USA > New York > New York City > Old New York : a journal relating to the history and antiquities of New York City, Vol. II > Part 36
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& son in New York, an enforced "absence," and in William's behalf, could he consistently reverse events and order the revolution back ? The broad question for William to consider was the status of the revolution as a whole; not in New York alone, but in Bos- ton, the colonies and England itself. As plain Dutch sense put it at the time : " If it was that Leisler did be ill, how came the King and Queen to sit on the throne !" His letter certainly evaded the difficulty, at least for the present. If Nicholson was yet in power, it authorized him to continue to act. If not, if a revolution had superseded him as well as Andros, it recognized " for the time be- ing" such as took care " for preserving the peace and administer- ·ing the laws." So the Committee of Safety understood it, and upon that understanding they honestly acted. So undoubtedly , the Boston committee would have acted ; as the government de facto, the proper recipients of the letter. Where was the differ- · ence? A revolution in both, in New York only obscured by the existence of parties and the persistent claims of Philipse, Van Cortlandt and Bayard, men for two years practically powerless, and not named nor officially designated in the letter. Let it here be said that neither was the appropriation of that letter, a royal letter, made a matter of indictment against Leisler. The Attor- ney General claimed pay for drawing up several indictments and was an able lawyer, but he did not include this charge nor this period of the history.
I have thus brought it down to a charge to this day made against Leisler-his so-called usurpation of the Lieut. Governor- ship. In reality what? His appointment thereto by the Com- mittee of Safety, who had already made him military commander of the province. And what would William himself have been in history, had James won the battle of the Boyne ? A usurper, branded and traduced by his opponents like Leisler, or as was Cromwell in his day. The Committee of Safety, at least, were not usurpers. Elected and sustained during this interim-a period understood by all parties to be ad interim-elected and sustained during it by a clear majority of the people ; if they were tsu pers, what shall we say of the Boston committee and the acting Gov- ernors in the other revolted colonies ? If we brand one we must brand all, brand the revolution throughout, brand the very idea of
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a popular revolution. But, in addition, the New York committee had what the other colonies had not, what they deemed authority for their action conveyed to them by the king's letter. In Con- necticut they rejected Andros, the royal Governor, and appointed their own. In New York, which had no general Assembly, nothing but a Lieut. Governor and Council, the captains first in control sent the matter directly to the people of the province. The people elected the committee of safety, and they in turn, as sup- posedly within the scope of the king's letter, made Leisler acting Lieut. Governor. And neither was this matter in the indictment upon which he was tried. Indeed how merely partisan was the opposition to his assumption of the title may be seen from two letters of Bayard himself, one of them dated January 24, 1690. A prisoner in the fort of as yet only two days, but laboring, as he says, under "an extreme sickness of body," he writes "to the Hon. Jacob Leisler, Esq., Lieut. Governor of the province of New York, and the Hon. Council," letters in which he acknowledged his error, craves pardon, and humbly petitions consideration and release ! Of course he had to swallow much pride, but there are the letters.
So to Leisler's Lieut. Governorship in her emergency yielded Albany a trifle later, when he was her only source of supplies. Indubitably his was the power in the province at the time, and so acknowledged to be by the other colonies. But for Leisler per- sonally the position was full of difficulty and not devoid of danger. His elevation concentrated upon his head many porten- tous winds and wrathful storm clouds. It made him a mark for new venom, new arrows that were laid to the string and let fly both at home and abroad. Usurpation it was called, and. even during the peril of war, whatever he did was to his enemies usurpation. He came to his duties without experience; a man unused to art or concealment or the ways of policy-straight out in word or deed as conviction or feeling moved him, an honest German; a man in temperament apparently much like Stuyve- sant, brave, sturdy, sometimes obstinate and sometimes choleric Stuyvesant -who would have fired upon the British fleet in bulk but for his minister's final appeal. As such a man personally. governing revolutionary elements, watched and opposed throughout
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by a party ready to malign his every word and act, and that certainly had the prestige in England, his was indeed a position of difficulty and doubtful result. One cannot do justice to this narrative who forgets the circumstances of the case. Passions running high in a small city, principally there, 200 years ago. An aristocratic party, clever, astute and determined, and a popular party arrayed against it. History has other instances of the same, and the bitterness evolved -waters boiling in a cauldron and all the more disturbed that the space was small. Under such con- ditions one might need the astuteness of William, or even the stature and proportions of Cromwell, himself abused living and dead, and his enemies holding the field of history for two cen- turies. And I see Leisler so placed, a minor man to William or Cromwell; as it were some shipmaster called to the command to navigate untried waters, amid rocks and contrary currents, and with breakers booming dangerously across the bow. No easy thing to steer his craft safely in such a scene! What wonder if, through some faulty turn of the wheel or the pressure of wind. and wave and current, he should meet at last with disaster !
The advancement of Leisler to the Lieutenant Governorship made a change in the committee of safety, eight of whom now became his council, Dec. 11, 1689. They were, from the county and city of New York, Peter De la Noy, Dr. Samuel Staats, Hendrick Janzen and Johannes Vermilye; from Kings, Captain Gerardus Beekman, M. D .; from Queens, Samuel Edsall ; from Westchester, Capt. Thomas Williams; from Orange, William Lawrence-French, English and Dutch. A real council, let me say, since the acts of the majority were to be the acts of all. To return, then, to the old story, were these men of "the lower classes, the rabble ?" To this it might be replied that New York itself had at the time but a small proportion of people who could be so called; a city where, say Bancroft and other authorities, " beggars were unknown and all the poor were cared for," and where outside a favored few "great equality of condition pre- vailed." The Huguenots, although some of them poor, were intelli- gent, industrious and God fearing; not the kind of stuff out of which to make even a diminutive rabble. The more numerous Dutch, the prevailing class, had strict Sabbath and other laws; and
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if they could not write English well, were well read in the Bible and Heidelberg catechism and the history of Holland, they and their children. Learning was difficult to get ; but solid and indus- trious citizens they were as a class-the pioneer ancestry of many reputable families, the crude ore out of which American life has moulded much fine material. As one of just such Philipse him- self grew up, only sharper than the rest in money making and land getting. But concerning the council. Peter De la Noy, a Hugue- not, was well known and prominent both before and after these events. Dr. Samuel Staats was afterwards councillor under Earl Bellomont, and again under Gov. Hunter; and his daughter was the first wife of Chief Justice Lewis Morris. Hendrick Janzen was apparently a relative of Anetje Jans; and Johannes Ver- milye was an original patentee of Harlaem, from whom the family name has descended, an elder in the church and trusted with office by his fellow townsmen again and again. These for the city. Of the others, Captain and Dr. Gerardus Beekman, of Flatbush, L. I., was an elder of that church under Dominie Varick, his sister the first wife of Nicolas Stuyvesant. As senior councillor when Lord Lovelace died, he became acting Governor ; and it is from him and the De la Noy and Keteltas families that our later Beekmans are proud to claim descent. William Lawrence, another, succeeded , Van Cortlandt himself when he died, as councillor to Earl Bello- mont-a man, it was said, " of good estate and honest understand- ing;" and in these very troubles opposed to his own uncle, John Lawrence, a man of wealth and education and prominence-so were families divided. I shall only add to this list a very im- portant official, Abraham Gouverneur, the clerk ; a young Hugue- not who " could read, write and speak readily " the three principal languages of New York, and one whose education, like Bayard's, was remarkable for his age and time ; a prominent man for years thereafter and whose niece, the daughter of his brother Isaac, as the second wife of Chief Justice Morris became the mother of that distinguished publicist, Gouverneur Morris. These were the men who, with two or three others and as Leisler's council, re- placed the favored rooks who had pre-empted the belfry of govern- ment under the royal governors! Not men of the lower classes, certainly ! Indeed, a few years later, in 1715, in what was then
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called the " court circle "-so had time socially intermixed the families-we find both Van Cortlandts, Bayards, De Peysters, Beekmans, Gouverneurs and Staatses. It is, therefore, as mere campaign literature, that I quote a paper sent to William and Mary, May 19, 1690, of which one knows neither who wrote nor who actually signed it, valueless as history, but which has been used against Leisler ; a paper ostensibly from "the merchant traders and others the principal inhabitants of New York." These " principal inhabitants of New York," as they modestly claim to be, were just thirty-six in number; that is, including Rev. Mr. Pieret, the French minister, a citizen of two years' standing, and Dominie Varick, of Long Island. By some subtlety in the social scales, Dominie Selyns and the eminent Daillé, his French col- league, do not figure in the list. According to these " principal inhabitants," and as they proceed to inform their majesties, New York was "at the sole rule of an insolent alien "-that is, one not born in their majesties' dominions, a German. Presumably a deli- cate compliment to William, an intimation that they did not believe him to have been born in Holland, although some within his dominions did call him an insolent and usurping Dutchman ! But, considering the French names upon the paper, the word . " alien" was rather remarkable. Where had they themselves '. been born ; and as compared with Leisler, how long were they in the country ? And he was " assisted by some few who formerly were not thought fit to bear the meanest office, to whom they could give no better name than a rabble, and several of whom could be proved guilty of enormous crimes; who imprisoned at will, opened letters, seized estates, plundered houses and abused the clergymen !" Sufficiently partisan, whoever signed it. Cer- tainly Rev. Mr. Pieret never himself wrote his name " Pieretz."
But it enables us to give attention to one special point. It is by details that we must reach results, through much tangled un- derbrush of misrepresentation that we must clear the way to ulti- mate light and truth. They " abused the clergymen !" And why abuse the clergymen ? Leisler and his council were, perhaps all of them, members or officers of churches-at the least three of them were elders under Dominie Selyns and Dominie Varick. If, as the principal ones, the Dutch clergy of that day were tena-
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cious of their dignity, no less respectful, in general, were the peo- ple. It was their habit. Upon what, then, if true at all, was this charge grounded ? The answer will give us, what we seek, far- ther insight into this revolution. The Dutch ministers then in the province were Dominie Dellius of Albany, Selyns of New York, and Varick of Long Island, Letters of theirs to the Classis of Amsterdam are now in process of translation, in charge of Chap- lain Roswell R. Hoes of the Navy. In one of these from Dominie Varick, who suffered the most-a letter dated April 9, 1693, when it was all over-he tells the Classis how the love of years among his people had now for about four years been turned into hate towards him. He gives as the cause " the change in the govern- ment." Yet why on that account turn against a beloved minis- ter? Here is some lift in the fog : "the common people were calling their authorities traitors, papists," and the like, and "the preachers seeing that was wrong tried to persuade the people of it." So stated, small cause for such hate! There the dominie drops the matter, but we may fill in the history. It may not be known how long those farmers of Long Island and the Dutch else- where had been seeking some measure of self-government. They petitioned for it under Stuyvesant, but he refused. He would none of elections "by the rabble." But freedom was in their blood; and so again in 1681, "prompted (says Bancroft) by an exalted instinct, they demanded power to govern themselves." They did not get it, but new exactions under James. Their op- portunity was William ; and " their authorities " at the time were Philipse, Van Cortlandt and Bayard-men associated in every mind with James " the popish king" and his regime, and who, even after his overthrow, still resisted the rising popular tide. Unfortunately, the Dutch ministers took the unpopular side, in favor of these old and obnoxious " authorities"-in this different from the clergy of Boston and New England, who there guided and in a measure controlled the revolution. That was all there was against them, this the pith and core of their offending. And does it not show beyond anything in this history the broad acreage of this revolution and its deeper causes-that it was not (as fool- ishly asserted) the wicked work and tyranny of Leisler and a few, a city rabble ? In 1693, when Leisler was dead and his council were
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prisoners, and not then till Governor Fletcher had sent a threaten- ing letter to the Consistory, only 102 out of 500 church members could Dominie Varick gather to his communion. He had like- wise preached at Bergen and Hackensack and Staten Island ; but they would no longer hear nor have him administer the com- munion. At Harlaem, that excellent church was an out-station of Dominie Selyns. He had baptized and married some of them years before. But in this matter he was on one side and they very generally on the other ; with the consequence that after the half yearly communion in 1690 (Oct. 9), they refused his ministrations for some years. His immediate charge was the old Dutch church in New York, where were wealthy and influential officers and members like Philipse and Van Cortlandt and Bayard. The Gov- ernor's pew was there. A majority of the members sided with the council and the minister. And yet his salary was much with- held, greatly to his trouble and annoyance ; and so late as Novem- ber, 1693, it was a question whether he would not have to resign (as Dominie Dellius writes) through " the ill-will of his congrega- tion !" And as to Dellius himself-in Albany, with (as he says) a more " peaceable " people, and notwithstanding the great influ- ence of Peter Schuyler aud others, the congregation was divided. Could anything tell the story better ? These were churches, their own church members and people, the moral elements in the com- munity, and thus divided, thus largely and hotly against their ministers !
The French Huguenots were, apparently, equally divided in sentiment. In the church founded by Rev. Mr. Pieret in 1687, as Rev. Mr. Wittmeyer its annalist and present pastor avers, a strong opposition to Leisler existed, led by a few influential men. Rev. Mr. Pieret was doubtless with them. But, as Mr. Wittmey- er's examination also showed, the great majority in and around New York supported Leisler. These were probably the pastoral charge of Rev. Mr. Daille, the French colleague of Dominie Sel- yns ; who in the closing scene induced large numbers of them, in New York and Harlaem and New Rochelle and other places, to join in a petition to the Governor for Leisler's pardon. Such was the position of things with ministers and churches. "Abused " by their people in the ways mentioned and by word of mouth, in
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this great excitement, some of the former undoubtedly were. Dominie Varick fled to the South for a time from his own con- gregation, they were so incensed against him. But were they abused, and how, by Leisler and his council? Dominie Varick was later on imprisoned, but not (as we shall see) by Leisler or his council. Dominie Selyns once had his house invaded by soldiers in search of Bayard-roughly and with loose discipline, no doubt, to the hurt of his feelings but not of his person. He never suffered personal molestation or violence. Yet are his sufferings among the wails of this history. Dominie Dellius, in a letter of self-defense against Earl Bellomont in 1699, writes the grave charge against Leisler that he once publicly called Dominie Selyns "an old rogue "; in church, it is elsewhere said ! Very improper in Leisler, very unpleasant German frankness, not to be com- mended for imitation in these more quiet and gentle times. Yet in retributive and historical justice, one would like to know the text, the subject, the particular remark (not recorded) which pro- duced this wrathful explosion. Stuyvesant (or he is belied) might have said just the same or worse. May we not leave such things, mere words, mere rents in official dignity, and there was little else, as unworthy of notice in a history which ended in blood ? Domi- nie Selyns was a good and learned man, but who sometimes used large and exuberant language ; as when, for their benefit in Eng- land, he wrote a Latin certificate testifying that Philipse, Van Cortlandt and Bayard were " pious, candid and modest Protestant Christians, filling the offices of deacons and elders with consum- mate approbation and praise." He used such language about his sufferings. Rev. Mr. Pieret and Rev. Mr. Daillé were not mo- lested, nor was Dominie Dellius actually, by Leisler or his council.
Leisler's public acts as Lieut. Governor now demand of us a brief notice. The time for such was short, but he was not idle. Early in February, 1690, occurred the massacre and the burning of Schenectady. Count Frontenac had opened his campaign along the frontier. In the city the French refugees were almost in panic. Leisler was at once all energy. Within ten days dele- gates were on their way to confer with the other colonies as to the public safety ; to Connecticut (Feb. 21) Johannes Vermilye, Benjamin Blagge and Leisler's son-in-law Milborne. He raised a
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force of 160 men and sent them to Albany-now as willing as she had before been unwilling to recognize his authority. He called a provincial assembly-the second of its kind-to provide means for the war. And in May he convened, to meet in New York, the first Colonial Congress. This Congress decided what each colony should furnish-New York 400 men, Connecticut 130, Maryland 100, and so on with the rest. In addition thereto Leis- ler fitted out in New York five vessels-three for the expedition from Boston against Quebec, and two to keep the French out 'of Long Island sound. In doing so, as De Peyster afterwards de- clared to have been within his own knowledge, he spent a large por- tion of his own estate. Were these services recognized when the end came ? No, nor mentioned nor permitted in any way to miti- gate his sentence. It was only by the efforts of Earl Bellomont and De Peyster and Dr. Staats and young Leisler with the king that any part of the money spent was subsequently returned. At the time his efforts in behalf of the province were really turned against him. The expedition north under General Winthrop, of Connecticut, from which so much had been expected, failed to do anything and led Leisler into unwise recriminations ; and unfor- tunately the naval outfit under Sir William Phipps was equally unsuccessful. But they cost money. When the provincial As- sembly at last met it had to levy taxes, war taxes as usual unpopu- lar, and any and every attempt to collect which became fuel for clamor against Leisler. Nevertheless, his prompt public spirit and efficiency as a Lieut. Governor are undeniable ; and this so called usurper it was, to whom, with his council, must be credited the organization of the first Colonial Congress for mutual defense, a century plant whose fuller fruitage was the United States. This same so called usurper and his council it was, likewise, who first among New York officials voluntarily called into being a provin- cial Assembly, as the source of legislation and taxation, a principle rejected by James but reaffirmed by William, in its results our State legislature. Leisler was a democrat, conducting, against great opposition, especially in Albany and New York, a demo- cratic revolution. A man of the people, he believed in the people. At the beginning he was for a committee of safety, elected by the people. And in Albany, aristocratic Albany, which resisted him
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till the time of the war, the contention of his officers was that the old James charter was null and that they ought to have a free election by the people. A spasm of liberty, repressed, though only so, by 100 years of British domination yet to come !
A faithful exhibit of events prior to the closing scenes requires us to add one more topic to this review. Even during the war, busy as Leisler was in bringing the colonies together, in arranging expeditions, in mustering troops, in equipping vessels, in providing guns and stores for destitute Albany, he and his council also had the disaffected to look after. They kept up the contest and the heat of neither party subsided. In such circumstances what was to be expected ? Measures of repression, arrests, fines, imprison- ments-some by the local courts, some by order of council-some- times, also, searches by soldiers, and sometimes therewith excesses by soldiers. Revolutionary times these, 200 years ago, not our times! And the difference is important. Consider the tre- mendous violations of law and right in England under James and Jeffries up to 1689; the extortions, spoliations, imprisonments, under Andros, the royal governors and their council up to the same date; that Leisler had himself been imprisoned by Andros; that imprisonment was the ready "catholicon " for almost all offences at the time ; that Rev. Mr. Van Rensselaer, a clergyman, had been imprisoned in Albany in 1676 for words, heresy, spoken in a sermon ; that Andros and others were at the very date held in prison in Boston by its committee of safety! Some of these things heating to the temper, and all of them a bad example to revolutionary times if not necessary! In New York the only safe holding place was the fort. And now let us examine the oft- repeated charge against Leisler of exceptional tyranny in these matters. As a clergyman imprisoned under his administration and harshly treated (it is said), and who "ultimately died from the effects of his ill-treatment," the case of Dominie Varick naturally claims precedence. But Dominie Varick, as we know, early in these difficulties fled from his own congregation into Pennsylvania. Afterwards returning, he was, at a later time, charged by some of them with high treason, arrested, fined by a court, and then im- prisoned by it in the fort for nonpayment, during five months. There he had a lighted chamber, in this differing from some
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others, and spent the time in learning French from Captain D'Eau, a captured French emissary to the Mohawks. Not specially harsh treatment! This and more, a long letter, he writes two years afterwards, without mentioning, perhaps through forgetfulness, that he had "ultimately died of his ' ill treatment!'" There were others with him in the fort not so well off, some with "windows nailed up or underground," evidently wherever they could put them for safe keeping. And some there were, he says, "with irons on the legs," i. e., chained by one leg. Except this letter it must now be said there is little in the way of record, apart from loose and partisan allegation, to give us any definite idea as to who or how many were thus imprisoned and treated during Leisler's administration. That they would be disaffected persons, more or less dangerous, is unquestionable. That they were not hundreds is certain. They were not scooped in from the community like fish in a net, or as people were during the French revolution. Recorded court " affidavits" against individuals do not indicate a large number. The records of the council, as we have them. contain but few names of persons to be arrested; and but few are . mentioned or alluded to as in confinement when the fort was sur- rendered. Indeed, of leading and active partisans, the most likely to be made to suffer, the most of them were not molested. The names of such would have been given ; and at the time of the trial names appear of active participants therein, men too prominent to be overlooked, who were never personally the victims of Leisler's tyranny. Minvielle, for instance, had been a captain, deserted the rest, was at once placed in the council by Sloughter when he came, and voted for Leisler's death ; would he not have been one ? It was not really the great number imprisoned but the quality of some few who were, that gave vehemence to the outcry against Leisler.
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