USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume I > Part 15
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And now came the supreme move on the part of the Governor, which was only to prepare for him a supreme discomfiture. Zenger was arrested on November 17, 1734. The Grand Jury would find no indictment against him, so Attorney-General Bradley, like De Lancey a creature of Cosby's, filed an information for libel, and on the strength of this the Governor's Council ordered Zenger's arrest. He was im- prisoned in the common jail, in the basement or ground floor of the City Hall. A habeas corpus was procured, and his deliverance on bail demanded, but the prosecutors put the bail at an exorbitant figure;
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four hundred pounds dowu, and two sureties besides at two hundred pounds each. Thus Zenger langnished in prison until the Grand Jury conld be induced to bring an indictment. This it finally and formally refused to do on January 28, 1735. Zenger should then have been set free. But his enemies were not yet through with him. The Attorney- General was at once ready with a new charge based upon Nos. 13 and 23 of the Journal, in which was alleged to have been printed by him matter that was " false, scandalous, and seditious." So there was to be a trial after all before the Court over which JJames De Lancey presided. On April 16, 1735, the case came up. Zenger's connsel, none other, of course, than Smith and Alexander, began by calling in question the legitimacy of the Judge. Morris having been removed. and De Lancey appointed by the mere willful act of the Governor. without consent of Conneil. They were right beyond dispute. but the Chief Justice perforce must cover up one act of despotism by an- other. Hle disbarred the two lawyers, a checkmating move on the chessboard against the popular party, apparently, for thus Zenger was left without defense. There was only one other lawyer in town, Joseph Murray, and he was retained by the government. But Zen- ger's friends, as will be seen, were equal to the emergency. There was a long detention in prison for him still in store, but he was a champion worthy of the canse. With indomitable resolution he con- dueted his paper from his prison cell, whispering directions to his journeymen through a hole in the cell door. At last the preliminaries of the trial were set for late in July, a counsel, John Chambers, was appointed for the prisoner by the court, a jury was selected by a proc- ess which made it a " struck jury," and on August 4. 1735, the pris- oner was bronght to the bar. His connsel pleaded " Not Guilty," and the argument begau. The passages complained of were read; they represented a citizen of New York who was abont to remove perma- nently to Pennsylvania, giving his reasons for his change of abode. In New York liberty and property were in danger; the people were sinking into slavery ; judges were removed without cause: new courts erected in arbitrary fashion; trial by jury set aside, and an official's information made sufficient to conviet ; deeds were destroyed, leaving valuable property at the mercy of the authorities. (This last outrage Cosby had perpetrated toward certain landholders of Albany.) The Attorney-General called such language " false, scandalous, and se- ditions." When he had finished his speech there was a stir in the courtroom, and a venerable figure rose and came forward to address the jury. Smith and Alexander had prepared a gennine surprise for the Court and Governor. for this aged man, bearing the weight of eighty years, was none other than Andrew Hamilton, of Philadelphia, the foremost lawyer and forensic orator in the colonies. lle an- nonneed that he appeared for Zenger, the defendant in the canse. " And," he added, " I'll save Mr. Attorney the trouble of examining
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witnesses; we admit the publication of the papers." Bradley there- upon exclaimed : " Then the verdict must be for the King." " Not so, neither, Mr. Attorney," quickly responded the aged lawyer, " you have something more to do; the words must be proven libelous." This would have been a dangerous expedient for Court and Governor; it would have too glaringly exposed the ugly facts of the case, and the illegitimacy of their own actions. Hence Chief-Justice De Lancey refused to allow the bringing of witnesses to prove that the passages complained of were correct. He claimed that the truth of a libel made it none the less a libel, nay, a worse one. This was an ont-and-out Star-Chamber principle, as Hamilton reminded him, for it was the undoubted privilege of Englishmen to complain of nnjust government and oppression. " But," he went on. " since his honor refuses us the liberty to prove our case, to you, gentlemen of the jury, we must now appeal as witnesses of the facts; you are to be judges now both of the law and of the facts." He thereupon set out to explain this point to the jury, exhorting them as men and citizens to bear in mind what was at stake; how the government had sought in every way to hedge in and cover its iniquitons acts by illegitimate court and civil proceedings, till, to save the cause of liberty, they must go outside of mere technicalities and judge of the mer- its of the case, and the reality of the facts complained of in the papers, in order to arrive at a verdict whether or not the prisoner were guilty of libel, or had spoken the truth; a truth which had need of being spoken to save an oppressed people from being utterly un- done. In conclusion the venerable counselor said: "I am truly un- equal to such an undertaking on many accounts. And you see I labor under the weight of many years, and am borne down by many infirmi- ties of body; yet, old and weak as I am. I should think it my duty, if required to go to the utmost part of the land, where my service could be of any use in assisting to quench the flame of prosecutions upon informations set on foot by the government to deprive a people of the right of remonstrating (and complaining, too) against the arbitrary attempts of men in power." Then reminding them that the cause before them was not the cause of a poor printer, or even of New York, but " of every freeman upon the main of America," he ended with this prophetic peroration : " I make no doubt but your upright conduct this day will not only entitle yon to the love and esteem of your fellow- citizens, but every man who prefers freedom to a life of slavery will bless and honor you as men who have baffled the attempts of tyranny, and, by an impartial and incorrupt verdict, have laid a noble fonnda- tion for securing to ourselves, our posterity, and our neighbors, that to which nature and the laws of our country have given us a right- the liberty of both exposing and opposing arbitrary power in these parts of the world, at least by speaking and writing truth."
When these noble words had ceased to flow from the aged lips an
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out burst of pent-up feeling came from the crowd that thronged the courtroom. Bradley made a brief reply, very tame and ineffectual by the side of what had just been spoken. Chief-Justice De Lancey at- tempted to persuade the jury that they were no judges of the law, and the facts not having been proved, the verdict must go against the ac- cused. But Hamilton's immortal plea for the cause of liberty and the freedom of the press was too much for the technical objections of a judge notoriously prejudiced. Only a few minutes were required for the jury to come to a unanimous verdict. They came back to the courtroom. With breathless anxiety the crowd awaited the an- nouncement, and when the words " Not Guilty " were uttered, tre- mendons applause and lond hnzzas drowned the voice of the remon- strating judge. Hamilton was fairly carried from the building. On this and the next day he was honored by banquets. The freedom of the city in a gold box was presented to him by the Common Council, and when he set forth on his return to Philadelphia, the thunder of cannon bore salutes to him as his barge left the shores of Manhattan.
Thus Cosby had given occa- sion to a grand vindication of the freedom of the press. Zen- ger went back to his office in Stone Street and continued to . publish the New York Journal until his death in 1746. It was then conducted by his widow
and son. John Zenger. until ANDREW HAMILTON. the year 1752. In the mean time the New York Gazette had undergone some changes. Bradford was still living in 1743. being at that time eighty years old, and he lived ten years after that, but about that year he gave up publishing his newspaper. It was continued then by one James Parker, who published it under the double title of the New York Gazette and Weekly Postboy.
The despotic Cosby did not long survive the famons trial. It is said that he suffered from consumption, and in March, 1736, he died. But he left a legacy of trouble even after his decease. Some months be- fore, anticipating his end, he had called his Council secretly around him in his sick chamber and announced that he had suspended Rip Van Dam from the Council. It was again an act utterly unwarranted and illegal. No governor had a right to suspend or dismiss a member
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from his Council in this summary manner. After his death Van Dam proceeded to take his place as usual at the Council table. Being Presi- dent by virtue of his long term of office, he expected to act as Gov- ernor as he had done after the death of Montgomerie. What was his amazement when he was informed that he was no longer a member, and that George Clarke, formerly Secretary, had been made Presi- dent by the late Governor. Van Dam was not the man to submit tamely, and he had almost the entire population at his back. When Clarke appointed the Mayor and other city officers in September, Van Dam made his own appointments, Cornelius Van Horne as Mayor, and William Smith, Recorder. Each claimant appointed also a Sher- iff and Coroner. Clarke retired within the fort and fell back upon the garrison. Van Dam felt quite as secure in the support of the people and the train-bands. It looked as if nothing short of civil war could come from the strained situation. But finally on October 30, 1736, word was received from the Lords of Trade that Clarke had been ap- pointed Lieutenant-Governor until a suitable man could be found for Governor. Clarke remained in office several years, as it was not till 1743 that Cosby's successor arrived in the city. He earnestly sought to allay the passions aroused by the previous administration; but by making too obvious an attempt to please both sides, he drew down upon himself the displeasure rather than the favor of either. The years of his government passed along without such fierce partisan conflicts as had disturbed municipal harmony in the days of the Zenger trial, but it was during his term that the city was shaken to its foundations by a terrible event of quite another nature. This was the famous Negro Plot of 1741.
There was a preliminary negro scare twenty-nine years before, in 1712. Though it did not excite the town nearly so much as the later one, there was really more cause for alarm, and considerably more of a plot. On April 6, some twenty to twenty-five negroes met in the orchard of a Mr. Crooke, in Maiden Lane. An outhouse was set on fire, and when a number of citizens ran to the place to put out the flames, the negroes fired upon them, killing nine persons and wound- ing six. Those who escaped ran to the fort and gave the alarm that a plot was on foot by the negroes to kill the whites, in revenge for ill treatment. Governor Hunter took prompt action, sent a body of sol- diers to the scene of the massacre, beset the points of egress from the island, and ordering out the militia the woods were beaten for the fugitives, who had taken to them at the first sign of the approach of the troops. Twenty-one of the poor wretches were caught and ex- ecuted in various barbarous ways: hanged, broken on the wheel, burned at the stake, hung in chains and left to starve. Six com- mitted suicide rather than fall into the hands of the avenging whites.
Slavery was a firmly rooted institution in New York as in the other colonies, and the slave trade one in which great profits were realized,
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such as even royal persons deigned to share. In 1713 an English com- pany was organized to which was granted the monopoly of supplying the Spanish colonies with negro slaves for thirty years. one-quarter of whose stock was held by Philip V. of Spain, and another quarter by the humane and gentle Queen Anne of England. The agreement was to furnish one hundred and forty-four thousand slaves inside that term. Every householder of any means possessed a number of slaves for the ordinary domestic services. As has been stated, an inventory of Frederick Philipse's estate showed as many as forty negroes; Will- iam Smith had twelve in his house; others had more or less. On the plantations in the Out Ward, or on Long Island, Staten Island, or in Westchester, troops of slaves did the work required. Sometimes as many as one hundred and eighty negroes were imported into the city in one year. Prices varied from forty to fifty and even seventy-five pounds per head. Even white men and women sold themselves into a sort of slavery for debt, or to pay back advanced passage money; but this, of course, was not at all like the absolute and permanent and hopeless slavery of the blacks. Neither was it permitted to mal- treat these white slaves or indentured servants, while the restrictions upon the punishment of negroes were S. ERICI very slight; and even the in- fiction of death did not bring the consequences it deserved. The public penal- SLAVE MARKET, FOOT OF WALL STREET. ties that were inflicted upon negroes showed the extreme barbarity which the community allowed themselves in the treatment of these unfortunates, who were indeed a dangerous element. but were not rendered much less dangerous by this mode of dealing with their offenses. The gross injustice of the whole system sat as a sort of nightmare on the consciences of people; it made them imagine that they were in constant peril from a vengeance which they were only too industrious in giving occasion for; and when, even the slightest intimations of its outbreak ocenrred, it was exaggerated to vast pro- portions and created a panic which seemed to deprive the citizens of all reason or justice.
This is the only explanation of the panic of 1741. It was that more than a negro plot: there was much more of a plot in 1712, as has been intimated. Yet it cannot be denied, keeping in mind the state of people's feeling about the negroes they owned and maltreated, that the events which led to the panic could hardly have had any other re- sult. Early on the morning of March 18, a fire broke out on the roof of the chapel in the fort, the old historie church of 1642, within a year of its century. The chapel, the Governor's mansion, the Secretary's
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office, the stables, all became a prey of the flames. It was a deplora- ble destruction, but it was supposed to be due to an accident. Plumb- ers had been at work upon the roof of the chapel. and one of them was thought to have left some of his coals carelessly about without fully extinguishing them. A week later Captain (afterward Admiral Sir Peter) Warren's house was discovered to be on fire; the contem- porary historian Smith describes it as situated " near the long bridge, at the southwest end of the city," thus near the fort. Again a week later, a Mr. Van Zandt's store at the east end of the town was on fire. Three days later a fourth fire occurred, started among the hay in a cow stable. People on returning from this fire were called upon to rush to a fifth. in a room occupied by two negro servants, and caused by coals placed between two beds. Next morning came fire mm- ber six, from coals under a haystack in the coach-house and stables of lawyer Joseph Murray on Broadway. Next day there was fire num- ber seven at Sergeant Burns's house, opposite the fort garden, the site of the later Burns's coffee-house at No. 9 Broadway. On the same day fire number eight occurred on the roof of a Mr. Hilton's house, opposite the Fly Market (near corner William and John streets). The same afternoon a ninth fire destroyed Colonel Philipse's store- house. People were now a little warranted in growing suspicious. It was remembered how a fire had been the signal for the massacre of 1712. A ship manned with " Spanish blacks " had lately come in port, and the crew sold as slaves by the Captain, much to the disgust of the men. Spanish blacks were not necessarily negroes: they were swarthy whites or half-breeds from the Spanish colonies, with much more intelligence and spirit than the negroes. Citizens began to put two and two together. So many fires in rapid succession could not be purely accidental; it must be the work of the negroes-the slaves, " the negro and other slaves," as a publication of the day puts it. It was only necessary to start this theory to make it gain full credence. On April 11 the Common Council offered a reward of a hundred pounds and full pardon to any one who would give evidence of the ex- istence of a plot that would lead to the conviction of the conspirators. There were those in desperate need of pardon, and ready to carn the money besides. On February 28, thus a couple of weeks before the fire in the fort which began the series, a robbery had been committed. John Hughson, his wife and daughter, two indentured servants, Mary Burton and Arthur Price, and a prostitute by the name of Peggy. were all apprehended for the robbery. Some of the silverware had been found in Hughson's place, which was a low tavern or brothel, fre- quented by negroes and thieves. These worthies were all under sen- tence of death, as the law then stood. They heard of the offer of pardon and money combined, and their wits were set at work. Mary Burton seems to have been more inventive than the rest. She soon had a fine tale ready. Twenty to thirty negroes had been meeting at
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her master's house, who had plotted to destroy the town by fire, and to massacre the whites. Her master, Hughson, was to be King, and a negro of the name of Cæsar, Governor. Nothing better illustrates in what a state of mind the people must have been when such a coek- and-bull story was accepted as serions truth on such testimony. Arthur Price and Peggy took the cue from their worthy mate, and were also soon weaving equally probable and circumstantial stories about midnight meetings of negroes, and dreadful fates prepared for New York citizens. Evidently their imaginations were not of as fine a quality as Miss Burton's, for they overshot the mark a little, and told things a little too hard to be swallowed even by people so greedy for the horrible as New Yorkers were then. Over a hundred and fifty negroes had now been implicated and imprisoned on the strength of these " confessions." The negroes themselves caught the imaginative infection and told lies right and left about their own kind. But were there no white people involved? Could not a popish plot be tacked on to the negro plot? It was only necessary to give Mary that hint, and forthwith she had a tale woven abont a Mr. John Ury, a gentleman who was teaching Latin in the city. He was a Catholic clergyman in disguise, according to her, and he, too, had come to her master's place, and had pledged the negroes by mysterious signs and chalk marks on the floor, to murder the Protestant town folk. Hughson's daughter was called upon to corroborate this testimony, and at first she denied having ever seen Mr. Ury at her father's place. But the prospect of the gallows was held vividly before her, and she sne- embed to the temptation of lying away another's life to save her own. If Mr. Ury was a Catholic priest it needed but small persuasion to convince New Yorkers of that day that conspiracy and murder were his daily task. Testimony just as valid was brought by Mary Burton against a dancing master of the name of Corry, but he was discharged. Not so Ury, though it transpired that he was not a Cath- olic at all, but a non-juring Episcopal clergyman; this a Jacobite, and that was next door to a Catholic in loyal Hanoverian eyes. On April 21 the Court met for the trial of the conspirators, and not a lawyer in the city could be found to defend them. On May 11 began the executions of the usual picturesque varieties: burning and hang- ing; and on June 6 the last batch of negro culprits was sent to their long account. The Ury incident was a little belated, and perhaps con- ducted with a little more deliberation; at any rate the unfortunate gentleman was not executed till Angust 29. One hundred and fifty- four negroes committed to prison, of which fourteen were burned alive, eighteen were hanged, and seventy-one transported to various delectable regions; twenty-nine white persons apprehended, of which two, Hughson and Ury, were executed; this is the record of retalia- tion taken on alleged conspirators by a community of twelve thou- sand sonls, of whom one-sixth were slaves. It is amazing that so
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many lives could have been sacrificed on the testimony of persons so utterly depraved, and so obviously eager to earn their own escape from the gallows, and the sum of a hundred pounds, which was un- told wealth to them. Long after the panie was over, officials and citi- zens were still vindicating their severity; and in all sobriety the au- thorities appointed September 24 as a Day of Thanksgiving for the city's escape from a horrible fate.
In the midst of these vicissitudes and during the generation that was nearly spanned between the arrival of Governor Hunter and that of Governor Clinton, the little city at the southern end of Manhattan was steadily holding its own on the way to its greater destiny. With regard to its municipal being, we have noticed that the period was marked by the reception of a new charter granting important privi- leges. A feature of interest, too, is that so many Mayors held their office for long terms. Ebenezer Wilson, who was Mayor when Hunter arrived in 1710, had been the incumbent for three years previous. Jacobus Van Cortlandt, a younger son of old Burgomaster Oloff Stevensen Van Cortlandt, and a brother of Mayor Stephanus, was in- vested with the dignity and held it for only one year. Johannes Jan- sen, also, in 1725, held the position but for one year. But all the others much exceeded this. Caleb Heathcote was Mayor for three years, from 1711 to 1714; John Johnston, for six years, from 1714 to 1720; Robert Walters, for five years, from 1720 to 1725; Robert Lurt- ing, who enjoyed the privilege of receiving the new charter from Gov- ernor Montgomerie, was Mayor for nine years, from 1726 to 1735. Then followed Paul Richard, with three years, from 1735 to 1738, and John Cruger, with six years, from 1738 to 1744. These men were all eminent as merchants, having had a variety of experiences fitting them for success in life before they settled down to trade in New York; and then accumulating fortunes as merchants, or in real estate, or as auctioneers, or vendue-masters, as they were called then. Most of them, too, were made members of the Provincial Council, and were led on to other positions of public trust after tasting of the sweets of official power in the Mayor's chair. The municipal finances were not as yet conducted upon a gigantic scale, but the expenses were almost invariably below the income. Between 1721 and 1727 a list shows the highest income to have been £721, in 1723; and then the expenses were £575, exactly the price paid in 1726 for the lot upon which the Nassan Street Church was built. In the next year the outlay was two pounds less than the income, and that was £430. The Common Council meetings were appointed in 1711 to be held on the first Friday of the month, at the City Hall. at 9 o'clock in the morning. Eighteen rush-bottom chairs were purchased that year, and an oval table for the Council chamber. The City Hall up to 1716 had not been provided with a clock. Indeed, there seems to have been no town clock any- where, and only a sun dial upon the chapel in the fort. When the
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wealthy Huguenot merchant, Stephen De Lancey, received his sti- pend of £50 as Member of the Assembly upon its dissolution in 1716, he generously donated that sum for the purchase of a clock for the City Hall tower. One was put in with four dials, so as to indicate the time to an observer in any portion of the city. From time to time the city watch was increased, first from four to six, and then to ten, as more streets needed protection. It was to Stephen De Lancey's en- terprise also that the city was indebted for the importation of two fire engines, of the pattern used in London, to supersede the primitive passing of buckets from hand to hand. They were placed with much state in an apartment on the lower floor of the City Hall, which was flush with the pavement, forming an arched passageway to which ac- cess was open at all times. But a few years later an engine house was built on Broad Street, and one Jacobus Turk placed in charge of the machines. In 1737 a volunteer fire brigade was organized. consisting of twenty-five men, who, in consideration of this important service, were exempt from jury and militia duty, and from serving as constables. Quite early in the century the city fathers were troubled about the pan- per problem: at last. in 1734, they had got so far as to be able to put up a substantial, square, roomy building as a Poorhouse. It stood upon the Commons, later City Hall Park; there were cells in the NEW YORK ALMSHOUSE. 1734. basement, so that correction might accompany charity, particularly for the benefit of negroes. It is to the credit of the city magistrates that they did not propose to get rid of the poor by sacrific- ing the liberty of these unfortunates, as they might on one occasion have done. In 1738 Captain Norris, of the English man-of-war " Tar- tar," arrived in port. He represented to the Lieutenant-Governor and Council that he was very short-handed, and needed at least thirty men. He therefore asked permission to send a press-gang ashore and impress that number from among the city's population. Clarke and the Council granted the request. but Mayor Richard and his Alder- men indignantly refused to allow the English Captain to let loose his gang upon the streets, and Norris was fain to seek his thirty men elsewhere. A considerable portion of the city's limited but evidently sufficient income was derived from leasing ferry privileges. The landing places even on the opposite sides of the rivers stood on prop- erty ceded to the city by the Montgomerie charter. In 1708 a charter had been made ont referring exclusively to ferry privileges. A ferry
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