USA > New York > The Empire State: a compendious history of the commonwealth of New York > Part 16
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In the city of New York, where there was constant intercourse with Europe, particularly with Great Britain, the London fashions, much modified however, were followed ; yet these were sometimes disused in England by the time they were adopted here. Among the wealthier classes considerable luxury in table, dress, and furniture was exhibited, yet the people were not so gay as in Boston, where society was almost purely English, and presented greater cultivation. In New York wealth
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STATE OF SOCIETY AT NEW YORK.
was more equally distributed. There was an aspect of comfort through- out society.
New York City was more social in its character than any other place on the continent. It now had a mixed population, sturdy in individual character and cosmopolitan in feeling. Society presented an almost even surface of equality and independence. It consisted chiefly of mer- chants, shop-kecpers, and tradesmen. Their recreations were simple.
NEW YORK COSTUMES AND FURNITURE IN 1740.
The men enjoyed themselves at a weckly evening club, and the women frequented musical concerts and dancing assemblies with their husbands and brothers. The women were generally comely in person, dressed with taste, were notable housekeepers, managed their households with neatness and thrift, and made happy homes. They seldom or never engaged in gaming, as was the habit of fashionable women in England at that time.
Both sexes were very neglectful of intellectual cultivation. They read
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very little. The schools were of a low order. "The instructors want instruction," wrote a contemporary. "Through long and shameful neglect of all the arts and sciences, our common speech is extremely corrupt, and the evidences of a bad taste, both as to thought and lan- guage, are visible in all our proceedings, private and public." Virtue was predominant. The women were modest, sprightly, and good- humored ; and there was diffused throughout society an uncommon
MILKING-TIME AT ALBANY.
degree of domestic felicity, both in the city and province. The mer- chants and traders had a high reputation for honesty and fair-dealing, and the people everywhere, in town and country, were sober, industrious, and hospitable, yet eagerly intent upon gain.
The people were generally religious. The principal church organiza- tions were the Dutch Reformed, the Lutheran, the English Episcopal, and the Presbyterian. There was much latitudinarianism, much freedom
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of thought and action among the people, that fostered a spirit of inde- pendence. They were not bound hand and foot by rigid religious and political creeds, as were the people of New England, but were thor- oughly imbued with the toleration inherited from the first Dutch settlers, and theological disputes were seldom indulged in.
New York society possessed the elements of a noble State. These elements entered into the political and social structure of the common- wealth after the Declaration of Independence with the grand result now manifested to the world .*
On the death of Governor Cosby, Rip Van Dam, the senior councillor, again prepared to assume the functions of governor. When he called for the seals of office, etc., he was informed that Cosby had suspended him from the Council Board several months before. This had been
* Mrs. Grant, of Laggan, in her Memoirs of an American Lady, has left us some charming pictures of social life at Albany, where the population was chiefly of Dutch descent, and the habits of the people were more simple than at New York. She tarried among them awhile at the time we are considering. She says the houses were very neat within and without, and were built chiefly of stone or brick. The streets were broad and lined with shade trees. Each house had its garden, and before each door a tree was planted and shaded the " stoops" or porches, which were furnished with spacious seats on which domestic groups were seated on summer evenings. Each family had a cow, fed in a common pasture at the end of the town. At evening the herd returned alto- gether of their own accord, with their tinkling bells hung at their necks, along the wide and grassy street, to their wonted sheltering trees, to be milked at their masters' doors.
On pleasant evenings the " stoops" were filled with groups of old and young of both sexes discussing grave questions or gayly chatting and singing together. The mischiev- ous gossip was unknown, for intercourse was so free and friendship so real that there was no place for such a creature ; and politicians seldom disturbed these social gather- ings. A peculiar social custom arranged the young people in congenial companies, com- posed of an equal number of both sexes, quite small children being admitted, and the association continued until maturity. The result was a perfect knowledge of each other, and happy and suitable marriages prevailed.
The summer amusements of the young were simple, the principal one being what we call picnics, often held upon the pretty islands near Albany, or in "the bush." These were days of pure enjoyment, for everybody was unrestrained by conventionalities. In winter the frozen bosom of the Hudson would be alive with merry skaters of both sexes. Small evening parties were frequent, and were generally the sequel of quilting parties. The young men sometimes enjoyed convivial parties at taverns, but habitual drunkenness was extremely rare.
African slavery was seen at Albany and vicinity in its mildest form. It was softened by gentleness and mutual attachments. It appeared patriarchal, and a real blessing to the negroes. Master and slave stood in the relation of friends. Immoralities were rare. There was no hatred engendered by neglect, cruelty, or injustice ; and such excitements as the " Negro Plots" of 1712 and 1741 in New York City were impossible. Industry and frugality ranked among the cardinal virtues of the people.
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done secretly, that, George Clarke, an English adventurer and one of Cosby's tools, might become president of the Council. Clarke, as such, now assumed the office of lieutenant-governor. Van Dam would not yield, and the " rival governors" proceeded to act independently of each other. This state of things involved the Assembly and the corporation of New York City in fierce contentions, and the public excitement became so intense that open insurrection was threatened. It was finally allayed by the confirmation of Clarke's claim by the home government. His administration was marked by continual contests with the Assembly. It terminated in September, 1743, by the arrival of Sir George Clinton as governor of the province," a younger son of the Earl of Lincoln and the father of Sir Henry Clin- ton, the commander-in-chief of the British forces in Amer- ica during a portion of the old war for independence.
The most conspicuous event of Clarke's administration was tliat known as the "Negro TO THE MEMORY OF GEORGE CLARKE OF HYDE ESQVIRE WHO WAS FORMERLY LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK AND AFTERWARDS BECAME RESIDENT IN THIS CITY HE DIED JANVARY XII, MDCCLX. AGED LXXXIV YEARS AND WAS INTERRED IN THIS CHAPEL Plot," in 1741. Causes simi- lar to those which made the inhabitants of the city dread a servile insurrection in 1712 (see page 138) excited them at this time. As before, the tongue of rumor sounded an alarm which produced a panic. A bold robbery, almost si- CLARKE'S MONUMENT AT CHESHIRE. innltaneous fires in different parts of the city (though in the day-time), idle words spoken by negroes, and the grumbling of some black people who had been brought into the port in a Spanish prize-ship and sold into slavery, combined in suggesting to the excited minds of the
* Sir George Clarke was a prominent man in New York for nearly half a century. He was a native of England, was a lawyer, married Miss Hyde, a relative of Governor Cornbury, and was appointed secretary of the province of New York in 1703. He was a shrewd, thrifty man, and left America with a large fortune, like that of Cosby mysteri- ously gathered. He sailed for England in 1745. On his passage he was captured by a French cruiser, but was soon released, when the British Government indemnified him for his losses. Retiring to a handsome estate near Cheshire, he died there at an advanced age in 1760. His wife, a woman of fine accomplishments, died in New York.
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THE NEGRO PLOT.
people suspicions of a conspiracy, and creating a fearful panic. The people were deaf to reason. The magistrates and lawyers "lost their heads," and by their aets increased the public alarm.
False accusers charged negroes with incendiarism, robbery, and con- spiracy to burn the city and murder the white people. Very soon the jail and apartments in the City Hall were crowded with the accused. The keeper of a low tavern and brothel (John Hughson), his wife, and a strumpet who lived with them were accused by an indented servant girl of sixteen (Mary Burton) of complicity, with negroes named, in the robbery and in a conspiracy to burn the town and destroy the inhabitants. She had been tempted by fear and selfishness, by threats, and by prom- ises of money and freedom from her master (Hughson) to " tell all she knew"-in other words, to make false accusations and to bear false testi- mony. She declared that her master and mistress received and concealed the stolen property from negroes whom she named, conferred with some of the slaves about burning the city and killing the inhabitants, and that her master threatened to poison her if she exposed him ; while the negroes swore they would burn her alive if she revealed their secret. She said her master and mistress and the bawd whom they harbored were the only white persons present at the plotting with the negroes. The excited and credulous magistrates received this absurd story and others uttered by the lying servant girl as truth.
Without the semblance of justice or of common sense, and moved by the unsupported assertions of Mary Burton, the magistrates committed persons to the jail. The excited lawyers perplexed and terrified the poor prisoners, and the half-dazed jurors found the tavern-keeper, his wife, and their wretched boarder guilty. They were hanged. Eighteen negroes were also hung in a green vale, the site of the modern Five Points ; eleven were burned alive, and fifty were sold into slavery in the West Indies. Three of the colored people were burnt on the site of the (present) City Hall, one of whom was a woman. All who suffered at that time were undoubtedly innocent victims of groundless fright created by imaginary danger. This "reign of terror" continued about six months, when a day was set apart for public thanksgiving for the " great deliverance."
The " Negro Plot" may be classed among the conspicuous delusions of modern times. It is a counterpart in wickedness and absurdity to the " Salem Witchcraft" delusion in the preceding century.
There was another and a peculiar sufferer at this time-a victim of false accusations, perjury, and bigotry. His name was John Ury, his profession a schoolmaster and a nonjuring minister of the Church of
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England. He was charged with being a Jesuit priest in disguise, and was accused of inciting the negroes to burn the governor's house, which was the first of the almost simultaneous fires already alluded to. The only witnesses against him were the perjured Mary Burton and a daughter of the tavern-keeper just hanged. The latter was brought from a felon's cell and pardoned on the condition that she should give certain testimony against the accused. She swore that Ury had counselled negroes to burn the governor's house (which the governor himself declared had been accidentally set on fire through the carelessness of a plumber while soldering a tin gutter) ; that he had practised the rites of the Roman Catholic Church among the negroes in her presence at her father's house, and that he received confessions, etc.
Competent testimony of respectable citizens to the contrary-that he was a schoolmaster and a clergyman of the Church of England-was clearly given, but was not heeded. The charge of the chief- justice (De Lancey) and the speech of the attorney-general (Bradley) were large- ly mere tirades against popery and warnings against its secret emissaries. The mis- led jury were easily persuaded to pronounce poor Ury guilty, and the bigoted court, taking advantage of an unrepealed statute against priests, sentenced liim to be hanged. Ury protested his innocence to the last moment. The chief instrument in bringing this evi- dently innocent man to the scaffold was the disgraceful statute which condemned to death SIGNATURE AND ARMS OF GEORGE CLINTON. every Roman Catholic priest who should voluntarily come into the province. (See p. 126.)
In the whole of the wretched business of the "Negro Plot"' not a single charge of conspiracy was proven by a competent witness.
Sir George Clinton" published his commission as Governor of New
* Sir George Clinton was the youngest son of the sixth Earl of Lincoln, and rose to distinction in the British navy. He was commissioned a commodore, and made Governor
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WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GREAT BRITAIN.
York on the day of his arrival, September 20th, 1743. He held the office ten years. Clinton was wholly unfitted by his training and dispo- sition for the chief magistracy of a people like those of New York- sturdy, independent, and courageous ; free-thinkers in politics and irre- pressible aspirants for self-government.
After a peace between France and Great Britain for more than thirty years, during which time the American colonists enjoyed comparative repose, war was again kindled. It was declared in March, 1744. The colonists promptly rose in their might and donned their armor. The struggle that ensued continued about four years, and is known in Ameri- can history as King George's War, because George II. of England espoused the cause of the Empress of Austria, the celebrated Maria Theresa. In Europe it was known as the War of the Austrian Succes- sion.
This war was not distinguished by many stirring events in America. The most important was the capture of Louisburg and its strong for- tress, on the island of Cape Breton, which the French had constructed after the treaty of Utrecht at a cost of $5,500,000. William Shirley,* a good soldier and energetic statesman, was then Governor of Massa- chusetts. He perceived the importance of Louisburg in the coming contest, and plans for its capture were soon perfected by the Legislature of Massachusetts. He asked England for aid in the enterprise, and Ad- miral Warren was ordered to Boston from the West Indies with a fleet and troops. Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut furnished their proper quota of men. New York sent artillery, and Pennsylvania sent provisions. Thus common danger was teaching the necessity for a
of Newfoundland in 1732. In 1743 he was appointed Governor of New York, and had a tumultuous administration for ten years. He was unlettered, and of irritable tem- perament. In all his controversies with the New York Assembly he was ably assisted by the mind and pen of Dr. Cadwallader Colden. His chief opponent was Daniel Hors- manden, at one time chief-justice of the colony. He quarrelled with all the political factions in the colony, and returned home in 1753, when he was given the sinecure of Governor of Greenwich Hospital. In 1745 he was appointed vice-admiral of the Red, and in 1757 admiral of the Fleet. Again Governor of Newfoundland, he died there in 1761.
* William Shirley was born in Sussex, England, in 1693, and died at Roxbury, Mass., in 1771. He came to Boston in 1734, and practised the profession of a lawyer there. Active in public affairs, he was appointed Governor of Massachusetts in 1741, and became a skilful military leader in the French and Indian War. He was also a skilful diplomatist. For a while he was commander-in-chief of the British forces in America. In 1759 he was commissioned lieutenant-general and governor of one of the Bahama Islands, but returned to Boston in 1770. He built a fine mansion at Roxbury, but never occupied it.
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political union of the English American colonies fully thirty years before such union was effected.
The colonial forces, commanded by General William Pepperell,* thirty-two hundred strong, sailed from Boston in the spring of 1745, and were joined by Warren at Canseau with ships and troops. The com- bined forces, four thousand in number, landed not far from Louisburg at the close of April, took the French by surprise, and speedily began a vigorous siege of the strong fortress. Finally a combined attack by sea and land, at the close of June, compelled the French to surrender the fortress, the city of Louisburg, and the island of Cape Breton to the English. The mortified French ministry sent the Duke d' Anville the next year with a powerful naval armament to recover what had been lost, and to desolate the English settlements along the New England coasts. Storms wrecked many of his vessels, and disease soon wasted hundreds of his men. The duke was compelled to abandon the enter- prise without striking a blow. The New England people regarded these misfortunes of the enemy as a providential interference in their favor.
Meanwhile New York had been vigilant and active. Its immense frontier on the north exposed it to easy inroads of the common enemy. The Iroquois formed a trustworthy but not an omnipotent defence. The garrisons at Albany, Schenectady, and Oswego were strengthened, and the erection of block-houses was begun on the upper Hudson.
Notwithstanding these precautions five hundred French Canadians and Huron Indians and a few disaffected Iroquois warriors swept down the upper valley of the Hudson late in the fall of 1745, as far as Saratoga, leav- ing there a horrible record, and spreading the wildest alarm among the frontier settlements far and near. The invaders were commanded by M. Marin, an active French officer. They had rendezvoused at Crown Point, on Lake Champlain, where, at the suggestion of Father Piquet, the French Prefect Apostolique to Canada, it was resolved to sweep down toward Albany and cut off the advancing English settlements.
Saratoga was a scattered village on the flats at the junction of the Fish Creek and the Hudson River, near (present) Schuylerville. It com-
* William Pepperell was born in Maine in 1696, and died there in 1759. His father was a Welshman, and was made an apprentice to a fisherman when he came to New England. His son became a merchant. Liking military life, he was frequently engaged in fighting Indians. In 1727 he was appointed one of the king's Council, in Massachu- setts, and held the office thirty-two consecutive years. He became an eminent jurist, and was made chief-justice of the Common Pleas in 1730. After his successful expedition against Louisburg he was knighted (1745), and was appointed colonel in the royal army ; then a major-general, and lieutenant-general in 1759. For two years (1756-58) he was Acting-Governor of Massachusetts.
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A CONFERENCE WITH THE SIX NATIONS.
prised about thirty families, many of them tenants of Philip Schuyler, brother of the Mayor of Albany, and owner of all the lands in the vicinity. The invaders murdered Mr. Schuyler, plundered and burnt the village, and carried away over one hundred men, women, and children, including negroes, as captives. Mr. Schuyler's house, with his body in it, was burned. On the following morning the invaders, after chanting the Te Deum, departed for Canada with their plunder and prisoners.
The energetic Governor Shirley, flushed with the victory in the east, contemplated the conquest of the entire French dominions in America. His general plan of operations was similar to that of former expeditions for the capture of Quebec and Montreal.
Governor Clinton favored the project, and the Assembly voted aid. The erection of block-houses on the northern frontiers was authorized, also a new emission of bills of credit. Bounties were raised for vol- unteers, and provision was made for supplies of all kinds. The Six Nations were invited to meet the governor at a conference at Albany, at which appeared representatives of other colonies. The object of the conference was to engage the Iroquois to fight for the English in the conflict supposed to be impending. This conference was held in the summer of 1746.
William Johnson, a nephew of Admiral Warren, and then in the prime of young manhood, had been appointed Indian commissioner in place of Colonel Schuyler, who had long performed the duties of that office most efficiently. Johnson had made great efforts to aronse the Mohawks, among whom he lived, to make war on the French. At the time appointed for the conference he appeared on the hills overlooking Albany at the head of a large number of the Iroquois chiefs, habited and painted like the barbarians. Among these were leaders from the Dela- wares, the Susquehannas, the River Indians, and the Mohegans of Con- necticut, all eager to raise the hatchet against the French. The confer- ence was satisfactory. The Indians were dismissed with presents, and Johnson was furnished with arms and with instructions to send out war parties from the Mohawk Valley to annoy their enemies on the border.
The British ministry failed to send promised assistance to the colonies, and Shirley's grand project was abandoned. From this time no actual hostilities of importance occurred within the province of New York or on its frontiers in several years ; but the annals of New Hampshire, on its eastern border, for two years thereafter present a long and mournful catalogne of plantations laid waste and colonists slain or carried into cap- tivity by the French and Indians. The treaty of peace concluded at
1
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Aix-la-Chapelle, in October, 1748, ended hostilities between France and England and the American colonies for a time.
During the whole administration of Governor Clinton rancorous party spirit cursed the province. He had passed a greater portion of his life in the royal navy, and had learned and practised its imperious ways. These ways were, of course, often offensive. He loved his ease and good cheer, was kind-hearted James De L'anvey and good-humored, and tried to control the storms of pas- sion around him. Unfor- tunately, the surviving poli- SIGNATURE OF JAMES DE LANCEY. ticians who had quarrelled throughout the administra- tions of Cosby and Clarke were as rancorous and active as ever. He tried to propitiate both parties, and failed, of course. The Assembly persistently refused to yield an iota of their rights and privileges, and their independence vexed and worried Clinton.
Unfortunately for the governor and the province, Clinton made Chief- Justice De Lancey his confidant and guide. De Lancey was a politician of exquisite mould, and then wielded almost absolute sway over the Assembly and the people. At lengthi the governor and the chief-justice quarrelled over their cups at a banquet. The latter swore he would be re- venged ; and from that time Clinton found no peace in public life. De Lancey was im- placable. IIe pursued the governor as a personal and political enemy with the tenacity of a hound, and stirred up opposition to Clinton's authority and his measures every- where. Wielding power, the governor dealt SEAL OF JAMES DE LANCEY. some hard blows in return .*
An open rupture between the governor and the Assembly occurred in 1749. Under instructions from the king, Clinton demanded from the
* James De Lancey was born in New York City in 1703, and died there, 1760. He was educated in England, studied law there, and soon after his return (1729) was made a justice of the Supreme Court of the province. He became chief-justice in 1733. He was lieutenant-governor and acting-governor of the province for several years, and was one of the most influential men in the province in politics and legislation. Mr. De Lancey was one of the founders of King's (now Columbia) College. His wife was Anne, eldest daughter of Colonel Caleb Heathcote.
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SELF-DESTRUCTION OF A GOVERNOR.
Assembly the grant of a permanent revenue for five years, that he might be independent of the people. As in times past, the Assembly refused to grant it. The governor unwisely told them that their authority to aet at all, and the political rights and privileges which they enjoyed depended upon the breath of the monarch whom he represented, and he threatened to punish them if they did not, comply with his wishes. The Assembly boldly said in substance :
" Your conduet is arbitrary, illegal, and in violation of our privileges, and we will not comply with your demands."
In this quarrel, which continued until the end of Clinton's administra- tion, the unfortunate governor was placed in a delicate and even a false position. He was bound to obey his instructions in making the demand, at the same time he felt that the attitude of the Assembly was essentially right, and he urged upon the home government the propriety of making concessions to the popular leaders. Strangely enough, at about this period the chief leaders of the aristocratie faction, led by the chief-justice, became the popular leaders opposed to the governor and the crown.
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