USA > New York > New York City > The Memorial History of the City of New York: From Its First Settlement to the Year 1892, Volume III > Part 14
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in 1721-49. He married Catherine Van Brugh of Albany, and during the later years of his life entertained with great magnificence. He died in New-York city, February 4, 1749. EDITOR.
2 Smith's "New-York in 1789," p. 95.
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crisped. The hoops were succeeded by 'bishops' stuffed with horse- hair. In the early days ladies who kept their coaches often went to church in check aprons; and Watson mentions a lady in Philadelphia who went to a ball, in full dress, on horseback."1 About the same time, dark or black cloth took the place of colored stuffs for the dress of gentlemen.
Perhaps it will be of interest to conclude this re- view of New-York society with two brief glimpses into the actual doings of people in high life, one of a private and familiar nature, the other a celebrated public occasion. While Mr. Jay was absent in Eng- land on the special mission, Mrs. Jay wrote to him as follows: "Last Monday the President went to THE TEMPLE ARMS. Long Island to pass a week there. On Wednesday, Mrs. Washington called upon me to go with her to wait upon Miss Van Berckel, and on Thursday morning, agreeable to invitation, myself and the little girls took an early breakfast with her, and then went with her and her little grandchildren to breakfast at General Morris's, Morrisania. We passed together a very agreeable day, and on our return dined with her, as she would not take a re- fusal. After which I came home to dress, and she was so polite as to take coffee with me in the evening." The other picture presents a fashionable ball given by the French ambassador, the Marquis de Moustier, at his residence opposite the Bowling Green, on May 14, 1789. Although a despiser of republics in theory, he could not very well avoid doing the honors of his nation to the great chief of the American commonwealth, who had been inaugurated two weeks be- fore, and his manner of doing it was altogether worthy of France. Elias Boudinot, of New Jersey, writing of it to a friend, spoke en- thusiastically of his experiences there; and as his description has all the flavor of a contemporary and an eye-witness, we give it as it appeared in Griswold's "Republican Court":
"After the President came, a company of eight couple formed in the other room and entered, two by two, and began a most curious dance called En Ballet. Four of the gentlemen were dressed in French regi- mentals and four in American uniforms; four of the ladies with blue ribbons round their heads and American flowers, and four with red roses and flowers of France. These danced in a very curious manner, sometimes two and two, sometimes four couple and four couple, and then in a moment altogether, which formed great entertainment for the spectators, to show the happy union between the two nations. Three rooms were filled, and the fourth was most elegantly set off as a place for refreshment. A long table crossed this room from wall to
1 Mrs. Ellet, "Queens of American Society," p. 149.
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wall. The whole wall inside was covered with shelves filled with cakes, oranges, apples, wines of all sorts, ice-creams, etc., and highly lighted up. A number of servants from behind the table supplied the guests with everything they wanted, from time to time, as they came in to refresh themselves, which they did as often as a party had done dancing, and made way for another. We retired about ten o'clock, in the height of the jollity."
We may properly take leave of New-York society at a reception, or levee, at the president's house in Broadway. He stands in the midst of a brilliant circle of ladies and gentlemen. As guests are pre- sented, he does not shake hands, but re- ceives them with a dignified bow. He is attired in black velvet coat and knee-breeches, a white or pearl-colored waistcoat showing fine- ly underneath the dark and flowing outer gar- ment. Silver buckles glitter at the knees and upon the shoes. A long sword hangs by his side, bright, with a finely RESIDENCE OF LORD STIRLING. wrought steel hilt. It is the mark of the gentleman of the day, and need not recall the soldier amid these peaceful surroundings. Yellow gloves adorn the hands that struck so bravely for liberty. With a lingering look of affection and admiration upon the noblest Ameri- can that ever breathed, we pass out of the assembly-room, and the shadowy forms of the past dissolve. The plain present is upon us, a city huge and magnificent, a society possessing a wealth then never Ja. Jay dreamed of, and exhibiting more than princely liberality in its contributions to philanthropy, art, science, and learning,-a society in whose ex- tending circles are still conspicuous many of the Dutch, English, and Huguenot names that lent luster to the early days of the republic, when New-York, as the seat of the national govern- ment, witnessed the inauguration of Washington and welcomed the illustrious members of the first Congress.
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THE CITY OF NEW-YORK, NEAR THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.1
CHAPTER IV
THE CLOSING YEARS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 1793-1800
HE period in the history of the city that now opens is one that may be designated as "within the memory of men still living." It was the writer's privilege to be on terms of intimate friendship for a number of years with an aged lady who was born more than a year before the close of Washington's first term; she died during Mr. Cleveland's presidency. Again, on the Sunday preceding the centennial celebration of Washington's inaugu- ration in New-York city, the writer was introduced to a lady who on that day attained her one hundredth year. Within the compass of one such lifetime what vast changes have occurred in the condition of our city, as in the aspects of the civilized world ! Though apparently so near in the number of the years, at what a great distance in time do men seem to be this day from that closing period of the eighteenth century !
These aged persons in their infancy were actually nearer to a date even centuries before their birth than they were to their dying hour, so far as concerns the mechanical, industrial, and scientific progress of society. When they were yet children they would have had to travel the sea by ships under sail, or the land by the lumbering stage
1 This view was drawn by an officer of the French fleet, which took refuge in New-York Harbor when pursued by an English fleet. The house whose roof is barely seen to rise above the hill on the
VOL. III .- 8.
left is the Rutgers Mansion, owned by Colonel Henry Rutgers, and bequeathed to William B. Crosby, grandson of his sister, Catherine Bedlow, and the father of Dr. Howard Crosby.
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or private carriage drawn by horses, just as men did at the end of the seventeenth, and sixteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Their houses were heated, their homes and the streets of the cities where they and their contemporaries lived were lighted (if at all), in much the same way as people had done in the middle ages or in the days of the Roman republic. It is superfluous to expatiate on the advances in these simple matters of every-day necessity, made ere these venerable women had attained their half-century, their threescore and ten, their fourscore years. Yet how great an alteration in the very face of the world, in the intercourse of nations, in the conduct of business, in the comforts of existence, have the advances in these matter-of-fact affairs brought about ! Measured by circumstances and not by years, how vast the distance, as was said, between the beginning and the end of one such human lifetime; between the New-York of 1892 and that of 1793! It will be our task in this chapter to span that formidable gap, and seek to reproduce to the imagination conditions in our city of just a century ago.
The history of the eighteenth century, for the American colonies, divides itself into five clearly marked periods. The first may be called that of legislative controversy, of the struggle between royal gov- ernors and provincial assemblies, which served to deepen the con- sciousness of the colonists not only that they were possessed of rights, but that they had it within their power to assert those rights. The misconduct of one governor of New-York led to a practice on the part of the assembly of that province which had in it the germ of self- government. Too late was it seen by the English ministry what was the significance of granting supplies from year to year and for spe- cific objects. When they saw it and wished to remedy their mistake, the representatives of the people, equally alive to its advantages for themselves, would not abandon it. Then the great English principle of the power of precedent, which is quite as potent as a written con- stitution, riveted the practice upon the province, and it remained intact in the face of the most strenuous efforts to overthrow it by the governors, spurred on by peremptory instructions from king and ministry. It was but a step from these annual grants for specific purposes to the naming (if it were a salary) of the men who were to receive the money, and hence the legislature even learned to encroach upon the executive branch of the government. This contest, which, as Bancroft remarks, led ultimately to independence, is dated by him from the first assembly that met Lord Lovelace, Cornbury's immediate successor, in 1709.
It lasted with varying success, and with varying degrees of acri- mony, through all the later colonial administrations. It had taught the people of this colony (and under similar circumstances the same
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lesson had been learned by the colonists generally) to have some very decided feelings about taxation. Whether they must be accused of niggardliness, or may be credited with generosity, in the matter of grants for the support of the French and Indian or other wars,-one thing is certain, the money given in taxes was jealously awarded only at the call of the proper mode of taxation; it was to be only by the vote, and
VIEW ACROSS THE NORTH RIVER IN 1796.
after due deliberation, of their representatives. When, therefore, the stamp act was passed, and it was attempted to enforce it, a storm of indignation was aroused, and an in- surmountable opposition encountered. This is the next marked period of the eighteenth century. Legislative con- troversies between governors and assemblies were now succeeded by popular agitation. The one period or the one movement was but the logical outcome of the other. From the confined space and the limited numbers of the assembly-room, the controversy between popular rights and royal prerogative was carried into the streets, into public halls crowded by eager citizens of all classes. It was dangerous to brave such a tide of antagonism to the ministerial pol- icy. It would have been wiser to heed the steady remonstrances of a people who had long studied political principles, and who had an intelligent conception of the correctness of their political standpoint in opposing the attempt to tax them without representation. The tax itself was nothing to them, no more than Hampden's ship-money was
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to him. But they had not so scrupulously guarded their grants of money through nearly two generations without having acquired a keen sense of the principles at stake now. The British ministry, how- ever, persisted with obstinacy in their course, no doubt equally con- vinced that they were right; the tide of indignation and agitation was resisted, with the inevitable result of adding to its force, and precipi- tating a rupture.
Thus the stamp-act agitation led on to the Revolutionary period. Political controversy, confined first to legislative chambers, and then conducted in the presence of the masses or by organized actions of a civil nature for brief moments and on special occasions (as in the case of non-importation agreements and the boarding of tea-ships), had now brought both parties to such a heat in their friction against each other that the flames of war necessarily broke forth. The Revolu- tionary period occupied but a few years of the century's history, but they were momentous years. Distress deep and depressing often hung like a low cloud over all the land, but there was discipline in the affliction :
In such a forge and such a heat Were shaped the anchors of her hope.
And there were hours of glory and of pride, which witnessed to the strength and solidity born of the days of darkness. Despair could not possess the heart of a people who could thus suffer and thus triumph, and victory was theirs at last. The independence which was prophe- sied in 1709, which was shaping itself unconsciously and gradually through many colonial administrations, which began to acquire con- sciousness, albeit even yet with hesitancy and awe, during the stamp- act agitation, was now declared, fought for, won, and acknowledged. Out of the brief but fierce struggle the thirteen British colonies came forth free and independent States.
But they were not as yet a nation; and thus there opened another period in this eventful eighteenth century which, in the estimation of thoughtful students of our history, has been denominated "the critical period" by preeminence. It covered but one year less than that re- quired for the conduct of the Revolutionary war. The task of yield- ing to one another was a hard one; the sacrifice of certain individual rights long enjoyed and exercised while still in the tutelary condition of colonies, was difficult to make now that they had just attained the condition of emancipated manhood. So for six years the trial lasted, and the future remained uncertain amid the perils of the present- perils growing out of disunion, jealousies between States, actual infringements by the stronger upon the rights of the weaker. But at last light came; the constitution was framed-"the most wonderful
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work," as Gladstone has said, "ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." It was also the most conspicuous appli- cation-which the continuance of our republic has made but the more emphatic and illustrious-of the Golden Rule to human government. It was one State doing to another State what it would have the other do unto itself. Without this mutual sacrifice of rights and prop-
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erty for the common good, without this political loving of one's neighbor as one's self, federal union, and the strong nation which it created and still perpetuates, would have been impossible. It is at the exceedingly interesting juncture when this great feat had been accomplished not only, but when one complete term of its actual working under all the appointed forms of its administration-execu- tive, legislative, and judicial-had been concluded, confirming the excellence and wisdom of its plan, that this chapter takes up the current of our city's history. It had been privileged to see take place within its borders the inauguration of President Washington. In the old City Hall-converted into a Federal Hall-the Congress had be- gun its sessions; and the Supreme Court of the United States had not only erected its august bench here, but upon it had been placed John Jay, one of New-York's noblest sons.
In the same year that Washington was inaugurated, Richard Varick received the appointment as mayor of New-York from the governor of the State. He held the position till 1801, and thus his mayoralty extended throughout the whole of the period now under considera- tion. He succeeded James Duane, and was therefore the second mayor under the new order of affairs. As early as 1685 we find the Rev. Rudolphus Van Varick ministering to the five Dutch con- gregations of King's County, on Long Island, who then and for many years after could only unitedly support a preacher. In the course
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of time, and as a result of the Anglicizing influences necessarily pre- dominant in the colony, the unmistakable Dutch prefix, Van, had been dropped, and the mayor was content with a plain Varick. For some years he had occupied the office of recorder, so that he was well equipped by experience as well as legal knowledge for the place to which he had been promoted. In the war of the Revolution he had risen to the rank of colonel, and had formed part of Washington's official family, as his private secretary, after Hamilton had somewhat hastily resigned. He had doubtless shared in the increase of legal business since the evacuation, Tory lawyers having been disbarred in New-York, so that he had accumu- lated a comfortable fortune. At least his house in Broadway, where he resided, is put down on the tax-list for 1799 as valued at three thousand pounds, or nearly eight thousand dol- lars, as the pound then counted.
When his administration began (1789), the population of the city reached twenty-three thousand; it had doubled before the end of his term. The City Hall, for a short season devoted to federal uses and LaFairlib subjected to important alterations and embellishments, in order to fit it for the occupancy of Congress, had now once more reverted to its original purposes. Yet, while ceasing to be the capital of the republic in the autumn of 1790, New- York continued to be the capital of the State till January, 1798, and the legislature must have utilized the halls set apart for the upper and lower houses of the national parliament. But it was not until early in the next century that the third (and present) City Hall was erected; so that here, on the spot opposite Broad street, in Wall, still cen- tered the direction of the municipal government. And, fortunately, there can be gained an accurate idea of the extent of the respon- sibilities that rested on the shoulders of the city officials at this time, from an estimate of the amount of funds necessary for the support of the city's institutions for the year 1800. For the almshouse the
1 Major James Fairlie was the son of a New- York merchant, and the grandson of a Scotch midshipman who settled in America early in the eighteenth century. He became aide to Baron Steuben, served with that officer through the war, and shared his home on the land grant in western New-York. He held various public po-
sitions, and was a delightful companion; his sallies of wit often caused outbursts of laugh- ter from General Washington himself. He mar- ried a daughter of Chief Justice Yates. Their daughter Mary was a favorite with Halleck and Irving, and, like her father, noted for her wit. EDITOR.
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sum of thirty thousand dollars was required, while for the bridewell or workhouse five thousand were needed, and for the support - pre- sumably the subsistence - of the prisoners the amount of three thou- sand was set apart. The maintenance of a watch, the forerunner of the metropolitan police force, cost twenty-five thousand dollars. For streets occurs the item five thousand dollars; but this is independent of several other items that would seem to belong properly under this heading - such as lamps, to cost fifteen thousand dollars for being kept in order and lighted on nights when there was no "light moon," and wells and pumps for fire and domestic uses, which required only twenty-five hundred dollars. The roads about the city demanded an outlay of over seventy-five hundred dollars.
Amid these clearly defined particulars, some of them obviously useful, yet requiring only moderate sums, it is somewhat surprising to observe two very vague items, yet with large sums opposite to them: these are "contingencies," twenty-nine thousand four hundred and fifty dollars, and "city contingencies," seventy-five hundred dol- lars. The question naturally arises, What could these large contin- gencies have been? Tammany was then in existence; was already eleven years old, in fact. But it had not developed into the Tam- many of these later decades of the nineteenth century. If it had, we should not be at a loss to understand why thirty-seven thousand dol- lars should have been voted for purposes so curiously unexpressed. Still, this sum cannot alarm the New-York mind of the present day. The whole city budget, as just enumerated, reached only one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. With an addition of but ten or fifteen thousand to this amount the city to-day maintains one institution- its pride and boast -the College of the City of New-York.
At the time that is now under notice events of the most exciting nature had been and were transpiring abroad,- across the Atlantic Ocean,- which had an influence upon opinions and passions within our republic so great and powerful as to shake our government to its very foundations. New-York city shared in these agitations, and became the scene of many outbreaks of sympathy with or antagonism against the European nations with whom the republic came most closely into contact. It will be remembered that the year of the inauguration of Washington was that also of the beginning of the French Revolution. In adopting the policy of aiding the American colonies, the French king and ministry had, figuratively speaking, unwittingly seized hold of that curious Australasian implement, the boomerang. Popular rights could not be sustained in America with- out awaking attention to their reality in principle; and this would emphasize the glaring lack of their application to the population of France. No remedy could finally suggest itself to French statesmen
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to allay the distress of their nation but the calling of the States General of the kingdom, a body which it had not been thought neces- sary to call together for nearly two hundred years. Less than a week after Washington's inauguration, or on May 4, 1789, this body met at Versailles. After this first step events moved with great rapidity; the Bastille fell on July 14 of this same year, and in the next month were abolished the unjust exemptions and privileges by which the nobility and clergy, holding most of the wealth of the nation, escaped the burdens of taxation and cast their crushing weight upon the poor and the untitled classes. An avalanche had been set in motion which no power could stop. Soon came the Reign of Terror, and, in Janu- ary, 1793, or about six weeks before the end of Washington's first term, Louis XVI. was led, like a common felon, to the guillotine.
The republic of France was now a fact, and this filled with ex- treme delight many people on this side of the Atlantic, who only remembered that the French armies had aided to establish our own, and who did not regard what were the fundamental principles of this new republic as compared with that of the United States. It was forgotten that license and cruelty and ferocious tyranny of the worst kind had established the French republic; it was enough that it was a republic at all. But many here were wiser than this. Washington and Hamilton and Jay, and men of that stamp, with just as much gratitude for what France had done for the United States in the past, could only look with abhorrence upon the wrong she was do- ing to herself and to the cause of human liberty at present. Unhap- pily, these sentiments, so diametrically opposed, were now made to enforce differences bitter and radical upon questions of home gov- ernment. The federalists, the supporters of the administration, being known to be out of sympathy with the movements in France, the anti-federalists, or republicans, with the greater zest threw their sympathies headlong and recklessly on the side of the most violent red-republicanism.
After the death of the king it became a serious diplomatic question what should be done about recognizing a minister sent out by the new government. But, almost while Washington and his cabinet were considering how to act, Edmond Charles Genet, the new French minister, was landing at Charleston, South Carolina. If the presi- dent and his party were hesitating, their opponents had fully made up their minds. They hailed "Citizen " Genet, scorning to employ any other title, with demonstrations of extravagant joy; his progress from his place of arrival to Philadelphia was that of a conquering hero. Cavalcades of gentlemen went forth for miles out of the towns through which he was expected to pass, to escort him. As the min- ister representing the monarchical regime was duly recalled, and as
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