Yet the great mass of the people remained sufficiently democratic to preserve a spirit of hostility to oppressive government measures. We need not here repeat the story of Britain’s sins and America’s endurance. New York shared in common with the other colonies, and when Tryon came from North Carolina [July 3, 1771.] to rule the province, he found the same loathing for petty tyranny and aristocratic assumptions. Comparative quiet prevailed, however, until intelligence of Lord North’s Tea Act came. The flame of excitement then burst out in New York as suddenly and fiercely as in Boston. The Sons of Liberty reorganized; the Committee of Correspondence resumed its labors; tea commissioners and stamp distributors were considered co-workers in iniquity, and in front of the Coffee House in Wall Street, an effigy of Kelly, a New Yorker in London, who had ridiculed popular indignation here, was burned [Nov. 3, 1773.]. The fire in Hampden Hall spread among the people, and when Captain Lockyier, of the Nancy, the first tea-ship that came, arrived at Sandy Hook, he heeded the advice of the pilot, and went up to the city without his vessel. The "Mohawks" 39 were warned to be in readiness, and the people resolved that no tea should be landed. Captain Lockyier’s conference with the committee satisfied him that he had no fair alternative but to return to England with his cargo. Even while he was ashore, a merchant vessel (Captain Chambers) arrived with eighteen chests of tea hidden among its cargo. The vigilant Sons of Liberty searched his vessel, cast his tea into the harbor, and advised him to leave port as soon as possible. He heeded the advice, and left New York with Lockyier, while the people crowded the wharf at Whitehall, shouted a farewell, and amid cannon peals hoisted the royal flag upon the Liberty Pole in token of triumph.

Loyalty and timidity again developed their fruit in the Revolutionary committees, and by adroit management moderate men and royalists gained the ascendency. Afraid openly to oppose the popular will, they insidiously cast obstacles in the way of efficient co-operation with other colonies. Soon two distinct parties were formed among professed Republicans, marked by a line of social distinction – the Patricians and the Tribunes – the merchants and gentry, and the mechanics. They coalesced, however, in the nomination of delegates to the Continental Congress, and on the twenty-seventh of July [1774.], the people, by unanimous voice, ratified their choice. 40 This was an act of the people alone, for the Assembly, too timid or too loyal, refrained from any expression of opinion concerning the proposed Congress. 41

The American Association, adopted by the first Continental Congress, was popular in New York, and a committee of sixty was immediately organized to enforce its provisions. Warmly supported by the true Sons of Liberty, they took the lead in political matters. By their recommendation, the people in the several counties chose representatives for a Provincial Congress, and on the twenty-second of May, 1775, that body convened in the Exchange, at the foot of Broad Street, in New York. 42 The General Assembly had adjourned a month previously, and never met again. 43

The great crisis was now approaching, and the occurrence of many local circumstances inflamed the minds of the people, and prepared them for open rebellion. 44 Intelligence of the martyrdom of patriots at Lexington and Concord came at the moment when Captain Sears, the popular leader, was in official custody [April 24, 1775.], because he had made, it was alleged, treasonable propositions. 45 Aroused by that first clarion-blast of war, the people took possession of the City Hall, armed themselves, and with Lamb and Willett at their head, they embargoed all vessels in the harbor laden with provisions for the British army in Boston. They did more; Andrew Elliott, the collector, forbade the landing of a cargo of rum for the patriots. Sears and Lamb ordered the vessel to Cruger’s Wharf (between Coenties 46 and Old Slips), landed the rum, and carted it to its destination in the city then returning to the custom-house, they demanded and received the keys, dismissed the employées, and closed the building [May 2.]. When they had committed this overt act of treason, they boldly gave notice of the fact to their brethren in other cities. Persons known to be engaged in sending provisions to the British ships in the harbor were seized, and general alarm pervaded the Tory ranks. 47 A grand Committee of Safety, consisting of one hundred of the most respectable citizens, was now organized; a military association for practice in the use of fire-arms was formed, under Samuel Broome; a pledge (see page 384, volume i.) was circulated, and numerously signed; six hundred stand of arms were taken from the city arsenals by the committee, and distributed among the citizens; and when an Irish battalion (the last remains of the garrison in Fort George), under Major Moncrief, were on their way to a vessel bound for Boston, with a quantity of spare arms in boxes upon wagons, Marinus Willett and a small body of Sons of Liberty, encouraged by a short harangue by John Morin Scott, boldly confronted the soldiers, seized the arms, and carried them back to the now deserted fort [Jan. 23, 1775.]. These arms were afterward used by Gansevoort’s regiment, of which Willett was lieutenant colonel.

When the Provincial Congress assembled [May 22.], its complexion disappointed the people. Toryism and timidity prevailed in that Assembly, and the elaboration of schemes for conciliation, instead of measures for defense, occupied the majority. Hard pressed by public opinion, 48 and the influence of important events daily transpiring, they were obliged to yield. Four regiments were authorized to be raised; 49 fortifications at King’s Bridge 50 were ordered, and measures were taken to fortify the Hudson passes in the Highlands. In the mean while, the patriots gathered in force around Boston; the battle of Bunker Hill was fought; a Continental army was organized, and George Washington appointed the commander-in-chief. 51 Rumors of the approach of troops from Ireland came, and the Provincial Congress, somewhat purged of its Toryism by intelligence from the East, invited General Wooster, then in command of eighteen hundred Connecticut militia at Greenwich, to come to the defense of New York. He encamped at Harlem [June, 1775.] for several weeks, sent detachments to beat off marauders, who were carrying away the cattle of Long Island to the British army in Boston, and by his presence made the New York patriots bold and active. At midnight [July 20.] they captured British stores at Turtle Bay, and sent part to the grand army at Boston and a part to the troops then collecting on Lake Champlain to invade Canada; they also seized a tender, with stores, belonging to the Asia, and took possession of provisions and clothing deposited at Greenwich 52 by the government. 53

VIEW AT TURTLE BAY. 54

Governor Tryon returned to New York in the Asia on the third of July, and was received with respect. His course soon indicated his opposition to the Republicans. The energetic actions of the committee of One Hundred taught him to be circumspect in public, and his private intrigues to gain ascendency for Toryism in the Provincial Congress were abortive. That body, now guided by the popular will, and perceiving a resort to arms to be inevitable, ordered Lamb, who was then a captain of artillery, to remove the cannons from the grand battery and the fort, and take them to a place of security. Assisted by an independent corps under Colonel Lasher, and a body of citizens guided by King Sears, as the sturdy Son of Liberty was now called, he proceeded to the battery at nine o’clock on the evening of the twenty-third of August. Captain Vandeput, of the Asia, informed of the intended movement, sent a barge filled with armed men to watch the patriots. When they appeared, a musket ball was indiscreetly sent among them from the barge. It was answered by a volley, when the barge hastened to the Asia, bearing several men killed and wounded. That vessel opened her port-holes, and hurled three balls ashore in quick succession. Lamb ordered the drums to beat to arms; the church bells were rung, and while all was confusion and alarm, a broadside came from the Asia. Others rapidly followed, and several houses near the fort and Whitehall were injured by the grape and round shot. 55 No life was sacrificed, but terror seized the people. Believing the rumor that the city was to be sacked and burned, hundreds of men, women, and children were seen at midnight hurrying with their light effects to places of safety beyond the doomed town. Yet the patriots at the battery were firm, and in the face of the cannonade every gun was deliberately removed. Some of them afterward performed good service in the American cause. 56

Deep feelings of exasperation moved the Sons of Liberty in the city after this cannonade, and Tryon’s fears wisely counseled his flight. Mayor Mathews and others promised him protection, but he had more confidence in gunpowder, and on the nineteenth of October [1775.] he took refuge on board the British sloop of war Halifax, 57 where he received his council, and, like Dunmore, attempted to exercise civil authority. 58

Aided by Rivington, 59 with his Royal Gazetteer, his influence was still great, and he managed to keep disaffection alive and in active propagation. In total disregard of truth and common fairness, Rivington abused the Republicans with unsparing severity, and none more bitterly than Captain Sears. 60 That patriot, fired by personal insult and political zeal, came from Connecticut, where he had gone to plan schemes for the future with ardent Whigs, and at noonday entered the city [Nov. 23, 1775.] at the head of seventy-five light-horsemen, proceeded to the printing establishment of Rivington, at the foot of Wall Street, placed a guard with fixed bayonets around it, put all of his types into bags, destroyed his press and other apparatus, and then in the same order, amid the shouts of the populace, and to the tune of Yankee Doodle, left the city. They carried off the types and made bullets of them. On their way back to Connecticut they disarmed all the Tories in their route, and at West Chester seized and took with them the Reverend Samuel Seabury 61 and two other obnoxious Tories, and carried them in triumph to New Haven.

During the winter of 1775-6, disaffection to the Republican cause prevailed extensively throughout the province, and in Queen’s county and vicinity, on Long Island, the people began to arm in favor of the crown. Tryon expected to see the province speedily declare in favor of royalty, and from the Duchess of Gordon (armed ship), where he made his headquarters, he kept up an active correspondence with Mathews, Delancey, and other Loyalists in the city. The Continental Congress promptly opposed the progress of disaffection, and vigorous measures were adopted for a general disarming of the Tories throughout the colonies. 62

Early in January [1776.], Washington, then at Cambridge, was informed that General Sir Henry Clinton was about to sail on a secret expedition. He doubted not that New York was his destination, where Tryon was ready to head the Loyalists in a formal demonstration in favor of the crown. Fearing that province might be lost to the patriots, Washington readily acceded to the request of General Charles Lee, then in Connecticut, to embody volunteers in that colony, and march to New York. Governor Trumbull lent his aid to the service, and within a fortnight Lee, having the bold Isaac Sears for his adjutant general, was in rapid march toward New York with twelve hundred men. His approach produced great alarm, and many Tories fled, with their families and effects, to Long Island and New Jersey. The Committee of Safety, yet dozing over the anodyne of disaffection, were aroused by fear, and protested against Lee’s entrance into the city, because Captain Parker, of the Asia, had declared his intention to cannonade and burn the town if rebel troops should be allowed to enter it. 63 Lee was unmoved alike by Parker’s threats and the committee’s protest, and encamping the larger portion of his troops in "the fields" (the present City Hall Park), he made his head-quarters at the house of Captain Kennedy, No. 1 Broadway. 64

Sir Henry Clinton arrived at Sandy Hook on the day when Lee entered the city. He sailed for North Carolina [March, 1776.], was followed thither by Lee, and in June they were in conflict in Charleston harbor. The army in New York was left in charge of Lord Stirling [March 7.], and that officer prosecuted with vigor the labor of fortifying the city, begun by Lee. 65 Already the Tories who remained had been compelled to take an oath to act with the Americans if required, and officers were busy upon Staten Island, and some parts of Long Island, in disarming them.

WASHINGTON’S HEAD-QUARTERS. 66

Washington hastened to New York after the British evacuated Boston [March 17, 1776.], for he suspected Howe would sail directly to attack that city. He arrived on the fourteenth of April, and approving of the course of Lee and Stirling, he pushed forward the defenses of the city. Fort George was strengthened, and in the course of three months strong works were erected in the vicinity of the city and in the Hudson Highlands. 67 Toward the close of May [May 23.], he left the troops in command of General Putnam, while he hastened to Philadelphia to confer with Congress respecting the general defense of the colonies. The wicked bargain of Great Britain with the German princes for their men was now known, and it was believed that New York was the point where the mercenary vultures would probably strike their first blow. To that point the eyes of all America were now turned. Congress authorized a re-enforcement of thirteen thousand eight hundred militia, to be drawn from New England, New York, 68 and New Jersey, and provided for the establishment of a flying camp of ten thousand men, to be formed of militia from Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. The latter were to rendezvous at Amboy, and the accomplished General Mercer was appointed to the command. General Greene took post at Brooklyn, and superintended the preparation of defenses there. On his return [June 7.], Washington went to the upper end of the island, and personally aided in the surveys and the arrangement of the plan of Fort Washington and its outworks.

General Howe, who went to Halifax from Boston, arrived at Sandy Hook on the twenty-ninth of June [1776.], with ships and transports bearing his recruited army, where he was visited by Governor Tryon. On the eighth of July he landed nine thousand men upon Staten Island, 69 and there awaited the arrival of his brother, Admiral Howe, with English regulars and Hessian hirelings. These arrived in the course of a few days, and in August, Clinton and Parker, with their broken forces, joined them. Another disembarkation took place on the twelfth, and there, upon the wooded heights of Staten Island, above Stapleton and Clifton, and upon the English transports, almost thirty thousand men stood ready to fall upon the Republicans. 70 Already the Declaration of Independence had gone abroad; 71 the statue of the king in New York had been pulled down, 72 and brave men, pledged to the support of the Continental Congress and its measures, were piling fortifications upon every eligible point around the devoted city.

On the arrival of General Howe at Sandy Hook, the Provincial Congress of New York adjourned to White Plains, and there, on the ninth of July, they reassembled, approved of the Declaration of Independence, and changed the title of the Assembly to Convention of the Representatives of the State of New York. The Declaration, however, offended many influential men, who, though warmly attached to their country, and yearning for a redress of grievances, shuddered at the thought of separation from Great Britain. Some closed their mouths in silence and folded their arms in inaction, while others, like Beverly Robinson, the Delanceys, and men of that character, actively espoused the cause of the king. The patriot army in New York was surrounded by domestic enemies, more to be dreaded than open adversaries, and this fact seemed favorable to the hopes of Howe, that the olive branch would be accepted by the Americans when offered. 73 He soon perceived that much of loyalty was the child of timidity, and when his proclamations were sent abroad, offering peace only on condition of submission, the missiles proved powerless. Although doubtless desiring peace, he was obliged to draw the sword and sever the leashes of-the blood-hounds of war.

On the twelfth of July, the Rose and Phœnix ships of war, with their decks guarded by sand-bags, sailed up the bay, and passing the American batteries without serious injury, proceeded up the Hudson to Haverstraw Bay, for the double purpose of keeping open a communication with Carleton, who was endeavoring to make his way southward by Lake Champlain, 74 and for furnishing arms to the Tories of West Chester. The vigilant Whigs would not allow their boats to land, and there they remained inactive for three weeks. In the mean while, the belligerent forces were preparing for the inevitable battle. Hulks of vessels were sunk in the channel between Governor’s Island 75 and the Battery, and chevaux de frise were formed there under the direction of General Putnam, to prevent the passage of the British vessels up the East River. A large body of troops were concentrated at Brooklyn, under General Greene; Sullivan and his little army hastened from the North; two battalions from Pennsylvania and Maryland, under Smallwood, arrived, and the New York and New England militia flocked to the city by hundreds. On the first of August the American army in and around New York numbered about twenty-seven thousand men, but at least one fourth of them were unfitted by sickness for active duty. Bilious fever prostrated Greene about the middle of August, and Sullivan was placed in command at Brooklyn. A small detachment was ordered to Governor’s Island; another was posted at Paulus’ Hook, where Jersey City now stands, and General George Clinton, with a body of New York militia, was ordered to West Chester county to oppose the landing of the British on the shores of the Sound, or, in the event of their landing, to prevent their taking possession of the strong post at King’s Bridge. Parson’s brigade took post at Kip’s Bay, 76 on the East River, to watch British vessels if they should enter those waters. Such was the position of the two armies immediately antecedent to the battle near Brooklyn, at the close of August, 1776.

3 See vol. i., p. 391. The chief patroons, or patrons, who first came, were Killian van Rensselaer, Samuel Godyn, Samuel Bloemart, and Michael Paw. Godyn and Bloemart purchased lands on the Delaware, Van Rensselaer at Albany, and Paw in New Jersey, from Hoboken to the Kills. Livingston, Philipse, Van Cortland, and others, came afterward.

7 See vol. ii., page 46 {original text has "vol. i., page 386."}.

9 Governor Stuyvesant retired from active life after the surrender to the English, and lived in quiet dignity upon his "Bowerie" estate, a short distance from the city, during the remainder of his life. * Stuyvesant was a native of Holland, born in 1602, and was forty-five years of age when he came to rule New Netherlands. Soon after his arrival, he married Judith Bayard, daughter of a Huguenot, by whom he had two sons. After the capture by the English, he went to Holland (1665) to report to his superiors, and this was his last ocean voyage. With his little family he enjoyed the repose of agricultural pursuits, within sight of the smoke of the city, which curled above the tree-tops along the "Bowerie Lane." Upon his farm (on the site of the present Church of St. Mark’s), he built a chapel, at his own expense, and dedicated it to the worship of God according to the rituals of the Reformed Dutch Church. He lived eighteen years after the change in the government, and at his death was buried in his vault within the chapel. Over his remains was placed a slab (which may still be seen in the eastern wall of St. Mark’s), with the following inscription: "In this vault lies buried PETRUS STUYVESANT, late captain general and commander-in-chief of Amsterdam, in New Netherlands, now called New York, and the Dutch West India Islands. Died in August, A. D. 1682, aged eighty years."

15 The Democratic paper was published by John Peter Zenger, and was called The New York Weekly Journal; the aristocratic paper was published by William Bradford, formerly of Philadelphia (see page 52), and was called The New York Gazette. The latter was established in 1725, and the former in 1726. Bradford had been in the printing business in New York since 1693. His was the first newspaper printed in the colony.

18 We have already considered, in the first volume, the convention of colonial delegates at Albany in 1754, and the part which New York took in the war which ensued, and continued until 1763.

Doctor Colden was a close student and keen observer through life, and he enriched medical and other scientific works by numerous treatises from his pen. His "History of the Five Nations of Indians" is a work of great research and observation, and is now much sought after by scholars. Botany was his delight, and with Linnæus, the great master of the science, he was a constant and valued correspondent for many years. Almost all of the eminent scientific men of Europe became his correspondents, and Franklin and other leading men in America were his intimate epistolary friends. Doctor Colden paid much attention to the art of printing, wrote upon the subject, and was a real, if not the original, inventor of the process called stereotyping. To Doctor Francis I am indebted for a fine copy of the portrait of Colden, from which the one here given was made.

31 The statue of the king was placed in the center of the Bowling Green, and the iron railing which now incloses the spot was placed there for its protection. See page 595.

While the British soldiers occupied the city they knocked off the head and arms of the statue, and other wise defaced it. It was removed after the war, and for many years laid among rubbish in the corporation-yard, from which it was conveyed by Mr. Riley, of the Fifth Ward Hotel, to the corner of his house, within an iron railing, where it yet (1857) remains. The engraving on the preceding page is a representation of its present appearance.

44 On the twentieth of December, the ship Lady Gage, commanded by Captain Thomas Mesnard, arrived with ten cases and three boxes of arms, and a barrel of gunpowder, consigned to Walter Franklin. The collector ordered these to be seized, because, as he alleged, they had been lying in Franklin’s warehouse several days without cockets. While on their way to the custom-house, a small party of the Sons of Liberty took them from the officers in charge, but before they could conceal them, they were retaken and placed on board an armed ship in the harbor. On the same day a letter for the collector was put in the post-office, * containing menaces of vengeance, and that night a very inflammatory hand-bill was left at almost every door in the city. †

51 For a notice of Washington’s arrival in New York, when on his way to Cambridge, see vol. i.. page 564.

53 These acts were done under the immediate sanction of the committee of One Hundred, * who, while the Provincial Congress legislated, were busy in executing according to the known will of the people. The patriots regarded this committee with more confidence than they did the Provincial Congress.

54 Turtle Bay is a small rock-bound cove of the East River, at the foot of Forty-seventh Street. The banks are high and precipitous, and afforded a safe retreat for small vessels. Here the government had made a magazine of military stores, and these the Sons of Liberty determined to seize. Under the direction of Lamb, Sears, Willett, and M‘Dougal, a party procured a sloop at Greenwich, came stealthily through the dangerous vortex of Hell Gate at twilight, and at midnight surprised and captured the guard, and secured the stores. The old store-house in which they were deposited is yet standing upon a wharf on the southern side of the little bay. The above view is from the bank at the foot of Forty-sixth Street. Beyond the rocky point on the north side of the bay is seen the lower end of Blackwell’s Island, with the shore of Long Island in the distance.

On the left of the old store-house, delineated in the annexed sketch, is seen the bridge across the mouth of Newtown Creek, a locality which will be mentioned presently in connection with a notice of the landing of troops under Sir Henry Clinton.