USA > New York > The Empire State: a compendious history of the commonwealth of New York > Part 49
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62
The passions of the lower orders in New York City were so excited to do mischief by the election riots, that immediately afterward they were incited by the demagogues who had led them before to engage in a fearful public disturbance known as " The Abolition Riots." New York City was the headquarters of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Their meetings were frequently disturbed by their ignorant or unreasoning opponents. In July, 1834, these disturbances blossomed out into a wild riot, which spread terror over the entire city. Houses of linmane citizens were sacked, the property of others was destroyed, and no less than five churches in the city were attacked and partially demolished. Again the (now) Seventh Regiment, National Guards, was called out to suppress the dangerous tumult and to restore order. In this effort it succeeded admirably.
In the years 1834 and 1835 a spirit of wild speculation scourged the land. Trade was brisk ; the shipping interest was prosperous ; prices ruled high ; luxury abounded, and nobody seemed to perceive the under- current of disaster that was surely wasting the foundations of the absurd credit system and the real prosperity of the people. The credit system collapsed at the touch of the Ithuriel spear of Necessity. The Bank of England, seeing exchanges running higher and higher against that country, contracted its loans and admonished houses giving long credits to Americans by the use of money borrowed from the bank to curtail that hazardous business. At abont the same time the famous "Specie Circular" went out from our Treasury Department (July, 1836) directing
" James Harper, the senior member of the original firm of Harper & Brothers, was the son of Joseph Harper, of Newtown, L. I., where he was born in April, 1795. At sixteen years of age he went to New York to learn the art of printing. Industrious and thrifty, he was able, soon after his majority, to begin business on his own account. In the course of time his three brothers, John, Joseph Wesley, and Fletcher, became associated with him in the printing and publishing business under the firm name of Harper & Brothers. This brotherhood remained unbroken forty-three years, when, in March, 1839, James died at St. Luke's Hospital, New York, whither he had been taken, mortally hurt by being thrown from his carriage while his horses were running away. Mr. Harper was ever prominent in good works.
486
THE EMPIRE STATE.
the colleetors of the publie money to receive nothing but coin. From the parlor of the Bank of England and from the Treasury of the United States went forth the unwelcome fiat, " Pay up !" American houses in London failed for many millions, and every bank in the United States suspended specie payments in 1837. In 1839 the Bank of the United States, which had been rechartered by the State of Pennsylvania, fell into hopeless ruin, and with it went down a large number of the State banks of the country. A general Bankrupt Aet, passed in 1841, relieved of debt about forty thousand persons, whose aggregate liabilities amounted to about $441,000,000.
The business men of the city and State of New York suffered intensely from these financial troubles. Already the merchants of the eity had been severely smitten by a fearful conflagration on a bitterly cold night- December 16th, 1835-which reduced to ashes and einders in the space of a few hours property valued at almost $20,000,000. But from this calamity and the financial troubles of 1837 the merchants of New York, by their energy and pluck, presented the spectacle of a speedy and marvellous rebound.
The construction of the Croton Aqueduet for the sanitary and other uses of the inhabitants of the city of New York had been begun a few weeks before the great fire. It was completed in 1842 at a cost of $10,375,000, ineluding $1,800,000 for distributing pipes and amounts paid for the right of way. It extends from the Croton River, in West- chester County, where the waters of that stream are collected in a large reservoir, to the distributing reservoir at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenne, in New York City, a distance of about forty miles. The aquednet is tubular in form, and crosses the Harlem River over the magnificent High Bridge. The receiving reservoir within the Central Park covers an area of thirty-five acres.
487
FREE SCHOOL LIBRARIES ESTABLISHED.
CHAPTER XXXV.
GOVERNOR MARCY's administration extended from 1833 to 1839, during which time wise and important measures were adopted by the Legislature on his recommendation. The most conspicuous of these measures was a provision, at the session of 1835, for the enlargement of the Erie Canal and for the promotion of popular education and enlighten- ment. The Legislature responded generously. It instructed the canal commissioners to " enlarge and improve the Erie Canal, and construct a double set of lift-locks therein." These improvements were finally made, at an expense far greater than the cost of its original construction. This enlargement had become necessary because of the increasing busi- ness of the canal within ten years after it was completed.
This provision for the material prosperity of the State was supple- mented in April, 1835, by a provision for the intellectual advancement of the people of the commonwealth. A law was passed for the establish- ment of a free library in every school district in the State, then number- ing over nine thousand six hundred. Governor Marcy took special interest in the matter, and made untiring efforts to accomplish this important object-this grand feature of our common-school system. He desired to afford an opportunity to every child within the border of the commonwealthi, of whatever color, race, creed, or condition, to acquire intellectual and moral cultivation and enlightenment. The late General John A. Dix was the Secretary of State and Superintendent of Common Schools when these libraries were established. To his wisdom and sound judgment, aided by his deputy, S. S. Randall, the people of the State were indebted for the excellence of the selection of the books for the libraries .* These were pretty generally established in 1838, when the
* In the selection of books the following directions were adhered to :
"1. No works written professedly to uphold or attack any sect or creed in our country claiming to be a religious one shall be tolerated in the school libraries.
" 2. Standard works on other topics shall not be excluded because they incidentally and indirectly betray the religious opinions of their authors.
"3. Works avowedly on other subjects which abound in direct and unreserved attacks on or defence of the character of any religions sect, or those which hold up any religious body to contempt or execration by singling out or bringing together only the darker part of its history or character, shall be excluded from the school libraries. In the selection of books for a district library, information and not mere amusement is to be regarded as
488
THE EMPIRE STATE.
pupils attending the district schools of the State numbered abont five hundred thousand five hundred. An annual appropriation of $55,000 was made for the purchase of books for the libraries. In 1844 a State Normal School (the first in the commonwealth) was established at Albany, of which David P. Page was the first principal. It occupied a
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL BUILDING AT ALBANY.
building on State Street (117) originally erected by the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad Company for a passenger depot .*
It was at this period that great improvements were made in the system of popular education in the city of New York. The Lancastrian or monitorial form of government and instruction had long prevailed there
the primary object. Suitable provision should, however, be made for the intellectual wants of the young by furnishing them with books which, without being merely juvenile in character, may be level to their comprehension and sufficiently entertaining to excite and gratify a taste for reading. It is useless to buy books that are not read."
* A spacious building for the use of the State Normal School was completed late in 1885, and the school was opened therein on September 9th, with representatives from forty-three of the sixty counties of the State. During the first term in the new structure the attendance in the Normal Department was three hundred and sixty.
489
REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS IN CANADA.
and in other parts of the State .* The Pestalozzian + system had also been pretty extensively adopted. In 1832 a new organization of the public schools was effected, and these two grafts from foreign systems were pruned away. The schools in the city were placed upon a per- fectly free basis, and were graded in 1834. The six schools for colored children were transferred to the Public School Society (the formation of which has already been noticed), and placed on an equality with the other schools.
Toward the close of 1837 a popular outbreak occurred in the neighbor- ing British provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, which caused intense excitement among the people of the northern portions of New York. Their sympathies with the insurgents were aroused, and citizens of the State engaged in an unlawful invasion of the territory of a friendly neighbor.
There had been popular discontent in these provinces for some time. It finally assumed the aggressive form of a concerted attempt in both territories to cast off dependence upon Great Britain. The chief leaders in this movement were William Lyon Mckenzie, in Upper Canada, and Joseph Papineau, in Lower Canada. Mckenzie was a Scotchman, a journalist of rare ability, and a restless political agitator. Papineau, of French descent, was an extensive land-owner in the Lower Province, of cool judgment, and very influential among the French inhabitants in that region. Both leaders were republicans in sentiment.
This movement was regarded as patriotic by the Americans, and the active sympathy of the New Yorkers along the frontier was evoked. At the middle of December (1837) nearly a thousand New York volun- teers, with provisions and twenty pieces of artillery, seized Navy Island, in the Niagara River, two miles above the falls. There they were joined by Mckenzie, who was already a fugitive. They employed a small
* It was so called after Joseph Lancaster, a member of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, who at the beginning of the century introduced into the schools in England the monitorial system, which consisted of the employment of monitors, so called, composed of some of the brightest boys and girls in school, who each had charge of the discipline and tuition of a section of the school. They enforced discipline by watchfulness and prompt reporting to the teacher. The system was designed to carry on the public teaching of children in the most economical way. By this means a teacher could manage a school of three or four hundred children. But this system of espionage was mischievous.
+ The Pestalozzian system originated with John Pestalozzi. a Swiss teacher and reformer, and was designed to educate infant pupils by a combination of industrial, entertaining, intellectual, and moral instruction, without the use of books and by oral and object teaching entirely-the fundamental basis of the kindergarten system of Froebel. It was put in practice first in New York by the Infant School Society, founded by Mrs. Divie Bethune and others, in 1828.
490
THE EMPIRE STATE.
steamboat named the Caroline as a ferry-vessel between the New York shore and the island. On a dark night at the close of December, while persons on board of her were asleep, a party of armed Canadian loyalists from Chippewa seized her, killed some of her people, cut her loose from her moorings, set her on fire, and allowed her to go blazing down the fearful rapids and over the crown of the mighty cataract into the seething gulf below. It is believed that some persons were alive on board and perished with the vessel.
Mckenzie, whose rashness imperilled the cause at the outset, fled to New York. The Governor of Canada made requisition upon Governor Marcy for the surrender of the arch-agitator. Marcy declined to do so, for Mckenzie's offence was political, not criminal, and he was secking an asylum on neutral territory.
Meanwhile all along the New York frontier, from Cape Vincent to Rouse's Point at the foot of Lake Champlain, American sympathizers continued to cross into Canada and join the insurgents. At Clayton, on the New York shore of the St. Lawrence, lived William Johnston, a bold British subject, who was appointed commodore of the naval force of the insurgents by their authority." He kept up an amphibious war- fare among the Thousand Islands, and others on the Canada shore kept the frontier in continual excitement for months. At length the Presi- dent of the United States (Van Buren) issued a proclamation forbidding American citizens engaging in the insurrectionary movement. General Scott was sent to Northern New York to preserve order. Governor
* William Johnston was born at Three Rivers, Canada, in February, 1782. His father was an Irishman, and a Dutch girl from New Jersey was his mother. He was living at Clayton (French Creek), on the St. Lawrence, when the insurrection broke out. Cor- dially hating the British Government and its employés, and fond of adventure, he was easily persuaded to join in the strife. He was bold and courageous. The "Patriots" commissioned him " commodore" and commander-in-chief of the navy on the lake. among the Thousand Islands, and on the St. Lawrence River. After he had burned a British steamboat and committed other excesses, a reward for his apprehension was offered by both governments, and for a long time he was a fugitive, hiding among the islands and supplied with food by his charming daughter, a girl of eighteen years, who was expert in the management of a boat. He finally gave himself up to the American author- ities. IIe was sentenced to one year's imprisonment and a fine, and was confined in jail at Albany, where his daughter joined him to solace him in his solitude. They managed to escape, and Johnston was unmolested. When I visited him in 1860, at Clayton, he was the keeper of a light-house a few miles below. His daughter, the " Heroine of the Thousand Islands," was then a matron with several children, but retaining many traces of her former beauty. Johnston gave me his photograph ; also his commission from the Grand Council, the Western Canadian Association, the Grand Eagle Chapter, and the Grand Eagle Chapter of Upper Canada, creating him " Commodore of the Navy, Com- mander-in-Chief of all the Naval Forces of the Canadian Provinces on Patriot service."
491
DISTURBANCE OF INTERNATIONAL AMITY THREATENED.
Marcy also issued a proclamation of the tenor of that of the President. The open contest soon ceased, but for some time secret associations called " Hunters' Lodges" on New York soil kept up the excitement. These lodges numbered about twelve hundred. They were suppressed by President Tyler in 1842.
Early in January, 1841, an incident occurred on the Niagara frontier which for a moment threatened to disturb the existing amity between the governments of the United States and Great Britain. Alexander MeLeod, a resident of Chippewa, being at Lewiston, on the New York shore of the river, boasted that he was a participant in the destruction of the steamer Caroline and in the murder of one of her men. He was arrested and sent to the Lockport jail. He was indieted for murder, and the owner of the vessel instituted a civil suit against him. Mr. Fox, the British Minister at Washington, demanded of our Government the release of MeLeod, and avowed and justified the destruction of the Caroline as an act of his Government. The Secretary of State (Mr. Webster) informed Mr. Fox that it was a State affair, and the National Government had no right to interfere with the judicial proceedings of a State ; that the matter was before the Supreme Court of New York, and that he believed that tribunal would agree with him that the prisoner ought to be given up, for he was acting in obedience to orders from a superior. That court remanded MeLeod for trial before a special cirenit conrt sitting at Utica. After an exciting trial the innocence of the prisoner was proven, he having made the boast in a spirit of bravado while intoxicated. He was acquitted.
Martin Van Buren was nominated for the Presidency of the United States in 1836. Perceiving the necessity of taking ground against the Abolitionists, now organized and aggressive, in order to secure the votes of the Southern States, he did so, and was elected, taking his seat as Chief Magistrate in the spring of 1837. Governor Marcy also took a position antagonistic to the Abolitionists ; and so the Democratic Party of the State and nation became wedded to the upholders of the system of slavery. The nuptials proved disastrons to the party.
Never did any political party seem to stand on a more secure founda- tion than did the Democratic Party in New York in the winter of 1836-37. Alas ! before the lapse of a year it was utterly overthrown. In the fall the Whigs elected one hundred and one of the one hundred and twenty-eight members of the State Assembly, and carried six of the eight senatorial districts. The country had been swept by a fearful tornado of financial disaster. The banks of New York were compelled to suspend specie payments ; commercial distress was the rule, and the
492
THE EMPIRE STATE.
huge, hollow credit system fell into ruins. All this had followed the terrible fiat of the "Specie Circular" and cognate instrumentalities. The Whig leaders adroitly charged the public calamities to the misrule of the Democratic Party. The rank and file accepted the solution, and the overthrow of Democratic domination in New York was the logical consequence. William II. Seward was elected Governor of the State in the fall of 1838, over Governor Marcy, by a majority of about ten thousand .*
The finances of the State at this juncture were admirably managed. The banks conducted their business with so much prudence that they were able to resume specie pay- ments in 1839. A Free Banking Law had been enacted in 1838 01 WILLIAM H. SEWARD. the recommendation of Governor Marcy. Governor Seward in his message in 1839 spoke highly of the measure, and he eulogized the financial position of the State of New York, saying :
" History furnishes no parallel to the financial achievements of this State. It surrendered its share in the national domain, and relinquished
* William Henry Seward was born at Florida, Orange County, N. Y., in May, 1801 ; died at Auburn, N. Y., in October, 1872. He was a graduate of Union College, and began the practice of law at Auburn in 1823. He soon acquired a high reputation in his profession. He first appeared conspicuous in politics as president of a State convention of young men who favored the election of John Quincy Adams to the Presidency of the United States. He was a member of the State Senate, 1830-34, and became a leader of the newly-formed Whig Party. He was elected Governor of New York in 1838, and again in 1840. For several years he quietly pursued his lucrative profession. In 1849 he was chosen United States Senator, which position he held until called to the seat of Prime Minister (Secretary of State) in the Cabinet of President Lincoln in the spring of 1861. He filled the office with great honor to himself and the nation during the trying period of the Civil War. He continued in the same office in the Cabinet of President Johnson. Mr. Seward was regarded for many years as one of the leading and most efficient opposers of the system of slavery. Early in 1865 he was confined to his bed by an accident, and on the night of the murder of President Lincoln an assassin found his way into Mr. Seward's home and attempted to slay him. He never recovered from the shock. In the spring of 1869 he retired from public life. In August, 1871, he started with some friends on a tour around the world. He was everywhere received with marks of great respect. Mr. Seward died at Auburn, October 10, 1872. One of the most notable of his public acts was the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000 in gold, in 1867.
493
A FUGITIVE-SLAVE CASE.
for the general welfare all the revenues of its foreign commerce, equal generally to two thirds of the entire expenditure of the Federal Govern- ment. It has, nevertheless, sustained the expenses of its own adminis- tration, founded and endowed a broad system of education, charitable institutions for every class of the unfortunate, and a penitentiary cstab- lishment which is adopted as a model by civilized nations. It has increased fourfold the wealth of its citizens, and relieved them from direct taxation ; and in addition to all this has carried forward a stupen- dous enterprise of improvement, all the while diminishing its debts, magnifying its credit, and augmenting its resources." *
Governor Seward recommended the Legislature (1840) to provide for the speedy completion of the enlargement of the Erie Canal, but told them frankly that the cost, which the State officers had estimated at $12,000,000, would be at least $23,000,000-possibly $25,000,000. He also urged the construction of the Genesee Valley and Black River canals, which would require an expenditure of $6,000,000. In the same message he invited the attention of the Legislature to the fact that he had received from the Governor of Virginia a demand for the return of three colored " fugitives from justice," charged with stealing a negro- slave. Governor Seward refused compliance on the ground that such alleged felony was not recognized as such by the laws of civilized nations or those of the State of New York. + This was Mr. Seward's first official encounter with the slave power.
* The State of New York has the honor of having within its borders the first passenger railway built in the United States. The first railway charter granted in America was given by the Legislature of New York, in 1825, to the Mohawk and Hudson Railway Company. Their road extended from Albany to Schenectady, a distance of about fifteen miles, and was completed in the fall of 1831.
+ The Governor of Virginia in his next annual message referred the matter to the Legislature of his State, and haughtily declared that if the construction of the Constitution of the United States by the Governor of New York should be allowed to prevail, and no relief could be obtained against a " flagrant violation of the rights of Virginia" to reclaim her fugitive slave, it would be proper for her " to appeal from the cancelled obligations of the national compact to original rights ;" in other words, to secede from the Union.
The matter did not end here. The Virginia governor entered upon the work of retalia- tion. A citizen of New York charged with the crime of forgery fled to Virginia. Gov- ernor Seward forwarded a requisition for him to be surrendered as a fugitive from justice. The Governor of Virginia refused compliance, and kept the prisoner in jail a long time waiting for the Governor of New York to give up the three colored Virginia fugitives. This unjustifiable conduct on the part of the governor was disclaimed by the Virginia Legislature. The Legislature of New York adopted a joint resolution sustaining the claim of the Governor of Virginia for the three fugitives, and directed Governor Seward to transmit the resolution to the executive of Virginia. IIe declined to do so, and sug- gested the employment of some other agent than himself to perform that task. Here the matter was dropped.
494
THE EMPIRE STATE.
The Whig Party had now the entire political control of the State of New York, and the result of the presidential election that year (1840) gave them the political control of the nation for a while. In New York Governor Seward was re-elected, and the Whig candidate for the presi- dency, General William Henry Harrison, of Ohio, was chosen by a very large majority, after an exciting and demoralizing canvass, known in political history as " The Hard-Cider Campaign." *
President Van Buren had made himself very unpopular with the banking and commercial interests of the country because of his successful exertions in the establishment of the independent treasury ; also with a large portion of the people of the non-slaveholding States because of his alleged subserviency to the Southern slave oligarchy. Harrison took his seat on March 4th, 1841, and died just one month afterward. Then Vice-President John Tyler, of Virginia, assumed, by constitutional pro- vision, the exalted position of President of the United States.
At this time the population of New York was about two million five hundred thousand. Of this number, it was estimated that about thirty thousand children were uneducated, of whom fully one third were of foreign parentage. These were destined to become future citizens. In view of these facts thoughtful men pondered the matter with anxiety. Governor Seward was keenly alive to the foreshadowed danger, and in his message to the Legislature in 1841 he strongly urged that body to provide by law for the elementary education of the children of foreigners, of whatever nationality or religious belief. IIe said :
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.