USA > New York > Westchester County > Westchester County, New York, during the American Revolution > Part 25
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! It was well-said by Henry C. Van Schaack, in his Life of his father, " It will scarcely now be credited that powers so umdefined and extraor. " sheary should have been intrusted to a few individuals, by a people so " jealone of encroachments; where sense of liberty was so been as to " ' Font the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze;' and who, "on their own part, bad gone In war against a preamide."-Van Skutek's Life of Peter Von Schowek, 17.
le barlarities which were officially inflicted on individuals and fam- sim, in many in-lances only for an opinion extorted by their percentury. Bent an overt art or the inclination to commit one, as the barbarities 8. .. Men elicially recorded, were perfectly shocking ; and some of these slab were inflicted on residents of Westchestercounty, under the Hablamos of such notable Westchester county men as John Jay and .. . vetter Morris, will find places in other parts of this narrative.
Pennsylvania, as its Secretary." The history of its doings, generally, is known to every intelligent per-
On Monday, the twenty-second of May, 1775, a number of those who had been designated as Deputies from the several Counties of the Colony, assembled at the Exchange, in the City of New York, for the pur- pose of forming a Provincial Congress ; but, because they conceived there was not a sufficient number of Deputies present, they adjourned until the following ilay, without having attempted to organize. On the latter day, [.Tuesday, May 23, 1775,] those Deputies who were then present assembled at the Exchange, " the Deputies of a majority of the Counties " having appeared; and a "Provincial Congress for the "Colony of New-York " was organized by the election of Peter Van Brugh Livingston-one of the most violent of the former " Committee of Correspondence," a brother of the Lord of the Manor of Livingston, and a brother-in-law and partner in business of that Earl of Stirling, so called, who figured so largely in the military history of the War of the Revolution-to be its President ; and John Mckesson and Robert Benson, the latter a brother of that Egbert Benson whose extraordinary election as a Deputy from Duchess-county to the earlier Provincial Convention, has been already noticed, were elected to be its Sce- retaries.3. Although the doings of that body are less generally known than those of the Continental Con- gress, the purposes of this work will not require any further reference to them, than to such portions as relate particularly. to Westchester-county or to those who were within that County, and to such other por- tions thereof as, in their effects, affected that County or its inhabitants, during the period of the War of the Revolution.
As has been already stated, the local Committee for Westchester-eounty was created on the eighth of May, 1775, ninety members having been miraculously created out of the material of which twenty-three were actually composed; and Gilbert Drake' was made its Chairman.' Micah Townsend, subsequently holding other offices of honor, in both Westchester and Cumberland-counties, was made the Secretary of that Committee ; 5 and its doings, as far as they were
Journal of the Congress, " PimliADELPHIA, Wednesday, May 10, 1777." 3 Jean of the Prominent Congress, " CITY of New-York, May 22nd, " 1775," aad addition, including the proceedings on the following day. + Condottials of Delegates to Provincial Compress, May 8, 1775,-Historie Maanscripts relative to the War of the Revolution: Credentials of thegates, xxiv .. 153 ; Rivington's Soir- York Grotere, No. 108, New- York, Thurs- day, May 11, 1575.
The Probatials mentioned above were signed " GILBERT DRAKE, " Cheimen :" but those of the Delegales elected to the Second Provin- cial Congress, signed by the same person, Iwar the signature of " GILBERT gates, xxiv., 67.)
> Historie Mantersigts, etc .: Credentials of Delegates, xxXIV., ST.
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WESTCHESTER COUNTY.
recorded in the annual- of the County, will be duly noticed, as the narrative progresses.
The organization of the Provincial Congress, on the twenty-third of May, 1775, has been alrendy mien- tioned and described : ' a more particular description of the membership of that body which, in the interest of those who were in rebellion, was to take places be- side the several departments of the legally constituted ! were ready to join with all or with any. regardless of Colonial Government, in the government of the Col. ony, and which was to wield so important an influence over all who were within the Colony, seems to be in- cumbent on us, in this place.
Of the fourteen Counties of which the Colony of New York was then composed, thirteen were properly designated " the Counties," or " the country Counties," since they were mainly occupied by communities of farmers, unless in the instances of the frontier Coun- ties, in which hunters and trappers and surveying parties and, not unfrequently, families and villages of the aborigines, afforded considerable portion- of their continually changing populations. Of these thirteen rural Counties, some of the inhabitants of Albany and Duchess and Westchester and Queens made pre- tensions to something of social superiority, somewhat akin to the aristocracy of the City of New York ; but, in none of them, unless in Albany-county, was there any pretension to a controlling local aristocracy ; and in all of them, the actual tillers of the soil largely out- numbered all other classes, on the Census-lists. From such widely dissimilar constitueneies, in town and country, therefore, even from those who were not widely separated aud differently situated, there could. not be expected Delegations to the Provincial Con- - gress who were homogeneous in their characters and dispositions and inclinations; and as all those rural Delegations possessed more or less of the elements which prevailed among those who were nominally their respective constituencies, it was to be a work of time and patience and skill, in partisan and fretional discipline, to bring all of them into " working order," in the interest of the controlling, or revolutionary, faetion of the aristocracy -- a work of which notice will be taken, hereafter.
The City and County of New York, of course, was represented in the Provincial Congress by the ex- tremes of both conservatism and of radicalism, with a generous sprinkling of those who favored that po- litical association which promised the greater pecu- . niary profits ; and the several Delegations from Al- bany and Queens and Westchester and Duchess-coun- ties, respectively contained, also, more or less of mixed memberships. From the remaining nine Counties, the Delegations were generally smaller in number; and, very largely, especially in the earlier days of the existence of the Congress, they were composed of those who had honestly come for the purpose of pro- tecting the Colony from the wrongs to which the
--- 1 Hum Government was said to have subjected it ; but, at the same time, their inclinations were peace- ful; and they preferred a reconciliation with Great Britain, instead of a Civil War, which had been al- ready commeneed ; and, because they had not yet been corrupted by the social influences of life in the City nor by the allurements of official plunder, they
their factional affiliations, who entertained similar views, in the practical establishment of those funda- mental principles. The individual members of the first Provincial Congress of New York, at the opening and during the earlier period of the existence of that body, may, therefore, be classed as. first, the avowed Conservatives, who were led by such as John De Lancey and Benjamin Kissam and Abraham Walton and Richard Yates and George Folliot and Walter Franklin; as, second, the "Corporal's Guard" of avowed Revolutionists, who were led by John Morin Scott and Alexander MeDongal and Abraham Bra- sier ; as, third, a larger number, those who, under the guise of patriotism, were aiming at nothing else than at places and at the influences and emoluments to be produced by those places, who were led by the Living- stons and the Van Cortlandts, by Gouverneur Morris and John Thomas and Melanthon Smith and Abra- ham Ten Broeck and Egbert Dumond and Nathaniel Woodhull and John Sloss Hobart; and as, last, out- numbering all others, those who had left their sev- eral rural homes and come to the City of New York, for the purpose of serving their country, without hav- ing had, at that time, any other aim.
As the several Delegations voted as units, the votes of the several Counties having been east in accord- ance with the determination of the majority of the Delegates of each who were then present, the votes of individual Delegates, unless in instances of formal dissent, are not recorded ; but the conservatism of the organized Congress, as an aggregate, was seen, im- mediately after the organization of that body and the adoption of its necessary Rules of Order, on the first day of the Session, when Isaac Low, of the City of New York, who is already so well known to the reader, had commenced the work of centralizing all of political authority and power which were within the Colony, except those of the local police, in the Continental Congress, a work which has been per- sistently continued until this day, by men of the same classes of society and politics, and for the same pur- poses; and when, very promptly and very aptly, Gouv- erneur Morris, of the County of Westchester, who was already conspicuously notorious for hiscontemptuous disregard of the personal and political rights of the unfranchised masses of the Colonists, who were only " poor reptiles" in his aristocratic vocabulary,? had seconded the motion. The Resolution which Isaac Low had this offered, was in these words:
"See hi- letter to Mr. Penn, page- 11, 12, ante.
I Vide page 91, ante.
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WESTCHESTER COUNTY.
RESOLVED, A - the opinion of this Congress, that im- pinit obedience ought to be good to every recol- " mendation of the Continental Congress, for the gen- " eral regulation of the associated Colonies ; bnt this "Congress is competent to and ought, freely, to de- " liberate and determine on all matters relative to the " internal police of this Colony."!
Such a Resolution, so evidently in the interest of t !... : sbr-spirits of the revolt and in that of the ist altra of the aristocracy of the Colony, at the salase Bitne so radically subversive of those fundamen- ta! principles of government which were professed to have been the basis of the existing Rebellion against the Mother Country, very reasonably excited imme-
diate alarm; and, notwithstanding the Delegates were scarcely warm in their seats, the two ill-concealed monarchists who were temporarily masquerading, within the Provincial Congress, as republicans, and those, of the same class, elsewhere, in whose behalf the Resolution bad been offered, were very effectually snubbed -- on a motion of John Morin Seott, the very able leader of the handful of ultra-revolutionists, sec- onded by David Clarksou, both of the City of New York, the Resolution was defeated, only Richmond- county having voted in favor of it,2 neither the mover uor the seconder of it having received the support of the County of which he professed to have been a proper representative.3
The signal rebuke which the not yet corrupted. "country gentlemen," members of the Provincial Congress of New York, had thus given to those who had proposed to make the Colony of New York and all which it possessed subject, in all its relations, ex- cept in the local power of police, to a foreign body over whom neither the individual Colonists nor the aggregated Colony could possibly have exercised the slightest control, and by whom both the individual Colonists and the Colony in its entirety would have been subjected to an absolutely despotic control by those, of other Colonies, who already envied the ris- ing greatness of New York, appears to have been effective, in that direction ; but, two days afterwards, the little ultra-revolutionary clique, within the Con- gre's, taking courage from the evidently independent spirit which had been manifested by the rural Dele-
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I Jourall of the Provincial Congress, "a ho., P.M., May 23d."
" The vote of Richmood-county, in this rarly justaner, is very remark- alde, especially when it is considered in connection with the later in- -tales of that County's want of sympathy with both the Continental Congress and those who engineered that notable tualy.
This vote also afords a lesson of the greatest significance, illustrative of the ellerta if that ill-considered policy of uniformity in political main- ions, enforced by a military power, which the Provincial Congress, in its later and more corrupt days, adopted and enforced-by the adoption and entreement of such an extremely violent policy, instead of one in which consultation and local presser might have been the more prominent fea- tarwe, the inbitantsof Richard county were violently repelled,-by the ultra-revolutioniste, as others like situated were similarly repelled, com- Erling them to week first, protection, and, hext, fellowship, among il .** with whom they had, previously, had ny sympathy.
Journal of the Provincial Congress, "3 ho., I.M., May 23rd."
gations, in the former vote, and hoping that the same spirit of antagonism to the monarchical inclinations. which those " country gentlemen" had theu pre- sented, would rest, peacefully and usefully, on an in- clination in the opposite direction, made a movement, within the Congress, in behalf of Revolution and Re- bellion and a Civil War.
As the Colony of New York had not yet given that publie testimony of its entire and cordial accession to the confederacy of the revolted Colonies which had been given to it by the other Colonies, in the express approbation, by each, of the proceedings of the Con- tinental Congress of 1774, of which proceedings de- tailed mention has been made in other portions of this narrative, an attempt was made, in the Provincial Congress, ou the twenty-fifth of May, to supply that previously omitted ratification and approval of the proceedings of that already notable Congress, and, by that ratification and approval, to carry the Colony of New York within the circle of the confederacy of the revolt, and to make her subject to influenees and ob- ligations from which she had previously been free. For those purposes, and for others which were not less important although they were less visible, John Morin Scott, the leader of the revolutionary clique, moved "in the words following, to wit :
" As this Colony has not as yet given that public "testimony of their entire and cordial accession to "the confederacy of the Colonies on this Continent "which has been given by the other Colonies, in their "express approbation of the proceedings of the last "Continental Congress, I move that it be
"RESOLVED, That this Congress do fully approve "of the proceedings of the said Congress."
This Resolution was promptly seconded by Thomas Smith, a brother of William and of Joshua Hett Smith who subsequently became more widely known than they were, at that time; and it is evident that a defeat of that well-devised plan, also, had not been considered as even probable, by those who had de- vised it. But, as we are informed, " debates arose on "the said motion " -- there were grave questions, at that time, concerning the propriety of such an appro- val of all the proceedings of that first Congress, as was proposed by the leaders of the ultra-revolution- ists -- and the rural Delegations again determined on the side of peace and reconciliation and Colonial in- dependence from all foreign influences, by postponing the further consideration of the proposition, without day,' where it has remained, from that day until the present.
It is more than possible that the avowed Conserva- tive elements within the Provincial Congress had been largely instrumental in securing both these votes, in opposition to the discordant. efforts, succes- sively, of the ultra-aristocracy, represented by Laac Low and Gouverneur Morris, and of the ultra-revolu-
4 Journal of the Provincial Congress, "5 ho., P.M., May 25th."
1
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WESTCHESTER COUNTY.
tionary faction, represented by John Morin Scott and Thomas Smith ; but, whatever may have led to the practical rejection of those two propositions, each of which tended toward the centralization of the entire authority and all the power of the several Colonies, in the Congress of the Continent, thereby destroying the autonomy of each of the Colonies, without sub- jecting that Congress, in its exercise of that authority and that power, to any other limitation than the un- bridled will of a majority of the Delegations compos- ing it, this is clearly evident : the Provincial Con- gress intended, by those two adverse votes, to declare that, though a purely local body, it was, nevertheless, determined not to divest itself, even by implication. of that unquestioned governmental supremacy, within the Colony of New York, which it had already ac- quired, no matter how ; that, on the contrary. it had determined to retain, within itself, and to continue to exercise, unhampered by the interference of any other body, the several legislative, and judicial, and executive authorities, within the Colony, which it al. ready held, no matter by what warrant ; that it wonk yield to the Continental Congress, if it yieldled any- thing to that foreign body, nothing else than a volun- tary acquiescence ; that it would promulgate the Or- ders and Resolutions and " recommendations " of that other Congress, if it promulgated them at all, not as original and supreme rules of action of all who were or who might be within the Colony of New York, but as the bases of its own local enactments, to the latter of which, per se, and not to the former, it re- quired the implicit obedience of all those within or to come within the Colony, whose supreme political ruler it assumed to be and to remain. In short, from the beginning, the Provincial Congress of New York recognized no superior, controlling power, except that of its own actual constituents ; and, at no subse- quent period-not even when the Governor of New York declined the release of Alexander MeLcod, though demanded by both the Government of Great Britain and the President of the United States-has there been any more resolute supporter of the Sover- eignty of the several States, any more determined op- ponent of a transfer to any other body, from the People-which latter word is only an equivalent term for the State, and, in New York, if not else- where, is used, officially, to designate the State, it- self-of the original authority, the Sovereignty of those several Peoples, than was that revolutionary Congress of the Colony of New York, in its opposi- tion, on the one hand, to its ultra-aristocratic master- spirits, and, on the other, to the ultra-revolutionists among its members, early in the year 1775.
1
As a portion of the history of those times, reference may be made, in this place, to an incident which occurred in the Provincial Congress, soon after that body had rejected the Resolution which Isaac Low and Gouverneur Morris had offered, of which men- tion has been made. On the same day, the first day
of the Session of that revolutionary body, during the same afternoon, a motion was made by Alexander Me Dougal, a Presbyterian, providing for the appoint- ment of a Committee of two, to apply to all the Ministers in the City who could pray in English, "to "make such an arrangement among themselves as " would enable them adternately to open the Congress, "every morning, with prayer :" but Gouverneur Mor- ris, Lewis Graham, Colonel Philip Van Cortlandt, Colonel James Holmes, Stephen Ward, and John Thomas, Junior, six of the nine members of the Con- gress who were from Westchester county, probably recognizing the evident ipropriety of spreading their politically dirty hands before Him who giveth no favor to those who loveth and maketh a lie, dis- sented from a majority of the Congress, and caused their dissent to be entered on the JJournal of that .
body.1
On Friday, the twenty-sixth of May, the Prov- incial Congress adopted, unanimously, a Resolu- tion, offered by Gilbert Livingston of Duchess- county and seconded by John De Lancey of New York City, providing for the appointment of a Committee of one from each County, "to draw " up and report a proper Resolve of this Con- "gress, recommending to the different Counties "in this Colony, to form themselves into County "Committees, and also into Sub-committees for their "respective Townships and Districts, and recommend- "ing the signing of the General Association ; and also "to prepare and report to this Congress a draft of a "letter to be sent to the Committees and other per- "sons in the several Counties, for the above purposes, "and with copies of such Resolution." In that Com- mittee of one from each County, Major Philip Van Cortlandt represented Westchester-county; 2 and, ou the following day, [Maty 27, 1775] it made a Report, in due form.3
The Resolution which was thus reported, was in these words : " RESOLVED: That it be recommended, "and it is hereby accordingly recommended, to all the "Counties in this Colony, (who have not already done "it,) to appoint County Committees, and also Sur- "committees for their respective Townships, Pre- " cinets, and Distriets, without delay, in order to carry "into execution the Resolutions of the Continental " and this Provincial Congress.
" And that it isalso recommended to every Inhabitant "of this Colony, who has hitherto neglected to sub- " scribe the General association, to do it with all con- "venient speed. And for these purposes that the "Committees in the respective Counties in which "Committees have been formed, do tender the said " Association to every Inhabitant within the several "Distriets in each County. And that such persons,
Journal of the Provincial Congress "A bo. P.M., May 2d." 2. Journal of the Congress, " the., P.M., May 20th, 1775."
3 Journal of the Congress, " Die saturuli, 9 ho., A. M .. May 27th, 1755."
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WESTCHESTER COUNTY.
" bets of this Congress representing such Countries and " Districts respectively, ' do makesuch tender as atore- "weil in such Countries and Districts respectively ; " and that the said Committees and persons respec- "tively do return the said association and the names ; any of those Towns, to obtain the signatures of the " of there who shall neglect or refuse to sign the same, , "to this congress, by the fifteenth day of July next, "or "mer, if possible."
The letter which was reported, as a companion to this Resolution, was in the following words :
" NEW-YORK, May 29, 1775. "GENTLEMEN :
" You will see by the enclosed Resolution of " this Congress, that it is recommended to such of " the Counties as have not already formed Commit- " tees, to do it without delay, and that such of the In- " habitants of this Colony as have hitherto neglected " to subscribe the General Association, do it, so as to " enable you to make a return within the time limited " in the Resolution.
" As the execution of this Resolve is committed to " your care, we request you to use your best endeavours " to see that this recommendation be complied with. " It may, nevertheless, be proper to inform you that it " is the sense of this Congress that no coercive steps "ought to be used to induce any person to sign the " Association. The propriety of the measure, the " example of the other Counties, aud the necessity of "maintaining a perfect union in every part of this "Colony, it is presumed, are sufficient reasons to " induce the Inhabitants of your County to comply " with this requisition."
The Resolution and letter which were thus reported to the Provincial Congress, were taken up, for con- sideration, on the twenty-ninth of May; and, after some amendments had been made therein, they were "approved, agreed to, and resolved; " and five hun- dred copies were ordered to be printed ; and as many copies of the letter as should be necessary were ordered to be signed by the President and delivered to the members of the Congress, "to be by them " directed." ?.
As the County of Westebester had already been favored with the appointment of a County-committee, or what purported to have been such a Committee,3 y it is probable that it was not consulered necessary, in that instance, to interfere with that former appoint-
I The authority which appears to have been vestel in members of the Provincial Congress, to appoint local Committee where the inhabitants bal tal det: so, probably originated in that Congress, in an earlier wrotet meeting of That body ; but no record of any such actom is seen on its published Jourmed-like the Secret Jovenals of the Continental Con- gross, there of the Provincial Congress of New York, could they sim le faible-led, would undoubtedly throw diferent tints of light and rotor on bieny a romance, called " history."
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