USA > New York > The Empire State: a compendious history of the commonwealth of New York > Part 15
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Robert Hunter, a Scotchman, succeeded Lord Lovelace as Governor of New York. He had risen in military rank from a private soldier to brigadier-general. His literary accomplishments had gained for him the friendship of Addison and Swift, and his handsome person and
* Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, was born in 1678, and became a member of Parliament in 1701. In 1704 he was made Secretary of War, and left office with a change in the ministry in 1708. In 1710 he became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and was the principal negotiator of the treaty of Utrecht in 1713. He had been created Viscount Bolingbroke, and became prime-minister a few weeks before the death of Queen Anne. Being known as a Jacobite, he now fled to France, and entered the service of the Pretender, who appointed him his prime-minister. In 1720 he married a French lady, and was permitted to return to England in 1723. He died in 1751. Boling. broke was a good writer and brilliant orator. Pope addressed his " Essay on Man" to St. John.
+ " According to Harley," says Smith, in his History of New York, " this expedition was a contrivance of Bolingbroke, Moore, and the Lord Chancellor Harcourt to cheat the public of twenty thousand pounds. The latter of these was pleased to say, 'No gov- ernment was worth serving that would not admit of such advantageous jobs.'"
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IMMIGRATION OF PALATINES.
insinuating manners had won the hand of a peeress-Lady Hay. By her influence he obtained the appointment first to the office of Lieutenant- Governor of Virginia, and then Governor of New York and New Jersey.
With Hunter came three thousand German Lutherans, refugees from the Palatinate of the Rhine, who had been driven from their homes by the perseentions of the King of France, and had taken refuge in England. The queen and Par- Ar Hunter. liament sent them to America free of expense. They settled some on Livingston's Manor, some in the valley of the Scho- harie, others on the Upper Mo- hawk at the "German Flats," and some in the city of New SIGNATURE OF ROBERT IIUNTER. York, where they built a Luther- an church. A large portion of these refugees settled in Pennsylvania, and became the ancestors of much of the German population in that State. A few went to North Carolina.
It was during Hunter's administration that the Tuscaroras fled from North Carolina (1712) and joined their Iroquois brethren in New York, as we have observed, and so made the Confederacy a league of Six Nations. In the same year the inhabitants of New York were greatly disturbed by appre- hensions of an impending servile insurrection A there. The population of the city was then about six thousand, a large proportion of which were negro slaves.
IMPETV
At that time there was a brisk slave-trade carried on at New York, Newport, and Bos- NON ton, for since the revolution (1688) this trade had been thrown open." The slaves in New SEAL OF ROBERT HUNTER. York were held in the most abject bondage, and the masters were forbidden by law to set them free. In 1709 a slave-market was established at the foot of Wall Street, where they were sold and hired. A slave caught ont at night
* The Stuart kings of England had chartered slave-dealing companies, and Charles II. and his brother, the Duke of York, were shareholders in them. In 1713 an English company obtained the privilege of supplying the Spanish colonies in America with African slaves for thirty years, stipulating to deliver one hundred and forty-four thousand negro slaves within that period. One quarter of the stock of the company was
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
without a lantern and a lighted candle in it was put in jail and his master was fined ; and the authorities pledged themselves that the prisoner should receive thirty-nine lashes at the whipping-post if the master desired it. Other punishments for offences were sometimes very ernel. Human nature revolted, but chiefly under a mask. From time to time the slaves made some resistance. In one case they murdered a white family in revenge.
" Conscience makes cowards of us all." A rumor spread that a plot of the negroes to murder the white people and burn the city had been discovered. A sense of impending peril filled the town with terror. A riot that occurred at that moment, during which a house was burnt and several white people were killed, intensified the alarm. The magistrates acted promptly. The jail and other strong places were immediately filled with suspected slaves. Almost without evidence nineteen suspects were found guilty of conspiracy, and were summarily hanged or burnt alive. A similar scene occurred thirty years after- ward.
Hunter's administration was marked by frequent and violent, contests between the chief magistrate and the Assembly, the latter boldly assert- ing that they possessed an inherent right to legislate, not from any com- mission or grant from the crown, but from the free choice and election of the people, who ought not, nor justly could be divested of their prop- erty, by taxation or otherwise, without their consent." The governor could not assent to this republican doctrine, and the Assembly would not reeede a line.
Hunter loved ease and quiet. These disputations wearied him. At one time he wrote : " I have spent three years in such torture and vex- ation that nothing in life ean make amends for it." In 1719 failing health compelled him to return to England, when he left the govern- ment of the province in the hands of Colonel Peter Schuyler, the senior member of his Council.
William Burnet* succeeded Hunter as Governor of New York, and
taken by King Philip V. of Spain, and Queen Anne of England reserved for herself another quarter.
* William Burnet, a son of the eminent Bishop Burnet, was born at the Hague in 1688, and had William the Prince of Orange (afterward William III. of England) for his godfather. He had been engaged in publie office in London when he was appointed Governor of New York and New Jersey. He reached New York in September, 1720. His administration was popular. On the accession of George II. he was transferred to the government of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, in 1728. He is represented as majestic in stature, frank in manner, witty and brilliant in conversation. He was also a elever writer. Governor Burnet died in Boston in September, 1729.
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A WISE ADMINISTRATOR OF GOVERNMENT.
inherited his political discomforts ; but he soon found a cure for them in his own disposition and the exercise of common sense. His administra- tion of about eight years (1720-28) was generally serene and more bene- ficial to the province than any which had preceded it. Indeed, it was more quiet than any which succeeded it in the colonial period. Toward the last he incurred the enmity of a powerful body of merchants who controlled the Assembly, and his position was made so uncomfortable that he was transferred to the gov- ernment of Massachusetts at his own request.
Governor Burnet was a scholar, but not a recluse, and soon became very popular. He " was gay and condescending," affected no pomp, but visited every family of repu- tation, and often diverted himself in free converse with the ladies, by whom he was much admired. He made few changes among public officers. He called Dr. Cadwallader Colden and James Alexander to the Council Board. They were both men of learning and sterling worth. Colden was a philosopher, and was specially WILLIAM BURNET. familiar with the affairs of the colony and with matters pertaining to the Indians, and the latter was an able lawyer and man of business. The governor's most trusted con- fidant was Chief-Justice Lewis Morris.
The Assembly, in response to the governor's first message to them. returned a most cordial address, and voted him a five years' support. Everything was done to promote harmony and good feeling. Such con- fidence did the governor repose in the integrity, wisdom, and patriotism of the Assembly that he did not dissolve them, but continued them on, session after session, until jealousy was excited by the self-interest of certain merchants.
Since the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 a large and increasing trade had been carried on between merchants in New York and Albany and the French in Canada, in goods salable among the Indians. The Iroquois, who were thus compelled to buy most of these goods from the French, as "middle men," at a high price, complained to the commissioners of
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
Indian Affairs,* because the trade was injurious to them. Wise men in and out of the Assembly perceived the danger that might ensue to the friendship between the Five Nations and the English by this continual trade intercourse with the French, for the Jesuit missionaries were now more active than ever in their endeavors to alienate the Iroquois from the English and to win them to the French interest. A law was finally passed prohibiting this inter-colonial traffic. The governor also perceived the necessity of acquiring control of Lake On- tario for the benefit of trade and the security of the friendship of the Six Nations, so as to frustrate the designs of the French. Accordingly, in 1722, with the sanction of SEAL OF CADWALLADER COLDEN. the Assembly, he cansed a trading-house to be erected at Oswego, at the month of the Onondaga River. These measures at once created a strong opposition to the provincial government among the merchants engaged in the inter- colonial trade, and excited the indignation and alarm of the French in Canada, for they saw that their trade and their dominion were both in peril. The latter immediately proceeded to erect a strong store- house at the mouth of the Niagara River, and to repair the fort there. Unable to prevent this work, the governor caused a fort to be built at Oswego, at his own private expense, for the protection of the trading post and trade there. The French were incensed and made threats, but prudently curbed their wrath.
This state of things disturbed the political tranquillity of the province. Party spirit grew apace, and there finally arose such a clamor against the "permanent" and " unconstitutional " Assembly that the governor dis- solved them. There was great excitement at the ensuing election, and when the new Assembly met, in the spring of 1727, the majority of the
# The commissioners of Indian Affairs resided at Albany. They served as such without salaries, but the advantages as traders which their position gave them was ample compensation. For many years William Johnson (made Sir William in 1755) was the sole Commissioner of Indian Affairs and became very wealthy, especially in land. It was the business of the commissioners to maintain the friendship of the Iroquois. They received and distributed the moneys and presents provided for that purpose. A secretary was paid for keeping a record of these transactions. At the breaking out of the Revolution, power wielded by Sir William Johnson alone passed again into the hands of a committee.
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THE POLITICAL TRANQUILLITY DISTURBED.
members were ill-affected toward the chief magistrate. His removal seemed necessary to insure the public tranquillity, and on April 15th, 1728, Governor Burnet surrendered into the hands of John Montgomery (or Montgomerie), his appointed successor, the great seal of the province."
Montgomery was a Scotchman. Ile was bred a soldier, and had held a place at court and also a seat in Parliament. He was much inferior to his predecessor in abilities, and made no pretensions to scholarship. Loving his ease, he allowed public affairs to flow on placidly, and during the three years of his administration nothing of special public importance
C
FORT IN OSWEGO, IN 1750. (From a print in Smith's " History of New York.")
occurred in the colony excepting the repeal of the law (1729) prohibiting the trade with the Canadians. This repeal was effected through the influence of the interested merchants. This trade worked mischief.
Governor Montgomery died on July 1st, 1731, when the chief com- mand of the province devolved on Rip Van Dam, the senior member of the Council and an eminent and wealthy merchant. Van Dam filled the office well until August 1st, 1732, when William Cosby arrived bearing a commission as governor of the province of New York.
Just before the death of Montgomery a settlement of the long-con- tinned controversy about the boundary-line between New York and Con-
* The provincial seal of New York was changed (as in other provinces) on the acces- sion of successive monarchs. There were two great seals of New York made during the reign of Queen Anne, on which appeared an effigy of a queen and Indians making pres- ents, similar to the device on the seal on page 109. The seals of the three Georges each bore the effigy of a king, with Indians making presents, but modified in design. The reverse of each seal was similar.
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
nectient was definitely settled. The partition-line agreed upon in 1664 being considered fraudulent, attempts were afterward made to effect a settlement of the question in a manner mutually satisfactory, but this was not accomplished until May, 1731. In 1725 a partition- line was agreed upon by the commissioners of both colonies, but it was not entirely satis- factory ; now a tract of sixty thousand acres, lying on the Connectient side of the line, and from its figure called the Ob- long, was ceded to New York, and an equivalent in terri- tory near Long Island Sound was surrendered to Connecticut. Hence the divergence from a straight line north and south seen RIP VAN DAM. in the southern boundary between New York and Connecticut.
The Oblong is nearly two miles wide. Through its centre a line was drawn, and the whole tract was divided into lots of five hundred acres each, on both sides, and sold to emigrants, who came chiefly from New England. Governor Cosby was avaricious, unscrupulous, and arbitrary. He had been a colonel in the British army, and came to New York intent upon making a fortune. He could not comprehend the liberal spirit. that prevailed in the colony, and he played the part of a petty military tyrant in the most ridiculous manner. As English officials were wont to do at that time, he looked with contempt upon all provincials, treated them accordingly, and soon became one of the most obnoxious governors which had afflicted the colony.
Cosby came in conflict with Van Dam at the outset. He brought with him a royal order for an equal division between himself and the president of the Council of "the salary, emoluments, and perquisites" of the office of governor during the thirteen months the merchant had exercised its functions. Cosby demanded half the salary which the merchant had received ; Van Dam claimed one half the perquisites, etc., according to the order. Cosby refused, and brought a suit against Van Dam in the Court of Chaneery, over which the governor presided ex- officio. Van Dam tried to bring a counter-suit at common law, but
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STRIFE AMONG CIVIL AUTHORITIES.
failed. Cosby's judges, James De Lancey and Adolph Philipse, were the governor's personal friends and willing instruments. Lewis Morris, the able chief-justice of the province for twenty years, denied the jurisdiction of the court ; but the trial went on, and, of course, was decided in favor of the gov- ernor. Morris published his Opinion, and was punished by the governor by dismissal from the high office of chief-justice, and filling it by the appointment of De Lancey without even the formality of consulting liis council.
The sympathies of the people were with Van Dam, and these high-handed proceedings pro- voked intense public indignation. They led to the establishment of a democratic newspaper and a trial in which popular liberty and the freedom of the press were vindicated. This famous trial was the most conspicuous event of the adminis- tration of Governor Cosby.
Z TANDEM VINCITUR
THE MORRIS ARMS.
William Bradford issued the first newspaper printed in the province of New York, in October, 1725, called the New York Gazette. He was the Government printer, and his Gazette was controlled by Cosby and his political friends. Bradford had, first as an apprentice and after- ward as a business partner for a short time, the son of a widow among the Palatines who came with Governor Hunter, John Peter Zenger.
Leurs Morris
SIGNATURE OF LEWIS MORRIS.
The opponents of Cosby induced Zenger to establish a newspaper that might be an organ of the democratic party-a tribune of the people. It was first issued in November, 1733, and was named the New York Weekly Journal. Van Dam stood at the back of Zenger financially.
The Journal made vigorons warfare upon the governor and his official friends, as well as upon public measures. It kept up a continuous fusillade of squibs, lampoons, and satires ; and it finally charged the governor and his council with violating the rights of the people, the illegal assumption of power, and the perversion of their official stations
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TIIE EMPIRE STATE.
for selfish purposes. The Assembly, which was a "permanent" one and very obsequious, received its share of animadversion. *
These attacks were endured by the officials for about a year, when, in the autumn of 1734, the governor and council ordered certain copies of Zenger's paper to be publiely burnt by the common hangman. Then they caused the arrest of the publisher, and he was cast into prison on a charge of libelling the government. The Grand Jury refused to find a bill of indictment for this offence, but he was held by another process-information. James Alexander and William Smith, the eminent lawyers, became his counsel. Unable to give bail, he was kept 9000 TIBIVIS FIERFEACIAS in jail until early in the next August, when he was brought to trial in the City Hall, New York. The case excited intense interest throughout the THE PHILIPSE ARMS. whole country, for it involved the great subjeet of liberty of speech and of the press.
" Meanwhile an association called the Sons of Liberty had worked diligently for Zenger. The venerable Andrew Hamilton, of Phila- delphia, then eighty years of age and the foremost lawyer in the country, was engaged as the prisoner's counsel. On the hot morning when the trial began the court-room was densely crowded. Chief-Justice De Laneey presided. A jury was impanelled. The prisoner pleaded ' Not guilty,' but boldly admitted the publication of the alleged libel, and offered full proof of its justification. The attorney-general (Bradley) had just risen to oppose the introduction of such proof, when the vener-
* Illustrative of the obsequious deference which was then paid in the colonies even to an insignificant scion of nobility, a contemporary writer relates that when the young Lord Augustus Fitzroy, son of the Duke of Grafton, a favorite of the king, arrived in New York, in the fall of 1732, on a visit to the governor (and who was induced to marry his daughter), the corporation of the city waited upon the young man " in a full body, and the recorder addressed his lordship in a speech of congratulation, returning him thanks for the honor of his presence, and presented him the Freedom of the City in a gold box."
Smith, the historian, speaking of the marriage of the young lord to Cosby's daughter, says : " The match was clandestinely brought about by the intrigues of Mrs. Cosby, Lord Augustus being then on his travels through the provinces ; and to blind his relations and secure the governor from the wrath of his father, a mock persecution was instituted against Campbell, the parson, who had scaled the wall of the fort and solemnized the nuptials without a written license from the governor or any publication of the banus." The duke refused to acknowledge the wife of his son, and the ambition of her parents was wofully disappointed.
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THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS VINDICATED.
able Hamilton unexpectedly entered the room, his long white hair flowing over his shoulders instead of being made into a queue, in the fashion of the day. The excited audience, most of them in sympathy with the prisoner, arose to their feet, and in spite of the voice and frowns of the chief-justice, waved their hats and shouted loud huzzas. When silence prevailed the attorney-general took the ground that facts in justifiea- tion of an alleged libel were not admissible in evidence. The court sustained him .*
" When Hamilton arose a murmur of applause ran through the erowd. In a few eloquent sentences he scattered to the winds the soph- istries which supported the per- nicious doctrine, ' the greater the truth the greater the libel.' He declared that the jury were themselves judges of the facts and the law, and that they were competent to judge of the guilt or innocenee of the accused. He reminded them that they were the sworn protectors of the rights, liberties, and privileges of their fellow-citizens, which, in this instance, had been violated by a most outrageous and vindie- tive series of persecutions. He ANDREW HAMILTON AT MIDDLE LIFE. conjured them to remember that it was for them to interpose between the tyrannieal and arbitrary violators of the law and their intended vietim, and to assert, by their verdict, in the fullest manner the freedom of speech and of the press, and of the supremaey of the people over their wanton and powerful oppressors.
* Mr. De Lancey exercised much arbitrary power, and was always impatient of any opposition. One illustrative instance may suffice. James Alexander and William Smith were leading lawyers in the province. As counsel for Zenger, they interposed exceptions to the indictment of their client on information at the spring term. They also ques- tioned the validity of the commission of the chief-justice. They made a motion that these exceptions should be filed. De Lancey refused to receive the exceptions. "You thought to have gained a great deal of applause and popularity by opposing this court," he said ; " but you have brought it to this point, that either we must go from the Bench or you must go from the Bar." He then issued an order excluding them from any further practice in that court. This dissolving Zenger's counsel caused his friends to seek the services of Andrew Hamilton.
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
" Notwithstanding the charge of the chief-justice was wholly adverse to the doctrines of the great advocate, the jury, after brief deliberation,
1
17
HAMILTON AND THE PEOPLE.
returned a verdict of 'Not guilty.' Then a shout of triumph went up from the multitude, and Hamilton was borne out of the court-room upon
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A POPULAR DEMONSTRATION.
the shoulders of the people to a grand entertainment which had been prepared for him. On the following day a public dinner was given him by the citizens. At the close of September following, the corporation of the city of New York presented to Mr. Hamilton the Freedom of the City and their thanks in a gold box weighing five and a half ounces, made for the occasion. In this document they cordially thanked him for his ' learned and generons defence of the rights of mankind and the liberties of the press,' and for his signal service which 'he cheerfully undertook, under great indisposition of body, and generously performed, refusing fee or reward.'
" This triumph of the popular cause, this vindication of the freedom of the press, this evidence of a determination of the people to protect their champions, and this success of an organization in its infancy, which appeared in power thirty years later under the same name-' Sons of Liberty '-was a sure prophecy of that political independence of the colonies which was speedily fulfilled. Yet the stupid governor, stag- gered by the blow, could not understand the meaning of the prophecy, and only his death, a few months after this trial, put an end to his vin- dictive proceedings." *
Governor Cosby died on March 10th, 1736.
* Lossing's Our Country, I., 368-70. Gouverneur Morris, it is reported, said : " Instead of dating American liberty from the Stamp Act, I trace it to the persecution of Peter Zenger, because that event revealed the philosophy of freedom both of thought and speech as an inborn human right, so nobly set forth in Milton's Treatise on Un- licensed Printing."
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
CHAPTER XI.
FROM the arrival of Governor Cosby, in 1732, to the beginning of the Seven Years' War between France and England (1755-62), which is known in America as the " French and Indian War," the history of the province of New York is little more than a record of the operations of a violent party spirit engendered by selfish men struggling for power. Let us turn for a moment from this unpleasant subject to take a brief glance, through the optics of contemporary writers, at the character of society in the city and province of New York at that period.
The population of the province at the time we are considering did not exceed one hundred thousand. There were many discouragements to settlements. The dread of hostile incursions by the French and Indians on the north ; the transportation hither from Great Britain of ship-loads of felons ; the oppressive nature of navigation laws ; the avarice, bigotry, and tyranny of some of the governors who had been sent to rule the province, and the lavish grants of much of the best land in the colony to their favorites and instruments, were special hindrances to a rapid increase of population. The holders of large estates rated their lands so high that poorer persons could neither buy nor lease farms. The price of labor was so enormously high, because of the sparse population, that the importation of negroes had become a prime industrial necessity, and they were then very numerous in the province. The Dutch language was yet so generally used in some of the counties that sheriffs found it difficult to procure persons sufficiently acquainted with the English tongue to serve as jurors in the courts. The manners of the people were simple and various according to locality and condition. The prevalence of the Dutch, the German, the English, and the French (IIugnenots) in certain places modified manners.
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