The Epic of New York City

by Edward Robb Ellis

  A New York paper soon published this tentative cry for independence:

  If then the Interest of the Mother Country and her Colonies cannot be made to coincide (which I verily believe they may), if the same Constitution may not take Place in both (as it certainly ought to do), if the welfare of the Mother Country necessarily requires a Sacrifice of the most valuable natural Rights of the Colonies, their Right of making their own Laws and Disposing of their own Property by Representatives of their own choosing—if such really is the Case between Great Britain and her Colonies, then the Connection between them ought to cease.

  The New York assembly was in recess when news of the Stamp Act arrived. The first formal defiance came from Virginia. In the house of burgesses, Patrick Henry bitterly denounced the bill and asked fellow members to pass seven resolutions, which he whipped out of his pocket. Although four were rejected, all seven were reprinted by colonial newspapers. Thus the Virginia Resolves, as they were called, fluttered up and down the coast, like burning leaves from a forest fire, and inflamed other hearts.

  James Otis now proposed in the Massachusetts legislature that the thirteen colonies send delegates to New York to sit as a congress and discuss resistance to the Stamp Act. On October 7, 1765, twenty-seven men from nine colonies met in City Hall; Virginia, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Georgia were not represented. This Stamp Act Congress brought together rich men in coats of mulberry velvet and poor men clad in plain broadcloth. Collectively they were the best brains on the continent.

  With its 18,000 inhabitants, New York had grown larger than Boston but still lagged behind Philadelphia. Under a new city law, householders had been ordered to cover their roofs with slate or tile to reduce the danger of fire, but the law was largely ignored. Visitors walking along flat-stone sidewalks and crossing cobblestone pavements praised the clean streets. They saw diamond-studded women and gentlemen dipping snuff from handsome snuffboxes and learned that many literate citizens read Shakespeare, Swift, Pope, Addison, and Hume.

  Autumn is New York’s most delightful season, but the delegates had little time to enjoy it. After gathering in City Hall, they soon divided into two factions—radicals and conservatives—and for the next three weeks debated how to act toward the mother country. At last they drew up resolutions of colonial “rights and grievances” and petitioned the king and Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act. They declared that taxation without consent violated one of an Englishman’s most precious rights, and they still considered themselves Englishmen.

  On Ocober 22, while the congress conferred, the ship Edward arrived from England with the first stamps consigned to New York, packed inside ten boxes stowed in various parts of the vessel. Their arrival was announced at 10 P.M. by the thunder of cannon from a man-of-war in the harbor. The next morning the Edward docked at the Battery. Two thousand people flocked there to jeer, so nervous officials did nothing until the crowd had dispersed. Later that night seven boxes were unloaded—the fear of a rising wind cut the work short—and transported secretly to the fort.

  The next day dawn broke on rude posters nailed here and there in town. These warned: “The first man that either distributes or makes use of stamp paper, let him take care of his house, person and effects.” Signed Vox Populi, the posters added: “We dare.” The threat frightened the elderly scientist Cadwallader Colden, the new and unpopular lieutenant governor. He postponed opening the boxes until the just-appointed governor, Sir Henry Moore, arrived. Apparently Major Thomas James, who commanded the fort, thought differently. He was quoted as saying he would “cram the stamps down the throats of the people” with the end of his sword. By then more munitions and men had been added to the fort. Clad in scarlet coats, white breeches, and cocked hats, infantrymen and artillerists stirred restlessly and wondered what would happen next.

  On October 31—”the last day of liberty,” the patriots called it—royal governors throughout America swore to enforce the Stamp Act. At 4 P.M. more than 200 New York merchants met in George Burns’ tavern at Broadway and Thames Street and signed an agreement to boycott British goods until the act was repealed. This, the first of the historic nonimportation agreements, laid the foundation of American manufacturing. The New York Gazette declared in huge type: “IT IS BETTER TO WEAR A HOMESPUN COAT THAN LOSE OUR LIBERTY!” Crowds clattered over cobblestones, shouting threats and singing defiant ballads. They were led by direct actionists, calling themselves the Sons of Liberty. James McEvers, the city’s stamp master, looked, listened, and resigned. Lieutenant Governor Colden hid inside the fort.

  The next day the Stamp Act was supposed to go into effect. However, the stamps were not distributed. Many offices remained closed. Buildings were hung with black crepe. Even backgammon boards and diceboxes in the Merchants’ Coffee House were shrouded in black. Flags dangled at half-mast. Muffled church bells tolled. Again a street crowd gathered to mutter and grimace. Now, for the first time in the city’s history, there appeared a new phenomenon—the mob. City magistrates warned Colden that they feared an outbreak. Marines disembarked from warships, and soldiers dogtrotted from Turtle Bay on the East River, bringing the fort’s strength up to 30 officers and 153 enlisted men. As the day wore on, city merchants, barbers, sailors, cartwrights, teamsters, blacksmiths, and tavernkeepers were augmented by farmers, who streamed in from the countryside. By 7 P.M. all came together on the Commons.

  There the Sons of Liberty whipped them into a frenzy as darkness fell. Torches, lanterns, and candles were lighted, their smoke idling straight up into the windless sky. Working by the glow, the mob made an effigy of the gray-haired lieutenant governor holding a stamp in one hand and then hung the figure from a mock gallows. Next, an image of the Devil was constructed and thrust so close to the figure of Colden that Satan seemed to be whispering into his ear. Both effigies were hooted and jeered. Now they were put in a cart and trundled onto Broadway. Men shot pistols at them. The shouting, dancing, disorderly crowd churned down Broadway toward the fort. Colden’s coach house lay just outside its walls. The mob broke in, hauled out the lieutenant governor’s gilded coach, and transferred his effigy to its top amid wild cheers.

  Colden, hearing these shouts from within the fort, sagged in terror. Before the mob arrived, soldiers had sallied forth and knocked down a wooden fence in front of the fort so that rampart-posted gunners could potshot attackers. Torchbearing screaming men now scrambled over the broken boards and surged toward the fort. From a rampart, Major James cried, “Here they come, by God!” Men hefted heavy timbers to batter at the fort’s doors. Bricks and rocks were thrown at parapets and ramparts. Faces distorted in fury, the rabble dared the cannoneers to fire. Major James stepped forward for a better look. Seeing him above their heads, the crowd bellowed with renewed anger. Again they lunged forward. Royal gunners held matches near the touchholes of their cannon. A massacre seemed to be in the making.

  But the soldiers held their fire. No cannon belched. No musket cracked. An impasse had been reached. When mob leaders realized that they couldn’t break into the fort, they urged their followers to fall back. Slowly, sullenly, the mob withdrew. The watching gunners breathed more easily. In a last defiant gesture, however, the rabble collected pieces of the broken fence, piled them under Colden’s coach, thrust torches into the kindling, and howled with glee as the carriage and its effigy burned to ashes.

  Then, as the mob straggled back up Broadway, someone remembered that Major James had rented a house on the Hudson at the foot of Warren Street, just below King’s College. Why not tear it apart? Excited men turned and ran downhill to the major’s temporary home. Screaming with frenzy, they battered down doors, charged inside, smashed furniture, made bonfires of chairs, broke china, slashed open feather beds, tore up books, ripped plants out of the garden, and destroyed the summerhouse. The place was a shambles when they finally left at two o’clock in the morning.

  Nothing less than surrender of the stamps would satisfy the mob. Colden, already hanged in effigy, now heard
of threats to kill him in fact if he did not give up the stamps. Tacked to the door of the Merchants’ Coffee House was a poster calling for a frontal attack on the fort on November 5. Although the new governor was expected to arrive soon, Colden couldn’t afford to wait.

  He communicated with General Thomas Gage, commander in chief of all British forces in North America. Gage, married to an American, warned Colden that if the fort opened fire, civil war would follow. Colden then decided not to distribute the stamps. Instead, he would turn them over to the mayor and aldermen and wait for the governor to take further action. So now, amid wild rejoicing, the city fathers marched to the fort, picked up seven boxes of stamps, and deposited them in City Hall.

  The ship that brought Sir Henry Moore here on November 13 carried a second shipment of stamps. The only colonist ever to become governor of New York, Sir Henry had been born in Jamaica, serving there as lieutenant governor between 1755 and 1762. A sensible man, he decided on a policy of conciliation here. Contrary to Colden’s advice, he opened the gates to the fort and invited the people inside to watch as he was sworn into office. They arrived in great numbers and behaved well as the king’s commission was read aloud. Sir Henry later stripped the fort of much of its artillery and suspended his own power to execute the Stamp Act.

  Meanwhile, news of the disorders in New York and in the other colonies finally reached London. George III was annoyed by the “abandoned licentiousness” of his overseas subjects. Reactionaries screamed for cannon and dragoons to teach the upstarts a lesson, but British moderates termed the riots only “important occurrences.”

  In New York, with tranquillity restored, people talked of nothing but the agreement to boycott British goods. Leading citizens formed a Society for Promoting Arts—that is, for encouraging domestic manufacture. The rich set the tone of resistance by wearing garments made of cloth produced locally, and even Governor Moore donned homespun. Farmers tripled their flax harvest, housewives sat long hours at spinning wheels, and mourners wore less black cloth to save material.

  The boycott by New York and the other colonies soon began to hurt British commerce. London merchants formed a committee to lobby for repeal of the Stamp Act, and petitions poured into Parliament from English seaports and manufacturing towns. Early in 1766 the House of Commons opened debate on this vital issue. William Pitt, the aging orator, rose from a sickbed and hobbled on crutches into the House to declaim, “I rejoice that America has resisted!” He urged total repeal of the act because it “was founded on an erroneous principle.”

  At 3 A.M. on April 26, 1766, New Yorkers were startled from sleep by the bonging of every bell in the city. Bleary-eyed and disheveled, they shuffled out into the streets to learn that the Stamp Act had been repealed. Actually, the news was premature. When confirmation arrived on May 20, however, the city went mad with joy. Men drank toasts, congratulated one another, fired pistols and muskets, lighted firecrackers, broke windows, and even ripped knockers off doors in their delirium. However, the city fathers postponed the official celebration until June 4, to combine it with the birthday of George III, toward whom all now felt grateful.

  On that date the populace met on the Commons to feast on two barbecued oxen and to drink twenty-five barrels of beer and a hogshead of rum. Cannon fired salvos, a military band played “God Save the King,” and everyone cheered himself hoarse. Not long afterward New Yorkers decided to erect a statue to George III.

  In their effusion of gratitude New Yorkers forgot about the Declaratory Act. Although the king and his ministers had repealed the Stamp Act to save British businessmen from ruin, they had no intention of surrendering the Crown’s authority over the colonies. The very day of repeal Parliament passed the Declaratory Act, which affirmed that the king and Parliament “had, hath, and of right ought to have the full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the Crown of Britain, in all cases whatsoever.”

  There stood the handwriting on the wall—plain enough to be read by anyone who cared to look. Moreover, the Quartering Act of 1765 was still in effect. It required American legislatures to provide the king’s troops with barracks or other shelters; straw for bedding; cooking utensils; firewood for cooking and heating; and rum, cider, or vinegar to ward off scurvy. All this, the colonists slowly realized, was also taxation without representation. The Quartering Act fell most heavily upon New York because it was the headquarters of the British army. The New York assembly refused to comply with every provision of the act but did set aside a building containing nothing but four bare walls. The redcoats took one look at their stark quarters and grumbled. The longer they camped there and the longer they went without supplies, the angrier they became.

  On the night of July 21 four British officers got drunk in a Broadway tavern and then wandered out to break streetlamps near King’s College. The barkeeper followed them to protest and was slashed by a sword. After two orderlies had joined the roistering officers, the half-dozen British regulars staggered down Broadway, shattering other lamps. They encountered four members of the night watch, and a fight followed. One or two policemen were wounded, and a couple of soldiers were knocked down. One officer was jailed in City Hall.

  The other soldiers sped to General Gage’s house at 9 Broadway, his sentries sounded an alarm, and soon a dozen more warriors ran out of the nearby fort, fixed their bayonets, and advanced upon City Hall. On the way they met other policemen, wounded some, proceeded to the jail, and freed the prisoner. The next day the officer was rearrested, and another brawler was seized. The two Englishmen were brought before the mayor and aldermen, who bound them over to the supreme court. In the end the defendants were fined twenty pounds for each broken lamp.

  During the celebration of the Stamp Act’s repeal, a pine tree, proclaimed a liberty pole, was planted on the northwestern corner of the Commons. Eager to exalt the king and to weaken Parliament, the Sons of Liberty decked the tree with a sign reading: “George III, Pitt and Liberty.” From time to time patriots gathered there to pledge their fortunes and honor to freedom.

  British soldiers watched these ceremonies with sour eyes. On the first anniversary of repeal the regulars could contain themselves no longer. They crept from their barracks one night and hacked down the tree. The next day the Sons of Liberty put up another pine—the trunk encircled with iron bands to thwart the blows of an ax. Soldiers now tried unsuccessfully to blow up the tree with gunpowder. When citizens gathered to guard their emblem, the redcoats fired across the street into the Broadway tavern where the Sons of Liberty held meetings. Nobody was hurt, but General Gage hurried to the scene and dispersed his men.

  Under the cover of darkness on August 10 the soldiers managed to fell the liberty pole. Nearly 3,000 angry New Yorkers swarmed onto the Commons to demand an explanation. After a heated exchange of words the mob threw brickbats at the regulars. They counterattacked with fixed bayonets and wounded two or three citizens. When General Gage was notified, he dispatched his aide-de-camp to size up the situation, but the officer was attacked by the mob and retreated to save his life.

  Two days later the Sons of Liberty erected a third liberty pole and swore that no British soldier would be allowed to patrol the streets. As tempers flared, the breach between the townspeople and military widened. When General Gage tried to review a regiment on the Commons, a crowd of people, shouting that the place belonged to them, sought to push through the bayonet-bristling regulars formed in the traditional British square.

  George III denounced New York as “rebellious” and decided to punish it to terrorize other colonists. Governor Moore was told to sign no legislation passed by the assembly until it complied with every article of the Quartering Act. Under this pressure the assembly voted by a majority of one to provide for the troops.

  Besides disciplining New York, the British government now turned legislative guns against all the colonies. Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend put
through a series of laws taxing many colonial imports, such as glass, lead, paper, and tea. Revenue from the Townshend Acts was to pay the salaries of colonial governors and judges. This struck at the root of America’s political liberty, for the colonies had won almost complete self-government by financial control of royal officers. Trials for evasion of the Townshend Acts, the colonists also learned, would be held in admiralty courts without juries.

  This time Boston raised the first cry for a boycott. At first New York and Philadelphia did not cooperate. But after George III had sent more troops to Boston because of an “insurrection” there and after they had heard rumors that still more regulars were coming to America, New York merchants finally signed a second nonimportation agreement in 1769. Once again it was patriotic to buy American.

  Although the situation hurt British mercantile interests, it also damaged local merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans. The English had banned the use of paper currency, and specie was scarce. Some people, who preferred profits to patriotism, began smuggling British goods into the city.

  For example, there was Simon Cooley, who had emigrated from London and was a haberdasher, jeweler, and silversmith. When it was discovered that he had imported British wares, he said that they had arrived long before the boycott had begun. Cooley promised not to sell any more English items, but greed got the better of him. He not only displayed his merchandise but also sent to England for more. Local papers denounced him as an ingrate, liar, and knave. Fearing for his life, Cooley hired British soldiers to guard his shop. When General Gage heard of this private use of his regulars, he withdrew them. Then the defenseless Cooley learned a mob was heading for his store. Hastily closing it, he ran to the fort to hide. Bellicose citizens demanded that he explain himself on the Commons. At last Cooley walked with quaking knees to the public meeting place, begged for pardon, and solemnly vowed to observe the nonimportation agreement.