Part 246

"On Sunday, the 24th of April, 1775, the news of the battle of Lexington reached the city. This was the signal for open hostilities. Business was at once suspended; the Sons of Liberty assembled in large numbers, and, taking possession of the City Hall, distributed the arms that were stored in it, together with a quantity which had been deposited in the arsenal for safe keeping, among the citizens, a party of whom formed themselves into a voluntary corps under the command of Samuel Broome, and assumed the temporary government of the city. This done, they demanded and obtained the keys of the custom house, closed the building and laid an embargo upon the vessels in port destined for the eastern colonies. … It now became necessary to organize some provisional government for the city, and for this purpose, on the 5th of May, a meeting of the citizens was called at the Coffee-House, at which a Committee of One Hundred was chosen and invested with the charge of municipal affairs, the people pledging themselves to obey its orders until different arrangements should be made by the Continental Congress. This committee was composed in part of men inclined to the royalist cause, yet, such was the popular excitement at the time, that they were carried away by the current and forced to acquiesce in the measures of their more zealous colleagues. … The committee at once assumed the command of the city, and, retaining the corps of Broome as their executive power, prohibited the sale of weapons to any persons suspected of being hostile to the patriotic party. … The moderate men of the committee succeeded in prevailing on their colleagues to present a placable address to Lieutenant-Governor Colden, explanatory of their appointment, and assuring him that they should use every effort to preserve the public peace; yet ominous precautions were taken to put the arms of the city in a serviceable condition, and to survey the neighboring grounds with a view to erecting fortifications. … On the 25th of June, Washington entered New York on his way from Mount Vernon to Cambridge to take command of the army assembled there. The Provincial Congress received him with a cautious address. Despite their patriotism, they still clung to the shadow of loyalty; fearing to go too far, they acted constantly under protest that they desired nothing more than to secure to themselves the rights of true-born British subjects. The next morning Washington quitted the city, escorted on his way by the provincial militia. Tryon [Governor Tryon, who had been absent, in England since the spring of 1774, leaving the government in the hands of Lieutenant-Governor Colden, and who now returned to resume it] had entered it the night before, and thus had been brought almost face to face with the rebel who was destined to work such a transformation in his majesty's colonies of America. The mayor and corporation received the returning governor with expressions of joy, and even the patriot party were glad of the change which relieved them from the government of Colden. … Meanwhile, the colony of New York had been ordered by the Continental Congress to contribute her quota of 3,000 men to the general defence, and four regiments were accordingly raised. … The city now presented a curious spectacle, as the seat of two governments, each issuing its own edicts, and denouncing those of the other as illegal authority. It was not long before the two powers came into collision." This was brought about by an order from the Provincial Congress, directing the removal of guns from the Battery. Shots were exchanged between the party executing this order and a boat from the ship of war "Asia"; whereupon the "Asia" cannonaded the town, riddling houses and wounding three citizens. "Hitherto, the governor had remained firm at his post; but finding his position daily growing more perilous, despite the pledges of the corporation for his personal safety, he determined to abandon the city, and took refuge on board the 'Asia.'"

_Mary L. Booth, History of the City of New York, chapter 16._

ALSO IN: _I. Q. Leake, Life and Times of General John Lamb, chapter 7._

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NEW YORK: A. D. 1776 (January-August). Flight of Governor Tryon. New York City occupied by Washington. Battle of Long Island. Defeat of the American army.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776 (AUGUST).

NEW YORK: A. D. 1776 (September-November). The struggle for the city. Washington's retreat. The British in possession.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776 (SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER).

NEW YORK: A. D. 1776-1777. The Jersey Prison-ship and the Sugar-house Prisons. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776-1777 PRISONERS AND EXCHANGES.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1776-1777. The campaigns in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776-1777. WASHINGTON'S RETREAT; and 1777 (JANUARY-DECEMBER).

NEW YORK: A. D. 1777. Adoption of a Constitution and organization of a State government. Religious freedom established.

"After the Declaration of Independence, the several colonies proceeded to form State governments, by adopting constitutions. In that business New York moved early. On the 1st of August, 1776, a committee of the 'Convention of the Representatives of New York,' as the provisional government was called, sitting at White Plains, in Westchester County, were appointed to draw up and report a constitution. The committee consisted of the following named gentlemen: John Jay, John Sloss Hobart, William Smith, William Duer, Gouverneur Morris, Robert R. Livingston, John Broome, John Morin Scott, Abraham Yates, Jr., Henry Wisner, Sen., Samuel Townsend, Charles De Witt and Robert Yates. John Jay was the chairman, and to him was assigned the duty of drafting the Constitution. The Convention was made migratory by the stirring events of the war during the ensuing autumn and winter. First they held their sessions at Harlem Heights; then at White Plains; afterward at Fishkill, in Dutchess County, and finally at Kingston, in Ulster County, where they continued from February till May, 1777. There undisturbed the committee on the Constitution pursued their labors, and on the 12th of March, 1777, reported a draft of that instrument. It was under consideration in the Convention for more than a month after that, and was finally adopted on the 20th of April. Under it a State government was established by an ordinance of the Convention, passed in May, and the first session of the Legislature was appointed to meet at Kingston in July." The election of State officers was held in June. Jay and others issued a circular recommending General Schuyler for Governor and General George Clinton for Lieutenant Governor. But Schuyler "declined the honor, because he considered the situation of affairs in his Department too critical to be neglected by dividing his duties. The elections were held in all the Counties excepting New York, Kings, Queens, and Suffolk, then occupied by the British, and Brigadier General George Clinton was elected Governor, which office he held, by successive elections, for eighteen years, and afterward for three years. Pierre Van Courtlandt, the President of the Senate, became Lieutenant Governor. Robert R. Livingston was appointed Chancellor; John Jay Chief Justice; Robert Yates and John Sloss Hobart judges of the Supreme Court, and Egbert Benson attorney-general. So it was that the great State of New York was organized and put into operation at a time when it was disturbed by formidable invasions on its northern, southern, and western frontiers."

_B. J. Lossing, Life and Times of Philip Schuyler, volume 2, chapter 9._

The framers of this first constitution of the State of New York "proceeded at the outset to do away with the established church, repealing all such parts of the common law and all such statutes of the province 'as may be construed to establish or maintain any particular denomination of Christians or their ministers.' Then followed a section … which, it is believed, entitles New York to the honor of being the first organized government of the world to assert by constitutional provision the principle of perfect religious freedom. It reads as follows: 'And whereas, we are required by the benevolent principles of rational liberty, not only to expel civil tyranny, but also to guard against that spiritual oppression and intolerance wherewith the bigotry and ambition of weak and wicked priests and princes have scourged mankind, this convention doth further, in the name and by the authority of the good people of this state, ordain, determine, and declare that the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever hereafter be allowed within this state to all mankind.' Thomas Jefferson, to whom Virginia is chiefly indebted for her religious liberty [embodied in her Declaration of Rights, in 1776] derived his religious as well as his political ideas from the philosophers of France. But the men who framed this constitutional provision for New York, which has since spread over most of the United States, and lies at the base of American religious liberty, were not freethinkers, although they believed in freedom of thought. Their Dutch ancestors had practised religious toleration, they expanded toleration into liberty, and in this form transmitted to posterity the heritage which Holland had sent across the sea a century and a half before."

_D. Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England and America, volume 2, pages 251-252._

ALSO IN: _W. Jay, Life of John Jay, chapter 3 (volume 1)._

_T. Roosevelt, Gouverneur Morris, chapter 3._

_B. F. Butler, Outline of Constitutional History of New York (New York Historical Society Collections, series 2, volume 2)._

See, also, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776-1779.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1777. Opposition to the recognition of the State independence of Vermont.

See VERMONT: A. D. 1777-1778.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1777-1778. Burgoyne's invasion from Canada and his surrender. The Articles of Confederation. The alliance with France.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1777(JULY-OCTOBER), to 1778 (FEBRUARY).

NEW YORK: A. D. 1778. Fortifying West Point.

See WEST POINT.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1778. The war on the Indian Border. Activity of Tories and Savages. The Massacre at Cherry Valley.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1778 (JUNE-NOVEMBER), and (JULY).

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NEW YORK: A. D. 1778-1779. Washington's ceaseless guard upon the Hudson.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D.1778-1779 WASHINGTON GUARDING THE HUDSON.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1779. Sullivan's expedition against the Senecas.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1779 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER).

NEW YORK: A. D. 1780. Arnold's attempted betrayal of West Point.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1780 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER).

NEW YORK: A. D. 1780-1783. The war in the South. The surrender of Cornwallis. Peace with Great Britain.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1780, to 1783.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1781. Western territorial claims and their cession to the United States.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1781-1786.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1783. Flight of the Tories, or Loyalists.

See TORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1783. Evacuation of New York City by the British.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1783 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER).

NEW YORK: A. D. 1784. Founding of the Bank of New York.

See MONEY AND BANKING: A. D. 1780-1784.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1786. Rejection of proposed amendments to the Articles of Confederation.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1783-1787.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1786-1799. Land-fee of Western New York ceded to Massachusetts. The Phelps and Gorham Purchase. The Holland Purchase. The founding of Buffalo.

The conflicting territorial claims of New York and Massachusetts, caused by the overlapping grants of the English crown, were not all settled by the cession of western claims to the United States which New York made in 1781 and Massachusetts in 1785 (see UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1781-1786). "Although the nominal amount in controversy, by these acts, was much diminished, it still left some 19,000 square miles of territory in dispute, but this controversy was finally settled by a convention of Commissioners appointed by the parties, held at Hartford, Connecticut, on the 16th day of December, 1786. According to the stipulations entered into by the convention, Massachusetts ceded to the state of New York all her claim to the government, sovereignty, and jurisdiction of all the territory lying west of the present east line of the state of New York; and New York ceded to Massachusetts the pre-emption right or fee of the land subject to the title of the natives, of all that part of the state of New York lying west of a line beginning at a point in the north line of Pennsylvania, 82 miles west of the north-east corner of said state, and running from thence due north through Seneca lake to lake Ontario; excepting and reserving to the state of New York a strip of land east of and adjoining the eastern bank of Niagara river, one mile wide and extending its whole length. The land, the pre-emption right of which was thus ceded, amounted to about 6,000,000 of acres. In April, 1788, Massachusetts contracted to sell to Nathaniel Gorham of Charlestown, Middlesex county, and Oliver Phelps of Granville, Hampshire county, of said state, their pre-emption right to all the lands in Western New York, amounting to about 6,000,000 acres, for the sum of $1,000,000, to be paid in three annual instalments, for which a kind of scrip Massachusetts had issued, called consolidated securities, was to be received, which was then in market much below par. In July, 1788, Messrs. Gorham and Phelps purchased of the Indians by treaty, at a convention held at Buffalo, the Indian title to about 2,600,000 acres of the eastern part of their purchase from Massachusetts. This purchase of the Indians being bounded west by a line beginning at a point in the north line of the state of Pennsylvania, due south of the corner or point of land made by the confluence of the Kanahasgwaicon (Cannnseraga) creek with the waters of Genesee river; thence north on said meridian line to the corner or point at the confluence aforesaid; thence northwardly along the waters of said Genesee river to a point two miles north of Kanawageras (Cannewagus) village; thence running due west 12 miles; thence running northwardly, so as to be 12 miles distant from the westward bounds of said river, to the shore of lake Ontario. On the 21st day of November, 1788, the state of Massachusetts conveyed and forever quitclaimed to N. Gorham and O. Phelps, their heirs and assigns forever, all the right and title of said state to all that tract of country of which Messrs. Phelps and Gorham had extinguished the Indian title. This tract, and this only, has since been designated as the Phelps and Gorham Purchase. … So rapid were the sales of the proprietors that before the 18th day of November, 1790, they had disposed of about 50 townships [each six miles square], which were mostly sold by whole townships or large portions of townships, to sundry individuals and companies of farmers and others, formed for that purpose. On the 18th day of November, 1790, they sold the residue of their tract (reserving two townships only), amounting to upwards of a million and a quarter acres of land, to Robert Morris of Philadelphia, who soon sold the same to Sir William Pultney, an English gentleman. … This property, or such part of it as was unsold at the time of the decease of Sir William, together with other property which he purchased in his lifetime in its vicinity, is now [1849] called the Pultney Estate. … Messrs. Phelps and Gorham, who had paid about one third of the purchase money of the whole tract purchased of Massachusetts, in consequence of the rise of the value of Massachusetts consolidated stock (in which the payments for the land were to be received) from 20 per cent. to par, were unable further to comply with their engagements." After long negotiations they were permitted to relinquish to the state of Massachusetts all that western section of their purchase of which they had not acquired the Indian title, and this was resold in March, 1791, by Massachusetts, to Samuel Ogden, acting for Robert Morris. Morris made several sales from the eastern portion of his purchase, to the state of Connecticut (investing its school fund) and to others, in large blocks known subsequently as the Ogden Tract, the Cragie Tract, the Connecticut Tract, etc. The remainder or most of it, covering the greater part of western New York, was disposed of to certain gentlemen in Holland, and came to be generally known as the Holland Purchase.

_O. Turner, Pioneer History of the Holland Purchase, pages 325 and 396-424._

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"Much has been written and more has been said about the 'Holland Company.' When people wished to be especially precise, they called it the 'Holland Land Company.' … Yet there never was any such thing as the Holland Company or the Holland Land Company. Certain merchants and others of the city of Amsterdam placed funds in the hands of friends who were citizens of America to purchase several tracts of land in the United States, which, being aliens, the Hollanders could not hold in their own name at that time. One of these tracts, comprising what was afterwards known as the Holland Purchase, was bought from Robert Morris. … In the forepart of 1798 the legislature of New York authorized those aliens to hold land within the State, and in the latter part of that year the American trustees conveyed the Holland Purchase to the real owners." The great territory covered by the Purchase surrounded several Indian "Reservations"—large blocks of land, that is, which the aboriginal Seneca proprietors reserved for their own occupancy when they parted with their title to the rest, which they did at a council held in 1797. One of these Reservations embraced the site now occupied by the city of Buffalo. Joseph Ellicott, the agent of the Holland proprietors, quickly discerned its prospective importance, and made an arrangement with his Indian neighbors by which he secured possession of the ground at the foot of Lake Erie and the head of Niagara River, in exchange for another piece of land six miles away. Here, in 1799, Ellicott began the founding of a town which he called New Amsterdam, but which subsequently took the name of the small stream, Buffalo Creek, on which it grew up, and which, by deepening and enlargement, became its harbor.

_C. Johnson, Centennial History of Erie Company, New York, chapter 13._

ALSO IN: _O. Turner, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps' and Gorham's Purchase, part 2._

_O. Turner, Pioneer History of the Holland Purchase, pages 401-424._

_H. L. Osgood, The Title of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase (Rochester Historical Society Publications, volume 1)._

NEW YORK: A. D. 1787-1788. The formation and adoption of the Federal Constitution. The chief battle ground of the contest.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1787; and 1787-1789.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1789. Inauguration of President Washington in New York City.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1789-1792.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1789. The beginnings of Tammany.

See TAMMANY SOCIETY.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1790. Renunciation of claims to Vermont.

See VERMONT: A. D. 1790-1791.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1799. Gradual emancipation of Slaves enacted.

During the session of the legislature in April, 1799, "emancipation was at last enacted. It was provided that all children born of slave parents after the ensuing 4th of July should be free, subject to apprenticeship, in the case of males till the age of 28, in the case of females till the age of 25, and the exportation of slaves was forbidden. By this process of gradual emancipation there was avoided that question of compensation which had been the secret of the failure of earlier bills. At that time the number of slaves was only 22,000, small in proportion to the total population of nearly a million. So the change was effected peacefully and without excitement."

_G. Pellew, John Jay, page 328._

NEW YORK: A. D. 1805. The Free School Society in New York City.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: AMERICA: A. D. 1776-1880.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1807. Fulton's first steamboat on the Hudson.

See STEAM NAVIGATION: THE BEGINNINGS.

NEW YORK: A. D. 1812-1815. The war on the Canadian frontier.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1812 (SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER); 1813 (OCTOBER-NOVEMBER); 1813 (DECEMBER); 1814 (JULY-SEPTEMBER); 1814 (SEPTEMBER).

NEW YORK: A. D. 1817-1819. The Clintonians and Bucktails.

During the first term of De Witt Clinton as governor of the State, the feud in the Democratic Republican party, between his supporters and his opponents, which began in 1812 when he audaciously sought to attain the Presidency, against Madison, assumed a fixed and definite form. "Clinton's Republican adversaries were dubbed 'Bucktails,' from the ornaments worn on ceremonial occasions by the Tammany men, who had long been Clinton's enemies. The Bucktails and their successors were the 'regular' Republicans, or the Democrats as they were later called; and they kept their regularity until, long afterwards, the younger and greater Bucktail leader [Martin Van Buren], when venerable and laden with honors, became the titular head of the Barn-burner defection. The merits of the feud between Bucktails and Clintonians it is now difficult to find. Each accused the other of coquetting with the Federalists; and the accusation of one of them was nearly always true."

_E. M. Shepard, Martin Van Buren, page 56._

ALSO IN: _J. Schouler, History of the United States, volume 3, page 227._

_J. D. Hammond, History of Political Parties in the State of New York, volume 1, page 450._

NEW YORK: A. D. 1817-1825. Construction of the Erie Canal.