Westchester County, New York, during the American Revolution, Part 18

Author: Dawson, Henry B. (Henry Barton), 1821-1889. 4n
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Morrisania, New York City : [s.n.]
Number of Pages: 592

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1 Holt's Noir- York Journal, No. 1679, NEW-YORK, Thursday, March 9, 17:5; Brington's New-York Gazetteer, No. 99, NEW-YORK, Thursday, March 9, 1775 ; Proceedings of the Committee of the restin for the City and County of Your York, tith March. 1775, into which the record of the proceedings of the Meeting at the Exchange, in the Morning, was offi- cially copied ; Jones's History of New York during the Borodataentry Hor, i., 37, 3%, and de Lancey's Notre on that Hector;, i., 18-14 ; Leake's Memoir of General Joba Lunk, I'M); Dawson & Pork and is Deinity, Er, 39; Gordon's History of the American Revolution, i., 472; Hildreth's History of the Unit. I Mena, First Series, iii., 71, 72 ; etc.

" Provedings of the Committee of Os pration for the City and County of Vor Sich, at it - Meeting, " Monday Evening, 6th March, 1775."

3 Card, signed by Mr. Low ant allressed to " THE RESPECTABLE PUR. "Ije " dated " New YORK, March 9, 1775.""

A Correrany Moreis to Me. Boa, " New-YORK, May 20, 1774," pages 11, 12, male.

WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

evidently regarded as an umdoubted success. It as candidates for the places of Delegates to the - . the, however, that, notwithstanding all that ap. proposed Provincial Convention -- the opportunity to obtain place awl attthority, no matter hon ilfomaled ' th it opportunity might be, was an olgeet so vastly more important to those aristocratie place-seekers, than all others, that, whether promising or unpromis- ing of success, those who controlled that Committee could not possibly abandon it3 -- and, consequently, on the fifteenth of March, a Poll was opened in each Ward, at the usual places of Election, nader the inspection, in each instance, of the two Vestrymen of the Ward and two Members of the Committee, who had been appointed for that duty ; and the Free- holders and Freemen of the City then formally determined that Deputies should be appointed for the purpose named, and that the eleven nominees of the Committee should be such Deputies, to represent the City and Connty in the proposed Provincial Congress.4 The result of the Poll was reported to the Committee on the evening of the same day, [March 15, 1775] when that body ordered "that Circular Letters be "written to all the Counties in the Colony, informing "them of the appointment of Deputies for this City "and County, and requesting them, with all con- " venient speed, to elect Deputies to meet in Pro- "vincial Convention, at the City of New York, on "the 20th of next April, for the sole purpose of "appointing Delegates to represent this Colony at the "next Congress to be held at Philadelphia the 10th " day of May next." 5 parent success, at the Exchange, the machinery of w.lishne's did not move without a jar, within itself, a- the very decided testimony and dissent of Isaac Low, the Chairman of the Committee as well as that of the Meeting, against whom some underhanded an - taronism had been detected, have clearly shown ; 1 and it i- equally susceptible of proof that a very healthy feeling of disapproval of the dishonorable and unwar- rantable proceedings, at that Meeting, which had been held under the auspices of the Committee of Inspection and had been controlled by a majority of the members of that body, was entertained " by a very "great Majority of our Fellow Citizens," throughont the City .? Under these circumstances, and with these warnings, it need not be matter of surprise that the Committee which had hastened to award unusual honors to that riotous assemblage, by incorporating what was said to have been a record of its tumultuons doings in the Minutes of its own proceedings, with almost as much haste, although with very much less of ostentatious and noisy display than had been previously exhibited in the unseemly approval of it, at an Adjourned Meeting, held within forty-eight hours after its hasty recognition of the doings of that assembled multitude, and prompted by John Jay who, only a few hours before, had been decidedly differently-minded -- that Committee, thus predisposed, thus bashfully,' thus hastily, and thus prompted, gravely repudiated the questionable vote which "a very great Majority of the People" was said to have given in approval of the fundamental ques- 3 Proceedings of the Committee of Observation for the City and County of Jur York, at an Adjourned Meeting. 8th March, 1775. 4 Holt's New- York Journal, No. 1680, NEW-YORK, Thursday, March 10, 1775; Hiringlen's New- York Gazetterr, No. 100, NEW-YORK, Thursday, March 16, 1775; * Gaine's New-York Quecette ; and the Weekly Mercury, No. 1223. NEW-YORK, Monday, March 20, 1775. tion, concerning the appointment and authoriza- tion of Deputies to a proposed Provincial Convention, which, a few hours ago, it had declared to have been 5 Proverdings of the Conmatter of Observation for the City and County of Nere- York, " COMMITTEE-CHAMBER, 15th March, 1775." adopted " by a very great Majority of the People," at the Exchange; and, quite as gravely and with even With the single exception of de Lances, in his Notes to Judge Jones's History of Your York during the hours toun Revolution, as far as our acquaint- ance with them extends, every writer on that subject, ourself included, bas supposed and stated that the question of sending Delegates to a proposed Provincial Convention was unquestionably determined by the promisenous Meeting, at the Exchange, withunt having seen that that vote had been subsequently repudiated by the Committee, for cause, and that it had been submitted to the Freeholders and Freemien, at the Polls, and definitely determined by them, and ouly by them, at the same tinte that Delegates were elected to represent the City and County, in that Convention. greater inconsistency, it also yielded to those whom it had scornfully disregarded, at the Exchange as well as in its own Meeting, the right and the propriety of a Poll of the Voters, by which means the mis- cellancous, unfranchised crowd would be silenced and the suffrage and the determination of the question, concerning the election of Delegates to the proposed Continental Congress, be confined to the Frecholders and Freemen of the City and County, to whom, alone, * Holt and Gaine stated the vote to have been eight hundred and twenty-five in favor of the appointment of Deputies, and one linudred and sixty-three in opposition : livington stated the vote was nine hundred and twenty-nine, in favor, and one hundred and forty- three in opposition. They all agree that inany voters declined to vote-Holt and Gaine said, because their votos wore seen to have been unnecessary : Rivington said " the friends of the old fre Deligetex, (finding that they were not " permitted to vote for them os Delegates) almost all declined giving " their voices at all." the Committee had originally referred it. It is a notable faet, however, that, notwithstanding the Committee repudiated the first Resolution which the miscellaneous crowd, at the Exchange, was said to have adopted, it rigidly maintained the equally ques- tionable validity of the second Resolution, nominally authorizing the Committee to nominate eleven persons

They evidently suspected the managers of the movement were seeking to accomplish some mischief against those " old fire Delegates;" and it may be that I-aac Low, in his declination to appear as a candidate, before the proposed Convention, was influenced by that evidently .. crooked " movement. They preferred to vote directly for Delegates, instead of leaving the choice to an irresponsible Convention of politicians, who were evidently in the interest of other aspirants to Congressional honors and emoluments.

I Card, signed by Mr. Low and addressed to " THE RESPECTABLE POR. " Ll( ," dated " NEW YORK, March 9, 1775."

" The Communication, signed " IMPARTIAL," dated " NEW YORK, ". Martha, 1775," which was printed in Richigm'a Ner-York Chatter, N . 93, Nrw-Yuck, Thursday, March 3, 1775.

WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

There is an abundance of evidence, of unquestion- able truthfulness, showing that what has been repre- sented to have been a conflict of rival parties, patri- otically representing antagonistic political principles, on the occasion referred to, was, in fact, like all the political contests which had preceded it, during the preceding twelvemonth, only personal, factional, and local, in its origin and character ; that it was not, really, concerning the great questions arising from the Colonial policy of the Home Government and the Grievances of the Colonies, relative to which there was very little diversity of sentiment throughout the City ; and that, in fact, nothing else were involved in the questions which were submitted to the Meeting, than the local and minor questions concerning the control of the political affairs of the Colony itself and, especially, concerning those who should occupy the places of authority, and influence, and emoluments, therein.

It was eonceded, by contemporaneous writers of both factions, that there was, really, no difference of opinion, among the various classes and sects and factions of which the City was composed, concerning the existing necessity for the redress of what were said to have been the Colonial Grievances, and that, if the Parliament should not interpose and indicate a willingness to afford the relief which was required, the proposed Congress ought to be convened, for a further consideration of the subject and for such further action relative thereto as should, then, be considered necessary ; and no one, of either faction, pretended to be less loyal to the Sovereign nor less mindful of what were generally regarded as his pre- rogatives, than his most loyal supporters could have been-indeed, it was a notable fact, that, on the occasion of the Meeting now under consideration, even the revolutionary and miscellaneous crowd who assembled under the Liberty-pole was sheltered by a large Union Flag; and that when it moved from the Fields to the Exchange, with its noisy drum and fife and its yet more noisy attendants, it was preceded by another Union Jack, inscribed with the name and the title of the King.

That it might become expedient and proper to assemble the proposed Congress, if the Parliament should not, meanwhile, have indicated an inclination to redress the alleged Grievances of the Colonies, was not only conceded but freely acknowledged, even by those more earnest conservatives who had assembled at the Widow De La Montagnie's, on the preceding Friday evening; but they, in common with many others, hoped and believed that the Parliament woukd promptly indicate a willingness to afford the relief which was desired; and, in harmony with that hope and that belief, with a laudable desire to restore the harmony which had formerly prevailed between the Mother Country and the Colonies, and not with any intention to oppose the convention of the Congress, per se, they desired only a postponement of the action,

in the proposedl Meeting, which was designed for the inauguration of a movement for the election of Dele- gates to that proposed Congress, until the twentieth of April, which would have afforded time for the receipt from London of intelligence concerning the inclination and action of the Parliament, withont depriving the Colony of the opportunity to elect its Delegation to the Congress, in due form, it it should become necessary to convene the Congress. But those who were anxiously seeking places and inth- ence were not ignorant of the well-known fact that a sparrow in the hand is worth more than a dove on the roof; and, consequently, they were not willing to postpone the immediate action which would surely secure those desirable advantages to themselves ; and they acted accordingly, marshaling their irregular allies, posting their handbills bearing unfounded accusations against their adversaries (accusations which were promptly contradicted in other handbills) accomplishing, or seeming to accomplish, by noise, what, at that time, they could not have accomplished, and did not aceomplish, regularly, by the votes of those Freeholders and Freemen who were, then, present.1 The result of that hasty and violent action has been noticed, and need not be repeated ; but, not- withstanding it was subsequently disregarded by the Committee which had previously hastencd to receive and accept it, it served to draw the lines of faction with more distinctness and to array neighbor against neighbor, in greater animosity and bitterness than had previously been witnessed.

On the sixteenth of March, 1775, in conformity with the Resolution adopted by the Committee, and under its anthority, Isaac Low, the permanent Chair- man of the Committee of Inspection, prepared the following Circular Letter ; and, very soon afterwards, copies of it were sent to the several County Com- mittees, where such Committees could be found, throughout the Colony :

" NEW-YORK, 16th March, 1775. "GENTLEMEN :

"The late Congress having deemed it expedient, "that, in the present critical State of American " Affairs, another should be held at Philadelphia, the

I The motives of those who, respectively, originated and opposed the call for that Meeting may be best seen and understood in the placard ail newspaper literature of that notable event ; and in that connection, the original Advertisement, requesting the Meeting, which was pub- lished in Holt's Var- York Journal, No. ITS, NEW-YORK, Thursday, March 2, 1775, was the first of the series, The opponents of the Meeting, who assembled at the Widow De La Montaguie's, on the third ot March, issued a handbill, in which reasons for a postponement of the question were stated : on the morning of the day on which the Meeting, was hell, [burch o] a cahu appeal, signed " A FREEMAN," and addressed " To THE INHABITANTS OF NEW YORK, " very forcibly urging a postpone- ment of the questions, was published in Gaine's Jaar- York Gratte and Weekly Mercury, No. 1221, Monday, March 6, 1775 ; & more elaborate ap- 1wal and argument, to the sime effect, addressed " To THE RESPECTABLE " INHABITANTS OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK," signed "A CITIZEN OF NEW "YORK," and published in the same issue of that newspaper ; an elaborate reply to the last, signed " ANOTHER CITIZEN," and published in Holt's Nor- York Journal, No. 1699, New-York, Thursday, March 9. 1775; etc.

WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

juth Day of May next ; and the neighbouring Col- oties having already appointed Delegates for that -

" Purpose, we beg Leave to call your Attention to "that Subject, and to remark, that the Honour as "well as the Interest of the Province requires that ! year after year and generation after generation, " we also should be fully and properly represented.

"Influenced by these Considerations, this City "and County conceive it bighly necessary that a " Provincial Convention should, without Delay, be " formed of Deputies from all the Counties, for the " sole Purpose of appointing, out of their Body, Dele- "gates for the next Congress, and therefore have "already chosen their Deputies : They prefer this " Mode to any other, as it tends to unite the Counties, "and to preserve that Harmony between them so " essential to the Interest of our common Cause.

" Be pleased to communicate this Letter to the "Inhabitants of your County; and should they con- " cur with us in Sentiment, we beg they will consider, " whether it would not be best to choose their Depu- "ties so soon as that they may be down here by the " 20th of April next ; which Day we take the Liberty " of proposing to you as proper for the Meeting of " the Convention.

" We forbear urging any Arguments to induce "your Concurrence, being well persuaded you are "fully sensible that the Happiness of this Colony "and the Preservation of our Rights and Liberties, " depend on our acceding to the General Union and "observing such a Line of Conduct as may be firm, " as well as Temperate.

"By Order of the Committee : "ISAAC Low, Chairman."!

It is a very significant fact that, when the Com- mittee's Circular Letter was written and made ready for transmission to Westchester-county, there was no appearance whatever, within that County, of the slightest organized opposition to either the Home or the Colonial Government; and that, among the abris of what had been conveniently regarded as a Convention of the County, assembled, in the preced- ing August, for the election of Deputies to represent the County in the late Congress, at Philadelphia, ueither a County nor a Town Committee, actual or imaginary, remained, to bear testimony to the fact that such a Convention had ever existed, orto receive the Committee's Circular Letter and to take action on its recommendation. Indeed, there can be very little doubt that the well-to-do and generally con- tented farmers, throughout that County, those who were Freeholders quite as much as those who were only Leaseholders of properties on the various Manors, with here and there a rare exception, had continued to gather their crops and to send them to market, during the preceding Autumn ; to enjoy their

usual indoor and outdoor recreations, during the pre- ceding Winter ; and to return to the labors of the season, on their farms or elsewhere, during the ear- lier weeks of the Spring, as they had done, before, knowing little and caring less concerning that bitter struggle for commercial gain, no matter how law- lessly conducted, or concerning that equally bitter struggle for the honors and emoluments of political place, no matter with what auxiliaries nor with what disregard of individual and social proprieties and of public morals that struggle should be conducted, which had kept the neighboring City and the entire seaboard in an unceasing and disgraceful turmoil, during that entire period.

It is not now evident, if it ever was, that these honest, hard-working, contented men, in any portion of that unceasing and undisguised indifference to the elamor and the unblushing inmorality and the audacious lawlessness of politicians, of high or of low degree, beyond the borders of the County, which they had steadily and consistently presented, were really offenders against any law, human or divine; and it will require more evidence than has yet been pre- sented by those who have spoken or written adverse- ly concerning those quiet Westchester-county farmers and their uuostentatious conservatism, to establish the fact, if it be a fact, that, regardless of that pecu- liar standing which was awarded to Westchester- county, during the period now under consideration. and regardless of the recognized manhood of those who then lived there, the " consent " of those farmers, previously given, was not quite as necessary to have warranted the invasion of their rural quiet and con- tentment, by those, not of themselves, who were eager to thrust upon them, uninvited, new political methods, new political principles, and a new form of political government, none of which had yet secured their favor and approval, as it was, then, and as it has ever since been, assumed to have been necessary, every- where, before a political right could be disturbed or a new form of political government be established.

The farmers in Westchester-county, in 1774 and 1775, were quiet men, quirtly pursuing their peaceful vocations, interfering with no one, and avoiding the interference of others. They were not political in their aims or inclinations ; they had very clearly manifested, over and over again, their disinelination to be associated, in any degrec, with those who were inclined to become, if they had not already become, politicians ; and, as will be seen, in their action, dur- ing the Winter, and in their subsequent actions, under similar circumstances, they were not inclined to be crowded into any political associations, without their consent, without presenting, at least, an open, a man- ly, and a vigorous opposition. The reader will de- termine for himself, therefore, how much, if any, there was of individual and social propriety, and how much, if any, there was of consideration for the wel-

" This is a copy of the original publication, as it oppfeared in Gaine's Ser York theetter and Weekly Mercury, No. 123, NEW-YORK, Monday, March 20 1175.

WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

fare of those farmers or for that of the Colony, dis- severed from all other considerations, in the Com- mittee of Inspection, alias the Committee of Oloer- vation, for the City and County of New York-a merely local organization, vested with no more than the barest local authority, and that confined, exclu- sively, to an entirely different service-when it thrust itself, unasked and nudesired, into the midst of that peaceful and peacefully inclined community, only in order to disturb that prevailing peace by marshalling those who composed that rural community into rival parties, embittered against each other, without any aim or purpose in which they were, or in which they were likely to become, in the slightest degree interested, and for nothing else than for the promotion of individual aims and for the advancement to politi- cal place and authority, of aspiring politicians who were not always entitled, by their individual integrity, to any such advancement, anywhere.

As we have said, there was no Town or County Committee, within Westchester-county, unto whom the Chairman of New York's Committee of Inspec- tion could send the Committee's Circular Letter, to which reference has been made ; and other than usual means, therefore, were necessarily resorted to, to se- cure for it even a nominal circulation, within that County. It is not, now, known, beyond a peradven- ture, just what means were thus employed; but the copies of that insidious Circular Letter which were intended for residents of Westchester-county were evidently seut to a leading Westchester-county poli- tician ; and, by him, whomsoever he may have been, they were so manipulated that they reached only those residents of the County who would most surely promote the political purposes of that particular Westchesterian who had been thus entrusted with the delivery of them.1

1 We have preferred to consider that there was an intermediate agen- cy, between the Chairman of the New York Committee and the several Westchester county gentlemen into whose hands his Circular Letters eventually fell, because those gentlemen were mainly residents of the town of Westchester and of the neighboring village of New Rochelle ; because there was nothing, in that Circular Letter, which designated any time or place of meeting, for any Caucus or other Assemblage which

might be considered necessary, for the particular purposes mentioned in that Circulair Letter ; because, only on the warrant of that particular Circular Letter, explicitly stated by theni, a dozcu ben, frota at least for- different Towns, spontaneously came together, at the same thne, in a distant Towe in which none of them lived, and on the same errand Not one of the number was from Town, lying northward from the White Putins ; not vhe had come from all the country lying westward from the Bronx-river ; there was not present either a Van Cortlandt or a Thom- as, already well-known popular leader, either of whom would have been formidable. as a rival, against any new aspirant for the leadership of the movement and the spoils of office to which that movement tended. There was present. however, one who had, previously, been politically dormant ; by whom the machinery of the movement was evidently ron ; and by whom, subsequently, as will be hereafter seen. entirely through its instrumentality, a place was secured for himself, in the Congress of the Continent, and an opening made for the accession to office and aris. tortatie consequence and influence, of others of his wide-spread family.

It will have been con, by every attentive reader, that, very evidently, Twee how's package of Circular Letters, intended for circulation in

On the twenty-eighth of March, Theodosius Bar- tow, Egg, James Willis, and Abraham Guion, Esq., all of New Rochelle ; William Sutton, Esq., of Ma- maroneck ?; Colonel Lewis Morris, Thomas Hunt, and Abraham Leggett, of Westchester ; Captain Joseph Drake, Benjamin Drake, Moses Drake, and Stephen Ward, of East Chester; and James Horton, Junior, Es., of Rye," all of them, it said, "having received " letters from the Chairman of the City and County "of New York, relative to the appointment of Depu- "ties for this County," to a proposed Provincial Con- vention, "met at the White-Plains, for the purpose of "devising means for taking the Sense of the County "upon the Subject."

At best, that meeting of local politicians, or of those who were not indisposed to become politicians, from the south-eastern Towns of the County, no mat- ter by what means they had been induced to go to the White Plains, on that particular March morning, on such an unusual errand, was nothing more hor less than a Caucus of those who were known or supposed to have been in the interest of the Morris family and to have favored the aspirations of those members of that family who hankered after official place and au- thority. Neither Yonkers, nor Greenburgh, nor any of the Towus to the northward of them and of the White Plains, were in the slightest degree represented in that important assemblage ; and every one who had previously appeared as a leader of the farmers of the County, in their very unfrequent political doings, re- gardless of party associations, appears to have been, also, very carefully excluded, not improbably for the purpose of securing that harmonious action, in a pre- ordained direction, which the presence of older and more experienced rivals might have turned toward some other part of the County than toward the Manor of Morrisania.

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Westchester County, New York, during the American Revolution, Part 18

Author: Dawson, Henry B. (Henry Barton), 1821-1889. 4n Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Morrisania, New York City : [s.n.] Number of Pages: 592

Author: Dawson, Henry B. (Henry Barton), 1821-1889. 4n
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Morrisania, New York City : [s.n.]
Number of Pages: 592