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CHAPTER XVIII.
1783-1801.
Washington in New York-Parting with his Officers at Fraunces' Tavern-Progress of the City-The Doctors' Mob.
NOT openly and fairly was this evacuation made ; the British, departing by the provisions of an honorable treaty, employed the last moments of their presence in the city in the commission of a base and unmanly out- rage. Unreeving the halliards of the flagstaff at Fort George, they knocked off the cleats and greased the pole to prevent the hoisting of the American colors ; then evacuated the fort, sure that the stars and stripes would not be hoisted until they were far out of sight of their folds.
The discovery of this act excited general indignation, yet it did not delay the ceremony as its perpetrators had wished. A sailor-boy attempted at once to climb the bare pole, but it was too slippery, and he failed in the attempt. Upon this, the bystanders ran precipitately to Goelet's hardware store in Hanover Square, and, pro- curing hammers, nails, and other necessary tools, set to
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work, some to saw, some to split, and others to bore new cleats for the flagstaff. Filling his pockets with these, the sailor-boy tied the halliards around his waist, and, nailing the cleats above him on the right and left, ascended, reeved the halliards, and hoisted the flag to its place ; and as the stars and stripes reached the top of the mast, a salute of thirteen guns rung its echoes in the ears of the discomfited troops, not yet out of hear- ing of the sound of triumph.
Another incident, related by an eye-witness of the scene. who is still living, may serve to illustrate the reluctance with which the British quitted their hold of the city which they had so long claimed as their own. By the conditions agreed upon, the city was to be surrendered at noon, but an impatient shopkeeper in the neighbor- hood of Chambers street anticipated the arrangement, and hoisted the American flag during the course of the morning. Provost-marshal Cunningham hastened to
the spot and confronted the proprietor. " Pull down " that flag ;" exclaimed he with an oath; "the city " belongs to the British till noon." The man objected, hesitated, and was on the point of yielding, when the good woman of the house came to the rescue. "The "flag shall not come down," said she. Cunningham stormed and swore, and finally attempted to tear down the colors with his own hands, but the woman assailed him so vigorously with her broomstick, striking a cloud of powder from his wig at each blow, that he was forced at last to abandon the field and leave the stars and stripes in quiet possession.
General Knox was at once installed as commander-in-
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Dining-room in Fraunces' Tavern, corner of Pearl and Broad Streets.
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chief of the military forces in the city. General Washington lingered a few days, fixing his head-quarters at Fraunces' or Black Sam's Tavern, as it was familiarly called in allusion to the swarthy complexion of its pro- prietor, on the corner of Pearl, then Queen, and Broad streets, where at noon, on the 4th of December, his officers assembled to bid him farewell. The scene was an affect- ing one. The dangers and privations of years had knit officers and general together as comrades, and now that the object of all was attained, in the happiness of peace was felt the pang of separation. . Washington himself could scarce restrain his feelings; his friends did not attempt to do so. Filling a glass for a farewell toast, he turned to the company and said : " With a heart full of " love and gratitude, I now take leave of you, and most " devoutly wish that your latter days may be as pros- " perous and happy as your former ones have been " glorious and honorable." He raised the glass to his lips, then continued : " I cannot come to each of you to " take my leave ; but shall be obliged if each one will " come and take me by the hand." They obeyed in silence-none could speak ; Knox first, then the others embraced him in turn ; then turning silently from the weeping group, he passed from the room, and walked to Whitehall, followed by his comrades, where a barge was in waiting to convey him to Paulus Hook. Having entered the boat, he bade them adieu with a silent ges- ture, and the procession returned to their place of rendezvous, mute and dejected at the loss of their leader. Washington proceeded to Annapolis, where Congress was then in session, and, resigning his commission as
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commander-in-chief, hastened to Mount Vernon to resume the duties of a private citizen.
The city now began to fall back into a state of order, and to resume the appearance of tranquillity. It was time, indeed ; its commerce was ruined and its growth retarded ; it had paid a heavy tribute to the cause of liberty. No change was made in the character of the city government. The Dongan and Montgomerie charters were resumed as authority, the controlling power that had formerly been exercised by Great Britain being vested in the State. The city was still divided into seven wards, an alderman and an assistant from each of which were chosen annually by the people, while the appoint- ment of the mayor remained with the State government. This office was solicited by the mass of the people for James Duane, a native-born citizen, who had wrecked his fortune in the Revolutionary struggle, and had now returned to his farm, near Gramercy Park, to find his house burned and his property destroyed. The desired appointment was granted by Clinton, and, on the 5th of February, 1784, he was installed as the first mayor of the city under the new regime ; an office which he con- tinued to hold until 1789,when he resigned it for that of District Judge of the District of New York.
On the 11th of September, General Lafayette passed through the city on his return to France, and was received with all the enthusiasm which a grateful people could offer. Upon his arrival, he was waited upon by the corporation, who tendered him a complimen- tary address, with the freedom of the city. He remained but a few days. On his departure, he was
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escorted to the wharf by a large concourse of citizens, who witnessed his departure with sincere regret. The same welcome was extended soon after by the city authorities to John Jay, on his arrival from his success- ful European mission, and also to Baron Steuben, who visited the city during the same autumn. On the 2d of December, Washington arrived in the city, where he was received with a burst of enthusiasm. The corpo- ration paid him the highest honors in their power, while the citizens vied with each other in proving by their thanks that the days of the Revolution were not yet forgotten.
The next few years wore away with little event. Commerce, so long depressed, slowly revived, and public improvements were again talked of; but, though much was projected, little was done till the beginning of the next century. The city was forced, as it were, to begin life anew ; her trade was ruined, her treasury empty; her people even yet divided among themselves. Feuds were existing everywhere, the effect of the recent war. The patriots returned from their long expatriation with their hearts full of bitterness against those-and they were many-who had clung to the royalist side and remained in possession of their homes during the days of trial ; while the latter indulged in bitter invectives against the newly-established government, which, in many instances, had confiscated their estates, and branded them by its success as traitors to their country. New York was suffering from all the evils which a seven years' foreign occupation could inflict upon a city. Para- lyzed by the long-continued dominion of a foreign army,
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with a disorganized government, an interrupted com- merce, and a scattered population, years were needed to recuperate its energies and fully to complete the work of its resuscitation.
The spirit of public improvement soon revived, and the city began to grow apace. The population at this time numbered about twenty-three thousand inhabitants. The first step towards progress was made in the improvement of the waste ground about the Collect, through which Reade and Duane streets were opened in 1794. The upper barracks along the line of Chambers street, now useless for their original purpose, were leased as dwellings for the benefit of the corporation.
These barracks, which had been built during the old French war, were rude log huts, a single story in height, extending from Broadway to Chatham street, and inclosed by a high wall, with a gate at each end. From the eastern, familiarly known as "Tryon's Gate," was derived the name of the present Tryon Row.
The process of filling in and grading the grounds about the Collect went on slowly; ere long, it infringed upon the lake itself. A survey of the pond and the land about it was made in 1790, and, during the following year, the corporation purchased the claim of the heirs of Anthony Rutgers, for the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds sterling. This done, the pond was staked off, and the work of filling up the grounds in its vicinity from the neighboring hills went on during several years. In 1796, a canal through Lis- penard's Meadows, from the Collect to the North River, was proposed and sometime after constructed along the
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Stone Bridge on the corner of Broadway and Canal Street.
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line of Canal street. This canal was forty feet wide with a street on each side of the width of thirty feet. A stone bridge of a single arch, ten feet seven inches above the surface of the meadow, crossed it at the junction of Broadway and Canal street.
The pond, meanwhile, remained the same, deep, clear and sparkling-a miniature sea in the heart of the city. Its waters still furnished food for the angler, and rumors were rife of strange sea monsters which had been seen therein, one of which had carried off a Hessian trooper in the days of the Revolution. It was a man-trap, too, for the unwary traveller, and, from time to time, a citizen, who had mistaken his way in the darkness or had drank too deeply, fell from its banks and was drowned where now is solid ground. The possibility of such a transformation had not yet occurred to the busy speculators ; but schemes were projected to convert the beautiful lake into a means of ornament and profit. One company proposed to buy up the lands about it, and, preserving the lake in its primitive condition, to lay out a portion of the grounds as a public park, and realize their expected profit from the enhanced value of the remainder. But this project was scouted as vision- ary by the cautious capitalists, who could not credit that the city would ever extend so far ; the proprietors of the land, joining in the belief, were unwilling to risk their property in so wild a scheme; and the plan which would have preserved an inland sea in the heart of the city-a natural feature shared by no other-was finally aban- doned by its enterprising projectors.
Another company proposed to cut a ship canal through
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the island, connecting the pond with the rivers on either side, and thus to convert it into a magnificent inland harbor ; but this scheme failed for the same reasons as the other-the capitalists lacked faith in such extrava- gant hopes of the future city. As the city increased and the once-neglected lands grew valuable as gold-mines, the Collect was gradually filled in from the surrounding hills, till, in process of time, the lake over whose waters the Indians had so often guided their canoes, was trans- formed into firm earth, the site of the gloomy "Tombs " with its neighborhood of crime and misery.
From the earliest times, the Dutch "Vlackte " or Flat-the English Commons-had been recognized as the property of the city, to be used for public purposes. These purposes had been somewhat various, it is true ; a pasture under the peaceful sway of the Dutch burghers, it had become, in the stormy times which preceded the Revolution, the gathering-place of the patriots-the cradle of Liberty. What Faneuil Hall was to Boston, was the Commons to New York. There the enthusiastic Sons of Liberty, under the chieftainship of Scott, Sears, Lamb and McDougall, assembled to denounce the obnoxious Stamp Act; there they fought bravely in defence of their Liberty-Pole, the exponent of a right and a principle ; there they ended the battle of Golden Hill-the first battle of the Revolution-a contest under- taken, not from the impulse of sudden anger, but in defence of the liberties of the people ; there, too, were the Bridewell, the New Jail and the old Provost, the gloomy prisons of the victims of Howe and Clinton.
At this time, as heretofore, the Commons lay open,
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uninclosed by any kind of fence or wall. On the north side, was the Alms House and House of Correction. The Bridewell stood at the west end of the present City Hall, and the New Jail, now the Hall of Records, occu- pied its present position. Between the Alms House and the Bridewell was the public gallows, which, transferred in 1756 from its place near the lower end of the Park to the foot of Catiemut's Hill, in the vicinity of the Five Points, had been removed again to the Commons in 1784. In 1796, a new Alms House was built on Chambers street in the rear of the old one, now so dilapidated as to be unfit for further use, into which the inmates were removed in the course of the following year.
The Bridewell had been erected in 1775 on the site of the first Liberty-Pole, and within the bounds of the piece of land purchased for the second in 1770. This land was still the property of the Sons of Liberty, and in 1785, Isaac Sears, in whose name it had been purchased, claimed it on their behalf, and offered to release all right and title to it for eighty pounds sterling, with law- ful interest ; the amount of the original purchase money. The claim was allowed by the corporation, and the sum ordered forthwith to be paid ; but the said payment was never made, and the grounds to the northwest of the City Hall still belong to the heirs of the New York Liberty Boys.
In 1790, the first sidewalks in the city were laid on the west side of Broadway from Vesey to Murray street, and opposite for the same distance along the Bridewell fence. These were narrow pavements of brick and
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stone, scarcely wide enough to permit two persons to walk abreast. Above Murray street, Broadway was a succession of hills, having its highest elevation in the vicinity of Anthony street, where the road rose precipi- tously over a steep hill, then descended as abruptly on the other side to the valley at Canal street. In 1797, the grade of Broadway from Duane to Canal streets was established by the corporation, though some time elapsed before the proposed improvement was reduced to fact. The highest point of the projected grade was at the intersection of Broadway and Leonard street, whence it was to descend gradually to the bridge across the meadow at Canal street, where the land required to be raised about seven inches. But, in return, at Leonard street, it was necessary to cut through the hill to the depth of fifteen and a half feet, and at Anthony street to the depth of twenty-two feet nine inches. At Pearl street, the ground was four feet nine inches above the proposed grade.
The need of street numbers had been for some time rendered apparent by the increasing growth of the city, and in 1793, the corporation appointed a committee to prepare and report a feasible system. This was done, and the proposed method, beginning at the next house in every street terminating at either of the rivers, at the intersection of the main street next the river, and num- bering all houses below these intersecting streets, begin- ning with No. 1, looking upward in all the main streets and downward in all the slips, and so on to the end of the street or slip, was adopted by the corporation.
From the evacuation of New York by the British
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troops in 1783 to the organization of the Federal Gov- ernment in 1789, the most exciting event that happened in the city was probably the riot, known since familiarly as the Doctors' Mob. During the winters of 1787 and 1788, a number of dead bodies had been dug up by stealth by medical students and others, not only from the Potter's Field and the Negroes' Burial-Ground- then reckoned lawful prey-but from the private ceme- teries of the city ; and the fact becoming known, excited a general ferment among the people, and awakened a violent prejudice against the medical profession. As is usual in such cases, the facts were greatly exaggerated by public rumor, the most absurd reports were circu- lated through the city, and the New York Hospital-at that time the only one-was regarded by the people with superstitious horror. On the 13th of April, while the public mind was in this excited state, some students thoughtlessly exposed the limb of a body from the win- dow of the dissecting-room in sight of a group of boys who were at play in the rear of the Hospital. The news spread like lightning, and was instantly caught up by the unemployed crowds who were loitering in the streets to enjoy the leisure of the day. An immense multitude speedily assembled, and, besieging the Hospital, burst open the doors, and destroyed a collection of anatomical preparations, the most of which had been imported from abroad. Some fresh subjects were discovered, which were borne away and interred in triumph. The terrified physicians attempted to secrete themselves, but were dragged from their hiding-places, and would assuredly have been sacrificed to the fury of the crowd, had not
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the magistrates interfered and lodged them in the jail for safety. Satisfied with their work of vengeance, the crowd dispersed, and the physicians flattered themselves that the affair was over.
They were mistaken ; it was but the beginning of the play. The next morning, the crowd assembled with fresh reinforcements, and avowed their purpose of searching the houses of the suspected physicians. Clin- ton, Hamilton, Jay and others remonstrated, assuring them that justice would be rendered them by the law ; and, after searching Columbia College and several of the suspected houses, they were at length persuaded to retire.
In the afternoon, matters grew more serious. A party of the more violent gathered about the jail, and demanded possession of the students who were lodged there. This demand was of course refused ; to have complied would have been to deliver over the victims to certain destruction. Alarmed at the hostile attitude of the gathering, the mayor promptly called out the militia, and, about three o'clock, dispatched a small party to the defence of the refugees, which was suffered by the mob to pass without much molestation. A reinforcement of twelve men, dispatched to their aid an hour after, were arrested and disarmed before they reached the jail. Elated with this success, the rioters next attacked the building, but were beaten back by the handful of militia which had first been sent there, and which maintained its ground against desperate odds.
The city became the scene of intense excitement. The mob, unable to force the jail, tore down the fences and
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broke the windows, vowing destruction to every doctor in the city. The crowd about the building increased every moment, and the position of affairs grew so alarm- ing that, about dusk, the mayor marched with a large party of armed citizens to the relief of the besieged. The friends of law and order hastened to the spot, and vainly exerted their eloquence to allay the tempest and prevent the shedding of blood. They were assailed in reply by a volley of stones and brickbats. one of which struck John Jay in the forehead while he was earnestly entreating the multitude to disperse, and felled him to the earth, wounding him severely. Finding all other arguments in vain, the mayor at length determined to fire upon the rioters. Baron Steuben interposed and implored him to desist, but, before he could finish the entreaty, a stone whizzed through the air and laid him prostrate. "Fire, mayor, fire !" cried he, before he had touched the ground. The mayor hesitated now no lon- ger ; the order was given, the militia obeyed, and a number of the rioters fell at the first volley, while the remainder dispersed without waiting for the second. Five persons were killed in the fray, and seven or eight severely wounded.
A ludicrous incident, illustrative of the height of the popular fury, occurred during the riot, which was nearly attended by disastrous consequences. While the excitement was at its height, a party of the rioters chanced to pass the house of Sir John Temple, then resident British Consul at New York, and mistaking the name of "Sir John " for " surgeon," attacked it furiously, and were with difficulty restrained from levelling it to
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the ground. For some days, the militia kept guard about the jail, but no other attempt was made at violence. The offending students were sent into the country for a time, and the public excitement by degrees became allayed. But the venerable hospital was hence- forth invested by the populace with a sort of horror, and became the scene of many a fearful resurrectionist legend.
By the Articles of Confederation, under which the States had continued to act since the close of the war, each State was constituted an independent sovereignty, governed exclusively by its own legislature, and only subject as a political body to the general Congress, which, even then, had no power to force compliance with its dictates, or to prevent one State from making war upon another. Without credit, without revenue, empowered only to advise, and uninvested with any executive authority, this Congress was, indeed, but a mere farce, and the Articles "a rope of sand," as they were termed at the time. The need of a closer union of the States and of an efficient general government, soon became apparent. The country was in an impover- ished condition ; besides a foreign debt of eight millions, a domestic debt of nearly thirty millions had been incurred by the war ; yet Congress had no power to meet these obligations, but only to urge the States to raise money for the purpose. The officers and soldiers of the Revolutionary army, who had received but four months' pay, were clamoring for their arrears, but no money could be found to discharge the debt. Some of the States endeavored to meet these demands by levy-
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ing heavy taxes upon the citizens ; but this proceeding excited general discontent, and in Massachusetts, an insurrection ensued, which was with difficulty suppressed by force. The State treasuries were exhausted, com- merce was prostrated, the people, impoverished by the late war, were unable to support additional burdens, and, in the absence of a responsible general government, all hope of relief from credit was necessarily futile. In this exigency, a convention, growing out of a propo- sition of James Madison, of Virginia, was held at Anna- polis in September, 1786, for the purpose of amending the Articles of Confederation. Their deliberations resulted only in paving the way for another convention, composed of delegates from all the States, which was held at Philadelphia in the following May, with George Washington as president. After four months' delibera- tions, on the 17th of September, 1787, the present Con- stitution of the United States was accepted by the Convention, and submitted to the different States for approval.
Notwithstanding the obvious need of a consolidated government, the proposed Constitution was opposed by a large portion of the inhabitants, who averred that it placed too much power in the hands of the Executive ; and the States came slowly into the Union. Since the restoration of peace, two political parties had sprung into existence in New York. One of the primary causes of this division was the bill disfranchising all who had adhered to the British government during the war, which had passed the Assembly of 1784, chiefly through the efforts of the Sons of Liberty who composed the
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New York representation .* This act bore heavily upon the loyalists, many of whom were also attainted for treason, and their estates confiscated to the government ; and urgent efforts were made by them to procure its repeal, which were stoutly opposed by the Sons of Liberty, but were seconded by Hamilton and Schuyler. Through the influence of these powerful friends, the act was finally repealed on the 3d of February, 1787, and the loyalists reinstated in their privileges of citizenship. This act, denounced by the Liberty Boys as emanating from British influence, won the loyalists over to the side of Hamilton, and secured concurrence in his efforts for the adoption of the new Constitution. The opposite party, meanwhile, known familiarly as the " French party," for their sympathy with the struggle for independence now going on in France and their hatred of the opposing British influences, denounced the new Constitution in no measured terms, and exerted themselves to the utmost to prevent its acceptance by the people.
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