USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York : its origin, rise, and progress Vol. III > Part 9
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Swiftly following these events, Pinckney's special mission to Spain resulted in settling the long-disputed question of Spanish boundary and the navigation of the Mississippi. The treaty with that power was signed in October. Before the end of November a treaty had been arranged between the United States and the Dey of Algiers through the efforts of Colonel Humphreys, in addition to a recognition of the former treaty with Morocco, obtained from the new sovereign. And when Congress assem- bled in December the President in his opening speech presented a pleasing view of the prosperity of the country : "Every part of the Union displays indications of rapid and various improvement, and ex- hibits a spectacle of national happiness never surpassed, if ever before equaled."
Immediately after the President affixed his name to Jay's treaty, Randolph resigned the post of Secretary of State under circumstances of a peculiar character. Washington had gone to Mount Vernon in July for a few weeks' rest. Hammond, the British Minister, had recently married one of the beautiful daughters of Andrew Allen of Philadelphia, and was residing at his country-seat near the city ; he sent an invitation to Secretary Wolcott to dine with him on Sunday, the 26th of July, which was accepted. "I found the company," wrote Wolcott, " to con- sist of Mr. Hammond's family, Mr. Strickland, an English gentleman, Mr. Thornton, the late secretary of the British legation, and Mr. Andrew Allen of Philadelphia." Before dinner, Hammond took Wolcott aside
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and communicated the fact of having received from Lord Grenville an intercepted letter of M. Fauchet, the French Minister to his govern- ment. The package of dispatches had been thrown overboard from a French packet on the approach of an English vessel, and rescued from the water by a sailor who plunged in after them. After dining the gentle- men adjourned to a private room, and the celebrated letter was read aloud in English. The information it contained was highly interesting-and an extensive superstructure of inferences was erected thereupon by the lively fancy of the French Minister. The whole political situation of the two parties in America was indeed reviewed either at length, or by reference to former dispatches. Allusions to "precious confessions " of Randolph concerning the policy of the Opposition to overthrow the administration excited grave comment. One clause pointed towards a cabal in New York which, aided by the British Minister, was devising measures to destroy Governor Clinton, Randolph, M. Fauchet, and others. The following paragraph seemed to bristle with significance: "Two or three days before the proclamation was published, and of course before the Cabinet had resolved on its measures, Mr. Randolph came to see me with an air of great eagerness, and made me the overtures of which I have given you an account in my Number Six. Thus with some thousands of dollars the Republic could have decided on civil war or peace ! Thus the consciences of the pretended patriots of America already have their prices !"
Wolcott, accompanied by Secretary Pickering, visited Attorney-General Bradford, who was ill at his country-house, on the 29th ; and after an interchange of opinions, a letter was written to the President requesting his return to Philadelphia. He reached the city August 11, and the same evening the whole matter was placed in his hands. His subsequent course, and the scene when, in the presence of the other members of the Cabinet, his Secretary of State was asked to read the letter of the French Minister, are familiar to every reader of American history. Randolph has- tened to Newport, where M. Fauchet was about to sail for France, having been superseded by M. Adet, and before the year ended published a pamphlet in vindication of his conduct, which was so offensive to Wash- ington that he made no effort to conceal his intense indignation.
In the midst of the political commotions of the summer a British
frigate entered New York Harbor with several cases of yellow 1795. fever on board. The disease spread rapidly through the city, and although great numbers of the citizens fled in dismay to country-places, seven hundred and thirty-two deaths occurred. The people of Philadel- phia, through Mayor Matthew Clarkson, remitted seven thousand dollars
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THE NEW YORK SOCIETY LIBRARY.
to the distressed inhabitants of the metropolis.1 The new almshouse, completed this year in Chambers Street, was of special use in the emer- gency, and was shortly reported to contain six hundred and twenty-two paupers.
In his last annual message to the Legislature of New York, Governor Clinton recommended an endowment for common schools throughout the State. He had been ex-officio Regent and Chancellor of the Univer- sity ever since its foundation, and was deeply impressed with the im- portance of utilizing every possible agency for the diffusion of knowledge. Liberal provisions had been made for the establish- 1795. ment of colleges and the higher seminaries of learning, but legislative aid was yet to be afforded to that portion of the community without the pale of such institutions.2 An act was accordingly passed in April appro- priating an annual sum of fifty thousand dollars for five years to the maintenance of common schools in the various towns of the State.
The first edifice for the accommodation of the New York Society Library - the earliest loan library in America - was completed this year in Nassau Street, corner of Cedar. The site purchased, a lot thirty feet wide and of irregular depth, was part of the garden of Joseph Winter's mansion ; and the tree hovering in the shadow of the building, as shown in the sketch, was a luxuriant apricot, which, with the grapery peeping above the brick wall, belonged to his domain. Our illustra- tion is from a faithful representation of the building by the venerable father of American wood-engraving, Dr. Alexander Anderson, who exe- cuted it in 1818, for The Picture of New York, a little guide-book by Goodrich. The structure was imposing, considering its purpose and the time of its erection. It was built of brown stone, with three quarter Cor- inthian columns, resting on a projecting basement, with ornamental iron balustrades forming a favorite balcony. The interior was fashioned with a flight of stairs in the center leading to an oblong room on the second floor lighted with three tall windows at each end, having a gallery, and
1 During the prevalence of the yellow fever in Philadelphia in the summer of 1792, the corporation of New York City gave $ 5,000 to the distressed citizens of the Quaker City, and the Bank of New York loaned them considerable sums of money at five per cent. - Good- rich's Chronological Picture of New York.
2 The earliest application to the Regents of the University for the incorporation of an academy for classical instruction was from Rev. Dr. Samuel Buel, Nathaniel Gardiner, and David Mulford, of Easthampton, where a school had been supported by the people ever since the settlement of the town. The academy building was erected in 1784. Rev. Dr. Buel was the celebrated pastor of the Easthampton Church. (See Vol. I. 596.) David Mulford (born 1754, died 1799, married Rachel Gardiner) was the son of Colonel David and Phoebe Hunting Mulford, one of the leading men of Easthampton, and executor of the estate of David Gardi- ner, sixth lord of the manor of Gardiner's Island, and a direct descendant of Judge John Mul- ford, one of the first settlers of Easthampton. - Mulford Genealogy.
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bookcases on every side protected by wire doors. The society numbered nearly one thousand members, comprising the leading citizens of all occu- pations, and the collection of books removed from a room on the upper floor of Federal Hall to their new home in June embraced about five thousand volumes.1
When the war began the books of the Society, four thousand or more,
disappeared, and were supposed by many persons to have been destroyed. No meeting was held for the transaction of business or the choice of trustees during the whole fourteen years from 1774 to 1788. In December of the last-mentioned year, however, a move- ment was instituted New York Society Library Building, 1795. [Corner Nassau and Cedar Streets.] which resulted in the election of twelve trustees, Chancellor Livingston, Robert Watts, Brockholst Livings- ton, Samuel Jones, Walter Rutherford, Matthew Clarkson, Peter Ketteltas, Samuel Bard, Hugh Gaine, Daniel Crommelin Verplanck, Edward Gris- wold, and Henry Remsen, all gentlemen of education and culture. The reader will observe that three of the original trustees of the institution, Robert R. Livingston, John Watts, and William Livingston, were repre- sented in the organization of 1788 by their sons. Henceforward the society prospered. Rare and useful works, long since selected from the English standard literature, by the De Lanceys, Alexanders, Livingstons, and others, were exhumed from places where they had been lodged for safe-keeping, and, together with valuable newspaper files from 1726, restored to the uses for which they were intended, and handed down to
1 At a meeting of trustees, May 7, 1754, it was voted that every member bring in a list of such books as he might judge most proper for the first purchase. At a meeting, Septem- ber 11, 1754, pending the arrival of books ordered from London, resolutions were adopted concerning a library-room in the city hall, and John Watts, William Livingston, and William P. Smith were appointed to carry them into effect. The minutes show that invoices of books, larger or smaller, were added to the library in 1755, 1756, 1758, 1761, 1763, and 1765. The original subscription roll in 1754 comprised about one hundred and forty names.
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THE SUBJECT OF SLAVERY.
this generation. The library continued to increase in size and im- portance, and dispensed the benefits of its literary treasures in a quiet and unobtrusive manner, until the advancing tide of commerce in 1836 forced it to seek a more suitable locality in Broadway, corner of Leonard Street.
The neighborhood of the new Library was crowded with objects of interest. Antique churches with moss-grown roofs and grassy grave- yards might be seen from every window, not least among which was the quaint specimen of Holland architecture opposite, the Middle Dutch Church, open every Sunday to devout worshipers, but in course of years to be converted into a great city post-office. Dwelling-houses and gardens, stores and blacksmith-shops, trailing vines, rose-bushes, wood- sawing paraphernalia, and the carts from which drinking water was retailed for so much per gallon, were like familiar spirits. Hickory wood was the principal article of fuel. Each citizen attended to the sweeping of the street in front of his house twice a week; and in the evening the principal thoroughfares were lighted with oil-lamps. Milkmen, with yokes on their shoulders from which tin cans were suspended, traversed the city in the early morning, shouting in language unmistakable to mortal ears, "Milk, ho!" And negro boys went their rounds at day- break seeking chimneys to sweep.
Slavery still existed in New York. Every family of any pretension to affluence owned household and other servants. In all the news- 1796. papers of the period were advertisements of sales, and of runaway.
slaves. Many high-minded persons wished to see it abolished. As early as 1785 "The Society for promoting the Manumission of Slaves, and pro- tecting such of them as have been or may be liberated " was formed, with John Jay its president. A school was about the same time established for negro children. Writing to a similar Society formed in England in 1788, Jay said, " Manumissions daily become more common among us ; and the treatment which slaves in general meet with in this State is very little different from that of other servants." Jay himself owned slaves. In 1798, in furnishing an account of his taxable property, he accompanied his list of slaves with the observation : " I purchase slaves, and manumit them at proper ages, and when their faithful services shall have afforded a reasonable retribution." When Jay as Governor of New York made his first speech to the Legislature, he recommended the establishment of a penitentiary, for the employment and reformation of criminals, Jan. 6. and a plan of internal improvements for multiplying the means of travel through the State; and in accordance with his wishes a bill was early introduced for the gradual abolition of slavery. But on the ques-
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tion of compensation, upon which the slaveholders insisted, the bill, after a prolonged and exciting debate, was lost in the Assembly by a vote of thirty-two to thirty.
Opposition to the Jay treaty broke out afresh upon the return, in Feb- ruary, of the instrument ratified by Great Britain. The President pro- claimed it as the supreme law of the land, and sent a copy to the House. Both parties were roused by its appearance for a determined struggle. Congress had previously threatened to decline to concur in the legislation necessary to carry out its provisions. The first movement came from the Republicans. Edward Livingston, younger brother of Chancellor
Livingston, the recently elected member from New York, offered a March 2. resolution that the President be requested to lay before the House a copy of his instructions to Jay, and the correspondence and other docu- ments relating to the treaty. On the 7th he modified his proposition by adding the words: "Excepting such of the said papers as any existing negotiation may render improper to be disclosed." Livingston relied upon one clause in the Constitution which he interpreted as vesting power in Congress to carry the treaty into execution or not, as the case might de- mand. The other side relied upon the clause expressly vesting in the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, the power to make treaties, and thought the House had no discretion only as to the method of raising and paying the money.
The debate lasted a fortnight. After some thirty speeches on
March 24. either side, Livingston's resolution was carried by the decisive vote of sixty-two to thirty-seven.
Washington, with the unanimous approval of his Cabinet, then decided that the House had no right to demand the papers in question, and that due regard for the authority of the Presidential office seemed to require that such an assumption of power should be met at once by an explicit refusal. No pretense could be set up that the papers contained anything which the government was afraid to show, for they had already been communi- cated to Livingston as chairman of a committee on impressments, and to
other prominent men of the Opposition. The President therefore March 30. addressed a message to the House on the 30th, positively declining to accede to the call for executive papers.
The resentment was excessive. It was an act causing an amount of eloquent vituperation which it would be difficult to describe. Other business claimed attention, and it was the middle of April before the matter of the British treaty was formally reached. Madison assailed it in a brilliant speech on the 15th of April, and held out the prospect of obtaining another and a better treaty by further negotiations. "I should
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like to see the gentleman from Virginia, wrapped up in his mantle of doubts and problems, going on a mission to London to clear up this business," exclaimed Coit of Connecticut, with biting sarcasm. Albert Gallatin, in a vigorous and effective strain of eloquence, said it was fear that had originated the treaty and was now attempting to force the House to carry it into effect. Such a sentiment, uttered by a very youth- ful looking man - he was then thirty-five - with a foreign accent, was too much for the patience of some of the Federal members. Uriah Tracy sprang to his feet and vehemently declared, while answering Gal- latin's chief arguments, that he "never could feel thankful to any gentle- man for coming all the way from Geneva in Switzerland to accuse Americans of pusillanimity." Half a dozen of the Opposition called Tracy to order in sudden excitement and confusion. But Speaker Muh- lenburg pronounced him in order, and directed him to go on. Tracy begged pardon for any impropriety into which the heat of debate might have carried him, and disclaimed all intention of being personal. The great speech, however, in favor of the treaty was by Fisher Ames, after the debate had been prolonged two weeks. He had been ill, and April 28. absent through most of the session. Rising from his seat, pale, feeble, and hardly able to stand, he pronounced the famous oration, which for comprehensive knowledge of human nature and of the springs of political action, for caustic ridicule, keen argument, and pathetic elo- quence, has seldom been equaled on the floor of Congress. "I shall be asked," he said, "why a treaty so good in some articles and so harmless in others has met with such unrelenting opposition ? Certainly a fore- sight of its pernicious operation could not have created all the fears that have been felt or affected. The alarm spread faster than the publication. The treaty had more critics than readers. The movements of passion are quicker than the understanding. Have we not heard it urged against our envoy that he was not ardent enough in his hatred of Great Britain ? Let everything be granted we ask, and a treaty with that nation would still be obnoxious. Let us be explicit. This coun- try thirsted not merely for reparation, but for vengeance. Such passions seek nothing, and will be content with nothing, but the destruction of their object. If a treaty left King George his island, it would not an- swer, not if he stipulated to pay rent for it."
While this struggle was rending Congress, and the constitutional treaty-making power of the President and the Senate was quivering in the balance, the country became thoroughly awakened, and demonstra- tions in favor of the execution of the treaty in many places indicated a change in the tide of public sentiment. Merchants and property-holders
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could not remain blind to the danger of a collision with Great Britain. Petitions poured in from New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and elsewhere for a cessation of hostilities to the treaty. Public meetings were held in numberless towns and cities, and resolutions passed to sus- tain the administration. The question was to have been taken in the House immediately after Ames's speech ; but, dreading the effect it might produce, the Opposition carried an amendment. The next day three more speeches for the treaty were delivered, but no one attempted to answer Ames. The Opposition had hitherto claimed a majority of ten. In the course of the debate this claim dwindled to six. The vote, when taken, stood forty-nine to forty-nine. The responsibility was thus thrown upon Speaker Muhlenburg, who voted with the Federalists that it " was expedient to pass the laws necessary for carrying the treaty into effect." Only four New England members voted against it; and from the States south of the Potomac only four votes were cast in its favor. Thus the tempest subsided, and a peaceful and profitable intercourse with Great Britain for ten years longer was secured.
Edward Livingston was the mover of an ameliorating system of penal law during this session, but no action was taken. "He teems with holy indignation against fraud," wrote Chauncey Goodrich. An act was passed for the discharge, on taking the poor debtor's oath, of prisoners held for debt on civil process from the United States courts, in which Livingston was chiefly instrumental ; and he was unceasing in his efforts for the relief and protection of impressed seamen.
An attempt in Pennsylvania to imitate the appropriation made by New York for the support of public schools was opposed and defeated by the Quakers and members of some other religious sects, on the ground that while supporting schools of their own they should not be taxed for the benefit of other people. They argued that the religious uniformity made a system of public schools possible in New England, whereas, the same plan undertaken in the mixed condition of the population of Pennsyl- vania would be equivalent to no religious instruction, or heathenism.
About the same time the twelfth annual report of the Regents of the University of New York was presented to the Speaker of the Assembly, William North, by the youthful secretary of the board, De Witt Clin- ton. Since the creation of the University fourteen academies had been incorporated in the different counties, all of which were pronounced in a flourishing condition. The Clinton Academy in the Easthampton numbered eighty pupils ; the academy at Salem, in Westchester County, numbered fifty-two pupils. The report from Union College at Schenec- tady, which had just passed its first birthday, having been incorporated
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THE COLLECT, OR FRESH WATER POND. 423
by the Regents February 25, 1795, was cheering. It received its name from the union of several religious denominations in its organization. The endowment was originally contributed by ninety-nine Albany and two hundred and thirty-one Schenectady gentlemen ; and the sum was subsequently greatly increased by the generous influence of General Philip Schuyler, who was himself a liberal contributor. Rev. Dr. John Blair Smith, from Philadelphia, was its first president.
The population of New York City had nearly doubled in the ten years since 1786. Streets had been laid out, and habitations erected above the
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CATHARINE ST.
LEONARD ST.
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Map of the Collect, and Adjoining Streets, in 1796.
swampy fields in the region of Canal Street. But although surveys had been made of the several streets about the Collect, or Fresh Water Pond, they were not graded, nor had building-lots been found, for obvious rea- sons, marketable in that locality.1 The water of the pond was sixty feet
1 From the records of the Common Council the following is abstracted : 1790 -" Ordered, A committee to cause a survey to be made of the ancient bounds of the Fresh Water Pond, and report the same to the Board. . . .. The committee appointed delivered in a survey for the several streets in the vicinity of Fresh Water, which was ordered to be filed." 1793 - "Ordered, That a survey be made of the land and meadows at and about the Fresh Water Pond, with the streets which may be necessary marked thereon." 1795 -" A petition for digging out the Broadway, north of Barclay Street, agreeable to its regulation was referred." 1796 - " A committee appointed to confer with the proprietors of the ground through which the contemplated canal is to pass, from the Fresh Water Pond into Hudson River." 1798 - " A letter from the Health Commissioners read, representing that the swamp or meadow between the Fresh Water Pond and Hudson River is overflowed with standing water, and requires immediate measures for draining it. Ordered that it be attended to."
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L.i
Alms House.
EN
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FREF -- DEEP
Justice
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deep, and the marshy ground to the northwest as well as towards the East River gave little signs of promise as to future value. In the winter- time the pond was a fine natural skating-park, and the hill towards Broad- way was a comfortable gathering-place for lookers-on. A canal from the pond to the Hudson had been some time in contemplation, and early in 1796 the committee chosen negotiated with the proprietors of the swamp for such parts as were necessary " to make the said canal of the breadth of forty feet, and a street on each side of the breadth of thirty feet." The actual work did not begin for two or three years. The arched bridge " across the drain," now Canal Street, was ten feet seven inches above the surface of the meadow. Hence, when the digging commenced for level- ing the hill on the line of Broadway, the dirt was carried forward towards the north, as the street needed raising several inches through the meadow from Leonard Street to the bridge. About the same time complaints were made that the water-carts obstructed Chatham Street when drawn up in a row to receive water from the old Tea Water Pump for the supply of the city, and an order went forth causing the spout of said pump to be raised some two feet, and lengthened, so as to deliver the water at the outer part of the walk, and allow persons to walk under it without inconvenience. Neither the pond nor the canal received fur- ther special notice from the corporation until 1805. It was then re- solved that an open canal should run through a street of one hundred feet in breadth ; and also that the condition of the Collect was dangerous to the public health, that sewers should be passed through it, and that the head of it should be filled with good wholesome earth.
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