History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I, Part 56

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, ed
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co.
Number of Pages: 1354

USA > New York > Westchester County > History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I > Part 56

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5 " When the question to adopt the Measures recommended by the l'on- " gress was negatived by a Majority of one only, in this Assembly of "twenty-six Individuals, the Ministers were in high spirits ; and these 4. Individuals were then represented as 'all America.' "-(Governor John- stone's Speech in the House of Commons, May 13, 1775-Ahnon's Partienen- tary Register, i., 473.)

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

that rejection of Colonel Ten Broeck's Resolution the minority of the Assembly, appcars to have been well-studied by those who were of that minority ; but it did not prevent it from continuing to hanker after was only the prelude, that Vote of the Assem- bly has supplied a theme on which those who have seemed to play the part of historians of that the leadership of whatever movement, in the direc- portion of America's history, have based much : tion of a redress of the grievances of the Colonies, the of what they have said, unduly commendatory of Massachusetts and Virginia and quite as unduly denunciatory of everything which pertained to New York, unless of some of the men of New York, of that early period, whose characters, for fidelity to the truth and uprightness in the discharge of public duties, were no better than their own. 1

The lesson which the defeat of its dishonorable movement, under Colonel Ten Brocck, had given to

1 Gordon (History of American Revolution, i., 471) led off, in the work of detraction, by saying " The Massachusetts Congress were displeased with " the proceedings of the General Assembly of New York," for this Vote, among others, as if the approval of any merely iusurrectionary body were necessary to ensure the respectability, in history, of any General Assembly, legally elected, legally convened, and acting in conformity with law. Ramsay (History of the American Revolution, i., 143) insinua- ted, in the absence of sufficient authority to assert, that "tbe party for " Royal Government,"-although there was not a member of that party within the Assembly, and although the Colonial Government was con- fessedly without influence enough to be made acquainted with its inten- tions-led the Assembly to reject the Resolution. Grahame (History of the l'uited States, iv., 360) following Ramsey, and, generally, in his un- credited words, repeated the slander which that early writer insinuated. Leake (Memoir of General Lamb, 97) regarded the Vote as unpatriotic and " an important ministerial triumph." Lossing ( Field Book of the Rer- olution, ii., 793) made " fifteen of the twenty-four Members of the As- " sembly, Loyalists ; " and he attributed the Vote to that unduly assumed cause, althoughi, in fact, every member professed to have been equally loyal to the Sovereign. Bancroft, also, as far as his fragmentary para- graphs may be regarded as history (History of the United States, original edition, iv., 207-210 ; the same, centenary edition, iv., 454-456) insinn- ated what he would have been glad to have asserted, had he possessed even a shadow of evidence to support him, that it was the influence of the Government and that of the Established Church, the venality of the Representatives iu the Assembly, the timility of the Colonists themselves, and prejudice against lawyers and Presbyterians, combined, which pro- duced that notable Votc. The servility of the Assembly to the Miuis- try, singularly enough, produced it, if thic acute and untrustworthy Jolın C. Ilamilton (History of the Republic, i., 79), is to be believed. Lodge (History of the English Colonies, 491, ) one of the latest specimens of Massa- chusetts dilettanteism, sneeringly refers to the Assembly of New York as "the close corporation known as the Assembly," as if the General Court of Massachusetts, locked in its Chamber, was not quite as " close " a body, while it was in session, aseven he could find. Others, including Frothingham (Rise of the Republic, 398) told only of the rejection of Col- onel Ten Broeck's Resolution, and, by the suppression of much of the truth concerning the subject, left their less informed readers to infer, if the latter are not directly told so, that the Assembly was influenced, in that action, by an antagonism to the popular cause.

Noone, unacquainted with the facts and depending on any of the above-named historians for information, can possibly learn, from them, that the Vote referred to was taken in the interest of the common cause, as a prelude to what the Assembly intended to do, in its own manner, in support of that cause ; that there was not a " friend of the Government," or " Tory," or member of the " party of the Government, " among the members of that Assembly ; that the Colonial Government was not con- sulted, respecting anything which was done, or to be done, by that As- sembly ; and that not even the Congress of the Continent, as will be seen hereafter, morc earnestly, more powerfully, or more successfully opposed the Ministry and demanded a redress of the grievances of the Colonies, than that Assembly, in every thing which it did, on those subjects. Pit- kin (History of the United States, i .. 324, 325,) and Hildreth (History of the United States, First Series, iii., 56,) notwithstanding they were New Eng- landers, did not permit the truth to be suppressed ; but they gave to the Assembly of New York, at least a portion of what was due to it, in honestly written history.

Assembly should be inclined to take. Subsequent events very clearly indicated, indeed, that the mi- nority desired to promote its own factional interests rather than to serve the Colony; and, undoubtedly with that end in view, five days after the defeat of its first ill-timed movement, and apparently actuated only by purely patriotic motives, Peter R. Living- ston, of the Manor of Livingston, one of the leaders of the minority, offered a Resolution "that a day "may be appointed to take the state of this Colony "into consideration ; to enter such Resolutions as the " House may agree to, on their Journals ; and, in " consequence of such Resolutions, to prepare a hum- " ble, firm, dutiful, and loyal Petition to our most gra- " cious Sovereign." Whatever may have been the pur- poses of the minority, in submitting that Resolution, however, it certainly gathered no special advantages to itself, in doing so, since the majority promptly ac- cepted a proposition which was perfectly agreeable to it, and added importance to it, per se, by uniting with the minority in support of it, all the members who were present, the conservative as well as the radical, uniting in the unanimous adoption of it.2

Immediately after the adoption of the Resolution submitted by the Representative of the Living- ston Manor, Jamcs De Lancey, of the City of New York, one of the leaders of the majority and the head of that powerful family, moved "that a Memorial to the Lords, and a Representation " and Remonstrance to the Commons of Great Brit- " ain may be prepared, together with the Petition " to his Majesty;"3 and, like the Resolution which

2 Journal of the House, " Die Martis, IO ho., A.M., the 31st January, '1775."

3 The peculiar force, if not the peculiar assertion of the political standing of the General Assembly, with which the proposed papers were vested, in the words of the Resolution, was noticed, in the Parliament, and used as one of the reasons for the Parliament's rejection of them- in the House of Lords, it was said, "the title of the paper rendered it "inadmissible. It was called ' a Memorial: ' now, ' Memorials' are pre- " sented from one crowned head to another ; but as to a ' Memorial ' from " an American Assembly, it was unheard of, and ought not to be read." In the same debate, it was said, also, by another Peer, that "the title " given to the paper was suspicious : a ' Petition' from the same Assem- "bly had been presented to the King, the Colonies not denying the "supreme Rights of His Majesty ; a ' Remonstrance' to the Commons; "and, now, a ' Memorial' to the Lords. They dropped the usual word "' Petition,' lest, from that, it should he imagined that they acknowl- "edged the supreme power of those branches of the Legislature."- (Speeches of the Earl of Denbigh and Eurl Gower, in the House of Lords, May 18, 1775.)

In the llouse of Commons, Mr. Jenkinson, in opposition to receiving the paper addressed to that House, " urged that the Honsc had never re- " ceived Petitions of this nature : that, here, the name of a Petition was "studiously avoided, lest anything like an obedience to Parliament "' should be acknowledged. The opposition of the Colonies was not so "much against the tax which gave rise to the present dispute, as to the " whole legislative authority of Parliament, and to any restrictions of

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THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1774-1783.

had immediately preceded it, that Resolution, also, received the affirmative vote of every member of the House who was then present. 1

Continuing the commendable work in which it had thus commenced the proceedings of the day, and ap- parently without any dissent from any one, the House then ordered that James De Lancey, and Benjamin Kissam, of the City of New York, Colonel Philip Schuyler, of Albany-county, George Clinton, of Ul- ster-county, Dirk Brinkerhoof, of Duchess-county, Samuel Gale, of Orange-county, Isaac Wilkins, of the Borough of Westeliester, Crean Brush, of Cumber- land-county [now a part of Vermont], Christopher Billop, of Richmond-county, John Rapelje, of Kings-county, and William Nieoll, of Queens- county, or the major part of them-all, except Philip Schuyler and George Clinton being of the majority of the House-be " a Committee to prepare a State2 of the " Grievances of this Colony, aud report same to this " House, with all convenient speed, after the Call " thereof, to be had on the seventh of February "next." 3 Having thus indicated what the House proposed to do, in the common cause in which the body of the Colonists was so earnestly engaged, the House was tlien adjourned.

Time, very often, produces marvellous changes in the tempers and purposes of politieians, especially in those of politicians who are not of the controlling majority, in their own party or in the State; and, very often, the actions of those politicians, when the latter are engaged in a personal, or faetional, or par- tisan struggle, cannot be brought within the provisions of any known rule of action, of any class. No reas- onable reason which would be honorable to the minority of the Assembly, therefore, can be given for the eagerness which it displayed, on the sixteenth of February, to disturb the harmony of that body, in which all of both factions appeared to have been uuited in both purpose and action ; but, on that day, Colonel Philip Schuyler, of Albany-couuty, iu behalf of that minority, renewed the conflict of factions which had been opened, unsueeessfully, by Colonel Abraham Ten Broeek, of the Manor of Rensselaers- wyek, on the preceding twenty-sixth of January. For that unseemly purpose, that distinguished mem-

" their trade."-(Sprech of Mr. Jenkinson, in the House of Commons, May 15, 1775,-Almon's Parliamentary Register, i., 470.)

Besides the peculiarity of the titles of those several papers, to which reference has been made there was a grave significance in the fact that they were moved for, with those titles, by the head of the leading fan- ily in the Colony ; and that they were ordered by an unanimous vote of the Assembly. It has suited those who have preferred to traduce New York and her General Assembly, however, to regard both the General Assembly and its papers as only favorable to the Home Government and antagonistic to the common cause.

I Journal of the House, " Die Martis, 10 ho., A. M., the 31st January, " 1775."

" Iu the language of that period, the word " state," as it was used in this and similar connections, was the equivalent of the word " state- " ment," which, in such connections, is now employed.

3 Journal of the House, " Die Martie, lo ho., A.M., the 31st January, " 1775."

ber of the minority, on the day referred to, moved that certain specified letters, written by the Asseni- bly's Committee of Correspondence, during the reeess of the House, and urging the convention of a Con- gress of the Continent for the consideration of the grievances of the Colonies,4 should be entered on the Journals of the House, and copies of them be sent to the newspapers, for publication; and, of course, "debates arose upon the said Motion," which was followed by the emphatic rejection of it, by a . vote of nine, in the affirmative, against sixteen, in the negative-Judge Thomas and Pierre Van Cort- landt, of course, being among the former, and Colonel Philipse and Isaae Wilkins, of course, among thie lat- ter.5

On the following day, [February 17], Colonel Nathaniel Woodhull, of Suffolk-eounty, also a prom- inent member of the minority, continued the faction- al strife, by offering a Resolution of Thanks to those gentlemen who had represented this Colony in the recent Congress, " for their faithful and judicious dis- " charge of the trust reposed in them, by the good " people of this Colony ; " and, of course, " debates "arose upon the said Motion ; " after which, by a vote of nine, in the affirmative, against fifteen, in the negative, it was rejeeted-Judge Thomas being among the former, and Colonel Philipse and Isaae Wilkins being among the latter.6

On the twenty-first of February, Peter R. Living- ston, of the Manor of Livingstou, continued the struggle of the minority, by offering a Resolution giving "the Thanks of this House to the Merchants "and Inhabitants of this City and Colony, for their " repeated, disinterested, publick-spirited, and patri- " otic Conduct, in deelining the Importation or Re- "ceiving of Goods from Great Britain, and for their " firmi Adherence to the Association entered into and "recommended by the Grand Continental Congress, " held at Philadelphia, in the Months of September "and October last, and that Mr. Speaker signify the "same to the President of the Chamber of Commerce " in this City, at their next Meeting, and order a copy " of the same to be published in the public Prints." Like the other Resolutions of the series, which had preceded it, this peculiarly inappropriate Resolution, before such a deliberative body, after it had been amply diseussed, was promptly rejected by a vote of ten, in the affirmative, among whom were Judge Thomas and Pierre Van Cortlandt, against fifteen,

៛ One of those letters, if not more of them, was noticed in our statement of the measures of the Committee of Correspondence in New York. relative to its proposition for the convention of a Congress of the Colo- nies, page 23, oute.

5 Journal of the House, "Die Jovis, 10 ho., A. M., the 16th February, " 1775."

6 Journal of the House, " Die Veneris, 10 ho., A. M., the 17th February,

" 1775;" Lieutenant governor Colden to General Gage, "NEW YORK 20th " Febry, 1775." See, also, Dunlap's History of New- York, i., 454, 455.

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

in the uegativc, among whom were Colonel Philipse and Isaac Wilkins.1

On the twenty third of February, Crean Brush, of Cumberland-county, from the Committee which had been appointed to prepare a State of the Grievances of this Colony, presented a Report from that Committee ; which was " referred to the consideration of a Com- " mittee of the Whole House, and be proceedcd on, " by the said Committee, on Wednesday next." 2

Immediately after the Report on the Grievances of the Colony had been thus referred, Judge Jolin Thomas, onc of the Representatives of Westchester- county, and a leading member of the minority, offered a Resolution providing that " the sense of this House "be taken on the necessity of appointing Delegates " for this Colony, to meet the Delegates for the other " Colonies on this Continent, in General Congress, " on the tenth day of May next." The introduction of that resolution led to a spirited Debate in which the motives of the rival factions composing the con- fedcrated party of the Opposition and the undue assumption of authority which had not been dele- gated to it, by the recently held Congress of the Con- tinent, were freely and ably discussed by Colouel Philip Schuyler and George Clinton, in support of the Resolution, and by Crean Brush and Isaac Wil- kins,3 in opposition to it ; and the consideration of the subject was closed by the rejection of the Resolution, by a vote of nine in the affirmative and seventeen in the negative, the four Representatives from the County of Westchester being divided between the two factions, as they had been in the previous divi- sions of the House.4

The well-considered and, under the circumstances, the judicious determination of the majority of the General Assembly, to unite in the general opposition to the Colonial policy of the Home Government, in the general demand for a redress of the assumed gricv- ances of the Colonies, and in the generally expressed desirc to restore the harmony between the Colonies and the Mother Country, which the infliction of those grievances had disturbed, without, however, recogniz- ing the existence of any other opposition thereto, in any other person, in any other organization, or in any

1 Journal of the House, "Die Martis, 10 ho., A.M., the 21st February, "1775į;" Lieutenant-Governor Colden to General Gage, "NEW YORK 20th " Febry, 1775."

2 Journal of the House, "Die Jovis, 10 ho., A.M., the 23d February, " 1775." Lieutenant-governor Colden to General Gage, " NEW YORK, 20th " Febry 1775 ; " the same to the Earl of Dartmouth, " NEW YORK, 1st March, " 1775."

3 Speeches, made by Brush and Wilkins, on that occasion, may be seen in Force's American Archires, Fourth Series, i., 1290-1297, the former re-printed from Rivington's New- York Gazetteer, No. 98, NEW-YORK, Thursday, March 2, 1775; the latter from the same paper, No. 103, NEW- YORK, Thursday, April 6, 1775. Students of the history of the Revolu- tion in the Colonies will be well paid for the time occupied in a careful perusal of those Speeches, in connection with the other literature of that subject, published during that period.

+ Journal of the House, "Die Jovis, 10 ho., A. M., the 23d of February, " 1775 ; " Lieutenant-governor Colden to the Earl of Dartmouth, "NEW YORK, " 1st March, 1775."

other line of action, in New York or elsewhere, in order that its particular opposition might not en- counter that reasonable disregard of the Home Gov- ernment which the opposition of those who were in open insurrection would surely encounter, was as well known to the minority of that General Assembly, especially after the rejection of the Resolution offered by Colonel Ten Brocck and the subsequent adoption of those offered, respectively, by Peter R. Livingston and James De Lancey, as it was to the greater number of the members of that body, who sustained it; and a decent respect for the welfare of the Colony, that great end which all professed to regard as greater than all others, if that profession had been honestly made, would, unquestionably, have induced every member of each of the factions to have labored. earn- estly and harmon iously, in the siucere promotion of the common cause. But it was clearly shown that " the common cause," which was so loudly talked of, was only a secondary matter ; that personal and factional interests were, in fact, regarded as superior to the interests of the country ; that it was the pur- pose of the minority and of those with whom it affil- iatcd, for the especial advancement of their individual and factional interests, to obtain the entire coutrol of the political affairs of the Colony, even at the expense of a revolutionary overthrow of the entire structure of the Colonial Government; that, for the pro- motion of that purpose, the series of Resolutions submitted by the minority, from that submitted by Colonel Schuyler to that submitted by Judge Thomas, was prepared and submitted with an entire knowledge that it would be promptly rejected by the House, as inconsistent with the line of action which the majority had adopted, for its guidance; and that the successive votes of the General Assembly, by which those Resolutions were successively rc- jected, divested of all that was so well known of the purposes of that body and surrounded with all of insinuation and falsehood which individual animosity and factional zcal could contrive, were industriously presented, one after another, in their naked form, to the populace in New York City and elsewhere, as evi- dences, as false as they were mischievous, of what was unduly assumed to have been the antagonism of the General Assembly to the common cause, and, at the same time, for the purpose of gradually under- mining the affection for the Mother Country, which generally prevailed, throughout the Colony, and of preparing the populace for a revolutionary transfer of the legislative, as well as for that of the executive and judicial, authority of the Colonial Government, into other channels, in the iutercst of Rebellion, whercin the control would be assumed by other, if not by better, men.

Having fully accomplished its preliminary purpose, in securing from the legally constituted Legislature of the Colony a rejection of the several revolutionary Resolutions which it had submitted, aud in, thereby,

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THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1774-1783.

affording a pretext to those of its confederates, not of the General Assembly, for the assumption, by them, of authority, nominally in the name of the body of the Colonists but really in known opposition to the inclinations of by far the greater number, to call a Convention of the Colony, in the interests of Rebel- lion, in which should be reposed the uncontrolled power of exercising the various functions of an inde- pendent, despotic Government, without any limitation, and in open disregard of the existing, legally-consti- tuted Government of the Colony-having accom- plished that preliminary purpose, the minority of the Assembly discontinued the submission of Resolutions of any character ; and, as will be seen, all its labors were subsequently devoted to the promotion of its factional purposes, only, in the consideration of the papers which the House had ordered to be prepared and laid before it, in which, however, the majority afforded very slight reasons for complaint.

On the appointed day, [ March 1, 1775] the Assem- bly, in Committec of the Whole House, Colonel Ben- jamin Seaman, of Richmond-county, occupying the Chair, commenced. the consideration of the State of the Colony's Grievances, which had been reported by the Special Committee which had prepared it ; 1 and after having spent the entire day thereon, as well as the whole of the following day? and the greater por- tion of the succeeding day,3 also, in Committee of the Whole House, the latter day's session was closed by the adoption of the Report, by the Assembly, with a single Amendment, which was submitted by Colonel Philip Schuyler, and supported by nine of the minor- ity, and five of the majority-the only Amendment which was submitted by any one-a marked feature of the proceedings having been that the amended State of the Grievances of this Colony was adopted by the House, without a division.+

1 Journal of the House, "Die Mercurij, 10 ho., A.)1., the 1stMarch, 1775."

" Journal of the House, "Die Jovis, 10 ho., A.MI., the 2d March, 1775." 3 Journal of the House, "Die Veneris, 10 ho., A.)1., the 3d March, "' 1775.""

4 With that lack of modesty and truthfulness which characterized all, concerning his own family, which John C. Hamilton wroto, that gentle- mau (History of the Republic, i., 81, 82) has undertaken to glorify Colonel Schuyler, his grandfather, by falsifying the record, concerning this State of Grieraures.

In the Committee which had been appointed for the preparation of the State, in which every member brought forward whatever he regarded as a Grievance, and not in the body of the Assembly, as is meunly insinu- ated, Colonel Schnyler introduced the Act of 4th George III., Chapter XV., as such a Grievance, which was approved and accepted by the Committee, with only two dissenting votes, notwithstanding the over- whelming majority, in that Committee, who was opposed to Colonel Schuyler. When the Report was considered in Committee of the Whole House, there was not the slightest opposition to it ; and when the Com- mittee of the House reported the completed paper to the llouse, John C. Hamilton to the contrary notwithstanding, the entire stute was adopted without a division.

Ho also alluded to the third of the Grievances, offered in the original Committee, by James De Lancey, recognizing the Right of the Govern- ment of Great Britain to regulate the Trade of the Colonies and to import Duties on such articles, the products of foreign Nations, as should be imported, directly, into the Colonies-the same, in substance

The State of Grievances which was thins adopted by the General Assembly of New York included not only all those Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain, relating to or affecting the Colony of New York, for which Colony only the Assembly presumed to legis- late, which the Congress of the Continent had in- cluded in the Bill of Rights and Grievances which that body had adopted and published, but it included the additional Grievance inflicted in the Act of 6th George III., Chapter XII., "declaring the Right of " Parliament to bind the Colonies in all cases what- " soever," and that inflicted in the Act of 35th Henry VIII., Chapter II., authorizing the removal of pris- oners accused of Crimes committed in America, to England, for Trial, neither of which was included in that Bill of Rights and Grievances which the Congress had published. It included, also, the Act of 7th George III., Chapter LIX., " requiring the Legisla- " ture of this Colony to provide for the Services there- "in mentioned, without application made to the " Representatives of the People of this Colony, in " General Assembly, and holding up, by any other " Acts, a Suspension of the legislative powers of this "Colony, until such Requisitions be complied with ;" the Act of 14th George III. Chapter LXXXIII., " so " far as it may be construed to establish the Roman " Catholic Religion in the Province of Quebec," and "so far as it imposes Dutics upon certain Ar- " ticles of Merchandise imported into that Province," " which by another Statute of the same year, Chapter " LXXXVIII., is so extended as to comprehend all the " Indian Country, from Hudson's Bay to the Mouth " of the Ohio-river ;" and the four Acts especially re- lating to Boston and the Colony of Massachusetts- Bay, all of which it declared to be Grievances of this Colony ;5 and, as has been said, it concurred in that

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History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I, Part 56

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, ed Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co. Number of Pages: 1354

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, ed
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co.
Number of Pages: 1354