WEBVTT NOTE 9. Land Conflicts in New Jersey 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.200 Volume 2, Chapter 9, Land Conflicts in New Jersey 2 00:00:06.200 --> 00:00:13.040 Land conflicts in New Jersey during the colonial period stemmed from its unique status of having 3 00:00:13.040 --> 00:00:20.040 numerous resident proprietors. Other proprietary colonies had one or a few feudal owners remotely 4 00:00:21.460 --> 00:00:28.460 resident in England. Both West and East New Jersey, however, had numerous resident proprietors 5 00:00:28.460 --> 00:00:42.460 The Bulk of the Problem Centered in East New Jersey, where the proprietors tended to hold on to their granted titles and tried to enforce quit rents rather than subdivide and sell the land quickly. 6 00:00:42.460 --> 00:00:46.460 The proprietors had trouble with two types of settlers. 7 00:00:46.460 --> 00:00:53.260 titles and tried to enforce quit rents rather than subdivide and sell the land quickly. 8 00:00:53.260 --> 00:00:59.020 The proprietors had trouble with two types of settlers, the recipients of the old Richard 9 00:00:59.020 --> 00:01:06.020 Nichols patent during the mid-seventeenth century and squatters who believed no more 10 00:01:06.020 --> 00:01:13.180 was required for owning the land, then settling and purchasing the tract from the Indians. 11 00:01:13.180 --> 00:01:19.980 The Nichols Patentees were largely in Elizabethtown, while the small farmers and squatters were 12 00:01:19.980 --> 00:01:26.580 farther west in the Oranges and in Hunterdon and Morris counties. 13 00:01:26.580 --> 00:01:32.180 The East New Jersey Council of Proprietors began a concerted attempt to enforce their 14 00:01:32.180 --> 00:01:37.140 titles and quit rents during the late 1720s. 15 00:01:37.140 --> 00:01:42.060 Leading the Proprietors were Lewis Morris and James Alexander. 16 00:01:42.060 --> 00:01:48.700 The proprietors received a severe setback when their attempt to eject an Elizabethtown settler 17 00:01:48.700 --> 00:01:57.700 was defeated after a jury trial in Lithgow v. Schuler, 1734. 18 00:01:57.700 --> 00:02:03.140 Foiled in their attempt to oust the Nichols patentees, the proprietors decided to try 19 00:02:03.140 --> 00:02:10.420 to collect quid rents, which had accumulated to a total of £10,000 in arrears. 20 00:02:10.420 --> 00:02:16.460 The West New Jersey Proprietors also began to crack down on squatter settlers, especially 21 00:02:16.460 --> 00:02:23.760 in Hunterdon County. When agents of Proprietor Daniel Cox Jr. tried to collect quitterance, 22 00:02:23.760 --> 00:02:29.940 the Hunterdon settlers drove them off with arms and threatened Cox with assassination 23 00:02:29.940 --> 00:02:36.540 if he should persist in his harassment. The conflict intensified when Lewis Morris, the 24 00:02:36.540 --> 00:02:42.740 The leader of the proprietors became royal governor in 1738. 25 00:02:42.740 --> 00:02:46.900 Morris was the first to be royal governor of New Jersey alone. 26 00:02:46.900 --> 00:02:53.660 Before him the royal governors were only ancillary to their post as governors of New York. 27 00:02:53.660 --> 00:02:59.640 Morris quickly appointed his son, Robert Hunter Morris, to be chief justice of the province, 28 00:02:59.640 --> 00:03:06.640 and his daughter's father-in-law, Richard Ashfield, to be receiver general of quitterance. 29 00:03:06.640 --> 00:03:12.240 The upper house was also packed by Lewis Morris with his fellow proprietors. The determined 30 00:03:12.240 --> 00:03:19.240 Morris decided in the 1740s to try the Elizabethtown land cases in the court of Chancery, where 31 00:03:20.600 --> 00:03:26.460 he himself was presiding judge. In reply, the Elizabethtown settlers petitioned the 32 00:03:26.460 --> 00:03:31.020 The King about their grievances, but to no avail. 33 00:03:31.020 --> 00:03:36.940 Morris and the proprietors also began winning many ejectment cases against settlers on the 34 00:03:36.940 --> 00:03:43.940 fringe of Elizabethtown, as well as against squatters further west who had purchased Indian 35 00:03:43.940 --> 00:03:45.420 titles. 36 00:03:45.420 --> 00:03:51.860 The chancery case against the Elizabethtown settlers was filed in 1745, and the settlers 37 00:03:51.860 --> 00:03:54.740 appeared to be in dire straits. 38 00:03:54.740 --> 00:04:01.300 At this point, with tensions at fever pitch, one of the Elizabethtown leaders, Samuel Baldwin, 39 00:04:01.300 --> 00:04:08.600 was arrested for cutting timber on his own, but allegedly proprietary, land. 40 00:04:08.600 --> 00:04:15.740 The people's anger exploded, and a mob broke open the Newark jail and rescued Baldwin. 41 00:04:15.740 --> 00:04:22.580 Four months later, Nehemiah Baldwin and others of the rioters were arrested in their turn. 42 00:04:22.580 --> 00:04:29.440 In response a crowd armed with clubs appeared and rescued Baldwin. Shortly afterward a mob 43 00:04:29.440 --> 00:04:36.620 of 300 appeared at the Newark jail facing 30 armed militia. Threatening to kill every 44 00:04:36.620 --> 00:04:43.420 militia man if fired upon, the triumphant crowd succeeded in breaking in and rescuing 45 00:04:43.420 --> 00:04:51.300 all the prisoners. The new assembly of February 1746 sympathized with the rioters. In his 46 00:04:51.300 --> 00:04:55.820 In his opening address to the legislature, Governor Morris thundered that the riots were 47 00:04:55.820 --> 00:05:00.660 virtually high treason and likely to end in rebellion. 48 00:05:00.660 --> 00:05:05.260 Morris called for severe measures to quell the revolution. 49 00:05:05.260 --> 00:05:10.560 Morris and the proprietors introduced in the council an amazing bill modeled on an English 50 00:05:10.560 --> 00:05:18.600 law of 1715 providing that if twelve or more persons should meet and refuse to disperse, 51 00:05:18.600 --> 00:05:25.440 If so ordered by a government official, they would then be declared felons and be summarily 52 00:05:25.440 --> 00:05:27.280 put to death. 53 00:05:27.280 --> 00:05:31.160 The confrontation between the two forces continued to mount. 54 00:05:31.160 --> 00:05:36.940 The rebels presented a petition to the legislature, citing their Indian titles and calling for 55 00:05:36.940 --> 00:05:44.480 a stay of all judicial processes against them, while Proprietor Samuel Neville denounced 56 00:05:44.480 --> 00:05:50.600 the petition as infringing the Crown's prerogative and its sovereignty over the soil of New 57 00:05:50.600 --> 00:05:58.480 Jersey. In a sense, Neville was correct. The opposing libertarian theory of land ownership 58 00:05:58.480 --> 00:06:06.200 espoused by the squatters was eloquently set forth by a sympathizer in a New York newspaper. 59 00:06:06.200 --> 00:06:12.580 Going beyond Roger Wynn's simple theory of Indian ownership to what was essentially the 60 00:06:12.580 --> 00:06:18.940 With John Locke, Labor Theory of Original Landed Property, the writer declared that 61 00:06:18.940 --> 00:06:25.640 although the earth was made for equal use of all, it may nevertheless be appropriated 62 00:06:25.640 --> 00:06:34.020 by every individual. This is done by the improvement of any part of it lying vacant, which is thereupon 63 00:06:34.020 --> 00:06:41.320 distinguished from the great common of nature and made the property of that man who bestowed 64 00:06:41.320 --> 00:06:47.800 and his labor in it, from whom it cannot afterward be taken, without breaking through the rules 65 00:06:47.800 --> 00:06:54.800 of natural justice, for thereby he would actually be deprived of the fruits of his industry. 66 00:06:55.920 --> 00:07:02.920 At this crucial point, Lewis Morris died. The proprietary still ran the governor's post, 67 00:07:03.320 --> 00:07:09.640 however, since acting governor John Hamilton was none other than the president of the East 68 00:07:09.640 --> 00:07:16.640 New Jersey Council of Proprietors. Hamilton demanded a bill to suppress the rioters, but 69 00:07:16.960 --> 00:07:23.560 the assembly paid no heed to his request. Instead, rioting spread during the summer 70 00:07:23.560 --> 00:07:29.920 throughout the province, and especially in Hunterdon County. The assembly also refused 71 00:07:29.920 --> 00:07:36.920 to raise troops for war with France. John Lowe, Essex representative and a riot leader, pointing 72 00:07:36.920 --> 00:07:42.920 pointing out that the armed force would soon be employed to suppress the riots at home. 73 00:07:42.920 --> 00:07:52.920 Threats of assassination were again made against Samuel Neville and the Somerset County Jail was broken open by a mob and several prisoners released. 74 00:07:52.920 --> 00:07:56.920 Rioting was rapidly merging into open revolution. 75 00:07:56.920 --> 00:08:04.920 Governor Hamilton responded by intensifying the tyranny suffered by the settlers and the rest of the populace. 76 00:08:04.920 --> 00:08:11.120 Thus, he ordered the sheriff to arrest any tumultuous assembly and to keep them in jail 77 00:08:11.120 --> 00:08:18.360 until trial. And Robert Hunter Morris vainly asked the crown to send troops from England 78 00:08:18.360 --> 00:08:21.960 to suppress the tenant rebellion. 79 00:08:21.960 --> 00:08:28.960 In the spring of 1747, the successful rioters intensified their rebellion and began to assume 80 00:08:28.960 --> 00:08:33.800 The Offensive In Morris County, they began driving proprietors 81 00:08:33.800 --> 00:08:35.840 from their homes. 82 00:08:35.840 --> 00:08:40.300 In the Spring Assembly, Hamilton admitted that the attempts at suppression had only 83 00:08:40.300 --> 00:08:44.080 succeeded in redoubling the rioting. 84 00:08:44.080 --> 00:08:50.680 Here was another example in history of the near impossibility of a government relying 85 00:08:50.680 --> 00:08:56.340 only on its own resources, suppressing a popular revolution. 86 00:08:56.340 --> 00:09:02.080 The Assembly again ignored Hamilton's threat to import counter-revolution by bringing in 87 00:09:02.080 --> 00:09:08.700 British troops. As the Assembly adjourned, the encouraged rioters broke into even more 88 00:09:08.700 --> 00:09:14.820 widespread rebellion, expecting that ultimately the King would be pressured into getting rid 89 00:09:14.820 --> 00:09:21.820 of the problem by granting the settlers their lands. In July, one of the most serious of 90 00:09:21.820 --> 00:09:28.060 The riots broke out in Perth Amboy, the main center of the resident Eastern Proprietors. 91 00:09:28.060 --> 00:09:34.500 John Bainbridge Jr. had been arrested for taking part in the Somerset County outbreak 92 00:09:34.500 --> 00:09:38.140 and was imprisoned in Perth Amboy jail. 93 00:09:38.140 --> 00:09:45.980 At this point, a rescue party of 150, armed with clubs, led by Edmund Bainbridge, Simon 94 00:09:45.980 --> 00:09:52.820 Wyckoff and Amos Roberts appeared at the courthouse, knocked down the sheriff and the mayor, broke 95 00:09:52.820 --> 00:09:57.400 open the jail and jubilantly wrote off with the prisoner. 96 00:09:57.400 --> 00:10:03.120 The government called a grand jury for Middlesex County and Judge Samuel Neville, one of the 97 00:10:03.120 --> 00:10:10.480 leading proprietors, charged the jury to indict twenty of the rioters for high treason. 98 00:10:10.480 --> 00:10:14.840 The jury, however, would hardly indict them for a riot. 99 00:10:14.840 --> 00:10:20.720 In the midst of this revolutionary atmosphere, Jonathan Belcher assumed the post of governor. 100 00:10:20.720 --> 00:10:25.880 Belcher, a professional royal bureaucrat who had been governor of Massachusetts for a dozen 101 00:10:25.880 --> 00:10:33.320 years, could be expected, as a native of Massachusetts, to be unsympathetic to quitterance and feudal 102 00:10:33.320 --> 00:10:35.600 proprietorships. 103 00:10:35.600 --> 00:10:41.400 While sympathetic to the liberal position, Belcher denounced the rioters who affected 104 00:10:41.400 --> 00:10:47.860 another dramatic jail rescue in Essex County soon after the governor assumed office. 105 00:10:47.860 --> 00:10:53.540 But Belcher's momentary annoyance did not push him into a reactionary program. Instead, 106 00:10:53.540 --> 00:10:59.300 he spoke in kindly fashion to a delegation of the rebels. The assembly was under firm 107 00:10:59.300 --> 00:11:06.220 control of the liberals, while the council had been packed with proprietary appointees. 108 00:11:06.220 --> 00:11:12.060 Council repeatedly urged harsh suppression of the rioters, and the proprietors called 109 00:11:12.060 --> 00:11:16.220 for making rioting a crime of high treason. 110 00:11:16.220 --> 00:11:22.660 The assembly, while refusing to take such measures, was in an uncomfortable position. 111 00:11:22.660 --> 00:11:28.700 While liberal on the land questioned, it was too moderate and cautious to be radical or 112 00:11:28.700 --> 00:11:30.980 principled on the issue. 113 00:11:30.980 --> 00:11:37.020 Even the radical rebels, after effecting a jail rescue in Hunterdon County in the autumn 114 00:11:37.020 --> 00:11:43.460 of 1747, proposed a great open march on the government in Burlington to demand defense 115 00:11:43.460 --> 00:11:47.080 against the depredations of the proprietors. 116 00:11:47.080 --> 00:11:53.900 The frightened assembly joined the council in denouncing such a march as an insult and 117 00:11:53.900 --> 00:11:55.740 contempt of the laws. 118 00:11:55.740 --> 00:12:03.740 Chagrined at this desertion by the supposedly sympathetic assembly, the rebel settlers canceled the march. 119 00:12:03.740 --> 00:12:10.740 Indeed, the middle-of-the-road assembly agreed to pass a very mild bill to suppress the riots, 120 00:12:10.740 --> 00:12:18.740 but without funds to enforce it, in exchange for a government pardon for all recanting rioters. 121 00:12:18.740 --> 00:12:25.740 The rebels were now faced with a situation all too common to revolutionary movements throughout history. 122 00:12:25.740 --> 00:12:31.740 They could easily defend themselves from their enemies, but not from their friends. 123 00:12:31.740 --> 00:12:37.740 Once again, a revolution confronted a betrayal by its supposed leaders. 124 00:12:37.740 --> 00:12:44.740 If the rebels were to submit to the amnesty, they would lose their essential revolutionary momentum. 125 00:12:44.740 --> 00:12:51.060 Two hundred rebels prepared to ask forgiveness before the Essex County Court, but their leader, 126 00:12:51.060 --> 00:12:58.100 Amos Roberts, managed to persuade them by his eloquence to stand fast. As a result, 127 00:12:58.100 --> 00:13:04.000 only twenty-three rebels took advantage of the proffered pardon. The stunned leader 128 00:13:04.000 --> 00:13:10.540 of the proprietors, James Alexander, proposed that the Council alone, if necessary, pass 129 00:13:10.540 --> 00:13:16.300 was a law declaring that all non-repentant rebels be summarily convicted of all crimes 130 00:13:16.300 --> 00:13:23.300 for which they stood indicted. A fantastic breach indeed of Anglo-Saxon legal procedures. 131 00:13:24.060 --> 00:13:29.540 Belcher blandly refrained from suppressing the rebels, who continued to chop down timber 132 00:13:29.540 --> 00:13:36.540 allegedly belonging to his proprietary. Finally, however, in the fall of 1748, the weak and 133 00:13:36.540 --> 00:13:43.260 and Uncertain Belcher allowed himself to be pressured into arresting the great rebel leader 134 00:13:43.260 --> 00:13:45.980 Amos Roberts for high treason. 135 00:13:45.980 --> 00:13:50.580 Here indeed was a direct challenge to the power of the revolution. 136 00:13:50.580 --> 00:13:56.860 The same evening a mob gathered at the Newark jail, shunted the deputy sheriff aside and 137 00:13:56.860 --> 00:14:00.220 freed the imprisoned Roberts. 138 00:14:00.220 --> 00:14:06.900 Professor then asked the assembly to curb this sort of open rebellion against the crown. 139 00:14:06.900 --> 00:14:13.620 The rebels increasingly justified themselves on the squatter and Indian grant theory, thus 140 00:14:13.620 --> 00:14:19.940 alienating the wealthier and more respectable Nichols patentees who after all depended for 141 00:14:19.940 --> 00:14:27.780 their theoretical argument on earlier, though less arbitrary, grants from the crown. 142 00:14:27.780 --> 00:14:34.100 The Great Armed Rebellion reached its height in the autumn of 1748 and spread into the 143 00:14:34.100 --> 00:14:39.900 proprietary timberlands of Pennsylvania. As one counselor of New Jersey had exclaimed 144 00:14:39.900 --> 00:14:46.900 in horror, all laws are laughed at and disregarded and they with force cut, carry and transport 145 00:14:46.900 --> 00:14:54.340 timber in the face of the magistrates and defy them. Amos Roberts now headed a virtual 146 00:14:54.340 --> 00:15:00.200 of People's Government in Competition with the Official One. He divided his domain into 147 00:15:00.200 --> 00:15:07.020 three wards, established courts to settle disputes, and elected militia officers. 148 00:15:07.020 --> 00:15:12.780 The oligarchy asserted that Roberts had also appointed assessors and collectors to obtain 149 00:15:12.780 --> 00:15:18.240 taxes, but the rebels themselves indignantly denied this claim. Apparently, they thought 150 00:15:18.240 --> 00:15:24.840 without tax collecting a rather reprehensible act. The fervor and determination of the radical 151 00:15:24.840 --> 00:15:31.840 liberal revolutionaries performed the function of pushing the vacillating Belcher and the 152 00:15:31.840 --> 00:15:39.600 Assembly into line. Headed by a leading writer, Assemblyman John Lowe, the Assembly voted 153 00:15:39.600 --> 00:15:47.440 overwhelmingly to do nothing to suppress the rebels, and Belcher began to listen sympathetically 154 00:15:47.440 --> 00:15:53.360 to the Arguments of the Rebel John Bainbridge, Belcher was also helped to his new position 155 00:15:53.360 --> 00:15:59.760 by the threat of an assembly leader that he would never receive a penny salary if he complained 156 00:15:59.760 --> 00:16:03.480 to the Crown against the rebels. 157 00:16:03.480 --> 00:16:09.320 The Council, stronghold of the proprietary oligarchs, then itself petitioned the King, 158 00:16:09.320 --> 00:16:14.880 which petition included a criticism of Belcher's actions. 159 00:16:14.880 --> 00:16:22.200 The timorous opportunist Belcher, ever ready to bow to the winds of pressure, now hastened 160 00:16:22.200 --> 00:16:28.320 to urge the assembly to vote money to protect the jails, and threatened that, should there 161 00:16:28.320 --> 00:16:33.860 be any further riots, he would call in troops from another colony and set up a military 162 00:16:33.860 --> 00:16:35.400 dictatorship. 163 00:16:35.400 --> 00:16:41.520 The assembly kept its head, even in response to his presumptuous demand, and declared the 164 00:16:41.520 --> 00:16:48.520 the colony much too poor to afford more taxes to protect the jails. It blandly suggested 165 00:16:49.240 --> 00:16:54.560 an extension of the amnesty offered to the rebels. Belcher's reaction was a letter to 166 00:16:54.560 --> 00:17:01.560 the king, but very weakly done and not sent in collaboration with the council. The British 167 00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:08.640 government, however, was coming into different hands and by spring 1749 was beginning to 168 00:17:08.640 --> 00:17:14.360 to pursue a much more energetically imperialistic policy toward the colonies. 169 00:17:14.360 --> 00:17:17.080 The Board of Trade was under new control. 170 00:17:17.080 --> 00:17:21.800 More important, the Minister of Foreign Affairs in charge of the colonies was now no longer 171 00:17:21.800 --> 00:17:24.120 the Duke of Newcastle. 172 00:17:24.120 --> 00:17:31.960 Heading colonial policy as Secretary of State for the Southern Department from 1724 to 1748, 173 00:17:31.960 --> 00:17:38.920 Newcastle had been charmingly lax and had left the colonies more or less alone. 174 00:17:38.920 --> 00:17:46.600 But now Newcastle was succeeded by an energetic imperialist, the Duke of Bedford, who scorned 175 00:17:46.600 --> 00:17:51.160 Belcher and sided wholly with the feudal proprietors. 176 00:17:51.160 --> 00:17:58.340 In this auspicious atmosphere for counter-revolution, Chief Justice Robert Hunter Morris sailed 177 00:17:58.340 --> 00:18:04.140 to London to Plead the Proprietary Cause. The Board of Trade's report to the Privy 178 00:18:04.140 --> 00:18:11.140 Council was virtually copied from Morris's account. But Belcher's representations managed 179 00:18:11.580 --> 00:18:18.580 to mollify the Board. Its final recommendations in the summer of 1751 merely suggested an 180 00:18:19.120 --> 00:18:26.120 impartial investigating commission, a reprimand to the Assembly, and an extended amnesty. 181 00:18:26.120 --> 00:18:31.680 Belcher and the assembly were greatly relieved, especially since the board had been on the 182 00:18:31.680 --> 00:18:37.040 point of doing something drastic, freeing the New Jersey governor from salary paid by the 183 00:18:37.040 --> 00:18:44.040 assembly or reuniting New Jersey with New York or sending in British or New York troops 184 00:18:44.040 --> 00:18:46.200 to quell the rioters. 185 00:18:46.200 --> 00:18:52.640 Meanwhile, the riots themselves had died down as the leaders had fled the colony to escape 186 00:18:52.640 --> 00:18:58.400 The Expected Royal Reprisals Governor Belcher, however, was getting into 187 00:18:58.400 --> 00:19:00.800 dire financial straits. 188 00:19:00.800 --> 00:19:06.200 Continual conflict between assembly and council had blocked the legislature from voting him 189 00:19:06.200 --> 00:19:08.200 any salary. 190 00:19:08.200 --> 00:19:14.360 The assembly shrewdly decided to gain Belcher's support and strike a stunning blow at the 191 00:19:14.360 --> 00:19:20.920 of Proprietary at the same time by voting to raise funds through a tax on unimproved 192 00:19:20.920 --> 00:19:27.360 lands. This, of course, would hit precisely at the arbitrary monopoly of unsettled lands 193 00:19:27.360 --> 00:19:33.280 in the hands of the proprietors. The assembly tried to get Belcher to sign the bill and 194 00:19:33.280 --> 00:19:39.520 simply ignore defeat in the council. But Belcher, though sympathetic, could not take such a 195 00:19:39.520 --> 00:19:52.520 by the 1752 session, no taxes had been paid in New Jersey for 16 years, and the Treasury was empty, and the government heavily in debt. 196 00:19:52.520 --> 00:20:04.520 The Assembly then decided to levy a tax on all land, including the unimproved, and on this more moderate bill, the Council and Assembly compromised and agreed. 197 00:20:04.520 --> 00:20:11.600 The year 1752 also saw the resolution of New Jersey's great land conflict. 198 00:20:11.600 --> 00:20:16.760 With the crown out of the picture, the rebels began to take action again and affected a 199 00:20:16.760 --> 00:20:19.040 jail rescue in April. 200 00:20:19.040 --> 00:20:26.040 The crown having, in effect, decided against them, the proprietors decided to let well 201 00:20:26.040 --> 00:20:33.520 enough alone to be content with their unsettled lands and not to stir up revolutionary ferment. 202 00:20:33.520 --> 00:20:39.600 Furthermore, their chancery suit would be decided by Belcher, who would undoubtedly find 203 00:20:39.600 --> 00:20:41.560 for the tenants. 204 00:20:41.560 --> 00:20:45.960 The proprietors then decided to drop the whole matter. 205 00:20:45.960 --> 00:20:51.880 The great counter-revolutionary attempt to impose feudal overlordship on settlers of 206 00:20:51.880 --> 00:20:56.080 the land in New Jersey had finally collapsed. 207 00:20:56.080 --> 00:21:01.460 The rebels and the assembly, by their determined pressure, combined with the partial assistance 208 00:21:01.460 --> 00:21:04.460 The decisions of the Governor had finally triumphed.