Westchester County, New York, during the American Revolution, Part 2

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

USA > New York > Westchester County > Westchester County, New York, during the American Revolution > Part 2

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1 A personal examination of the Records of the County, preserved in the office of the Clerk of the County, at the White Plains, has revealed, to us, the significant fact that, although the Records of Ciril Actions in the Court of Common Pleas, the Records of Roads, and other similar Records, from a very early period, have been carefully made in books provided for the purpose (in one instance, if in no more, one volume, ly ling reversed, has been made to serve for two distinct lines of lec- orls) an las carefully preserved, the Records of Criminal Actions, iu Any antall the Courts, within the County, wer- not thus made in hooks, ma.tel long after the time of which we write -- until leng, very long, after the close of the peaceful and prosperous and happy period of the Colon- inl era-when the greater number and more important character of the Cronitil Ation --- until then too insignificant, in number and character, to entitle them t .. such a distinction, among the County Records-war- ranted, the first time, the employment of books in which to keep the Records of the !!.

If the rough Minutes of the Courts, in Criminal Actions, prior to ITS7, were preserved, at all, they have all disappeared : and we feel justified in saying, as we have said, in the text, that where Panperism and In- temperance were as uncommon as they were in Westchester-county, during the later Colonial period, there was, in consequence, a mini- buum of Crime.

: It is understood that there was no Newspaper established in West- chester county, until about Ist ), when one was putde hed at somers, and one at Peekskill.

lett, undisturbed, in all his relations, by any outside itifluenee.3

Such a community as that which constituted the Colonial County of Westchester-a community of well-situated, intelligent, and well-to-do farmers, diligently and discreetly attetiding to its own affairs, without the disturbing influence of any Village or County coterie-has generally been distingut-hed for its rigid Conservati-m, in all its relations; and such a community has always been more inclined to main- tain those various long-continued, well-settled, atid, generally, satisfactory relations, with more than or- dinary tenacity, preferring, very often, to continue an existing inconvenience or an intangible wrong, to which it had become accustomed, rather than to ac- cept, in its stead, the possibility of an advantage, in- definitely promised, in an untried and uncertain change. The tenure under which so many of those Westchester-county farmers held their lands, which did not permit them to enjoy the rights of Freehold- ers, at the Polls, had, from the beginning, removed that portion of the inhabitants of the County from the arena of polities, without having created any discontent ; and, to a great extent, it had served, also, to increase that Conservatism, even in political affairs, which would have undoubtedly controlled even those who were Tenants, under any other eir- eumstances. There is not, indeed, any known evi- dence of the existence, at any time, within the County, of any material excitement, among the great body of those farmers, on any subject ; " and, con-e- quently, there is very little, if any, evidenec that the excitement of the earlier opposition to the Home Government, which had so seriously disturbed the peace of the neighboring City, as well as that of other Towns and Cities, on the seaboard, prior to the Sum - mer of 1774, had found any active sympatby, in West-

$ Except wherein our antborities for particular statements have been already given, we have depended, for what we have stated. in this and in the two other paragraphs which immediately precede this, on the knowledge which we have acquired, concerning Westchester- county, its inhabitants, and its history, from the numerous books al manuscripts and newspapers, bearing on those subjects, which Lave fallen into our hands and been ex:mined by us, dering more than foris years past ; on the information, relating thereto, which was given to as. Personally, in our earlier life, by aged natives of the County, some of them dear relatives, and one, if no more, whose personal recollections extended back, beyond the Declaration of Independence ; and on what remained of the character and habits of its Colonial inhabitants, in there old families who continuel to linger within the County, when we first knew it.

+ We are not insensible of the discontent, among the tenantry on the Cortlandt Manor, which led a considerable number of them and of tho-e who favored them, in April and May, 1764, to move down, as far as Kingsbridge, demanding a redress of grievances, and making serions threats against their Landlord ; but it was only a local disturbance, reaching only to the limits of that single locality. It possessel no po- litical significance whatever-it was grimly siid of it, by a contemporary, "Sons of Inbeity errat opposers to these Rioters n- they are of opiston " no one is entitled to Biot but thenisAlves"-and it was promptly sty - pressed, without loss of either property of life. Those who are curious to know more of this outbreak of early "Vatireuters," are referred to] the Journals of Captain John Montresor, 361, 33 ; and to the Colonia Manuscript- of that p riod.

WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

chester-county, beyond the very limited circles of family and party and sect, united only in that one those who had hell public offices within the County, opposition to the Colonial policy of the Home Gos- ernment -- of "the Gentlemen in Trade," as they sometimes ealled themselves - within the several Towns and Cities on the Atlantic seaboard. to some of the long-established Laws of the Kingdom, as well as to those which had been enacted, since the close of the War with France and Spain, for the purpose of meeting the neces-ities of the Mother Country, occa- sioned by the enorinous expenses of that eventfui contest-the unfranchised Mechanics and Working- men of that period, within the Cities and Towns re- ferred to3 (sometimes, courted and caressed by those of those who had aspired to the honors and emoli- ments of office which they had not been able to se- cure, and of those very few who had assumed to be either socially or intellectually or pecuniarily above the general grade of those among whom they lived. Indeed, there had been no good reason for those farm- ers, comfortably situated on their inland homesteads, to take any particular interest in those struggles which, from an early period, the Boston, the Salem, the New York, or any other Ship masters and Mer- chants had been waging, for the protection of that long-continued and profitable "illicit trade," from which no benefit had ever accrued to any one be- ? It is proper for us to say that that opposition to the Colonial policy of the Home Government, as it was developed within the City of New York, overpowered every diff reure of family or of sect or of party which hul been previously known ; and that the De Lanceys and the Livingstons, the Churchman and the Dissenter, the Jacobin and the Georgian, for the purposes of that opposition and of whatever might be necessary to establish its power, because as one man-one in purpose, 3 Innamich as frequent mention will be made, in this narrative, of these unfranchised Mechanics and Working-men, it is proper thit, in this place, We should explain on; meaning of the phrase, in orier that the reader may not be misled, concerning it. of in determination, one in a. tion, one in everything. yond those who were thus noisily defying the well- known and reasonable Laws of the Country ; and, in the more recently and more generally created politi- cal excitement, it had mattered very little to the thrifty housewives, in Westchester-county, from whose warehouses -- whether from those of John Hancock and the revolutionary Merchants of Boston and New York, or from those of the Agents of the East India Company, in those ports-their teacups should be ;

supplied, since the Tea which had been smuggled ; General Assembly "shall be chosen in every City, and County, and

into the Colonies, in violation of law, by the former, was quite as expensive, and not always as well-fla- vored, as that which had been imported, legally and legitimately, by the latter. Now and then, it is true, those of these farmers who were Freeholders, had been engaged, among themselves, in a political con- test between the friends of the De Lanceys and those of the Morrises, or between the supporters of the Van Cortlandts and those of the Philipses, all of them Westchester-county Landlords, for seats in the Gen- eral Assembly of the Colony' or for some local ob- ject ; but, beyond such merely local contests, they had never gone-the "Sons of Liberty " were not repre- sented and had no correspondents, within that County.

It will be evident to every one, from what has been stated concerning Colonial Westchester-county and those who occupied it, that the purposes of this work, which is devoted especially to the history of that purely agricultural community, do not require us to notice the long-continued and ably-conducted strug- gle of parties, throughout the Colony, in which the Livingstons and the Morrises had been pitted against the De Lanceys and the Colonial and Home Govern- ment -; nor will it be necessary, for those purposes, that we shall present, in all their different phases, the antagonism of " the Merchants and Traders" of every

By the Act of May 8, 1699, it was provided that Representatives i, the "Mauer of this Province, who have Right to chuse, by People dwelling "and r --- Ment in the same Cities, Counties, and Manors ; whereof, "every one of them shall have Land or Tenements improved to the "value of Forty Pounds in Frer-holdt, free from all Inenmbrances, arel "have possessed the same Three Months before the Test of the said "Writ" [for an Election ; ] "and they which shall be chosen, shall be "dwelling and resident within the same Cities, Counties, and Manors : "and such as have the greatest Number of theto, who shall have Lands " or Tenements improved, to the Value of Forty Found in Free-hold, ."free from all Incumbrances, as aforesaid, shall be returned by the "Sheriffs of every City, Counties, aud Manors, Representatives i.r "the Assembly, by Indentures sealed betwist the sail Sherid's and the "said Chusers, so to be made."-( Lunes of New York, Chapter LAXIV., Section I., Livingstou and Smith's edition, New-York : 1752, 20, 29 ; the some, Chapter LXXIV., Section I., Van Schaack's elition, New- York 1771, 28.)

By the Charter of the City of New- York, granted by Governor Don- gan, in 1680, the Mayor and three or more of the Allernieu were au- thorige I to inske freemen of the City from among certain specified classes, on the payment, in each instance, of Five Ponnl-, not an insig- uificant sum, at that early period .* No person could do business of any khipl, within the City, unless he were a Freeman of the City ; and as the Freedom of the City also vested in those who held it the Right to vote for Representatives of the City in the General Assenihly, it will be seen that, within the City, the unfranchis-l were only those Freehold ry who were not Freemen and whose Real Estate was etcumbered with debt ; those Freeholuers whose inexpensive homes were not worth Forty Pounds-a large sum, for that period ; those who labored for others, as Clerks, Journeymou, or Latorets ; and those of that shiftless, characterles- class, who encumbered the City of New York, during the Colonial Period, Is similar classes continue to encum- ber every City, especially every Seaport, holding itself in constant retliness to join in any act of violence into which such as Alexander Me Dougal and Inac Sears, of the period mivler consideration, shall in- cline to lend them.

In Westchester county, the heirs and assigns of Stephanus Van Cort- landt having failed to exercise the privilege which had been given to the latter, as the Lord of the Manor of worth inlt, of electing a Representa- tiva for that Manor in the General Avembly, that privilege was trans- ferred, by the Act of June 22, 1731, to the body of the Freehoklers resi-

* A complete list of those who were suntted to the Freedom of the City of New York, from 1749 until 17, may be seen in the Momed j 1 the Corporation of the City of New York for 1816, ITT-342.

1 Doctor Sparks, in his Life of Gouverneur Morris, i., 20, toll us of an "important cause in which that gentlemen was engaged, " before the Courts, during the Colonial era -- " that of a contested Election, in West- " chester-county, where he had Mr. Jay for an opponent." We are not told who the contending parties, in that action, were; but it is Kid, "it involved principles of evidence, questions about the right of "anfrage, as then exercised, amla complication of facts, local and gon- "eral, which give full scope for the display of legal knowledge and " forensic akill."

WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

tto had usually assumed to be their social and polit- . superior-, in order to' secure their sturdy a -- ist- anee in the intimidation of the Government, and, at other times, unrecognized by those whom they had thus befriended, as if they possessed no Rights, in political matters, which the franchised well-born

Sen! was the Maior." (Luce of New York, Chapter DCVII., Section II., Learn asl smith's edition, New York : 1132, 219, 220 ; the name, ******* ** VI! . Section 1., Van Schaark's edition, New - York : 1774, [+] :44 It will be seen, therefore, that none, except those who were Y rw !. . ler holding improved and unencumbered Real Estate worth 1 At Paula, agreeably to the Act of May 8, 1699, could vote, in Colo- & a' inatchestercounty ; but, on the other hand, the Freehollen on the rt.an It Mator possessed and, undouborally, exercised the Right to vote Tas e, at ovety such Election for Representatives to the General !- sem- My -thit for the Representative for the Manor, under the Manorial " harter, and that for the two Representatives for the County, under the Statale, already mentioned. Of course, the great body of the Tenantry, no matter how valuable its Leaseholds might be ; those whose bundle Lome were not worth, in each instance, Forty Pounds; and those w hose Fropholds, of every value, which were encumbered by debts, had uut the right of voting at the Polls.

The practical effect of that limitation of the Right of Franchise may to seen in the lieturns of Elections. In the Election for Representatives for the City of New York, hell on the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nite- truth of February, 1761, only fourteen hundred and forty-seven votes. Including those of the Freemen of the City who were not, also, Free- hobler, were cast .- (The original Returns of the Inspectors, in manu- ,ript. wwned by us.) In the Election for Representatives for the City of New-York, held on the seventh. eighth, and ninth of March, ITos, when an Intense excitement prevailed and all known means for increas- Ing its strength were resorted to, by each of the antagonistic parties, Dineteen hundred and twenty-seven votes, including those of eight hun- fred and twenty three Freemen who were not, also, Freeholiers, were cast. - -: The original Returns of the Inspectors, in manuscript, owned by a ) in the Election for Representatives for the City of New-York,

1 .- 11 on the twenty-third, twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth, and toetaty . vehith of January, 1769, when another very excited con- tre; wcornet, only fifteen hundred and twelve votes, including those ! the Fremin who were not, also, Freeholdiers, were cast .- ( Thy Re- Chess of the Inspectora, original printed edition, owned by us.) In the Hlection for Dropmties to the Provincial Convention by whom the Delega- Non from the City of New York to the second Continental Congress was to h riected, held on the fifteenth of March, 1775, nine hundred and delty-eight votes, including those of the Freemen of the City who were not, also, Freehollers, were cast .- Holt's New - York Journal, No. lean, New York, Thursday, March 16, 1775; Klingtne's New - York Recetteer, No. 10), NEW YORK, Thursday, March 16, 1775 ; * Gaine's Next York Gazette: and the Weekly Mercury, No. 1223, NEW YORK, Monday, March 20, 1775.)

We have found ouly one Return of an Election in Westchester- county, during the period of which we write ; but that very completely mustrates our subject.1 In the Election for the first Governor of the Rex-formel State, in 1777, the aggregate of the votes cast in Allmany, Cumberland, Tryon, Duchess, Fister, and Westchester-counties, includ- las those of the Freemen of the City of Albany, was only twenty -ix Hundred and forty-two .- (Fragment of a General Return of Votes cast 1. agood the Side-Miscellaneous Papers, Volume xxxVII., in the e !!. " of the Secretary of State, at Albany.)

In 17-4, when there was nothing to disturb the election, the entire watend the State for Governor, less that of ten Precinct which was 1. realis east, was only four thousand seven hundred and forty-seven .- (Marta latte's Cred List and Forms of Government of the Colony and State of No York. Brianof 1 -; 0. 75.)

From these facts, the reader will understand how completely the gov- erumental power was concentrated in the hands of the wealthy and how little those who were not wealthy could control the Government under which they lived, during the Colonial rra and that which succce-led it, until the Record Constitution of the State, within our own recolec- ttou, broke the power of the aristocracy aud made every white male adult, who was a permanent restleut and a tax-payer, also a member of the State and a voter.

* Rivington said the aggregate vote was a thousand and seventy-two.

were required to respect) constituting, also, another and entirely independent factor in the political ele- ments of that period, in each of the several Colonies, which, in its very important relations with the poli- tics and the politicians of its day, must, also, be gen- crally disregarded, in this place, because it, and its aspirations, and its doings, are not, generally, germain to the purposes of this work. To other hands, there- fore, must be left the labor of describing, in detail, the bobl and persistent opposition of "the Merchants "and Traders" to those long-established Navigation and Revenue Laws, which, by reason of a more hon- est administration of them, by those whom the com- mercial classes had not succeeded in corrupting with their accustomed bribes, had so seriously interfered with the very profitable "illicit trade" -- that more elegant phrase which was used, and which continues to be used, to describe what, elsewhere and among less comely offenders, was and is called by the more expressive term of "SMUGGLING"-in which those "Merchants and Traders" had been so long and so profitably engaged: 1 and we can only glance, also, at that subsequently adopted system of intimidation which had been resorted to, by the same confederated mercantile offenders, under the guise of patriotism, but really for the promotion of their own selfish pur- poses, in their employment and direction of that other, less responsible and, not unfrequently, less respectable, populace, a marketable class which every large seaport can produce, sometimes in one manner and sometimes in another, quietly or violently, as had best answered the ends of those who had em-

1 " The dispute between Great Britain and America commenced in the "year 1764, with an attempt to prevent smuggling in America."-A Collection of Interesting, Authentic Papers relative to the Inspute beliceen Great Britain and America. 1764 to 1775. London : 1;77-commonly kuswn as Alion's Prior Docwomen's-3.

See, also, the following official announcement, which was published in Parker's New-York Gazette; or, the Weekly Fast-boy, No. 902, NEW YORK, Thursday, November 13th, 1760, which tells the whole story :

" Custom-house, New-York, Nov. 11th, 1700. "WHEREAS we are informel, that some of our Traders from Foreign " Forts, are now, and have been for some Time, hovering in the Sound "on the coast, with the View, as it is supposed, clandestinely to di-charge "their Cargoes ; a Practice highly prejudicial to His Majesty's Interest, "to the Trade of Great-Britain, and inconsistent with that Daty, and "Gratitude we owe to our Mother Country, almost exhausted with "Taxes raised for our Support and Defence. And not less injurious to "the fair Trwvler ; who having paid high Duties, cannot be supposed to "sell so cheap, as those that pay ho Duties, and of Course umist be great "Sufferers. That this has been the Case, and is like to be the Case "again, is notoriously known ; and all for the sake of enriching a few "Smugglers: which together with that of supplying our Enemies with "Provisions,$ will be an eternal Reproach to our Country. No good " Man therefore, not good Citizen, it is to be hoped, will hesitate in "giving all the Discouragement in his Power, to such ignominious "Practices. Informations, openly, or privately will be thankfully re- "ceived, and gratefully, if required, rewanled, by

"THE OFFICERS OF HIS MAJESTY'S CUSTOMS."

* At that time, Great Britain was at War with France and Spain, to whose Colonies, in the West Indies especially, Provisions were taken, by the Colonial Merchants, in exchange for those Goods, of thereign growth an I production, which they -ought to smuggle into the British Colonies, I on the Atlantic seaboard, as above stated.

WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

ployed it, to resist the execution of the Stamp-Act, tinent in revolution and disister. At the same time, to prevent the landing of the East India Company's it was clearly seen by those careful dlerevers of the Tea, and to make other demonstrations of seeming popular approval or disapproval, on other subjects of publie polity or of governmental policy, whenever the political or the pecuniary interests of those "Gentlemen in Trade" who had employed it, scemed to warrant the outlay of the means which had been required to produce a desired result: to our hand, meanwhile, can be assigned, of all the various impor- tant subjects comprising the political and military histories of the Colony or of the Continent, at all periods, only the description of those events, during the period of the American Revolution and that of the. War which followed and established that political Revolution, which, in themselves or in the conse- quences arising from them, directly affected the peace, the happiness, or the interests of those who, during those eventful periods, were residents of the rural County of Westchester, in New York.

The nrgent appeals with which the newspapers had been filled. year by year, and the inflammatory hand- bills which had been posted throughout the City, whenever the purposes of "the Merchants and " Traders " of the City of New York had required their powerful, but, sometimes, questionable, co-oper- ation in opposing the Colonial policy of the Home Government, had gradually taught "the Inhabitants" of that City -as, on such occasions only, the unfran- ehiscd Mechanies and Workingmen were delicately ealled, by those who had thus resorted to them-with more or less thoroughness, concerning the personal and political " Rights of Man and of Englishmen," as those Rights had been defined, from time to time, by those " Merchants and Traders " or by their well-paid Counsel, for the promotion of the particular purposes of those more aristocratic gentlemen; and these "Iu- " habitants " had also learned, from all those varied teachings and from their own well-trained reflections, that the particular Rights which had been so earn- estly and learnedly claimed by their high-toned neighbors, were not less the Rights of the unfran- elised masses, and cqually the birthright of their children. Little by little, therefore, under the leader- ship of, probably, not more than half a dozen shrewd and able and ambitious men, generally of higher social and political standing than themselves, these " In- " habitants" began to grow uneasy and insubordinate, if not radically revolutionary; and the confederated " Merchants and Traders " and the more aristocratic portion of the citizens who were not in Trade were as quickly made sensible that a power had been created and fostered, by themselves, for their own lawless purposes, which, because of its tendency to- wards a radical Revolution in both the social and politi- cal relations of the Colony, they wereno longer able to control -- a power, indeed. which, if it were not speed- ily and effectually checked, would surely overwhelm them and, probably, involve the Colony and the Con-

signs of the times, that any attempt to abridge the existing power of the unfranchised " Inhabitants" of the City, and, especially, that of those who were less scrupulous in the selection of their means, by open and dircet measures, would, probably, induce the latter to employ, in their own behalf, that system of violence which they had been taught to regard as commenda- ble and praiseworthy, when they had employed it in bchalf of others; and it was seen, also, by those who had become alarmed by the strength and the audacity of that new element in Colonial politics, strengthened, as it evidently was, by its affiliation with the radically revolutionary elements in New England, the ma- chinery of the by-gone Committees of Correspondence being controlled by it, that, in order to check its growing power, or to secure any change whatever, in the control of it, or to retain the control of the poli- ties of the Colony, great caution and great tact, if not great promptness and great boldness, at some auspi- cious moment, would be absolutely necessary. An evident danger silenced those who, under other cir- cumistances, would, probably, have favored the employment of other and more direct means: wise counsels prevailed among those who were thus con- sidering in what manner the evidently rising power and audacity of the unfranchised and revolutionary massas could be controlled, without disturbing the peace of the City and the Colony: and it was deter- mined, with much shrewdness, to resort to "art," at the earliest favorable opportunity, for the accom- plishiment of their well-concealed purposes.1 Such an opportunity as was desired for the purposes i referred to, was very soon afforded.

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Westchester County, New York, during the American Revolution, Part 2

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