USA > New York > Dutchess County > The revolution and the common man : farm tenants and artisans in New York politics, 1777-1788 > Part 7
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
92
mittee with future Anti-Federalist Jacobus Startwout as chairman. 53 This committee developed a policy of requiring traders to buy goods at prices fixed by the committee, and to sell them at designated rates of profit after invoices had
been exhibited to the committee or its chairman. 54 Early in August a committee was formed in Poughkeepsie Precinct, the chairman being future Anti-Federalist Gilbert Livingston. 55 The same month, Petrus Dewitt ( father of Anti-Federalist John DeWitt) chaired a county-wide meeting which resolved to "dil- ligently inquire into the conduct of all public officers. ">
Thus of the three chairmen of these committees whose names are known, two were Anti-Federalist delegates to the sta-e ratifying convention in irse and the third was a delegato's father. The fact that the Dutchess County movements for price- fixing, land confiscation, and Anti-Federalism were led by the same men, argues poverfully in favor of two-party continuity.
Land Sequestration
In the same issues of the 1779 papers which told of price- fixing committees starting up in Philadelphia, Boston, and Williamsburg, Cutchess farmers read of the confiscation of Loyalist estates in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Vermont. 57
Early in the year there appeared an exchange of letters as to
New York Journal, July 19, July 25, 1779. "New York Packet, Sept. 19, 1779. 55New York Journal, Aux. 9, 1779. 5ºIDid,, Aug. 16, 1779. 57 ... New York Packet, May 2:, July 1, Sept. 2, 1779.
93
why the estate of Cutchess Tory Thomas Lexis had not been sequestered. 58 Then in May a correspondent signing himself "Country Man" made an impassioned pre-election appeal which underlined the political significance of the Loyalist land Issue. Many other states, he declared, had passed acts confis- cating Loyalist lands.
It is a matter of the highest regret to great num- bers, I might say to the people in general of this State, that similar proceedings have not taken place bere, particularly that the confiscation bill was not passed into a law, the last session of Assembly. The public are impatient to know through whose means the completion of that most necessary and important bill was obstructed and put off, tho' they hope it will be one of the first works of the next session. We are also uneasy that the votes of the Le -islature are not published, at least in time for us to know before every new election, by the Totes of the old one, in what manner they have acquitted themselves, and how well they are entitled So our future choice, which surely no one can have the least prete sion to who voted against the con- fiscation bill. >>
The movements for price-fixing and for confiscation had a natural relation, for confiscation was whiely regarded as an alternative to printin : still more currency. In August, the price-fixing committee of Pouchroepsie Precinct called for "the immediate confiscation and sale of forfeited estates. 100 October 1 ?- 9, when the New York legislature enacted the permanent con- fiscation ( though not yet the immediate sale) of Loyalist es- Cates, was also the month thes national r sentment against profiteering reached a climax in the "attack on Fort Vilson4 in Philadelphia. The New York Assembly of early 1730, which passed "New York Journal, Jan. 11, Feb. 1 and 15, 1779. 591b14., May 17, 1-79. 201bli., Aug. 9, 1779.
94
lexislation for the sale of confiscated estates, had been Specially convened by Governor Clinton for the purpose of dealing with price-fixing proposals, and responding to " the Sense that your Constituents loudly express of the Necessity
of applying some suitable Remedy to this growing Evil. U.
The demand in 1779-1780 for the confiscation, and then the sale, of Loyalist land, succeeded a period from 1 ?? 7 to 1779 when Loyalist property had been forfeited or sequestered. In all these stages the problem of Loyalist property was most acute in southern Dutchess, the scene of the tenant rising of 17c .. For here all three landlords became open Loyalists, and Tory sentiment among the tenants was strong also: in 1778, an Informant wold William Smith that the nel. Nborhood of Quaker Hill, where the 17.0 rioters had made their final stand, was 32 if in neighboring Sivin- forty-to-one against independence.
ston manor the tenants, also inclined to Toryism, remained so throughout the war (see Chapter I), In Dutchess County where the landlords were Loyalist there was a strong incentive to espouse Wiedery in order to obtain the land. Once it seemed likely that the patriots would win, south Dutchess sentiment swung to support the Revolution in the hope that a confiscation law would be passed.
These much-troubled highlands of south Dutchess were the southern boundary of the area controlled by the New York Revo-
ElSprech of Aug. 24, 1779, Clinton, Public Papers, 7, 210. 52see in confirmation of the Tory sentiment in south Cutchess: n. 3, above, and Nathan Pearce to the Provincial Congress, Jan. 5, 1777, Journal of the Provincial Congress, I, 700-707.
.
d
1
er
95
lutionary government. Fishkill became a major supply depot for the Army; it was to Fishkill that, after the Battle of White Plains, the corpses were brought back to be stacked like cordwood in the streets. John Jay was only the most prominent of the refugees from Westchester and other southern counties who streamed into the highlands, often with little more than the clothes on their backs. One of these refugees, John Camp- bell, wrote to a Dutchess commissioner of sequestration in 1790 that "those two families have twelve children the oldest not eleven years old and to my knowledge one of those families have been six weeks this winter without bread - and when the small remains is gone I brought out of New York this must be my situation unless you relieve me. " 03 This influx of patriot refugees threatened in 1775-1779 to deprive the long-suffering tenants of even the leaseholds they possessed.
Both the Influx of refugees and the departure of Tories built up pressure for public marement of Loyalist property. "Almost in every quarter of the county, " Egbert Benson and Mel- ancton Smith stated in March 17-7, "the estates of persons now with the enemy, are daily sold and wasted without any method to secure them, either for the public or their creditors. ,64
In that same month, the Provincial Convention sought to deal with the problem by creating commissioners of sequestration for each county. 05 The commissioners were empo ered, first, to
P3John Campbell to Theodorus Van Wych, Jan. 31, 1780, Papers of the Commissioners of Sequestration - Dutchess County. 24 Journal of the Provincial Congress, II, 407.
05For the steps leading up to this lezislation, see Harry 3. Yoshpe, The Disposition of Loyalist Estates in the Southern District of the State of New York (New York, 1939), 13-15.
96
sell the personal effects of Loyalists at public auction, and second, to lease the lands of Loyalists "under moderate rent from year to year to persons friendly to the cause of America, " giving first priority to refugees.
Their discharge of the first task does not concern us here. " In the second area, the commissioners felt their way into a far more difficult task. In some Loyalist fami- lies the head of the house had fled, leaving his wife and children on the farm; should they then be dispossessed?07 The commissioners had no clear instructions as to how much rent to charge. 08 They were uncertain whether they could
It was an unending headache. The items involved were "one mare and sucking col: the property of Richard Vanderburgh on the farm of Wines Manny. Charles Davies of Beekmans has a quantity of wheat at Elijah Townsends," etc. The goods were sold at public vendue, one precinct at a time, usually by the commissioners themselves (Papers of the Commissioners, e,c., "Memorandum of Tory Goods"; "The Property of Beverly Robinson sold at vendue at the house of Peter Bogardus, Nov. 24, 1777," Hugh Rea to Commissioner Sheldon, December 10, 1777, and Commissioner Van Wyck to Commissioner Livingston, December 13, 1777). Alexander Flick, using manuscripts since destroyed by fire, states that between 1777 and 1780, 624,594 was realized from the sale of the personal property of 262 Dutchess Tories; by May 1783, the total was 699, 771 (Loyalism in New Yor's Dur- ing the American Revolution [New York, 1901], 141-142).
07 An official in Ulster wrote to Clinton, May 8, 1778, about the work of the Ulster commissioners: "They say they have not rented any as yet, and they choose not to do it, as there is women in them, I understand the Commissioners for Dutchess County has rented such farms" ( Clinton, Public Papers, III, 282-283).
58The Dutchess commissioners wrote to Clinton on March 16, 1778: "Your memorialists have put numbers of well affected refugees inhabitants of this state into the possession of lands and tenements deserted by the former disaffected proprietors. As yet your memorialists have stipulated with but very few of the refugees aforesaid, what rent they shall pay for the lands and tenements they
97
lease farms, perhaps belonging to an absentee whig landlord, from which a Tory tenant had departed. 09 On the one hand, they faced protests from men who had left but later returned; Thomas Lewis, whose case was mentioned earlier, wrote to say he had read in the newspaper that his property was to be gold and that justice had certainly miscarried, inscribing his letter, 'Poughkeepsie Gaol, Dec. 16, 1778.#70 On the other hand, a precinct committee of safety might remonstrate that the most deserving candidates had been passed over by the commissioners :
Whereas it is reported that you have let to Kr. John Vredenburgh the farm whereon John Karl formerly lived who is gone off to the enemy, and is now in possession of Lieutenant Furness Knickerbocker; as the right of soil belongs to Mr. Peter Van Senthuysen, the commit- tee of said precinct is not clear whether said place is let by you or Mr. Benthuysen, however that be, said committee beg leave to .. 'orm you that Mr. Vredenburg !! is not a friend to the cause of America, he only pre- tends to be neuter, and has already a good house which he occupies, and does not want the other place, unless it be to make gains by, and Lieutenant Knickerbocker has no other place for himself and family than
occupy. Your memorialists wish to have pointed out to them, what proportion of the highest rent they could obtain from others, for lands and tenements above described, the said refugees should pay" (ibid., III, 45-46; the draft of this letter is in Papers of the Commissioners).
09Egbert Benson, whom the commissioners consulted on doubtful points of law, wrote to Commissioner Livingston on August 3, 1780: "The law has not pointed out any mode to the Commissioners for inquiring into titles, and . . . con- sequently possession must be to them sufficient evidence of right,' except in the case of tenants "notoriously tenants only for a year or other short term and having no kind of interest in the improvements" and in the case of tenants whose leases would expire in less than a year (Papers of the Commissioners).
70Ibid.
98
the place which the said Karl left, wherefore this committee recommend Lieutenant Knickerbocker to your Justice and favor, and it is the sense of this com- mittee he ought of right to have the preference life of said place of which he now 18 in possession.
In pursuing their difficult assignment, Commissioners Sheldon, Van Wyck, and Livingston stepped into the shoes of the former landlords. They gave leases, with the usual clause forbidding waste. 72 They dispossessed squatters 73 and prosecuted for nonpayment of rent. 74 Since the law stipulated one-year leases, their tenants had each year to seek anew a continuation of leases. Wilhelmys P. (last name illegible] wrote to the commissioners, December 21, 1779 :
As the time : agreed for the place whereon I now live will expire in a few months I take this early oppor- tunity to know whether I can have it for another year and should be glad you would let me know it soon, that I may have time to look elsewhere in case I cannot stay where I now am.
A glimpse of daily life on a farz leased from the com- missioners of sequestration is afforded by the account book of the New York City refugee, Jonathan Lawrence. "> Lawrence
7-Peter Heermance, chairman of the Rhinebeck Precinct committee, to the commissioners, March 10, 1778, ibid.
72 Undated lease to Thomas Jenks of Charlotte, 1bid. ; New York Journal, April 5, 1779.
73Van Wyes to Livingston, June 30, 1779, Papers of the Commissioners.
74Van Wies to Livingston, June 5 and e, 1779, 1bid .; New Yor's Journal, January 11, 1779.
75papers of the Commissioners. 7ºLawrence Papers, I. - Z.H.S.
99
"hired" the farm of Daniel Attwater from the commissioners for the year May 1779 to May 1790 ( in Dutchess County, elec- tions, town meetings, and the payment of rent took place in the spring). One fourth of the farm Lawrence sublet to his nephew John. In the first soring he planted seventeen bush- els of corn, seven bushels of potatoes, and two-and -half bushels of buckwheat; the expenses included 11 gallon rum for our plowing Frolle. " During the summer he paid sums of fifty and thirty-three dollars to soldiers for hoeing his corn and working on his ha :. On October le he out in the main Dutchess crop, sixteen bushels of wheat. Meantime he pastured " Continental Horses" two weeks for the commissary of hospitals. Next spring he changed his crops to flax, rye, and pats. Taxes for the year were sixty-six sounds, rent sixteen bounds.
The commissioners appear from their records to have attempted to prevent speculators from abusing a law de- signed to ali refugees. Had they seen paragons of justice, however, they could not easily have avoided the charge of favoritism. Leases, unlike the personal effects of Loyal- ists, were disposed of not at auction but through private application. Often a would-be tenant asked a member of the Revolutionary committee in als neighborhood to write the commissioners on his behalf. A letter from Hugh Rea, chair- man of the Northeast Precinct committee, to Commissioner Sheldon, illustrates the difference between the methods of disposal of the two kinds of property. Rea laclosed the inventory of "the personal estates of those that has
100
absconded to the enemy last summer out of this precinct." He urged that they be sold as soon as possible. He said that he could put the movables except the livestock in one safe place, but could not bring together the livestock, as forage was scarce and no one was willing to pasture all the cattle. Rea concluded that the bearer of the letter wished "to hire John Peter Rows place of you, and I would be glad you would assist him in getting it by speaking to the rest of the Commissioners for him. 477
But the unfairness of the leasing system was more than a matter of favoritism in renting vacant farms. In some cases the commissioners dispossessed an existing tenant to make room for a refuree. How many tenants, one wonders, received letters 11to the following?
Messrs. John and Thomas Campbell, Thomas Cakly and Elvin Valentine, refugees from the enemy, have made application to us for the mills, and houses and farm appertaining to the same, and as we are particularly Instructed to give refugees the preference we have siven those gentlemen our promise, that they may possess the aforementioned premises this present year. These are therefore to give you notice, that you are to remove.
To James Cox, who received the commissioner's letter, the spirit of '70 may have suddenly seemed less important, and the spirit of Ico more real.
77Rea to Sheldon, December 10, 1777, Papers of the Commissioners.
79Van Wych to James Cox, January 20, 1779, 1bid.
101
CHAPTER V THE CONFISCATION OF LOYALIST LAND, 1780 ANC AFTER
The cumulative financial crisis which bore so heavily on the common people also produced an urgent demand for new sources of funds for the army. In the winter of 1779-1780, these two causes combined to push the legislature to the con- fiscation of Loyalist lands.
Looking back years later on the hardships of those days, a group of Dutchess tenants recalled that while some had flod to the enemy, they themselves had "remain'd stedfast on . . . determined to defend the right of our Country as well as our Property. " They had suffered particularly, they said, from the nearness of the troops, 'who were constantly Cantoned & encamped around us, notwithstanding our willingness at all times to supply their reasonable wants but how inadequate was our little property to the Support of an Army often hungry, Naked and distressed for the necessary Comforts of life, which consequently, at times, by living so contiguous to them Reduced us to the same predicament. "1 Other tenants, less patient, simply withheld their rents, or (rather than accept the worth- 2 less quartermasters' certificates) left their wheat unground.
-Petition of tenants on the "Water Lots,' Sept. 6, 1784, New York Assembly Papers, XXVI, N. Y. S. L.
2See R. R. Livingston to the Trustees of Kingston, Har. 1, 1788, R. R. Livingston Papers; and the advertisements of Robert G. Livingston in the New York Journal, Jan. 4 and Aug. 16, 1779, and the New York Packet, Ang. 19 and Sept. 2, 1779. For wheat left on the ground, R. R. Livingston to John Penn, Jan. 28, 1780, R. R. Livingston Papers.
-
102
Protest had berun with the accusation of individuals. Thus the chairman of the Rhinebeck Committee of Safety com- plained of a local speculator debasing the currency, and of Robert Livingston, Sr., racing horses and charging high prices for his iron. 3 And "the petition of the freeholders and inhabi- tants of Dutchess County" told the state legislature that spe- culators were selling provisions to the enemy for specie and refusing to sel to Whigs for paper currency, and were, there- fore, 'a vile set of Men whose God ig their Gain. "" It was this spirit, as described earlier, that underlay the recreation of committees in the summer of 1779.
But along with resentment toward individuals arose the demand for confiscation of land. This was a program which, 12 Just as simplistic as price-fixing, cut much more deeply into the social fabric. In October 1778, 418 Dutchess inhabitants petitioned the Assembly for a confiscation bill, warning that
the delay of this act to another session is big with uncertainty of its passing at all, and therefore of the most dangerous consequences to this state. Espec- Sally as it will occasion universal uneasiness and in all probability produce tumults and insurrections, and tend to a domestic tyranny and confusion as much to be dreaded as the evils brought upon us by our connec- tions with Great Britain. >
A year later, a group of tenants alspossessed by Beverly Robin- son in the fo0's sent to the legislature a petition, now much charred and barely-legible, which rehearsed the particulars of their misfortune and put forward a claim to their inheritance.
Herman Hoffman to the President of the New York Convention, Mar. 17, 1777, and Jacob Heermance to the President of the Council of Safety, Nov. 21, 1777, Jour. Prov. Cong., II, 409, 457.
""The Petition of the Freeholders and Inhabitants of Dutchess County, " n.d., N.Y. S.L.
"Quoted in Johnson, Henry Luddington, 153-156.
103
They had, they wrote,
settled a wild uncultivated Tract of Land . . and turned it into comfortable Habitations (with an] Ex- pectation of Reaping the Benefit, and enjoying [the fruits of] their Labour and Toil in the Decline of Life; being [confident ] . that whoever should be
the proper Owner . would have Justice Goodness
and Compassion . to allow them the Priviledge of enjoying those Habitations [and] Farms which they had made comfortable and in some measure profitable by the sweat of their Brows, upon their paying an equi- table and reasonable Rent. But contrary to this as soon as their farms were in any measure made com- fortable convenient or profitable by their Industry, one Beverly Robinson instigated by his associates Philip Philipse and Roger Morris, and assisted by a Banditti of Kings Troops . in the Year 1766 obliged them to quit their Houses and Farms and com- mit themselves naked unto Providence.
Therefore they desired the legislature "to enact such Laws or adopt Measures as may effect the Restoration of these your Pe- tioners."
In September 1?79, when this petition was written, a for- midalle tremor of unrest was sharing the ground beneath the feet of the Whig leaders. "The people have become very licentious, " Robert h. Livingston's brother-in-law complained in December. 7 In the same month Livingston's mother camped a complaint about Oppressive taxes with a prayer for 'peace and Independence and deliverance from the persecutions of the Lower Class who I for- see will be as dispotic as any Prince (if not more so) in Europe. " The challenge was clear: the two groups of Whig leaders, radicals and conservatives, responded with a character-
Petition of Simon Calkins and others, Sept. 2, 1779, New York Assembly Papers, XXVI, N. Y. S.L.
?Thomas Tillotson to Robert A. Livingston, Dec. 13, 1779, Robert 3. Livingston Papers.
U Margaret Beekman Livingston to Robert R. Livingston, Dec. 30, 1779, ibid,
104
istic difference.
The response of the conservative leaders to the popu- lar movement for price-fixing ane confiscation was unam- biguous hostility. One and all they condemned price-fixing as da gerous meddling with private enterprise. "Is it pos- sible my friend, " stormed Gouverneur Morris, "that the State of New York can thinkof passing a reculating Act. How hath this madness got hold upon them. " 3 Future Federalist John Sloss Hobart commented: "The liberty of acquiring property 1s, probably, the greatest incentive to action in the whole moral system Man is, by nature, a lazy beast Exert yourself therefore to prevent our resolves [the resolves of the Hartford Convention of 1 ??? favoring a general limita- tion of prices] from obtaining the sanction of congress, let there be no convention at Philadelphia. 10 Another future
Federalist, Egbert Benson of Dutchess, agreed: "A regulating scheme has not been attempted anywhere in the State except at Albany It is amazing that people should still pur- sue a system so evi-ently futile and absurd. I sincerely wish the limitation may be limited to Albany. I possibly am in the opposite extreme and so far from reducing prices agree- able to the plan, I think the Embargo Act [affecting wheat sent out of the statel ought immediately to be repealed and our farmers indulged with an opportunity of carrying their produce to the highest market. .11
"Gouverneur Morris to Robert A. Livingston, May 27, 1778, Livingston-Bancroft Transcripts, II, ". Y. P. L.
10John Sloss Hobart to same, Nov. 15, 1779, Robert R. Livingston Pebers.
11Egbert Benson to John Jay, July 6, 1779, Correspondence and Public Papers of Jay, I, 213-214.
105
Gouverneur Morris in particular was outspoken as to the infamy of government interference with private enterprise. Price regulation, he declared, "gave a Woeful Impression of the new Governments by laying down a Violation of the Rights of Property as the Corner Stone on which they were to be erected. In another of his many essays on financial topics, this Ameri- can Adam Smith stated: "In the Fluctuations of human Affairs, the Principle of self Interest is like the Power of Gravity to Fluids, which brings them to a level, merely by the Mutability of their component Parts. 113 Only when his relative Robert became Financier did Gouverneur Morris yield to the insistence of conservatives like Hamilton that the state could be used to protect private property, as well as to destroy it.
Regulation of property seemed bad to the New York conser- vatives; confiscation of property was, of course, worse. In 1778 the state legislature attempted a tax on large incomes. "As to the taxation of money," Livingston complained to Morris, it is needless to tell you how far I agree with you in sentiment when I inform you of the measures our vise Legislature has taken to banish both money & monied men from the State. The first is effectively done by an embargo on flour which deprives us of every remittance but money. The second not only by a tax on money but by a most unprecedented tax of 5 per cent on all, Traders and Manufacturers who have made more than 11000.14
The New York conservatives hotly opposed the confiscation
12Fragment on price regulation, n.d., Gouverneur Morris Papers, Columbia U.
13Fragment on paper currency, Feb. 1780, ibid.
14Robert R. Livingston to Gouverneur Morris, Apr. 6, 1778, Robert R. Livingston Papers. See also in this collection same to samo, Jan. 1778 and Jan. 29, 1778; Schuyler to Livingston, Mar. 5, 1778, and Livingston to Schuyler, Mar. 29, 1778.
.. 12
106
of Loyalist land, too. In the fall of 1778, we find Living- ston urging Morris to attend the Assembly because dangerous plans were afoot to forfeit estates and give land to the soldiers. 15 The next spring, Livingston kept John Jay informed of the progress of the "most ill judged" confiscation bill; never, the Chancellor declared, "was there a greater compound of folly avarice & injustice. " .16 Jay's brother James, as will appear below, consistently voted against a confiscation bill at every opportunity.
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.