USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York : its origin, rise, and progress. Vol. II > Part 28
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CONDITION OF THE CITY.
the Nation (it is said agt US) and a bloody campaign next summer. But let us be prepared for the worst. Who can prize life without Liberty ? It is a Bauble only fit to be thrown away."1
The limit of the first New York Congress having expired, an election took place at the usual time in the autumn ; the second Congress, chosen for six months, was to have met November 14, but a quorum was not present until December 6.2 There has ever been in the public mind a very natural confusion concerning the committees and congresses of New York in this exciting period. But the careful reader of preceding pages will note the sequence unbroken from the birth of the famous Fifty- One in the spring of 1774 ; and the gradual unfolding of the subtle forces inherent in the community which were soon to assume majestic place and meaning. Whenever the Provincial Congress adjourned, for however short a time, a Committee of Safety was delegated from their own numbers to manage affairs in the interim ; therefore a responsible body representing the people was at all times in session. No colony had ac- quired more dexterity in the performance of public business than New York; and one of the strongly marked features in the complicated ma- chinery of the new government, which was already beginning its move- ments, was the special care taken by all men in office not to wield more power than had been distinctly delegated to them by the united voice of their constituents.
Isaac Sears, so conspicuous for his zeal in the earlier New York com- mittees, without any particular fitness for leadership in any direc- Nov. 23. tion, and wholly deficient in judgment, had removed to New Haven, where he raised a company of cavalry. Becoming incensed with James Rivington,3 the editor of the New York Gazetteer (published since
1 New York in the Revolution, 84, 85. John Morin Scott was born in New York in 1730, and graduated at Yale College in 1746 ; he afterwards studied law and became one of the leading members of the New York bar, where many of the ablest minds of America were then practicing. He was appointed a Brigadier-General in June, 1776, and was engaged in the battle of Long Island. In March, 1777, he left the military service to become Secretary of the State of New York. In 1782 and 1783 he served in the Continental Congress. He died in 1784 in New York.
2 Journal of the Provincial Congress of New York, 197.
B James Rivington, printer and bookseller in New York during the Revolution, was a man of fifty (born in London, 1724), possessing talent, fine manners, and much general information. In May, 1775, he was placed in confinement by order of Congress for his attacks upon the patriots, to which body he applied for release, declaring "that, however wrong and mistaken he may have been in his opinions, he always meant openly and honestly to do his duty as a servant of the public." In 1777 he resumed the publication of his paper ; but in 1781, when British success looked doubtful, he turned spy, and furnished Washington important information ; thus, when New York was evacuated he remained in the city, where he died in 1802.
VOL. II.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
1773), for his severe strictures upon the conduct of the Americans, he, unannounced, swooped down upon New York City with seventy-five mounted men armed to the teeth, and destroyed Rivington's printing- press and other apparatus, carrying off the types, which were converted into bullets. It was a riotous proceeding, universally condemned by the citizens of the city, and met the rank disapproval of the Committee of Safety, who declared it unworthy of an enlightened people to attempt "to restrain the freedom of the Press."
With the approach of winter, New York grew more and more cheerless. Scarcely a third of its residents had returned to their homes. An omi- nous apprehension of calamity hung over the city. Governor Tryon was visited by his counselors from time to time on the Duchess of Gordon, but they were impotent to exercise the powers conferred upon them by the king of England even in the smallest particulars. Help was daily expected, and they smiled among themselves as they contemplated the easy conquest of the metropolis with the arrival of Britain's army. Why it should be so long in coming was a problem.
One glance across the water, and we shall see that Barrington's estimate of England's military strength was correct. When the tidings of the battle of Bunker Hill were discussed at Whitehall the lords were startled by the loss of so many officers ; the king remarked, with arrogant composure, that he would have twenty thousand soldiers in America before spring. Barrington suggested to the Secretary of State that no such number could be raised. George III. at once made efforts to secure troops from the continent of Europe, sending agents to Hanover, Holland, Germany, and Russia. The astute Vergennes could hardly convince himself that England's statesman would miss the means, so apparent to him, of pacifying America, although he unhesitatingly pronounced George III. the most obstinate king alive, and as weak as Charles I. But he was forced to give up his doubts when he read the king's proc- lamation against the Colonies, which reached America in November. The Empress of Russia returned a sarcastic negative answer when invited to ship twenty thousand men across the Atlantic to serve under British command; and the king was obliged to turn for aid to the smaller princes of Germany.
While England was quivering from center to circumference with the heat of the discussions over the injudicious and apparently impractica- ble schemes of her monarch, which half the kingdom believed fraught with disgrace, Washington, acting under a promiscuous executive, was making a herculean endeavor to organize a regular army and a military system from the disconnected material around Boston. Erelong it was
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PHILIP SCHUYLER.
discovered that Carleton, the British governor of Canada, was enlisting the French peasentry in an expedition to recover Ticonderoga, and also instigating the northern savages to take up the hatchet against New York and New England. These movements decided the Continental Congress to occupy that Province as an act of self-defense. The command of the perilous enterprise was assigned to the two New York generals, Schuyler and Montgomery.
Philip Schuyler was forty-two years of age when he thus appeared conspicuously before the world. He was born to opulence, inherited the masterly traits of an ancestry which for three generations had been foremost in promoting the welfare and development of New York, was a natural as well as a trained mathematician, was familiar with mili- tary engineering, having served in an important department of the army during the French War, was well versed in finance and political economy, and was a thorough scholar in the French language; he was personally proud, self-poised, high-spirited, impatient of undeserved criti- cism, but superior to envy of any description, and one of the most un- pretentious and generous of men. His mother was the beautiful Cor- nelia Van Cortlandt, a lady of great force of character, the youngest daughter of Hon. Stephanus Van Cortlandt and Gertrude Schuyler, so interesting from their political consequence and social consideration in an earlier decade of our history. He had been one of the most earnest advocates of liberty in the New York Assembly ; his well-balanced mind had acted a faithful part in the Continental Congress, and in the later councils of the Province ; and from the first he liberally pledged his own personal credit for the public wants. He repaired at once to his charm- ing home on the banks of the Upper Hudson,1 a great, elegant, old-fash- ioned family mansion, half hidden among ancestral trees, and surrounded by gardens, fruit-orchards, and broad, highly cultivated acres, and after a brief visit turned his face warward. At Ticonderoga his duty was the same as that of Washington at Cambridge, - the raising, organizing, equip- ping, provisioning, and paying of men from an uncertain and scarcely founded treasury ; and the obstacles and the dangers were much greater, from his proximity to the hostile element hovering about Johnson Hall, and the totally unprotected condition of the region of the Hudson; and the New England soldiers at the post, as well as those that came after- wards, were volunteers mostly from the farms, undisciplined, and holding themselves on an equality with the subordinate officers, and quite as much inclined to dictate as to obey.
Richard Montgomery, from the old Scotch-Irish nobility, born at Con-
1 A noble estate at Saratoga, inherited from an uncle.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
way House, near Raphoe, Ireland, was a laureled warrior, although but thirty-eight years of age. He entered the English army while quite young, and distinguished himself with Wolfe in the brilliant conquests of the French War. He was an intimate friend of Barré, and well known per- sonally to Edmund Burke, Fox, and other English statesmen, and he had stood shoulder to shoulder with the colonists in five im- portant military cam- paigns. He had re- tired from the service and some time since taken up his abode in New York, pur- chasing a large prop- erty on the Hudson. He married Janet Livingston, daughter of Judge Robert R. Livingston -who was accustomed to say that if American liberty failed to be main- tained, he would re- move with his family to Switzerland, as the Portrait of Richard Montgomery. only free country in the world - and sister of the future chancellor, then one of the important members of the Continental Congress. It was this lady's great-grandfather, Robert Livingston, who figured so prominently for half a century in the public affairs of New York, and her grandfather, Robert Livingston, who prophecied for years the coming conflict with England, and on his death- bed, in 1775, at the age of eighty-seven, watching with keen interest the re- sults of the battle of Bunker Hill, confidently predicted America's indepen- dence ; and in her veins also coursed the republican blood of the Schuylers and Beekmans. From a domestic circle which had for its inheritance an infusion of lofty sentiment in harmony with the appeals for justice from a Parliamentary minority of the choicest and greatest of the realm of England, Montgomery had been summoned to represent Duchess County in the New York Congress. His great moral and intellectual qualities in- stantly found recognition. His sound judgment was valued as it deserved,
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RICHARD MONTGOMERY.
and his promptness in action and decision of character inspired heroic confidence.
He was regarded with pride and affection as, bidding adieu to his lovely home and recently wedded joys, he turned his face toward the uninviting northern frontiers. His figure even now stands out through the mists of a century in living colors, - tall, of fine military presence, of graceful ad- dress, with a bright magnetic face, winning manners, and the bearing of a prince. His wife accompanied him to Saratoga, where they parted - forever.
Events soon proved the wisdom of attempting the conquest of Canada as a safeguard against Indian hostilities, and preparations were pushed with vigor. Schuyler, who knew all the country and its inhabitants, civil- ized and savage, went to Albany to use his influence with some of the warriors of the Six Nations there assembled ; but a despatch from Wash- ington hurried him again to Ticonderoga. He found Montgomery, who had also caught the warning note from the commander-in-chief, already en route over Lake Champlain. Schuyler was stricken down with a bilious fever, which did not, however, prevent his journeying three days in a covered batteau, overtaking Montgomery and party. But his illness became so serious that he was compelled to relinquish the chief command to Montgomery and return to Ticonderoga.
The details of this expedition are among the most remarkable and romantic of the Revolutionary contest. The way bristled with difficulties, roads and bridges were among the modern conveniences of the future, the munitions of war were insufficient, food was scarce and of the poorest quality, and the common troops were full of the inquisitiveness and self- direction of civil life. Montgomery was much better able to manage the New York than the New England soldiers, as his authority depended chiefly upon his personal influence and powers of persuasion ; of the lat- ter he said, " They are the worst stuff imaginable for fighting; there is so much equality among them that the privates are all generals, but not soldiers." And yet with a force of one thousand men Montgomery cap- tured the fort at Chamblee and the post of St. John's,1 proceeded to Montreal,2 and leaving General Wooster in command of that town, led his gallant little army to the very walls of Quebec.
1 Colonel Marinus Willett of New York was left in command of the fort of St. John's.
2 Montgomery wrote to his wife, November 24 : " The other day General Prescott was so obliging as to surrender himself and fourteen or fifteen land officers, with above one hundred men, besides sea officers and sailors, prisoners of war. I blush for His Majesty's troops ! Such an instance of base poltroonery I never met with ! And all because we had a half a dozen cannon on the bank of the river to annoy him in his retreat. The Governor [Carleton] escaped - more 's the pity ! Prescott, nevertheless, is a prize."
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
During his triumphal progress Benedict Arnold, with rare boldness and persistence, conducted a detachment of Washington's army through a trackless wilderness of nearly three hundred miles, where for thirty-two days they saw no trace of the presence of human beings. Their provisions fell short towards the last, so that it is said some of the men ate their dogs, cartouch-boxes, breeches, and shoes. They appeared, after losing about half their number, at Point Lévi, opposite Quebec; an apparition which so startled the Canadians that, had boats been obtainable, it is more than probable that Quebec would have capitulated at the first demand without a struggle. Aaron Burr, a mere stripling, was of this party, and was chosen by Arnold to communicate his presence to Montgomery, one hundred and twenty miles distant, in Montreal. In the garb of a priest, and mak- ing use of his Latin and French, Burr obtained a trusty guide and one of the rude wagons of the country, and from one religious family to another was conveyed in safety to his destination. Montgomery was so charmed with his successful daring, that he at once made him his aide-de-camp, with the rank of captain.
It was on the 3d of December that Montgomery made a junction with Arnold,1 and soon decided to carry Quebec by storm. His reasons Dec. 3. were twofold : he was unprovided with the means for a siege, and the term of the enlistment of the greater portion of his troops would ex- pire with the year. Whatever was done must be concentrated within the month of December.
It was on the 30th, while but a few more hours of the old year re- mained, that the order was given. The principal attacks were Dec. 30. conducted by Montgomery and Arnold in person. Colonel James Livingston, a New-Yorker who had for some time lived in Canada, was at the head of a regiment of Canadian auxiliaries which he had himself raised, and was sent, with his command, to St. John's Gate to distract attention, while another party under Brown was to feign a movement on Cape Diamond. Arnold, leading twice as many men as Montgomery, reached the Palace Gate, where in the first fierce encounter he was dis- abled by a wound in the leg and carried from the field. Captain Lamb, with his New York artillery, fought in this division, Lamb himself being
1 Montgomery's last letter to his wife was written December 5. He says : " I suppose long ere this we have furnished the folks of the United Colonies with subject-matter of con- versation. I should like to see the long faces of my Tory friends. I fancy that they look a little cast down, and that the Whig ladies triumph most unmercifully.
" The weather continues so gentle that we have been able, at this late season, to get down [the St. Lawrence] by water with our artillery. They are a good deal alarmed in town [Quebec], and with some reason. I wish it were well over with all my heart, and sigh for home like a New Englander.
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THE INVASION OF CANADA.
wounded and taken prisoner. Montgomery reserved for his own party New York men, and in the blackness of the night, and through a blind- ing storm of wind, snow, and hail, led them, Indian file, to Wolfe's Cove, from which they were seen in full march at early dawn. And ever by the side of the princely commander was the diminutive and boyish Aaron Burr. They passed the first barrier, and were about to storm the second, when within fifty yards of the cannon, Montgomery exclaimed, "Men of New York, you will not fear to follow where your general leads ; push on, brave boys, Quebec is ours !" and almost instantly fell. And with his life the soul of the expedition departed.
Foes and friends alike paid a tribute to his worth. Barré wept pro- fusely when he heard of his death. Burke proclaimed him a hero who in one campaign had conquered two thirds of Canada. " Curse on his vir- tues," said North; "they 've undone his country !" Governor Carleton, with all his officers, civil and military, in Quebec, buried him with the honors of war.1 Congress passed resolutions of sorrow and grateful re- membrance ; and all America was in tears.
Quebec, the strongest fortified city in America, with a garrison of twice the number of the besiegers, was not conquered, but the heroic endeavor created an impression throughout the world that America was in earnest.
1 The remains of Montgomery were removed forty-three years afterward, in compliance with a special act of the Legislature, and placed beneath the portico in St. Paul's Chapel, New York City, where a monument had been erected to his memory by order of Congress. By request of Mrs. Montgomery, the Governor of the State of New York, De Witt Clinton, commissioned Lewis Livingston, the son of Edward Livingston, to conduct the ceremonies of removal, which were on a most brilliant scale, such voluntary honors indeed as were never before paid to the memory of an individual by a republic.
The only original portrait of Montgomery (of which the sketch is a copy) is at Montgomery Place on the Hudson. It was sent to Mrs. Montgomery by Lady Ranelagh, the sister of the General, shortly after his death, having been painted in Europe when the young hero was about twenty-five. He left no descendants. His will, made at Crown Point, August 30, 1775, is still in existence, though the paper is yellow and worn with its hundred years, and it bears the well-known signature of Benedict Arnold.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
CHAPTER XXXII.
1776.
January - July.
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
THE NEW YEAR. -- NEW YORK ACTIVE, BUT CAUTIOUS. - GOVERNOR FRANKLIN OF NEW JERSEY IN CUSTODY. - BURNING OF PORTLAND, MAINE. - BURNING OF NORFOLK, VIR- GINIA. - FAMILIES DIVIDED AND FRIENDS AT ENMITY. - NEW YORK DISARMS THE TORIES ON LONG ISLAND. - THE PAMPHLET "COMMON SENSE." -SIR JOHN JOHNSON SURRENDERS TO SCHUYLER. - LEE'S ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. - GENERAL CLINTON'S ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. - THE PANIC. - LORD STIRLING IN COMMAND OF NEW YORK. - GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM. - ESCAPE OF HON. JOHN WATTS. - FORTIFICATIONS. - THE BRITISH ARMY DRIVEN FROM BOSTON. - WASHINGTON TRANSFERS THE AMERICAN ARMY TO NEW YORK. - SILAS DEANE SENT TO THE FRENCH KING FOR HELP. - CANA- DA'S COMMISSIONERS. - THE THIRD NEW YORK CONGRESS. - ALEXANDER HAMILTON. THE CONSPIRACY. - RIOTS AND DISTURBANCES. - BRITISH FLEET OFF SANDY HOOK. - GOVERNOR WILLIAM LIVINGSTON. - LIBERTY HALL. - THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. - DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.
T T HE opening of the year 1776, one of the most romantic and remark- able years for its sequence of civil wonders in the history of the world, was depressing in the extreme. The social observances of New Year's day in New York City for the first time in a century and a half were omitted, save in a few isolated cases where the ladies of the house- hold welcomed family friends without ceremony. A storm of wind, sleet, and rain terminated towards evening in a light fall of snow. The streets were deserted, and the portentous clouds seemed to close about the very roofs and chimneys. The mind of the people was strained and apprehen- sive, the more so because of the undefined nature of the new life upon which they were entering. There was nothing fictitious or deceptive in the freshly awakened impulses and activities, but the step from the past into the untried future was creative of the most extraordinary sensa- tions.
Clinton was confidently expected from Boston. The metropolis was barren of defenses. The Bay of New York was already controlled by the British men-of-war ; also the East River, and the Hudson River below
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NEW YORK ACTIVE, BUT CAUTIOUS.
the Highlands. And neither Long Island nor Staten Island could pre- vent the landing of British troops upon their soil. The possession of Long Island was virtually the command of Manhattan Island.
The proceedings of the New York Congress were with closed doors ; none but members, all of whom were pledged to secrecy, were permitted to take copies of the minutes. The intention was to publish at the close of each session such of the acts as were not voted by the counties to be of a secret or unimportant nature, but the journal was not printed until 1842. In the gathering together of war materials this body was indus- trious from the first. They advised Washington from time to time of things taken from the king's stores, as, for instance :
" In a private room in the lower barracks some twenty cart-loads of soldiers' sheets, blankets, shirts, and a box of fine lint; in John Gilbert's store ten hogsheads of empty cartridges, and some twenty-four-pounders ; in a private room in upper barracks near Liberty-Pole about six cart-loads of different kinds of medicines ; and in Isaac Sears' old store one hundred and thirty boxes of tallow candles, and a lot of soldiers' sheets and blankets." 1
And they were frequently under orders from the Continental Congress to procure flour and other necessaries "in the most private manner possi- ble " for the various divisions of the army.
In New Jersey a self-organized government acted, as in New York, side by side with that of the king during the greater part of 1775. Gov- ernor Franklin, who had for a dozen years been useful and honored as an executive,2 sympathized with the power which had given and could take away his means of living. In September he suspended Lord Stirling from his Council for having accepted a military appointment under the Continental Congress. He prorogued the Legislature which convened December 6, until January 3, 1776, and it never reassembled ; thus ter- minated the Provincial Legislature of New Jersey. He wrote to Dart- mouth : -
"My situation is indeed particular and not a little difficult, having no more than one among the principal officers of government to whom I can, even now, speak confidently on public affairs."
This communication was intercepted January 6, by Lord Stirling, which resulted in a guard being placed at the gate of his residence to prevent his escape from the province ; and his subsequent arrest and imprisonment.8
1 Washington's Correspondence in Congressional Library. Washington, D. C.
2 See .Vol. I. p. 705.
3 Governor Franklin was confined in Connecticut in charge of Governor Trumbull. In November, 1778, he was exchanged, and came to New York, where he resided four years, and founded and presided over a Refugee Club. He retired to England at the close of the war.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
Dr. Franklin felt most keenly the defection of his son. It was a strange coincidence that William Temple Franklin,1 the only son of Governor Franklin, adhering to the cause of America, should also have been lost to his father.
Family histories disclose many painful characteristics of the great strug- gle. Fathers and mothers were doomed to see their children at open variance. Wives beheld in agony their husbands armed with weapons that were to be used against their own blood. Friends, between whom no shadow of dissension had ever existed, ranged themselves under differ- ent banners. New Jersey, with less of foreign commerce and inland traffic to employ her youth than many of the other Colonies, had courted government offices and the naval and military service of England. Ever since the time of the original Lords Proprietors, many of her sons had been educated in Europe, involving associations which often resulted in marriages into foreign families ; while similar unions had occurred be- tween the officers of the royal regiments sent to America and the daugh- ters of New Jersey. Thus, independent of pecuniary considerations and conscientious adherence to the oaths of office and dependence, personal and domestic happiness were jeopardized on every hand. The wonder is, not that so many valuable men became distinguished as Tories, but that their number should have been so far exceeded by the resolute spirits pushed to the front by the concussion of ethereal forces.
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