USA > New York > New York and its institutions, 1609-1871. A library of information, pertaining to the great metropolis, past and present > Part 5
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* Slaves then bore the surname of their masters invariably.
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THE NEGRO PLOT OF 1741.
master and mistress, and Peggy Carey, an abandoned Irish woman living at Hughson's. Peggy was next brought before the court and promised pardon on condition of general con- fession. She, however, denied all knowledge of any con- spiracy, or of the origin of any of the fires, and said that to accuse any one would be to slander innocent persons and blacken her own soul. The law at that time was that no slave could testify in a court of justice against a white person. Yet Mary Burton, a colored slave, here testified to matters implicating Peggy Carey, a white woman, which she, Peggy, emphatically denied. But the city had gone mad, and Mary Burton, who a month previous would have been spurned from a court-room, had suddenly become an oracle, and on her tes- timony poor Peggy and the negroes named were found guilty and sentenced to be executed. Death now staring Peggy in the face, she became greatly alarmed, and begged for a second examination, which was readily granted. She now testified that she had attended a meeting of negroes held at a wretched house near the battery kept by John Romme, and that Romme had promised to carry them all to. a new country and give them their liberty, on condition that they should burn the city, massacre the whites, and bring him the plun- der. This ridiculous twaddle, evidently fabricated for the occasion, was received as proof positive, and the persons named (except Romme, who fled for life, though his wife was arrested) were severally brought before her for identifica- tion. The work of public slaughter began on the eleventh of May, when Cæsar and Prince were hanged, denying all knowl- edge of any conspiracy to the last. Hughson and his wife having been found guilty, were shortly after hanged, in con- nection with Peggy, who had been promised pardon for her pretended confession, every word of which she solemnly re- tracted with her dying breath. We will not follow the details of this strange investigation further. Suffice it to say that, finding confession or some new disclosure the only loop- hole through which to escape, nearly every prisoner prepared
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NEW YORK AND ITS INSTITUTIONS.
a story which availed him nothing in the end. Every attor- ney volunteered to aid the prosecution, and thus left the ter- rified slaves, without counsel or friend, to utter their incoher- ent and contradictory statements and die. From the 11th of May to the 29th of August, one hundred and fifty-four ne- groes were committed to prison, fourteen of whom were burned at the stake, eighteen hanged, seventy-one trans- ported, and the remainder pardoned or discharged. The loqua- cious Mary Burton continued the heroine of the times, depos- ing to all she knew at the first examination, but able to bring from her capacious memory new and wonderful revela- tions at nearly every sitting of the court. At first she de- clared that no white person, save Hughson, his wife, and Peggy, was present at the meeting of the conspirators; but at length remembered that John Ury, a supposed Catholic priest and schoolmaster in the city, had also been implicated. He was at once arrested, and on the 29th of August hanged. The panic now spread among the whites, twenty-four of whom being implicated were hurled into prison, and four of them finally executed. Personal safety appeared now at an end; everybody feared his neighbor and his friend, and the Reign of Terror attending the Salem Witchcraft was scarcely more appalling. We cannot conceive how far this matter would have extended if the incomprehensible Mary Burton had not, inflated with former success, begun to criminate many persons of high social standing in the city. While the blacks only were in danger, these persons had added constant fuel. to the fire; but finding the matter coming home, they concluded it was now time to close the proceedings. The further investigation of the case was postponed, and so the matter ended. That some of the fires were the work of in- cendiaries (perhaps colored) there appears to us but little doubt; but that any general conspiracy existed is not proba- ble. The silly story that a white inn-keeper should conspire with a few negroes to massacre eight thousand of his own race, that he might occupy a subordinate position under an
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TRIUMPH OF THE ANGLO-SAXON. 65
ignorant colored king, is simply ridiculous; yet for this he and his wife were hanged. The trials and executions were a frightful outrage of justice and humanity, presenting a mel- ancholy example of the weakness of human nature, and the. ease with which the strongest minds are borne down in peri- ods of popular delusion.
TRIUMPH OF THE ANGLO-SAXON.
HE scheme of kingcraft to make the authorities independent of the people, by securing a permanent revenue, was again and again introduced by the Colonial Governors, but as often resisted by the Assem- bly. Sir George Clinton, having alienated the people by his unfortunate administration, was su- perseded in 1753 by Sir Danvers Osborne, who had received royal instruction to insist on a per- manent revenue. This being emphatically re- sisted, the dispirited Governor, who had just buried his wife, seeing nothing but trouble and failure in the future, terminated his existence by hanging himself with a handkerchief from the garden wall of John Murray's house in Broadway. He was succeeded by Lieutenant-Governor James Delancey, whose accession was hailed with delight. It was under his administration that Kings (now Columbia) College was founded, the charter being signed by Delancey, October 31, 1754. The same year the scheme for a public library was projected, and the Walton House, long the palace of the city, erected. This building, erected by. William Walton, a son-in-law of Delancey, was four stories high, built of yellow Holland brick, with five windows, in front, and a tiled roof encircled with balustrades. This edifice.
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NEW YORK AND IT'S INSTITUTIONS.
which would attract no unusual attention now in a country village, was then considered the wonder of America, and had a wide European fame. It is still standing on Pearl street, and contrasts sadly with the magnificent iron-fronted busi- ness palace of the Harpers, now nearly opposite. The city was now being enlarged ; new streets were laid out and con- structed, and piers and ferries established. But the most exciting topic of this period was the war with France, which resulted finally in the conquest of Canada. The establish- ment of French and English colonies on this continent re- sulted in incessant friction between these rival powers, and led ultimately to a gigantic struggle between the two most warlike nations of the world. The English, having planted themselves on the Eastern seaboard, advanced westward, claiming all between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, . while the French, possessing Canada in the north, and the mouth of the Mississippi in the south, claimed all lying be- tween. These incessantly interfering claims for rich terri- tory, which neither owned, led to numerous bloody wars, extending in their influence from the St. Lawrence to the Ganges, for the possession of a country which, twenty years after the cessation of these struggles, passed from under the control of both. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, closed the third colonial war, which had been prosecuted with great vigor, and which had resulted in the capture of Louis- burg by the English arms. By the treaty, however, this captured territory was restored to France, leaving things again in statu quo, and ready for new hostilities. In 1749, George II. chartered the Ohio Company, granting six hun- dred thousand acres of land, in the vicinity of the Ohio river, to certain persons of Westminster, London, and Virginia, thus paving the way for new national troubles. It was in 1753, to avoid an open rupture which was rapidly approach- ing, that a young man of Virginia, destined to be heard from (George Washington), volunteered to carry a letter of ineffec- tual remonstrance, several hundred miles through a dangerous
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TRIUMPH OF THE ANGLO-SAXON.
country, to the French commander. In 1755 three expedi- tions were fitted out against Canada-one under General Braddock, to dislodge the French from Fort Duquesne ; one under General Shirley, for the reduction of Niagara; and one un- der William Johnson, a member of the Council of New York, against Crown Point. All three signally failed, though Johnson, gaining a slight advantage over the French, wounding and capturing their com- mander, magnified it in- to a victory, for which he was rewarded by the English Govern ment with £5,000 and the title of baronet. WASHINGTON AT THE AGE OF FORTY.
The preparations of 1756 were more extensive than in the preceding year, the Governors of Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland uniting in the campaigns, and pledging nineteen thousand American troops. This year closed also with the success of the French arms. Prep- arations for war were renewed in 1757, on a greatly enlarged scale. Four thousand troops were pledged from New England alone, and a large English fleet came over to take part in the struggle. Yet this year ended again in disaster, with a loss to the English of Fort Henry and three thousand captured troops. The affairs of the English colo- nists had now become very alarming, filling New York and the whole country with intense anxiety. The English colonists outnumbered the French by nearly twenty to one; yet, as they were divided in counsel, their expeditions had either
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NEW YORK AND ITS INSTITUTIONS.
been overtaken with disaster, or beaten by the French, who, united under a single military Governor, had so wielded their forces, and attracted to their ranks the Indians, as to have spread general disaster along the whole frontier.
It was in this critical exigency that William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, was called to the helm of State, and so rapid were his movements, and comprehensive his plans, that the three years of disaster were followed by three of brilliant victory, culminating in the reduction of Louisburg, Frontenac, Crown Point, Ticonderoga, Niagara, and Quebec, thus obliterating forever, after a doubtful struggle of one hundred and fifty- six years, the French dominion from the country. . The triumphant conclusion of this long and anxious struggle was the occasion of great and universal rejoicing in New York. The merchants had long looked for the enlargement of their commerce, and the citizens for the expansion of the city.
TROUBLOUS TIMES APPROACHING.
HE year 1760, which so honorably closed the war, was also marked by the death of Lieutenant Governor Delancey, who was succeeded by Cad- wallader D. Colden, a zealous royalist, who continued in power five years. : It was during this term that the noted Stamp Act. was passed, which rendered his ad- ministration a very stormy and unpleasant one. The news of the passage of this Act was followed in : New York by the issue of a new paper called the " Constitu- tional Courant," which first appeared in September, 1765, by the placarding of the streets with "The Folly of England, and the Ruin of America ;" by the organization of the
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TROUBLOUS TIMES APPROACHING.
"Sons of Liberty," and the appointment of a " Committee of Correspondence," to secure unanimity of action among all the merchants of the country in resisting the aggressions of England.
THE OLD BRIDEWELL.
While there existed in the nature of the case many reasons why these colonies should eventually rise to independency, it is also certain that proper treatment on the part of the mother country would have long delayed such an event. The colonists had no desire to sever their connection with the home government; indeed, they long clung to its usages and authority. In the bloody campaigns against the French they had sacrificed the lives of thirty thousand of their sons, and burdened themselves with a debt of thirteen million pounds. sterling. An honorable acknowledgment.of their undoubted interests and rights would have permanently cemented them to the English crown : but these were persistently denied. The colonists were regarded as greatly inferior to the people of England. Pitt, the friend of America, once said in Par- liament, " There is not a company of foot that has served in.
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NEW YORK AND ITS INSTITUTIONS.
America out of which you may not pick a man of sufficient knowledge and experience to make a governor of a colony there." This underrating of the American intellect led to the appointment of weak and tyrannical Governors, which yielded at length its legitimate fruit. The colonists resisted taxation because they were not represented in the English Parliament ; but the matter of taxation was not so grievous as the whole- sale suppression of manufacture. America abounded with iron ; but no axe, hammer, saw, or other tool, could be manu- factured here without violating the crown law. Its rivers and marshes teemed with beaver, but no hatter was allowed to employ over two apprentices, and no hat of American manu- facture could be carried for sale from one colony to another. No wool could be manufactured save for private use, and the raw material could not be transported from one colony to another. Everything must be sent to England for manu- facture, and return laden with heavy duties. The colonists were prohibited from opening or conducting a commerce with any but the English nation, and every article of export must be sent in an English ship.
The repeal of the Stamp Act was followed by the duty on tea, glass, etc.,-legislation equally obnoxious to the colonies. - The British naval officers were petty lords of the American seas. They compelled every colonial vessel to lower its sails as it passed, fired into them for the slightest provocation, boarded them at pleasure, and rudely impressed into their service sailors who were never allowed to return to their families. These things could but yield a bloody harvest. The failure of the Governors to secure a permanent revenue was followed by the quartering of troops in New York, which the populace felt was another scheme for the destruction of. their liberties. The citizens of New York were first to resist these aggressions. It was here that the Sons of Liberty first organized, and raised the first liberty pole. The Manhattan merchants were first to cease the importation of English goods-a contract grossly violated by other merchants in
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TROUBLOUS TIMES APPROACHING.
America, but rigorously adhered to in New York, to the ruin of many strong houses. Here the first blood was shed in behalf of liberty. It occurred in a conflict between the citizens and the English soldiers, January 20, 1770 (over five years before the battle of Lexington), on a little hill near the present John street. It was in relation to the liberty pole, and long known as the battle of Golden Hill. New York was the scene of the greatest suffering during the Revolution. Early captured and partly burned, it lay seven years in ruins under the heel of the conqueror, who had here established his principal headquarters, and monopolized all its churches, public buildings, and many private residences. Here the first Federal Congress was organized in 1785, the federal constitution adopted in 1788, and President Wash- ington inaugurated in 1789. First to espouse the cause of independence and organize defence, though its commerce was wholly ruined, and its inhabitants lay starving and bleeding through perilous years, it uttered no murmur of complaint; and since the establishment of independence its : citizens have been second to no others in promoting the in- terests of their country and of humanity.
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NEW YORK AND ITS INSTITUTIONS.
CHAPTER III.
IMPORTANT INCIDENTS OF THE REVOLUTION AND LATER HISTORY OF MANHATTAN.
NEW YORK GOVERNMENT AT SEA-PLOT TO ASSASSINATE WASHING- TON-SHOCKING BARBARITY OF ENGLISH OFFICERS-HALE AND ANDRE, THE TWO SPIES-ARNOLD IN NEW YORK-BRITISH EVAC- UATION-THE BURR AND HAMILTON TRAGEDY OF 1804-ROBERT FULTON AND THE "CLERMONT " -- PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS OF 1825.
NEW YORK GOVERNMENT AT SEA.
V ILLIAM TRYON, the last colonial Governor, entered New York July 8, 1771. He occupied. the house in the fort, which had been rebuilt after the excitement attending the negro plot subsided, and which was now again destroyed by fire. His family (except the servant girl, who was burned alive). barely escaped with life, a daughter leaping from a window of the second story. As revolution was brewing, business was so generally prostrated that no public improvements were made during his administration, except the founding of the New York Hospital. Tryon having returned to England, the gov. ernment again devolved upon Cadwallader D. Colden until his return, which occurred June 24, 1775. The next day Washington entered New York on his way to Cambridge to take command of the Provincial army. The country was now fully in rebellion, and Tryon found his bed filled with thorns. The idea of rocking his weary frame and aching head into repose on the billows of the bay appears now to
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PLOT TO ASSASSINATE WASHINGTON.
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have been suggested, but the fact that rest for a Crown Gov- ernor could only be found on the other side of the Atlantic was not yet so manifest. He, however, continued at his post, and kept up a semblance of authority against the Provincial Congress, until the latter part of August, when he removed his headquarters on board the " Asia," an English man-of-war, from which he for some time kept up a communication with his friends on shore. He also caused the principal archives of the city to be placed on board the ship " Duchess of Gor- don." These were carried to England, but again returned by royal order in 1781.
PLOT TO ASSASSINATE WASHINGTON.
1 . BOUT the 24th of June, 1776, a most barbarous plot was discovered among the tories of New York, including the Mayor and several of General Washington's guards. The plan was, upon the approach of the British troops, to murder Washing- ton and all the staff officers, blow up the magazines, and secure the passes of the town. About five hundred persons were engaged in the conspiracy, and the Mayor acknowledged that he had paid one of the chief conspirators £140, by order of Governor Tryon. One of the soldiers belonging to Washington's guards being convicted was executed in the Bowery, in the presence of twenty thousand spectators. Severity to the few was doubtless mercy to the many.
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NEW YORK AND ITS INSTITUTIONS.
SHOCKING BARBARITY OF ENGLISH OFFICERS.
HE condition of the captured soldiers of the Continental army, and of many of the inhabitants of New York, during the Revolutionary period, presents one of the most melancholy chapters of human suf- fering in the history of the world. The several churches were con- verted into prisons, hospitals, mili- tary depots, and riding schools The Bridewell, in its half-finished condition, the new jail, sugar-houses, and various prison-ships, were filled with soldiers and political prisoners promiscuously huddled together. In winter, without fire or blankets, they
OLD PROVOST, NEW YORK.
perished with cold, and in summer they suffocated with heat. In the burning season every aperture in the walls was crowded with human heads, panting for a breath of the outside world,
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SHOCKING BARBARITY OF ENGLISH OFFICERS.
while the ghastly eye turned anxiously from the misery and death within, in quest of a green leaf or a friendly counte- nance. Sick, wounded, and healthy lay on the same floor, ren- dered putrid with filth, and vocal with the sounds of human agony. Jailers and guards exhibited a love of cruelty hor- rid beyond expression, and many are said to have been poisoned by these fiendish attendants for their watches and silver buckles. They were not regarded as prisoners of war, but as pinioned rebels, to be starved and tortured until killed or goaded into the royal army. While a few remonstrated against these shocking inhumanities, the friends of the minis- try cried out, " Starvation, Starvation to the Rebels ; nothing but starvation will bring them to their senses."
The old sugar-house, one of the chief dens of human tor- ture, was constructed of gray stone, and stood in Liberty street, east of Nassau, and immediately adjoining the Middle Dutch Church, or what is now the old New York Post-office. This sugar refinery, erected in 1689, had passed through an honorable career from the days of Leisler downward in its legitimate use, but was now, under foreign rule, destined to depart from the good old way; its sweetness to be changed to gall and bitterness, and its cheerful business hum to the sighs and wails of the suffering and starving. The edifice con- tained five low stories which were each divided into two rooms. The walls were very heavy, and the windows small and deep. The yard was encircled with a close board-fence nine feet high. Within these walls were at times huddled 400 or 500 prisoners of war, without beds, blankets, or fire in winter, wearing for months the filthy garments that covered them on the day of their capture. Hot weather came, and with it the typhus fever, which prevailed fearfully, filling the dead cart on each returning morning with wrecks of wasted humanity, 'which were rudely dumped in the trenches in the outskirts of the city. The meagre diet of these suffering patriots con- sisted of pork and sea biscuit ; the latter, having been damaged by salt water, were consequently very mouldy, and much worm-
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NEW YORK AND ITS INSTITUTIONS.
eaten. We present a cut of this memorable structure, which stood as a monument. of the several periods through which it had passed until 1840, when it was demolished by the march of modern architectural improvements. This cut and several others in this volume were engraved by Alexander Anderson, M.D., when in his eighty-eighth year, and were ob- tained, with valuable information in relation to the prisons of the Revolution, from Charles I. Bushnell, Esq., of New York, who has perhaps taken a deeper interest in the study of that interesting period than any other writer of our times.
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THE OLD SUGAR-HOUSE IN LIBERTY STREET.
But dreadful as were the prisons, and the old sugar-house in Liberty street, the prison-ships are of still more terrific memory. In 1779 the " Prince of Wales" and the " Good Hope" were used as prison-ships: The "Good Hope " being destroyed by fire the following year, several old hulks for- merly employed as men-of-war were anchored in the North and the East rivers, and were called hospital ships, though it soon became apparent that they were but wretched prisons for captured Americans. Among these may be mentioned the "Stromboli," the " Scorpion," the " Hunter," the " Fal-
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THE JERSEY PRISON SHIP-As moored in the Wallabout Bay, Brooklyn, in 1780.
One of the most prominent of the decaying ships of the British, in which the captured Americans were imprisoned and inhumanly treated.
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SHOCKING BARBARITY OF ENGLISH OFFICERS.
mouth," the "Chatham," the "Kitty," the "Frederick," the " Glasgow," the "Woodland," the " Clyde," the "Persever- ance," and the " Packet."
But none attained such appalling notoriety, as a monstrous crucible of human woe, as the "Jersey." This vessel was originally a British line-of-battle ship, built in 1736, and car- ried sixty guns. She had done good service in the war with France, and had several times served as a part of the Medi- terranean squadron. In the spring of 1776 she sailed for America as one of the fleet of Commodore Hotham, and ar- rived at Sandy Hook in the month of August. She was sub- sequently used as a storeship, then employed as a hospital ship, and was finally, in the winter of 1779-80, fitted up for a prison ship, and anchored near the Wallabout in the East river, near what is now the Navy Yard, where she lay until the close of the war, when the day of retribution arrived, and she was broken up and sunk beneath the muddy waters of the East river to rise no more. Dismantled of her sails and stripped of her rigging, with port holes closed, with no spar but the bowsprit, and a derrick to take in supplies, her small lone flag at the stern became the appropriate but unconscious signal of the dreadful suffering that raged within. Hundreds of captured prisoners were packed into this small vessel, where, with but one meal of coarse and filthy food per diem, without hammocks, or physicians, or medicines, or means of cleanliness, they wretchedly perished. Thousands of emaci- ated skeletons were during these perilous years cast into the billows of the bay, or left half covered in the sand banks and trenches. The bones of the dead lay exposed along the beach, drying and bleaching in the sun, whitening the shore until washed away by the surging tides. About twelve thousand prisoners are believed to have died on these vessels, most of whom were young men, the strength and flower of their country.
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