USA > New York > The history of the late province of New-York, from its discovery, to the appointment of Governor Colden, in 1762. Vol. II > Part 8
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The house considered the governor, therefore, as in the scheme of forcing the transportation, the expense of which they had refused to defray, and the rather because doctor Colden, when at Albany, had insisted upon it, menacing the commissioners if they did not comply.
Hence the clamours in the country, the prognosti- cations in the governor's message, and the severities of the representation, though it was four days afterwards that the house resolved, that the gover- nor was ill advised in granting the warrant for the subsistence of the king's independent fusiliers; that the commissioners obeyed the law in refusing to comply with it; that colonel Roberts' order was
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arbitrary and illegal ; that the breaking open the stores was a violation of the rights and liberties of the subject; and that Colden, Roberts, and Holland, were guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors; and that it would be in vain to furnish provisions for subsisting the forces in the expedition against Canada, until assurances were given that an effec- tual stop should be put to such proceedings; and an order was made for requesting the governor's command to the attorney-general to prosecute the delinquents.
Mr. Clinton's message of the 10th of November, in answer to the representation of the fifth, contri- buted nothing to the extinguishment of these discontents. Displeased with the commissioners of Indian affairs, he charges the untowardness of the savages upon them, as traders with them; promises to give orders to the secretary for that business to prepare copies of the correspondence ; expresses high disapprobation at the public testi- mony of their dissatisfaction with his winter camp, as countenancing a contempt of orders, and the printing it without waiting for his answer; and threatens to complain to the king of the difficulties he had passed through in the last six months ; and, with respect to the resolves of the 8th, he observes, in another message of the 24th, for the vindication of his own measures, and to wipe off aspersions upon others, that the troops at Albany, by concert between himself, Mr. Shirley, and Mr. Warren, were destined against Canada ; that he added to them a part of the independent companies; that the new levies, which they had agreed to supply
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with provisions, were at first sixteen hundred men, exclusive of commission officers ; that these, by desertions and disease, were reduced to fourteen hundred, including the officers ; that he could not imagine it disagreeable to them that he supplied the defect of two hundred out of the independent companies; that when he issued the orders to march, he sent major Clarke to the commissioners with assurances that, if the assembly disapproved of the supplies, he would replace the quantum ; that the form of the warrants they complained of are settled in council; that he authorized doctor Colden's request to the commissioners for trans- porting and delivering out the provisions to the captains, and on their objecting, to engage payment for the expense of the carriage, and that if they refused this, to intimate his intention to appoint other commissioners; that Mr. Colden reported their consent, and Mr. Cuyler, one of them, confirmed it. He then refers them to the minutes of a council of war, held at Albany by colonel Roberts, colonel Marshal, major Clarke, and major Rutherford, on the 16th October, at which colonel Roberts presided, showing that after Mr. Clinton left Albany, Mr. Cuy- ler refused to transport the provisions, assigning the want of money as his reason, or to appoint a com- missary to deliver them out, if they were transported by the army; nor would he deliver them at Albany to any commissioner or quarter-master, though colonel Roberts promised to be accountable, and to produce the captains' receipts, insisting, that the letter of the act required the commissioners to deliver them only to the captains.
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That the council then considering that the cap- tains could not find separate storehouses on the frontiers, nor could their services in scouting parties enable them to preserve the provisions from waste, he advised colonel Roberts to impress their provisions, give a receipt for them, appoint a commissary to be recommended by the commissioners to issue them out ; and that such conduct was, in their opinion, not inconsistent with the intent of the act of assembly, and that, without it, the expedition for guarding the frontiers would be neglected.
The governor added, that he thought himself in the line of his duty in ordering the march ; the council right in their advice from the great law of necessity, and that neither Roberts nor Holland were to blame ; that he could not therefore give any orders for pro- secuting them.
He promised to assist in the discovery of embez- zlements, if any there had been, and for obtaining justice to be done to the colony, and that the provi- sions impressed should be accounted for. He urged them to change the commissioners for others less in- clined to embarrass the service, obliquely impeaches them for deficiencies of rum; and, after censuring their freedoms with persons in his and doctor Col- den's stations, remarks that their resolves deserve their most serious consideration.
The house resolved this answer unsatisfactory ; that whoever advised or endeavoured to create jea- lousies and encourage a breach of the laws were enemies to the constitution ; that they would grant no more supplies while such notorious abuses were committed ; but that upon proper assurances of
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redress, they would grant further aids for the sub- sistence of the troops.
The governor, alarmed, asked for the sustenance of the troops, agreeable to their engagements, pro- mising that what had been experienced should not happen again, and that exact accounts of the con- sumption should be kept and laid before them ; and to divert their attention from the last object, made new requisitions to pay for female scalps ; smiths among the Senecas and Onondagas ; arrearages for provisions at Oswego, and the repairs of the fort at Albany. But, unwilling to prolong the session, they postponed these considerations, and were prorogued on the 6th of December, when thirteen acts received the governor's assent. Care was taken to prevent desertions from the army, to raise the taxes, to maintain a military watch in Albany, to keep up the militia, to provide winter subsistence for the troops, support the civil list for a year, and raise two thousand two hundred and fifty pounds by lottery for founding a college, a project early in the eye of the patrons of the public school, formerly trusted to the care of Mr. Malcolm, favoured by the pupils of that institu- tion now rising to manhood, and forced by a general spirit of emulation on discovering the sundry ad- vantages our youth had acquired by an academical education in Great Britain and Ireland, but chiefly at the neighbouring colleges of New England.
The author observed in the first records of the colony of New-Haven, vulgarly called the blue laws,* that this was an object of the very first adventurers in that country, long before their charter, uniting
* See note F.
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*
that and the Hartford colony, was obtained. The inhabitants of New-Haven (to whose honour be it mentioned) raised a large sum to begin the institu- tion within five or six years from the date of their Indian purchase of that town, then called Quinipiack. It was from this seminary that many of the western churches in New-York and New-Jersey were after- wards furnished with their English clergymen. Mr. Smith, who was a tutor and declined the rector's chair in Yale college, vacant by the removal of Dr. Cutler, was the first lay character of it belonging to the colony of New-York. Their numbers multiplied some years afterwards, and especially when, at his instance, Mr. Philip Livingston, the second pro- prietor of the manor of that name, encouraged that academy by sending several of his sons to it for their education.
To the disgrace of our first planters, who beyond comparison surpassed their eastern neighbours in opulence, Mr. Delancey, a graduate of the university of Cambridge, and Mr. Smith, were, for many years, the only academics in this province, except such as were in holy orders ; and so late as the period we are now examining, the author did not recollect above thirteen more, the youngest of whom had his bachelor's degree at the age of seventeen, but two months before the passing of the above law, the first towards erecting a college in this colony, though at the distance of above one hundred and twenty years after its discovery and the settlement of the capital by Dutch progenitors from Amsterdam .*
* See note G.
VOL. II .- 15
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The assembly being convened again in the spring of the next year, Mr. Clinton, in his speech of the 25th of March, observed, that the late provision for the levies extended only to May 1st ; that he had secured the Six Nations without any charge to the colony, and had hopes of drawing some of the re- mote savages into an alliance, and for this purpose he required supplies to be distributed in presents ; that, agreeable to a concert with Mr. Shirley, two forts were intended to be erected at the portage on the route to Crown Point, to favour the expedition to Canada, for which the king's orders were daily ex- pected; that no money being sent from England, and the council of this colony and the commissioners from the Massachusetts having proposed to pro- secute the expedition at the immediate expense of the colonies, in certain rates there stated, he impor- tuned them for their concurrence and proportion ; and by a message he also desired a provision for scouting parties to be kept up while the army went forward on the main design.
Bent upon renewing the hostilities of the last ses- sion, they did not vote any address, and resolving not to recede from the declaration that they would not transport the provisions from Albany, they agreed to victual their levies for three months, and pay for one hundred scouts, and only to pay one hundred and fifty pounds for the expenses of his journey to the intended Indian convention.
The enemy were, at that time, ravaging the fron- tiers and practising most merciless acts of cruelty. The house, to make a handle of a pathetic petition presented to them, and for embarrassing and calum-
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niating the governor, asked one hundred men out of the little army destined to Canada for scouring the woods, offering every private a shilling per day be- yond the pay of the crown, and introducing it with a recital, that the levies were victualled at a very great expense, and had been hitherto unemployed ; and to raise the popular outcry the higher, they be- sought him to pass the bill providing for the hundred rangers to which the council had consented eight days before, intimating that they would then do nothing more, and desiring a recess.
The governor thought himself compelled, for his vindication, to inform them, that when last at Al- bany he could not engage a man to range the woods under the wages of three shillings per day, with pro- visions besides ; that their offer of one shilling was, therefore, no motive for their acting in that service, and if they agreed to it, the house had made no pro- vision for their officers ; that he had engaged the Six Nations at the sole expense of the crown, who also bore all the other charges of the army except provi- sions; that parties of Indians and the new levies had been employed in divers excursions ; that when the expedition to Canada was laid aside for the year, he ordered a camp to be fortified at the carrying place, that from thence they might intercept parties from Crown Point, and by collecting magazines there, forward the intended services of the present year against Canada; that this design was obstructed by the late obstacles respecting the issuing provisions, till the frost compelled them to winter at Saratoga; that he had posted a part of the army in the Mohawks' country, others at and beyond Schenectady, three
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companies at Schaghticoke, four at Half Moon, two at Niskyuna, and others at Albany, leaving a force at Saratoga-" so that there were garrisons in a line from east to west, across the northern frontier, in every place where they could be placed in safety during the winter season ;" there were other places where forts ought to have been erected, but that he could not put that charge upon the crown, they them- selves not thinking them necessary for their own safety; that to keep the enemy at home, he had sent out parties of the Mohawks against their borders ; that his project of a fort at the carrying place was approved of by Mr. Shirley, and some of the neigh- boring colonies were willing to contribute to it, if the assembly of this colony would set the exam- ple, and when he urged their concurrence, he had avoided all ground for fresh controversy.
He proceeds then to complain of their declining every necessary expense for the common security, and of their disrespectful behaviour which obliged him, as he says, " from that common justice which every man owes to himself, to speak out, some things which otherwise I should have thought proper to conceal." That the principal traders and richest men in Albany do not wish well to an expedition against Canada, from an attachment to a trade with that country, engrossed by a few, and which he had effectually obstructed .*
* The keenness of this insinuation will escape the reader's attention, unless he recollects the representation drawn up by Mr. Colden and others, in governor Burnet's administration, against a petition promoted by Mr. Delancey's father, who derived great advantages by the Indian trade through lake Champlain. and was, therefore, in opposition to the new trading house at Oswego.
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To this he ascribes his difficulties with the Indians, and a message from the governor of Canada per- suading the savages to a neutrality, and promising from his pity of their brethren at Albany to turn his Indians on their most inveterate enemies of New England.
He then reminds them, that before the late negro plot information was given of popish emissaries, and that he suspects them among us, working upon men of wrong heads, violent passions, and desperate fortunes, as had been the case in the late Scotch. rebellion.
He shows the danger of false insinuations to raise jealousies among the people of their rulers and go- vernors ; asks, with what truth it can be said the new levies have been hitherto unemployed, and sug- gestions publicly hinted of his neglect of duty ; and promises an answer to théir request for a recess, when he knows their resolution to take care of the colony.
They formed themselves into a committee of the whole house, and agreed upon another representa- tion. To give them time to cool, he adjourned them from the 2d to the 19th of May, but with what suc- cess the reader will determine, after he reads the following abstract of the long answer of seven folio pages and a half in print, then reported by a com- mittee consisting of Messrs. David Clarkson, Cor- nelius Van Horne, Paul Richard, Henry Cruger, Federick Philipse, John Thomas, Lewis Morris, David Pierson, and William Nicoll. It was read, engrossed, and presented the same afternoon, with a request for leave to adjourn.
They disown any intention to offend by the request
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for employing the new levies for rangers, to which they were excited by information that they were wil- ling to serve with an allowance beyond the king's pay of nine-pence or one shilling per day ; by asser- ting that they were unemployed, was only meant that they were not then on the expedition to Canada, and that they might have been on short scouts without any injury to the service ; that they were well appri- sed of the importance of the Indian alliance ; that, therefore, they had put one thousand pounds in his hands in 1745 for presents, though he had then money, before voted for that purpose ; that those Indians had, as yet, done nothing agreeable to their assurances of their engaging in the war if further depredations were made.
That they consider the king's order to make pre- sents as an intimation that the charge ought not to fall on the colony ; that he went to Albany last sum- mer at their expense, but what he gave the Indians they know not; that the crown was also, doubtless, at other great charges, which turned out to the pri- vate interest of some individuals. They think their loyalty very manifest since his arrival, and suppose him well convinced of it; that he spoke well of the people in his first speech, but the change of his opinion obliged them to remind him that they gave him one thousand pounds as an earnest of their respect for him ; have raised as much for his support as for any of his predecessors, and built a noble edifice for his residence on his own plan, and paid his house-rent while the house was constructing.
They recollect the burning of Saratoga, November 1745. and hint, that if the independent companies
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had not been drawn from that post, this destruction would not have happened.
That money was given for a fort at the carrying place according to his own design, which was never- theless applied to re-building that at Saratoga ; that they contributed a part of the militia to garrison it ; that then a line of block-houses was recommended from New England to the Mohawks' castle ; they had provided for this scheme, and the money laid out in detachments of the militia posted by his order on the frontiers. They declared their willingness to contri- bute to two forts at the carrying place, and seem to doubt his declaration that any other colonies will bear a part of this burden. They declare, that no- body acquainted with the climate could be surprised at the disappointment of the attempt to fortify a camp at the time he fixed upon for that work. They assert, that the money raised for the expedition is nearly expended by the nine-pounds bounty per man, the victualling of sixteen companies, one hundred men each, and other military purposes. These they think proofs of their care for themselves, and do not forget their gift for the cape Breton expedition, with the further expense of transporting ten cannon, their carriages, &c:
They conceived that their advancements have been unskilfully laid out, for want of an engineer, and lament the delay of the person expected.
Respecting the scheme of commissioners for a joint prosecution of the war with the other colonies, they mention their having provided for it, and add: " how it has happened that nothing has been done upon that commission, is only to be conjectured."
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They censure the late negotiations at Albany, towards erecting two forts at the carrying place and attacking Crown Point, with the assistance of only three of the council, while there were six gentle- men in commission for that purpose, and no other government had commissioners there but Massa- chusetts bay.
They declared that they had not confidence in the success of the expedition, and chose to wait till experienced officers, daily expected, arrived from England. They confessed, that ever since he had placed his confidence in a person obnoxious to and censured by that house, the public affairs had been perplexed, and not attended to with that steadiness and good conduct which their importance required, and did appear in the measures pursued before he · bore so great a part in his councils.
To him they imputed certain late speeches and messages, and the interruption of the public harmo- ny; denied that the traders of Albany wished ill to the Canada expedition, and charged the insinuation to the inveterate prejudices of his minister, who had grossly calumniated the distressed inhabitants of Albany, and abused his confidence.
That part of his message descriptive of the prac- tices of Popish emissaries, they applied to another person then in his favor,* who was bred a protestant, resided several years in Canada, married a woman there of the Romish church, after having first abjured his religion, alleging that he was a person of desperate fortunes. To his intrigues and false-
* John Henry Lidius, whose father was a Dutch minister at Albany.
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hoods they imputed the unfavorable temper of the Indians, and to popish emissaries the perplexities of his administration.
They then assert it to be reported, that two-thirds of the Indian presents in 1745 were embezzled ; and that the French and Spanish prisoners were sold, under colour of his authority, to owners and captains of flags of truce, at a pistole a head ; and these things they affect to mention as with a design to give him an opportunity to punish the delinquents.
They hoped that, from the whole they have evinced, they have had a due care not only of their own, but his honour and interest.
Mr. Clinton commanded an adjournment for a few days, and contented himself only with a threat of complaining to the king, and a remark, which every body else had made without doors, that this violent and acrimonious composition was not two hours before the house ; so that the engrossed copy sent to the governor, must have been prepared before the draft was brought in by the committee.
It has been before observed, that this petty army, raised upon the duke of Newcastle's letter of the 9th of April, 1746, was to be paid by the crown. Hitherto Mr. Clinton had drawn bills to raise money for that purpose; and whether because the design seemed to be neglected at home, and he really apprehended the non-payment of his bills, or sought an occasion to embarrass the assembly, he gave them intimations that the troops threatened to disband for want of pay; and he exacted their indemnity of his estate against the protest of his VOL. IT .-- 16
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bills, or their providing money to keep the army together.
The projector of this device certainly could not reasonably hope to draw any other advantage from it, than a demonstration to government that Mr. Clinton's drafts, which already amounted to nine thousand pounds, and for which he had the advice of his council, were absolutely necessary, and that end it did serve, and that only; for the house absolutely refused to counter-secure him, declaring that his drafts were necessary to prevent the total desertion of the levies, and that his refusal to continue drawing would imply distrust of the king, and render himself answerable for the lives and estates of his subjects.
From the 4th of June, they only met and adjourned to the 4th day of August, when he called upon them to join with Massachusetts bay and Connecticut in the attack of Crown Point, aided by as many Indians, of whose temper he spoke favorably as to their being animated to action.
But they laid hold of the objections, that as no estimate was found of the whole expense, nor the quotas of the respective colonies ascertained, they refused to concur till these preliminaries were settled.
Mr. Clinton continued his drafts for the army, till the languor of administration exhausted his hopes of any co-operation from that side of the water ; and on the 31st of August, when he flatly refused any longer to victual the four independent companies and southern levies, or to expend money upon the Indians, or transport provisions to
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Saratoga, he urged them to take those expenses upon themselves, for two months, till when he hoped to draw the other colonies into some contribution, and to be better informed of his majesty's intentions. He also notified them that Oswego was in danger; colonel Johnson, the con- tractor for the supply of that garrison, requiring guards to convoy the provisions, a late incursion of the enemy upon the German flats in that route having doubled the expense of transportation.
On which the house resolved, that the provisions of the independent companies ought not to be a charge either to the crown or the colony, while posted at Albany, they having always subsisted themselves out of their own pay, except when at Oswego or the outposts; when there, they were and should be supplied by the colony : that the southern colonies ought to subsist their own forces ; that having the king's orders to make advancement to cultivate the friendship of the Indians, it is his duty to continue them till the contrary be signified by the crown ; that his bills for transporting pro- visions to Saratoga being paid, that expense ought to be forborne; that colonel Johnson cannot ask an additional allowance, the governor having in- formed them on the 2d of December, 1746, that the colonel had contracted against all events ; but to protect the county of Albany, they agreed to provide for one hundred and fifty rangers, to be formed in three companies, and kept up for fifty days.
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