USA > New York > New York : the planting and the growth of the Empire state, Vol. II > Part 15
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Societies for the promotion of agriculture, of science and art, and of benevolence, have been from an early day numerous and active in the commonwealth, and their transactions have often added rich gifts to the literature of the interests to which they are devoted. Among the pioneers in this field. Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell (born 1764. died 1831) holds the first rank. He was distinguished in various branches of literature and sat in both houses of congress. His energy and versatility, as well as his learn- ing and prolifie pen, were working capital for New York city. Dr. David Hosack ( born 1709, died 1835) was a colaborer in many movements giving to the city tone and progress in litera-
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ture, science, art, and charity. By the activity of such men, attractions and encouragement were offered to scientists, so that investigators and writers like John James Audubon chose homes in the city or its vicinity.
An organization at once a sign of intellectual activity and a power in the sphere which it chose for itself, was the New York Historical Society, founded November 20, 1804, by some of the leading statesmen, clergymen, and schol- ars of the city. The addresses delivered before it and the collections published by it, down to the current year, have included studies and documents of great interest, and productions of high and varied eloquence. The society gave an impetus to investigation into the chronicles of the commonwealth, and to the preservation of its records. The legislature was enlisted in gathering. abroad as well as at home, documents that otherwise would have been lost, and print- ing them in form for study. Local societies with like objects have been devoted and effi- cient, and monuments on the battlefields of Oriskany and Saratoga are due to their labors. Private enterprise has been busy with gazet- teers and county and town histories, whose number is already legion ; while recent centen- nial celebrations. and the bi-centennial jubila- tion of Albany, have caused a general revival in historical studies.
CHAPTER XXXV. LAND AND RENT. 1839-1846.
THE imperial domain of New York was im- providently administered from the first. The vast estates secured by the patroons under the Dutch were so located as to become very valu- able as population grew. The grants by the English royal governors to themselves and their favorites took up much more of the choice lands. Speculation, by these large landowners and by others, seized, for small consideration but under the name of purchase, vast tracts, which the Indians gave up without knowing the conse- quences. By grant from King George, Sir William Johnson added to his former postes. sions a domain which made him, next to Wil- liam Penn, the owner of the most extensive estate on the continent. Foreign capitalists, like the Holland Land Company, acquired title to thousands of aeres in various parts of the commonwealth. At the close of the Revolution the commonwealth owned more than seven
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million acres of its own soil. The waste and folly that had prevailed from the beginning culminated in the sale of 1791, when, in tracts so large as to exclude fair competition and in total quantity so much as to glut the demand, over five and a half million acres of these lands were given away, at prices merely nominal, to speculators who sought only their own gain.
The evils of the concentration of lands in a few hands were many; the benefits were to individuals, or if to the community they were transient. For a while there was a largeness of operations in clearing forests and making roads, and a courtly hospitality, which had their value. These could not give to tenants, how- ever long their leases, the independence and enterprise of owners of the soil. The patroons insisted on their rights to feudal service and to permanent title to the farms which they per- mitted others to work. The lords of manors preferred to lease their lands, and sold grudg- ingly. Thus of vast tracts held and long occu- pied by industrious and thrifty farmers, in- creased in value by cultivation and improve- ment and by growth of population, the title for generations vested in the patroons. or the holders of the patents and their descendants. The Holland Land Company sold farms on long time to those who would improve them, at
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1 prices that seemed low, but when a succession of bad crops came or domestic affliction used up the income, they proved to be onerous. The development of a vast region simultane- ously on like theories, with similar products, seeking the same markets, has its hazards.
The inevitable result was that the purchasers often complained of any enforcement of their contracts to pay for their lands, and suspected, if they did not discover, designs to evict them and seize on the improvements which they had made. The tenants on long leases were in a worse condition. They found that they had no title to the houses they had built, or to the farms they had cultivated, and that they were bound by a feudal tenure, while on the merest technicality the landlord might enter into pos- session, and the laws would give to him the fruits of their labor. Acts were passed in 1779 and 1789 abolishing feudal tenures between private citizens ; but the landlords embodied like services and conditions in leases in fee, and for many years such agreements were not con- tested. In 1812, effort was made in the legis- lature to limit the claims of the patroons and to define the rights of their tenants. but it came to nothing. The irritation continued and was aggravated from year to year, not simply with reference to lands held under feudal tenure, but
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to leases and contracts and mortgages under allodial tenure. In 1836 the people of Chau- tauqua county were disturbed by rumors that the liens given by them to the Holland Land Company were to be enforced, and the land office, with its records, was destroyed by a mob. In Batavia, Genesee county, a threatened at- tack on the land office was prevented by the organization and arming of the citizens. Be- cause prominent whigs took the place of the company as proprietors, partisan prejudices added fuel and flame to the controversy, which was, however, adjusted without prolonged vio- lence, through the patience and tact and liber- ality of William H. Seward as agent.
The difficulties were more grave in the coun- ties into which extended the estate of the Van Rensselaers. Just before 1839, the heirs of the patroon, besides seeking to collect long arrears of rent, tried to enforce their right to one-fourth of the sales of products of the land in case of alienation. Such a restriction would destroy much of the value of the leases, and practically gave the grantors a quarter title to the lands. Associations were formed to get rid of such burdens and to resist payment of rent, which it was alleged had been waived. The landlords appealed to civil process, which the tenants re- sisted. A band of anti-renters in disguise killed
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a person named Smith in Grafton, Rensselaer county, and a long investigation failed to dis- cover the persons engaged in the affray. In Albany county, resistance to like process was general ; and in December, 1839, Governor Sew- ard issued a proclamation of warning against tumultuous assemblages and warlike acts. The sheriff called upon six or seven hundred per- sons to assist him in serving papers, and at Reidsville was met by an armed body of fifteen hundred men, who stopped him and forbade him to perform his duty. By authority of Governor Seward, the military companies of Albany were summoned ; and December 9 an advance of one hundred and twenty men found over a thousand persons gathered to obstruct the sheriff, while the people generally sympathized with them. Three companies were ordered from Troy, and five hundred militia from Montgomery county, to proceed to Albany. By December 12 the sheriff was allowed to serve process and levy on property, and one person was arrested ; and four days later, the militia was discharged from further service. In his message of 1840 Giov- ernor Seward proposed a commission to adjust the grievances, and it was anthorized by the legislature ; but while the tenants assented to its recommendations, the landlords refused to do so.
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The controversy therefore continued, and acts of violence were perpetrated in several counties. Governor Wright made it a topic of discussion in his message in 1845, reciting that organized bands, disguised as savages and bear- ing arms, had defied the officers of the law, and interfered with its execution, and that lives of unoffending citizens had been sacrificed. He declared that the sympathies of the people fa- vored the commutation of rents and fee-simple titles, but that the present duty was the asser- tion of the power of the State to preserve or- der. He recommended the enactment of severe laws to prevent and punish agrarian outrages, and they were promptly enacted. In Columbia county, however, violence was repeated. In Delaware and Schoharie, riots occurred, and a deputy sheriff named Steel was murdered by an armed party while performing his duty. Governor Wright followed the example of Gov- ernor Seward by issuing a proclamation of warn- ing, and then calling out a military force ade- quate to put down the disturbances. They had lasted for months, and hundreds of men were engaged in them. Many arrests were made, and over fifty persons were convicted, including two who were sentenced to death, but the gov- ernor commuted their punishment to imprison- ment for life. He felt the more free to exer-
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cise clemency because the insurrection was, in December, declared to be suppressed, and in his message in 1846 he recommended the abolition of distress for rent, the taxation of incomes from rents, and the limitation of leases to five or ten years.
The grievances of the tenants were carried into politics, and the legislature sought to cure them by statutes ; while the constitutional con- vention of 1846 set limits to leases, and defi- nitely abolished all feudal tenures. The anti- renters in 1846 gave their support to John Young for governor, and soon after his acces- sion in 1847 he issued a proclamation narrating the incidents in the land controversy, and pro- nouncing the offenses political in their nature ; wherefore, since the excitement had passed away, and the controversy itself had been closed, public policy would be subserved by mercy. He therefore gave full pardon to fifty- four prisoners, including the two persons who had originally been sentenced to death. Severe criticism was pronounced on this course, which was alleged to be in pursuance of a preflection bargain with the anti-renters. The insurrec- tions were not renewed, but Governor Young recommended that suits should be prosecuted by the State to test the validity of the title of the landlords.
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Private litigation was abundant, and was at- tended with many aggravating incidents. Sev- eral cases were carried to the court of appeals. In October, 1852, that tribunal, in a thorough review of the laws as they stood even before the constitution of 1846, held that no agree- ment could make good restraints on alienation of titles held in fee, and therefore that all reser- vations of quarter-sales were illegal and void. This decision went far to sustain the position of the tenants, and practically ended the anti-rent movement as an organization to resist the laws. Sporadic obstructions, however, occurred to evic- tions for non-payment of rents or under con- tracts. In July, 1866, in Knox, Albany county, a battalion was sent to suppress agrarian trou- bles, but at its appearance seventy or eighty rioters scattered without violence, and nine prisoners were handed over to the courts. In the next month an agent of the landowners was fired upon in the town of Berne, and his horses were shot. Four persons were arrested and tried for the assault. Since the claims for service or payment in kind, or in shares of the products on alienation, have been abandoned, land tenure has become simple, and conflict over it has ceased to be threatening to society.
As time has run on, the large estates have been divided, and small proprietors have been
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multiplied. In 1880 the farms of the State averaged only 99 acres, and the tendency has been for years to smaller holdings. Reductions are yet possible and desirable, for there remained 281 farms of over a thousand acres each, 1,315 containing between 500 and 1,000 acres, and 96,273 between 100 and 500 acres. The total number of farms was 241,058, being more than in any other State except Illinois, and they gave occupation to 377,460 persons. Their value was $1,056,176,741, the greatest in the Union ex- cept those of Ohio ; while the farming imple- ments and machinery used on them exceeded those of any other State, and were worth $42,592,741. According to the last census, four- teen counties in the United States produced from the soil in 1879 over $5,000,000 each. One of these was in California, two were in Illi- nois, three in Pennsylvania, and eight were in New York, to wit : Monroe, 86.382,976 ; Onei- da, 86,378,153 ; St. Lawrence, 86,016.009; Erie, $5,352.737 ; Otsego, 85,284,929; Jefer- son, $5.199,352 ; Steuben, 85.171.054 : and On- ondaga, 85,079,198. Three of these counties lead every county except one in Pennsylvania. The same census places the value of all farm products in the State in 1879 at $178.025.695, exceeding those of any other commonwealth except Illinois ; and experts insist that more
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accurate and complete figures would place New York first in agriculture, as it is by very far first in the value of its manufactures, and the mag- nitude of its domestic and foreign trade.
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CHAPTER XXXVI.
STRUGGLES IN THE COMMONWEALTH.
1847-1858.
ELEMENTS of personal rivalry undoubtedly entered into the political controversies in New York during the administration of President Polk, but they rested on radical differences of principle. The friends of Van Buren and of Wright were opposed to the annexation of Texas and to the extension of slavery, as were the whigs generally. The conservatives in both parties acquiesced in these policies, and denounced the popular protests against what were pointed out as the aggressions of the slave power, as improper interference with institu- tions recognized by the constitution. When, in 1847, Preston King, a representative from St. Lawrence county, renewed the motion for the proviso originally proposed the previous year by Mr. Wilmot, that slavery should not be allowed in the territory acquired from Mex- ico, the New York legislature sustained his position by a vote nearly unanimous, and in
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congress all the representatives from the State but one were recorded for the proposition, as was Senator John A. Dix, while Senator Dick- inson voted in the negative.
The supporters of Mr. Polk's administration controlled the State convention in 1847, but their candidates were beaten at the polls by over thirty thousand majority. They held the party machinery, and in 1848 chose delegates to the national convention at Baltimore, and put electors in nomination. The other wing, the barnburners, took exception to this action of the hunkers, and issued a call, signed by a majority of the democratic members of the legislature, for a State convention, which also chose delegates to Baltimore. The national convention refused to admit either delegation to vote on the nominations for president and vice-president. The choice of Lewis Cass for the presidential candidate was very offensive to the radicals of New York, and they met in State convention May 22, and put Martin Van Buren in nomination for president. The selec- tion of General Zachary Taylor by the whigs as their candidate for president was an offense to a large element among them, and the addi- tion of Millard Fillmore for vice-president con- tributed to the dissatisfaction of many of the freesoil wing. Since his unsuccessful canvass
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for governor, Mr. Fillmore had been elected comptroller, and attained prominence as a con- servative, showing no sympathy for the opposi- tion to slavery to which the people were giving expression, and insisting on the strict observance of the compromises of the constitution. When, therefore, a national convention was held in Buffalo, August 8, dissentients from both parties, representing nearly all the free States, were in attendance, and they adopted a plat- form opposing the extension of slavery to the territories, and nominated Martin Van Buren for president and Charles Francis Adams for vice-president.
The canvass was able and vigorous through- out the free States upon the lines laid down in Buffalo; but the freesoil movement became formidable only in New York, and its electoral votes decided the result. The canvass was in this sense a struggle in that commonwealth. General Taylor received in the State 13. 99 fewer votes than were given to Henry Clay in 1844 ; and yet in the electoral college the full weight of the State was cast for him, and con- stituted the whole of his majority. This was due to the fact that 120,497 ballots were cast for Van Buren, and only 114,819 for Cass. For the time the democratic party of New York was rent in twain, and the whigs held
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easy sway. They elected as governor Hamilton Fish, chosen the previous year to fill a vacancy in the office of lieutenant governor. He had served in both houses of the legislature, and for one term in congress. With a liberal education and popular though dignified manners, he pos- sessed solid qualities of prudence and decision and foresight. He was chosen in 1851 to the United States senate, and won honorable and enduring distinction in the cabinet of President Grant as secretary of state from 1869 to 1877.
An incident in the canvass of 1848 was a liberty party convention held in Buffalo, in January of that year, which put Gerrit Smith in nomination for president. This party re- fused to recognize property in man, and asked the government to act immediately for the ex- tirpation of slavery. Beriah Green, a scholar and a preacher of remarkable logical force, was a leader in the movement, with William Good- ell, who was its candidate for governor ; but Gerrit Smith himself was the controlling figure, and notable in many ways. Inheriting vast tracts of land in central and northern New York, he gave away a large share in small par- cels to actual settlers. He was a pioneer in the anti-slavery movement, in which he took the most advanced position. In later years he gave freely to aid in making Kansas a free
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State, and John Brown had much of his money, although it was not given with a knowledge of the attack on Harper's Ferry. To the war for the Union his gifts were munificent, and at the close he signed with Horace Greeley the bail bond of Jefferson Davis. Esteemed and beloved by his neighbors, the only political position he ever occupied was that of representative in con- gress, to which he was elected in 1852, but re- signed because its duties were not congenial to him.
The death of President Taylor, July 9, 1850, elevated Millard Fillmore to the executive chair, and greatly affected the condition of parties in New York. William H. Seward had been chosen to the national senate with the accession of President Taylor. His friends, the freesoil whigs, had been treated with consideration in the assignment of the federal offices in the State. Mr. Fillmore made haste to remove many of them, and to give preference to con- servatives, or, as they came to be called. " silver greys." The compromise measures of 1850 and the demand by the South for the rigid enforce- ment of the fugitive-slave law. afforded pro- nounced lines of division. The rescue of a fugitive slave from the federal officers by a mob in Syracuse gave local color and intensity to the popular excitement. The advocates of free
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soil demanded positive restrictions on slavery in the territories, and the legislature passed strong resolutions to that effect; while the conserva- tives held, with Daniel Webster, that it was not necessary to reenact the laws of nature, which would prevent the establishment of slavery in the domain in controversy. The effects of the divisions were not fully felt in November. 1850, when Washington Hunt was elected governor by the whigs, by the scant majority of two hun- dred and sixty-two, over Horatio Seymour, for whom the democrats cast their united strength.
But in 1852 the wreck of the whig party was utter and final, due to its failures to obey the positive injunctions of popular sentiment. Mr. Fillmore was a candidate for president before the national convention, but from all the free , States he received less than twenty votes on any ballot. The contest was long and doubtful, and while on the first ballot he received one hundred and thirty-three votes. which was more than was given to any competitor, on the fifty- third and final ballot his votes were one hun- dred and twelve ; while to General Winfield Scott one hundred and fifty-eight were given, conferring the nomination. On that ballot Mr. Fillmore commanded only seven from his own State, and from all the other free States only three from Connecticut and three from Iowa.
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In larger measure than his predecessors in can- didacy, he was made to feel how little hold he had even on his own party at home, and how weak was State pride in the conflicts of parties. The platform, however, commended the dis- tinctive features of his administration. In the democratic party, William L. Marey had hopes of the nomination for president, and received some votes in the convention. In his private correspondence he expressed the belief that he could have been successful but for the opposi- tion of Daniel S. Dickinson. Governor Marcy afforded another example of the fatal effects on candidates of the factional divisions in New York. The canvass of 1852 in this State was conducted on lines wholly different from those of 1848 and 1856. The overwhelming defeat of General Scott, notwithstanding his military record, indicated the condemnation of the com- promise measures, and was in New York the end of any reasonable hope of conducting par- ties on that basis. The lesson taught to the democrats in 1848 was in 1852 impressed on the whigs, who thereafter disappeared from State and national politics.
While Franklin Pierce received the electoral vote of the State, Horatio Seymour was chosen governor. He entered the assembly in 1841 as the pronounced friend and ally of William L.
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Marcy, and in the session of 1844, in a report as chairman of the committee on canals, he argued with force and eloquonce in favor of a liberal policy of enlargement, and constituted himself the champion of the Erie Canal, waging its battles in the press and on the platform until all tolls were abolished, largely in response to his appeals. As speaker of the assembly, in 1845, he exhibited urbanity and grace, with promptness and vigor. He had taken no share in the faction fights within his party, and was chosen its candidate for governor in 1850, when defeated, and in 1852, when successful as the architect of harmony.
The enlargement of the Erie Canal and the construction of the laterals were progressing in spite of opposition and obstacles. A new ele- ment, which had been for some time taking form and strength, was now organized to com- pete in carrying freight. The Erie Railway was built rather as an ally to the canal inter- ests, to secure popular support in the southern counties. Railroads had also been constructed in many parts of the State. It was in 1853 that a policy was adopted for enlisting railroads as an important factor in securing the trade of the West, and holding the chief currents of domestic commerce parallel with the Erie Canal. This was the union of separate lines, changing pas-
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sengers and freight at their termini, into a con- tinuous railroad, first from the Hudson to Lake Erie, and soon from the sea at New York to the great lakes.
The charter granted in 1826 for a railroad between Albany and Schenectady was not fruitful of others until that road was opened in 1831. Then charters began to multiply. Utica and Schenectady were connected by char- ter in 1833 and by rails in 1836 ; Auburn and Syracuse, by charter in 1834, by rails in 1888; Schenectady and Troy, by charter in 1836 and by rails in 1842. In 1836 also charters were granted for a road from Syracuse to Utica, opened in 1839; from Auburn to Rochester, opened in 1841; and from Attica to Buffalo, opened in 1842. The Tonawanda road, char- tered in 1832, was also opened in 1842. A road from Lockport to Niagara Falls was chartered in 1834 and opened in 1838. These were all local enterprises. and, as separate organizations, could do through business only with frequent changes and at heavy cost. As travel and traffic increased. the inconveniences were found . to be insufferable. The demand for consoli- dation came from the business community as well as from the railroad managers. Yet ap- prehensions of the vast power of the corporation were not concealed when, by act of April 2,
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