Part 3

Between the hostile French in Canada and the little frontier city on the Hudson roamed the tribes of the Iroquois confederacy, upon whose friendship and fealty in large measure hung the destiny of the English possessions. The stockade, thirteen feet high, would have been of little account if that living bulwark of savage allies had yielded to the arms or the bribes of the French. That the bulwark did not yield, that the fealty of the Indians was won and, through every peril, kept unbroken, was owing to the sagacity and honorable dealing of the government and burghers of Albany. _The House of Peace_—this is the name which the Mohawk sachem, at one of the council-fires, gave to the Albany of those olden days, and, in the graphic phrase of his Indian oratory, he pictured at a stroke its political value and place in history; for there, by repeated formal treaties and habitual friendly intercourse, were riveted the “Covenant Chains” which made the confederation of the Six Nations the guardians of the feeble province.

There is a scene in _The History of New York_, by William Dunlap, which is illustrative. The date is 1746 and the central figure is the celebrated Col. William Johnson, Indian agent, whom George II. made a “baronet of Great Britain.”

“When the Indians came near the town of Albany on the 8th of August, Mr. Johnson put himself at the head of the Mohawks, dressed and painted as an Indian war-captain. The Indians followed him painted for war. As they passed the fort, they saluted by a running fire, which the governor answered by cannon. The chiefs were afterwards received in the fort-hall and treated to wine. A good deal of private manœuvring with the individual sachems was found necessary to make them declare for war with France before a public council was held. The Iroquois took to the 23d of the month for deliberation, and then answered, the governor being present.”

During the French wars, Albany, from a military point of view, was probably the most animated spot on the continent. It was the storehouse for munitions of war and the rendezvous for the troops. English regulars and provincial militia swarmed in and about the city. After the unsuccessful campaigns of 1756 and 1757, the town was filled with refugees, reciting the slaughter of the garrison at Fort William Henry, and the murder and havoc wrought by the Indians in pay of the French. Hundreds of loyal Indians, with their squaws and papooses, encamped under the stockade. The houses and barns were filled with wounded soldiers brought from the seat of war. In the pauses of the campaigns, notwithstanding the horrible rumors and actual disasters, the “dangerously accomplished” English officers made merry life in old Albany, picturesque details of which are given in that charming chronicle of colonial days, _Memoirs of an American Lady_ (Mrs. Philip Schuyler), by Mrs. Grant of Laggan.

In the opening of the campaign of 1758 there was grief and consternation in the province. Tidings came that Lord Viscount Howe had been killed in a skirmish on the march against Fort Ticonderoga. The body of the brilliant soldier was brought to Albany by his friend, Captain Philip Schuyler, and was buried beneath the chancel of the English church. The stone recently unearthed in the village of Ticonderoga, which bears the inscription, evidently scratched by a knife or bayonet, _Mem of Lo Howe killed Trout Brook_, probably marked the spot where Lord Howe fell. There is abundant evidence that his body now lies beneath the vestibule of St. Peter’s Church. The _Church Book_ of the parish contains the following entry: _1758, Sept. 5th. To cash Rt for ground to lay the Body of Lord how & Pall £5. 6. 0_.

In the following year, the fateful victory of Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham gave Canada to England and ended the hard-fought duel between the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon for the sovereignty of the continent.

Some years before this, the Stadt Huys, the old City Hall of Albany, was the scene of a significant event which was the prelude of one still more momentous. There in 1754 Commissioners from the several provinces convened to renew the “Covenant Chain” with the Six Nations, and to discuss the best methods for uniting and defending the colonial interests. The foremost spirits and political prophets of the colonies composed the assembly. Numerous Indian sachems, with their stately bearing and barbaric splendor, decorated the scene of the deliberations. The “Plan” adopted by the convention was not accepted by the Crown, but it was the first attempt to articulate the idea of a colonial union, and it bore two names, Benjamin Franklin and Stephen Hopkins, which in due time were affixed to the Declaration of Independence.

Before the lightning flashed in the volley at Lexington, there were centres of influence throughout the colonies breeding storm. Albany was one of them. The heart of the old Dutch town was fired with the indignations and enthusiasms of the time. There were tories of course, but the temper of the city and the attitude of those who controlled the situation are indicated by the fact that, when the Province of New York had fairly opened the fight, the old fort on the hill was extemporized into a tory jail.

As early as November, 1774, the freeholders of the city appointed a _Committee of Safety and Correspondence_, which proved a vigorous agent in propagating the war spirit and furnishing men and money for the Continental army. The following names appear on its lists: John Barclay, _Chairman_, Jacob C. Ten Eyck, Henry I. Bogert, Peter Silvester, Henry Wendell, Volkert P. Douw, John Bay, Gysbert Marselis, John R. Bleecker, Robert Yates, Stephen De Lancey, Abraham Cuyler, John H. Ten Eyck, Abraham Ten Broeck, Gerret Lansingh, Jr., Anthony E. Bratt, Samuel Stringer, Abraham Yates, Jr., and Cornelis van Santvoordt. In the records of the committee occurs this significant minute: “Pursuant to a resolution of yesterday, the Declaration of Independence was this day read and published at the City Hall to a large Concourse of the Inhabitants of this City and the Continental Troops in this City and received with applause and satisfaction.”

At the beginning of, and all through the struggle for independence, Albany was a strategic point of the utmost importance. The war-office in London and the British commanders in the field recognized that it was the key to the situation in the north. There is a passage in the oration of Governor Seymour at the Centennial Commemoration at Schuylerville, the actual scene of Burgoyne’s surrender, which condenses and interprets one of the most important chapters in the history of the Revolution.

“It was the design of the British government in the campaign of 1777 to capture the centre and stronghold of this commanding system of mountains and valleys. It aimed at its very heart,—the confluence of the Hudson and the Mohawk. The fleets, the armies, and the savage allies of Britain were to follow their converging lines to Albany, and there strike the decisive blow.”

As sometimes happens, the blow struck the striker. Col. Philip Schuyler, the young officer who brought the body of Lord Howe to its burial, was an ardent patriot and the most distinguished citizen of Albany. On the recommendation of the Provincial Congress of New York, he had been appointed by the Continental Congress a major-general in the armies of the United Colonies and had assumed command of the Northern Department. He was displaced in favor of General Gates, but he retained the confidence of Washington, and it was he who planned and conducted the campaign which resulted in the victory of Bemis Heights and the surrender of Burgoyne. This event broke the formidable menace that hung over the province and the colonial cause. The defeated British general found himself in the hands of a courteous foe, and for several months he meditated and mitigated his disaster amid the elegant hospitalities of the Schuyler mansion in Albany.

In 1797, “this antient and respectable city of Albany” (to quote the courtly compliment of Washington) became the capital of the State. At the close of the Revolution, New York had not yet determined its seat of government. From 1777 to 1796 it peregrinated between Kingston, Poughkeepsie, Albany and the city of New York. Not until the twentieth session of the Legislature was the long dispute settled. The geographical advantages of Albany finally carried the day, and for the last hundred years the site of the frontier fort has been a political arena and an illustrious seat of legislative and judicial power.

The Albany of “modern times,” as the phrase is understood in our American life in which everything is new except human nature, has preserved few of the ancient landmarks. The only souvenirs are the bronze tablets which were devised at the Bicentennial in 1886, and which now designate the historic sites in the city. If one, reverent of ancient and vanished things, make pilgrimage to the tablet near the curb on the lower edge of the Capitol Park (a block above the site of Fort Frederick), to the one on the corner of Broadway and Steuben Street (the site of the northeast gate), and to the one near the curb on lower Broadway two blocks from State Street (the site of the southeast gate), he will define quite accurately the girdle of the _palisadoes_ which protected old Albany.

If he pass the memorial of the northeast gateway, a place of memorable outgoings and incomings, and continue up Broadway about three quarters of a mile, he will find a bronze tablet bearing the inscription: “Opposite Van Rensselaer Manor-House. Erected 1765. Residence of the Patroons. This spot is the site of the First Manor-House.” It was an unpretentious one-story building of Holland brick, half fortress and half dwelling. The final Manor-House, on the other side of the road, was a structure of another fashion. At the time of its erection, 1765, it was considered the handsomest residence in the colonies. Thither Stephen Van Rensselaer brought his young bride, Catherine, daughter of Philip Livingston, and his babe, who became General Van Rensselaer. It stood amid the drooping elms of a large park and was decorated with a taste and luxury startling to the period. In 1843 the building was enlarged and enriched by the elder Upjohn. Once a stately mansion, the scene of splendid hospitalities, it has shared the American fate of obstructive antiquities in thriving towns. The railroad and the “lumber district” crowded and finally strangled it. For several years it stood empty and dismantled, and obviously had outlived both its beauty and its use. In 1893 the stone and timbers were transported to the Campus of Williams College, where they were reconstructed into the Sigma Phi Society building, which perpetuates a remote suggestion of the famous Manor-House.

In the southern part of the city, on Clinton Street, is a bronze tablet which designates the sister of the Manor-House, the Schuyler mansion, built by the wife of General Philip Schuyler while he was in England in 1760. This historic relic stands on a plateau above the street, surrounded by a remnant of the original garden, but the broad avenue, shaded by elms, which once gave approach to the mansion from the river, is overgrown with houses. Though used at present as an orphan asylum under the charge of the Order of St. Francis de Sales, it retains substantially its original features. It is a dignified and spacious house; not remarkable architecturally, but fragrant with history. Here Burgoyne enjoyed his imprisonment. Here Washington, Lafayette, Count de Rochambeau, Baron Steuben, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Aaron Burr, and other notable men of old were entertained. Here Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler were married, December 14, 1780. Besides famous guests and weddings, its chief feature of historic interest is the staircase, apropos of which, we quote from Mr. Marcus Reynolds’s article on _The Colonial Buildings of Rensselaerswyck_ in _The Architectural Record_ of 1895.

“Here is shown the famous tomahawk mark. In 1781 a plan was made to capture General Schuyler and take him to Canada. A party of tories, Canadians and Indians surrounded the house for several days, and at length forced an entrance. The family took refuge in the upper story, leaving behind in their haste the youngest member of the family, Margaret Schuyler, afterward the wife of the patroon. An elder sister going to rescue the infant, was pursued by an Indian, who threw his tomahawk at her as she fled up the stairs. The weapon entered the hand-rail near the newel, and the mark is still shown, which would be conclusive evidence if the same story were not told of the Glen house in Schenectady, the only house unburnt in the massacre of 1690.”

With all its historic associations, Albany is not conspicuous for the scenery it has furnished for the enchantments of poetry and romance; still it is not altogether destitute of literary honors. Its colonial life figures in the _Satanstoe_ of the great Fenimore Cooper and in Harold Frederick’s _In the Valley_. The Normanskill, which tumbles into the Hudson at the south end of the city, flows through the Vale of Tawasentha, the scene of Longfellow’s Hiawatha. The hills and forests about the city suggested many a delicate detail in the woodland rhythms of Alfred Street, who made his home and burial-place in Albany. Its old Dutch life with its sedate charm has been pictured by a living Albanian, Leonard Kip; and probably the house still stands on Pearl Street or Broadway, in which Henry James found the charming girl who stood for his _Portrait of a Lady_.

On the east bank of the Hudson, in old Greene Bosch, opposite the city, decays the dishonored ruin of Fort Crailo. The date, more or less mythical, is 1642. It was the headquarters of General Abercrombie, and in the garden back of the house a derisive British surgeon, Dr. Stackpole, composed the immortal jingle of Yankee Doodle. If, in 1800, one stood on the southeast corner of State and North Pearl Streets, opposite the famous elm which Philip Livingston planted in 1735, his eye glancing up the street to the north would be arrested by a picturesque relic of Dutch Albany, the Vanderheyden Palace. Of course it has joined the departed, but its ghost appears in Washington Irving’s _Bracebridge Hall_, and its old weather-vane now swings above the porch of Sunnyside.

Some of the colonial structures were fine and famous in their day, but in truth, in our American towns, imposing architecture is a thing of recent date. Few cities give more favorable sites for architectural effects than the three hills of Albany. It is not too much to say that the wealth and taste of its citizens have conspired with its peculiar advantages of position. The architecture of Albany has an exceptional value. The City Hall, with its Romanesque doorways and majestic campanile, is a fine specimen of the great Richardson. The Albany City Savings Bank, recently constructed, is a classical gem, inadequately set, but cut by a master hand. Its Corinthian monoliths and graceful dome satisfy the eye, and the whole structure is a suggestive instance of what trade can do in the interests of art.

The four examples of ecclesiastical architecture of more than local interest are the North Dutch Church, an exceptionally good specimen of the style which obtained in the beginning of the century; the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, with its lofty double spires emphasized by the site, and its spacious interior treated with taste and dignity; St. Peter’s Church, with its noble lines, artistic windows and finely detailed tower,—“one of the richest specimens of French Gothic in this country”; and the Cathedral of All Saints, whose unfinished exterior encloses columnar effects and a choir-vista which remind one of an impressive mediæval interior and give the edifice a distinctive place among the churches of America.

These architectural monuments, however, and the city itself are overshadowed by the new Capitol. This massive structure, since its corner-stone was laid on the 24th of June, 1871, has absorbed over twenty millions of dollars. The enormous bulk, the difficult foundations, the obdurate granite, the elaborate sculptures, the mistakes and afterthoughts, sufficiently account for the money. The old Capitol, which stood in front of the southeast corner, well-nigh could be tucked into one of its great pavilions. The edifice is of such cost, size, and architectural importance, that one discusses it as he might discuss Strasburg Cathedral or the weather. Claiming simply the freedom of personal impression, one may say that its weakest feature is the eastern façade, which gives an inadequate suggestion of the size of the building and moreover is dwarfed by the projecting mass and lofty ascent of the gigantic stairway. He may also say that the Capitol declares its highest points of architectural interest in the constructive and decorative treatment of the interior.

The edifice has been built with the advantage of large ideas and limitless resources, and the disadvantage of fluctuating ideas and a succession of architects. These facts have left their imprint on the structure but, with all that can be said in criticism of details and of unused possibilities, it can fairly be ranked among the great buildings of modern times.

As one approaches Albany, the colossal bulk of the Capitol thrust against the sky seems to dominate the city as the great cathedrals of Europe dominate the towns that have grown or decayed under their shadow. But there are other structures and artistic things, representing the local life, that are worthy of remark.

The State Museum of Natural History, in Geological Hall, a block below the Capitol, vies with the State Library as a credit to the State and the haunt of the student. It is one of the largest and best arranged museums in the country, and its collection of the paleozoic rocks of New York, which figure so largely in the nomenclature of geology, is a monument to an eminent name in the scientific world, James Hall, late State Geologist.

Near the Capitol Park is the Albany Academy, in whose upper rooms Henry and Ten Eyck demonstrated the electrical facts which were applied by Morse. Up the hill, on the southwest corner of the city, stand the pavilions of the new Hospital, built in 1899, and the Dudley Observatory, of note in the stellar world. On Washington Avenue is Harmanus Bleecker Hall, built from the fund held in trust for more than half a century by Chancellor Pruyn and Judge Parker. On State Street opposite the Capitol is the building of the Historical and Art Society, which, though new-born, has already done valuable work in collecting sequestered relics of history.

Under the elms in Washington Park are two fine bronzes: Caverley’s statue of _Robert Burns_ and Rhind’s statue of _Moses at the Rock of Horeb_. Fortunately one of the earliest and two of the noblest creations of the sculptor Palmer are in the city of his home: his _Faith at the Cross_, his _Livingston_, and his _Angel of the Resurrection_.

Albany the Old has become Albany the New. In many ways the new is more energetic and more splendid than the old. The town is large enough to show the characteristic features of our American life in its more sensitive and vigorous centres, and small enough to retain local color and distinctive traits. It is self-centred, believes in itself, and has the instinct to discern and the habit of demanding the best things. It is a place where the finest flavors of the old life linger in and temper the broader spirit and more robust movement of the new life; a place that perpetuates its traditions of social elegance and hospitality; a place, too, that has been the cradle and home of men of commanding force, who have contributed to the highest life of the nation and have left their names on enduring structures of thought and art and economic organization.

The city lies at the intersection of the great thoroughfares of traffic and travel in the richest and most densely populated portion of the republic. Its facilities for production and distribution may give it in the future an enormous industrial development. This fortune is not unlikely, but, to those who estimate in large ways the values of life, it cannot heighten the beauty or deepen the charm of the Albany of to-day.

SARATOGA

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE GREAT WATERWAYS

BY ELLEN HARDIN WALWORTH

There are names which are more than famous—they have a distinct individuality; their sound to the ear or appearance on the page arrests attention, arouses interest, and presents a clear picture to the mind. Such a name is Saratoga, with its romantic record, its picturesque scenery, and its beautiful village,—the “Queen of Spas.” Nature has furnished Saratoga with a regal setting on the lower spurs of the Adirondack Mountains, the last elevations of the Palmertown range, on the edge of the world’s first continent.

Here where the Laurentian rocks stand out boldly over the sands of the old Silurian sea, and where the mighty waterways sweep down from the great northern gulf southward, and from the great northwestern lakes eastward, lies Saratoga Springs. These valleys, bearing the waters of Lake Champlain, Lake George, and the upper Hudson on the north, and of the Mohawk River on the west, have been for centuries the great war-paths of the Indians and of civilized nations. If America is not old, at least her maturity is marked in this region by the scars of war, and by the lines of struggle for the sovereignty of the great waterways. Here are veritable ruins,—old Fort Carillon, later “Old Ticonderoga,” Fort Frederick, afterward Crown Point, and traces here and there of the line of forts extending from the Indian carrying-place at Fort Edward down on either bank of the Hudson to old Saratoga, now Schuylerville, where the great monument commemorative of Revolutionary victory marks the national character of that struggle, and where, eight miles below, at Bemis Heights, fourteen granite tablets, each a monument five or six feet in height, mark the fighting-ground. Through the Mohawk Valley are signs of the “Long House” of the Six Nations, of massacres and battles, that tell their story of three centuries.