F in 3 1924 080 796 521 The original of tiiis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924080796521 Cornell University Library reformatted this volume to digital files to preserve the informational content of the deteriorated original. The original volume was scanned bitonally at 600 dots per inch and compressed prior to storage using ITU Group 4 compression. 1997 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henrg m. Sage 189X THE STORY OF THE STATES EDITED liY ELBRIDGE S BROOKS ROBERT BENSON READING THE CONSTITUTION, APRIL 20, I777. Pagi 133. THE STORY OF THE STATES THE STORY OF NEW YORK BY ELBRIDGE S BROOKS lllnstratioKS by L J Bridgman BOSTON : LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. Copyright, i888i BY D. LoTHHOP Company. BERWICK & SMITH, PRINTERS, BOSTON. PREFACE. It is the purpose of this story of the State of New York to indicate in outline rather than in detail the stages of growth through which the Commonwealth, from a purely mercantile venture in a newly-discovered world, advanced to its present imperial position in a sisterhood of sovereign States. Against the background of historic facts is thrown this record of a hypothetical Knickerbocker family, the members of which never attained to the eminence of power, wealth, or official station, but remained through all the stages of national de- velopment ever the same simple folk — active workers in their humble sphere but, with thousands like them, factors in the advancing career of a mighty State. Fragmentary as such sketches must necessarily be, the author trusts that they may serve to emphasize, in a novel way, certain historic happenings in the various epochs that mark the con- tinual progress of the Empire State from its day of small things. If these, in turn, shall awaken in American readers a deeper interest in the more comprehensive histories of their nation, or of the States that stand as its component parts, the purpose of the author will have been fully served. We need, as a people, to know more of ourselves. The story of American progress is builded upon matters of even greater importance than its records of wars, of politics, and of men of renown. Between the lines of every history should be read the unwritten but not less notable story of the people. The family and descendants of Teunis Jansen, the honest burgher of the Winckel Street, may have had no existence in fact, but they can stand as types of those living, laboring folk, the people, whose daily duties, activities, cares and needs, are a part at once of the story and the success of the great State of New York. TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE INFANT COLONY ... ...... II 1609-1657. CHAPTER II. DUTCH NEW YORK 33- 1624-1664. CHAPTER III. THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE . S3 1664-169I. CHAPTER IV. UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS 77 1664-1765. CHAPTER V. A COLONIAL BARON . . lOI I738-I774. CHAPTER VI. LIBERTY 119 1775-1800. CHAPTER Vn. EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES I45 l80D-rS20. CHAPTER VIII. IN THE TWENTIES 168 182O-1830. CHAPTER IX. PROGRESS AND DISASTER . I92 1825-1837. TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. A GROWING STATE ERRATIC DAYS IN WAR AND PEACE 1837-1850. CHAPTER XI. 1850-1860. CHAPTER Xn. 1860-1888. 219 244 262 THE CHRONOLOGICAL STORY 283 THE people's COVENANT 3°.3 BOOKS RELATING TO NEW YORK 307 3<39 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Robert Benson reading the Constitution April 20, 1777 The first sight of land. Initial The Half Moon . ... A party of Walloons coming to the settlement at Albany The windmill near the Fort. Initial De Perel Straat . Approaching New Amsterdam in 1656 " I would rather be carried out dead ! " said Stuyvesant James, Duke of York Initial . The first New York Exchange . Anthony at the house of Teunis On Kidd's ship. Initial . Going to school in 17CO On the frontier . ... An Iroquois type. Initial Isaac Jansen goes to the Indian country A council at Johnson Hall One of the Continentals. Initial The Battle of Oriskany Van Arsdale at the flag staff In 1812. Initial .... On the fortifications in 181 2 " Take that thing out of your hat, sir ! " Governor De Witt Clinton, hiitial Reading the " Culprit Fay" The mingling of the waters On the canal. Initial " People were all either masons or anti-masons After the fire of '35 Work after disaster. Initial Page Frontis. II 13 27 33 35 43 51 53 61 69 77 79 89 lOI 107 "5 119 123 131 145 149 159 168 173 ■83 192 201 211 219 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Anti-renters stopping a sheriff . A New York dandy of '49 " Brownstone frontage. " Initial Rescue of a fugitive slave . " Every bank in the city suspended payment " A boy of '61. Initial .... One of the first to enlist " The business is yours ; let's go to work ! " 223 235 244 249 25s 262 267 275 THE STORY OF NEW YORK CHAPTER I. THE INFANT COLONY. i/yEHOLD! The land, my son ! " And good Captain Jan E vert- sen van Gloockens, of the Dutch galiot Gilded Beaver, laid a broad hand upon the ''^^' / shoulder of the lad who, leaning far over the high taffrail, was peering through the scattering haze of a September morning in the year 1657, toward the long, low coast-line just coming into sight. What the lad saw, over the quarter, was a distant rim of shore, looking very flat and level as it lay low down in the western horizon ; ahead, to the southwest, a misty mass that might be hills or might be cloud-banks was just dimly coming into view. 12 THE INFANT COLONY. while, between, an open stretch of water flashed and sparkled under the September sun. " Nassauw Island, from Secktaw-hackey 'round to Rechqua-aike and Conitjen," said the skipper, in eluding the low coast-line in a comprehensive sweep of the hand; "the Staten hills and Scheyichbi," he continued, in guide-book style, pointing to the cloud-bank in the south; "the Hoofden and the gateway to the Monados," he said, indicating the broad sweep of sparkling water ; " and by that gateway, my son," he concluded, "shall we and the Gilded Beaver sail upward to your long-wish ed-f or haven of Nieuw Amsterdam." Translated into our modern geographical terms the good captain's talk, part Indian, part Dutch, in its names of places, would mean to us : " Long Island shore from Fire Island Inlet around to Rockaway and Coney Island ; the Navesink hills, Staten Island, and the New Jersey shore; the Nar- rows and the gateway to Manhattan Island ; and by that gateway shall we sail upward to your long- wished-for haven of New York." For so have names changed in two hundred years, although the low shore-line and the misty hills still appear the same, and are the first landmarks that greet the visitor from across the seas to-day, as he stands watchful and curious upon the deck of some great ocean steamer, even as they greeted young THE INFANT COLONY. '3 Teunis Jansen, from Amersfoort, as he stood, watchful and curious, on the unsteady deck of the Gilded Beaver two hundred and thirty years ago. A sturdy, manly-appearing young fellow was this same Teunis Jansen — a frank-faced, hopeful-look- THE HALF MOON. ing lad of scarce nineteen — fair type of that rest- less young life of Europe that, for now neariy three centuries, has been coming, coming, in an almost ceaseless flow, to the shores of the New World, as to a land of promise, of endeavor, and success. Neariy fifty years before, on a September day in 14 THE INFANT COLONY. the year 1609, an earlier Teunis Jansen — this lad's grandfather — had sailed this very course as one of the mixed crew of Dutch and English sailors who, under the command of Captain Henry Hudson, the English navigator, had seen from the deck of another Dutch galiot — the Half Moon — the same low-lying shore-line, the same misty hills, the same gleaming gateway to a new world. Fifty years had passed since Captain Henry Hudson, sailing up the beautiful river, had found himself in a land which he reported to be " the finest kind for tillage and as beautiful as the foot of man ever trod upon " ; and, within that time, many changes and a constantly increasing tide of emigration had come to the new lands of which Captain Hudson had taken possession in the name of the States General of Holland and the Dutch East India Company. Originally discovered by the Spaniards of Chris- topher Columbus' day (as recent investigation clearly indicates), the land had been neglected and forgotten by its first discoverers, these same wealth- devouring Spaniards, who, seeking gold and spices, cared only to follow the advice of the geographer of their king — Peter Martyr the Italian : " To the South, to the South, for the great and exceeding riches of the Equinoctial ; they that seek gold must not go to the cold and frozen North." THE INFANT COLONY. 1 5 But, though this northern land might be ignored and forgotten by its earlier discoverers, the evi- dence of Spanish exploration and possible occupa- tion exists to-day in several actual and peculiar relics. One of the most striking of these is the simple headstone not long since unearthed near the town of Pompey, in Onondaga County, Central New York. For on this stone has been deciph- ered, after much patient study, this nearly oblit- erated inscription in abbreviated old Spanish : " In the year of our Lord, 1520, in the sixth month, died here in the hope of immortality, our comrade Leo, of the city of Leon, in Spain." And, even more enduring than this crumbling headstone, the very language of those barbaric owners of the soil, who learned to know and hate the Spanish power, in the North as in the South, retained for centuries the stamp of Spanish contact. Many a place and tribe through Lower New York, accepted as Indian names by the first colonists, have been found b)'^ scholars to be based upon Spanish words. Indeed, even the metropolis of the Western World itself to-day retains in the name of the island upon which it is built — a name that it has proudly used for fully three hundred years — the evidence and the moral of the greatest evil which, from the very earliest days, the white man laid upon the red ; for it was called Manhattan, 1 6 THE INFANT COLONY. Manhates, Monatoes, Monados.* And monadoes is a Spanish word signifying " the peace of drunken men." But, for all practical purposes, the Teunis Jansen of 1609, and his captain and companions on the Half Moon, first opened to European knowledge and commerce the river which they called Mauri- tius, the French, Rio de Montaigne, but which for many a year has borne the name of its dauntless explorer, Hudson the navigator. It was then, too, that, by the favorable report of the country borne back to Holland, was laid the foundations for the great and marvelous future of the Empire State of New York. But young Teunis Jansen as he leaned over the taffrail of the Gilded Beaver thought little of this possible future. He was thinking of the past, and was recalling all that his grandfather had told him, as the old man would sit, smoking his big pipe crammed with Indian leaf, in the ingle-nook of the quaint little house at Amersfoort near the shores of the Zuyder Zee. For many, a time, had the old man told the lad the story of those early days : how he had come again and again to the Manhattans after Captain Hudson's discovery; how he had trafficked with the Indians for furs and " pelts " *As Monados, the name of Manhattan Island appears on the earliest maps of American discovery. THE INFANT COLONY. 17 and made merry in the log warehouse on the island ; how Captain Adriaen Block's vessel the Tiger had burned to the water's edge just off the Copake rocks ; * how, through the long winter of 161 3 the shipwrecked sailors had lived in the four small houses,! half cabins, half wigwams, they had raised for shelter, and how, during their winter's exile, they had built a clumsy craft, the Unrest, on which they sailed away in the spring. And Teunis remembered, as well, all his father's stories. For his father, too, had been sailor and fur-trader in the New Netherlands. The lad had heard, many a time, of his father's rough and roving life on sea and shore ; of the trading stations of the great West India Company at Manhattan and Esopus and Fort Orange, away up the broad river ; at the Fresh River | and on the South River, § a hundred miles southward from the Manhattans. He remembered his father's story how in the year 1632 Zwanendael on the South River had fallen before the assault of the savage red-man and he re- called, alas, all too well, how news at last had come to Amersfoort that his own father, volunteering for the Heer Governor Kieft's bloody and unwarranted assault on the Indians at Pavonia in 1643, had ♦Where Castle Garden now stands. tAbout on the spot which is now No. 39 Broadway. tNear Hartford, on the Connecticut. §The Delaware River, a few miles south of Philadelphia. 1 8 THE INFANT COLONY. himself been killed soon after by the enraged savages as he was bringing a boat-load pf furs from Fort Orange down to the Manhattans. All these stories had long stirred the lad's am- bition and made it his greatest desire to follow in the footsteps of his father and his grandfather, and come over to the New Netherlands to traffic and settle, and, perhaps, to make his fortune in trade. For, after all, this was the basis upon which the State of New York was founded — the eagerness for profitable trading. The desire for gain has always ruled mankind. It has peopled wildernesses, founded States, and produced nations. Patriotism, indeed, is largely business glorified into a principle. Even more than the yearnings for religious freedom, an ambition for profitable trade was the impelling cause that has resulted in the America of to-day. It was this that sent Hudson over the sea ; it was this that led Champlain into the wildernesses of the Adirondacks and brought these two men almost face to face, as, all unconsciously, on the same Sep- tember days, they were pushing, the one to the South and the other to the North, in search of an impossible passage to a still more impossible Cathay. It was this, too, that sent factor and fur-trader into hitherto untrodden paths in advance alike of soldier and of priest, of conversion and of conquest. THE INFANT COLONY. 1 9 " The soldier," says Mr. Parkman, " might be a roving knight, the priest a martyr and a saint ; but both alike were subserving the interests of that commerce which formed the only solid basis of the colony." When, in the year 1493, the Pope Alexander the Sixth, with a generosity that was as cheap as it was colossal, gave all America to Spain, the seeds of dissension in New World colonization were planted. Neither papal bull nor Spanish swords could keep the trader and the gain-desiring settler from their coveted trading-ground, and the grant by which France, basing her title on the questionable dis- coveries of Verazzano, claimed all North America from the Atlantic to New Mexico, and from the Gulf to the Arctic Circle, was as valid, or rather, as worthless, as was the unfounded claim of Spain or the equally questionable ones of England and of Holland. It was these conflicting claims to the property of those other and earlier possessors — the red Indians of America — that led to interminable discussions and demands between the new settlers and their home governments; and these discussions seem to have raged more hotly in the New York colony than anywhere else. The people of Northern Europe, as they increased in wealth, developed a taste for luxuries, And not 20 THE INFANT COLONY. the least of these luxuries was the fashion of wear- ing costly robes and cloaks made from the skins of bear and bison, beaver and fox. The discovery of these fur-bearing animals in large numbers in the newly found land to the west* created a demand that others were quick to supply. It was seized upon by hundreds of enterprising men as an oppor- tunity for profit, and thus at once was established what Mr. Parkman denominates " the hardy, adven- turous, lawless, fascinating fur trade." The trading post and the store-house were the first signs of the white man's civilization upon the banks of the Hudson and the shores of the greater and lesser lakes. Such was the log house built on Manhattan Island, very near to the present Bowling Green, in 1615; such, the trading-post, half fort, half store house," thirty-six feet long by twenty-six wide," on an island just below the site of the city of Albany and such, too, were the insecure bark lodges near Ticon- deroga and on the shore of Oneida Lake and the equally temporary hut within sound of the roar of Niagara. Thus at various points, widely separated but held for the same general purpose of trade in furs, did the hermit trapper — shrewd, unscrupulous, brave and venturesome, — open the first chapter in the story of the Empire State. *In the years 1565-66 over six thousand buffalo skins were exported by French traders who secured them secretly from the Indian hunters of the Alleghany slope. THE INFANT COLONY. 21 And how noble a domain for commerce and for settlement did the boundaries of this same Empire State inclose ! " The history of a country," says Mr. Bancroft, " is, in many of its features, deter- mined by its geographical situation. The region which Hudson discovered possessed near the sea an unrivalled harbor ; a river that admits the tide far into the interior; on the north the chain of great lakes, which have their springs in the heart of the continent ; within its limits the sources of rivers that flow to the Gulf of Mexico and St. Lawrence, and to the bays of Chesapeake and Delaware ; of which, long before Europeans anchored off Sandy Hook, the warriors of the Five Nations availed themselves in their excursions to Quebec, to the Ohio and the Susquehanna. With just sufficient difficulties to irritate, and not enough to dishearten, New York united richest lands with the highest adaptation to foreign and domestic commerce." And yet the early settlers of New York in their efforts to obtain a home encountered obstacles that were calculated to both irritate and dishearten. Not in the limitations of a stubborn soil nor in the surprises of a barbaric foe were these encountered. Both these obstacles were courageously met and successfully overcome. The colonist's chief barriers to success were, rather, their own selfish over-lords. It was in spite of the niggardly methods, the petty 2 2 THE INFANT COLONY. jealousies, and the continual strifes of their own patrons and protectors that the people of New York rose superior to circumstances and, triumph- ing over the tyrannies of Companies and Patroons, of Dutch sluggishness and of British greed, became finally the real founders and upbuilders of a great and growing State. The foundations of the State were laid by com- merce. But the builders of this foundation were the close-fisted members of the firm of Self and Monopoly. It is well for those who, at the present day, so inveigh against the great and grasping monopolies of our time, to remember that in this, as in other matters, the world's advance in righteousness may be seen. Not the most soul-less corporation of this last quarter of the nineteenth century is to be compared for selfishness, arrogance, short-sight- edness, tyranny and greed to the companies that in the early days of American colonization sought to monopolize and "corner" the possibilities of a continent. And by no means the least culpable of these were the corporate bodies which, under the special per- mission of the States General of Holland, secured the privilege of trade and settlement in the limits of what was then known as the New Netherlands. This was a vast section without absolute bounda- THE INFANT COLONY. 23 ries or prescribed limits save as such limits should be the indefinite frontier lines of the French occupa- tion of Canada on the north, and the English col- ony of Virginia on the south. This section was claimed by the States General of Holland "in right of discovery " and extended westward " as far as the Dutch might be supposed ever to explore." The Dutch East India Company in whose service Henry Hudson was employed when he discovered the river that bears his name, was a wealthy and powerful commercial corporation of ' Holland. It monopolized the trade of the East, and, aiming to circumvent and get the better of Holland's bitterest enemy, Spain, this, company expended vast sums in the search for a nearer and northerly passage to the China seas. Thus, among other places, were the New Netherlands discovered in September, 1609. Hudson's reports brought other Dutch ves- sels on purposes of private trade into the " River of the Mountains " as the beautiful stream was called. Hongers, Pelgrom and Van Tweenhuysen, three Amsterdam merchants, were the earliest commer- cial adventurers in this region, and on January ist, 1 61 5, an association of speculative Amsterdam mer- chants, under the style of the "New Netherlands Company," secured from the government of Hol- land the exclusive right for three years of trading in the region known as the New Netherlands. 24 THE INFANT COLONY. Individual speculation was forced to retire, and thus was the first ^ monopoly established. The profits on this three years' trading contract were enormous, but upon its expiration, in 1618, mercantile jealousy interferred and a renewal was refused. The Dutch West India Company was then formed. It was granted the exclusive trade upon the American and Asiatic coasts of the Atlantic, and was invested with enormous powers beyond those, so it is asserted, ever granted to any private corpo- ration. And thus was monopoly perpetuated. For forty years the Dutch West India Company, its directors and servants, held autocratic power over its possessions known as the New Netherlands. The governors it sent out were merely officers in a commercial corporation caring for little except the privileges and the profits of their masters, the Com- pany, and caring still less for the condition or the success of those of the colonists who were not, as were they, servants of the great monopoly. After a few years of this dog-in-the-manger policy of trade and government the failing revenues of its New Netherland possessions, when compared with those of its South American possessions, compelled tjie Company to seek for new methods to retrieve its losses. Wisdom should have suggested the policy of liberal offers to new settlers, but the aris- tocratic notions that held sway even in republican THE INFANT COLONY. 25 Holland could not endure concessions to the peo- ple. Instead, the Company sought to create what has been termed " a monopoly within a monopoly." They disposed of great tracts of land, or " manors," to certain of the Company's own officers or to wealthy Holland merchants who, under the title of patroons became, in reality, feudal lords over the lands thus ceded to them. The only redeeming feature of this additional monopoly was that the patroons were forced to acquire their lands from the Indians " by purchase." This policy, wisely proposed, was wisely adhered to. It remains, therefore, to the honor of the Dutch settlers of New York that where far too many of the colonizers in America acquired their lands from the Indian owners through fraud or open seizure they, from the first, honestly paid for what they openly purchased. But, under the guardianship of monopolies men become either serfs or protestants. The State of New York grew because of the increasing indepen- dence of its people and not because of any liberality on the part of its founders or of public benefits from the hands of its early governors. These, as has been said, were simply servants of the monopoly they represented, earnest in its service and loyal to their own interests, but regarding the people as vas- sals to be curbed or inflictions to be ignored. 26 THE INFANT COLONY. Mey and Tienpont, earliest of the representatives of the Company, were merely traders and factors caring only for the cargoes they could send to Holland. Minuit was a self-willed and self-seeking adventurer, Van Twiller, a drunken and indolent fool, Kieft a conceited and tyrannical bankrupt, Stuyvesant a despotic and passionate autocrat. And the change from Dutch to English rule brought little or no relief so far as the personal characteristics of the governors were concerned. They were favorites of the Duke or the King, re- warded with colonial office for loyal personal ser- vice and could not so lower their dignity as to consult the wishes or entertain the complaints of the " people." And these "people" — who were they.? Traders, first, and the roving adventurers who are always in the van of any pioneering move ; then, a company of Walloons, from the country about the Scheldt, fugitives from French intolerance and Spanish persecution ; next, ship-loads of sturdy Dutch emi- grants from their native Holland, seeking a foot- hold and possible prosperity in a new and untried field ; with them. Huguenot refugees, already half Hollanders by residence in that land of religious toleration since the fearful day of St. Bartholomew ; runaway or discharged sailors and soldiers ; fugi- tives from stern home justice — scatterings from < H Z W w H H THE INFANT COLONY. 29 every nation of Europe; for, from the very first, the colony of New Netherland held that mixture of folk and of nationalities that has always made New York City the most cosmopolitan town in all America, and given to the State the same mingled composition. They came in every ship that plied between the Old Amsterdam and the New — in the Gilded Otter, the Jan Baptiste, the Brownfish, the Faith, the Spotted Cow, the Arms of Amsterdam, the Love and all the other queerly-named craft. In these came Jan Barentsen, the house carpenter, Cornelis Andriessen Hoogland, the tailor, Pieter van Halen from Utrecht, with his wife and two children, Geertruy Jochems, wife of Claes Claessen from Amersfoort, and her two children ; Adriaen Fournoi from Valenciennes, Harmen Dircksen from Norway, wife and child ; Claes Wolf, from the Elbe, sailor, Epke Jacobs from Harlingen, farmer, wife and five sons, Femmetje Hendricksen, maiden ; Christiaen de Lorie from St. Malo, Steven Koorts from Drenthe, wife and seven children, Annetje Gillis van Beest, servant girl — bakers and tailors, farmers and fishermen, masons and shoemakers, wheelwrights and coopers, laborers, workmen, clerks and servants, maid and matron, widow and child and even one pair on their honeymoon — " Dorige- man Jansen, from Dordrecht and his bride." These are but a few names selected from the old passenger 30 THE INFANT COLONY. lists of two hundred and fifty years ago — samples, all, of the people who, spite of ocean terrors and savage fears, faced all the deprivations of life in an untried land. In this however they and their companions were to make for themselves a home and build their hopes and their endeavors into the great State of which, even more than the autocratic West India Company, the people themselves laid the firm foundation. But these all came slowly. It was not until 1624, fifteen years after Hudson's voyage, that the first real colonists came. Up to that date the New Netherlands had been used simply as a barter- ground for the fur-traders. These colonists of 1624 were Belgian Protes tants, known as Walloons. Thirty families of these thrifty folk came over in the ship New Netherland, under charge of Captain Cornelis Jacobsen Mey, afterward first Director-General of the colony. Eight men were landed at Manhattan ; four couples were sent to the South River ; two families and six men to the Connecticut River region, and the rest were carried north to the Fort Orange, or Albany settlement. This, as has been said, was the first real colonization of New Netherland. That same year, 1624, other vessels came from Holland and, in the year following, the Dutch West India Company, rejoicing in a profit on their THE INFANT COLONY. 3 1 first year's business of nearly twenty-eight thousand guilders, determined to enlarge the settlement that was slowly growing around their chief warehouse on Manhattan Island. They accordingly offered certain special so-called " inducements " to emi- grants, and before the close of the year four vessels brought settlers to the new colony — "forty- five persons in all with household furniture, farm- ing utensils, and one hundred and three head of cattle." By June, 1626, the population of the Manhattan settlement (which did not receive the name of New Amsterdam until 1633) had grown to two hundred persons. There were some thirty dwellings grouped about the " block house with red cedar palisades " — called by courtesy "the fort" — which stood near the water's edge. That same year of 1626, the first stone building was erected. This was the Com- pany's warehouse. In 1628 the island had outstripped the other set- tlements in the province and boasted a population of two hundred and seventy persons, and the colo- nists began to build houses of brick and stone. In 1630 the monopoly of the "patroon" system was authorized by the Company, and these owners of new tracts began to send over colonists to occupy their lands. So, year by year, was New Netherland gradually 32 THE INFANT COLONY. peopled, until in 1650, just forty years after Hud- son's voyage, the province in its scattered trading settlements at Manhattan Island, Fort Orange, now Albany, the Fresh River, now Hartford in Connec- ticut, Pavonia, now Jersey City, Zwanendael on the South, or Delaware River, not far from the pres- ent site of Philadelphia, and Breuckelen, on Long Island, showed a census of nearly three thousand colonists. During the time of Stuyvesant, the last of the Dutch directors, or governors, these figures grew to a total of eight thousand persons within the confines of the New Netherlands, of whom over one thousand were resident on the island of Manhattan. And it was to these eight thousand colonists that young Teunis Jansen, whom we left gazing over the rail of the Gilded Beaver, was to join him- self. For he was sailing up the Lower Bay toward the clustering houses of New Amsterdam in the beautiful month of September, 1657, the tenth year in the administration of the Heer Petrus Stuyve- sant, Director-General of New Netherland for their High Mightinesses the States-General of Holland and the Honorable Lords Directors of the Dutch West India Company. CHAPTER II. DUTCH NEW YORK. T was a quaint and, in many ways, a perplex- ing town in which Teunis Jansen found himself when, late that afternoon, h e stepped upon the long dock at Pearl Street. The Gilded Beaver lay at her moorings in mid- stream, in the East River, just off the Long Dock. Teunis Jansen and the other passengers had come ashore in the Beaver's row boat and, upon the deck of the galiot, the good Captain Jan Evertsen van Gloockens was superintending the discharge of his cargo, which certain clumsy, flat-bottomed scows were taking ashore for delivery to the haven-master and the consignees. The town was neither a large nor a regular one, 33 34 DUTCH NEW YORK, and the most noticeable objects that the lad had seen as he sailed up the bay were the sloping roof and rather squat spire of the Gereformeede Kerck, or Reformed Church, the towering flag-staff and bastions of Fort Amsterdam, and the whirling sails of the big windmill close beside it. And there on the Long Dock ready to meet and greet him stood Anthony Yerrenton, his father's former comrade and crony in the fur-trading days — one of those cosmopolitan fellows, as much Dutch as English, and as much French and Indian as both, whom the American fur-trade, more than any other calling, specially produced. But now gray and grizzled by advancing years and long exposure, and with profits from fur-traffic suffi- ciently satisfactory to enable him to give up roughing it in the Northern wilderness and become a factor and dealer himself, the Heer Anthony Yerrenton had become a staid and prosperous burgher of New Amsterdam, highly regarded by his associates and even spoken of as one of the possible Schepens of the town at the next regular appointing-time. He was the head of a family of boys with wide-flapping breeches, and girls with tightly-twisted braids, for the goode vrouw Yerrenton, his wife, was a Dutch matron of the amplest type, an over-particular housewife and a highly satisfactory " provider." But the sight of the son of his old comrade DUTCH NEW YORK. 35 brought back to his mind thronging memories of the old days of traffic and adventure among the red Indians and the French coureurs de bois ; and, with the grasp of a vise and a hand-shake hke a whirl- wind the Heer Anthony Yerrenton swooped down DE PEREL STRAAT. upon young Teunis Jansen and dragged him away to his odd and ugly-looking little house on De Brugh Straat, or Bridge Street. First impressions of any new place are not al- ways lasting ones. Impressions hold only as they become more deeply rooted. But to the day of his death Teunis Jansen never forgot his peculiar 36 DUTCH NEW YORK. sensations as he strolled along De Perel Straat (Pearl Street) — the pleasant roadway that skirted the flashing river. Here he was at last, in a new land — a land which his grandfather had helped discover, his father to develop, and to which now he, with all his young life of endeavor and deter- mination before him, had come, to find and found a home and "grow up with the country." The arrival of a ship from the mother-country was sufficiently rare to be esteemed a sensation, but the Dutch were a people to take sensations seri- ously and with all their interest in the Gilded Beaver, its passengers and its cargo, the group of watchers and welcomers that thronged the Long Dock made but little show of excitement. Friends greeted friends with the kiss of welcome that passed between men as well as women ; the numerous wine-shops near by found a sudden increase of pat- ronage, but in all this there was little of the volu- bility exhibited by Anthony Yerrenton. The old fur-trader, usually cool and sedate, had been aroused to enthusiasm by the sight of this lad from across the sea and he waxed elo- quent over the beauties of the little town he loved so much. As they passed along he proudly pointed out for Teunis the signs of growth and increasing pros- perity about the little city. DUTCH NEW YORK. 37 " Why, lad," he said, " when your father and I used to come down here in our boats with our loads of furs from 'Sopus and Fort Orange, say twenty years ago — in Governor Van Twiller's time — there was ne'er a street in the whole town. The houses lay in clusters like, and snug up to the walls of the fort. De Perel Straat — this one we are on — was only a wagon-way along the river side. Look at it now ! Forty-three houses, not counting the wine shops — and far too many of them, say I, All good houses, too — the best in town almost. Well, we have Governor Kieft to thank for starting this street, and there's little else we can thank him for — a greedy, violent and mischievous man, lad, whose folly caused your poor father's death ; he came near wrecking the colony too, and, faith, he would have done it if the Company had not listened for once to the appeals of the people. But see what we've done in spite of it all. Here are now some seventeen streets all told — Te Marckvelt, De Heere Straat, De Waal, Te Water, De Perel Straat, Aghter De Perel Straat, De Brouwer Straat, De Winckel Straat, De Bever Graft, Te Marckvelt Steegie, De Smee Straat, De Smits V'ly De Hoogh Straat, De Heere Graft, De Prince Graft, De Prince Straat, and De Brugh Straat, where I live. And look you, now; I bought my place on De Brugh Straat, scarce a dozen years back (barely 38 DUTCH NEW YORK. five morgens and a half* in size is it), for just twenty-four guilders t and only yesterday Hendrick Kip offered me an hundred and twenty-five guild- ers for the lot alone ! There's a profit for you, lad. But he don't get it. Why, we'll have De Brugh Straat paved within the year and my values will run even higher. O, yes ; we have commenced the paving. There's De Hoogh Straat yonder. Paved last year as finely and as fairly as any street in old Amsterdam. And if all goes well with us here, you shall see ! We will have all the streets most in use paved just as stoutly ere two years have gone." The pavement upon which good Heer Yerrenton was discoursing so eloquently, as he rattled off the queer Dutch names of the streets of old New York, would seem poor enough in these days of patent methods and of Belgian blocks. It was simply native cobble-stones with a gutter laid in the middle of the roadway and with no sidewalk what- ever. But it was as grand as asphalt or granite in the eyes of Anthony Yerrenton. And, notwithstanding all its drawbacks, the city had made excellent progress for its years. First re- garded by the Dutch West India Company as only a convenient storage station for furs and peltries it *The lot was 30 feet front by no feet deep. + J9.60 equal to about $50 to-day. DUTCH NEW YORK. 39 had, since the year 1626, when the Heer Director Kieft bought the island from the Indians for twenty- four dollars ( sixty guilders ) grown into quite a prosperous town despite the blunderings and the despotisms of its proprietors and its rulers. And as with the city so also with the colony. It prospered or languished according as trade fluctu- ated or the stupidity of rulers affected it. But neither depression in trade nor inefficiency of gov- ernors could retard the growth of a colony whose people were beginning to think for themselves, and were growing even more hardy, self-reliant and progressively assertive. From the first, the attitude of the people of New York had been one of assertion. Though the Dutch have ever made a boast of their spirit of liberty and toleration the story of their colonies shows their colonial rulers to have ever been lagging in the wake of the people's desires rather than leading the van. Every Dutch governor from Minuit to Stuyvesant, when he was not serving, first, his own interests and then those of his masters the Directors of the Dutch West India Company was engaged in the attempt to smother the aspirations of the people. The spirit of liberty and human progress cannot be smothered. There is a sense of independence created by the severance of home-ties and the 40 DUTCH NEW YORK. absence of home-restraints that appears in the emi- grant from across the seas, even as it does in the adventurous Yankee lad "seeking his own for- tune." It is one of the secrets of the American character, and though sometimes it shows unpleas- antly in the adopted citizen it is one which, intelli- gently fostered, will lead to a grand national future. Personal prosperity is always the death of socialism. The colonists of the New Netherlands, upon the Hollander's native basis of opposition to tyranny (by which, according to Mr. Carlyle, they succeeded in " breaking the vertebral column " of Spain for- ever), engrafted the stronger love of liberty that the free air of a vast New World unconsciously gave to them. However much it may be asserted that the theory of resistance to tyrants was of New Eng- land origin, it is certain that, more than any other American colony, the province of New York made the first protest against the encroachments of aris- tocracy and monopoly. Further than this, it may be said, as Mr. Berthold Fernow has recently ex- pressed it, that " the great Indian problem, which has been and still is a question of paramount im- portance to the United States Government, was solved by the Dutch of New Netherland without great difificulty. . . . The historians who charge the Dutch with pusillanimity and cowardice in their dealings with the Indians forget that to their policy DUTCH NEW YORK. 41 we owe to-day the existence of the United States," After all, truthfulness in trade and honesty in commerce may make business principles principle indeed. It was this lesson of sterling honesty and shrewd common sense that young Teunis Jansen learned from the hospitable friend who bade him make the already crowded little house on De Brugh Straat his home until such time as he should have " lost his sea legs " and looked about him for something to do. The little home on De Brugh Straat was a type of the New Netherland home. It was a low stor)?^ and a half structure, standing gable-end to the street, with front of wood and stone, and ends of small, alternate black and yellow Dutch bricks. Its tiled roof was surmounted with a weathercock and the big brass knocker, shaped like a dog's head, hung on the upper half of the ample Dutch door. The goode vrouw Yerrenton was scrupulously neat, and, the house within, was her undisputed province. The floor was scrubbed and sanded; the wide fireplace in the kitchen was the general rallying-point, and the table was plentifully supplied with the simple food of the days of simple tastes. Teunis was given a "slaap-banck," or sleeping-bench, in one of the dormered rooms under the eaves and soon grew to be regarded as one of the family — 42 DUTCH NEW YORK. and by none more so than buxom Grietje, otherwise Margaret Yerrenton. The young emigrant had come to the New Neth- erlands at a critical period of its history. Already the Dutch power was on the wane. The English, always aggressive colonists in whatever part of the world they have planted the flag of Britain, were especially so in North America. Basing their claims to this New Netherland territory on a title not so valid as the Dutch — if that can be esteemed valid which is based simply upon discovery and occupation — the English authorities claimed owner- ship and dominion over all the New Netherland limits. Not even the defensive policy of a stern and vigorous governor, like Stuyvesant, could make headway against the inevitable. Connecticut had practically fallen into English hands, so too had Westchester, the South River and New Jersey patents were fast slipping from Dutch control, while the greater part of Long Island acknowl- edged England's authority. The commercial spirit seldom resorts to armed resistance. Communities absorbed in trade may protest, but they rarely fight. A change of rulers is preferable to business disturbance. Colonial his- tory is full of evidence of this, from the days of Rome to those of England. DUTCH NEW YORK. 45 Recklessly neglected by the selfish monopoly that was its master but not its protector, and desirous, as success seemed possible, of a more unfettered effort toward commercial progress, the New Neth- erland colony gradually lost whatever of fealty or respect it had originally held toward the home gov- ernment. With its people more interested in their profits from trade than in an unsubstantial and un- remunerative patriotism the feeling which the colony displayed of indifference as to its rulers finally developed into an absolute preference for a stronger even if an alien set of masters.. What young Teunis Jansen first discovered, when his attention was turned from an intimacy with per- sonal characteristics and surroundings to an inter- est in the colony's political life, was this growing disposition to accept and even to welcome a change of allegiance from Holland to England. Young fellows of nineteen, as a rule, are inter- ested in political questions even if they do not study into or altogether comprehend them. Teunis Jan- sen was quick to appreciate and ready to side with the popular tone in New Amsterdam. He learned from the Heer Yerrenton all the varying phases of the colonies troubles and struggles, as, over his frequent pipes, the old trader stated the facts and drew his inferences. " This Heer Director lords it over us like a 46 DUTCH NEW YORK. Muscovy duke," grumbled the old man one day, as he smarted over some fresh disregard by Stuyvesan of the people's desires ; " he is, even as the Heer Van Dincklagen once said of him, very like a gray wolf — the longer he lives the worse he bites. What think you to-day, Teunis ? Some of the peo- ple from the out-ward came to him to-day complain- ing because he had forbidden the farm-hands at the bouweries to ride the goose at the Shrovetide feast. They had asked me to speak for them as one who knew and did not fear the tempers of the Heer Director. But he quickly shut me up. " I wonder at your fathering such unseemly doing, Heer Yer- renton,' he said to me. ' A godly member of the Kerck like you should know that it is both unprofit- able and unnecessar}' to celebrate such pagan and popish feasts!' ' But, Heer Director,' I put in here, ' it is but the people's sport ; it is, as you do know, tolerated in Holland and even winked at here by some of our magistrates — ' ' Ach, so ! ' broke in milord as if he would have taken off my head, ' tolerated, say you ; winked at, say you } Then would I have you know, Heer Yerrenton, that I, as the Director for their High Mightinesses will enact such ordinances as will tend to the glory of God without asking the consent of you or your vexing people or your city magistrates. I understand my quality and authority and the nature of my DUTCH NEW YORK. 47 commission and I need neither advice nor inter- cession.' " It was such little tyrannies as this that tried the temper of the people of the colony — a mixed pop- ulation at the best — who were already growing restless under the restraints of a purely business autocracy, and were becoming each year more and more desirous of freedom. Men will carelessly ignore or as carelessly accept matters of national policy or importance which touch the abstract rather than the personal in their lives. But an interference with individual possessions or desires speedily arouses the combative faculty. A stop- page of their Shrovetide pranks awoke more anger among the people of New Amsterdam than did the information that King Louis of France claimed all North America as his own, or that England had supplanted Holland as the " Mistress of the seas." And, indeed, it was just such petty troubles as this one, over which good Anthony Yerrenton grew so heated, that proved an influence toward the final result — the downfall of Holland in America. Teunis Jansen was a good house carpenter and even before the winter was over he found no lack of employment. At the Heer Yerrenton's sugges- tion he announced himself before the next summer as a master-builder, and paid over to the Director's " fiscal " twenty of his small stock of guilders (about 48 DUTCH NEW YORK. eight dollars) for what was called the " small burgher right." " Not that I favor the system, my lad," said his old friend; "in truth, 'tis but another of the Heer Stuyvesant's 'ristocrat antics ; but it may help you get a footing in trade, which is what I wish for you, and it gives you certain privileges which may be of profit. I, myself, though sorely against my judg- ment, paid out fifty good guilders for the ' great burgher right ' — the which doth give me exempt- ion from watches, expeditions and arrest and doth make me eligible for selection as schepen, burgo- master or councillor. Not that I think much of the affair. I do, indeed, grudge the fifty guilders this burgher right hath cost me. It smacketh too much of barons and manors for a free woodsman such as I. But it may advantage you, my lad." Teunis Jansen was possessed of enough of the roving disposition of his ancestors to lead him into the desire for a taste of this same free woodsman's life that the old trapper and trader had referred to. And so, in that very summer of 1658, he joined himself to a party of traders and penetrated into the Indian country beyond the Couxsachraga wilderness and the still farther North. He slept in hazardous security in the ' long house ' of the fierce but politic Iroquois, he saw much of savage customs, of wild wood life and the questionable DUTCH NEW YORK. 49 methods of Indian traffic and then returned to New Amsterdam quite ready to settle down and " stick to his trade." But one thing, in particular, he had noted in this spell of wandering and was quite ready to believe Anthony Yerrenton's prophecies of evil concerning it. That was, the unwise sale of arms and liquor to the Indians. " Time was, lad," said the old trader, in the se- curity of his chimney corner, " when it was a crime justly punishable for colonist or trader to sell either guns or rum to the red-skins. We who were first among them saw the danger of this both to the red-skins and ourselves. But the curse of gain is on us all, and for the sake of easy and profitable traffic our people now are ready to give the red- skins what may prove our death-warrant if we look not to ourselves. I have no wish for another sea- son of '55." * And he spoke no idle words ; for the very next year, in 1659, the Indians ravaged the river settle- ments and brought death into many a settler's home. And the main cause of the trouble was, so the his- torians assure us, the indiscriminate sale of liquor and fire-arms to the Indians. The old records plainly declare that the colonists " did court and begin " this latest trouble. * It was in 1655 that the Indians waged a bitter war of retaliation against the Dutch, 50 DUTCH NEW YORK. The Indian, never able to resist the fascination of the white man's fire-water and gunpowder, would sacrifice anything in the way of barter to obtain them, and the Indian's appetite and the colonist's greed thus proved disastrous alike to savage and to settler. The colonists of America early learned, though they did not heed, the danger of playing with edge tools. The Dutch West India Company had not made a success with its American possessions. Consider- ing these as a source, simply, for revenue from the fur trade, the Company had foolishly ignored all the other possibilities of product and profit that the land afforded ; it had studiously disregarded the interests of the people it had settled there and the measures by which the colonists might have been made a means of strength rather than of loss ; and it had from the first held back when it should have fostered, and tyrannized when it should have been just and generous. English aggression crept slowly on. Acre by acre the patroonships vanished and the Company's territory was curtailed. The Dutch claim to all the South River country was denied ; Long Island and Connecticut were absorbed, and even the right to Manhattan itself was challenged. " Maryland," declared Lord Baltimore's secretary, Calvert, " ex- tends even to the limits of New England." " And DUTCH NEW YORK. 51 New England, so they claim, doth extend to Mary- land," said the startled Dutch envoy ; " where then remains New Netherland ? " " That," replied Cal- vert coolly, " I do not know." At last the end came. In the year 1664 a sort of buccaneering expedition — illegal because Eng- land and Holland were not at war — was sent from "I WOULD RATHER BE CARRIED OUT DEAD"! SAID STUYVESANT. England by the Duke of York to enforce his claims in America. The river and bay were blockaded and Colonel Richard Nicolls, the commander of the expedition, sent to Stuyvesant a summons to " sur- render the towns situate on the island commonly known as Manhattoes with all the forts thereunto belonging." 52 DUTCH NEW YORK. There was no alternative. The crude little for- tress against which the growing town was crowded was in no condition to withstand attack. The peo- ple, weary with the neglect of their interest by the wealthy company that should have helped and the home government that should have protected them would oppose no change that might prove of ben- efit to them. Resistance might only add to their burdens, and men, women and children alike com- bined in petitions to the governor to surrender to the English. " I would rather be carried out dead," burst out the brave but stubborn Stuyvesant. But one man could not stand against the combination of friend and foe The flag of Holland came down from the ramparts of Fort Amsterdam and New Netherland became an English province. That very year, 1664, Teunis Jansen, now a pros- perous young burgher of twenty-five, was married to the buxom Grietje Yerrenton, the daughter of his father's old and trusty comrade. And, of so much more importance are our own private concerns than are the changes of dynasties or the fall of states, that the quiet wedding in the little Dutch parlor on De Brugh Straat made more of a stir in the Yerrenton household than did the fall of Fort Amsterdam and the close of Dutch dominion in America, CHAPTER III. THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RUL^. AMES STU- ART, Duke of York and Albany, Lord High Admiral of England, bro- ther to King Charles the Sec- ond and heir to the crown, was as ■^x(^^ shrewd and un- scrupulous, as he was despotic and perverse. His father-in-law, Edward Hyde, Earl of Claren- don and Lord Chancellor of the Kingdom, was equally selfish and even more shrewd and unscrup- ulous. Actuated solely by a selfish desire to increase the power of his princely son-in-law and of his daughter, the duchess, and thus to magnify the importance of the newly-created house of Clarendon, the Chan- cellor had planned this identical piratical expedition 53 54 THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. that had destroyed Holland's power in America and created a topic for conversation at Teunis Jansen's wedding. Clarendon foresaw that Duke James would, in all probability, some day become King of England. He also recognized the fact that a patent, or decree, from King Charles giving the disputed New Nether- land territory to the Duke would in time revert to the crown. This, the wily politician saw, would create a central and direct royal authority in America; and this in time might draw all the other English possessions within its influence and juris- diction, and thereby check the growing disposition to self-rule that was, so this aristocratic king-wor- shiper believed, growing altogether too pronounced among the English colonists in America. So the family pride of a tuft-hunting English peer and the grasping avarice of a craven English prince successfully schemed to dispossess the ac- knowledged rulers of a growing commercial colony across the broad Atlantic, without question as to the allegiance, or the desires of the people who alone were building up the colony. And thus was attempted, says Dr. Stevens, " that policy of per- sonal rule which, begun under the Catholic Stuart, culminated under the Protestant Hanoverian, a century later, in the oppression which aroused the American Revolution." THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. 55 The people of the province, more thoughtful of each day's duties or necessities than of the causes of the political move that changed them from Dutch to English allegiance, accepted the transfer without protest. Indeed, as we have seen, a certain public senti- ment, in a measure, contributed to this transfer. And, after it was accomplished, the people, in a negative way, welcomed the change of rulers in the hope of a better condition of trade under the vigor- ous methods of England. Colonel Nicolls, representing the conquerors, was the sworn partisan of the Duke of York, but he was wise enough to be " both prudent and concili- atory " toward the conquered. Acting under his suggestion the leading Dutch citizens gave up their original intention of returning to Holland and (including even the obstinate Heer Director Stuyve- sant himself) took the oath of allegiance to the Eng- lish king. They, it would seem, were shrewd enough to see that loyalty to England, in America, was bet- ter for their pockets than hostility to England, in Holland, — especially when the removal meant an abandonment of promising business interests. The province speedily became English in name and in titles if not in population and in customs. New Amsterdam became New York, Fort Orange Albany, Esopus Kingston, and a code of laws was 56 THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. established which granted to the province, in name if not in fact, religious freedom, trial by jury, equal taxation and unhampered possession of property both in lands and slaves. The old-time offices of schepen and burgomaster were abolished and, in their stead, appeared the English form of civic gov- ernment, with its mayor, aldermen and sheriff. Old Anthony Yerrenton, English though he was, grumbled more at this last change than did even his own Dutch neighbors. " A plague on all their foolery ! " he said to Teunis one day when the news came that Captain Thomas Willett was named by Colonel NicoUs as the first " mayor " of New York. " Why not leave well enough alone .'' Tom Willett is an honest and able fellow, which is more than one can say of some other of those Plymouth Colony men that have come over here — jankers* and malcontents most of 'em. Willett, too, hath a better knowledge of our Dutch ways and speech than have most Eng- lishmen, but the old ways were best. It all doth smack too much of the palace and the court to suit a rough old woodsman like me." Protest however was useless. Both Nicolls and his master, the Duke, were determined not to be troubled in New York by the democratic spirit that * " Janker " is an old Dutch verb, meaning to growl or to scold. It was applied by the Dutchmen of New Netherland to their rivals of the Massachusetts colonies, and is said to be the original of the word " Yankee." THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. 57 was so apparent in Massachusetts. They would not yield to the wishes of " men misled by the spirit of independency " as Colonel Nicolls declared, and the new order of things went into effect notwith- standing the protests of the people. But the high-handed method by which England acquired possession of a new province was quickly resented by Holland. That thrifty but inconsist- ent republic, when it had once lost what it really did not care to keep, straightway discovered how much, apparently, it did need its meagre foothold on American soil. In a great rage it protested, blustered, demanded and threatened and finally forced England, in 1665, into a declaration of war. For over two years the fleets of England and Holland fought out, in European waters, the con- test for the possession of a strip of distant country, three thousand miles across the western sea. The maritime power of the Dutch Republic was well- nigh invincible. Success followed success and the war which was closed by the treaty of Breda, in 1667, was in reality a vindication of Holland's naval supremacy. But it was also an assertion of her mercantile shrewdness, quite as well. For, by the terms of the treaty of Breda, Holland, singularJy enough, al- though gaining its ends gave up the very territory 58 THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. in defence of which it fought. The English re- ceived the province of New Netherlands in ex- change for the islands of Poleron and Surinam in the East Indian seas, and for Nova Scotia in the north. This was a shrewd bargain for Holland. The spices and highly-valued products of the East Indian islands and the great fish-harvest of Nova Scotia far outweighed in profit the limited fur supply of the New Netherland province. But the states of Holland thus ratified by treaty the very act of piracy which drove them into war. The province of New York, the cause of all this strife and diplomacy, experienced none of the blows of the actual conflict, but it felt what was of even deeper weight — the woes of complete negligence. " A fieo for all this fighting and trimming," grumbled old Anthony Yerrenton as he dandled a chubby little grandson in Teunis Jansen's home ; " a fico for it all, say I. Of what use is it to us here whether De Ruyter whip or the Duke bears the broom so long as we are dying of doing naught. If we are worth the fighting for we are worth the fostering, and none of this doth England do. Allard Anthony, the sheriff, you know, lad, did tell me but yesterday at the Stadt Huys that the Heer Governor Nicolls declareth that he hath spent every dollar of his own for the needs of the province, and that if the French Mounseers should take it into their THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. 59 heads to pounce down upon us from Canada he hath neither men nor means to resist them." " That is true, father," responded Teunis ; " Ser- geant Manning of the Fort's garrison told me that his soldiers were sick of a service which promised them little and brought them naught. He says that since they came out of England not one of them hath been in a pair of sheets, or upon any sort of bed but canvas and straw." " Our wharves are rotting and our trade is dead," went on old Anthony, simply nodding in approval of his son-in-law's parenthesis ; " the city streets and palisades are falling to ruin for lack of care, and Cornelis Steenwyck tells me, only this very morning, that the French Mounseers fell upon his last galiot, the Faith, barely off Montauk, and now he hath not a vessel left. And if he had of what profit would it be when our English masters take no heed of our straits and send no battle ships to protect our ports t " But as Holland's treaty-demands showed, neither that country nor England regarded the New York province as really worth the fighting for. In 1668 one of the English commissioners, Samuel Mav- erick, wrote to the Duke of York, " Long Island is very poor and inconsiderable, and besides the city of New York, there are but two Dutch towns of any importance, Esopus and Albany." 6o THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. Affairs, however, were soon to change for the better. The famous political alliance which the three Protestant governments of England, Holland and Sweden formed (known as the Triple Alliance) brought the opposing interests of Dutch and Eng- lish in the New York province into closer and more friendly relations. Business took a fresh start, building operations increased, commerce be- tween the colonies grew and the town and province alike felt the impetus of prosperity. Governor Nicolls, wearied with the strain which his govern- ment had brought upon him, returned to England in 1668, and Governor Lovelace who succeeded him, though lacking the energy of Nicolls, was selfishly desirous of increasing the importance of his government, and the measures which he adopted had the double effect of serving his own interest and awaking the business energies of the little city. Matters went along with comparative smoothness for several years. The merchants of New York — few and scant of purse, to be sure, but as eager for gain as their modern successors — met every Fri- day at noon (commencing on March 24, 1670) upon the bridge that spanned the narrow ditch in Broad Street, to discuss and arrange their various financial concerns. And thus was laid the foundation of the New York Exchange. For this very body of slow-going Dutch and English shopkeepers, who THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. 63 spent their Friday mornings in the open-air closing their transactions and dodging the flying. sleds of the boyish coasters, grew at last into that powerful association of merchants which for years has guided or manipulated the monetary transactions of half the world. The outlying towns, too, grew slowly but surely. In the North Albany was developing from a border trading post into a compact and well-ordered town; the little palisaded settlement of Schenectady was obtaining a firm footing in the valley of the Mo- hawk ; Esopus, or Kingston, further down the Hud- son, was a growing midway station between New York and Albany, while the Long Island towns some dozen in number from Brooklyn and Bush- wick eastward to the Hamptons, though always more inclined to affiliate with the Connecticut and Massachusetts colonies, were still part of the pro- vince of New York and seemed, some of them, almost as thriving commercially as they do to-day. But in 1672 came another change. The "Triple Alliance " was broken ; England and Holland once again were foes ; and one fine August morning in the year 1673 Teunis Jansen rushed into his father- in-law's house on the Bridge Street with the start- ling information that a Dutch fleet of twenty-seven ships was anchored off Staten Island and there was likely to be a row. 64 THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. " A black murrain on kings and princes," broke out democratic old Anthony, flinging down his pipe upon his goode vrouw's well-sanded floor and springing to his feet, " are we never to be in comfort in this badgered town? Here's the Heer Governor off a-junketing in Connecticut, and no one but that chicken-hearted Manning in command at the Fort. We all be Dutch again, lad, before to-morrow's sun." And the old man was right. Captain John Man- ning in command at the fort had neither the pluck nor the desire to defend an almost defenceless town against the attack of sixteen hundred hardy Dutch fighters. When, therefore, he heard that certain of the compatriots of the invaders among the burgh- ers of the town had gone out in a body to meet and welcome the six hundred men who had just been landed from the fleet he pulled down the English flag from the fort and surrendered his post without a blow. So New York became Dutch again. The old order of things was restored, and Captain Anthony Colve became Governor-General of the captured province. But, as usual, New York was a shuttlecock for. European kings and statesmen rather than the property of its own people. The States General of Holland felt that they could not long keep THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. 65 peaceable possession of a country so hemmed in by English-speaking folk and before a year had passed, in July, 1674, news came to the little city by the sea that it had been given up by Holland and that it was once again a province of England. " Well, well," commented old Anthony Yerrenton as he heard the news, "it matters little to us who may be our masters, since masters I suppose we must have. I told Cornelis Steenwyck when he and the other Dutch merchants sent over their petition and remonstrance to the States General that they would have only their labor for their pains. If this land is to be English why, then, English it will be and it is far wiser for us to strengthen our own homes than weaken 'em by courting an impossibility. We're the Duke's peo- ple still and it is better for us to strive for the English shillings rather than sigh for the Dutch guilders." Again the old man was right. The Duke of York, learning wisdom from experience, obtained from his brother, the king, a new patent of posses- sion that gave him greater powers than before, but he modified his autocratic possibilities by conces- sions to the " people " whom, as a class, he hated and yet was shrewd enough to favor. Major Ed- mund Andros, a trooper of Prince Rupert's dra- goons, was sent to New York as royal governor and 66 THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. arrived off Staten Island, October 22, 1674. The next day the official transfer of the province from Dutch to English rulers was made at the Stadt Huys, or City Hall, on the Strand, or water-side (now Pearl Street), and the New Netherlands became again, and for all future time, New York. The power of Holland in America had come to an end. Sixty years of misrule had but served to display the weakness and negligence of a merely mercantile autocracy. Regardful only of personal profit it had deliberately neglected those ways of wisdom and of statesmanship which might have made the province of the New Netherlands a self- supporting colony, a foothold for Dutch sovereignty in America, and thus perhaps materially have changed the future history of the American people. For all their failures and for all their losses in these new lands across the sea, the Dutch West India Company and the States General of Holland had only themselves to thank, for theirs had been a record of selfishness, of negligence, of procrastina- tion and of greed. But the people whom their brief era of occupancy had drawn to America were of the true Dutch stock. Slow-moving, heavy and phlegmatic they were still of that sturdy race whom years of resistance to op- pression had made into a nation of freemen. God- fearing but tolerant, conservative but wide-hearted THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. 67 they had made liberty possible in Europe and permanent in America ; for it is not too much to affirm that but for the asylum granted in Holland to the persecuted of every nation and creed, and but for the refuge extended in New Amsterdam to the banished reformers of less-tolerant colonies neither pilgrim nor puritan, quaker nor dissenter would have been able to have perpetuated their protests or given practical progress to their faiths. The spirit that grew into that demand for per- sonal liberty made fact by the American Revolu- tion could scarcely have gained force or form had Holland been less tolerant or the New Netherlands less conservative. Beneath the corner-stone of the American Republic lies the strong supporting soil of Dutch liberty, Dutch toleration and Dutch integrity. A trooper by education and experience Major Edmund Andros brought to the performance of his. official duties that uncompromising military spirit that demands all and is tolerant of no opposition. The leading Dutch burghers who, rightfully, desired to be assured of religious freedom and exemption from bearing arms against their home-land of Hol- land were declared mutinous and seditious and placed under arrest. Any attempt on the part of the people to think or act for themselves was es- teemed rebellious, and the rule of Andros though 68 THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. apparently directed toward the bettering of the province showed always behind the word of the governor the sword of the soldier. But the people would think for themselves in spite of king or duke or royal governor. They petitioned for the right to assemble by their rep- resentatives to plan and shape their own affairs of trade and public welfare. " Our trade is crippled and our liberties are enthralled," they boldly de- clared, " by the inexpressible burden of an arbitrary power." The leaven of liberty was already at work, but it was greed and not patriotism that brought it suc- cess. The thrifty Duke of York was in need of money and although he insisted that such conces- sions to the people were worse than useless and " hazardous to the peace of the government," he finally made the concession as a matter of bargain and sale, agreeing that if the people of the province Would raise sufficient money to pay off the public debt he would " condescend " to their desires. The right of representation thus grudgingly sold to the very people to whom it, in justice, belonged was among the earliest steps in the advance toward popular sovereignty in America. An assembly of eighteen representing the freeholders of New York, Long Island, Esopus and Albany, together with the distant but kindred settlements under the Duke's THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. 7 1 patent of Martha's Vineyard and Pemaquid on the coast of Maine met in the fort in New York on the seventeenth of October, 1683 — being duly vested with " full liberty to consult and debate for all laws " and to carry into effect all such save those " disapproved by the Duke " — a grudging way of conceding and thus practically obstructing the concession. Before the arrival of that great day, however — a red-letter day for colonial New York — Major, now Sir Edmund Andros, had been recalled and Captain Thomas Dongan, another soldier and henchman of the Duke, was sent as royal governor in his stead. Teunis Jansen, now growing into middle life, was one of those who most ardently desired and most joyfully welcomed this earliest recognition in America of the " people " by their kingly masters. " It means a great deal, does it not, father ? " he said to old Anthony Yerrenton as, together, they discussed the " Charter of Liberties " that the assembly had passed. " ' No aid, tax, custom, loan, benevolence, or imposition whatever,' they declare, ' shall be levied within this province under any pre- tence, but by the consent of the governor, council and representatives of the people in general assem- bly.' Does not that mean a better day for the province and the people ? " " It does indeed, my son," said wise old Anthony, 72 THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. "it does indeed — if it be allowed. But mark my word, Duke James is not the man to allow it. This Charter of Liberties, even though he may seem to concede it now, will never be permitted to stand." And so it proved. For when, in 1685, the Duke James became, by the death of his brother Charles, King James of England, one of his first acts was to contemptuously repudiate the people's Charter on the ground that it allowed too much liberty, and thereupon he proceeded at once to consolidate and strengthen his power in America by uniting all the Northeastern colonies from Maine to New York into the single department of the Domin- ion of New England. A more impolitic measure could not have been attempted. The antagonisms between Dutchman and " Yankee " were yet all too pronounced to make union possible. Bickerings and cross-petitions, charges and counter-charges were frequent, and the " Dominion of New Eng- land," as we shall see, speedily resolved itself into its original conditions. The revenge of the people for this royal repudi- ation of a solemn charter of rights was to come, however, and sooner than they could anticipate. King James of England brought to the assump- tion of his royal prerogatives all the selfishness and obstinacy that had marked his days of ducal power, intensified by the superior advantages of his THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. 73 promotion to a throne. Despotism worked its own ruin and James Stuart, as a recent writer observes, " by his bigotry and arbitrary measures threw away the crown of England." The new king, William of Orange, though the grandson of an English monarch was a Dutchman by birth and the head of the Dutch Republic. The news of his accession was joyfully hailed by Dutch New York as promising a return to what they now looked back upon as the '' good old times " of Dutch living and government. But the aristocracy of the province were luke- warm in their allegiance. The little clique of " first families " that sought to arrogate the authority to themselves and ape the manners of the English court in the little stockaded towns of a Western wilderness hesitated to desert a king whose favor they had so long coveted. When once assured that the change of rulers was absolute, they sought to themselves assume the leadership to the exclu- sion of the people. But the people had already caught the inspiration of resistance. Discrediting both King James and his adherents and regarding them as the enemies of Protestantism and of lib- erty they determined themselves to control their own affairs until definite instructions from the new king should reach them. The royal governor of the attempted Dominion, Sir Edmund Andros, was 74 THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGIISH RULE. a prisoner to the rebellious Boston colonists ; his deputy, Nicholson, whom he had left in New York weakly deserted his post, and at the call of the people one of their own men. Captain Jacob Leis- ler, a respectable and respected citizen of New York, had the courage to assume the government of the province until the orders of the new king should come to them from England. No man has been more maligned or misunder- stood than Jacob Leisler. Historians have delib- erately misjudged him, drawing their conclusions from the biased reports of the few aristocrats who hated or the English officials who despised him. Jacob Leisler was one of the earliest of American patriots. His brief and stormy career as provin- cial governor of New York was marked by mis- takes of judgment, but his mistakes were more than overbalanced by his foresight and statesman- ship. He acted as one of the people for the people. He summoned a popular convention, arranged the first mayoralty election by the people, attempted the first step toward colonial union by endeavoring to interest the several provinces in a continental congress and sought to cripple the chief adversary of the English in America, France, by the masterly stroke of an invasion of Canada. That he failed is due to the jealousy, the timidity and the short- sightedness of his fellow-colonists. But he builded THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. 75 wiser than he knew, for though he died a martyr to colonial jealousy and English injustice his bold and patriotic measures awoke the people to a knowledge of their real power and prepared them for that spirit of resistance to tyranny which made them a century later a free republic* Leisler was hanged for usurpation and treason May 15, 1 69 1, by the officers of the very king whom he had sought to strengthen and maintain, and at the instigation of the aristocratic clique who feared and hated him. His murderer and successor — the royal governor appropriately named Sloughter — assumed the power and the short-lived Dominion of New England so elaborately organized by King James, fell to pieces. New York again become a separate and independent province, and the rule of the people was for a time postponed. But in the midst of the Leislerian troubles, the affairs of the province were for a while forgotten in the little house on Pearl Street. For one bright summer morning good old Anthony Yerrenton breathed his last, and Teunis Jansen, now a re- spectable citizen with a growing family, mourned * " Of this protomartyr of American Independetice,*' says Frederick De Peyster, referring to Jacob Leisler, '* the world knows too little ; for to his earnest and honest services in oppo- sition to monarchical usurpation and ministerial violations of the political rights of the subject, even the pens of republican historians have been too tardy in rendering appropriate and suffi- cient honor.'' The author of this volume admiring the sturdy and uncompromising spirit of this " people's governor " and feeling with Mr. De Peysler, that a great character had been thus persistently ignored, has sought to present his story, especially for the information of young Americans, in an historical romance for yoimg people entitled " In Leisler's Times." 76 THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH RULE. the loss of his most trusted friend and adviser. In the death of the staunch old woodsman Teunis recognized the severing of the last link between the stirring times which were making history for the little town his father-in-law had helped to found and the early days of its rude and unprophetic beginnings. Note. — In the story of those early workers whose unrequited labors so assured the future of the State they helped to found, place should be given and thanks accorded to another " for- gotten statesmen," who but slightly antedates the time of Governor Leisler. To the foresight and efforts of an honest Dutchman of the Mohawk Valley was due the settlement of what has been termed "the most momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on this -continent," namely: whose, of the white conquerors, should be the ownership of the North American Continent ? This question was settled by the peaceful but diplomatic policy of the Heer Arendt Van Curler. Appreciating the value of the Indian's friendship in maintaining the security of a growing State, he concluded a treaty of peace with the dominant native power— the Iroquois of Central New York. By a simple act of faith well-kept he shat- tered the warlike measures and the intricate diplomacies alike of French governor and Jesuit priest and made his Indian allies so loyal to "the covenant of Corlaer" that suc- ceeding Dutch and English rulers found but little trouble in keeping a band of ferocious foemen true to the pledges made to this earliest of New York statesmen. The title "Corlaer" was given by the Indians to all future governors of New York. Even to this day, we are assured by Van Curler's stanch eulogist Mr. William Eliot Griffis, the " Kora" by which the Northern Indians designate any one of exalted position or renown is but the native rendering of the name of their earliest friend among the Dutchmen of the New Netherlands, the man whose word they could trust among all the insincerities of their white conquerors — Arendt Van Curler, the founder of Schenectady. CHAPTER IV. UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. HE defeat of the people which the res- toration of kingly author- ity in per- plexed New York empha- sized was in effect their victory. It taught them to think for themselves. The taste of power which their free elections and their independent actions furnished, came as the first glimmer of that latent desire for self-government that was in time to lead to success- ful rebellion. Teunis Jansen succeeded to the heritage of dem- ocratic ideas and sterling common sense that his old friend and father-in-law, Anthony Yerrenton, had acquired during his sixty years of American pioneering. The younger man keenly felt the loss of his dear old mentor and mourned for him 77 78 UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. sincerely, while he brought up his own girls and boys in the line of honest work and conscientious labor that their good grandfather so often enjoined upon them. The close of the Leislerian troubles found Teu- nis an honest and hard-working citizen of very moderate means but with a small and substantial house on the Winckel Street, not far away from the one from which he had taken his wife. His eldest son, also a Teunis Jansen, was already well on toward manhood and had started a little home of his own on one of the new streets near the " clover pasture " — now Pine Street. A second son, with something of the roving disposition of his grand- father, had never returned from the expedition which Governor Leisler had hoped to see en- gage in the successful invasion of Canada. His mother mourned the wandering spirit of her absent boy, but his father had heard of him as being a successful trapper and trader among the friendly Indians, and knew that the time would come when the lad would drop into more settled ways and per- haps found a home for himself in the attractive lands about the distant Mohawk. The schooling that the boys and girls obtained in those far-off days was limited but sturdy. The sons and daughters of Teunis Jansen were skilled in the elements only and were none of them UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. 8 1 over-proficient in those. But in that era of begin- nings literary attainments were not so needful as were muscle for labor and wit for trade. So the children and grandchildren of Teunis Jansen were furnished with just sufficient " book-learning " to enable them to reckon in Dutch and English money, to write a fairly intelligible letter and to have their catechism at their tongues' ends. The girls, however, were experts in all housewifely duties and the boys were familiar with one or the other of the " handicraft trades " at which very early in life they must learn to " turn their hands." There was already a cosmopolitan air about the little city at the mouth of the Hudson — a flavor of fusing nationalities which was to a certain extent prophetic of the character of the future metropolis. The Dutch traditions and the cus- toms of the original settlers clung tenaciously to the daily life of the town ; the Dutch element still led in point of numbers ; but a large share of the inhabitants was composed of other nationalities. The river settlements were even more distinctively Dutch, but the Long Island towns were strongly English and in the trading posts and border set- tlements at the north was noticeable a strong in- fusion of French blood from across the Canadian border. It was this very Canadian border that, for at 82 UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. least one half the eighteenth century, was to be the source of excitement to the New York colony, the problem of royal governors and the ever pres- ent excuse for slowness in tax returns which the dilatory colonist invariably fell back upon. From the day when the "corsairs" and explorers of France claimed all North America for their Lord the King, France and England had been in open dispute as to the extent and limit of the Canadian frontiers. Only the loyalty of the real owners of the soil — the freedom-loving Iroquois . of Central New York — to their treaties of friend- ship with the Dutch settlers of New York and with their English successors kept the arms of France at bay. The Iroquois were the real bul- wark of English occupation. Frontenac, most restless and most picturesque of all the French governors of Canada was as shrewd as he was fearless, and his plans for the invasion and conquest of the English possessions were skill- fully laid and often fatally near to successful execu- tion. The massacre at Schenectady during the disturbed days of Leisler's times was one of these sudden incursions. Frontenac, through all his long career as governor of Canada, was the_bug- bear of the New York colonists and he, indeed, was ever alert and aggressive and impatient of any delay that kept him from his plans of conquest. UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. 83 For nearly twenty years after the death of Leis- ler the governors sent by the English King to direct the affairs of New York were of the worst possible stamp. Their very greed and incompe- tency however only served to strengthen the grow- ing desire of the people toward self-government. Sloughter and Ingolsby, Fletcher and Bellomont, Nanfan, Cornbury and Lovelace — not one of these during his brief and profitless lease of authority seems to have been possessed of any desire beyond self or to have known any interest save his own. The " general assembly " which King James had abolished was again submitted to by King William, but its powers and authority were limited. The " Governor's Council " was selected by royal ap- pointment and had little in sympathy with the peo- ple, whom it seldom represented. Assembly and council, governors and people were in continual op- position and, frequently, in outspoken antagonism. It was during this time that sorrow came to the household of Teunis Jansen. One of his grand- sons " went wrong." A bright young fellow and a lover of the sea, young Abram Jansen shipped for a sailor and made numerous voyages with one Captain William Kidd, a New York sea-captain who had a pleasant house on Liberty Street and who for years had sailed a packet ship between New York and London. Captain Kidd had taken a fancy 84 UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. to young Abram Jansen and given him a berth on his packet. But suddenly, one August day in 1698, dark rumors came to New York. Captain Kidd though sent aboard to stamp out piracy had himself turned pirate. He had raised the black flag and, using the very ship which the Gov- ernment had given him, he " swept the seas with little regard to the laws of property," and "made his name a terror to honest merchantmen." Abram Jansen followed his captain's lead and was killed in a desperate sea-fight in East Indian waters. Kidd himself was at last captured, tried for piracy, found guilty and executed, May 10, 1701,* and the presumed connection with his illegal traffic which was charged against leading citizens of New York even including its governor, Bellomont, was for years a scandal and a stain on the good name of the colony. But nowhere did the stain fall deeper or more grievously than upon the little houses on the Winckel Street and in the Clover Pasture where grandparents and parents mourned the lapse of their dearly-loved sailor lad into wicked and fatal ways. With the coming of Governor Robert Hunter in June, 1 7 10, brighter days seemed to dawn on the slowly growing colony. Trade and colonization both increased under his intelligent direction of affairs. In 1711, three thousand German refugees, * Recent investigations throw much doubt on the criminality of this celebrated sea-rover. " To-day," says Mr. Fernow, " that which was meted out to Kidd might hardly be called jus- tice ; for it seems questionable if he had ever been guilty of piracy." UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. 85 flying from the anguish and starvation of the " Thirty Years War," emigrated in a body to New York and locating first on the lands of the Living- ston Manor on the Hudson finally procured lands of the Indians in the Mohawk Valley and helped to build up that fertile and beautiful section. Pala- tine Bridge and German Flats still carry in their present names the memory of these war-worried refugees from the disturbed " Palatinate." The development and growth of a people must be by slow stages so long as the development is hampered and the growth hindered by the arro- gance, the interference or the indifference of a pa- rent government far away. The British governors were but the representatives of their government three thousand miles across a stormy and treacher- ous ocean. Commerce grew slowly and trade was impeded by the indisposition of the home govern- ment to allow its colonies to attend to their own business in their own way. But as desire grew so did determination, and it was but a sign of the sturdy and strengthening progress of the popular will to find the New York Assembly declaring in 171 1 that it was its "inherent right" as the rep- resentatives of the colony " to act not from the grant of the crown, but from the free choice of the people, who ought not, nor justly can be divested of their property without their consent." This 86 UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. determination grew with each new year, and though it was sternly repressed by the powers across the sea as tending too much " to independency of the crown " neither king nor governor, council nor " Lords of Trade " could long hold in check the actions of a people feeling their way toward liberty. The fifteen royal governors who ruled the pro- vince during the three quarters of a century that intervened between the year 1 700 and the Revolu- tion spent a large portion of their time in combat- ing this very " spirit of independency " that their masters in England denounced. They did little for the real interests of the colony, and their names are almost as entirely forgotten as are their doings and their acts. The growth of New York, slow as it was, proceeded entirely from the labors of the people and the energetic work of such patri- otic colonists as Peter Schuyler of Albany, Robert Livingston of Livingston Manor, Lewis Morris of Morrisania, Zenger the earliest of New York "journalists," Rip Van Dam the merchant, Cad- wallader Colden, the physician, scholar and scien- tist, William Johnson the Mohawk trader, James De Lancey the brilliant lawyer, Frederick Phillipse the Westchester patroon, Andrew Hamilton, the advocate — "champion of the oppressed," — and others of equal energy if of less personal promi- nence. Some of these men were opposed to the UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. 87 people when the struggle for national liberty came to the issue of battle, but none the less should their labors be gratefully recognized by those who to-day are proud of the strength and the glory of the Empire State. Father and son, Teunis Jansen and Teunis the younger, were a part of this slowly advancing march of the people. The lad who in 1657 had, with so many hopes and so much wondering, first viewed from the deck of the Gilded Beaver the little town with its fort, its church and its few straggling houses, had grown into its life and its ambitions with the other unknown and silent workers who like him had helped on the growth of the struggling town and the far-reaching border province. After all it is the quiet majority of whom little is known beyond their own home circles, who render the prominence and power of the minority possible, and when in 171 7 Teunis, the emigrant of 1657, now an old man of eighty, died in his little house in the Winckel Street few outside his limited circle of acquaintances and fellow workers noted his departure or recognized the value of such humble workers as was he upon the real foundations of a mighty nation. His son Teunis died in 1 744. The " Clover Pastures " had become a part of the city's slowly extending streets and he, too, like his father though only a 88 UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. hard-working ship carpenter had still lived himself into the demands and the power of the colony of which he seemed only a humble but no less helpful part. Another Teunis took up his father's work and joined like him in the advancing march of public opinion that was compelling governors and councils to recognize and combat the cause of popular liberty. Gradually the settlements were encroaching upon the wilderness. Agriculture and commerce were reclaiming more and more of the forest lands and building up the trafific of sea and river and dusty highway. The colony increased in population to nearly one hundred thousand in 1756. Its outly- ing possessions in Connecticut and Massachusetts and far-off Pemaquid in Maine had long since been given up to the sister colonies to whom they more naturally belonged, but its trading posts were growing into towns and around its frontier forts and block houses new settlements were constantly springing up. Wars and rumors of wars still disturbed its peace and often paralyzed its industries. In 171 1 Leisler's bold plan of weakening the French power in America by an English invasion of Canada was. advocated by Peter Schuyler and agreed to by the home government. Twenty-five hundred New York men, including volunteers from Connecticut and UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. 9 1 an Indian contingent of eight hundred Iroquois gathered on Lake Champlain, while five thousand English troops sailed from Boston. But the inva- sion proved but an ill-starred expedition. Misman- agement, shipwreck and timidity drove back the Boston forces and the rank and file of the little New York army returned to their homes with no result reached save the opening of the northern frontiers to the old story of surprise and massacre. Little actual war, however, occurred during the first half of the eighteenth century and, save for the ever-constant terror of French and Indian incursion there need have been no bar to a healthy growth of the colony had the royal governors been governors in fact. Home disturbances, however, are often as detrimental to development as actual warfare, and the colony experienced all the horrors of antici- pated bloodshed during the foolish " negro insur- rection "of 1 71 2 and the still graver " negro plot " of 1 745 — both of them, in their way, the first pro- phetic mutterings of the final downfall of African slavery. Albany, which had received two tremen- dous frights from the near approach of French and Indian war-parties in 1693 and 1696 could seldom feel entirely secure, and the massacre at Saratoga in 1745 gave good cause for this feeling of uneasi- ness. In fact until the capture of Louisburg by the forces of the colonies in 1 744 and the final conquest 92 UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. of Canada by the English in 1759 the northern frontier of New York was either an anticipated or an actual battleground. The border settlements were in continual danger. Block houses and rude forts sprung up for frontier defences from Albany and Lake Champlain westward as far as Oswego, while even within sound of the ceaseless thunders of Niagara the strife for possession increased the natural jealousies of race divisions. And still, in spite of wars and rumors of wars, life in the slowly-growing Dutch-English colony went on quietly enough. There were marryings and givings in marriage, there were christenings and betrothals, there were schoolings and 'prentic- ings, winnings and losings, household hopes and sorrows, joys and fears, as well in the manor-house of the patroon and the mansion of the " aristocrat " as in the " bouwerie " of the farmer and the squat little town-house of just such commonplace people as were these Jansens of New York. The family was growing numerous now. Sons and daughters, grandchildren and great-grand- children were finding and founding homes of their own, names were changing and interchanging and all the puzzling intricacies of Dutch relationships were scattering the descendants of Teunis Jansen throughout the little colony. The girls were farm- ers' wives or burghers' " goode vrouws," carding UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. 93 and spinning, sweeping and dusting, hoarding up linen for their own daughters' wedding days and bringing up their girls and boys to steady, hard- working, little-expecting. God-fearing lives. The boys were getting footholds at home or abroad — the more adventurous or ambitious ones pushing out, spite of the terror of the Indian arrow and the dread of the French harquebuse, into the fertile farmlands to the North and West. A Jansen was fur-trading at Oswego, selling duffel cloth at Albany, farming near old Fort Stanwix (now Rome), fighting for the king at Crown Point and at Niagara, placidly counting his sheaves at Esopus, setting his traps in the lake country, or trafficking with the Indians in the company of the ten young men who, in 1720, penetrated into the very heart of the Indian country with young Philip Schuyler, or with the forty who, later still, made their homes among the friendly Iroquois, pioneers of the civ- ilization that was soon to follow after them. For, in the face of hardship and obstacles, in spite of the dangers at home and the disastrous policy of the English rulers the trade of the New York colony was steadily and strongly increasing. Ship-building and the saw-mill industries gave oc- cupation to many workers ; glass-making in New York and crude iron-working along the Hudson ; pearlash and potash, silks and naval stores, brick 94 UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. kilns near Esopus, salt-works on Coney Island, homespuns and woollens among the " Palatinate," hat-making in Albany and New York — these and other branches of manufacture grew steadily in spite of governmental ban, and in 1770 Governor Moore declared that throughout the colony " every house swarms with children, who are set to work as soon as they are able to spin and card; and, as every family is furnished with a loom, the itiner- ant weavers who travel about the country put the finishing hand to the work." Commerce, too, grew with the home industries. So much in the line of supplies was, by govern- ment orders, forced to be imported into the prov- ince that the fleet of merchant ships engaged in the European and West Indian trade became larger every year. In 1749 New York had over one hundred and fifty ships engaged in the carrying trade. Already was the city by the sea becoming the commercial metropolis of America. There are drones in every hive. Not alone the fat and pampered ones who live upon the accumu- lations of the workers, but the lean and hungry ones who grumble over the little they possess and seek to accumulate by disturbance and aggres- sion rather than by honest, helpful labor. So cosmopolitan a town as New York, contributed to by so many nationalities with all their natural UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. 95 antagonisms, jealousies and desires, would of ne- cessity be more given to restlessness than would a less heterogeneous colony. We must always distinguish between the people and the rabble. It was the rabble who believed in and fomented all the superstition and cruelty of the Popish scare and of the negro plot ; it was the people who lifted the Heer Leisler to power, who applauded the tri- umph of Zenger the journalist over the tyrannies of a narrow-minded government, and stood man- fully by Rip Van Dam when he dared assert the rights and prerogatives of the colony which they, the people, had developed and rebuilt. It was the people, top, who, schooled by hard experience and ceaseless labor into a spirit of independency, gradually developed the manhood to assert and the determination to rule that led to revolt against a selfish and grasping despotism and made, finally, the successful experiment of self- government and popular sovereignty. " These colonists," wrote Governor Hunter in 1 71 1, "are infants at their mother's breast, but such as will wean themselves when they become of age." They become of age quicker than even the most far-seeing of English statesmen could imagine, and the struggle for popular rights which began even during the administrations of Governor Hunter's immediate successors, the frivolous Burnet and the g6 UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. tyrannical Cosby ended only in the turmoil and bloodshed of the American Revolution. The colonial assembly, the nearest approach to a direct representation of the people, grew gradually more and more assertive. The assembly of 1737 in its address to Governor Clarke boldly declared the right of the people to be " protected in the enjoyment of their liberties and properties " and announced its determination not to vote a penny of revenue or support " until such laws are passed as we conceive necessary for the safety of the in- habitants of this colony, who have reposed a trust in us for that only purpose, and by the grace of God we will endeavor not to deceive them." But England learned nothing from declaration and protest. The colonies were a source of pro- fitable trading and of growing returns, and any concessions to the people which involved a lessen- ing of profits and returns was not to be thought of by the parent government. The Stamp Act, the navigation laws and the imposition of duties grew out of this determination to use the colonies as a treasure house, and acts of restriction and of petty tyranny increased the discontent which finally burst into an uncontrollable blaze. Discontent while it often stirs to noblest action arouses also the basest elements. While it leads the people to armed protest it as surely impels the UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. 97 rabble to unreasoning violence. Mobs and riots as well as assemblies and revolts spring from the same source of popular irritation. It must be said of ancestral New York that its manners were not always of that standard of cor- rectness that we, in these later days, have set up though we do not always follow it. The same is in a measure true of all the American colonies, but within the borders of New York, especially, the same mixed elements that constituted its society were at once its safety and its peril. We are too prone to consider what we unthinkingly call the " good old days " as being all that is noble and heroic when, indeed, the opposite is much nearer the truth. Perfection only comes with years and progress. And so, as we study the records we are forced to admit the existence, in an even more aggravated form, of the very evils that we of this day are too apt to consider as the outcome of our own restless desires and life. Peculation and embezzlement were openly charged and far too frequently proven against officials, merchants and men of eminent stand- ing. Land frauds, Indian frauds, commercial frauds, false returns and even falser methods, illicit trading, smuggling and piracy — these were matters of common report, while the prevalence 98 UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. of drunkenness and other social evils were both a barrier and a reaction to entire development. Even in Stuyvesant s day it is reported that fully one fourth of the houses in New Amsterdam were devoted to the sale of brandy, tobacco and beer, and as Mr. Roberts observes, " their existence tells the story of the habits of the people." Chaplain Miller in 1695 says that ''so soon as the bounty of God has furnished this people with a plentiful crop, they do turn the money into drink," and through- out the colonial days the jealousies between the " aristocrats " and the people were too often aggra- vated by the wide-spread use of rum. It was when Governor Sloughter was " besotted with drink " that he signed the illegal death-warrant of Leisler ; it was when the informer Kane was possessed by the " fumes of the liquor of the tavern " that he foisted upon the terrified colonists the lying details of the shameful " negro plot " ; it was when the representative of the most powerful family in the province — Chief Justice DeLancey — and Gov- ernor George Clinton, the proxy of the king, were " in their cups " that a personal quarrel led to antagonisms that threatened the welfare of the colony. Indeed the deep hold that this vice had upon the morals of the entire colony seemed to repeat and emphasize the wisdom of the name which the earlier Spanish-Indian intercourse had UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. 99 fastened upon its leading town — Monados, " the place of drunken men." But customs that now seem disgraceful were then esteemed essential, and it was in spite of this curse of drink and its kindred evils that so mixed a commonalty as Colonial New York grew into and nurtured that high-placed spirit of independency that was slowly but surely leading the people toward freedom, democracy and the upbuilding of a nation. The border warfare of a hundred and fifty years that ended only with England's historic victory upon the Plains of Abraham ; the constant boun- dary troubles that England's needless delays fast- ened upon the settlers in New York and their adjoining colonial neighbors ; even the party hates and personal rancors of family jealousies and the sharply-drawn lines between " aristocrats " and com- mons, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, all had a certain good effect in the resolution and determin- ation that they engendered, and by means of which liberty was to be finally accomplished. Out of Leisler's colonial congress of 1690, and that at Albany in 1754, as well as from the self- respecting assemblies that intervened and dared to tell the British government so many plain and unwelcome truths came the greater Continental Congresses of 1764 and 1774 and the colonial resistance that broadened into national revolt. lOO UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. With all this growing desire for self-government the people in a great majority sympathized. Their home affairs, their daily labors, their merchandise and their farms were still of first importance to them all, but they realized nevertheless that even these could not prosper if a lordly court across the water were always to coerce and interfere. And so, excited and aroused as people are apt to be at sea- sons of great national peril, young and old, rich and poor, man and woman, boy and girl clamored against the tyranny of England. While the young Teunis Jansen of that day joined the " Sons of Liberty " and helped post up the famous " We Dare " placard upon office doors and street corners his youngest brother, Ryck Jansen, tagged at the heels of the street crowds that wandered from point to point on that historic First of November, 1 765, and sung out as lustily and as unmusically as any one of them the ringing chorus : " With the beasts o£ the wood, We will ramble for food, And lodge in wild deserts and caves. And live poor as Job, On the skirts of the globe Before we'll submit to be slaves, brave boys, Before we'll submit to be slaves." CHAPTER V. A COLONIAL BARON. NTO that section of the province of New York beyond the Couxsachraga wilder- ness, now known as the Valley of the Mo- hawk, but known to those days simply as "the Indian country " there came one spring day in the year 1738 a young Irish lad — William Johnson of Warrentown, in the County Down. Scarcely more than twenty years old, of a well-built and commanding figure, fearless, cau- tious, industrious, brave and shrewd, possessing especially a sound mind in a sound body, and a manner that won for him at once the confidence and popularity of his fellows, this enterprising young Irishman stamped his name and his per- sonality upon the region now known as Central I02 A COLONIAL BARON. New York, as neither royal governor nor colonial magnate was able to do. His story is one of the most striking as it is one of the most important phases in the history of the beginnings and the development of the Empire State; and it is pe- culiarly fitting for us to consider it here, ere we proceed with that later section of the story of the state in whose beginnings this young Irish adventurer bore so prominent a part. Young William Johnson came as factor or super- intendent for his maternal uncle Sir Peter Warren, the English admiral, who, following the example of other English nabobs had purchased from the Indians a large tract of fertile country within the limits of the Mohawk Valley. The section was alike historic, picturesque and full of singular interest. For us the pen of Cooper has described and painted its beauties, its romances and its stirring scenes. But its history is even stranger than its fiction, and as the prelude to its later story possesses a singular and especial interest. Beyond the Schenectady wilderness and west- ward a good day's journey from the rude fortress walls of "Albany stretched in the earlier days a tract of country into which for years only trappers and traders had dared to penetrate and which, even in the middle of the eighteenth century, was still A COLONIAL BARON. 103 an unknown and almost unexplored region to the settlers about Manhattan Island and along the shores of the Hudson. And yet, though known only to the most advent- urous and most restless of the colonists of the New World it was for years the battle ground of two nations. Fertile, promising, and rich in furs and peltries, bounded on the north by vast inland seas and watered by beautiful streams and still more beautiful lakes, this section, known as " the Indian country," was so attractive a land for trade and settlement that with each new year, while France and England were both struggling to pos- sess it, the pioneers of colonization were venturing into it under the protection of the colonial gover- nors of New York and the colonial " barons " who were monopolizing its possession by direct purchase from its Indian proprietors. For nearly three hundred years this splendid stretch of country had been the seat of one of the most remarkable barbaric confederacies that the world has known. The six nations of Indians, best known by the French name of Iroquois, though called by themselves, always, the Hodeno- saunee or " people of the long house," lived here as citizens of an unvincible forest republic. Ambi- tious, warlike, haughty and free they had risen to a station in the rank of semi-civilization quite above I04 A COLONIAL BARON. that of any other Indian nation and their authority and mastership were acknowledged by the sur- rounding tribes from the rivers of Virginia to the shores of Hudson's Bay and from the New Eng- land coast to the banks of the Mississippi. The statesmanship of Arendt Van Curler se- cured their friendship in the early Dutch days ; and, because of this, his Dutch and English successors in the provinces were, until the Revolution, able to maintain their possession of the entire lake region. It was the constant loyalty of the Iroquois confederacy to the British king that enabled Eng- land finally to become master of Canada, and it was upon lands purchased from them that the slowly growing settlements of English colonists began gradually to build and develop the now thriving home-land of Central New York. The most easterly of the Six Nations was the tribe known as the Mohawks. Their lands com- prised that section now celebrated as the beautiful valley of the Mohawk, and they were regarded as the real head — the brain and leaders of the Iro- quois Confederacy. The settlements of the white man gradually increased in their land, but so cautiously and craftily was this advance made and guarded that the Indian still remained the white man's friend, even though he saw and appreciated the slow A COLONIAL BARON. 1 05 absorption of his home-land. That so brave and dominant a race impatient of control and ambi- tious for authority should permit themselves to be thus pushed and crowded from their lands would be one of the problems of history could it not be explained by two important causes — the white man's craftiness and the white man's rum. Against these the Indians of America were never able successfully to contend. Many a young man from the older settlements went from his home to seek his fortune in the Iro- quois country. Dutch patroons and English land- owners began to lease, sell, and cultivate the great tracts of land they had secured from the Indian proprietors, and one day in the year 1763 young Isaac Jansen, the youngest brother of Teunis the elder, then scarce twenty years of age, announced to his eldest brother, who was recognized as the head of the family, his intention of trying his luck in the Iroquois country. It was of no use for Teunis the elder to object. The Jansens had ever possessed the roving strain in their blood from the days of their sea-faring and fur-trading ancestors of three centuries back. " Well, what are your chances, lad ? " he de- manded of this would-be pioneeer. And young Isaac told how one of the Van Ness boys had an engagement to go as farrier to Sir Io6 A COLONIAL BARON. William Johnson's " castle " in the Mohawk Valley and how, too, young Van Ness had been able to get for him (Isaac) the promise of steady work at his trade of carpentering in the patroon's new settle- ment of Johnstown. " Go then, lad, and the Lord be with you," said the elder brother when Isaac had detailed his expectations. " You won't be the first Jansen who has struck out into the wilderness." And adding to his brother's slender outfit a share of his own hardly-earned shillings Teunis bade young Isaac God-speed and together the two adventurous lads set their backs to their native town and their faces toward their fortune. To both these young fellows as to many another restless lad in the colony, had come frequent rumors of this most fascinating and enticing of all the " patroons " — Sir William Johnson : how he had risen from a mere lad to a power greater than that of many a lord and baron across the water ; how he lived in a stone castle in the midst of surroundings calculated to drive an adventurous boy frantic with emulation ; they had heard and repeated the wonderful accounts of Sir William's vast estate ; of his loyal and successful tenantry ; of his army of scouts and trappers, of hunters and rangers ; of his thousands of Indian allies and how he had been made the great White Chief ISAAC JANSEN GOES TO THE INDIAN COUNTRY. A COLONIAL BARON. 109 of the Iroquois nations. All these and many other reports they had heard — some of them exaggerated and fabulous, but unquestioningly ac- cepted as fact by the ambitious boys who chafed under home restraints and longed for the free, unfettered life of the forest and the rivers of this wonderful Indian country. And to a certain extent the stories that had floated down the Hudson from the Mohawk coun- try were true. The Irish lad of 1738 had within less than twenty-five years become a great feudul baron of colonial New York. Succeeding even beyond his own expectations as his uncle's factor he had purchased for his own use extensive tracts in the Mohawk Valley, had developed both his own and his uncle's estate to most productive issues, had settled a thrifty tenantry upon his lands, won the friendship and loyalty of the Indian tribes into whose lands he had come, and because of his remarkable success in keeping them in friendly relations to the English authorities had been hon- ored with important ofifices and trusts by the home government. A fearless and impetuous soldier he had led the provincial militia in some of the fiercest battles of " the French and Indian war," and had been created by his king " Major General and Sir " William Johnson for intrepid and valuable services. More than any other man, in all the long history of no A COLONIAL BARON. the frontier troubles that ended at last in the inva- sion of Canada and the fall of Quebec, he had kept the Iroquois in alliance with England, successfully combating the " diplomacy " of French statesmen and the craft of French Jesuits, and had been admitted within the circle of Indian tribal ties as a comrade and a chieftain under the Mohawk name of Warra-ghi-yagey — the Great Brother. It was into the domains of this remarkable man, now in the prime of life and at the height of his power, that young Isaac Jansen and Abram Van Ness came in the year 1763. Isaac came as car- penter and laborer, but more stirring work than building cabins and framing doors and windows was in store for him. The war with the Indians, roused to indignant and murderous protest by their greatest patriot — Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawas — was raging with fury along the western border, and almost the first experience that young Isaac Jansen met with in his new home was to help build the strong stockade with which Sir William surrounded Johnson Hall, and to arm with the other tenantry of the pro- vincial baronet for its protection and defence. The strong stone towers that flanked this stockade and the brass cannon that defended them (captured by Admiral Warren at the siege of Louisburg) proved a stronger argument with the wavering A COLONIAL BARON. Ill Iroquois than did Pontiac's appeals. The North- ern tribes who had been almost persuaded to join the Ottawa Chieftain declared their determination not to " take up the hatchet," but . at the same time announced their readiness, if Sir William was molested, to take it up valiantly in defence of their Great " Brother." Sir William's shrewdness and courage and his firm but friendly attitude toward his Indian allies alone saved New York from the horrors of the border war that laid waste the western frontier and immortalized the name of Pontiac — the " Napoleon of the Indians." At last the war was over. Pontiac, defeated and deserted by his followers, returned from his inter- view with Sir William Johnson in 1766, to die by the tomahawk of a faithless Illinois, and the man who had been the main bulwark of New York against massacre and desolation devoted himself to the development of his splendid estate. Once again, in 1768, was Sir William Johnson's great influence with the Iroquois needed to resist disaster. As just in his dealings with them as he was shrewd and far-seeing, he sided with them in the dispute over the occupation by white settlers of the great tract in Northern New York, known as the Kaya-de-ros-seras patent — a vast section of valuable land obtained by fraud and occupied in e> 112 A COLONIAL BARON. spite of the protests of its native owners. The Iroquois indignant at the broken faith and arrogant claims of the colonial authorities threatened to take up the hatchet in defence of their rights, and had not the wisdom of Sir William Johnson awakened the colonial " proprietories " to a sense of their folly and injustice, and induced them by the payment to the Indians of five thousand dollars to purchase the lands they had stolen, a bloodier chapter than any yet known in the story of New York would need to have been written. By this means seven hundred thousand acres lying between the Hudson and the Mohawk, were opened to colonization and civ- ilization, and the name of Sir William Johnson more than ever before became the synonym of justice among the Indians and of influence among the colonists. It was by measures such as this that the fer- tile region of Central New York was won from barbarism and secured for civilization. Here and there new settlements were made and new indus- tries sprung up. Isaac Jansen, a hardy and vigo- rous young pioneer, found favor in the eyes of " the patroon " and had charge and oversight of much of the building that the era of peace brought about. The " patrobn's " own settlement of Johnstown, near to his mansion of Johnson Hall, grew into quite a flourishing village and the estate itself increased A COLONIAL BARON. II3 in produqtiveness and beauty. The wilderness that the young Irish lad had found through all the valley of the Mohawk, thirty years before, was now a region of rich farms, beautiful meadows and homes of rude but genial plenty. The Indians were be- coming agriculturists and steadfastly resisted all attempts of French or Spanish " diplomats " to swerve them from their allegiance to the English king and their own " Great Brother." Thus the eve of the Revolution found the region known as Central New York. The increase in settlement was bringing a sturdy company of work- ers within its limits, and even that hot and bitter fued as to boundaries known as the trouble of the New Hampshire Grants could not stop the tide of colonization. The county of Albany, upon petition of its inhabitants, was divided into three new coun- ties and the busy little village of Johnstown was made the county town of the new county of Tryon (named for the then acting colonial governor). Sir William Johnson was at this time the most influential man in the province of New York. Beloved by his tenantry, trusted by his Indian neighbors, honored by his king, his influence was uni- versally acknowledged and his integrity was unques- tioned. He was one of the very few American baronets. He was the superintendent of the Northern Indians, a member of the king's council, 114 A COLONIAL BARON. a major-general commanding a well-disciplined force of fourteen hundred provincial militia, an owner of large estates and an energetic promoter of every plan of public benefit. " Sir William has too much influence," declared one rather pessimistic patriot to Isaac Jansen as they talked of the attainments and successes of the patroon. " He can carry anything he pleases now. He returns two members to the assembly by his nod, and can direct the election of the Albany and Schenectady members as he pleases." " I wish his influence were twice as great," replied the loyal Isaac, always enthusiastic in support of his generous patroon ; " for one thing we are sure of and that is, 'tis both his inclination and his interest to use all his influence for the good of the province." But the day that was to change all this condition of personal power was at hand. The spirit of those same " Sons of Liberty " who had withstood the "hirelings of tyranny" at Golden Hill and lustily shouted their revolutionary choruses in the streets of New York found its way even beyond the northern wilderness. The progress of a free people is antag- onistic to monopolies — good or bad. The demand for liberty grew, separation from England was de- creed and the Revolution caine. It was to work many changes in private and public life, but none A COLONIAL BAH ON. 1 1 "J more vital or more decided than in the region about the Mohawk. Some great proprietors like the Livingstons and the patroon of Renssalaer be- came ardent patriots, others hke PhilHpse and De Lancey were bitter and aggressive tories and, in many instances, as decided the proprietor so decided many of his tenants ; but it remained for the " patroon of the Mohawk," Sir WilUam John- son, to be neither patriot nor tory and so to lose alike his influence, his property and his life. He was one of the people. He had risen from the ranks to power, prominence and wealth. He had served his king and his country with equal fidelity and ardor, and he stood on the eve of the great struggle a type of others of his class — unde- cided where his duty lay. And yet, says his biog- rapher, Mr. Stone, " there can be no doubt that had he lived until it was necessary for him to take a decided stand, he would have boldly espoused the cause of the colonies." But death decided it for him. On the twelfth of July, 1774, in the midst of an Indian council of six hundred Iroquois gathered about his manor-house of Johnson Hall for the purposes of discussing griev- ances death found him, and at sunset he expired. It was a fitting close. It was alike the sunset of Indian power and of feudal forms. Henceforth a new order was to rule, born of struggle and of Il8 A COLONIAL BARON. progress, and destined to advance the New World from a restricted colonial appendage to a free and mighty nation. But as one who, slighted by histo- rians and misjudged by posterity, gave to the State of New York the possibilities of its freedom, its extent, its wonderful growth and its importance in the new nation the space here accorded to the work of Sir William Johnson is but simple justice to a great man — the proprietor, defender, colonizer and developer of Central New York. His work was done. And with his death fell alike his power and his influence. But history, im- partial and just, which would give equal recognition and approval to all who help in the advancement of a State must ascribe in the story of the upbuilding of the Empire State credit alike to great and small. And while, therefore, praise and honor are due to all such humble workers as were Isaac Jansen and his fellows — the men who seldom come to the surface — equal praise and equal honor are to be ascribed to that masterly and remarkable man who by his wisdom, justice, energy and pluck achieved an honorable name, saved his home-land from desolation and kept faith with all — Sir William Johnson, the lord proprietor of the Valley of. the Mohawk. CHAPTER VI. LIBERTY. 'rir^ OUNG Teunis Jan- sen, the sixth of the name, was married on the twenty-sec- ond of April, 1774, to the "yonkvrouw" Tryntie Van Blarcom of the little town of Breucklen across the East River. He always remembered his wed- ding day, because that very afternoon he was summoned as one of the " Sons of Lib- erty " to attend a "tea-party " in the harbor. He really did help toss over the eighteen chests of tea which Captain Chambers had brought over in the schooner London, and to send a-packing back to England, Captain Lockyer of the tea-ship Nancy, who had dared act counter to the will of a determined and now turbulent people. 119 1 20 LIBERTY. Teunis still bore on his leg the scar of the healed-up bayonet-wound which he received at the " Battle of Golden Hill," four years before, when, on the eighteenth of January, 1770, the citizens had made the first stand against the insolence of the British soldiers. For upon that little hill covering the portion of what is now John Street, between Cliff Street and Burling Slip, the first blood of the Revolution was shed. A year later actual war began. The colonists, pushed to desperation by the continued tyranny of England, met force with force ; and on Sunday the twenty-second of April, 1775, Teunis was among the throng that coming out of the Garden Street church heard the news which a hard-riding courier brought down the Bowery road and into the little city, how on a pleasant country highway, two hun- dred miles to the eastward, the colonists and the king's troops had met and fought the historic battle of Lexington. From that time on, for the next seven years, the province of New York bore the brunt of the great contest of right against might. From Harlem Heights and Ticonderoga to Saratoga and Stony Point, from the British occupation of 1776 to the British evacuation of 1783 the years of revolution brought within the confines of New York every evil of war. " The colony," says Mr. Roberts, LIBERTY. 1 2 1 "was a series of camps. Battles and marauding expeditions, massacres and the burning of towns extended over all its inland portions, while the chief city felt the burden of the headquarters of the royal forces and the horrors of a multitude of prisons." Upon its soil Nicholas Herkimer, a de- scendant of one of the sturdy " Palatinate refu- gees "of the century before, led his army of farmers against the chasseurs and regulars of the British army in the battle of Oriskany — " the bloodiest and most picturesque battle of the Revolution " ; within its bounds the foremost hero and the great- est traitor — Nathan Hale and Benedict Arnold — worked, each, his glorious and his infamous end, and in its picturesque interior, so says Mr. Roberts, " all the waters and all the paths blazed in the woods, have their stories of heroism and suffering. They rival the pages of romance in the daring, in the ingenuity, in the diversity of experience exhib- ited on both sides, and in the persistence with which the settlers held to their homes, often as- sailed, and more than once destroyed." For there were two sides to this conflict, more antagonistic because more nearly related than were the opposing armies of England and America. It is the sad feature of every quarrel between conscience and self-interest in which the people bear a part that friend may be arrayed against 122 LIBERTY. friend and brother against brother, and that each may hold antagonistic opinions equally strong and equally honest. It has been the fashion of historians and rehears- ers of the story of the American Revolution to cast all possible odium upon the tory element — that portion of the people that from various motives re- mained loyal to the king against whom their neigh- bors had rebelled. Justice should be conceded even to a discreditable foeman, and the Tories of America, as they could see neither the wisdom nor the honor of forcing opinions into warfare and pre- cepts into blood, held to what they deemed con- scientious loyalty quite as heroically as did their neighbors the " rebels " to conscientious patriotism. We are too apt to judge character from results rather than from motives. It is matter for special note, however, that the purely mercantile spirit of the New York colony was opposed to separation and revolution. So also were the moneyed classes — those known as " the aristocrats " — and those later emigrants from Eng- land who, new to the demands of colonial life, could not enter into the spirit of protest which they en- countered and, naturally, construed into disloyalty. Among those who stood thus loyal to the English king was the family of Sir William Johnson, the patroon of the Mohawk. LIBERTY. 125 Neither his son Sir John, nor his nephew Colonel Guy Johnson into whose hands his estate and posi- tion descended had the ability or the patriotism to act as he would have advised. They became bitter Tories both, their names were detested by all patri- ots as leaders in a war between neighbors ; and they were advisers in a campaign that included all the horrors of Cherry Valley and all the brutalities of Wyoming. Fugitives at last from the wrath of a victorious people, their large estates were confis- cated, their power wasted, their influence entirely destroyed. The Indians who had been the friends of the first proprietor, slow to appreciate the real position of the colonists, remained loyal to Eng- land and forever lost their former importance as allies and neutrals. Brant (Tha-yen-da-ne-gea), the Mohawk protege of Johnson, and Butler, the tory leader, became names of detestation to the people about the Mohawk, and where the word of Sir William might have saved life and cemented friend- ships, his memory was used in the cause of hatred and bloodshed. It was hard for faithful adherents like Isaac Jansen to decide. But Lexington and Ticonde- roga awakened them to decision. Bunker Hill and Lonsf Island aroused them to action. When Sir John Johnson's tory regiment of Royal Greens and Colonel John Butler's "loyal" Rangers — both 126 LIBERTY. recruited in the valley of the Mohawk — joined to themselves Brant's Iroquois warriors and threatened Fort Stanwix, Isaac Jansen was among the first of the farmer patriots to rally to the defence of his country and to range himself against the rep- resentatives of English tyranny. And these repre- sentatives were the successors of his former friend and patron. But in a war of principles personal friendships must yield to patriotism. The battle of Oriskany checked the tory uprising and the defeat of Burgoyne proved the valor and the determination of the yeomen of the Mohawk. The " patriots " of New York were eminently the " people," the lower classes, descendants of the Dutchman, the Huguenot, the Scotchman, the Welshman, the Irishman, the English "roundhead," and the New England dissenter — the very men who longing for a larger freedom of opportunity left to their sons a heritage of hope. Prominent families as has been shown were identified with the patriot cause, but as a rule their associates and " social equals " leaned to the Tory side. Due honor however should be given to those who, representing families of wealth and distinction, became leaders in the cause of liberty. A Schuyler, actual captor of Burgoyne, unselfishly gave alike the opportunity, the leadership and the glory to another, and devoted the whole of his Saratoga LIBERTY. 127 harvest to the needs of the patriot army; a Liv- ingston deprived of his official position because of his pronounced republicanism led his colony to independence, represented it in the Continental Congress and was one of the five who drafted the immortal Declaration ; a Hamilton, boy though he was, made at seventeen a speech that went far to- ward strengthening the determination of the people for freedom, chivalrously defended his Tory in- structor at college from the fury of his own adher- ents, crossed the Delaware with Washington on that historic ferry-ride before the victory of Tren- ton, discovered the treason of Arnold at West Point and led the last gallant assault upon the dispirited enemy at Yorktown ; a Van Cortlandt, type and representative of Manhattan aristocracy, yet resisted the appeals of Tory and royalist friends, destroyed the major's commission in the British army sent him by Governor Tryon and served with honor and distinction in the patriot ranks ; a Judith Murray, shrewd and clear-headed, when the " rebel " army was in danger of capture, by the charm of her nature and her well-assumed hospi- tality, held the British officers in social intercourse until Washington's imperilled force had slipped from their British pursuers, and thereby saved the patriot army from capture. These and many other instances attest the strength of purpose that held 128 LIBERTY. true to the cause of freedom those whom self- interest might have made recreant, and contributed to the final result which " cast down the mighty from their seat and exalted them of low degree." And of the heroism of the " common people " in the struggle for freedom — the element, after all, out of which liberty was evolved — who can do their story justice ? With power, wealth and patronage arrayed against them, the people of the State of New York rose to an appreciation of their own possibilities, and in common with the people of the other colonies pledged to each other, in the lan- guage of the deathless Declaration, their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. It was John Paul- ding, " a poor man " of Westchester, who, disdain- ing the bribe of Andre, frustrated the treason of Arnold and without hope of a reward beyond " his virtue and an honest sense of duty " saved the patriot cause from utter and irretrievable ruin. It was Enoch Birch of Putnam, the hero of Cooper's masterly story of " The Spy," who at the risk of life and honor penetrated the enemy's most secret designs, and kept Washington informed of the British commander's most important intentions. It was Sybil Luddington of Carmel, a fearless young girl of sixteen, who in the dead of night rode her horse to the nearest American post and apprised the Continentals of the British attack on Danbury. LIBERTY. 129 It was Jack Van Arsdale, a plucky up-river lad of seventeen, who climbed the greased and dismantled flag-staff on the fort at New York and flung out the American colors above the departing and defeated British army. It was the starving soldiers of New York who without hope of pay or of any return but death zealously reared the impregnable fortifications at West Point, " every stone of which," says Ban- croft, " was a monument of humble, disinterested patriotism ; " it was the men of New York who, with those of Virginia, of Pennsylvania, of Maryland, and of New England, fighting " with one spirit for a common cause, " won the victory at Saratoga — " the battle of the husbandmen," the most important battle of the Revolution and one of the fifteen deci- sive battles of the world. Peace came at last. Peace and liberty. But when with the other victorious patriots Teunis Jan- sen returned to the home and the wife he had scarcely seen for five long years, he came to a scene of desolation and ruin that tempered even the joy of victory and promised only hard and tireless labor for yet other long years to come. Teunis returned as he had gone, only a private soldier, but he re- turned with a feeling of importance and responsi- bility as one of the sovereign citizens of a free republic and a devoted son of the noble State of New York. 130 LIBERTY. For it was a State now. Colony and province no longer it held an important place in the sister- hood of the thirteen free and independent States that confederated together in the American Union, putting in the place of royal commissioners and king-made charters the peoples' agreement of an acceptable constitution. The name and the constitution of the free State of New York both date from the twentieth of April, 1777. Upon that date was its constitution adopted, basing its authority upon the will of the people and declaring " in the name of the good people the free exercise of religious profession and wor- ship, without discrimination or preference to all mankind." In all the story of the State there is scarcely a more stirring episode than this. It was the battle year of 1777. A bitter and relentless foe occupied the chief city of the new commonwealth and all its settled sections felt the touch and terror of vindic- tive war. Forced from place to place by the ever- present danger of an hostile advance, and with the risk of capture and the certainty of the harshest usage ever upon them, the members of the gov- erning body of the infant State yet boldly met and openly proclaimed their independence of England, and formally adopted the people's charter — the Constitution of the State of New York. VAN ARSDALE AT THE FLAG STAFF. LIBERTY. 133 " The Constitution formed in New York, amid the confusion of the Revolution," says Horatio Seymour, " is a proof of the profound knowledge of its leading men in the principles of civil lib- erty, good government and constitutional law. Its superiority was universally admitted and it was re- ceived with great favor not only in the State, but elsewhere. . . . All the State constitutions rec- ognized in express terms the natural and absolute right of every man to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, yet the consti- tutions of New York and Virginia alone were free from provisions repugnant to these declarations." This remarkable instrument was, practically, the work of three young men — John Jay, Robert R. Livingston and Gouverneur Morris. Adopted by the convention assembled at Kingston on the twentieth of April, 1777, it was formally published on the morning of Tuesday, the twenty-second, when, mounting upon a barrel in front of the county courthouse of Kingston, Robert Benson, the Secretary of the Convention, surrounded by his fellow officers and members, read the docu- ment to the assembled people who had been sum- moned to hear it by the bell of the village church. But the people found what was to them more important business than constitution-making and governing when with the close of the war they 1 34 LIBERTY. came to their own again. Seven years of conflict had demoraHzed and destroyed the trade and para- lyzed the industries of the community ; the State, Hke the infant that it was, needed almost to begin life over again. So, while their leaders were legislating, the peo- ple set to work. And so valiantly did they apply themselves that in less than five years after the actual evacuation of New York by the British both the city and the State were on the high road to prosperity. In the scarcely reclaimed interior where the desolation of war had well-nigh made the country once more a wilderness the activities of peace gave new vigor to the people. Within sight of those hotly-contested fields of Oriskany and Saratoga the people who had won now pre- pared to enjoy the fruits of their victory. With each new year, after the close of the Revolution, emigration set more steadily toward the lands about the Mohawk. ' The estates of Sir William Johnson became smaller farms and holdings and his Indian friends were crowded into contracted limits. Isaac Jansen prospered as an honest work- ing-man, and a successful landholder ; his children and grandchildren diffused themselves over the lands that stretched away from the beautiful Mo- hawk, making of the Western wilderness farm- land and home-land and by their energy and their LIBERTY. 1 35 frugality helped to lay the foundation for that growth and prosperity that came at last to the now thronging towns and villages of Central New York. To the south, in New York City scarred by siege and fire, longer idleness was at a discount. Teunis Jansen, following the traditions of his family, was carpenter and shipbuilder, and when a city is to be rebuilt and its commerce rehabilitated the wielder of axe and hammer, plane and saw finds plenty to do. " Dwellings that had escaped the flames," says Mrs. Lamb, " were bruised and dis- mantled ; gardens and grounds were covered with a rank growth of weeds and wild grass ; fences had disappeared, and the debris of army life was strewn from one end of the town to the other. Public buildings were battered and worn with usages foreign to the purposes of their erection ; the trade of New York was ruined, and her treasury was empty." Here, certainly, was work enough for all, from patroon to pauper. But even this was in a measure retarded by the spirit of intolerance which is too often the accompaniment of liberty. It is human nature to forgive slowly. Where for years opinions had been so hostilely arrayed against each other as to find expression only in deeds of violence and blood, victory for one side and defeat for the other could scarcely fail to 1 36 LIBERTY. be attended with ill-feeling, recriminations, and the desire for vengeance. Probably in all the history of strife there has never been a more thoroughly surprised and con- founded class of people than were the Tories of New York at the close of the American Revolution. As has been said, they represented, especially, the mercantile life of the province, the makers and sup- porters of business, and they never for an instant anticipated anything else than the final triumph of England. Saratoga and Yorktown were therefore terrible revelations, and the " Definitive Treaty of Peace " found them either fugitives or suppliants. Once victorious, the people were slow to pardon those among themselves who had proved faint- hearted or recreant, and were all too ready to vent their detestation in harsh and vindictive form. " There ought, sir," declared one pitiless patriot, " no Tory to be suffered to exist in America." This opinion found so many supporters that in 1784 the New York Legislature passed an act of outlawry and disfranchisement against all those who had clung to the side of England. In time, however, better and nobler counsels prevailed, and this unchristian measure was repealed in 1787. Out of all this, however, and out of the kindred and accompanying differences came the party divi- sions that are at once the bane and the security of LIBERTY. 137 all popular governments. Family feuds, like those between the De Lanceys and the Livingstons, were revived. Personal quarrels became public controversies, and differences of opinion on matters of policy and right direction led to antagonisms that have scarcely been healed even to this day. Peace, as it has its victories no less renowned than war has quite as emphatically its animosities and its discords. But both because of and in spite of these party differences the little State steadily grew toward greatness. Its extensive domain stretching from the ocean to the St. Lawrence and from the Hud- son to Niagara furnished boundless opportunities for homes and for successful development. Immi- gration increased with each new year, and from a community of less than a quarter of a million in- habitants in 1783, the State of New York swelled its numbers to over half a million in 1800, and to fully a million in 18 10, while from the fifth place in population and importance among the original thir- teen colonies it advanced to the very foremost place in 1820. With the increase of immigration came the de- mand for better communication. New roads were opened to the interior ; the lakes and rivers, natural water-ways for travel and for commerce, were put to more general use ; post-riders galloped every 1 38 LIBERTY. fortnight with messages and mails between the Hudson and the valley of the Genesee, and a more frequent stage-line along the bank of the Hudson kept up continual communication between New York and Albany. Agriculture brought new sec- tions of the State under cultivation ; manufactures, long stagnant or repressed under the restrictive policy of England, were widely established and used the vast water power of the State for practical ends. Ocean commerce grew in bulk from no ex- ports whatever during the Revolution, to two and a half millions of dollars in 1791, and to more than fourteen millions in 1800, while education lagging always behind the absolute productive necessities grew slowly but steadily as its value to the citizens of a free State became more and more appreciated. The fur-trade, as it had founded Albany gave birth to Buffalo, while Albany itself, constituted the capital of the young State in 1797, became the centre of the constantly increasing grain trade and a prosperous and important city. In 1786 Albany was reckoned as the sixth city in the Union in population, wealth and social position. From 1784 to 1 790 New York City was the capital of the new " United Stares." All this material advance as it implied the need of capital meant labor none the less. It was the people's victory even more than it was the success LIBERTY. 139 of those whose names alone are prominent in all State histories. This latter element — the minority of power and social position — while containing many true and honest citizens was found, far too often, aping, in a community based upon republican simplicity, the forms and snobbishness of foreign courts. And yet while disdaining the people as social inferiors, these " leaders of society " sought to use for purpose of self-advancement the very ele- ment without which they could not have secured either power, position or success. This minority of " social prominence " gave the cities importance and even tinged the smaller towns but it in no wise touched or affected that broader and sturdier manhood that was developing out of the falling forests and the fertile soil the real ele- ments of substantial growth and permanent success. Not but that this pioneer life was hard and contracted. A close contact with the soil and a knowledge only of the necessities of life does little toward developing the finer possibilities of man's intellectual nature. But upon this basis of toil has gradually arisen the structure of a liberal and more comprehensive manliness that has contrib- uted more to the real up-building of the State and the nation than has all the arrogance of capital and all the petty nonsensities of social distinc- tions and the aristocracy of dress. The story of I40 LIBERTY. the growth of the State of New York, says Mr. Roberts, "in all its curious details, in farms laid out, in factories built, in roads extended, in the broadening culture of the people, will repay exami. nation and can never lose its novelty." But if the people delegated the real business of governing to their leaders they did not fail to themselves exercise the privilege of the ballot. This prerogative of freedom was as inspiring as it was novel to them and while it gave them, perhaps, a childish delight in their own importance, it gave them, also, the deeper sense of their responsibilities. The fact, too, that suffrage was not really universal but was enjoyed only by such as could show the small but needed property qualification only served to increase the importance of those who were legal voters. They were the rulers, and as is often the case with newly enfranchised peoples, they used the ballot, sometimes, quite as tyrannically as they did conscientiously. " We, the people," could make and unmake rulers where before they had been but vassals and serfs and any interference with their rights was angrily resented. When, in the election of 1792, the popular vote for Mr. Jay as governor was overruled in favor of Mr. Clinton on the ground of certain irregularities the people were aroused at once and would have taken matters in their own hands. They denounced the high-minded LIBERTY. 141 and patriotic Governor Clinton as a usurper and a fraud and would have proceeded to even further extremities had not the overruled candidate, Mr. Jay, himself begged them to desist ; appealing to "that natural good-humor which harmonize society," he urged them to submit to the decisions of the canvassers of the returns to whom they themselves had given authority, and thus the excitement was allayed. With this devotion to the privilege of the ballot, therefore, election day in the young State was a red-letter day to the new-made freemen. Every body talked politics and even in the remotest set- tlement a deep interest was taken in the questions involved and in the claims and counter-claims of the opposing parties. It was a great day in the Jansen household when in the presidential election of 1792 the eldest son, still a Teunis, of course, becoming of age that year and at the same time a free-holder, cast his first vote for the presidential electors. The family were devoted Federalists, and Tryntie's Jansen's Jansen, as, according to Dutch nomenclature the young voter was termed by the friends of the family, proudly voted, as did his father, for Wash- ington and Clinton. The opposing political parties of that day were the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists — the first 142 LIBERTY. favoring the Constitution of the United States as it was first adopted in 1787, the other holding the theory of the sovereignty of the State and seeking to limit the powers of the General Government. These were, however, but the bases of beliefs; the methods and measures of each party touched many other questions and led to numberless disputes and antagonisms, while the adherents were even more bitter and personal than are the political opponents of to-day. In the war-flurries that stirred the nation in the closing years of the century, as now France and now England seemed inclined to be arrogant and aggressive, young Teunis Jansen, in common with all the youth of the land, quickly caught the war fever and proudly paraded in his curious uniform as one of the New York Militiamen, while mother and sisters regarded him lovingly as one of the possible defenders of the dignity of America. All this martial fervor, however, did not with- draw him from his line of daily duty and his saw and hammer played in unison with those of his father as they wrought their sturdiest upon many a new building in the growing town or upon the trim-looking vessels that were launched from the New York ship yards. Until 1790, New York City had been the capi- tal of the nation, but in that year, president and LIBERTY. 143 congress removed temporarily to Philadelphia and the local pride of the metropolis was deeply touched. It seemed to all New Yorkers that no city could be more suitable for the nation's capital than their own loved and successful town. With the opening of the nineteenth century the constant stream of immigration was bringing new settlers into every section. The incoming of so many different nationalities even still further in- creased the cosmopolitan character of the popula- tion, and it is stated, as an instance of this, that in the little hamlet of " old Fort Schuyler " (now Utica) when it numbered but ninety houses "ten or twelve different nations were represented. With the increase of trade and manufacture, financial wealth grew and in 1800 there were banks in operation at New York City, Hudson, Albany and Troy. The scandals attached to the early his- tory of these banks, the indications that certain high officials were involved in questionable transac- tions concerning them, and the evident mingling of political bargains with their management are proof that people in those days were quite as open to criticism and quite as liable to yield to tempta- tion as are their descendants in what we are too apt to term " these degenerate days." The boys and girls of the Jansen household were growing with their city and their State. Following 144 LIBERTY. the traditions of the family the young birds left the home nest as soon as they were able to shift for themselves. When the young Teunis of Revo- lutionary times grew to be old Teunis — a grizzled and hard-working citizen of sixty — he and his faithful Tryntie lived almost alone in their little house on Anthony Street near the Collect Pond (where much to the scandal and surprise of the more superstitious folk John Fitch had launched the first steamboat in 1796). Their children and grandchildren could be found near by in the city itself or far away by the locks of the Mohawk, on the rapidly-growing city of Hudson, while one, trav- elling off to join his grandfather's relatives in the interior, had even risen to the dignity of a peda- gogue and was teaching a country school in the backwoods beyond Otsego. Workers all, in their humble way, they sought to do their duty as honest men, helpful women and good citizens. And labor which is always honor- able is always helpful. It is the quiet endeavors of its unheralded citizens quite as much as the world- known labors of its leaders that advance a State from the days of weak beginnings to those of strong and influential accomplishments. CHAPTER VII. EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. T seems strangely out of place that in what is really a peace-loving world the story of its peoples should be punctuated by their quarrels. The wars of the world mark the (' epochs in its history whereas they should in reality be consigned to a secondary place. One will scarcely deny that these wars have not in a general way been a contribu- tion toward progress, but the real life of the people themselves, irrespective of generals and armies, of diplomats and treaties, has after all given the true impetus to the advance of the nations. So when, according to all our histories, we should imagine the thirteen States of the American Union and the State of New York in particular as all absorbed in thoughts of war, during the period that culminated in the year 1812 in the second conflict 145 146 EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. with England, I am quite certain that the people of the State, such at least as were of the class of which Teunis Jansen and his family were types, had more real concern for their daily duties — their business gains and losses, their home happenings, joys and sorrows, and the personal affairs of their next door neighbors — than for the question as to the legality of the embargo act, the repeal of the Berlin decree, the British " orders in council," or the impressment of American seamen. And yet these questions brought on a war that was alike irritating and disastrous, and that fell with especial severity upon the people of the State of New York. That Commonwealth was the rally- ing ground of armies, and the pivotal point around which American interests centred. In these calmer days of arbitration and mutual concession such a war as that of 1812 would be impossible. If England was aggressive so was America hot-headed. The old scars of 1783 were still unhealed and the leaders of a vindictive war party forced the nation into a- conflict for which there was really no excuse. But when war actually did come it found the people loyal. Disapproval and censure gave place to a united stand against a foreign foe and the people of New York unanimously agreed in a great mass-meeting in the park of their EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. 147 chief city to " lay aside all animosity and private bickering, and aid the authorities in constructing fortifications." The Jansens, father and sons, put away their tools and hastened to offer their sturdy muscle for work upon the city's fortifications. One of the boys was among the twenty-five hundred men who sailed out of New York harbor on privateering cruises against the commerce of England, and both the eldest and the youngest sons — Teunis and Jacob Jansen — were in the ranks of the militia- men who organized for land defence. All this energy was sorely needed. New York State was but illy prepared to withstand a foreign invasion. Her harbors were almost defenceless, her northern frontier line was but a long stretch of exposed country, and from Canada or from the sea she was equally open to the enemy. But the story of 18 12 proves, if such proof were needed, that after all courageous and purpose- filled men are the surest defence for a State. Ogdensburg and Sackett's Harbor, Chippewa and Lundy's Lane proved that the valor of New York still maintained its old renown, while Decatur and Hull, Perry and Jones upheld the honor of their native land and made its navy invincible alike on the great lakes that washed the northern boundary of the Empire State and upon the greater ocean 148 EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. through whose narrow gateway the city on its southern shore was reached. On the eleventh of February, 1814, the ship Favorite brought into New York harbor the news of the treaty of Ghent. Peace was proclaimed, just at the moment when peace was sorely needed, and the trade and commerce of the imperilled State, well-nigh ruined by two years of war, revived with new energy and vigor. The origin and growth of political parties is at once due to and indicative of the progress of the people. Wherever men congregate in masses vary- ing opinions or desires will control and divide them. In the old days of force and autocracy there were but two divisions — the tyrants and the tyrannized ; but as men tended toward self-government desires were coined into protests and demands were made the bases of party or national differences. In no State in the American Union has this intelligent organization of political antagonisms been more a factor in the development of the Com- monwealth than in the State of New York. Her people — of varying nationalities, creeds and social standing — have ever exhibited an eagerness and an aptitude for self-government and therefore for the methods of such government. Never brutal, though sometimes rancorous, party spirit has ever run high and strong and the vigor of every political EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. 151 campaign has been typical of the energetic life of the people. At first, when the apathy of simple mercantile colonists was giving place to the practical selfish- ness of a developing community, political parties were, essentially, but personal followings — append- ages to those few leading families of the infant State who through the semi-feudalism of colonial times had arrosfated to themselves alike the offices and the prestige of the province. The Jansens and the Yerrentons, the Ver Valens and the Van Blarcoms, the Des Marets and the Snedens were but the personal followers of De Lancey or Living- ston, of Van Cortland or Schuyler, of Clinton or the later Livingstons, according as association, location, or policy dictated and it was not, indeed, until a growing democratic spirit emancipated men from this species of unconscious vassalage and the increase of immigration brought into the State voters who neither knew nor regarded these family feuds, that the peoples' politics found room for footing or growth.* For forty years, at least — from the days of Alexander Hamilton and George Clinton, lead- ers of the opposing factions — Federalists and * " In the earlier days of the colony," says Mr. De Peyster, " the struggle was one of antagonistic races; later it became a contest for political power between leading, rival families, and later still it was a war of principles ; these were followed by the organized struggles of the more modem political parties, each seeking the mastery," 152 EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. Anti-Federalists (Democrats and Republicans*) had been the opposing political parties in New York as well as in the other States in the new nation. Fed- eral or State sovereignty — which should it be ? this was long the main question in difference, and as time and the growing interests of the nation changed or modified the bearing of this question, creating new phases and more minute divisions, the people who were at first simply adherents and voters became gradually promoters and partisans of new measures. The two original factions split into other and growing parties. New influences were at work and after the war of 1812 the rapid growth and development of the State brought forward many important questions as factors and creators of new political parties. Burrites and Livingston-men, Clintonians and Bucktails and other less prominent but equally assertive factions split, severed and changed entirely the complexion of the original parties, while that " personalism in politics " which to-day we so deplore and criticise at each recurring campaign was fully as rampant and even more vin- dictive. The public prints were full of these per- sonal attacks. One leader was declared by an opponent to be "the veriest hypocrite and the most *And yet, so curious are the whirligigs of politics, the Democrats of those days were the Republicans, the Republicans were the Democrats. " The Democratic Party in its earlier days," says Mr. De Peyster, "was designated by the title of the Republican party. The Tammany Society officially recognized the title of Republican as the name of its party." EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. 153 malignant villain in the State," while even so high- minded and courteous a citizen as De Witt Clinton — Senator, Mayor and Governor — did not hesitate to designate certain of his opponents as "composed of the combined spawn of Federalism and Jacobin- ism, and generated in the venomous passions of disappointment and revenge — neither fish nor flesh, bird nor beast, but made up of all monstrous, all prodigious things." In all these clashings of personal and party dif- ferences the people themselves — alike the tools and the terror of their leaders — became harder to control and more impatient of dictation and manipulation. Emancipated by the teachings of the Revolution and the growing independence of the day, from the spirit of semi-vassalage to the great families — the inheritance of centuries of feudalism — the people awoke gradually to their individual import- ance and to the power that lay in their votes. And yet they dallied with this new prerogative, sway- ing from indifference to indignation in fitful and spasmodic ways. A free people is a fickle one save when great issues unite or antagonize them. The Jansens, father and son, from the days of the first Teunis and old Anthony Yerrenton had, even when most asserting their democratic opinions, been but personal followers of the more prominent 154 EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. advocates for independence among the ranks of the " aristocrats." As these had been, as far back as Stuyvesant's day, those " two malignant fellows," Peter Kuyter and Cornelis Melyns, so through succeeding years and crises had succeeding Jansens followed the fortunes and advocated the principles of Steen- wyck and of Leisler, of De Peyster and Van Dam, of Cruger and De Lancey, presumably " leaders of the people." Through the dark days of the Revo- lution they had clung to Livingston and Schuyler, to Sears and Clinton, to Herkimer and Morris and during the formative years of the young nation they had been loyal in turn to Hamilton and Jay, to Van Rensselaer and Lewis, or swayed, as public opinion turned and shifted from Adams to Jeffer- son, from Hamilton to Burr. Federalists at heart they were still ready to follow the majority when power shifted to the republican side and were equally moved to loud hurrahs by the appeals of De Witt Clinton and the fiery leadership of Burr. And, in all this, the unknown and simple folk of the house of Jansen were but types of the thousands like them — men and women who reasoned a trifle, but, too often, blindly put their faith in some hero of the hour, swerving suddenly to the opposite quarter as the wind of public favor turned the weathercock of leadership. For ever and always — EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. 1 55 save in cases of extreme public danger — the home- keepers and home-lovers regard their persona] be- longings, aspirations, happenings and desires as of more importance than the actions of governments, the designs of statecraft, or the loud heralded "principles" of politicians. Even the statesman is an outgrowth of the poli- tician. Censure and criticism have always a grain of truth at base, and opposition has in it a mingling of policy and patriotism, craft and honor. It is only when self-interest dominates all the better qualities that alike the statesmen and the public official become the politician — a much abused word that should imply patriotism but far too often means only personalism. It was Aaron Burr, a disappointed politician of New York who, the loser by one vote of the high office of President of the United States, lost also, by an equally narrow chance, the Governor's chair and then, angered by his reverses, murdered his chief opponent, and concocted and sought to carry out in a spirit of blind revenge, a scheme of revolution and of treason. It was Alexander Hamilton, of New York, almost a statesman, who called the Constitution of the United States an "experiment" and spoke of the people as " their own worst enemies," who arrogated to himself the chief " pat- ronage " of his successful party, and vilified his 156 EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. rivals in language that was not less bitter because it was courteous. It was De Witt Clinton who, with even more claims to the title of statesman than had Hamilton, could yet be vindictive toward his opponents and arrogant toward his supporters, and could try all the arts of the politician and the ques- tionable methods of the party manager in order to secure his own ends or to thwart those of his political rivals. There is after all little difference between the political methods of 1808 and those of 1888 in this same State of New York, and what difference there may be is really to the credit of these later and better days. Party differences so fierce and factious to-day were even more bitter then. Invective, insult and personal abuse were bandied about from one politi- cal opponent to another and the friends of one day were the bitter enemies of the next. " I do declare," one of the actors in these early political strifes exclaimed years afterward, " it was a pleasure to live in those good old days when a Federalist could knock a Republican down in the street and not be questioned about it." The explanation of the existence of such an era of bad feeling is not difficult to find. Communities were smaller, and personal preferences were more pronounced. The people's prerogative which so many of us nowadays hold far too lightly though EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. 1 57 then often slighted was yet more highly prized than it is to-day. Party divisions often separated father and son with almost hostile lines, and again and again did it happen that " a man's foes were of his own household." There was therefore terror and dismay in the house of Jansen when, one brisk November day in the year 18 18, young Teunis Jansen, seventh of the name, deliberately walked into his father's house on Vestry Street and, with a bucktail in his hat, coolly fronted that irate old gentleman. Teunis the elder caught instant sight of the obnoxious decoration and started up angrily. " So, so, boy ! " he cried, " what does this mean .? Have you, too, gone Tammany mad } " " Not Tammany mad, father, but Tammany sane, since none but Tammany folk be sane now, I think," replied the younger man. " I tell you, dad, we're bound to beat your Caesar of a Clinton this time. I've been huzzaing for little Van till I'm hoarse." " And what are you, then ? A Bucktail .? " snapped out old Teunis fiercely ; " and do you dare huzza against Governor Clinton, and call him Caesar, boy } What d'ye mean ; what are you thinking of ? When did you join this spawn of treason that you call Tammany .? " " 'Tis no spawn of treason, sir," replied young 158 EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. Teunis, quite as hotly. " 'Tis the party of freedom and progress." " The party of fudge and fiddlestick, booby," retorted his father. " You're like all the rest of these young blades — think you know more than your elders, eh ? Tammany, houf ! " and the old man blew a great puff of smoke straight at his son — "that for Tammany, sir! And who was Tam- many, I'll ask ye 1 a greasy old runagate of an Injun and no more to be trusted than are the hot- heads like you who get up a club and think to turn the world upside down. Tammany, phew ! See here, boy, do you dare set yourself in rebellion against Governor Clinton — and your father } " " So long as you are fogies and tyrants, yes," replied Teunis the younger. " Tammany was no greasy old runagate. His attachment to liberty, sir, was greater than his love of life — and those are better principles than ever De Witt Clinton advanced." " Or your father either, I suppose you would say, boy, eh ? " broke out old Teunis. " Take that thing out of your hat — at once, sir — and huzza for Governor Clinton, or I'll thrash you roundly, Bucktail or no Bucktail," and the irate old gentle- man made a dash for the brush in his son's hat- " I am a freeman and free man, father," said the young fellow, stepping back and putting a hand < P o H O o z X H < X U < EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. l6l before the offending brush of a buck's tail which the Tammany men (a " bolt " in the Republican party) wore in their hats as the badge of their fac- tion. " If I am an offense in your house, sir," he added in a very lofty manner, " I will take myself off where I am none such and where I can find friends who will not call my honest opinions fudge and fiddlestick." " Well, go, then, and a good riddance to you," shouted the angry father ; " am I to be browbeaten in my own house and by my own flesh and blood, too } Get along to your Tammany pest-house, sir. You're no son of mine if you are of that set. Get along to your Bucktails, I say. We'll pull 'em down fast enough, I can tell you, when once we get the hounds after 'em next election day." And so father and son parted in anger, and all because of some obscure political difference that to us, at this distance, seems slight and absurd enough. Of course this quarrel was speedily made up, for the wife and mother is ever a spirit of peace in a home, and father and son shook hands again ; but even to such extents did party rancor go and the splits, such as this, in the same party were even more fierce and bitter than were the hatreds of rival parties. But it is from just such minor divisions as these that new principles proceed, develop and grow into 1 62 EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. new and progressive parties. Of these very Buck- tails — Martling men — Tammany men, as they were variously called — grew the later Republican party, which, bitterly opposed to Governor De Witt Clinton's "personal power" in the State, daily grew in strength and importance, contributed largely to the election of Monroe as President in 1820, very nearly defeated Governor Clinton's re-election, that same year, and sent his chief opponent, the shrewd and politic Martin Van Buren, to a seat in the Senate of the United States. The twenty-five years that had elapsed since the united party of " Washington and Freedom " claimed alike the loyalty and suffrages of all free- holders, had seen a divergent political growth in the State of New York. The " party of freedom " has disintegrated and divided into factions and fol- lowings more or less hostile as the personal desires of leaders or the preferences of voters determined. " The great political parties in the State of New York," says Mr. De Peyster, " arose from the con- flicting sentiments concerning the extent of power which was necessary to enable the Congress of the United States to discharge the duties to which it was appointed ; but they did not assume distinct organization until the proposed Constitution of the United States was presented to the State for its approval and ratification." EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. 1 63 Originally a strong anti-federalist State and wedded to the picturesque doctrine of independent sovereignty* the growing Commonwealth of New York had as time and circumstances modified its beliefs grown into an active loyalty to the Consti- tution of the United States and its decreasing feder- alist or increasing anti-federalist majorities proved its gradual acceptance of allegiance to a central authority. The growing animosities between Alexander Hamilton and Governor George Clinton — the acknowledged leaders of the opposing parties — naturally developed, after the closely-disputed adop- tion of the National Constitution in 1788, a per- sonal following for each chieftain, and it is even claimed that President Washington, desirous though he was of harmonizing both factions, yet showed a marked preference in his disposal of national patronage in New York State to the friends of Hamilton. Be that as it may, it is certain that year by year the breach widened and party lines grew ever *"The three great States of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts,'' says Horatio Seymour, '* insisted upon representation in the National Senate and House of Representa- tives in proportion to population. New York, alone of the large States, declared that she did not ask nor would she take a representation in either braDch of the National Legislature beyond what was allowed to the feeblest member in the confederacy. *' To my mind," this loyal son of his native Slate declares, *' this forms the noblest passage in the history of our State. Her future greatness was then apparent, yet she had the magnanimity to rise above the temptations of power and the superior wisdom to see the necessity of forming a govern- ment of limited jurisdiction and of upholding local sovereignties." 1 64 EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. sharper while, even as now, the county of New York, strongly federalist, carried the slim majorities of the State in the earlier elections. As young Teunis Jansen was captured in 1820 by the brilliancy of Martin Van Buren, so, twenty years before, had his father been led away by the audacity and dash of Aaron Burr. Probably no character in American history ever occupied so unique and picturesque a position as did Aaron Burr. A daring young soldier during the Revolution, though always distrusted by Wash- ington, this successful Albany lawyer gained posi- tion and prominence so rapidly after his entrance into public life as to distance all competitors and to become before he had fully reached his prime a popular and almost successful candidate even for the presidency itself. Shrewd, politic, audacious, unscrupulous, reckless and designing, he possessed a winning presence and a personal magnetism that blinded men to his real character and attached them to his following with as much enthusiasm as ever bound together the forest band of a Robin Hood or the henchmen of some mediaeval chief- tain. Never forgetting his own personal interest and advantage he could yet seem to sink self in behalf of the people so adroitly that for years he was at once the hero and the idol of a large portion of the free voters of New York, and only lost his EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. 1 65 hold upon them when his unbridled ambition and reckless habits led him into personal intrigue and assassination, and a bold attempt at treason drove him from his home into the gloom and ignominy of flight and exile. It was possibly this severe lesson in unwise attachment to an unworthy leader that made the Teunis Jansen of 1800 the bitter and unsparing conservative of 1820 and prompted him to such severe measures with his own son when that eager 3'oung voter sought to make a hero and a chief- tain of another rising and brilliant political leader. Martin Van Buren, however, was free from the defects of character that proved the ruin of Burr. He was, however, a born politician and he knew so wisely how to act and manage that he held and strengthened the following his talents drew around him, and was thus enabled to reach both the goals which Burr so nearly attained and so absolutely lost — the governorship of New York and the presi- dency of the United States. De Witt Clinton, nephew of Governor George Clinton, New York's first executive, was destined to make for himself a greater name and a deeper impress upon the history of -New York State than did his illustrious uncle. " He entered upon life,"* says Mr. Tuckerman, '' when the contest between *De Witt Clinton was born March 2, 1769, and died P'ebruary ji. 182S. 1 66 EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. the two original parties under the Federal govern- ment was at its height, and closed his existence at the epoch of their virtual dissolution." Always interested in the development of his native State and prominent alike in politics and in philanthropy, his course brought him foes as bitter as his friends were loyal, while the plans which he advocated with an enthusiasm that was almost dictatorial and a tenacity of purpose that sometimes appeared au- tocratic, though they conquered at last, did so only in the face of opposition and prejudice. But still, through all the strifes and changes of politics and all the vicissitudes of war were the people , of the State of New York strengthening their position as the foremost commercial Common- wealth in the new union of States. The very stringency of markets and dearth of necessities which the war of 1812 with its attendant measures of embargo and blockade entailed developed a greater self-reliance among the people who were the acutest sufferers in a conflict to which they were unalterably opposed and yet in which they loyally bore their part. The establishment of manufactories for the home production of such stuffs as they had hitherto been accustomed to import led to a growing condition of demand and supply, and laid the basis of those manufacturing interests that were, before many EARLY POLITICAL STRUGGLES. 1 67 years, to constitute the main strength and increase of the beleagured State. The founders of the modest woollen mill of Oriskany and of the crude little cotton manufactory at Whitesborough, both of which were established because of the desperate needs of the people in those days of suffering and privation, builded wiser than they knew. For in so doing they all unconsciously laid the foundation of that spirit of enterprise and endeavor which led to other and greater establishments and resulted in the present manufacturing wealth of the great State of New York. War, after all, is a mixed evil. If it does weaken and exhaust, it also, as surely, develops personal dependence and self-help. If it does engender hatred and slaughter, it also creates a spirit of comradeship that, by its very welding of individual interests, strengthens and cements the bond of mutual assistance and so gradually leads to that better and wiser day when arbitration shall take the place of warfare and the pen prove, as indeed it is, mightier than the sword. CHAPTER VIII. IN THE TWENTIE S. I ELL, my jolly young Buck- tail, and what do you think of your party now ? " was the question that greeted Teunis Jansen the younger as one April morning in the year 1824 he sat in his little shop in Pine Street and with a clouded brow pored over his copy of the " Evening Post " of the day before. The reader looked from his paper and met the inquiring eye of his bluff old father. " Dad," he said, while an indignant flush red- dened on his face, " it's an outrage ! I'm your man and Governor Clinton's from this day on. It's the most scandalous piece of trickery I ever 1 68 IN THE TWENTIES. 1 69 heard of. And so they'll find out too before they're a month older." This " scandalous piece of trickery " was indeed one of which no political party, however deeply it was plunged in a devotion to self and spoils, could ever feel proud. It may seem a slight matter to us of to-day, schooled to the ways and wiles of modern politicians, but it was far from being a slight matter then and it resulted in one of those rare occurrences which history calls an " uprising of the people." The New York legislature in the very moment of the dissolution of its session of 1824 had un- wittingly but almost unanimously passed a meas- ure, sprung upon it, in the hurry of adjournment, by shrewd party managers in a spirit of senseless and vindictive party rancor. This was the removal of De Witt Clinton from the office of canal com- missioner. And thereby hangs a tale. With the close of the war of 18 12 the vast resources and latent possibilities of the State of New York brought within its borders a ceaseless stream of emigration. A round million of people found homes within its borders and the Common- wealth sprang to the rank of first in the roll of States in point of population. But the Empire State — with an area as large as that of England — was practically isolated from lyo IN THE TWENTIES. itself. With no system of commercial intercom- munication beyond the great white-capped truck wagons, and the cramped and limited stage coach, trade suffered, and any thing like substantial growth was retarded. Poughkeepsie and Utica, Albany and Buffalo were many days apart, and a journey to the interior from the city of New York was as serious a matter as a modern trip to Europe. The exigencies of the war just closed — during which the frontier line of the State was the scene of bitterly disputed contests — opened the eyes of statesmen, soldiers and students to the need of a better system of communication between the sea- board metropolis and the villages and settlements of the interior and the border. " Oh, for a canal ! " had been the cry again and again during those weary war-days as now supplies or now news of victory or disaster travelled slowly and spasmodi- cally from town to town. But, when a need exists far-seeing men are ready to appreciate and act. Already New York stood acknowledged by the world as the originator and developer of steam navigation. The Jansen boys (for such is the fickleness of human nature) as they had been misbelieving scoffers before his hour of success, had been also among the most enthusi- astic cheerers upon the sloping Manhattan shores when in 1807 Robert Fulton's new-fangled craft the IN THE TWENTIES. 171 Clermont rounded the Battery and steamed slowly up into the shadow of the Palisades on its way toward Albany. That crude little tug — whose smoke and snorting had so startled one honest countryman that he declared to his wife he had seen " the devil on his way to Albany in a saw- mill " — rapidly developed into something more practical and palatial. In 18 19 the Savannah, built in New York, made the first Transatlantic voyage from Savannah to St. Petersburg by way of Liverpool, and in 1825 James Allaire's steamer, the Sun, made the trip from New York to Albany in twelve hours and eighteen minutes.* All these advances, however, though they anni- hilated space where broad water-ways were available were of little benefit in opening up such sections as interior New York. Again and again had the construction of a State canal been advocated and attempted. Christopher CoUes and General Philip Schuyler, Gouverneur Morris and James Geddes, Chancellor Livingston and Robert Fulton had urged its importance and worked in its behalf, but no one had succeeded in accomplishing any thing toward the desired end until De Witt Clinton had thrown into the work all the force of his great and untiring energy, and in spite of disappointment * The Walk in the Water, the first Lake steamboat, was launched at Black Rock, near Buffalo, in May, 1818, and made her trial trip across Lake Erie to Detroit in August of that year. The Ontario, built in 1816, made her first trip over the lake Ontario in April, 1817. 172 IN THE TWENTIES. and rebuff, of opposition and defeat had finally succeeded in beginning in 1817 what his opponents styled in derision " Clinton's big ditch," but what became, after its completion in 1825, the greatest American channel for trade and emigration — the Erie Canal. To succeed in the face of bitter and persistent opposition is the surest way to popularity. De Witt Clinton's unswerving belief in the great pro- ject he so vigorously advocated won the people to his side and the last device of his enemies by which, in the legislature of 1824 and on the very eve of the completion of his scheme, they deprived him of his official position as canal commissioner aroused the people as they had not been stirred for years. There was a rare tumble in politics. Such humble citizens and voters as Teunis Jansen the younger who for years had been fighting the party of Clinton at the polls now revolted in his favor. The act of proscription was openly and angrily denounced and as a result of this popular uprising Clinton was for the third time elected governor of his State by what was for those days an enormous majority and almost every man who had directly or indirectly aided in his overthrow was swept out of office by the votes of an indignant people. The great Erie Canal with nearly one thousand miles of lateral length and navigable feeders has IN THE TWENTIES. 1 75 long since been superseded in importance as a means of rapid internal communication by the still more remarkable triumphs of the steam engine and the railroad. But seventy years ago it was a vital question in New York life and politics and to its successful completion is due the rapid and phe- nomenal growth of Central New York, while many a thriving town and city of to-day owes alike its settlement, its incorporation, its life and growth to the impetus given to trade and commerce, to im- migration and settlement, by " Clinton's big ditch." Great projects are the death knells of great evils. It is a singular and significant fact that as each year brought still nearer to completion so great a work of public benefit and practical progress as the Erie Canal, each year, as surely, brought nearer to its death the curse of human slaverv that for full two hundred years had rested upon the fair name of New York. Originally introduced for selfish ends by the soulless monopolists of the Dutch West India Company in the earliest days of New Amsterdam, slavery as an institution had lost its hold as free- dom gained a footing. A community of workers has neither need nor liking for enslaved labor. Even before the beginning of the nineteenth cen- tury slavery in the State of New York was merely nominal and the census of 1810 showed less than 176 /iV THE TWENTIES. twenty thousand slaves to a million of inhabitants. When faced with the principle of free labor its very existence, meagre as this was, seemed an anomaly and an excrescence. Its continuance in the State was never a political issue. Its abolition was desired by both parties. Alexander Hamilton, the federalist, was outspoken in its condemnation ; Edward Livingston, the anti- federalist, was equally its foe. It was Governor John Jay, the democrat, who in the last years of the eighteenth century was president of " The Society for the Manumission of Slaves," and who proposed the bill of abolition by which the State declared that every child born within the limits of the State after the fourth day of July, 1 799, should be forever free ; it was Governor Daniel D. Tomp- kins, the republican, who gave the " institution " its death blow by the recommendation in his annual message of 181 7 (the very year in which the first spadeful of dirt was turned on the Erie Canal) the entire abolition of slavery in the State of New York on and after the fourth day of July, 1827. All this is but indicative of the popular desire and the popular will. A people really free and pro- gressive can never abide the existence of property in men. It is also a significant fact that as slavery decreased the desire for popular education grew IN THE TWENTIES. 1 77 strong. The thrifty ways of the old Dutchmen of New Amsterdam although they inclined toward the education of the young never permitted much advance or gave to the children of " the people " anything more than the very baldest rudiments. The little school of the Dutch " domine," Van Olfendam, who in 1650 taught the children of " the gentry " for a fee of " two beavers " per annum, did give place to the so-called " public school " of a few years later, and led to a certain attempt at education in the sparse river-settlements of those early Knickerbockers. But with English rule even this crude attempt at education languished and died out. It was only when freedom gained the day that popular education came at last. Grad- ually the horn book gave place to the primer, the primer to the text-book, and the exclusive and pedantic " Latin School " of Stuyvesant's day de- veloped, thus, after many years, into the common school which found in every town and village its cheerless but well-supported schoolhouse. Rough and uninviting as were these early " temples of learning" they served a noble purpose, for within their walls many an embryotic citizen learned the rudiments of that practical education that was to help him in time toward manlier duties and aspirations. The conservative old Teunis Jansen of 1820, 178 IN THE TWENTIES. to be sure, pooh-poohed at what he termed the extravagance that insisted on giving to the young- sters of that day a better " school-larnin' " than their fathers and mothers had obtained, but none the less proud did he feel when his children and grandchildren showed proofs of intellectual advance- ment. Still the desire for learning grew, and the five thousand schools of 18 18 showed how far- seeing had been the wisdom of such public-spirited citizens as De Witt Clinton, who in 1805 became the first president of " the Society for Establishing a Free School in the City of New York," and how far-reaching had been the efforts of such men as Governor Morgan Lewis, who, in the same year of 1805, secured the passage of an act by which the proceeds of the sale of five hundred thousand acres of the public lands should be devoted to the ex- tension and improvement of the common-school system in the State. It was to be the fault of the young Jansens of succeeding generations if they fell short in the matter of education for, surely, the State was nobly helping them to greater possibilities. There was another happening within that first quarter of the nineteenth century which, although the younger Jansens knew it not and the older ones scarce regarded it, still indicated the State's advance in material and intellectual force. For IN THE TWENTIES. 1 79 forty-four years the Constitution adopted by the highest wisdom of the State had served the pur- pose of the growing Commonwealth, but as intel- Hgence broadened and population increased certain changes in the bond that held the people of the State in union seemed vital and necessary. A constitution is a compact between individuals for the purpose of securing unity and is based upon certain laws of action and procedure. These laws, as people progress, need certain modifications and amendments and as their young State grew toward manhood the people of New York appre- ciated alike the flaws and the weaknesses that the test of time disclosed in their civil compact. The first convention of 1777, as will be remem- bered, accomplished its work in the midst of trouble and turmoil ; the boom of the enemy's guns was scarcely beyond ear-shot while the possibility of failure and the punishment of treason loomed ever before the eyes of its patriotic members. They did their work wisely and well, but even their large foresight could not apprehend the growth and development of their State during half a century of freedom. The convention of 182 1 revised and altered many important features of that first con- stitution which experience had proved faulty or insufficient. It extended the right of suffrage, re- formed the judiciary system, abolished the council l8o IN THE TWENTIES. of appointment which had proved itself a harm- ful and fatal political power, increased the powers of the governor and advocated the extension of popular education. The new constitution, which was formally ratified by the people in February, 1822, was a marked advance upon the original document, and for twenty-five years served the purposes of the citizens of the growing State until another revision in 1846 showed a still further advance in breadth and statesmanship. The literary growth of a people occupied in developing the resources and strengthening the framework of a rising State is necessarily slow and is the last phase of national or local life in which the people themselves actually display an interest. After the Revolution men began to inter- est themselves more and more in the circumscribed little newspapers of the day which slowly but surely grew in size and influence as the people gradually became readers. The younger Jansens found but little beyond their own school text-books to afford them reading material, for, even as litera- ture advances, the requirements and the enter- tainment of the children are the last to secure attention. But, even in the homes of the people, two young authors of the early days of the century found readers and admirers. The stories of James Fenimore Cooper and the graceful humor of IN THE TWENTIES. l8l Irving penetrated even beyond the circle of " the aristocracy " which for far too long a time had monopolized not only the refinements but the enjoyments of culture ; and, though the readers bore but a small proportion to those who did not read ; the effect of the literary advance was each year a more potent and apparent factor in the real progress of the State. Old Teunis Jansen the elder as he listened to the story of that marvellous character in fiction " The Spy " grew interested and excited over the memories of the Revolutionary times that it in- spired, but he grew hot and wroth when his grandson read to him the sharp and racy satires of Knickerbocker's so-called " History of New York." " Who is this Diedrich Knickerbocker } " he de- manded.* " 'Tis all lies, boy, lies that he is telling. Would that my grandfather, old Teunis, were alive. I'll wager you he would hunt up this scribbler and serve him out roundly for his scurvy tales. The Heer Stuyvesant a blockhead and our old Dutch forebears knaves and cowards ! Ach ! I'll hear no more of it — but — yes — read on, lad — read on. **'The Dutch settlers,'' said Mr. Chauncey M. Depew, in his address at the Semi- centennial Anniversary of the St. Nicholas Society in 1885, "by the magic pen of the father of American literature, became the victims of a caricature which captivated the fancy of the world, and made the most potent factors in the founding and development of the freedom and prosperity of our country, the accepted subjects of good-natured ridicule and merriment." 1 82 IN THE TWENTIES. Let's hear what more lies this blackguard Knicker- bocker can tell ! " The old man " pshawed " contemptuously too at what he called the " po'try trash " of Drake's " Culprit Fay." " The idee of there bein' any such heathen truck as a fairy up among the Highlands," he said ; " why, I've hunted 'em over, man and boy, these fifty years, from Cro'nest and Anthony's Nose to the Botterberg and Sugar-loaf and never a spook or fairy did I come across." But, all the same, the charming rhythm of Drake's delightful poem did have its influence on the practical old grandsire, and trim young Sophie Jansen as she read the lines he saw fit to so pooh-pooh, laughed slyly as she noticed her grandfather keeping time to the rhythm of the " Culprit Fay " with finger, foot, or head. But the Jansen family though a type of the " people " of their day were to a certain degree above that type in their love of books and reading. The reading habit had not yet secured the hold upon the masses that later years brought it and though in some, even humble homes, the works of Cooper and Irving, of Drake and Halleck, of Bryant and Verplanck, of Brown and Sands and Hoffman and other now unknown and forgotten writers were alike familiar and popular the " literary following " was in a measure limited. The bookstore was, IN THE TWENTIES. 1 85 however, gradually becoming a feature in social growth, and in many a small town and thriving vil- lage the bookseller, with the doctor, the "domine," the judge and the schoolmaster, was one of the recognized " authorities." Books were then too few to be ranked as other than high and honorable merchandise. They were luxuries, accessible only to the more fortunate, and while there was too apparent a lack of the desire for culture among the people in general, there was also, perhaps, too much of a certain churlishness of possession among the booksellers themselves, reminding one of Charles Lamb's " stall-man " who cries out to a penniless reader in his book-shop : — " You sir, you never buy a book, Therefore in one you shall not look." But each little village had its coterie of culture and in all such circles the local bookseller was both mentor and oracle. In considering the growth of intelligence in our land we are far too apt to forget the bookseller of sixty years ago as one of its leading and most honored factors. The glimpse which N. P. Willis gives us of a winter at Fleming Farm among '' the imprisoned inhabitants of Skaneateles*" in the Lake region of the State, hints at this growing culture in even remote and isolated sections. He tells of the old library of the Flemings — "a long room in the 1 86 IN THE TWENTIES. southern wing of the house, a heavily curtained, dim old place, with deep-embayed windows, and so many nooks and so much furniture that there was that hushed air, that absence of echo within it, which is the great charm of a haunt for study or thought." The Flemings, he says, " amused them- selves during the deep snows of winter with a man- uscript ' Gazette ' which was contributed to by every body in the house, and read aloud at the breakfast- table on the day of its weekly appearance." Such intellectual pleasures, he affirms, were not alto- gether appreciated by the " indigenous beaux of Skaneateles," but it was in just such homes that the intellectual growth of the State was developed and fostered. From just such a home, in Plattsburg on Lake Champlain, came that most precocious of American girls — Lucretia Davidson. "Their home pleasures and excitements," says her biogra- pher, " were all intellectual, and her father's well- selected library was, at all times, the dearest solace of his daughter." Another element in this intellectual growth was one which appealed still more directly to the people and affected an even larger number than did the reading habit. This was the Sunday school. The Jansens and their class were faith- ful church-goers. Old Teunis Jansen, like his forefathers had ever been a constant attendant at IN THE TWENTIES. 1 87 his church. To have missed a Sabbath service would have been almost a felony, and his children and grandchildren followed in his footsteps — fol- lowed by force of habit and home-training perhaps more than because of any individual thinking or desire, but followed unquestioningly and dutifully. With thousands of men and women, the church was the centre of social life, and when in 18 12 the first Sunday school in New York was opened by Mrs. Bethune and, later, in Greenwich village, other similar schools speedily followed, the older people questioned the wisdom of such an experiment but its success was soon beyond dispute. De Witt Clinton, foremost in helpful public measures, gave his support to the new plan of spiritual education and the Sunday school soon became an established church auxiliary, gradually adopted by every de- nomination and obtaining each year a stronger and securer footing throughout the growing State. Side by side, the common schools and the Sunday school were doing a great and noble work in the formation and development of the minds and char- acter of the children of the State. So the first quarter of the nineteenth century drew toward its close. And in the very year that opened the second quarter, in October, 1825, the people of the entire State of New York knew with pride and pleasure that their greatest work had been 1 88 IN THE TWENTIES. accomplished, that the longest canal in the world had been constructed within their domain and they prepared to celebrate its opening in enthusiastic holiday fashion. On the morning of October 26, just eight years and three months from the date of commencement, the " palatial " canal boat Seneca Chief with a special passenger-list of notables started from Buffalo on its way to New York and the open sea ; all along the route were welcome, rejoicing and festivity. "Who comes there?" was the, hail from the deck of a little boat at the stone aqueduct of Rochester. " Your brothers from the West on the waters of the Great Lakes," was the reply. " By what means have they been diverted so far from their natural course } " came the question from the little boat. " Through the channel of the Great Erie Canal," was the ready answer. " By whose authority, and by whom, was a work of such magnitude accomplished } " demanded the challenger, and from the pioneer canal boat came the proud reply, " By the authority and by the enterprise of the people of the State of New York." Cannons boomed and music sounded a welcome, fireworks and illuminations lighted up the nights, IN THE TWENTIES. 1 89 and all along the line eager spectators thronged the banks of the canal to view the pageant and greet the Seneca Chief. At Utica the Jansens who were in the family line of that adventurous young Isaac who, sixty years before, had been one of the pioneers of the Mohawk valley in Sir William Johnson's day, cheered lustily at the boat that was to float down toward their kinsmen by the sea. Albany was one blaze of welcome, and on the fourth of November, nine days after its depart- ure from Buffalo, the Seneca Chief, with a great naval escort, amid the thunder of cannon, the ring- ing of bells, and the sounds of stirring music, floated on past the greatest city of the State. " Where from and whither bound 1 " came the hail of New York City from the deck of the steamboat Washington. " From Lake Erie, bound for Sandy Hook," rang out the answer, and then where the waters of the broad bay mingle with those of the greater ocean the chief promoter of this vast enterprise, Governor De Witt Clinton, standing on the deck of the Seneca Chief poured into the Atlantic from a gilded keg the waters of Lake Erie. " May the God of the heavens and the earth," he said solemnly, " smile most propitiously on this work, accomplished by the wisdom, public spirit, and energy of the people of the State of New I go IN THE TWENTIES. York, and may He render it subservient to the best interests of the human race." It was a day of festivity and rejoicing. We, who, at this later day, witness each year the com- pletion of work that is at once more marvelous and more far-reaching than the completion of a great ditch on which to float boats of merchan- dise and produce may not esteem the work of our grandfathers of such moment as did they, but neither human ingenuity nor human energy can give to the world, in view of all the circumstances, of all the hinderances and of all the ends it served a grander work than was this now prosaic and almost forgotten Erie Canal. Such, even then, the people felt it to be and such we may be sure did all the Jansens regard it as, old and young, they cheered the pageant and were themselves a part of it, or watched with wonder and delight the mighty display of fireworks and illumi- nation that lit up the City Hall at New York and reflected the joyous glare upon the upturned faces of the throng that gathered about it. It was a fitting time for old Teunis Jansen to pass away. His eighty years of life represented the old regime that was likewise to pass away with him, giving place to an era of change and progress, far removed from the staid and soberer ways in which he had been reared. His generation had IN THE TWENTIES. I9I made a nation. His descendants were to mag- nify and develop it, and when he passed off the sphere of life and action even while the notes of re- joicing over a great work accomplished still echoed in the air there died with him the era of struggle, of labored methods and of slowly achieved results. With the opening of the second quarter of the nineteenth century the story of Modern New York was begun. CHAPTER IX. PROGRESS AND DISASTER. • HOSE distant cousins of the Teunis Jansen of 1825 who, near the Utica line, had cheered on the Seneca Chief as that pio- neer canal boat traversed the new water-way to the sea, had, by that time, grown to be reckoned as "old settlers" in the Mohawk region. They were indeed inclined to look with all the superiority of sons of the soil upon the new comers whom the completion of the canal attracted to their picturesque section. For, as has already been intimated, the facilities afforded by the completion of the Erie Canal led, almost immediately to a great " real estate boom " throughout Central New York. That fertile and attractive section over which, for years, the war- like Iroquois had roamed as lords and for the 192 PHOGRESS AND DISASTER. 1 93 mastery of which England and France had quar- reled and fought was no longer a dangerous and unproductive border-land. Each new year was making it the home of a thrifty and enterprising folk — emigrants from neighboring States or across the sea. There were certain subsidized highways or fair " State roads " through the northern, central and southern counties, while the ease of access and transportation which the new canal afforded, together with the excellence of the soil and its evident possibilities more than offset the uncertain title of the new lands and the risks attendant upon corporate or speculative proprietors. That these risks were by no means imaginary the later history of the State attests. The troubles that they occasioned form not only a unique but a dramatic episode in the story of New York. Probably in no other State in the Union did the unwritten law of feudal tenure have such a last- ing hold upon the people or lead to so much pro- test and disturbance. Thousands of acres within the limits of the State had, since the days of the patroons — the earliest of American monopolists — remained in the hands of the descendants of those land barons of the Colonial days who rarely sold and invariably leased to occupants and tenants. Sir William Johnson was said to have been, next to William Penn, the largest landholder in America, 194 PROGHESS AND DISASTER. while families like the Van Renssalaers (the "pa- troons" of Albany), certain foreign capitalists and the direct descendants of the colonial governors held tenaciously to the large tracts that had been acquired by inheritance or nominal purchase. The Holland Land Company — an association of Dutch speculators — had, since 1790, controlled millions of acres in Central New York and similar though smaller corporations had acquired title to vast tracts of land which they disposed of to settlers on lease- holds or on long credits. The thousands of emigrants who settled upon these attractive lands and proceeded to open and develop them thought only, at first, of the ease of their purchase, giving but little heed to the future and to the complications that their acquisitions would involve. But when, after years of occupa- tion, they became attached to their home-sites and considered the improvements that they had made and the advance in value which their labor had caused they grew restive under a continued obliga- tion to the monopolistic proprietors. These feudal lords, however, held alike tenants and debtors to their unwise agreements, and insisted on certain rights and obligations in rent or service that were galling to a people pledged to personal independ- ence. Awaking at last to their insecurity tenants and debtors alike protested against an invasion of FJiO GUESS AND DISASTER. 1 95 what they deemed they had made their own by the right of ceaseless thrift and industry. They combatted, defended and appealed, and, not un- frequently, added to legal protest open and aggres- sive resistance. But the first rush of new-comers that followed the opening of the Erie Canal thought little of these future complications, although many of the " old settlers " whom they found already in occupa- tion grumbled, complained, and made dark fore- casts of future antagonisms. They thronged the straggling settlements along the line of the canal, they started new communities on unoccupied lands, or, striking off from the pathway of canal and state road scattered their new home-centres over all the rolling farm lands and forest tracts that stretched from the banks of the Hudson to the shores of Erie and Ontario. Utica and Rome, Oswego and Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo grew at once from struggling communities into corporate villages and towns, while smaller places vied with each other for prominence or recognition as growing centers. Up and down the canals floated the comfortable and capacious canal-boats — the passenger packets, or " line-boats " — often gay in decoration and ap- pointments, drawn sometimes by four or five horses, tandem, and often making the astonishing speed of six miles an hour! "A trip by packet," says 196 PH OGRESS AND DISASTER. Mr. Roberts, "survives in the memory of many as a pleasurable gliding between banks of beauty, sometimes romantic, presenting constant changes of scene, with berths at night inclosed in curtains in the single cabin, and quite as comfortable as, if less swift, than a journey in the modern palace cars. * It was to try one of these very packet-trips by canal that our friends the Jansens of New York set out from their city home in 1827. Moved by an intelligent curiosity and the reports as to the marvelous growth of Central New York that had floated down the river to the metropolis, Teunis Jansen and his wife Vroutje (she was a Van Houten of Haverstraw and still held to the old Dutch names and many of the good Dutch ways of her ancestors) started one August morning upon a pleasure trip as far westward as Rochester where dwelt certain of the distant kinsmen of the Jansen blood. To indulge in such " idle vanities " as a vacation * This was the romance of canal-travel. But we have good evidence that the " slow- moving barge " had really little of romance about it. " I made my journey," writes Horace Greeley of one of these same canal trips to Western New York in 1827, " by way of the Erie Canal on those line boats whose ' cent and a half a mile, mile and a half an hour ' so many yet remember. Railroads, as yet, were not ; the days passed slowly yet smoothly on those gliding arks, bemg enhvened by various sedentary games ; but the nights were tedious beyond any sleeping-car experience. At daybreak you were routed out of your shabby, sbelf-Hke berth, and driven on deck to swallow fog while the cabin was cleared of its beds and made ready for breakfast. I say nothing as to the ' good old times ; * but if any one would recall the good old line boats I object. . I trust I have due respect for ' the good old ways ' we often hear of ; yet I feel that this earthly life has been practically lengthened and sweetened by the invention and construction of railroads." PROGRESS AND DISASTER. 1 97 was in those days an almost unheard-of luxury ; to take a vacation trip was the very height of extrava- gance. But Teunis was learning some new things as he watched the progress of events, and not the least practical of these was a sensible reading of the maxim respecting the effect of all work and no play. And so it happened that on an August morning in 1827 Teunis and his good wife stood on, the deck of one of the river steamers as it steamed slowly away from the dock near Whitehall and headed toward Albany. It was still the day of small things for the me- tropolis.* Its population was considerably less than two hundred thousand, and, although the entire island had been theoretically laid out (on paper) in streets and avenues as early as 181 1, the town itself, in 1827, barely extended above Canal Street. Villas and farmlands still sloped down to the river's edge, and the clustering roofs of the surburban villages of Greenwich and Chelsea (now known as the populous regions about Greenwich avenue and West Twenty-third Street and long since swal- lowed up by the growing city) could be seen across * " No single railway pointed toward her wharves. No line of ocean steamers brought passengers to her hotels, nor goods to her warehouses, from any foreign port. In the mer- cantile world her relative rank was higher, but her absolute importance was scarcely greater than is that of Rio Janeiro or San Francisco tn-day (1867). Still, to my eyes, her miles square of mainly brick or stone houses, and her furlongs of masts and yards, afforded ample incite- ment to a wonder and admiration akin to awe." — Horace Greeley'' s first visit to New York. (1831) 198 PROGRESS AND DISASTER. the intervening tree-tops.* Yonkers and Peekskill, Newburgh and Poughkeepsie were scarcely more than river-side villages, while Hudson, with its silent docks.t — indications of an earlier prosperity — seemed almost a city in comparison. Albany was reached at sunset. It was then a city of some twenty thousand inhabitants, clinging still to many of the old Dutch ways and customs that its solid citizens had observed ever since the earlier days of Beaverwyck and Fort Orange. From Albany the canal packet started, and soon the travellers were floating westward at the rapid rate of some five miles an hour, quiet but apprecia- tive witnesses of the industry, the growth and re- sources of their native State. Past town and village and little log settlement they floated — from Troy to Utica, from Rome to Syracuse, and so came at last to their kinsmen at Rochester, fully assured that. Governor De Witt Clinton was indeed a great man, and that the State of New York was a mightily enterprising commonwealth. *Both these suburban villages have occupied a unique and peculiar position in the story of Manhattan Island. Gradually absorbed, in spite of their own protests, by the resistless and ever-growing metropolis they still preserved for many years an identity of their own all the more marked because so absolutely futile. The years have silenced the protests and engulfed the identity. " Chelsea Village," says Mr. Banner, one of the most charming of New York's later annalists, "has never had the aggressive exclusiveness of Greenwich. It exists to-day (1S88), and vaguely knows itself by name, close to the heart of the great city that has swallowed it up ; but it is in nowise such a distinct entity as the brave little tangle of crooked streets a few blocks to the south. Greenwich has always been Greenwich, and the * ninth ward' has been the centre of civilization to the dwellers therein." + Hudson at one time was a busy whaling port and owned more shipping than did New York City itself. Its promising commerce was destroyed by the embargo of 1812, which so seriously afiected other places. PROGRESS AND DISASTER. 199 And all along the route, from New York City to Rochester, Teunis, the observer, and the good Vroutje, his wife, found that but two topics of con- versation appeared to interest and absorb their fellow-passengers. These were, the vast possibili- ties of Central New York, and the effect of the Morgan mystery upon New York politics. For politics in New York State were drifting into the strangest complications. Only a year be- fore there had died on the fourth of July, 1826, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams — " author and champion, respectively, of the great Declaration," and the party names of federalist and anti-federalist were like these old-time leaders, reminders only of the past. Already, in 1825, was Andrew Jackson recognized as the " coming man," and, in the State of New York, Martin Van Buren, " the most adroit politician of his time," was a leading and a vital force. Parties were hopelessly mixed. There were Clintonian Adams men, and Democratic Adams men (supporters of the president, but rivals in State politics) ; there were the Clintonians of the In- dependents, or " People's Party," and the Bucktails, who voted at the nod of that autocratic power in New York politics known as the " Albany Re- gency " ; there was the small but aggressive anti- Masonic party and this, though sounding absurd and needless enough to our ears to-day, well-nigh 200 PJiOGRESS AND DISASTER. overturned the whole State. For the anti-Masons rose to prominence through a " mystery " as pe- cuh'ar as it was perplexing and dramatic. One William Morgan of Batavia, a member of the secret society known as Free Masons was charged with threatening to disclose the secrets of that organization. Suddenly he disappeared and was never after seen alive. Startling rumors spread. The defenders and opponents of the Masonic fraternity were drawn into a bitter quarrel. Then came the climax. Morgan's body, so it was claimed, had been flung into the Niagara River by his enraged fellow Masons. A mutilated body drawn from the river was declared to be that of Morgan — or, at least, to be " a good enough Morgan until after election." * The feud filled the State. What- ever the truth of the matter, whatever the guilt or innocence of the various parties to this singu- lar quarrel, one thing is certain : the fate of this recreant Mason brought about a tremendous ex- citement; it created factions and engendered feuds; it entered very largely into local and State poli- tics ; it very nearly destroyed the prospects of some of the political leaders and highest officials of the State. Even so popular and acknowledged a * Mr. Greeley declares in his ** Recollections," forty years after the Morgan and Anti- Masonic excitement, that Thurlow Weed never made this long-famous remark and that the charel: 4;rainst Mr. Weed to the effect that he had manipulated the body of a drowned man I(5T perineal purposes was an "utterly groundless calumny, having barely a shred of badinage to palliate its utterance." 'people were all either masons or anti-masons." FRO GUESS AND DISASTER. 203 statesman as Governor De Witt Clinton himself, because of his Masonic connections and his exalted rank in the order, fell under suspicion, and was made the victim of groundless charges. And it was thus that still another disturbing element in the tangled politics of the State was introduced by the organization, under the name of the Anti- Masonic party, of those " who were determined to destroy the institution of Freemasonry " and who felt that they " could not express their sentiments with so much force and effect in any other way than through the ballot-box." It was in the midst of all this excitement that our friends, the Jansens, made their canal trip to Rochester. People were all either Masons or anti-Masons, talk ran hot and high, and " the literature of the period," says Mr. Roberts, "was as harrowing as a series of sensational novels." Teunis Jansen had inherited the Dutch reticence of his ancestors ; discreetly holding his tongue, he listened to the charges and recriminations bandied about by the partisans of either side and silently drew his own conclusions. And yet, reticent and slow though he was, he was one of the thousands who, attracted by the vigor, the ability, and the personal magnetism of " the hero of New Orleans," General Andrew Jackson, cast former party affiliations to the wind 204 PROGRESS AND DISASTER. and, disdaining in the maze of political combina- tions any other judgment than that of enthusiasm huzzaed loudly for " Old Hickory," and helped give him in 1828 the electoral vote of New York and the final majority that placed him in the presidential chair. But, so uncertain a quantity is popular feeling when the day for actual decision comes, in spite of all the talk and all the threaten- ings over the Morgan affair the vote of the Anti- Masonic party of New York in the election of 1828 was but thirty-three thousand three hundred and forty-five out of a total ballot of one hundred and thirty-six thousand seven hundred and ninety-four. The dominating force in New York State was now Martin Van Buren, whom men called for his shrewdness and his success " the little magician." The election of 1828 placed him in the Governor's chair. In that same year died his greatest rival and New York's foremost statesman, De Witt Clinton. Four times governor of his native State, whatever affected her interests or seemed a prophecy of her future prosperity received from Clinton en- couragement, labor and zeal. " The Pericles of our Commonwealth," said George Griffin, one of the dead statesman's most eloquent eulogists, " for nearly thirty years he exercised, without stooping to little arts of popularity, an intellectual dominion in his native State scarcely inferior to that of the PROGRESS AND DISASTER. 205 illustrious Athenian — a dominion as benignant as it was effective." With the faults and shortcom- ings incident to power and popularity De Witt Clinton, nevertheless, attained and still holds al- most if not quite the foremost position among New York's greates-t names. His memory is one that all New Yorkers, all Americans, indeed, should cherish, and there is truth if there is also a strain of adulation in Mr. Tuckerman's estimate of the man.* " To those alive to local history and the origin of great practical ideas," he says, " daily observation keeps fresh the memory of De Witt Clinton in his native State. As a stranger enters her unrivalled bay, he sees in the fortified Narrows a proof of Clinton's forethought; in an afternoon excursion the Bloomingdale Asylum and Sailor's Snug Harbor, whose endowment he secured, bear witness to his benevolent enterprise ; while the grand systems of public instruction, of mutual in- surance, of internal navigation, of savings banks, reform of the criminal law and agricultural im- provement, however modified by the progress of science, constantly attest the liberal and wise polity which under his guidance gave them birth. . . . The method of his statesmanship," continues Mr. Tuckerman, " was thoroughly American — instinct * See " De Witt Clinton ; the National Economist " in Henry T. T«ckerman's " Biogra- phical Essays," Boston, 1857. 206 FH OGRESS AND DISASTER. with republican courage and directness, above con- siderations of gain, mainly cognizant of prospective good, undisturbed by the dictum of faction. And now that the watchwords of party are forgotten and the ravings of faction have died away, his noble presence stands forth in bold relief, on the historical canvas of his era as the pioneer of the genius of communication, whose magic touch has already filled with civilized life the boundless valleys of the West, then an untracked forest ; as the Columbus of national improvement, and the man who most effectually anticipated the spirit of the age, and gave it executive illustration." But if Columbus had his La Casa — "a mariner," so the records assure us, " scarcely inferior in his own estimation to the admiral himself" — so had De Witt Clinton his Martin Van Buren. "An adroit and subtle, rather than a great man," says Mr. Greeley, " his strength lay in his suavity." Always a partisan and a politician he yet had ability and tact sufficient to create for himself a strong and loyal personal following and to make the leader to whom he attached himself at once his patron and his debtor. As he had climbed to power in his own State by a politic manipulation oi the varying popularities of De Witt Clinton (both as supporter and foeman, as follower and rival), so he owed his wider eminence to his partisanship for FROGHESS AND DISASTER. 207 Jackson whose enthusiastic henchman he became when the flood of popular favor caught that imperi- ous soldier. " Had there been no Jackson," says Mr. Greeley, " Van Buren would never have attained the highest office in the gift of his countrymen." For to that office he did attain in 1836, and until that time he continued to stand as the chief figure in the politics of New York and one of the most popular of Americans. But, during all these years of his ascendancy, though outwardly pros- perous the State was really storing up trouble for the days to come. Immigration steadily increased and New York City, as Mrs. Lamb expresses it, " appeared like a youth much overgrown for his years. It had shot up with a rapidity that defied calculation. Wealth was increasing faster than sobriety was inclined to measure. Swarming mul- titudes from every quarter of the globe were render- ing the community in a certain sense unformed." Thus although population grew progress was not healthy. And no State felt this unsettled con- dition more seriously than did New York. The de- mand was less than the supply. Skilled mechanics like the sons of Teunis Jansen found work hard to obtain and uncertainly paid. " As a journeyman," says Mr. Greeley, speaking of the period around 1830, " I could rarely find work in "the country be- cause there was so little money; and on coming 2o8 FR OGRESS AND DISASTER. to the city I found that payments by master me- chanics to their men were mainly made in uncurrent notes of State banks which must often, if not gen- erally, be taken to a ' broker ' and shaved before they would pay board or buy groceries." Then arose the trouble between President Jackson and the banks, a trouble which because of the stringency it caused in the money market fell with especial severity upon the people, who, having but little, felt the pressure most keenly. In that same year (1832) came the cholera scourge. It swept over the city of New York like a plague and during the three summer months that it held the crowded and careless metropolis in its death-grip more than three thousand people died of this fell disease. It was a sorry time for such humble folk as the Jansens. Money was too scarce to make flight from town possible, and work was hard to get within the pest-ridden city. Whole streets were barricaded against the approach of the plague as if it were some tangible foe and death and distress found entrance into many a home. " In every house, in every office and shop," says Mr. Bunner, describing the reign of terror, " there was hasty packing, mad confusion and wild flight. It was only a question of getting out of town as best one might. There was only one idea, and that FH OGRESS AND DISASTER. 209 was flight — from a pestilence whose coming might have been prevented, and whose course might have been stayed. To m.ost of these poor creatures the only haven seemed to be Greenwich Village ; but some sought the scattered settlements above; some crossed to Hoboken; some to Bushwick; while others made a long journey to Staten Island, across the bay. . . . There were some who remained faithful throughout all and who labored for the stricken, and whose names are not even written in the memory of their fellow men. Flight and fright alike carried with them contagion and death, and the pest that wasted the chief city of the State left its traces also along the trail of the fleeing fugitives." It is such things as these that dishearten the ignorant, and develop disorder and crime among the unthinking. The cosmopolitan character of New York City, as it has been its chiefest blessing has also been its bane. As early as these days of 1832 when hard times and a fatal disease alike harrassed the town did this disorderly element display itself. Street brawls and riots attended every election while every move made by philan- throphy was confronted by lawless ignorance. An unformed community is always a restless one and when composed of so many nationalities race pre- judices and race antagonisms are as certain to occur 2IO pa OGRESS AND DISASTER. as are unpleasant relations between employer and employed or between idleness and occupation. And here again is seen the point of separation between the people and the rabble referred to in an earlier chapter. The people turn protest into action only when their liberties are actually in dan- ger ; the rabble is ready to rise upon opportunity rather than upon provocation. It was the rabble that turned election day into a time of brawl and riot, and became disorderly and murderous with equal unreasonableness when wise men sought by sanitary restrictions to . stamp out the dreadful cholera, when Masonic halls were built, when abo- litionist meetings were in session or when stone, quarried by convicts, was used in the erection of public buildings. Out of the jumble and whirl of politics there came in 1828 two leading parties — the Democrats and the National Republicans ; the first, ardent sup- porters of Jackson, the second, halting adherents of John Quincy Adams and carrying now for the first time the distinctive party names that have clung to them ever since. In the case of the latter, how- ever, their names ranged from Whig to Liberty men, from Free Soilers to Abolitionists and fluctuated under the stress of various issues from conserva- tism to aggressive resistance. The power of Clay, as a factor in opposition, was asserting itself with AFTEE THE FIRE OF 35 FROGJiESS AND DISASTER. 213 just sufficient force to make him a rival, but not a candidate within his own party, while the over- shadowing popularity of Jackson made the presiden- tial elections of that period in American history, in New York as in other States, rather the fights of factions than the struggle of two opposing parties. " Out-manceuvred on every side," says Mr. Greeley, " the Republicans were clearly foredoomed to de- feat." The vital question of Protection and Free Trade were just springing into controversy and the election of Jackson in the campaign of 1828 was by a majority that carried every electoral vote south of the Potomac and west of the Alleghanies. With these Jackson States went New York. The coun- ties of New York, Westchester, Dutchess, Ulster, Orange, Delaware and Greene giving all heavy Jackson majorities, while his total majority in the State was upwards of fifty-three hundred. All this indicated something more than mere partisanship. It was, indeed, the opening of a new era. As one observer has well stated it " a new generation was growing up under new economic and social conditions, despising traditions and Old World ways and manners." Andrew Jackson was a typical American and his success was, in a measure, the success of American principles. It is a significant fact that this same period marked the introduction of two important elements in the 214 FEOGJiESS AND DISASTER. growth of cities and of States — the adaptation of horse-railroads for the streets of cities and the use of steam as a motive power. The first steam locomotive was built in New York City in 1830, for use on a South Carolina railway, and the railroad from Albany to Schenec- tady, incorporated in 1826, was put in operation in 1832. That same year the first horse-railroad was built upon Fourth Avenue, and these novel and speedier modes of locomotion were but the indica- tion of the emancipation of the people from old- time methods and manners. With this spirit of progress came, however, the spirit of speculation — alluring, promising and de- ceptive. Money, freed from a long existing pres- sure by the political and financial complications that threw the Federal deposits into the State banks, suddenly grew " easy " and abundant, and all classes were affected by what, at last, proved to be " a factitious but seductive semblance of pros- perity." Hard-working men in humble life, like the younger Jansens, had visions of real estate ventures that promised a fortune, and embarked their small savings in various attractive schemes. A new city was planned and building lots " boomed " to an extravagant figure in Harlem, where years after, lines of grass -grown streets marked alike the ruin of folly and the graves of FHOGHESS AND DISASTER. 215 blasted hopes. Other places, too, caught the wild fever and in the newer sections of the State this false advance in land values was especially notice- able. Real estate rose so rapidly in and about Buffalo that one man in Black Rock (now a part of Buffalo) who had purchased a piece of land for two hundred and fifty dollars saw its value increase within a single hour, from six thousand to twenty thousand dollars and disposed of it for this latter sum. Such fevers of speculation were destined to turn men's heads and dull their soberer reason. The spirit of hazard became general. Fictitious for- tunes induced a spasm of business. Employment became easy and wages increased, trade and manu- factures grew in bulk and profits, and the people boasted of their increase and saw no shadow of approaching disaster. The population of the State had risen to a total of over two millions in 1835, two hundred and seventy thousand of this total belonging to New York City alone. Building operations were extensive, property steadily increased in value, culture and refinement were accompanying this apparent prosperity when suddenly in 1835 came the first blow. New York City on the night of December 16, was visited by a terrible fire that destroyed property valued at more than eighteen millions of dollars, laid eighteen acres of city lands 2l6 FJiOGRESS AND DISASTER. in ruins and swept away nearly seven hundred buildings. Industries were paralyzed, every insur- ance company in town was made bankrupt, and this disaster to the capital city was felt by the entire State to which the metropolis was at once both feeder and factor. " O, no, father, it's not quite as bad as that ! " said Teunis the younger to Teunis the elder, as on the morning succeeding the great fire they stood surveying the smoking ruins. " What is the use of preaching trouble ? It is a terrible blow, but New York is rich enough and strong enough to look this loss squarely in the face and build up again, even greater than before." " May be, lad, may be," said the older man, shak- ing his head doubtfully, " but I tell you we're not so rich as you think. There's such a state of the case as having too much of a good thing, and I tell you we've been living too fast. We have for- gotten that to succeed one must make haste slowly." "O pshaw, don't be a croaker!" over-confident youth replied to the warnings of age. " There is money and pluck enough here to build New York up better than it was before. You will see. But we must have more water in the town if we expect to head off such a fire as this again." The young man was in a measure correct. The people of New York set to work at once to repair FJiOGEESS AND D ISA S TEH. 217 the ravages of the fire, and "with almost miraculous energy the city was rising from its ashes " when the truth of the elder Jansen's prophecy was all too fully established. For in 1837, when Martin Van Buren became President of the United Sates, and Andrew Jackson " retired to his Hermitage congratulating himself that he left the American people prosperous and happy " the crash came. Everything conspired to disaster. Crops were poor and importations heavy ; manufactories were stopped and trade became stag- nant; the tide of speculation ebbed even more swiftly than it had risen ; bankruptcy and loss of employment fell alike upon capitalist and laborer, and the general government instead of helping in a time of distress, increased the disaster by arbitrary and crippling decisions. " Thousands," says Mr. Greeley, "who had fondly dreamed themselves mil- lionaires, or on the point of becoming such, awoke to the fact that they were bankrupt," and those of less exalted expectations found their small invest- ments swept away or involved in the general ruin. The blow of financial disaster fell with intense severity upon New York City and State. The people suffered in pride as well as in purse, and, with true human instincts, looking for a cause of their trouble fastened it not upon themselves, but upon their rulers. Their local elections proved this 2l8 FUG GEE SS AND DISASTER. popular revulsion. Alike in metropolis and village, in cross-road settlement and country town the same deep murmurings were heard, and capitalist and laborer, blind to their own share in the universal disaster, breathed out threatenings against their constituted representatives. " Under the generally accepted rule," says Mr. Doty, in his History of Livingston County, " that the party in power is responsible for all existing evils, the Democratic party was held responsible for this wide-spread dis- tress and business stagna.tion, and its nominees were thus rendered unpopular. This tendency of popular judgment," declares Mr. Doty, " has ever been a marked feature of our political system, and while it may and undoubtedly does sometimes work injustice to party leaders and organizations it also acts as a wholesome check upon the abuse of power or the neglect of manifest public duty." Popular judgment, rendered quick and hot-tempered by this panic of '37, sought less for reasons than for scape- goats. Van Buren no longer the idol of the people received now only revilings and censure and what was termed " the rumblings of a political earth- quake " were felt throughout the Union and the State. The man touched in pocket becomes -an engine of discontent. A people, thus stricken, forgets justice in anger. CHAPTER X. A GROWING STATE. HEN Teunis J ansen, in common with thousands of his equally u nf ortunate fellow-country- men, pulled himself to- gether after the crash and ruin of that disastrous year of 1837, he found that life must practically be com- menced over again — a work which at fifty-five is by no means the ambition-tinctured task that the young fellow of twenty-one sets out upon with hope and enthusiasm. But, none the less because it was so ungracious a task, he went at it bravely and with all that sturdy tenacity that belongs to the Knicker- bocker blood. Gradually by dint of struggle and denial he began, as did so many others of equal will, 219 2 20 A GROWING STATE. to recover the ground he had lost and to coin the sweat of labor into slow but substantial savings. Throughout the great State that had felt most keenly the shock, the panic and the loss the same brave work went forward, and out of the ruin of fortunes and the wreck of homes a firmer and surer basis for healthy financial growth was gradually evolved. Lawmakers and capitalists did their part toward atoning for the errors for which they were largely responsible. The toilers of every grade men and women alike, faced the inevitable and fell to work at once. There was much grumbling over the situation and much wrathful criticism of those who (so the people thought) being at the helm should have guided the ship of state more safely through the breakers. But, even while grumbling and criticising, the people everywhere manned the ropes and helped to work the nearly stranded vessel into clear water once more. So, out of disaster came, gradually, new life. For a young country is as full of possibilities as is a young man, and as quickly recovers from wounds and worriment. But the " political earthquake " hinted at in the preceding chapter came with the very next election. Out of one hundred and twenty-eight members of assembly (the most direct representatives of the people) over one hundred were from the ranks of the opposition — the new A GROWING STATE. 221 following that, comprising all the elements antago- nistic to the Democratic party, took now the name of " Whigs." The very next year, in 1838, the Whig ticket was again victorious by a majority of more than ten thousand, and William H. Seward was elected governor of the State. The " Free Banking System " took the place of the former monopoly of " pet banks," as they had been called, and the people started forward again on a new era of prosperity.* Suddenly, upon the northern border, sounded a note of war. It proved to be of but small moment, but before its echoes died away in defeat it stirred and excited the people as to what the possibilities might be and how the State would fare in a real border war. Seven hundred restless New Yorkers, led by a descendant of the patroons of Renssalaer, offered themselves as allies and supporters of a Canadian revolt against England. The revolt came to naught, but aggression and recrimination were frequent, and the whole Northern frontier seemed for a time in danger. There were one or two sharp * " History furnishes no parallel," Governor Seward's iirst message declared, " to the financial achievements of this State. It surrendered its share of the national domain and relinquished for the general welfare all the revenues of its foreign commerce, equal generally to two thirds of the entire expenditure of the Federal Government. It has, nevertheless, sustained the expenses of its own administration, founded and endowed a broad system of education, charitable institutions for every class of the unfortunate, and a penitentiary estab- lishment which is adopted as a model by civilized nations. It has increased fourfold the wealth of its citizens, and relieved them from direct taxation ; and in addition to alt this, has carried forward a stupendous enterprise of improvement, all the while diminishing its debt, magnifying its credit, and augmenting its resources." 222 A GROWING STATE. fights between the partisans of the Canadian " pa- triots " and the British troops, some property was destroyed, and American neutraUty was maintained only with difficulty. Sympathy with the patriots was open and almost aggressive, and for several years the northern counties of the State showed by their hostile votes their disapproval of the neutrality of the Van Buren administration in this Canadian "strife for freedom." In fact the Van Buren administration had fallen upon evil days, so far as the confidence of the people was concerned. The voting public is too often a fickle one, and a succession of unpopular actions turns friendship into hostility. As Teunis Jansen drily observed, when one bright May day of 1840 his jubilant son Teunis the younger, now about to cast his first vote, rushed into his shop tossing his hat for " Tippecanoe and Tyler, too," " Handsome is as handsome does, lad. Tip and Ty may sing sweet and lovely now, but who knows what their tune 'II be after election. 'Tis like the old Dutch rhyme my grandfather used to have over : ' Peter he played the violin, But Zebedee played the flute.' And let me tell you, lad," he added, " John Tyler isn't going to play second fiddle. Just wait and see which you'll have to dance to — fiddle or flute." ANTI-RENTERS STOPPING A SHERIFF. A GH OWING STATE. 225 And the old voter's warnings came true sooner even than he could anticipate. For when scarce one month after his occupation of the presidential chair, good General Harrison (" Log Cabin " and " Hard Cider " candidate of those exciting days) was carried to his grave " the hopes born of his elec- tion," as Mr. Greeley well says, "were suddenly buried with him." The course of Tyler showed him to be obstinate, perverse and unreliable. Rec- reant alike to his own promises and to the trust that had been placed in him he deserted his former adherents and supporters and " stood forth an im- bittered, implacable enemy of the party which had raised him from obscurity and neglect to the pinnacle of power." Politics tumbled again and the very men who had in 1840 shouted so lustily the party chorus — " We'll hurl little Van from his station And elevate Tippecanoe," sought in 1844 to replace their dethroned favorite upon the seat from which they, themselves, had helped to " hurl " him. But Van Buren's days as a political leader were numbered. His own partisans in other States were becoming weary of New York's political ascendency. With Henry Clay as an opponent the choice of the other party was too strong to be trifled with, and 2 26 A GROWING STATE. Van Buren's unpopularity in the South had in- creased rather than diminished with his opposition to the annexation of Texas. The power of the " little magician " was on the wane. New issues brought new leaders to the front. Already the strife between protection and free-trade — a question upon which so strong a mercantile State as New York must take a prominent stand — was agitating the nation while still another element was invading American politics — the party of uni- versal freedom. Born in obscurity and cradled in contumely, the weak and universally-proscribed abo- lition party of 1840, in spite of the fanaticism of its organizers and the unpopular ways of its leaders, was to bring forward the one burning issue of a later day, absorbing all other questions and drawing sharp dividing lines between Truth and Error. In common with all the Northern States New York was profoundly affected by this disturbing element. Its votes, like those of other protests, swollen by a union with such other elements of local opposition as the Anti-Masons, Anti-Renters, and their kin grew to be of sufficient importance to, at first, only threaten the majority vote, next to weaken it to a plurality and finally to become from a disturbing element, simply, a balance of power party and a victorious majority. In the elec- tion of 1840, Gerrit Smith, the Abolition candidate A GH OWING STATE. 227 for governor, polled a vote of 2662 ; in 1844 Birney, the Abolition candidate for president, had in New York State a vote of 15,812; in 1848 when (so strange is the whirligig of politics) the very Van Buren who was once its foe became its standard- bearer, the anti-slavery element — become now by a coalition of oppositions, the " Free Soil party " — polled a vote of 120,497 (larger by six thousand than the Democratic vote in the State) and be- coming the Republican party in 1856 carried the State by a plurality of eighty thousand and a popular vote for Fremont of 276,007. This re- markable advance meant, however, not so much the growth of abolition sentiment as the growth of anti-slavery principles. It indicated the love of the people of New York for personal liberty, and their protest against anything like Southern dictation. Conservative by nature they looked with distrust on anything like radical measures. As Teunis Jansen the elder said to Teunis the younger, when in 1848 father and son separated in politics — the one voting for General Taylor the other for Van Buren — the one a straight- out Whig, the other a " Free Soiler," " Let slavery alone, lad, it will work its own death; fight its ex- tension if you will, but don't meddle with it in the States where it still lives." To which Teunis the younger replied, " Progress 2 28 A GROWING STATE. means action, father. We can't let this thing alone, for it won't let us alone. I am not sure, but I am willing to go even farther than the Free Soil platform and stand by the declaration of the Buffalo abolitionists : ' No slave . States and no slave territory ! ' " For this was the day of " bolts " and breaks, and there was quite as much sense as sound in the reiterative " Bolters' chorus " which a younger brother of Teunis broke into as he overheard the declarations of his elder. This chorus, be it known, was very popular with the dissatisfied ones of that day, and was sung from New York to Niagara, — "Bolt, bolters, bolt; Bolt all around, Bolt every day, And bolt again in the morning." Another protest, though of less importance in a national sense, found expression at this time in New York politics. Certain kinsmen of the Jansens who were descendants of those adventurous younger sons who in earlier days had gone as pioneers to the fair but undeveloped sections of Central New York, now found themselves joining with neighbors and new- comers in a final stand against the last assertions of feudalism — rentals for lands which the people themselves had reclaimed and developed. The gloomy forecasts of the earlier settlers to which A GROWING STATE. 229 reference was made in a former chapter now be- came facts, and throughout the northern section of the State tenants were protesting against the en- forcement of what they deemed unjust claims, and loudly demanded an absolute limit to hereditary leases and an abolition of all feudal tenures. Per- manent leaseholds (the property of descendants of the first great families who had, by the favor or the cupidity of royalty, possessed themselves of vast tracts of undeveloped land) they declared to be "feudal, aristocratic and unrepublican." Protest was changed into action, resistance to the collec- tion of rents became open and aggressive, and the Anti-Rent war of 1844 was the people's protest against an unwise and tyrannical landlordism. And it does, indeed, seem both absurd and un- American. To demand of tenants who had already, in one sense, purchased the land, even such a feudal fee for the privilege of living upon it as the annual payment of a good, fat chicken or a handful of wheat was of itself so unpatriotic that the last and best of the " patroons," the Stephen Van Renssalaer of Revolutionary times, gave over the collecting and demanding it. His descend- ants, however, were foolish enough to insist not only upon the re-establishment of this ancient fee, but upon the collection of the long-standing arrearage. Thereupon the tenants resisted. The 23© A GEO WING STATE. " Helderberg War " of 1839 was inaugurated among the occupants of the Van Renssalaer estates and similar action by other landlords gave rise to similar disturbances. In Albany and Columbia, in Dela- ware and Schoharie counties resistance developed into rioting and bloodshed, where " Anti- Renters " disguised as Indians openly attacked and " disci- plined " agents, collectors and sheriffs. At last the military were called out to maintain the peace, political capital was made of every disturbance and succeeding governors sought to so compromise matters as to adjust the antagonisms between land- lord and tenant. This often serious and sometimes picturesque phase of New York history which at one time bid fair to become another instance of "embattled farmers" resisting aristocratic oppres- sion, was for several years a stirring feature in State politics, and was only finally disposed of when in 1846 the Constitutional Convention of the State of New York abolished forever all feudal tenures and freed the fertile fields of New York's fairest agricultural section from the baronial burdens that had so long hampered its best development. To- day New York is one of the six States in the Union which forbids alien landlordism within its lirnits, while even resident aliens can hold real estate only by becoming naturalized citizens. But, spite of canal and State turnpike and the A GROWING STATE. 23 1 continual tide of immigration, some of the fairest portions of the great State were still, in 1840, little better than wild country where, as Mr. Beers de- scribes it, " the farmer was still something of the settler, and the axe and plough were both imple- ments of husbandry." It needed something more vigorous and pushing to make their partial wilder- ness accessible ; and this came at last. In 1831 the first railroad in New York State (the Mohawk and Hudson) was opened. It ran between Albany and Schenectady, a distance of seventeen miles. In 1832 the Saratoga and Schenectady road was opened, cov- ering a distance of twenty-one miles. That same year one mile of the New York and Harlem Rail- road was operated. Slowly but steadily the iron trail grew. The New York and Erie Railway, chartered in 1832, was opened to travel on its eastern section (from Piermont to Goshen) in 1841, and along its entire length (from Piermont, westward), in 185 1. The New York Central and Hudson River Rail- road was in operation between Albany and Buffalo in 1841, and between New York and Buffalo in 1851. These great roads with their tributary branches did more than anything else for the internal growth and development of the State, but their advance from crude and comfortless accommodations to their present high state of excellence was slow and painful. 232 A GROWING STATE. Helped on by all such plans of public improve- ment the State grew apace. Its population in 1845 had reached 2,604,495 ^"^^ the city which was now not only its metropolis, but was the metropolis of America as well, claimed 371,223 as its share of that two and a half millions — one seventh of the entire population. The Jansens were proud of the great and grow- ing city in which they were such humble units. Who is not 1 It is local and civic pride that make of our cities vigorous and ambitious corporations, that beautify and adorn them and cause each citizen to see in his own town the very top and crown of municipal excellence. Even our rivalries are our regenerators — they keep us from going backward. So the Jansens in 1845, like their good "forebear" of two centuries before, bluff old Anthony Yer- renton, were proud of their native city. It was crowding up now, toward Greenwich village and Murray Hill. Bleecker and Bond Streets were its fashionable quarters, and about the gray stones of the New York University the residence of wealthy merchants overlooked the city's latest park. The restless and dissatisfied ones of king-ridden Europe entered through its beautiful bay as into a promised land, and, along either river front, forests of masts pointed skyward in proof of the city's growing com- merce. " From this point up," wrote N. P. Willis A GROWING STATE. 233 in the early " forties," as standing on the bend by the Battery he looked northward along the Hudson River front, " extends a line of ships, rub- bing against the pier the fearless noses that have nudged the poles and the tropics — an array of nobly-built merchantmen, that, with the association of their triumphant and richly-freighted comings and goings, grows upon my eye with a certain maj- esty." And proud as were the Jansens of their own great city equally proud and loyal were the workers and home-livers in the other leading cities of the State in that middle portion of the busy nineteenth century. Albany could boast her fifty thousand inhabitants, and Troy her twenty-eight thousand. Oswego and Utica, Syracuse and Rochester were crowding toward or past the score of twenty thou- sand, Buffalo had already more than forty-two thousand people who called her pleasant streets their own, and Brooklyn, sister city of the metrop- olis, pressed close upon a round one hundred thou- sand. Within the borders of the State also fashion had its Mecca about the very spot where, a century before, the colonial baron. Sir William Johnson, had been borne for relief in sickness by his Indian allies. For fully a century it had lain among its hills for- gotten save for its stirring record of Revolutionary strife and victory, and then, so says Mr. N. P. Willis, " a roving mineralogist tasted the waters of 234 A GROWING STATE. Saratoga; and, like the work of a lath-and-plaster Aladdin, up sprang a thriving village around the fountain's lip, and hotels, tin tumblers and apothe- caries multiplied in the usual proportion to each other, but out of all precedent with everything else for rapidity. Libraries, newspapers, churches, liv- ery-stables and lawyers followed in their train ; and it was soon established, from the Plains of Abraham to the savannas of Alabama, that no person of fashionable taste or broken constitution could exist through the months of July and August without a visit to the chalybeate springs and populous village of Saratoga." It was to Saratoga that the earliest railroad ran, and the " medicine-spring " of the Indian and the " fountain of youth " of Sir William Johnson became, even early in the present century, so says Willis again, " the paradise of the unmarried, the Bath of America." But it was not for " the people " to indulge in such luxuries as Saratoga even then suggested. Their outings and pleasures were few, their hours of labor were long, their home-living not alto- gether elevating or broadening. Such homes as Fleming Farm or that of the Davidsons of which we have already had a glimpse were not known to the majority of New York's citizens fifty years ago. Spite of all the gushings of romance and the claims of idealists the daily life of rural or A NEW YORK DANDY OF 49. A GROWING STATE. 237 suburban communities partook, forty years ago, of the hard and restrictive rather than of the elevat- ing and broadening elements. This dwarfing en- vironment is not, even yet, entirely changed and hence it follows that the youth of such sections look toward the towns and cities as goals where life's ambitions are to be attained and satisfied, and with a restlessness born of discontent are ever ready to desert the old home for the struggle and success of the distant city. Already, before 1850, the tendency was in this direction and New York city, in particu- lar, became the lodestone that drew not only the youth of its own broad State, but the ambitious ones of other States and of Europe's unsatisfied masses into the turmoil of its competitions and its trades. Nationalities were fusing. The American was being slowly evolved. " Native American " parties were formed in vain. The spirit of a real American progress was antagonistic to a selfish nativism. Steam which was annihilating space was putting an end to local restrictiveness, and when in 1844 came the success of the electric telegraph, invented and developed by a New York man,* both time and * In 1835 Morse successfully exhibited the workings of his telegraph in his own room in New York City ; in September, 1837, he publicly exhibited a telegraph in operation in the rooms of the New York University, and in 1844 Congress granted him thirty thousand dollars for the construction of a wire between Baltimore and Washington. On October 8, 1842, he had laid an experimental cable between Governor's Island and the Battery, and in 1843 Samuel Colt had successfully made the same submarine connection between Fire Island, Coney Island and New York City. 238 A GROWING STATE. space were vanquished, and isolation for any live town or community was forever after impossible. The fierce fire of competition arouses all the latent energy of human nature, and the Knickerbocker stock, of which the Jansens were a type, and which, despite the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the town, had still for many a generation formed the basis of New York life, recognized the fact that this increas- ing competition meant less conservative measures both in trade and in manners or the original stock would be forced to the wall. An influx of New England life, sharp, ambitious and aggressive, in- fused, says Mr. Lossing, " the spirit of business energy and thrift into the social and commercial life of the city and the State ; " ambitious ones from other sections and from distant lands came, fired with the determination to succeed, and this com- mingling of conservatism and energy, of ambition and thrift introduced a new era in trade, and estab- lished on still firmer lines the materia] prosperity of the commonwealth. Neither the blunders of politi- cal leaders nor the clash of political parties could stay the current of business progress upon which the State entered with " the forties," while the signs of social and intellectual advance in that same de- cade between 1840 and 1850 were equally marked. Schools and higher educational institutions multi- plied. Reformatory and philanthropic measures A GROWING STATE. 239 took on a practical and helpful form and the press, alike of the city and the State, freeing itself from the old time trammels of personalism and abuse was growing into a broader and more concordant factor in the general advance. This was the result. But the elements contrib- uting toward that result were as diverse and often as conflicting as were the nationalities represented in the life of this most cosmopolitan of American commonwealths. Political factions, trade rivalries, religious differences, social distinctions — these and other, but fully as strong antagonisms made up the reverse of this picture of progressive prosperity. The story of New York has its dark quite as well as its bright side, and it is only because its citizens, whatever their birth or breeding have been, above all else, so thoroughly American that they have advanced, in spite of the perils of both failure and success, to their present strong position. The decade of " the forties " drew toward its close. New York, though openly opposed to the unwarranted and aggressive war with Mexico — '• a scheme of gigantic spoliation having for its end and aim the aggrandizement of the slave power," still furnished its quota toward the army of the invaders. Scott and Worth and Kearney with others of equal bravery though of less prominence displayed on Mexican battle-fields that valor in war 240 A GROWING STATE. that has ever characterized the sons of New York. But the dash and daring of such as these did not in all the unbroken line of victories blind the eyes of the thoughtful men of their State to the pity and injustice of the forcible seizure of a province from a friendly and neighboring power. This decade was a time of prosperity with the Jansens. Working along, quietly but determinedly, in their own humble sphere, seeking neither for- tune, position, nor political preferment, they lived the simple, manly. God-fearing and upright lives that were the common lot of so many of the work- ers and laborers about them. Content with little and not expecting more, they made their homes pleasant family-centres. The little refinements and the necessary cultures of our later day may not have had place therein, but mind and soul alike were broadening ; popular education, a growing in- terest in intellectual happenings and a wide-awake study of the leading questions of the day entered more and more as cultivating influences to help, to expand and to instruct. After all, it is homes such as was this simple Jansen household, gathered in its unpretentious, two-story, pitched-roof brick house on Cornelia Street, that by their wise conservatism act as a balance to all the pretensions of wealth on the one hand and all the mutterings of discon- tented poverty on the other. They keep alike the A GROWING STATE. 241 State and the republic true to the one grand purpose of universal advancement. The same sort of home looked out upon the quaint old streets of Albany; despite the limitations of a toil-filled country life just such a one nestled in the shadows of the Cat- skills, fronted the fair expanse of Lake George, or lay, like a quieting influence, within sound of the roar of Niagara ; in just such was fostered the sub- stantial growth of Utica and Syracuse, of Rochester and Buffalo, and from such, in many a smaller town and village, went out the young life that was to still further develop the possibilities of the State's metropolis, or the even vaster possibilities of the farther West. Restlessness is found even in the quietest of homes. A Jansen, dropping his jack-plane at the first sound of the bugle, marched off to battle and followed closely after the one-armed Kearney as he stormed through the San Antonio Gate of distant Mexico ; a Jansen, true to the old ad- venturous instincts of the name, sailed to the north for profit and excitement on the long and dangerous whaling cruise ; and a Jansen, filled with the fever for sudden wealth, joined in '49 the mad rush for gold that filled California with eager " prospectors," and strewed the Pacific hill- slopes with the wrecks of disappointed and broken adventurers. 242 A GROWING STATE. " After all, lad," said Teunis the elder, as one day the California prodigal found his way back to the old home again, broken, dispirited and penniless after his vain struggle for a fortune in the far-off Pacific gold-fields, " after all, lad, the old ways are best. You can't improve upon the natural road to success, and where one man makes a fortune thousands lose their all. There's more real com- fort and more good money, in the end, in the hammer and saw here in our Christopher Street shop than in the pick and sieve out in the diggin's that you weren't cut out to work. Stay at home, lad, and help your brother and myself. Perhaps you won't make enough out of it to be able to hold your own with the dandy fellows on Bleecker Street with their sky-blue coats and purple neckties, their satin waistcoats, their prison-looking trousers and their gilt chains and gewgaws, but we'll help you to be an honest workman, able to earn your salt and not ashamed of your father's name. After all, that's what helps make even this big town big, and keeps those same dandy fellows in neckcloths and ruffles. Stick to what you know, lad, and don't dabble in what's strange to you. If ever trouble comes to this town, it'll be from folks trying to get something out of nothing, or going into specula- tions and big things that they know nothing about. My grandfather used to get off to me, when I felt A GROWING STATE. 243 just as you do sometimes, that Dutch rhyme that Mr. Irving has put in his book : — ' De waarheid die in duister lag, Die komt met klaarheid aan den dag,' and I tell you there's more truth than poetry in that. What's dark now will come out bright enough sometime if we'll only stick to the truth and, please God, live honest even if we can't be stylish." CHAPTER XI. ERRATIC DAYS. HERE was work in plenty for all the car- penters in the J an sen shop that mid-century year of 1850. The city was perceptibly increas- ing in population and extent. The people re- quired homes ; the mer- chants must have stores and warehouses. The brick and brown-stone front- age was steadily stretching northward, and the wood-work and fittings of all these new "high-stoop" and " English-basement " houses furnished labor enough for good workmen and skilled mechanics. The State, too, quite as well as the city, was growing rapidly in population and products. It is asserted that in the sixty-five years, between 1 790 and 1855, the State of New York increased in' pop- ulation sevenfold — the city twenty-fold. In 1850 the State had a total population of over three 244 ERRATIC DAYS. 245 millions — a gain of nearly half a million since 1845 ; within those same five years the city showed a gain of nearly two hundred thousand, having in 1850 a population of 515,547. Between the Jansens of the metropolis and those distant kinsmen of the Jansen name whom Teunis the elder had visited at Rochester in 1827, quite an intimacy had sprung up — an intimacy which even the high postal rates of the anti-postal days had not been wholly able to dampen. The Jansens of 1850 had, thus, frequent communication with their kins- men at Rochester, and gradually came to exchange semi-occasional visits as the slow-going canal gave place to the more expeditious railroad. New York City has always been a powerful attraction to dwel- lers in less metropolitan centres, and the descent of distant relatives upon their city cousins has ever been one of the unwritten features of New York's domestic story. There is a summer reciprocity, of course, when the dwellers in hot and dusty streets remember the green fields of their country kins- men, but the city as an ever-present attraction is an even more powerful magnet. It was in the course of these later visitations that the Jansens of Rochester astonished their more prosaic kins- men of the city with now some unexpected turn in State politics, or now some new and strange development in religious thought. 246 ERRATIC DAYS. For these years about 1850 may be noted as the era of erraticism in religious faith and social prob- lems, and this was fully as apparent — if not really more noticeable - — in Central New York than in any other part of the country. The cultured dis- beliefs of Massachusetts had as yet scarce crossed the New York boundary, but certain of those sporadic religious wanderings which touch the superstitious rather than the intellectual in man, had already had their birth on New York soil. " Mother Ann " and her " family " of Shakers had begun their singular system of life and faith as far back as 1779, at Watervliet, near Albany, and that still stranger woman, Jemima Wilkinson, whose story is in itself a marvel, had founded her colony and wrought her pretended miracles in the western wilderness near Seneca Lake, where in 18 19 she died. Solomon Spaulding's buried romance, which subsequently became (under the hands of Joseph Smith, the shrewd farmer's boy of the Ontario clear- ing) the famous " Book of Morman," was unearthed on a hill in Manchester, by the shores of Lake Ontario, and the first Morman church was started in that little town ; the half-crazy " religionist," Captain William Miller, evolved his "end of the world" theories at his home among the hills of Washington County, where, an uneducated farmer, he had brooded over possibilities beyond the grasp ERRATIC DAYS. 247 of his limited intelligence, while the still greater paradox of " spiritualism," so-called, found its first " manifestations " among the Shakers at New Leba- non, in the home of the Poughkeepsie shoemaker, Andrew Jackson Davis, and by the " Rochester knockings," or "spirit-rappings" of the Fox sisters at Hydeville and, later, at Rochester. These excursions into the mysteries, country born and bred, found their way in time, by prosely- tism or by hearsay, to the city and, in 1850, were but a few among the many vagrant beliefs — spirit- ual, moral, hygienic and social — that were by turns interesting and taking captive the people of town and village all through the busy State. This erraticism in beliefs always argues a sea- son of material prosperity among the people for, as a rule, the affairs of the soul are with far too many honest folk a secondary matter to the condi- tion of the pocket. So, even this unsettled state of thought argues a corresponding and substantial growth for the State from which all these pecu- liarities of faith emanated. So, for a season, the Jansens of the city, in common with thousands of just such slow-thinking but excellent people, were, in turn, made curious, attracted, fascinated, disillusioned, disgusted and repelled by the pseudo reforms in religion and science that, all about that middle portion of the 248 ERRATIC DAYS. present century, ran their course throughout the entire country. The discussion across the counter and at the work-bench, the gossip of the living- room and the disputes of the street as they did much to interest the people in all these new "isms" — spirituaHsm, magnetism, Millerism, Gra- hamism, Fourierism and their kin — also did much to demonstrate their fallacies and to lead people to a clearer and more practical way of thinking. But there was one " ism " that was slowly mould- ing public sentiment, and making its way from an apparent fanaticism to real endeavor. Upon his wild mountain farm at North Elba, in Essex County (given him by Gerrit Smith, most gentle of New York fanatics), John Brown was, in 1850, thinking his way toward those offensive measures that were, before another decade, to make him the John Baptist of a regeneration greater than even his over-wrought imaginings could picture. De- nounced by politicians and regarded with distrust by the people, the little handful of reformers con- temptuously styled Abolitionists influenced those who most despised and ignored them, and finally gained recognition and footing by the autocratic acts of the very ones who most strenuously labored for their overthrow. " Whatever of impunity they enjoyed throughout the greater portion of the North," says Mr. Greeley, " was accorded them ERRATIC DAYS. 25 1 rather through contempt for their insignificance than wilHngness to let them be heard." But events were strengthening them in spite of their objectionable speech and methods. The pas- sage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 which practically turned the free North into privileged preserves for the Southern man-hunters aroused first the antipathy and then the protests of the people, while the Kansas-Nebraska bill of 1854 demonstrated to the Free States that ''systematic, determined resistance was now an imperative duty." Those who had most loudly denounced the ultra demands of the abolition extremists now turned protest into action and showed by their votes their determination to be neither the tools nor the allies of the traders in flesh and blood. In 1852 a mob at Syracuse rescued a fugitive from his captors who, under the shelter of the Fugitive Slave Law, were taking the poor runaway back to slavery. Similar disturbances in the State showed the temper of its people. The liberty convention of 1848 which, meeting at Buffalo, placed in nomi- nation for the presidency, Gerrit Smith of New York — one of the chief among the abolition agita- tors — although then made the butt for ridicule, and regarded as not even a respectable minority, paved the way for the later coalition of opposing elements, helped on the disruption of the Whig party in 252 ERRATIC DAYS. 1852, developed into the Free Soil party of 1854, and, in 1856, carried the State of New York for the new and aggressive Republican party, giving Fremont and Dayton the State by a plurality of eighty thousand in a total vote of nearly six hun- dred thousand. The " Irrepressible Conflict " had certain unmistakable factors in the Empire State — busy, preoccupied, and absorbed in its own concerns though that great State was — quite as distinctively as in the other and more pronounced anti-slavery commonwealths. It is in this stand for the right that the real power of the people is to be seen. In the face of an aristocracy of wealth — an aristocracy which, even from the old Dutch days, has been a domina- ting influence in New York history — the cause of the people has gone steadily forward. Even in this very issue of slavery against freedom the wealth and fashion of the State were either ranged on the side of oppression or were coldly neglectful of the ques- tion involved. The protest of the people was in reality the people's protest. It was the stand of the great middle class (itself often careless and neglectful, but always well-intentioned) against both the indifference of the highest and the venality of the lowest strata of society. A great city is invariably the most culpable alike in indifference and venality and, in this case, the ERRATIC DAYS. 253 advance of freedom's claims was rather in spite of than with the countenance of the great metropolis. Absorbed in its own concerns — its gains and its loses, its pleasures and its pains, its growth and its grandeur — the city of New York thought less of right than of policy. By the plurality of 1856 the rural life of the State of New York, as against the negligence or cupidity of its metropolis, expressed the determination of its people to resist the dicta- tion and the pressure of an aggressive slavery. And out of this very selfishness that, for business reasons, would palliate rather than oppose a wrong came the punishment and humiliation of the city. Another era of disaster was at hand. It had been a year of feverish disturbance, this fatal year of '57. Conflicts between the new and old police boards had disgraced the city ; the quar- rels of local politicians became almost feuds and vendettas, and not even its philanthrophy and its lavish purchase of a great pleasure park could blind people to its extravagant show of mourning over now a dead pugilist, now a drink-killed political " boss," or its open resistance to the legislative laws against the liquor traffic. Teunis Jansen the elder, succeeding to the name and trade of his father upon the death of that honest old gentleman in 1852, had sought to en- large his business returns by embarking with his 254 ERRATIC DAYS. brothers upon the performance of larger building operations than their capital or credit justified. The scheme had been that of his brother Isaac, the unsuccessful California miner, but the promise of great returns blinded the usually cautious Teunis to the necessarily large investments and the risks involved. Departing from the safe policy of his father — never to risk beyond his ability to re- cover — Teunis had burdened himself with heavy liabilities for material and had given his paper promises to pay depending for their discharge upon the negotiations of similar paper promises taken from the " capitalists " for whom he was building. In assuming such risks our honest carpenter was but following the example of thousands of others, equally honest and well-intentioned. But too large a volume of such unstable trade is certain to react upon itself. The " mountain load of debt " as Ed- ward Everett called it grew with each new day of fictitious business. It became more than the banks could carry or the people could bear. Loans were called in and discounts contracted. Obligations could not be met by those who had entered upon them, and one fine October morning Teunis Jansen rose from a troubled sleep to find himself ruined as his father had been just twenty years before, and by the same never heeded experience of disastrous speculation. •A < w > ERRATIC DAYS. 257 But as Teunis Jansen was not alone in his misfor- tune, so, too, his city was not alone in its disasters. New York first felt the blow and suffered terribly from its effects ; by October 14 every bank in the city had suspended payment, enormous rates of interest were paid for loans, and the fear and frenzy of panic closed in upon the town. New York was the commercial centre of the country ; the influence of the metropolis extended far and wide and its sea- sons of abundance or scarcity were correspondingly felt not alone in the State but in the remotest parts of the land. Failure followed failure in rapid suc- cession, distress and want created even greater des- titution, and there was scarcely a home in the land that did not feel the effect of this catastrophe of over-confidence and over-production. Teunis Jansen, overcome with mortification at what he deemed his own cupidity and lack of judg- ment, like a sensible fellow, sought not for lame and impotent excuses but blamed himself for his folly and set to work, as had his father before him, to manfully dig himself out of his ruins. No vigorous and well-furnished country long labors under a burden of disaster. It rights itself in time and is finally relieved of its undesirable bur- den, only, in another generation, to undergo a similar experience. The household of Teunis Jansen, indeed, felt 258 ERRATIC DAYS. supremely thankful that it had not been called to experience the bitterest pangs of the panic at a time when the cry of . " bread or blood " rang through the streets of the city, when bakers' wagons were mobbed by the starving people, and provision stores were threatened by the hungry unemployed. Boys and girls alike promised to use uncomplainingly if need be lard instead of butter and candle-light in place of gas, if such sacrifices on their part would help their father out of his time of trouble. The good Teunis, however, knew full well that all his advice to his boys to take lesson by his failure would be ignored by them when the allurements of unsubstantial profits came to them. But all the same, looking over the wreck, he sought to give the warning. " The trouble is, lad," he said to young Teunis, a stalwart young fellow of nineteen, " we as a peo- ple are in too much of a hurry. That's what my father, out of his own experience, said to me. It's what I now tell you. But I don't suppose you'll heed it. I heard this Boston man (a deep thinker he is too, lad) Theodore Parker, say in a talk the other day that we of this nation are the least economical civilized people on the earth, and I reckon he's right. The only cure for us is, I be- lieve, moderation — moderation in business, in pri- vate and public expenditures, in legislation and in ERRATIC DAYS. 259 everything else. There is no royal road to wealth, lad, and that you'll soon enough discover ; and, whether we are individuals or communities, as we sow we must surely reap." Teunis the younger shoved the plane valiantly and said " amen " to all his father's " preaching," but the older man knew that when opportunity came his boy would be as eager to risk and venture as had father and grandfather before him. " We shall never recover from this set-back," said the croakers. But recovery is always possible. Even the shadow of financial disaster, black as it had been to so many upon whom it had fallen, grew less and less dense as better times came on and confidence was restored and as, over all the land, the conviction grew that a disaster even more grave and serious than financial loss threat- ened the American people — the disruption of the National Union ! It is in no sense a part of the story of New York to detail or discuss the causes of the War of the Rebellion. The conflict came, not without attempted compromise and prevention, but it came, none the less, as the inevitable consequence of an absolute issue between two determined forces — an- issue not to be longer postponed or compounded, but to be put to the test of strength, of loyalty and even of battle. 26o ERRATIC DAYS. The State of New York as one of the chief fac- tors in the decision of this issue prepared now to turn its protests into action. But not without attempted reconciliation was this determination taken. Its best commercial interests could be served only by peace between the South and North. War meant, for it, commercial disturbance and serious loss. " No other State," says Mr. Roberts, " held, by its trade, by its insurance companies and by its journals, such close relations with the South as did New York. No other State had such vast interests involved in maintaining friendship with the Southern people." In the interests of peace it first moved. A petition, addressed to Congress by the Chamber of Commerce of the City of New York and asking for steps toward a peaceful settle- ment of the impending quarrel, received the signa- tures of forty thousand merchants and business men of the city, and every city in the State was placarded with posters calling for meetings in the interest of peace and harmony. But peace and harmony were not to be. New York State had given to Lincoln and Hamlin a majority of over fifty thousand, and to the Republi- can State ticket headed by Edwin D. Morgan as its candidate for governor a majority of over sixty- three thousand. When therefore the demand came for acts as the promise of its votes the people ERRATIC DAYS. 26 1 of New York were not backward. " They ran," says Mr. Roberts, " before all the demands upon them." " No State," he declares, " moved more steadily forward in obedience to principle ; and no other sacrificed so much at the outset, and through the whole continuance of the struggle for a united republic uncontrolled by slavery." The utterances at the "peace at any price meeting" convened on January 31, i860, at Tweddle Hall, Albany, were universally condemned by the people. They grew impatient of even suggested compromise and when, on that April afternoon of 1861, came the tidings that the first shot had been fired and that Sumter had fallen. Republicans and Democrats — patriots now and no longer politicians — were united in one common desire to resent the insult to the flag and unite for national safety and national defence. The great Union Square Meeting of April 20 put this desire into practical form; the Union Defence Committee, comprising the foremost busi- ness men of the twin cities, was organized, and the words of patriotism and of firm determination there uttered found an instant and purpose-filled response in every town and village, every farmhouse and cross-road even to the remotest sections of the Empire State. CHAPTER XII. IN WAR AND PEACE. HE boom of the ofuns at Sumter found an instant echo in every true Northern heart. "Si- lence is th e evidence of dis- loyalty," said the people of Delaware County, and the State of New York, never lagging in time of stress, gave of its young blood unsparingly. And, among the half million men* whom the State gave in defence of the nation's life during the four long years of civil war, one of the first to enlist was Teunis Jansen the younger. * New York furnished to the service of the Union during the Civil War 448,850 men; while 18,197 were represented by their "commutation" or " substitute " payments. The State claimed also an additional supply of 6000 soldiers to those credited to New York by the books of the war department, while a militia force of 16,213 men sent for short service was not credited in the quota of the State. These figures, with the number of persons who served in official positions in the army and on staff duty, swell the total to fully 500,000 men. 262 IN WAR AND PEACE. 263 A mother's pleadings and a father's grudging consent could not cool the young blood that leaped to action at such a time of enthusiasm and excite- ment, and Private Teunis Jansen — first a three months man, then a three years man and then a re-enlisted veteran — returned to his home only after the surrender at Appomatox. Of a sturdy nature, and with a vigorous constitu- tion, the young soldier was one of the fortunate few whose record of safety was exceptional. Though actively engaged in twenty-nine battles and skirmishes and with fully as much dash and daring as his comrades, he yet had neither scar nor wound to show, s^ve the spent bullet that he wore beneath his scalp as a memento of Antietam's fight. Proof against the malaria, the exposure and the myriad camp sicknesses that did to death so many of his companions, he was always first at rations and at roll-call, and came home at last Captain Teunis Jansen, the pride of his family and the same sturdy and simple-hearted fellow that had left the city home four years before. His two brothers who caught the war-fever not so much from any latent patriotism as from the let- ters from camp that came from their elder brother to stimulate and excite them, were not so fortu- nate as was he. One fell in the bloody "death- angle " at Gettysburg, and one was always on the 264 IN WAR AND PEACE. hospital list, only to drag himself home at last a discharged invalid, useless in war and, ever after, equally useless in peace. Throughout the length and breadth of the State, wherever a stalwart arm and willing heart were found, the record of the Jansen household could show its counterpart. The story of the State has no prouder or worthier page than that which tells of the loyalty, the generosity, the faithfulness, the sacrifices and the deeds of the great Commonwealth during those four weary years in which the nation was struggling for safety and for life. From New York City by the sea to Buffalo by the lakes there was scarcely a home from which did not go out some soldier to take his place in the ranks of the Union army or some influence that could tell of equal interest and of equal loss. What Buffalo said of herself in 1887, looking back over that portion of her local life that has now become his- tory, may be said of every town and city in the State : " Our city has ample occasion for justifiable pride, but on all the bright page of noble achieve- ments in her fruitful history there is no time she can trace with more commendable egotism than that which recounts the deeds of her sons on the field of battle." " In zeal and devotion and gallantry," says Mr. Roberts, " New York troops were not behind their fellows in any danger or trial. Wherever the IN WAR AND PEACE. 265 sacrifices and triumphs of the national army 01: navy are told or sung, their deeds will be remem- bered and honored." The comrades of Teunis Jansen on picket, in battle and in bivouac were fully as brave and fully as faithful as was he. But it is not in fighting-men only that the sum of a nation's courage is to be reckoned. Quite as important a factor in the triumph of the Right as the volunteers of the Empire State was that greater army of determined men and devoted women who gave of their substance and their life uncomplain- ingly and unsparingly. The men could give of their wealth and of their poverty, even. Of the first two hundred and sixty millions of dollars loaned to the Government for the prosecution of the war New York advanced two hundred and ten millions. " The first flush of an era of heroism," says Mr. Roberts, " was upon the people, and the Common- wealth counted neither cost nor sacrifice in its determination to save the Union." The women could give of their sympathy, their economy and their willing labor that which was not to be reck- oned in dollars and cents, but which exerted an even stronger and more lasting influence. In the first months of the war a great meeting of ladies, held in the Cooper Institute, led to the organization of a society for active work, out of which grew the United States Sanitary Commission. And 266 IN WAR AND PEACE. in the quiet but effective work of the home circle and the neighborhood gatherings, in the patient endurance, the pinching economies, the heroic sacrifices, of which the world knows little and history keeps no record, the work of the women of the State who stood behind her volunteers, a vast but silent moral influence, may be reckoned in the account of practical aid fully as noble and fully as effective an element as were the bayonets of her soldiers and the money of her merchants. The war at last was over. Victory had rested, as victory only could rest, upon the banners of a nation determined to defend and vindicate her honor and her right. With extravagant demonstra- tions of gratitude and respect, of appreciation and pride, the thronging streets of every city in the State, from the metropolis to the lakes, welcomed back, in those spring months of 1865, the sons of the Commonwealth. There were tears for the decimated ranks, there were huzzas for the home- returning veterans, there were murmurs of pity, tinged with pride, for the tattered battle flags that told of battle and of storm. And then, the soldiers became citizens once more. Teunis Jansen and his comrades dropped into the ways and paths of private life and of home duties gladly and readily. They returned to the homes that welcomed them and to the ranks of ONE OF THE FIRST TO ENLIST. IN WAR AND PEACE. 269 labor that opened to receive them with all the determination and ambition of men who, having played their part in war faithfully and well, hoped now to perform their duties in peace with equal vigor and success. The work of mustering out went rapidly forward, and by the end of the year, of all the volunteers who had maintained the credit of the Empire State upon the battle-fields of the Republic, only seven regiments of infantry and two of cavalry remained in the service. To Teunis and his comrades there was plenty of work at hand. They returned to a State which, even though advancing in material prosperity dur- ing the desperate struggle, showed the price it had paid for success in the actual loss of its strongest and most needed workers.* And now these had come home again. They returned to a State that, notwithstanding its outspoken and devoted loyalty, had yet held within it through those four years of war, the ele- ments of opposition and of wavering faith. The adverse forces of disapproval and doubt, of criti- cism and depression, of political disfavor and of absolute disturbance had penetrated its councils and swayed the moods of its people. The timid and faint-hearted cast down by every reverse or * Tbe census of 1865 as compared with that of i860 showed an actual decrease in popula- tion amounting to nearly 50,000. 270 IN WAR AND PEACE. antagonized by every unsatisfactory or radical action of the national authorities, often wavered in their fealty or shifted their political adherence. The war party in the State more than once suffered defeat at the polls, while the opponents of the gov- ernment, pushing the permission of free speech to the uttermost, too often hampered and harassed the methods and acts of those who saw more clearly the needs and demands of the hour. Riot and bloodshed rent the chief city of the State in one terrible and never-to-be-forgotten July week of 1863, and conspirators tried again and again to weaken the allegiance of the State and turn its great influence against the conduct of the war. But all to no avail. " I tell you, lad," said Teunis the father to Teunis the home-returning son, " we had our dark days here, too — quite as dark as were any you knew at the front. There was the day when we heard that the Merrimac had sunk all the war-ships at Fortress Monroe and was steaming up here to bombarb and destroy New York ; there was the week before Gettysburg when every one had it that Lee's victorious army was on its way to Philadelphia and New York, and that the war was to be transferred to northern soil ; there were the draft troubles, and the riot week, and Early's raid and the Canada plots — all of 'em made things look black enough, I can tell you, IN WAR AND PEACE. 27 1 while every set-back from Bull Run to the murder of the President struck home with us just as hard as it did with you. We waited here, always full of anxiety and doubt ; you, at the front, had all the excitement of real conflict to keep you up to the mark. But, thank the Lord, no matter how black things looked to us, we were bound to stick to it, and stick we did ; and, to my mind, the victory we have gained over the croakers and the rebels at home (and we had plenty of such here in New York) is as grand a triumph as was Grant's over Lee, or the downfall of the Rebellion itself. But it's all over at last. And now, old fellow, the shop's ready for you ; the business is yours. There's plenty to be done; let's go to work! " And go to work they did and to good purpose. Freed from the incubus of an exhausting war, and the drain in men and money that it demanded, the State of New York in common with the other sec- tions of a reunited nation pressed forward on the path of material and intellectual progress. A little study of statistics will tell with what re- sult.* With a population, in 1888, of 5,709,969 (an increase of fully two millions since the close of the civil war) toward which the metropolis contributes * According to the latest statistics the United States is now the richest nation on the globe, showing in 1888 an estimated wealth of $60,000,000,000. In this valuation New York stands first in the list of States, Pennsylvania being second, and Ohio third. 272 IN WAR AND PEACE. its total of a million and a half, the State of New York values the real and personal property of its citizens as aggregating fully eight billions of dol- lars. Its farm lands are quoted as being worth nearly twelve hundred millions ; its manufactures reach annually twelve hundred millions more ; the money in the banks of deposit within its borders show a total of five hundred millions of dollars while thirteen hundred thousand depositors have to their credit in the savings banks of the State another round five hundred millions. The railroad lines that stretch their iron rails across its surface, though an outgrowth of only forty years of prog- ress, show annual earnings in freight and passenger traffic amounting to one hundred and thirty mil- lions of dollars, while the canals of the State, into whose construction De Witt Clinton threw so much of his energy and faith, now free highways for transportation so far as tolls are concerned, show an annual value in merchandise carried of hundreds of millions of dollars and a maximum carriage, in 1887, of nearly six million tons. The common schools of the State give free education to more than a million children at an annual cost of more than thirteen millions of dollars, while twenty-two universities and colleges show an aggre- gate value in grounds, buildings and apparatus of fully eight millions of dollars. Mrs. Bethune's little IN WAR AND PEACE. 273 Sunday-schoool of 18 16 has expanded into over seven thousand Sunday-schools within the State, attended by twelve hundred thousand scholars and teachers. The number of persons actually em- ployed in the productive industries of the State (including professional and personal service, agri- culture, trade, manufactures, mechanical trades, etc.) reached, according to the census of 1880, nearly three millions, and has largely increased since then. The State Milita in 1887 showed an actual enroll- ment of over twelve thousand men and an available reserve of six hundred and fifty thousand. These are wonderful figures for a State which is but one in a sisterhood of thirty-eight vigorous, ambitious and constantly progressing common- wealths, and which has but just completed its first century of actual existence as a separate and con- stituted State. They show the real work of the people — just such sturdy, determined, active and practical folk as this mythical family of the Jansens of Manhattan whose share in the continual advance this story has striven to sketch. Not all the depressions of war and of business reverses, not all the bungling of would-be leaders nor all the greed of unscrupulous politicians, not all the machinations of disturbers of the public peace nor all the dark deeds of all the vicious ele- ments that such a mingling of nationalities, and so 274 ^^ ^^^ ^^^ PEACE. unrestricted a flow of the world's emigration must contain, have been able effectually to block the path of progress nor to prevent the real supremacy of honesty, patriotism and persistence over those darker forces that have so often, in less enlight- ened days, combined for the overthrow of great and powerful States. It is the victory of the people over their enemies and over themselves, as well, and may be regarded as one of the strongest evidences of the value of free institutions and the worth of free citizenship and free labor. Toward this progress every city and town, every village and community, every farm and clearing within the limits of the State has contributed. The manifold interests of trade and commerce, of manu- factures and of vast capital that constitute the strength and life of the twin cities of New York and Brooklyn have worked to achieve the results that are apparent to-day; but, so too, in equal and proportionate measure have these been brought about by the lumber and the foundries, the manu- factures and transit trade of Albany, the steel works and car shops, the stove foundries and collar fac- tories of Troy, the salt works and rolling mills of Syracuse, the flouring mills and clothing factories of Rochester, the cheese trade of Rome, the starch works and lake traffic of Oswego, the iron works and " THE BUSINESS IS YOURS ; LET'S GO TO WORK ! " IN WAR AND PEACE. 277 tanneries of Elmira, the nurseries of Geneva, the commerce and grain trade, the iron industries and railway traffic of Buffalo, the locomotive works of Dunkirk, the carriage and boiler shops of Utica, the flouring mills and paper factories of Watertown, the iron furnaces and breweries of Poughkeepsie, and all the other countless and manifold industries of hand and brain that occupy the attention and contribute to the support of all the six million resi- dents of the Empire State. With the oldest city in the nation as its capital,* with relics and reminders of the heroic days of its earliest settlers and defenders at every hand, with a past of interest and renown to inspire and instruct, it has a future that is full of possibilities grander and more inevitable than even its sons and daugh- ters of to-day imagine. With " three quarters of the fresh water of the globe " flowing past her beautiful lake cities and with her chief town washed by the waves of the great Atlantic, the State of New York holds within her limits the very mountain peaks that, so the geologists affirm, reared themselves out of the depths of " chaos and old night " as the first * The abandonment of Jamestown, the decadence and Insignificance of St. Augustine and Santa F^ make Albany the oldest continuous city in the United States. It is, indeed, as a recent writer declares, " the birthplace of the Union," and there is no place in the country, continues the same writer, *' which is associated with so many varied and far- reaching facts." 278 IN WAR AND PEACE. tangible suggestions of a habitable world* far back in the very beginnings of the globe. Upon her western boundaries falls the greatest known cata- ract of the world, while one of the noblest and most picturesque of rivers cuts through her eastern limits. She boasts, as her metropolis, the fifth city of the world in population, and the second in commercial greatness, and spans the arm of the sea that sepa- rates her two most populous cities with the grandest suspension bridge in the world. Equally great in her follies and her charities, in her resources and her wastefulness, the State of New York houses within her area of less than fifty thousand square miles a greater number of inhabi- tants than has ever been colonized in such an area within the same period of time, while her very vastness alike in possession, in opportunities and in action makes her in every phase a State of superlatives. Her intellectual activity is on a par with her commercial vigor. Already, within her chief city, she has gathered a brilliant circle of growing writers who bear out the promise of those earlier days of Irving and Cooper, of Bryant and Halleck, of Hoffman and Drake and Poe, and give force to the prophecy that New York City will, in time, become *The Adirondack Region is said to be the oldest portion of the earth's surface. IN WAR AND PEACE. 279 the " literary centre " of the nation. The greatest monthly magazines of the world are issued from her presses. Her newspapers are centres of vast information and influence, and her religious, pro- fessional and scientific circles hold names that the world delights to honor. In these later years she has tasted, again and again, the sweets of success, the dregs of shame and the bitternesses of failure. Lured on and in- toxicated by the fascinations of the fickle goddess of speculation, she experienced in 1873 one of the worst financial panics of modern times ; lulled into indifference by a display of power and of insolence, her chief city lay for years the prey of a gang of robbers who fed fat at the public crib ; aroused to action almost at the eleventh hour, she crushed them in 1871 by the uprising of an indignant peo- ple only once more to fall in these later years a prey to similar evil masters, less successful because less shrewd and arrogant. Aldermanic rings and legislative rings, canal rings, contract rings and railroad rings have encompassed now the State and now its leading cities, only to be repeatedly broken by the strong grasp of an awakened people, while the problem of monopoly against union — the old strife between capital and labor — still ever threatens and still is never solved. But, spite of all obstacles and in the face of all reverses, progress 28o IN WAR AND PEACE. is ceaseless and the Empire State helped, even by its hinderances, and made stronger, even by- its weaknesses moves proudly forward to the still grander and nobler possibilities that the Future holds in store. And, within their quiet homes, absorbed in the duties that each day creates, modest, unobtrusive, self-helpful, active and trustworthy the Jansens, and such as they, still keep the even tenor of their way, unmoved by the glittering unsubstantialities that lure so many to loss and disgrace, and are, in their honest and quiet fashion, a factor in the great suc- cess which their State has attained. For New York is not all bustle and rush. Although, as Mr. Roberts remarks, she " has never enjoyed the quiet and the repose of Arcadia," there are still within her great city as quiet and orderly homes as in her villages and on her farm lands. Despite the hurry and push of competition and of trade the State still holds to many of the plodding and patient ways that marked the old Dutchman of the long ago. Could that first Teunis Jansen of Stuyvesant's day, the honest burgher of the Winckel Street, revisit the city which has gone on without him for fully two hundred years, he would stand amazed at -the marvelous revelation of progress and of power that he would see. The Winckel Street was long since swallowed up, and of all the old landmarks of his IN WAR AND PEACE. 28 1 distant day scarcely a relic remains. The jingle of the telephone and the click of the type-writer in twice ten thousand offices would astonish the plod- ding shopkeeper of two centuries ago, wedded to his ponderous methods of accounting; the flash of the electric light would blind his flickering dip and dull horn lantern ; the whirr of the mowing machine and the clatter of the thresher would confound the patient wielder of scythe and flail, and the fleet of swift steamers crowding through the Narrows with goods scarce ten days out from the old world, would make him think that the black art he so feared had in truth come to trouble and mislead mankind. But, though methods change, human hearts re- main the same. The good Knickerbocker bread- winner of the long ago would find his descendants the same honest, active, hopeful, slow-going work- ers that he and his children were, and he would see in just such earnest, willing, devoted, home-loving folk the real people of the State — the source of its strength, its prosperity and its wealth. The workman dies, but the work goes on. Since first the Spanish explorers — three hundred and seventy years ago — stood by the beautiful waters of Onondaga Lake and wrought their Castilian speech into the Indian names of lake and island, river and mountain, the march of white occupation in the Empire State has gone steadily forward. 282 IN WAR AND PEACE. To-day six millions of people possess the land that then one fierce Indian confederacy of scarce six thousand barbarians held and dominated. Within the boundaries of that forest republic a sovereign State has risen to possession and power. And this result has been achieved by the unceasing union of just such elements of honest endeavor, earnest pur- pose, sturdy strength and practical common sense as in the day of beginnings two centuries and more ago marked the first of the name, Jansen, the honest burgher of the Winckel Street, in the early days of rude and crude New Amsterdam. APPENDIX THE STATE OF JSTEM^ YORK IN OUTLINB "WITH COUNTIES AND COUNTY TO\V>fS ETC., ETC. THE STORY OF NEW YORK TOLD IN CHRONOLOGICAL EPITOME. Chronology is the best index to the past. The progress of a people is most surely epitomized by the orderly presentation of the dates of such historical happenings as tell the real story of a state or a nation. As the fitting complement to the story of New York alr-eady sketched in the preceding pages the same story is here retold in epitome by the grouping of chronological sequences. It begins away back in the mists of antiquity. Pre-historic New York has a story as full of interest and romance, of struggle, advance, decline and progress again as has its later record, but of those pre-historic days but scant remains exist. The pick of the archaeologist and the research of the anti- quarian reveal for us a few of these data, but the record of thousands of years can be told almost in a paragraph. THE ERA OF BEGINNINGS. Discoveries made at High Rock Spring, Saratoga, disclose the first traces of the aboriginal American in a past of very great antiquity. The pre. historic peoples known as the " Cave Dwellers " probably occupied New York State as early as from 10,000 to 25,000 B. C. Remains of two hundred and fifty enclosures — fortifications, walls, tem- ples and home-sites — in Western New York show that portion of the State to have been, for ages, the home of the semi-civilized people known as the " Mound-Builders," and as late, probably, as 1000 B. c. From this estimated date until the close of the fourteenth century A. D. the State was occupied by nomadic Indian tribes who were, about the year 1405, driven out by a branch of the Western Dakotas known as Ho-de-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois. This powerful Indian republic of five confederated tribes held possession of the State at the time of its colonization by Europeans in the early years of the seventeenth century. At just what remote period of time the State was first visited by Euro- peans it is impossible to determine. Phoenician adventurers before the days of the Argonauts or Basque fishermen in the opening years of the first Christian centuries may have seen the river we now call the Hudson. There is reason for thinking that in the summer of the year 1003 Lief the son of Eric, or certain of his Norse followers, explored the Bay of New York and saw the Palisades of the Hudson ; there is a slight possibility that the eight 283 284 ERA OF COLONIZATION. Arabian sailors who sailed westward from Moorish Lisbon about 1140 may have ventured into the Bay of New York; there is a possibility, even less slight, that the followers of the legendary Welsh prince Madoc sighted the hills of Navesink in 1170. All this, however, is largely conjecture with but a trifling basis of fact. Either the companions or the successors of Columbus, pushing to the northward, between the years 1500 and 1520 explored New York's water- ways, penetrating even into the valley of the Mohawk j Araericus Vespucius may have sighted the Staten Island hills in 1497 ; John Cabot in the same year may have coasted through Long Island Sound and in 1498 Sebastian Cabot, his son, it seems possible, sailed into the Bay of New York. The memorial stone unearthed at Pompey, Onondaga County, and bearing the date of 1520, is an evidence of Spanish visitation, and the ruins of a fort on Castle Island, below Albany, display Spanish workmanship and have been attributed to the same period. Giovanni da Verrazano sailed his caravel the Dau- phine into the mouth of the Hudson in April, 1524, and Estevan Gomez, toward the close of the same year, explored and made a uhart of the broad Bay of New York. The French Franciscan Andre Thevet saw New York harbor in the early spring of 1556 and through succeeding years Spanish, French and English adventurers sighted or touched at the coast about " the Manhattans.'' In 1569 David Ingram with two companions, following the Indian trails, on an enforced pedestrian trip from the Gulf of Mexico to Massachusetts Bay crossed the southeastern portion of New York State. About the first of July, 1609, Samuel de Champlain entered New York State from Canada. He explored Lake Champlain and on July 29 he defeated the Iroquois near the present site of Ticonderoga, and set afoot the enmity that ever after kept France from the possession of the Iroquois country. On the morning of September i, 1609, Henry Hudson in the Dutch ship Half Moon dropped anchor in New York harbor and the uncertain days of beginnings and discoveries gave place to THE ERA OF COLONIZATION. i6og. Hudson explored the Hudson River from Manhattan island to Albany — September 1 2-23. 1612. Christiasnsen and Block sailed for the Manhattans. 1613. Christiaensen built Fort Nassau, the " strong house," on Castle Island below Albany, erected a few huts on Manhattan Island and launched a new boat, the Onrest, near the present " Battery." 1614. Amsterdam merchants obtained a charter for trading in the New Netherlands — October 11. 1615. Champlain fought the Iroquois near Oneida Lake — October 10. Returned to Canada — October 16. 1617. Jacob F.elkf ns, near Albany, formed an alliance with the Iroquois — the " Treaty of Tawasenetha. " EJiA OF COLONIZATION. 285 1618. The Amsterdam merchants were refused renewal of charter. 1620. States General refused to allow the Puritans to colonize the New Netherlands — April 11. 1621. States General granted charter to the Dutch West India Company — June. 1622. West India Company took formal possession of the New Nether- lands — December. 1623. Albany settled by the Walloons. Fort Orange built. 1624. Amsterdam Chamber sent out the ship New Netherlands with colo- nists. Cornells Jacobsen Mey director — March. 1625. William Verhulst succeeded Mey as director. Brooklyn settled. 1626. Peter Minuit arrived at New Netherlands as Director General. Manhattan Island purchased from the Indians for twenty-four dollars — May 6. Establishment of friendly relations with Plymouth Settlement — October. 1629. States General confirmed the scheme of the Company creating the feudal rights of the " patroons " — June 7. 1630. Kilian Van Renssalaer purchased territory around Fort Orange as patroon of Rensalaerswyck. Michael Pauw as patroon bought Staten Island and the present site of Jersey City, calling it Pavonia. 1632. Controversy between Company and Patroons. Recall of Minuit. England claimed the New Netherlands. 1633. Wouter Van Twiller succeeded as Director General. Erection of Fort at New Amsterdam. Jacob Eelkens' visit to Manhattan. Van Twiller forced him to sail away. Dutch built a fort near Hartford. Remonstrances of the English. Van Twiller expelled English from Fort Nassau. Settle- ment on Manhattan received the name of New Amsterdam. 1635. Controversy between Van Twiller and Van Dinklagen. Van Twiller recalled. Purchase of Pavonia from its Patroon by West India Company. 1638. Wilhelm Kieft arrived at Manhattan as governor — March 28. Swedes build Fort Christina on Dutch lands on the Delaware. 1639. New Charter of Privileges granted to Colonists by Company. 1640. Large territory in King's and Queen's counties purchased. Kieft proclaimed ordinance of non-intercourse with Connecticut colonists. Kieft sent an armed force against Raritan Indians. Slaughter of Raritan Indians. Burning of De Vries' plantation. 1641. Declaration of war against the savages. General council of prin- cipal citizens convened— August 23. The "Twelve Men" appointed by the colonists to represent them — August 28. Expedition against West- chester Indians. 1642. Kieft quarrelled with the " Twelve Men " and disbanded the com- mittee. 1643. Massacre of Indians at Pavonia and Corlaer's Hook — February 2 5. Colonists attacked by the Indians in turn. Hempstead settled. 1644. Aid of the New Haven Colony successfully invoked. Massacre 286 ERA OF ENGLISH DOMINION. of Long Island Indians. Massacre of Indians at Greenwich under Underhill. 1645. Peace concluded with Indians on the Bowling Green. Flushing settled. 1646. Yonkers settled. 1647. Kieft recalled. Peter Stuyvesant succeeded as director general — May II. Kuyter and Melyn banished as " popular agitators " — July n. Representative Council of nine members organized. Adjustment of bounda- ries between New England and Dutch Colonies. 1652. Burgher governments established at Manhattan and Brooklyn — April 4. 1654. Intrigues of the English for the conquest of the Province. Exten- sion of increased municipal powers to colonists. Oswego settled. 1655. Reconquest of the Swedish Forts on Delaware. Renewal of Indian hostilities — September 15. Indians attacked Pavonia, Hoboken, Long and Manhattan Islands. Restoration of peace. 1656. Jamaica settled. 1657. Kingston (Esopus) settled. 1659. Arendt Van Curler concluded a peace with the Iroquois. Septem- ber 17. 1660. Van Curler concluded a treaty with the non-Iroquois tribes, at Esopus. 1661. Schenectady settled. 1664. Popular assembly of the whole colony convened at New Amsterdam — April 10. Vexatious controversies with English Colonies. Grant of patent by Charles II. of England giving the New Netherlands to the Duke of York. Arrival of English fleet. Surrender of Dutch demanded. Capitu- lation of Stuyvesant — September 3. Name of New York given to the colony and its chief city — September 8. Fort Orange called Albany — September 23. New Jersey transferred to Lord Berkeley. THE ERA OF ENGLISH DOMINION. 1665. Col. Nichols first English governor. City Charter remodelled. Promulgation of "The Duke's Laws." Executive power vested in mayor and aldermen. Power to enact laws and impose taxes to belong to governor and council. 1668. Recall of Nichols. Col. Francis Lovelace governor. 1670. First New York Exchange established — March 24. 1672. War between England and Holland. 1673. Dutch Squadron anchored at Staten Island — July 29. City sur- rendered to the Dutch by Captain Manning, in the absence of Governor Lovelace — July 30. Administration of Captain Anthony Colve. 1674. Territory restored to English by treaty — February 19. Major Edmund Andros appointed governor — November. Arbitrary Measures of Andros. ERA OF ENGLISH DOMINION. 287 1678. The " Bolting Act " secured to citizens of New York the exclusive right of bolting and exporting flour — a source of great revenue to the colony. 1679. Indian slavery abolished. 1680. Andros summoned to England. Recall of Andros. 1682. Purchase of the Delaware settlements by William Penn. Long Island annexed to New York. 1683. Colonel Thomas Dongan governor — August 27. Representative Assembly called — October 17. Charter of Liberty framed vesting power in governor, council and people. Right of suffrage conferred on free- holders and trial by jury established. Delegates to assembly apportioned in accordance to population. Province divided into twelve counties with j-wenty-one representatives. Arbitrary exactions of James II. Intro- duction of Catholic interference. 1684. Virginia and New York conclude at Albany treaty of peace with the Iroquois — July 30. Attempt to establish a fort at Niagara frustrated. 1685. Castleton and Middletown settled. 1686. New York and New England consolidated into the Province of New England — June 3. 1688. Governor Dongan recalled. Francis Nicholson appointed gov- ernor — August. Revolution of 1689 in England led to serious complica- tions in America. People divided into Royalist and Democratic parties. 1689. Massachusetts broke the provincial union — April 18. Nicholson left his post, and the people of New York revolted and conferred the chief power upon Captain Jacob Leisler — May 31. Opposition to Leisler in north part of province. Recognition of the Leisler government by William and Mary. The people delegated the civil and military command to Leisler. Council of advisers appointed. 1690. Schenectady burned by French and Indians, sixty of inhabitants killed — February. First Continental Congress met at New York — May i. Leisler sent a naval expedition against Quebec and Montreal. Poughkeepsie and Fishkill settled. 1691. Arrival of Major Ingoldsby announcing appointment of Colonel Sloughter as governor. Ingoldsby demanded surrender of Fort. Leisler refused to surrender government except to Sloughter. Arrival of Sloughter — March 19. Arrest of Leisler and Milborne — March 20. Their trial and execution — May 15. Renewal of treaties with Iroquois at Albany. Popular assembly convened. Liberal Constitution formed. Death of Sloughter — August 2. 1692. Benjamin Fletcher governor. Signal defeat of French near Lake Champlain. 1693. William Bradford established the first printing press in New York. Church controversy. Act passed recognizing Protestant Episcopal Church as the established church of the Province — September. 1695. Fletcher recalled. Act of Attainder against Leisler repealed. 1696. Trinity Church opened for worship — February. Armed vessel fitted out under Captain Kidd for repression of piracy —April. 288 ERA OF ENGLISH DOMINION. 1697. Peace of Ryswick. Kidd turned priate. 1698. Earl of Bellomont governor — April 2. Stock Company organized for suppression of pirates. 1699. Lord Bellomont attaches himself to the people's party. New Assem- bly of democratic proclivities convened — May 18. Acts passed for suppres- sion of piracy and indemnity to state offenders. Families of Leisler and Millborne reinstated in forfeited possessions. Kidd arrested in Boston — July. 1701. Death of Bellomont — March 5. Lieutenant-Governor Nanfan acting-governor. Trial and conviction of Nicholas Bayard for treason — March 7. Kidd executed in England — May 12. 1702. Arrival of Lord Cornbury as Governor of New York and New Jersey — May 3. 1705. Grammar School established ; Andrew Clarke appointed master. Dissatisfaction with Cornbury. His recall. 1708. Lord Lovelace, governor — December 18. Newburg settled. 1709. Death of Lovelace — May 6. Government left in hands of Lieu- tenant-Governor Ingoldsby. Expedition fitted out against Montreal. Failure of expediton. Ingoldsby removed. 1710. Robert Hunter, governor — June. Arrival of three thousand Ger- man immigrants. 1711. Unsuccessful expedition of four thousand men against Canada. Refusal of Assembly to grant permanent appropriation for support of gov- ernment. Supplies for a single year furnished. 1712. Rumored insurrection of negroes creates a panic — April 6. Execu- tion of twenty-one negroes. 1715. Protracted contests between Governor and Assembly as to revenue. Court of Chancery established and confirmed. Lewis Morris appointed Chief-Justice of province. 1719. Retirement of Governor Hunter. Peter Schuyler of Albany, acting-governor. Restoration of amicable relations with Iroquois. 1720. William Burnet, governor — September 17. Revenue voted to him for five years. 1722. Erection of a trading-post at Oswego. German immigrants settle in Mohawk Valley. Congress of provincial governors and commissioners at Albany. Memorial forwarded to the king. Assembly refused renewal of supplies for more than three years. 1725. Bradford started the New York " Gazette " as the governor's organ — October 16. 1727. Dissolution of Assembly by governor. The succeeding Assembly dissolved. Burnet transferred to Massachusetts. Law prohibiting French trade repealed. 1728. John Montgomerie succeeded as governor — April 15. Grant of new city charter. 1731. Death of Montgomerie — July i. Rip Van Dam acting -govern or. 1732. Colonel William Cosby, governor — August 1. ERA OF ENGLISH DOMINION. 289 1733. Cosby demanded half of Van Dam's salary. Van Dam demanded half of Cosby's perquisites. Van Dam tried and condemned to pay amount. Morris removed from office and De Lancey appointed. New York " Weekly Journal " started by John Peter Zenger as an opposition organ — November 5. 1734. Attacks on the government in New/ York "Journal." Zenger arrested — November 17. 1735. Zenger tried for seditious libel — July. Acquittal of Zenger and triumph of popular cause — August 4. Oppressive proceedings of Cosby. 1736. Cosby's death — March 10. Exclusion of Rip Van Dam as his successor. George Clarke appointed Lieutenant-Governor by commission — October 14. 1737. Assembly dissolved and a nevf one called — April. Revenue granted for one year and no longer. Disfranchisement of Jews. 1741. Fire in New York — March 18. Negroes accused of plot to burn the town. One hundred and fifty-four negroes and twenty-one whites arrested. Thirty-four negroes and four whites executed. The reign of terror stop- ped — September 24. 1743. Admiral George Clinton appointed governor — September 2. Act passed limiting term of Assembly to seven years. Dissensions of Clinton with Assembly. Popular discontent. 174s. Saratoga destroyed by French and Indians — November 16. 1746. Sir William Johnson made head of the Indian Department — September. Continued opposition to Clinton. 1748. Great Indian council at Albany — July 20. 1753- Resignation of Clinton. Sir Danvers Osborne succeeded as governor — October 10. Suicide of Osborne — October 11. Lieutenant- Governor DeLancey assumed charge. 1754. Congress of colonial deputies at Albany — June 19. Renewal of • treaties with Iroquois — July 11. 1755. Sir Charles Hardy governor — September 3. Hardy returns to England leaving De Lancey in charge. Beginning of French and Indian War. Meeting of the Colonial governors at New York — April 14. Campaign against Canada planned. Great Indian council on Sir William Johnson's estate. Erection of Fort Edward. Camp on Lake George. Battle of Lake George ; defeat of the French — September 8. Rome settled. 1756. Lord Loudoun, Governor of Virginia, took command. Fort Bull captured by the French — March 27. Colonel Bradstreet defeats the French at Sandy Creek — July 12. Neutrality of a portion of the Iroquois tribes. Montcalm captures Forts Ontario and Oswego — August 14. 1757. Siege of Fort William Henry. Surrender of the Fort — August 9. Massacre of the garrison by the Indians. Massacre at Palatine Village — November 12. 1758. General Abercrombie took command. Siege of Louisburg — July 8. Attack upon Fort Ticonderoga; its repulse — July 8. Surrender of Louisburg — July 26. Attack upon Fort Frontenac by Bradstreet ; its cap- ture — August 27. Capture of Fort Du Quesne — November 24. 290 ERA OF ENGLISH DOMINION. 1759. Amherst succeeded Abercrombie. Ticonderoga abandoned by French — July 26. Capture of Crown Point and Niagara — July. Wolfe takes Quebec — September 17. Capture of Montreal — September 8. 1760. Lieutenant-Governor De Lancey died — July 30. Succeeded by Cadwallader Colden acting-governor. 1761. Sir William Johnson visits the Iroquois tribes. General Robert Monckton appointed governor — April 28. Pratt named as chief-justice. Has appointment only to hold at King's pleasure. Indignation of the people. 1762. Assembly refused to appoint salary for chief-justice. 1763. Sandy Hook Lighthouse built. 1765. Stamp Act passed by Parliament — March 22. Sons of Liberty organized. Meeting of the First Colonial Congress in New York — October 7. Congress asserted rights of Colonies to tax themselves. Ship vifith stamps arrives in New York harbor — October 23. Meeting of mer- chants to protest — October 31. Statement of grievances sent to King and Parliament. Act took effect — November i. McEvers, the stamp agent, resigned his commission. Merchants agreed to stop all importa- tion from England. Parade of Sons of Liberty. The governor burnt in effigy. House of Major James rifled. Attempt to obtain possession of the Stamps. Governor Colden delivered up stamps to Mayor. General agreement in non-intercourse policy by colonies. Articles of confedera- tion proposed and adopted. Arrival of Sir Henry Moore as governor — November 13. Peter De Lancey appointed stamp director. De Lancey resigned his commission. New supply of stamps for Connecticut burned by Sons of Liberty. Assembly confirmed the proceedings of Colonial Congress. 1766. Repeal of the Stamp Act — February 20. Parliament declared right to tax colonies at pleasure. News of the repeal reached New York — May 20. Celebrations in Colonies. Liberty pole raised — June 4. Controversy between Governor and Assembly — June. Liberty pole cut down by English soldiers — August 10. Disturbance between soldiers and patriots. Assembly refused to comply with demands of government for military supplies. Assembly induced to consent to an additional appropria- tion. Legislative powers of Assembly suspended by Parliament. 1767. Assembly disregarded this act of Parliament. Tax on tea, glass, paper, etc., passed. Renewal of non-importation agreement by merchants. 1768. New Assembly met. Resolutions strongly declaratory of their rights passed. Assembly dissolved. 1769. New Assembly convened — April 4. Military appropriation re- newed. Death of Governor Moore — September 11. Cadwallader Colden again governor. Assembly convened — November 21. Supplies for troops obtained by coalition between governor and De Lancey. Inflammatory hand- bills condemning Assembly circulated. Public meeting held, proceedings of Assembly condemned — December 18. Passage of bill for issue of Colonial bill of credit. ERA OF REVOLUTION. 291 THE ERA OF REVOLUTION. lyyo- Jo^in Lamb arrested for presiding over public meeting. Alex- ander MacDougal, author of inflammatory handbills, imprisoned. Liberty Pole demolished again — January 17. Public meeting of the citizens. Res- olutions denouncing conduct of the soldiery passed. Arrest of soldiers by Sons of Liberty — January 18. Attempt at release by the comrades. Battle of Golden Hill — January 18. Conflict renewed — January 19. Erection of a new liberty pole — February 6. Renewed attack upon pole. Successful defence by Sons of Liberty — March 29. Sons of Liberty burn effigy of merchant who violated non-importation agreement. Repeal of duties except on tea. Committee of one hundred make non-importation except on tea. Colden superseded by Lord Dunmore as governor — October 25. 1771. Proceedings against MacDougal — January. MacDougal com- mitted to prison. Lord Dunmore transferred to Virginia. William Tryon appointed governor — July. Tryon refuses to accept any salary from assembly. 1772. New York Hospital founded. 1773- Government remitted duties on tea except 3 d. a pound. Large shipments of tea made un this basis. Sons of Liberty renew their pledges condemning purchase of tea — November 27. Saratoga settled. 1774. Tryon resigned the government — April 7. Colden his succes- sor again. Arrival of tea-ships — April 18. New York Tea Party — April 22. Tea ships forced to return to England by vigilance committee — April 23. Meeting of the citizens — May 19. Committee of fifty-one formed to renew non-importation agreement. Public meeting ; non-importation agreement renewed and a colonial congress recommended — July 6. Second Colonial Congress assembled at Philadelphia — September. Declaration of Rights. 1775. Assembly addressed a strong remonstrance to Parliament. As- sembly adjourned — April 3. First Provincial Assembly of delegates from Counties met — April 20. Five delegates appointed to Continental Con- gress. Second Provincial Congress met at New York — May 22. Congress authorized raising of regiments. "Arrival of the Asia. Sons of Liberty take possession of City Hall. Supplies seized from ships in harbor. Provi- sional government established — May 5. Capture of ammunition at Turtle Bay. Embarkation of the royal troops for Boston. Recapture of arms by the citizens. Capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point — May 9. Arnold's victory on Lake Champlain — May 18. Tryon resumed his office — June 25. Organization of four regiments as the quota of New York. Removal of the guns from the Battery. Cannonade of the City by the Asia. Tryon abdicated. Demolition of the Royalist press. Ticonderoga fortified. Unsuccessful attempt to invade Canada. Capture of St. Johns — November 2. Surrender of Montreal — November 12. Siege of Quebec by Arnold and Montgomery — December 3. Death of Montgomery — December 30. 1776. Continuance of Siege by Arnold and Wooster — April. Arrival 292 ERA OF REVOLUTION. of Burgoyne and retreat of Americans — May. Defence of New York — April. General and Lord Howe and Sir Henry Clinton invested New York — July. Declaration of Independence — July 4. Battle of Long Island — August 27. Surrender of Sullivan and defeat of Americans — August 29. Withdrawal to New York — Great fire in New York — September 21. Execution of Nathan Hale — September 21. Evacuation of the city. Skirmish at Harlem. Retreat of Washington to White Plains. Battle of White Plains — October 28. Capture of Forts Washington and Lee by the British — November 16. Retreat of Washington across Dela- ware — December 8. Naval combat on Lake Champlain — October 11. Surrender of Crown Point. Occupation of New York by the British. 1777. Convention of delegates from counties met at Kingston — April. First State Constitution adopted — April 20. Election of Governor; ap- pointment of state officers. Attack on Ticonderoga — July 2. Retreat of St. Clair. Battle of Oriskany; defeat of British — August 7. Burgoyne massed his army at Crown Point — June 27; he advanced to Saratoga — September 14. Battle of Bemis Heights or Stillwater — September 19. Second Battle of Stillwater — October 7. Surrender of Burgoyne at Sara- toga — October II. Capture of Forts Clinton, Montgomery and Consti- tution — October 17. Gates joins Washington in Pennsylvania. 1778. Destruction of Cobbleskill, by the Indians and tories — June i. Attack upon Cherry Valley — November 11. 1779. British capture and Americans recapture of Stony Point and Ver- planck's Point — May 30 and July 16. Attack of Brant at Minisink — July 19. Battle of Minisink. General Sullivan and Clinton's expedition against the Indians. Defeat of the Indians at Elmira — August. 1780. Affair at Young House near Tarrytown — February 3. Benedict Arnold appointed to command of West Point — August 3. Arnold holds treasonable correspondence with Andre. Arrangements made for interview between them. Interview between Arnold and Andre — September 21. Andre's capture at Tarrytown — September 23. Escape of Arnold. Con- viction of Andre. Execution of Andre at Tappan — October 2. 1781. French troops united with the American army at Dobb's Ferry — July 4. The allied armies left New York for Virginia — August 19. Sur- render of Cornwallis at Yorktown — October 19. 1782. Sir Guy Carleton assumed command of British troops at New York — May. Transfer of New York's western lands to the nation accepted by Congress — October 31. American army went into winter quarters at Newburg — Octo ber. 1783. Washington at Newburg refused to be made king of the United States — March. Popular meeting at Fort Plain banished tories from the Mohawk Valley — May 9. Treaty of Peace signed — September 3. Evacu- ation of New York by the British — November 25. Washington took leave of the army officers at Fraunces' tavern, New York — December 4. Hudson settled. 1784. State legislature assembled at New York — January 21. Act ERA OF FORMATION. 293 passed establishing custom house and revenue system. Congress removed to New York City — December 23. Legislature passed acts disfranchising tories. 1785. Legislature made duties payable to Congress in State's bills of credit. Congress requested Governor Clinton to convene Legislature for reconsideration of this measure. Governor Clinton refuses. Convention of commissioners from States to form system of commercial regulations — September. Recommendations for the call of a national convention to revise articles of confederation. Troy and Utica settled. 1786. Syracuse settled. 1787. Approval of Governor's course by Legislature. Appointment of delegates to the National Convention. Legislature limits their powers to revision of Articles of Confederation. Disfranchising act against tories repealed. Meeting of the National Convention — May. Delegation from New York except Hamilton, withdraw from convention, believing the con- vention to exceed its powers. Constitution adopted — September 17. Pub- lication of " Federalist " articles by Hamilton. Geneva and Binghamton settled. THE ERA OF FORMATION. 1788. State Legislature passed a resolution calling convention for con- sideration of United States Constitution — January 27. "Doctor's Mob" in New York — April 13. Constitutional Convention organized at Pough- keepsie — June 17. Constitution adopted by a majority of three with recom- mendation of amendments — July 26. Constitution officially proclaimed — September 13. Special session of Legislature to send delegates to Conti- nental Congress — Decembers. Representatives elected to United States Congress. Recommendation to Congress to call convention to amend Constitution. Canandaigua and Elmira settled. 1789. First Federal Congress under the National Constitution assembled at New York — March 4. Washington and Adams president and vice- president — April 6. President Washington arrived in New York — April 24. Inaugurated as president — April 30. George Clinton re-elected gov- ernor — April. Legislature convened in special session — July 6. Schuyler and King elected senators — July 19. Ithaca settled. 1790. Congress removed from New York to Philadelphia — August 12. President Washington left New York — August 30. Large Federal majority at State election. Census showed an increase of eighty-five thousand during past five years. Election of Aaron Burr as senator. Rochester and Buffalo settled. 1791. Re-appointment of representa-tive and senatorial districts. Assem bly increased to seventy-three and senate to twenty-four members. Act passed to sell State lands. 1792. Act passed incorporating Western and Northern Inland Lake Navigation Companies — January. Re-election of Governor Clinton and 294 ERA OF FORMATION. Lieutenant-Governor Van Cortland — April. Re-election of Washington and Adams — November. 1793. The French Revolution. Naval battle off Sandy Hook between French and English frigates — August 3. Citizen Genet arrived in New York as representative of the French Republic — August 7. 1795. Act passed appropriating fifty thousand dollars annually for five years to common schools — January. Rufus King re-elected United States senator — January 27. Jay and Van Renssalaer elected governor and lieu- tenant-governor. 1795. Trial of John Fitch's steamboat at New York. Canal completed at Little Falls. John Lawrence elected U.S. senator — November. Ogdens- burg settled. 1797. Act passed creating office of comptroller — January. Philip Schuyler chosen U. S. senator. Location of the capital at Albany. Election of Adams as President. 1798. Re-election of Jay and Van Renssalaer. Clinton and Spencer elected U. S. senators. Act passed incorporating a company for construe tion of canal from Lakes Erie to Ontario. 1799. Act supplying city of New York with pure water passed. Partial abolition of slavery in the State — April. 1800. Governor Morris chosen U. S. senator. John Armstrong elected U. S. senator — November. Watertown settled. i8oi. Orgnization of the common school system. Recommendation of a convention to amend State Constitution. Contest between Jefferson and Burr — February. Jefferson elected president and Burr vice-president. George Clinton and Van Renssalaer elected governor and lieutenant-gov- ernor. State Constitutional Convention meets — October 13. 1802. Ambrose Spencer appointed Attorney General — January. Pro- posed ■ amendment to National Constitution. De Witt Clinton elected senator — February 9. Controversy between Clinton and Burr. 1804. Ammendment of the United States Constitution in reference to presidential electors — January. Lewis and Broome elected governor and lieutenant-governor — April. Hostility between Burr and Hamilton — February. Duel between Burr and Hamilton and death of Hamilton — July II. Mitchell elected U. S. senator. Re-election of President Jeffer- son. Governor George Clinton elected vice-president — December. 1805. Act appropriating proceeds of one half million acres of public lands to common schools — January. Free School Society of the city of New York incorporated. Mclntyre appointed comptroller. Election of Tompkins as governor. Lockport settled. 1807. Robert Fulton's steamboat Clermont launched at Brown's shipyard on the East River— August 7. Congress laid an embargo on all vessels in harbors of United States — September 23. Opposition to this measure by Federalists. 1808. Favorable report of proposed canal from Lake Erie to Hudson. Election of Madison and George Clinton as president and vice-president. ERA OF FORMATION. 295 1809. Obadiah German elected U. S. senator. Negotiations for repeal of English and French decrees. Refusal of English government to repeal orders in council — June. 1810. Board of Commissioners appointed to make survey route for Erie and Champlain Canal. Re-election of Tompkins and Broome — April. Preparations for war with England. i8ii. Appointment of Commissioners for establishment of common schools. Bill passed for the construction of the canal — April 8. 1812. Bill passed for the organization of the common school system. Bill introduced chartering Bank of America. Legislature adjourned by the governor — March 27. Death of Vice-President Clinton — April 20. Bill passed chartering Bank of America — May 21. War declared against Great Britain — June 20. Organization of West Point Military Academy. Many privateers sent out from New York. General Hull's surrender of Detroit — August 16. Capture of Guerrierre and Macedonian and Frolic. Gunboat Oneida repulsed five British vessels ofiE Sackett's Harbor — July 19. Commodore Chauncey drove the British fleet into Kingston Harbor — Novem- ber 9. Elliott captured two British vessels at Fort Erie — October 9. Van Renssalaer captured British works at Queenstowu — October 12. Battle of Queenstown Heights — October 13. Re-election of Madison, and Gerry as president and vice-president — November. Perry assumes command on Lake Erie. 1813. Rufus King elected U. S. senator — January. Re-election of Governor Tompkins ; triumph of Democrats. Capture of the Peacock — February. Expedition to Elizabethtown, Canada — February 7. British capture Ogdensburg — February 22. Americans capture York — April 27. Capture of Fort George — May 27. British defeat at Sackett's Harbor — May 29. Attack upon Black Rock — July 11. Burning of Plattsburg — July 31. Capture of the Argus by the Pelican — August 14. Capture of the Boxer by the Enterprise — September 5. Perry's victory on Lake Erie — September 10. Battle of the Thames — October 5. Unsuccessful expe- dition against Canada — November. Action at Chaeateaugay. Evacuation of Fort George. Americans burn Newark and Queenstown. Retalitory descent by British upon Forts Niagara, Lewiston, Youngstown, etc. — December. Buffalo and Black Rock captured and burned — December 26. 1814. Appropriations to Colleges. Unsuccessful attack upon Rouse's Point— -March. Repulse of British at Oswego — May 5., Action at Sandy Creek. Capture of Fort Erie — July 3. Battle of Chippewa — July 5. Battle of Lundy's Lane — July 25. Siege of Fort Erie — August 7. Brit- ish invade Northern New York. Preparations for defence of city of New York and the Northern frontier — August. Indorsement of the credit of the government by Governor Tompkins. Attack upon Plattsburg. Battle of Lake Champlain — September 11. British retreat into Canada. Special session of Legislature to take measures for defence — September 26. Voted to increase pay of militia and raise additional troops. 1815. Sanford elected U. S. senator — January. News of Treaty of 296 ERA OF PSOGRESS. Peace received — February 11. Canal meetings in New York and Albany — December. 1816. Twenty thousand dollars appropriated for canal — April 17. Governor Tompkins re-elected — April. Election of Monroe and Tompkins as president and vice-president — November. 1817. Total abolition of slavery after July 4, 1827, decreed — January 18. Election of Governor DeWitt Clinton and Lieutenant-Governor Tayler. Act passed for construction of canal — April 17. Commencement of the work — July 4. Formation of the Bucktail and Clintonian parties. 1819. Amendment of the Canal Law — January. Revision of the school law. First boat on Erie Canal — October 22. iSao. King elected U. S. senator — January. Clinton and Tayler re- elected. Federal interference in State election. Re-election of Monroe and Tompkins as president and vice-president — November. Controversy be- tween Governor Clinton and the State senate. 1821. Martin Van Buren elected U. S. senator — January. Bill to call convention to amend Constitution. Election of delegates to convention — June. Meeting of convention in Albany — August 28. Extension of right of suffrage to every male citizen over twenty-one years old, except colored people. Judicial system remodeled. Legislative and executive departments reformed. Adjournment of convention — November 10. Governor DeWitt Clinton refuses re-election. 1822. Ratification of Constitution by the people — February. Yates and Root elected governor and lieutenant-governor — November. Abolition of lotteries. 1823. Appointment of chancellor. Judges of Supreme Court and Circuit Judges — January. Democrats divided on question of choice of presiden- tial electors. Champlain Canal completed — September 10. 1824. Defeat of the electoral law. Removal of DeWitt Clinton from office of Canal Commissioner — April 12. Popular indignation. Extra session of the Legislature — August 2. Resolution in favor of Electoral law. DeWitt Clinton and Tallmadge elected governor and fieutenant-gov- ernor— November. Legislature votes in favor of Adams for president — November. Visit of Lafayette — August 15. 1825. Adams and Calhoun elected president and vice-president. Act appointing commissoners for survey of State Road. Rufus King appointed Minister to England. Completion of Erie and Champlain Canal — Octo- ber 26. Celebration of the event — November 4. THE ERA OF PROGRESS. 1826. Nathan Sanford elected U. S. senator. Resolution amending the constitution, extending suffrage and providing election of Justices of Peace passed. Abduction of William Morgan by Free Masons — September 29. Clinton re-elected — November. 1827. Organization of the Anti-Masonic Party. ERA OF PROGRESS. 297 1828. Death of Governor DeWitt Clinton — February 11. Act passed for organization of Court of Common Pleas in New York City. Martin Van Buren and Throop elected governor and lieutenant-governor — Novem- ber. Completion of Delaware and Hudson Canal — October. Jackson and Calhoun elected president and vice-president. Progress of the Anti-Masonic excitement. 1829. Bill for the establishment of safety fund banking system. Charles E. Dudley appointed U. S. senator. Presidential electors to be chosen by general ticket. Governor Van Buren resigns to become Secretary of State — March 12. Passage of the Chenango and Chemung Canal Billii. Death of John Jay — May 17. 1830. Throop and Livingston elected governor and lieutenant-governor. 1831. William L. Marcy appointed U. S. senator — February i. Van Buren appointed Minister to England. Railroad opened between Albany and Schenectady. Death of vice-president Monroe in New York — July 4. 1832. Election of Marcy and Tracy as governor and lieutenant-governor. Jackson and Van Buren elected president and vice-president. 1833. Silas Wright Jr. chosen U. S. senator in place of Governor Marcy. Completion of the Chemung Canal. N. P. Tallmadge elected U. S. senator — February 2. Act for the construction of the Chenango Canal. 1834. Whig party formed. Marcy and Tracy again elected. 1835. Loan of five millions by the State to banks. Establishment of aca- demical departments for the education of teachers — January 8. Act to purchase libraries in the school districts of the States — April 13. Con- struction of the Croton Aqueduct and High Bridge. Great fire in New York City — December i5. 1836. Bills passed for construction of Black River and Genesee Canals. Proceedings against Senators Kemble and Bishop for bribery. Re-election of Marcy and Tracy. 1837. Van Buren and Johnson elected president and vice-president. Silas Wright re-elected U. S. senator. Completion of the Chenango Canal. Suspension of specie payments by banks of New York City. Financial panic. Bill passed suspending the provisions of the safety fund act. Cana- dian Insurrection. Burning of the Caroline on Navy Island. Proclamations of neutrality by United States. 1838. Suspension of the act prohibiting issue of small bills. General banking law passed. 1839. Appropriation of United States deposit fund for purposes of edu- cation. Seward and Bradish elected governor and lieutenant-governor — November 2. Act repealing law prohibiting issue and circulation of small bills. The " Helderberg war " (anti-rent) — December. 1840. Governor Seward refuses to surrender colored fugitives charged with stealing slaves. N. P. Tallmadge re-elected U. S. senator. Act abolish- ing imprisonment for debt. Act approving refusal of Governor to sur- render fugitives — May 14. Seward and Bradish re-elected — November 3. Harrison and Tyler elected president and vice-president. Governor of Vir- 298 ERA OF PROGRESS. ginia refused to surrender forger from New York till New York returned colored fugitives. 1841. Act amending common school law — May 26. Arrest of Alexander McLeod for burning of the Caroline — January. Demand of the British Government for hife release. New York and Erie Railroad opened — September 22. Supreme Court decides to refuse demands of the British Government. 1842. Trial and acquittal of McLeod — March 29. Act imposing State tax (" stop and tax law "). Legislature declared that stealing a slave in Vir- ginia and contrary to its laws was a crime under the Constitution — April II. Governor Seward declined to transmit resolution — April 12. Act to establish school commissioners in New York City — August. Bouck and Dickinson elected governor and lieutenant-governor — November. 1843. Silas Wright re-elected U. S. senator — February 7. 1844. Act passed to enlarge Erie Canal. Proposed amendments of the constitution. Anti-rent disturbance. Formation of native American party to exclude foreigners from offices. Wright and Gardiner elected governor and lieutenant-governor — November. Polk and Dallas elected president and vice-president. Foster and Dickinson appointed U. S. senators by governor in place of Wright and Tallmadge — December. Proposal for the amendment of the Constitution ratified by people. Continuance of anti-rent disturbances. 1845. John A. Dix chosen U. S. senator — February 25. Governor Marcy appointed secretary of war. Bill passed providing for call of State Convention for formation of new constitution — March 13. Anti-rent out- break in Columbia, Delaware and Schoharie Counties. Imprisonment of Dr. Boughton, one of the leaders. Murder of Deputy Sheriff Steele. Proclamation of martial law. Trial and conviction of anti-rent rioters. Great fire in New York — July 19. Call for State Constitutional Conven- tion approved by people — November. 1846. Declaration of war against Mexico — May 13. State Constitutional Convention met — June i. Changes in election of senators and members of the lower house. Power of impeachment vested in the assembly. Organ- ization of the Court of Appeals. Removal of justices of the Supreme Court. Election of county judges and justices of the peace. Tribunals of conciliation authorized. Revision of practice and pleading made. Elec- tion of county and State officers. Provision for payment of canal debt. Restrictions on the contraction of State debts. Restrictions on banking associations. Common school.literature, and deposit funds. Incorporation of cities and villages. Provision for future amendments to constitution. Establishment of free schools. Election of Young and Gardiner as gov- ernor and lieutenant-governor — November. Adoption of new constitution by people. 1847. Pardon of the anti-rent convicts. Act establishing free academy in New York City. Termination of Mexican war. Death of Governor Wright — August 27. 1848. Appropriations made for canals. Fish and Patterson elected ERA OF PROGRESS. 299 governor and lieutenant-governor — November. Taylor and Fillmore elected president and vice-president. New York and New Haven Railroad opened — December 28. 1849. Act appointing a board of commissioners for establishment of agricultural college. Resolutions condemning extension of slavery over free regions. Act establishing free schools throughout the State — March 16. William H. Seward elected U. S. senator — February. Act to establish free schools approved by people — November. 1850. Act passed referring repeal of free school law to people. Act establishing asylum at Syracuse for idiots. Death of President Taylor — July 9. Passage of Clay's compromise bill — July. State Convention to oppose unconditional repeal of free school law at Syracuse. People vote against repeal of law. Hunt and Church elected governor and lieutenant- governor — November. 1851. Modification of the free school law — April 12. E.x-Governor Fish appointed U. S. senator — February. 1852. Seymour and Church elected governor and lieutenant-governor — November. 1853. Act passed establishing State agricultural and scientific college. Laws passed regulating railroad companies. Special session of the Legis- lature convened. Act to amend the Constitution declared unconstitutional by attorney-general. Ex-Governor Marcy appointed Secretary of State — March. Act passed revising school law — June 4. 1854. Constitutional amendment ratified by people at a special election giving an unusual appropriation for enlargement and completion of canals. Clark and Raymond elected governor and lieutenant-governor — November. 1855. Act passed for suppression of intemperance, prohibiting granting of licenses for sale of intoxicating liquors. Seward re-elected U. S. senator. Act passed making cities and counties liable for property destroyed by mobs. Resolutions adopted adverse to slavery. 1856. State tax for support of schools amended. King and Selden elected governor and lieutenant-governor — November. Buchanan and Breckenridge elected president and vice-president. 1857. Preston King elected U. S. senator — February. Act passed for the suppression of intemperance. Tax imposed for speedy completion of public works. Resolution adopted that slavery shall not be allowed in State for any time, and that the United States Supreme Court by its decision in Dred Scott case had forfeited respect of country. ■ Death of Ex-Governor Marcy. Financial panic. 1858. Morgan and Campbell elected governor and lieutenant-governor. John Brown's invasion of Virginia. 1859. Rejection of negro suffrage by people. i860. Act providing extension of rights of married women passed. Pro- vision made for the prosecution of the public works. Lincoln and Hamlin elected president and vice-president. Morgan and Campbell elected gov- ernor and lieutenant-governor. Kansas and Nebraska struggle. Attempts 300 ERA OF PROGKESS. at compromise by Southern senators. Secession of the Southern States — December. 1861. Resolutions adopted announcing determination to sustain the war and tendering president any aid he wished — January 7. Peace Con- gress assembled at Washington — March 1. Ira Harris elected U. S. senator in place of William H. Seward appointed Secretary of State. Petition of merchants for compromise forwarded to Congress. Bombard- ment of Fort Sumter — April 12 and 13. Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand men — April 15. Legislature authorized the enrollment of thirty thousand men and appropriated three million dollars. Troops organized into thirty-eight regiments — July 12. Large public meeting held at Union Square — April 18. Advance of funds by New York merchants. State loan of two hundred million dollars to United States. Twenty-five thousand troops called for by Governor Morgan. 1862. One hundred and twenty regiments sent into the field by State. Three and a half million dollars paid for bounties. Completion of the Erie Canal enlargement. Seymour and Jones elected governor and lieutenant- governor. Death of ex-president Van Buren at Lindonwold near Kinden- hook. 1863. E. D. Morgan elected U. S. senator — February. Governor Sey- mour's Fourth of July address. A draft riot broke out in New York City — July 13. Interposition of Governor Seymour ineffectual. Suppression of riots by United States troops — July 16. Large amount of property de- stroyed and many lives lost. Riotous opposition to draft in Brooklyn, Troy and Jamaica. Enforcement of draft by aid of United States troops. Thirty thousand additional troops drafted. Surrender of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. Victories of Chattanooga, Chickamauga and Lookout Mt. 1864. State tax imposed. Lincoln and Johnson elected president and vice-president. Fenton and Alvord elected governor and lieutenant-governor. Conspiracy to burn New York City — November 25. Robert Kennedy, a conspirator, executed. 1865. Surrender of Lee — April 9. Assassination of Lincoln — April 14. Succession of President Johnson. 1866. Election of Fenton and Woodford. — November. 1867. Act passed to enlarge locks on Erie and Oswego Canals. Bill passed calling Constitutional Convention. Roscoe Conkling appointed U. S. senator in place of Harris. Act passed increasing State tax and declaring all schools free. Constitutional Convention assembled — June 4. Anti- rent disturbances break out — July. 1868. Constitutional Assembly reconvened — January. Cornell Univer- sity opened in Ithaca. Hoffman and Beach elected governor and lieutenant- governor — November. Grant and Colfax elected president and vice- president. i86g. Fenton chosen U. S. senator in place of Morgan — February. Legislature assented to the Fifteenth Amendment to the National Constitu- tion prohibiting all discrimination in franchise on account of color. The ERA OF PROGRESS. 3°' Board of School Commissioners enlarged to twelve members elected by the people. 1870. Construction of Brooklyn Bridge began — January 2. New Legis' lature withdrew the consent of the State to the Fifteenth Constitutional Amendment. Hoffman elected governor. 1871. Exposure of the Tweed frauds. Indignation meeting condemning Tweed frauds. Impeachment of Barnard, Cardozo and McCunn, Judges of Superior Court. Committee of seventy appointed to investigate Tweed ring. Corner-stone of State Capitol, at Albany, laid — June 24. Orange Riot in New York — July t2. 1872. Tweed arrested. Horace Greeley nominated for president. Grant re-elected. General Dix elected governor. Legislative dissent to Fifteenth Amendment withdrawn. 1873. Financial panic. Trial and conviction of Tweed. 1874. S. J. Tilden elected governor. Investigation of the Canal Ring. Death of ex-President Fillmore at Buffalo — March 8. 1875. Re-arrest and conviction of Tweed. 1876. Tilden nominated for president by Democrats. Hayes elected president and W. A. Wheeler of New York vice-president. W. M. Evarts of New York appointed Secretary of State. Robinson elected governor to serve for three years. Brooklyn Theatre fire — December 6. 1879. Cornell elected governor. New capitol at Albany opened — Feb- ruary 12. 1880. Egyptian obelisk erected on Graywacke Knoll in Central Park, New York City — January 22. Garfield and Arthur elected president and vice-president. 1881. Nomination of Robertson as collector of New York City. Resig- nation of Piatt and Conkling — May 14. Assassination of Garfield — July. Arthur president. Consolidation of Elevated Railroads in New York City. Warner Miller and Elbridge G. Lapham chosen U. S. senators — July 17. 1882. Charles J. Folger chosen secretary of treasury. Cleveland elected governor and Hill lieutenant-governor. 1883. Brooklyn Bridge opened to the public — May 24. One hundredth anniversary of the disbanding of the American Army of the Revolution celebrated at Newburg — October 18. Centennial celebration of the British Evacuation of New York — November 25. New railroad bridge across Niagara River opened — December 20. 1884. Grover Cleveland elected president. W. M. Evarts chosen U. S. senator — January 21. 1885. Niagara Falls reservation made into a State Park — July 16. Adirondack forests protected. New Croton Aqueduct commenced. Death of ex-President Grant at Mt. McGregor, near Saratoga — July 23. Hill and Jones elected governor and lieutenant-governor — November 3. 1886. Twelve hours made a day's labor. Women admitted to legal practice. Grant Monument Association incorporated. Soldiers' monu- ment at Albany authorized. Bi-centennial celebration at Albany — July 22. 302 ERA OF PROGRESS. Statue of Liberty in New York harbor unveiled — October 28. Exposure of the corruptionists in New York City government, known as the " Boodle aldermen.'' Death of ex-President Arthur in New York City — November 18. 1887. Frank Hiscock chosen U. S. senator — January 20. Trial of "Boodle aldermen.'' Centenary of Columbia College — April 13. 1888. Great storm throughout the State — March 12. New York has contributed to the direction and development of the United States of America four presidents, namely : Martin Van Buren of Kinderhook (1837), Millard Fillmore of Buffalo (1850), Chester Alan Arthur of New York City (1881) and Grover Cleveland of Buffalo (1885); seven vice-presidents, namely : Aaron Burr (1801), George Clinton (1805), Daniel D. Tompkins (1817) ; Martin Van Buren (1833), Millard Fillmore (1849), William A. Wheeler (1877) and Chester A. Arthur (1881) ; one speaker of the House of Representatives; John W. Taylor (1820, 1825) ; one Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay (1789) and five associate justices, namely: Brockholst Livingstone; (1806), Smith Thompson (1823), Samuel Nelson {1845), Ward Hunt (1872) and Samuel Blatchford (1882). THE PEOPLES' COVENANT AS EMBODIED IN THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK. The Constitution of the State of New York adopted April 20, 1777, amended 1801, adopted as revised February, 1821, again adopted as still further revised and amended November 3, 1846, and amended January i, 1877, consists of sixteen articles, subdivided into the necessary sections. The Preamble reads : We the People of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our Freedom, in order to secure its blessings. Do establish this Consti- tution. The fifteen articles, here condensed to the briefest possible limits, set forth in detail the obligations, duties and desires of the- people through their constituted officials and representatives as follows : Article i deals with citizenship and property, and embraces eighteen sections, covering the following declarations : i — No person shall be dis- franchised except by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers ; 2 — Trial by jury shall remain inviolate forever ; 3 — The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship shall forever be allowed in this State to all mankind; 4 — The privileges of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended except in cases of rebellion and invasicm ; 5 — Exces- sive bails or fines shall not be imposed ; 6 — No person shall be subject to be twice put in jeopardy for the same offence ; nor shall he be compelled to be a witness against himself; nor be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law ; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation; 7 — The compensation due when private property is taken for public use shall be determined by a jury of commis- sioners duly appointed by law; 8 — No law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press; 9 — A two thirds vote of the Legislature shall be requisite to every bill appropriating the public money or property for local or private purposes; 10 — No law shall abridge the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government; no divorces shall be granted save by judicial proceedings ; no lottery or sale of lottery tickets shall be allowed within this State; 11 — The people as sovereigns possess the original and ultimate property in all lands within the jurisdiction of the State; 12 — All feudal tenures of every description are abolished; 13 — The entire and absolute property in land is "allodial" — that is, not held by others, but vested in the owners themselves; 14 — No leases or grants of agricultural land allowed for more than twelve years; 303 304 THE CONSTITUTION. 15 — No fines, quarter sales or restraints on any grant of land are legal; 16 — Purchase of lands from Indians are not valid; 17 — Colonial laws not a part of the State law, and all parts of the common law repugnant to this Constitution are hereby abrogated ; 18 — Grants of land made by English authorities after 1775 are null and void. Article ii applies to voters and elections and embraces five sections. 1 — Every male citizen of the age of twenty-one who shall have been a citi- zen for ten days and an inhabitant of this State one year next preceding an election, and for the last four months a resident of the county, and for the last thirty days a resident of the election district in which he may offer his vote shall be entitled to vote at such election in the election district of which he shall at the time be a resident; no elector shall be deprived of his vote in time of war by reason of his absence from his election district; the Leg- islature shall provide the manner in which such absent elector may vote; 2 — Bribery, betting on the results of an election and any infamous crime shall exclude electors from exercising the right of suffrage; 3 — Employ- ment in the service of the United States, attendance at any seminary of learning, temporary confinement in any almshouse, asylum or public prison shall not affect the residence of voters; 4 — Laws shall be made for ascer- taining by proper proofs who shall be entitled to the right of suffrage ; 5 — All elections shall be by ballot. Article m regulates the legislative power of the State, vested in a senate and assembly. It comprises twenty-five sections and declares that the senate shall consist of thirty-two members each chosen for two years, and the assembly of one hundred and twenty-eight members elected annually; it divides the State into thirty-two senatorial districts, provides for a census every ten years on and after the year 1855; apportions the members of assembly among the several counties of the State according to the number of inhabitants ; provides for the pay of members at the rate of fifteen hun- dred dollars per annum ; prohibits members from receiving other appoint- ments while in office; disqualifies actual office holders from becoming members of the legislature ; fixes the time of elections to the Legislature as the Tuesday succeeding the first Monday of November; defines the powers of each House and the manner of conducting the public business and specifies what class of bills, laws and claims shall be passed upon by the Legislature. Article iv treats of the Executive and comprises nine sections. 1 — The Executive power shall be vested in a Governor and a Lieutenant-Gov- ernor each of whom shall hold office for three years; 2 — No person shall be eligible to either office except a citizen of the United States, of not less than thirty years of age and a citizen of the State for five years; •J — Elections for Governor and Lieutenant-Governor shall be at the same times and places as elections for members of the assembly; the persons receiving the highest number of votes shall be deemed elected; in case of a " tie " the election shall be by joint ballot of the two Houses of the Legislature; 4 — The Governor shall be the commander-in-chief of the THE CONSTITUTION. 30S military and naval forces of the State ; he shall have power to convene ex- traordinary sessions of the Legislature and such sessions shall only act upon subjects recommended by the Governor ; he shall send a message to each session of the Legislature communicating the condition of the State and recommending such matters as he shall judge expedient ; he shall tran- sact all necessary official business, expedite all such measures as the Legis- lature may resolve upon and take care that the laws are faithfully executed; he shall receive an annual salary of ten thousand dollars and be provided with a suitable executive residence; 5 — The pardoning power is vested in the governor and comprises reprieves, commutations and pardons after con- viction; 6 — In case of the Governor's impeachment, removal from office, death, inability to discharge his duties, resignation or absence from the State the powers and duties of the office shall devolve upon the Lieutenant- Governor ; 7 — The Lieutenant-Governor shall possess the same qualifica- tions of eligibility for office as the Governor ; he shall be president of the senate, but shall have only a casting vote therein; 8 — The salary of the Lieutenant-Governor shall be five thousand dollars per annum without other compensation, fee, or perquisite; 9 — Every bill, before it becomes a law, must receive the Governor's signature ; a bill, vetoed by the Governor, must receive the votes of two thirds of the members of each House before it becomes a law. Article v treats of the methods of election of certain State officers, viz. : Secretary of State, Treasurer and Attorney General, State Engineer and Surveyor ; also of the appointment by the Governor, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate; of the Superintendent of Public Works, and the Superintendent of Prisons ; prescribes the duties of these latter officials and also of the Commissioners of the Land Office, the Commissioners of the Canal Fund and the Canal Board. Article vi deals with the department of Justice. Tt comprises twenty- eight sections. It vests the power of impeachment with the assembly, states the duties and terms of office of the Chief Judge and six associate Judges of the Court of Appeals (elected by the people) ; of the jurisdiction, justices and judicial districts of the Supreme Court; of the terms of the Supreme Court ; of the various City Courts throughout the State; of the election of Justices and Judges, and their compensation ; of the several County Courts in the State and the local judicial officers. It deals also with the election or appointment of Justices of the Peace, and the officers of inferior local courts, of the clerks of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, the compensation of judicial officers, and the method of pro- cedure in all courts in the State. Article vii treats of the State Canals, and of the credit of the State, and embraces fourteen sections. It creates from the revenues of the State Canals a sinking fund to liquidate the Canal debt and the General Fund debt- abolishes tolls on canals; provides for a tax to pay the expenses of superintendence and repairs of the canals, and for an annual tax to extin- guish the canal debt. It prohibits the leasing or sale of certain State 3o6 THE CONSTITUTION. canals; and the disposal of the salt springs belonging to the State. It also prohibits the payment of State moneys for any purpose save by legal appropriation and declares that the credit of the State shall not be given or loaned to any individual, association or corporation. It limits the power of the State to contract debts, except in case of invasion, insurrec- tion or war, and limits the power of the Legislature in the creation of debts. It provides for the safe keeping and investment of the sinking funds, prohibits the liquidation of claims barred by lapse of time, and sets the limits of existing claims. Article viii contains eleven sections and deals with the creation, charters, and indebtedness of corporations ; with the responsibility of stock- holders ; the preference of bill-holders in case of the insolvency of banks ; with the incorporation of cities and villages, and defines their powers of taxations, assessment, credit, debts, etc. Article ix in a single section declares that the capital of the common school fund, of the literature fund and of the United States deposit fund shall each be preserved inviolate. Article x, in nine sections, prescribes the methods of choosing or appointing Sheriffs and County Clerks ; of the Register and Clerk of the City and County of New York ; of Coroners and District Attorneys, and treats of their terms of office and compensation. Article xi, in six sections, provides for the maintenance of the State Militia, and excuses from service upon certain conditions such inhabitants of the State as are, from scruples of conscience, averse to bearing arms. Article Xli prescribes the wording of the oaths of office required from members of the Legislature and all executive and judicial officers. Article xiii, in two sections, treats of amendments to the Constitution which must be agreed to by a majority of the members of each of the two Houses, and ratified by the approval of the majority of the electors of the State. Article xiv is in thirteen sections. It sets the times of elections of State officials ; and abolishes certain heretofore existing judicial offices from and after the first Monday of July, 1847. Article xv is directed against bribery and official corruption, and embraces four sections. Article xvi provides that all amendments to the Constitution shall be in force from, and including, the first day of January succeeding the election at which such amendments are adopted. Done in convention at the Capitol in the city of Albany, the ninth day of October, in the year one thousand eight hundred and forty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the seventy-first. A SELECTION OF BOOKS TOUCHING THE GENERAL STORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK. Space does not permit the enumeration here of the very many local histories, studies and monographs devoted to the development of certain sections of the State of New York. There are town and county histories innumerable ; there are individual biographies in great numbers ; there are pamphlets and documents of special or peculiar interest — all valuable to students and full of material illustrative of the rise and progress of a great state. But, for obvious reasons, this list can only deal with the few leading or general histories of the State and cit}'. J. R. Eroadhead's History of the State of New York in two volumes is an elaborate narrative history of colonial days from 1609 to 1691 ; W. Dunlap's History of New York in 2 vols, extends to the year 1783 ; J. D. Hammond's History of the Political Parties of the State of New York in 2 vols, covers the political history of the State from 1788 to 1841 ; J. S. Jenkins' Lives of the Governors of the State of New York extends to 1850; J. S. Jenkins' History of Political Parties in the State of New York covers the period from 1783 to 1849 ; J. Macauley's History of the State of New York in 3 vols, extends to 1800 ; S. S. Randall's History of the State of New York is a brief, general compilation in one volume, extending to 1870 ; Ellis H. Roberts', New York : the planting and growth of the Empire State in 2 vols, is issued in the series of " American Commonwealths,'' edited by Horace E. Scudder, and extends from the discovery to the year 1887, and W. Smith's History of the Province of New York is a colonial history only and reaches to the year 1762. The voluminous collection of the New York Historical Society, the " Documentary History of New York," in four volumes, compiled by E. B. O'Callaghan, J. W. Barber's " History and Antiquities of New York " and J. F. Watson's " Annals of New York City and State in the olden time " will be found by the student to contain much valuable and suggestive material. The City of New York has had its story told in more or less detail in the massive History of the City of New York by Mrs. Martha J. Lamb 307 3o8 BOOKS RELATING TO NEW YORK. (2 vols.) — a work of very great research and interest, and in the more con- densed histories of Mary L. Booth (extending to 1859), of W. L. Stone (reaching to 1870) and of D. T. Valentine (ending with 1850). A " Story of the City of New York " by C. B. Todd has also just been published. The hand of the romancer can often present an even more accurate picture of men, manners and customs than can the less unhampered pen of the historian. New York society in its various phases has furnished a theme for many a story teller. Colonial New York, in the old Dutch days, is depicted in Mrs. F. H. Parker's "Constance Aylmer " — a story of Manhattan in 1650; in J. K. Paulding's " The Dutchman's Fireside," and his " Book of St. Nicholas " and in Washington Irving's satirical but immortal " Knickerbocker's His- tory of New York." Colonial New York under the English governors is drawn in P. H. Myer's " First of the Knickerbockers (of the time of 1673) ^"'^ ^'^ " Young Patroon " (1690) ; James Fenimore Cooper in his " Water Witch " touches the days just after the capture of New York by the English, while his " Satanstoe " presents a study of life in Westchester County in 1750 ; Mrs. M. C. Harris' " Siitherlands " is a pre-Revolutionary story of an old manor house, in the Catskill region, which is still standing midway between Catskill and Cairo, and Elbridge S. Brooks in his story " In Leisler's Times " gives a picture of the province under the people's governor, Jacob I.eisler. Cooper's masterly " Leather Stocking Tales " also belong to this period. Revolutionary New York is delightfully sketched in Mrs. Amelia E. Barr's " Bow of Orange Ribbon " ; in Cooper's famous story " The Spy " ; Grace Greenwood's " Forest Tragedy " ; David Murdock's " Dutch Dom- ines of the Catskill " ; C. F. Hoffman's " Grayslaer : a romance of the Mo- hawk " ; Henton's " My Comrades," like " The Spy," a tale of " the neutral grounds," and in E. P. Roe's romance of the Highlands, " Near to Nature's Heart." The Anti-rent troubles of 1750, 1784 and 1S45, furnish the motive of Cooper's tales of " Satanstoe," " The Chain-bearer" and "The Redskins." Novels dealing with New York life and manners after the opening of the present century are rather social than historical, but H. C. Bunner's " Story of a New York House " deserves mention beyond all others, as at once the most charming and sympathetic presentation of one of the most unique phases in the ever shifting story of New York. INDEX. Albany ; first settlement of, 30; becomes an English possession and receives its present name, 55 ; development of, 63 ; position of, 138; antiquity of, 277. Andros, Major Edmund, governor, 65, 67, 71. 73- Anti-rent troubles, 229. Arnold, Benedict, 131. Assembly, First popular, secures "Charter of Liberties," 71. Bancroft, George(on New York'sdomain)2i. Beers, Henry A. 231. Benson, Robert, 133. Bethune, Mrs., opens Sunday-schools, 187. Block, Adriaen, visits the Manhattans, 17. Books relating to Newr York, 307. Brant, Joseph, 125. Brown, John, 248. Buffalo, war record of, 264. Bunner, H. C, 19S, 208. Burgher rights, 47. Burr, Aaron, 155, 156. Butler Colonel John, 125. Canada, invasions of, 74, 88. Canadian revolt of 1839, 221. Chambers, Captain, tea ship attacked, iig. Cholera scourge, The, 208. Chronological Epitome, 283. Clarendon, Earl of; his character, 53 ; plans the capture of New Netherlands, 54. Clinton, De Witt, 153, 156, 162, 165, 169, 171, 172, igS, 203, 204-6. Clinton, Governor George, 98, 141, 151, 163. Colden, Cadwallader, 86. Colve, Captain Anthony, Dutch gover- nor, 64. Constitution of New York, 303. Cooper's, "The Spy," 181. Corlaer (see Van Curler). Davidson, Lucretia, 186. Davis, Andrew Jackson (see Spiritualists). De Lancey, James, 86, 98, 117. Depew, Chauncey M., 181. De Peyster, Frederick, 75,. 151, 152, 162. Dongan, Captain Thomas, governor, 71. Doty, Lockwood L., 218. Drake's "Culprit Fay," 182. Dutch Colonists; composition of, 26; first arrival of, 30 ; character of, 41, 66. Dutch East India Company, 23. Dutch Governors, character of, 26, 39. Dutch West India Company, 24; its mis- taken pohcy, 50. 1812, war of, 146. England claims the New Netherlands terri- tory, 42, 50; conquers New Netherlands, 52 ; goes to war with Holland over Ameri- can possessions, 57 ; second war with Hol- land, 63 ; loses New York, 64; gains New York finally by treaty, 65. English Colonial Governors, character of, 26, 83. Era of Beginnings, 283. Era of Colonization, 284. Era of English Dominion, 286. Era of Formation, 293. Era of Progress, 296. Era of Revolution, 291. Erie Canal, project advocated, 171; began, 172, 176; completed, 187; opened, 188. Everett, Edward, on panics, 254. Exchange, First New York, organization of, 60. Fernow, Berthold, 40. Fire, Great, in New York City, 215. Fitch, John, launches first steamboat, 144. Fox sisters. The (see Spiritualists). Frontenac (French governor of Canada), Aggressiveness of, 82. Fulton's steamboat, 171. Fur trade in New Netherlands, 20. "Golden Hill," Battle of, 114, 120. Gold fever of '49, the, 241. Greeley, Horace, 196, 197, 200, 206, 207, 213, 217, 225, 248. Griffin, George, 204. Hale, Nathan, 121. Hamilton, Alexander, 151, 155, 163, 176. Hamilton, Andrew, 86. Herkimer, General Nicholas, 121. 309 3IO INDEX. Holland; claims and settles New Nether- lands, i6 ; grants American trade to Dutch West India Company, 24 ; loses the New Netherlands, 52 ; protests against English occupation, 57; declares war against Eng- land, 57; gives up New Netherlands, 58; disregard of the colony, 54; second war with England, 63 ; captures New York, 64 ; surrenders New York finally by treaty 45 ; fatal policy of, 66. Horse-railroad, The first, 214. Hudson, Henry, discovers New York, 14. Hudson, Maritime importance of, 198. Hunter, Captain Robert, governor, 84, 95. Indians: Dutch policy toward, 25; trouble with, 49; loyalty of, 82, in. Intemperance in the colony, 98. Irving's ** Knickerbocker," r8i. Jay, John, 133, 140, 176. Johnson, Sir William, 86, 101-118, 122. Johnson, Sir John, 125. Johnson, Colonel Guy, 125. Kidd, Captain William : piracies of, 83 ; exe- cution of, 84. Lamb, Mrs. Martha J., 135, 207. Leisler, Captain Jacob, the "people's gov- vernor,'* 74 ; execution of, 75. Lewis, Morgan, 178. Livingston, Robert, 86, 117. Livingston, Robert R., 133. Lockyer, Captain, tea ship sent back, 119. Locomotive, The first, 214. Lossing, Benson J., 238. Lovelace, Governor, 60. Manning, Captain, surrenders New York to Dutch, 64. Manhattan Island, Spanish name of, 16; first settlement of, 30. Mexican War, New York in, 239. Miller, Captain' William (see Millerites). Millerites, The, 246. Morgan, Edwin D., 260. Mormons, The, 246. Morris, Gouvemeur, 133. Morgan, William, 199, 200. Morris, Lewis, 86. Morse, S. F. B., 237- *' Mother Ann " (see Shakers). " Negro plots," The, 91. New Amsterdam, First view of, 11 ; (in 1657) 33, 37; surrender to English, 52. New Netherlands ; eariiest trading station at, 17, 32; become an English possession, 52. 55- New York City named, 55; capital of United States, 13S; fii'st Sunday-school in, 187; canal celebration at, 190; in 1827, 197; cholera in, 208; in 1835, 215 ; great fire at, 215; in 1845, 232; in 1S50, 245; banks of, suspend in 1857, 257; in 1888, 271. New York (province) named, 55; made part of the Dominion of New England, 72 ; early industries in, 93 ; commerce of, 94. New York (State) named, 130 ; Constitution published, 133 ; establishment of manufac- tories in, 166; Constitution revised, 179, 180; popular education in, 177; literary growth, 180, 182; land monopolies, 194; real estate "booms," 215; growth, 215, 232, 244, 271; industries of, 274; position of, 278, Nicolls, Colonel Richard, demands surrender of New Amsterdam, 51 ; governor of New York, 55 ; policy of, 57 ; resigns his ofiBce, 60. Oriskany, Battle of, 121. Panic, of 1837, 217; of 1857, 254; of 1873, 279. Parkman, Francis (on fur trade), 19, 20. " Patroon system:" inauguration of, 31; abolition of, 230. Phillipse, Frederick, 86, ri?. Political Parties: 151, 172; Federalists, 141, 152, 154, 156, 164, 199; Ami- Federalists, 141, 152, 163, 199; Democrats, 152, 210, 213, 218, 221, 261; Republicans, 152, 156, 161; Tammany, 157, 162; Bucktails, 157, 162 ; Martling-men, 162 ; People's Party, 199; Independents, 168, 199; Clinton- Adams men, 199; Democrat Adams men, 199; Albany Regency, 199; Anti-Masons, 199,203,227; National Republicans, 210, 213, 227, 252, 260, 261; Whigs, 210, 221, 227; Liberty men, 210; Abolitionists, 210, 227, 228, 248, 251; "Log Cabin" and " Hard Cider " days, 225 ; anti-renters, 227, 229, 230; Free Boilers, 227, 252 ; Na- tive Americans, 237. Pompey Stone, The, 15. Pontiac fails to rouse the Iroquois, in. Railroads : opening of, 231, growths of, 272. Rebellion, War of the: New York in, 259, 26r, 262, 271. Revolution, The: New York in, 120; Tories in, 122, 136; prominent families in, 126; the people in, 128. Ring rule, 279. Roberts, Ellis H., 120, 121, 140, 196, 203, 261, 264, 265. " Rochester rappings " (see Spiritualists). INDEX. 3" Saratoga, Origin of, 233. Schools, Common, 177-78. Schuyler, Peter, 86, 88. Schuyler, Philip, 93. Seward, William H., 221. Seymour, Horatio, 133, 163. Shakers, The, 246, 247. Slavery: instituted, 175; decrease of, 175; abolition of, 176. Smith, Gerrit, 226, 248, 251. Smith, Joseph (see Mormons). " Sons of Liberty," 100, 114, 119. Spanish discovery of New York, 14; words in old Indian names, 15. Spaulding, Solomon (see Mormons). Spiritualists, the, 247. Stevens, John Austin, 54. Stone, William L., 117. Stuyvesant, Peter (or Petrus); character of, 26, 46 ; titles of, 32 ; policy of, 42 ; surren- ders New Amsterdam to English, 52; takes oath of allegiance to England, 55. Syracuse, Mob at, 251. "Tea-party," New York, 119. Tompkins, Daniel D., 176. Tories, Status of, 122. Tuckerman, H. T., 165, 205. Van Buren, Martin, 162, 164, 165, 199, 204, 206, 218, 222, 225. Van Curler, Arendt, 76 (note), 104. Van Dam, Rip, 86, 95. Weed, Thurlow, 200. Wilkinson, Jemima, 246. WiUiam of Orange becomes King of Eng- land, 73. Willis, N. P., 1R5, 232, 233. York, Duke James of : his character, 53 ; de- spatches an expedition against New Neth- erlands, 51 ; obtains patent of New York colony from King Charles, 54 ; opposition to democratic spirit, 57; obtains new patent from the king, 65 ; makes concessions to the people, 68 ; becomes King of England, 72. Zenger, Peter, 86, 95. THE STORY OF THE STATES EDITED BY ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS As the first in the proposed series of graphic narratives descriptive of the rise and development of the several States of the American Union this Story of New York seeks to picture the growth of the Empire State in a way that will, it is hoped, be found of interest to the public, but neither in manner nor in method is it to be esteemed an index to the style or scope of the volumes that shall follow it. Each author has been selected for his or her own peculiar and felicitous adaptation to tell just the story assigned. No set lines or limitations are placed upon an author's method of telling the story of any especial State, beyond the general desire that each volume shall, with historic accu- racy, set forth in strong and picturesque narrative, each State's individual story. It is believed that the list thus far made public will be found to directly conform with this intention. This initial volume will be speedily followed by two others already in press, namely : The Story of Ohio by Alexander Black. The Story of Louisiana by Maurice Thompson. THE STORY OF THE STATES. Among the other volumes secured for the series, several of which are already well toward comple- tion, are: The Story of The Story of The Story of The Story of The Story of The Story of The Story of The Story of The Story of The Story of The Story of The Story of The Story of The Story of California . Massachusetts . Virginia Missouri Vermont Texas Maryland . Colorado . Kentucky . the District of Columbia Maine Pennsylvania Kansas Connecticut By Noah Brooks By Edward Everett Hale By Marion Harland By Jessie Benton Fremont By John Heaton ByE. S. Nadal By John R. Coryell By Charles M. Skinner By Emma M. Connelly By Edmund Alton By Almon Gunnison By Olive Risley Seward By Willis J. Abbot By Sidney Luska The " stories " will be issued at the uniform net subscription price of ^1.50 per volume. Announce- ments of additions to the series will be made in succeeding volumes. Inquiries respecting the series may be addressed to the publishers, D. LOTHROP COMPANY, BOSTON. ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS'S Books for Young Americans The True Story of Christopher Columbus, called the Admiral. Revised edition. New cover Jf 1.50 " With its thorough historical research and its novelty of treatment, it is the Columbus book of its time." — The Interior, Chicago. The True Story of George Washing:ton, called the Father of His Country. 4to, cloth $150 "Although many excellent biographies of our first President have been prepared for the young, we think that Mr. Brooks has presented the best, and has sustained well if not added to his reputation gained by his previous efforts in historical fields for young readers." — S. S. Library Bulletin. The True Story of Abraham Lincoln, the American. Fully illustrated, 4to, cloth iJi-So " His life reads like a romance, the best romance that ever was printed, and Mr. Brooks has done an admirable work. . . . The story of Lincoln was never more ably told." — Evening Post, Chicago. The True Story of U. S. Grant, the American soldier. Fully illustrated, 4to, cloth . . ' $1.50 " Carefully written in that style which makes Mr. Brooks so popular a writer with his young readers." — The Pilgrim Teacher. The True Story of Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman. Profusely illustrated, 4to ifSl.So The only popular life of the great Franklin written from a human stand- point for the boys and girls of America. These seven books are now in wide and acceptable use in American homes, schools, and libraries. They are real stories, true stories, that interest young readers in and out of school, and imperceptibly pave the way for their becoming students of America's story and readers of the bulkier books of American history and biography. " An entertaining and instructive series." — Christian Endeavor World. The True Story of Lafayette, the friend of America. One vol., illustrated, 4to $\.t,o This volume, the seventh in the series of" Children's Lives of Great Men," will appeal to all young Americans, and older ones as well, to whom the name of Lafayette is ever dear. It is an absorbing, simply told, and stirring story of a remarkable character in American history, and is the " whole story" from the boyhood of the great Frenchman to the close of his long, dramatic, and romantic career. ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS'S BOOKS The True Story of the United States of America. Profusely illustrated, 4to, cloth S1.50 This is in every sense a companion volume to the series of " Children's Lives of Great Men." It tells the true story of the beginnings, rise, and de- velopment of the republic of the United States, without the dreary array of dates or the dull succession of events that so often make up history for the young. Its object is to tell the story of the people of America, — to awaken an interest in motives as well as persons, in principle rather than in battles, in the patriotism and manliness that make a people rather than in the simply personal qualities that make the leader or the individual. The book is very largely used for supplementary reading in schools, and is accepted as the most popular " story " of the United States yet told for young people. The Story of Our War with Spain. Told for young Americans. Profusely illustrated, one vol., 8vo i?l.50 An authentic, complete, up-to-date, and reUable account of the war for Cuban liberation in i8g8, prepared after a careful study of the best and latest data. It is at once comprehensive, graphic, and entertaining, and well sustains the reputation earned by this author's long Ust of interesting, instructive, and successful books for young Americans. in Buff and Blue : A Story of the American Revolution. Illustrated by Merrill, one vol., 8vo . . . iJl-SO This stirring story of the Revolution details the adventures of one of Washington's famous life-guards, who is a college mate of Alexander Hamilton, and fights with him from Trenton to Yorktown. It deals with school and camp in the " days that tried men's souls " here in America, and introduces such famous characters as Washington, Hamilton, Lafayette, Arnold, Andre, and Wayne. A splendid book for boys and girls. The Story of the American Indian. Profusely illustrated, 4to, cloth S1.50 The first and only complete and consecutive story of the red men of America. It is sympathetic but not sentimental, practical but not one-sided, picturesque but not romantic. A book for all Americans to read. The Story of the American Sailor. Illustrated, 410, cloth ^1.50 The only story of the American blue-jacket, whaler, fisherman, merchant- man, and foremast-hand, cabin boy, captain, commodore, and admiral. A grand book for all lovers of heroism on the sea, — especially American heroism. ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS'S BOOKS The Story of the American Soldier. Illustrated, 4to, cloth ^1.50 A stirring and graphic record of the American fighting man, — the soldier who has secured peace through war, — from the days of mound- builders and red Indians to those of Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Miles. The story of New Yorli. (Story of the States Series.) Illus- trated, 8vo, cloth .... . . . $1.^0 This initial volume of the " Story of the States Series," of which Mr. Brooks is editor, is a story of the beginnings and development of the Empire State, told in a delightful and attractive manner. " More like a charming fireside legend, told by a grandfather to eager children, than the dry and pompous chronicles commonly labelled history." — Critic, New York. Storied Holidays: A Cycle of Red-Letter Days. Illustrated by Howard Pyle, l2mo, cloth . . ... $1.^0 A unique and charming collection of historical stories about the world's holidays, told by the author of " Historic Boys " and " Historic Girls " Splendidly illustrated by Howard Pyle. "A book for buying and keeping that the children, as they grow up, and the parents, too, may dip into and read." — Sunday School Times. The Boy Life of Napoleon, afterwards Emperor of the French. Translated and adapted for American children from the French of Madame Eugenie Foa. Illustrated by Vesper L. George, and by numerous photographs. One vol., square 8vo . . . ^1.25 " The style of the book is simple and graceful, and it has the merit of historical accuracy, also of dramatic action. For those who wish their boys and girls to study the life of the great Emperor of France, we know of no better book than this." — Literary World, Boston. In Leisler's Times : A Story of Knickerbocker New York, told for boys and girls. Illustrated by W. T. Smedley, 1 2mo, cloth $1.50 A stirring, dramatic, and vivid historical tale, based on the remarkable record of Jacob Leisler, earliest of American patriots, — the first people's governor of New York. " A good boy's book ; manly, patriotic, and readable." — The Indepen- dent. In No Man's Land: A Wonder Story. Illustrated by Childe Hassam, i2mo, cloth ....... $\.(X> An"Ahce in Wonderland" story about an American "Alice" whose name was Ruthie, and who went to No Man's Land in a street-car. Full of fun and fancy. The children's favorite wonder story. " Sparkles all over with glee. . . . There is not a dull line in it." — The Dial. Young Befemder Series By ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS IN DEFENCE OF THE FLAG A Boy's Adventures in Spain and Cuba in the War of 1898 Illustrated by W. F. Stecher i2mo Cloth $1.25 A STORY of action and adventure such as all ■'»■ healthy boys like, telling of a plucky young American who defended his country's flag against mobs in Spain and foemen in Cuba, and had many thrilling experiences. " Suffice it to say that he will be a lucky boy, with many a t..rill before hini, who iinds this book in his Christmas stocking. Don is a hero after every boy's heart." — Boston Heralds WITH LAWTON AND ROBERTS A Boy's Adventures in the Philippines and the Transvaal Illustrated by C. Chase Emerson i2mo Cloth $1.25 THE stirring adventures of a manly American boy who follows Lawton in his last campaigns, and by a singular train of circumstances has ' ' moving accidents by flood and field, "in two wars, with American soldiers, Filipino insurrectos, Malay pirates, English troopers, and Boer burghers. '* Mr. Brooks presents vivid pictures of both wars, so widely separated. His pa^es are full of the swift-moving; incidents which boys love. Dull indeed must be the young reader whose interest flags." — Boston Journal. UNDER THE ALLIED FLAGS A Boy's Adventures in China During the Boxer Revolt Illustrated by W. F. Stecher i2mo Cloth $1.25 'HE stirring story of an American boy's adventures in Tien Tsin and Pekin, in the ranks of the Interna- tional troops and as one of the defenders of the be- leaguered legations. Up-to-date, absorbing, and full of healthy excitement. Characters who are in the stories " With Lawton and Roberts " and " In Defence of the Flag ' ' reappear in this story. " Men and women, boys and girls, of all the mingled nationalities that made this war in China so picturesque, appear in the story and give it vigor, variety, and unflagging interest." — Cleveland World, T' For sale by all booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers, LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON W. O. STODDARD'S BOOKS 12mo Cloth Price per volume, $1.25 DAN MONROE : A Story of Bnnker HiU Illustrated by W. F. Kennedy In this volume the hero is one whose name is found in several trust- worthy records as the drummer boy of the Lexington militia, his closest friend, Nat Harrington, being the fifer. The Concord fight, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the arrival of Washington are introduced as parts of a carefully preserved historical outline. liONG BRIDGE BOYS Illustrated by I. B. Hazelton It tells the story of an actual attempt made by the Confederates of Vir- ginia, just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, to seize the city of Washington by force of arms, and make prisoners of President Lincoln and other high government officials. AHEAD OP THE ARMY Illustrated by C. Chase Emerson This is a lively narrative of the experiences of an American boy who arrives in Mexico as the war with the United States is beginning. THE ERRAND BOT OF ANDREW JACKSON : A War Story of 18 13 Illustrated by Will Crawford This tale is of the War of 1812, and describes the events of the only land campaign of 1812-1814 in which the Americans were entirely successful. JACK MORGAN : A Boy of 181% Illustrated by Will Crawford It is the adventures of a boy of the frontier difting the great fight that Har- rison made on land, and Perry on the lakes for the security of the border. THE NOANK'S I^OG : A Privateer of the Revolation Illustrated by Will Crawford The further adventures of the plucky Guert Ten Eyck, as he fought King George on land and sea. THE DESPATCH BOAT OF THE "WHISTLE : A Story of Santiago Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill A breezy story of a newspaper despatch boat, in the war with Spain. GCERT TEN EYCK Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill A hero story of real American girls and boys, in the American Revolution. THE PARTNERS Illustrated by Albert Scott Cox A capital story of a bright, go-ahead country girl and two boys who helped her keep store. CHUCK PURDY : A New York Boy Illustrated A delightful story of boy life in New York City. GID GRANGER: A-Conntry Boy Illustrated A capital story of American life. For sale by all booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers, LOTHROP. LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON George Gary Eggleston's Juveniles The Bale Marked Circle X A Blockade Running Adventure Illustrated by C. Cliase Emerson. t2mo, red cloth, illustrated covert $1.50. Another of Mr. Eggleston's stirring books fcr youth. In it are told the adventures of three boy soldiers in the Con- federate Service wrho are sent in a sloop on a secret voyage from Charleston to the Bahamas, conveying a strange bale of cotton which holds important documents. The boys pass through startling adventures : they run the blockade, suffer shipwreck, and finally reach their destination after the pluckiest kind of effort. Camp Venture A Story of the Virginia Mountains Illustrated by W. A. McCollough. J2mo, dark red cloth, illustrated cover, $1,50. The Louisville Courier Journal says : " George Cary Eggles- ton has written a decidedly good tale of pluck and adventure in 'Camp Venture.' It will be of interest to young and old who enjoy an exciting story, but there is also a great deal of instruction and information in the book." The Last of the Flatboats A Story of the Mississippi Illustrated by Charlotte Harding. I2mo, green cloth, illustrated cover, $1.50. The Brooklyn Eagle says : " Mr. George Cary Eggleston, the veteran editor and autiior, has scored a double success in his new book, 'The Last of the Flatboats,' which has just been published. Written primarily as a story for young readers, it contains many things that are of interest to older people. Altogether, it is a mighty good story, and well worth reading." Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., Boston