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1 
 
 
 A TORY HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 
 
 [From the Boston £TQaiiig Transcript, June 5, 1879.] 
 
 A TORY HISTORY OF NEW YORK DURING 
 THE REVOLUTIOX.* 
 
 It has become a generally accepted truth 
 that every history or narrative concerning 
 any matter of variance, strife or controversy 
 between two parties, individuals, communi- 
 ties or nations, has two sides to it. This 
 means that there are two ways of telling a 
 story, two sets of facts to be presented, two 
 methods of dealing with the same facts, two 
 lines and courses of argument, with infer- 
 ences, colorings of statement, stress of em- 
 phasis, relations of the course of individuals, 
 with an ascription of motives and ends to 
 either party, with all the consequent conclu- 
 sions to be drawn from one or another view 
 or construction of the elements and materials 
 which enter into any complicated and con- 
 tested issue. The intelligent and the candid 
 have been led to allow that this duplicated 
 rehearsal and summing up of the substantial 
 facts of any case is at least possible, if not 
 reasonable and just, in every matter of the 
 world's history, whether of private or public 
 concern. 
 
 It might seem as if there was a single story 
 which stood out fairly and fully as an excep- 
 tion to this general statement — a story which 
 absolutely had only one side to it, viz. — that 
 Cain killed Abel. But ethnologists have told 
 ns of an ancient city in the central fastnesses 
 of eastern Asia, in which dwelt a nation 
 called-the Ishudes, I'laimiug to be d<'Scend-_ 
 ants of Cain, and who actually invert the old 
 Bible story, and insist that Abel was the 
 wrong-doer, and Cain the innocent sufferer. 
 Now, if that story has two sides to it, what 
 incident in the whole series of the world's 
 strifes, what controversy, conflict or struggle 
 in the long development of human fortunes 
 in this distracted world shall we exempt from 
 the sweep of the truth above presented as so 
 fully verified ? 
 
 The voluminous histories, biographies, mon- 
 ographs and addresjfcs on manifold occasions, 
 in Congress anil on local celebrations, which 
 find their theme in any of the causes, occa- 
 sions or actors in our own civil war, have 
 made us familiar with the bewildering range 
 of uncertainty covered l)y the different selec- 
 tions of facts, the ways of jiresenting them, or 
 arguing, pleading or drawing inferences and 
 conclusions from them. We need no longer 
 to go back to any matters of the Old World his- 
 tories to find examples of the perplexities 
 which are made to invest all the substantial 
 elements of a narrative from the different 
 ways of telling a story. More than one gen- 
 eration will find full occupation among us in 
 
 ♦History of New York during the Revolutionary 
 War, and of tlie Leading Events in tlie otlier Colo- 
 nies at tliat Period. By Thomas Jones, Justice of 
 the Supreme Court of the Province. Edited by 
 Edward Floyd DeLanccy. Witli Notes, Contem- 
 porary Documents, Maps and Portraits. Two vol- 
 umes, royal octavo. New York: Printed lor tlie 
 New York Historical Society. 1879. 
 
 trying to digest and assimilate the facts 
 wliich shall fairly present to an earnest and 
 discriminating reader the real origin, method 
 and true moral significance of our great na- 
 tional war. 
 
 Of our earlier conflict, that which made us 
 a nation by securing our independence, it 
 may be said thai, as a matter of fact, the 
 telling of the story has been so far almost en- 
 tirely and exclusively on one side. This 
 statement applies with especial force to the 
 estimate generally made of the characters, 
 motives and conduct of the chief actors, the 
 public men, the patriots, the statesmen and 
 the military officers who led in, controlled 
 and accomplished the great result. The 
 glamour of success has invested them with 
 all the glory of self-sacrifice, wisdom and 
 patriotism. The loftiest virtues have been 
 assigned to them. W^e credit them with sin- 
 gleness of purpose, sincerity of heart, abso- 
 lute self-negation, and the complete merging 
 of all private aims, interests and ends in a 
 sublime public cause. Even the British his- 
 torians and pamphleteers, when writing from 
 their own national point of view of the naeth- 
 od. the conduct and the chief actors in the 
 war which sejiarated us from the mother 
 country, though some of them have not been 
 sparing of falsehood, misconstruction, in- 
 vective and actual slander, have liy no means 
 availinl themselves of the materials which 
 they might easily have obtained for telling 
 the other side of the story coni'crning us. 
 
 Among oursel . es it has been to a very large 
 -extent assumed and allowed that there are 
 incidents, documents, secret passages and 
 critical matters concerning the doings of puli- 
 lie bodies and the course or characters of 
 public men, which, for many rea.sons, it is 
 not wise or desirable to bring under relation 
 or discussion in writing the history of our 
 Revolution. One might almost infer that 
 there had been a concert among our histori- 
 ans to this end. Keen and diligent impiiicrs 
 into that p'rfion of our annals know much 
 which has never got upon the record or in 
 print, and which by the tolerance of the past 
 has been veiled in an obscurity that in tuir 
 days of interviewing, of reporting, and of 
 sensational journalizing is inconceivable if 
 not impossible. John Jay said that a tru(^ 
 and faithful rehearsal of the parts played, the 
 acts done, the intrigues contrived and the 
 measures approved by the, "patiiots" in our 
 struggle, to say nothing of the motives which 
 might reasonably be a.scr'ibed to sonu^ of 
 them, could not be made on the printed jiage 
 of sol)er history, and ought not to be nia<lc if 
 it were possible. Higher and nobler ends and 
 lessons would by sucli rehearsal he perilled 
 and sacrificed liy discred table disclosures, 
 though professedly made in the interest of 
 trutli. Where the sum and prevalence of aim 
 and purpose were righteous, and the evil was 
 lirecijiitated and neutralized, and when, ai-- 
 cording to the best construction of Washing- 
 ton's somewhat dultious motti>, ''Kxitns arln 
 prnhal," the result threw back approval nji- 
 on the measures which secured it— re- 
 
>^ 
 
 A TORY HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 
 
 serve upon all the shailowiiigs of the 
 story was kindly, and wise, and right. 
 
 Charles TIk mipson . the secretary of our Rev- 
 olutionary Congress through its whole jieriod, 
 the man who for integrity and nibleness of 
 character, rectitude and intelligence of judg- 
 ment, and opportunities of knowledge pos- 
 sessed by no other individual, was best qual- 
 ifled to write a perfectly faithful and lumi- 
 nous narrative of the debates and doings of 
 that Congress, of the aims and conduct of its 
 members, of the promptings of their several 
 constituents and of the secret springs which 
 were there worked, did in fact write out with 
 care and skill such a full record. And when 
 it was completed, ready for the press, rather 
 by the proinjiting of his own discreet convic- 
 tion than by the advice or remonstrance of 
 others, he consigned the manuscript to the 
 flames. His avowed motive for so doing was 
 that its publication would bring pain or re- 
 proach upon those of another generation 
 than that with which he had been dealing. 
 
 In every instance in which Jlr. Bancroft 
 has criticised or castigated any one of the 
 prominent statesmen or military officers of 
 our Revolution, he has, for so doing, been 
 challeuge<l by a grandson, or other represen- 
 tative of the subject that had passed under 
 his dissection. 
 
 Common sense, however, would remind us 
 that in such a convulsing and exasperating 
 conflict as that of our Revolutionary War, 
 leaving largely out of view most that trans- 
 pired on the public arena, there wo uld be an 
 
 inlinite amount and variety of material fur- 
 nished in private, social and domestic life, 
 for working out the other than the popular 
 and creditable side of the story. The disrup- 
 tion of the order and quietude of affairs; the 
 suspicions, jealousies, rivalries and intrigues 
 which would manifest themselves; the alien- 
 ation of friends; the rising uj) of new claim- 
 ants to notice and honors: the aggravation of 
 smouldering feuds; the sharpening of ani- 
 mosities engendered by religious variances; 
 the perilling of vested rights and pri%ileges, 
 and the inquisitorial espionage brought to 
 bear upon the most private affairs of persons, 
 high or low in position, with the absolute ne- 
 cessity of espousing one side or the other — 
 would offer to one who had a large share in 
 most or all of these matters the means for 
 using a pen with a severe and caustic acri- 
 mony. 
 
 But, even after this long introduction be- 
 fore we come to deal with the remarkable 
 and piquant volumes now before us, we must 
 make brief reference to the only other single 
 publication which, in its authorship and in 
 the circumstances which prompted its being 
 written, and several similar conditions, will 
 naturally bring it to the minds of readers of 
 this significant work. Thomas Hutchinson, 
 the native-Viorn but stanchly-loyal governor 
 of Massachusetts during the fomenting of the 
 heats and disturbances which preceded our 
 Revolutionary War and the actual outbreak 
 of hostilities, embarked from Boston on his 
 
 voyage to England in .June, 1774, to report to 
 the king. 
 
 On his departure he confidently expected 
 that he should return in his official charac- 
 ter, and that the strife would be pacified, the 
 colonies being still held by the mother coun- 
 try. He naturally took with him such public 
 and private papers as he would need for fully 
 acquainting the ministry with the state of af- 
 fairs here under the troubled administration 
 of his in'edecessor and his own. Having pre- 
 viously written and published two most ad- 
 mirable volumes of the history of Jlassachu- 
 setts down to the year 17o0, besides a volume 
 of original papers of the highest value, he em- 
 ployed himself till his sudden death abroad 
 in 17.S0, midway in the war, in continuing his 
 work. The result was a manuscript mainly 
 digested from the materials he had carried 
 with him. This manuscript was not put into 
 print until the year 1828, when, by the earnest 
 solicitation of members of the Massachusetts 
 Historical .Society, it was published in Lon- 
 don, an edition of five hundred copies with a 
 special preface being issued for the English 
 market, and another of the same numlier 
 for Boston. Of course there are special plead- 
 ings and partisan statements in this volume, 
 and a few sharp personalities reflecting ujion 
 the characters, the motives and the measures 
 of a few of our popular leaders whom he was 
 bound to regard as the prime agents of mis- 
 chief, sedition and rebellion in initiating the 
 strife with king and ministry. Nor would it 
 be by any means fair or just to say that the 
 the severest sentences 
 his pen about two, or 
 
 refugee governor in 
 and judgments from 
 possitily three, persons, and upon some offen 
 sive popular movements, was prompted by 
 lack of candor, by selfish ends, or still less by 
 malice. Read with a spirit of candor and 
 with needful a.lowancts for the heats and an- 
 imosities of the time, the volume is, on the 
 whole, creditable to the writer of it, well tem- 
 pered, dignified, generally moderate 'n tone, 
 authentic in its statements and forcible in 
 some of its pleadings. 
 
 The volumes now in our hands, while in the 
 points to which we have referred likely to 
 suggest to the reader the ijosthumous work 
 by Hutchinson, present very many character- 
 istics of difference and contrast. The vol- 
 umes, con'aining more than fifteen hundred 
 pages of text and notes, and generously pre- 
 sented in fair type and paper, are issued by 
 the New York Historical Society, at the 
 charge of "the John D. Jones fund," founded 
 by a generous member of the society to se- 
 cure the publication of a special series of his- 
 torical materials, aside from the generous 
 scope of its ordinary publications. Some fine 
 engravings and maps enrich the volumes. 
 The editor is of kin to the wife of the author. 
 
 The writer of the spicy and most unre- 
 served matter which, after lying in reserve 
 for nearly a ccnturj', now appears in print, 
 was the Hon. Thomas Jones, one of the 
 judges of the Supreme Court of the province 
 of New York, as his father, the Hon. David 
 
A TOKY HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 
 
 Jones, had been before him. Having suffered. 
 as we sliall .see, from the personal and official 
 attitude of disgust and opposition which he 
 assumed in the preparatory and opening 
 stages of the Revolution, towards the 
 prime movers in them, and his health 
 being greatly impaired, leaving behind him 
 friends and a large property, he emiiarked 
 for England with his wife and niece in 17.S1, 
 to use the waters at Bath. He, too, thought 
 he should return here to home and jiosses- 
 sions under the restored power of the Crown. 
 He died in England in 171)2, having, to his 
 amazemeiit and liorror, witnessed not only 
 the full triumph of rebellion and indejien- 
 dence of the colonie.s, but also the ungrateful 
 neglect by Great Britain of the ruined Loyal- 
 ists, who, like himself, had staked their all of 
 worldly good and hopes in faitliful constanc.v 
 to their lawfid monarch. He appears to have 
 employed himself witli a most sad and em- 
 bittered spirit in the composition of this his- 
 tory between the years 178a and 1788— a pe- 
 riod which, in its distractions and anxieties, 
 was almost as dark a one for the new repub- 
 lic as had been the years of the war. The 
 manuscript passed into the hands of his wid- 
 ow, then of his niece, and in 1835 to the pos- 
 session of her brother, the late Bishop de 
 Laucey of western New York. The sou of 
 the liishop. thinking that the inllammatory 
 matter in it may now safely be exposed to the 
 air, is the editor who sanctions its publica- 
 tion. 
 
 The distinctive character of the c ontents 
 and tone of these ponderous and well-charged 
 volumes is to be referred chiefly to the per- 
 sonal sentiments and experiences of the 
 writer, deeply embittered as he was by the 
 sense of what he regarded as most grievous 
 outrages and miseries inflicted upon him for 
 not espousing the cause of our independence. 
 It was no part of his purpose to vindicate the 
 course pursued by the British Government 
 towards the colonies, in the measures which 
 led to the war or in the conduct of it. He 
 does, indeed, avow himself a loving and loyal 
 subject of the Crown, warmly attached to the 
 mother countr.y, proud of his allegiance to it, 
 and happy under the institutions established 
 by it in his native province. He was not only 
 a zealous monarchist, but a most devoted 
 memljer and lover of the Church of England. 
 He opens his relation l>y describing the con- 
 dition of the province a few years before the 
 outbreak of hostilities as marking its golden 
 age of peace and prosperity, and, with the ex- 
 c«iitlon soon to lie indicated, of frientUy and 
 harmonious relations between the prominent 
 families and individuals and the people gen- 
 erally, though the iiopulatiou was by no 
 means a homogeneous one, and there were 
 rivalries and discords among the mau.y reli- 
 gious sects, cliques, classes, and political fac- 
 tions of which it was made up. "Without 
 any emphatic argument in iustiflcation 
 of the course pursued bj- the British Gov- 
 ernment which made the first grievances 
 of the colonies, he contents himself with 
 such an approbation as would natural- 
 
 ly come from a fondly loyal man, and 
 he would evidently have been content 
 and happy to have lived and died as a suliject 
 of the king, belie^"ing he would do no wrong, 
 and that any seemingly oppressive acts of 
 administration might have been reconsidered 
 and al;andoned under a jiidicious discussion 
 of them. Beyond this, however. Judge Jones 
 does not go. As to the actual conduct of the 
 Administration, its prevailing councils, its 
 spirit, its iiltimate designs and the means 
 taken to accorajilLsh them, he uses as bitter 
 language of protest and disapprobation as 
 can be found in the sharpest invectives of our 
 patriots. Further than this, the judge, sadly 
 unjudicial !is he is, allows himself the utmost 
 intemperance of opinion and utterance as to 
 the actual conduct of the war by the military 
 and civil officers of the Crown. In his view, 
 the whole seven years' campaign, in each l)at- 
 tle, suspension of hostilities, delay of move- 
 ments, cross purposes of prime agents, nego- 
 tiations and attempted pacifications, was a 
 long succession of lilunders, pro^•oking and 
 humiliating failures. The generals who in 
 turn held the chief command were all incom- 
 petent, imbecile, indolent, luxurious, and in- 
 capable of being made to realize their own 
 foll.v, rashness and inefficiency. The com- 
 missary and pay departments were extrava- 
 gant, wasteful, mercenary and grossly dis- 
 honest. More than all, and worse than all, 
 the processes and terms by which Britain was 
 brought to recognize the success of the rebel- 
 lion and the Independence of the colonies 
 ^wei-e f 6 the last degree shainef ul and disgrace- 
 ful. The three astute and cunning commission- 
 ers sent by us to Paris outwitted and cajoled 
 the "baker" Oswald, and the "vintner" 
 ■SVhitehead, the negotiators on the part of 
 Great Britain. The result was a Yankee 
 bargain of the most tricky sort. Britain 
 gave np immense regions of territory here to 
 which the colonies had no claim whatever. 
 She was satisfied with getting a promise that 
 our Congress would make certain "recom- 
 mendations" to the States, whlcii Congress 
 had not the slightest jiower to enforce into 
 obligations, and which the States treated 
 with the utmost slight and contempt. Britain 
 also left all the savage tribes which had 
 fought and suffered in her cause against us 
 utterly unprovided for and at our mercy; so 
 that we might claim their native forests by 
 right of conquest from subjects and allies of 
 an enemy. And, to crown all the disastrous 
 humiliations to which Britain submitted in 
 the treaty, she was faithless to the solemn 
 pledge by which, on the first collision with 
 rebellion, she had jiromised to jirotect and 
 remunerate all her subjects in the colonies 
 who held firm loyalty to her, and suffered for 
 so doing. In spite of this jiledge, she left 
 thousands of such sufferers — among them her 
 own officers in civil life and those who had 
 not borne arms — to hopeless exile from their 
 homes, to confiscation of their propert.v, and 
 to poverty. 
 
 It was while having his own experience of 
 this direful lot in England, where, it will be 
 
A TORY HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 
 
 remembered, that, as a iion-comhatant, he 
 had gone in search of health, miii-way in the 
 war, that Judge Jones wrote these often 
 burning pages. His thoughts reverted to the 
 noljle estate, with its fine manor liouse, on 
 Fort Neck, Long Island, left to him l>y his 
 father. His wife was a daughter of James 
 de Lancey, former chief justice and lieutenant 
 governor of the Province of New York, and 
 his .social surroundings and affluent circum- 
 stances at his home made lite there to him 
 very attracti\e. He was, however, childless. 
 His health had improved while in England, 
 and after the jieace, which he conceived so 
 disgraceful a one on the part of Britain, had 
 been settled, he thought his longings of heart 
 would be gratified liy his being allowed to 
 return home. An act of attainder confiscat- 
 ing the estates of Loyalists, whether they had 
 left the Province or remained in it, was passed 
 by the Xew York Assembly in 177!', and this 
 forbade the return of refugees on pain of 
 death. For a brief period Judge Jones flat- 
 tered himself that, by the provisions of the 
 treaty in relief of Loyalists, this act would be 
 repealed. Bitterly was he disappointed, 
 and that bitterness of his own spirit is 
 thrown into these pages. The only allowance 
 to be made for the acrimony, the asperity, 
 the intensely objurgatory tone, and malignant 
 personalities which make them fairly bristle 
 with passion and contempt, will naturally be 
 yielded liy the reader on this score. Crushed, 
 mortified, smarting under a sense of wrong, 
 impo\"erished, a pensioner on the Crown, and 
 looking across the ^vate^Dufy^lTSe?^fiiG■hare- 
 ful triumph of men and a cause which he 
 loathed and despised, the poor exile might be 
 pardoned, if not for feeling as he did, yet for 
 writing as he felt. One cannot but think, 
 however, that he had very few iiualifications 
 needed for the endo%vment and exercise of an 
 impartial and judicious mind. He was nar- 
 row and bigoted in his prineijiles. It does 
 not seem to have been conceivable by him 
 that a man holding Republican princi]iles or 
 any other religious opinions than those of the 
 Church of England could be an honest and 
 good man. Being on the toil of the social 
 .scale himself, he was wedded to all aristo- 
 cratic and exclusive jirerogatives for the few 
 favored ones over the masses of the world's 
 toilers, and regarded the people as rightfully 
 subservient to the purposes ami the prosjier- 
 ity of his own pamjiered <-lass. 
 
 While, therefore, for the reasons that have 
 been intimated. Judge Jones's unique volumes 
 are in no sense a contribution to the defence 
 or justification of the jiolicy pursued by 
 Great Britain in the conflict with her Ameri- 
 can colonies, they have what will give them a 
 far more oftensive character to such Ameri- 
 cans of the living generation as may feel 
 aggrieved and outraged by those large portions 
 of their contents which deal so unsparingly 
 with their "patriot" Republican and Presby- 
 terian ancestors. So we have called the work 
 in our hands a Tory history of New York in 
 the Revolution. It is a bold, unsparing, 
 ruthless, some ■v\ill add a scandalous and 
 
 scurrilous, indictment of the leaders of the 
 jjatriotic cause 'n New York. In the homes 
 and streets of New York will be found today 
 men and women who may read charges 
 against their immediate progenitors, not 
 merely of the political offences incident to 
 lack of loyalty an<l to active sympathy with 
 rebellion and revolution, but of various moral 
 delinijuencies, mean and di-sgraceful doings, 
 duplicity, artifice and fraiul. There is hardly 
 a contemptuous or vituperative adjective in 
 the "Unabridged" which is not used in these 
 pages attached to the names or the deeds of 
 the prime agents on the patriot side. 
 
 For the most part Judge Jones writes as an 
 historian, without the use of the ])ersonal 
 pronoun. His references to himself are as if 
 made by another than the writer. But he tells 
 his own story over and over again, sometimes 
 summarily, once with all the documents 
 bearing on his case. Here is an account 
 which he gives of himself, and of the 
 wrongs which he had suffered. After men- 
 tioning the resignation of the justiceship by 
 his father in 1773. on account of age and in- 
 firmities, he adds — 
 
 "The governor of New York, with the ad- 
 vice of his majesty's council, appointed his 
 only son. Thomas Jones, Esq., to the vacant 
 seat. This gentleman was liberally ediicated 
 [he graduated at Yale], served a regular ap- 
 prenticeshiji to one of the most emincmt coun- 
 sel in New York, was called to the bar, and 
 jiraetised in all the courts of record, with 
 ln.inor. a fair character and unblt-niislicd repu- 
 
 tation, ills loyalty is well known. Iiis mtej;- 
 lity undoubted, and his religion that of the 
 Church of England. For his steady adher- 
 ence to the cause of his sovereign, his fixed 
 opposition to rebellion and the measures 
 irarsued prior to its actual commencement, 
 he l)eeame extremely obnoxious to the rebel 
 powers. In consequence of which he was 
 three times a priscnier [on parole], treated by 
 the rebels with the utmost severity, indignity 
 and contempt [this does not apjiear from any 
 evidence which he gives of it, when the 
 actual sufferings (jf others of his party are 
 considered], suffered a captivity [on parole] 
 of nearly a year in Connecticut, was at dif- 
 ferent times robbed, plundered and pillaged, 
 and at last attainted by the Legislature of 
 New York of high treason, and his estate con- 
 fiscated to the use of the State." Under the 
 impersonality of his authorship, heoften com- 
 mends himself, his character and conduct, 
 and reports matters as told him "liy Thomas 
 Jones. Esq.," that is. himself. He represents 
 himself as the victim "of private revenge, 
 malice and political resentment." A reader 
 will be likely to form but a low estimate of 
 his pluck, manliness or magnanimity. 
 Of course, all the exiled Loyalists 
 were naturally peevish and whining under 
 their hard fate. But they took their own 
 side, and would doubtless have reconciled 
 themselves to the fate which would have 
 awaited the other side if their cause had 
 failed, and which would have included all 
 that the Tories suffered, with a liberal use of 
 
A TOBY HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 
 
 hempen halters beside. With all his law, the 
 judge could not be made to uuderstand how 
 he, a sworn subject of the Crown, could be 
 attainted as a traitor to the State of New 
 York. 
 
 He lays out his lull force in the use of 
 strong and censorious language when he 
 essays to trace out what he regarded as the 
 cunning plots, the profligate intrigues and the 
 wholly selfish tricks and measures of the 
 leaders of the patriot party. That he dis- 
 closes some discreditable facts about indi- 
 viduals may well be allowed, considering 
 that his subject-matter is human nature. The 
 things that he seems to have hated beyond 
 all otliers were republicanism, the assertion 
 of their native-born rights by common peo- 
 ple, Presbyterianism, and any form of what 
 he calls "New England religion." He would 
 have agreed with the immaculate Charles II. 
 that Episcopalianism was the only religion 
 for a gentleman. As an exception, hinted at 
 already, to his view of the state of things 
 just before the outbreak as representing 
 the golden age of New York, he liegins by 
 referring the initiation of the rebellion 
 to the activity of a factions Republican and 
 Presbyterian party some fifteen years before 
 the P.evolution, who resisted the establish- 
 ment of the full jn-erogatives of the Church 
 of England over the heterogeneous commvt- 
 nions of the Province. All the mischief was 
 traceable "to the lampocnis, artful insinua- 
 tions, cunning, sly, dark designs of William 
 Smith, father and son, William Livingston, 
 jonn mnriTT iSTrorr^ — rtti-nerr — xr., rT^rer van 
 Brugh and Philip Livingston, and Thomas 
 Smith." These were the originators of all 
 that "abuse, scandal, infamy, billingsgate and 
 blackguard stuff" which appeared in the 
 publications of the patriots. The leaders on 
 the other side. Judge Pratt, the De Lanceys, 
 etc., were all noble and pure-hearted men, 
 chargeable with no fault but hatred of rebel- 
 lion and its promoters. "An artful, design- 
 ing, cunning, hypocritical, Presbyterian reb- 
 el," is the character given of a man against 
 whom no act justifying the use of the terms 
 is alleged. If the judge talked on this side of 
 the water as he wrote on the other side of it, 
 it is easy to understand that when he was 
 once out of the country it was not considered 
 desirable that be should return to it. And 
 yet he doubtless knew concerning some actors 
 and deeds what warranted him in an occa- 
 sional strung expression. 
 
 .Judge Jones says that before the first Colo- 
 nial Congress was held, he and others, who, 
 as Loyalists, were the chief sufferers for their 
 oppo.sition to rebellion, recognized the oppres- 
 sive and unwise course which the British 
 Administration was pursuing towards us. 
 They were ready to take part in any judicious 
 and moderate measures of remonstrance, be- 
 lieving that by constitutional means and by a 
 change of Administration they might secure 
 redress without entertaining any purpose of 
 sundering or weakening the happy bonds 
 which held them to the mother country. To 
 this end the Loyalists helped in or assented 
 
 to the sending of delegates to the first Con- 
 gress. But the spirit which gained the ascend- 
 ency in that body, and which grew rampant 
 in its successors, together with the violence, 
 the passion, the outrages and the rule of the 
 mob which inrtamed the lower classes of soci- 
 ety, soon drove him and his friends to take 
 the stand by which they sacrificed their 
 worldly goods and hopes. His pages are 
 aliout equally divided between a statement of 
 the wrongs inflicted upon the Loyalists, of 
 which he gives many aggravating personal 
 relations, and the blunders, corruptions, ex- 
 travagance and gross frauds which humili- 
 ated the British military and administra- 
 tive departments. He does not shrink 
 fronl prono\incing General Howe as supine, 
 half-hearted in his command, and, in fact, 
 treacherous to his own king. The following 
 is the judge's summing ui> of the wrecked 
 cause: "Had half the pains been taken to 
 suppress the American Kebellion as there 
 was to drain the British treasury of its cash, 
 any one year of the war would have abolished 
 rebellion and Great Britain been at this day 
 still in full possession of thirteen opulent col- 
 onies, of which she has been dismembered by 
 the misconduct and inattention of one gen- 
 eral [Howe], by the stupidity of another 
 [Clinton], and by an infamous ministry, who 
 patched up an ignominious peace, to the dis- 
 honor of the nation, the discredit of the sov- 
 ereign, and to the ridicule of all Europe." 
 There is much repetition in the volumes, and 
 a frequent recurrence tr and summarizing 
 -orcompraints-ttnTr jTTTTages— witiL'il tny suctl" 
 a heavy burden on the feelings and sense 
 of wrong of the writer. Some very inter- 
 esting biographies and sketches of character 
 of prominent persons of the time are given, 
 with occasional revelations of newly dis- 
 closed facts. The brief chapter on General 
 Washington, though unsympathizing and 
 slightly depreciatory, is, on the whole, cred- 
 itable to the writer. The straightforward- 
 ness and earnestness of the judge, and the ev- 
 ident fulness of his information, make us 
 tolerant of some of the defects of his style 
 and of the one-sidedness of his narrative. 
 
 Nearly half of the contents of both these 
 volnmes consists of notes and documents fur- 
 nished by the editor. For his work the very 
 highest respect and encomium will be grant- 
 ed in full measure by every reailer. He may 
 stand as a model for all who shall undertake 
 a like laborious office. He shows that he 
 possesses in the highest degree every cjuality 
 needed to fit him for the task. Years of re- 
 search and investigation must have gone into 
 his pages. He is dignified, candid and impar- 
 tial where anything like comment from him 
 on the text which he has illustrated seems to 
 be called for. The official papers which he 
 has hunted out from their repositories are 
 very valuable and luminous as revealing the 
 actual state and coloring of the times and 
 events. Occasionall.y he qualifies or rectifies 
 remarks or assertions which .Tudge Jones had 
 made from imperfect knowledge or strength 
 of prejudice. So the volumes, with thi.". 
 
A TOUY HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 
 
 generous body of admirable and autlientic 
 documents, will be highly prized by that 
 class of historical students «lio know that 
 the nearer they can come to primary sources, 
 the more satisfactory will be their means tor 
 a fair and full understanding of the subject 
 which engages them. They will also be very 
 grateful to Judge Jones for helping them to 
 
 look at the other side of the story of a conflict 
 which, as we trace to it such a sum of bless- 
 ings in its success for us, must have caused 
 those who lost in the stake trials and woes 
 so grievous that we can well forgive any de- 
 gree of complaining and censoriousness in 
 the relation of them. 
 

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