History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I, Part 58

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 58

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A candid and carefully-made comparison of the terms of those several State of Grievances, and de- claratory Resolutions, and Petition, and Memorial, and Representation and Remonstrance, which were prepared, and agreed to, and presented, and published by that much-abused General Assembly of Colonial New York, with the several Resolutions, and Decla- ration of Rights, and _Association, and Addresses, and Memorials, and Petition, which, in like manner, were prepared, and agreed to, and presented, and published by the much-eulogized Congress of the Continent, which had assembled in Philadelphia, in September, 1774, will clearly establish the fact that the former were quite as decided, in their tone, and quite as clear and distinet, in their terms, as the latter; and such a comparison will also clearly establish the fact that, in its continuous and violent opposition to the former,

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

in every stage of its progress through the House, the minority of that General Assembly was clearly actu- ated by some other motive than that of simple, un- contaminated® patriotism.

It will be seen, also, by every careful and candid reader of the published proceedings of that Congress to which reference has been made, that, notwithstand- ing the gravamen of the declared Grievances of the constituent Colonies, of that notable body, consisted of sundry Acts of Parliament, all of which were con- sidered as oppressive, it had made no attempt what- ever, either by Petition or otherwise, to induce the Parliament to remove or even to modify those Griev- ances, or any of them, by a repeal or even by an amendment of the obnoxious provisions of those op- pressive legal enactments, contenting itself, instead, with preparing, and agreeing to, and presenting, only Addresses to the People of Great Britain, to the Inhab- itants of the Province of Quebec, and to the King, and a Memorial to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies, respectively, not one of whom possessed the slightest legislative authority, nor the slightest ability, in any way, to remove nor even to modify those Grievances, whatever might have been its disposition to have done so-indeed, notwithstanding the well-known desires of the great body of the Colonists, throughout the entire Continent, notwithstanding the known purposes for which that Congress had been convened, and notwithstanding the express provisions of the greater number of the Credentials of the several Del- egations, the proceedings of that Congress were mainly declaratory and justificatory of Rebellion, with scarcely an effort to obtain a redress of Grievances, and nothing whatever for the yet more desired reconciliation and union with the Mother Country, "so beneficial to the " whole Empire, and so ardently desired by all British " America,"1 for "the restoration of union and har- " mony between Great Britain and the Colonies, most " ardently desired by all good men."2 The tone and the tendency of all that it did, however, were pecu- liarly revolutionary, in all which it was eminently successful ;3 and, to that extent, if no further, it had failed to represent, truly, those in whose name it had nominally acted. On the other hand, the General As- sembly of Colonial New York, the legitimacy of whose organization and the entire legality of whose action, in behalf of the common cause, no one has ever presumed to question ; without compromising its dignity, as a General Assembly; with that common sense which, in Europe as well as in America, was, then, so pe-

euliarly uncommon; without entangling itself with any questionable alliance; and without belittling its legitimate influence by expressing its official sym- pathy with any other body, even in relation to those measures which were similar, in character and pur- pose, to those of its own enactment-that General Assembly, quite as clearly and quite as energetically as the Congress had done, in behalf of its constitu- ents, boldly declared the Grievances of those whom it represented, in a clear recital of the several Acts of Parliament which had been employed by the Home Government for the oppression of the Colonists; and, in addition to that recital of specific Statutes which were grievous in their provisions, it adopted a series of Resolutions, declaratory of the general Rights of the Colonists, as Englishmen, "to which they were " equally entitled with their fellow-subjects in Great " Britain "-Resolutions which no one could have made stronger, in support of the common cause. But, unlike that Congress, and more consistently with its duty to its constituency than anything, in that connection, which the Congress had professed to do, that General Assembly, in its official character, approached the King and the two Houses of Parlia- ment, in whom, acting together, rested the only legit- imate authority which could possibly be exercised for the removal of those Grievances which it had described, and for the restoration of that harmony, between the Colonies and the Mother Country, which the former so earnestly desired; and, unto these, respectively, it respectfully presented its manly, and dignified, and legally-expressed prayers for the re- peal of those several Acts or parts of Acts which were oppressive or which threatened to become so. In all these, it violated no law and fostered no spirit of dis- affection. Without the loss of any of that diguity which legitimately belonged to it, and without sacri- ficing any of that respect for its constituents which its duty required it to maintain, it recognized the sovereignty of the King, as the Congress had also doue; and, consistently with that dignity and that respect, but with a boldness which was peculiarly its own, at the same time, it also asserted its own stand- ing, as a General Assembly, by memorializing instead of petitioning the Peers, and by representing the facts of the usurpation, to the Commons, and by sup- plementing that "representation " with a "remon- strance " against the action of that distinguished body, in its serious disregard of the Rights of the Colonists. In all these several prayers, with what- ever titles and in whatever form they were presented, the General Assembly employed terms which com- manded the respect of those to whom they were re- spectively addressed ; and, in one instance, so clearly was thic Grievance represented and so earnest was the remonstrance which was made against it, in the As- sembly's Remonstrance, that even Lord North was obliged to acknowledge the force and the fitness of the plea, and, in his place in the House of Commons,

1 Credentials of the Delegation from Virginia, to the Congress.

2 Credentials of the Delegation from Massachusetts, to the Congress.

3 It is matter of history, well known to every student, that the action of the Congress on the Sufolk-county Resolutions, (Journal of the Congress, "Saturday, September 17, 1774, A.M. "), closed the door of reconcilia- tion against the Colonies, and led the Home Government to regard the great body of the Colonists as only rebels, against whom it had become the duty of that Government to throw the weight of its authority, a determination for which those Colonists, in their individual relations, had given no warrant, either in their actions or their dispositions.

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THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1774-1783.

to declare his willingness that that Grievance, if no other of the serics, should be duly removed.

Notwithstanding all that has been said in deprecia- tion of that particular Colonial General Assembly, it did not consider it necessary, nor even expedient, to override the minority of its members without even recognizing their existence on its Journal, under cover of the subsequently notorious "unit-rule," in recording the votes of its members, nor in any other manner ; nor did it conceal its proceedings, whether honestly or questionably determined, by publishing as complete what were only mutilated copies of its Journal, all of which the Congress had done. It might have been charged with " corruption," with some de- gree of propriety, had it purchased an appearance of unanimity in its votes with unexplained exceptions in the mandatory provisions of some of its general en- actments-exceptions in favor of one of the high-con- tracting parties, which were necessarily conceded as equivalents for commercial trickery in another-as the Congress had done; but the divided votes which are presented on nearly every page of its Journal very elcarly indicate that, whatever of factional bitterness there might have been, neither codfish nor rice was recognized as an element in the determination of grave questions, affecting the peace of the Colonies and the welfare and happiness of millions, in Europe as well as in America. On the contrary, what it did was done honorably, and openly, and in conformity with the requirements of parliamentary, as well as of constitutional, Law ; not by unanimous Votes, actual or fietitious, but by a majority of its members, duly and courteously exercising the authority with which that majority was duly and legally vested. It was not done by the action of the minority of that Assembly, which represented the revolutionary element of the Inhabitants of the City of New York more completely and with greater zeal than it represented those several constitueneies who had given scats, in that body, to it; but it was done in the face of that factious minor- ity, and notwithstanding its open, persistent, and res- olute opposition. It was not done by reason of any prompting or influence of either the Colonial or the Home Government ; but in well-known opposition to the wishes and the expectations of both. It was not done because of any popular influence, present or prospective ; but only from the personal knowledge of its members, concerning the great wrongs to which, it was said, the Colonies had been subjected, concern- ing the rights and the interests of the Colonists which had been invaded, and concerning the measures which were necessary for the protection of those invaded rights and interests, for securing a redress of those great wrongs, and for the restoration of harmony and peace. In fact, that General Assembly, in all the proceedings of which mention has been made, more clearly and more faithfully represented the interests and the opinions and the inclinations, concerning governmental matters, of the aggregate body of the

Colonists, in New York, including every class, and sect, and political party-and it possessed no anthority to represent any other, and made no pretension to do so-than cither the Congress of the Continent or the fragmentary revolutionary faction within the Colony had done or possibly could do; and there is very great reason for the belief that its orderly, and digni- fied, and more practically sensible influence would have been recognized beyond the limits of New York, and that it would have succeeded in its honorable efforts and evidently earnest purposes to restore, per- manently and without dishonor, that harmony be- tween the Colonies and the Mother Country which all professed to desire, had not the rashness of General Gage, in Massachusetts, during the brief recess which it had voted to itself, broken the well-strained barriers of Peace, loosed the worst elements of human nature in the Colonists, overturned everything which per- tained to a Government of Law, and plunged the Continent into all the horrors of a needless and, nce- essarily, a bitter fratricidal War-a War which, at its conclusion, the farmers of Westchester-county, or those of them who remained, more than all New England combined, had sorrowful reasons for remem- bering, because of the devastated homestcads, the divided families, the antagonistic neighbors, and the remembranceof plunder, and outrages, and butcheries, among them, of which that War had been so abund- antly and so sadly productive.

A few words only are required to complete the record of the results of that much-slandered General Assembly ; and the space which they will occupy cannot be better occupied.

The Petition which was officially sent to the Agent of the Colony, the celebrated Edmund Burke, for presentation to the King, was duly laid before the Sovereign ; 1 but, inasmuch as the General Assembly had, also, addressed the Parliament, on the same sub- jeets, it is not known that any particular attention was paid to it.

On the fifteenth of May, the distinguished Agent ot the Colony, offered to be presented to the House of Com- mons, the Representation and Remonstrance which the Colonial General Assembly had addressed to that body ; and, in doing so, Mr. Burke made a short Speech, in which he told the House that "they never " had before them so fair an opportunity of putting "an end to the unhappy disputes with the Colonies, " as at present; and he conjured them, in the most

1 " Mr Burke having delivered to me the Petition to the King, I had "the hononr to present it to His Majesty, who was pleased to receive "it with the most gracious expressions of regard and attention to the "humble request of his faithful subjects in New-York, who have, on "this occasion, manifested a duty to Ilis Majesty and a regard for the "authority of the Parent State, which, had they not, in the Memorial "to the House of Lords and in the Representation to the House of Commons, " been unfortunately blended with expressions containing Claims which " made it impossible for Parliament, consistent with its justice and dig- "nity, to receive them, might have laid the foundation of that Recon- "ciliation we have so long and so ardently wished for. "- The Earl of Dartmouth to Governor Tyron, "WHITEHALL, May 23, 1775.")

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

" earnest manner, not to let it escape, as possibly, the "like might never return ; " closing his remarks with the statement that "he had, several times in "the Session, expressed his sentiments, very fully, " upon every thing contained in that Remonstrance ; " as for the rest, it spoke so strongly for itself that he " did not see how people in their senses could refuse " at least the consideration of so reasonable and de- " cent an address;" and, after having "stated the " heads of the Remonstrance," " he moved for leave to " bring it up." The Ministry was not as well dis- posed, however, as Mr. Burke appeared to suppose ; and Lord North promptly took the floor, to reply to what that gentleman had said. He commenced by asking the Clerk to read the official record of the proceedings of the House, in December, 1768, on a Petition of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, and what was known as the Declaratory Act ; and he continued by saying that he was "greatly in favour of " New York ; and that he would gladly do everything " in his power to shew his regard to the good behaviour "of that Colony; " but he declared that the " honour " of Parliament required that no paper should be pre- " sented to that House, which tended to call in ques- " tion the unlimited Rights of Parliament." "As to " the Quebec Dutics," which was one of the Griev- ances against which the General Assembly had re- monstrated, he said " he did not pretend to be infal- " lible; he confessed they were not laid as they ought " to be ; and he declared that he was willing to give "satisfaction, in that point, immediately." "This, " however," he said, " was but a trifle to the general "objects of the Remonstrance." An earnest Debatc ensued, Messrs. Cornwall and Jenkinson supporting the Ministry, and Messrs. Cruger, Aubrey, Charles James Fox, and Governor Johnstone supporting Mr. Burke ; and that was followed by the submission by Lord North, of an Amendment to Mr. Burke's Motion " for leave to bring up," making it read thus : "That " thic said Representation and Remonstrance (in which " the said Assembly claim to themselves Rights derog- "atory to, and inconsistent with, the legislative " authority of Parliament, as declared by the Declara- " tory Act) be brought up." By a vote of one hundred and eighty-six to sixty-seven, the Amendment was adopted; and the amended Motion, of course, was promptly rejected, without a division.1

Three days after that rejection of the Representation and Remonstrance of the General Assembly, by the House of Commons, [May 18, 1775] the Duke of Manchester brought the Memorial which that General Assembly had addressed to the House of Lords, before that House, and moved that it be read. The Earl of Dartmouth opposed the Motion ; and a spirited Debate ensued, in which the Earls of Buckingham- shire, Denbigh, Gower, Hillsborough, and Sandwich,

and Lord Mansfield, supported the Minister, and the Duke of Richmond, the Earls of Shelburne and Effingham, and Lord Camden, opposed him. The only objection raised against the reading of the Memorial was the bare suspicion that " it contained " matter derogatory to the supreme legislative power "of Great Britain ;" and on that suspicion, alone, the Memorial not having been even described, the House sustained the Minister, and declined to allow the Memorial to be read, by a vote of twenty-five to forty- five, sending it, of course, into the legislative limbo.2 Well might Edmund Burke subsequently say of that rejection of the Memorial and of the Remonstrance of the General Assembly of Colonial New York, by the two Houses of Parliament, " nothing done in Parlia- " ment seemed to be better calculated to widen the " breach between Great Britain and the Colonies." 3

2 Almon's Parliamentary Register, ii., 152-156; Annual Register for 1775, "Ilistory of Europe," *116, $117.

It is a reasonable case, in such instances as those cited and in those of the earlier historians of the American Revolution who lived and wrote in Europe, that no more than the rejection, by the Parliament, of the two papers which were sent to that legislature by the General Assembly of New York, was mentioned in the writings of those gentlemen ; but there is no valid exeuse for those, in America, who have exhausted all their resources of misrepresentation and abuse on that General Assembly, charging it with having been everything which was detrimental to the honor or the integrity or the interests of the Colonies, and closing their respective narratives, on the subject of that Assembly, by reciting no more than the facts, stated in the text-that its Memorial and Remon- strance had been rejected by the two Houses of Parliament, without having been read-without having pretended to explain how it were possible that so bad an Assembly as they had described, could, by any possibility, have been, the author and publisher of such papers as, because of their peculiarly republican averments, the Home Govern- ment and the Parliament would not allow to be even read in their presence.

Bancroft, after having consolidated the Remonstrance and the Memorial, making them one paper, obliged Burke to offer both, on the same day, and in the same House, all of which were described in the narrow com- pass of four lines, without even a hint how such an Assembly as he had previously described, could have produced such a paper-his silence serving to screen his nnfaithfulness, as a historian, both in a falsification and in a suppression of the truthi. (History of the United States, original edition, iv., 286 ; the same, centenary edition, iv., 515.) John C. Hamilton, of course, by his suppression as well as by his falsification of the truth, in order that his father and his grandfather might he undnly eulogized, is equally untrustworthy (History of the Republic, i., 86.) Lendrum, (His- tory of the American Revolution, i., 87;) "Paul Allen " (History of the American Revolution, i., 237, 238;) Gordon, (History of the American Rerolu- tion, i., 500 ;) Ramsay, (History of the American Rerolution, i., 171, 172 ;) and others, less prominent but not less popular, have been equally un- faithful, as historians, in this matter.

Lossing, (Field Book of the Rerolution ;) Frothingham, (Rise of the Republic ;) Ridpath, (History of the United States ;) Lodge, (History of the English Culouies in America ;) Morse, (.Inuals of the American Rerolution ;) Warren, ( History of the American Revolution ;) and others, although abounding in faets and fictions concerning Massachusetts, have not spared a line for the recognition of what was done for "the common "canse," by the General Assembly of the Colony of New York.

Pitkin, (History of the United States, i., 324, 325;) and Hildreth, (History of the United States, First Series, iii., 56, 65,) with that fidelity to the truth which distinguished them, as historians, and notwithstanding they were New Englanders, not only recited enough of the facts to enable their respective readers to understand what the General Assembly of New York really did, but they also compared the result of those doings with the doings of the Continental Congress, very much to the eredit of the former, without belittling what they regarded as also due to the latter.

8 Anunal Register for 1775, " History of Europe," $117.

1 Almon's Parliamentary Register, i., 467-473; Annual Register for 1775, " History of Europe," $115, $116.

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THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1774-1783.

Except those matters to which we have already rc- ferred, nothing which requires especial notice in this narrative, oceurred until, in February, 1775, the Gen- eral Assembly of the Colony rejected the Resolution, submitted by Judge Thomas, of Westchester-eounty, which provided for the cleetion, by that General As- sembly, of Delegates to the proposed Congress of the Continent, to be held at Philadelphia, on the tenth of May ensuing, reference to which has been already made.1 Four days after that determination, by the General Assembly, to take no official action on the subject referred to, [February 27, 1775,] Peter Van Brugh Livingston brought it before the " Committee " of Observation," by which name the Committee of Inspection evidently preferred to be known ; and that Committee, notwithstanding its authority was limited to other and entirely different lines of duty, enter- tained and agreed to a Resolution, offered by that gentleman, " that the Committee take into Consider- " ation, the Ways and Means of eausing Delegates to " be elceted, to meet the Delegates of the other Col- "onies on this Continent in General Congress, to be " held at Philadelphia, on the 10th Day of May " next." ? Ifany other action on the subjeet of that Res- olution was taken at that time, it was not completed when the Committee adjourned; and not until the following Wednesday, [March 1, 1775,] at an Ad- journed Meeting of the Committee, was the subjeet disposed of, by ordering the publication of an Adrer- tisement, addressed "to the Freeholders and Freemen " of the City and County of New York," in which were made a reeital of the recommendation that another Congress should be convened at Philadel- phia, on the tenth of May ensuing ; a suggestion that an Election of Delegates " ought not longer to be de- " layed;" an acknowledgment that that Committee possessed "no Power without the Approbation of "their Constituents, to take any Measures for the "Purpose ; " and a "request " "that the Frecholders " and Freemen of the City and County of New York, " will be pleased to assemble at the Exchange, on "Monday the 6th Instant, at 12 o'clock, to signify " their Sense of the best Method of choosing such " Delegates; and whether they will appoint a cer- " tain Number of Persons to meet such Deputies as " the Counties may elect for that Purpose, and join " with them in appointing out of their Body Dele- " gates for the next Congress." 3 That Advertisement was published on the following day, [March 2, 1775; ] 4 and, what was very unusual, those who were opposed to the revolutionary faction of the confederated party ot the Opposition appear to have organized, for the

purpose of joining issue with the latter, at the pro- posed Meeting, on the questions which had thus been referred only to those who were cither Freeholders or Freemen of the City, in whom, alone, the right of the elective franchise was, then, legally vested.5

An unusual excitement appears to have been aroused by the placards with which the walls and the fences throughout the City were covered,6 and by the impassioned appeals with which the newspapers were filled; and the morning of the sixth of March opened with many appearances which betokened the ap- proach of a serious conflict between the rival faetions. As carly as nine o'clock, the revolutionary faction, strengthened by many who were neither Freeholders nor Frecmen, began to assemble around the Liberty- polc,7 on which a large Union Flag had been raised, at an early hour; and, at eleven o'elock, preceded by a Band of Musie and a large Union Flag, it moved, by a circuitous route, toward the appointed place of meeting, pieking up, as it went, such a motley crowd of "boys, sailors, negroes, and New England and " New-Jersey boatmen " as a noisy Band and eon- tinuous invitations to "fall in," which have always been ineidental to partisan politieal processions, could not have failed to seeure. The conservative faetion, strengthened by " some Offieers of the Army "and Navy, several of His Majesty's Council, and "those Members of the House of Representatives. " who had refused taking into consideration the Pro- " eeedings of the Congress, together with the Offieers " of the Customs and other Dependents of the Court, " &e."-the Governmental Party, as far as there was one, having evidently united with the conservative faction of the party of the Opposition, on that oeea- sion-assembled at the Widow De La Montagnie's, at ten o'clock; and that, also, moved, quietly, in a procession, to the Exchange, in season to take part in the proceedings of the proposed Meeting. It is said that "soon after the parties met some eonfusion " arose, but subsided without any bad consequences ". -in other words, blows were exchanged, which, at one time, threatened to become a serious riot.

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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 58

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