USA > New York > New York : the planting and the growth of the Empire state, Vol. II > Part 6
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These reservations were due in large part to the growth of the commerce of New York. It maintained its court of admiralty, with juris- dietion over maritime cases ; it exercised, as of old, its sovereign relations towards the red
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men, and in 1783 it claimed for itself the col- lection of duties on imports in its ports, which had two years before been conceded to con- gress. In 1786 the legislature formally insisted on retaining the sole right of collection ; while Governor Clinton, when appealed to by con- gress to call a special session to yield that right, refused to do so.
In the federal convention, Hamilton took a foremost part in the deliberations, and became the champion of the plan adopted. Yates and Lansing were strenuous opponents of equality of the votes of States in the senate ; and when that provision was adopted, they retired, on the plea that the convention was exceeding its powers. On these lines parties were to divide in New York. Governor Clinton transmitted the new constitution to the legislature without a word of remark ; and although Hamilton and Jay were affecting the public mind through the " Federalist," ratification by this State was doubtful until the convention took the actual vote upon it.
That convention met in Poughkeepsie, June 17, 1788, with Governor Clinton as its presi- dent. Hamilton and Jay, Chief Justice Rich- ard Morris, John Sloss Hobart, Chancellor R. R. Livingston, and James Duane, then mayor of New York, were the champions of the con-
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ADOPTION OF CONSTITUTIONS.
stitution. Governor Clinton, Yates, Lansing, Samuel Jones, and Melancthon Smith led the debate against it. The arguments of the ma- jority have been embodied in the history of the nation. Governor Clinton himself was in favor of a federal government, while he charged that Hamilton wished for a consolidated gov- ernment. The opposition dreaded the power of the central authority ; proposed that no per- son should be eligible as senator more than six years in twelve, and asked for a more numer- ous representation in the popular branch. Af- ter proposing a conditional adoption in case amendments suggested should not be embodied, the opposition yielded, but only after a suffi- cient number of other States had approved the document. When the vote was taken, Gover- nor Clinton, as president, was not recorded ; but Jones and Smith joined to make the major- ity of thirty against twenty-seven in the minor- ity. Except Yates and Lansing, who became successively chief justices, the minority con- tains hardly a name afterwards eminent. while the majority is resplendent in the persons who compose it.
The amendments suggested by New York became embodied in the national constitution, and have been accepted as proper safeguards to the liberties of the people.
IV. A STATE IN THE UNION.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE FIRST TASKS OF PEACE.
1783-1795.
WHILE New York was the only State which had met in full every requisition upon it for the preservation of the Union, not one of the other States had felt in any such degree as she suffered the burdens of hostilities from the British troops, from tory marauders, and from their red allies. Nowhere, therefore, was the treaty of peace more welcome. The British armies were gathered into its chief city, and upon Long Island and Staten Island, for em- barkation for their homes ; and November 25, 1783, the day when they evacuated the city, is deservedly commemorated. The streets changed their aspect at once. Americans sought their homes. The vocations of peace began, and the impetus was started which has brought its mar- velous growth to the metropolis. When the stars and stripes were carried up the flagstaff
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by a youth, who thus offset the spite of the re- tiring British in cutting the halliards, a new life began. Washington and his troops were welcomed for their services and hardships and the victories they had won, and, not least, be- cause they were to cease to be soldiers and to become citizens ; and the farewell of the com- mander-in-chief, December 4, to his companions in arms, was a touching sign that peace was not only assured, but was to be enduring.
The population of the city was not large enough to divert attention from these events, so important to the whole country, so doubly impressive on the soil where for seven years hostile armies had been dominant. In New York city, the inhabitants in this year num- bered 23,614, and on Long Island 30,863, while in the entire State they were 233,896. The patriots who had been banished by the British possession were glad to return to their homes, and many of the loyalists sought to enter again in the interior upon the estates which they had abandoned. A strong policy of confiscation had been enforced against the latter during the war, but it was checked by the terms of the treaty of peace ; and, in the territory which had been held by the British, the returning patriots. after recovering their lands and houses, were unable to get pay for their use. In the Mohawk
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NEW YORK.
Valley, it was estimated that one-third of the population at the beginning of the war had lost their lives in the struggle, while one-third had gone or been driven away, so that only one-third remained when peace was declared. The losses may be exaggerated, but the figures were taken to justify the action of a meeting held in Fort Plain, May 9, 1783, which repre- sented the prevailing feeling throughout the State. The resolutions formally declared that the persons who went away or were banished because of their tory sympathies " shall not live in this district on any pretense whatever." Other rural districts took similar action ; and, March 25, 1784, the Sons of Liberty called a meeting in " the Fields " in New York, and ad- vised all tories to leave town before the first of May, insisting that they should not be permitted to remain in the State. In that year the legisla- ture passed an act disfranchising all who had adhered to the British government during the war; it was repealed in 1787, largely through the influence of Hamilton and Schuyler.
Thus many of the tories were able to stay where the British had protected them, and grad- ually some penetrated into the interior. Soldiers from the British army, and especially from its German allies, in numbers not inconsiderable, remained as settlers in the country which they
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THE FIRST TASKS OF PEACE.
failed to conquer. The soldiers of the State in the continental army, by taking up their land bounties, pushed out the lines of settlement. Baron Steuben, who had served with distinction as inspector of the army, received a quarter township as a grant from the legislature, and it was located in the tract purchased from the Oneidas. He illustrated the career of many privates by making his home on the hills north of the upper Mohawk, where a town bears his name and a monument preserves his well-earned fame. Other settlers followed such lead, and some purchasers of large tracts began to adopt the plan of selling farms to hardy pioneers who would break roads, and, by starting homesteads, add value to the adjacent wilderness, although the rule was only to grant leases.
The commonwealth treated its vast domain with reckless prodigality. In 1791, a law was passed, with a view to draw in settlers, authoriz- ing the commissioners of the land office to sell any of the public lands at their discretion. These commissioners were Governor Clinton, Lewis A. Scott, Aaron Burr, Girard Bancker, and Peter T. Curtenius. and they sold 5,542,173 acres of land for $1.030.433 ; and of this vast domain Alexander McComb secured 3,635.200 acres, for much of which only eight pence an acre was paid. The governor was charged with an in-
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terest in some of these purchases, but McComb made an affidavit that that officer had no pecu- niary share in them. A legislative investigation was ordered, on motion of Mr. Talbot, of Mont- gomery county, who knew the value of the lands ; but Melanethon Smith led the move- ment approving the conduct of the commis- sioners, and was sustained by a vote of thirty- five to twenty. While it may be true that no higher price could then be obtained, the folly must be admitted of forcing so many acres upon the market at once, and of throwing into the hands of speculators a territory which, if of- fered to actual settlers only at a nominal price, would have enriched the commonwealth, while adding the best elements to its vitality and productive energy.
New York was at this time fifth of the States in population. Virginia had more than double its number of inhabitants ; Pennsylvania had nearly one-fourth more ; North Carolina ex- ceeded it by the total census of New York city and Long Island : Massachusetts surpassed it in nearly cqual degree. When the war closed, Maryland was its peer in population ; and Con- necticut, and even Tennessee, followed it very closely. Its share in the inception, the organi- zation, and the prosecution of the war for in- dependence, and its services in framing the
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THE FIRST TASKS OF PEACE.
constitution and in its ratification, must be judged by these figures. Critics have paid the State the compliment of comparing its record with that of Virginia on the one hand, and of New England as a whole on the other. History justifies the comparison, and must render its verdict, with due regard to the popu- lation engaged, and to the difficulties of situa- tion and of military pressure.
These difficulties can best be measured by the effect of their removal. New York grew in population, in seven years preceding 1790, by nearly one-half, mounting up to 340,120, reached 589,051 in 1800, and in 1810 with 959,049 at- tained the second rank, very nearly equaling Virginia, and surpassed it by one-third in 1820.
The centre and the west of the State, which had been the scene of contest, became in this in- terval the chosen field of immigration. Tryon county, named Montgomery in 1784, had fur- nished territory for more than a score of coun- ties, and, while New York had risen to the lead in population, Albany stood in 1820 thirteenth in rank ; while Ontario, Genesee, and Oneida were respectively second, third, and fourth in number of inhabitants. The incoming mul- titudes, as early as 1796, made necessary the opening of a State road from Whitestown to Geneva, from the Mohawk to the interior lakes ;
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and in 1798 roads were cut from Genesee to Buffalo and Lewiston, while the water routes from the south as well as from the east were very much used. Before the eighteenth century closed, a regular postrider connected Albany and the Genesee Valley by trips every fortnight, a grand road was opened from the capital to Clinton county, and a regular line of stages be- side the Hudson prophesied the swifter travel of later days.
But, if in the Revolution the population of the State was so inferior, discipline and trial had given it character. If New England was Puri- tan and Virginia Cavalier, and both positively English, New York was the first to become dis- tinctively American. In spite of its strong loyal element, its separation from the crown severed fewer ties of blood and nature, because of the diverse races which mingled on its soil. The original Dutch current has run by intermar- riage into the veins of many families whose names bear no testimony of it. Other races also have joined hands. In the framing of the nation, many streams of race mingled. To the Declaration of Independence. Philip Livingston subscribed with the vigor of Scotch blood ; Francis Lewis, with the ardor of a Welshman ; William Floyd and Lewis Morris, with the pru- dence of mingled Welsh and English descent.
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THE FIRST TASKS OF PEACE.
Philip Schuyler, the major general, was of pure Dutch blood. Nicholas Herkimer, the hero of Oriskany, was the son of a German from the Palatinate. Alexander Hamilton, born in the West Indies, was Scotch and Huguenot in or- igin ; and John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States, was of clear Huguenot strain. George Clinton, the first governor of the State, was the son of an Irish immigrant, as was Gen- eral Montgomery, who fell at Quebec. English- men there were who then and afterwards added lustre to the service of the commonwealth ; but it is the distinction of New York that its early history was molded in the furnace, and from the varied elements, which have given to the nation its character and its name as American.
In the first decade after the treaty of peace, the features which have marked the State may be traced in their early development or in their origin. It began at once to struggle for a foothold on the ocean in commerce, as it reached out for domestic trade. The exports. which were nothing during the war, became $2,505,465 in value in 1791, and $14.045,079 in 1800. This value rose to $17.242,330 in 1820, of which 810,000,000 worth was composed of the products of the soil. Agriculture received an immediate and rapid extension ; and, in wheat and other grains, the quality and quan-
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tity of the crops of the State were for the time what those of the far Northwest have been in later years, and the primacy was won in valne of products, which the census of 1880 still ac- cords to New York.
Manufactures, repressed in their beginning by British legislation, having escaped from that restriction, put to use the natural resources, the water-power. the climatic advantages, which have made the State master in diversity, vol- ume, and wealth in this department. Iron was worked from the ore, and by bloomeries and trip - hammers and rolling mills, and for ma- chinery and domestic and mechanical uses. Woolen and linen, cotton, and some silk cloth were weaved. Leather was tanned, paper and glass made ; while clocks, copper, brass and tin wares, hats, oils, beer, spirits, and other diversified industries, employed capital and labor. The value of specified manufactures in 1811 is stated at 830,000,000, and of this sum household labor is credited with 812,000,000. Such production and such traffic required all the facilities of the waterways which nature had surveyed, which had afforded paths for war, and which enterprise now sought to im- prove and connect, and to supplement by high- ways and bridges.
The Dutch had laid the foundation of
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schools, and the English colony had estab- lished a college. In 1784 a board of regents of the university was established to extend and elevate Columbia College, but it soon was broad- ened for the oversight of all academies and colleges, and, with a gift of public lands, en- tered on the tasks still committed to it, with projects higher than have been yet attained. Union College was the first institution of that rank to receive a charter from the board, in 1795, although in 1793 Samuel Kirkland, with the encouragement of Alexander Hamilton, had founded Hamilton Oneida Academy, " for the mutual benefit of the young and flourishing set- tlements and the various tribes of confederate Indians," and time has ripened the seed he planted into Hamilton College. In 1795 also, on the recommendation of Governor Clinton, an appropriation of $50,000 was made by the legis- lature, of which the interest was to be applied in the ratio of population, with like sums raised by local tax, to the payment of wages of teachers in common schools. In 1800 a lottery was authorized to raise 8100,000 for colleges and schools. On such foundations grew the school system for which now nearly $14,000,000 is annually expended from taxation alone.
By the settlement of a long-standing con- troversy between the two States, Massachu-
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setts, in 1786, received the preemption right to 230,000 acres between the Oswego and Che- nango, and to 6,000,000 acres near Seneca Lake and in the Genesee Valley and west of it. These lands passed into the hands of Oliver Phelps, who held also a treaty with the Sene- cas, and he, with his associates, opened the vast tracts to settlers. Failing in his specu- lation, he lost his title, which passed, through Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution, to Dutch capitalists, who organized the Holland Land Company, which divided its estates into small farms, and sold them to actual settlers on long credit. The speculation of Phelps brought in many immigrants from New England, par- ticularly into the Genesee Valley and west- ward. From Connecticut came also into the upper part of the Mohawk many families plant- ing homes. Samuel Kirkland, who began his labors among the Iroquois in 1764, chose finally the Oneidas as the field of his mission, and, receiving a patent for land in 1789, built a house as its centre in the town which bears his name. This New England movement included frequently a missionary element. The settlers planted homes for themselves, and they carried schools and churches into every neighborhood, which they intended should be for a blessing to red men as well as whites. Religious activity
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THE FIRST TASKS OF PEACE.
was indeed general among the several denom- inations, and organizations were established, church edifices erected, and work planned for extending their borders. In jurisprudence, the constitutions one after another, and the stat- utes, as they came to be passed, attracted the newer States to look to New York for their models. In the law, distinguished ability and wide acquirements were manifest, as the names prominent in political positions give assurance ; and in the medical profession science was assert- ing itself more and more.
The fur trade had been the source of wealth to Albany, and afterwards to Oswego in smaller measure. The war and the alienation of the Iroquois put an end to it. In violation of the treaty of peace, the British for a while held possession of Oswegatchie, Oswego and Niagara, and thus forced whatever traffic remained in furs to Buffalo as its centre; and in 1811 a single cargo received there by lake was valued at $150,000. The peltries were gathered in the West, and shipped in bulk, and Buffalo therefore lacked the picturesque features of the original trade, when Indians in vast numbers brought their trophies to the market on the Hudson. The change was great to Albany. The effect upon the State was to direct enterprise to the clearing of the forests, to agriculture, to
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NEW YORK.
the beginnings of manufactures, and to general traffic. Albany became thus the centre of a trade in grain, and of supplies for the settlers. It was in 1786 the sixth city in the Union in population, with 3,050 inhabitants, and in wealth and culture and hospitality it held at least equal rank. Its growth gave it, in 1810, 10,762 inhabitants.
But New York was easily at the head after peace wrought its effects. The legislature, which since the State was organized had been meeting at Kingston and Poughkeepsie, and once in Al- bany in 1784 and thereafter until 1788, held its sessions in New York, then, after two sessions in Poughkeepsie, chose its home definitely in Albany. Congress also, December 23, 1784, re- moved its meetings to New York. The City Hall on Wall Street was, by private subscrip- tions amounting to $32,500. remodeled for its occupancy, and was renamed Federal Hall. The coming of the representatives of the nation was very welcome after the British possession. The first session under the constitution was fixed for March 4, 1789; but, owing to bad roads, to delays in the elections, and in some degree to a lack of attention to public affairs, a quorum did not appear in the house of repre- sentatives until March 30, nor in the senate until April 6. Then Washington was declared
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THE FIRST TASKS OF PEACE.
unanimously chosen President of the Republic, and here he was welcomed by Governor Clin- ton when he came to enter upon his high office. Very brilliant was the scene when, under the bright sun of April 30, the first Presi- dent took the oath of office, on the balcony of Federal Hall ; and at night illuminations and fireworks testified to the popular joy.
New York continued to be the seat of the fed- eral government until December, 1790. Gov- ernment and city impressed each other, and the social festivities were doubtless more numerous and on a larger scale than they were for a long period after the capital was located on the Poto- mac. European styles and manners were in- troduced, not only by immigrants and mer- chants, but by John Adams especially, and in less degree by Jay and others who were sent to represent the young republic abroad, and brought home some of the display of foreign courts and society. The growing town was, in its inhabitants and in its spirit, cosmopolitan. Looked upon somewhat askance by Puritan New England, it yet " showed much greater at- tention to good morals than has been supposed," as a worthy Connecticut matron testified. The- atrical representations, which had been discon- tinned throughout the country during the war on the recommendation of the continental con-
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gress, were resumed in New York; while not only New England, but Pennsylvania and South Carolina as well, interdicted them. In 1786 the first American play ever produced was enacted here; it was a comedy entitled "The Con- trast," by Royal Tyler, afterward chief justice of Vermont, and its story turned on American captives in Algeria, and first introduced " Yan- kee" speech and manners on the stage. The erection in 1795 of the edifice for the New York Society library testified to the public spirit and love for learning which the people were foster- ing. The signs of intellectual activity were many and varied. Lectures were fashionable, and scientific themes were in especial favor. Art was the gratification of the few, who were to wait some years to organize associations to promote it.
The newspapers were not yet numerous, and each on that account wielded a distinct power. They were generally, in city and country, par- tisan organs, and indulged in personal attacks and virulence of language, due to outside con- tributors, who, however, could not shirk responsi- bility. The leaders of parties used this medium for reaching the people. Sometimes the news- paper office was assailed by a mob. as when the office of Greenleaf's " Patriotic Register " was destroyed by a federal mob, July, 1788, for sat-
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irizing too freely the celebration of the ratifica- tion of the constitution. Quite as frequently the authors whose personality was discovered were held to account. A sad incident of this kind in 1798 exhibits the aggravation of the writers, and the passions of the subjects of their assaults. Brockholst Livingston, in ridiculing the organ- izers of a federal meeting, exasperated Mr. Jones, who was one of them, to such rage that he assailed the writer with a cane, and a duel followed, in which Jones became a victim to this style of partisan warfare.
In New York city, in 1795, the federalists had two papers, - the "Advertiser," of which Noah Webster, afterwards famous as a lexicographer, was editor, and the " Packet " of Samuel Lou- don. Greenfield's "Journal " stood for the re- publicans. The " Price Current " represented the commercial interests. Albany in that year maintained three newspapers. Orange and Ul- ster had each two. In Columbia. Dutchess. Suf- folk, and Rensselaer, respectively, one served the wants of the inhabitants. They were generally political journals, even when the title suggested devotion to the interests of the farmers. West of Albany only two newspapers were printed at this period, the " Herald" at Otsego, and the "Gazette " at Whitestown; but, with the in- crease of population, papers soon began to multiply.
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Growth and enterprise, and manifest im- provement in intellectual and moral, as well as material, respects, in this period, were marked in city and country. The settlements begun, the capital invested, the industries established, the projects proposed, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, gave assurance that New York was to make good use of its natural advantages, and to move on towards imperial greatness.
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CHAPTER XXVII.
PARTIES, THEIR LEADERS AND THEIR DIVISIONS.
1789-1801.
IN New York, parties were arrayed on na- tional lines as soon as the constitution was adopted, and the strife ran so high that the vote of the State was not cast at the first elec- tion for president ; nor did its senators appear in their seats until the first session of the federal congress was well advanced. In the legislature of 1788, Governor Clinton and his friends held a majority in the assembly, while the federal- ists, with Hamilton for their leader, controlled the senate. The former claimed that United States senators and presidential electors should be chosen by joint ballot of the two houses, as is the practice now; while the upper house in- sisted that a concurrent vote of the bodies act- ing separately was required for an election. They came to no agreement until July 1, 1789, and thus the commonwealth had no share in the election of Washington for his first term,
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