History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I, Part 64

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

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termined that any twenty of them, "should be "impowered to act for the said County ; " and it also determined to send a Deputation to the proposed Provincial Congress, referring to the new-appointed Committee of the County, the nomination of those who should be members of that Deputation.

There were only twenty-three of the ninety who had been named for the Committee, present and act- ing on the subject which had been referred to it ; but it was not slow in nominating, " to represent the said "County in Provincial Convention," Gouverneur Morris, Doctor Robert Graham, Colonel Lewis Graham, and Colonel James Van Cortlandt, all of them from the Borough Town of Westchester ; Stephen Ward and Joseph Drake, from Eastchester ; Major Philip Van Cortlandt, of the Manor of Cort- landt; Colonel James Holmes, of Bedford ; John Thomas, Junior, of Rye ; David Dayton, of North Castle ; and William Paulding, of ; and, un- doubtedly, with equal promptness, the Meeting confirmed the nominations, by electing the eleven nominees to seats in the proposed Congress of the Colony.

It is said, in the official report of the Meeting, that, after the election of the Deputation, as above "stated, "the Committee signed an association, simi- " lar to that which was signed iu the city of New- " York, and appointed Sub-Committees to superintend " the signing of the same throughout the County ; " 3

8 The Association, which was thus "signed by the Committee"-if any others than Members of the Committee had been present, they also would have signed it-was not that Association which the Continen- tal Congress had decreed and promulgated, in the preceding October, but another and entirely different affair, which had been drawn up by James Duane, John Jay, aud Peter Van Schaack, and " set on foot in "New-York," on the twenty-ninth of April. It had been largely signed, in the City, and copies of it had been sent "through all the "counties in the Province ; " and the action taken at the White Plains, concerniug it, was only responsive to the request of the Committee of Que hundred, which had superseded the Committee of Inspection, in the City of New York. The following is a copy of that Association, care- fully copied from Rivington's New- York Gazetteer, No. 107, NEW-YORK, Thursday, May 4, 1775 :

P ERSUADED that the salvation of the rights and liherties of " America, depends, under God, on the firm union of its in- "habitants, in a vigorous prosecution of the measures necessary for its " safety, and convinced of the necessity of preventing the anarchy and " confusion which attend a dissolution of the powers of government ; "we, the freemen, freeholders, and inhabitants of the city and county of " New-York, being greatly alarmed at the avowed design of the ninis- " try to raise a revenue in America, and shocked by the bloody scene "now acting in the Massachusetts-Bay ; do, in the most solemn manner " resolve never to hecome slaves; and to associate under all the ties of "religion, honour, and love to our country, to adopt, aud endeavour to " carry into execution, whatever nicasures may be recommended by the "continental congress, or resolved upon by our provincial convention, "for the purpose of preserving our constitution, and opposing the exe- "cution of several arbitrary and oppressive acts of the British Parlia- "ment, untila reconciliation between Great Britain and America, on "constitutional principles, (which we most ardently desire) can be ob- " tained; and that we will, in all things, follow the advice of our "general committee, respecting the purposes aforesaid, the preservation " of peace and good order, and the safety of individuals and private prop- "erty. "Dated in New-York, April and May, 1775."

This Association, with some slight changes, was re-printed (without any

1 It will be noticed that the proposed assembly was, in this Circular Letter, called a "Provincial Congress," not a " Convention," as the last was named.

2 The re-print of this Circular Letter, in the text, is made from a care- fully-made copy of one of the originals, which has been preserved among Associations in the Historical Manuscripts relating to the War of the Revolution, in the Secretary of State's Office, at Albany, Volume XXX., Page 182.

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THIE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1774-1783.

and after that had been done, the Meeting was ad- journed.1

The official report of the proceedings of the Meet- ing does not give the names of any of the ninety per- sons who were said to have been chosen as a "Com- " mittee for the County of Westchester ;" and a careful search for those names, in other contemporary pub- lications, has been rewarded with only a partial success-the Credentials of the Deputies to the Pro- vincial Congress, to which reference has been made, reveal the names of the following :

David Dan.2, George Comb,

Miles Oakley,

Micah Townsend,

John G. Grahamn,

Benoni Platt,

Samuel Drake, Frederic Van Cortlandt,

Lewis Morris, James Varian,

Jonathan Platt,3 Samuel Haviland,

Michael Hays,

Benjamin Lyon,

Samuel Crawford,

Robert Bloomer,

Gilbert Thorn,

William Miller,

Thomas Thomas,

Joshua Ferris,

James Newman, Gilbert Drake,

Jonathan G. Tompkins, Chairman.

It will be evident to the reader that, until the ap- pointment of the "Committee for the County of West- " cliester," by the Meeting which was held at the White Plains, on the eighth of May, 1775, as has been already stated, there had not been even the slightest appearance of any central organization, for political purposes, within the County ; that, until they were crowded into the political arena, by the place-seekers who were among them, the hardworking farmers throughout the County had not permitted the political questions of the day to disturb their peaceful labors ; and that the place-hunting few, as insignifi- cant in numbers as they were in honest patriotisın,

apparent reason) appended to the Journal of the Provincial Convention, which Convention had adjourned a week before the Association was written and before it was known that any reason for such an Association was imminent. In de Lancey's Notes to Jones's History of New- York dur- ing the Revolutionary War, i., 505, 506, it has been again re-printed, this timo from the inaccurate re-print just referred to, and, of course, with its imperfectious, together with a more serious omission than any which that had presented.

Judge Jones, in his History of New York, i,, 41-45, gave a very inter- esting account of the Association and of the signing of it, warmly tinted, of course, with his peculiar bitterness ; but, nevertheless, he is our principal authority on those subjects.

1 This statement of the proceedings of the Meeting at which a Deputa- tion was chosen to represent Westchester-county, in the first Provincial Congress, is made on the authority of the official report of that Meeting, signed by " JAMES VAN CORTLANDT, Chairman for the Day," and pub_ lished in Rivington's New- York Gazetteer, No. 108, NEW-YORK, Thursday, May 11, 1775 ; and ou that of the Credentials, signed by each of the twenty-three Members of the Committee for the County who were then present, which Credentials have been preserved among Credentials of Delegates, in the Historical Manuscripts, relating to the ll'ar of the Revolu- tion, in the Secretary of Stato's Office at Albany, Volume XXIV., Page 133.

2 The Provincial Congress, on the twenty-ninth of June, 1775, issued a Warrant to David Dan, as First Lientenant, nnder Captain Jonathan l'latt.

3 The Provincial Congress, on the twenty-ninth of June, 1775, issued a Warrant to Jonathan l'latt, as Captain.

did not constitute even a respectable ininority of those who were heads of families and householders, through- out the County.4 It will be seen, also, that the Mor- ris family, strengthened by its alliance with its kindred family of Graham, had fully entrenched itself, as the political head of the County ; and it will be par- ticularly noticed of what kind of material Delegates were made, even at that early period of the revolu- tionary movement in Westchester-county, the most ill-disguised monarchists and even office-holders holding Commissions under the Crown, from among the non-producing class in that purely agricultural community, boldly, if not audaciously, assuming to be in harmony with the industrial masses whom they really despised, and crowding forward, in their grecd for place and emoluments, to seize whatever oppor- tunity for advancement, their ingenuity and their superior intelligence should place within their reach.

If a mere handful of the inhabitants of the County, who neither possessed nor claimed to possess any legal qualifications whatever to do such an act; who did not act nor claim to act under the guidance of any thing except its own unrighteous impulses ; and who neither possessed nor claimed to possess even a shadow of delegated authority from any one, within or without the County, to do any such acts or any others, with the authority and in the name of the County, can be said, with even a semblance of truth, to have really done so, the ancient and entirely conser- vative County of Westchester, by the revolutionary ac- tion at the Meeting at the White Plains, on the eighth of May, was wheeled into the front line of the Rebellion,

4 In all which has been written concerning the political affairs of Westchester-county, prior to the first Session of the First Provincial Con- gress, which assembled on the twenty-second of May, 1775, as far as we havo knowledge on the subject, only fifty-one persons have been named, as residents of that County, who favored the revolutionary proceedings recommended by the Continental Congress of 1774. Of these fifty-one, two were Representatives in the General Assembly-one of theni, was, then, the County Judge, under the Royal Government. Of the remain- ing forty-nine, one rose no higher than a place in the Committee of lis Town; six were satisfied with only places on the Committee of the County, in whom, however, great power in local matters was vested, and by whom much money was disbursed for the support of prisoners of war quartered in their vicinities ; one aspired to both the Town and County Committees, and held seats in both ; threo were given nothing else than Commissions in the Regiments of the County ; eleven held varions Civil Offices, as well as Commissions in the Regiments of the County ; one held a seat in the Provincial Congress, and was contented with that singlo place ; sixteen lield seats in one or more of the Provin- cial Congresses, together with other places, at the samo time or subse- quently ; fivo became discontented with their associations, and wero accused of being loyalists, and were prosecuted as suchi ; leaving only five of the entire forty-nine who did not, as far as we have knowledgo, accept places of either authority or entolument, Eveu the Secretary of the first County Committee looked out for tho profits of official station, and secured, through his associations, somo of tho fat things of place- Dlicah Townsend, tho Clerk of the first County-Committee, secured thio command of a Company of Colonial Troops, early in 1776 ; and he was, in other respecta, well provided for, during that eru of distress and ruin.

The reader may judge from this exhibit how much of genuine patriot- ism and how much of personal selfishness, controlled the revolutionary politics of Westchester-County, 1774-70.

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

abreast of the most advanced of the anarchists of that period ; and if, without a semblance of that "consent" of which so much had been said and written, as a pre- requisite to any change of government-without, also, any of those qualifications in itself and authorities from others, of which mention has been made-the same handful of new-born revolutionists, at the same time, can be said to have really done so, the alle- giance of the great body of the anti-revolutionary farmers of that County, and there were no others, to its Sovereign, was violated, if not abrogated, and all the obligations of that great body of the inhabitants of the County, to obey the legally established Gov- ernments and the legally enacted Laws of the Coun- try, were dissolved, and all were made subject, in- stead, to that self-constituted County Committee which was then organized and taking its first step in Rebellion ; to the proposed Congress of the Colony, in whom was to be vested absolute, unrestrained author- ity, in all classes of governmental affairs relating only to the Colony of New York ; and to the coming secoud Continental Congress, in whom, also, a simi- larly absolute, unrestrained authority, on every con- ceivable subject, within each and every of the several Colonies, would, also, be seated; and, therefore, every one of those peaceful and peacefully inclined farmers and every member of their respective families were, by that handful of revolutionists, insignificant in numbers and only tools in the hands of an unprinci- pled master mischief-maker, made subject, nolens volens, to every edict which should be pro- mulgated by cither of those three self-constituted, unrestrained, revolutionary bodies ; to whatever they or either of them should determine, no matter how monstrous its character might be ; and, very often, to whatever individual members of one or other of those bodies, intoxicated with the possession of a power to which, previously, they had been strangers and revel- ing in a despotism to which the Colony had not, at any period of its existence, been subjected, should de- mand and require.

With those partisan catchwords and political maxims which, a very short time previously, had filled the air with their noisiuess, before the reader, he will readily determine how much of even revo- lutionary consistency and propriety and integrity there was in those doings which are now under consideratiou ; but, among such as those by whom those doings were inaugurated and conducted- among those whose aims were only personal and sclfish and wholly regardless of every other principle whatever than that of self-aggrandizement; among whom the supremacy of the general good of the great body of the Colony or of the Continent-the " patriotism" of poets, of professional politicians, and ofexuberant eulogists-was only a toy intended for nothing else than for the temporary amusement of their gaping, credulous auditory, while the political prestidigitator who presided over the show, bedizened

with the tinsel which was not what it seemed to be, was secretly perfecting the juggle which was intended to deceive all others than those who were participants in the performance and sharers in the profits to be de- rived from it,-neither consistency nor propriety nor integrity was regarded or even thought of, the cupid- ity of the end entirely justified the unrighteousness of the means; and new governing powers and new rules of conduct and new methods took their places in every Town, throughout the County ; and old obli- gations were disregarded, and old guaranties were ab- rogated, and the safety of persons and of properties rested on other foundations than those which were known to and depended on by those of an earlier period.

The American Revolution had finished its work and was ended : the long-established Government of Law had been crowded aside and, in fact if not en- tirely in form, had given place to a new Government of arbitrary, unbridled Force : thenceforth, the peace of the County and the rights of Individuals and of Property, within the County, sacredly respected even under a Monarchy, were held only by those who pos- sessed them, subject to the unrestrained will of the stronger.

The careful reader will not have failed to see, in what has been written in this narrative and in the testimony which has been adduced to sustain it, the stern fact that, as far as the Colony of New York was concerned, and we write of no other Colony, the opposition to the measures of the Home Goverment, from 1763 until the Spring of 1775, which, subsequent- ly, became more widely known as THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, was not, in the slightest degree, the outcome of a popular movement, in which the great body of the Colonists or any considerable portion of it arose in opposition to a wrong, inflicted or sought to be inflicted by the Parliament of Great Britain or by any other body, on the Colony or on any individ- ual member of it, as has been rhetorically pretended, by orators and poets and historians, from that day until the present ; but, on the contrary, that it origin- ated in the City of New York, among those of the commercial and mercantile classes, relatively few in number, whom, by reason of their greater wealth or of their higher social standing, we may properly re- gard, as they were regarded by themselves, as the aristocracy of the Colony-with few, if any excep- tions, they were those wealthy and enterprising Merchants, of various names and families and parties and sects aud nationalities, each of whom had sunk, for all the purposes of that particular movemeut, whatever of individual or family or partisau or sec- tarian or national animosity, against others, he pos- sessed, combined and acting in a common opposition to all those measures of the Home Government which had tended to break down the unblushing lawlessness of those confederated Merchants, in their entire dis- regard of the Navigation and Revenue Laws of the

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THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1774-1783.

Empire, and to enforce on each of those Merchants, in his individual business, that obedience to the Laws which would be no more than his reasonable duty, while it would also tend to the suppression of that corruption of the local Revenue-officers and of that general practise of Smuggling from which he was so complacently acquiring wealth and influence. Except wherein these aristocratic Smngglers employed their ships' crews and the habitués of the docks and slumns of the City, for purposes of intimidation and political effect, the nnfranchised masses of the Colonists, in the country as well as in the City, with very rare excep- tions, and the Freeholders of small estates and those Freeholders, of either large or small degree, who pos- sessed no pecuniary interest in the foreign commerce of the Port, whether inhabitants of the City or of the rural Counties, had no part nor lot in the inception or in the organization or in the promotion of that opposition to the Home Government which, subse- quently, in its more advanced stages, became known, at home and abroad, as THE AMERICAN REVOLU- TION.

In fact, while the aristocracy of the Colony was thus confederating and consolidating discordant ele- ments and plotting and breeding disaffection to the Mother Country, the unfranchised Mechanics and Working-men, residents of the City and toilers for their daily bread, with occasional exceptions, pur- sned their respective industrial vocations, peacefully and industriously, without taking any greater interest in the anxieties of their aristocratic neighbors than those "well-born" "Gentlemen in Trade" were taking in their welfare or in that of their respective families ; while the great body of those who occupied the rural Counties of the Colony, also hard-working and peacefully inclined, knew little of and carcd less for what was then disturbing the previously well- sustained quiet of the metropolitan connting-rooms.

It is, indeed, true, in this connection, that the aris- tocratic Merchants and Ship-owners, in the City of New York, had been, during many years, more or less reasonably aggrieved by reason of the govern- inental interference with their well-established and very profitable "illicit trade," to which reference has bcen made: it is also true that, for the purpose of in- fluencing and, if possible, of intimidating the Home Government, in their opposition to that Home Gov- ernment, because of those assumed grievances, those high-toned lawbreakers had repeatedly resorted to the desperate means of, first, appealing to the maxims and the teachings of the fundamental law ; of employ- ing the former for their partisan slogan, and the latter for the foundations of their passionate appeals; and, sometimes, second, of employing, directly or indirectly, the floating and the less respectable portions of the population of the City, as supernumeraries on the stage on which they were acting their several parts in the drama of their seeming patriotism-means which were as nnreal, in their hands, as their own " patrotism," so

called, was deceptive ; and, particularly, in the last- mentioned of the two means employed, as hazardous as it was fraudulent-but it is also true that, while the maxims and the teachings of the fundamental law which they so freely bandied, were only words of convenience, meaning nothing beyond the end for securing which they had been thus employed, their auxiliarics, thus enlisted from among the unfranchised and lowly, if not from among the vicious, were, by those who employed them, only regarded as temporary employees, engaged for the performance of particular services, of more or less danger and lawlessness ; and not as common heirs to a common inheritance for which both they and those who had thus employed them, as parties possessing an equal interest therein- as the maxims and the teachings of the fundamental law, with which both the employers and the ein- ployees, in this instance, werc familiar, had clearly indicated to both-were jointly contending.

The American Revolution, as we said in the begin- ning, originated, not in a popular movement of the great body of the Colonists, nor in any considerable number of those Colonists, in opposition to a wrong, inflicted or sought to be inflicted by the Parliament of Great Britain or by any other body, on the Colony or on any individual member of it, but the commercial and mercantile classes, in the City of New York, the aristocracy of the Colony, in their desperate efforts to shelter "the illicit Trade " -- the Smuggling-in which they had been so long and so profitably employed, from the obstructions, more than ordinarily effective, which the Home Government had raised against it, subsequent to the establishment of the Peace, in 1763. As we have said, also, the elaborate essays on the "Rights of Man and of Englishmen," on the "consent " which was necessary in order to give validity to Laws, and, generally, on the assumed grievances to which the Colonists had been subjected, all of them the productions of well-paid Counsel or other interested writers, with which the newspapers of that period were filled to overflowing, were nothing else than means employed for the protection of that prolific, but corrupt, source of the wealth of the Mer- chants of the City of New York; and the yells and the outrages, inflicted on both persons and propertics, of those who had been employed to give effect to those labored arguments of the press, by what were assumed to have been spontaneons outbursts of popu- lar resentment against the usurpations of the Home Government-usurpations of individual rights, by the way, which were only the same as those which were subsequently inflicted, in every State, on those who were not Frecholders; and which the Constitu- tion for the United States has always inflicted and continues to inflict on the inhabitants of the several Territories, who have always been and who are, now, taxed without having consented to any such taxation, their Delegates in the federal Congress having had no right, at any time, to vote on any question whatever

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

abreast of the most advanced of the anarchists of that period ; and if, without a semblance of that "consent" of which so much had been said and written, as a pre- requisite to any change of government-without, also, any of those qualifications in itself and authorities from others, of which mention has been made-the same handful of new-born revolutionists, at the same time, can be said to have really done so, the alle- giance of the great body of the anti-revolutionary farmers of that County, and there were no others, to its Sovereign, was violated, if not abrogated, and all the obligations of that great body of the inhabitants of the County, to obey the legally established Gov- ernments and the legally enacted Laws of the Coun- try, were dissolved, and all were made subject, in- stead, to that self-constituted County Committee which was then organized and taking its first step in Rebellion ; to the proposed Congress of the Colony, in whom was to be vested absolute, unrestrained author- ity, in all classes of governmental affairs relating only to the Colony of New York ; and to the coming second Continental Congress, in whom, also, a simi- larly absolute, unrestrained authority, on every con- ceivable subject, within each and every of the several Colonies, would, also, be seated; and, therefore, every one of those peaceful and peacefully inclined farmers and every member of their respective families were, by that handful of revolutionists, insignificant in numbers and only tools in the hands of an unprinci- pled master mischief-maker, made subject, nolens volens, to every edict which should be pro- mulgated by either of those thircc self-constituted, unrestrained, revolutionary bodies ; to whatever they or either of them should determine, no matter how monstrous its character might be ; and, very often, to whatever individual members of one or other of those bodies, intoxicated with the possession of a power to which, previously, they had been strangers and revel- ing in a despotism to which the Colony had not, at any period of its existence, been subjected, should de- mand and require.

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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 64

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