and John Cotton, clerk. No time was lost. Committees were immediately appointed to draft petitions to Parliament.
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having for their burden the Stamp Act; and, after a har- monious ' session of fourteen days, the convention dis- solved, having adopted a declaration of rights, a petition to the King, and a memorial to both Houses of Parliament -the latter being drawn by James Otis.
As before remarked, the people of New York were among the most bitter opponents of the Stamp Act. While the riots were going on in Boston, the act itself was reprinted, and hawked about the streets of New York city, as " The folly of England, and ruin of America." Secret, organizations styling themselves the "Sons of Lib- erty" met to discuss plans of resistance. Warned by the example of his brother appointees in the neighboring colo- nies, McEvers, the stamp-distributer, resigned. General Gage, at the solicitation of Colden, ordered down, in July, from Crown Point, a company of the Sixtieth regiment, for the defense of Fort George, the guns of which were remounted, new ordnance ordered, and the magazine replenished with a bountiful supply of ammunition. On the arrival of the first cargo of stamps in the harbor, toward the end of October, placards were posted up in the streets and at the Merchants' Coffee-house, of which the following is a copy :
" PRO PATRIA.
" The first man that either distributes or makes use of stampt paper, let him take care of his house, person, and effects.
" VOX POPULI.
" WE DARE."
Terrified at signs he could not misunderstand, the Lieutenant-Governor had the stamps conveyed, for greater security, to the fort, and in great trepidation summoned the members of his privy council for their advice. But notwithstanding he sent repeated messages, and notwith- standing, also, that seven members were in the city, only three (Horsmanden, Smith, and Reid) responded to his
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call, and they declined giving any advice unless there was a fuller Board. In this state of affairs, nothing was left to Colden but to shut himself up in the fort and await the result. He was not long in suspense.
.On the 1st of November, the day appointed for the Stamp Act to go into operation, the popular indignation, which had been so long smoldering, burst forth. Early in the evening, the Sons of Liberty, numbering several thousand, appeared before the fort and demanded the stamps. On being refused, they proceeded to the open fields-a portion of which is now the Park-and, having erected a gibbet, they hanged the Lieutenant-Governor in effigy, and suspended by his side a figure, holding in his hand a boot, representing Lord Bute .* The images, after hanging some little time, were taken down and carried, together with the scaffold, in a torch-light procession to the gates of the fort. Having in vain knocked on the gates for admission, the mob broke into Colden's carriage- house, brought forth the family-coach, placed inside of it the two effigies, and, having again paraded them around the city, returned to within one hundred yards of the fort- gate, and hanged the figures upon a second gallows erected for that purpose. A bonfire was then made of part of the wooden fence, which, at that time, surrounded the Bowl- ing Green ; and the effigies, together with the Lieutenant- Governor's coach, a single-horse chair, two sleighs, and severa . light vehicles, were cast into the flames and
* Colden, it is true, in a letter under date of November 5th to Secretary Conway, says that the image suspended by the side of his effigy was intended to represent the devil, in which Bancroft follows him. In a manuscript letter. however, now before me, written by Alexander Colden, his son, to Sir William Johnson, a month after, and when the facts, therefore, could be better ascer- tained, the excitement having partially subsided, the writer says that the second image was designed for Lord Bute. The boot has now significance as s rebus of Lord Bute which before it had not. " His Lordship's [John Stewart, Earl of Bute] established type with the mob was a jack-boot, a wretched pun on his Christian name and title."-Macaulay's Essay on the Earl of Chatham.
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entirely consumed. While the flames were lighting up the black muzzles of the guns of the fort, another party, having spiked the cannon on the Battery, proceeded to the house of Major James, an artillery officer, who had made himself especially obnoxious by his having aided in putting the fort in a suitable posture for defense, and, having burned everything of value, returned in triumph, bringing with them the colors of the Royal Artillery Regiment.
When McEvers resigned, Colden had sneered; but even he was now compelled to give way. The day after the riot, he caused a large placard to be posted up, signed by Goldsbrow Banyar, the deputy-secretary of the council, stating that he should have nothing more to do with the stamps, but would leave them with Sir Henry Moore, Bart., who was then on his way from England to assume the government. This declaration, however, did not satisfy the Sons of Liberty. Through their leader, Isaac Sears, they insisted that the stamped paper should be immediately delivered into their hands, threatening, in case of a refusal, to storm the fort where it was deposited. The Common Council, alarmed at the uncontrollable fury of the mob, and fearing an effusion of blood, added, like- wise, their solicitation that the stamps might be deposited in the City Hall. In answer to this latter request, the cause of the dispute was delivered up, after considerable negoti? cion, to the corporation - the Board giving a pledge to make good all the stamps that might be lost.
But if the spirit of the mob could not be subdued, it might at least be guided. On the 6th of November, a meeting of the more conservative citizens was called, and Sears, with four others,* was authorized to correspond with several colonies upon the new and alarming feature
* These were John Lamb, Gershom Mott, William Wiley, and Thomas Robinson.
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of the prerogative of Parliament. The committee thus appointed entered into their work with zeal, the fruits of which soon became apparent. A resolution, emanating from New York and adopted by the other colonies, directed the English merchants to ship no more goods to America, and declared that no more goods coming from England should be sold on commission in the colonies after the first day of January, 1766. Nor did the patriotism of the people end here. The wearing of cloth of British manu- facture was dispensed with, coarse home-spun garments taking its place. Marriages were no longer performed by licenses, upon which the Stamp Act had now laid duty, but were solemnized by being proclaimed in church. Everywhere resistance to kingly oppression was the watch-word.
The new Governor, Sir Henry Moore, Bart., who had been appointed, in June, to succeed Major-General Monck- ton, arrived in New York the beginning of November, 1765, after a tedious passage of ten weeks. When 1765.
he first landed, he was disposed to assume a haughty tone in relation to the Stamp Act. The Corporation offered him the freedom of the city in a gold box; but he refused to accept it, unless upon stamped paper. The custom-house cleared vessels, but the men-of-war ran out their guns and refused to allow them to leave the harbor, unless they produced a certificate from the Governor that no stamps were to be had. This the latter declined to give, and the vessels remained at the wharves. The spec- tacle, however, of Colden quaking with fear in the fort, and the judicious advice of his council, soon convinced him of the folly of any attempt to carry the act into execution; and, before his first meeting with the Assem- bly, he openly announced that he had suspended his ' power to execute the Stamp Act. To still further appease the people, he dismantled the fort, very much to the
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disgust of the Lieutenant-Governor, who, not having been consulted, retired in chagrin to his country-seat at Flushing.
Owing to the successive adjournments by Colden, the General Assembly met, for the first time this year, on the 13th of November. Only fourteen members, however, answering to their names, the speaker announced the appointment of Sir Henry Moore to the government, and adjourned the Assembly to the 19th.
The severest test, perhaps, of public opinion at this time, is to be found in the Governor's opening address, which was brief and general, and contained not the slightest allusion to the existing troubles. The answer of the House was equally guarded ; each party seeming to be averse to broach a topic that was so unpleasant to the other. But if the Assembly were unwilling to allude in their address to that which was now upon every mind, they showed no indisposition to handle it among themselves. Among their first resolutions was one, not only approving the action of the committee in meeting with the Congress in October, but tendering them, also, their warmest thanks for the part which they had taken in the deliberations of that body. In connection with this resolution, they further resolved, nemine contradicente, " that for obtaining relief from the operation and execu- tion of the Act of Parliament called the Stamp Act, hum- ble petitions be presented to his Majesty, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons, as nearly similar to those drawn up by the late Congress as the particular circumstances of the colony will admit of." . A committee was therefore appointed to draw up the three petitions, which, signed by William Nicholl, the speaker, were forwarded, in the name of the House, to Charles and John Sargeant, the colony's agents in London.
But the action of the Assembly did not keep pace with
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the public requirements; at least so thought the Sons of Liberty. On the 26th, a sealed letter was handed by an unknown person to Mr. Lott, clerk of the House, directed " TO MR. LOTT, MERCH'T. IN NEW YORK," and ran as follows:
" On receiving you are to read the in closed in the open Assembly of this Province New York as you are clark and whare of fail not on your perrel.
(Signed) FREEDOM."
The inclosed letter was directed " To the General Assembly of the Province of New York," and was in the following words :
"Gentlemen of the House of Representatives, you are to Consider what is to be Done first Drawing of as much money from the Lieut. Governor's Sal- lery as will Repare the fort & on Spike the Guns on the Battery & the nex a Repeal of the Gunning Act & then there will be a good Militia but not before & also as you are asetting you may Consider of the Building Act as it is to take place nex yeare which it Cannot for there is no supply of Some Sort of materials Required this Law is not Ground on Reasons but there is a great many Reasons to the Contrary so Gentlemen we desire you will Do what lays in your power for the Good of the public but if you take this ill 'be not so Conceited as to Say or think that other People know nothing about Govern- ment you have made their laws and say they are Right but they are Rong and take a way Leberty. Oppressions of your make Gentlemen make us Sons of Liberty think you are not for the Public Liberty this is the General Opinion of the People for this part of Your Conduct.
" 1765 " by order
"Nov'r 26
" . ign'd, one & all.
" FREEDOM."
Both of these letters-which, by the way, bear on their face unmistakable evidence of their being designedly written in this illiterate manner, probably for the greater disguise *- were laid before the House by the clerk, who dared not refuse. But the Assembly were not disposed to have any such gratuitous advice; nor was their patriot- ism yet attuned to the same accord with that of the writer. However much, moreover, they might be disposed, them- selves, to criticise the unpopular Colden, they did not choose to be instructed by the ironical suggestion in rela-
* The entire absence of punctuation in the same letter, with the correct abbreviations of Sign'd and Not'r, and the correct spelling of the more diffi- cult words, show clearly the marks of design.
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tion to the Lieutenant-Governor's salary and the spiked guns. They therefore resolved that the said letters were rebellious, scandalous, and seditious; that they were designed to inflame the minds of the good people of the colony against their representatives ; and that an address should be presented to the Governor requesting him to offer a reward of fifty pounds for their author or authors, that they might be brought to " condign punishment;" pledging themselves, at the same time, to provide the means of defraying the above reward.
On the 3d of December, the Governor, by Mr. Banyar, sent down a message to the House, in which the latter was informed that by the Mutiny Act, passed during the last session of Parliament, the expense of furnishing the King's troops in America with quarters and other neces- saries, was to be defrayed by the several colonies. In con- sequence thereof, the Commander-in-Chief had demanded that provision be made for the troops, whether quartered within or marching through the province ; and it was now requested to make provision accordingly.
This request was at this time exceedingly inopportune. It involved a question which, in Lord Loudon's time- when the country was engaged in a disastrous war, and when, therefore, there was a seeming necessity for such provision-had been productive of ill feeling, and almost of riots. It may readily be seen, therefore, that when no such necessity existed, and when the public mind was in such an excited state, the Assembly were in no mood to comply. The message was accordingly referred to a com- mittee of the whole House, of which Robert R. Livingston was the chairman. On the 19th, they reported against it, on the following grounds : that when his majesty's forces were quartered in barracks belonging to the King, they Were always furnished with necessaries without any expense to the counties in which they were quartered ;
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and that if any expense were necessary for quartering troops on their march, and supplying them with what was required by the act, the House would consider thereof after the expense was incurred. Sir Henry Moore was too prudent a man to press the matter further; and hav- ing satisfied his duty to the Crown by the formal demand for quarters, he allowed the matter to drop for the present.
The Sons of Liberty were still in the ascendant. The last week in November, two hundred of them crossed over to Flushing, and compelled the Maryland stamp-distrib- uter, who had fled thither for safety, to sign a resignation ' of his office. In December, ten boxes of stamps were seized on their arrival in port, and consumed in a bonfire. "We are in a shocking situation at present," wrote Alex- ander Colden to. Sir William Johnson, with whom the former was on terms of intimacy, " and God knows how it will end. Its not safe for a person to speak, for there is no knowing friend from foe."
Opposition to the Stamp Act still continued. In Jan- uary, 1766, a committee from the Sons of Liberty waited
1766. upon six persons in Albany, and requested them to take an oath that they would not accept the office of stamp-distributer. All but Henry Van Schaack, the Albany postmaster, having complied, the mob went to the latter's house, a little below the city, broke the windows, furniture, and the piazza, and taking his pleasure-sleigh into town, consumed it in a bonfire. Alarmed at these demonstrations, Van Schaack took the required oath, and the mob dispersed.
In New York city, the committee (Isaac Sears, chair- man) were still active. Having ascertained by their secret agents in Philadelphia that a merchant, Lewis Pintard, had sent to that city a Mediterranean pass and a bond on stamped paper, they waited upon the merchant, and also upon the naval officer who had given the pass,
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on the 12th of January; and, compelling them to appear on the common, forced them to swear, before a crowd of eight thousand people, that the passes which they had signed and delivered were not stamped, to their knowledge. Not satisfied, however, with this declaration, the committee conducted them to the Coffee-house, before which a bonfire had been kindled, and obliged Pintard to commit the passes to the flames with his own hands. On the follow- ing day, Governor Moore, who, being of a timid and ami- able nature, had a dread of becoming unpopular, sent for one of the committee, and said, in the course of the con- versation, that he hoped the " gentlemen, his associates," did not suspect him of being cognizant of the Mediterra-
nean passes. Upon being informed that they did not, the Governor further stated that he had solicited this inter- view to assure the Sons of Liberty that, not only was he ignorant of that transaction, but that he would have nothing to do with any stamps whatever.
Alarmed at the rapid growth of republican principles in America, the seeds of which had been sown by its own folly, Parliament, on the 18th of March, repealed the obnoxious act. The British Legislature, however, yielded not with a good grace. "The colonists," wrote Sir William Baker to Sir William Johnson, " must not think that these lenient methods were brought about by the inducements of their violence." * Fearing, therefore, that their action would be misconstrued, Parliament hastened, almost simul- taneously with the repeal of the Stamp Act, to pass a bill declaring the absolute right of the King and Parliament
* " I hope the last session of Parliament has conciliated the North Ameri- cans to their mother country ; but at the same time it must be expected from them obedience to the laws of this government. The colonists must not think these lenient methods made use of by that administration were brought about by the inducement of their violence; but was really the effect of conviction that the rash act past the two preceding sessions was unwarrantable and oppressive."-M. S. ; Sir William Baker to Johnson, Nov Ith, 1766.
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" to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the Crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever."
In the first delirium of delight at the repeal, the news of which was communicated to the colonists by their agents, on the 16th of May, the tendency of the Declara- tory Act was not heeded. In New York city, especially, the populace seemed wild with joy. Bells were rung, a royal salute of twenty-one guns fired, and the city illumi- nated. On the 4th of June, the King's birthday, the Governor had an ox roasted whole, a hogshead of rum and twenty-five barrels of beer opened, and the people invited to join in the feast. On the same day, a mast was erected, inscribed " To his most Gracious Majesty, George the Third, Mr. Pitt, and Liberty." But the enthusiasm of the people did not end here. On the 23d of June, a meeting was held, at which a petition was signed by a majority of the citizens, requesting the Assembly to erect a statue of William Pitt, as a mark of their appreciation of his services in repealing the Stamp Act. That body entered fully into the feelings of the people; and, besides complying with the wishes of their constituents, in rela- tion to Pitt, they made provision for an equestrian statue to his majesty George the Third; and also voted their thanks and a piece of plate to John Sargeant, " for his services as special agent," during the Stamp Act controversy.
The opening speech of Governor Moore to the Assem- bly, on the 12th of June, began by adverting to the gen- eral satisfaction diffused among the people by the repeal of the Stamp Act. It was the impression made on the minds of the people by this act of his majesty's favor that had induced the Governor, so early, to call the Legislature, in order to give them the earliest opportunity . of making those acknowledgments of duty and submission which, on such an occasion, his excellency thought must
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