USA > New York > The Empire State: a compendious history of the commonwealth of New York > Part 50
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" I could not enjoy the consciousness of having discharged my duty if any effort had been omitted which was calculated to bring within the schools all who are destined to exercise the rights of citizenship ; nor shall I feel that the system is perfect or liberty safe until that object be accomplished."
The wise and cultivated citizen, John C. Spencer, t was then the
* General Harrison lived in the growing West, and his dwelling had once been a log- cabin, at North Bend, Ohio, where he exercised great hospitality. In the campaign referred to his partisans made a log-cabin a symbol of his democracy-a man of the people -- and a barrel of cider symbolized his hospitality. In hamlets, villages, and cities log-cabins were built as rallying-places for the members of the party, and there cider was freely given to all. Drinking carousals were the results, and the demoralization of young men was fearful. Horace Greeley edited a campaign paper called The Log-Cabin, which became the predecessor of the New York Tribune.
+ Jolin Canfield Spencer, son of Judge Ambrose Spencer, was born at Hudson, N. Y., in January, 1788 ; died in Albany in May, 1855. He was a graduate of Union College ; studied law and began its practice at Canandaigua, N. Y., in 1809. At the age of nine- teen he had been private secretary of Governor Tompkins, and was ever afterward prom-
495
INTERESTS OF POPULAR EDUCATION PROMOTED.
Secretary of State and State Superintendent of Common Schools. He was in full accord with the views of Governor Seward. In response to petitions from the city of New York upon this subject, which were referred to him, he made an able report, in which he recommended the election of a Board of Commissioners of Common Schools in that city, authorized to establish and organize a system of ward schools, which should co-operate with those of the Public School Society in furnishing the requisite facilities for the education of all classes of children. On Mr. Spencer's recommendation provision was made for a State Deputy Superintendent of Common Schools, to which important office S. S. Randall, who had been Secretary Dix's deputy, was appointed. Pro- vision was also made for the election of county superintendents through- out the State. A liberal appropriation was made for the support of the Common School Journal, which was devoted to the interests of popular education .*
Out of these and cognate proceedings grew a violent controversy which had been begun mildly many years before. Its essence was the
inent in the public affairs of the State. In 1811 he was appointed master in chancery, and in 1813 judge-advocate in active military service on the frontier. In 1814 he was postmaster at Canandaigua, and was assistant attorney-general in 1815. He was a member of Congress, 1817-19, and a member of the Assembly and its Speaker in 1820. He was State Senator, 1824-28, and in 1827 was one of the commissioners to revise the statutes of New York. He became an anti-Mason, and was a special officer appointed to prosecute the persons connected with the alleged abduction of Morgan. Judge Spencer was Secretary of State, 1839-41. He was first made Secretary of War and then Secretary of the Treasury in Tyler's Cabinet. Opposed to the annexation of Texas, he resigned in 1844 and resumed the practice of law. To Judge Spencer is due, to a great extent, the greater improvements in the common-school system of the State. He edited the first edition of De Tocqueville's Democracy in America.
* The apathy of the people concerning popular education in the State of New York at that time was most remarkable. It was stipulated that one copy of the Common School Journal should be sent regularly to the clerk of every school district in the State free of charge. " It is mortifying and painful to state," says Hammond, in his Political History of New York, vol. iii., p. 225, " what the truth of history requires us to record, that it is within our personal knowledge that the trustees of many school districts refused to take from the post-office this excellent journal, every number of which contained much important and useful information, the cost of which is paid from the State Treasury, because they were unwilling to pay from the common funds of their respective districts the sum of one shilling a year for postage !"-one cent a month.
The author of this volume was one of a few citizens of Duchess County who, at the beginning of 1837, formed a society for " The Improvement of Common Schools and the General Diffusion of Knowledge." Many of the best citizens of the county became members of the association, and meetings were held by the society at various places in the county with a hope of exciting public interest in the important subject. Yet such was the marvellous apathy of the trustees of the common schools and of parents in gen- eral, that after a trial of about fifteen months the effort was abandoned as useless.
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
antagonism of religious denominations, some of which had participated in the benefits of the public money placed under the control of the Public School Society (which was a close corporation and had supreme power in the distribution of the funds intrusted to it by the State), and others had been denied such participation. The subject was brought before the Legislature.
That body by act transferred the whole inatter of the distribution of the school fund in the city of New York to the Common Council, with full powers.
The trustees of the Roman Cath- olic Free Schools applied to the Common Council for a separate proportionate share in the distribu- tion of the school fund. Their schools were numerons and were rapidly increasing. The Public School Society remonstrated, and the chamber of the Common Coun- cil became a notable arena for the ARCHBISHOP HUGHES. display of argumentative oratory. The Public School Society em- ployed some of the best legal talent in the city to champion their canse. They were confronted by the astute Archbishop Hughes, " who appeared in behalf of the Roman Catholics.
The controversy became exceedingly hot, and great public excitement prevailed. The Common Council sustained the Public School Society. The Roman Catholics appealed to the Legislature. On the recommen- dation of Governor Seward that body extended to the wards of the city
* Archbishop John Hughes, an eminent Roman Catholic prelate, was born in county Tyrone, Ireland, in 1797 ; died in New York City in January, 1864. He emigrated to America with his father in 1817 ; received a good education at a Roman Catholic sem- inary in Maryland, and remained there as a teacher several years. In 1825 he was ordained a priest, and was settled in Philadelphia. In 1838 he became coadjutor to Bishop Dubois in New York, and on the death of the latter in 1842 he became bishop. He visited Europe in 1839, and in 1841 opened St. John's College at Fordham, which he had organized. He held the first diocesan synod in New York in 1842, where alterations were made in the methods of the administration of churches without trustees. In 1850 he was created archbishop. He held the first provincial council of his Church in New York in 1854. On the breaking out of the late Civil War Archbishop Hughes was sent to Europe with the late Thurlow Weed on an informal diplomatic mission in behalf of the United States Government. His health failed soon after his return. He was a powerful controversialist, and did much to advance the prosperity of his Church.
497
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SOCIETY AND THE CATHOLICS.
of New York the common-school system which had prevailed for many years throughout the State. The management of the schools (indepen- dent of those under the control of the Public School Society) was placed in the hands of inspectors, trustees, and commissioners elected by the people ; and so all schools were allowed to participate in the benefits of the public funds according to the number of their scholars ; but such participation was prohibited to any school in which any religious sectarian doctrine or tenet should be taught, inculcated, or practised.
Both contestants were dissatisfied. The friends of the Public School Society regarded the measure as a serious blow to popular education. The Roman Catholics considered the exclusion of all religious instruction from the schools as most fatal to the moral and religious principles of their children, and said : " Our only resource is to establish schools of our own." The Public School Society kept up its organization several years longer, but, convinced of the superiority of the State system, it was dissolved in 1853, and some of its members took seats in the Board of Education, which was organized in 1842. That board has ever since had the supreme control of public instruction in the city of New York.
Under the auspices of the Board of Education a normal school was established in the city of New York in 1869. An elegant, spacious, and well-equipped edifice for its use was completed in 1873, and the school was opened in September, that year, under the title of " The New York Normal College." " Already a State Normal School had been estab- lished at Albany (1844), as we have observed, under the control of an Executive Committee composed of the Superintendent of Common Schools and four other gentlemen.
In the fall of 1842 another political revolution in the State of New York occurred. The Whig Party was overthrown, and William C. Bouck, the Democratic candidate for governor, was elected by about twenty-two thousand majority.t The Democrats also elected a large majority of the members of both branches of the Legislature. The Abolitionists, who were chiefly Whigs, gave to their candidate for gov- ernor-Alvan Stuart-about seven thousand votes.
* The Normal College in New York is devoted to the training of female teachers. All its teachers, outside the faculty, are women. The building, fronting on Sixty-eighth Street, is an elegant one, four stories in height.
+ William C. Bouck was born in Schoharie, N. Y., in 1786 ; died there in April, 1859. In 1812 he was appointed sheriff of Schoharie County. He was a member of the Assembly, 1813-15 ; State Senator in 1820, and canal commissioner, 1821-40. From 1843 to 1845 he was Governor of the State, and in 1846 was a member of the State Constitu- tional Convention. From 1846 to 1849 he was assistant treasurer in New York City, after which he devoted himself to agriculture.
498
THE EMPIRE STATE.
Governor Bouck took his seat at the beginning of 1843. In February Silas Wright, who now ranked among the ablest members of the Senate of the United States, was re-elected to a seat in that body for six years. The new State administration was moving on quietly and harmoniously, when Colonel Samnel Young, the Secretary of State, created much excitement in and out of the Legislature by declining to carry out one of its important orders.
Several years before, the Legislature authorized a geological survey of the State under the supervision of competent scientists. It was now completed, and their elaborate report, in ten volumes, accompanied by numerous illustrations, was submitted to the Legislature. That body ordered three thousand copies to be printed and deposited with the
WILLIAM C. BOUCK.
Secretary of State for distribution among the State officers and mem- bers of the Legislature.
In a communication to the Leg- islature, in March, the Secretary of State declined to carry out the pro- visions of the act. He declared it to be unconstitutional, because it had failed to receive the assent of two thirds of all the members elect- ed to each House, as directed by the Constitution. He pointed out, with stinging words of censure, other violations of the Constitution by the Legislature in the creation of stocks and the grants of public money. He said :
" Millions of outstanding stocks are now impending over the State which were created by laws in clear and direct hostility with the plain provisions of the Constitution ; null and void in their inception, and imposing not even the shadow of a moral obligation for the fulfilment of their ostensible demands."
These assertions created instant and warm debates in the Legislature and alarm among the holders of these securities. That alarm was soon quieted by resolutions adopted by the Legislature, declaring that the State would sacredly fulfil all its obligations without regard to technical informalities. The secretary, however, persisted in refusing to comply with the law during his whole official term.
At this time the State was much agitated by the presentation of a
499
ANTI-RENTISM.
social problem which had been pressing for a solution for some time. It was a question of land tenure.
We have noticed the acquirement of vast tracts of land in New Netherland, under the Dutch rule, by privileged persons called patroons. After the old war for independence, when the laws of primogeniture were abolished, a large proportion of the land of the settled part of the State of New York was held by these patroons, and the cultivators of the estates occupied farms on leases for one or more lives, or from year to year, stipulating for the payment of rents, dues, and services, some- what after the manner of the old feudal tenures in Holland and England. These feudal tenures having also been abolished, the proprietors of manor grants contrived a form of deed by which the grantees agreed to pay rents and dues almost precisely as before. These tenures became burdensome and odious to the tillers ; and in 1839 associations of farmers were formed for the purpose of devising a scheme of relief from the burdens. They were the tenants of Patroon Van Rensselaer, who had just died.
This movement soon became known as "anti-rentism." It speedily manifested itself in open resistance to the service of legal processes for the collecting of manorial rents. The first overt act of lawlessness that attracted publie attention was in the town of Grafton, in Rensselaer County, where a band of anti-renters killed a man. Yet the criminal was never discovered.
In 1841 and 1842 Governor Seward in his messages recommended the reference of the alleged grievance and matters in dispute on both sides to arbitrators, and appointed three men to investigate and report to the Legislature. Nothing was accomplished, and the disaffection spread and was intensified. So rampant was the insubordination to law in Delaware County that the governor (Silas Wright) in 1845 recommended legislation for its suppression, * and declared the county in a state of insur- rection. Finally the trial and conviction of a few persons for conspiracy
* The Legislature passed an " act to prevent persons appearing disguised and armed." It authorized the arrest of all persons who appeared having their faces concealed or dis- colored, who might be punished as vagrants. It authorized sheriffs to call a posse to his aid in making arrests.
At about the same time an Anti-Rent State Convention was held at Berne, in Albany County, at which great moderation was displayed by the chief actors in it. Eleven counties and a greater number of associations were represented. They disapproved the outrages that had been committed ; appointed a State Central Committee and a committee to present petitions to the Legislature. A newspaper called The Guardian of the Soil, devoted to the anti-rent cause, was published at Albany, and was conducted with much ability and prudence.
500
THE EMPIRE STATE.
and resistance to the laws, and their confinement in the State prison, caused a cessation of all operations by the masked bands.
There was so much popular sympathy manifested in behalf of the anti-renters that the association in 1839 organized a political party favor- able to their cause. It succeeded in 1842, and for several years after- ward, in electing one eighth of the Legislature, who favored anti-rentism ; and in the revised Constitution of 1846 a clause was inserted abolishing all feudal tenures and incidents, and forbidding the leasing of agricul- tural lands for a longer term than twelve years.
The Democratic Party triumphed in the State and nation in 1844. James K. Polk was elected President of the United States, and Silas Wright was chosen Governor of New York by a majority of more than ten thousand votes over Millard Fillmore. His majority in New York city alone was three thousand three hundred and eighty-six.
The same year was made memorable by the successful establishment of instantaneous communication between distant places by means of the electro-magnetic telegraph, to which intelligence and a language had recently been given by a citizen of New York-Professor S. F. B. Morse. A line of telegraphic communication between Baltimore and Washington had just been completed, and the first public message sent over it was an announcement from Baltimore of the nomination of Mr. Polk for the presidency by the Democratic Convention then in session in that city. Other lines were speedily set up, largely through the wonder- ful executive ability of Henry O'Reilly, of New York, who was the editor of the first daily newspaper (at Rochester, N. Y.) established between the Hudson River and the Pacific Ocean.
Governor Wright's administration was a quiet one, disturbed only by the anti-rent excitements, which he did much to suppress. These excite- ments gradually subsided, and only in courts of law were the associations seen. *
Governor Wright, like Governors Marcy, Seward, and Bouck, made special efforts to increase the efficiency of the common-school system of the State. In his first message to the Legislature he said :
" Our school fund is not instituted to make our children and youth either partisans in politics or sectarians in religion, but to give them education, intelligence, sound principles, good moral habits, and a free and independent spirit ; in short, to make them American freemen and
* Stephen van Rensselaer, the eldest son of the last patroon, and who inherited the estate, sold his interest in the lands of the great manor to a judicious kinsman by mar- riage, who made amicable arrangements with all the tenants for the rent, sale, and pur- chase of the farms.
501
TEXAS, AND WAR WITH MEXICO.
American citizens, and to qualify them to judge and choose for them- selves in matters of politics, religion, and government. No public fund of the State is so unpretending, yet so all-pervading ; so little seen, yet so universally felt : so mild in its exactions, yet so bountiful in its benefits ; so little feared or courted, and yet so powerful as this fund for the support of common schools. The other funds act upon the secular interests of society ; its business, its pleasures, its pride, its passions, its vices, its misfortunes. This acts upon its mind and its morals."
The common-school system of the State of New York is its chief glory. The annals of that system form the brightest and most important page in the history of the commonwealth. Whoever shall directly or indirectly conspire to use it for any other than its high and holy mission, to entangle it in the miserable meshes of political strife or the more unholy warfare of religious denominationalism, should be regarded by every true American citizen as a public enemy, and treated as such.
It was at about this time that the Democratic Party in the State pre- sented two opposing factions, called respectively "Barn-burners" and "Hunkers." The former were progressive. They were for reform- radicals, anti-slavery men, and sympathizers with the anti-renters who had burned barns ; hence the name given this faction in derision. The " Hunkers" were conservatives ; non-progressive, " old fogies." The Native American Party, recently organized, was a disturbing element in both parties, and being largely composed of former members of the Whig Party, it somewhat diminished the political strength of that party.
The Democratic national administration took a bold step in 1845 in the interest of the slaveholders, who desired an expansion of the territory of the United States on its south-western borders in order to provide more ample breathing space for their peculiar institution, then threatened with suffocation by overcrowding. On that border lay the independent State of Texas, which had been wrested from Mexico by filibusters from the United States. Its annexation to our republic was determined upon. The South, as a unit, favored the measure ; the North generally opposed it. President Tyler, who had deserted the party (the Whigs) which had elected him, favored the annexation. Texas consented. James K. Polk, of Tennessee, Tyler's successor in office, urged it ; and on July 4th, 1845, the annexation of Texas was effected.
Mexico had never acknowledged the independence of Texas. It remonstrated in vain against the annexation. The United States sent an " Army of Observation" into Texas, on the border of Mexico ; and in 1846 war between the two countries began. It ensued in the conquest
502
THE EMPIRE STATE.
by the United States troops of the Mexican territories of California and New Mexico.
Texas was so large that it was designed to divide it into five slave- labor States, and so increase the political power of the Southern oligarchy. Happily this scheme was never accomplished. In the whole iniquitous plan of annexation, and the more iniquitous war that ensued, citizens of New York-politicians and volunteer soldiers-bore a conspicuous part.
503
THIRD REVISION OF THE STATE CONSTITUTION.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE prescribed time for the consideration of amendments to the State Constitution was now at hand. There was a difference of opinion as to methods for the accomplishment of this object. Many preferred having amendments adopted by the Legislature and afterward sub- mitted to the people for their ratification or rejection. Others preferred a convention of delegates chosen by the popular voice to discuss, form, and propose amendments to be submitted to the people.
Governor Wright, who was opposed to a convention, suggested to the Legislature of 1845 several amendments, which were submitted to the people and approved by them at the general election in the fall. To make them a part of the Constitution a vote of two thirds of the members of both houses of the Legislature was required. They failed to receive the requisite number of votes. Then a convention was authorized.
An election of delegates was held in April, 1846. In nearly all the counties it was made a partisan question, and a majority of the delegates chosen were Democrats. They assembled at Albany on June 1st, one hundred and twenty-eight in number. Only one of them-General James Tallmadge, of Duchess-was in the convention of 1821.
The convention was organized by the choice of ex-Lieutenant-Gov- ernor John Tracy for president. Thomas Stanbuck and Henry W. Strong were appointed secretaries. A committee of seventeen was appointed to formulate topics to be considered in the revision. They reported eighteen, and these were referred to as many standing com- mittees. They embraced different and important subjects to be discussed.
The Executive, Legislative, and Judicial departments were first con- sidered. No material alterations were made in the organization of the existing Executive Department. In the Legislative Department the only essential change was for the election of senators and assemblymen by single districts. The power of impeachment of public officers was vested in the Assembly. The Senate and the judges of the Court of Appeals, presided over by the lieutenant-governor, constituted the tribunal for the trial of such impeachments.
The Judiciary Department was reorganized. Its power was greatly increased, while the number of judicial officers was diminished. Cen-
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
tralization of judicial power was abolished, and the judges were made dependent upon the people directly by being chosen by the voters at general elections. A Court of Appeals was organized, to consist of eight judges, four to be elected by the people, the remainder to be selected from the class of justices of the Supreme Court having the shortest time to serve. The judges were made removable by a concur- rent resolution of both houses of the Legislature. Tribunals of Concili- ation were authorized for the voluntary settlements of litigated cases.
The prerogative of appointment to office was taken from the governor and Senate and given to the people. This change gave to the latter, acting in their sovereign capacity, the vast patronage which had been wielded by a central power. Some of the State officers composed the commissioners of the Land Office and of the Canal Fund, and, with the canal commissioners, constituted the Canal Board.
Provision was made for the certain payment and total extinction of the public debt (then about $17,000,000) within a comparatively short and defined period. The power of the Legislature in ILSIO SEAL creating State indebtedness without the sanc- tion of a majority of the people, declared at the polls at elections, was restricted, and cer- YORK tain means were provided for enlarging the grand canal and for the completion of canals OF already begun.
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