USA > New York > Westchester County > Westchester County, New York, during the American Revolution > Part 24
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The first formal organization of those who were in confederated opposition to the Home Government of that period, which was made within the City of New York and, probably, within the Colony -- the Caucus of the confederated Merchants, at Sam. Francis's, in May, 1774, which had been evidently assembled under the inspiration of James Duane and John Jay, who
were not Merchants, but Lawyers-wasreally intended quite as much for the adoption of measures which should practically rebuke. the evidently growing sense of their own political power which has been recently sven arising among the Working-men and the lowly, throughout the City, if for nothing else, as for the adoption of measures in further opposition to the Home Government, to which it was nominally de- voted; and, by adroitness in their management of the movement-the master-spirits of that aristocratic as- semblage were not novices in political chicanery- while they really secured, more firmly than ever, the controlling authority in the confederated Opposition to the Home Government, in the aristocracy of the Colony, those master-spirits not only laid the founda- tions of their own and their family's further advance- ment, but they, also, so far placated the disaffected Working-men, by making the greater number of their leaders a helpless and powerless minority in the pro- posed Committee of Fifty-one, that peace and harmony of action, thoroughout the entire Opposition, were im- mediately restored-they had again deceived the masses of the people ; and, once more, a share of that confidence which those lowly masses had reposed in their aristocratic neighbors, was entirely forfeited. Although that new-born element was represented in that Committee of Fifty-one, its representatives were in a powerless minority ; and whatever was done in that body, whether the representatives of the Work- ing-men assented or dissented, was, therefore, in fact, nothing else than the act of the confederated aristoc- racy. It was not long, however, before that fraudu- lent treatment of the Working-men produced "the " great Meeting in the Fields," and the dissolution of that incongruous alliance, and the resumption of the antagonism of the masses ; and it was not long, also. before the confederation of the aristocracy itself, within as well as without the Committee of Fifty-one, was broken by the defection of those who had been the master-spirits of the organization, who, for the advancement of their own and their family's aspira- tions for place and emolument, had become as un- faithful to their aristocratie associates in the Coni- mittee and to the political principles which that Com- mittee had so resolutely maintained, as they and those whom they had controlled and guided, in the Com- mittee, a few weeks previously, had been, to the great body of the Inhabitants of the City, by whom that Committee had been really created and vested with authority to represent the entire body of the Opposi- tion, within the City of New York. There was no abatement of the previously united opposition to the demands of the Working-men, however ; and in each of the new-formed factions of the confederated aristocratie Opposition to the Home Government and ju all which they or either of them did, there was the saine entire disregard of the political rights of the Working-men, then without leaders, which had been so clearly conspicuous in all the actions of the aristoc-
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racy, from the beginning of the political troubles, within the Colony.
The reader has been made acquainted with the successful opposition which the Committee of Fifty- one had made to the plan of operations which the Boston-men had proposed and insisted on ; and with the successful establishment, instead, of its own pro- ject to call a Congress of the several Colonies, for con- sultation and for the promotion of harmony, in the party of the Opposition, throughout the Continent. He will remember, also, the narrative of the refusal of the Committee of Fifty-one to permit the Mechanics and Working-men to be represented on the ticket for Delegates to the Congress of the Colonies which it had proposed, and that of the consequout failure to elect its proposed Delegation, when its ticket was submitted to the body of the Freeholders and Free- men of the City, at the Polls. He will remember, also, what has been said of the various movements and counter-movements of the rival factions, after the defeat of the Committee's candidates ; of the treachery to the Committee who had nominated them and to their aristocratic associates, of four of the five candi- dates of the Committee; of the consequent election of those five candidates, in the absence of any other candidates, by the united support, at the Polls, of por- tions of both the aristocratic and democratic element>; of the assembling of the proposed Continental Con- gress, in which there was not a single representative who was in sympathy with or who honestly repre- sented the working masses of the Colonists; of the seizure of the control of that Congress by the " fire- " eaters" of Massachusetts and Virginia aud South Carolina, and the consequent transformation of it, from the instrument for the promotion of reconcilia- tion and peace, for which it had been specifically created and put in motion, into one for the promotion of rebellion and bloodshed, which was utterly obnox- ious to all, except a very few, of the Colonists through- out the Continent ; of the entire neglect, by that Con- gress, to seek that redress of the grievances of the Col- onists from those by whom, only, such a redress could have been made, notwithstanding it was for that par- ticular purpose the Congress had been convened, and notwithstanding such a reconciliation was what was most earnestly desired "by all good men ; " and of the readiness of that Congress to inaugurate a system of violence, in each of the Colonies, for which it af- forded ample warrants. He will remember, also, what has been stated concerning the General Assembly of the Colony ; its organization ; its bold and deter- mined opposition to the obnoxious Colonial policy of the Home Government ; its sturdy refusal to become auxiliary to or identified with the Continental Con- gress, notwithstanding it was not less determined in its opposition to the Ministry ; its measures for secur- ing from the Parliament of Great Britain, the only body from whom it could be obtained, a complete re- dress of what the Colonists regarded as grievances ;
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and the unsuccessful result of its efforts, in that com- mendable undertaking, only by reason of the boldness of its declarations and of the audacity of its preten- sious to rank, a- the legally constituted representa- tives of a free people, notwithstanding they were Col- onists.
It will be remembered by all who are familiar with the history of Colonial New York, however, that, al- though the aristocracy of that old and respectable Col- ony had always been consistent and united, in its un- deviating disregard of the real political rights of the working masses, those in the rural districts as well as those in the Cities, there had been, during many years before the period of which we write [Miy, 1775], and there was, then, a bitter feud, existing within itself, between two rival families and their respective asso- ciated families and their several adherents. It will, also, be remembered that, during a long period of years, one of those powerful families and its friends had occupied all or nearly all the high places in the Colonial Goverment, and had dispensed the exten- sive patronage of that Government and disposed of its valuable emoluments among those who were known to have been the friends and adherents of the family, agreeably to the dictates of its own controlling will ; while the other of those two antagonistic families and those who had been its friends and adherents, during the same long period, had uneasily and unsatisfac- torily reposed on nothing else than on their own rural respectability, without any place in the Goverment of the Colony, without any of that influence which place had afforded so bounteously to its more powerful rival, and without any of those emoluments of office which, more than ahnost all else, would have been so ex- ceedingly acceptable to every Seotehman and to every other within whose veins the controlling blood was Scotch. The feud between the De Lanceys and the Livingstons, in Colonial New York, is matter of his- tory which is familiarly known to every New-Yorker who is reasonably acquainted with the history of his own country.
When the Home Government, eager to reduce the heavy land-tax to which the country gentlemen of England had been subjected by reason of the demands of that Government, in its vigorous prosecution of the War with France and Spain, first tightened the lines of'those who administered the Custom-, in the Col- onies, and thereby seriously interfered with the smug- gling in which every class of the local aristocracy was so largely and so profitably engaged, there was a common reason, which appealed to those of the De Lanceys and those of the Livingstons with equal force, for an op- position to the Home Government, in which those of both the families could harmoniously unite and from which both could be more surely benefitted; and, in accordance with that teaching of common sense, that opposition to the Home Government, of which the reader has been told, was really established in the City of New York, with its organized Committee of
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Fifty-one and its more noted Continental Congress ! of the Provinces of Massachusetts-Bay and New among the results of that union.
intineuce, had slowly retired from the field of politi- cal action and had been dissolved by its own action ; the Continental Congress and its policy and its meth- - had been accepted by the Livingstons and their inend- and adherents as that which seemed to be best adapted to add strength to their hereditary an- tagonist to the De Lanceys and their friends and ad- berents; the General Assembly of the Colony and its policy and its methods, not less in opposition to the Colonial policy of the Home Government than the others, had been accepted by the De Lanceys and their friends and adherents, as well as by the great body of the Colonists, throughout the entire Colony, as the only legitimate exponent of the will of the Col- ony and the only one which could reasonably be ex- pected to obtain a hearing before the Home Govern- ment and the Parliament and the people of Great Britain, from whom, only, a redress of the grievances of the Colony could be obtained; and the Colony was again made the witness and the victim of a bitter feud between rival families, one of them holding and the other endeavoring to obtain all the places and influ- enee and emoluments of the Colonial Government. A Delegation of twelve had been elected, by a Conven- tion which had been convened for that purpose, to re- present the Colony in a second Congress of the Col- onies ; and of that Delegation, two were Livingstons, two were of those who had married Livingstons, and two others were assured and well-tried supporters of the Livingston interest. The excitement which was occasioned by "the news from Lexington " had added strength to the friends of the Continental Con- gress and its revolutionary policy, to the Livingston interests, and to the revolutionary faction, generally ; and, in the same interests and with the same revolu- tionary ends in view, a Provincial Congress had been called and elected, although, as was subsequently seen, the Deputies thus elected were not always pli- wit tools, to be handled by a skilful politician, for purely partisan purposes. The control of the politi- cal affairs of the Colony, it will be seen, as far as those affairs could be controlled by the revolutionary fac- tion, was, by the election of the members of the Pro- vincial Congress, firmly secured to the Livingstons and to their friends ; and the government of the Col- onists, thenceforth, was revolutionary, without war- rant of Law, and oligarchic.
In England, at the time of which we write, the Ministry, revelling in the strength of its party and hanghtily disregarding everything of prudence and conciliation. had recently led the Parliament to enact, first, the Bill for restraining the Trade and Commerce
Hampshire and the Colonies of Connecticut and
At the time of which we write, the threatened dan- ; Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in North America, with Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Islands in the West Indies; and to prohibit such
ger from the working classes appeared to have been averted ; the Committee of Fifty-one, or those who ha I remained in it atter the treachery of those who had ' Provinces and Colonies from carrying on any Fishery on the Banks of Newfoundland or other places therein mentioned, under certain specified conditions and lim- itations; and, second, the Bill for restraining the Trade and Commerce of the Colonies of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and South Caro- lina, with Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Islands in the West Indies, under certain conditions and limitations-the Commerce and Fishing Right- of the Colony of New York, in each instance, having been left, undisturbed-and the First Session of the Fourteenth Parliament was drawing near to its close. The disturbance of Trade which was consequent on the political differences, had already produced great distress, in Great Britain, among those whose lives and labors and properties were employed in the man- ufacture of goods specifically intended for the Ameri- can market; and, at the same time, the Merchants, in that country, and those who had given credits, com- mercial or financial, to the Colonists, in America, were anxiously considering in what way, if at all, since entire commercial non-intercourse, except that which was surreptitious and corrupt,' had been or- dered by the Parliament as well as by the Continental Congress, they were to receive payment of what was due or becoming due to them-anxieties which were not removed by the aristocratie and " patriotic" "debtors," in some of the Colonies, at least, whence remittances had been entirely suspended and where the Courts of Justice were not permitted to assist in the collection of debts.
In New York, at the time of which we write, as far as the great body of the Colonists in the rural Counties were concerned, there does not appear to have been any noticeable change-the farmers had not been disturbed in their labors, during 1774; and the surplus of their productions, which had found early markets, had undoubtedly been disposed of at those better than ordinary prices which are known to have prevailed, in consequence of the increased demand . which had been produced, early in the Autuum, by the approaching embargo. In the City, the suspen-
1 The full supplies of goods, of every description, which were shipped to Boston, with the knowledge of officers who occupied high places in the Government, on Transport Ships and disguised as Stores for the Royal Army- sometimes paid for, as Stores for the Artny, by the King's Treasurer-subsequently became a subject of searching investigation before the House of Commons. The Schedules of Goods thus shipped afford amusing evidence of what were officially considered as Army Stores : they clearly show, also, the relative weight of morality and im- morality, whenever the profits of trade are considered, and how vastly more the Profit and Loss Accounts, on their respective Ledgers, will th- Rience the monds and the religion and the doings of " Men in Besi- "new" Merchants and others, than anything which their Motion have taught them, anything which their Bibles have presented to their consideration, or anything which their consciences have brought telvre them
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sion of the foreign trade, by the experimental action of the first Continental Congress, must have bern as disastrous to the great body of the inhabitants -those possessing small Estates as well as the Trademen jalo, have already appointed such Committees. In and Mechanics and Workingmen, of every lowly i Westchester county, however, although the handful of office-eckers who hovered around the Morrises. class-as that much written-of Port Bill, imposed by the retributive action of the King and the Parliament I and who did what those haughty leaders told them of Great Britain, had produced on the similar classes who had inhabited the Town of Boston, in the pre- ceding year ; but the men of New York and their de. pendent families had endured whatever of hardships there has been in the suspension of their respective means of support, without those outeries, nominally of assumed distress among " the suffering inhabitants" -more loudly uttered by demagogues, for other pur- poses, than by those who were really sufferers, pray- ing for relief-which had distinguished Boston, a few months previously, and which had induced the tender- hearted, the world over, to become politicians and to reprobate the Home Government by whom the Port Bill had been imposed ; to sympathize with those who were said to have been "suffering," although the latter could have found remunerative labor elsewherethan in Boston ; and to contribute the means which were really expended, very largely, more for the benefit of the tax- payers than for that of the "suffering poor" of the Town. The suspension of their business, by the aristoc- racy of America, who could sustain the present strain in order to ensure the receipt of an ultimate advantage. was, we say, no less severe in New York than the simi- lar suspension of her business, by the aristocracy of Great Britain, had been in Boston; and the sufferngs of of the working classes were, undoubtedly, quite as keen- ly felt in the one case as in the other ; but, in the in- stance of New York, there was neither an appeal for help nor an ostentatious display of "patriotic" sym- pathy, extending help; and if the sufferings of the lowly vietims, in New York, were noticed at all, by those "patriotic" aristocrats who had produced those distresses, it was only in those congrat ulatory remarks, not unfrequently seen in the published correspondence of the not distant later period, that the necessities of the working-classes were compelling them to enlist in the Armies, in order to obtain even a portion of the food which was needed to keep their dependent wives and little ones from starvation, and that "for the " Rights of man and of Englishmen."
The " determination" of the Continental Congress of 1774, to appoint Committees "in every County, "City, and Town," "whose business it should be at- " tentively to observe the conduct of all persons, " touching the Association," which that Congress also enneted, and with extraordinary powers for persecut- ing and bringing ruin on whomsoever those local Committees should determine to put under a ban. hrad not yet become as well-seated, in the Colony of New York, as in some of the other Colonies; but the
City of New York was thus controlled ; and, possibly, some of the rural communities who were more than ordinarily revolutionary in their inclinations, may,
' to ilo in rein for official favors received or looked for, had recently appointed such a County Committee, at the time of which we write, it had not yet com- meneed its subsequently well known work of inquisi- torial proscription and pluinder and outrage. There were individuals, among the farmers or in the little villages or at the several landings, who remembered and continued to condemu the usurpations of polit- ical authority which had signalized the first Conti- nental Congress and had divided and lessened the power of the Opposition; and these and others who had attended the recently-held meeting at the White Plains may have been and undoubtedly were discon- tented and outspoken, within their respective families and among their neighbors, producing, in some in- stances, undoubtedly, ill-feelings and personal ani- mesities and less harmonious neighborhoods. But, notwithstanding all these, the great body of the in- habitants of the County was entirely undisturbed ; the labors of the day had been done, as they had pre- viously been done, on the hundreds of homesteads, throughont the County; politieal questions in which they felt no interest had not slackened the domestic or the out-door industries nor lessened the holiday or evening pleasures of by far the greater number ; and, with here and there a clearly perceptible change, the staid old agricultural County was undisturbed, in all its various relations. The Colonial officers con- tinued to discharge their various duties, as their pre- decessors had done -- John Thomas, who had occupied the Bench of the Court of Comnon Pleas, since May, 1755, continued to discharge the duties of that office, as well as those of the other office of Representative of the County, in the General Assembly, without
Committees, and the extent to which they carried their new-found authority, although & rettes peenbarty to Virginia, is entirely applica- ble to the methods an I the extent of authority of similar Committees, in every other Colary : " The Issoritten bret, in part, cutered inte, recor- "tretidled by the people of this Colony, and adopled by what is called " the Continental Congress' are how entotring, throughout this coun- "try, with the greatest rigour. A Committee has been chosen in every "County, whose business it is to carry the Istriation of the Congress " inte execution ; which Committee amines an authority to inspect the " books, invoices, and all other secrets of the trade and correspondence "of Merchants; to watch the conduet of rvery Iuhabitant, without dis- "time tion ; and to send for all such as come under their suspicion, info "their presener, to interrogate them orpeeting all matters which, at " their pleasure, they think it objects of their inquiry, and to 'stig. "' matice,' as they terin it, such as they findl transgressing what they " are now hardy enough to call ' the Laws of the Congress,' which ' stig- "matizing' is no other than inviting the vengeance of an outrageous "and lawless mole, to be exercised upon the unhappy victims." -- { The " Devender 21, 1771," Said before the House of Commons, February 1. 1775,-Almon's Forli Gand zy Regidor, House of Commons, First Session Fourteenth Parliament, i., 1 , 1 -t .. )
I The following description of the methods adopted by those local
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Ning disturbed, by any one ; and James De Lancey. sho had been the Sheriff of the County, since June, 1:20, and David Dayton, who had been the Surro- ; son, and need not be repeated, unless in such instances ate, since Jane, 1766, and John Bartow, who had as particularly related to Westchester-county or to those who were within the bounds of that County, during the period of the War of the Revolution. been the Clerk of the County, since April, 1700, each in his appointed official place, continued to discharge the official duties which were incumbent on them, and to receive and to enjoy the emoluments which theme reveral offices secured to them -- the Courts of the County continued their several Sessions, at the appointed times; and, as we have said, with occa- -ional individual or neighborhood exceptions, a gen- oral quiet prevailed, a quiet which preceded a ter- rible convulsion, as the reader will shortly see.
The machinery of government which had been created by the revolutionary elements, within and withont the Colony of New York, was, very soon, pt in motion. It was composed of only a series of con- claves, each of which exercised, arbitrarily, Legisla- tive, Executive, and Judicial functions, unrestrained by either constitutional or statutory provisions, and controlled, in whatever it determined to do or not to do, only by the individual impulses of such, within this Colony, as the Livingstons and the Morrises, the Van Cortlandts and the Thomases, and as James Duane and John Jay, men, in every instance, who were distinguished for their entire disregard of and con- tempt for the unfranchised and lowly masses, of every class, as well as of those who were franchished, but not "well-born "-the former being looked on, by them, as fit only for labor and for fighting; and the latter as no better than the others, unless on cleetiou- days-and who represented only the uncontrolled and purely aristocratie prejudices and antipathies and the equally uncontrolled and malignant partisan animosi- ties and jealousies of those who, during many years, had been exeluded from official life, and who, by the whirligig of rebellion, were, then, first enjoying. in an extremely diluted form, what they had so long and so anxiously hankered for.1
The Congress of the Continent assembled at Phila- delphia, agreeably to order, on Wednesday, the tenth of May, 1775; and, ten Colonies being represented- only three of the Delegates from New York having been present, that Colony was not counted -- it was formally organized by the election of Peyton Randolph, of Virginia, as its President, and Charles Thomson, of
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