The Project Gutenberg eBook ofGouverneur Morris

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofGouverneur MorrisThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Gouverneur MorrisAuthor: Theodore RooseveltRelease date: June 4, 2012 [eBook #39915]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by David Edwards, Judith Picken and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOUVERNEUR MORRIS ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Gouverneur MorrisAuthor: Theodore RooseveltRelease date: June 4, 2012 [eBook #39915]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by David Edwards, Judith Picken and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive)

Title: Gouverneur Morris

Author: Theodore Roosevelt

Release date: June 4, 2012 [eBook #39915]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by David Edwards, Judith Picken and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOUVERNEUR MORRIS ***

[Transcriber's notes:blank pages have been removedInconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained. Corrected obvious printer errors:page51, "comparision" changed to "comparison." ("A comparison of the men ....")page270, "Tuilleries" changed to "Tuileries." ( "... the poor king was driven from the Tuileries.")page315, missing " added. ("... à casser les œufs.""")page365, missing "." added. ("Dalrymple, General, 125.")page366, "De Lancys" changed to "De Lanceys." ("De Lanceys, 16, 21, 45.")page368, "salôn" changed to "salon." ("literary life of the salon")]

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BOSTON AND NEW YORKHOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANYThe Riverside Press, Cambridge1892

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

Two generations ago the average American biographer was certainly a marvel of turgid and aimless verbosity; and the reputations of our early statesmen have in no way proved their vitality more clearly than by surviving their entombment in the pages of the authors who immediately succeeded them. No one of the founders of the Constitution has suffered more in this respect than has he who was perhaps the most brilliant, although by no means the greatest, of the whole number,—Gouverneur Morris.

Jared Sparks, hitherto Morris's sole biographer, wrote innumerable volumes on American history, many of which are still very valuable, and some of them almost indispensable, to the student. The value, however, comes wholly from the matter; Mr. Sparks is not only a very voluminous writer, but he is also a quite abnormally dull one. His "Life of Gouverneur Morris" is typical of most of his work.He collected with great industry facts about Mr. Morris, and edited a large number of his letters and state papers, with numerous selections, not always well chosen, from his Diary. Other merits the book has none, and it has one or two marked faults. He failed to understand that a biographer's duties are not necessarily identical with those of a professional eulogist; but for this he is hardly to blame, as all our writers then seemed to think it necessary to shower indiscriminate praise on every dead American—whether author, soldier, politician, or what not—save only Benedict Arnold. He was funnily unconscious of his own prolix dullness; and actually makes profuse apologies for introducing extracts from Morris's bright, interesting writings into his own drearily platitudinous pages, hoping that "candor and justice" will make his readers pardon the "negligence" and "defects of style," which the extracts contain. He could not resist the temptation now and then to improve Morris's English, and to soften down, or omit anything that he deemed either improper or beneath the stilted "dignity" of history. For example, Morris states that Marie Antoinette, when pursued by the Parisian fishwives, fled from her bed "in her shift and petticoat, with her stockings in her hand;" such particularity struckMr. Sparks as shockingly coarse, and with much refinement he replaced the whole phrase by "in her undress." An oath he would not permit to sully his pages on any terms; thus when Morris wrote that Pennsylvania would find Sir Henry Clinton "a most damnable physician," Mr. Sparks simply left out the offending sentence altogether. This kind of thing he did again and again.

Still he gives almost all of Morris's writings that are of political interest. It is, however, greatly to be desired that we should have a much more complete edition of his letters and Diary, on account of the extremely interesting descriptions they contain of the social life of the period, both in America and in Europe. As regards his public career, and his views and writings on public subjects, we already have ample material, much of which has appeared since Sparks's biography was written, and some of which is here presented for the first time.

Morris's speeches in the Constitutional Convention have been preserved, in summarized form, by Madison in his "Debates:" of these, of course, Sparks was necessarily ignorant. Miss Annie Carey Morris has written two articles in "Scribner's Magazine" for January and February, 1887, on her grandfather's life in Paris during the French Revolution, giving some newand interesting details. A good article appeared in "Macmillan's Magazine" for November, 1885, the writer evidently having been attracted to the subject by the way in which Taine made Morris's writings a basis for so much of his own great work on the Revolution. Decidedly the best piece upon Morris that has yet been written, however, is the admirable sketch by Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge in the "Atlantic Monthly" for April, 1886.

My thanks are especially due the Hon. John Jay for furnishing me many valuable letters, hitherto unpublished, of both Jay and Morris; and for giving me additional information about Morris's private life, and other matters. All the letters here quoted that are not given by Sparks are to be found either in the Jay MSS. or the Pickering MSS. Mr. Jay also furnished me with the account of the way in which Louis Philippe was finally persuaded to pay the debt he owed Morris.

PAGEIntroductionvCHAPTER I.His Youth: Colonial New York1CHAPTER II.The Outbreak of the Revolution: Morris in the Provincial Congress28CHAPTER III.Independence: Forming the State Constitution53CHAPTER IV.In the Continental Congress76CHAPTER V.Finances: The Treaty of Peace99CHAPTER VI.The Formation of the National Constitution125CHAPTER VII.First Stay in France169CHAPTER VIII.Life in Paris197CHAPTER IX.Mission to England: Return to Paris227CHAPTER X.Minister to France252CHAPTER XI.Stay in Europe300CHAPTER XII.Service in the United States Senate320CHAPTER XIII.The Northern Disunion Movement among the Federalists347

When, on January 31, 1752, Gouverneur Morris was born in the family manor-house at Morrisania, on the lands where his forefathers had dwelt for three generations, New York colony contained only some eighty thousand inhabitants, of whom twelve thousand were blacks. New York city was a thriving little trading town, whose people in summer suffered much from the mosquitoes that came back with the cows when they were driven home at nightfall for milking; while from among the locusts and water-beeches that lined the pleasant, quiet streets, the tree frogs sang so shrilly through the long, hot evenings that a man in speaking could hardly make himself heard.

Gouverneur Morris belonged by birth to that powerful landed aristocracy whose rule was known by New York alone among all thenorthern colonies. His great-grandfather, who had served in the Cromwellian armies, came to the seaport at the mouth of the Hudson, while it was still beneath the sway of Holland, and settled outside of Haerlem, the estate being invested with manorial privileges by the original grant of the governor. In the next two generations the Morrises had played a prominent part in colonial affairs, both the father and grandfather of Gouverneur having been on the bench, and having also been members of the provincial legislature, where they took the popular side, and stood up stoutly for the rights of the Assembly in the wearisome and interminable conflicts waged by the latter against the prerogatives of the crown and the powers of the royal governors. The Morrises were restless, adventurous men, of erratic temper and strong intellect; and, with far more than his share of the family talent and brilliancy, young Gouverneur also inherited a certain whimsical streak that ran through his character. His mother was one of the Huguenot Gouverneurs, who had been settled in New York since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; and it was perhaps the French blood in his veins that gave him the alert vivacity and keen sense of humor that distinguished him from most of the great Revolutionary statesmen who were his contemporaries.

He was a bright, active boy, fond of shooting and out-door sports, and was early put to school at the old Huguenot settlement of New Rochelle, where the church service was still sometimes held in French; and he there learned to speak and write this language almost as well as he could English. Thence, after the usual preparatory instruction, he went to King's College—now, with altered name and spirit, Columbia—in New York.

The years of his childhood were stirring ones for the colonies; for England was then waging the greatest and most successful of her colonial contests with France and Spain for the possession of eastern North America. Such contests, with their usual savage accompaniments in the way of Indian warfare, always fell with especial weight on New York, whose border lands were not only claimed, but even held by the French, and within whose boundaries lay the great confederacy of the Six Nations, the most crafty, warlike, and formidable of all the native races, infinitely more to be dreaded than the Algonquin tribes with whom the other colonies had to deal. Nor was this war any exception to the rule; for battle after battle was fought on our soil, from the day when, unassisted, the purely colonial troops of New York and New England at Lake George destroyedBaron Dieskau's mixed host of French regulars, Canadian militia, and Indian allies, to that still more bloody day when, on the shores of Lake Champlain, Abercrombie's great army of British and Americans recoiled before the fiery genius of Montcalm.

When once the war was ended by the complete and final overthrow of the French power, and the definite establishment of English supremacy along the whole Atlantic seaboard, the bickering which was always going on between Great Britain and her American subjects, and which was but partially suppressed even when they were forced to join in common efforts to destroy a common foe, broke out far more fiercely than ever. While the colonists were still reaping the aftermath of the contest in the shape of desolating border warfare against those Indian tribes who had joined in the famous conspiracy of Pontiac, the Royal Parliament passed the Stamp Act, and thereby began the struggle that ended in the Revolution.

England's treatment of her American subjects was thoroughly selfish; but that her conduct towards them was a wonder of tyranny, will not now be seriously asserted; on the contrary, she stood decidedly above the general European standard in such matters, and certainlytreated her colonies far better than France and Spain did theirs; and she herself had undoubted grounds for complaint in, for example, the readiness of the Americans to claim military help in time of danger, together with their frank reluctance to pay for it. It was impossible that she should be so far in advance of the age as to treat her colonists as equals; they themselves were sometimes quite as intolerant in their behavior towards men of a different race, creed, or color. The New England Puritans lacked only the power, but not the will, to behave almost as badly towards the Pennsylvania Quakers as did the Episcopalian English towards themselves. Yet granting all this, the fact remains, that in the Revolutionary War the Americans stood towards the British as the Protestant peoples stood towards the Catholic powers in the sixteenth century, as the Parliamentarians stood towards the Stewarts in the seventeenth, or as the upholders of the American Union stood towards the confederate slave-holders in the nineteenth; that is, they warred victoriously for the right in a struggle whose outcome vitally affected the welfare of the whole human race. They settled, once for all, that thereafter the people of English stock should spread at will over the world's waste spaces, keeping all their oldliberties and winning new ones; and they took the first and longest step in establishing the great principle that thenceforth those Europeans, who by their strength and daring founded new states abroad, should be deemed to have done so for their own profit as freemen, and not for the benefit of their more timid, lazy, or contented brethren who stayed behind.

The rulers of Great Britain, and to a large extent its people, looked upon the American colonies as existing primarily for the good of the mother country: they put the harshest restrictions on American trade in the interests of British merchants; they discouraged the spread of the Americans westward; and they claimed the right to decide for both parties the proportions in which they should pay their shares of the common burdens. The English and Americans were not the subjects of a common sovereign; for the English were themselves the sovereigns, the Americans were the subjects. Whether their yoke bore heavily or bore lightly, whether it galled or not, mattered little; it was enough that it was a yoke to warrant a proud, free people in throwing it off. We could not thankfully take as a boon part only of what we felt to be our lawful due. "We do not claim liberty as a privilege, but challenge it as a right," said the men of NewYork, through their legislature, in 1764; and all Americans felt with them.

Yet, for all this, the feeling of loyalty was strong and hard to overcome throughout the provinces, and especially in New York. The Assembly wrangled with the royal governor; the merchants and shipmasters combined to evade the intolerable harshness of the laws of trade that tried to make them customers of England only; the householders bitterly resented the attempts to quarter troops upon them; while the soldiers of the garrison were from time to time involved in brawls with the lower ranks of the people, especially the sailors, as the seafaring population was large, and much given to forcibly releasing men taken by the press-gang for the British war-ships; but in spite of everything there was a genuine sentiment of affection and respect for the British crown and kingdom. It is perfectly possible that if British statesmen had shown less crass and brutal stupidity, if they had shown even the wise negligence of Walpole, this feeling of loyalty would have been strong enough to keep England and America united until they had learned how to accommodate themselves to the rapidly changing conditions; but the chance was lost when once a prince like George the Third came to the throne. Ithas been the fashion to represent this king as a well meaning, though dull person, whose good morals and excellent intentions partially atoned for his mistakes of judgment; but such a view is curiously false. His private life, it is true, showed the very admirable but common-place virtues, as well as the appalling intellectual littleness, barrenness, and stagnation, of the average British green-grocer; but in his public career, instead of rising to the level of harmless and unimportant mediocrity usually reached by the sovereigns of the House of Hanover, he fairly rivaled the Stuarts in his perfidy, wrongheadedness, political debauchery, and attempts to destroy free government, and to replace it by a system of personal despotism. It needed all the successive blunders both of himself and of his Tory ministers to reduce the loyal party in New York to a minority, by driving the moderate men into the patriotic or American camp; and even then the loyalist minority remained large enough to be a formidable power, and to plunge the embryonic state into a ferocious civil war, carried on, as in the Carolinas and Georgia, with even more bitterness than the contest against the British.

The nature of this loyalist party and the strength of the conflicting elements can only be understood after a glance at the many nationalitiesthat in New York were being blended into one. The descendants of the old Dutch inhabitants were still more numerous than those of any other one race, while the French Huguenots, who, being of the same Calvinistic faith, were closely mixed with them, and had been in the land nearly as long, were also plentiful; the Scotch and Scotch- or Anglo-Irish, mostly Presbyterians, came next in point of numbers; the English, both of Old and New England, next; there were large bodies of Germans; and there were also settlements of Gaelic Highlanders, and some Welsh, Scandinavians, etc. Just prior to the Revolution there were in New York city two Episcopalian churches, three Dutch Reformed, three Presbyterian (Scotch and Irish), one French, two German (one Lutheran and one Calvinistic, allied to the Dutch Reformed); as well as places of worship for the then insignificant religious bodies of the Methodists, Baptists (largely Welsh), Moravians (German), Quakers and Jews. There was no Roman Catholic church until after the Revolution; in fact before that date there were hardly any Roman Catholics in the colonies, except in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and in New York they did not acquire any strength until after the War of 1812.

This mixture of races is very clearly shownby the ancestry of the half-dozen great men brought forth by New York during the Revolution. Of these, one, Alexander Hamilton, stands in the very first class of American statesmen; two more, John Jay and Gouverneur Morris, come close behind him; the others, Philip Schuyler, Robert Livingston, and George Clinton, were of lesser, but still of more than merely local, note. They were all born and bred on this side of the Atlantic. Hamilton's father was of Scotch, and his mother of French Huguenot, descent; Morris came on one side of English, and on the other of French Huguenot, stock; Jay, of French Huguenot blood, had a mother who was Dutch; Schuyler was purely Dutch; Livingston was Scotch on his father's, and Dutch on his mother's, side; the Clintons were of Anglo-Irish origin, but married into the old Dutch families. In the same way, it was Herkomer, of German parentage, who led the New York levies, and fell at their head in the bloody fight against the Tories and Indians at Oriskany; it was the Irishman Montgomery who died leading the New York troops against Quebec; while yet another of the few generals allotted to New York by the Continental Congress was MacDougall, of Gaelic Scotch descent. The colony was already developing an ethnic type of its own, quitedistinct from that of England. No American state of the present day, not even Wisconsin or Minnesota, shows so many and important "foreign," or non-English elements, as New York, and for that matter Pennsylvania and Delaware, did a century or so ago. In fact, in New York the English element in the blood has grown greatly during the past century, owing to the enormous New England immigration that took place during its first half; and the only important addition to the race conglomerate has been made by the Celtic Irish. The New England element in New York in 1775 was small and unimportant; on Long Island, where it was largest, it was mainly tory or neutral; in the city itself, however, it was aggressively patriotic.

Recent English writers, and some of our own as well, have foretold woe to our nation, because the blood of the Cavalier and the Roundhead is being diluted with that of "German boors and Irish cotters." The alarm is needless. As a matter of fact the majority of the people of the middle colonies at the time of the Revolutionwerethe descendants of Dutch and German boors and Scotch and Irish cotters; and in a less degree the same was true of Georgia and the Carolinas. Even in New England, where the English stock was purest,there was plenty of other admixture, and two of her most distinguished Revolutionary families bore, one the Huguenot name of Bowdoin, and the other the Irish name of Sullivan. Indeed, from the very outset, from the days of Cromwell, there has been a large Irish admixture in New England. When our people began their existence as a nation, they already differed in blood from their ancestral relatives across the Atlantic much as the latter did from their forebears beyond the German Ocean; and on the whole, the immigration since has not materially changed the race strains in our nationality; a century back we were even less homogeneous than we are now. It is no doubt true that we are in the main an offshoot of the English stem; and cousins to our kinsfolk of Britain we perhaps may be; but brothers we certainly are not.

But the process of assimilating, or as we should now say, of Americanizing, all foreign and non-English elements was going on almost as rapidly a hundred years ago as it is at present. A young Dutchman or Huguenot felt it necessary, then, to learn English, precisely as a young Scandinavian or German does now; and the churches of the former at the end of the last century were obliged to adopt English as the language for their ritual exactly as thechurches of the latter do at the end of this. The most stirring, energetic, and progressive life of the colony was English; and all the young fellows of push and ambition gradually adopted this as their native language, and then refused to belong to congregations where the service was carried on in a less familiar speech. Accordingly the Dutch Reformed churches dwindled steadily, while the Episcopalian and Presbyterian swelled in the same ratio, until in 1764 the former gained a new and lasting lease of life by reluctantly adopting the prevailing tongue; though Dutch was also occasionally used until forty years later.

In fact, during the century that elapsed between the final British conquest of the colony and the Revolution, the New Yorkers—Dutch, French, German, Irish, and English—had become in the main welded into one people; they felt alike towards outsiders, having chronic quarrels with the New England States as well as with Great Britain, and showing, indeed, but little more jealous hostility towards the latter than they did towards Connecticut and New Hampshire.

The religious differences no longer corresponded to the differences of language. Half of the adherents of the Episcopalian Church were of Dutch or Huguenot blood; the leadingministers of the Dutch Church were of Scotch parentage; and the Presbyterians included some of every race. The colonists were all growing to call themselves Englishmen; when Mayor Cruger, and a board of aldermen with names equally Dutch, signed the non-importation agreement, they prefaced it by stating that they claimed "their rights as Englishmen." But though there were no rivalries of race, there were many and bitter of class and religion, the different Protestant sects hating one another with a virulence much surpassing that with which they now regard even Catholics.

The colony was in government an aristocratic republic, its constitution modeled on that of England and similar to it; the power lay in the hands of certain old and wealthy families, Dutch and English, and there was a limited freehold suffrage. The great landed families, the Livingstons, Van Rennselaers, Schuylers, Van Cortlandts, Phillipses, Morrises, with their huge manorial estates, their riches, their absolute social preëminence and their unquestioned political headship, formed a proud, polished, and powerful aristocracy, deep rooted in the soil; for over a century their sway was unbroken, save by contests between themselves or with the royal governor, and they furnished the colony with military, political, and socialleaders for generation after generation. They owned numerous black slaves, and lived in state and comfort on their broad acres, tenant-farmed, in the great, roomy manor-houses, with wainscoted walls and huge fireplaces, and round about the quaint old gardens, prim and formal with their box hedges and precise flower beds. They answered closely to the whig lords of England, and indeed were often connected with the ruling orders abroad by blood or marriage; as an example, Staats Long Morris, Gouverneur's elder brother, who remained a royalist, and rose to be a major-general in the British army, married the Duchess of Gordon. Some of the manors were so large that they sent representatives to the Albany legislature, to sit alongside of those from the towns and counties.

Next in importance to the great manorial lords came the rich merchants of New York; many families, like the Livingstons, the most prominent of all, had representatives in both classes. The merchants were somewhat of the type of Frobisher, Hawkins, Klaesoon, and other old English and Dutch sea-worthies, who were equally keen as fighters and traders. They were shrewd, daring, and prosperous; they were often their own ship-masters, and during the incessant wars against the French and Spaniardswent into privateering ventures with even more zest and spirit than into peaceful trading. Next came the smaller landed proprietors, who also possessed considerable local influence; such was the family of the Clintons. The law, too, was beginning to take high rank as an honorable and influential profession.

Most of the gentry were Episcopalians, theirs being practically the state church, and very influential and wealthy; some belonged to the Calvinistic bodies,—notably the Livingstons, who were in large part Presbyterians, while certain of their number were prominent members of the Dutch congregations. It was from among the gentry that the little group of New York revolutionary leaders came; men of singular purity, courage, and ability, who, if they could not quite rank with the brilliant Virginians of that date, nevertheless stood close behind, alongside of the Massachusetts men and ahead of those from any other colony; that, too, it must be kept in mind, at a time when New York was inferior in wealth and population to Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, or Virginia, and little, if at all, in advance of Maryland or Connecticut. The great families also furnished the leaders of the loyalists during the war; such were the De Lanceys, whose influence around the mouth of the Hudson was second to that ofnone others; and the Johnsons, who, in mansions that were also castles, held half-feudal, half-barbaric sway over the valley of the upper Mohawk, where they were absolute rulers, ready and willing to wage war on their own account, relying on their numerous kinsmen, their armed negro slaves, their trained bands of Gaelic retainers, and their hosts of savage allies, drawn from among the dreaded Iroquois.

The bulk of the people were small farmers in the country, tradesmen and mechanics in the towns. They were for the most part members of some of the Calvinistic churches, the great majority of the whole population belonging to the Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed congregations. The farmers were thrifty, set in their ways, and obstinate; the townsmen thrifty also, but restless and turbulent. Both farmers and townsmen were thoroughly independent and self-respecting, and were gradually getting more and more political power. They had always stood tenaciously by their rights, from the days of the early Stuart governors, who had complained loudly of the "Dutch Republicans." But they were narrow, jealous of each other, as well as of outsiders, and slow to act together.

The political struggles were very bitter. The great families, under whose banners they were carried on, though all intermarried, weredivided by keen rivalries into opposing camps. Yet they joined in dreading too great an extension of democracy; and in return were suspected by the masses, who grumblingly followed their lead, of hostility to the popular cause. The Episcopalians, though greatly in the minority, possessed most power, and harassed in every way they dared the dissenting sects, especially the Presbyterians—for the Dutch Reformed and Huguenot churches had certain rights guaranteed them by treaty. The Episcopalian clergy were royalists to a man, and it was in their congregations that the main strength of the Tories lay, although these also contained many who became the stanchest of patriots. King's College was controlled by trustees of this faith. They were busy trying to turn it into a diminutive imitation of Oxford, and did their best to make it, in its own small way, almost as much a perverse miracle of backward and invariable wrong-headedness as was its great model. Its president, when the Revolution broke out, was a real old wine-bibbing Tory parson, devoted to every worn-out theory that inculcated humble obedience to church and crown; and he was most summarily expelled by the mob.

Some important political consequences arose from the fact that the mass of the people belonged to some one or other of the branches ofthe Calvinistic faith—of all faiths the most republican in its tendencies. They were strongly inclined to put their republican principles into practice as well in state as in church; they tended towards hostility to the crown, and were strenuous in their opposition to the extension of the Episcopal power, always threatened by some English statesmen; their cry was against "the King and the Bishops." It is worth noting that the Episcopalian churches were shut up when the Revolution broke out, and were reopened when the British troops occupied the city. The Calvinistic churches, on the contrary, which sided with the revolutionists, were shut when the British came into New York, were plundered by the troops, and were not reopened until after the evacuation.

Thus three parties developed, although the third, destined to overwhelm the others, had not yet come to the front. The first consisted of the royalists, or monarchists, the men who believed that power came from above, from the king and the bishops, and who were aristocratic in their sympathies; who were Americans only secondarily, and who stood by their order against their country. This party contained many of the great manorial families and also of the merchants; and in certain places, as in Staten Island, the east end of Long Island,the upper valley of the Mohawk, and part of Westchester County, the influence of the upper classes combined with the jealousy and ignorance of large sections of the lower, to give it a clear majority of the whole population. The second party was headed by the great families of Whig or liberal sympathies, who, when the split came, stood by their country, although only very moderate republicans; and it held also in its ranks the mass of moderate men, who wished freedom, were resolute in defense of their rights, and had republican leanings, but who also appreciated the good in the system under which they were living. Finally came the extremists, the men of strong republican tendencies, whose delight it was to toast Pym, Hampden, and the regicides. These were led by the agitators in the towns, and were energetic and active, but were unable to effect anything until the blunders of the British ministers threw the moderate men over to their side. They furnished none of the greater revolutionary leaders in New York, though the Clintons came near the line that divided them from the second party.

The last political contest carried on under the crown occurred in 1768, the year in which Morris graduated from college, when the last colonial legislature was elected. It remindsus of our own days when we read of the fears entertained of the solid German vote, and of the hostility to the Irish, who were hated and sneered at as "beggars" by the English party and the rich Episcopalians. The Irish of those days, however, were Presbyterians, and in blood more English than Gaelic. St. Patrick's Day was celebrated then as now, by public processions, as well as otherwise; but when, for instance, on March 17, 1766, the Irish residents of New York celebrated the day by a dinner, they gave certain toasts that would sound strangely in the ears of Milesian patriots of the present time, for they included "The Protestant Interest," and "King William, of glorious, pious, and immortal memory."

The royalist or conservative side in this contest in 1768 was led by the De Lanceys, their main support being drawn from among the Episcopalians, and most of the larger merchants helping them. The Whigs, including those with republican leanings, followed the Livingstons, and were drawn mainly from the Presbyterian and other Calvinistic congregations. The moderate men on this occasion went with the De Lanceys, and gave them the victory. In consequence the colonial legislature was conservative and loyal in tone, and anti-republican, although not ultra-tory, as a whole;and thus when the revolutionary outbreak began it went much slower than was satisfactory to the patriot party, and its actions were finally set aside by the people.

When Morris graduated from college, as mentioned above, he was not yet seventeen years old. His college career was like that of any other bright, quick boy, without over much industry or a passion for learning. For mathematics he possessed a genuine taste; he was particularly fond of Shakespeare; and even thus early he showed great skill in discussion and much power of argument. He made the oration, or graduating address, of his class, choosing for the subject "Wit and Beauty;" it was by no means a noteworthy effort, and was couched in the dreadful Johnsonian English of the period. A little later, when he took his master's degree, he again delivered an oration,—this time on "Love." In point of style this second speech was as bad as the first, disfigured by cumbrous Latinisms and a hopeless use of the superlative; but there were one or two good ideas in it.

As soon as he graduated, he set to work to study law, deciding on this profession at once as being best suited for an active, hopeful, ambitious young man of his social standing and small fortune, who was perfectly self-confidentand conscious of his own powers. He soon became interested in his studies, and followed them with great patience, working hard and mastering both principles and details with ease. He was licensed to practice as an attorney in 1771, just three years after another young man, destined to stand as his equal in the list of New York's four or five noted statesmen, John Jay, had likewise been admitted to the bar; and among the very few cases in which Morris was engaged of which the record has been kept is one concerning a contested election, in which he was pitted against Jay, and bore himself well.

Before this, and while not yet of age, he had already begun to play a part in public affairs. The colony had been run in debt during the French and Indian wars, and a bill was brought forward in the New York Assembly to provide for this by raising money through the issue of interest-bearing bills of credit. The people, individually, were largely in debt, and hailed the proposal with much satisfaction, on the theory that it would "make money more plenty;" our revolutionary forefathers being unfortunately not much wiser or more honest in their ways of looking at the public finances than we ourselves, in spite of our state repudiators, national greenbackers, and dishonest silver men.

Morris attacked the bill very forcibly, and with good effect, opposing any issue of paper money, which could bring no absolute relief, but merely a worse catastrophe of bankruptcy in the end; he pointed out that it was nothing but a mischievous pretense for putting off the date of a payment that would have to be met anyhow, and that ought rather to be met at once with honest money gathered from the resources of the province. He showed the bad effects such a system of artificial credit would have on private individuals, the farmers and tradesmen, by encouraging them to speculate and go deeper into debt; and he criticised unsparingly the attitude of the majority of his fellow-citizens in wishing such a measure of relief, not only for their short-sighted folly, but also for their criminal and selfish dishonesty in trying to procure a temporary benefit for themselves at the lasting expense of the community; finally he strongly advised them to bear with patience small evils in the present rather than to remedy them by inflicting infinitely greater ones on themselves and their descendants in the future.

At the law he did very well, having the advantages of his family name, and of his own fine personal appearance. He was utterly devoid of embarrassment, and his perfect self-assurance and freedom from any timidity orsense of inferiority left his manner without the least tinge of awkwardness, and gave clear ground for his talents and ambition to make their mark.

However, hardworking and devoted to his profession though he was, he had the true family restlessness and craving for excitement, and soon after he was admitted to the bar, he began to long for foreign travel, as was natural enough in a young provincial gentleman of his breeding and education. In a letter to an old friend (William Smith, a man of learning, the historian of the colony, and afterwards its chief justice), in whose office he had studied law, he asks advice in the matter, and gives as his reasons for wishing to make the trip the desire "to form my manners and address by the example of the truly polite, to rub off in the gay circle a few of the many barbarisms which characterize a provincial education, and to curb the vain self-sufficiency which arises from comparing ourselves with companions who are inferior to us." He then anticipates the objections that may be made on the score of the temptations to which he will be exposed by saying: "If it be allowed that I have atastefor pleasure, it may naturally follow that I shall avoid those low pleasures which abound on this as well as on the other side of the Atlantic.As for these poignant joys which are the lot of the affluent, like Tantalus I may grasp at them, but they will certainly be out of my reach." In this last sentence he touches on his narrow means; and it was on this point that his old preceptor harped in making his reply, cunningly instilling into his mind the danger of neglecting his business, and bringing up the appalling example of an "Uncle Robin," who, having made three pleasure trips to England, "began to figure with thirty thousand pounds, and did not leave five thousand;" going on "What! 'Virtus post nummos? Curse on inglorious wealth?' Spare your indignation. I, too, detest the ignorant miser; but both virtue and ambition abhor poverty, or they are mad. Rather imitate your grandfather [who had stayed in America and prospered] than your uncle."

The advice may have had its effect; at any rate Morris stayed at home, and, with an occasional trip to Philadelphia, got all he could out of the society of New York, which, little provincial seaport though it was, was yet a gay place, gayer then than any other American city save Charleston, the society consisting of the higher crown officials, the rich merchants, and the great landed proprietors. Into this society Morris, a handsome, high-bred young fellow,of easy manners and far from puritanical morals, plunged with a will, his caustic wit and rather brusque self-assertion making him both admired and feared. He enjoyed it all to the full, and in his bright, chatty letters to his friends pictures himself as working hard, but gay enough also: "up all night—balls, concerts, assemblies—all of us mad in the pursuit of pleasure."

But the Revolution was at hand; and both pleasure and office-work had to give way to something more important.

During the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the Revolution, almost all people were utterly in the dark as to what their future conduct should be. No responsible leader thought seriously of separation from the mother country, and the bulk of the population were still farther from supposing such an event to be possible. Indeed it must be remembered that all through the Revolutionary War not only was there a minority actively favorable to the royal cause, but there was also a minority—so large that, added to the preceding, it has been doubted whether it was not a majority—that was but lukewarm in its devotion to the American side, and was kept even moderately patriotic almost as much by the excesses of the British troops and blunders of the British generals and ministers, as by the valor of our own soldiers, or the skill of our own statesmen. We can now see clearly thatthe right of the matter was with the patriotic party; and it was a great thing for the whole English-speaking race that that section of it which was destined to be the most numerous and powerful should not be cramped and fettered by the peculiarly galling shackles of provincial dependency; but all this was not by any means so clear then as now, and some of our best citizens thought themselves in honor bound to take the opposite side,—though of necessity those among our most high-minded men, who were also far-sighted enough to see the true nature of the struggle, went with the patriots.

That the loyalists of 1776 were wrong is beyond question; but it is equally beyond question that they had greater grounds for believing themselves right than had the men who tried to break up the Union three quarters of a century later. That these latter had the most hearty faith in the justice of their cause need not be doubted; and he is but a poor American whose veins do not thrill with pride as he reads of the deeds of desperate prowess done by the confederate armies; but it is most unfair to brand the "tory" of 1776 with a shame no longer felt to pertain to the "rebel" of 1860. Still, there is no doubt, not only that the patriots were right, but also that they were as a whole superior to the tories; they werethe men with a high ideal of freedom, too fond of liberty, and too self-respecting, to submit to foreign rule; they included the mass of hard-working, orderly, and yet high-spirited yeomen and freeholders. The tories included those of the gentry who were devoted to aristocratic principles; the large class of timid and prosperous people (like the Pennsylvania Quakers); the many who feared above all things disorder; also the very lowest sections of the community, the lazy, thriftless, and vicious, who hated their progressive neighbors, as in the Carolinas; and finally the men who were really principled in favor of a kingly government.

Morris was at first no more sure of his soundings than were the rest of his companions. He was a gentleman of old family, and belonged to the ruling Episcopalian Church. He was no friend to tyranny, and he was a thorough American, but he had little faith in extreme democracy. The Revolution had two sides; in the northern Atlantic States at least it was almost as much an uprising of democracy against aristocracy as it was a contest between America and England; and the patriotic Americans, who nevertheless distrusted ultra-democratic ideas, suffered many misgivings when they let their love for their country overcometheir pride of caste. The "Sons of Liberty," a semi-secret society originating among the merchants, and very powerful in bringing discontent to a head, now showed signs of degenerating into a mob; and for mobs Morris, like other clear-headed men, felt the most profound dislike and contempt.

Throughout 1774 he took little part in the various commotions, which kept getting more and more violent. He was angered by the English encroachments, and yet was by no means pleased with the measures taken to repel them. The gentry, and the moderate men generally, were at their wits' ends in trying to lead the rest of the people, and were being pushed on farther and farther all the time; the leadership, even of the revolutionary party, still rested in their hands; but it grew continually less absolute. Said Morris: "The spirit of the English constitution has yet a little influence left, and but a little. The remains of it, however, will give the wealthy people a superiority this time; but, would they secure it, they must banish all schoolmasters and confine all knowledge to themselves.... The gentry begin to fear this. Their committee will be appointed; they will deceive the people, and again forfeit a share of their confidence. And if these instances of what with one side is policy, with the other perfidy,shall continue to increase and become more frequent, farewell, aristocracy. I see, and see it with fear and trembling, that if the dispute with Britain continues, we shall be under the worst of all possible dominions; we shall be under the dominion of a riotous mob. It is the interest of all men, therefore, to seek for reunion with the parent state." He then goes on to discuss the terms which will make this reunion possible, and evidently draws ideas from sources as diverse as Rousseau and Pitt, stating, as preliminaries, that when men come together in society, there must be an implied contract that "a part of their freedom shall be given up for the security of the remainder. But what part? The answer is plain. The least possible, considering the circumstances of the society, which constitute what may be called its political necessity;" and again: "In every society the members have a right to the utmost liberty that can be enjoyed consistent with the general safety;" while he proposes the rather wild remedy of divorcing the taxing and the governing powers, giving America the right to lay her own imposts, and regulate her internal police, and reserving to Great Britain that to regulate the trade for the entire empire.

Naturally there was no hope of any compromise of this sort. The British ministrygrew more imperious, and the Colonies more defiant. At last the clash came, and then Morris's thorough Americanism and inborn love of freedom and impatience of tyranny overcame any lingering class jealousy, and he cast in his lot with his countrymen. Once in, he was not of the stuff to waver or look back; but like most other Americans, and like almost all New Yorkers, he could not for some little time realize how hopeless it was to try to close the breach with Great Britain. Hostilities had gone on for quite a while before even Washington could bring himself to believe that a lasting separation was inevitable.

The Assembly, elected as shown in the previous chapter, at a moment of reaction, was royalist in tone. It contained several stanch patriots, but the majority, although unwilling to back up the British ministers in all their doings, were still more hostile to the growing body of republican revolutionists. They gradually grew wholly out of sympathy with the people; until the latter at last gave up all attempts to act through their ordinary representatives, and set about electing delegates who should prove more faithful. Thereupon, in April, 1775, the last colonial legislature adjourned for all time, and was replaced by successive bodies more in touch with the generalsentiment of New York; that is, by various committees, by a convention to elect delegates to the Continental Congress, and then by the Provincial Congress. The lists of names in these bodies show not only how many leading men certain families contributed, but also how mixed the lineage of such families was; for among the numerous Jays, Livingstons, Ludlows, Van Cortlandts, Roosevelts, Beekmans, and others of Dutch, English, and Huguenot ancestry appear names as distinctly German, Gaelic-Scotch, and Irish, like Hoffman, Mulligan, MacDougall, Connor.[1]

To the Provincial Congress, from thenceforth on the regular governmental body of the colony, eighty-one delegates were elected, including Gouverneur Morris from the county of Westchester, and seventy were present at the first meeting, which took place on May 22 at New York. The voting in the Congress was done by counties, each being alloted a certain number of votes roughly approximating to its population.

Lexington had been fought, and the war had already begun in Massachusetts; but in New York, though it was ablaze with sympathy for the insurgent New Englanders, the royal authority was still nominally unquestioned, and there had been no collision with the British troops. Few, if any, of the people of the colony as yet aimed at more than a redress of their grievances and the restoration of their rights and liberties; they had still no idea of cutting loose from Great Britain. Even such an avowedly popular and revolutionary body as the Provincial Congress contained some few out and out tories andvery many representatives of that timid, wavering class, which always halts midway in any course of action, and is ever prone to adopt half-measures,—a class which in any crisis works quite as much harm as the actively vicious, and is almost as much hated and even more despised by the energetic men of strong convictions. The timid good are never an element of strength in a community; but they have always been well represented in New York. During the Revolutionary War it is not probable that much more than half of her people were ever in really hearty and active sympathy with the patriots.

Morris at once took a prominent place in the Congress, and he showed the national bent of his mind when he seconded a resolution to the effect that implicit obedience ought to be rendered to the Continental Congress in all matters pertaining to the general regulation of the associated colonies. The Assembly, however, was by no means certain how far it would be well to go; and the majority declined either to approve or disapprove of the proceedings of the late Continental Congress. They agreed to subscribe to the association, and recommended the same course to their constituents; but added that they did not believe the latter should be forced to do so.

Still, with all their doubting and faint-heartedness, they did set about preparing for resistance, and for at least the possibility of concerted action with the other colonies. The first step, of course, was to provide for raising funds; this was considered by a committee of which Morris was a member, and he prepared and drew up their report. In the state of public feeling, which was nearly a unit against "taxation without representation" abroad, but was the reverse of unanimous as to submitting even to taxation with representation at home, it was impossible to raise money by the ordinary method; indeed, though the mass of active patriots were willing to sacrifice much, perhaps all, for the cause, yet there were quite as many citizens whose patriotism was lukewarm enough already, and could not stand any additional chilling. Such people are always willing to face what may be called a staved-off sacrifice, however; and promises to pay in the future what they can, but will not pay in the present, come under this head. Besides, there would have been other difficulties in the way, and in fact it was impossible to raise the amount needed by direct taxation. Accordingly Morris, in his report on behalf of the committee, recommended an issue of paper money, and advised that this should not be done by the colony itself, but thatthe Continental Congress should strike the whole sum needed, and apportion the several shares to the different colonies, each of them being bound to discharge its own particular part, and all together to be liable for whatever any particular colony was unable to pay. This plan secured a wide credit and circulation to the currency, and, what was equally desirable, created throughout the colonies a common interest and common responsibility on a most important point, and greatly strengthened the bonds of their union. Morris even thus early showed the breadth of his far-seeing patriotism; he was emphatically an American first, a New Yorker next; the whole tone of his mind was thoroughly national. He took the chief part in urging the adoption of the report, and made a most telling speech in its favor before the Assembly, a mixed audience of the prominent men of the colony being also present. The report was adopted and forwarded to the Continental Congress; Morris was felt on all sides to have already taken his place among the leaders, and from thenceforth he was placed on almost every important committee of the Provincial Congress.

This body kept on its course, corresponding with the other colonies, exchanging thinly veiled threats with the Johnsons, the powerfulTory over-lords of the upper Mohawk, and preparing rather feebly for defense, being hampered by a total lack of funds or credit until the continental currency was coined. But they especially busied themselves with a plan of reconciliation with England; and in fact were so very cautions and moderate as to be reproached by their chosen agent in England, Edmund Burke, for their "scrupulous timidity." The Congress, by the way, showed some symptoms of an advance in toleration, at least so far as the Protestant sects went; for it was opened and closed by ministers of the Episcopalian, Dutch Reformed, Presbyterian, Baptist, and other sects, each in turn; but, as will shortly be seen, the feeling against Catholics was quite as narrow-minded and intense as ever. This was natural enough in colonial days, when Protestantism and national patriotism were almost interchangeable terms; for the hereditary and embittered foes of the Americans, the French and Spaniards, were all Catholics, and even many of the Indians were of the same faith; and undoubtedly the wonderful increase in the spirit of tolerance shown after the Revolution was due in part to the change of the Catholic French into our allies, and of the Protestant English into our most active foes. It must be remembered, however, that the Catholicgentry of Maryland played the same part in the Revolution that their Protestant neighbors did. One of the famous Carroll family was among the signers of the Declaration of Independence; and on the other hand, one of the Cliftons was a noted loyalist leader.

Morris took a prominent part, both in and out of committee, in trying to shape the plan of reconciliation, although utterly disapproving of many of the ways in which the subject was handled; for he had all the contempt natural to most young men of brains, decision, and fiery temper, for his timid, short-sighted, and prolix colleagues. The report was not all to his taste in the final shape in which it was adopted. It consisted of a series of articles recommending the repeal of the obnoxious statutes of the Imperial Parliament, the regulation of trade for the benefit of the whole empire, the establishment of triennial colonial legislatures, and also asserting the right of the colonies to manage their internal polity to suit themselves, and their willingness to do their part, according to their capacities, for the general defense of the empire. The eighth article contained a denial of the right of "Great Britain, or any other earthly legislature or tribunal, to interfere in the ecclesiastical or religious concerns of the colonies," togetherwith a "protest against the indulgence and establishment of popery all along their interior confines;" this being called forth by what was known as the "Quebec Bill," whereby the British Parliament had recently granted extraordinary powers and privileges to the Canadian clergy, with the obvious purpose of conciliating that powerful priesthood, and thereby converting—as was actually done—the recently conquered French of the St. Lawrence valley into efficient allies of the British government against the old Protestant colonies.

This eighth article was ridiculous, and was especially objected to by Morris. In one of his vigorous, deliciously fresh, and humorous letters, dated June 30, 1775, and addressed to John Jay, then in the Continental Congress, he writes:—

The foolish religious business I opposed until I was weary; it was carried by a very small majority, and my dissent entered.... The article about religion is most arrant nonsense, and would do as well in a high Dutch Bible as the place it now stands in.I drew a long report for our committee, to which they could make no objections excepting that none of them could understand it.... I was pleased at the rejection, because, as I observed to you before, I think the question ought to be simplified.I address this letter to you, but I shall be glad [if]you will read it to Livingstone, for I intend it for both of you; make my compliments to him, and tell him that I shall write to him when I have time to write a good letter—this is a damned bad one, and would not exist, if I did not think it a duty to myself to show my friends that I had no hand in that foolish religious business, I am, as you well know, your friend, etc.

I drew a long report for our committee, to which they could make no objections excepting that none of them could understand it.... I was pleased at the rejection, because, as I observed to you before, I think the question ought to be simplified.

I address this letter to you, but I shall be glad [if]you will read it to Livingstone, for I intend it for both of you; make my compliments to him, and tell him that I shall write to him when I have time to write a good letter—this is a damned bad one, and would not exist, if I did not think it a duty to myself to show my friends that I had no hand in that foolish religious business, I am, as you well know, your friend, etc.

Morris did not believe in a colonial assembly making overtures for a reconciliation, as he thought this was the province of the Continental Congress. The majority was against him, but he was a clever politician and parliamentary tactician, as well as a great statesman, and he fairly outwitted and hoodwinked his opponents, persuading them finally to adopt the report in the form of a mere expression of opinions to be sent to their congressional delegates, with a prayer that the latter would "use every effort for the compromising of this unnatural quarrel between the parent and child." In this shape it was forwarded to the delegates, who answered that they would do all in their power to compromise the quarrel, and added a postscript, written by Jay himself, to the effect that they deemed it better not to make any mention of the religious article before the Congress, as they thought it wise to bury "all disputes on ecclesiastical points, which have for ages hadno other tendency than that of banishing peace and charity from the world."

While all this was pending, and though Bunker Hill had been fought, and the war was in full progress round Boston, New York yet maintained what might almost be described as an attitude of armed neutrality. The city was so exposed to the British war-ships in the bay, and the surrounding population was so doubtful, that the patriot party dared not take the deciding steps, especially as so many of its members still clung to the hope of a peaceful settlement. Morris announced frankly that he did not believe in breaking the peace until they were prepared to take the consequences. Indeed, when the few British troops left the city to join the garrison in Boston, he strongly opposed the action of the Sons of Liberty, who gathered hastily together, and took away the cartloads of arms and ammunition that the soldiers were taking with them. The Congress, to their honor, discouraged, to the best of their power, the rioting and mobbing of Tories in the city.

In fact, New York's position was somewhat like that of Kentucky at the outbreak of the Civil War. Her backwardness in definitely throwing in her lot with the revolutionists was clearly brought out by a rather ludicrous incident. General Washington, on his wayto take command of the continental army round Boston, passed through New York the same day the royal governor, Tryon, arrived by sea, and the authorities were cast into a great quandary as to how they should treat two such kings of Brentford when the one rose was so small. Finally they compromised by sending a guard of honor to attend each; Montgomery and Morris, as delegates from the Assembly, received Washington and brought him before that body, which addressed him in terms of cordial congratulation, but ended with a noteworthy phrase,—that "when the contest should be decided by an accommodation with the mother country, he should deliver up the important deposit that had been confided to his hands."

These words give us the key to the situation. Even the patriots of the colony could not realize that there was no hope of an "accommodation"; and they were hampered at every step by the fear of the British frigates, and of the numerous Tories. The latter were very bold and defiant; when Congress tried to disarm them, they banded themselves together, bade the authorities defiance, and plainly held the upper land on Staten Island and in Queens County. New York furnished many excellent soldiers to the royal armies during the war, andfrom among her gentry came the most famous of the Tory leaders,—such as Johnson and De Lancey, whose prowess was felt by the hapless people of their own native province; De Peyster, who was Ferguson's second in command at King's Mountain; and Cruger, who, in the Carolinas, inflicted a check upon Greene himself. The Tories were helped also by the jealousy felt towards some of the other colonies, especially Connecticut, whose people took the worst possible course for the patriot side by threatening to "crush down" New York, and by finally furnishing an armed and mounted mob which rode suddenly into the city, and wrecked the office of an obnoxious loyalist printer named Rivington. This last proceeding caused great indignation, and nearly made a split in the revolutionary camp.

New York had thus some cause for her inaction; nevertheless, her lack of boldness and decision were not creditable to her, and she laid herself open to just reproaches. Nor can Morris himself be altogether freed from the charge of having clung too long to the hope of a reconciliation and to a policy of half measures. He was at that time chairman of a legislative committee which denounced any projected invasion of Canada (therein, however, only following the example of the ContinentalCongress), and refused to allow Ethan Allen to undertake one, as that adventurous partisan chieftain requested. But Morris was too clear-sighted to occupy a doubtful position long; and he now began to see things clearly as they were, and to push his slower or more timid associates forward along the path which they had set out to tread. He was instrumental in getting the militia into somewhat better shape; and, as it was found impossible to get enough continental money, a colonial paper currency was issued. In spite of the quarrel with Connecticut, a force from that province moved in to take part in the defense of New York.

Yet, in the main, the policy of the New York Congress still continued both weak and changeable, and no improvement was effected when it was dissolved and a second elected. To this body the loyalist counties of Richmond and Queens refused to return delegates, and throughout the colony affairs grew more disorderly, and the administration of justice came nearly to a standstill. Finding that the local congress seemed likely to remain unable to make up its mind how to act, the continental leaders at last took matters into their own hands, and marched a force into New York city early in February, 1776. This had a most bracingeffect upon the provincial authorities; yet they still continued to allow the British war-ships in the bay to be supplied with provisions, nor was this attitude altered until in April Washington arrived with the main continental army. He at once insisted that a final break should be made; and about the same time the third Provincial Congress was elected. Morris, again returned for Westchester, headed the bolder spirits, who had now decided that the time had come to force their associates out of their wavering course, and to make them definitely cast in their lot with their fellow Americans. Things had come to a point which made a decision necessary; the gathering of the continental forces on Manhattan Island and the threatening attitude of the British fleet and army made it impossible for even the most timid to keep on lingering in a state of uncertainty. So the Declaration of Independence was ratified, and a state constitution organized; then the die was cast, and thereafter New York manfully stood by the result of the throw.

The two Provincial Congresses that decided on this course held their sessions in a time of the greatest tumult, when New York was threatened hourly by the British; and long before their work was ended they had hastily to leave the city. Before describing what theydid, a glance should be taken at the circumstances under which it was done.

The peaceable citizens, especially those with any property, gradually left New York; and it remained in possession of the raw levies of the continentals, while Staten Island received Howe with open arms, and he was enabled without difficulty to disembark his great force of British and German mercenaries on Long Island. The much smaller, motley force opposed to him, unorganized, ill armed, and led by utterly inexperienced men, was beaten, with hardly an effort, in the battle that followed, and only escaped annihilation through the skill of Washington and the supine blundering of Howe. Then it was whipped up the Hudson and beyond the borders of the State, the broken remnant fleeing across New Jersey; and though the brilliant feats of arms at Trenton and Princeton enabled the Americans to reconquer the latter province, southern New York lay under the heel of the British till the close of the war.

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