History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I, Part 66

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 66

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and the unsuccessful result of its efforts, in that com- mendable undertaking, only by reason of the boldness of its declarations and of the audacity of its preten- sions to rank, as the legally constituted representa- tives of a free people, notwithstanding they were Col- onists.

It will be remembered by all who are familiar with the history of Colonial New York, however, that, al- though the aristocracy of that old and respectable Col- ony had always been consistent and united, in its un- deviating disregard of the real political rights of the working masses, those in the rural districts as well as those in the Cities, there had been, during many years before the period of which we write [ May, 1775], and there was, then, a bitter feud, existing within itself, between two rival families and their respective asso- ciated families and their several adherents. It will, also, be remembered that, during a long period of years, one of those powerful families and its friends had occupied all or nearly all the high places in the Colonial Government, and had dispensed the exten- sive patronage of that Goverument and disposed of its valuable emoluments among those who were known to have been the friends and adherents of the family, agreeably to the dictates of its own controlling will ; while the other of those two antagonistic families and those who had been its friends and adherents, during the same long period, had uneasily and unsatisfac- torily reposed on nothing else than on their own rural respectability, without any place in the Government of the Colony, without any of that influence which place had afforded so bounteously to its more powerful rival, and without any of those emolumeuts of office which, more than almost all else, would have been so ex- ceediugly acceptable to every Scotchman and to every other within whose veins the controlling blood was Scotch. The feud between the De Lanceys and the Livingstous, in Colonial New York, is matter of his- tory which is familiarly known to every New-Yorker who is reasonably acquainted with the history of his own country.

When the Home Government, eager to reduce the heavy land-tax to which the country gentlemen of England had been subjected by reason of the demands of that Government, in its vigorous prosecution of the War with France and Spain, first tightened the lines of those who administered the Customs, in the Col- onies, and thereby seriously interfered with the smug- gling in which every class of the local aristocracy was so largely and so profitably engaged, there was a common reason, which appealed to those of the De Lanceys and those of the Livingstons with equal force, for an op- position to the Home Government, in which those of both the families could harmoniously unite and from which both could be more surely benefitted; and, in accordance with that teaching of common sense, that opposition to the Home Government, of which the reader has been told, was really established in the City of New York, with its organized Committee of

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THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1774-1783.

Fifty-one and its more noted Continental Congress among the results of that union.

At the time of which we write, the threatened dan- ger from the working classes appeared to have been averted ; the Connnittec of Fifty-one, or those who had remained in it after the treachery of those who had used it for a stepping-stone to something of greater influence, had slowly retired from the field of politi- cal action and had been dissolved by its own action ; the Continental Congress and its policy and its meth- ods had been accepted by the Livingstons and their friends and adherents as that which seemed to be best adapted to add strength to their hereditary an- tagonism to the De Lanceys and their friends and ad- herents; the General Assembly of the Colony and its policy and its methods, not less in opposition to the Colonial policy of the Home Government than the others, had been accepted by the De Lanceys and their friends and adherents, as well as by the great body of the Colonists, throughout the entire Colony, as the only legitimate exponent of the will of the Col- ony and the only one which could reasonably be ex- pected to obtain a hearing before the Home Govern- ment and the Parliament and the people of Great Britain, from whom, only, a redress of the grievances of the Colony could be obtained ; and the Colony was again made the witness and the victim of a bitter feud between rival families, one of them holding and the other endeavoring to obtain all the places and influ- ence and emoluments of the Colonial Government. A Delegation of twelve had been elected, by a Conven- tion which had been convened for that purpose, to re- present the Colony in a second Congress of the Col- onies ; and of that Delegation, two were Livingstons, two were of those who had married Livingstons, and two others were assured and well-tried supporters of the Livingston interest. The excitement which was occasioned by "the news from Lexington " had added strength to the friends of the Continental Con- gress and its revolutionary policy, to the Livingston interests, and to the revolutionary faction, generally ; and, in the same interests and with the same revolu- tionary ends in view, a Provincial Congress had been called and elected, although, as was subsequently seen, the Deputies thus elected were not always pli- ant tools, to be handled by a skilful politician, for purely partisan purposes. The control of the politi- cal affairs of the Colony, it will be seen, as far as those affairs could be controlled by the revolutionary fac- tion, was, by the election of the members of the Pro- vincial Congress, firmly secured to the Livingstons and to their friends ; and the government of the Col- onists, thenceforth, was revolutionary, without war- rant of Law, and oligarchic.

In England, at the time of which we write, the Ministry, revelling in the strength of its party and haughtily disregarding everything of prudence and conciliation, had recently led the Parliament to enact, first, the Bill for restraining the Trade and Commerce

of the Provinces of Massachusetts-Bay and New Hampshire and the Colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in North America, with Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Islands in the West Indies; and to prohibit such Provinces and Colonies from carrying on any Fishery on the Banks of Newfoundland or other places therein mentioned, under certain specified conditions and lim- itations ; and, second, the Bill for restraining the Trade and Commerce of the Colonies of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and South Caro- lina, with Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Islands in the West Indies, under certain conditions and limitations-the Commerce and Fishing Rights of the Colony of New York, in each instance, having been left, undisturbed-and the First Session of the Fourteenth Parliament was drawing near to its close. The disturbance of Trade which was consequent on the political differences, had already produced great distress, in Great Britain, among those whose lives and labors and properties were employed in the man- ufacture of goods specifically intended for the Ameri- can market ; and, at the same time, the Merchants, in that country, and those who had given credits, com- mercial or financial, to the Colonists, in America, were anxiously considering in what way, if at all, since entire commercial non-intercourse, except that which was surreptitious and corrupt,1 had been or- dered by the Parliament as well as by the Continental Congress, they were to receive payment of what was due or becoming due to them-anxieties which were not removed by the aristocratic and "patriotic " " debtors," in some of the Colonies, at least, whence remittances had been entirely suspended and where the Courts of Justice were not permitted to assist in the collection of debts.

In New York, at the time of which we write, as far as the great body of the Colonists in the rural Counties were concerned, there does not appear to have been any noticeable change-the farmers had not been disturbed in their labors, during 1774; and the surplus of their productions, which had found early markets, had undoubtedly been disposed of at those better than ordinary prices which are known to have prevailed, in consequence of the increased demand which had been produced, early in the Autumn, by the approaching embargo. In the City, the suspen-

1 The full supplies of goods, of every description, which were shipped lo Boston, with the knowledge of officers who occupied high places in the Government, ou Transport Ships and disguised as Stores for life Royal Army-sometimes paid for, as Stores for the Army, by the King's Treasurer-subsequently became a subject of searching investigation before the House of Commons. The Schedules of Goods thus shipped afford amusing evidence of what were officially considered as Army Stores : they clearly show, also, the relative weight of morality and int- morality, whenever the profits of trade are considered, and how vastly more the Profit und Loss Accounts, on their respective Ledgers, will in- Inence the morals and the religion and the doings of " Men in Busi- " Dess," Merchants and others, than anything which their Mother4 have taught them, anything which their Bibles have presented to their consideration, or anything which their consciences have brought before them.

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

sion of the foreign trade, by the experimental action of the first Continental Congress, must have been as disastrous to the great body of the inhabitants-those possessing small Estates as well as the Tradesmen and Mechanics and Workingmen, of every lowly class-as that much written-of Port Bill, imposed by the retributive action of the King and the Parliament of Great Britain, had produced on the similar classes who had inhabited the Town of Boston, in the pre- eeding year ; but the men of New York and their de- pendent families had endured whatever of hardships there had been in the suspension of their respective means of support, without those ontcries, nominally of assumed distress among "the suffering inhabitants" -more loudly nttered by demagogues, for other pur- poses, thau by those who were really sufferers, pray- ing for relief-which had distinguished Boston, a few months previously, and which had induced the tender- hearted, the world over, to become politicians and to reprobate the Home Government by whom the Port Bill had been imposed ; to sympathize with those who were said to have been "suffering," although the latter could have found remunerative labor elsewhere than in Boston ; and to contribute the means which were really expended, very largely, more for the benefit of the tax- payers thian for that of the "suffering poor" of the Town. The suspension of their business, by the aristoe- racy of America, who eonld sustain the present strain in order to ensure the receipt of an ultimate advantage, was, we say, no less severe in New York than the simi- lar suspension of her business, by the aristocracy of Great Britain, had been in Boston; and the sufferngs of of the working classes were, undoubtedly, quite as keen- ly felt in the one case as in the other ; but, in the in- stanee of New York, there was neither an appeal for help nor an ostentatious display of "patriotic" sym- pathy, extending help; and if the sufferings of the lowly victims, in New York, were noticed at all, by those "patriotie" aristocrats who had produced those distresses, it was only in those congratulatory remarks, not un frequently scen in the published correspondence of the not distant later period, that the necessities of the working-classes were compelling then to enlist in the Armnies, in order to obtain even a portion of the food which was needed to keep their dependent wives and little ones from starvation, and that "for the " Rights of man and of Englishmen."

The "determination" of the Continental Congress of 1774, to appoint Committees "in every County, " City, and Town," "whose business it should be at- " tentively to observe the conduct of all persons, " touching the Association," which that Congress also enacted, and with extraordinary powers for persecut- ing and bringing ruin on whomsoever those local Committecs should determine to put under a ban, had not yet become as well-seated, in the Colony of New York, as in some of the other Colonies;1 but the

City of New York was thus controlled ; and, possibly, some of the rural communities who were more than ordinarily revolutionary in their inclinations, may, also, have already appointed such Committees. In Westchester-county, however, although the handful of officeseekers who hovered around the Morrises, and who did what those haughty leaders told them to do in return for official favors received or looked for, had recently appointed such a County Committee, at the time of which we write, it had not yet com- menced its subsequently well-known work of inquisi- torial proscription and plunder and outrage. There were individuals, among the farmers or in the little villages or at the several landings, who remembered and continued to condemn the usurpations of polit- ical authority which had signalized the first Conti- nental Congress and had divided and lessened the power of the Opposition; and these and others who had attended the recently-held meeting at the White Plains may have been and undoubtedly were discon- tented and outspoken, within their respective families and among their neighbors, producing, in some in- stances, undoubtedly, ill-feelings and personal ani- mosities and less harmonious neighborhoods. But, notwithstanding all these, the great body of the in- habitants of the County was entirely undisturbed ; the labors of the day had been done, as they had pre- viously been done, on the liundreds of homesteads, throughout the County ; politieal questions in which they felt no interest had not slackened the domestic or the out-door industrics nor lessened the holiday or evening pleasures of by far the greater number ; and, with here and there a clearly perceptible change, the staid old agricultural County was nndisturbed, in all its various relations. The Colonial officers con- tinued to discharge their various duties, as their pre- decessors had done-John Thomas, who had occupied the Bench of the Court of Common Pleas, since May, 1755, continued to discharge the duties of that office, as well as those of the other office of Representative of the County, in the General Assembly, without

Committees, and the extent to which they carried their new-found authority, although it relates peculiarly to Virginia, is entirely applica- ble to the methods and the extent of authority of similar Committees, in every other Colony : "The Associations first, in part, entered into, recom- " mended by the people of this Colony, and adopted by what is called "'the Continental Congress,' aro now enforcing, throughout this coun- "try, with the greatest rigour. A Committee has been chosen in every "County, whose business it is to carry tho Association of the Congress "into execution : which Committee assumes an anthority to inspect the " books, invoices, and all other secrets of tho trade and correspondence " of Merchants; to watch the conduet of every Inhabitant, without dis- " tinction ; and to send for all such as come under their suspicion, into "their presence, to interrogate them respecting all matters which, at " their pleasure, they think fit objects of their inquiry, and to 'stig- "'matize,' as they term it, such as they find transgressing what they "are now hardy enough to call ' the Laws of the Congress,' which 'stig- """matizing' is no other than inviting the vengeance of an outrageous "and lawless mob, to be exercised upon the nuhappy victims." -- ( The Earl of Dunmore to the Earl of Dartmouth, " WILLIAMSBURG," [ Virginia, ] "December 24, 1774," laid before the House of Commons, February 15, 1775 .- Almon's Parliamentary Register, House of Commons, First Session, Fourteenth Parliament, i., 185, 186.)

1 The following description of the methods adopted by those local

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THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1774-1783.

being disturbed, by any one; and James De Lancey, who had been the Sheriff of the County, since June, 1770, and David Dayton, who had been the Surro- gate, sinee June, 1766, and John Bartow, who had been the Clerk of the County, since April, 1760, each in his appointed official place, continued to discharge the official duties which were incumbent on them, and to receive and to enjoy the emoluments which those several offices secured to them-the Courts of tlie County continued their several Sessions, at the appointed times; and, as we have said, with occa- sional individual or neighborhood exceptions, a gen- eral quiet prevailed, a quiet which preceded a ter- rible convulsion, as the reader will shortly see.

The machinery of government which had been created by the revolutionary elements, within and without the Colony of New York, was, very soon, put in motion. It was composed of only a series of con- claves, each of which exercised, arbitrarily, Legisla- tive, Exceutive, and Judicial functions, unrestrained by either constitutional or statutory provisions, and controlled, in whatever it determined to do or not to do, only by the individual impulses of such, within this Colony, as the Livingstons and the Morrises, the Van Cortlandts and the Thomases, and as James Duane and John Jay, men, in every instance, who were distinguished for their entire disregard of and con- tempt for the unfranchised and lowly masses, of every class, as well as of those who were franchished, but not "well-born "-the former being looked on, by them, as fit only for labor and for fighting; and the latter as no better than the others, unless on election- days-and who represented only the uncontrolled and purely aristocratie prejudices and antipathies and the equally uncontrolled and malignant partisan animosi- ties and jealousies of those who, during many years, had been excluded from official life, and who, by the whirligig of rebellion, were, then, first enjoying, in an extremely diluted form, what they had so long and so anxiously hankered for.1

The Congress of the Continent assembled at Phila- delphia, agreeably to order, on Wednesday, the tenth of May, 1775; and, ten Colonies being represented- only three of the Delegates from New York having been present, that Colony was not counted-it was formally organized by the election of Peyton Randolph, of Virginia, as its President, and Charles Thomson, of

Pennsylvania, as its Secretary.2 The history of its doings, generally, is known to every intelligent per- son, and need not be repeated, unless in such instances as particularly related to Westchester-county or to those who were within the bounds of that County, during the period of the War of the Revolution.

On Monday, the twenty-second of May, 1775, a number of those who had been designated as Deputies from the several Counties of the Colony, assembled at the Exchange, in the City of New York, for the pur- pose of forming a Provincial Congress ; but, because they conceived there was not a sufficient number of Deputies present, they adjourned until the following day, without having attempted to organize. On the latter day, [Tuesday, May 23, 1775,] those Deputies who were then present assembled at the Exchange, " the Deputies of a majority of the Counties " having appeared; and a "Provincial Congress for the "Colony of New-York " was organized by the election of Peter Van Brugh Livingston-one of the most violent of the former " Committee of Correspondence," a brother of the Lord of the Manor of Livingston, and a brother-in-law and partner in business of that Earl of Stirling, so called, who figured so largely in the military history of the War of the Revolution-to be its President; and John Mckesson and Robert Benson, the latter a brother of that Egbert Benson whose extraordinary election as a Deputy from Duchess-county to the earlier Provincial Convention, has been already noticed, were elected to be its Sec- retaries.3 Although the doings of that body are less generally known than those of the Continental Con- gress, the purposes of this work will not require any further reference to them, than to such portions as relate particularly, to Westchester-county or to those who were within that County, and to such other por- tions thereof as, in their effects, affected that County or its inhabitants, during the period of the War of the Revolution.

As has been already stated, the local Committee for Westchester-county was created on the eighth of May, 1775, ninety members having been miraculously created out of the material of which twenty-three were actually composed; and Gilbert Drake was made its Chairman.4 Micah Townsend, subsequently holding other offices of honor, in both Westchester and Cumberland-counties, was made the Secretary of that Committee ; 5 and its doings, as far as they were

1 It was well-said by Henry C. Van Schaack, in his Life of his father, " It will scarcely now be credited that powers so undefined and extraor- " dinary should have been intrusted to a few individuals, by a people so " jealous of encroachments ; whose sense of liberty was so keen as to " 'sunff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze ;' and who, " un their own part, had gone to war against n preamble."-Van Schaack's Life of Peter Van Schaack, 67.

The barbarities which were officially inflicted on individuals and fam- ilies, in many Instances only for an opinion extorted by their persecutors, withont an overt net or the inclination to commit one, as those barbarities have been officially recorded, were perfectly shocking ; and some of those which were inflicted on residents of Westchester county, maler the guidance of such notable Westchester county men as John Jay and Gouvernenr Morris, will find places in other parts of this narrative.

2 Journal of the Congress, " PHILADELPHIA, Wednesday, May 10, 1773." 3 Jourant of the Provincial Congress, " CITY OF NEW-YORK, May 22nd,

" 1775," and addition, including the proceedings on the following day. 4 Credentials of Delegates ty Provincial Congress, May 8, 1775,-Historical Manuscripts relative to the War of the Revolution : Credentials of Delegates, xxiv., 13 ; Riringtone's New- York theretteer, No. 108, NEW-YORK, Thurs- day, May 11, 1775.

The Credentials mentioned above were signed " GILBERT DINKE, " Chairman ; " but those of the Delegates cIrcted to the Second Provin- rial Congress, signed by the same person, bear the signature of " GILBERT "HI. DRAKE, Chairman."-(Historical Manuscripts, etc .: Credentials of Dele- gatex, xxiv., G7.)

5 Historical Manuscripts, etc .: Credentials of Delegates, xxiv., 67.

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

recorded in the annals of the County, will be duly noticed, as the narrative progresses.

The organization of the Provincial Congress, on the twenty-third of May, 1775, has been already men- tioned and described : 1 a more partieular description of the membership of that body which, in the interest of those who were in rebellion, was to take places be- side the several departments of the legally constituted Colonial Goverment, in the government of the Col- ony, and which was to wield so important an influenee over all who were within the Colony, seems to be in- cumbent on us, in this place.

Of the fourteen Counties of which the Colony of New York was then composed, thirteen were properly designated " the Counties," or " the country Counties," since they were mainly occupied by communities of farmers, unless in the instances of the frontier Coun- ties, in which hunters and trappers and surveying parties and, not unfrequently, families and villages of the aborigines, afforded considerable portions of their continually changing populations. Of these thirteen rural Counties, some of the inhabitants of Albany and Duchess and Westchester and Queens made pre- tensions to something of social superiority, somewhat akin to the aristocraey of the City of New York ; but, in none of them, unless in Albany-county, was there any pretension to a controlling local aristocracy ; and in all of them, the actual tillers of the soil largely out- numbered all other classes, on the Census-lists. From such widely dissimilar constituencies, in town and country, therefore, even from those who were not widely separated and differently situated, there could not be expected Delegations to the Provincial Con- gress who were homogeneous in their characters and dispositions and inclinations; and as all those rural Delegations possessed more or less of the elements which prevailed among those who were nominally their respective constituencies, it was to be a work of time and patience and skill, in partisan and factional discipline, to bring all of them into " working order,'' in the interest of the controlling, or revolutionary, faction of the aristocracy-a work of which notiee will be taken, hereafter.

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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 66

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