USA > New York > New York : the planting and the growth of the Empire state, Vol. II > Part 5
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by columns against which further struggle was hopeless.
Ticonderoga and Crown Point fell at once into the hands of the Americans. Sir Henry Clinton had in the meanwhile ascended the Hudson River to West Point, capturing two forts and burning Kingston. But Oriskany and Saratoga shattered the plans of a grand cam- paign. The attempt to cut the colonies into two parts with the British army between them had failed. The brave fighting of the colonial army had given pledges that independence would be won. France saw that its alliance would insure the creation of a new nation in America. Victory was not assured for the united colonies, but these events on the soil of New York rendered it possible.
New York was to suffer still more from bloody conflict. Its chief city was hopelessly held by the British army as its official head- quarters. The Six Nations were stirred to hos- tility by Sir John Johnson and the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant, with Walter Butler, of in- famous name. Their tory partisans were more cruel than the red men. At Cobleskill, Scho- harie county, June 1, 1778, Brant won a savage triumph with a mixed force, and burned and plundered the settlement. Springfield was also destroyed, and the assailants retired. A month
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later the Indians were again at Cobleskill, and, burning where they went, beat off a force that attempted to check them. The valley of the Schoharie-kill was in the succeeding year sub- jected to invasions from the Senecas, and suf- fered severely. About Fort Stanwix the tories and red men were continually hovering, and more than once persons were pounced upon and scalped in sight of the works. In 1778, in the early autumn, German Flats was visited by Brant and his followers, and was entirely de- stroyed, although all the inhabitants but two were warned in season to escape with their lives. An expedition was sent after the In- dians, but failed to bring the warriors to battle, and was rewarded only by laying waste the In- dian villages of Unadilla and Oquaga, and cap- turing a large supply of cattle and provisions.
At Cherry Valley a fort had been built, and the village was occupied by a band of colonial troops under Colonel Ichabod Alden. He rested in security, and the settlers were scattered in their habitations, regardless of warnings of ap- proaching foes. Under cover of a severe storm of snow and rain, November 11, Brant and Butler, with eight hundred Indians and tories, swooped upon the homes, and forty-three per- sons, including women and children, were butch- ered, forty taken prisoners, all the buildings
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were burned, and the domestic animals seized. So brutal was the massacre that Brant charged Butler and the tories with acting against his protests. Brant himself was content, July 19, 1779, with destroying the church, mills, houses, and barns at Minnisink, Orange county, with- out sacrificing lives, but turned upon a party sent in pursuit, and, after capturing a detach- ment, butchered the wounded, and slew forty- five who tried to escape.
Such deeds produced a terror in the colony. No one knew where the red men and tories would strike next. To check and counteract them, excursions were made against the tribes in their homes. One of these was led by Colonels Van Schaick and Willett from Fort Stanwix in April, 1779. Proceeding by Wood Creek and Oneida Lake, they penetrated the villages of the Onondagas, which they de- stroyed, and seized the provisions and even the weapons of the red men, who fled into the wil- derness. In the same year, General Washing- ton ordered an expedition into the Seneca and Cayuga country, to break the power of the tribes, as well as to punish them for their out- rages. General Sullivan led the main army from the south, while General James Clinton conducted a column by way of Otsego Lake and the Susquehanna Valley. They destroyed the
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crops of the Senecas, and ravaged their country wherever they marched. At Newtown, near Elmira, they assembled their army August 29, and found Brant and Johnson and Butler, with a following numbered at eight hundred tories and Indians. The American forces. won an easy victory, and their foes scattered and fled.
The vietors marched northward, destroying orchards, cornfields, frame houses, and villages indicating progress in civilization, in all the region about Seneca and Cayuga Lakes, in- cluding the castle near Geneva and the old town of Genesee. September 16, the destroy- ing army recrossed the Genesee River, and car- ried devastation to the Cayugas and Onondagas. With a loss of only forty lives, eighteen In- dian villages had been annihilated, and one hundred and fifty thousand bushels of corn and immense quantities of other provisions were destroyed. The tribes were stripped of their homes, and, for the purposes of the Revolution, the Six Nations ceased to be organized allies of the British crown. They were reduced to wan- dering pillagers, to revengeful, uncompromis- ing warriors, who struck where they could, and sought to wreak vengeance on all the settle- ments, while they no longer had homes to be assailed. The Oneidas suffered no less from the forces of the king. Their castle was de-
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stroyed, and the tribe was so completely im- poverished that support by the American gov- ernment was a necessity until the close of the war.
Local raids upon the white settlements fell now upon Little Falls, on the Mohawk, burning mills, and now along the base of the Catskills, where the tory inhabitants pointed the way for the marauders. Individuals, families, were murdered. All the incidents of border warfare can be found in the personal narratives which have been preserved. In the interior of the State, all the waters, and all the paths blazed in the woods, have their stories of heroism and suffering. "They rival the pages of romance in the daring, in the ingenuity, in the diversity of experience, exhibited on both sides, and in the persistence with which the settlers held to their homes, often assailed, and more than once de- stroyed.
Sir John Johnson and Brant were the leaders in a bold and sweeping raid by the tories and their allies. May 21, 1780, the Mohawks and the tories came down from Canada, by way of Lake Champlain, to Johnson's old home at Johnstown. Dividing his force of five hun- dred, consisting of British regulars, and his own Royal Greens, with Indians and tories, he burned Tribe's Hill and Caughnawaga, mur-
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dering as he went. He made his headquarters in his own homestead, collected his prisoners, carried away the silver plate of his family which had been hidden, and, although a force was sent to stop him, he was able to get away without loss. In October of the same year, he led a force of six hundred men by way of Os- wego across the country to the Susquehanna Valley, where it was joined by Brant and Corn- planter with a body of red men. They rav- aged the Schoharie Valley, laid siege unsuc- cessfully to a fort at Middleburg, and, turning to the north, harassed the patriots and laid the country desolate. From Fort Hunter, in the same month, he let his forces loose into the Mohawk Valley, and burned and plundered as he marched. At Stone Arabia, a small gar- rison under Colonel John Brown occupied a stockade called Fort Paris, and, expecting co- operation from a column under General Van Rensselaer, it came out from the works to fight Johnson, when the commander and forty men were killed, October 19, and the few survivors fled. When General Van Rensselaer arrived at Klock's Field, St. Johnsville, he had an army of fifteen hundred men. He was slow in attack, and when he gained an advantage he failed to press forward upon the enemy. Johnson fled from the field, and the next day
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Van Rensselaer pursued as far as Fort Her- kimer. On his retreat, the tory chief captured a detachment sent to seize his boats at Fort Stanwix, and then made his way safely to Oswego.
When the British troops took possession of New York city, the continental congress met the disaster with a strong and hopeful address, written by John Jay, appealing for fortitude for a cause which was admirably stated. The patriots of the city were put under martial supervision. The tories, headed by Judge Horsmanden and Oliver DeLancey, welcomed Governor Tryon and the British general and admiral, while Queens and Suffolk counties showed a majority for the king. Tryon exerted himself to the utmost for the royal cause, and earned the hatred of the patriots for his sever- ity. He was attainted by the legislature Octo- ber 22, 1779; but when he went to England he was honored by the crown, and raised to the rank of lieutenant general, dying in 1788. He was the last royal governor, for his suc- cessor, General James Robertson, came in 1780, when the colony had ceased to look to London for anthority, and was already a State in the Union.
The treatment of the prisoners captured by the British during the war is one of the darkest
,
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chapters in the history of the occupation of New York city. Prisons were prepared in churches, in public buildings, in the old sugar- house, in the ships in the bay. They were crowded with patriot officers and privates, whose treatment was a scandal and a shame. The pro- vost marshal was Cunningham, appointed in 1775, and serving through the war ; severe, un- yielding, and bitterly hated by the patriots. The new jail under his own charge was the most infamous of the dungeons. The horrors of the
prison ships have passed into tradition. The sufferings, the indignities, the deaths, were a part of the price paid for independence. The measure of cruelty is suggested by- the state- ment that, of three thousand prisoners taken at Fort Washington November, 1776, only eight hundred survived for exchange May 6, 1778.
Thus New York was made to endure every evil of war. The colony was a series of camps. Battles and marauding expeditions, massacres and the burning of towns, extended over all its inland portions, while the chief city felt the burdens of the headquarters of the royal forces, and the horrors of a multitude of prisons. Yet the colony did not waver, although suffering beyond any of its sisters. In the face of hos- tile armies, it was first to start a movement for state organization, and it held steadily on the path to independence.
CHAPTER XXV.
WAITING FOR VICTORY. - ADOPTION OF CON- STITUTIONS.
1777-1788.
POLITICAL organization in New York went on in spite of war and its horrors. The provincial congress which met July 9, 1776, assumed the name of the Convention of Repre- sentatives of the State of New York. As soon as it had given its pledges to sustain the De- claration of Independence, it appointed a com- mittee, with John Jay as chairman, to prepare a form of government. The military opera- tions in the colony postponed a report until March 12, 1777, and the adoption of the constitution did not take place until April 20. Authority was derived from the people, but property qualification was required for electors and for members of the senate, although not for the assembly ; and a council of revision and appointment designated many local offices, and exercised a power of review over acts of The governor was the head of this
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council, and with him were associated four senators chosen by the assembly. So curiously constituted and clothed with such powers, and finally treating the governor as only a member on an equal footing, the council became in time the subject and the field of sharp controversy.
" In the name of the good people," the con- stitution declared "the free exercise of reli- gious profession and worship, without discrimi- nation or preference, to all mankind ; " and no distinction of rights was based on color, al- though slavery was recognized, in spite of Gouverneur Morris' labors to provide for its gradual abolition. Comparison proves that no other State exhibited so much liberality in its constitution, or produced at that period a docu- ment of so much merit, as New York, far as that fell below the standard which the State has since attained in its jurisprudence.
The convention appointed John Jay chief justice, Robert R. Livingston chancellor, with other judges, and designated a committee of safety, with John Morin Scott as chairman, to exercise all powers until the state government could be organized. Owing to the British pos- session, the convention appointed the first sena- tors from the southern district, and members of assembly for New York, Kings, Queens, and Suf- folk. The returns of the election for governor
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were made to the committee of safety. Votes were cast for John Morin Scott, John Jay, Philip Schuyler, and others, but George Clinton was chosen by a plurality, with Pierre van Cortlandt lieutenant governor. The governor was in active command of troops in the field, and did not enter upon his civic duties until after the surrender of Burgoyne. His execu- tive responsibilities were, indeed, in no small degree, military for several years. Of Irish de- scent and good education, he was trained as a lawyer. He was now thirty-seven years of age, and had been acting in politics for nine years. A leader on the patriot side in the assembly, he sat also in the continental congress and voted for the Declaration of Independence. In the field he was brave and energetic, if not always successful. A radical in his patriotism, he had less scholarship and statecraft than Hamilton and Jay and Scott and Livingston, and more of the qualities which win popularity than any of his contemporaries in the State, as was proved by his election seven times, six in direct suc- cession, to the office of governor, which he held for twenty-one years, and by his elevation to the vice-presidency.
With the British in possession of the Hudson and its adjacent territory up to the Highlands, except a part of the counties of Westchester
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and Orange, and holding the fortified posts on the north, and with the Indians on the western borders of settlement and pouring into the Mohawk Valley, the new State was practically concentrated in the region from the Highlands of the Hudson to Lake George, and from Al- bany not far west of Oneida Lake. It exercised all the functions of government, and main- tained its position in the Union with unswery- ing fortitude. The legislature accepted, Feb- ruary 6, 1778, the Articles of Confederation adopted by congress. In the cabals against General Washington, instigated in behalf of Gates, and sustained by leaders who complained of the slowness of the armies, the representa- tives of New York were zealous in favor of the commander-in-chief, and their attitude went far to check the conspiracy against him.
The chief operations of the war were in the later years transferred to the South. Washing- ton sought to occupy the British forces in New York, so that they might not give aid espe- cially to Cornwallis in his campaigns. After the Sullivan expedition, no large movements were attempted here. Stony Point, a projec- tion into the Hudson below the Highlands, was the scene of a gallant but unfruitful exploit. It had been taken by the British general Clinton, May 30, 1779, from a garrison which sur-
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rendered somewhat ingloriously ; but " Mad " Anthony Wayne recovered it, July 16, from the British, by an attack with the bayonet alone. With a loss of only fifteen killed, he captured the works, killing sixty-three and tak- ing five hundred and forty-three prisoners ; but men could not be spared to hold the position, and the fort was destroyed. This was one of the most brilliant operations of the war, and was the only one of any magnitude in New York at this period. Brant swept into the Mohawk Valley at intervals in 1781. Another company of red men and tories was met in fight by the troops under Colonel Willett at Darlagh, in Schoharie county. In October, Major Ross and Walter Butler, with a mixed force of one thousand men, struck Johnstown, where a brisk battle was fought by Colonel Willett with a small army. The British fought and retired, and Willett pursued them as far as Fort Dayton. The dead body of Walter Butler, who had so long harassed Tryon and Schoharie counties, was found on the field.
Two of the personal tragedies which add romance to war happened on the soil of New York. During the dark days of 1776, when Washington was in stress to learn the move- ments of the victorious British army, Nathan Hale, a young captain in a Massachusetts regi-
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ment, and a recent graduate of Yale College, volunteered to undertake a secret mission to Long Island, and on his return was captured. He was taken to the headquarters of General Howe, and after trial sentenced to be hanged as a spy at daybreak the next morning. The pro- vost marshal, Cunningham, executed the sen- tence with cruel indignities, while Hale died re- gretting that he had " but one life to lose for his country." The second tragedy was connected with the treason of Benedict Arnold, who had fought bravely in New York and in the expedi- tion against Canada, and was in 1780 in com- mand of West Point. Major Andre was sent by Sir Henry Clinton to communicate with the traitor, but on his return he fell into the hands of American partisans. He was con- victed as a spy and sentenced to death. Hale's mission was a soldier's search for information ; André's was an act of aid for damnable treason, looking to the base sale of an important military station. If a hero is to be chosen, the former, and not the latter, deserves the distinction.
The close of the war in New York was stained by acts of partisan barbarity on the part of the tories. April 16, 1782, three Americans were publicly executed by order of Colonel James DeLancey, in retaliation, as he claimed, for the murder of refugees. In the same month Joshua
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Huddy, a prisoner of war, was taken under pretense of exchange, and hanged by a party of loyalists, because a tory prisoner had been shot while trying to escape. If New York was not tender of loyalists when peace came, it was be- cause its people were human.
All the influence of Washington was required in March, 1783, at the headquarters of the army, Newburg on the Hudson, to check a movement which involved many of the officers. Captain Armstrong, an aide-de-camp of General Gates, put forth an anonymous address approving a call for a meeting with reference to the pay of the officers, and appealing to their passions. At the meeting, the commander-in-chief advised reli- ance on the justice of congress, and resolutions reported by General Knox were passed denounc- ing " with abhorrence and disdain " the " infa- mous proposals" which had been circulated. The attempt to use the army for mischief was rebuked. Gouverneur Morris has been sharply criticised on the theory that he advised the move- ment in order to force a stronger government, and he certainly wrote to Jay in the preceding January : " The army have swords in their hands. Good will arise from the situation to which we are hastening. Much of convulsion will prob- ably ensue, yet it must terminate in giving to government that power without which govern- ment is but a name."
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To the consolidation of the Union New York rendered a service not easily to be overrated, in its generosity relative to lands in the North- west. No State had better title to more vast domains, for it claimed from surrender by the British, from royal grant, and from purchase from the Iroquois. These claims extended to the peninsula of Michigan, and to the mouth of the Ohio. Other States hesitated to yield their public lands to the nation. New York, by for- mal act of its legislature, April 19, 1780, was first to transfer its vast domain, and to set the example which sister States slowly followed. The claims of this State had not been fully rec- ognized to these western lands, but a committee appointed by congress reported in its favor on all points ; and October 31, 1782, the transfer was formally accepted, with Virginia and Mas- sachusetts alone voting against it, and the Caro- linas divided. The States in the negative op- posed the acceptance of the gift, because they were unwilling to follow the generous exam- ple which finally compelled similar cessions on their part.
When, in 1779. Spain presented claims which threatened to complicate negotiations for peace, Gouverneur Morris was made chairman of a committee in congress to consider the subject. Sustained by Jay and the unanimous delegation
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from New York, he moved that, in view of " the exhausted situation of the United States, the derangement of their finances, and the defect of their resources," independence only should be insisted upon ; but New England was able to gather strength enough to induce congress to declare that " by no treaty of peace should the common right of fishing be given up." This attitude of New York caused the defeat of Jay, and the selection of John Adams as minister to treat with Britain for peace, while Jay was assigned to the less important rank of minister to Spain. When, however, actual ne- gotiations were entered upon in Paris, Jay was present, and distinguished himself for the zeal with which he insisted upon direct and posi- tive, and not implied, recognition of American independence. At Franklin's request, he drew up the articles of peace. When Adams joined in the final negotiations, Jay was not the least of the statesmen whose names were subscribed to the definite treaty of peace.
The war was far from ended when Alexan- der Hamilton, from the tent where he was serv- ing on the staff of Washington, began his labors for a more perfect union, and a constitution be- fitting a great nation. September 3, 1780, he addressed to James Duane, a representative in congress from New York, an appeal foreshad-
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owing the arguments which finally secured the adoption of the federal constitution, and a gov- ernment whose strength a century has tested. In July and August, 1781, he published a series of papers, under the name of the "Continental- ist," to advocate the same views. Hamilton had married a daughter of General Philip Schuyler, and thus at once connected himself with the society of New York, and with allies who were to be of great use to him in his polit- ical career. When Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Hamilton became a law student in Albany, and was appointed a receiver of taxes, the beginning of his connection with the na- tional treasury. His mind, however, was upon the construction of a federal constitution.
In 1780, Governor Clinton had presented to the legislature the " defect of power" in the confederation, and John Sloss Hobart and Eg- bert Benson were sent to a convention in Hart- ford to confer on the subject. They were the leaders in that body in urging the recommenda- tions which were adopted for empowering con- gress to apportion taxes on the States in the ratio of their total population. The matter had thus entered into discussion, and the senators and assemblymen were therefore in a receptive mood when Hamilton visited them in Pough- keepsie in July, 1782, and they unanimously
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adopted resolutions written by him, and moved in the senate by his father-in-law, General Schuyler, declaring that the powers of the cen- tral government should be extended, and that it should be authorized to provide revenue for itself, and to that end "it would be advisable to propose to congress to recommend, and to each State to adopt, the measure of assembling a general convention of the States, specially au- thorized to revise and amend the constitution." Naturally, the author of the resolutions was chosen a member of the continental congress. He sought to impress this project on that body, and was so grievously disappointed at his fail- ure that, with " ill-bodings for his country," he abandoned the attempt, and turned to devote himself to his profession. He resumed his task in a different field.
To Washington's farewell letter, appealing for increased powers to the central government, Governor Clinton sent a cordial response sus- taining its views; and to the legislature, in transmitting the letter, he advised attention " to every measure which has a tendency to ce- ment the Union, and to give to the national councils that energy which may be necessary for the general welfare." But the recommen- dation for a constitutional convention remained unfruitful for years ; and March 3, 1786, con-
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gress ventured to call only a convention to con- sider the trade and commerce of the United States, and to suggest measures for the action of congress. Hamilton and Benson attended the convention in Annapolis in September, and urged the policy originally recommended by New York; but when they asked the legisla- ture to approve of those recommendations, it declined, by the influence of Governor Clinton, to give approval. In 1787, however, the legis- lature adopted a joint resolution instructing the members of congress from the State to move that a convention be held to amend the articles of confederation ; and, when the call was issued, Robert Yates, John Lansing, Jr., and Alexander Hamilton were appointed del- egates "for the sole purpose of revising the articles of confederation, and reporting to con- gress and the several legislatures such altera- tions as shall, when agreed to by congress and confirmed by the several States, render the federal constitution adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union."
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