USA > New York > Westchester County > Westchester County, New York, during the American Revolution > Part 17
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1 Credentials of the Delegation from Virginia, to the Congress.
Credentials of the Delegation from Massachusetts, to the Congres.
3 It is matter of history, well known to every student, that the action of the Congress on the Safethermaly Resolution, (Journal of the Congress, "Saturday, September 17, 1774, A.M."), cloud the door of reconcilia- tion against the Colonies, and ied the Home faverment to regard the great body of the Colonists as only rebels, against whom it had become the duty of that Government to throw the weight of its anthority. a determination for which those Colonists, in their individual relations, had given no warrant, either in their actions or their dispositions.
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to declare his willingness that that Grievance, if no other of the series, should be duly removed.
Notwithstanding all that has been said in deprecia- tion of that particular Colonial General Assembly, it did not consider it necessary, nor even expedient, to override the minority of its members without even cover of the subsequently notorious "unit-rule," in recording the votes of its members, nor in any other
Colonists, in New York, including every class, and sect, and political party-and it possessed no authority to represent any other, and made no pretension to do so -- than either the Congress of the Continent or the fragmentary revolutionary faction within the Colony had done or possibly could do; and there is very
recognizing their existence on its Journal, under | great reason for the belief that its orderly, and digni-
fied, and more practically sensible influence would have been recognized beyond the limits of New York. manner ; nor did it conceal its proceedings, whether : and that it would have succeeded in its honorable efforts and evidently earnest purposes to restore, per- manently and without dishonor, that harmony be- tween the Colonies and the Mother Country which all professed to desire, had not the rashness of General Gage, in Massachusetts, during the brief recess which it had voted to itself, broken the well-strained barriers of Peace, loosed the worst elements of human nature | in the Colonists, overturned everything which per- tained to a Government of Law, and plunged the Continent into all the horrors of a needless and, nec- essarily, a bitter fratricidal War-a War which, at its conclusion, the farmers of Westchester-county, or those of them who remained, more than all New England combined, had sorrowful reasons for remem- bering, because of the devastated homesteads, the divided families, the antagonistic neighbors, and the remembrance of plunder, and outrages, and butcheries, among them, of which that War had been so abund- antly and so sadly productive.
honestly or questionably determined, by publishing as complete what were only mutilated copies of its Journal, all of which the Congress had done. It might have been charged with " corruption," with some de- gree of propriety, had it purchased an appearance of unanimity in its votes with unexplained exceptions in the mandatory provisions of some of its general en- actments-exceptions in favor of one of the high-con- tracting parties, which were necessarily conceded as equivalents for commercial trickery in another-as the Congress had done; but the divided votes which are presented on nearly every page of its Journal very clearly indicate that, whatever of factional bitterness there might have been, neither codfish nor rice was recognized as -an element in the determination of grave questions, affecting the peace of the Colonies and the welfare and happiness of millions, in Europe as well as in America. On the contrary, what it did was done honorably, and openly, and in conformity with the requirements of parliamentary, as well as of A few words only are required to complete the record of the results of that much-slandered General Assembly ; and the space which they will occupy cannot be better occupied. constitutional, Law ; not by unanimous Votes, actual or fictitious, but by a majority of its members, duly and courteously exercising the authority with which that majority was duly and legally vested. It was not The Petition which was officially sent to the Agent of the Colony, the celebrated Edmund Burke, for presentation to the King, was duly laid before the Sovereign ; 1 but, inasmuch as the General Assembly had, also, addressed the Parliament, on the same sub- jects, it is not known that any particular attention was paid to it. done by the action of the minority of that Assembly, which represented the revolutionary element of the Inhabitants of the City of New York more completely and with greater zeal than it represented those several constituencies who had given seats, in that body, to it ; but it was done in the face of that factious minor- ity, and notwithstanding its open, persistent, and res- On the fifteenth of May, the distinguished Agent of the Colony, offered to be presented to the House of Com- mons, the Representation and Remonstrance which the Colonial General Assembly had addressed to that body ; and, in doing so, Mr. Burke made a short Speech, in which he told the House that " they never " had before them so fair an opportunity of putting "an end to the unhappy disputes with the Colonies, olute opposition. It was not done by reason of auy prompting or influence of either the Colonial or the Home Government ; but in well-known opposition to the wishes and the expectations of both. It was not done because of any popular influence, present or prospective ; but only from the personal knowledge of its members, concerning the great wrong, to which. it was said, the Colonies had been subjected, concern- " as at present; and he conjured them, in the most
ing the rights and the interests of the Colonists which had been invaded, and concerning the measures which were necessary for the protection of those invaded great wrongs, and for the restoration of harmony and peace. In fact, that General Assembly. in all the proceedings of which mention has been made, more clearly and more faithfully represented the interests and the opinions and the inclinations, concerning governmental matters, of the aggregate body of the
1 .. Mr Burke having delivered to me the Petition to the King. I had "the honour to present it to His Majesty, who was pleased to receive "it with the most gracious expressions of regard and attention to the rights and interests, for securing a redress of those : "himinble request of his faithful subjects in New-York, who have, on "this occasion, manifested a duty to His Majesty and a regard for the "authority of the Parent State, which, had they not, in the Memorial "to the House of Lords and in the Representation to the House of Commons, " leen unfortunately blended with expressions containing Claims which "made it impossible for Parliament, consistent with its justice and dig- "rity, to receive them, might have ladd the foundation of that Recon- "ciliation we have so long and so ardently wished for."- The Earl of Dartmouth to Goserver Tyron, " WHITEHALL, May 20, 1775.")
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"earnest manner, not to let it escape, as possibly, the "like might never return ;" closing his remarks with the statement that "he had, several times in "the Session, expressed his sentiments, very fully, " upon every thing contained in that Remonstrance ; "as for the rest, it spoke so strongly for itself that he " did not see how people in their senses coukl refuse " at least the consideration of so reasonable and de- "cent an address;" and, after having "stated the " heads of the Remonstrance." " he moved for leave to " bring it up." The Ministry was not as well dis- posed, however, as Mr. Burke appeared to suppose ; and Lord North promptly took the floor, to reply to what that gentleman had said. He connnenced by asking the Clerk to read the official record of the proceedings of the House, in December, 1768, on a Petition of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, and what was known as the Declaratory fct; and he continued by saying that he was " greatly in favour of " New York; and that he would gladly do everything " in his power to shew his regard to the good behaviour "of that Colony;" but he declared that the " honour " of Parliament required that no paper should be pre- "sented to that House, which tended to call in ques- "tion the unlimited Rights of Parliament." "As to " the Quebec Duties," which was one of the Griev- ances against which the General Assembly had re- monstrated, he said " he did not pretend to be infal- " lible; he confessed they were not laid as they ought " to be ; and he declared that he was willing to give "satisfaction, in that point, immediately." "This, "however," he said, " was but a trifle to the general "objects of the Remonstrance." An earnest Debate ensued, Messrs. Cornwall and Jenkinson supporting the Ministry, and Messrs. Cruger, Aubrey, Charles James Fox, and Governor Johnstone supporting Mr. Burke ; and that was followed by the submission by Lord North, of an Amendment to Mr. Burke's Motion " for leave to bring up," making it read thus : "That " the said Representation and Remonstrance (in which " the said Assembly claim to themselves Rights derog- "atory to, and inconsistent with, the legislative "authority of Parliament, as declared by the Declara- " tory fet) be brought up." By a vote of one hundred and eighty-six to sixty-seven, the Amendment was adopted; and the amended Motion, of course, was promptly rejected, without a division.1
Three days after that rejection of the Representation and Remonstrance of the General Assembly, by the House of Commons, [May 18, 1775] the Duke of Manchester brought the Memorial which that General Assembly had addressed to the House of Lords, before that House, and moved that it be read. The Earl of Dartmouth opposed the Motion ; and a spirited Debate ensued, in which the Earls of Buckingham- shire, Denbigh, Gower, Hillsborough, and Sandwich.
and Lord Mansfield, supported the Minister, and the Duke of Richmond, the Earls of Shelburne and Effingham, and Lord Camden, opposed him. The only objection raised against the reading of the Memorial was the bare suspicion that " it contained "matter derogatory to the supreme legislative power "of Great Britain :" and ou that suspicion, alone, the Memorial not having been even described, the House sustained the Minister, and declined to allow the Memorial to be read, by a vote of twenty-five to forty- [ five, sending it, of course, into the legislative limbo.2 Well might Edmund Burke subsequently say of that rejection of the Memorial and of the Remonstrance of the General Assembly of Colonial New York, by the two Houses of Parliament, " nothing done in Parlia- "ment seemed to be better calculated to widen the " breach between Great Britain and the Colonies." 3
: Almon's Parliamentary ligider, i., 152-156; Lamitad Register for 1775, " History of Europe,"* * 116, 4117.
It is a reasonable case, in such instances as those cited and in those of the earlier historians of the American Revolution who lived and wrote itt Europe, that no more than the rejection, by the Parliament, of the two papers which were sent to that legislature by the General Assembly of New York, was mentioned in the writings of those gentlemen ; but there is no valid excuse for those, in America, who have exhausted all their resources of misrepresentation and abnye on that General \-sembly, charging it with having been everything which was detrimental to the honor or the integrity or the interests of the Colonies, and closing their respective narratives, on the subject of that Assembly, by reciting no more than the facts, stated in the text-that its Memorial and Remon- France had been rejected by the two Houses of Parliament, without having been read-without having pretended to explain how it were posilde that so bad an Aweinly as they had described, could, by any possibility, have been, the author and publisher of such papers as, because of their peruliarly republican averments, the Home Govern- ment and the Parliament would not allow to be even read in their 1.resence.
Bancroft, after having consolidated the Romanstrouve and the Memorial, making them our paper, obliged Burke to offer both, on the same day, and in the same House, all of which were described in the narrow con- pass of font lines, without even a hint how such an Assembly as he had previously described, could have produced such a paper-his silence serving to screen his unfaithfulurss, as a bistorian, both in a falsification and in a suppression of the truth. (History of the Coded States, original edition, iv., 286; the sur, centenary edition, iv., 315.) Joland. Hamilton, of course, by his sup pression as well as by his falsification of the truth, in order that his father and his grandfather might he unduly eulogized, is equally untrustworthy (History of the Republic, i., 86.) Lendrum. (Hix- fory of the Inrioun forolator, i., &T;) "Paul Allen" (Natury of the tim, i., Sung Runway, (History of the American Revolution, i., 171, 172;) and others, less prominent but not less popular, have been equally un- faithful, as historiens, in this matter.
Lossing, (Field Book of the Boculation:) Frothingham, ( I've of the Repuldie :) Bidpath, (History of No Cuites states ;) Lodge. ( History of the Warren, (History of the American Revolution :) and others, although abranding in forte and fictions concerning Massachusetts, have not spared a line for the recognition of what was done for " the common "erie" by the fientend Avreally of the Colony of New York.
Pitkin, ( Halong of the Code Master, i. 321, 325;) und Hildreth, ( History of the Lated States, First series, il., i. Ch) with that fidelity to the trith which distinguiditel them, as historians, and notwithstanding they wira New Englanders, but only recited enough of the facts to enable their respective radis to understand what the General Assembly of New York really did, but they also compared the result of these doings with the deines of the Continental Congress, very much to the credit of the former, wnbont behustling what they regarded as also due to the
1 Almon's Derlimentary Register, i., 407-43; Awound Register for , latter. 1723, " History of Europe" 115, ×11.
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purpose of joining issue with the latter, at the pro- posed Meeting, on the questions which had thus been referred only to those who were either Freeholden. or Freemen of the City, in whom, alone, the right of the elective franchise was, then, legally vested.3
Except those matters to which we have already re- a red. nothing which requires especial notice in this narrative, occurred until, in February, 1775, the Gen- eral Assembly of the Colony rejected the Resolution, submitted by Judge Thomas, of Westchester-county, which provided for the election, by that General As- An unusual excitement appears to have been aroused by the placards with which the walls and the fences throughout the City were covered,6 and by the impassioned appeals with which the newspapers were filled; and the morning of the sixth of March opened sembly, of Delegates to the proposed Congress of the Continent, to be held at Philadelphia, on the tenth of May ensuing, reference to which has been already made.' Four days after that determination, by the General Assembly, to take no official action on the | with many appearances which betokened the ap- subject referred to, [February 27, 1775.] Peter Van proach of a serious conflict between the rival factions. As early as mine o'clock, the revolutionary faction, strengthened by many who were neither Freeholders nor Freemen, began to assemble around the Liberty- pole,' on which a large Union Flag had been raised, at an early hour; and, at eleven o'clock, preceded by a Band of Music and a large Union Flag, it moved, by a eireuitous route, toward the appointed place of meeting, picking up, as it went, such a motley crowd of "boys, sailors, negroes, and New England and "New-Jersey boatmen" as a noisy Band and eou- tinuous invitations to "fall in," which have always been ineidental to partisan political processions. could not have failed to secure. The conservative Brugh Livingston brought it before the " Committee "of Observation," by which name the Committee of Inspection evidently preferred to be known ; and that Committee, notwithstanding its authority was limited to other and entirely different lines of duty, enter- tained and agreed to a Resolution, offered by that gentleman, " that the Committee take into Consider- "ation, the Ways and Means of causing Delegates to "be elected, to meet the Delegates of the other Col- "onies on this Continent in General Congress, to be "held at Philadelphia, on the 10th Day of May " next."" Ifany other action on the subject of that Res- olution was taken at that time, it was not completed when the Committee adjourned; and not until the , faetion, strengthened by " some Officers of the Army following Wednesday, [ March 1, 1775,] at an Ad- "and Navy, several of His Majesty's Council, and "those Members of the House of Representatives " who had refused taking into consideration the Pro- " ceedings of the Congress, together with the Officers 'of the Customs and other Dependents of the Court, " &c." -- the Governmental Party, as far as there was one, having evidently united with the conservative faction of the party of the Opposition, on that occa- sion-assembled at the Widow De La Montagnie's, at ten o'clock ; and that, also, moved, quietly. in a procession, to the Exchange, in season to take part in the proceedings of the proposed Meeting. It is said that "soon after the parties met some confu-ion "arose, but subsided without any bad consequences " -in other words, blows were exchanged, which, at one time, threatened to become a serious riot. journed Meeting of the Committee, was the subject disposed of, by ordering the publication of an Adrer- tisement, addressed " to the Freeholders and Freemen " of the City and County of New York," in which were made a recital of the recommendation that another Congress should be convened at Philadel- phia, on the tenth of May ensuing ; a suggestion that an Election of Delegates "ought not longer to be de- "layed;" an acknowledgment that that Committee possessed "no Power without the Approbation of "their Constituents, to take any Measures for the "Purpose; " and a "request " "that the Freeholders " and Freemen of the City and County of New York, "will be pleased to assemble at the Exchange, on " Monday the 6th Instant, at 12 o'clock, to signify " their Sense of the best Method of choosing such Isaac Low presided, as Chairman of the Committee who had requested the Meeting and proceeded to ex- plain the purposes of that request, after which he pro- "Delegates; and whether they will appoint a cer- "tain Number of Persons to meet such Deputies as "the Counties may elect for that Purpose, and join " with them in appointing out of their Body Dele- " That organization was effected at a public Meeting of the Inhabit- ants who disapproved the ' request" of the Committee, which was held at the Widow De La Montagnie's, in Broadway, opposite the Fields. on Friday evening. March 3, John Thurber presiding .- (.I Branded, sigurd) by Jobu Therher, in the Library of the New York Historical Society.) " gates for the next Congress." 3 That Advertisement was published on the following day, [March 2, 1775; ] + and, what was very unusual, those who were opposed " The Committee of Observation called it. Meetings by means of hand- bills posted throughout the City ; and the Meeting at the Widow It. La Montagnie's was called in the same manner. to the revolutionary faction of the confederated party ot the Opposition appear to have organized, for the
1 See page 52, ante.
" Proceedings of the Committee of Oberation for the City and County of New York, at its Adjourned Meeting, February 27, 1775.
3 Proceedings of the Committee of liberation for the City and County
of New York, at its Adjourned Meeting, 1st March, 1775.
" Holt's New York Journal, No. 1678, New-York, Thursday, March 2. 1775,
" A. nearly as can be ascertained, the Liberty-pole stood in the Fields, now the Park, near the present line of Broadway, opposite the block which is bounded by Murray and Warren-streets.
It occupied a small lot of ground which had been bought for that purpose, by those who styled themselves " Sous of Liberty : " and, as lately as 1785, lauic sears, the assign of one of those who had bought it, many years previously, made a claim on the City, and was paid for his interest therein. - Manual of the Corporation of the City of Ver York for 1856, 433.)
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posee the following question: " Whether a certain was the result of the day's labor, that it directed the " Number of persons shall be appointed and author- detailed statement of those transactions, thus re- "ized to meet such Deputies as the Counties may . ported to it, to be entered, in full, in the Minutes of. "elect, and join with them for the sole object of ap- its own proceedings. Having thus disposed of the "pointing out of their body on the 20th of April next, main question, apparently to its entire satisfaction, the Committee then proceeded to nominate, by ballot, eleven persons, " for the Approbation of the Freemen "and Frecholders, for the City and County of New "York, to serve as Deputies to meet such other Dep- "uties as may be appointed by the remaining "Counties in this Province, for the sole Purpose of " electing out of their Body, Delegates for the next " Congress; " and the choice of the Committee fell on Isaac Low, Philip Livingston, James Duane, John Alsop, John Jay, Leonard Lispenard, Abraham Wal- ton, Francis Lewis, Isaac Roosevelt, Alexander MeDougal, and Abraham Brasher," notwithstanding Isaac Low had previously " desired a Friend that in "Case he should be put on the Nomination, to de- "clare, in his Behalf, that he should be under the dis- "agreeable Necessity of Dissenting."3 " Delegates to the next Congress?" Those who were opposed to the question, the conservative faction and it- governmental allies, promptly demanded a Poll of the Voters, giving as reasons for their demand, that the business of the day was to take only the sense of the Freeholders and Freemen; that none but those of these two classes of persons had a right to vote on the question ; and that it was impossible to discrini- inate them from those who had not such a right. The large body of the members of the Committee who was present, " who had taken upou themselves the part of "Returning-officers," ofcourse, refused the demand -- as the number of qualified voters, then present, who were known to have been opposed to the question. was evi- dently so very largely in the majority, a Poll of the Vot- ers, had one been permitted, would have determined the question in the negative, and have defeated the pur- pose of those who wereseeking another advancement to place and authority, in the proposed Congress of the Colonies -- and the question was, of course, declared to have been carried, in favor of the proposition. The second question which was proposed : "Whether " this Meeting will authorize the Committee to nomi- "nate Eleven Deputies for their Approbation ?" being of secondary importance to those who had op- posed the first, a Poll of the Voters was not demanded thereon ; and, of course, like the preceding question, it was adopted "by a very great Majority of the Peo- " ple," promiscuous in its qualifications for such an action, voting civa coen. "The Business of the day " being finished," as the record stated, the assemblage dispersed; and, as far as that notable Meeting was concerned, the purposes of those who had evidently obtained the control of the Committee of Inspection, had been fully secured.1
There appears to have been thirty-eight of the Members of the Committee of Inspection present at the noon-day Meeting, on the Exchange, which has been described; and, on the evening of the same day, [March 6, 1775,] in their capacity as Returning- officers, they reported to the Committee itself, which Hrad assembled in due form, the proceedings of that popular assemblage, including the affirmative au- swers to the two questions which had been presented to it; and so entirely satisfactory to the Committee
It will be seen that, in this last performance, the Committee of Inspection. (or of Observation, as it was pleased to call itself,) notwithstanding the peculiarly aristocratie elements which entered into its compo- sition, had accepted, if it had not resorted to, that questionable element which had been so frequent- ly employed, on former occasions, for the perform- anee of acts, which neither the Law of the Land bor their own self-respect would have permitted its high-toned employers to do, directly, with their own hands-that it had resorted, indeed, tothat peculiarly questionable element, outside the limits of plebeian re- spectability, which Gouverneur Morris had so graphi- eally described, in his letter to Goveruor Penn, which has been already laid before the reader." It will be seen also, that in exact conformity with such question- able practises, already very well known to every men- be rof the Committee noise and lawless acts of violence. in that last instance, had accomplished, at the Meet- ing at the Exchange, what an evidently insufficient supply of Freeholders and Freemen, unassisted by those who were not thus qualified to vote, could not have possibly secured to the Committee, on that oc- casion; and that, among those political tricksters among whom the end justified the means-a class which was evidently well represented in the Com- mittee, at its Meeting on the evening of the sixth of March-the introduction of that very questionable mode of determining grave questions, involving the weal and the woe of the Colony, affirmatively, where, otherwise, the majority of competent voters would. unquestionably, have negatived those questions, was
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