USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, from its earliest settlement to the present time > Part 29
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"' arms !"' Hardly had the words been spoken when the intrepid colonel seized the horse's head, which he had let go in the strife, and, calling upon all of the soldiers who were unwilling to shed the blood of their country- men, to come from the ranks to the side of the people, turned the cart to the right, and ordered the carman to drive up Beaver street. A single soldier stepped from the ranks in compliance with the invitation. He was received with three hearty cheers by the crowd which had gathered about the scene of contention, then mounted on one of the carts and escorted in triumph to the corner of Broadway and John street, where the arms were. deposited in the yard of Abraham Van Wyck, a stanch
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Whig who kept a ball-alley at this place, which was a favorite resort of the Sons of Liberty. These arms were , afterwards used by the first troops raised in New York by the order of Congress. The soldiers, meanwhile, were escorted to the wharf, where they embarked amid the hisses of the citizens .*
Open hostilities had now commenced. Ticonderoga and Crown Point had been taken ; the battle of Bunker Hill had been fought, and George Washington had been appointed commander-in-chief of the American army. Yet the people had not yet grown to the idea of inde- pendence, and the Committee of Safety, when accused of the thought, indignantly repelled it as treasonable and preposterous, while even the Sons of Liberty freely acknowledged the right of England to regulate trade, only denouncing the principle of parliamentary taxation. On the 25th of June, Washington entered New York on his way from Mount Vernon to Cambridge to take command of the army assembled there. The Provincial Congress received him with a cautious address. Despite their patriotism, they still clung to the shadow of loyalty ; fearing to go too far, they acted constantly under pro- test that they desired nothing more than to secure to themselves the rights of true-born British subjects. The next morning, Washington quitted the city, escorted on his way by the provincial militia. Tryon had entered it the night before, and thus had been brought almost face to face with the rebel who was destined to work such a transformation in his majesty's colonies of
* See Willett's Narrative, pp. 28-32.
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America. The mayor and corporation received the returning governor with expressions of joy, and even the patriot party were glad of the change which relieved them from the government of Colden. But the city had greatly changed during his absence. He had left it mutinous, yet anxious to obey him as far as was pos- sible, and always disposed to treat him with respect ; he found it in a state of open rebellion, preserving the semblance of loyalty without its substance, and far less disposed to yield obedience to his orders than to those of the Provincial Congress, now established among them.
Meanwhile, the colony of New York had been ordered by the Continental Congress to contribute her quota of three thousand men to the general defence, and four regi- ments were accordingly raised, which were placed under the command of Colonels Alexander McDougall, Gozen Van Schaick, James Clinton, and Holmes. Of the first of these, which was raised from the city of New York, Adolph Ritzma, the son of the domine of the Dutch Church, was lieutenant-colonel ; Frederic Wisenfelts, a Prussian of fine military talents, first captain, and Mari- nus Willett, second captain. A Swiss officer, by the name of Zedwitz, served as major of the regiment ; both he and Ritzma afterwards proved traitors to their trust. John Lamb was appointed to the command of a com- pany of artillery, and Wiley, Oswald, Sears and others of the Liberty Boys entered the ranks, and soon after- wards set out on the Northern campaign.
The city now presented a curious spectacle, as the seat of two governments, each issuing its own edicts, and denouncing those of the other as illegal authority.
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It was not long before the two powers came into colli- sion. Regarding the guns on the Battery as dangerous to the patriot interest, and needing them for the forti- fications of the posts in the Highlands, the Provincial Congress directed their removal ; and, on the night of the 23d of August, Captain Lamb with a party of Liberty Boys and a number of citizens, among whom was Alexander Hamilton, proceeded to execute the order ; a part of the company remaining under arms while the rest were employed in removing the cannon. While thus engaged, a musket was discharged from the barge of the Asia, which had been stationed near the shore to recon- noitre. The fire was returned by Lamb and his company, killing one of the crew, and wounding several others, upon which the barge at once made her way to the ship. No sooner had she reached it than a heavy cannonading was opened on the town, riddling the houses near the Bat- tery, and severely wounding three of the citizens. The drum beat to arms ; a rumor was spread that the British intended to destroy the city, and many of the people fled with their wives and children in apprehension of the impending catastrophe. The intrepid Liberty Boys, meanwhile, coolly continued their task in the face of the enemy's fire, nor did they quit the Battery until the last of the twenty-one pieces had been carried away in safety. The next day, Captain Vandeput, the com- . mander of the Asia, dispatched a letter to the mayor, complaining of the murder of one of his men, and demanding immediate satisfaction. A correspondence of mutual recrimination, resulting in nothing, ensued, and on the 29th of August, the Provincial Congress issued
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an order declaring that, as the Asia had seen fit to can- nonade the city, she must henceforth cease to receive supplies from it, and must obtain them instead by the way of Governor's Island.
Hitherto, the governor had remained firm at his post ; but, finding his position daily growing more perilous, despite the pledges of the corporation for his personal safety, he determined to abandon the city, and took refuge on board the Asia ; from which he kept up a con- stant communication with his friends on shore, and insti- gated violent attacks on the Sons of Liberty through Rivington's Gazette,* the organ of the royalist party. Finding this journal becoming somewhat too scurrilous in its abuse, the Liberty Boys, after vainly remonstrating with the printer, directed Captain Sears to attend to the matter. Mustering a party of light-horse from Connec- ticut, he entered the city at noon on the 4th of Decem- ber, and, proceeding to the printing-office, forced open the doors, demolished the press, distributed the types through the windows, and effectually stopped the paper.
* This journal, which was first issued by James Rivington on the 22d of April, 1773, on a large medium sheet, folio, from the beginning warmly supported the cause of the British government, and received the support of the royalists through- out the country. After the destruction of his office, Rivington went to England, where he procured a new press, and obtained the appointment of king's printer for New York. After the conquest of the city by the British, he returned, and, on the 4th of October, 1777, issued his paper anew, and continued it under the title of the Royal Gazette until the close of the war, when he discarded the royal arms from the title, which henceforth appeared as Rivington's New York Gazette and Universal Advertiser. The paper, however, was regarded with coldness; and, dis- couraged by the want of popular faith in his conversion, in 1783, he discontinued its publication, and devoted himself exclusively to the sale of books and stationery. He also published several volumes, among which were Cook's Voyages. He was regarded by his contemporaries as a man of considerable ability.
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Early in the spring of 1776, General Lee,* who had commanded the American forces at New York since the departure of Wooster, was ordered to Charleston, and General Putnam was left in sole command of the city. Putnam fixed his head-quarters at No 1 Broadway, in a
FIRTH POND & C.
FORTES
Washington's Head-quarters in Pearl street.
* Lee came to New York in January, 1776, with a force of twelve hundred men, and took up his head-quarters at the Kennedy House, the same afterwards occu- pied by Putnam. Previously to the departure of Washington for Philadelphia, he lodged while in the city at No. 184 Pearl street; upon his return, he removed to the Kennedy House, the favorite resort of the officers of the army.
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house built by Captain Kennedy of the British army. On the 14th of April, Washington arrived, having succeeded in expelling the British troops from Boston, and took up his quarters at Richmond Hill, on the corner of Varick and Charlton streets. The idea of independence was fast gaining ground, and those who would have shuddered at the thought a few months before, were now discussing the expediency of a total separation from the mother country. At this juncture, " Common Sense " was pub- lished in Philadelphia by Thomas Paine, and electrified the whole nation with the spirit of independence and liberty. This eloquent production severed the last link that bound the colonies to the mother-country ; it boldly gave speech to the arguments which had long been trembling on the lips of many, but which none before had found courage to utter, and, accepting its con- clusions, several of the colonies instructed their delegates in the Continental Congress to close their eyes to the ignis fatuus of loyalty, and fearlessly to throw off their allegiance to the crown. On the 7th of June, 1776, the subject was introduced into Congress by Richard Henry Lee, who offered a resolution declaring " that the " United Colonies are, and ought to be, free and inde- " pendent States, that they are absolved from all alle- "giance to the British crown, and that their political "connection with Great Britain is and ought to be " totally dissolved." A spirited debate followed these resolutions. The delegates of several of the colonies New York among the rest, had received no instructions how to act in this emergency, and they drew back shrink- ingly from the perilous step which would condemn them,
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if unsuccessful, to a traitor's doom. Seven of the thirteen colonies voted in its favor. Armed with this small majority, Jefferson, John Adams, Franklin, Sherman and Robert R. Livingston were appointed to draft a Declar- ation of Independence ; which, on the 4th of July, was adopted by Congress, and the British colonies trans- formed into the United States of America.
On the 10th of July, the news reached New York, where it was received with the greatest enthusiasm. Orders were immediately issued for the several brigades then in the city to meet on the Commons at six in the evening to hear the document publicly read. At the hour appointed, the soldiers ranged themselves in a hol- low square, within which was Washington on horseback with his aids, on the site of the present Park Fountain, to listen to the address which, for the first time, pro- claimed the United States a free and independent nation. The reading ended, the immense auditory burst into shouts of applause. The people, impelled by the new- born spirit of independence, rushed in a body to the City Hall, and, tearing the picture of George III. from its frame, rent it in pieces and trampled it under foot. Proceeding thence to the Bowling Green, they hurled from its pedestal the statue of the royal tyrant which they had set up in a fit of ill-judged enthusiasm a few years before, and dragged it in triumph through the streets of the city. The statue of Pitt escaped desecra- tion upon this occasion ; yet the people had lost much of their reverence for their former idol, and the statue had already received considerable mutilation from their hands.
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Everything now indicated that the city of New York had been chosen by the enemy as the next point of attack. On the 25th of June, General Howe had arrived at Sandy Hook from Halifax, and had landed on the 21st of July at Staten Island, where he found many partisans of the royal cause. Here he was joined a few days after by his brother, Admiral Lord Howe, from England, together with the forces of Clinton from the South, and thus placed in command of an army of twenty-four thousand of the best disciplined troops of England, besides the large reinforcements of Tories which flocked to his standard, and rendered him invaluable aid by their knowledge of the country. To oppose this formidable array, Washington had collected a force of twenty thousand raw militia-the best at his command- nearly one half of whom were invalids or detailed for other duty, while many more were destitute of arms and ammunition.
The city, meanwhile, had been strongly fortified. On the southernmost point of the island was the Grand Battery, mounting twenty-three guns, with Fort George Battery, of two guns, immediately above it, in close proximity to the Bowling Green. The North River shore was defended by McDougall's Battery, of four guns, on a hill a little to the west of Trinity Church ; the Grenadiers' or Circular Battery, of five guns, some dis- tance above, in the neighborhood of the brewhouse ; and the Jersey Battery, of five guns, to the left of the latter. On the East River shore were Coenties' Battery, of five guns, on Ten Eyck's wharf ; Waterbury's Battery, of seven guns, at the shipyards ; Badlam's Battery, of
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eight guns, on Rutger's Hill, in the vicinity of the Jew's burial-ground in Chatham street ; and not far from that, Thompson's Battery, of nine guns, at Hoorne's Hook, and the Independent Battery on Bayard's Mount, now christened Bunker Hill, on the corner of Grand and Centre streets. Breastworks were also erected at Peck, Beekman, Burling, Coenties and Old slips ; * at the Coffee-House, and the Exchange ; and in Broad and other streets of the city, and a line of circumvallation was stretched across the island from river to river. Fortifications were erected on Governor's Island, Paulus Hook, Brooklyn Heights, and Red Hook ; a line of works were thrown up on Long Island from Fort Greene at the Wallabout to Gowanus Creek, within which nine thousand men were encamped and the passages to the city, both by the North and East Rivers, were obstructed by chains and sunken vessels. The latter fortifications were erected under the superintend- ence of General Greene, who was intrusted with the command of the American forces on Long Island. General Sullivan was deputed as the assistant of Greene ;
* These slips were simply openings between two wharves, into which the wood- boats entered at high water and grounded there, that the cartmen might enter at low tide to unload them. There were at this time six slips on the East River shore-Whitehall Slip, so called from the large white house, built by Stuyvesant adjoining the slip; Coenties' (Coen and Antey's) so called from Conrad Ten Eyck and Jane, his wife, who lived in the house on Little Dock, now Pearl street. adjoining the slip: Old Slip, the first in the city ; Burling Slip, which derived its name from Mr. Burling, a merchant on the corner of the Smit's Vly and Golden Hill ; Beekman's Slip, so called from Mr. Beekman who resided on the southwest corner of Pearl street and the slip, and Peck Slip, which received its name from Mr. Peck, at that time the owner of the lands in its vicinity. The only slip on the North River was at the foot of Oswego, now Liberty street.
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General Nathaniel Woodhull was directed to forage for the troops on Long Island, and Washington retained command of the forces in the city.
Soon after the arrival of the British fleet at Staten Island, Admiral Howe, who came commissioned by the British government to treat for peace with the rebels, as they were contemptuously termed, attempted to open negotiations with the American forces, and, to this end, addressed a letter to " George Washington, Esq.," which Washington returned without reply. He then dispatched another, addressed to "George Washington, etc. etc.," which was also returned; upon which the general, resolved never to acknowledge the military rank of a traitor, abandoned all hopes of an accommo- dation with the rebels, and turned their thoughts to a warlike policy.
At this critical juncture, General Greene fell danger- ously ill of a fever, and Washington, anticipating that New York and Long Island would be attacked simulta- neously, dispatched General Putnam to take command at the latter, with strict injunctions to guard the passes to the American camp, and by all means to hinder the
advance of the enemy. For this, the position of the
ground was well chosen. A range of thickly wooded hills, extending from the Narrows to Jamaica, and only accessible by three easily-guarded passes-the first, wind- ing round the western base of the Narrows ; the second, crossing the range by the village of Flatbush ; and the third, passing to the right through Flatlands and inter- secting the road which led from Bedford to Jamaica- separated the American lines from the expected landing-
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place of the enemy at Gravesend. Near these passes, breastworks had been erected and three or four regi- ments stationed, while patrols were set to reconnoitre the roads and to give the earliest intelligence of the advance of the enemy. Trusting to the watchfulness of Lord Stirling and General Sullivan, Putnam, who knew nothing of the topography of the country, unwisely removed these patrols from their posts, and thus insured the defeat of the American army.
Contrary to the expectations of Washington, Howe determined to reach New York through Long Island, and on the 22d of August, passed over with four thou- sand men from Staten Island to Gravesend, where he landed without opposition. Other regiments, commanded by Earls Cornwallis and Percy, Sir William Erskine, Count Donop, and Generals Grant, De Heister, and Knyphausen soon followed, increasing the number to fifteen thousand men, who stretched along the eastern base of the hills, where they lay encamped for several days, reconnoitering the ground and skirmishing with straggling scouting parties from the American lines.
Clinton was not long in discovering the unguarded state of the passes through the hills. He at once com- municated the intelligence to Howe, a consultation was held by the generals, and a skillful ruse concerted for the plan of attack. On the evening of the 26th, De Heister, with the Hessians under his command, advanced along the road which led through the hills by the way of Flatbush, while General Grant, with the left division of the army, took the lower road along the shore ; a manœu- vre designed to divert the attention of Putnam, and thus
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at Montresor's Island, and afterwards imprisoned here, " was one loaf of the bread left on the evacuation "of New York (and which had been made for an " allowance of three days), one quart of peas, half a " pint of rice, and one and a half pounds of pork for " six days. Many prisoners died from want, and others " were reduced to such wretchedness as to attract " the compassion of common prostitutes, from whom " they received considerable assistance. No care was " taken of the sick, and if any died, they were thrown at " the door of the prison, and lay there till the next day, "when they were put on a cart and drawn out to the "intrenchments, beyond the Jews' burial-ground, where " they were interred by their fellow-prisoners, conducted " thither for that purpose. The dead were thrown into " a hole promiscuously, without the usual rites of sepul- " ture.""
The Brick Church in Beekman street was at first used as a prison, then converted into a hospital for the sick among the prisoners. The Friends' Meeting-house in Pearl street and the Presbyterian Church in Wall street were also used as hospitals, and the French Church in Pine street was transformed into a depot for military stores.
The Middle Dutch Church, the present Post-Office, was also stripped of pulpit and pews, and made to furnish room for three thousand prisoners. "Here," says John Pintard, an eye-witness of the scene, "the " prisoners taken on Long Island and at Fort Washing- " ton-sick, wounded and well-were all indiscriminately "huddled together by hundreds and thousands ; large
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"numbers of whom died by disease ; and many were un- " doubtedly poisoned by their inhuman attendants for the "sake of their watches or silver buckles." The inmates were subsequently transferred to the other prisons, and the church was converted into a riding-school, to train dragoon horses. The glass was taken from the windows and the shutters left unhung, the floor was taken up and the ground covered with tan-bark ; and a pole was placed across the middle for the horses to leap over.
Just to the east of this, in Liberty street, stood the old Sugar-house, built in the days of Leisler ; a grey stone building, five stories in height, with thick walls, and small, deep windows, which now became one of the gloomiest of the improvised dungeons of the city. Each story was divided into two rooms, with ceilings so low and windows so small that the air could scarce find entrance under the most favorable conditions. A pon- derous, jail-like door opened on Liberty street to the courtyard-a broad, flagged walk about the building, through which two British or Hessian soldiers were constantly pacing, night and day. On the southeast, a heavy door opened into a dismal cellar, also used as a prison. The yard was surrounded by a close board fence, nine feet high. In this forbidding prison-house, secured by massive locks and bars, the wretched prison- ers were huddled so closely that they could scarcely breathe, and left for many weary months, without fire or blankets and with no other clothes than those which they had worn on their entrance, to while away the hours of their captivity by carving their names upon the walls with rusty nails-often the only clue to their
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probable fate ; for the typhus fever raged fiercely among them, and the dead-cart paid its daily visits, bearing away the writers ere they could finish the rude epitaphs, thus left as the sole trace to their friends of their doom. 'In the suffocating heat of summer," says Dunlap, the contemporary historian of the times, " I saw every narrow "aperture of those stone walls filled with human heads, " face above face, seeking a portion of the external air." " While the jail fever was raging in the summer of 1777," says Onderdonk, in his "Incidents of the British Prisons and Prison-ships at New York," "the prisoners " were let out in companies of twenty, for half an hour " at a time, to breathe the fresh air ; and inside they " were so crowded, that they divided their numbers into " squads of six each. No. 1 stood ten minutes as close " to the window as they could crowd, and then No. 2 " took their places, and so on ; seats there were none ; " and their beds were but straw, intermixed with ver- "min. For many weeks, the dead-cart visited the " prison every morning, into which from eight to twelve " corpses were flung and piled up, then dumped into " ditches in the outskirts of the city." An interesting reminiscence of this prison, as well as of the hospitals of the city-the more interesting from being one of the few descriptions on record of the treatment which the sick received in these hospitals-is found in the narrative of Levi Hanford, of Walton, Delaware County, New York. Entering the army in the autumn of 1775, at the early age of sixteen, he was one of the company sent by Lee, in the spring of 1776, to break ground for the first fortifications erected on Governor's Island. In March,
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1777, he was surprised and captured by a party of Tories while on guard at Long Island Sound, and taken first to Huntington, then to Flushing, and thence to New York, where he was incarcerated in the old Sugar- house in Liberty street.
" The old prison," says he, " was a stone building, " six stories high ; but the stories were very low, which " made it dark and confined. It was built for a sugar "refinery, and its appearance was dark and gloomy, " while its small and deep windows gave it the appear- " ance of a prison, which it really was, with a high board " fence inclosing a small yard. We found at this time " about forty or fifty prisoners, in an emaciated, starv- - " ing and wretched condition. Their numbers were " constantly being diminished by sickness and death, " and as constantly increased by the accession of new " prisoners, to the number of 400 or 500. Our allow- " ance of provisions was pork and sea-biscuit ; it would "not keep a well man in strength. The biscuit was " such as had been wet with sea-water and damaged, " was full of worms and moldy. It was our common " practice to put water in our camp-kettle, then break " up the biscuit into it, skim off the worms, put in the " pork, and boil it, if we had fuel ; but this was allowed " us only part of the time ; and when we could get no " fuel, we ate our meat raw and our biscuit dry. " Starved as we were, there was nothing in the shape of food that was rejected or was unpalatable. Crowded " together, in bad air and with such diet, it was not "strange that disease and pestilence should prevail. ' I had not been long there, before I was taken with the
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